Masher

Smoked Blues

• by Laura
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Lou gives me a call.  It goes something like this.  “Laura.  I’ve got the smoker going and a lot of bluefish.  You want a piece?”

Now, you’ve got to know how I love bluefish.  So what am I gonna do...say no?  A few hours later, I arrive to find Lou standing in his garage with the smoker going, and huge plumes of smoke blowing down the driveway.  “They’ve been on since 8 this morning,” he explains. 

Typical. 

Lou, as many of you know, is a great cook and friend, who busts me mercilessly and offers comic relief to my overly serious self.  I say “Lou, Can I take your picture at your smoker?”

He replies by singing a snippet from a Louie Prima song,

Se ti piglia lu pisciaolo
Tssu vai, issu viene
Sempre lu pesce a manu tiene

Which is basically about a guy who is always holding fish in his hand.  (Get it?) It’s a great song in dialect from the wonderful region of Naples, same as Lou.

Anyway here is Lou at the smoker.  (Sorry Lou for the less than flattering shot with your eyes closed!)

And here are his bluefish inside the smoker. 

Now I know what you’re thinking.  You’re thinking how can I get a smoker like that?  Well, you can’t.  This is a custom job, built for Lou by a couple of friends, and I don’t remember the whole story either, except that it’s a workhorse.  He’s had whole pigs on the spit in there. 

And what you also need to know is that if you get into this ancient form of preservation, the smoke alone wont do the full job to preserve food safely.  You’ve either got to dry it in addition or salt it.  That’s why Lou first fillets these fish then puts them in a salty brine before smoking.  The result is stong, salty, smokey, and absolutely delicious.

And here’s a better picture.  Can you guess what Lou’s saying? 

“Calda!” Which is not dialect for “Hurry up and take the picture--the fish is hot!”

Lou often catches the fish he smokes, but in this case, a friend brought them by.  For Lou’s smoking services, the fee is simple.  He keeps half.  That’s right.  “I get ten to smoke.  I keep five,” he explains.  Seems fair enough when you consider all the work and time.

Maybe we’ll come back next month to visit Lou’s back yard when it is the scene of much tomato preserving. 

But before you go, click here to brighten up your day with this completely fun Louie Prima song that will have you dancing and wishing you were from Naples, too.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tg3C0nvenro&feature=related

Masher

Front Yard Garden Update

• by Laura
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Okay, so we're slacking a bit.  Weeds are growing.  Some tomatoes are cascading onto the sidewalk.  And this is no time to slack. It's August!  There's weeding to be done, and harvesting, and then planting some fall crop.  But hey, my kids were away with their aunt and uncle and grandparents in Florida this weekend, and it's the first time in years that my husband and I had a weekend off together. We headed to the city one day, the beach the next.  Sorry garden, but no way was I staying home to tend you.

Still, it's hard not to beam with pride--and we do all the time.  Our beans are very productive growing on the tee-pee in the center.  Biggest success:  cucumbers, which you see on the trellis in foreground, a long prickly skinned variety that is very crunchy.  We eat them every night.  Tomatoes a little slower than we'd hoped, but coming along and lovely.  Hot peppers turning red.  Chard ready to harvest.  Root vegetables slow but coming.  All in all, a great joy.

The biggest surprise for me was the bees.  As I've written earlier, this garden--which mixes flowers, herbs, and vegetables--was inspired by the front yard gardens I saw in Italy.  Now I'm really wondering why in the world we segregate or vegetable patches and flowers here.  Clearly they belong together.  Honeybees are attracted to flowers and then pollinate everything we've got.  All summer long there have been dozens of bees in the garden at any given moment.  They especially liked the cucumbers.  Who knew that our garden would be helping bees--giving them food so they can make honey? 

For those just visiting jellypress for the first time..... you can see how this garden was transformed from a useless patch of grass, by clicking the link below “tomatoes at my front door.”

see also: Tomatoes at my Front Door

Masher

Corn Love

• by Laura
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Corn.  A kind of grass.  Long ago with tiny cobs smaller than a pinky finger, in Mexico, where it began, 5,000 years ago, maybe more.  First cultivated by natives (probably women). Traded northward to tribes as far as the Great Lakes and Massachusetts.  Stolen by the first Europeans.  Pounded in mortars.  Bred to cloying sweetness.  Shipped all over the world.  Genetically modified. Made dirt cheap with farm subsidies. Turned into cheap sugar syrup. Villified. 

The journey of corn is more than any writer could ever dream up. In the corn mother myths of natives, the perfect mother dies for the sake of her hungry children.  From her body springs the first corn plants that enable life.  In Pueblos, her image blends with the Virgin Mother.

Corn gives us life.  It kills us with diabetes.  It grows in the shape of human likeness, tall with tassles like arms and legs.  Fed to cows that evolved to eat grass.  6.5 pounds of corn feed make 1 pound of beef.  Fuel for a meat eating culture.  Now, as ethanol.  Fuel for a car culture.

Nancy and I talk all the time about the conflict of food in modern life.  You can see the conflict in her painting.  The life and death of corn.  The beauty.  The dead body.  The fallen bird.

We don’t want to dismiss technology and all it has brought our lives. The idea of small local farms that the Slow Food movement loves is very appealing but seems so utterly irrational and expensive when you think of all the hunger in the world and people in developing nations desperate for technology so they can feed themselves.  Anyway, if all the world went to small local farms, wouldn’t a famine ensue?  Could small local farms sustain cities that have little farm land left?

Will we ever really be locavores as Whole Foods markets tell us to?  Is it realistic?  Or are these ideas things we tell ourselves in the hopes of feeling more morally superior about our wealth.  It is hard to know. 

What do you think? 

Not to be Forgotten

Corn Fritters

• by Laura
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Yes, this is a corn plant from my garden, nearly ready. 

But as to this recipe--it’s a “not to be forgotten” all the way, because not only is it a good thing to make, but also because it clearly bears some African influence, which is typical of the old southern cookbooks.  Dishes like these are a silent legacy of slavery.  Africans brought with them an expertise in frying (and for fritters) and also taste for the piquant, which is obvious in the large amount of black pepper.  So perhaps Mrs. Bryan was documenting the dish from her African cook or someone else’s.  But in any case, she seems to have done a poor job.  This recipe is obviously impossible. She calls for 12 ears of corn and only 4 egg yolks to bind it all together.  Ridiculous.  Ridiculous of course till you realize that this was nearly 200 years ago and corn was surely smaller, but for that matter so were eggs.  (We breed everything so large now.) And how much flour, really is the two spoonfuls?  We’ll never know. 

Don’t get bogged down.  It’s just a concept, and the concept is this:  Shuck your corn, then the take a knife and cut off the kernels.  Mix them together with enough egg yolk, salt and pepper and flour as will hold it together, then fry.  I found the result a little plain, and of course the sweetness of corn today is just sometimes so annoyingly candylike.  So here’s what I did:

2 cups fresh corn kernals (about 4 ears)
1 tablespoon, plus a little more, finely minced onion
2 teaspoons, finely minced flesh of a serrano chile
1/4 cup flour (you might like for half of this to be cornmeal)
1/2 teaspoon (or to taste) salt
black pepper to taste
2 egg yolks
2 tablespoons milk or, even better, butter milk
1/4 grated cheddar--optional only if you don’t mind a softer melty fritter

Mix together the first seven ingredients.  Then add milk and cheese if you are using.  Fry on a griddle that is greased with olive oil or butter, until brown on each side.

If I were a chef I’d go to town with this.  I’d hold the cheese and instead, serve a corn fritter as an appetiser with a warm frisee salad and a dollop of goat cheese on top.  Or perhaps I’d serve with a fresh mango salsa.  Or a tomato salsa with cilantro.  Or perhaps some wlted arugula.  My home tasters like them plain.  But not for breakfast.  No way.  Rather, as an “agreeable relish” as Mrs. Bryan suggests.  In any case, corn fritters are an open canvas.  There’s so much fresh corn around now. Try them with left over cobs the next day.  And be sure to eat them fresh off the griddle. 

Masher

We thought the corn plants had souls

• by Laura
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“We cared for our corn in those days, as we would care for a child; for we Indian people loved our fields as mothers love their children.  We thought the corn plants had souls, as children have souls, and that the growing corn liked to hear us sing, as children like to hear their mothers sing to them.”

Buffalo Bird Woman,
Hidatsa Indian, born 1839 in an earth lodge in present-day North Dakota

Masher

Jersey Girls Love Jersey Tomatoes

• by Laura
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As a Jersey girl, It’s hard not to give a nod to Julia Moskin today in The New York Times who did some wonderful reporting on the supremacy of the good old Jersey Tomato--make that the Ramapo variety.  She interviewed farmers who described the “horticultural garbage” they encountered when trying to grow heirloom varieties for a market gone “ga ga.” Well guess what, Ramapo tomatoes--hybrids, bred by laboratories--are better.  They resist rot.  They don’t crack on the vine.  And they have a wonderful balance of sweet and acid.  No they don’t have pretty stripes like the Green Zebra.  They are “nondescript red and round,” and this is a good thing--they are powerhouse producers with great taste. They are our heirloom here.  I can’t help but beam with pride. 

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/23/dining/23toma.html

Masher

Creative New Uses for Your Kitchen Gear

• by Laura
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Wouldn’t I like to be a space traveler, too, with my Kitchen Aid bowl as a helmet and measuring spoon as my weapon?  A bell head with a gong?  A little boy rummaging around the kitchen, age 7, age of grace. I sense reality creepng in.  But here, one blessed moment. 

Masher

Front Yard Garden Update

• by Laura
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It’s amazing how fast everything is growing.  We’ve got corn on the stalk.  Lots of cucumbers and greenbeans.  Early Girl tomatoes just about ready.  Peppers moving along.  Chard three quarters of the way there.  More herbs than we can handle.  And a serious Zucchini Situation taking over the whole thing.

There have been some real surprises with this garden.  I didn’t expect it to be such a social event.  But it is.  People in the neighborhood frequently comment and look.  They ask us how it’s going.  Or they compliment our progress.  Cool. 

see also: Tomatoes at my Front Door

Not to be Forgotten

Life Is a Bowl of Sour Cherries

• by Laura
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I don’t know how I got by all my life without sour cherries.  But it wasn’t until last month that I had my first taste.  My friends Lou and Nancy turned me on to them, and now it’s going to be forever love. 

I’m not talking about Nancy of Jellypress, but Nancy the owner of Orbis—one of the best restaurants around. Nancy is the kind of chef who loves to go pick her own fruit and catch her own fish on her days off.  Since Lou (yes ravioli Lou) is retired and has time, they’d been picking cherries—up on a ladder and everything--at a friend’s tree.  Well all this takes place a couple of weeks ago when we had a simple lunch of Lou’s homemade tagliatelle (made with a duck egg or a goose egg—something crazy but I can’t remember what) and Nancy’s beautiful Bolognese sauce.

Then, she brought out the cherries on ice cream and I was a goner. 

Two days later, Nancy called me to say she’s been cherry picking again.  Did I want some?  Of course I did….  And so would you. 

Do whatever you can to find sweet and sour cherries.  If you live Northward, there’s still time.  I got these at the farmer’s market a few days ago. Then I saw some in Whole Foods tonight.  Find some today if you can. 

When I called other Nancy—yes our very own Jellypress Nancy—to share my feelings about this fruit, I wasn’t the least surprised to find out that she was already a member of the sour cherry club.  In fact, already painted put them on her counter—that finite midlife horizon of hers.  When I saw these paintings I thought, oh my gosh, well really isn’t everything in that painting—just everything?

Okay, well, almost everything.  The ice cream isn’t there.  So make sure you go get that yourself.

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Not to be Forgotten

Ramps from the Forest

• by Laura
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This spring, a friend brought me a bunch of ramps she’d gathered in the woods near her house in upstate New York.  She handed them to me in a plastic bag standing on the walk in front of my house.

Now, it’s not too often someone hands you a bag of some wild food she personally collected from the forest floor. Naturally, the gesture thrilled me.  The oniony smell was intoxicating, and the green leaves were so smooth and gorgeous with their red stems that I immediately picked up the phone and called Nancy and told her to get right over to my house so she could collect some.  I had a strong feeling that she’d want to paint them.  I was right.

For those of you who may not know—ramps (allium tricoccum) are a special kind wild leek that is famous in the Appalachian mountains.  And, listen to me now, they are also a national treasure.

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Artist's Notebook

Old recipes, Modern Life: an installation mapping identity and personal history

• by Nancy
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The following are photographs of the installation piece I made for “conceptual drawing class” here at graduate school out of the vintage recipe book that writer Dianna Marder generously gave me for a gift. (Don’t worry Dianna, the installed pieces are color copies, not the original!) The piece goes between my apartment kitchen and the studios in the art school. The first one is in my kitchen at the dorm . . . basically it’s a piece showing the handwritten recipe page as aesthetic object inspired by the essay “Reading the Language of Objects” by M. Anna Fariello. Fariello explains that an aesthetic object is a document (a map of the maker’s marks, and in this case, with particularities of handwriting, crossings-out and changes, fingerprints, etc.) a metaphor (since it is recipes, for sustenance physical and emotional) and also what she calls a “socially integrated object,” meaning an art object that is not set apart and rarified but rather part of the social fabric and of daily ritual (in this case, cooking.) As such it is capable of resonating on a deep emotional and spiritual level. With artistic intent of course. Enjoy! Captions below each photo explain a bit more . . .

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Antique Recipe Road Show

Sugar and Heat for Your Jam

• by Laura
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Q, Can strawberry jam be made without sugar and without cooking?

(I came to the conclusion that in the 1800s, they may not have had sugar or pectin) Raw is better than cooked and NO SUGAR is certainly better than even one granule of sugar.

Thanks
Dawn.

A.  Dawn, First of all, the answer is yes, absolutely, you can make no-cook jam with some pectin (a thickener) and eliminate the sugar if you wish--especially if you have wonderfully ripe and sweet fruit.  I have a friend who makes no-cook berry jam in Maine and swears by it.  I always wanted to try it myself, so if you have a recipe, feel free to share because I’d love it. 

However, I’m pretty certain that you need the consistently low temps of a fridge or freezer to do it, and so these types of jams are probably of the modern electrical era. 

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Artist's Notebook

Packing for graduate school: paints, palette, uh, kitchen counter?

• by Nancy
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Yes, I took it with me. How could I not? When I found out that I would be living in another city for three summers to attend graduate school for painting, I made a small replica of my kitchen counter with the leftover tiles and packed it. I couldn’t imagine working without it. It’s been a part of my painting practice for three years. The metaphor of the grid, measured just as time is measured. Its evocative color and texture. The way it structures the painting. I also packed a bag full of my beloved antique and vintage kitchen tools. Little did I know that my painting professor had something else in mind. 

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Masher

Tomatoes at my Front Door

• by Laura
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So as you loyal Jellypress readers may recall, I made a pronouncement on the first day of spring that we’d tear up the front lawn around here and put in a vegetable garden.  Well, two months, three palates of stone, one borrowed rototiller, three yards of top soil, and several aching backs later, I’ve got some results to post. 

We began the middle of May.  First we had to bust through the sod.  Unbelievably hard work.  Next, we had to turn the hard clay soil.  Now comes the point where I must say that my husband and I could never do this alone.  This is a shared garden created with another family--our next door neighbors Arielle and David (there’s Arielle and baby Olive in the picture).  And the hero of the neighborhood, Chuck, came from a few doors down to lend a hand (see him with the trusty rototiller).  Note three pallets of stone on the sidewalk waiting to be laid down.  Our goal was raised beds at a six-inch height, because the extra soil would be light, and workable.  We didn’t want to use wooden prefab boxes because we wanted something more inspired in the front of the house.  We got a bit obsessed with the stone. 

Memorial Day Weekend.  Turns out the stone we ordered to match the house was shaped more like boulders than flat building stones.  It was not returnable.  I began to sink into depression.  But David allowed no such thing and instead asked for a sledge hammer and goggles.  Before you know it, the men were splitting stone and grunting.  My son got involved.  It evidently was very cathartic for the guys in the group.  People slowed their cars to watch, and the neighbors definitely took notice of our work--a mixture of admiration and pity.  None of the dramatic chain gang scenes were photographed, alas.  For a while, piles of broken stones were everywhere, and it was a bit worrisome.  Were we fools?  Was it possible?  Could we build these walls? But here you see it all tidily falling into place.  This is the view from my front door.  Stones laid by committee.  And then several wheelbarrows of top soil, manure, peat, and fertilizer put down by garden hero David. 

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Masher

Really Cooking with Fire

• by Laura
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I like nature just fine.  But I like to sleep with a roof over my head. 

Well, guess what? 

Husband likes to camp.  Normally I send him off without me, along with one of our sons.  But a couple of weeks ago, I tried to be a good sport and go sleep in a tent on a family weekend in the woods. 

It rained.  It was cold--like forty degrees at night, and there were moments when you could say I had a rather negative attitude.  But the setting--green green spring of the Catskills--was gorgeous. 

And of course I took the opportunity to cook breakfast over the campfire.  My first ever. 

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