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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
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
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
Masher
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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Progress! We can’t believe we did it.
Here are our beets, coming up.
And here is our first heirloom tomato (black prince), coming from flower to fruit.
We put in a tee-pee for climbing beans.
These are baccicia beans just pushing out of their shells toward the sun. These seeds were sent to me by a reader of “Lost Ravioli” from Napa. More than a hundred years ago, Italians brought these beans to California.
We’ve also got carrots, corn, broccoli, spinach, chard, and many kinds of peppers and herbs growing, amongst flowers. This is borage… a very “not to be forgotten” vegetable with many many uses. Both leaf and flower are edible. And the bright blue flowers are beautiful. Now each day when I open my front door, I see theater and drama. Things are happening. It is a fascination and a joy.
see also: Vegetables in the Front Yard
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Masher
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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Cooking with fire makes you think about just how recent it is in human history that we have had stoves.
Usually the fire is too hot. Or it’s too cold. It needs a lot of attention if you’re not used to it.
You get smoke in your eyes, and your clothes smell. Also, the warmth of the fire, I can assure you, doesn’t reach terrible far.
Still, there was a certain triumph to finally getting the eggs to boil. I felt as hough I’d really accomplished something.
There were really some beautiful moments on our trip.
And of course this:
And this:
And then the rain came.
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Masher
Lina knew I’d love this one. She’s my friend who is a real estate agent here in town and she’d just got a new listing for a house—all renovated and done-up with granite countertops, happy colors, shiny floors and new siding—in short, all history covered over so that it was hard to even guess when the house was built. But wait, deep in the dark basement—a big old secret remained. It was too huge to erase. A clue to the house. Was it? Could it be?
Yes, a gigantic wine press cemented into the basement wall. With the owners’ blessing, Lina brought me in to peek. It was an enormous thing—used now as a storage shelf. We had fun taking down boxes of outgrown toys so we could photograph it--imagining sweaty scenes of bare feet stomping grapes and immigrant families laboring down here decades ago—the smell of ferment in the air along with the trills of some dialect we could never understand.
But when did this all happen? And whose winepress had it been? And—perhaps the most interesting question--why was it located in a predominantly African American neighborhood?
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A little research and I became sure that the winepress belonged to an Italian family. Not too surprising.
Italian laborers immigrated to this town more than a hundred years ago, hired to dig the original water and sewer lines and lay railroad track. They were housed in tents and barracks in open lots, and some local church documents describe them making huge bonfires at night and singing in their camps. Most wanted to make money and go back home to Italy. But eventually many stayed and saved enough money to buy houses. The winepress probably comes from the time period--somewhere between 1900 and World War II. But of course, winemaking itself goes back in the Mediterranean to the dawn of recorded history there.
And so that winepress got me to thinking about migrations—perhaps the most fascinating aspect of all human history for me. What we take with us and what we leave behind. And how the migrations never end.
Four million Italians came to American between 1880 and 1920. (The entire population of Italy was only around 15 million). Then seven million African Americans came up from the American South to the North, as part of the Great Migration—between 1910 to 1970. And before this, the huge forced migration from Africa that began in the early 1600s.
Many Italians fled their neighborhoods when African Americans moved in. They did so out of racism and out of fear. The irony is, however, that once Italians left their immigrant neighborhoods and moved to the suburbs, they dispersed into the vast American culture and usually began to lose their ethnic identity, having children who would not grow up in the neighborhood enclaves hearing dialect, listening to the old people tell stories, and making wine in the basement.
And now the African American neighborhoods too are changing--becoming less connected--as children grow and move away and newcomers move in. Lina tells me it is mostly young professionals now interested in this house, which is located close to the train to New York.
Do I sound nostalgic? Not really. Life constantly moves forward. But that winepress got to me—a big immovable hunk of concrete shaped into the very foundation of a home.
Too big to move. It had to be left behind.
Oh yes. One last thing. Those looking for a house in Montclair with a quick commute and wine-making facilities in the basement should contact Lina Panza.
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Masher
Location: Montclair, NJ. An expensive, crowded, upscale brain-powered burb, a mere 12 miles outside of NYC. In other words… Not the kind of place you usually find women raising a flock of chickens.
But here we are in the backyard of Grace Chow Grund--on a perfect suburban block—amidst fourteen hens in a chicken run positioned at the far end of her flower- and vegetable-filled lot.
The question is, of course, why? Why have chickens in suburbia?
“I keep them for three reasons,” replies Grace.
“The first reason is for the eggs of course. We get 9 to 11 on a good day.”
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“The second reason is that they’re extremely funny. Whenever you’re in a bad mood, just come out here and watch them. They’re very silly--and not very smart. Our family has lots of chicken jokes.’
The third reason is my passion for sustainable living. They eat all my vegetable scraps--they eat pasta and bread and salad--everything. I make hardly any garbage. Their manure gets aged for compost and makes beautiful flowers and vegetables. We can all live peaceably in the world. You don’t need fourteen chickens to do it. We can all find a way to slow down and be mindful. The chickens do this for me.”
Grace makes it look so easy and wonderful that before I know it, I’m asking her about where I can get a chicken coop and some Blue Araucanas of my own. Oh those fresh eggs are so appealing. But wait...what about the gross parts? I had a lot of questions for Grace. Here’s my Q& A--gathered while sons number 1 and 2 (ages 7 and 12) stared enraptured at the clucking girls and begged for a flock of their own.
LS: “Do you get rats?”
GG: “Yes, of course. Rats have been on the earth longer than we have. When I have to, I use poison. That’s one nonorganic thing I do. But we also have hawks come by and help.
LS: Did you grow up doing this?
GG: It’s familiar to me. I began my life in Malaysian where lots of people have chickens.
LS: Is this legal? Do your neighbors mind?
GG: In our town, we’re allowed to keep up to 25. I’m well under the limit. As to the neighbors, we asked them first.
LS How did you get started?
GG: There was a guy I knew who had chickens and I admired them, so I started with three. Then I made a big leap and ordered 15 through the mail.
LS: How much does it cost to feed them?
GG: Probably about $50 bucks of chicken feed a month.
LS: Do you have predators?
GG: Racoons are my number-one predator. I’ve got a pesky one right now who’s determined to reduce my flock. At night, I get the girls into the coop and lock them in where they’re safe. But sometimes, when they’re still out, a raccoon will get a bird. You come out and find some feathers and maybe a few bones.”
LS: Is it gross to clean out the chicken coop?
GG: ....
LS: Are other families doing this in our town?
GG: I’d guess about ten.
LS: What does your husband think of this?
GG: He kind of lets me be. He grew up on a farm, so he sees this all differently. They’re not pets.
By the way, Grace’s commitment to sustainable living is bigger than chickens. You can often find her at her shop Terra Tea Salon and Fair Trade Eco Market “>Terra Tea Salon and Fair Trade Eco Market on Church Street in Montclair, NJ.
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Masher
My mother lives in Florida now, and rarely, if ever, bakes anymore because she is busy taking care of my father who has been very ill. I miss her. I miss baking with her. Every spring, she made sponge cake with strawberries. It was a revelation. It just wasn’t spring until we had that cake, airy and bright with lemon zest, stained with strawberries in syrup and blessed with a cloud of whipped cream.
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I miss the smell of her cake in the oven, especially now that strawberries are abundant and stacked impossibly high in their supermarket plastic container towers. Back then, we got our strawberries from a “grocer” that Mom nicknamed “Gaw-jus” because he bragged about his picture-perfect produce in a heavy Bronx accent.
“I went to Gaw-jus,” she’d say, presenting me with the bags full of perfumed berries to wash and slice. “One for the cake, one for me,” I’d say as I cut them and we would giggle together over this weakness we shared, our inability to resist sneaking a little piece before the guests arrived. In my mind’s eye, I see her unguarded, pretty face nearly free of makeup. She prefers simple things. Her wedding ring is often the only piece of jewelry she wears. I remember her fingernails shining with a thin stroke of clear polish on the edge of her spatula as she stirred the egg whites into the cake batter.
“It needed trimming,” she’d say, giving me thin slices off the bottom of the warm sponge cake straight out of the pan that we ate with our fingers, taking them carefully from the knife edge.
It is always 1975 in these memories of my mother baking with me in a New Jersey kitchen wallpapered with outdated yellow and brown pop-art flowers. After all, it’s where the woman who bore me is baking — not just then, but always and forever somewhere in my center, that essential place lost to me so much of the time. And everything she tried to teach me — devotion, patience, the importance of ritual, humility — is there in that simple act of making cake from scratch.
Our sponge cake recipe is an old family recipe from Helen, my Uncle Richy’s mother. A matriarch. In our family, that means strong, compassionate, capable. And so much more. The cake is also much more than its label — usually sponge cake elicits groans in the same way that fruit cake does. None of them are considered any good. This one always gets the raves. I made it for a party recently and it was, as always, a revelation.
Grandma Helen’s Sponge Cake
9 extra large eggs, separated
1 and 1/4 cup sugar (scant cup)
grated rind and juice of medium to large lemon
scant cup all purpose unbleached white flour (Passover cake meal may be substituted)
1. Preheat oven to 340 degrees (convection) or 350 degrees for still oven.
2. Beat egg yolks on an electric mixer fitted with the whisk attachment for 10 minutes adding the sugar 1/4 cup at a time after 5 minutes. Add the rind and juice of the lemon and beat until well blended.
3.. Beat egg whites until stiff but not dry. Sift cake meal over yolks and add beaten egg whites to yolk mixture using a rubber spatula and a folding motion.
4. Place batter in an ungreased tube pan with a removable bottom and tube section or in a spring form. Bake for 1 hour. Check cake after 40 minutes as baking times and oven temperatures vary. Remove from oven and invert pan to let cake cool. Using a sharp thin bladed knife release cake from the sides of the pan before removing and placing on serving plate.
5. With a whisk by hand, or on an electric mixer fitted with a whisk attachment, whip heavy cream to soft peak, adding vanilla extract and confectioner’s sugar to taste after the cream has thickened slightly. Do not overbeat. Slice strawberries thinly and sprinkle them with sugar to taste, then let them sit in the refrigerator until they form their own syrup. Slice cake and serve each slice with a generous helping of strawberries in syrup and freshly whipped cream.
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Masher
Jellypress got nice coverage in two newspapers this week. We’re thrilled. Check it out here:
The Philadelphia Inquirer
The New Jersey Star Ledger
Photo by Michael Bryant, The Philadelphia Inquirer
Masher
A couple of years ago, my family moved to a smaller house on a small plot of land, the events of which are chronicled in my book The Lost Ravioli Recipes of Hoboken. Even if you haven't read the book, you can probably guess why we'd do it. Partly the influence of Italy, where people live in smaller spaces. But surely even more it was that search for that slippery ideal known as simplicity and less stress. Can't say for sure that we've achieved it. That's another post. Or maybe another book.
In the meantime, son number two ran into my office today, the first day of spring, and threw a clump of flowery weeds and its muddy rootball at my feet. He giggled and ran out. It was a seven-year-old's prank, and he was delighted with himself. I picked it up and was taken by the wonderful smell of spring's wet earth and envious of children who get to spend time messing around on the grass.
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Now that we're here a while in this new place, we are thinking about the garden and land around us. The backyard is quite shady but the front yard gets full sun. My dear neighbor and friend suggested we dig up the front lawn and plant a vegetable garden. We're ready. Maybe even offend the rest of the block with raggedy tomato plants right in full display a few feet from the sidewalk.
I pledge, today, on the first day of spring, to do this. And I'm thinking about the gardens I saw all over Liguria where fruit, vegetables, herbs and flowers all mingled quite beautifully in the front yard. I will plant borage for my ravioli, and true tender Genoese basil for pesto. To give myself inspiration, I watched this video about edible estates, an organization that says it's attacking the American front lawn. Count me in.
--Laura
http:/www.youtube.com/watch?v=q7JgenD4fdw
--LS
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Masher
Foodies of the world love to gripe about the horrors of globalization and modern technology: nectarines from Chile, corn syrup, plastic packaging. Yes, I agree. But globalization has also brought some benefits, including a lot of international knowledge and a passion for preservation. It's made people rally around old recipes and food history. The Internet seems to be one of our best tools.
Let me give you one example: Years ago, I received an email from a woman named Marialuisa Schenone--same last name as mine--from Genoa, Italy, home to my dad's grandparents.
She'd stumbled across my web site and decided to write me.
"I know where your family comes from," wrote Marialuisa. "They come from the village Lumarzo where all persons are Schenone."
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Over time, Marialuisa and I developed a correspondence based on old foods and memory. I was writing a book on my search for my great grandmother's Genoese ravioli recipe, and it turned out Marialuisa's mom was a famous ravioli maker in a mountain village north of Genoa. Before long Marialuisa was inviting me to come and visit. "My mother awaits you. She will make ravioli when you come."
Six months later, I was driving up into the hills of Liguria with Marialuisa at the wheel. She was taking me to her mother's town--full of Schenones--higher and higher into the mountains, filled with chestnut trees. She took me to the graveyard there, filled with dead people who shared my last name. And finally to her mom's small cottage, where we entered to find ninety-year-old Giuseppina bent over her pasta board, kneading dough.
That day, Giuseppina, taught me to roll pasta in a big thin circle, just as my great grandmother used to, using a long stick--a skill that has been largely cast aside in favor of machines.
In the search for old family recipes--I had many similar amazing encounters in Italy, and so many were based on a similar initial thread of email. In other words--I found my rustic, pre-commercial, handmade ravioli recipe--and traced it back to the 13th century, largely through this modern technology. What a paradox.
Now if only I could figure out my new cell phone. Damned technology.
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To find out about Laura's search for a long lost family recipe, click [
A James Beard Award winning book that tells a history of American women through food, recipes, and remembrances. Recipes and illustrations from prehistory to the present day.
Laura's memoir about a search for a recipe, happiness, and mythic Italy--with many unexpected adventures along the way.
In this culinary memoir, Nancy Ring combines funny and poignant stories of love and work with warm remembrances of a family that celebrates food with gusto and cherishes memories with passion...