Underground

The New York Times recently had a piece about tomato greenhouses http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/31/dining/31tomato.html . The article talks about a greenhouse operation in Maine that doesn't grow their tomatoes in dirt. The tomatoes look great but I can't help but wonder if they might be missing out. Can they possibly be getting all of the nutrients from the water that is piped into them that their roots would have searched out underground? I'm sure there are scientists there who have carefully calibrated the concentrations of identified nutrients and administer them according to computer readouts but that doesn't comfort me.

I want my vegetables natural. I want them  dirty. I want them to still be dusty from the soil they grew up when they get to my kitchen, to bring a piece of their terroir with them. Yes, I know it means more cleaning. Yes, it adds to their weight so yes, they cost more but dirt helps to preserve them and more importantly, connects me with their past.

Tagine Time

I've been working on being more in the moment, taking my time, slowing down. Yesterday climbing the PATH stairs at Exchange Place, for example; I focused on the burn, as I took the steps, rather than just wishing I was at the top already. I don't go to the gym so those stairs are about as much exercise as I get. I'm also concentrating on chord formations more when I play the ukulele - B♭ (the people's key), D (my El Guapo) and the nefarious E. 

Being in the moment takes more time. Time certainly passes more quickly. And I'm taking my time in the kitchen (and took my time getting to the letter T but that's a little something called procrastination). I've started making bread, cooking with dried beans instead of canned and using the tagine more often. Tagines are all about taking your time, cooking low and slow and letting the ingredients get to know one another. 

I got my tagine over a year ago, a gift from Melissa. Just getting it was an adventure. We'd show up and they'd be closed. After a couple tries (lesson: call ahead to make sure they'll be open because if it's slow they just might close), we were inside. They have spices galore in there but this was about picking out a tagine. They have a whole bunch - each unique. It took awhile for us to find the base/top combination that fit well together and was aesthetically pleasing. Well, what I ended up with was more about the fit than looks but I've grown quite attached to it and wouldn't trade it for another. It has delivered some delicious meals.
Tagines are usually made out of clay so cooking with them is a bit different than cooking with a Dutch oven, which, I'd say, they're most like. They're all about keeping steam and juices inside and cooking for a long time. Dutch ovens allow for that high heat initial sear which tagines do not tolerate so well. Try it and your tagine base might end up in two pieces.
So, why a tagine when you could use a Dutch oven? Well, you're cooking in clay. Clay. When was the last time you  cooked anything in clay? The history. Clay is the stuff people have cooked in for millenia (actually I'm not sure how long but longer than cast-iron that's for sure). It's earthy. It's dirt you cook in. (Sure, glass was dirt but it doesn't smell earthy.) I use a tagine because it's earthy, has a cool top and makes for a nice presentation but more than that, it makes me slow down.

Sloppy Joes at Deer Camp

Up at deer camp, my brother and I do the cooking. This year we had moose meat (we got a moose last month). We brought up some steaks, hot sausage and a shoulder roast.
When we were hunting for the moose, our guide always brought moose meat sandwiches. If he hunts deer, he brings venison. We're not quite the hunters he is.
I decided I'd make Sloppy Joes for our first night there. I didn't have a recipe but figured it couldn't be too hard to come up with something ground meaty, tomatoey, with heat and some sweetness. I picked up some ground pork to go with the moose sausage - moose is pretty lean.
I mixed the moose and the pork together in a cast-iron skillet with a bit of olive oil, things complicated a bit by the moose's frozen state. Separately, I cooked up some onion, garlic and bell pepper.
Kev and I had gone shopping at Hannafords in Essex. I'd picked up the pork there as well as Kaiser rolls and Bove's Roasted Garlic Pasta Sauce - if it had been July I'd have made the sauce from scratch but given the season and Deer Camp being fairly rustic I went with the sauce. I added the sauce to the meat and then mixed in the peppers, onions and garlic. I then tasted and adjusted - adding a bit of sugar, cumin, salt, pepper, Worcestershire sauce and then, after time for everything to get acquainted, over the rolls it went.

It wasn't exactly what I'd had so many Friday nights in East Charleston but it was g.d. tasty. Dad certainly liked it.

Raphanus Sativus

Growing up we only had radishes raw. There was usually a bunch of them in a white bowl in water in the fridge. We ate them mostly with a sprinkle of salt. Sometimes they lent a spot of spicy color to a salad or crunch to a potato salad - a cold, refreshing crunch.

I've tried cooking up radishes and radish greens. No success so far with the greens. I just can't get past the scratchy feel of them which cooking them doesn't completely solve. (More shallots? Duck fat?) So far, the best luck I've had with radish greens is to scatter them about on a serving dish and then to place radish halves slathered with a watered down goat cheese spread on the halves atop them.

Cooking the radishes themselves, they lose their punch and become more like their turnip cousin. So I rarely cook radishes because they lose most of what I like about them. Last night I made a soup. I had decided a cold radish soup would be good. I googled and lo and behold found a recipe. It called for cooking up radishes, a leek and a shallot. I did (and ate several raw with salt while doing so). I added chicken stock, reduced it and then cooled it. Then the food processor for a rough puree. When it was time for supper I garnished it with radish slices and parsley. I'm pretty happy with it. It has taken its place in my limited cold soup repertoire joining gazpacho and cucumber. I need to make more cold soups.

The other thing about radishes I like is the blank stare I usually get when I talk about something having "had the radish." I've heard it has been used to refer to a person's being exhausted; though in my experience it was always about a thing, as in, this shirt has "had the radish," it's time for the rag bin. It's an expression I heard a lot growing up - my Dad's usually good for using it once every couple weeks or so. Not everyone is au courant though. I tried it out on my uncle who grew up in the same area last week. He didn't know what the heck I was talking about and he still lives in the Northeast Kingdom. Language is a funny thing. If you ever figure out where the origins of "had the radish," let me know. In the meantime, happy crunching.

Quinoa

Since quinoa does not come from a grass it is not a grain. Corn comes from a grass so it is a grain though I think of it more as a vegetable that's really good with butter and salt.
Corn and quinoa both pop when you eat them kind of like caviar does. I'm OK with the corn's popping but having caviar and quinoa ricocheting around the inside of my mouth wigs me out.
However, it's supposed to be really good for you so I bought some and cooked it up. Cooking it is easy - like a pasta or like a grain. If you cook it like a grain then you don't have to feel like you're pouring a lot of good nutritious water down the drain.
It's usually used like pasta or rice but I'm thinking its nutty taste would work well with maple syrup or peanut butter - maybe that would put a damper on the popping.