Afternoon Snack

Sorry I haven’t been posting much — been busy at work these past two weeks.

Corn and tomato sauté, ricotta bruschetta

Click here to view a large-size version of the pic above.

This was two ears of corn briefly sautéed in melted unsalted butter with minced shallots, a pinch of salt and some chopped tarragon. Remove from heat and stir in some diced tomato.

The ricotta spread consists of 4 tablespoons sheep’s milk ricotta cheese, salt, pepper, extra-virgin olive oil and 1 teaspoon chopped lemon thyme. Combine all ingredients and stir until thoroughly incorporated. Can be made 1 to 2 hours in advance; chill in the refrigerator until ready for use. Spread ricotta on slices of grilled or toasted bread and serve.

Why Vegetables Are Difficult

I’ve come to the conclusion that vegetables are more challenging than animal proteins, especially when it comes to creating interesting combinations. When you go to a high-end restaurant like Gramercy Tavern or Blue Hill, there are for example, five-course or seven-course vegetable tasting menus. That presents a challenge where a chef needs to structure a meal so that each course offers a different, yet interesting range of colors, shapes, textures and flavors that doesn’t mimic or duplicate from its predecessor. If you think about it, your options become even more limited when you cook seasonally. There’s only so much you can do with potatoes and turnips before things start to become boring.

Fortunately this problem doesn’t assert itself all that often in the spring, summer or fall. There’s such a profusion of ingredients available on the market that the only limits in the kitchen are those that spring from your imagination.

Vegetarian plate
Clockwise from right foreground: wild mushrooms and garlic scapes deglazed in Belgian beer and finished with a touch of fromage blanc; pan-glazed sugar snap peas with ginger; roasted new potatoes with lemon and thyme; poached farm egg

Interview With Alice Waters

Alice Waters is an American chef and co-owner of Chez Panisse, the original “California Cuisine” restaurant in Berkeley, California, as well as the informal Café Fanny in West Berkeley. A champion of locally-grown and fresh ingredients, she has been credited with creating and developing California Cuisine and has written or co-written several books on the subject, including the influential Chez Panisse Cooking (written with then-chef Paul Bertolli). She has also promoted organic and small farm products heavily in her restaurants, in her books, and in her Edible Schoolyard program at the King Middle School in Berkeley. Her ideas for “edible education” have been introduced into the entire Berkeley school system, and with the current crisis in childhood obesity, have attracted the attention of the national media. She is a head advocate of a multi-billion dollar stimulus package that works to give every child in the public school system free breakfast, lunch, and an afternoon snack. She states that taxpayers should endorse this package because we are already paying for it in terms of our health.

Waters advocates eating locally produced foods that are in season, because she believes that the international shipment of mass-produced food is both harmful to the environment and produces an inferior product for the consumer.

Here is a long excerpt from an interview with Salon that was done in 2007:

I’ve been cooking from this book for about a month now.

You have? Tell me, did the recipes work?

Yeah, they were wonderful. But as you say, it’s less about the recipes than your ideas of where to get the food. And I’ve been following those ideas too. I went to the farmers’ market several times.

You know this would be any old book of recipes if it weren’t for the philosophy of food at the beginning. If you’re just going into the store and buying those ingredients, if you’re really a good cook you could probably make something. But what is beautiful is that this changes your life. It brings you into the whole community of people and hopefully brings you back to the dinner table.

I agree. But, some things I’ve noticed. First of all, it’s not easy to do this. I’m a writer so I have a lot of free time. I can take Tuesday afternoon off and go to the farmers’ market. So it was relatively easy for me to do it compared to someone who has to punch a clock. What do those people do?

I think there are lots of ways, actually. I think you have to decide you’re going to work at this a little bit. To begin with, you set aside a day that you might want to eat with your family. It doesn’t have to be a dinner or a complicated thing — it could be an afternoon tea. It could be a Saturday lunch. It could be a breakfast. But hopefully you will decide the following week you can do it twice a week. That’s the beginning.

I think you have to plan ahead. When I go to the market on a Saturday and I’m buying for family and friends I’m thinking about what I’m going to eat on the weekend but also about what I’m going to make for the following week. You know those tomatoes, I’m not getting them dead ripe unless I’m eating them for lunch — I might get them a little firm so that by Wednesday I can have them in a salad. I’ve always got something in the pantry — I talk a lot about what you can cook when you just have a closet full of pasta and grains.

So how often would you go to the farmers’ market in a week?

Twice. I mean, if I could I’d go every day, but I go on Saturday when I can buy a lot of things, and on Tuesday. And then I’ll go get other things in the regular market as a sort of backup.

You recognize, though, that it takes more time to do it this way than going to the store.

I do absolutely recognize it takes more time. But this is all part of fast food values. Let’s do it quickly. Let’s get it over with. Let’s let the machines do it for us, because kitchen work is drudgery and so is garden work. Let somebody else do that.

Get out of that mind-set and tell yourself cooking is a meditation. I like to do it. It’s relaxing for me to come home — it truly is! — and wash the salad. I love to see the salad in the sink. To spin the salad. I like to dry it. I like to pound to make a vinaigrette with my mortar and pestle. I enjoy grinding coffee and putting it in the filter and warming up the milk. It’s part of a ritual that gives my life meaning and beauty.

I feel particularly like this on my book tour, that this is a crazy kind of life. It’s over before you know it. And so you have to find ways of slowing it down. And this is an everyday delightful way to slow it down. Take time. Take a moment. The most important value of this book aside from nourishment is that there’s pleasure in the doing. It’s pleasure in work. It’s something that we don’t understand in this country. Work is over there and pleasure’s over here, and we work our whole lives so that we can go on a cruise ship. It’s just insanity, and some people don’t even make it to the cruise ship.

So we have to figure out about everyday pleasure. It’s trying to bring people back to their senses. Put the smells in the house. Make the chicken stock so it makes people hungry. Burn the rosemary, make the farro, make the bread. These are all aromatic ways to bring people back to the table.

In addition to time, it’s costlier to do it this way. One of the reasons that people eat fast food is because that’s all they can afford.

For some people that is true. But I would say that you have to decide — it’s not going to be cheap but it can be affordable. And that’s where this book comes in. When polenta costs $6 for a hundred portions, I’m pretty certain that I can make something tasty for less money than a fast food dinner for my family.

So you’re saying it’s more but it’s not prohibitive?

That’s right. You just decide, OK, well, maybe I won’t rent that DVD.

* * *

I think this goes directly to what my foodblogging is all about. It really sums up what I want in life — to be healthy and have a positive outlook. Now I’m not naive. I wouldn’t be able to shop at the farmer’s market regularly if I were laid off all of a sudden [and for that I'm grateful].

That said, I think the principle would still be the same. Okay, so the produce wouldn’t have that stunning freshness. I’d have to settle for regular $2 supermarket eggs. That’s okay. If anything, the lesson Alice teaches us is that cooking is a luxury that any of us can afford even in the worst possible situation. It’s something we should take time to savor. We only have one life and it’s up to us to make the most of it while we can. What better way to do it than to start with food?

* * *

You can read the entire interview here. The audio version is here (which I recommend over the print version).
Related discussion on eGullet can be viewed here.

Eat Your Vegetables

12 vegetable ragoût

1 carrot, peeled and sliced
1 parsnip, peeled and sliced
handful of fingerlings, scrubbed
1 medium Binjte potato, peeled, cut into 1/4″ thick slices and barely par-boiled
2 Jerusalem artichokes, peeled and sliced
2 celery stalks, sliced on a bias and blanched
6 ramp stalks, cleaned/trimmed and blanched
3 scallions, trimmed and blanched
1 small to medium red onion, peeled and sliced
1 medium turnip, peeled and sliced
6 shiitake mushrooms, sliced
1/3 cup peas, blanched
extra-virgin olive oil
kosher salt
white wine
unsalted butter
freshly ground black pepper
onion chives

Combine fingerlings, carrot, parsnip, onion, turnip and Jerusalem artichokes in a Pyrex or glass baking dish, along with 2 T. olive oil and a pinch of salt. Toss. Roast at 375 F for 30 to 35 minutes. Set aside and cool slightly.

Melt butter in a sauté pan over medium-high heat. Add mushrooms and sauté for 2 to 3 minutes or until they are browned and softened. Add a couple tablespoons white wine and cook for an additional 1 to 2 minutes until the liquid is absorbed.

Melt some more butter in a sauté pan over medium-high heat. Add the roasted vegetables. Cook for 3 to 5 minutes or until browned and tender. Add a splash of white wine and cook for 2 to 3 minutes, stirring frequently, or until most of the liquid is nearly evaporated.

Combine all the vegetables and stir. Add a couple tablespoons white wine. Cook for 3 to 5 minutes or until heated through and the liquid has reduced. Add 1 or 2 T. unsalted butter and some minced onion chives to the pan and toss until the vegetables are coated and hot. Season to taste with salt and pepper. Serve immediately.

*I added the peas at the very last minute. This accounts for their bright green color. Any longer and you run the risk that their color begins to turn.