Love Apples

Summer Squash Custard.

Normally I just grill them, and pray the bore will scorch out of them.

Summer squash, yellow, as I used here, or green (zucchini, courgette--take your pick of names) so abundant and asking for love, even as if by mid September, I'm hard-pressed to muster it.

And on this day, for someone delicate coming for lunch, I knew that my usual dispatching with branding-iron scars wouldn't do.

I remembered that Saveur had recently reminded me of a Barbara Kafka recipe. My take goes like this:

Blanch 1.5 kg squash in 1/2 centimetre wide long thin strips in well-salted water, all of 25 seconds. Dry them on a wire rack for a few hours.

In a baking dish whisk together 3 eggs, 1 1/2 cups cream, some 1/2 to 3/4 cups Parmigiano and with a few thyme or chervil leaves, and freshly-ground pepper--two more twists of the mill than you'd think. Lay the slices in on their sides so their skin-on edges peak through the custard. In a 450 oven until golden and set, which might take as little as 35 minutes or 45, depending on the configuration of your baking dish.

Fig Jam. Homemade. Near-Homegrown

It had been an inauspicious start of a trip to the market. Not only did I leave the house late, and became ensnared in shifting construction, but a parade (a parade!) came between me and my Jean-Talon freshness. Plus someone took the most strategically perfect street-parking spot.

I meant to dash across the aisle to buy vegetables for supper, and get home to the gentler chaos of home. But mid-sprint, as though in a roadrunner cartoon, a golden hoard at the stand of a local producer slowed my sprint to dreamy slow-mo. A big sign that tells me Figues the Rougemont. Rougemont? Figs. Grown 50 kms from Montreal!

They were kadotas. The table was heavy with them. Ripe to overripe. Begging me.

The man had had the look of despair of selling the day's last. Seeing the dilated pupils of my suddenly-bedroom eyes was happy news to him.

I had about 4 kgs figs once cleaned and stemmed. Added some sugar, maybe 1 kg. Lemon juice, about 1/2 cup, with perhaps another 1/4 cup water to get things started. After a bit of cooking, put about 1/2 through the food mill, and left the other half to fend for themselves. After some cooking, the colour wasn't as joyful as I'd hoped, and the flavour lacked relief. R. came up with the most inspired idea to fix both--last fall, a local cranberry producer from the Atwater market had given us some powered unsweetened cranberries that we'd so far only quizzically stored. It made for a great addition here: it carried with it dense red pigment, real zing, and a fair amount of natural pectin. I'm not sure the pectin was needed, and more lemon juice with perhaps some zest, would have served the same way to lift it all. But this is absolutely perfect stuff.

The Trauma! The Hope! The Books! -- A Cookery Revolution at my House.

The process of organising books is, for me, one of the most tortured. It hasn't helped that I've historically made no small mistakes in terms of What to keep, What to give, What will fit. And then there's the tearing of the duelling values--aesthetics vs. intellectual integrity in how to display silkbound reading copies, next to dog-eared broken-spined marked-up university copies.

But this was altogether a different magnitude. This felt a revolt more than a reshuffling.

The cookbooks in my house had been stored in the kitchen, but this was always inadequate space. As a result, various places around the house--the den, the study--the bedroom started fostering piles of them. I don't know how I didn't hold cookery, otherwise at the centre of my days, to be deserving, but I thought their place was the periphery.

This meant a lot of sprinting up and down.

In the middle of a dash upstairs, at what was surely the seventh step, I had an epiphany that told me that -running was wrong -that the bookshelves needed to look more like my life, the reallife middle.

So: Deep deep breath. To elsewhere, beloved but dusty sleepy denizens. I now have food writing, alive with yeast and blotches, and in constant use on shelves with my comfy chair beside them. Oh. I see my future.

An Inconvenient New Addiction: Fresh Fennel Seeds

We were staying at B.'s for the night. Breakfast was something I was distinctly looking forward to. A tumble of eggs, and coffee, kids, and needing to dash for ballet lessons, and "where are my shoes?"

On the outside, it might have seemed chaotic--but for me on the inside, it was the great serenity of life that works.

Then in no time, it became serene on the outside too. Just grownups in the garden, looking at how it has changed over summer. How this plant did. How that one didn't. How "flowers that don't have a scent just piss me off," and other such words, their truth, momentarily irrefutable.

In the middle of it, B. pulls off some seeds: "Here. taste this."

I did. Of course I did. And as I did, B. tells me "It's fresh fennel seed. If I could have this as gum, I'd chew it all the time."

Oh yes. Invasion of gentlest fennel. Intense. Green. Wet. I was suddenly needing it every day.

In the photo, the branch that's bare shows the seeds I ate.

Copyright 2008. All rights reserved for photos and text.

L.'s Prayer.

You saw how this worry wasn't my everyday same.
You saw me trying to will harm to stay at bay.
You heard me to be asking for a prayer.
You reached.
You answered me with these.

I hold them. I feel you through the cell walls. I join you there.

Copyright 2008. All rights reserved for photos and text.

The Pigeons. The Pesto.

On this day--pesto-making day--rain threatening, I was stopped at a light on Avenue du Parc, on the Plateau in Montreal. I saw a flock of birds flying from one side of the street to the other, sometimes stopping for a second atop one of the buildings, often just changing direction again. One glinting flash of belly white, the next the sober grey of their wings. Over and over. Pigeons acting their true nature. Whilst it sometimes occurs to me to think them "only pigeons," I remind myself that I, too, keep choosing the city. This, we have that in common. So in this moment I just took wing, dart, rise, with them. An urban ballet, ours.

And here I was on my way to perform another mix of ancient yet metropolitan. An elemental grinding together of pinoli, basil leaves, olive oil. But for me, city girl, instead of the repetitive motion of stone on stone, it's one of the new loves of my life: my VitaPrep with its three(!) horsepower at my personal service. Sigh, yet grin. And then with it, taking the breath of an ephemeral season and freezing it for frozen days that will need memory or hope.

800 grams of basil is what I had, and so:

Pesto alla Genovese
800 grams basil leaves
800 grams pinoli
8 grams salt
2 heads of gorgeous pink garlic
Enough Ligurian olive oil to make it whirl.

Coaxed into those otherwise annoying ice cube bags. To this, when thawed, Parmigiano and more olive oil will be added.

This translates to my Pesto alla Genoves rule of thumb:
2 parts by weight basil leaves
2 parts by weight pinoli (pine nuts)
1 part by weight ground Parmigiano
Enough Ligurian olive oil to make it whirl, and more to achieve desired consistency.
Salt
Garlic

Copyright 2008. All rights reserved for photos and text.

Love Apples: the Canning. The 2008 Edition.

Normally canning tomatoes goes like this:

Get up before dawn, without an alarm set, just from the excitement. A sensation not unakin to Christmas morning.

Tie hair back
Brush teeth
Wear something that likes tomato
Tiptoe downstairs
Make tea
Peer outside
Turn on Puccini
Put blanching kettles up to boil
Wash tomatoes

By the time it's Saturday morning for the rest of the world, serious progress has been made. I feel virtuous and aesthetically pleased. I feel like I've been to church.

This year, er, not exactly that.

Everything was off schedule: our house, the market, the lands. We had just gotten home from PEI, and I had placed an order for heirloom San Marzanos. When I saw them, it was love at first sight. Yet to start all of this on a Monday, one day before a Big Family Visit, and work deadlines looming, made for less than ideal conditions.

And so: Wash. Blanch. Grind. Cook. Can. All of it in fits and starts. R. did the bulk of it: early, late, in small spaces in between. It all felt disjointed; hollow; burdensome.

Ah, but then, a moment of grace-- As I was coming home from a late meeting, and several breaths before I turned the key in the front door, I was already able to detect the glorious scent of my tomatoes emanating from every brick and stone: sweet yet, now, burnished; their depth discernable. My senses trilled with them. Is it any wonder they call them love apples? It was the incense of our home. It was church after all.

Copyright 2008. All rights reserved for photos and text.

Prince Edward Island: Kim & Smoked Salmon. Bliss in Real Life.

If I often wonder how the planet hasn't literally just gone madly spinning on a wild stagger of a reactionary zigzagging through space, meeting someone like Kim Dormaar tells me that there are some people who've nailed it into place.

It's not his professional credentials or the awards he's won, it's not even that I'm so mad for his smoked salmon that I forget about worry for whole minutes at a time. It's his confidence in how he has told me for near decade and a half I've known him, "This is how I do it. This is the reason for it." that makes me feel like there's hope.

***

I don't even quite know how it happed.

I meant only to buy two sides of smoked salmon to bring back to Montreal for two upcoming houseguest visits, and so I went to Kim's smokehouse (photo of the smokeroom above). This is something I often do on the island. While there I find myself chatting more than I do, which tends to indicate that I'm either nervous or unexpectedly comfortable, though this time it was hard to tell which it was.

But from that came this: I was on the point of leaving and closing the car door.

Me: I'll probably be back in PEI in about three weeks.

Kim: Well actually, I'm short-staffed tomorrow at the [Charlottetown] farmer's market

Me: [Quizzical look.]

Kim: I usually get there for 7.

Me: [Quizzical look.]

Kim: But if you could arrive at 8--that'd be great.

Me: [Eyes wide open as the penny drops.]

Kim: It wraps up by 2.

And instead of mumbling something that says, "sorry... can't" or "I might look competent, but *trust* me when I tell you..." I went with

Me: I'm not staying 'til 2. I'm leaving at 11.

You mightn't guess how at the time, this felt an assertive answer. And standing before the formidable, it was. Yet most importantly, it was just the answer I meant to give, even as I wouldn't have devised it.

And so--A half-day at the Farmer's Market at Kim's stall. More exhilarating in pace than I would ever have guessed, and just as thoroughly wonderful as deep inside I knew it would be. Needless to say, with it came a sense of community, friendship, and pride and even as my pride was mostly borrowed I think I'll beam with it for days yet.

***

He ships. It's firm; it's tender. It's that ethereal mix of fresh-yet-soulful. It's ecstasy-inducing. It's http://smokedsalmon.isn.net/

Prince Edward Island, Me, & Wild Thyme.

It happens sometimes that life's truths just slam you into knowing them. They don’t wait, they don't seduce, they don’t even demand. They merely assert: I am here--it's up to you whether or not you are changed by me, but for an instant at least, something will change.

And so, driving from a warm September swim at Dalvay beach, on the north shore of the island, with my mind full of what's next. Just like that--the car crashes onto it: thyme. It felt like a solid wall. Heavy, heady, purifying, bracing.

Pull over. Roll down the windows. And as though for the first time in months, breathe.

Wild thyme is abundant in PEI. Round patches of it dot meadows. These are, however, discrete manifestations. Often you only take notice once you've trod on some. The scent wafts up; instantly intoxicates.

It must have been just just cut, part of a whole field. And though I'm still deciphering how this encounter will change things, the lead possibilities so far are:

1. Thyme in throngs mutes the rest of the day.
2. Wild beats cultivated.

No Translation Required: the Korova.

A lot of translation work is required in my life, when I try to explain how my pained and ecstatic search for meaning-transport-safety-beauty is answered all day and all night in the likes of a gaze, a sentence, a jar of duck fat.

But not here. I could tell about A Clockwork Orange, Korova the name of its milkbar that drugs through innocent-looking treats, just as these. I could tell you about Pierre Hermé and how he developed them. I could tell you how they need to be bitter and salty along with the sweet.

But all I need say is: "M., I made these for you."

And she answers with a thank you that says, you didn't need to, I shouldn't eat them, but how lovely! And then a few hours later a "these are good."

Plum Plum Tart: A Continental Bridge.

R: People will find it weird that you put food on the floor.

Tori: They won't--they'll only see the plummy and gold tones, and how they love one another.

R: Er. I think that's likely to be what you see.

Tori: [Starts humming.]

***

I only decided to make a plum tart after I'd come home from market. I had bought some Mount Royals, round, dark, wet --meant for breakfast.

As soon as the tart thought occurred, I felt like 1) It HAD TO happen, 2) There was no way I'd have enough plums. (Though come on, Tori, focus, at least *weigh* them: oh well there you go: you don't even have half of what you need. Damn. Damn. Curse-rather-than-weep.) and 3) It was too late to go out again before my desperate need to serve it as part of dinner with friends.

I told myself to let it go--there's plenty of food--but I again had this sense that I needed to make it in order to declare myself home. To ground us all, really.

And if this sounds melodramatic, trust me, it was. (Have I mentioned jetlag? It was jetlag made me do it!!) I was feebly flailing hoping this would make plums spring up from the ground.

But then in the middle of my ineffectual twirls about the kitchen, I opened a cupboard in that distracted one does for lack of what else to do.

Cue floodlights, lyre strains, wing flutters: There was before me a jar of plum preserves I had just made last week, but already forgotten about. It was made with thoughts of deep winter. Instead it lit--that home serving this home--a more symbolic bleakness.

Half a jar went in. SO good. A triumph of the unreasonable.

Copyright 2008. All rights reserved for photos and text.

Home.

Jetlag's a bitch. Though, then again--I do get a lot done when I wake up at 3 a.m.

I quickly get to first orders of business after sorting laundry, mail, newly-acquired books into distinct piles that mimic efficiency:

1) put up a bread
2) get coffee
3) go to market.

I hear how the rain ("The rain!") has made it a hard year for green growers. Though with how flush the markets seem, I reach this first by asking.

I'm sorry for the wet. I'm happy for the recent sun and warm. And I know that this place can start feeling like home again once I've checked in with my household gods, and those that provide for them.

Copyright 2008. All rights reserved for photos and text.

Eating Eating for England.

I've recently read Nigel Slater's Eating for England: The Delighs & Eccentrecities of the British at Table (2007).

It is sometimes personal, sometimes witty, sometimes laugh-aloud funny, sometimes less-so collection of snippets on many aspects of quirky Birtish food habits.

The reason it's stayed with me most is that I had, until this point in my life, thought I had something of a clue about how much Brits liked their sweets and biscuits. But I've been now walking around in a state of shock since reading the depth and breadth of their love affair.

A shortlist (!) of sweets and biscuits covered in the book: Sherbet Lemons, KitKats, Everton Mints, Acid Drops, Gibbs After-Dinner Mints, Bourbon Biscuits, Mint Cracknel, Liquorice Sticks, Toblerone, the Digestive, Golden Mint Humbugs, After Eight Mints, Muray Mints, Jellie Babies, Werther's Originals, Fruit and Nut Bars, Toffees, Jaffa Cake, Chocolate Digestives, Fudge, Barley Sugar, Pink Wafters, Anise Balls, Pear Drops, Custard Creams.

And for Slater, each of them elicit a Proustian falling through time.

The only commercial treats to which I have any such strong associations are Smarties. (Erm, to me real Smarties are the Canadian/U.K. Smarties, not the U.S. ones I think of as misnamed Rockets.) They tinted your fingers. You used the stain to "polish" your nails. They were small, and kid-sized. They were chocolate. You could shake the box and know how many you had left. One boxful went on and on. They had the word "smart" in them. And pink ones tasted best, even as you knew they all tasted the same. How better?

I've today worn my Smarties shirt in honour. Not that I'm absolutely certain the fancy Parisian shirtmaker who produced it knew that's what he'd made.

Copyright 2008. All rights reserved for photos and text.

Same Place Next Year.

There's a unique pang in leaving the places where you're a regular.

And you don't really know how it might change without you.

Copyright 2008. All rights reserved for photos and text.

Pickling Day.

I've never fully committed to pickling. There are definitely moments when I'm taken with the idea of it. I think it's that in it, I hear the sea calling, and the salt that sucks life out, and with it, oddly, preserves to give it later. What's not to stand in awe of, what's not to want to master.

Perhaps I should admit to myself that I'm afraid of pickles. Not their safety: whereas I trust very few people to give me jam, I think you'd have to work at getting pickling wrong.

Is it the unnatural crunch? Perhaps the pervasive wet that leaves me parched? And both these may well be a part of it, but I think it's the brine that holds this mystery for me. Murky magic.

Nonetheless: Pickling day. Packing the vegetables in the jar is fun. They squeak a bit as I urge them into slightly unnatural shapes. And foremost: I get to participate in ancient ritual. That alone should satisfy. Should.

Copyright 2008. All rights reserved for photos and text.

A Fool for Blackberries.

I wasn't up to more preserving just now, inspired though I was by this post at Box Elder. I went with a blackberry fool, with a crunch.

So today: my Blackberry Fool with Blackberry Meringue.

I love to think of the fool coming from the French word fouler, to crush, with a bit of a clumsy quality imbedded in the word. (I could also think of this as an over-enthusiastic performance of Eton Mess, yet that might altogether conjure something unwieldy, and so my mind doesn't brave it.) I love fool, no matter the name, too because my body staunchly refuses to tire of good softly whipped cream, and how well it loves fruit.

I also can't weary of the meringue + cream + fruit--either as a pavlova, or a vacherin--only this combination has none of the grownup challenge of real crunch, this is more like a gentle childish spoon version.

And so: I started with 500g of blackberries (50 deca, as said at markets here in Hungary), though I ended up using somewhat less than that, after a handful (the one pictured) was eaten upon coming home.

For the meringue component: 200g (1 cup) sugar and 4 egg whites placed in a clean stainless or glass bowl placed over a pan of barely simmering water for one minute or so, until the sugar crystals dissolve (so you no longer feel them between your fingers). If you omit this melting-in step, you're meringue won't be as crisp, which is frankly no great loss here, but I was in a thorough mood. Whip the egg whites with a mixer (or engage whoever's around to take turns to do it by hand) until billowy and marshmallowy, and keeps a peak when the whisk is lifted out. In a separate bowl, mash a handful or two of blackberries, and gently mix them in the beaten egg whites--let it be streaky and uneven. You then slather, somewhat evenly, the whole thing on a lined baking sheet, and bake it until dry in a cool oven (220F/110C/1/4 Gas Mark) until it's dry and feels hollow when picked up. Not much trouble here--turn it off if you've an errand to run, it will wait. Allow to cool, and then cover with a sheet of something or a tea towel, or place in a plastic bag, and bash with whatever's handy--I usually use my rolling pin--until you have mostly a sandy-pebbly rubble of purple meringue. You'll have more crumbs than you'll need, but delicious ones at that.

When ready to eat the fool, softly whip 500 ml of cold whipping cream with 2 tablespoon of sugar (a cold bowl, and cold whisk helps this, but I rarely bother). Reserve some very pretty blackberries for garnish (or don't) and in a separate bowl mash blackberries, leaving uneven bits. Gently fold the two together, with about 1/2 of the broken meringue, reserving the rest to sprinkle on the tops.

Spoon the fool into dessert or wine glasses, with reserved blackberries at the bottom, or on top, and sprinkle tops with reserved meringue.

Budapest Breakfast: Foie Gras.

I often wonder how much of an expensive treat one might choose to eat if it were always available for cheaps.

I got to know my answer for lobster and caviar, having lived in times and places where they were abundant. (The answer? LOTS.) I suspect much the same would be true for best Graves and truffles were I given the chance to find out. (Won't someone please need me to know this!?!)

In profusion here is foie gras. Last I bought it, $17 for a glorious 700g. For years, I've proven what find breakfast food it makes when I'm here, and I can. The best moment is when you forget that it's a privileged occurrence, and all you're left with is melting cool deliciousness.

The photo shows, too, how much goose fat the bread likes first. (Erm.)

I also speculate how much might I would be willing to dish out for, say, garlic mashed potatoes if priced in double digits for an ounce, but I hope never to have to find out...

[Incidentally, be it duck or goose, Hungarian foie gras is often what's labelled Produit de France once enough value-added through processing and tinning.]