Tantre farm share, week 8

Bottom row: yellow zucchini, cucumber, basil, mint, garlic, arugula, kohlrabi
Top row: onions, snap peas, new potatoes, green beans, beets, carrots, broccoli, red oak lettuce, red leaf lettuce, rainbow chard

Whew! Love the variety but because of Art Fair, I had to park kind of far from the market and my arms were sore by the time I lugged the packed share box and the two additional bags back to the car.

Menu plan for the week:

• Breadcrumb crusted (yellow) zucchini with chard
• More calabacitas with the rest of the yellow zucchini--can't get enough of this.
• Two weeks ago we had a snap pea revelation. I've always eaten snap peas raw; the only time I'd cooked them was as a steamed side for a salmon dish and they were just ok, nothing to write home about. But we've had so many peas the last couple of weeks that I had to try something else and was motivated to try a simple saute: snap peas, unsalted butter, chopped spearmint, black pepper and fleur de sel. Super simple but the combination is amazing! I made them as a side with grilled lamb chops and the peas were what Brian and were raving about. So this week not a single pea will escape my saute pan.
• Tonight I'm using some of the garlic to make a batch of spicy peanut sauce, some brown rice, tofu and whatever vegetables I can lay my hands on (definitely some broccoli, carrots, green beans, yellow zucchini).
• Vietnamese-style steak salad: lettuce, mint, basil, onion tops and shredded carrots with grilled steak, rice noodles, chopped peanuts and nuoc cham
• Anyone have a recipe for kohlrabi pickle or slaw? I'm thinking of something sort of Asian with rice vinegar, maybe a little sugar...
• The lettuce with roasted beets, walnuts and orange vinaigrette with an onion, chard or beet tops, broccoli, basil and feta quiche.
• New potatoes will be boiled and then topped with a little dill
• I bought a couple of extra cucumbers so that we could have my favorite beer snack this week.

Exquisite

I think that writing about poetry is hard because my prose feels so clumsy, so heavy and earth-bound, after reading poetry. But I'll have to give it a go.

Exquisite: that's the word that comes to mind when I think of the book I finished recently, Rita Dove's Sonata Mulattica.* I tried to cobble together my own summary of the book, but let's face it, The New Yorker already crafted a fine summary:

Dove’s verse sequence re-creates the life of the biracial violinist George Bridgetower, best remembered for being the first performer, and the initial dedicatee, of Beethoven’s “Kreutzer” Sonata. ....The book remains highly accessible, reading much like a historical novel. Dove is fascinated by Bridgetower’s life as a black musician...[but] she is concerned equally with the status of musicians in a world of precarious patronage—even Haydn, at the Esterhazy estate, has “no more leave / to step outside the gates / than a prize egg-laying hen”—and with “the radiant web” of music itself.

Dove's book reminds me of another of my other favorite books of all time (still a part of my top ten list!), Michael Ondaatje's The Collected Works of Billy the Kid. Both use poetry rather than prose as a means of creating a portrait of a historical figure. The shifting gaze and varied rhythms of the poems makes the portraits more vivid to me than a linear prose biography or novelization. The lives of interesting people are messy and don't always make sense and a series of poems is the perfect medium with which to express this. This is particularly true in the case of Dove's subject about whom the historical record is fragmented at best. While I understand the value of communicating facts in clear narrative prose, these two books make you feel the history rather than just intellectualize it.

Both books are painfully beautiful--I found myself forgetting to breathe while reading some of Dove's poems and only realized that I'd been holding my breath at the end of the poem when I had to gulp for air. Dove's book keeps from putting the reader into lyrical overload by also being funny and playful, sarcastic and sad. She creates such a kaleidoscopic portrait of George Bridgetower that, like Ondaatje's Billy, I find him haunting my thoughts. Of course there are poems about race and I noticed that the book was shelved in the Black Studies section of the library. I would also like the library to buy three more copies and to file them in the poetry, biography and fiction sections. The themes of the book are so layered that it defies simple categorization: it's about relationships, about why people compose and why people play music, the tensions of patronage and fickleness of society. It is about admiration and jealousy, grandeur and pettiness.

To get the most out of this book I would recommend two courses of action. First, get some music. The playlist should include plenty of the two composers who are featured in the book: Haydn (that's "Papa" Haydn to George) and Beethoven, particularly the Violin Sonata No.9 in A Major, Opus 47. But it also might be good to add in a little Bach, Mozart and Handel. I found listening to them helped me appreciate how radical Beethoven must have sounded to his contemporaries. Second, read the chronology located at the back of the book. This will set out the time line and help to clarify the voices of some of the minor characters--people who witnessed Bridgetower or Beethoven. Their poems provide refreshing perspective on the main characters but could be confusing if you can't place the voice.

Of course, the most intense poems were the ones where Bridgetower contemplates Beethoven and vice versa because they lay bare the particular intimacy between the musician and the composer. Here is Bridgetower commenting on Beethoven as he sight reads the Violin Sonata No.9:

He frightens me. I've never heard music
like this man's, this sobbing
in the midst of triumphal chords,
such ambrosial anguish,
jigs danced on simmering coals.
Oh, I can play it well enough--hell,
I've been destined to travel these impossible
switchbacks, but it's as if I'm skating
on his heart, blood tracks
looping everywhere, incarnadine
dips and curves...

Beethoven's view of Bridgetower is also shot through with the anguish he feels at going deaf. His experience of watching Bridgetower play his compositions almost transcends sound itself:

I was careless then, I squandered the world's utterance.
And when my muddy conspirator swayed and quaked
like the tallest poplar tossed by the lightest wind

so that I could read his playing, see my score
transcribed on the air, on the breeze--I breathed
his soul through my own fingers and gave up

trying to listen; I watched him and felt
the music--it was better than listening,
it was the last pure sound...

At the end of Dove's interview with Diane Rehm, she mentioned hoping to record an audio version of the book. The only thing I would like more than re-reading this book, is listening to Dove read the poems to me.
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*I heard Dove on the Diane Rehm Show (you can hear the interview here) and immediately requested the book from the library.

Tantre farm share, week 7

From left to right: Onions, parsley, dill, arugula, English shelling peas, new potatoes, two heads of red oak lettuce, basil, sugar snap peas, fava beans, garlic, beets, yellow summer squash, two bunches of red Russian kale, kohlrabi

I'm still working on the damn kitchen, though at least it is moderately functional. So I'm going to limit the rhapsodizing about how beautiful these vegetables are and move right on to what I'm going to do with them.

Menu plan:

• Tonight: grilled lamb chops, sauteed snap peas with mint, red oak lettuce and arugula salad and new potatoes with dill.
• Shelling peas with the first basil pesto of the year and pasta (homemade or dried, depending on the energy level...)
• Calabacitas with the yellow squash and some of the onions served with grilled steak and green rice.
• Main course salad using more of the lettuce, parsley, beets, and onions supplemented with cucumbers from the market, grilled or canned tuna, feta and olives and served with arugula and fava bean crostini.
• Roasted kohlrabi, sauteed kale and some form of protein. I'm hankering for tofu but can't quite figure out a compatible flavor profile. Ideas anyone?
• More kale chips for snacking.
• Not sure what to do with the beet greens this week, other than basic saute with garlic....

Triple Beet Overload

Whenever we go to Washtenaw Dairy, the boy critter chooses a massive scoop of Triple Chocolate Overload. Yesterday, inspired by that name, I made a meal I call Triple Beet Overload.

Beet pasta,
filled with beet greens, walnuts and ricotta,
accompanied by a salad with sliced beets:
For a beet lover like myself, this was more delicious than Triple Chocolate Overload. The pasta had a simple browned butter, crispy sage leaf and poppy seed sauce and the salad was romaine, arugula, beets and cucumber (all from the farm share or farmer's market) in a shallot vinaigrette. I used one generous bunch of beets from the Tantre farm share to make this meal (plus plenty more ravioli for another day): the roots were split between the salad and the puree in the pasta dough and the greens went in the filling.

I made some beet linguine for the critters and the boy critter happily gobbled it down. The girl critter was more reluctant and then I screwed up royally and suggested she pretend the noodles were earthworms, forgetting that this is the child who goes on worm rescue patrol after it rains to save worms. She looked horrified at the mere thought that someone would find eating (pretend) earthworms amusing and that was that; not another noodle passed her lips.

Beet Overload

beet pasta recipe adapted from Martha Stewart
beet green filling recipe adapted from LA Times

Serve with a salad with sliced beets to put it over the top in beety-goodness.

Beet Pasta
about 1/3-1/2 C cooked peeled beets--you can roast or boil them, whichever you prefer
2 eggs
1 egg yolk
1 t salt
2 C flour, plus more for kneading and rolling

Process the cooked beets in a food processor, scraping down the sides a few times. Add the eggs, yolk and salt and process again, until you don't see any individual beet bits. Add flour and pulse until the dough comes together in a big lump.

Turn dough out onto a well-floured surface, flour the top and knead for about 5 minutes. Then wrap in plastic and let rest for an hour (in the fridge if you plan on longer than an hour).

While the dough rests, make the filling:

Beet Green Filling
2 T olive oil
1 garlic clove, pressed or minced
1 generous bunch of beet greens, washed, stems removed and chopped
1/2 C walnuts
1 egg white
1 C whole milk ricotta
1/3 C microplane grated Parmesan (less if you are using coarser grated)
1/4 t fresh ground nutmeg
salt and pepper

Saute the garlic in the olive oil until fragrant, then add the beet greens and cook until thoroughly wilted, at least 5 minutes.

Put the greens in the food processor (yes, you have to wash the darn thing after making the pasta....) add the walnuts and pulse until chopped fine. Transfer greens to a bowl and add the egg white, ricotta, Parmesan and nutmeg. Mix well and season with salt and plenty of black pepper.

Now assemble the ravioli:

Cut off a blob of dough that is about 1/5th of the whole and press into a vaguely rectangular shape and lightly flour it. Then run through your pasta roller, dialing down the setting each time. I have a pastry brush dipped in flour that I use to dust it between runs. I run it through twice on the biggest setting and once on all the following settings and I stop at 2 (not the absolute thinnest setting because that makes for very delicate ravioli and I tend to tear them). Repeat until you have used all your dough, or until you have made sufficient ravioli. You can wrap up the rest of the dough in plastic and refrigerate it for a day or two until you have the energy to make some more.

Lay out your looooong rectangle of pasta on a lightly floured surface. Then put 1/2 teaspoons of filling spaced evenly down half the sheet (I usually do it in two rows, but it depends on the size of your ravioli. If you prefer big ones then use a full teaspoon of filling and space them out a bit more). Use a brush dipped lightly in water to moisten the edges of the ravioli then fold the other half of the sheet over the top. Gently press around the lumps of filling to seal it in and then use a knife or pasta cutter to cut the ravioli's apart. Place on a lightly floured board or cookie sheet and dust lightly with a little more flour. Freeze if you don't intend to use immediately or else the pasta will start to absorb the filling and deteriorate. When you are ready to cook, put on a big pot of salted water, have it come to a boil and then toss in the ravioli and cook until they float to the top. Drain and toss with the sauce.

Sauce:
3/4 of a stick of butter
1 T poppy seeds
a good handful of fresh sage leaves

Melt the butter in a small sauce pan then toss in the poppy seeds and sage leaves. Cook until the butter gets slightly nutty colored and then pour the whole shebang over the pasta and serve. Make sure that everyone gets a few sage leaves. If you like, you can shred Parmesan over the top of each serving.

Why I love A.Word.A.Day

There are plenty of "word a day" offerings out there (I think my screen saver even has one) but most of them assume you have a pretty basic vocabulary and they are formatted like basic dictionary entries: dry, dry, dry.

A while ago I subscribed to Wordsmith.org's A.Word.A.Day e-mail and it has been such a pleasure--each week the words are grouped around a theme: sometimes it is the connection to a particular language, sometimes the words are derived from birds, sometimes the words are esoteric insults (always good to have some of these tucked away so I can swear in front of the critters without major repercussions). This week's theme is "words with three letters in alphabetic sequence." (You can browse the theme list here.)

Today's entry was simply perfect: defenestrate*. The former-French-speaker in me could figure out what it meant by the connection to the word window: "fenetre". The basic pronunciation, definition and etymology are covered, but the notes section, in which the word is explicated and commented upon, is what makes A.Word.A.Day special. In defenestrate's note there is a reference to the Defenestration of Prague which took place May 23, 1618 and led up to the 30 years war, but then, even better, there is a link to a Lego sculpture gallery of this particular historical moment! If I was a kid studying for the SATs you can bet I would remember defenestrate after looking at the Lego pics.

I love obsessive dweebitude things like this. Do you have a favorite to share?
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*Incidentally, Blogger's spell checker does not know the word defenestrate. Ha!

Slowly...

...we're making progress on the kitchen:
I proudly present my stretch of ceiling. I've said it before and will say it again, I'm not a perfectionist, but this stretch of mudding and taping would satisfy a pickier person than I am.

Then the ceiling was primed and painted, the walls got 3 coats of red, and you can see the wood trim has all been stripped. As I'm typing this, Brian is finishing up staining it. We still have crown moulding, oak trim around the counter tops, and the subway tile backsplashes to install, but those three are far less messy and won't require crazy tarping, just moving stuff around as the work is done. The stove may be out of commission for a day or so when I'm tiling right behind it, but hopefully we won't have to eat as much take-out as we did this week. I'm itching to get back to cooking with the great produce that is available right now.

Tantre farm share, week 6

No one expects me to do much with this week's beautiful produce:

Vaguely left to right: onions, 2 quarts of peas, beets, fava beans, broccoli, Italian kale, dill and chives, kohlrabi, arugula, cabbage, turnips, summer squash

Because presently my kitchen looks like this:
And this:
Brian has the week off and we are doing all sorts of pain-in-the-ass messy jobs in the kitchen. We've replaced the one piece of damaged drywall in the ceiling and I am on my third coat of mudding and smoothing the joints. Brian is about half-way done with stripping the woodwork which someone did a half-assed job at (there are still little flecks of gray and white paint). Thankfully we discovered a fantastic product that makes this particular task much less onerous: Removall. I saw someone raving about it on a This Old House show a long time ago and thankfully remembered the name. I had to mail order it but it was worth it--you can apply this stuff with your bare hands which isn't something I'd dare do with traditional paint remover! The smell isn't horrific, doesn't cause headaches (at least in my wee head) and best of all, the stuff really works. I can't understand why no home stores carry the stuff.

We'll also be putting up crown moulding, repainting the walls and ceiling (not sure what color yet....decisions to be made...opinions welcome...) and dealing with some wall and ceiling gaps that have been in existence since we replaced a built-in cabinet years ago. I'll be tiling the back splashes (white subway tile) though that might take place after the tarps are gone and the kitchen is semi-functional again since tiling isn't nearly as messy as drywall. There's probably more picky little stuff I'm forgetting.

So the produce isn't going to be fussed over this week: I plan to uncover the stove briefly this evening and make a "share box" pasta in which I chuck in just about every vegetable I lay my hands on. Then I'll prep some salads using the kohlrabi, cabbage, arugula (not together) that can be pulled out and eaten between coats of paint.

Menu plan

There was an insane rain storm yesterday which has done a great deal to alleviate my mental fog that accompanied the humidity. Now I am capable of coming up with something other than salad to consume our Farm Share:

• The turnip greens, mystery greens, waido, and some of the scallions will go into another adaptation of spanikopita. This time I'm going to tinker with the filling and include some drained yogurt to give it a little extra tang. And I have about 10 garlic scapes (not from the farm share) that will also find their way into the mix.
• The kohlrabi will be eaten raw--I haven't decided exactly how. If I get to a store and find some decent fennel, this salad looks good.
• The beets and asparagus will get baked/roasted alongside the spanikopita and then sliced and doused with a simple mustard vinaigrette.
• The braised turnip recipe I made last week was so good, I'm making it again. Brian and I were having fork wars over who got the last turnip.
• The parsley is already gone having been chopped up and added to the salads (so far, we have used up 2 of the huge heads of lettuce).
• I'll make kale chips and hope I might be able to trick the kids into eating them.
• and the peas (oy vey, the peas!), some will get a quick blanching and then get tossed with a sesame/rice wine vinegar dressing (sort of like goma ae for peas!), some will be mixed with grated carrots, mint, olive oil and feta, some will be chucked into the salads, hopefully the kids will put away a whole bunch since this is the only green vegetable they willingly eat.

Pea insanity!

I just picked 1.5 lbs of sugar snap peas in my garden! And I ate about 5 oz of shelling peas right there on the spot! And I still have some left from the farm share!

Must head into the kitchen now to do them justice.

Our new friend

Last weekend, Brian decided to transform our crappy grill into something much more interesting:
It looks a little ridiculous with the big honking smoker attachment but I tell you people, it WORKS. (The alarming looking angle of the smoker is due to the way it is bolted to an angled side of the grill--not because the whole thing is leaning that way). I had my doubts when he was rigging the thing up on Saturday but I should know better than to doubt the man's mechanical abilities, especially when motivated by the possibility of churning out large quantities of smoked meat. And yes, it still works as a gas grill too. (If anyone is interested in how he did it, let me know and I'll pry it out of him. It did involve some noisy drilling at which point in time I ran inside and slammed the door.)

Allow me to display some of the beauteous offerings that he smoked on Father's Day (yes, he chose to spend his Father's Day enveloped in clouds of hickory smoke. We provided him with plenty of beer to keep him happy out there.)
The smoked salmon was revelatory. I made a tzatziki sauce to go with it.
A smoked chicken. Also mighty fine.
And his favorite, smoked pork ribs. I'm not the biggest rib fan (I prefer pulled pork) but I had one and they were good. We went with a simple dry rub that consisted of paprika, brown sugar, kosher salt and black pepper for all three smoked protein products. They were brushed occasionally with a little apple juice while on the smoker. That was it!

I made some sides, but neglected to photograph them: Alice Waters' Cole Slaw, a redskin potato salad with snap peas and avocado doused with the creamy salad dressing, and plenty of sweet corn on the cob.

I did remember to take a photo of dessert though:
Homemade chocolate chip cookies with (purchased) vanilla bean ice cream. Isn't this what Summer is supposed to look like?