This time of year I am a sucker for artichokes. There’s really only one way to make them, and to then combine carciofi alla romana with tender white beans and crunchy homemade toast produces one of my favorite late-winter meals. Soon enough artichokes will be out of season, right around the time that my reliance on vegetables grown more than 50 feet from my house will end. Until then, they’re my vegetable guilty pleasure.
With the warmer weather (leaving aside the inconvenient truth that it snowed today) comes the urge to light fires and char large pieces of animal on them, or at least let said slabs of flesh languish in hot proximity to the fire, bathing in the fragrant smoke until tender and orgiastically satisfying.
By way of follow-up on the sap post from last week, it’s worth mentioning that subsequently I got 12 more gallons from the same source and cooked them down into one resplendent bottle of syrup (a quart plus an extra half pint which I poured into the other syrup in the fridge). Meanwhile, I’ve been steadily gathering and reducing sap from the smallish birch trees near the garden. The birch sap is for something else, but the maple syrup is pure liquid sunshine, magically appearing at the time of year when we need it most.
I got some beautiful local raw milk and pastured eggs today to use in a couple of projects, and they unsurprisingly found their way into dinner. It’s been just lovely lately; today was a tad chilly but the sun was warm. I’ve gotten a bunch of stuff planted in the garden, and hooped those beds to keep them from freezing hard on cold nights. I’m having a hard time keeping up with all of the culinary ideas that I keep having, which is a wonderful problem to have, especially in contrast to my mood of a couple weeks ago.
Tomorrow I’m going to pick up half a lamb, so I thought I’d put up something about some other lamb from about a week ago. Tonight, coincidentally, we’re going to dinner with the people with whom we split the lamb, and I may bring the camera so that future generations can reverently study our dinners. This weekend I have some plans for a pretty special meal, but until then this should tide you over.
I am so much happier than I was a few days ago. Yesterday’s enthusiastic digging and planting filled me with the thrill of food season. From this point on, there’s going to be something worth eating within steps of my door every day. To start, it’s all the roots that slumbered underground in the garden all winter that I can now ravage lasciviously to serve my gustatory whims. And soon enough, ramps, nettles, and garlic mustard are going to make the mistake of sticking their necks out far enough for me to cut them off. The herb garden is already stirring.
Today I had one of those crystal clear hankerings around mid-afternoon that I have learned well not to ignore if I want my dinner to be good. To wit: red potatoes in the pantry, and still a jar of tomato purée from last summer. And guanciale, ever guanciale, in the fridge. I have to get more jowls and cure a couple more so there’s no danger whatsoever of running out.
So this month’s Charcutepalooza process was brining. The day they announced it was the day I finished off a lovely pastrami, and the week before we had eaten the last of a tongue pastrami. So that was bad timing. But it did give me an excuse to make something else.
Various forms of grilled sandwiches with home-cured meat played a big part in getting me through this winter. Versions of the reuben in particular really spoke to me, and I’ve been missing them since the last pastrami ran out. (Here’s an account of my from-scratch reuben, and here’s the post about the recent tongue pastrami). I love Moroccan flavors, and in general I prefer lamb to beef, so I thought I’d make lamb pastrami. It’s logical if you think about it; both the brine and the crust can be easily tweaked towards the Maghreb, and lamb takes smoke and strong spices really well. The Reubenesque aspects of the final sandwich all got similar modifications, and the result was a hell of a sandwich.
Japan has been on my mind a lot lately, though unfortunately for terrible reasons. Given the many areas in which Japanese culture has influenced me–ceramics, cooking, and to a lesser degree painting–there’s not another country that has made such an impact on me, at least one I’ve never been to. Italy taught me to cook, and France taught me about wine. Japan is more of an aspirational influence, a strange attractor that shapes my cooking and serving from afar.
This morning I went to unload a kiln, and the results were inspiring. This is why I make ceramics: apart from the pleasure of working with clay (and productivity makes me happy) the resulting pieces make me want to cook better to do them justice. In this case, these 7-sided bowls made the difference between some steaks with other stuff on a plate and a meal that really worked on every level.