Food | mulberryshoots

November 3, 2013

new things . . .

It’s so much fun learning about new things from friends and vice versa, isn’t it? The other day, L. and I took a ride in the middle of a Thursday to a family-run farm nearby, about a half hour drive to Concord, MA. It was so much fun to show L. the unmarked little secret place to buy organic eggs on the honor system (she took a photo of the entrance with her camera.) and then to go back for a cup of hot dark coffee, and homemade scones in a new flavor: pineapple and coconut. L.’s eyes got big as we munched on the delicious scone. Then she put more into a bag for her family to eat later. We stocked up on Vermont Hubbardston blue cheese which is a chevre with a smoky blue cheese flavor that is heavenly when allowed to come to room temperature and it’s slightly runny. I have been known to eat a whole (small) wheel in the evening while eschewing dessert! It’s BETTER than dessert!

Today, she wrote to me that the eggs were “eggs-traordinary”, the cheese was delicious as were the homemade scones. We have both been enjoying apple-mixberry pies and other fresh vegetables we found at the farmstand: eggplant, kale, salad greens. Going to the farmstand together also allowed for time to discuss our new joint endeavor called, “musical notes outreach,” a program for the elderly in nursing homes, assisted living residences and hospice. Our mission is simple as can be: “We want to make you happy by providing the sound of music.” Simple as that. L, because she has worked in the elder care community, knows activity directors in local venues as well as people in charge of palliative care in the neighborhood. Thanks to her efforts, we have two of our first bookings in December and are looking forward to introducing the program and seeing how people respond to it to see what they enjoy most. A menu of classical, Windham Hill and other songs will be offered.

When I played Bach’s Prelude in C major, both L. and I immediately agreed it would be a wonderful, simple piece to open each program. We might follow it by playing Charles Gounod’s “Ave Maria” overlay as a duet with the Bach Prelude. I’m thinking of playing the melody of the “Ave Maria” and then ask if they’d like to hum along while I play it again with the Bach Prelude accompanying it. Our closing piece for each program will be “Devotion” by Liz Story. Along the way, there may be some Chopin Preludes, “Clair de Lune” by Debussy and some crowd pleasers like “You Raise Me Up” and some Windham Hill songs like “All For Us” that are simple and touching in their simplicity.

Here is a link to a wonderful Youtube clip by Bobby McFerrin singing the Bach Prelude with the audience singing the Gounod “Ave Maria” along with it. Just wonderful. I hope you’ll have time to play and enjoy it. Also included is a link to the song, “As For Us” which I’ve always loved, listening to it on a Windham Hill CD in the car. I couldn’t find the music score, but have jotted down the main progression of the piece by ear from the Youtube clip and am will include it in our programs.

So there is a lot of “new-ness” going on and it’s also a lot of fun. New friends, new music, new ways to play music. Stay tuned for how it goes in December with “musical notes!”

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October 26, 2013

bread and butter . . .

homemade sandwich white bread, a half loaf is better than none!

Sometimes, it feels really good to get back to basics. Like bread and butter. Even though there’s just half a loaf left, I took a photo of the bread that I made yesterday. One of the offshoots of the mums show was that the sandwich I bought there was made with wonderful homemade white sandwich bread, even though it was pretty soggy from having sat in the plastic container for awhile. It was so tasty that I resolved to find a recipe for sandwich white bread and bake a loaf at home. Because of the flavor and crumb, I thought that the recipe might include milk, butter and honey. Sure enough, I found such a recipe and followed it to make what is, (drumroll), the very best tasting bread that I have ever made.

Here are a few things that I absorbed about making the bread light with a firm crumb and a crust that is not too chewy but still flavorful. The most important thing is not to use too much flour. I followed this recipe and its guidance to add only a tablespoon of flour at a time if the dough was sticky while kneading. Apparently, a bread dough that has just enough flour to hold it together will be tender and light. I’ve found the same axiom to be true when making cinnamon rolls at Christmas: the less handling a dough that has just enough flour makes the most tender, light rolls.

The second is to use fine ingredients. I added G.’s favorite honey from Canada (Billy Bee) which has great depth of flavor without being overly sweet. Melted Plugra unsalted butter went into the dough. I discovered this brand of butter by watching a NYTimes Melissa Clark video on butter-tasting. Plugra brand won hands down. So the next time I was in a specialty grocery store, I sprang for some and have been rationing it out ever since. I still use Kate’s unsalted butter most of the time, but Plugra is creamier and more buttery-tasting. The flour used was King Arthur’s unbleached all purpose flour along with Maldon sea salt. I think that’s all the ingredients except instant yeast I had in the fridge and whole milk.

I hand kneaded the bread dough for exactly ten minutes even though I was tempted to stop after five minutes. I heated my oven, then shut it off, placed a bowl of water in it and added the dough in a greased bowl to rise for the first time. After the dough rose the first time, (after a 2nd boost of hot air two-thirds of the way through,) I punched it down gently, formed it into a loaf with minimal handling and put it into a buttered (not greased) white stoneware Le Creuset bread pan (my all-time favorite baking utensil.) Heated the oven again and turned it off, added a pan of water and let it rise again with a film of plastic on it. When risen, separated the plastic without disturbing the dough. Then I boiled a small pot of water. Pre-heated the oven to 350 degrees. Opened the oven and poured the boiling water into a pan next to where I was going to bake the bread. Closed the oven again to let the inside oven temperature rise again to 350 degrees. Popped the bread into the oven and let it bake for about 30-35 minutes. Took it out, gently ran a knife around the corners and it came out easily, the steam permeating the kitchen with wonderful bread aroma.

The top had slid over a bit but it just added to the charm of the loaf. For lunch, we spread butter and drizzled honey on top, eating it with bowls of soup. Moist and firm of crumb, chewy but not hard nor dry. I plan to make this bread every week. I thought of making two loaves at once, but rather than freezing one loaf, I think I’d rather have one freshly baked loaf at a time. Today, I toasted two thick slices for breakfast and decided to take these photos to share with you a simple feast of bread and butter (plus honey.)

Enjoy!

breakfast toast with butter and honey

my second loaf fresh out of the oven today!

second loaf, close up!

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September 26, 2013

a romantic cook . . .

antique carved breadboard

I was reading a follow-up article in the NYTimes this morning about chickens who are fed scraps from gourmet restaurants from NYC (trucked to an Amish farm in Pennsylvania) and how improved the flavor is over commercially fed birds. If it’s true for us humans that “we are what we eat,” then it should be little surprise that this holds true for animals as well, doesn’t it? In any case, I have been comparing the taste and texture of chickens available through our grocery markets ever since the original article was published last week. I try to avoid Perdue chickens in the supermarket because of the documentary a few years ago showing caged chickens in a filthy barn as one of the Perdue suppliers. Wouldn’t touch one after that. I’m tempted to order one of the D’Artagnan Green Circle chickens after these reports of incomparable flavor and juicy white meat, silky dark meat.

One of the letters to the editor wrote about living “on our frugal little farms” which made me laugh. Especially since my recent Bon Appetit magazine which arrived a couple of days ago featured a gorgeous spread about Mimi Thorrison who is half-French/half-Chinese, has beautiful dark hair and a slender figure even after bearing four children and cooks for a family of nine everyday filled with fresh foods from the farm markets, seafood, butter, chicken, cream, calvados and gougeres. In case you haven’t noticed, there is a wide breadth of life between living frugally on our little farms and living fully on a farm in Medoc, France with a husband who is a professional photographer and breeds Jack Russell and smooth haired terriers. At latest count, I think they have forty dogs running around the place. Mimi also favors providing the best wine you can afford, sets flowers all around with lit candles with beautiful bases. And, astonishingly, none of it looks or sounds pretentious at all, that’s the most amazing part of her aura.

It takes a lot to bowl me over since I read a lot and peruse magazines from the U.S., U.K. and Australia at the local bookstore, even keeping up with editorial changes which seem to be happening more often, or at least more quickly these days. There has been nothing close that takes my breath away as much as the description of the Thorisson family and photographs described on Mimi’s blog, Manger. Apparently, this is a shared response because there is a TV cooking show being filmed on site and she is writing a cookery book that will be published by Clarkson Potter in the Fall of 2014. I can’t wait.

Not only are the goings on so evocative and tenderly personal, they are written without being at all self-promotional (her two year old daughter, Gaia’s yearning for blackberries that she could reach [not spoiled by the foxes brushing by the low branches] and not finding them where she was sure there were some; then their father, Oddur [yes, that’s his Icelandic name] speaks earnestly to their son, Hudson, asking him to look carefully for patches of blackberries elsewhere on the property.) Which he does!, to everyone’s delight, yielding ten bowls of blackberries, which Mimi then makes into blackberry ice cream and blackberry souffles dusted with fine sugar and frozen blackberries on the top. It is so beautiful and yet so charmingly described (a fine line to walk) that the reader is entranced. Charmed by reading about and peering into such a very charmed life.

So, I wish the best for them, and have Manger on my bookmark bar (among the few) where I gain inspiration from people who are living their dreams (along with breeding so many dogs) raising a family with such thoughtful care and looking so beautiful amongst it all. What it has also done is to reinforce my awareness once again of how much beauty and bounty resides within our own homes: old wooden bowls collected over so many years and Shino glazed pottery plates and bowls that we use every day. Old copper pots, one a huge hammered one, is perfect for roasting a leg of lamb, turnips, carrots and onions now that the weather has cooled off. Yesterday, a friend brought a sheaf of freshly picked basil which I harvested and stored in the fridge with a slightly dampened paper towel. Tomorrow, I plan to make pesto with toasted pine nuts and pair it with whole wheat fettucine plus bella mushrooms. Trimming fresh basil leaves off an armful of two foot stems seemed like light work compared to cleaning ten bowls of wild blackberries!

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August 23, 2013

Yin, not yang . . .

You may have heard of Yin and Yang or at least seen the image of two halves making a whole: the dark and the light. Yang energy is excess in all things, pushing things beyond the limit outside of oneself. Yin is shy, reserved, quiet, drawing energy from within.

The truth of the matter is that my whole summer has been so yang that I’m “yanged” out, if that’s a word I can coin here. Too much running around, reaching out for lots of things, driving a lot, experiencing strong feelings, all of which have taken place in long summer days of intense heat and humidity.

Now that the light is changing and the air cools at night, I’m definitely ready for the pendulum to swing back the other way. Yesterday for some reason, I was drawn back to thinking about macrobiotics as a way of eating and living. Years ago, I spent a week at the Kushi Institute in Becket, MA. learning how to cook macrobiotic food. Armed with a pressure cooker, heat mat, premium brown rice, spring water, collard greens and kinpira recipes, I came back, ready to combat the viral encephalitis that still had a grip on my brain. Even though Western doctors said there was nothing wrong with me besides exhaustion, I knew something was up when I ordered an “ice cream sundae with mushrooms on top” at Friendly’s.

Thinking back on it, I remembered making rice balls and tiny lunches packed in bento boxes to take to work with me. People marvelled at how little it looked like I ate and at the same time, complimented me on the glow of my skin. I lost weight then too. Remembering that has reminded me now that I have a chance to regain my center, calm myself down, eat less but nutritiously and lose the remaining weight I’ve been aiming at once and for all, say, by Christmas.

The other long-held goal of mine to truly clean things out here and live a spare, although not spartan lifestyle also seems close at hand. The dumpster was taken away as quietly as it appeared, holding three and half tons of debris. In a month’s time, another container will appear for us to go through things that are still left. Just thinking of how much lighter living will be by then has me feeling giddy with anticipation.

For me to stay on something like a macrobiotic pathway it may also be helpful to think about life a little differently than in the past. I find myself wanting to shed the extravagances of the past: over-the-top Christmas holidays; gifts for the children they might not want or need; here-or-there things that are nice but add to the stuff that eventually will be sorted out and then given away again. The Buddhists say that craving is the source of human suffering. Taoists say something a little less judgmental. In any case, you can’t make desires go away. Something has to happen so that they don’t seem important anymore. Or set things up so that desires won’t surface as often. Tempting places like Amazon.com, Etsy, eBay and Nordstroms have been deleted from my Bookmark Bar. Oh yes, and I forgot to mention Pinterest, which is a most beautiful way to absorb other people’s cravings while increasing your own! I’ll have to get my thrills from going to the market a few times a week with cash, not a debit card.

Another thing that I learned about having less is the joy of an almost empty refrigerator. To me, nothing is worse than figuring out what to cook so that the refrigerator contents don’t spoil. I’d rather shop more often and buy two days worth, eat it ALL, and then start over again. So much food is wasted otherwise. I find that I can never rely on what I thought I’d like to eat, then three days later cooking it with the same kind of relish as when I first bought it.

So that’s where Yin is taking me these days. I’m exhausted from all the Yang. Depleted. I just need to stay quiet for awhile. Sit quietly. Read. Keep the TV off, especially the news. And turn off the cooking show where Ina Garten pours a quart of cream into six egg yolks swimming in two sticks of butter. Now, that’s Yang.

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August 21, 2013

books . . .

Although I didn’t think ahead of time that I was going to do it, I am finding myself in the midst of my semi-annual (twice a year) bookcase clean-out. Or I could just say book clean-out because I seem to have them stacked in all sorts of places, waiting to go to the library as donations, or finding a place to remain. This time, I’m even donating some large format books. It’s an interesting exercise because it’s a little like looking at a mini-“this is your life” video as the books get sorted or discarded, noticing how my interests and tastes have evolved.

The first section of bookshelves nearest the kitchen is prime real estate for books I love and use the most: cookery books by hip, healthy cooks such as Andrea Reusing, Nigel Slater, Alice Waters, Deborah Madison, Holly Davis, Heidi Swanson. Bookending them are Julia Child, the Conrans, Ronald and Felicity Dahl, the River Cottage guy and the River Cafe in London cookbooks. A dozen each of Japanese and Chinese cookbooks, dim sum, bento box, asian grill, noodles galore, tofu and soba paperbacks are now grouped together on the third shelf down. This reorganizing and culling out has inspired me to look through some of my favorites (Holly Davis and Andrea Reusing) once again.

In the middle section are two shelves of Taoist and Zen poetry, writings, translations and books about the I-Ching, including half a dozen translations of that venerable book. There’s a mini-library of books about Cape Cod and the North Shore: National Seashore volumes featuring towns of Eastham, Wellfleet and Truro; books about the stone quarries in Rockport. New England Transcendentalists, Ralph Waldo Emerson’s writings and Henry David Thoreau’s journal of his time on the Cape meet halfway on a shelf with Taoist poetry translations by Red Pine and Zen writings by Alan Watts.

Finally, there’s enough room without having to lay books flat onto vertically shelved books (except for my two-volume boxed set of the I-Ching at the ready whenever it’s needed.) Whenever that kind of cramming has overflowed, it’s time to cull them out. It happens often in August, for some reason: must be because it’s so hot and one of the most uncomfortable times to do it.

There are five cartons of books to load into the car and take down to the public library today. Wednesday is their donation day and I’d just as soon have them out of the house so that I can enjoy the books that now have more breathing room. I’ve been remonstrating with myself lately about continuing to buy books when there’s no more room, but am glad to see how much richer my library is now than it used to be.

At the library, I’ll have a chance to look up and borrow some of the books that were suggested at the memoir writing class last week. It’s an opportunity to broaden my reading without buying more volumes, at least not today.

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August 19, 2013

fresh! . . .

Once in awhile, an image comes along that embodies the word, “fresh”. This is one of them. Not only does it look delicious to eat, it’s a refreshing take on the concept of a sandwich. A piece of grilled bread, ricotta, thin slices of pear, a drizzle of honey and freshly cracked walnut pieces.

White peaches would be good too. I might even try my hand at making ricotta.

After a maelstrom of heaviness these last few weeks, this image of freshness started my day off with a feeling of lightness and clarity.

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June 28, 2013

pocketful of rye . . .

A friend of mine, R., lives in a tiny row house near Regent’s Park in the Marylebone district of London. The door is painted bright yellow and there is a veritable garden on the front pavement and across the way, lined with trees in pots, flowers and other vegetation. Once, when I visited her, she served a small loaf of rye bread which had a tight crumb and toasted up beautifully with a crusty exterior and chewy insides. It was just right, spread with thin slices of pate, or sweet butter and homemade jam. Fruitlessly, I have looked for a loaf that resembles this memory a long time ago, and had given up finding such a tasty loaf of dark bread.

Recently, my daughter, M., mentioned that she baked a spelt/rye bread from a recipe a friend gave to her awhile ago. Nigel Slater, a cookery maven from England also has a recipe for spelt/rye bread, this one with a little grated parmesan cheese added during the second kneading of the dough. Because the heat wave that we’ve had dispersed into drizzly rain and fog, it’s much cooler now and I thought I would weigh in and try my hand at making one of these loaves of bread. Nigel Slater’s recipe is given for two loaves and the ingredients are listed in metric specifications. I like to make one loaf at a time so I cut the recipe in half. Here are my approximate measurements converted from his:

Nigel Slater’s rye loaf: In a warmed bowl, combine dry ingredients:
1 1/2 cups rye flour; 1 1/2 cups wholemeal spelt flour; 1/3 cup white flour; 1 tablespoon (packet) of dry yeast; 1/8 teaspoon fine sea salt. Whisk these dry ingredients together to combine.

Heat scant 1 1/2 cups of water to warm but not hot; stir in 1 1/2 tablespoons of honey.
Pour water/honey into dry mixture and stir to combine. (Mine was a little dry when I added 1 1/4 cups of water so I added in a bit more, that’s why I increased the measurement from 1 1/4 to a scant 1 1/2 cups)

Reserve 1/8 cup of freshly grated parmesan cheese to knead into the dough after it rises the first time.

Pull and stretch dough while kneading for a good 4-5 minutes. Lightly oil a clean bowl and let the dough rise until it is doubled, covered with a cloth or plastic wrap. Remove the dough from the bowl, place on a lightly floured board and knead again, briefly, for just a minute or two, adding parmesan as you go. I patted the dough into a rectangle, sprinkled parmesan cheese with a spoon, folded it over into thirds, then over again; repeated twice.

Butter a bread pan and flour it, shake out the excess flour. Shape the kneaded dough into a loaf and place in the pan, cover and set aside for a half hour or so until it has risen again.

Preheat oven to 450 degrees. Yes, I was surprised at this too but that’s the proper conversion from “220C, gasmark 8.”

Bake for 25-30 minutes until crisp on top. Remove from the oven, leave for 10 minutes, then lift out and leave the loaf to cool before slicing. To keep, wrap in foil or kitchen film and set aside. It will also freeze well.

. . .fresh out of the oven!

So that’s tonight’s supper, along with a couple of croquettes of sweet potato, quinoa and cranberries that I picked up at Whole Foods yesterday. A small, crispy green salad would be good alongside.

after dinner postscript: next time, I would stretch, pull and knead the dough differently to incorporate more air into the dough during the first kneading step. Might also add a little more water too!

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June 20, 2013

fresh start . . .

Made a smoothie for breakfast that tastes lighter than usual and is very refreshing:

Ingredients:
almond coconut milk
freshly squeezed juice from two navel oranges
fresh spinach from Idylwylde Farm (half a handful)
fresh parsley (half a handful)
fresh blueberries (a quarter of a handful)
frozen peaches (about 6 slices)
frozen banana (fresh, cut up and stored in freezer)
a large knob of peeled ginger root

Mixed in the Vitamix. Makes two tall glasses, one reserved in the fridge for later in the day.

This smoothie was markedly different from others that I have made so far. Adding freshly squeezed juice from two navel oranges to the almond-coconut milk base added flavor and resulted in lighter liquid content. Parsley and spinach were less dense greens than kale by itself. Plus, frozen fruit (peaches and banana) made the drink colder than room temperature smoothies of the past. The knob of ginger root was peeled and at least twice the size I normally use. It added zing and provided a clean aftertaste. Overall, this concoction was lighter in density, more flavorful and colder than normal: a keeper recipe to jot down in my food journal.

Last night, photos (shuffle) appeared on my Mac laptop while we watched the game (the Bruins made a stalwart effort tying the game at 5-5 but lost in overtime.) As the images came and went, I couldn’t help but notice how much older I looked a couple of years ago and even as recently as this last holiday season. In addition to growing my hair longer, I think I may have lost about twenty pounds these last six months because I feel/look much healthier/better.

Of all the things that might have helped, I think the little Oster citrus juicer has made the most difference. Whenever I find myself craving something to snack on, I juice up a pink grapefruit and two navel oranges. It is a refreshing drink that also satisfies my desire to eat something. Plus, I keep the fruit in the fridge so that the juice is nice and cold. Adding fresh juice to almond-coconut milk was a good experiment.

So, that’s today’s fresh start for the day.

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June 19, 2013

game four . . .

So for game three of the Bruins Stanley Cup Playoff game against the Blackhawks, I made a “tarte aux pommes” with simple ingredients I already had on hand. In the Times today, there was a small photograph at the bottom of the front page showing what looked like a chocolate chip cookie. But this one had chunkier pieces of chocolate showing, not your usual Nestle’s semi-sweet chocolate chips that come in the ubiquitous dark yellow bag that nearly everyone buys to make that old cookie favorite.

The featured article about baking these cookies was by an otherwise erstwhile health food columnist, Martha Rose Shulman. It turns out she is a ghost-baker for baking cookery book authors. As you know from reading my food posts, we like eating rather spare, healthy cooking too.

Not today. The reason why the cookies caught my eye and looked so delectable is that the recipe calls for cut up bittersweet chocolate. So when I was at the grocery store, I bought two bars of Ghiardelli chocolate labeled “Intense Dark.” My first thought was to bake batches of the chocolate mixed individually and to compare the taste. But in the end, I cut up the chocolate, mixed both kinds of bitter chocolate together in the cookie batter and slid the baking pan into the oven.

Here they are cooling on the oversized rack that I’ve been hoping to use for some time.

. . . bittersweet chocolate chunk cookies cooling on the rack

Here’s also hoping that the Bruins win tonight and go on to win their game 4 on Saturday night to clinch the Stanley Cup. Because at this rate, all of the healthy eating influences in the last few months will have been obliterated by our cravings while watching the playoffs. I guess we could try carrot sticks or something but these bittersweet chocolate chip cookies are a lot more fun.

The true test is of course how they taste. I just tried my first one, splitting it with G. to see what they were like. I’m not really much of a desserts person myself, which is why these crisp, light cookies with dark chocolate are so delicious! They are a lot less sweet than ones made with Nestle’s semi-sweet chocolate chips. Moreover, the FLAVOR of the bittersweet chocolate is intensely enjoyable.

Here’s to the Bruins winning tonight!

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Category: Food