Recent Events

This past week saw three items related to food that have got me thinking and concerned about the future. On Wednesday, an article in the food section of the New York Times discussed the latest changes the big food companies are making to their products to try and convince consumers of the health benefits of chemically adulterated offerings, on Friday a front page story in the Valley News introduced us to the FDA’s involvement in genetically modified meat and fish, and on Saturday, Rosemary and I attended the Farm Aid music concert in Marshfield, Massachusetts, a event that is in it’s 23rd year in support of the family farmer. To me, the confluence of these three events and their implications for food in our society, were almost as disturbing as the massive financial crisis that is playing itself out on Wall Street and in Washington.

Let’s start with the advent of nutraceuticals, a term so new my word processing program thinks it’s a misspelling, which is defined as meaning a food additive which is derived from one food, and purports to import the health benefits of that food into it’s recipient food. Previously food supplements like garlic pills or gingko tablets, which were popular for a while in the 1990s, would be a related example. Now Tropicana, famous for orange juice, will include anchovies in their juice so one can derive the benefits from the anchovies’ omega-3 fatty acids while having breakfast. They will market the product under the name Tropicana Heart Healthy orange juice. Of course, they will have eliminated the anchovies’ taste and smell, so you won’t even suspect its presence unless you read the label. Similar products are on the drawing board at the other major food companies (Tropicana is owned by PepsiCo) like Dannon, Kraft and General Mills. According to the Times’ article, a 1999 court decision giving makers of food supplements broad latitude in advertising the health benefits of their products is the gateway to the introduction of these “functional foods,” as they are being called.

‘Functional foods’ have been modified to enhance their nutritional benefits, like vitamin D fortified milk or iodine-fortified salt or enriched flour, all of which helped to eliminate certain diseases in our country like rickets, goiter and pellagra. The new “functional foods” aren’t aimed directly at disease eradication, as in the past, but more at delivering what are currently thought to be nutritional benefits of an under-consumed food to those actively consumed, with certain health benefits accruing to the one ingesting the product. While there is widespread scientific agreement on the benefits of calcium, fiber, folic acid, soy protein, omega-3 fatty acids, lactic acid bacteria, beta-carotene and others, it has not yet been proven that adding them in supplemental form actually works. Recent studies surprised the scientific community when the inclusion of certain antioxidants taken in supplemental form had no beneficial effect on cardio-vascular disease. Scientists do not yet know how compounds in food are made available to the body, so I would urge caution on these new offerings to consumers, and I know that none of them will make my shopping list. I want my food unadulterated and natural, grown locally, and raised or grown on a sustainable farm by someone I can talk with about it’s origin, cultivation, feeding and harvesting. The food we eat at our house doesn’t come with labels, encased in plastic and Styrofoam, or covered with wax or insecticide residues or nutritional sprays. In fact, the food at our house comes not from the supermarket, but directly from area farmers.

Equally upsetting was the Valley News story derived from a Los Angeles Times article about genetically modified salmon, cows, pigs and goats. The FDA, our “friends and protectors” in Washington, are developing guidelines for food companies to produce genetically modified animals as if they were drugs. These massive food entities want to raise salmon faster, produce mad cow resistant cattle, and omega-3 rich pigs. Some genetically modified animals, called ‘biopharm animals’ would produce certain drugs, like insulin. Of course, the FDA’s approval process, to be fair to the big companies at the expense of the consumer, would be highly secretive to protect proprietary processes from competitors’ eyes, leading skeptics like myself to urge rejection of the whole idea. Many have already raised concerns about the potential environmental impacts of these “Frankenstein animals.” The whole genetically modified food initiatives aren’t about healthy, nutritious food, they are about agribusiness profits at the expense of local farmers and consumers.

So despite these assaults on food reason and responsibility, there are people out there who are working diligently to restore the benefits of the family farm, the bedrock of our food society. Since the first Willie Nelson inspired Farm Aid music concert in 1985, 300,000 family farms have disappeared in America. As John Mellencamp told the audience, when the first Farm Aid concert was produced, they thought Washington would actually listen and reverse the course established by then-Agricultural Secretary, Earl Butz, to “Get big, or get out!” The Nixon administration encouraged the advent of the factory farm at the expense of the family farm, and we have “Tricky Dick” to thank for the state of agribusiness in America today. We have agricultural pollution, petroleum based fertilizers, insecticides, and pesticides depleting our land and running off into our waterways, mono-culture factory farms with their horrific animal husbandry practices, genetically modified foods, irradiated foods, country-wide food recalls, tainted products from China and more, instead of locally raised foods from our friends and neighbors. It’s time America woke up to plight of the family farm and supported the people who act responsibly to their crops and animals, the environment, and consumers. It is your choice, dear reader, to go blindly to the supermarket, buying whatever is on the shelf or in the cooler, with out consideration of its origin, alteration or rearing practices, supporting the status quo of a massive food industry built on political influence and profiteering, or helping locally responsible farmers who value the environment, their crops and animals and you, their consumer. Fortunately, locally and all across America, more and more people are waking up to the benefits of local, sustainable agriculture, and our agricultural base is becoming more diversified, producing more products for our table. And let me add, these products are the real thing, not altered or ‘improved’ by science, but what evolution wrought. These products are natural as is your body and soul. So it only makes sense to use these goods in our daily life, and by extension, we support our environment, our family farms and our health. Do the right thing for your family and community…buy local from our family farmers. It’s an old concept that is new again!

Winter Squash

We’ve had a couple of chilly nights lately, and, it being mid-September, there’s talk of foliage and fall harvest happenings in the air, besides the first whiffs of wood smoke in the crisp mornings. At the farmers’ markets and farm stands and in many backyard gardens, the winter squashes and pumpkins are ripe, so it must be autumn. Fortunately we don’t have any frost on those pumpkins yet, and a good thing, too, because there’s a lot of good fall eating yet to do, and frost is the great interrupter of our feasting.

Winter squash differ from summer squash in a couple of different ways, the most obvious being that we eat summer squash with it’s soft, edible skin while the fruit is immature, whereas we allow the winter squash with its relatively tough, inedible skin, to mature on the vine before harvesting. It is traditional, as well as practical, to cut winter squash and pumpkins with about 2 to 3 inches of stem attached, and to allow them to cure in the field for a week or more if no frost threatens. This curing aids in longer keeping qualities of butternuts, buttercups, Hubbards, and others, but Acorn are a poor keeper, relatively speaking, and should be eaten within 5 or 6 weeks of harvest.

New Englanders have relied on winter squash as part of their fall and winter diets since the beginning of America. A member of the genus cucurbita, they should not be stored in the refrigerator as they will suffer from chill injury. Store in a dry, draft free place, like a cellar, at 55 degrees or so and they should last into January or beyond. Winter squash are rich in beta-carotene as well as starch and fiber. There are three major varieties; cucurbita maxima which include the buttercup and its many types, amber squash, Hubbard, turban squash and banana squash, cucurbita pepo which include acorn squash, delicata and carnival or festival squash, and cucubita moschata or butternut. All have firm, usually yellow-orange flesh surrounding a fibrous seedpod. The flesh is moderately sweet and lends itself to both sweet and savory preparations. Winter squashes also lend themselves to being used as containers for other ingredients and, after baking, being eaten along with their contents.

As far as pumpkins go, any field pumpkins are fine for carving and using as fall decorations, but don’t bother trying to eat them. They tend to be very fibrous and don’t have that much flavor. Pie pumpkins and little sweet pumpkins are fine, whether for pies or as part of a dish of roasted fall vegetables. And don’t forget the pumpkin seeds. Toss then in a hot skillet to toast and add a little salt. Eat in moderation as they are high in fat and calories, but they do include folic acid and iron and are great in salads.

One of our favorite fall meals includes a platter of roasted fall vegetables. You can use anything you can think of or have on hand. Just cube up some peeled butternut and/or buttercup squash, sweet pumpkin, potatoes (we like fingerlings and leave the skin on), carrots, turnips, onions, celery, parsnips, and/or celeriac, and add some shallots and garlic divided into cloves. Toss everything in some olive or vegetable oil with some salt and pepper, maybe some thyme, and roast on a half sheet pan lined with parchment paper for 30 to 45 minutes a 400 degrees until tender. Garnish with minced parsley. They’re delicious warm or at room temperature.

Of course, the classic is to divide butternut squash lengthwise, scoop out the seeds, and place butter and either brown sugar or maple syrup in the depression before sprinkling with salt and freshly ground black pepper and baking at 400 degrees until the squash is tender, 30 minutes or so. Mash it all up together still in the skin, and dig in.

Here’s an acorn squash recipe called Zucca al Forno, which we have enjoyed and involves cooking the squash whole with a stuffing.

7 tablespoons unsalted butter
2 onions, cut into fine dice
3/4 pound fresh mushrooms, thinly sliced
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
3 cups mascarpone cheese, or use cream cheese
3/4 pound Emmentaler, grated or use Swiss cheese
1/4 pound Parmigiano-Reggiano, grated
3 whole eggs, beaten
1 1/2 teaspoons freshly grated nutmeg
8 slices white bread, cut into 1-inch squares
2 large acorn squash, top cut off and seeds and strings removed, caps reserved or 4 festival or carnival squash prepared the same way.

In a medium skillet, heat 3 tablespoons of the butter, add the onion and mushrooms, and saute until they soften and the onions release their juices. Add salt and pepper, to taste, and set aside.
Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F.
In a large bowl, combine the mascarpone, Emmentaler, Parmigiano-Reggiano, eggs, and nutmeg, and stir well. Season with salt and pepper and stir in the onions and mushrooms.
In a skillet, melt the remaining butter and toss in the bread cubes, cooking over high heat until they are crisp.
Place the squash in a baking dish and, using a total of a third of the cheese mixture, stuff the bottom of each of the squash. Using a total of half of the bread cubes, place them in even quantities into each of the squash. Top the bread cube layer with more of the cheese mixture, then the remaining bread cubes, and the remaining cheese. Replace the top on the acorn squash and roast 1 hour in the oven, until the flesh is very soft. Remove from the oven, let cool for a few minutes and scoop out the cheese and flesh to serve, or if using the festival or carnival squash, serve individually.

My personal favorite is the buttercup squash, especially when their flesh is nice and dry. They roast and mash beautifully. Hubbards tends to be overly watery for my taste, but they sure are impressive with their knobby skin and immense sizes, up to 300 lbs. The buttercup roasts or steams well and has nice flavor, so it tends to be used a lot in my fall kitchen. The acorns, delicata and the small, colorful festival squashes are sweet and tender right now and should be enjoyed at their peak.

Potatoes

At your local farmers’ market these days you will find a growing variety of potatoes are now available. Russets, Red Bliss, Kennebunks, Yukon Golds, Green Mountains and other varieties are now appearing, and, dug fresh from the ground are delicious to eat. Usually potatoes are cured for a short period of time to allow their skins to thicken as this benefits their storage capabilities, however “new potatoes” with their thinner skins have a delightful flavor and should be enjoyed now while their season lasts. Anyone who grows their own potatoes enjoys slipping a few new potatoes out from beneath a growing plant to accompany their evening meal.

The potato is a starchy, tuberous plant originating in South America. It was long grown by the Incas and other South American tribes eons before the Americas were discovered in the 16th century. There are still 3,000 varieties of potato grown in South America, every shape, size and color imaginable. The Spanish brought the tuber back to Europe where it met with mixed success early on. In Ireland, of course, it became widely grown and counted upon by the masses as a staple in their diet as it supplied a ready source of protein. In fact, British social scientists raised the alarm that the potato would be the scourge of European civilization as it provided the impoverished masses with a ready dietary supplement that met their safety and security needs, allowing them to move up what would become Maslow’s “hierarchy of needs” pyramid to sex. The result was a population explosion that actually commenced as the Industrial Revolution was beginning, allowing capitalists to find eager workers for their factories, with the eventual evolution of the modern middle class.

A member of the nightshade family, the potato, Solanum tuberosum, is actually a perennial plant grown worldwide. While it produces a flower and seeds, it is most commonly cultivated by planting pieces of the potato tuber containing “eyes”, an asexual practice known as “vegetative propagation.” The Colorado potato beetle is it’s natural predator, and as such has developed a resistance to commonly used insecticides, none of which I would use in my garden anyways. It is best to remove these orange/red pests by hand, dropping them into a can of kerosene or gasoline. In The Botany of Desire, Michael Pollan tells his story of growing a Monsanto potato variety where the plant has been genetically engineered with a beetle pesticide incorporated into its DNA, giving it resistance to it’s nemesis. While Pollan wrote that the plants grew beautiful potatoes, he could never bring himself to actually eat these mutated tubers, thus they shriveled up, and started to sprout, while sitting in a box on his back porch. I think it is best to resist easy fixes from the Monsanto “frankenfood” wonder-scientists and stick with naturally developed varieties.

Potatoes are either “waxy” or “floury.” Waxy varieties boil well and don’t fall apart, lending themselves to potato salads and dishes like gratin dauphinois, a French scalloped potato dish made with milk and Swiss cheese. The floury varieties, like our russets or Idaho potatoes, are best for baking, mashing or making into French fries or potato chips. Fingerling potatoes have become more popular and common recently, and sweet potatoes, long a staple in the south, have their place, even if not directly related to the “Irish” potato, a common term for white potatoes. One can also find some of the colored varieties, like Peruvian blue potatoes, which are heirloom breeds.

As potatoes are eaten all over the world, the variety of recipes available for the adventuresome cook is almost inexhaustible. Even in America we see the potato in omelets, in stews, chowders and soups, as hash browns, as dumplings (i.e. gnocchi), potato pancakes and latkes, fried as fritters or croquettes, mashed, fried a chips or fries, boiled, steamed, baked and as toppings for other dishes, like Shepard’s Pie. They are the most common starch in the American diet, so preparing them in a large number of ways is requisite for the home cook to keep the hungry hoards from grumbling about the diversity of their repasts.

The potato is best known, nutritionally, for its carbohydrate content. While that content is primarily in the form of starch, the potato contains a number of vitamins and minerals important to our health. Much of the potatoes’ dietary fiber is contained in its skin, or just below the skin, however over half of the potatoes’ nutrients are contained within the potato itself. So peel them or not, as you choose or the application calls for, but remember as you discard the skins that you are throwing away a lot of goodness. Potato skins are now a treat all by themselves.

While you can use a microwave to “bake” a potato, and your machine probably has an “baked potato” button on it, you won’t get the nice crispy skin you can achieve in your oven when you lubricate its skin with butter or oil, and salt and pepper before baking, although you will save time and energy, both important considerations in today’s world.

While I was cooking at Balducci’s in New York, I used to make these “smashed fingerling” potatoes every day, and they flew out of the prepared food case and were frequently called for on the catering menu.

Smashed Fingerling Potatoes

1 lb. Fingerling potatoes, unpeeled
2 tsp. Lemon zest
1 tbl. Flat leaf parsley, minced
2 ea. Garlic cloves, sliced thin
Salt and pepper
Canola or vegetable oil for frying

Cook the whole fingerling potatoes in boiling, salted water until done, 10 to 15 minutes depending on their size. Drain and allow them to cool completely. When cool, take them individually and place the flat side of a cleaver or large chef’s knife atop them, giving them a blow that squeezes out some of their insides while keeping most of the skin intact.

I use a Japanese mandolin to get very thin, uniform slices of garlic. Take the sliced garlic chips, place in cold oil to cover, and turn the heat on beneath them. They will sputter as the oil heats up and their moisture is cooked off, which will take a few minutes, but watch them closely as they turn golden brown quickly and should be removed and drained at this stage.

Bring a pot half full of oil up to 360 degrees to 375 degrees and add the smashed fingerlings. Cook until they are golden brown and delicious, season with salt and pepper, the lemon zest and garlic chips. A dusting with parsley completes the dish.

Ratatouille Nicoise & Minestrone Soup

We are at the height of the growing and gardening season, so let’s talk about what to do with all those vegetables that are locally available right now. I have a couple of recipes here that combine a large number of those vegetables and make for some mighty fine eating, at a very modest cost. Given today’s high prices for gas and food, these can provide a modicum of relief for the home cook. In fact the two recipes that follow are part of what in Italy are known as cucina povera, literally “poor kitchen,” which generally describes a recipe arising from the days of intense poverty which existed until recently across much of the Italian peninsula.

The first is actually a French dish known as ratatouille nicoise, a vegetable stew which originated in Nice, France, whose cousin is the Italian caponata, a combination of eggplant, onions and olives usually served as an appetizer. Ratatouille, either a main dish or a side dish, is a combination of eggplants, zucchini (traditionally, but one can also include yellow squash), onions, tomatoes and sweet peppers, either red, orange, or green, or a combination of all three, along with olive oil, garlic and herbs. The name is derived from the French words ratouiller and tatouiller, two words derived from the verb touiller, meaning to” stir up.” There is some debate as to whether one cooks all the vegetables together or each vegetable separately, combining them afterwards to fuse their flavors. I personally like to cook them separately so I can control the cooking of each ingredient, otherwise you can end up with a thick stew where the vegetables become indistinguishable from each other. In the recipe below, I actually choose to grill most of the vegetables before combining, so this is a non-standard version, but very tasty. Ratatouille can be as a stand-alone dish with salad and bread, but it is traditionally served with roasts, chicken or other meats.

Grilled Ratatouille

2 ea. Eggplants, small or the thin Japanese eggplants, sliced ¼” thick
2 ea. Zucchini, sliced ¼” thick on the bias
2 ea. Yellow summer squash, sliced ¼” thick on the bias
2 ea. Red peppers
2 ea. Yellow, orange or green peppers
2 ea. Sweet onions, sliced ¼” thick
4 ea. Garlic cloves, minced
2 lb. Vine ripened tomatoes, cubed
¼ cup + 2 tbl Olive oil
Salt & pepper
2 tbl. Fresh basil, chiffonade
2 tbl. Fresh flat leaf Italian parsley, minced

Salt the eggplant and allow it to exude its liquid for 30 minutes while you light the grill and allow it to preheat. Wipe off the salt and droplets of liquid from the eggplants and toss with the rest of the vegetables in a large bowl with the ¼ cup olive oil, salt and pepper to taste. Grill each vegetable until marked and cooked through, but not mushy. The peppers should be grilled until the skin is black, then placed in a plastic bag to steam for 10 minutes. This will allow you to peel the skin off (don’t rinse under running water as you’ll wash away some of their sweet flavor). Remove the peppers’ seeds and cut into pieces.

In a skillet, place 1 tsp. of olive oil and sauté the minced garlic for a minute or so. Cut the grilled vegetables into bite-sized chunks and combine them in a large sauté pan with the remaining olive oil and cooked garlic. Cook about 5 minutes to combine the flavors, season with salt and freshly ground black pepper, and dress with the basil and parsley. Serve warm, at room temperature or even cold. It always tastes better the next day.

Minestrone is an Italian vegetable soup usually containing pasta, rice, or potatoes. There is no standard recipe as it is made year round with the vegetables that are in season at the time of it’s making. It may contain small quantities of meat, like pancetta or bacon, or not. It may be made with meat stock, vegetable broth or water. It can have green vegetables like string beans, peas or broccoli, leafy vegetables like spinach, chard, cabbage or kale, summer or winter squash or pumpkin, onions, garlic, leeks, tomatoes, corn or whatever you have on hand. I usually include some beans, either fresh cranberry beans, barley or dried cannellini, ceci or borlotti (Great Northern, chickpeas or kidney beans). An Italian trick is to include a piece of the rind from a wheel of Parmigianno-Reggiano cheese. A delicious addition is to add some pesto, a combination of basil, garlic, pine nuts, olive oil and Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese, as they do in Genoa and in the French soup known as Soupe au Pistou.

Some general rules on making a Minestrone are that soups that simmer for a relatively longer time tend to be creamier as the starches in the beans or barley are released more than if added just as they are cooked through. The rice or pasta should be added toward the end of the cooking, or they will suck up all the liquid and make the soup overly thick. Some nice ways to finish the soup is to drizzle each serving with some good extra-virgin olive oil, add a grating of Parmiagianno-Reggiano or Pecorino Romano cheese to each bowl, grate fresh black pepper over the soup, add a tablespoon or two of red wine to each bowl or some garlic croutons or toasted bruschetta brushed with olive oil.

I’m not going to include a specific recipe, but will outline the general technique and allow you to include whatever is available in your pantry.

If using meat, and it’s always pork, sauté it, be it salt pork, bacon, pancetta, or guancile (cured pork jowl) in the soup pot. When the pork has rendered it’s fat and it has crisped up, remove it to a paper towel to drain. Add your onions or leeks, cut up into dice, chopped celery, carrots and/or garlic and sauté about 5 to 10 minutes until translucent. Add your diced pumpkin, winter squash, potato or turnips along with a pig’s foot, if you have one. The pork trotter has a lot of gelatin in it and will give the broth more body than if not used. Pour in your liquid, be it stock or water, to generously cover the vegetables and add our cheese rind, if using. Cook slowly until the vegetables are soft. Add any green beans, peas, chard, spinach, cabbage, or corn and cook slowly about 5 to 10 minutes. Add any rice or pasta and cook until done, 10 to 15 minutes more. If adding pesto, stir it in at the end or send the soup to table with a cruet of extra-virgin olive oil, the grated Parmesan cheese, black pepper grinder and/or croutons or bruschetta. Garnish with the pork bits.

Mid-Summer Corn

Although in this week’s column I want to return to discuss mid-season sweet corn, I can not help but make mention of an article I saw in the New York Times this past week. The Food & Drug Administration (FDA) has approved the use of radiation to sterilize spinach and iceberg lettuce. Previously, the FDA approved the irradiation of beef, poultry, pork, wheat, potatoes and other fruits and vegetables. They have done this in the name of food safety as irradiated food has had any E. coli, salmonella or campylobacter bacteria zapped by their gamma ray machines. This is, in fact, further admission by the FDA that they can not control the food stream in this country and must resort to high tech methods to guarantee sanitary food products for consumers. As the Times article states, Patty Lovera of the consumer group Food & Water Watch, was quoted as saying “This is a total cop-out. They don’t have the resources, the authority or the political will to really protect consumers from unsafe foods.” Many, this writer included, feel that irradiating food results in decrease in nutritional value and taste, and I studiously avoid irradiated food. Note that irradiated food must be labeled as such, so “buyer beware” when shopping at the supermarket. This, of course, is another reason to keep your food dollars circulating locally by buying from area farmers, farm stands and farmers’ markets. No local farmer runs his or her vegetables though an X-ray machine before offering them to the public!

We’ve been enjoying the corn season at our house and Rosemary brings home a few ears regularly from Cedar Circle Farm in East Thetford where everything is grown organically. Sure we grill it if I’m cooking outside, we boil it or steam it if I am cooking inside, but this weekend at the Norwich Farmers’ Market, I picked up the first shell beans I’ve seen from Craig Putnam of Echo Hill Farm in Orford. I had just been thinking it was about time to make a New England favorite, succotash, so I was tickled to see those red speckled bean pods at Craig’s booth.

Succotash is one of those recipes that everyone makes differently. While it apparently originated here in New England, its name is derived from the American Narraganset Indian words misickquatash and sukquttahash, there are dozens of “authentic” methods around the country of making succotash. The three basic required ingredients are maize or fresh corn, beans, and some sort of cured pork product like bacon or salt pork. Beyond these basics, almost any other vegetable can be added, like okra in the south, where succotash is more widely eaten. Original recipes call for lima beans, but I’ve always used fresh shell beans, although in Pennsylvania green beans are commonly used. So feel free to substitute what you have on hand when concocting a plate of succotash.

Here’s how I made a skillet full the other night:

Succotash

¼ lb Bacon
1 cup Fresh shell beans
4 each Ears fresh sweet corn
1 pint Yellow cherry tomatoes, halved
4 each Fresh Roma tomatoes, seeded and diced
1 each Sweet onion, diced ¼”
2 each Garlic cloves, minced
1 each Green pepper, cored and diced
1 each Jalapeno pepper, seeds removed and chopped fine
¼ cup Red wine vinegar
½ cup Fresh cream
3 tbl Fresh flat leaf parsley, minced

Cut the bacon into 2” pieces and cook over medium heat in a cast iron skillet until crisp. Remove the bacon to paper towels to drain and discard all but 1 tablespoon or so of the bacon fat. Add the diced onions and cook over medium heat about 5 minutes or more, but don’t allow to brown. Add the green pepper and jalapeno and cook 3 minutes. Add the minced garlic and cook one more minute. Add the tomatoes and vinegar and cook about 5 minutes, or until the tomatoes start to break down. Add salt and pepper to taste.

Meanwhile, shell the beans and cook in some boiling water until tender, about 12 to 15 minutes. Drain and reserve.

Husk the corn and cut the kernels off the cob. Add to the skillet with the other vegetables and cook about 5 minutes. Add the reserved beans, the bacon, crumbled, and the cream. Simmer a few minutes to combine all the flavors and then sprinkle with the parsley. Serve warm.

Feel free to substitute other vegetables if you like such as diced zucchini or yellow crooked-neck squash, pan patty squash, broccoli flowerets, or green or yellow beans. Try grilling the corn before adding or grill the zucchini or even the green beans for a smoky flavor. Experiment and have fun!

The days are getting a little cooler, particularly in the morning, so its time to think about making soup again. Corn chowder made with fresh corn is a treat you can only enjoy this time of year. Here’s a chowder I made a week ago that combines two summer treats, sweet corn and Maine lobster. Try it for a special occasion or just for fun.

Lobster and Corn Chowder
Serves 8

2 2lb Maine lobsters
1 each Celery stalk, coarsely chopped
1 each Medium carrot, coarsely chopped
2 each Sprigs of fresh, flat-leaf parsley
1 each Bay leaf
5 each Black peppercorns
½ lb Salt pork, diced
3 each Medium yellow onions, peeled and diced
3 each Garlic cloves, peeled and minced
1 ½ lb Red Bliss potatoes, cut in ½” cubes
6 each Ears of fresh sweet corn, cut off the cob (c. 4 cups)
3 cups Half-and-half, or light cream
Pinch Cayenne pepper
Freshly ground pepper, white if you have it, otherwise black
2 tbl Fresh, flat-leaf parsley, minced

Bring a large pot of water to the boil, salt it generously, and add the lobsters. Cook for 10 to 12 minutes. Remove the lobsters to a platter and strain the cooking liquid into a large bowl or another pot. You can cool the lobsters under cold water, then remove the meat from the shells, cut it into large pieces (I leave the claws whole), and reserve. Discard any tomalley and coral, or eat it, as I did. Add the shells to the cooking water along with the celery, carrots, parsley sprigs, bay leaf and peppercorns. Simmer the stock for 1 ½ hours and strain it through a fine sieve into another pot. Cook it down until you have about 6 cups of liquid left.

Try out the salt pork in a Dutch oven over medium-low heat until crisp and the fat has rendered out, 15 minutes or so. Remove the salt pork to some paper towels to drain and reserve to garnish the soup later. Add the diced onions to the fat and sauté over low heat until soft, about 10 minutes or so. Add the minced garlic and cook a couple more minutes. Add the potatoes and roll them around in the pork fat to cover. Add the stock and bring to a simmer. Cook the potatoes about 5 minutes then add the corn kernels and cook until the potatoes are tender, about 5 to 10 more minutes. Add the half-and-half, the dash of cayenne, and return to the simmer. Add the lobster meat and simmer, don’t boil, until heated through, 3 or 4 minutes. Correct the seasoning, grind on a bunch of fresh pepper, garnish with the salt pork bits and fresh parsley. Enjoy!

Tomatoes

The tomato season is upon us and a large variety of different fruits are appearing in farmers’ markets and at farm stands. Perhaps you grow some tomatoes at home, as we do, so you can enjoy vine-ripened fruit from now until frost. The little cherry tomatoes were the first to ripen at our house, but now some of the plum tomatoes, like Roma and San Marzano are starting to turn red, and the Brandywines and beefsteaks are taking on some color. We also grow Cherokee Purple, a heirloom variety with a distinctive coloration.

The tomato plant is native to the western hemisphere, probably originating in South America or Mexico. The Spanish discovered the plant in the 16th century and brought it to Europe where it quickly became grown in the Mediterranean areas. Originally thought to be poisonous, it was used as a tabletop decoration, before being adopted for its culinary uses, perhaps as late as the 1700s. Today we hardly think of Italian or Spanish cuisine without the ubiquitous tomato, and its many uses have made it a staple in a large number of households. Thomas Jefferson brought tomato seeds home from Paris and helped to popularize the tomato in America. Today tomato production is dominated by the Chinese, which produces about 25% of global output, although the US is the second largest producer, followed by Turkey.

The tomato plant, solanum lycopersicum, is a perennial plant grown as an annual. It is a member of the nightshade family, Solanaceae, and is related to the tobacco plant, the eggplant, chili peppers and the potato. Strictly speaking, the tomato itself is a fruit, being the ovary of the tomato plant complete with seeds. In actuality, the tomato is a berry of the flowering plant, but is it generally known as a vegetable. Most fruits are sweet in taste and used more as a dessert, however the tomato is more acidic and used as part of an entrée or salad. In the science of botany there is no “vegetable” species, as this is purely a culinary term. The tomato is the state vegetable in New Jersey, and I must say that when I shopped at the Union Square Greenmarket in New York, the Jersey tomatoes were unequalled in their variety of shapes, sizes, colors and taste.

Recently tomatoes have been in the news as they were the source of a salmonella outbreak a few months ago, sickening people across the country, including in Vermont and New Hampshire. The hapless Food and Drug Administration was unable to detect the source of this poisoning for many months, and now they think it originated in Mexico with some jalapeno peppers. The point being that the food chain in this country is suspect, with products coming from so many producers worldwide that the government has lost any control it once had, and you should stick to eating locally grown foods not only for their superior flavor, but also for food safety reasons. If you buy a local tomato and get sick, you know where it came from and can return to the source. Buy one in the supermarket and you don’t have a clue as to its origin, and neither does the supermarket manager.

The tomato is rich in vitamin C and the red varieties, particularly in tomato ketchup and tomato paste, include a powerful antioxidant, carotenoid lycopene. It is little known that the leaf of the tomato, long thought to be toxic because it contains a defensive alkaloid, tomatine, can be added to a tomato sauce near the end of cooking to restore its fresh flavors that are lost during the cooking process. The tomatine actually binds with cholesterol in our digestive system, preventing the absorption of the toxic alkaloid and the cholesterol. So this practice of using some tomato leaf to freshen your sauce includes a health benefit as well as being a taste enhancer! Who knew?

Tomatoes purchased in a store are picked green and artificially ripened with ethylene gas, a hydrocarbon gas given off by fruit. Tomatoes ripened this way tend to last longer, but they have inferior flavor, and are starchier and mealier than those ripened on the vine. Vine ripened tomatoes accumulate more sugar, acid and aroma compounds, thus they have more flavor. Most commercial growers are primarily interested in tomatoes that are disease and pest resistant, cracking resistant, fast growing and uniform in size. Taste takes a back seat, and commercial growers prefer hybrid varieties that are produced by genetically modifying the seed or crossing with other varieties to enhance one characteristic, like uniformity of size or pest resistance. Most hybrids will not produce a seed that will duplicate its parent, so the commercial grower is dependent upon the seed producer for each year’s crop. Recently there has been a resurgence of the heirloom or heritage tomato amongst home and organic gardeners due to their better flavor and more interesting shapes and colors, albeit at the risk of less disease or pest resistance.

Tomatoes should not be refrigerated! As soon as a tomato is chilled to 55 degrees or below they suffer damage to their membranes that dissipate their flavor, result in a blotchy, unappetizing appearance, and damage to their texture. Bringing them back to room temperature will not reverse this process, so please store them outside your refrigerator. If you’ve picked them slightly under ripe, store them in a paper bag as they ripen best in the dark. If the tomato is fully ripe, you can refrigerate it, but you won’t be doing it or its future eaters any favors.

Fresh local heirloom tomatoes are plentiful now. While we are fortunate to have access to Longwind Farm in East Thetford, where fresh organic tomatoes are produced about 10 months of the year, we eat primarily canned tomatoes during the non-summer months. I like the San Marzano canned tomatoes for tomato sauce, but also find Hunt’s Whole tomatoes an acceptable alternative. I strictly avoid all crushed canned tomatoes, finding them overly acidic, and only buy whole canned tomatoes. I like to crush them up myself after they’ve cooked for a while, and I usually use my potato masher, rather than my food mill, as we like our sauce a little chunky, whether for pasta, in an eggplant parmesan or in soup or stew. A pot roast or winter beef stew always get a can of whole tomatoes at my house, and, of course, anything cooked with tomatoes improves with an overnight aging in the refrigerator.

Today I’m making a large pot of fresh tomato sauce from a boxful of organic seconds Rosemary brought home from Cedar Circle Farm in East Thetford. There are probably a half a dozen types of tomatoes including a black-purple heirloom type, some plum tomatoes and some beefsteaks. I’ll sauté some local onions and garlic from our garden before adding shredded carrots grown at Your Farm in Fairlee (for their natural sweetness). Before I dump in the tomatoes, which I have peeled and seeded, I’ll add some fresh thyme, and then cook these tomatoes down to a thick sauce for tonight’s supper. Just before serving, I’ll add some fresh basil leaves.

I also bought some little plum tomatoes from Craig Putnam of Echo Hill Farm in Orford, and I’m drying them in a low (200 degrees) oven on sheet pans until fully desiccated. These tomatoes I’ve sliced lengthwise and tossed with olive oil, salt, pepper and a little sugar. I’ve sprinkled them with fresh thyme and arranged them cut side up on parchment paper. It will take 6 to 8 hours to fully dry them out. You could use a dehydrator, but I prefer my oven. I’ll store these oven-dried tomatoes in a jar with olive oil and garlic slices and a few basil leaves for use later on.

Whole Hog BBQ & Music Festival

Today I am authoring my weekly column from the grounds of The Whole Hog BBQ and Music Festival in North Haverhill, NH. I am part of the Smoking Barrels crew, headed by Jeremy Cramer of Fairlee. The barbecue contest consists of three events; spareribs, shoulder and whole hog. The Whole Hog BBQ and Music Festival is in its 6th year, having originated on the Memorial Field in Bradford before moving to the North Haverhill Fairgrounds last year. There are nine teams competing in this Memphis BBQ Network (MBN) sanctioned event. The array of cookers and barbecue contraptions, from the Big Green Egg cookers to home made smokers is impressive. No two teams have similar equipment, and, Lord knows, they all have different recipes and barbecue techniques. Some teams start their pigs and shoulders while the sun is still up on Saturday evening, while others don’t put their meats on the grill until after the sun sets and the Big Dipper comes out. The variety of heat sources is also all over the lot; some teams are using homemade charcoal, some Kingsford briquettes, or others commercial charcoal. Some cookers have rotisseries, while most cook directly on a steel grate over charcoal or on a rack elevated above the grate. All the cookers have covers so the meat cooks in a closed atmosphere with some smoke exhaustion.

Barbecue is a distinctly American invention, although cooking over an open fire or with smoke has been occurring for eons, worldwide. Not to be confused with “grilling,” where the meat or vegetables to be cooked are placed on a grate over red hot coals, and are cooked by radiant heat, similar to what happens when you use your oven’s broiler, barbecue is a slow, indirect heat method of cooking, developed primarily in the American south. The barbecue cookers have drafts and vents that permit the cook to control the temperature in the covered cooker, and the ideal for a pig roast is 200 to 250 degrees. This produces a long, slow cooking in a smoke filled atmosphere, producing a falling apart meat with a decidedly smoky flavor. Many contestants rub or marinate or inject their meat with a flavoring treatment designed to complement and season the flesh. Brown sugar, vinegars, salt and a wide variety of herbs and spices are often used. Everybody has their own favorite formula, and while general descriptions abound (if you choose to believe them), few actual details are enunciated. Barbecue folks are a genial lot, given to an evening of companionship and story telling. But even late at night, after swapping tales and quaffing some suds, rub particulars remain untold.

At The Whole Hog, the head judge inspects the meat to be cooked on-site to be sure that no marinades or rubs have been applied in advance. Some cooks mop their meat, primarily spareribs, with a sauce toward the end of the cooking period to give it added flavor. Others just dry rub their ribs and serve them plain when they are done. “Wet or dry?” is a server’s question to patrons at barbecue joints all over the south. I saw both methods here.

I found it interesting that during the judging, the judges were instructed to use only their hands to handle and eat the meat. While we provided silverware for the judges’ use, most adhered to the MBN standard and picked up the meat, pulled it apart to see if it was tender, smelled it closely, looked it over carefully and then ate it. If a sauce was provided, most ate the meat unadorned before trying it with the sauce. One of the visuals of properly barbecued meat is the smoke ring that results from the long smoky cooking. This smoke ring is a light pink coloring just below the surface of the meat that results from smoke and water in the meat interacting during the lengthy cooking process. Another is the looseness of the bone, and the judge wants to see the bone removed to be sure that the meat is thoroughly cooked. The bone should be white or near white.

The contestants start gathering on Saturday morning, bringing in their equipment, supplies, coolers, tables and chairs. Most have a camper trailer, which includes a bathroom and sink, although each contestant is supplied with running water and access to an electrical outlet. Mark Fifield of Bare Bones actually brought a small three bay sink for his team, but then he’s highly experienced in pig roasting and has accumulated a large variety of equipment over the years. As soon as the head judge inspects each contestant’s meats, we are all off and running, mixing rubs and marinades, if not already prepared in advance, and getting our meats injected or seasoned in preparation for the actual cooking. The on-site judging schedule dictates each teams timing as to when their meats will be placed on their cooker as ribs are due at 9:30 on Sunday morning, shoulders at 10:30 and whole hog at 11:30. Most teams man their cookers throughout the night as cooking temperatures are closely monitored to assure even, slow cooking. The meats must be thoroughly cooked, but not to the point of being mushy. Tender, falling off the bone meat is the ideal for southern barbecue, and it is often called “pulled pork” to connote the fact that no utensils are needed, its that tender. It shreds under your touch.

Once the meat schedule is worked out and the cooks know when to get each piece on, its time to decorate your area for the judges. In our case we have a tropical scene while the No Swiners, a family team from Thetford and Corinth, has a farm theme complete with hay bales, sponge painted kitchenware on a wrought iron stand and baby pig figurines scattered amongst the many ribbons they have won at The Whole Hog festival over the years.

In the morning, all the contestants are busy with their final preparations and hoping that their meats will be cooked just right, in time for the judging. Judging consists of two events, the blind box and on-site judging. In the blind box, each team is supplied with a covered container with a number and name of the product (ribs, shoulder or whole hog). The team selects portions of their barbecue for inclusion in the blind box and it is delivered at a preset time to the blind box judges. Shortly thereafter the first on-site judge arrives at your cooking area. By this time, we are all adorned with our Smoking Barrel shirts and aprons, looking spiffy, if not a little tired from the lack of sleep. The area had been raked and all extraneous equipment, trash and the like cleared away. The judge is invited in and shown the meat on the cooker. We introduce the team and discuss where the meat came from, what type of fuel we used and how the meat was cooked. A portion is placed on a clean plate and served to the judge at a table where we have arranged a place setting with silverware and a glass of water. While the judge inspects and tastes the meat, we point out the characteristic smoke ring, the ease of removing the bone, and other salient points about our barbecue. The judge stays 10 to 12 minutes before thanking us and moving out of our area to complete their notes and scoring. Meanwhile, we fill out our scoring of the judge on a preprinted form. Then a second on-site judge arrives and we repeat the process. In all, each product has three on-site visits from a different judge. Meanwhile, the blind boxes were judged by 4 different individuals outside our view.

After the initial round of judging, three finalists are selected for the final judging. This process takes an additional couple of hours to complete, and by this time the crowd, which started to arrive around noon and has been entertained by some great blues bands, is restive and eager for the “people’s choice” time to arrive. During this period, which commences at 3:45 pm, people go to each booth and receive samples of the meats cooked. After sampling a variety of contestants’ offerings, they vote their choice for the best barbecue.

I won’t give the final results, which are published elsewhere in this newspaper, except to say that the big winner, both Grand Champion and Peoples’ Choice, was Bare Bones, and they will now compete next spring in Memphis for the MBN national championship. Good luck to Bare Bones, and we know you will represent us well.