So the other weekend (before I had three simultaneous deadlines) we went to a party. A birthday party, to be exact, at the scene of the Great Oyster Slaughter of aught twelve. This time around, it was more of a pot luck, and I rummaged around in the freezer to figure out what to bring. And I found a beef heart. Problem solved!
Swordfish. Leftover polenta re-cooked with milk and alliums (scallions, onion, wild garlic). Miso-mustard-honey-cider vinegar sauce. Black pepper. Chervil. True story. Regular blogging will resume shortly.
We were in Vermont for a few days over Spring Break, during which time we visited Taylor Farm, as we always do when we’re up there. In addition to their excellent Gouda–their aged is my favorite–they also sell raw milk, and sometimes cream. For whatever reason, Milo got it into his head that he was going to make butter, so he did. I guided him through the process, but the work was all his doing. I’m all about better living though child labor.
I was so busy posting fraudulent nonsense on Sunday that I forgot to mention that the new Chronogram is out and in it I profile Café Le Perche, an excellent bakery in Hudson where they’re making some seriously pedigreed bread at a high level using local, organic flour. I also have two pieces in the new issue of Edible Hudson Valley: one about my homemade Camembert and a sidebar about uses for all the whey…
It’s been very hard to keep this a secret, so I am thrilled to finally announce that my first book will be published this summer. I’ll have lots more details in the near future, but for the time being I simply want to say how gratifying it is that years of research and hard work have paid off. I especially can’t wait to recount how one very late, very drunken night at Per Se led…
I reread my France posts recently, and it already feels sort of like if it happened to someone else, especially the early ones (since I was so jetlagged). And there are still so many photos and so much information left to process. Since the freshness of the experience fades in inverse proportion to said processing, future posts in the “Things What I Learned In France” department are likely to be less literal and more an organic assimilation of the information I absorbed while there. This post is about an homage to Gascony that popped into my head as I unwrapped the many goodies I had stashed in my luggage, including a sampler of the Chapolards’ charcuterie–saucisson sec, saucisse sèche, and noix de jambon–which Dominique graciously gave me and which somehow ended up swaddled in plastic bags and dirty laundry and buried deep in the recesses of my suitcase for the trip home.
I kid, of course; bringing those things home would have been illegal. Also, there was the Armagnac. And the prunes, and the Tarbais bean and Espelette pepper seeds, and pistachio oil and truffle salt and other items that would be at the top of your must-have list if your plane happened to disappear into the Bermuda Triangle and leave you stranded on some desert island somewhere like in a certain TV show that actually managed to be more annoying than Twin Peaks. I’m all about the pragmatism.
With this crazy non-winter, besides the stirring in the garden all the wild edibles are rousing themselves bright and early. Besides the wild garlic–a perennial favorite, and every bit as good as its over-hyped and over-harvested cousin the ramp–garlic mustard is getting a vigorous start all around the house. Since it’s ubiquitous, invasive, and extremely tasty (it’s one of my absolute favorite wild greens) there is a multi-faceted pleasure in its consumption that encompasses ease, righteousness, and hedonism.
Last year my friend Danny, who has 25 or so acres up the road a piece, got keen to make maple syrup from the approximately one gajillion sugar maples on his property. It turns out that far fewer than a gajillion are required to produce copious sap, even given the 40:1 reduction ratio that syrup requires. He gathered sap into many five-gallon buckets, with me helpfully bringing some of my own to catch the excess, and we both cooked it down on our respective stovetops (he used his wood stove) in our big speckleware canning tubs. The results were documented here, and we both officially caught the sap fever. This year, as promised, he took it to another level.
As a happy coincidence, shortly after my return our dear friend Philippe had his birthday, which occasioned an event that cushioned any culture shock I might have been feeling after ten days of immersive and hedonistic Gallic gastronomy. John ordered a hundred Wellfleet oysters from Gerard and we had a quick telephone consultation about wine. And then we partied.
The return trip went smoothly, though it took longer than I would have liked. It was particularly galling to fly right over my home town–I even saw my house, since we were descending into Newark and roofs were visible–since if I could have jumped out there and parachuted down it would have saved me four hours of flying, customs, and then driving back up. Notwithstanding the time, it still amazes me that one can travel so far so fast. I love it. And even though my ten days in France were full of fun and flavor, it was very nice to get home.