The garden has been my greatest teacher. It has taught me that tender broccoli leaves make perfectly lovely winter greens. That like young kale they need just flash in the pan to turn mild and tender. And that in spring before the snow peas are ready, a riotous chop of herbs like rosemary, thyme, chives, and sage tossed with warm strands of baked spaghetti squash is sublime. Olive oil, minced garlic, salt, pepper and I have a warm salad whether I tuck in nuggets of blue cheese as auto-sauce or not.
In short, I’ve learned that if I am open to the at bounty lies outside the kitchen door, I can connect with what eating truly fresh food in season is all about. I can free myself from the trap of thinking it’s reasonable to eat tomatoes and lettuce during the dead of a Pacific Northwest winter or fresh strawberries outside of their luscious, local June season. I can revel in the joy of anticipating new potatoes, of discovering that fava beans that are ready by June when not much else is, and of putting up my own roasted red peppers for winter.
Growing your own comes at a cost of course. Some years things don’t produce well.There’s turning the compost piles, if you’re low tech like me and just use a pitch fork. And then there’s straightening up from yet another row and leaning wistfully on your hoe to watch your neighbors heading off to something spiff like a farm-to-table dinner in wine country or a luxurious yoga class.
My experience is, though, that the garden brings its own enduring joy. It’s own peace of mind. The beauty of the garden is simply and undeniably luxurious. Then there’s the exercise you get, all without having to pay for a class or head off to the pool. And we haven’t even gotten around to the savings on our food bills. Or how by being less dependent on the cash economy, we can trade in our 40-hour weeks for part-time work.
Quite the deal a kitchen garden is. Mental health therapy. Significant cash savings. (As in I’ve probably spent all of $20 on fresh produce over the past year.) Physical exercise. And fresh delicious food.
Mainstream food writers at the Oregonian dismissed spaghetti squash as bland and boring in an article on winter squashes. Too bad they missed the point, but then that’s what happens as long as you’re looking at things from the Standard American Perspective–which in the case of food is widely known as the Standard American Diet (SAD). As long as you’re thinking only of winter squash as distinct thing on your plate, their conclusion makes sense: the denser, sweet orange varieties have a taste that stands on their own.
But my garden squash patch is almost entirely devoted to spaghetti because it’s such a work horse in flash-cooked warm salads. On the previous post, Getting Our Acts Together, I showed how prettily spaghy dressed up a New Year’s potluck dish (that I took to KCC). And how easily I got fed the following day by simply making some gremolata to go with.
Now here’s day three. Still spaghetti squash waiting in the fridge so I got a full blast burner going under my cast iron wok, poured in a puddle of water, grated a broccoli stem and gave the florets a brief chop. Into the steaming heat the good greens went along with some scooped out spaghetti squash. By the time I found some olives to toss in and a plate, the squash was warm and broc al dente.
Dressing was some olive oil poured over, pinch of coarse salt, grind of black pepper, lemon zest grated right on top, lotsa fresh squeeze lemon juice to follow, and a big fluffy grating of parmesan using my hand dandy microplane.
Yup, I could have stopped to mince some garlic but I didn’t and things were luscious with the olives especially saying, “hello.”
So, that’s getting on a roll with spaghetti squash, day 3. You can put it in a blender with eggs and cornmeal to bake up like pizza crust and top it with the usual too. Who knows, day 4 might just roll on out with that little number–or even some big puffy yellow muffins. How about you? Into to getting around and getting on a roll?
As usual, it’s not what we do but how to do it. Especially when it comes to the measure free hippie kitchen. So those long lists you see in cookbooks about putting a pantry together only go so far by telling us what to buy at the store. Half the battle, it seems to moi, is getting organized with your stuff so that it’s handy. That way when the rubber hits the road and you roar into your kitchen with a yen for chow, you can rock & roll.
Let’s keep it simple to start. Simple not only for the sake of explanation but also because making food taste good really can be done very simply. The pantry items I used for my New Year’s potluck dish were nothing more than the sacred quartet: oil, vinegar, salt, pepper (as in red chile peper because who says the only pepper in town is black). The key was that they were handy and inviting in their fun bottles and pots. Oil and vinegar sitting out within arm’s reach in blue glass. A pot of coarse salt (the yellow dish from Itay) that I can dip into. Ditto with red chile pepper (in the footed dish of green Depression glass). You can see there’s also a black pepper mill and some garlic there along with kitchen tools ready and waiting.
As far as how it all worked, I had half a baked spaghetti squash waiting in the fridge and a packet of green beans thawing in the kitchen sink (both items, I’m pleased to say, where from my summer garden).
Then there was the end of a pot of homemade veg soup that got a whiz in the blender and then enough whole wheat flour to turn it into goop akin to mashed potatoes. This made veggie patties that I fried up on my cast iron griddle–an item that hangs conveniently on the wall above my stove. Yes, it’s true that if I’d had a couple eggs to stir in they would have been lighter. And also that some wheat sprouts or chopped walnuts would have added interest. But there you have it, my pantry was on the bare side, so I had make do.
If you can picture yourself putting this dish together…here you are at the counter with a nice platter for your arrangement. (In this case an oven proof quiche dish for reheating later on.)
You get the green beans out and give them a nice chop (if you didn’t already French cut them when you froze them last fall as I did). Then grab your olive oil and use your fingers. That way you can tell when your beans are nicely coated. Same routine for the spaghetti squash, your fingers being quite useful for pulling the strands apart as well. Once your lovely green and yellow circles are in place, you can nab the vinegar for a healthy sprinkling. Then some coarse salt and red chile flakes–the secret on the latter being not to over do.
All that’s left to finish this dish is a bowl of dip in the middle and the patties arranged around the edge. For me that day, no yogurt or humus in sight, so it was my home canned plum sauce from the summer that served as the dippity-do-dah. A few more red chile flakes over that for pretty-pretty and the deed was done. Ready for people at the buffet to shovel up some green beans and spaghetti squash, nab a patty and spoon on a little plum sauce.
It was quick to make, too. From start to finish I guess about a half hour including doing the veggie patties. Also yes, it depended on me working right along through the year and putting things like plum sauce up during harvest. Or at least buying things at the store with an eye toward mixing and matching. In addition to the sacred quartet, there’s keeping winter squash on hand. Not only spaghetti but other kinds, and when you bake them always do extra for on down the pike as they’ll keep a good week in the fridge. Same with the green beans or some other kind of green vegetable besides those boring old salad greens. Kale. Broc. Those are my choices this time of year if you don’t have a supply of others put up from your summer garden.
The other part of this equation is frugality. You can see I didn’t make many veggie patties. That’s because there wasn’t much soup left. The key, though, is that I did not throw it out. Why? Because I grew most of the vegetables in the pot and couldn’t bear to see them wasted. More, I thought, was the brew was blenderized, it was perfectly good goop to use for most anything. In this case the patties; another day it might have been the liquid in some homemade focaccia.
That’s the method to the madness around this measure free hippie kitchen. Hope it helps the cause in your kitchen too as the New Year kicks in. Here’s to healthy, wealthy, wise, and rocking & rolling….
If you’ve followed me much, you know that I like getting on a roll. Here’s what my lunch the next day looked like.
Spaghetti squash fluffed up on a plate, dressed with olive oil and fresh lemon juice (once you’ve captured it’s zest). Some gremolata spooned over and Parmesan grated around the edge. So delicious and easy. Healthy. Seasonal. The works. And if you don’t speak gremolata, let me introduce you to minced parsley flavored with garlic and lemon zest.
Cut the stems off your bunch of Italian parsley (nice with its flat leaves but use the curly stuff if that’s all you have) just above the tie thing. Then get your sharp chef’s knife and mince away until you have no visible stems or leaves left–until the parsley brew is fine indeed. Then mince equally fine, a clove or two of garlic. (If you have a deep mortar and pestle you can pound the garlic instead of mincing, but whatever–all roads lead to Rome.) Then take a microplane and zest a lemon or two.
Mix the works into a nice blend, and you just made gremolata–something that goes as easily on fish as it does on spaghetti squash.
Quiche is reliable since it’s just a custard with goodies in it that sets up no problemo. Also it’s great served room temperature, so is perfect for something like a New Year’s buffet.
Shrimp Quiche
Here’s one I did for Christmas with wild prawns that I boiled first, sliced in half lengthwise, and then cooled a bit so they wouldn’t start cooking the eggs when I added them. Served with pickled green beans, caramelized onions, and plum duck sauce, it was a hit.
Recipe Note
The custard was 4 eggs and a couple cups of milk along with a handful or two of grated Swiss and a nice pinch of salt. Paprika on top didn’t hurt the cause either.
Details
There’s no reason a person couldn’t pep things up with some Dijon mustard stirred into the eggs–as well as flash cook a chop of pretty green veggies like broccoli or kale and maybe some roasted red peppers.
Mushrooms, of course, are also obvious choices, although if you go for shrooms try to find organic as they have to use–gross I know, but we need to know this stuff–bug spray in conventional operations.
As far as crust goes, it’s my usual whole wheat pastry-organic butter version at a ratio of one part flour to a half part butter. For this crust I used a cup of flour to a stick of butter plus a couple good pinches of salt. Here’s more on the technique if you need it.
So far so good. I’ve still not bought fresh produce (except pomegranates, lemons, and some Clementines) and since the slim garden days of last spring. It’s getting to be slim pickins’ for sure given Portland’s November snow storm that way laid my broccoli and gave the kale and cabbage a good talking too. Still, I’m limping along. Making easy fish vegetarian to vegan food from scratch. First for the pescarians, then vegans fall in line after the holiday shot.
On the stove at the moment is a clam chowder. Potatoes and frozen green beans from last summer’s harvest, fresh pulled leeks and carrots, and a can of clams. I even have a few leggy fronds of parsley from the kitchen window pot to add right before serving so it keeps it’s “somewhere-over-the-rainbow color” as I put it in one book or another.
All in all, not bad for the eve of winter solstice when it’s all we can to do keep the home fires burning.
Warm salads are another favorite of mine. Here I rely on garden spaghetti squash that’s keeps all winter in the basement or even in right in the kitchen–and is easy to bake. Then some freshly picked kale, flash cooked with garlic and red chile flakes. Dress with olive oil, fresh lemon juice, and coarse salt. Garnish with ruby pomegranates jewels and a polite chop of walnuts.
Pretty tasty no matter what carb and protein you pair it with. And it even works for the vegans in the crowd. Merry Howdy!
A line I co-opted from Neil Young but so accurate when you think about it. The food industry and the grocers the pushers and us peasants hooked on their grocery carts. Pushing them around the stores in mindless dazes, clutching at things in crinkly packages. Sure that just one more will finally do the trick and make us happy. Chuckle.
Yes, I might be pushing the metaphor a bit far–but not all that much when you really stop and think about it. Stop and remember how it was when a family put down stakes somewhere and the very first thing they did was get the garden planted, some fruit trees in, and a house built for the hens.
It’s true that I am totally heads over heels in love with my kitchen garden–so much so that the third book in my Measure Free Trilogy is titled, Grow Your Own: From the Garden to the Table. As with the others, it will focus on the cooking side of the proposition even as it pays homage to how what’s happening in the garden and how that influences the directions things take in the kitchen.
That said, I realize not everyone has a place to garden or even wants to garden. And I respect that. You get tired and dirty in the garden. There’s weeds. And slugs. Bugs too. So far be it from me to be a garden pusher. To try and push gardens on the unsuspecting public.
But people. It’s so far beyond that, this business of the grocery cart pushers and us as grocery cart addicts. Now that they’ve got us in their stores wandering the aisles of their wares with our carts, they’re not satisfied to just sell us the raw stuff of life from the gardens. Nope. Instead it’s bags and boxes and bottles and cans and cartons. Even at the food co-ops and natural food stores. People are buying product and lining up at the deli counter. We don’t know how to cook anymore. Plus that we think putting a simple meal together is a big deal or has to be gourmet to be good. More’s the pity.
What helped me pierce the gauzy beguiling veil was coming of age in the Sixties when mainstream ways were considered suspect. But that was only have the battle. The other part has to do with funds. When I lived 10 years with the Hopi and Navajo I saw how people did when they managed on incomes well below the poverty line. And what I discovered was that their food was beautiful, creative, delicious, local, seasonal. All around lovely stuff.
And in my journey back in my own culture, I soon discovered that if I ate like an Indian (or peasant if you will) I’d have money to do some fun things in life–like go to graduate school and write books. There were even a bonus. The food I learned to make was light years better than anything you can buy. That’s because it was fresh. Also because over the years I learned the art of flavor and how to use the sacred quartet–oil, vinegar, salt, pepper–to very good advantage. I also learned the difference between just tossing things in willy nilly and thinking about what really might help a dish. For example, nuts and raisins with some vegetables in a warm salad to add a few fun notes.
So that’s my bit on the pushers and how they’ve got us hooked on their grocery carts and bottled salad dressings and bagged spinach. And here’s to all of us increasingly backing away from our addiction on all this junk. Increasingly leaving our money in our pocketbooks instead of squandering it on inferior food. Increasingly leaving our measuring cups behind and having fun cooking in our own kitchens.
The exclamation point is so over-used these days, but in the case of this title, it is warranted. That’s because in both instances, the food industry–conventional and natural–wants to incite excitement.
We will be getting a real deal, they imply, if we take a fast track to pizza with their “quick” sauce! Even better if we’re health conscious, we will get nine fabulous whole grains with their bagged cereals and flours.
Never mind that it might be almost as quick, and much more creative, to put some garlic and a few herbs together with tomato paste for your own pizza sauce. Or that our bodies might not need nine grains in one fell swoop, and that we have to pay for someone to mix those blends up for us and put them into the bags. Never mind all that because that’s really not the issue.
Not the issue because we have been trained to react (not respond) to these messages–as were our parents and grandparents before us. Buy this, the message really says, and you’ll be happy. And we want so to be happy. It’s true….
In my hippie kitchen, though, I’ve found that the further I steer clear from packaged things, the happier I am. That’s because when I buy the basics and pull them together myself I discover that:
1. It doesn’t take long
2. The results aren’t too bad
3. The food is fresh
4. The price goes down
5. We get a chance to be creative and think for ourselves.
Think for ourselves. Become empowered cooks. Yes. That’s the passion that drives me–and the one I want to share. But don’t worry. We don’t have to do it too much. Just a little here and there is all it takes.
This morning’s cereal for example. A handful of oats cooked on high in a little salted water for a minute. A couple big spoons of flax meal fresh from the coffee grinder. Some wheat germ from a plastic bag that lives in the fridge. Yogurt. Apple. Fresh lime juice. Walnuts. A few ruby pomegranate jewels that so mark the season. My own blend of cinnamon, allspice, coriander, cayenne sprinkled over the top. A hot black cup of free trade, organic espresso to go with.
If you’d a been here I could have easily made enough for two. And I think we both would have agreed that it was quick and healthy enough for a couple characters like us…. Chuckle.
Here’s to empowered everyday cooks. Here’s to leaving processed food behind and taking back your kitchen. It might not have the short term glitz of Pizza Quik and Nine Grain Cereal, but in the longer term–like The Beatles sang–it’s guaranteed to raise a smile.
The measure free trilogy books will surely become collectible. After all, Cooking Beyond Measure and Hippie Kitchen are the first cookbooks without measurements written in the United States in over a century. And when Grow Your Own Comes out next year, it will be the third.
More, these books are kitchen companions that forge new ground in poetic prose designed to lure us back into our kitchens. Here’s a snippet from the introduction to Hippie Kitchen’s Winter Chow chapter. I hope it resonates as much with you as it did with the crowd gathered at the Blackbird Wine Shop reading I did last night.
Winter Chow
If there was ever a culture of people who need to hook up with winter, it’s mainstream Americans. Us non-siesta-takers. Us independent, highly mobile, multi-taskers who have bought the more-is-better, time-is-money line.
I know the rush-rush vibe has dogged me more than I ever dreamed it would. Like one time in 1982 when I lived up on Second Mesa in Hopiland. You could see forever from the pueblo that day. Out across Navajo where dusty roses and muted purples were a mere
suggestion of weavers in pleated velveteen shirts decorated with silver liberty head dimes and buffalo nickels. West and south where the winds came from the San Francisco Peaks, home of the masked gods, the katsinas. I, however, saw little of that on this particular day. I was in a hurry doing something, going somewhere.
That’s when one of the neighbors piped up and said, “Oh you’re such an efficient white lady.” He smiled and everyone tee-heed compassionately most likely remembering the times they had been ribbed in their turn. Indeed, joking and teasing is one way tribal people hold a mirror up, helping each other to at least try and keep the bubble in the middle. What a relief to live in that society. To not have to pretend you have it more together than you really do. It was like The Band’s “take a load off Fanny” line from Big Pink.
So that’s what the gentle but firm nudge did for me that day. Got my attention. Reminded me that kicking back now and then is cool. I can’t say I’ve been all that successful, but the winter kitchen does help bring one back. It’s warm in a winter kitchen. You can turn on the oven and bake focaccia. You can smell the fresh yeast bread. You can make soup. You can feel the hardy winter roots in your hands. Hear the rush of steaming water when the broccoli hits the heat. Taste how fun chile and sugar are together in buttery cookies. You can create a very Zennish moment in your winter kitchen—in your hippie kitchen in winter.
If you got this far, you might be about ready for a listen to this cool cat.
Come on into your kitchen!
We don’t have to go to Tuscany to have a sexy food life!
It’s right here. Right now. All we have to do is turn on the lights….
Here’s how ultrafast cooking works in my hippie kitchen. In the morning when I’m having breakfast, I steam up a pot of quinoa. This grain cooks in 10 minutes and has the highest protein of them all. I leave it sitting out at room temperature and then when dinner comes along all’s that needs doing is chopping the last of the garden tomatoes, walking outside and plucking the end of the basil, and dressing with a polite pour of olive oil, swig of red wine vinegar, coarse salt, and fresh crack of peppper from the grinder.
All that and I get some leftover quinoa to put in a soup the next day or even mix with an egg and minced celery and onion to fry up into crisp patties. Yep. Having a pot of leftover whole grain around–whether it be millet, amaranth, wheat berries, brown rice, or quinoa–can make your kitchen life easy, frugal, healthy, and wise.
So rock & roll. It’s easy to make simple everyday food in your own kitchen. Fun too since you get to be the boss.
In short, I’ve learned that if I am open to the at bounty lies outside the kitchen door, I can connect with what eating truly fresh food in season is all about. I can free myself from the trap of thinking it’s reasonable to eat tomatoes and lettuce during the dead of a Pacific Northwest winter or fresh strawberries outside of their luscious, local June season. I can revel in the joy of anticipating new potatoes, of discovering that fava beans that are ready by June when not much else is, and of putting up my own roasted red peppers for winter.
