2 April 2010 by
Jean Johnson
Here’s a freelance piece I published in E Magazine back in 2006. Worth the read if you’ve time…
Belly and Soul—Eating Locally and In Season
Like someone scouting for a spouse in a bar, there was good reason I spent much of my life under the fluorescents trolling inner aisles of the groceries for things in crinkly packages. I was looking for flavor, and I wanted it pronto, on my terms.
These days, though, I’ve found love in the bounty of Oregon’s seasons. Fresh corn snapped from the stalk…dark baby kale, fronds nipped by winter frosts…raspberries in the morning sun, plucked right from the vine…new potatoes, freshly unearthed, coddled with a bit of butter…snow peas so pale in the early spring light they break your heart.
I never followed the foodie scene or spent much time in the kitchen—except to make cookies—so sexy things like having all the right cookbooks and brining turkeys passed me by. Thus, my transition from packaged fare and tomatoes-on-demand was bumpy. I mean, how could broccoli ever compete with American pizza?“It’s tough,” said Catherine Pantsios, Chefs Collaborative board member and former co-owner of the critically acclaimed San Franciscan restaurant, Zolas. “People have become so anesthetized.”
Cynthia Harriman, director of food and nutrition strategies for Oldways—the food issues think tank that started the Chefs Collaborative to foster connections between local producers and restaurants—echoed the dilemma. “Since a lot of Americans see eating as a fueling up the tank operation, many see eating well as a hair shirt,” said Harriman. “No one’s going to eat right unless we can convince them this stuff is delicious.”
A balmy spring breeze ruffles my hair as I stoop to pull leeks that have wintered over in my garden. Next stop is the carrot patch. Then the kitchen where the leeks get sautéed with tarragon, while the carrots simmer with some potatoes. The works takes a whirl through the blender before joining forces in the soup pot for a healthy slug of white wine, crack of fresh pepper, and bit of salt. I take some to my mother along with a baked pear. “You could serve this to a queen,” she said. It was that delicious.
Making soup, though, is a bit of an ordeal since you have to get the blender out. What really brings me to my knees in the spring and early summer is pasta primavera—or most any kind of primavera for that matter.
But you have to go the distance to make it work. Run the gamut on combinations of fruit and nuts and cheese to accent your winter greens and root crops and spaghetti squashes. That’s when you can hear snow peas dangling off the vines in their sensuous arcs speak.
It’s how it was during my Grand Canyon days. The river trips stopped at one gorgeous side canyon after another. But the experience was never as sublime as when I’d hike in, hour after hour under hot sun over dry terrain. Finally we’d drop into a single, lush side canyon, shuck our packs and dusty boots, and slip into the plunge pools. It was delicious.
Cynthia Harriman observed the same phenomenon when she was in the Czech Republic in 1990 just after the Iron Curtain fell. “Watermelon season started, and that was the only fruit you could get anywhere,” she said. “But rather than complain about the lack of variety, the Czechs were excited. There they were with all this pent up emotion; they really appreciated the melons having their moment in the sun. We’ve lost that joy of the seasons.”
It’s the same with me and pasta primavera. In I come with my clutch of snow peas and whatever else I could find in the garden—some tender chives, parsley, carrot, scallions—perhaps even asparagus if any heads have poked through the loam. Maybe even an early strawberry for dessert.
I get the high heat going under the pasta water and my cast iron wok. In the latter goes a tad of olive oil and the aromatics. While they’re sizzling I grate the carrot and chop the pea pods and asparagus. If I have some morels straight from Oregon’s spring forests—which I often do since New Seasons stocks them—those earthy treats get included too, right at the very end. Rice wine vinegar is usually the spike of acid I balance out this kind of delicate fare with. Beyond that, it’s a grate of asiago and whatever salad greens look good.
For Julia Child, it was much the same according to K. Dun Gifford, founder of Oldways. “I had many, many lunches with Julia over the years. She always made omelettes and we’d have a glass of wine—sometimes two,” said Gifford with an arch of his brow. “It was always the same. She’d go to the refrigerator and say, ‘Dun, dear, what shall it be? Shrimp? Scallions?’ I’d always answer, ‘Oh, whatever’s in there that needs using, Julia.’”
Half the secret to cooking well is going with the flow—using what’s on hand—eating local, seasonal fare. Indeed, now that I’ve paired my food to the seasons, the sun and earth’s majestic pas de deux speaks to me belly and soul. Before I might have marked spring by nestlings chirping away for their mammas and papas. Now it’s about my own stomach as well—about ruffled scarlet leaf lettuces and fiddle head ferns and buds on the kiwi vines about to burst.
We’re all products of our culture, of course, and even though I’m not an Oregonian blueblood, the ethics pioneers left must have made their way into my psyche. Those sturdy folks were more about family and less about profits than most nineteenth century Americans. A little trading on the side was cool. Mostly, though, they just wanted to build strong communities and grow their own.
Portland’s new small, local chain of grocery stores, New Seasons, embraces that ethos as well and was singled out by the New York Times as being on the nation’s local-seasonal cutting edge. “Our home grown program is really about creating a regional food economy,” said Lisa Sedlar, president of New Seasons where ‘home grown’ stickers alert consumers to things that come from around here. “The joy for us is having relationships with 125 farmers who we pay fair prices. If it doesn’t work for them, it doesn’t work for us.”
Amen, says Carlos Petrini an Italian political activist who founded Slow Food International. Petrini believes that changing our food system is the most vital and revolutionary act we can make in today’s world.
Catherine Pantsios gives that bold thought a nod. “I think people feel powerless in the face of the whole global situation and wonder how they can affect things. Where your food comes from,” she mused. “It’s an area where your decisions can help preserve farm land and strengthen the local economy. It just makes it nicer.”
Dun Gifford couldn’t agree more. “In 1993 when we introduced the concept of sustainability, the whole business of techno-foods was going to take over the world. At Oldways we’re all about everything that’s natural and traditional—fresh as opposed to frozen—a wide variety of lettuces as opposed to iceberg.”
Certainly variety is the key as far as Josh Kirschenbaum, product developer at Territorial Seed, is concerned. The company is a strong proponent of plant varieties that have gotten lost in the shuffle. “Big corporations make more money from larger varieties that they can sell in volume,” said Josh. “It’s lead to standardized homogenization that people want to move away from.”
Portland, Oregon gardener, farmer’s market patron, and New Seasons shopper, Laura Berg is one of those. “I grew a variety that I’d not heard of last year—Long Island Cheese. A friend roasted one rubbed with olive oil just recently. The skin was so tender we could eat it.”
“I buy locally because I want Portland to be a nice place to live,” Berg added. “And as far as my garden goes, going outside and picking something for dinner is glorious even if I’m doing in with a flashlight and in my raincoat.”
As for me, I’ve got a pot of lima beans simmering with rosemary on the stove and some quinoa all steamed up. Now I’ll make my rounds outside where red chard and white radishes wait. I’ll do the chard stems in a dab of oil with minced garlic first and then ladle in some bean juice.
The result will be a gorgeous, jammy bit of crunch alongside the warm salad of wilted chard leaves. Tender but still utterly, deeply green, the chard leaves and stems will grace the sturdy peasant fare decorated with a scattering of artisan cheese and hazelnuts. I’ll pour a glass of wine in Julia Child’s memory, too. After all, she made life such fun.
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Food Politics, Food Thoughts, Seasonal |
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