In my kitchen, comfort foods still make for a good dinner, and, chilis, ratatouilles and pork roasts are frequently on the menu. I've cured olives, and my first prosciutto, and also a couple of bresaolas this winter. Mediterranean and Mexican dishes have taken center stage over the those months, a quince and chicken dish with preserved lemons being one of my favorite ventures. But the most comforting dish turned out to be stuffed Hungarian style green peppers. My neighbor is fortunate enough to have a tray of organic fruits and vegetables delivered to her door each week and she will often share a few of them with me. First there was a cabbage which I steamed and peeled away the leaves to stuff with a meat and rice mixture. I made half a dozen for her, as a thank you gift, stuffed with bulgur and red peppers since she is doesn't eat meat. There have been small red potatoes and bananas, beautiful heads of broccoli, and a delicious acorn squash which I halved and roasted with oil and topped with mozzarella for another vegetarian friend who will eat nothing with a face. But the cabbage set to reminding me of stuffing green peppers. I bought four at the market at a ridiculous price. I made a mixture of a pound of ground pork and two pounds of ground beef and added chopped onions and garlic and a couple of eggs, some salt and pepper. Instead of long grain rice I had on hand some left over wild rice which worked extremely well as it doesn't hold as much water cooked and adds some husky texture to the mix. Well combined I topped and deseeded the peppers and densely stuffed them. To this point everything is raw save for the rice and I put the pepper hat back on. the four just about fit my large pot and I sarted them on the stove top with about an inch of water, covering them with a lid for a few minutes. aftr this I added chopped tomatoes from a can and tomato sauce from a couple more cans and added some chicken stock and paprika. After an hour of slow cooking they were ready and I cooled them to room temperature for reheating later in the day. This was most satisfying with a glass of dry riesling. Perhaps this dish will return in the summer. They say we are due for three days of rain this coming week.
Showing posts with label farming. Show all posts
Showing posts with label farming. Show all posts
Sunday, April 18, 2010
Green Envy
As if to underscore that this has so far been a strange and scary year, Los Angeles has been blessed with plenty of rain this spring. Spring time is when I usually begin reminiscing about that damp English climate I grew up with, with its sheets of fine silk-like rain and land-tinting gray clouds that would make even the most colorful environment look like a layered watercolor wash. I have not seen Southern California so verdantly clement at this time of year in recent memory and so my envy of those fortunate enough to live up on the Central Coast has abated for the time being, though I am sure by August it will nag me once again.
In my kitchen, comfort foods still make for a good dinner, and, chilis, ratatouilles and pork roasts are frequently on the menu. I've cured olives, and my first prosciutto, and also a couple of bresaolas this winter. Mediterranean and Mexican dishes have taken center stage over the those months, a quince and chicken dish with preserved lemons being one of my favorite ventures. But the most comforting dish turned out to be stuffed Hungarian style green peppers. My neighbor is fortunate enough to have a tray of organic fruits and vegetables delivered to her door each week and she will often share a few of them with me. First there was a cabbage which I steamed and peeled away the leaves to stuff with a meat and rice mixture. I made half a dozen for her, as a thank you gift, stuffed with bulgur and red peppers since she is doesn't eat meat. There have been small red potatoes and bananas, beautiful heads of broccoli, and a delicious acorn squash which I halved and roasted with oil and topped with mozzarella for another vegetarian friend who will eat nothing with a face. But the cabbage set to reminding me of stuffing green peppers. I bought four at the market at a ridiculous price. I made a mixture of a pound of ground pork and two pounds of ground beef and added chopped onions and garlic and a couple of eggs, some salt and pepper. Instead of long grain rice I had on hand some left over wild rice which worked extremely well as it doesn't hold as much water cooked and adds some husky texture to the mix. Well combined I topped and deseeded the peppers and densely stuffed them. To this point everything is raw save for the rice and I put the pepper hat back on. the four just about fit my large pot and I sarted them on the stove top with about an inch of water, covering them with a lid for a few minutes. aftr this I added chopped tomatoes from a can and tomato sauce from a couple more cans and added some chicken stock and paprika. After an hour of slow cooking they were ready and I cooled them to room temperature for reheating later in the day. This was most satisfying with a glass of dry riesling. Perhaps this dish will return in the summer. They say we are due for three days of rain this coming week.
In my kitchen, comfort foods still make for a good dinner, and, chilis, ratatouilles and pork roasts are frequently on the menu. I've cured olives, and my first prosciutto, and also a couple of bresaolas this winter. Mediterranean and Mexican dishes have taken center stage over the those months, a quince and chicken dish with preserved lemons being one of my favorite ventures. But the most comforting dish turned out to be stuffed Hungarian style green peppers. My neighbor is fortunate enough to have a tray of organic fruits and vegetables delivered to her door each week and she will often share a few of them with me. First there was a cabbage which I steamed and peeled away the leaves to stuff with a meat and rice mixture. I made half a dozen for her, as a thank you gift, stuffed with bulgur and red peppers since she is doesn't eat meat. There have been small red potatoes and bananas, beautiful heads of broccoli, and a delicious acorn squash which I halved and roasted with oil and topped with mozzarella for another vegetarian friend who will eat nothing with a face. But the cabbage set to reminding me of stuffing green peppers. I bought four at the market at a ridiculous price. I made a mixture of a pound of ground pork and two pounds of ground beef and added chopped onions and garlic and a couple of eggs, some salt and pepper. Instead of long grain rice I had on hand some left over wild rice which worked extremely well as it doesn't hold as much water cooked and adds some husky texture to the mix. Well combined I topped and deseeded the peppers and densely stuffed them. To this point everything is raw save for the rice and I put the pepper hat back on. the four just about fit my large pot and I sarted them on the stove top with about an inch of water, covering them with a lid for a few minutes. aftr this I added chopped tomatoes from a can and tomato sauce from a couple more cans and added some chicken stock and paprika. After an hour of slow cooking they were ready and I cooled them to room temperature for reheating later in the day. This was most satisfying with a glass of dry riesling. Perhaps this dish will return in the summer. They say we are due for three days of rain this coming week.
Tuesday, April 6, 2010
Letter From New Zealand #3
My friend Peter Huck, journalist and windswept adventurer, recently moved away from Los Angeles with his other half, the lovely Barbara Drake, to beautiful New Zealand. I asked Peter to write a monthly letter from down under as a kind of mirror to my own efforts and experiences here. This is the third letter.
The godwits are leaving. Driving up the coast road, past Miranda, at the bottom of the Firth of Thames, on a glittering morning the other week, I chanced upon a middle-aged lady unpacking a large telescope from the trunk of her car. I offered to help and we set off across a field, fringed by mangroves lapped by a “king” high tide, towards a silver strand where a handful of people stood outside a small hide, staring at several hundred long-beaked birds, massed on a sandbar some hundred or so feet distant.
The godwits are leaving. Driving up the coast road, past Miranda, at the bottom of the Firth of Thames, on a glittering morning the other week, I chanced upon a middle-aged lady unpacking a large telescope from the trunk of her car. I offered to help and we set off across a field, fringed by mangroves lapped by a “king” high tide, towards a silver strand where a handful of people stood outside a small hide, staring at several hundred long-beaked birds, massed on a sandbar some hundred or so feet distant.
In 2007 a bar-tailed godwit, E7, tagged with a tiny satellite transmitter, flew 7,258 miles non-stop from Alaska across the Pacific back to Miranda in just nine days. I gleaned this from one of the world’s foremost godwit authorities, Keith Woodley, when I left the hide and stopped by the Centre, just down the road apiece.
Alas, the godwits’ future is clouded by uncertainly. Industrialization in the Yellow Sea region threatens ecosystems used as a major godwit pit stop, while in NZ environmentalists fear projected plans to mine gold tailings – and possibly release buried toxins, such as mercury - in the Firth of Thames will irrevocably damage a recovering habitat that godwits and other creatures depend on for their survival.
Mining has become an emotive issue in New Zealand and nowhere more so than in the Coromandel, as reported by a protest group. The peninsula, where gold was found close to our rainforest block in 1852 [traces were noted in the 1820s], is an historic gold boom area – we recently found a shaft, probably an air vent, on our property, which lies several hundred yards distant from a scene of frenzied 19th century activity, described in Diggers, Hatters and Whores: The Story of the New Zealand Gold Rushes, Steven Eldred-Grigg’s lively and lavishly illustrated 2008 history, as miners followed reefs in the quartz veins - where nine prospective gold mining sites were recently identified by the government.
The National Government, which began secret talks with mining companies in 2006, two years before it was elected, has downplayed rising fears of environmental impacts, insisting that only 17,440 acres of land on the country’s conservational estate, including possibly in national parks, would be mined, although oil and gas exploration could also impact marine reserves.
This development, plus concerns about over-fishing – the government has just upped its catch quota for the endangered Southern bluefin tuna – dairy methane emissions that contribute to climate change, and a controversial scheme, discussed at International Whaling Commission talks, to allow Japan to continue its farcical “scientific” whale hunt, provided they reduce their catch over the next decade, have roused fears the nation’s “100% Pure” tourism PR will be exposed as greenwash, a line taken by the Economist.
Fortunately, plans to factory farm dairy cows in the Mackenzie Basin appear to have been abandoned – for now anyway. Given that NZ has an international reputation for grass feed meat – >NZ Cuisine food writer Ray McVinnie describes industrialized cattle farms, such as the feed lots on I-5 north of LA, as “bovine concentration camps” - this should have been a no-brainer. Ditto an emphasis on organically grown produce. However, this approach appears to be anathema to corporate farming, and there are disturbing signs, notably a court decision to reverse a previous judgement against plans to use animals to develop health and medical products - NZ may join the GM camp. Disturbingly, two corporations, including NZ dairy giant Fonterra, hope to release GE grasses, a potential tipping point as seed dispersal would be impossible to control.
We’ll be enjoying some of our homegrown greens – fennel, basil, parsley, lettuce and argula – with some king fish steaks, our share of a fish caught on a hand line by a Coromandel friend, tonight. We’ve just returned to Auckland from the peninsula, after installing a 180-watt PV panel on our sleep-out, powering up a small fridge and some lights last Saturday – energy from the sun via two batteries – even as New Zealand joined other nations by switching off lights for Earth Hour. The trick in the future will be getting rid of the batteries and hooking up to the grid. But that’s another story.
©2010 Peter Huck
©2010 Peter Huck
Tuesday, March 2, 2010
Letter From New Zealand #2
My friend Peter Huck, journalist and windswept adventurer, recently moved away from Los Angeles with his other half, the lovely Barbara Drake, to beautiful New Zealand. I asked Peter to write a monthly letter from down under as a kind of mirror to my own efforts and experiences here. This is the second letter.It’s been a dry month in Aotearoa, the Land of the Long White Cloud. Large cracks have appeared in the deep clay cap on our Coromandel block. We’ve spent much of the past month building a bach lean-to – three walls covered with salvaged tin (corrugated iron) and punctuated with louvers, plus a sloping tin roof to catch rainwater, and a floor made from eucalyptus planks – beside our caravan. But, as yet, we haven’t a gutter and a down pipe to catch water.
This precious commodity is in very short supply. Other than rare misty moisty moments – such as a squall that swept across the house site from the Hauraki Gulf last week, momentarily easing the humidity and perking up our plants, but hardly settling the dust – there has been no rain.
This makes washing, drinking and, of course, cooking a challenge. One of our daily tasks is to haul in water, either from the Driving Creek Café or the creek itself. We also lack power, so each day must swap a trio of ice packs [frozen in a neighbour’s freezer] to cool our Esky or icebox. Given that we’re also working dawn to dusk hours we’ve opted to prepare dishes –
home-made dahl, hummus and Provencal-style fish stew, a kiwi bouillabaisse, are standards - in Auckland, tweaking them if necessary in Coromandel. This week’s onion, garlic, tomato and courgette stew base was augmented by gurnard, bought from the fish ‘n’ chip shop a stone’s throw from the Coromandel harbour, and prepared by flashlight as the cicadas buzzed, dusk fell and a glittering canopy of stars joined the moon to cast a magical, theatrical light across the darkening forest.
By LA standards New Zealand droughts are benign. But prolonged dry spells wreck havoc on this nation’s farm economy, not to mention our parched Auckland veggie patch, neglected while we were away. Northland, the area beyond Auckland, is threatening water restrictions. Yet, Central Hawke’s Bay, traditionally prone to long droughts – and best suited to dry country stock farming and grapes – has had a wet summer. There is much talk of El Nino and whether it is influenced by global warming, even as climate change deniers – delighted by the hacked Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change emails and other scandals, and a vociferous lobby in New Zealand - have had a field day.
Despite its ballyhooed “clean and green” touri
st image, enhanced by epic scenery [Ian McCulloch, of Echo & The Bunnymen, once described New Zealand as a “psychedelic Yorkshire,” perhaps due to the extraordinary clarity of the atmosphere; gazing at our 360-degree Coromandel vista is like tumbling into the rabbit hole or stepping into an 18th century landscape by Cook’s artist Sydney Parkinson] and low greenhouse gas emissions, compared to other Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development nations, New Zealand isn’t nearly as pristine as it makes out. Efforts to turn Auckland into a “super city” by amalgamating local councils are seen by critics as a feint to privatise water, even as the right-wing National government ponders opening up protected land including, maybe, World Heritage status national parks, to mining, an issue that is red hot in the Coromandel Peninsula, site of the nation’s first gold strike at Driving Creek in 1852.
Meanwhile, dairying, a major export, squanders water [pumping from aquifers in Hawke’s Bay for instance to the consternation of non-dairy farmers] and is responsible for copious methane emissions, a greenhouse gas linked to climate change and estimated in 2007 by New Zealand’s National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research at 35.2% of the country’s output. And a new documentary, based on English journalist Charles Clover’s book The End of the Line, argues that New Zealand has torpedoed its status as a sustainable fishery, due to its destructive, bottom-trawled orange roughy – popular in the US – catch. Waitrose, the UK food chain, has banned orange roughy and hoki, another kiwi fish; a prime example of consumer-driven conservation that New Zealand would be wise to acknowledge. “The number one hole in your system,” Clover told the New Zealand Herald, “[is that] you don’t actually have a proper up-to-date assessment of the 600-odd species you have in your waters.”
I could go on, listing other holes in the “clean and green” PR line. New Zealand has much to be proud of as regards its farming prowess, such as getting food to markets thousands of miles away and surviving without government subsidies. But the colonial legacy in which finite resources, whether fish, timber or water, were commodities to be exploited no longer works. Diminishing resources worldwide have created a new paradigm, in which the world is divided between those who exploit resources for short-term economic gain, and those who see the economy as a subset of the environment, where sustainable use is the only viable long-term option.
©2010 Peter Huck
This precious commodity is in very short supply. Other than rare misty moisty moments – such as a squall that swept across the house site from the Hauraki Gulf last week, momentarily easing the humidity and perking up our plants, but hardly settling the dust – there has been no rain.
This makes washing, drinking and, of course, cooking a challenge. One of our daily tasks is to haul in water, either from the Driving Creek Café or the creek itself. We also lack power, so each day must swap a trio of ice packs [frozen in a neighbour’s freezer] to cool our Esky or icebox. Given that we’re also working dawn to dusk hours we’ve opted to prepare dishes –
home-made dahl, hummus and Provencal-style fish stew, a kiwi bouillabaisse, are standards - in Auckland, tweaking them if necessary in Coromandel. This week’s onion, garlic, tomato and courgette stew base was augmented by gurnard, bought from the fish ‘n’ chip shop a stone’s throw from the Coromandel harbour, and prepared by flashlight as the cicadas buzzed, dusk fell and a glittering canopy of stars joined the moon to cast a magical, theatrical light across the darkening forest.By LA standards New Zealand droughts are benign. But prolonged dry spells wreck havoc on this nation’s farm economy, not to mention our parched Auckland veggie patch, neglected while we were away. Northland, the area beyond Auckland, is threatening water restrictions. Yet, Central Hawke’s Bay, traditionally prone to long droughts – and best suited to dry country stock farming and grapes – has had a wet summer. There is much talk of El Nino and whether it is influenced by global warming, even as climate change deniers – delighted by the hacked Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change emails and other scandals, and a vociferous lobby in New Zealand - have had a field day.
Despite its ballyhooed “clean and green” touri
st image, enhanced by epic scenery [Ian McCulloch, of Echo & The Bunnymen, once described New Zealand as a “psychedelic Yorkshire,” perhaps due to the extraordinary clarity of the atmosphere; gazing at our 360-degree Coromandel vista is like tumbling into the rabbit hole or stepping into an 18th century landscape by Cook’s artist Sydney Parkinson] and low greenhouse gas emissions, compared to other Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development nations, New Zealand isn’t nearly as pristine as it makes out. Efforts to turn Auckland into a “super city” by amalgamating local councils are seen by critics as a feint to privatise water, even as the right-wing National government ponders opening up protected land including, maybe, World Heritage status national parks, to mining, an issue that is red hot in the Coromandel Peninsula, site of the nation’s first gold strike at Driving Creek in 1852.Meanwhile, dairying, a major export, squanders water [pumping from aquifers in Hawke’s Bay for instance to the consternation of non-dairy farmers] and is responsible for copious methane emissions, a greenhouse gas linked to climate change and estimated in 2007 by New Zealand’s National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research at 35.2% of the country’s output. And a new documentary, based on English journalist Charles Clover’s book The End of the Line, argues that New Zealand has torpedoed its status as a sustainable fishery, due to its destructive, bottom-trawled orange roughy – popular in the US – catch. Waitrose, the UK food chain, has banned orange roughy and hoki, another kiwi fish; a prime example of consumer-driven conservation that New Zealand would be wise to acknowledge. “The number one hole in your system,” Clover told the New Zealand Herald, “[is that] you don’t actually have a proper up-to-date assessment of the 600-odd species you have in your waters.”
I could go on, listing other holes in the “clean and green” PR line. New Zealand has much to be proud of as regards its farming prowess, such as getting food to markets thousands of miles away and surviving without government subsidies. But the colonial legacy in which finite resources, whether fish, timber or water, were commodities to be exploited no longer works. Diminishing resources worldwide have created a new paradigm, in which the world is divided between those who exploit resources for short-term economic gain, and those who see the economy as a subset of the environment, where sustainable use is the only viable long-term option.
©2010 Peter Huck
Friday, April 10, 2009
Natural Oils
Tua Fuk Yao in Thai, or yard long beans as I prefer to call them, since the Thai name said in my English, at least, sounds a bit shabby, are in the farmer's markets here at present. They are attractively long and slender and have long been a favorite of mine for their meaty dense texture. They turn a very deep viridian green color after a couple minutes' blanching in a sea-salt brine which brings out their sweetness too. I snip the ends with scissors and usually halve them before preparation. Then, I sauté them in a little sesame oil and throw in some chopped garlic, diced red peppers and fermented black beans, as is the East Asian way. The whole preparation takes a handful of minutes.
I blanched the beans this time, as usual, but did not sauté them. I made a ragout of red peppers, onions and leeks cooked in white wine with tomato puree and snow peas added near the end of its cooking, taking care not to brown any of these ingredients in any extra oil.
The result was a tasty dish somewhere between a soup and a stew with only the oils that the ingredients had brought to the dish. A pleasant vegetarian meal, and one in keeping with my diet.
Sunday, August 31, 2008
Last of Summer?
Marissa Roth gave a small dinner party last night which started poolside with plump green olives and sliced salami, creamy pastry cheese twists and a very potable chilled Riesling. When called to table we found a huge platter laden with fresh buffalo mozzarella, baby arugula, avocado, capers and a mild vinaigrette. Food maven, LA Times columnist and author Russ Parsons, brought along two varieties of Brandywine heirloom tomatoes grown in his Long Beach garden which Marissa substituted for her tiny heirlooms, and they were plump flavorful and lusciously tasty. After we had laid waste to that she served up wild organic salmon poached in orange juice with fresh dill, steamed french green beans with plenty of parsley, and deliciously crisp pan roasted fingerling potatoes. A French Muscadet and a dry, buttery Carneros Clos Du Val Chardonnay, which Russ also supplied, complemented it all with plenty of sparkling mineral water. If that wasn't enough we went back poolside to taste fresh nectarine gelato. All the ingredients were from her local South Pasadena farmer's market, including the gelato by Carmela Ice Cream who sells online and at the Hollywood and South Pasadena farmer's markets, with the exception of Russ's homegrown tomatoes and the salmon which Marissa caught herself at Bristol farms. It was a superb dinner.
We talked a bit about whether summer was over or not, a bit about food as Russ is a goldmine of information on resources and the way things are in foodland, and we talked about Bakersfield and Fresno and their anomalies. For all that hard work Marissa looked remarkably relaxed and glowed throughout the evening like the bloom on one of the sweet nectarines she garnished the gelato with. Perhaps this cool summer will linger on and I for one won't mind. Next week fall will officially be here for me as I harvest my Bakersfield Chardonnays and start to turn them into wine. I tasted them last week and they were intensely sweet but I bought a refractometer so as to measure the brix before I start getting sharp with the shears.
We talked a bit about whether summer was over or not, a bit about food as Russ is a goldmine of information on resources and the way things are in foodland, and we talked about Bakersfield and Fresno and their anomalies. For all that hard work Marissa looked remarkably relaxed and glowed throughout the evening like the bloom on one of the sweet nectarines she garnished the gelato with. Perhaps this cool summer will linger on and I for one won't mind. Next week fall will officially be here for me as I harvest my Bakersfield Chardonnays and start to turn them into wine. I tasted them last week and they were intensely sweet but I bought a refractometer so as to measure the brix before I start getting sharp with the shears.
Saturday, July 14, 2007
Heatwave Remedy: Rosemary's Iced Cream
This is foremost a commentary on food-ish experiences in and around the region that surrounds my little kitchen and it's not really a recipe write. I also think its a no brainer that South Africa popped up prominently in the last post, as I am continually reminded that our local landscape echoes that of The Cape and its hinterland. Many of the flora we take for granted originated down there: the bird of paradise, aloe and certain palms to name some. A place in Capetown made, to my memory, the best malted milk shakes I have ever had. I sat in a sea-breezed, palm shaded garden near the beach, and stood a spoon in the thick creamy delight which seemed twice my size, a treat which was akin to a love gift by my parents.
Today, in LA, we suffer a rally of the heat wave that punished us last week. I wish I was at Rosemary's. I would pop in there now but for the fact that Rosemary's Ice Cream Parlor is in downtown Bakersfield, a sprawling oil town with 300,000 plus inhabitants and a corresponding real estate boom. "Ole Bako" regularly enjoys temperatures of 100 degrees and worse. It's an hour and forty five minutes north of us, in the South Central Valley and is its agricultural epicenter. Most of our country's table grapes, pistachios, almonds and carrots, come from this rich, masterfully irrigated part of the valley. Bakersfield is famous for its style of country music, for Merle Haggard and Buck Owens, and also for its oil. As Gloria Swanson bullyingly cajoles William Holden in Billy Wilder's Sunset Boulevard:
Norma Desmond: Shut up, I'm rich! I'm richer than all this new Hollywood trash! I've got a million dollars.
Joe Gillis: Keep it.
Norma Desmond: Own three blocks downtown, I've got oil in Bakersfield, pumping, pumping, pumping! What's it for but to buy us anything we want!
When you drop down from the beautiful mountain ride into The Grapevine, named for both its luge-like passage and the vines bounded by the triangle between the north and southbound lanes of I-5, you immediately see a fantastic birds-eye view of the valley. When you hit the floor, the oil is ever pumping and here my allergies start to kick in. After a half hour of what is still a beautiful drive, now on I-99, you streak past vineyards and orchards, and depending on the season, potatoes, mustard, and cotton. This is where Cary Grant gets threatened by a crop duster in Hitchcock's North by Northwest and you occasionally still see them swoop over the freeway from field to vast field. Then you hit Bakersfield. Most people in LA will tell you that it's a place they rush through, from-to. When I gingerly turn onto White Lane I momentarily come under the impression that the world's supply of oil is endless and the environment is a nagging aunt you should ignore, on account of the fact that probably at least seventy-five percent of the vehicles are huge flat-bed trucks or SUVs. The occasional Honda, small Chevy, Lexus or Bentley provides light entertainment. I have a small economy car, and once in a while I feel a little threatened by leers from aggressive flat-bed drivers, as if a small car is a sign of my worth. Sometimes one will roll by with Haliburton or Schlumberger emblazoned on its side as a reminder that this is a company town, conservative and somewhat dated despite state of the art gated tracts. When my much loved natively resident in-laws went shopping for a hybrid vehicle recently they easily purchased one from surplus on the lot. Here in LA you have to get on a list. That will change as there is now an influx of disenchanted Angelenos moving in, but I'm still not sure if modern Bakersfield is the American Dream personified or a hastily manufactured illusion of it.
Bakersfield is certainly a great town for old-school food. There are the usual "luxury" chains, from Tahoe Joe's to P.F.Chang's, but what remains of the town's past are excellent Basque restaurants, five or six of them from the old pack, lead by Woolgrowers'. French Pyrenees' Basques settled here in force a century ago and are still a great influence in the region. A gem is the Pyrenees Bakery, near Woolgrower's downtown, their breads and pastries best sampled at their own outlet. Not far from there a fifties flavored Chinatown barely hangs on, and two leading ice cream manufacturers, Rosemary's and Dewar's (pronounced there dwars). Dewar's is famous for its iced milk and salt water taffy. They have a couple of outlets including the original, rather tattered, location. But, there is no frozen delight that compares to Rosemary's iced cream served in its single hallowed location. A family business, established in the mid-seventies and named for the founder's daughter, they make their iced cream on site, and toppings too. Chances are, one of the chit-chatting daughters, if not the maestro, will break away from family talk and quietly help you at the till when you leave. Their dining room is large, muraled with cherry topped enticements, and filled with white painted steel chairs on a checkerboard floor and marbled tables that remind me of a famous, lime green hued soda fountain in Cambridge, Mass. I have sent many people to Rosemary's when they have called me from the freeway, between towns, asking where to go for lunch, as they also serve straightforward toasted sandwiches (my favorite being the liverwurst). I am such a fan of theirs that I would do a website for them for next to nothing. In all forthrightness, a Black and Tan (see picture), overflowing with chocolate and vanilla ice cream, layered plentifully with hot fudge and butterscotch, topped with their own confectioner's cream and a cherry, glass of water on the side, will leave you full of its own accord. I won't mention the voluptuous banana splits and countless other fabulous standards on the menu. And you feel you are in your hometown.
In this LA neighborhood, gelato shops abound and the trendy, in my mind overblown, Pinkberry's "iced delight" is a stone's throw from my door. Rosemary's iced cream in Bakersfield beats and trounces them all, hands down, and if I could I would sniff disdainfully at them if I were passing by on my way to a local Rosemary's outlet. Rosemary's is a positive American Reality now, in Bakersfield, my hometown for almost four years.
Today, in LA, we suffer a rally of the heat wave that punished us last week. I wish I was at Rosemary's. I would pop in there now but for the fact that Rosemary's Ice Cream Parlor is in downtown Bakersfield, a sprawling oil town with 300,000 plus inhabitants and a corresponding real estate boom. "Ole Bako" regularly enjoys temperatures of 100 degrees and worse. It's an hour and forty five minutes north of us, in the South Central Valley and is its agricultural epicenter. Most of our country's table grapes, pistachios, almonds and carrots, come from this rich, masterfully irrigated part of the valley. Bakersfield is famous for its style of country music, for Merle Haggard and Buck Owens, and also for its oil. As Gloria Swanson bullyingly cajoles William Holden in Billy Wilder's Sunset Boulevard:Norma Desmond: Shut up, I'm rich! I'm richer than all this new Hollywood trash! I've got a million dollars.
Joe Gillis: Keep it.
Norma Desmond: Own three blocks downtown, I've got oil in Bakersfield, pumping, pumping, pumping! What's it for but to buy us anything we want!
When you drop down from the beautiful mountain ride into The Grapevine, named for both its luge-like passage and the vines bounded by the triangle between the north and southbound lanes of I-5, you immediately see a fantastic birds-eye view of the valley. When you hit the floor, the oil is ever pumping and here my allergies start to kick in. After a half hour of what is still a beautiful drive, now on I-99, you streak past vineyards and orchards, and depending on the season, potatoes, mustard, and cotton. This is where Cary Grant gets threatened by a crop duster in Hitchcock's North by Northwest and you occasionally still see them swoop over the freeway from field to vast field. Then you hit Bakersfield. Most people in LA will tell you that it's a place they rush through, from-to. When I gingerly turn onto White Lane I momentarily come under the impression that the world's supply of oil is endless and the environment is a nagging aunt you should ignore, on account of the fact that probably at least seventy-five percent of the vehicles are huge flat-bed trucks or SUVs. The occasional Honda, small Chevy, Lexus or Bentley provides light entertainment. I have a small economy car, and once in a while I feel a little threatened by leers from aggressive flat-bed drivers, as if a small car is a sign of my worth. Sometimes one will roll by with Haliburton or Schlumberger emblazoned on its side as a reminder that this is a company town, conservative and somewhat dated despite state of the art gated tracts. When my much loved natively resident in-laws went shopping for a hybrid vehicle recently they easily purchased one from surplus on the lot. Here in LA you have to get on a list. That will change as there is now an influx of disenchanted Angelenos moving in, but I'm still not sure if modern Bakersfield is the American Dream personified or a hastily manufactured illusion of it.
Bakersfield is certainly a great town for old-school food. There are the usual "luxury" chains, from Tahoe Joe's to P.F.Chang's, but what remains of the town's past are excellent Basque restaurants, five or six of them from the old pack, lead by Woolgrowers'. French Pyrenees' Basques settled here in force a century ago and are still a great influence in the region. A gem is the Pyrenees Bakery, near Woolgrower's downtown, their breads and pastries best sampled at their own outlet. Not far from there a fifties flavored Chinatown barely hangs on, and two leading ice cream manufacturers, Rosemary's and Dewar's (pronounced there dwars). Dewar's is famous for its iced milk and salt water taffy. They have a couple of outlets including the original, rather tattered, location. But, there is no frozen delight that compares to Rosemary's iced cream served in its single hallowed location. A family business, established in the mid-seventies and named for the founder's daughter, they make their iced cream on site, and toppings too. Chances are, one of the chit-chatting daughters, if not the maestro, will break away from family talk and quietly help you at the till when you leave. Their dining room is large, muraled with cherry topped enticements, and filled with white painted steel chairs on a checkerboard floor and marbled tables that remind me of a famous, lime green hued soda fountain in Cambridge, Mass. I have sent many people to Rosemary's when they have called me from the freeway, between towns, asking where to go for lunch, as they also serve straightforward toasted sandwiches (my favorite being the liverwurst). I am such a fan of theirs that I would do a website for them for next to nothing. In all forthrightness, a Black and Tan (see picture), overflowing with chocolate and vanilla ice cream, layered plentifully with hot fudge and butterscotch, topped with their own confectioner's cream and a cherry, glass of water on the side, will leave you full of its own accord. I won't mention the voluptuous banana splits and countless other fabulous standards on the menu. And you feel you are in your hometown.
In this LA neighborhood, gelato shops abound and the trendy, in my mind overblown, Pinkberry's "iced delight" is a stone's throw from my door. Rosemary's iced cream in Bakersfield beats and trounces them all, hands down, and if I could I would sniff disdainfully at them if I were passing by on my way to a local Rosemary's outlet. Rosemary's is a positive American Reality now, in Bakersfield, my hometown for almost four years.
Monday, July 9, 2007
Bazaar Bizarre
I would like to thank both Winfernal and Wolfgang for their comments in the recent Figs post. Winfernal, apparently a meat eater, shares his excellent vegetarian recipe for spaghetti carbonara with us, and a skepticism about the unhealthiness of raw eggs, amongst other things, and is well worth the read. Wolfgang poses some challenging questions. These independent comments address related topics which I will discuss in this post.As a child, I went where my parents went, and we were often in South Africa. Major cities, Jo'burg, Cape Town, Durban, had bazaars, colorful markets that were a cross between the modern swap meet and food hall and to my memory very large and sprawling, in devoted, permanent, locations. It was the sixties and the bazaars were under segregation, divided by race. I tread lightly with the terminology here, but there was the Indian Bazaar, and the African Bazaar, which I understand is now no longer operating. Both fantastically colorful and full of the bountiful produce that that fertile country provides, they were always a fun excursion for a wide-eyed child such as myself. At the Indian market it was quite something to see 40 kinds of curry powder arranged in conical heaps ranked by heat, the hottest being Mother-in-Law curry, and each brightly and differently colored according to its spice content. My father would always stock up before our return to Britain, as in those days it was difficult to find authentic Indian curry in England. But what I remember vividly, besides being expected to bargain for Zulu chachki, was the inevitability of a sheep's head at various meat stalls, eyes-in, buzzing with flies which the vendors would swat at and fan away. The smell of spice outweighed everything to my sensitive seven year old's nose, a reminder that spices were originally used to cover the taste and smell of rotting meat and vegetables, and sometimes to preserve them from further deterioration. Although I hear sheep's head is a delicacy I would probably not partake. There is little I will not try, but there are some I revisit rarely. I am, for instance, fussy about what is combined with eggs, and potatoes too, but I can't think of anything that I am truly disgusted by, except perhaps insects or larvae, which are eaten with relish in many parts of the world. I would not eat horse, or dog, or cat, though I have eaten lion biltong (jerky), defined after the instance, in Africa. I have eaten tripe, blood sausage, frog's legs and rattlesnake, and I relish fresh sautéed sweetbreads. Lamb's kidneys are a great favorite of mine. Farmed pheasant, the only kind available to us, is boring, hung for only a couple of days it cannot compete with its weeklong-hung counterparts in Europe, rich, delicious and gamey, and perfectly healthy. I will eat any vegetable or spice, though I don't care for hot peppers in any quantity as they then tend to destroy subtler and equally important flavors in any meal.
Above all, quality suppliers are supremely important, which, apart from the grocer or butcher, includes any restaurant you might eat at. I check labels and country of origin at market and I prefer to buy fresh local produce, seasonally current. I patriotically, stay clear of meat and fish from abroad if I can, though, unless you want to hock the family jewels, it is hard to find good lamb originating any place other than Australia or New Zealand. Government checks and balances are, to my mind, overly stringent in our country, particularly with regard to dairy. Do not think for a moment that a French Brie purchased at market is anything like what they are eating in Europe. You may as well have bought it in Europe and stone blasted it to conform to our government's standards. I remember being on a farm up-coast from Durban, South Africa, where I learned to milk a cow at the age of 8. We took the bucket back to the kitchen and tasted of the butterfat and it was truly wonderful. After home pasteurization it was still superior to what passes for milk in the the domestic market, though I'm sure if you own your own cow you can do the same here. One can get very sick if milk is not pasteurized at an early point, but does one really have to nuke it if it will be naturally processed into cheese?
In parts of the world where hygiene is almost absent, I have had to eat what has been set before me, so as not to offend my hosts (who have not necessarily been the providers of the food) and risked the bodily consequences usually for professional reasons. Cleanliness in the kitchen is Rule One which includes keeping vegetables and meats apart unless your preparation is swift. I was once obliged to taste the wine at a Mediterranean vineyard belonging to a family member of a friend and was served their latest white from a filthy glass in an equally filthy kitchen. I bit the bullet with the consolation that the wine had a high alcohol content (not a fail-safe antiseptic). Mostly I dine at friends' and a gracious host will not put you on the spot if you leave a portion of your serving, though they might gripe about it after you have left. It's unusual to be served something that isn't fairly "safe" at such events. If I can't eat something I quietly leave it and hope to be invited again.
As a postscript to the Big Eden post: I saw Ratatouille this weekend at El Capitan, which was magnificent, and I highly recommend it. Despite being somewhat anti modern Disney on account of their aggressive and invasive marketing, I bit the bullet. Daniel and Helena, 4 and 2 respectively, pictured above with uncle Matt and the theater backdropped, were completely spellbound at the immense imagination that unfolded on the silver screen. This was Helena's first time in front of the big screen. I do hope our nation's mothers and fathers will eventually let their children know that feral rats were responsible for the bubonic plague and are currently the source of hantavirus which is a killer here in the southwest. But, suspend belief once again, and see the film. It is absolutely terrific.
Tuesday, May 22, 2007
How Does Your Garden Grow?
My dear, beautiful, friend and neighbor, Shauna, has a demanding career "stoking the star, making machinery behind the popular song" (and yes, once upon a time, she worked forthe subject of that excellent song). Shuttling between LA, New York and Nashville, she still finds time to enjoy a glass of fine wine and to plant tomatoes, peppers and beans. Walked by her apartment-front garden just now, and, only two weeks after the
initial planting it sure is thriving. I put in some basil from my own heirloom seeds to help. Can't wait to taste of her efforts and my favorite fruit. Click on the pic to see the garden large in all its green splendor.
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