Letter From New Zealand #6

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. They are living in a tiny apartment in Auckland with a very, very small kitchen. Since their excellent and mostly vegetarian dinner parties were such a feature of my social life here, and sadly missed, I asked Peter to think about writing a monthly letter from down under as a kind of mirror to my own efforts and experiences here. This is the sixth letter.

One of the pluses that New Zealand boasts, from a carbon capture perspective, are its forests, which cover 7.5 million hectares, or almost 30% of the land area. We've spent the past week up on Two Caravan Hill, our Coromandel property, working with a local team to add a few hundred native trees to the national total, countering some of our carbon emissions as well as restoring biodiversity. After several days of heavy rain - up to 10 inches in one deluge that precipitated huge mudslides on the twisting road over the steep Coromandel Range to our east - we struck a dry window of clear, still, warm days, and bone-chillingly cold nights with temperatures near freezing, that made clamoring up steep banks (sometimes chain-sawing giant gorse plants to gain access) a little easier and less uncomfortable.

Having sourced our plants – native species that included totora, rewarewa, puriri, matai, pohutukawa, hebe, pittosporum, flax, ti kouka, akeake, karaka, kowhai, tanekaha, horoeka and nikau to give them their Maori names - from local nurseries and Project Crimson, a national group which supplies free plants, we stockpiled compost, mulch and stakes around the property and got stuck in .

The crucial thing when attempting to reconstruct a forest is where you plant. Thus certain trees – the rewarewa and totara for instance – like free-draining areas and work on slopes. Others, including many grasses – planted as part of our ongoing stream restoration - and the cabbage trees, can tolerate wet feet. Indeed, cabbage trees would seem to grow anywhere: I’ve seen them on high slopes in dry limestone country in Hawke’s Bay. Others, like karaka, handle wind, no mean consideration on Two Caravan Hill, where gusts routinely box the compass. Soft-leafed plants, pace the puriri, do best with some cover. We solicited advice from experts, walking around the landscape to site specimens, and frequently consulted books as we tried to imagine what plants would look like in three, five, ten or twenty years. Podocarps like matai, totora or kauri (which we’ll plant later) live for centuries. The trick is not to give into temptation and overplant, although in severe wind areas we massed fast growers like pittosporums to break up gusts.

This was our second large-scale planting – Barbara was in charge of the first last August, when it rained – and we’re starting to see more bird life (attracted by plants that provide food in the form of berries). Fantails fluttered around as we spread mulch, they often follow people as we disturb insects when brushing through bush; California quail burst from cover when we approached; tuis, famous for their repertoire of grunts, coughs and chortles, sang nearby, as did bellbirds and one afternoon I watched a kahu, or hawk, ghost silently over the tree fern glade beneath our bach, using its wings to back and hover, as it searched for prey. I didn’t hear the morepork this time.

Dinner With a View

Due to troublesome times and a growing sense of panic within, I have accepted very few dinner invitations this year, and also given very few of my own. Last week Tony and Sherrie invited us to a wonderful evening at the house up in the hills of Highland Park which has views toward Elysian park and Downtown making a sparkling picture from the dinner table. They also have the terraced garden planted with all manner of fruits, vegetables and herbs. Tony and I worked together many years ago and it is all too seldom that we are able to get together. This one had been on the books for some time and they are always fun to spend time with, being hip to all the new stuff, the old stuff and what will be happening before it happens, here in LA.

Sherrie prepared a flavorful and peppery lamb ragu on fresh pasta and Tony, grilled brussel sprouts which he allowed to burn slightly and which we all agreed seemed to enhance the delicate sweetness of the dish. There was also a kale salad and creamy buratta on the side, neither of which I had eaten before, despite Buratta being a trendy item in town. Sherrie opened a couple of delicious reds to sip while we laughed, we cried, we ate it all up. The view from the table sparkled in all directions, not least our sparkling hosts who cheered me up immensely.

Erin's Olives: My Cure

Olives plucked directly from the tree are edible, but, unbelievably bitter. "Bitter" is really an understatement, for having tasted them that way, I can tell you that that they are pretty much spit-out bitter. Planted extensively in Southern California for their ornamental beauty and also for commercial purposes, the olive is, unless genetically engineered, a messy tree, spilling a blood-indigo colored carpet beneath its arbor when that season comes. Many years ago, when I lived in Tucson they banned new plantings for just that reason arguing that the trees were an unwanted source of allergens. There are many varieties, and one of the local favorites is the Russian Olive which is a very beautiful gray tree reminiscent of a weeping willow. The fruit of an olive has a gestation that takes it from pip, to firm greenness and shades on to a deep dark fleshy, fluid filled blackness that signals complete ripeness. One can choose to cure the fruit at any point between greenness and ripeness.

The curing of olives is one of the great achievements of mankind. Olive oil, is, and for centuries passed, has been used as a condiment and cooking medium, and probably more importantly as a vital fuel for lamps. Most olive oil comes from the stone, or pip, ground down or pressed. Olive oil has a very strong flavor and can overpower many Northern European or traditional American dishes. I remember being 15 and thinking that I would surprise my parents by making Southern Fried Chicken for dinner. I had watched my mother make the dish repeatedly over the years and learned her method, but, not having developed a real palette, I thought olive oil would be perfect as a medium, and of course it completely overpowered the dish. I was crestfallen for all my efforts even though we all managed to eat it up.

Times change. This last Christmas I was walking up the pathway to Erin Chairez's house in Bakersfield, and I saw that the young Russian olive tree, originally planted as an ornamental, was dripping with plump fruit. I went in, got a large bowl and began picking the the juicy morsels from the tree. I filled the bowl and brought them back down to L.A. You can cure olives with food grade lye and also with salt. Since it was an experiment I thought I'd forgo the cost of the mail order lye, which is also a poison, and try to do it with salt. I scored each deep dark olive with a knife at the branch end and poured water and salt over them to make perhaps a 15% brine. I love long haul food experiments, having learned patience with wine making and meat curing, so, I boned up on various methods from the internet and came to my own process. I poured the whole lot into a gallon ziploc bag and put them in the fridge and after two weeks I pulled them out and changed the dark maroon water with fresh brine and tasted one. Hardly a difference. I repeated this again and again , changing the water less frequently mostly out of apathy, almost thinking that it was never going to happen.

Last week, some three months on, having forgotten about the bag tucked away in a corner of the fridge, I pulled them out and tasted one. It was barely salty but deliciously olive-y. Time to rinse them and dry them. I spread them on a baking sheet at a 225 degree heat and checked them every ten minutes over a half hour period until they had shrivelled ever so slightly and I pulled one out and tried it. The flavor had intensified from that ever so slight dehydration. I resisted the urge to add chopped rosemary or garlic reminding myself that I am something of a flavor purist. I coated them very thinly with olive oil to seal them and unify their color and then canned some and slapped a quick label on the jar(see pic). I must say they are delicious. My only regret is that I did not pick and cure five times the amount. Ah well there is always next year!

A Letter From Peter Huck in New Zealand

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. They are living in a tiny apartment in Auckland with a very, very small kitchen. Since their excellent and mostly vegetarian dinner parties were such a feature of my social life here, and sadly missed, I asked Peter to think about writing a monthly letter from down under as a kind of mirror to my own efforts and experiences here. This is the first of such entries.

Dateline: Auckland, New Zealand; January 20, 2010

Intrigued that I cook in an even smaller kitchen – a narrow, well-appointed galley betwixt a toilet and a shower; perhaps an eighth of the space in a 19.6 by 11.5 foot apartment, formally a motel room - than the one he graces in Los Feliz, Jonathan has invited me to file an occasional culinary piece from New Zealand, where I returned, after two decades working as a journalist in Los Angeles, to pursue an off-the-grid house project in the Coromandel Peninsula. This post is a tour d’horizon of my new life in Godzone; I’ll get into specifics down the road.

I interpret “culinary” in the widest sense. I am just as interested in learning where food comes from, how it is grown, and the sometimes controversial issues surrounding its production, as I am in cooking and eating. In some respects New Zealand is a huge farm. Agriculture is innovative and entrepreneurial – there are no subsidies – but surprisingly resistant, given the country’s pristine environmental hype, to sustainable, organic methods. Still, for those who look there are plenty of delights.

My life is split between Auckland and Coromandel, a three-hour drive around the rim of a spectacular maritime inlet, the Firth of Thames, then up the Pacific Coast Highway, the Antipodean version, a sometimes one-lane blacktop that twists from sea level to some 1,500 feet, then back again.

I’m now in Auckland, living with my girlfriend Barbara Drake (left, with "pet" Magpie) on the slopes of Mt Albert, one of 49 extinct volcanic “stumps” that litter the narrow isthmus between the Tasman Sea and the Pacific Ocean. It is a maritime city with volatile sub-tropical weather and fertile soil; perfect for fresh sea fish and home grown vegetables - we can hardly keep up with the fecundity of our two tiny plots that keep on giving: silver beet, cabbage, lettuce, rocket [arugula], rhubarb, courgettes, tarragon, thyme, sorrel, nasturtiums, basil, oregano, cilantro and parsley.

Our life is lived in a series of boxes: our city flat, where cooking is a combination of cuisine and choreography; our ‘95 Subaru wagon; two packed-to-the-door storage facilities; and a pair of ancient caravans – one with an almost completed lean-to or sleep-out, largely built from recycled material sourced from community demo yards – on our 27-acre conservation block of regenerating rainforest.

It is a lifestyle – frequent journeys between tiny living spaces – that dictates what we eat. We live on a very cheap budget. Our homegrown veggies are supplemented by organic produce, including fruit, from highway honesty stalls and community gardens in Auckland and Coromandel. Eating well means hooking into food networks, where barter sometimes replaces payment. We also buy fresh fish more or less direct from the boat at various harbours between the city and our land, along with specialist items – cheese, honey, olive oil, wine, condiments or bread – from grassroots producers. We don’t shun supermarkets – rural life hasn’t dented my caffeine habit - but they’re peripheral.

Thus, the Tarakihi depicted in the picture taken in our caravan, as dusk falls on the Hauraki Gulf and a Morepork, or native owl, starts calling on our block, is that day’s catch, bought from the Coromandel fish ‘n’ chip shop. Our meal, cooked by Barbara on a two-ring gas stove in candlelight, included French beans from the weekly farmers’ market, organic chilli sauce from the sleepy community of Papa Aroha, olive oil from one of our neighbours, garlic from another, toasted kelp harvested from New Zealand’s beaches [five times the length of the US West Coast], plus new potatoes and a 2007 “cleanskin” [end-of-vintage wine, sans label] Gisborne merlot from the local store.

Like the US, New Zealand is rediscovering the delights of home grown produce. Gardening networks, including community gardens where some food is free, are emerging. Ironically, for a nation where farm produce is the major export [and sometimes cheaper in Trader Joe’s than it is in an Auckland supermarket], and “clean and green” a national catchphrase [and, as the Guardian pointed out, sometimes a hollow one; more on that at a later date], kiwis rank third on the 2009 OECD obesity list, after the US and Mexico, a consequence of a generation weaned on processed and fast foods. I’ll be exploring these themes, and local cuisine, on future posts.

©2010 Peter Huck

Tiny Kitchens

A superb, jaw-dropping exhibition at LACMA which originated at The National Gallery in D.C. called Pompeii and the Roman Villa: Art and Culture around the Bay of Naples is to die for and prompted my purchase at a local bookstore of Mary Beard's superb book, related only in subject.

My Ancient Greek feeble, and my Latin pathetic, I nevertheless call myself a keen antiquarian and much of my reading originates there. To see these artifacts of the wealthiest inhabitants, and surely, this is not how everyone lived, is wonderful. It is also a reminder of the social diisparities of our own time. In a glossy, clinical museum setting it is sometimes difficult to keep in mind that Roman society was as varied and fragmented as our own, and more likely openly cruelly so. I am personally interested in nuances and customs from our western fore bearers that shine a light on our own era. A sense of history is ultimately important in understanding where we are now.

So, knock me down with a feather, Mary Beard states the fact that even in the biggest villas the kitchens were comparatively tiny. And I mean small at their grandest size . Pompeii and Herculaneum would be the Santa Barbaras and Venturas of their time, and, for sure, many of the largest villas were in the surrounding country (think Ojai and so forth ). Some historians suggest that food was brought in to the tricliniums (small but grand dining rooms) of large houses from the many restaurants in town and also that people may have essentially barbecued in the courtyards of various gardens and waterways for their daily pleasure. This doesn't surprise me at all for the rich in this town at least seem to cater even the smallest events.

However, I feel so much better. If Apicius had to cook in such close quarters I am amazed that he got the results he did but I am sure he never cooked a thing and the documents we have are more to do with his hired cooks' efforts even if he was a real person, perhaps the Homer of antique cuisine? I have a tiny kitchen and I cook some good stuff I think, but, lets face it those Romans of the first century could get a whole lot out of their kitchens too. Hmm that might be a Julie and Julia challenge - though I have read that book and really disliked it. Perhaps Meryl Streep's acting will redeem the story. That is also a story about cooking in a small kitchen that has spawned a bundle of similar efforts using The French Laundry Cookbook or Larousse as yeast.

By the way the roasted organic golden beets marinating in balsamic vinegar and sprinkled with Maldon sea salt in the picture above are sitting pretty next to my curing salts freshly arrived from parts afar. I clarified a half gallon of rich chicken stock today and froze it in packets. It is a real thrill seeing the egg whites take out the dross and leave the gold in the clarification process. If alchemy were ever anything real in the past, it is cooks that own it in our own time.

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.

Sunday Luncheons

Two lovely consecutive weekends have just passed here in LA . And two pleasant afternoons beside mesmerizing swimming pools. Michael Golob is a true artist and a man I admire. I worked with him during my time in movie advertising and he hosted a backyard barbecue, Memorial Day Weekend, at his family home in a quiet tree shaded corner of Burbank. We feasted on teriyaki chicken and chicken sausage, well, just about every kind of cookout dish imaginable. His sweetheart, Liz, made pies that were to die for and I saw one member of the assembly, who shall remain nameless, go back at least three times to partake of the different varieties. I stopped at one brownie, not being of the sweet toothed. It was a wonderful family affair.

Yesterday, in South Pasadena, The Waymouths, newly returned from Tibet and Nepal, regaled us with stories of drinking yak butter tea, of conch blowing, and of flushing out tigers in the long grass on the back of trumpeting elephants. We enjoyed a brief show of Nigel's elegant snapshots of monastic life in the thin air of the Himalayas. Marissa (née Roth), while waiting for the Leica engineered Kodachromes to come back from Kansas, put together a smoked salmon and bagel lunch with whipped cream cheese, capers, organic tomatoes and onions, washed down with Vouvray spritzers and a nice Bandol. Plenty of fizzy mineral water kept us cool. The finches clubbed around the bird feeder while we ate, and our hostess' gorgeous garden is on the verge of blooming big time, providing a beautiful backdrop to the dancing surface of the pool. I am so glad they are back, always something missing in my life when they are travelling. What a great summer it will be.

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 for
the 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.