Seasons and Seasoning

The first summer squash, tomatoes and peaches are making their appearance this beautiful May morning at the market.

As we have often indicated in these posts, since we moved to Davis and started shopping at the farmer’s market, we’ve found that we mostly shop and eat seasonally: that is, we eat whatever is in season at the time.  We never made a conscious decision to do this; we just fell into it.  And we certainly never feel it as an obligation.  

For that matter,  eating in season might almost be said to be the less “natural” choice nowadays, if one considers our real society as our habitat.  Davis also has supermarkets where you can get pretty much any fruit or vegetable all the time.  So eating in season might be thought to be an act of abstention by which one deliberately limits or curtails an available abundance.

We find it is otherwise.  But why?

A stand-up comedian we like, Pete Holmes, does a bit about the sandwich shop Subway, where, he says, “everything tastes the same: it all tastes the way the restaurant smells, that vague, cardboard, sawdust smell…”

(You can hear it at:

http://soundcloud.com/bullseye-with-jesse-thorn/pete-holmes-subway)

It’s a really funny performance, but considered like this, out of context and in the cold light of day, isn’t it remarkable to think how profoundly we have impoverished ourselves and our senses — especially given the abundance of material things that surround us? 

We make this point to suggest why there is no restraint, but rather something positively pleasurable about waiting for the season.  It is to live with a whole calendar of smells and tastes: a progress from green garlic to winter garlic, from asparagus to zucchini, from fava beans to tomatoes, and so forth.

We wait for the season to buy and cook, and then when we cook we also season the food.  The word “season,” as a noun referring to a certain time of year, descends from the Latin serere, to sow.  It's easy to imagine people a long time ago being intensely concerned about identifying the right time to sow and reap.   As a verb meaning (as the Oxford English Dictionary gives it), “To render (a dish) more palatable by the addition of some savoury ingredient,” season descends from the Old French “saisonner” (itself a distant cousin of serere), but now taken as meaning “to ripen.”  The word itself thus seems to encompass a certain rhythm of sowing and ripening, of planting and fruition.  The food ripens in the field in the proper season and then it ripens in your pan with a touch of seasoning.

Today we put some fresh shelled English peas, carrots and a few chopped spring onions in a pan with some butter and a little water.  We cooked them covered at low heat until almost tender.  Then we reduced the liquid to a glaze, and seasoned with salt, pepper and some chopped mint from the garden.  Perfectly simple seasoning for the simple abundance of the season.

Golden Ranger

This week we staggered home with the bounty typical of this season, in which we still find the produce we've been enjoying for weeks or months--such as asparagus, fennel, oranges, fava beans, and turnips--but also relatively new treats, including tomatoes, cherries and blueberries, and debuts, including the first peaches of the season.  It was a particular pleasure to find a Golden Ranger chicken at Cache Creek Meat Co. for the third week in a row.  The Golden Rangers will be available for a few more weeks, too.  This is the first kind of chicken we got from Cache Creek--several years ago now--and it remains our standard for evaluating chickens.   If you have your doubts, these pasture-raised chickens will teach you why they are both different from and better than even organic chickens, let alone those from factory farms.  One of the things we've learned about buying meat at the farmers market is that it sometimes requires us to rethink basic cooking strategies.  Cache Creek chickens are smaller and much less fatty than any other chickens we've tried.  For instance, they don't have those flaps of yellow fat that need to be cut off.  As a consequence, they tend to cook faster.  They also shed less fat so if you roast vegetables in the pan with them, you might want to add a little olive oil at the start.  In turn, Bledsoe pork tends to have more fat than the super-lean "other white meat" pork we've grown used to.  In short, you have to experiment a little with market meat and be willing to revise your methods a bit.  

The Golden Ranger is a relatively small chicken and it has a wonderfully intense flavor.  It's possible to get its skin very crisp.  Kristy at Cache Creek advised us to leave the chicken uncovered for a few hours before cooking it to make the skin even crisper.  So on the day that we roasted it, we salted it in the morning and left it uncovered on a plate in the fridge.   That night, we roasted it following the recipe for "Alice B. Toklas chicken" from Gertrude Stein by way of Peggy Knickerbocker's book Simple Soirees.  In this recipe, you preheat a cast iron skillet on the stove top (at about medium), heat a little butter and oil in it, and then start the chicken breast side down for 4-5 minutes, then flip it over for a few more minutes on the stove top before finishing it in a 400 degree oven.  After it's roasted for 35-40 minutes, pour 1/2 cup of port over it, and 10 minutes later, 1/2 cup of orange juice.  When it seems ready (the legs wiggle and the juices between leg and breast run clear), take the chicken out and let it rest.  Resting meat is always important.  But it makes a big difference with these chickens, we think.  While the chicken rested, we skimmed the fat off of the pan juices (less work than it would be with a fattier bird), boiled down the juices, and finished the sauce with a tablespoon or two of cream.  

The final chicken looked like this.  Even the stripped carcasses of these chickens remain flavorful.  We save them in the freezer and use them for stock.  This stock isn't the same as the stock we made with stew hens, described in our "bountiful stock" post.  But it is infinitely superior to canned stock, and it is a pleasure to know that it is made with what would otherwise be wasted--a carcass or two, a few onions, carrots and celery from the back of the vegetable drawer, and a rind leftover from parmagiano reggiano cheese.  We save those rinds in a bag in the freezer and put them inside a chicken as we roast it, or in soups or stocks, or even in pots of beans as they cook.

We'd thrown some of the tiny turnips we'd gotten into the roasting pan, so those were an added bonus.  We've cooked a lot of those turnips this year, especially enjoying them in vegetable melanges with carrots and fava beans.

A quick snack for the cook is raw radishes served with dipping salt.  These are beautiful and spicy purple radishes, served with a smoked salt.  

Herbs and Witches

Cooking with herbs combines the simple sensual pleasure of their smell, appearance, and taste, with reminders of their history, especially their central role in that remarkable combination of cooking, medicine, ritual, cosmetic practice, and experimental science that has long been women’s work. 

When we think about herbs, we have a tendency to think about Anne Bodenham, who  was executed for witchcraft in England in 1653.  She was eighty years old at the time.  She wore spectacles, spoke her mind, and had enjoyed a long career teaching, reading and providing an eclectic mix of services to her neighbors—helping them find things, solve problems, and cure minor ailments.  Such talents qualified her as what was called a “cunning woman,” a status that could easily get women into trouble because it was not easy to separate medicine and religious practices from occult belief at that time. Perhaps the most haunting aspect of this story is that, as she faced her execution, she dictated a kind of will, asking that her women friends would prepare her body for burial and destroy her garden:  “Her will was that the Women that shrouded her should go into her Garden, and gather up all her herbs, spoil all her flowers, and tear up the roots."  Why?  Perhaps she wanted to insure that no one would accidentally eat a poisonous or dangerous plant.  Perhaps she simply wanted to destroy an extension of her identity and a source of her power so that no one else could claim it.  Just as Shakespeare’s Prospero sinks the books from which his magical powers as a sorcerer derived, so Anne asked that her plants be torn out.  Whatever it may have been, we often think of her, our ghostly companion, as we tend our own herbs, in gratitude for something as simple as a garden we can call ours.

Most herb gardens have more benign uses and fates than Anne’s.  In ours, the herbs sometimes have to struggle to get enough sun so we also often buy fresh herbs at the market.  The herbs at the farmers market are more abundant, fresher, and less expensive than those available in supermarkets, especially those crammed into plastic boxes.  They make a beautiful posy, as fragrant and pretty as anything else you might put in a vase.   

This week, we made a recipe from A Celebration of Herbs:  Recipes from the Huntington Herb Garden.   This book is based on lectures by Shirley Kerins, but it includes recipes contributed and tested by a large cadre of Huntington Library volunteers and so it has some of the depth and breadth of a community cookbook, drawing on a wealth of collective knowledge and experience.  The book also includes quotations and images from the library’s collection of herbals, that is, encyclopedias of herbs, describing their culture and uses.  We chose this recipe because it highlights mushrooms, which we always have at the market, and the herbs in abundant supply now.

Tarragon-marinated mushrooms

1 pound mushrooms, cleaned

¾ cup olive oil

¼ cup wine vinegar (red or white)

2 tablespoons lemon juice

3 tablespoons minced fresh chives

1 tablespoon minced fresh tarragon

1 teaspoon salt

½ teaspoon sugar

½ teaspoon minced fresh dill

1 clove garlic, minced (we used the green garlic and some chopped scapes since those are at the market now)

If the mushrooms are large, halve them and set aside.  Combine the oil, vinegar, lemon juice, chives, tarragon, salt, sugar, dill, and garlic in a large lidded container.   

Add the mushrooms, cover, and shake well.   

Marinate 4 hours or longer in the refrigerator.  Shake occasionally.  Serve chilled.

According to A Celebration of Herbs this will serve 6, but not at our house.  A head of cauliflower can also be substituted for the mushrooms.

Another great showcase for herbs is Feta marinated in olive oil and herbs.  This is especially good with Nicalau Farms goat feta, so here's hoping they start bringing it to the market again this summer.  Orland Creamery Farmstead has recently started offering a cows' milk feta on Saturdays that should work beautifully because it is porous and will absorb flavors very well.  This is also a great recipe for someone who wants a little project, but not too taxing, and who wants the long-term gratification of preserving without too much work.

We base our recipe on that in Joanne Weir's Wine Country Cooking.

Start with a good sized piece of feta, about 3/4 pound.  Take a hefty handful of sprigs of sturdy herbs--oregano, rosemary, and thyme are good.  "Gently bruise" them with the spine or side of a knife, as Weir suggests, to begin releasing their oils.  Heat a cup of good olive oil--from the market, naturally--over medium heat.  Don't let it get too hot!  You want to infuse it with the herbs, not fry them.  Throw in the herbs and let them sizzle for just 30 seconds.  Remove the pan from the heat and let the oil cool.  Then place some of the herb sprigs and oil in the bottom of a clean mason jar.  Pack cubes of feta (we like to cut it into cubes to maximize marination) into the jar and add the rest of the herbs and oil.  

Then store this in the refrigerator for 2 weeks to 3 months.  The longer it stands the herbier the feta will be.  When you serve it, return the cheese and oil to room temperature and  drizzle the cheese with the oil.  You can top this with  freshly chopped herbs; discard the herbs that have been in the oil.  But don't waste a drop of the oil!  It's very flavorful.  The cheese and oil will make a simple Greek salad of tomatoes, cucumbers, and olives pretty special.

More spring pasta

From last Saturday's market we took home more fava beans and English peas, which in traditional French and Italian recipes are often cooked together since they're in season at the same time.  The sweet peas make a nice complement to the earthy fava beans.  We like to make a simple spring pasta that combines both with a few sprigs of spring onion and/or spring garlic, which are among the most distinctive ingredients of this season, much sweeter and milder than their mature counterparts.


This week we also brought home garlic scapes, which we had to have explained to us.  They're apparently the flower-stalks of garlic plants, often cut off so the plant puts all its energy into making the plump bulbs that we usually use. But they actually have a mild garlicky flavor.

Blanche and peel the favas, then shell and blanche the peas lightly, and reserve.  Then lightly saute some chopped ramps and spring onions in olive oil and a bit of butter, not enough to brown them.  (In another season, you could just use chopped shallots.)  Add a few chopped tomatoes or a tablespoon or two of tomato paste.  (If you use fresh, they should be peeled and seeded.  Although we brought home some early tomatoes this week they weren't quite ripe enough for sauce.)

Then add a glug of white wine, and cook until it reduces to nothing.  Finally add about a quarter cup of cream, and simmer until slightly thickened into a pink creamy sauce.  That's almost it.  (This is another dish that could also have julienned proscuitto or other ham sauteed lightly, just before you add the onions.  We like the dish both this way and, as here, vegetarian.)

We use this sauce with home-made noodles, medium-thick.  Of course you could also use store-bought dried pasta: fettuccini or tagliotelli, or even a shaped pasta like penne or whatever — the Italians are notoriously inconsistent in their names for the myriad different forms of pasta they make.  At home, we cut them by hand so they are  irregular.  After all, as long as they're homemade (a restaurant might call them "hand-cut"), they may as well look that way.

Cook your pasta in boiling water until just barely done, then finish them in the pan with the sauce, adding about half a cup at least of grated cheese (Parmesan, Asiago, etc.) and about half a cup of pasta water; and tossing over high heat until the sauce is fairly dry and clinging to the pasta. 

This is a basic template for a pasta that could highlight almost any spring vegetable.  It's fine even with just a little spring onion or garlic, the tomatoes, cheese and cream.  Utter simplicity and pure pleasure.

In which we cook from the Davis Farmers Market Cookbook: Fava Bean Soup

We were excited to get our copy of the Davis Farmers Market Cookbook:  Tasting California's Small Farms, by Georgeanne Brennan and Ann M. Evans.  This is a beautiful book, and one that will inspire you to shop the market with a new appreciation.  One of the nicest things about the book is the way that it helps you to see our farmers and their wares through its photographs.  Naming the farmers in each photograph assists the process of getting to know them as individuals and neighbors, one of the privileges of shopping a relatively small, local market on a regular basis.  The authors provide new insights, too, even for market regulars such as ourselves.  For instance, we didn't know that California Vegetable Specialties in Rio Vista is "the only commercial grower of Belgian endive in the United States," even though we buy that endive almost every week.

Brennan and Evans know our market and our region.  Brennan has written many, many cookbooks and they are both experienced cooks, teachers, and writers.  The result is a book with a point of view.  The authors' knowledge and passion illuminate each page.  The book is also reliable in that these are well-conceived recipes, the outcome of years of cooking, and they have been carefully tested--which has become dishearteningly rare in the world of cookbooks.  The book includes a wide range of recipes, including preserves of various kinds.  One of us is a big fan of Brennan's book on preserving, The Glass Pantry (now out of print).  Like that book, the Davis Farmers Market Cookbook has recipes for savory as well as sweet preserves, in this case, ketchup, pickled onions, and chutney.  We will be getting back to those recipes later in the summer.

While the book is organized seasonally, it begins with eight basic recipes that can be adapted week to week and season to season:  for risotto, pasta, a savory gratin and tart, a vegetable fricassee, etc.  This is the place to start for those who want to respond to what's on offer at the market but have a hard time letting go of that recipe and shopping list. Should you decide to make a risotto, for example, you could lay in the arborio rice, stock, parmesan, and butter, and then launch yourself into the market, looking for mushrooms and whatever spring vegetable looks best, asparagus or peas.  Or you might have the tart crust made, and milk available at home, and then buy the eggs and cheese you'll need for a savory tart at the market, as well as whatever vegetables look best to you that week, knowing you'll be able to pull off a main dish.  This is a great "on ramp" for starting to cook in response to what you find  at the farmers market, without feeling you have to make endless follow up grocery trips.

The first thing we've cooked from the book is a Fava Bean Soup.  Fava beans are in season now.  They were also one of our first farmers market discoveries, and we still have a sentimental attachment to them.  We have that wonderful chicken stock we described in last week's post, so this soup seemed a perfect choice.  We skipped the two recommended garnishes--chopped, cooked pancetta and creme fraiche.  Both would be superb but we didn't have them.  The soup was still splendid unadorned.

The basic recipe is simplicity itself:

2 1/2 lb. fava beans (in their pods)
3 cups chicken stock
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon white pepper

For those of you who are unfamiliar with fava beans, the challenge they pose is that you have to shell them, blanch them, and then skin them.   As Brennan and Evans explain, this is "time-consuming but worth both the effort and the minutes."

They look like this once you take them out of the pods.  The next step is throwing these into boiling water.  We learned from this cookbook that we have been overcooking our favas;  the book earned its place on our crowded shelves with that tip alone.  Brennan and Evans advise you to leave the favas in the boiling water for 30 seconds only.  They are right.  What we would add is that, if you are going to use these favas for something other than soup (in a pasta or vegetable melange, for instance), you should shock them in ice water at this point so that they stop cooking.  The next step is to get them out of the skins (which are tough and bitter, and obscure the beans' gorgeous bright green). You can do this with a paring knife or a thumbnail.

The skinned favas look like this.   At this point, they can be pureed with olive oil, salt, and pepper for a dazzling spread on crostini, or used in other dishes. 

For this soup, you combine the favas and stock and cook for 5-20 minutes depending on how tender the favas were to begin with.  Taste them!  When they are soft, puree the mixture in a blender (you probably need to do this in batches unless you want green goop dripping off your glasses).  Brennan and Evans recommend straining the soup and simmering it again.  You season it at this point with the salt and pepper and can add the pancetta and creme fraiche garnishes, if you're using them.  We served it immediately, right out of the blender, and garnished it with grated pecorino romano because 1) fresh uncooked favas are traditionally served as a snack with pecorino and 2) that's what we  had on hand.