grape harvest 2009!
Posted: October 9, 2009 Filed under: gardening 2 Comments »
There is an orchard near my house that put in four or five rows of wine grapes. Been there for a few years now. Hybrid wine grapes: don’t make awful wine like native grapes, don’t die like European grapes, left to their own devices, do around here. Foch and Chambourcin. And these grapes have been left to their own devices; orchard has better things to do, I guess, than baby finicky wine-grapes, when I am probably the only person in the county who asked after them. The following are some pictures of what grapes, even tough hybrids, left to their own devices, in a damp year, look like come harvest time, around here:
We got around to showing up to pick, fairly arbitrarily, on October 6th. The Foch had already passed, and perhaps had fared a little better, but as it was it took the two of us an hour to pick 11.5 pounds of grapes. Below is a picture of one of the better, bigger bunches (very small, indeed):
We took it home and crushed it, and measured its sugar content: 18.5 Brix, a potential alcohol level of 10.3%. Considering the conditions, I was afraid it might have come in closer to 6%, so I was pleased. I kept the juice macerating on the skins for two or three hours, to extract a little color, to make a rosé. A nice, light, perhaps slightly sparkling rosé, to be drunk next summer. Two bottles worth. Oh well.
creamy watermelon!
Posted: October 9, 2009 Filed under: gardening Leave a comment »
Â
Fruit review. This one is called Cream of Saskatchewan. Fairly small, short-season watermelon. I grew it this year. From Seed Savers. Wet year, bad fruit growing year, and very bad for peppers. My melon was brittle; split into pieces when I started it with a knife. Very thin rind, like the package said—hardly there at all. The flavor, fascinating. Actually a little cream-like. (The flesh is more cream-colored, by the way, it looks white in most pictures I’ve seen, even in  my picture, it looks white.) It reminds me of eating maple snow, fresh snow with cream and maple syrup poured on it, something I grew up eating. It has a viscosity, too, that is unlike a watermelon, a thickness. It is more like a honeydew melon than most watermelon. It is a great novelty, and maybe this was a bad year for it. I will grow some other great novelty, next year.
roasting red peppers
Posted: September 25, 2009 Filed under: laying in 1 Comment »
Two years ago—the first year I roasted peppers—we made a great discovery. We bought a few cases, maybe five cases of peppers from a local farmer who sells imperfect peppers cheaply. These, he said, were a little on the ripe side. He left them at the house of a mutual friend, and we would pick them up. The first day, I’m fairly sure there was a first day, something happened and we didn’t make it. The second day, we went and the friend wasn’t home, and as it wasn’t that close a friend, to go trawling through her house, we left. On the third day (I think it was), we retrieved those peppers. On the ripe side.
Getting them home, we started to process them. There were a lot of rotten parts we had to cut out, and we cut out the stems and the seeds as well. We finished about half of them, and it got late, and we got tired. The next day (it may have been the next day) we started again. A lot of the peppers we’d processed the day before had new rot on them, and we had to cut at them again. We began to roast them on a shallow-troughed grill, one that proved inadequate, as the coals burned down too fast. Didn’t finish that day, either.
The point of all this, what I’m getting at, is that these peppers, ripe past rottenness, roasted under the broiler and then their skins steamed loose in a closed stock-pot, were a lot of work, I thought, too much work. Then, hands to the elbows covered in sticky, thick, black-flecked slime, from rubbing off the blistered skins, bitching about how few roasted red peppers one couple really needs in a year, I happened to lick one of my fingers.
The way I have described it, to incredulous listeners, is better than ripe strawberries in season. I am not a roasted red pepper lover: they are too expensive, and, whatever. And yet.
Make these. Make them over-ripe. Roasting peppers is a ridiculous amount of work, so it’s not worth doing if you don’t do it right. Once they are steamed and the skins rubbed off, put them with their juices in mason jars and cover them with olive oil. They keep pretty well in the refrigerator this way, and they freeze fine, too.
The Herbwife gave her account of this event, slightly more timely, here.
the mouth must adjust
Posted: August 17, 2009 Filed under: uncategorized 1 Comment »“The wines we now make in Apulia, like those we drank and used for cooking on Naxos and in Tuscany, are grown on a small-holding scale and almost exclusively for the grower’s use. . . .
Appreciation of [these] local wines comes gradually, while drinking, and by accepting their peculiarities. ‘Bisogna farsi la bocca’ is the rule. The mouth must adjust, and on the whole it does this best while eating. (Naxian quarrymen professed to eat only to honour the wine.) One is in fact asked to get over the shock of their uncontrolled diversity, which fluctuates not only with the weather during the year and on the day of the harvest, but according to the wine-maker’s hunches. . . .
The result is that one encounters both wonders and horrors such as are never met with in bottled wine.”
—Norman Mommens, “The Sculptor,” writing in Patience Gray’s Honey From a Weed (London: Prospect books, 1986.)
Other People’s Kitchens
Posted: August 12, 2009 Filed under: fasting Leave a comment »NYT article on a perennial problem.
atlas pasta machine mod
Posted: August 10, 2009 Filed under: uncategorized 2 Comments »
Everyone I know who has a pasta machine has this same pasta machine. Damp pasta dough sometimes sticks to the rollers and gets stuck under the casing pieces (not shown), and dries, and then catches more pasta dough and drags it in under the casing pieces. You have to open it up every few years and get that crap out.
Which is a pain. Not only is the thing difficult to take apart, but it is made from very sharp stamped metal which will cut you and have you cursing Italians, if you are the sort of person who likes to do that sort of thing.
Once you have those casings off (revealing the smaller, outer dowels, shown above) you will find them very difficult to put back on.
Why bother?
to keep chickens from being a nuisance
Posted: July 27, 2009 Filed under: gardening 3 Comments »“‘Farmers, in general, who keep hens, are more troubled with them than with any other one thing upon their farms, considering the amount of work which they do. They are always scratching in the garden, digging up corn, or committing other depredations which keep the farmer and his girls running to keep them out of mischief.’
Of course they are, because they must scratch for a living. If you don’t want hens in mischief, feed them; and at times when it is really necessary, shut them in a poultry-yard and feed them, and adopt this simple rule for feeding fowls, known to most housewives in the country who have charge of the poultry, but it may be useful to amateurs, and as it is very short, we print it. Here it is: Don’t feed too much. That is all; though we may add that food should never be given to fowls unless they are hungry enough to “run crazy” after it; and just as soon as they stop running crazy, you stop throwing feed, and never—no, never—leave feed lying by your fowls “for them to eat at leisure.” This same rule does pretty well for all other domestic animals—children included.”
Solon Robinson, Facts for Farmers (New York: Johnson and Ward, 1865), 142.
fireplace cooking
Posted: July 21, 2009 Filed under: uncategorized 4 Comments »
On account of several things we couldn’t set the grill on the usual firepit outside, and as the broiler is such a disappointment with things like meatballs, and seeing as lately I’ve been inclined towards the primitive, we found ourselves cooking in the fireplace the other night.
Let me tell you, I am sold.
I think I learned more about grilling in one hour than in the last five years of grilling on grills and open fires. And despite there being things I would do better next time (like making a deeper coal-bed and using the correct color-balance when taking a picture) these were perhaps the most satisfying meatballs I have ever cooked.
There will be more posts on this subject. Many more.
In the meantime, I suggest you try it. Rig some way to set up a rack in your fireplace, such as the bricks I used. Make sure you have a good, deep bed of coals. Put the rack on, wait until the rack is good and hot before putting on the food.
Have a glass of wine and a good pair of tongs. Lay around on an oriental rug bolstered by a few pillows and blankets. Eat the meatballs as they become ready, with the rest of your food, already thoughtfully laid out.
Bliss.
links: picnicking in Paris and another coup for Virginia wine.
Posted: July 17, 2009 Filed under: uncategorized Leave a comment »other foods, other fats
Posted: July 15, 2009 Filed under: fat 8 Comments »
I was raised on olive oil. I was for most of my life not fully aware that there really were other cooking fats. I knew we kept ‘vegetable oil,’ made from vegetables, presumably, I think for popping corn. Butter was for baking with.
Things change. At the moment, we have duck fat (pictured), bacon fat and leaf lard, in the refrigerator. We frequently have tallow (beef fat, as hard as wax) and chicken fat. Usually twice a year, after holidays, we have goose fat, a favorite. All of these, with a small investment of time, are free for the not-throwing-away. In the case of lard it’s usually a matter of someone else throwing it away, but if you ask nice, it’s still usually free.
As much as I love olive oil and butter, there are some things that other fats do better. Poultry fat, for richness of flavor, cannot be beat. Leaf lard, as everybody knows, though hardly anybody has tried it, makes the best, flakiest pie crust. And not only that: lard-butter pie crusts are easier to make than butter-only ones. But lard is good for pan-frying, too: a little heavy, perhaps, but iconic in greens and beans, and good especially for use in the cold months. We don’t get much tallow on account of our not eating much beef, and the beef we do eat (don’t know his name, this last one, but he was an intact, one-year-old grass-fed bull) hasn’t got much fat on it. I suspect however that it has a higher smoking point than some other fats, though. I am still learning.
We keep a few other fats on hand, like coconut oil for popping corn, and sunflower oil, for I don’t actually know what, come to think of it. And I’m curious to play with grape seed oil and some nut oils, which I suspect I’ll get around to in good time. But those aren’t quite so free, or, now that I get around to mentioning it, local.
readying new fermentation vessels
Posted: July 14, 2009 Filed under: uncategorized 2 Comments »
We got a whole lot of one gallon ex-vinegar bottles at an auction the other week, for the purpose of testing out varieties of home-made wines. Old bottles, and old vinegar bottles in particular, need special attention before they can be used to make wine, or else they can impart all kinds of nastiness. These, I filled with a dilute bleach solution and left out in the sun for a week, to sterilize. This is the only time in a carboy’s life that I attempt anything like sterilization with anything like bleach: once it has seen a little service, I like to think that any lingering microfauna, so long as I treat them well, will actually be beneficial to the making of wine. This is a little heretical, by the way. But, so far, so good.
So: bleached, I scrub the bottles out with a crooked bottle brush and rinse them. Now, they are ready to use, according to some people, though they still smell like bleach and are angry because you have not yet shown proper respect to the wine-making gods, by preparing a suitable place in which they might like to live. Really. At least, that’s one way to put it.
But I am convinced of the necessity of “treat[ing] the barrels [fermentation vessels] like the best of friends,” as Norman Mommens put it so well in Patience Gray‘s “Honey From a Weed.” (London: Prospect Books, 1986. One of the best books ever, by the way.)
On this occasion I made up a strong tea out of stale kitchen herbs, ones I know to have some astringent, anti-bacterial qualities (though mild), and ones we have growing that we’ll soon harvest, dry, and replace: rosemary, thyme, oregano, basil, mint. I would have used lavender, too, if we’d had any. Once the tea had steeped sufficiently, I poured it in the jugs and stoppered them up, so as to keep in the steam. I like to leave the tea in there for a couple days if I can, then rinse it out with good, clean water: the best I can find. Again, we are pleasing the gods here: forces no one fully understands. Do what needs to be done.
Now the jugs are ready to use, though I believe their juju will only improve with use, time, and continuing respect.
Incidentally, (a word I seem to like), those herbs I used in the tea all contain phenolic acid: an effective chemical for use in developing film. Take a tea like this, or made from any of its component parts, and add a concentrated base (as opposed to acid) substance such as baking soda, washing soda, or lye (if you know what you’re doing), and you will have an excellent, slow, fine-working, non-toxic black and white film developer. Add some vitamin C powder to speed it up. I haven’t played with this recently. I ought to.
NC wine (as in North Carolina), boxed in vintage Oval Office floorboards, sent by Obama to Italian President.
Posted: July 11, 2009 Filed under: uncategorized Leave a comment »No joke. Blue Ridge mountain Vermentino?
I am always excited to find another east coast winery doing something interesting, and competently. These folks are not so far from me. I will be analyzing our respective climates shortly.
I heard it here.
garden, catnip
Posted: July 8, 2009 Filed under: gardening 2 Comments »I harvested nearly an armload of catnip this morning to keep it from choking out the tomatoes it was choking out. Then I hung it up all over the house to dry. This place stinks. The cat is strangely unaffected.
the state of Spanish wine
Posted: July 8, 2009 Filed under: uncategorized 1 Comment »Great article on the state of Spanish wine by Joe Manekin. The article is available at both links, but the text is easier on the eyes at the first one (sorry, Joe).
This was published as part of the 31 days of natural wine series—a series of essays by diverse authors that taken together, so far, represents the best damn collection of wine writing I have ever come across. You should take a look.