Friday

Root Tapestry
















Nancy (France)  Photograph by David Geller, 2009

If I had fabulous wealth and could send one of my many
resourceful and highly skilled retainers on a mission to find
an image that bespoke love of the farmer for what the earth
gives in return for tending the garden, I would be thrilled to
have this sent back from the field. It is a tapestry that delights
not only the eye but stimulates that cooking, tasting, part of
the brain to consider what preparation and menu might
translate these wonders as truly and directly as can be.

Roasting, boiling, grilling, browning, mashing, toasting
seeds, whipping (my Aunt Ruthie, god bless her forever,
used to always express frisson over the whipping/mashing
question), and this is not to even get into wether to peel or
not, the order of serving, and other arcane molecular
gastronomy issues, and the deep relationship of the root
vegetables to human survival (and the deep relationship
of the humans to root vegetable survival perhaps).
Rachel