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

Small Planet

It was 1968; an intense year. The reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., and Senator Robert Kennedy were murdered. News of the My Lai Massacre was unfolding and other horrors of war in Vietnam were shown on the news each night. The Beatles' White Album had just been released. New shows such as Star Trek, Laugh-In, Green Hornet, and The French Chef were on our television. I was eleven years old - the same age as my son right now. 

Then....in December, NASA's Apollo 8 sent Frank Borman, James Lovell, and William Anders to the far side of the moon and back again, and here came photographs of the Earth taken by Bill Anders from lunar orbit, the most famous of which was called Earthrise. There was optimism expressed by some that these images would hasten world peace. They had to! One extra connection I had was that my father had worked on the Apollo program in some minor way - he was an aircraft engineer whose quality control work from his visits to Cape Canaveral sent his fingerprints into outer space. How exciting for me! 

Although peace did not break out, trajectory, a word used a lot in those days, was something I was feeling concerned about; both my own and that of the earth. I cut out this picture from a magazine, saved it, and was drawn to look at it many times. Others were looking too. One of them, I feel sure, was Frances Moore Lappe.

When Diet for a Small Planet came out in 1971 I did not notice. But not long after, while working after school and summers at Tufts University's dining hall kitchens, I inadvertently became exposed to things that changed my trajectory. Oxfam was one of them. I read about it in the student newspaper and got informed (the expression of the time was "turned on") by Tufts students I worked with who were promoting Oxfam America. 

I read Diet for a Small Planet, thought about Oxfam's work for peace, justice and famine relief, practiced making Julia Child's recipes, listened to Captain Kirk explain to a Klingon that earth had ended war and hunger in the last century, attended a lecture by Dick Gregory and began doing short fasts...a bite of a sun warmed tomato from my mom's garden was also probably in the mix. Before long, I was a vegan, buying organic foods, growing sprouts in my closet in gallon jars, and trying to get protein complimentary concepts to work for me. A few years later I was back to eggs and dairy; about a decade later, a slow slide began into eating fish; then poultry; then other meats.

But at the time, my mom was shocked, hurt, could not believe it: at age 15 I was refusing to eat her pot roast! And very tasty pot roast it was, as I hastened to assure her it was nothing personal against her cooking skills. Going out to eat at the Hilltop Steakhouse, waitresses sadly shook their heads while getting confirmation from my mom, in an I - can't - believe - it - either tone of voice, that I was only ordering salad. 

A startling facet of what I was doing was that it was a luxury; being a vegan was something I was going out of my way to do (far, far fewer vegan foods available then); it was something I could do only because of my privileged social status, which my parents had worked their butts off to provide and saw in light of their own experiences growing up in the great depression. I was not being ungrateful, was not trying be spiritually materialistic or better than thou, was not trying to hurt anyone's feelings, and most of all was not "giving up" meat, which is the way my mom described it. I loved vegetables! All I wanted to do was make a small difference, by making choices I believed in, choices that I felt better about the more I learned about food. Perhaps I did.

I later pondered these things while I rode my 1974 burgundy Fuji road bike on long solo trips to places like Long Lake in Littleton or Wingaersheek beach in Gloucester whose focus was the singular experiences of being one with my bike, the water, and the corn and other veggies found at farms along the way. Many of these farms are no longer there. I had that experience called Mono No Aware by the Japanese - I knew I was tasting in the cucumbers and raspberries micro elements of the earth and rains that had fallen on that land that might be, is now, a car dealership.

Chocolate Souffle for forty

The eggs come first. The Country Hen eggs are my 
favorite store-bought egg. I've used them in countless 
recipes, and in most of my wedding cakes. They are 
very much worth the extra price because the quality 
is eggscellent. We drop big  money on our cars all 
the time - the refrigerator section is not the place 
to go cheep. 

 

In the picture is also a cast iron pan with shallots - 
for roasted parsnips and shallots soup I 
happened to be also making that day. Roasted 
those shallots in the oven - much more even that 
way and no need to stand over the stove. 

But the chocolate souffle...let the eggs come to 
room temperature. Then prepare the souffle dishes - 
but you can use lasagna dishes, cup cake foil tins, 
origami, tea cups....just about anything. People recognize 
it better in a souffle dish. Spray oil lightly in the dish. 
Rub any cooking oil around with your hand if no 
spray is in the pantry. Dump a cup of sugar in the 

dish and turn the dish to evenly coat it with sugar, 
dumping  excess into the next dish, if more than one, 
and so on. 

Separate the eggs. Save the shells for your garden. 
Chop up the chocolate, microwave it on very low several 
times and turn it with a spatula or otherwise keep it in a 

warm place to get it warm enough (111˚F) to flow. Just 
be sure to do it slow and steady; chocolate is delicate. 
This is essentially James Beard's recipe(more or less)-

see his American Cookery - One ounce bittersweet 
chocolate to each egg. 

Oven temperature is 400ƒ if you are making a big batch 
as shown. At home for one dish, 375ƒ is enough. 
When oven is ready, pans are ready, chocolate is melted, 
eggs are separated...you are ready. 

Beat yolks with about a half cup sugar to each dozen eggs. 
Use the beater attachment, no problem. They get paler 
and lemoney looking. Stop beating, scrape them into a large 

mixing bowl. Whip whites at high speed. When they become 
foamy, which is pretty quickly, add about 1/2 teaspoon of 
cream of tarter per dozen eggs. Keep on whipping, while 
adding about 1/2 cup sugar per dozen eggs. Volume 
should increase a lot....but stop whipping when the egg 
white foam is still shiny, when good stable peaks are formed 

but not crumbly. 

While whites are whipping or waiting, fold the chocolate 
lightly into the egg yolk and sugar to form an emulsion. 
Before all yellow and chocolate streaks are gone, add 
the whites and fold lightly until mostly blended and 
of a satisfyingly chocolate color. Scrape gently into 
dishes and get them into the oven. Do not worry 
about putting them on pans of water as so many books 
warn you - but if you are using some lightweight 
containers it is best to place a sheet pan under them. 
Turn the oven down 25 degrees after about 20 minutes. 
Doneness depends on the center of whatever receptacle 
you chose to bake the souffle in. The bigger they are, and 
the deeper you fill them, usually the longer the center 

takes to cook. When done the center is domed, the
souffle is slightly separated straining where it touches
the edge of the dish, and the center is not jiggly. You can
stick a skewer in or a sharp knife to check if you like.

By 30 minutes, surely, even large souffle dishes are about 
done. Have a platter ready to set the souffle dish upon. A wet 
cloth napkin is a nice thing to have below the souffle dish 
as it prevents sliding. Warn people that the baking dishes are 
hot and trust them to dispatch the souffle forthwith.

Roots in my mom's garden.

I am strongly influenced by my mom's garden. She and my dad bought land and built a house on a plot that was originally the "back" yard of the oldest house on their street. There was a grape arbor there I remember well- with grapes full of flavor but puckery and with a large seed. I vaguely recall that the rest of the yard was a maze of tracks between bushes, worn by the play of neighborhood kids. The neighbor in back, of one of many Italian families, Mr. DePasquale, had just installed a tall chain link fence, probably to protect his garden from their careless feet. My mom bravely stood her ground in front of the builder's dump truck,
refusing to let them take the top soil.

The energy my parents put in to creating the garden was impressive. They created a curved retaining wall using concrete test cylinders obtained for free from a company in Auburndale. I remember the trunk of the car being filled with these over the course of many trips taken on Saturdays and after supper. Gradually the wall took shape; and over the years mom has enriched the soil and tended the plants with care. Here is what it looks like today, slightly bowing outwards:

The first years of the garden featured tomatoes - for which my parents have a passion. Mr. DePasquale figured large in this story, giving mom advice from his store of wisdom, in part brought from his native Italy. Everything he grew was staggeringly tasty. Mrs. DePasquale was equally adept within her realm, and shared her culinary skills with my mother freely. Her system of measurement was comprised of demonstrations, such as using the index finger of one hand to make a small circle on the palm of the other to show how much salt, and saying,"When i's a like this (gesturing)." when asked how to tell when something is done. They all much regretted the fence over which nevertheless passed a stream of vegetable and gifts, through which hours of talk transpired, and which had to be gone around when visiting - but apparently it was even more trouble to remove it, so it stayed.

The gifts...it was the food that connected people and was put into service as gifts. Wether it was something freshly picked or a finished dish, brought steaming from their kitchens, often without prior notice, to be presented when we answered the doorbell, food mapped the breadth of neighborly relations. This Italian neighborhood where I was raised was crisscrossed with food, patiently grown, or carried on the bus from the North End's markets, generously shared, and laboriously prepared. Cooking formed the compass by which most other topics were reckoned. It was something to do together, something worth doing, and so much a part of community identity and tradition that it did not appear to be as extraordinary as it actually was. Until it is gone, a tradition, like the shade of an ancient tree, seems secure; and yet how fragile it is, how easily broken are the oral and manual traditions of cooking, as easily lost as the songs sung and stories told no one thought to write down.

How many times have I wished I had written down a recipe or at least remember the name of it so I might be lucky enough to track it down! There were some cookies Mrs. Giordano made - like those cut with a zig zag pasta wheel*and fried (yes, fried!) and tossed with confectionary sugar -  that were a taste of heaven. But my memory fails me, I was a mere visitor into that world of tradition and not all the seeds planted have grown. I have since learned to put some of what I experienced into perspective - things do mostly make sense when looked at from the right angle or distance. For instance, about these cookies: a course in nutritional anthropology at Tufts opened my eyes to the fact that Italian communities use cookies extensively as a cultural marker. For example, at a funeral, each woman contributes her own unique cookie, usually passed on from her mothers' mothers' mother, to a tableaux of other cookies, the size of which marks the standing of the deceased in the community. I suppose I might be known for cinnamon rolls, but that is another story.

*be sure to watch the pasta slide show at this NY Times link