For the Love of Tomato Soup

I know. It's May; almost Memorial Day, and here I am, waxing poetic on tomato soup. In my defense, allow me to point out that we had a rash of rainy and cold weather (cold enough for me to kick on the furnace and pull out my sweater) that gave me a real craving for soup.

The problem was that by this time of year, the ingredients in my fridge have shifted, leaving me very little to make soup. But while rummaging in the deep freeze for a lost ham hock, I came across two containers of fresh tomato puree that I had lovingly and painstakingly put away back in late October. I remembered these tomatoes well, for I had let them stay on the vine and reap the last of the fall warmth and the nightly temperature dips all in the hopes of harvesting the sweetest tomatoes of all. By the time I picked them, most of the leaves had fallen away and the fruits were nicked and not anywhere near the beauty bombshells of the earlier crops. But they were tasty and made me long for tomato soup the way they serve it up in Yountville (very near Napa) at a little French bistro called, Bistro Jeanty.

Eggs and Greens with Thick Spaghetti

Sadly, even with the overexposure to "unusual" foods, when it comes to vegetables, most Americans still eat the basic few. For me, however, I can't think of a single one that isn't, at least on a rotational basis, in my diet. One of my favorite by far is kale.

Rick in vitamin C and K, calcium and beta carotene, kale often makes the top of the list of healthiest foods, most likely because it contains lots of carotenoids (pigments that carry oxygen) and is a natural anti-inflamatory. Basically, people who eat diets high in these dense nutrients live longer lives without disease. If this information isn't enough to sway your thinking, then a bowl of my hearty pasta should do the trick.

I call it peasant food because it's cheap to make and sticks to your ribs, but it's also very dense in nutrients and good for your heart fats (olive oil and walnuts). There's a nice balance between carbohydrates and proteins, which gives one sustained energy, and it's serious comfort food that is simple and rewarding to make.

Secret Meetings and Brown Paper Bags

A few weeks ago at the Farmer's Market, I found myself hanging back in line, keeping a fair distance from the other shoppers. It was way too cold for a late February Saturday morning in California and all I really wanted to do was have a quick, but private chat with the vendor and take myself home. Finally, the line died down and I seized the opportunity to corner Lamb Lady behind her table. "I don't see it on your board, but don't you have some Marguez for sale?" I asked as calmly as possible.

She eyed me a bit suspiciously and after a long pause, repeated, "Do I have any Marguez for sale?" The wind kicked up a bit and my patience started to flag, but she was the only one (to my knowledge) who had Marguez, so I had to keep my cool; I nodded and then she went on into a long soliloquy that covered, in turn, raising lamb, a secret recipe, and an FDA crackdown. I nodded my sympathies and then, in whispered voice, she confided that while she didn't have any with her that morning, she just so happened to have two half-pound packages back at her ranch and could bring one the following week. It took a lot for me to get her to agree to giving up both packs, but after a few more minutes she agreed. It would have to be secret, though, and she wouldn't list them on her board, so if I wanted Marguez, I needed to be there the following Saturday. Period.

Ephemeral Beauties

Along with a wild streak of gray hair over my right temple, age has brought me a deep appreciation for the treasures of each season, something that was entirely lost on my younger self. Lately, the end of fall and the whole of winter has become my favorite seasonal time, especially in regard to the bounty of produce.

I've a deep love and respect for the earthiness of turnips and rutabagas and parsnips, the sweetness of fennel, the bright bitterness of collards and Tatsoi; I love cabbages and radicchio and endive, and the cauliflowers and broccolis, but while my vegetable bin seemed to overflow, the same didn't always seem true of my fruit basket.

At some point I realized this had more to do with my own mindset than reality, and off I ventured to the local farmer's market. It would be a trip that would forever change my life, particularly because at the time, I lived in Southern California and in spite of all the agricultural land that fell to new home construction, citrus was still a booming crop. It was there that I discovered the Myer lemon, a cross between an orange and a lemon, and, an all time favorite, the Blood orange. But a funny thing happened over the next two years--Blood oranges disappeared from the farmer's market and the fruit stands that lined the old highway that snaked inland  from the coast; they had never been available at the grocery store so I made no attempt to look there. As par for the course, this only made me crave them more and sent me in search of them-- an odyssey that would last many years.

It's Artichoke Season!

Hooray--for who wouldn't want to sit around the table and pick over a heap of artichokes? Well, probably a lot of people because it's been my experience that there are two camps when it comes to this prickly thistle: Love 'em or Hate 'em. If you hate them, there are only two possible reasons: they are challenging to prepare and leave your fingertips cracked and discolored (latex gloves are a handy way to nip this in the bud) or there simply isn't much to eat on an artichoke. True; I've known many a person to utilize an artichoke leaf as a vehicle for a dipping sauce, and it's even more true that there is just a little bit of 'meat' for one's teeth to scrape away on each leaf, but eating a pile of artichokes is as fun, rewarding, and delicious as spending an afternoon picking crabs? Not to mention, once you pick your way through all of the leaves, you get the real prize--the heart. So, it's fairly safe to say that if you can't fathom a better way to spend the day, then you come down in the other camp--a bona fide artichoke lover.

That's me. So, when Ken came home the other night with a lumpy brown paper bag and a Cheshire grin on his face and announced he had a surprise for me, I knew that the Artichoke Man must have stopped by his office. When I opened the bag and peered in to see 7 beautiful, medium-sized artichokes, I was thrilled, for not only would I get to eat artichokes, but it also meant that Spring was on its way and soon enough, all the delights of the new season would be bountiful and ready to enjoy.

Before I espouse on how to cook, or even eat, an artichoke, perhaps a bit of artichoke trivia to brighten the day. First off, the artichoke is truly a Mediterranean discovery. First discovered in Sicily, the ancient Romans actually would candy the hearts with honey and cumin seed, which is sort of fascinating to me as well as how someone somewhere hit upon the genius idea of actually preparing and eating an artichoke the way we do now; it must have been hell to have been an early artichoke aficionado--one's mouth literally torn to pieces from the sharp leaves and well, raw artichokes, at least the older ones, are very bitter. Anyhow, discover a better way to eat them, they did, and the artichoke moved around Europe and gained popularity, eventually riding the seas to Louisiana with the French and then soon after, taken by the Spanish to California. Now, virtually every artichoke eaten in the United States originates from Monterrey County, which just so happens to be about 90 minutes up the road from me, and, 80% of all artichokes are grown in a little town called Castroville, which is located in Monterrey County. Finally, just to note, in 1947 Marilyn Monroe was crowned the Queen of the Artichokes in Castroville, which is a bit ironic since at one point, the artichoke was also considered to be an aphrodisiac.

This Spud's for You

Behold--the humble potato. In spite of her cross-eyes, blemishes, dirty skin, and thick waistline, she is loved by--dare I say?--everyone from one end of the globe and back around again. As Americans, in a single year, we EACH consume 140 pounds of potatoes, and as a nation, 4,000 million pounds of french fries. Some historians credit the potato with the expansion of Industrialism across Europe; it was the cause of a war, aptly named, The Potato War, where opposing forces, due to crop failures, literally raided their enemies and took their potatoes, and due to a blight that caused the potatoes to rot from disease, it was the root (pardon the pun) of a decrease of over two million people from Ireland during the Great Potato Famine (1845-52),  gone to either starvation, or to America in search of work and food.

Personally, I adore potatoes, probably given to the fact that my mother cooked a lot of potatoes. In fact, to this day, I have never met anyone, myself included, who could work a potato over in quite the way that my mother can. Among her repertoire: crispy hash browns, wonderful potato pancakes, fried homestyle potatoes with thick rings of smothered onions, mashed potatoes, potato casseroles, baked potatoes, scored potatoes, and roasted potatoes. We ate, thinking back upon those days, a significant number of potatoes. I believe, although my grandmother, by coincidence, worked at the National Potato Board (how cool is that? A marketing agency for the potato!) that the real reason we consumed more than our fair share of the tubers was due to being poor, but I'm also certain that my mother cooked them so often simply because they were good and satisfying.

My real affair with the potato actually began when I was in my early thirties and living in San Francisco. Ken decided to take me to a wonderful little (and I do mean little) restaurant on the edge of North Beach (the Italian sector) called, Cafe Macaroni. After folding ourselves into one of the few tiny tables in a dining room made even smaller by the ginormous refrigerated display case brandishing a good fifty antipasto treats, Ken ordered the wine while I scanned the menu. "Don't even bother," he said. "I am going to order you the most perfect thing ever." And with that, we raised our wine glasses in a toast passing time, until the beautiful, young, I-can't-speak-much-English-but-I'm-Italian waiter arrived.

The dish that was placed before me was gnocchi. And even I, who had lived between the pages of cookbooks and had a subscription to not one, but two, highbrow food magazines, and who--seriously--had traveled in Italy, had never even heard of gnocchi. I was sheltered and naive and my soon-to-be husband was introducing me to a ball of boiled dough--no, a drug--that would plunge me squarely into the depths of addiction, for once that first little dumpling crossed my lips and my brain lit up with euphoria and my heart raced through my chest, I was hooked.

But this post is not about my battles with the dumplings, which is a sad and heartbreaking tale on its own, but rather, a moment where I give pause in my day to commiserate with my fellow human beings south of the equator in Argentina, who so love gnocchi, that on the 29th day of every month, they celebrate Dias de los noquis--Day of the Gnocchi--but February, a most uncooperative month, only gives us 28 days. I've never been to Argentina, so I'm not sure what that means, but from what I've read, the only time one can find gnocchi is on the 29th day of the month. Does that mean that these poor people will have to go without gnocchi since their last feast of January 29th until their next one on March 29th? There's no telling; but I will be frank by saying here, out loud and for everyone (well at least the half-dozen or so people reading this) that I would revolt--I would--in fact, I WILL eat gnocchi today, even though it is only the 28th, and I hope that you, too, will lift up your fork in solidarity.

But, where, you ask, can you buy gnocchi? My friends, making gnocchi is not as hard as you think, especially when one's addiction rarely allows time to go off in search of the 'stuff' available on the street.

Nice Buns!

Here's a secret that I found out about Ken right before I married him--his first love was the Cafeteria Lady at his elementary school. He loved her even before the Danish babysitter (whom I am fairly sure was more fair in memory than in reality) whom he swears was the sweetest, kindest and prettiest woman ever. But--she couldn't make rolls like the Cafeteria Lady who was much older and a lot less sweet, but had such a place in Ken's heart that we even have--no joking--a letter that he wrote to his mother during a first grade penmanship lesson. To quote, the letter says, "Dear Mom. School is fine. Lunch is good."

He wasn't talking about the spaghetti, or the meatloaf, or event the fried chicken; instead, was writing about the rolls. These rolls would take on such a significant memory for him, that they would become one of the many topics of conversation in our lives and on many occasions, although he never came right out and said it, he inferred that his life would be perfect if only I could duplicate those rolls.