So . . . what do all of these dishes have in common?

• crab apple blossom drops with Meyer lemon sour mix
• warmed olives with fava beans and rosemary
• nasturtium pesto
• watercress, nasturtium, and miners’ lettuce salad with pine nuts and fresh flowers
• and braised dandelion and nettle with wild mushrooms

Yep – they are all made from ingredients foraged from the Bay Area! We cheated a bit, I’ll admit, buying a few things that couldn’t be conceivably foraged, and allowing for a few other foods that could have been foraged with a lot of difficulty – i.e. pine nuts and wild mushrooms. We also admitted the fava beans that conveniently came in our most recent Eatwell Farm box.

Another admission: I’m more likely to be found “foraging” for my house keys than clipping nasturtium leaves from the backyard. But oh, what abundance awaits those who go looking through local fields and paths (and even farmers markets) for edibles.

Now, please don’t go stealing the first tomatoes from someone’s community garden plot, and don’t go eating every wild plant you can get your fingers on! Foraging should be about about finding the fascinating and nourishing foods that surround us, overlooked, every day, but it’s important to use careful judgment, both about what to eat and what to pick. Don’t eat anything you can’t positively identify (as edible!), and always leave some behind for other people, for the birds, and to allow the plant to continue thriving.

We assembled all of the dishes for a small dinner party that some friends held, and the cocktail and the nasturtium pesto were the biggest hits. I can already see a completely foraged dinner party in our future!

Crab Apple Blossom Drops

We used the delicious Hanger One from St. George Spirits, and it was well worth it.

Ingredients

• 7 oz vodka
• 1 cup crab apple blossoms (reserve enough flowers to garnish each drink)
• Rind of 1 Meyer lemon (in wide strips, pith removed)
• 3 oz lemon juice
• 3 oz simple syrup
• 3 oz triple sec
• Sugar (for rims)

Method

Place the vodka in a glass jar and add the lemon zest and flowers. Gently bruise the flowers in the vodka, cover, and allow to infuse overnight. The next day pour through a fine strainer or cheesecloth to remove flowers and lemon rind.

To assemble the drinks, coat the rim of each glass with lemon juice and dip in granulated sugar. Place infused vodka, triple sec, simple syrup and lemon juice in a cocktail shaker with ice and shake until chilled. Adjust flavors if you like, adding more simple syrup, lemon juice or vodka as your tastes dictate. Strain drink into glasses and garnish each with an edible flower. Makes six small cocktails, or twice as many shots.

Nasturtium Pesto

Ingredients

• 1 lb nasturtium leaves (or use half nasturtium leaves and half Italian parsley leaves)
• 1/2 cup good quality olive oil
• 1/2 cup pine nuts
• 4 cloves garlic
• 1/2 tsp sea salt

Method

Combine ingredients in a food processor and blend until smooth, adding a little more olive oil if necessary. You could use a mortar and pestle, but with the nasturtium leaves, the pesto tastes better very smooth, so be prepared to grind for quite a while! Adjust seasoning to taste and use as you would traditional basil pesto.

• crab apple blossom drops with meyer’s lemon sour mix
• warmed olives with fava beans and rosemary
• nasturtium pesto
• watercress, nasturtium, and miners’ lettuce salad with pine nuts and fresh flowers
• and braised dandelion and nettle with wild mushrooms

Oh, dear reader, I know the signs. A blog in its last death-throes. The “sorry”s and “back soon”s and promises of reform, the ever decreasing posts. I recognize the symptoms, and I’ll admit it’s not easy to keep alive these little homes we carve out of thin air. But this one’s not going away. Just give its authors time to crawl out from under the mounds of school work and work work, of books and papers and dishes and (yes) a few DVDs; they’ll be back around any day to visit their favorite spots and share their favorite adventures. Until then, I’ll leave you with this recipe for homemade chocolate, Oaxaca style.

I began thinking about chocolate a few weeks ago. Really, I was thinking about pleasure. We were eating at NOPA, which surprises us by how good it is every time we go there and, since we were with a good friend who we rarely see, we were more extravagant than usual. We started with cocktails, then shared a variety of small plates and main dishes, a good bottle of wine, a couple of desserts (their desserts are fabulous), and more drinks. It was a good meal, and it started me thinking about a New York Times Op-Ed from back in February 2006 (Go With Your Gut, by Harriet Brown), which suggests that the more we enjoy what we eat, the more nutrition we derive from it.

It’s a tempting thought, not least because, well, don’t we all wish our every indulgence might yield some hidden benefit? But it makes sense, too. Our bodies, if we can remember how to follow their lead, know what to hunger for.

So here is chocolate:

This recipe comes from Susanna Trilling, by way of her Seasons of My Heart cookbook. I modified it to include less cinnamon and sugar, and prepared it using a food processor, rather than the traditional grinding stone or mill methods. You can find raw cacao at natural foods stores (we got ours at Rainbow Grocery) or online. This chocolate is unrefined and a bit granular. Though it is delicious straight, it is at its best prepared as hot chocolate, the traditional use in Oaxaca. Melt one stick in 12 ounces of hot milk or water, crushing and stirring gently with a spoon. It is also excellent for baking, though the cinnamon gives it a slightly different taste.

Homemade Chocolate, Oaxaca Style

Ingredients
1/2 ounce Mexican cinnamon sticks, broken (or about 2 tablespoons ground)
1 pound first-class fermented cacao beans
10 ounces – 1 1/4 pound finely granulated sugar

Method
In a cast iron pan, toast the cinnamon until fragrant, stirring constantly, then set aside to cool. If using cinnamon sticks, grind in a spice mill or coffee grinder until fine. Add the cacao to the pan and toast, stirring constantly until the beans begin to crack and brown. Allow to cool, then remove and discard shells.

In a food processor, combine cinnamon and cacao beans and mix until finely ground. Add about 8 ounces of sugar and mix again until sugar is fully incorporated. Taste for sweetness and continue adding slowly until desired sweetness is achieved. Do not add more than the chocolate can absorb. The original recipe called for 1 1/4 – 1 1/2 lbs sugar. I used about 10 ounces. Grind the mixture until it is shiny and very smooth.

Turn onto a large wooding cutting board and pat into a square 1/4 inch thick until it is shiny. Slide a chef’s knife under the chocolate to release it from the board, flip it, and pat the other side until shiny as well (you may need to transfer it to a second chopping board to turn it over). Cut into pieces 1 inch by 4 inches and place on wax paper to solidify, up to two hours depending on temperature and humidity. Store chocolate in a sealed plastic bag or glass container.

Eat and savor.

Many people may not realize it, but the word pesto literally means: to pound or to crush, in Italian. It seems obvious when you think of similar sounding words like mortar and PESTLE, but for some reason, until recently, I never made the connection.

Homemade pesto sauce was almost a weekly tradition for me and my sister growing up. Both my stepfather and my stepmother each had their own unique and delicious methods for preparing the sauce, but unfortunately both methods involved the use of a food processor. Neither of them realized how much better their sauce could have been had they made it the traditional way: with a mortar and pestle. I should give them the benefit of the doubt though, as they were both hard working people with more to think about than gourmet food preparation, and the ones largely responsible for developing my lust for good food. Perhaps they did realize it would have tasted better the old fashioned way, but gave in to the allure of modern convenience and efficiency in a world of conflicting priorities. I won’t judge them negatively for their choice, but I will insist that something was lost in their process(ing). I can’t put my finger on exactly what it is, but having tried both now, I’ve concluded that pestled pesto just tastes better. It’s sweeter, more aromatic, colorful, and flavorful.

Many of the finest distilleries in the United States made a comparable mistake while re-outfitting their whisky stills shortly after the repeal of Prohibition. With new capital, new technology, and the desire to make things bigger, better, and longer lasting, they started using stainless steel to build their stills instead of the traditional copper. A copper still typically has a life expectancy of only around ten years, depending on production levels, whereas a stainless steel still lasts indefinitely. A description of the result, is best made by Jim Murray, author of Jim Murray’s Whiskey Bible. When asked what whisky would taste like without copper used in the distillation process.

“That’s an easy one,” he said. “As often as not, diabolical. The less copper you get, the less sweetness and honey tends to be around. Often you pick up a cabbage water aroma—at its worst, it takes me back to the old days when my mum used to boil hankies. Copper adds a sparkle to the nose; stainless steel stills offer something often flat and lifeless.”

It took years of research and large sums of money to discover why copper was so necessary in the distilling process. Turns out that one of the major reasons is that it acts as a catalyst, extracting sulfur and other nasties from the passing vapors. Much is still unknown about copper’s benefits, and perhaps will be left a mystery for many more years to come.

The moral of this whisky tangent, in case you haven’t figured it out by now, is that in most areas of life, it’s best to adhere to the time honored methods our ancestors developed over thousands of years. They work!

Here we go again… you’re probably thinking, another article by Will or Rose on how to spend an entire day in the kitchen making something that could be bought pre-made, or should only take a few minutes using modern technology. Let me assure you, that the following method only takes about 5 minutes more than the food processor method. I personally find the grinding process to be a labor of love, and I think my wife Mary can taste the difference.

Traditional Ligurian Pesto

Ingredients:

• Leaves from 2 bunches fresh basil
• 1/4 cup pine nuts, toasted, plus crushed pine nuts for garni sh
• 2-3 cloves garlic
• 1/4 cup Parmigiano-Reggiano or Pecorino Romano cheese, grated, plus more for garnish
• 1/2 cup extra-virgin olive oil, plus more as needed
• 1/2 tsp. coarse sea salt

Method:

1. Combine basil, toasted pine nuts, garlic, and salt in your mort ar.
2. Grind with pestle in a pounding and/or rotating motion until a paste is formed, about 5 minutes.
3. Add cheese; grind until combined.
4. Briskly stir pesto with a wooden spoon while drizzling in the olive oil.
5. Drizzle pesto with more oil until desired consistency is reached.
6. Let rest while cooking your pasta.
7. Stir pesto into drained pasta while still hot.
8. Garnish with extra cheese and crushed pine nuts.
9. Try throwing a handful of chopped tomatoes on top (my mom ‘s touch)
10. Enjoy!

    

I have a beautiful, unexpected day off today, and am spending it in the kitchen, drying, preserving, mixing dough, thinking. Invariably it happens – someone close or far, a friend, a relative, a colleague, visits this blog and asks the same question. Why make bitters, or butter, or vermouth, or ketchup from scratch? Usually, the answer seems so clear to me, I needn’t even consider before answering. But last night I wondered aloud if it wasn’t just a little petty maybe, or a little silly, a grown up way, maybe, to play with my food.

No, Andy (my beloved, my better, more humane and just self) said, it’s a search for authenticity, for the authentic experience. Indeed. We are so far divorced from the way our food is made or grown, we often have trouble recognizing the real thing.

What, for instance, would real grenadine taste like? We have the “false” version on our bar (ingredients: high fructose corn syrup, water, citric acid, natural and artificial flavors, sodium citrate, sodium benzoate, red 40, blue 1.), but I’ve been thinking of making some from scratch, out of real pomegranates. How about mayonnaise, granola?

I’m reading And Then, You Act, a collection of essays about making art, and more specifically, theater, in an unpredictable world. In her introduction, Anne Bogart suggest that as Americans in the 21st century we are the objects of “constant flattery and manufactured desire.” “I believe,” she says, “that the only possible resistance to a culture of banality is quality.” I believe that to be true of art, but I feel the same way about food. In many ways, quality and authenticity are synonymous. Eat, Michael Pollan suggests, food that your great, great grandmother would recognize as food. So today I peeled and sliced pears, cut apples into rounds.

Dried fruit is so easy, it hardly deserves a recipe. If you don’t have a food dehydrator, you can dry fruit successfully in the oven, but it will take a bit longer.

Dried Pears or Apples

• 4-5 lbs ripe apples or pears, peeled if desired
• 1-2 cups lemon juice (optional) or
• 1 cup honey (optional)

1. Cut fruit into uniform slices or rounds, about 1/8 – 1/4 inch.

2. If desired, treat with lemon juice (to help preservation), or honey (to sweeten). Place fruit on drying rack or cookie sheet with room enough between slices to allow for air circulation.

• To treat with lemon juice, mix 1 part lemon juice to 1 part water in a large bowl and place fruit into it. Allow to soak 10 minutes, drain well and place on drying rack or cookie sheet.
• To treat with honey, mix 1 cup honey with 1 1/2 cups warm water and stir to dissolve. Add fruit and soak 3-5 minutes. Drain well and place on drying rack or cookie sheet.

3. Set dehydrator to 135 degrees or oven to the lowest possible setting (or 140 degrees) and set racks inside. If using an oven, leave the door open slightly and, if possible, point a fan in to increase air circulation.

4. Dry for 6-12 hours depending on temperature and humidity, checking frequently when fruit is close to being ready. To test for doneness, cut several piece in half. There should be no visible moisture and fruit should not stick to itself when pressed together. The dried fruit should have about 20% moisture content.

5. Allow to cool and pack tightly into clean, dry, well sealed containers. Store in a cool dry place. Fruit will keep for up to one year.

~
Apple-Pear Sauce

Making apple or apple-pear sauce is just as easy as drying fruit. The sweetness of ripe pears works perfectly with tart, ripe apples. I used a variety of both – McIntosh, Granny Smith, and Cox’s Orange Pippin apples, and Bosc and Comice pears.

• About 20 medium apples, or a combination of apples and pears, cored, quartered, and peeled if desired
• 2-3 cups water
• 1 tbs honey
• 1 tsp almond extract

1. Place fruit in a large, heavy pot with about an inch of water and simmer, stirring regularly, until soft. Crush any remaining chunks against the side of the pot.

2. Stir in the honey and almond extract. The sauce will probably be sweet enough without the honey, but I like to add it for the flavor. Orange and vanilla extracts are also excellent, as is cinnamon.

3. Pour into sterile jars and process 15 minutes in a boiling water canner. Or transfer to a glass container and store 2-3 weeks in the refrigerator.

Yields about 5 pints.

The bill, which is renewed and updated only every 5 years, covers things like farm subsidies and nutritional programs (like food stamps). But while it provides hundreds of millions per year for farming of the corn and soybeans that will become high fructose corn syrup, partially hydrogenated soybean oil, and animal feed, driving down the price of junk food and driving up obesity and diabetes, it provides no support to grow fruits and vegetables, which have increased in price by 40% in the last 5 years.

In fact, the last bill directed just $3 million per year total toward research into organic agriculture, while it supplied $2.95 million per year to a single giant cotton farm. As the laws currently stand, organic farmers cannot even buy crop insurance to protect themselves against a poor growing season. Recent stories in the San Francisco Chronicle (find it here) and the New York Times (find it here) provide more information.

One simple way to help is to sign the internet petition at left, sponsored by Environmental Working Group, one of the leaders in Farm Bill reform. They plan to submit it to the House of Representatives on July 15th.