Archive for the ‘Seasonal food’ Category
When is local really local? My local grocery store advertises that to them “Local Means Local.” Front and center in their store this afternoon, I encounter a contradiction. A large display is built up in conjunction with their latest ad featuring “Bocconcini Salad,” a Caprese by another name, I suppose. There are piles of hothouse, yes, hothouse cluster tomatoes. Why, I ask myself, at the height of Northern California’s tomato season? I am told they hail from California, so I guess, in some obscure fashion; it is more local than say, Mexico. Where are the beautiful heirloom tomatoes produced and delivered by the farmer from across the mountains that drives here twice a week to delivery freshly picked produce? Next to the tomatoes are individual, factory sealed tubs of various sizes and shapes of “fresh” mozzarella cheese in water. In this case, local is a little closer, as the cheese comes to us from the San Francisco Bay area, by way of Sacramento. Also on the same shelf is row upon row of glistening clear glass bottles of obscenely inexpensive organic extra virgin olive oil. Turning the bottle over, I search for a point of origin and find it at the bottom of the label in smallish print. The oil is “Produced in Turkey.” Now in the world of extra virgin olive oil, the words “produced in…” mean nothing more than “bottled and labeled in…” so I have no idea where the olives are grown. This particular store entreats its customer to “…keep your dollars local,” rather than shopping for inexpensive, imported goods at an unnamed national discount chain, known for their low, low prices. They point out that the value of purchasing locally produced, higher priced goods from a local retailer is more than just the price, and I heartily agree. Around the corner, in another aisle, there is a display of large, stainless steel containers that hold bulk artisan Northern California olive oil. You could easily miss this product, on your way to the soup or the mayonnaise. When questioned, the answer is always the same. The store must provide value to the hard working customers that are on a budget. The thinking is such, that as long as the alternative is available, it makes it acceptable to feature and promote inexpensive, anonymous, mass-produced products from nations somewhere around the globe who pay their workers a dollar a day?
Consumers today flock to purchase products labeled “organic,” as if it is some sort of magic safeguard against greedy corporate profit takers and unscrupulous users of chemicals and hormones in food production. What ever happened to knowing where your food comes from? Whole Foods touts the benefits of their organic wines, produced under their private label in Australia. Don’t we have enough good, sustainably produced local wines in California? I saw a cartoon in the paper yesterday, where a child tells the parent that organic produce wrapped in Styrofoam and plastic film is a contradiction, and the parent looks as though he doesn’t understand. Fears of pandemic food-borne illnesses lead the customer to embrace the sterile packaging, yet how much imported oil does it take to process food in this way? Are we looking for the 3” x 5” card on how to shop and eat?
In contrast, I shop for produce each week at our local farmers markets. Even in my small town, where we have markets only from May through October, I can purchase meat, baked goods, produce, cheeses, eggs, honey, fish, olive oil and even seedlings for my garden. I can talk to the producers, handle the product, smell the peaches that are so ripe that they are beginning to burst from their skins. Yes, I pay a bit more than if I were to cruise the aisles of the larger supermarket, but the experience of purchasing food that is produced by a human being that I know by name and converse with regularly causes me to show the product a bit more respect. I am less inclined to let these items lose themselves in the back of a too-large refrigerator until they are mere shadows of their former selves. I am also less inclined to buy more than I need for a given day or week, knowing that this food is at its peak and should be honored and respected for what it is, not to mention the time and effort expended to produce it.
I swap the lore of growing beans with one farmer, and of producing olive oil with another. One of the bakers works for me on occasion, the other bought the business I used to own. I stop to admire both the goat farmer’s cheeses and pictures of his new baby, and we talk about mutual friends both near and far. To me, local means someone you have a connection with. We humans are social animals, and marketing is one of the last vestiges of village society. We lose something when we lose this connection to our foods. When we disconnect our food from the people that produce it, we reduce it to merely the exchange of money for goods. I guess, in that circumstance, the price would become the most important component of the transaction. We forget the hard work that goes into producing our food, the long hours that the farmer spends tending the crops, the early mornings when he rises to load the truck for one more market day, and the late nights when he returns to his home and family. I refuse to let large corporations dictate what I cook and eat, and today, I can still log a small victory by buying from a local farmer. But how long can this continue? Somewhere, somehow, there has to be a shift in values. Will it take a catastrophe, as some predict, or is there some small part of every human’s brain that longs for the connection? As Wendell Berry is quoted by Slow Food, “Eating is an agricultural act.” In an obscure way, this means we are all farmers of sorts, and equally responsible for cultivating our future.
Post by Julia Conway on July 22nd, 2008
Tags: Seasonal food
Posted in Country life, Food politics, Local food, Mendocino, Olive oil, Slow Food
The mid-June afternoon is the warmest we have had in a week or two, and I find myself standing next to the stove stirring the lava-like mass at the bottom of the big kettle. It spits and pops and sends small jets of dark red grease upward to catch the unwary forearm. A simmering pot of broth steams on the left burner, making the small hairs around my face curl from the humidity. This is not the type of cooking where one can leave the room and pursue other tasks, no matter how urgent. We will serve this chocolate-laced savory concoction of ground nuts, seeds and both fresh and dried chiles over rice at the annual Taste of Wine, Chocolate and Ale to benefit the Mendocino Music Festival.
The recipe for this complex and labor-intensive stew comes from the state of Puebla in Mexico. It has been lovingly and awkwardly translated from its original Spanish, and modified to reflect the types of chiles available at my local Mexican market. As most of the Mexican immigrants here on the coast hail from either Oaxaca or the Yucatan, substitutions from the original are mandatory. The actual types and proportions are a guarded secret, but the process itself is the real story.
One begins by charring the fresh vegetables, tomatillos still in their husks, white onions, and fresh Poblano chiles. Traditionally, this is done on a comal, a cast iron griddle the size of a garbage can lid. To hasten the process while still preserving the flavor, I roast each of the items in a very hot convection oven until the skins are blackened and the juices ooze and caramelize on the pan. Fresh corn tortillas and a torn-up stale bolillo (soft roll) are fried in pork lard and set aside to cool. The dried chiles are soaked in boiling water to soften them for handling. Blanched almonds and pumpkin seeds are also fried until toasty brown and fragrant, and whole cinnamon sticks, fennel seeds, cloves and allspice are toasted in a dry pan.
The first ingredients to be pureed are the onions and the tomatillos, husks and skins removed. Next the tortillas and fried bread are ground to fine crumbs and stirred into the vegetable mixture. The nuts and spices are combined and processed to a powder, taking care not to process so long that almond-pumpkin butter results. When combined with the other ingredients, the mixture looks like some type of dough. The roasted Poblanos are stemmed, pureed and added as well, darkening the mixture with their almost black-green hue. The soaked dried chiles are also stemmed and carefully seeded so the finished stew is not fiery hot. Plastic gloves are required for this procedure, as it is too easy to inadvertently touch lips or eyes with fingers infused with the potent oils. A handful of the seeds are toasted and added back to the chiles for just a bit of heat. The mixture is drained and then fried in more lard until the dark red chiles turn almost black and their pungent oils fill the air. The thick paste is scooped into the food processor with water to thin, and pureed until it resembles brick colored paint. When everything is combined, the raw mole is faintly reddish and flecked with darker specks of chiles and spices.
Though this process takes over an hour, it is not the most time consuming part of preparing mole. The woman that gave me the recipe told me that the most important part is when the love is added to the stew. Heating more pork lard in my biggest kettle until it froths; I prepare to finish the mole. When I add the raw paste to the fat, everything boils and bubbles frantically. I must stir almost constantly at this point, so that the paste browns but does not burn. Soon I add large ladles of hot chicken broth, alternately thinning and thickening the mixture as it cooks over a period of hours. Halfway through, I add several rounds of chopped up Mexican chocolate, allowing it to melt into the paste. Now stirring is non-negotiable as the chocolate will burn if left sitting on the bottom of the kettle. This is where the love comes in, as the mole must be nursed along, stirring constantly, as it darkens and continues to thicken. I imagine Mexican women, mothers, daughters, sisters, and grandmothers, taking turns stirring the mole through the afternoon as they laugh and talk and share the joys of the kitchen. Unfortunately, my only companions this day are my dogs, sitting patiently at my feet hoping for a small taste of what is to come. The final ingredient added is a glass of white vinegar, the acid providing a necessary counterpoint to the richness.
Dishes like this take much too long for most of us to prepare in our modern, hurried world. Even the Mexican grocery store sells mole in a small glass jar, to be seasoned with the cook’s own variations on spices, often reminiscent of her mother’s recipe. There is something elemental about preparing a dish that takes most of a day to cook. There is an intimate connection between the cook and the kitchen, and the love and attention that is required to transform the mundane ingredients of an everyday salsa into a complex and heartening Mole Poblano. Spicy, savory, bitter, sweet, and sour; the flavors that punctuate every region’s culinary traditions meld together in a dish that warms the hearts of all of those who partake of its magic.
Post by Julia Conway on June 13th, 2008
Tags: Seasonal food
Posted in Food and wine, Mendocino, Recipes, Slow Food, Wine Country
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