Читать книгу Rosalind Creasy's Recipes from the Garden - Rosalind Creasy - Страница 11

The gardening chef

an evolution of american eating

Ho-hum cardboard tomatoes, astringent green bell peppers, and bland, store-bought food—that’s how most of America ate a generation or two ago. Where were they hiding the luscious rainbow of heirloom tomatoes? Why weren’t green peppers allowed to ripen to their sweet natural red—much less yellow or orange? And why were cilantro, fresh basil, mâche, and radicchio kept out of the mainstream? Somehow we got on the wrong track, no longer knowing where our food came from or what was in season. We’re now reclaiming our culinary birthright—one deeply connected to the Earth—through home gardening, shopping at farmers’ markets, and eating local foods.

Throughout my life, gardening and cooking have played major roles. In looking back, it seems that my personal experiences can shed some light on the changes that have been happening in American cuisine during the past 50 years.

My adventures began when I was five years old and my father deeded me my first vegetable garden—a little plot adjacent to his big garden in my hometown of Needham, Massachusetts. There I grew offshoots from his strawberry plants, extra tomato and bean seedlings, and lots of flowers. I saw it as an extension of my dollhouse and continually moved the plants around. I don’t remember ever harvesting anything from my garden, but that didn’t matter because I was having a great time experimenting with plants while enjoying my father’s company.

Over the years, he taught me through example what I later realized were some important links between the kitchen and garden: putting the water on to boil before picking the corn, judging when an asparagus spear is at its peak, and harvesting string beans and partially stringing them at the same time. (Use your thumbnail to cut part way through the bean below the stem and pull the bean down and away. This leaves the “stem-y” top and the string from one side of the bean hanging on the vine. I now use the same technique with snap peas.)

My mother was the cook in our house. Looking back, I must say that she wasn’t very inspired—bless her heart. It was the 1950s, after all. Although she made great roasts and steaks, she boiled most vegetables. Because they were garden fresh and she usually didn’t overcook them, her vegetable dishes were pleasant. But Mom’s repertoire was very limited. She baked or boiled potatoes; it probably never occurred to her to roast, sauté, or grill them—or any other vegetable for that matter. The only herbs she used were in poultry seasoning for the holidays, and those were dried and came in a tin. She certainly never prepared anything that was remotely spicy.

After I married, my husband Robert and I set up housekeeping in Cambridge, Massachusetts. In retrospect, I can’t believe my luck. Cambridge in the early 1960s was home to both Julia Child and Joyce Chen, the doyennes of cooking in America. The town was abuzz with food mania. Both women had written popular cookbooks and Julia had her landmark cooking show—what inspirations they were! Robert, being a clever, food-loving man with a sophisticated palate, came up with great birthday presents for me. The first was the gastronomic bible of the day, Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking (written with Louisette Bertholle and Simone Beck), followed the next year by the Joyce Chen Cookbook. Living in the city, my gardening days were temporarily over, but I can’t think of better introductions to the techniques for creating some of the world’s best food.

I was home with one baby, then a second, so for well over five years I cooked my way through both books. From Julia, I learned to make hollandaise for my asparagus; to put together what was then an exotic dish with eggplant and zucchini—ratatouille; to serve homemade squash soup in a hollowed-out pumpkin; and to make Pommes Anna, a crisp cake of thin potato slices layered with butter. Over the years, I also learned how to make a good chicken stock, blanch vegetables, and even make French bread.

Years later, I gave a slide presentation on edible landscaping to Julia Child and members of the American Institute of Wine and Food. I brought along my dog-eared copy of French Cooking for her to sign. When she saw it, she hugged it, saying that such a well-worn copy was the ultimate compliment. Before she signed my book, she ran her hand over the pages, feeling the splatters and wrinkles, and read some of my hand-written notes: “Robert loved it!” “Make this again and add more herbs,” and “Freezes well.”

Although I never had the good luck to meet her, Joyce Chen was no less vital to my culinary journey. Growing up, my only exposure to Chinese food was the not-so-authentic, and not-so-thrilling, canned chop suey with chow mein noodles—clearly a poor take on one of the world’s most sophisticated cuisines. Although I’d had Joyce Chen’s cookbook for many months, I hadn’t used it. Apparently Robert noticed, and so decided to take me to Joyce’s restaurant. What a culinary awakening that was! The flavors were complex yet easy to like. Inspired by the meal, I was ready to delve into the cookbook. From it, I learned how to make wonton soup, cook rice properly, and stir-fry (not to mention the importance of having all the vegetables and seasonings completely prepared before starting to cook). Compared to French cooking, Chinese techniques were more straightforward. I soon discovered that Chinese dishes were easier to make for everyday meals than Julia’s fancy French recipes. They also fit better into our limited budget and seemed healthier (using oil instead of butter, less meat, and amounting to far fewer calories). My friends and I started to go to Boston’s Chinatown to seek out pak choi, pea pods, fresh ginger, and Chinese cabbage—all new to me. Even though we lived in an apartment, I also got back into gardening in a very small way: I grew bean sprouts in my kitchen. They were tasty in my stir-fries—nothing like the slimy ones in canned chop suey—and they were lots of fun and easy to grow.

My return to gardening was made complete in 1968 when we moved to the San Francisco Bay area. We bought a ranch-style house in Los Altos on a small lot with a sunny front yard and a very shady backyard. My gardening opportunities were still limited, because vegetables and fruits need lots of sun and the concept of ripping out the front lawn and replacing it with an edible garden had not yet occurred to me. For a few years a friend and I shared her wonderful vegetable garden; we planted the usual rows of corn, beans, tomatoes, basil, peppers, and both summer and winter squash. It was great to once again enjoy luscious homegrown tomatoes and to start the water boiling before we picked the corn. Right in front of our eyes—and to our great surprise—we found the green bell peppers ripening to a rich red. Who knew?

This harvest of traditional Italian vegetables features eggplants, red and yellow tomatoes, leeks, peppers, and squash blossoms.

Thanks to America’s broadening culinary horizons, it is now possible for chefs living in even the remotest of locations to purchase or grow once-rare edibles. This brightly colored taco, for example, is made with yellow tomatoes, ‘Ruby Queen’ corn, and orange bell peppers.

Robert and I acclimated well to California and loved all the ethnic foods that were so readily available. These exciting new dishes were influencing my cooking, so I decided that it was time to have a small garden area of my own where I could experiment with some of the more unusual edible plants required to make them. I transformed the parking strip in front of the lawn into a flower border, into which I snuck a few spicy peppers for chili relleños, jalapeños for tacos, lots of basil for pesto, cilantro for stir fries, tarragon for Julia’s béarnaise sauce, and artichokes, which, as it turns out, were the stars of the “flower border” because they were so beautiful.

In the mid 70s, I decided to go back to school to get a degree in horticulture with the goal of becoming a landscape designer. About the same time, Robert started overseeing scientific projects all over the world for IBM. I got to go along with him to places like Milan, Grenoble, Cairo, Taipei, Paris, Hong Kong, and Vienna. While he was working with clients in each city, I would head out to the markets and the gardens. Often, a host spouse would translate for me when I stood puzzled in front of a large pile of unusual-looking radicchios or chili peppers. My most frequent questions were “How do you cook it?” and “Where can I get seeds?” During dinner I usually shared my wonder at all the great vegetables and herbs I was discovering. Our hosts would tell me more about them, and if I was lucky, they shared recipes.

In France, it was eye opening not to have traditional potato salad with mayonnaise but instead a salade niçoise with fingerling potatoes, haricots verts, and fresh seared tuna with tarragon vinaigrette. The braised baby bok choi and mushrooms in spicy ginger sauce in Hong Kong, and Italy’s slivers of raw artichoke bedecked with curls of Parmesan cheese and drizzled with lemon juice and olive oil blew the top off my perception of vegetables. This started me down the road to growing even more fantastic edible plants, or tracking them down in the market. When harvest time came, I’d use the recipes I had saved or develop my own.

I was fortunate to have firsthand experience of so many unusual foods. In the 60s when I started cooking, there were few recipes available using any but the most common of vegetables and herbs. The two books my husband had gifted to me were exceptions, yet I was still held back by the limited availability of interesting ingredients. In fact, there was an unwritten rule in the cookbook-publishing world: “Never use an ingredient the average cook could not find in his or her local grocery store.” Consequently, American cooking allowed little room for innovation and imploded in on itself. It was not until the early 1980s when Julee Rosso and Sheila Lukins agreed to write their soon-to-be-classic The Silver Palate Cookbook—and insisted on including “exotic” ingredients like fresh basil and mangos—that this rule changed. Creative ingredients began to show up in a flood of good eating.

Meanwhile, gardening was running a parallel path to cooking. In the mid-twentieth century, the seed industry limited in the name of efficiency vegetable and herb varieties available to the home gardener. There were color standards: green for snap beans and bell peppers, red for tomatoes, orange for carrots, and brown skin with white flesh for potatoes. Purple—beans, peppers, tomatoes, carrots and potatoes—was nowhere to be seen, and neither were any other bright colors. Agriculture and America’s general lack of interest in vegetables and herbs had joined to present a united front against anything but run-of-the-mill garden produce. But exciting and flavorful edibles were on the horizon.

The next step on my own gardening journey came during a trip to a kibbutz outside Haifa, Israel, where I was struck by how hard it was for the Israelis to grow food on the limited arable land in their country, which is mostly desert. I was convinced that Americans were wasting the valuable soil around their homes, and that they should use it to grow at least some of their own vegetables and fruits. Thus, my version of edible landscaping was born. With this inspiration, I got to work on what would become The Complete Book of Edible Landscaping, which Sierra Club Books published in 1982. To my surprise, it became a big hit.

Great rumblings had been occurring in the cooking world and were continuing. And here I was—once again—at the epicenter of one of the quake zones—Northern California. In the 70s, the flower children pushed us toward healthier foods, including many Asian specialties and vegetables. Alice Water’s Berkeley restaurant, Chez Panisse, which featured local and beautifully prepared seasonal foods, was becoming a phenomenon. Greens Restaurant opened in 1979 in San Francisco led by Deborah Madison (then chef), and became one of the premier vegetarian restaurants in the nation. Greens formed a close bond with Green Gulch, a large organic garden. Farmers’ markets in California were opening at an exponential rate and more and more chefs and gardeners began to work together. In nearby Napa Valley, the wine and cheese industries were taking off. Many of these businesses gave cooking demonstrations out of their gardens. At about the same time, CCOF (California Certified Organic Farmers) was busy trying to develop organic standards for vegetables and fruits. And the world sat up and took notice.

In 1985, in the midst of this glorious food revolution, I signed a contract to begin working on my second book, Cooking from the Garden. Unlike my previous book, this one was going to be all about how to grow ethnic foods, baby greens, edible flowers, and heirloom vegetables—and how to cook them in unique and interesting ways. I needed a trial garden to test at least a hundred different varieties of vegetables at one time, simultaneously growing a dozen tomato varieties, twenty different types of lettuce, and so on. These were vegetables that few cooks or gardeners had seen, such as green or striped tomatoes and red-hearted radishes, and I was faced with not only the challenge of growing them, but also creating recipes that showcased their unique flavors and textures. The only suitable place for such a garden was my sunny front yard. And I now had the skills to make it beautiful!

I hired Wendy Krupnick, an experienced food gardener, for this gargantuan two-year project. She dug up the entire front yard, transforming it into a succession of garden beds. I kept copious notes throughout the process: from finding and obtaining seeds, growing them out, photographing the resulting plants at the peak of their glory, harvesting them, and finally on to cooking, eating, and photographing the delectable results. Just as I hoped, we grew out hundreds of wonderful edibles in mini-gardens with Mexican, French, German, Asian, Native American, herb, and salad themes. It may be hard to fathom now, but back then there was almost no information on growing or cooking with foods out of the American mainstream; there was no Internet. We were pioneers, learning about roasting vegetables, how to preserve their colors when cooking them, where to find chipotle peppers, and discovering the world of Middle Eastern cookery. Even something that is familiar now, such as balsamic vinegar, was hard to find; salsa was exotic, even though in America today it is more widely used as a condiment than ketchup.

Many international dishes that were once unusual have become staples of the American diet. This classic Italian minestrone soup is a delightful opportunity to showcase homegrown vegetables.

Heirloom dishes such as this rhubarb-strawberry cobbler are irresistible and delicious American traditions.

I was truly blessed in this endeavor; Wendy was not only an expert gardener, but had also worked in a number of restaurants (including Chez Panisse). She brought sophistication to my recipes. In addition, Wendy was the state secretary for CCOF; organic farmers from all over the state came to meetings at my house. They shared new research in organic gardening methods, often bringing unusual or special produce to “show and tell” and giving us cutting-edge recipes and ideas.

I also came to be an early supporter of the Seed Savers Exchange, and felt an urgent need to help preserve some of the thousands of heirloom vegetable varieties that were going extinct. I could do my part by singing their praises to the public and food professionals. And with my ever-changing garden, I found that I had the means to make a difference.

After I finished my book, the Los Angeles Times asked me to write a monthly syndicated column about unusual vegetables. Since I couldn’t buy broccoli raab, Japanese eggplant, lemon thyme, Vietnamese coriander, tomatillos, or the many other edibles I wanted to write about, I had to grow them in my garden (and go through the familiar process of planting, note-taking, photographing, recipe testing, and so on). Once again, we grew a variety of gardens, with each bed embracing a different theme, and to distinguish them from the ones in my soon-to-be-published book, we created formal brick paths and built an arbor spanning the main walkway.

By the following year when the book finally came out, there was more media demand for new and varied gardens, including television coverage on CNN Headline News (a story about heirloom vegetables) and CBS This Morning (a feature on growing a front yard garden of mesclun salad greens). The New York Times did a feature article on cooking with unusual vegetables, and used their own photographer. Within a year, I became a contributing editor at Country Living Gardener magazine, and I needed even more new recipes and photos from my garden. Clearly, I was off on a new career path.

Since I started planting the front yard garden more than twenty years ago, my succession of gardeners and I have changed it out and planted new edibles of every sort twice a year, which means I’ve had more than forty trial gardens. It’s been great fun finding a range of unique themes. For instance, in 1992 (the 500th anniversary of Columbus’s landing in the New World), I planned a garden full of indigenous plants including the “three sisters” (beans, corn, and squash, a trio of companionable plants that Native Americans traditionally grew together), tomatoes, chili peppers, sunflowers, and amaranths. I’ve planted and cooked from at least a dozen distinctive salad gardens—some in containers and many combined with edible flowers. My spice garden included the herbs which, when they go to seed, are considered spices (anise, coriander, cumin, dill, and fennel), along with a patch of unusual mustards for seed—brown, white, and black.

There has been an Italian wild greens garden, a salsa garden, a grain garden, and a rainbow vegetable garden featuring everything from blue potatoes to rainbow chard, red carrots, and purple artichokes.

Recipes from the Garden is a compilation of some of my favorite dishes; it’s my way to share the innumerable culinary adventures I’ve had through decades of cooking from my garden. Along the way I’ve had the privilege of meeting many cooks who garden and gardeners who cook—professionals and amateurs alike—who have been gracious enough to share their recipes.

This book is not meant to be an A to Z primer on vegetables and herbs. Instead, it is a collection of recipes that follows my meandering journey through a garden of eden that you, too, can enjoy—whether the ingredients come from your garden, a grocery store, or the local farmers’ market.

You’ll find here enticing recipes that are flavorful, packed with nutrition, and generally light on saturated fats and sodium. I have included a vast range of recipes from easy to complex, suitable for beginners and long-time cooks:

• Easy and quick recipes using familiar ingredients: Mint Whipped Cream, Tomato and Basil Salad, and Baked Beets

• Dishes that are amazingly nutritious, and filled with vitamins and antioxidants: Classic Minestrone Soup; Hearty Greens with Pears, Blue Cheese, and Chives; and Oriana’s Cabbage Salad

• Recipes sure to please: Crab and Asparagus Salad with Fancy Greens and Sorrel Dressing, Tortilla Soup, Pork Shoulder Sandwiches with Tomatillos

• Gifts from the garden: Rosemary Pesto, Basil in Parmesan, and Dried Tomatoes

• Edible flower recipes: Chive Blossom Butter, Lavender Sugar, and Flower Confetti Salad

• Old-fashioned classics with a modern twist: Baked Apples with Dried Cherries and Hazelnuts, Corn Pudding, and Rhubarb-strawberry Cobbler

• Show-off recipes for devoted garden cooks: Red Cherry Peppers Roasted and Stuffed with Mozzarella Cheese and Prosciutto, Deep-fried Squash Blossoms with Chili Cream, and Garden Celebration Salad

• Memorable desserts: Rose Petal Sorbet, Golden Chard Dessert Tart, and Carrot Pie

Even if you don’t have your own garden, you, too, can create most of the recipes in this book. With each passing day, more and more ingredients that were once considered exotic are becoming accessible. No doubt some of these recipes will bring out your adventurous spirit and tempt you to sample from our new global buffet. As you look through the recipes in this book, you will find yourself planning your next meal, as well as next season’s garden—from sorrel and Cinderella pumpkins to cherry peppers and nasturtiums, from melons to fava beans.

As Julia Child would say, “Bon appétit!”—and happy gardening.

Rosalind Creasy

Los Altos, California