remedial eating

on a roll

Some people fall into a groove.  I fling.  

Then I reach for a spade, really put my back into it, and digdigdig until I can't quite see the light.  I love it there, in the deep underneath, earth dark and cool and fantastically dank.  But it has been pointed out to me, once or twice, that I might maybe sometimes overdo.  

Take Poppy.  In January, I concluded the Poppy (pattern here) I made for Zoë's 3rd birthday was overdue a new wardrobe.  She had just the two dresses she arrived with, and Zoë was coming up on another birthday herself, and, well. Two dresses.  Two years.  Surely you see it, too?

I set to work.   

I cut out one smock, and another, and then another.  Because making things in multiples is so simple, you know?  Same pattern, same seams, autopilot territory.  

And then I cut out some pants, one-two-three.  Because smocks without pants are like chocolate without peanut butter.  

And then, I made the happy discovery that pants cut for five-year-olds from one-yard lengths yield scraps perfectly sized for Poppy pants.  Sweet!

More pants.

And more tunics to go with. 

(To give you a sense of where we're at, were I a mouse, I'd be asking for a straw about now, but would not yet have trimmed my hair, or swept, or fetched crayons, or napped.  Or, asked after another cookie.)

Let's just say Poppy scored.  

She wound up with pants which matched most of Zoë's, pears and polka-dots and paisleys.  She has smocks cut from pajama scraps, and old quilting cottons from my childhood, and tiny 2T dresses once worn by my girl, re-purposed to rag doll proportions.    

There were white pants of thick Irish linen, cut from an old hole-riddled $1 runner.  A Downtown Abbey-era bit of lace I've had since high school, and adored, and admired, and wondered what on earth to do with, raised its hand and suggested itself for a little blue, brass-buttoned smock.  I accepted.  The antique pink tea towel with extraordinary appliqué—and the pox of indelible spots—finally found its purpose in life.  Cut carefully, add buttons strategically, and voilà!  Wee sailboat smock.  

And so it went.  The final count was, well, unknown, as I don't prefer to quantify my excesses.  I do know the new duds handily filled an old Samsonite overnight case.  And that putting scraps to such small, delicious uses evokes a certain thrifty indulgence.  

And that although no stuffing-headed little girl (or for that matter, red-haired real girl) actually needs a suitcase thick with doll clothes, it was great fun for me.  And if we're honest, such projects are really more for the makers than those they're made for.  And if I'm going to get on a roll, fast and furious, with no exits in sight, it had better be an innocent, upstanding roll.  You know where I'm headed with this.  

Salad.  More salad.  Every day a salad.  We went through six bags of greens, last week, and had to buy more, to patch us through.  Half of them went to this salad, here.

This here salad is a relatively new addiction for me, which is why I've only made ten (twelve?) times, over these past three weeks.  It began when the library notified me that I could pick up Lucinda Scala Quinn's new book.  When it will end is anyone's guess.  Although, knowing my track record...

Enough about me.  You.  You'll want some fresh spunky greens on hand, something with crunch and character.  Mizuna's been in regular rotation in our CSA, and I've loved its juicy crisp, here.  Quinn suggests mostly escarole, with a half head of raddichio.  Sounds good, too.  To this, and to Quinn's original, you'll add slivered celery and smashed hazelnuts.  (Yes, that's me, digging deeper, deeper, into the excellent crunchy groove.)

You'll also want some parmigiano reggiano, or pecorino romano, either/or.  I've tried both.  Declared both best.  Then re-negged.  You decide.  Either way, get your hands on a wedge, because you'll want slivers, substantial, toothsome, salty alter-egos to those crisp leaves.  

And, you'll want dates.  Yes, dates.  I know.  I never wanted dates, either.  In all my life, I've never understood the appeal of this sticky cloying gacky brown lump.  I finally understand.  (And by finally, let's be clear: we're talking forty-years of date confusion, people.)  Dates exist for this salad.  

Toss sliced dates with smart greens and toasty filberts and a serious hit of gritty-creamy parmesan schrapnel and oh. my. stars.  They make sense. Against all these other tastes, bitter/salty/umami/sharp, they come to life with all kinds of complexity.  Like bits of brown sugar, the dark stuff, muscovado, maybe, but also caramel's kissing cousin, and a mysterious swarthy something that try as I might, I can't put my finger on.  I sliced some kumquats over this last go around, which added another, wonderful sweet-tart dimension. But don't let lack of kumquats stand in your way.  This salad is stand-alone wonderful, as is.  The dates make it so.  Which is why I, lifelong loather of dates, recently bought a pound of Medjools at Costco.  I'm down to eight ounces, maybe six.  I'm on a roll.  Best step aside.

An Anytime Salad of Greens, Dates, Pecorino + Hazelnuts
inspired by Lucinda Scala Quinn, Mad Hungry Cravings
Costco's Medjool dates are phenomenal, plump, rich, profoundly fresh (yes, there is fresh and stale dried fruit).  Wherever you buy them, make sure they are rich shiny brown and soft, not white or wizened.  Great dates are impossibly sticky to slice.  Work with it.  Their flavor overcomes all.  On hazelnuts, I'm ever and always a Holmquist girl.  

for the salad:
6 ounces (8 cups) mizuna, or one head of escarole + half a head of raddichio
2 ounces pecorino or parmigiana reggiano (from a wedge)
8-10 dried medjool dates, pitted and sliced
generous 1/3 cup toasted* hazelnuts, roughly chopped
3 stalks celery, thinly sliced
15 kumquats (optional), sliced and seeded

for the dressing:
1/4 cup freshly squeezed lemon juice (from 1-2 lemons)
1 tablespoon maple syrup or honey
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

Prepare Salad:  Roughly tear or slice greens into generous bite-sized pieces. Place in a large, shallow salad bowl.  With a paring knife, shave cheese into thin tiles, slightly thicker than what a peeler would yield.  You want toothsome bites of cheese, thick enough to have presence, thin enough to go around.  An inch across, say, and thick as a dime.  Add to greens, along with sliced dates, chopped hazelnuts, sliced celery, and kumquats, if using. 

Make dressing:  In a jar with a tight-fitting lid, combine lemon juice, syrup and salt.  Swirl to dissolve salt.  Add olive oil, attach lid, and shake vigorously to emulsify.  

Drizzle 3-4 tablespoons dressing over salad, and toss gently and vigorously to combine.  Munch a handful, and add more salt and/or dressing to taste.  (You will have leftover dressing.  You will be happy about this.)  Try to share.

*To Toast Hazelnuts:  Preheat oven to 350°.  Lay hazelnuts on a rimmed baking sheets, and toast 10-12 minutes, until the white nuts turn ivory, the skins begin to curl, and deeply fragrant.  There's much fuss about peeling hazelnuts. Buy good ones (order from Holmquist; you'll never look back), and the skin is as sweet as the meat.  

 

quite a lot

I do believe apologies are in order.

March: Mea culpa.  How wrong I was.

I can't imagine what I was thinking, equivocating on about your fine self.  

Waffle, schmoffle.  You're not ambivalent in the least.  You totally have a purpose, and it is called pause.  Respite, re-calibration, ramping up.  Your job is to make sure we're sick and tired of winter, and ready and waiting for spring. Roger, that.

You're St. Patrick's Day.  Jeepers creepers.  I love any month that calls for slumps of spoon-tender corned beef, and golden roast parsnips, and soda bread so good, we ought to make it monthly.  

You're Pi Day!  Excuse to play fractions, and talk equivalents, and feast on pizza and pie, the same night.  And, on an existential note, to debate whether a properly proportioned Pac-Man is two-thirds or three-quarters of one whole.

You're old toys, re-discovered, as days remain cold, and kids dig ever deeper into closets.  Who couldn't use a second Christmas?  Your weather makes it so.

You're old games which play surprisingly like new.  Same old Uno.  Brand new kids.  Older, wiser, now able to hold cards!  Uno, open-hand, is an important first step, but somehow, it just isn't the same.  

You are new-to-us thrifted games, good games, the sort that amuse and challenge and fit between snack and homework.  My favorite.

You are unexpected gifts, logic puzzles, generously given by kind friends. (Thank you, friend.)  So small, it fits in the palm of small hands.  So addictive, it might keep one up until eleven.  Oneself, and one unnamed twelve year old. School or no school, the thing must be solved.  (It's not.  Yet.  A few more late nights.)    

And even if March is raw throats and runny noses, sick days and sleepless nights and lots of missed school, it seems like last gasps, like end parens, on a season that surely is near done.  (Surely?)  

Besides, it opened up a Monday to devour a sweet book, start to finish, between tissues and temperature-taking and tea. 

You are rain, rain, rain!  I adore rain, rain, rain.  After Winter's deep freeze, its kitty-paw snow, I'd all but forgotten that plip-plop, plip-plop.  It actually woke me up one night.  Then hypnotized me right back to sleep.

Except when you send the odd flurry of snow.  The day after Winter is over, say.  It didn't stick around, but it did inspire in my eldest an a cappella Twelve Days of Christmas revision: On the second day of Spring, it was twenty-two degrees...  

(I think, March, it's fair to say you also have a sense of humor.)

You are crunchy brown earth, too thuggish to dig, too ugly to not at least feel the itch.  I'm not one to order seeds after Christmas, to poke with a spade, eager to begin.  But I recognize that this March moment's important, this awareness that someday soon, something must be done.  

You are pre-daffodils I dare to cut, when the buds are barely more bulge than stem.  I knew I was pushing it.  I expected nothing.  It bloomed anyway.  Roger that. 

And then, there's the light, the last faded light, the final throes of Winter's soft hum.  Raging bright sun is returning with a vengeance, and I'm dusting off my soon-requisite squint.  And doubling down, drinking my fill of the intermittent, exquisite overcast.  The flannel skies, the tip-toe mornings, the pale monochrome afternoons.  Hush light.

In the past week, between clear and glare, we've been gifted a few pigeon-belly grey days.  Oyster shell days.  Damp newspaper days.  Old sock, fresh concrete, dirty mop water days.  Days with light so gauzy and fair that even laundry baskets look appealing.  Full, unfolded laundry baskets.  Did I mention I love this light?    

So while I might not call March my most favorite month, it seems I rather like it, food trenches and all.

For pie or no pie, good games or bad, we are still weeks away from spunky fresh food.  This, I cannot fix.  We indulge, right now, in mangoes and oranges, the odd far-flung berry to keep the kids from scurvy.  We pad our menus with hardy roots and leaves that aren't actually March fare, not here anyway, but which at least look and taste the part.  We dig deep into grains, nuts, seeds, and beans.  We rub elbows with roots and crucifers, until everyone involved needs corduroy patches.  

Indeed, without March through mid-April, I'm not sure I'd love roots and crucifers like I do.  It's during this last, long peninsula of winter that I double down, take stock, get serious.  When I pause long enough to pay heed to the turnips, appreciate the cabbage, give thanks for the carrot.

Ah, the old carrot.  The ubiquitous carrot.  Year-round citizen of our fridge, daily guest at our table.  It probably deserves its own place setting, by now, so regularly do we reach for its crunch.  Useful, dependable, versatile carrot.  So common the carrot, it can sometimes seem as familiar as tube socks you buy by the twelve-pack.  As dull, also.  

Or not.

What follows is a way with carrots that is many things, none of them dull.  It is the Ginger and Carrot Stir-Fry, from Naomi Duguid and Jeffrey Alford's Beyond the Great Wall.  And if you wonder why I led off with ginger, read on: it is no typo.  

This is a simple, straightforward stir-fry, a classic in most respects.  Two firm veg, cut slender and fine, for lightning-fast cooking and bold spare flavor. Blistering heat, a splash of oil, garlic and chili, for depth and smoke.  A modicum of pork, mere ounces, really, so little the authors don't include it in the title.  

Which brings us back to that intriguing title.  

Which begins, significantly, with ginger.  

Which is where things get interesting.   

One cup of fresh ginger, the ingredient list reads.  One-third of a pound.  One Pac-Man mouth's worth.  I probably don't need to tell you that that is quite a lot of ginger.  I might, however, need to explain why this lot is an excellent idea.  

I don't know about you, but I tend to think of ginger as an aromatic.  I've no qualms about using several slices in tea, or heaped tablespoons in greens, or ounces in cakes.  But it wasn't until a few years back, when I first took this recipe out for a spin, that I came to see ginger as vegetable, an ingredient in its own right.  I was, as they say, dubious.  Needlessly.  It is so, so right.

Slivered and stir-fried, something happens to ginger, something unexpected, something wonderful.  The heat seems to seal in the heat, the wok's sear mellowing the root's burn.  What remains is an invigorating warmth, a thread of zing, a welcoming glow.  

Against the simple sweet of the carrot, whose texture and shape it echoes like irony, the ginger dazzles, thrills, delights.  High drama as dinner.  Root and alter-root.  And as happy a wake-up call for carrots as any early Spring eater could ask for. 

Which brings me, March, to my second mea culpa: I called you the trenches. When will I learn?  

With meals like these, there's quite a lot to like about eating in the fine month of March.  

Ginger + Carrot Stir-Fry, with Pork
adapted from Beyond the Great Wall, by Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duguid

Look for fresh ginger that is firm and unblemished; wrinkly, shriveled roots will be fibrous.  Asian groceries stock excellent, inexpensive ginger, though most supermarkets carry it, also.  To matchstick the peeled carrots and ginger, I cut deep diagonal 1/16" slices, stack the slices 3-4 deep, then cut the slices into 1/16" slivers.  Presto: matchsticks!  As with any stir-fry, have all ingredients chopped and ready. The cooking itself takes under 10 minutes.  The original calls for a dozen crushed Sichuan peppercorns.  I typically use freshly ground black pepper instead, but feel free to trot out the lip-tingling original, if you've got it.  

I sometimes increase the pork to eight ounces, to please my resident carnivore.  That said, I think this would sing without any, with instead small cubes of smoked tofu, or tempeh, or even edamame, any mild toothsome bit to round out the bright roots.  If using pork, freeze 15 minutes first for simpler slicing.  

2 tablespoons peanut oil
1 tablespoon minced garlic
5-8 ounces pork tenderloin, thinly sliced into bite-size bits (1/2 x 1"), optional
2-3 dried red thai chilis
About 2/3 pound carrots (6 med., 4 lg.), peeled and cut into matchsticks (1 3/4 finished cups)
About 1/3 pound fresh ginger, peeled and cut into matchsticks (1 finished cup)
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup water
several grinds black pepper
2 tablespoons soy sauce 

Have all ingredients sliced and ready.

Heat an empty wok or heavy skillet over high heat.  Add oil, swirl to coat bottom, and let heat until it shimmers, 30 seconds.  Add garlic, stir-fry 10 seconds, then add pork and chilis.  Stir-fry for 3-4 minutes, nudging pork to separate, and to expose all pieces to the hot pan, until meat is seared and coloring here and there.   

Add carrots and ginger, and stir-fry for one minute.  Add salt, and stir-fry another minute.  Add water, cover, and boil vigorously for 3 minutes.  Remove lid, and continue to boil briefly, 1-2 minutes, until roots are tender but still toothsome, and sauce has reduced to a near-syrup.  Add soy sauce and freshly ground pepper (or crushed Sichuan peppercorns).  Stir-fry another minute, taste for seasonings, adjust salt and pepper, and serve immediately. 

all the possibilities

I am beginning to understand you, you Spring people!  

Sunday helped.  

Sunday was surreal.

Sunday was many things, most mundane, a few hair-pulling, but it was also sixty-three and sunny, and that makes up for a lot.  Maybe even losing an hour.

Pictures aren't worth a thousand words, here, or for that matter, an incomplete sentence. The above and below are from Friday/Saturday/Monday, when it was snowy/chilly/rainy.  But Sunday was Sunday, and something else entirely, and suited for so many things, none including the word "camera".  

Sunday was dusting off bicycles, re-fitting helmets, riding to the park and back. For the first time this year, for some.  For others, for the first time, ever.  It was stretching stiff legs to pump on the swings, like a butterfly pumps wings, still damp and rumpled.  Sunday was Zoë crying out in alarm, and me looking back, thinking she'd toppled.  Upright: check.  Alright: check.  What on earth?  

Mom, what IS that, on my arm? 

Your freckle, sweet girl.  You've had it since you were born.

*Giggle*  Ohhhh, guess I hadn't seen it in awhile. 

Sunday was biking back to refrains of I'm HOT! and Can we get the shorts out? and Now??  And doing just that, and then watching them skedaddle right back outside to play.  It was looking out the window in search of small faces, seeing instead only Crocs and bare knees in the tree.  It was looking out, later, to find them applying snow "lotion" to pale arms.  Or maybe it was freckle juice.  Beats me.    

Sunday was stealing away on my own bike, before dinner, to return library books, solo.  And taking the long route, to the faraway branch, just because it was so stinkin' pleasant.  I saw runners, running, creaky with winter.  I felt my own muscles, no better off.  They made, shall we say, their presence known. I'm pleased they're still there.  If a bit rusty.  Maybe a squirt of WD-40?

My nose startled at the smell of burgers grilling, on the way.  By the return trip, I picked up wood smoke.  The two seemed to sum up Sprinter, nicely.  

Sunday was taking the trash and recycle out at eight.  Eight!  With a shred of light, still, and no coat, and a smile.  And turning around to find a boy in his PJ's, on the lawn, bat in one hand, baseball in the other.  I don't play baseball. I'm terrified of baseballs.  I was hit in the face once by a baseball.  I can still hear it, taste it, thirty years later.  My kids, therefore, barely know the game's name.  But on a day like Sunday, with a boy and a bat (and a Nerf ball; very, very important, that), we pitch, hit, pitch, hit, until the sun falters, giddy just to be in the gloaming.  

In my reading, Monday, I came across the word resplendent.  I paused, struck first by the thought that I couldn't recall when I'd last seen or heard the word. My second thought was, Sunday.  I'm not (quite) baroque enough to use resplendent in a sentence.  I'm just saying, my brain spit it out, unbidden. Shoes and socks, salt and pepper, Sunday and resplendent.  

And as I mulled Sunday over, the next morning, I thought, This! is why people like Spring.  They don't see an ominous prologue to summer, to muggy and buggy and insufferable heat.  They see sun that warms instead of burns, light that invites, windows wide open.  They see air as addictive as any controlled substance.  They see crocuses, and purple, and color returning.  

They see finally saying yes! to endless requests to make Mudpies and Other Recipes.  They see strawberries, long presumed dead, pulling a Phoenix, resurrecting.  They see buds overtaking barren witch claws.  I've always been fond of barren witch claws.  But buds, they're nice, too.  And I do love a good breeze.

They—You?—see Spring as itself, fresh, spare, clean, overridingly pleasant.  Full of possibility.  A lot like cabbage.

Do you feel this way about cabbage?  I do, and I have for some time, and I think you should, too.  

After all, a recent survey of the world's 30,000 happiest folks revealed that 86% of them adore cabbage.  

I totally made that up.  But it could be true.  Rigorous cabbage/happiness research is sorely underfunded.  

Until cabbage gets the attention it deserves, I'll gladly step up as Cabbage Apologist in Chief.  When fresh, in fall, it rocks salads, raw, shredded into plump, juicy slivers.  It melts into soups; braises like a champ; and surprises, and delights, barely boiled and buttered.  Flash-fried with ginger and chilis into a mustard-seed-dotted, turmeric-stained tangle, cabbage by way of the sub-continent dazzles.  Stir-fried, with a nub of ham and splash of rice wine, it makes a smashing five-minute side.  

But it is to this mess of sautéed, slivered cabbage that I probably turn to, more than any other.  It is plain and simple, to make and to look at, and all I can say is: don't let it fool you.  I've been known to eat the whole pot in one sitting.  In my defense: it shrinks a lot.  Still.  It's a whole head of cabbage.

A whole head of cabbage, a knob of butter, salt.  That's it.  The rest is all heat and alchemy.

What we're talking about here is plain old ordinary cabbage, the celadon, sixty-nine-cents-per-pound bowling ball.  Savoy and Napa have their place, and a lock on picturesque, what with their ruffles and frill.  But for our purposes today, what we want is the snap, crunch (and cowlick) of the humble Green.  

You sliver the thing, fine as you can, which is half the fun, since cabbage was made for cutting.  Halve it [THWONK], lay flat side down [WHOMP], grab a large knife and slice [SCHWOOP! SCHWOOP! SCHWOOP!].  It's the work of two minutes, if the phone rings, and satisfying as all get out.  

Melt butter.  Add cabbage, and salt.  Keep heat close to high.  Stir, read paper, stir, practice spelling list, stir, taste, oh.  Well, oh.  Taste again.  For seasoning.  And again.  Because you're careful that way.  Once more, just to be sure.  Another once, twice... get that fork outta there.  

Cabbage cooked this way is cabbage under the influence: of butter.  Better influences, I know not.  There are, inexplicably, only two Tablespoons, pitted against pounds of cabbage.  But man, do those two get around.  Over the course of twenty minutes, give or take, this measly little knob makes the acquaintance of every last strand, thread and shred of cabbage.  The cabbage is totally on board.   

It tastes as if it has absorbed the butter, as if it has been steeped in the stuff. That, my friends, is a very nice as if.  

The cabbage, for its part, has this neat trick of becoming three vegetables in one.  Green cabbage's leaves are a diverse lot, some thick, most average, some paper-thin.  Each behaves differently in the pan.  The mainstream leaves, file-folder-thick, relax and melt and swoon a little, like a Waterhouse Ophelia.  The barely-there leaves almost disappear, gossamer little wisps whose main function is to catch in the pan, maybe caramelize.  And then there are the flashes of rib, which retain just a bit of their muscular crunch.  They make a fine team, these three.        

In the same way those parsnips trump, for me, french fries, this cabbage eats like buttered noodles, only better.  (My children, I should mention, couldn't agree less.  This would be why they are called children.)  The flavor is primarily sweet, and nicely salty, with little caramelized winks of leaves and milk solids.  The glory that is butter is omnipresent.  The cabbage is silky, supple, soft.  Except where it's not, where the bits of thick rib interrupt with their own juicy snap.  

It's a good dialogue, interruptions and all.    

You could, of course, fancy it up, add fresh herbs, or minced meats, or a custard-filled tart shell.  I tend toward the plain, because the plain is extraordinary.  (Well, plain eating, if not plain serving.  I often heap it on an old platter, just to make it feel better about itself.  It's not easy living life as the Toyota of cabbages.)  

It is nice on thickly sliced toasted crusty bread, topped with your sharpest cheddar, and piled high with as much soft cabbage as said bread can manage. I'm fond of an olive-oil fried egg, set on a golden nest of the stuff.  Tumble in creamy white beans, and/or tiny fried potatoes, and/or nubbly grains, farro, barley.  Toss it with buttered noodles (never too much of a good thing); fettucine are especially nice.  Mostly, I eat big sloppy bowls as is, reveling in twisty bedraggled forkfuls.

Oh, and if you're Irish, and/or a St. Patrick's Day fan?  (I most definitely am not, and am, in that order.  I never miss a March 17th.)  Corned beef never met a better plate mate.  Although, it's awfully good alongside fennel-ripped Italian sausages.  And come Easter, sweet pink slivers of ham.  And... Well, I won't bore you with all the possibilities.  Anyway, you'll find your own.  

I'll just close on this: today, before lunch, we picked two of our twelve crocuses, to bring a glimpse of the outdoors in.  In the space of an hour, over soup and cottage cheese, they went from silent, secretive buds to yawning cups of porphyry and gold.  All from that unassuming, compact package.  Seemed familiar, somehow.  

Softly Sweet Buttered Cabbage
adapted from Ina Garten, Barefoot Contessa Parties!

I love that Ina Garten published this in a book devoted to parties, and under Valentine's Day, no less.  Cabbage love, indeed.

1 medium head (2 1/2 pounds) ordinary Green cabbage
2 tablespoons salted butter
2 teaspoons kosher salt

Remove only the tattiest bits of outer leaf; the dark green exposed leaves add lovely color to this dish.  Cut cabbage in half, and place each half, cut-side down, on a board.  With a large knife, slice cabbage into thin ribbons, working around the tough core.  Continue until all cabbage is chopped.

In a large, heavy dutch oven or deep skillet, melt butter over medium-high heat.  Add slivered cabbage and salt, and stir well to coat.  Sauté, 15-25 minutes, stirring every few minutes, until cabbage has reduced by roughly two-thirds in size; has released and re-absorbed its liquid; and is bronzing at the odd edge. You want to keep the heat high enough to seal in the juices, but toward the end, take care not to let it burn.  The shorter time will result in plump, juicy threads that retain a bit of crunch.  Take them a bit further, and they'll slump, concentrate, and take on a caramelized edge, here and there. Your call. 

Taste, add additional salt if needed, pepper if you prefer, and serve piping hot.    

hem and haw

March, March. 

What do we think of March?

I'm lukewarm on the month, myself.  February, I realize, is for many the dregs, rock bottom of the winter blech barrel.  I get that.  I feel the same way about July. 

But by March, it gets a little funny.

For one thing, March is when winter divides us, North from South, inland from edgeland.  By March, in Seattle, there are daffodils to speak of, and yolk yellow forsythia, already come and gone, and the possibility, if not the reality, of peas.  Rain boots and bumbershoots replace cold weather gear, and the (often unrequited) hope for the white stuff.

We landed four inches, yesterday.  School was cancelled.  We won't be planting peas, anytime soon. 

You know I'm all over inches and igloos, and you probably hear my happy dance from there.  But by now, such splendor's the exception, not the rule, and more than a little melancholy for it.  Winter has entered its epilogue, the thrill of those early chapters behind us.  

Any snow that falls now inevitably brings thoughts not of firsts, but of lasts. Lasts are wistful.  

Mostly, March snow's a half-hearted thing.  Yesterday's was damp, heavy, and by today, halfway to gone.  It snowed all last week.  Accumulation: Zero.  It vanishes, on the way down.  It's a different snow species going forward, flyaway stuff, with no plans to stick around.  

The season itself seems spent.  But the finish line's a long way off, yet.   

By March, in Ohio, Winter starts to wane.  It does not follow that Spring kicks in.  Sun happens, March through May, in small, non-contiguous, biggering bursts.  But it will be two months, anyway, before Spring is here to stay.  

April is, after all, no stranger to snow. 

And so, dressers bulge with three seasons of clothing.  Shoes multiply, snow boots, rain boots, flip flops.  The coat closet teeters between clutter and chaos. Our first week in school, our first year here, it was 7° Monday morning, 70° Friday afternoon. 

A spread of sixty-one degrees.  Five days.  Same week.  First week of March. 

It's as if March, and its doppelgänger, April, can't decide which way to go. Winter, Spring?  Spring, Winter?  Eenie meenie miney mo...  

(We discussed how best to address this, the other day, and decided these next months deserve their own season.  A fifth, transitional, in-between season. Wing?  Wring?  Maybe Sprinter...  To, you know, get us through quicker.)

And I think that's the thing that gets me about March.  I'll mourn Winter when it goes, welcome Spring when it lands, but where we are now is a no-man's land. March waffles, equivocates, hems and haws.  It's ambiguous at best.  I am not. At my best, around ambiguous, that is.

So it's hard to explain why it is that I've dodged this minestrone for months.  

Partly, I point to the fact that it's one of those fluid recipes, wide open to interpretation and the contents of your crisper.  But we've covered that, now. Improvise.  Innovate.  Check.

Also, it's a dog.  Relentlessly unattractive.  Even in person.  I still ate thirty quarts.  (I know.  I couldn't believe it, either.  I just double-checked my pots. I've made more like forty.  But I did relent, and share a few bowls, so let's go with thirty-plus, and call it conservative.) 

Mostly, though, I'm still blinking in disbelief that minestrone could be considered edible, much less greed-inducing.  Prior to this fall, my minestrone encounters all came from crowd-friendly faux-talian restaurants.  The sort where you order not entrées but "dinners".  The sort where you get free bread/salad/soup/coffee/ice cream/refills.  Laugh if you will, but I've a soft spot for this sort.  For everything, that is, save the strident red sludge with tinned potatoes, khaki green beans, and that rarified terroir that comes only from three days on a steam table.  

Apparently, that was not minestrone.   

Apparently, if the fine women of River Cafe are to believed, minestrone is actually an exaltation of vegetables.  It's a careful building up of flavors, layer upon well-considered layer.  It requires a bit of work, and a bit of time, as ten pounds of vegetables don't chop themselves.  But it is good, deeply pleasing work, as the chopping and stirring and layering dovetail like an anonymous 19th century oak desk.  Perfectly.  Which translates pretty much directly to the spoon.  

But I'm getting ahead of myself...  

This soup is Judy Rogers' and Rose Gray's Winter Minestrone, and it is a first-class keeper.  Maybe that's redundant, since pretty much anything Rogers-Gray is, in my experience, a first-class keeper.  Still, there are several small, brilliant steps in this recipe that do a real number on ordinary old veg.  It is based on soffritto, that dense, intense, slow-cooked slurry of aromatics that go just shy of caramelized, anything but shy in flavor.  This slow dance is key, and totally unhip, when tinned broth, beans, and greens equal soup in ten.  I do that soup.  I like that soup.  This isn't that soup.  And it shows.  Save this one for a weekend morning, because thirty minutes is almost a cheater's soffritto, and forty-five minutes, not a moment too long.  

To this heady sludge, you add things in quantities that may raise eyebrows, and will demand seconds.  A full bunch of parsley, stems and leaves, both.  Heads of garlic.  Heads.  Plural.  Swiss chard ribs, tinned tomatoes.  And then, again, chop, stir, chop, stir, let the magic unfold in slo-mo.  Because caramelized tomatoes?  So, so not strident.   

Almost there.  In go your six pounds of slivered greens (you read that right), your mountain of diced roots, a few quarts of water.  I add parmesan rinds, as I love their umami, and a small throw of kielbasa, for my small sausage fiends. Both add something.  Both are unecessary.  That soffritto brings flavor to spare.  

Then, simmer.  Half an hour, give or take.  Add tender veg at the end, if you wish.  Beans—I like chickpeas—no matter what.  Season well, with the same slow attention you've given all along.  Because an undersalted soup is a television on mute, but add just enough, and in that moment, each vegetable becomes eloquent, articulate, witty.      

One last note about those vegetables: they're all my addition, and I adore them. Gray and Rogers call this one Winter Minestrone, and theirs is a soup of beans and greens.  But I made my first batch late last fall, as we were readying for two days in the hills, and my fridge and garden were both bursting.  These pictures all date to that time; this minestrone's carried me through every month, since.  From fall's last zucchini to late winter's storage veg, it has flattered every thing I've thrown at it.  Indeed, while peeling roots for last week's pot, I went a little panicky over their impending loss.  Hold up, I scolded the turnips and parsnips, I'm not done with your soft pepper, with your sweet cream.  

Whereupon I resolved to quit hemming and hawing, and get you a bowl of this soup.  Because what could possibly possess a person to pine for turnips in March?  See below.   

Three Season Minestrone
adapted from Italian Country Cook Book, by Ruth Rogers and Rose Gray 

Vary the veg to suit your taste and crisper drawer.  Bok choy can stand in for swiss chard.  Double the spuds.  Skip the green beans.  Follow the general guidelines for timing—stems in step two, roots in step three, and tender veg just before the end—and you can substitute at will.  

Rogers and Gray add half the cavolo nero at the beginning and half at the end, for a splash of bright, resilient green.  I prefer mine added entirely at the beginning, where it goes army beige but turns silky and rich.  Your choice. Either way, six pounds disappear.  Seriously.  Theirs is also a thick, standing-room-only soup, which contains only enough water to cover, and has half the beans mashed before adding.  I leave my beans whole, and often increase the water, as I love the warming effects of hot broth.  Also your call.  Half-inch dice.  I know.  But it makes for the most pleasing spoonfuls, each a small party of sweet, tender veg.  Truly.    

This makes vats, gallons and gallons.  I freeze a tall stack of portions, for later lunches, and get nervous when the pile runs low.  Halves easily, if you want less.   

4 tablespoons olive oil
6 medium carrots, chopped
3 medium onions, chopped
6 celery stalks, chopped
2 teaspoons' salt
2 heads of garlic, cloves peeled and minced
2 pounds swiss chard, leaves and stems separated, leaves slivered, stems chopped
1 28-ounce can plum tomatoes, roughly chopped
1 bunch parsley, leaves and stems, chopped
4 1/2 pounds cavolo nero (Tuscan kale) or other hearty green, stripped of tough stems, leaves slivered
3-5 quarts water, vegetable stock, or chicken stock
8-16 ounces parmesan rinds
6-8 cups root vegetables (parsnips, potatoes, turnips, sweet potatoes, more carrots), peeled and cut into 1/2" dice
6 cups tender vegetables (green beans, zucchini, corn), prepped and cut into 1/2" dice
8-16 ounces kielbasa, cut into 1/2" dice (optional)
2 cups chickpeas, cooked
salt and freshly ground pepper
freshly grated parmesan, to top 

Peel and roughly chop your carrots, onions and celery.  In your biggest, heaviest pot, preferably a dutch oven, warm the olive oil until shimmery.  Set flame to low, tip in your carrots, celery and onions, add two teaspoons' salt, and stir well to coat.  Cook slowly, stirring occasionally, until soft and amber, 30-45 minutes.  While this is happening, go about the rest of your prepping and chopping, working your way through the roots, leaves and such.

When your soffritto is one third its' former volume, slumped, and smelling wonderful, add the two heads' minced garlic, half the chopped parsley (stems and leaves), and the chopped chard stems.  Stir well, let settle, then add tomatoes.  Cook, stirring occasionally, until reduced, 15-30 minutes.

Add half (or all, see note above) of swiss chard and cavolo nero leaves, the diced root vegetables, enough water or stock to cover, parmesan rinds, and diced kielbasa, if using.  (At this point, I usually divide the soup over two large pots, so as not to crowd, and to allow for the vegetables still to come.)  Bring to a boil, and let simmer, 30-45 minutes, or until the biggest root yields easily to knife point.  Taste for salt—it will need plenty more, anywhere from 1-2 tablespoons.  Add and taste, add and taste, until you are happy.  

Now, finish off the soup with the final line-up:  add the remaining greens, if you reserved any; cooked beans; plus any tender vegetables (green beans, zucchini, corn), and let simmer another 5-10 minutes, until tender.  Taste for seasoning again—all the vegetables should be flavorful, each tasting distinctly of itself, and the broth bright and deeply savory.  Adjust salt and pepper until this tastes true.

Serve immediately, topped with freshly grated parmesan and/or olive oil.  And stash some away in the freezer for later.  There are few things better to find in the deep freeze.  

'tis the season

Right, so I realize you packed up the trees and tinsel months ago.  Us, too.  But in our home, the end of December is really only the beginning.  

Our Winter is sort of synonymous with Fest, with one party spilling on into the next.  We start with a bang, lucky enough to celebrate two birthdays within days of Christmas.  Then, there's New Year's, which is pretty staid, maybe puzzles and pizza and toothpicks for small eyelids, and two minutes of TV on either side of midnight.  And new calendars.  The most exciting bit, really.

What really keeps the celebration drum beating, though, is the everything thereafter.  For there's a birthday three weeks into January, and another three weeks later, during February's first week.  And then, exactly one week after that, V-day, heart day, cheap glorious chocolate day, take your pick.    

(Me, I pick glitter day.  There is glitter in the grout.  Glitter between the floorboards.  Glitter in the ancient basement cast iron sink.  There is glitter enough that, were the space shuttle still circling, the crew could see New York, Chicago, and us.  There are those who say February's a dark, dreary month.  To them, I say: get a load of my laundry tub!)

And then, as an added bonus this year, we got Annette, all weekend long. Annette packs more party into 5'4" than does David Stark in his much-buzzed-about events.  This does not include the toys she packs in every suitcase, which this time included one marshmallow crossbow, one marshmallow air pistol, and one large lights-and-sounds target.  

Small pack of Jet-Puffed: $2.39.  Marshmallow Crossbow: $18.05.  Being a fly on the wall while Annette explained this particular set of carry-ons to TSA at Sea-Tac: Priceless.

What this means, practically speaking, is that our Winter is also celebration season.  Yes, Winter's mittens and hats and floors, stained white with salt within moments of mopping.  

But it's also planning and plotting and inviting.  It's lantern-stringing and candle-lighting and excellent  off-key singing.  It's bright happy paper and gloppy glue sticks and food color used in untoward proportions.  It is cupcakes in cones, and a stealth lemon cake, and confirmation that the extra curd and cream was extra nice.  And that this remains, one year later, one heckuva cake.  Ditto the kiddo.  Keepers, both.

There are thank you notes yet to be written.  The odd moustache, still on the wall.  A few ROYGBIV balloons yet to contend with.  (As for the birthday theme one freshly-minted five year old chose: three guesses, first two don't count.) But by and large, we're winding down. 

We've packed up the doilies, pulled down the banners, returned the blackboard to black.  My cuticles, if not quite white yet, are also no longer royal blue. Progress.  This week, normal returns.  It's been a grand ride.  I'm ready.  

(Well, normal save the lunches left behind yesterday morning.  And the mittens, much-needed for a field trip.  And the trash can lid that vanished in the night's storm.  And the dryer drum, which, I discovered after breakfast, is completely coated in melted crayons.  Crayons.  Plural.  Red and blue.  As is every item of clothing therein.  Who knew Crayola could do such damage?  

Typical Tuesday, filling in for a Monday.)  

Which brings me to something else we've been celebrating during this same dark, cold stretch: pomegranate season.  And, before it leaves us entirely, I must must must must get this to you.  

The "this" in question is the burnt eggplant with pomegranate, lemon and mint from Jerusalem.  The breathlessness is because this much-ballyhooed recent title is all that, and then some.  And then some more.  (No, more.  More, still. Getting warmer.  How about just plain wonderful.)  The urgency stems from the fact that pomegranate season's almost over.  And the reason for my many "musts" is eggplant, pomegranate, lemon and mint.

Eggplant.  Pomegranate.  Lemon.  Mint.  

Together.  In one bowl!  Think about that.  Exactly.

Me.  

Oh.  

My.    

My eggplant love is well-documented, my fondness for the burnt stuff, no secret.  But this particular iteration is new to me.  If it's new to you, change that fact.  Now.

You begin with a base of burnt eggplant, a.k.a. eggplant brought to its smoky-sweet, supple, scoopable, silk-stockinged knees.  After broiling your eggplant beyond recognition, you spoon out out its soft insides to strain an hour, and let loose any liquid that might tarnish bliss.  The now-concentrated heap of smoked eggplant meat is then loosened up again, but this time, with dazzle. There's the juice and zest of one large plump lemon, plus the cool fresh of chopped mint.  There's garlic, whose raw bite I don't favor, which I therefore warm in the accompanying olive oil.  And there's pomegranate, seeds and syrup, the first stroke of brilliance all Ottolenghi and Tamimi, the second minor add, greedily mine.  

The end result is extraordinary.  Smart with lemon, bright with mint, softened and deepened by gently-garlicked oil, the smoked eggplant startles, just like that.  Stir in the pomegranate syrup and seeds, and stand back.  It stuns.  The syrup, garnet, heady, treacled, adds a caramelized, concentrated thread throughout.  And the seeds, how the seeds delight.  Rubied, crisp, tart, they punctuate each bite, edible exclamation points.  They pop on the tooth and sparkle on the tongue, like so much sweet caviar.  Like glitter for the tastebuds.  Like genius.

What to do with it, you say?  Oh ho!  Let the fun begin...  It would sidle up next to a piece of fish nicely, halibut or cod, simply, expertly seared.  Lamb, also, if you like lamb.  Falafel, definitely, if you don't.  I can see it piled high in warm pillowy pita, with leaves and sharp feta, or nothing at all.  In my home, it began life as a pita chip dip, which we'd lay out with hummus, olives, cheese and veg, on our semi-regular chips and dip night.  Highly recommended.  Few things flatter a pita chip better, soft smoky sweet against salty crisp crunch.  Pile it on as high as you can.  

(No, of course I didn't push burnt eggplant on the pre-K birthday guests.  We had rainbow goldfish, and rainbow fruit, and rainbow spaghetti.  What else?)  

Me, I couldn't pile it on high enough, and ended up inverting the equation. These days, I pile it into a bowl, and crumble a few pita chips on top for crunch. More eggplant fattoush, less dainty dip.  More of the good stuff, eggplant, pomegranate, lemon, mint.  More more more, before those pomegranates pack their bags.  Because pomegranates remain, in my neck of the woods, one of the few foods MIA in the off-season.  'Tis their season, still.  Tic-toc, tic-toc! 

(What are you still doing here?) 

Smoked Eggplant with Pomegranate, Lemon + Mint
adapted from Jerusalem, Yotam Ottolenghi and Sami Tamimi

It isn't remotely eggplant season, of course, but worldly eggplant works fine in this context.  Next fall, I intend to nail that narrow window when eggplant and pomegranate season coincide.  There are many ways to seed pomegranates.  My preferred method is dungeness-crab style: spread newspaper on the table, and go at it.  For the clever water method, see here. Eggplant varies widely in size; I've used from 2-4 to yield the quantities called for.  Use the weight and volume guides, to nail quantities, and simply adjust your seasonings to match your finished eggplant yield.  

Please note eggplant needs at least one hour to drain.  Eggplant can be roasted and drained 3-4 days in advance, and the dip mixed 24 hours in advance, with fresh herbs added at serving.  

3-4 large, Italian globe eggplant (3-3 1/2 pounds total, uncooked weight; 2 1/2 cups cooked, after roasting and draining) 
2 cloves garlic, minced
3-5 tablespoons olive oil, to taste
grated zest of 1 large plump lemon + 2 tablespoons juice, freshly squeezed 
2 tablespoons flat-leaf parsley, chopped
4 tablespoons fresh mint, chopped
2 tablespoons pomegranate molasses
seeds of 1 large pomegranate (1 cup)
1 teaspoon salt, plus more to taste

Burn eggplant:  During the winter months, I burn eggplant under the broiler, as follows.  For gas stovetop* and BBQ methods*, see below.  Place rack 6" under element, preheat broiler, line a sheet pan with foil, and score eggplants with a few shallow, 3/4" slashes. Place eggplant on the foil-covered pan, then place pan in oven.  Broil for 40-60 minutes, rotating each eggplant a quarter-turn once the exposed side has blackened and blistered, every 15-20 minutes.  An exhaust fan comes in handy.  Eggplants are done when all sides are black, burst in spots, and have collapsed.   Err on the side of overdone.  The flesh should be silky soft, the exterior, absolutely dreadful.  

Allow smoked eggplant to cool enough to handle, then cut along one side, baked potato style.  Spoon flesh from burnt skin (discard skin), place in a colander, and pull apart into slender threads, or snip roughly with clean shears.  You are aiming for scoopable, bite-size bits.  Drain at least an hour at room temperature, or up to overnight, in the refrigerator.  (Smoked, drained eggplant can be refrigerated 3-4 days, at this point.)  

When you are ready to mix your dip:  Place 3 tablespoons' oil and minced garlic in a small skillet or saucepan, and place over a medium flame.  Warm oil and garlic together, gently, until garlic is fragrant and faintly golden but not taking on any true color, 3-4 minutes.  Place drained eggplant pulp in a medium bowl, and add lemon zest, juice, garlic and olive oil, 1 teaspoon salt, pomegranate molasses, and stir well to combine.  Taste for seasoning, and add more olive oil, lemon juice, salt, and/or pomegranate molasses, to taste.  Let marinate an hour, if you can stand it.  (I often can't.  It's awfully, awfully good, just-mixed.) When ready to serve, mix in the mint and parsley, and half the pomegranate seeds.  Mix gently to combine, pile high on a plate, and scatter with the remaining rubied seeds.  

This is brightest the day you make it, but holds very well several days.   

*Alternate Methods to Burn Eggplant:

On a gas burner:  line the stovetop with foil to catch drips, keeping only elements exposed.  Turn heat to medium-high, and place eggplant on prongs, directly over flame, one eggplant per element.  Roast 15-18 minutes, rotating every 5 minutes or so, when bottom has become blackened and blistered. Eggplant is done when interior is melting soft and the exterior can no longer hold together.  

On the BBQ: see instructions (and another favorite burnt eggplant recipe) here.