Fresh Cracked Pepper

“August is the cruelest month,

breeding tomatoes out of the green land,

mixing hunger with desire,

stirring my stomach with red globes

filled with the sun’s rays.” — T.S. Eliot

Late August, a turning point. Summer teetering on its long legs, delirious with spent heat, drunk with ripeness, ready to fall. Unexpectedly warm days like memoirs of June flirt with September’s impinging chill. It’s my first full summer to fall transition here in central New York, and I don’t really know what to expect. My Canadian urge to wrap myself in sweaters at this time of year is consistently fought off by summer’s persistence.

A summer I am happy to enjoy so long as she keeps bringing me her ruby gifts.

Yesterday’s gift, an heirloom tomato. Or, as I saw on a sign at the market on Saturday, an example of “what tomatoes used to taste like” before they were domesticated and shipped thousands of miles still in their green skin. I can’t remember what cultivar exactly this one is, but it sprung from seeds saved by friends and generously passed on to me in the spring.

Heirlooms, often scarred and sometimes bulbous, make up for their “ugliness” in taste. Fleshy and meaty and with few watery bits, it seems like they were made for the Toasted Tomato Sandwich: Queen of August lunches.

This particular one wasn’t the ultimate, but I grew it myself, and that more than made up for what it lacked in taste.

There’s such pleasure in watching food happen right under your fingertips. Nurturing the seedlings and then transplanting them to the wider world of the garden. Tomato plants yield an almost overnight jungle, which in the face of other failed crops (radishes, beets and peas) provide much-needed satisfaction for rookie gardeners like myself. Witnessing their small buds break open in the early summer and then turn to green globes is a procession full of mouth-watering expectation. The red rewards are now just beginning to emerge.

They began like this, reaching for sunlight through a window:

As a child, the Toasted Tomato Sandwich (TTS) was synonymous with summer. Known in other households as the BLT, in ours the presence of bacon was a once in awhile treat. As ubiquitous in our home as Kraft dinner was in most, the TTS was usually served on the softest of white bread, either rye or my mother’s homemade. Sometimes smothered with Miracle Whip for a tangier bite than mayonnaise, the simple harmony of flavors was unmatched in our sandwich world. Bread, mayo, tomato, salt and pepper: Childhood summers suddenly tangible.

As I got older I experimented with whole leaves of basil, sprouts, different lettuces, and more grainy breads. But the taste of a soft white bread (in yesterday’s case, Panera’s sunflower loaf) caramelized slightly in the toaster, three thick slices of home-grown tomato, and the rare touch of crisp bacon was a taste I wished could’ve lasted all day long. Ever as satisfying, I was instantly transported to a sunny kitchen in small-town Manitoba:

As T.S. Eliot suggests, my stomach felt full of the sun’s rays indeed. And as we march steadily into fall, I hope the red globes — just beginning to peek through foliage in my garden — will help keep me sunny for weeks to come.

Back in May I started a series to track my journey through The Bread Bible by Rose Levy Berenbaum. In that first post, I shared about this wonderful find and how I hoped it would be the end to a streak of bread failures. Now that I think about it they weren’t even all that terrible. But her loaves, goodness. Her loaves are worth whole afternoons. Her loaves will surely summon my heirloom tomatoes to finally redden and come home to their destiny in the revered TTS. (Toasted Tomato Sandwich, for those of you unfamiliar with my family’s tendency to abbreviate everything.)

The revelation that this book brought faded quickly with the arrival of summer, whose heat promptly bowled over all my wheaty aspirations. The flash of June left me running from an apartment that made me feel like a bun in the oven. Rose’s book went back to the library and onto my Amazon wishlist. All those bookmarked recipes gave way to store bought bread (gasp!) and meals where cooking either took place outside or not at all. In moments of extreme weakness there was always bread from the farmer’s market, but as good as it was, it just wasn’t. I hadn’t watched it grow up, you know?

Last week a serendipitous email brought me back to bread. It was from Rose herself, successful cookbook author, patron saint of Cake and Bread. It read simply “have I thanked you yet for your great posting about bread and my book and work? this was so special I was waiting ’til I had time to do it full justice.” I had emailed her my post and then forgotten all about it.

Her email, along with the news that freshcrackedpepper was being added to a famous person’s list of links have sent me running back to my oven begging for forgiveness. The cool evenings beginning to entice Syracuse into late summer might help with that too.

This can be mine again, adorned with pithy tomatoes, buttery home-grown lettuce, and sprouts born not of soil but of water in a jar in my cupboard.

This Tyrolean Ten-Grain Torpedo that was my third Bread Bible Bread was an absolute treat. Notes accompanying my pictures include: Might’ve let rise a tad too long (was working in the garden), it browned really really fast. Covered with foil and finished the latter half of baking right on the baking stone. Very crusty and the grains on top were a rustic addition. Has that almost metallic, iron-y taste I like in bread. Vital wheat gluten makes it almost impossibly soft for a baguette-style loaf.

Not my most poetic writing, but enough to take me back to that May day that passed pleasantly in my garden while my poor dough puffed its way just past perfection.

Months later I can’t remember why Rose called it Tyrolean. My guess is that it has something to do with Tyrol, the region of Europe that bridges part of Austria and Northern Italy. Beyond that it’s escaped me. I’m assuming the torpedo part comes from its shape and the ten grains from its crunchy composition.

Now that I occupy my own eighth of an inch a famous bread baker’s website, I’ll have to get back to work ploughing through her mammoth collection. As long as these late August nights keep wrapping themselves around the day like a cool cloth on a fevered forehead, I can be found crouched before my 400 degree oven wishing it had a window. Inside, great bread will be happening. Bread so good that just knowing about it will be enough.

According to the right-wing news media, a person’s taste says a lot about them — including whether they would make a suitable US president. Last week, as if grasping for things to criticize the Democratic candidate for, another political pundit called attention to Obama’s noshing habits. His crime this time around was his supposed penchant for arugula.

Those little leaves say communist all over ‘em, don’ they?

This came to my knowledge (as do so many other insipid media blunders) via John Stewart, whose show included a clip of ABC’s Jake Trapper calling Obama “an arrogant, arugula-eating, fancy berry tea drinking celebrity.” Now if that’s not reason enough to vote for a man who shares a last name with a brand of frozen french fries, I don’t know what is. Opps, now I’m just playing their game. Ahem, back to tonight’s pizza.

I know I just blogged about arugula, but this is totally different. I promise.

So I still have that abundance of arugula on hand, bored through with tiny bug holes that don’t bother me one bit when washed vigorously. I’m just glad they enjoyed it as much as I did, though I doubt they had a half glass of pinot to compliment the mild pepper nuances. Poor little pinot-less weevils.

I’ve been wanting to try an arugula pizza, after seeing it pop up on blogs and in foodie magazines as of late: Arugula-fig. Arugula-prosciutto. Arugula-walnut. Characters like these haunted my dreams.

After a few minutes of research I discovered that handfuls of the rinsed and chopped weed (’cause it sure grows like one!) can be thrown onto any old fresh-from-the-oven pizza. The residual heat from the pie will wilt the greens and two minutes later your pepperoni and mushroom expectations will be blown away. Just like Obama will explode your iceberg lettuce and bacon expectations, America! If you only let him, maybe he’ll get Eleanor Roosevelt’s veggies growing again on the White House lawn.

Arugula might just be the tastiest leaf you could throw at a pizza pie, next to basil. The two can duke it out in my kitchen any day.

So not only did I eat arugula for dinner, I also went GOLFING this afternoon with my hubby. Now THAT’S a yuppie afternoon if there ever was one. I wonder what the FOX and ABC anchors would say about poor Obama if he were to engage in such an elitist, liberal, yuppie afternoon as I had. We can only speculate, and try to protect him by eating all the world’s arugula ourselves. Yes, that’s definitely the only solution for our poor Barack.

To fuel all your energy-draining worrying about our dear Democratic presidential nominee, I want you to go make this pizza. Consider it my gift to all you Americans with tension building in your souls for the future of your country’s leadership. I bring you Barack Obama pizza: some nutty, zesty, liberal, well-educated, eloquent, DIY grassroots hippie flatbread with flax in the dough to boot.

Take that McCain spicy fries and deep n’ delicious. You’ve got nothing on this one.

Continue reading ‘obama pizza’

It seemed fitting that the day after completing my first triathlon, while nursing the pleasant soreness of limbs pushed to their limits, that I should post another recipe in my Homemade Energy Bars series. The balls and chews I’ve already featured seemed to go over well, and so I bring you another fantastic, real food version of those tempting health food store snacks. So here’s another no-bake treat, one as simple as bonding for 5 minutes with your food processor (or, as in my case, your hand-blender-with-fortunate-attachment).

I’m not really one for the energy goos and gels. Preferring instead the taste and texture of real food, I tend to pack my workout bag with things of the grainy-granola variety, as opposed to packages full of something resembling McDonalds’ birthday cake icing. However, even with these proclivities, during my race yesterday I did pound back a pack of Chocolate Outrage Guu midway through my 24 mile bike. With its quick delivery of energy with zero digestive problems, I will definitely lean on these in future race days. But for everyday use (training and running errands when it doesn’t matter if I have to stop for a bathroom break), these are much more satisfying.

Racing, whether in a 5k or an Ironman, peels back the layers of culture and associations that surround our eating and drinking. It strips food down to fuel, and liquid to its hydrating properties. It makes you aware of things most people don’t give 2 cents of their thoughts to, like sodium, carb and protein intake. In short, it can drive you crazy, thinking of your body as a machine to be tweaked and oiled.

Training for that compulsive finish line is a trial of mind and body. It is an ever-building procession of cells and attitudes and obsessions that carry you into the days ahead. As I stood there in the water my mind went strangely blank, and I felt my animal nature rise beneath my skin. For just shy of three hours, my tastes, memories and to-do lists were buried under the power of being that well-fueled machine. I was muscle and sinew and units of energy, and it felt truly euphoric.

If you are sick of seeing plates full of nothing but novelty, reward or diet-induced contraband, go and register for a race. Suddenly everything you eat and drink will feel more plump, juicy and satisfying. Like an intravenous running from the earth straight into your blood stream, you will feel miraculously connected and newly powerful.

Continue reading ‘Homemade Energy Bars III: Peanut Ginger Squares’

On Friday I finished the first semester of my journalism masters, also known as bootcamp. The six week program is the SI Newhouse School of Public Communications’ way of welcome us into the world of reporting and story telling, and let me tell you, it lived up to its combative name. Thankfully, I was able to relate a few of my assignments to food.

Over the past month, I barely had time to EAT let alone cook and take pretty pictures for freshcrackedpepper. But I missed it. Instead of scheming and dreaming over farmer’s markets finds, I was churning out story after story on the happenings of Syracuse, whether real or fake. (Click the link to see a video presentation made of our disaster drill).

The one I am sharing with you today I am very proud of. To prepare us for the increasingly multimedia world of news, my team members and I were assigned these “soundslides.” (You’ll start to see more of them on news organizations’ websites.) We had two days, 9-5, to shoot, edit, interview, sound edit, compile and convert all our footage into this package. The topic was “a person with an unusual job,” and since Mark and I used to buy our coffee from this guy before we started roasting our own, I decided he might be a good subject. My team agreed, and here is what we produced. Enjoy!

When presented with my two snack options on my West Jet flight yesterday, I was irked that they’d only covered sweet and salty options (”cookies or snack mix, miss?”) I’m not sure who regulates things like taste, but a fifth taste is pending on the bitter-sweet-salty-sour gamut. This new addition is none other than umami, a relative newcomer to the taste scene.

While it might take a few more years for airlines and convenience stores to start offering snacks in this new category, elsewhere its popping up as plentifully as my basil plants.  This taste, often described as “savoriness” (read: deliciousness), can be understood with a simple mental exercise. Think soy sauce, parmesan cheese and anchovies, not neccessarily together but rather by their “essence.” These foods possess the mysterious fifth taste credited with imparting indescribable “heartiness” to foods.

Good ol’ Wikipedia tells us that umami comes about more technically via the detection of the naturally present amino acid, glutamic acid, or glutamates in some foods. This is why MSG also presents a unique heartiness to food, despite it being an additive most health nuts decry.

It turns out that the Clamato juice I had with my West Jet salty snack mix might qualify as being umame, but I’m not sure yet. For now, I’ll cling to it as a convenient “je ne sais quoi” term for food that surpasses my inner thesaurus.

With arugula sprouting up in my garden faster than I can caress my tomato plants (who apparently like that sort of thing) this salad has become a faithful and fast dinner these days. With a supply of candied walnuts and a block of stinky cheese, umami is never too far away to meet a craving that goes beyond the everyday. And even better, some health gurus claim that the more tastes you can meet in one meal, the more likely you are to feel satisfied.

Take this salad, one of my favorites. Sure it’s a little salty, a little bitter, and a little sweet. But its main star power is in its combination of big, bold flavors I have trouble describing the marriage of. So umami it is. Peppery, nutty, hearty deliciousness that is perfect for these hot summer days when we live on salad and then listen to our bodies thank us profusely.

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These days I barely have time to dream. If I did, I would dream about spending time in my kitchen as I used to do, stirring together wonderful things. But school has sucked me in and sucked me dry.

Just weeks ago I had the time for wonderful things. Books for pleasure, long and lazy conversations, hours on the yoga mat. I am happy where I am, but it has brought a sea change.

If I could find the time to sleep, perchance I could find the time to dream: an afternoon for dark chocolate, my very own ice-cream maker, kisses of cayenne. I would dream about this Mexican iced sorbet I made when days allowed for dreams. And maybe, just maybe, there would be a few minutes left to actually bring it to life.

Continue reading ‘mexican sp(iced) chocolate sorbet’

I first tasted dolmas, or stuffed grape leaves, in Greece. I was 19 and still more or less uneducated in the cuisines of the near East. They were delicately Mediterranean, bursting with new combinations of taste and texture.

My friend and I were sharing a white stucco flat on the island of Naxos, overlooking the Aegean Sea. We had met an Australian woman named Grace, who introduced us to the cigar-shaped delicacies packed in olive oil. I was a sucker for anything offered to me in that accent — or any accent, for that matter. To this day I still adore two of her recommendations: dolmas and halwa, a sweet spun from sesame-seeds.

In those lazy days we lived on dolmas and baklava. These days all I can find are the canned ones packed in excessive amounts of oil, unless I want to pay a dollar apiece just up the street. With the way the weather has turned, that seems like a steep price to pay to have a cool Greek snack at hand. If you love the nutty, lemony squish of a chilled dolma on a dog-day afternoon, a dolma’s all that will do ya.

And then — thank Zeus! — along came my friend Susan. Being schooled herself in these mysterious dolmatic ways, she passed on her expertise to me. Though I observed more than I participated, I learned that making them yourself cuts the oil and the need to fly back to Naxos. I also found out that dolma is from the Turkish word for “stuffed thing.” Turns out I have more in common with this finger food than I thought.

Grape leaves should be easy to find in a well-stocked international grocery store. I used a California-Style brand called Castella, but the choice was rather arbitrary in front of a shelf full of them. Grape leaves must be one of those foods, like the “single use appliance,” that doesn’t seem to have many other uses. I declare these, however, to be wise stewardship of the leaves that nurture our wine-producing grapes the world over. If they’re good enough for grapes, they’re good enough for me.

These are an easy substitute for the endless chopping, precision rolling, and meticulous fish- handling of sushi. They are deliciously cool and light, the perfect compliment to a serene back porch gathering around a pitcher of Sangria, or to a rollicking twilight tapas bash. Easy to make and easy to eat, these dolmas are so good you might just want to break a plate or two. Just make sure they’re your own, and not someone else’s Royal Daulton.

Continue reading ‘dolmas done right’

Tonight is Masters Eve. With two orientations behind me and a year of work ahead, I thought I’d mark the occasion with an “ode to the student life” post. I bring you the quintessential Ramen noodle–with better hair and make-up, or at least nutritional profile.

I ate a lot of meals alone during the month of June. In order to help pad the marital pockets, my hubby and I embraced a mutual separation over the course of last month to go off and make some money. My journey took me to a rural area of New York State where I house and pet sat for three weeks. Having a nicely stocked kitchen and a 24-hour farm stand five minutes up the road helped combat any lurking loneliness.

When it got really bad I snuggled up beside the ice-cream maker. Oh Cuisinart, I’m afraid that you don’t love me as I love you! Yup, it made for some good company.

The problem with eating upwards of thirty meals alone in the span of three weeks is that you can’t possibly savor each and every morsel. Sometimes you’ve just gotta get the job done: food from fridge to bowl to mouth: Hello, Ramen. It’s been awhile.

But I could not respect my body and eat it from the packet–quickly reconstituted and slathered with oily seasoning–at the same time. And so I proceeded to try adding vim and vigor to the Old Faithful of undergrad meal supplements. Ramen, meet your new friends vitamins A through D, iron, magnesium and calcium. I know they’re strangers, just give them a chance, ok?

And then, in the great realm of coincidences that is the Internet, days after discovering the possibilities in that shiny crunched up packet of dinner-for-one, Mark Bittman posted this story on how to cut food costs when you’re feeling crunched. There it was, first in a long list of great tips, instructions for revved-up Ramen. Common knowledge by now I suppose.

As one commenter notes on Bittman’s blog, Ramen noodles aren’t very good for you no matter how you slurp ‘em. I must agree; there are countless other great noodles out there — refrigerated Udon, rice vermicelli, Chinese noodles, Japanese soba noodles — which are just as fast. Ramen is in fact kind of a rip-off if you think about it, excessively packaged to boot. But we had a cupboard full of it (which I will maintain that I did NOT bring to this marriage!) and I had fun transforming it into something new that I might never eat again.

Yet again, classes start tomorrow…

So if you find yourself lonely, hungry, uninspired and without a Cuisinart to cuddle, bring a pot of water or broth to a boil. Throw in some chopped vegetables (I had carrot, purple cabbage and kale) and cook until tender. Then add a package of miso paste (available at Japanese grocers and much better for you than the conventional seasoning), some chopped green onions, a splash of soy sauce, and a final drizzle of toasted sesame oil.

I was surprised at how satisfying my concoction ended up being. As I dined in a candle lit house all alone, the soup comforted me with plainness interrupted by vibrancy. I even managed to page through Saveur and Gourmet’s sophisticated temptations while I ate, emerging at the other end nourished by simplicity in the face of the refined.

I really like making up names for the stuff I bake, kind of like Grandpa did. It’s not that any of them stick as well, but I try. I guess it kind of feels like branding, like I could develop a cute package and commercial to go along with them. But that would defeat the purpose, really.

With my my latest concoction in the energy snack series combining walnuts and sesame seeds, I came up with the name walamee balls, or bars, or just walamees. I think it sounds pleasantly Australian. Exotic, despite its everyday ingredients.

Many of you seemed to enjoy the Whole Grain Chews I posted a few weeks ago. So just for you, I quickly got to work on another seedy snack, similarly chewy but different in style. A sweet and nutty combination of raisins, dates, sesame seeds and walnuts, these little packages deliver a healthy hit of energy-boosting carbs and muscle-building protein in about 1.5 “round” inches. Throw them in your bike bag or backpack for when those blood sugar levels start to get low.

Making your own snacks–a food group we’ve wholly handed to big companies–can be incredibly satisfying. Not only do these snacks take minutes to prepare, you can practically do them in your sleep. They also save on packaging and transportation (yay Earth!) and are composed of whole, natural ingredients (yay Bodies!) So next time you’re cruising down the Power Bar aisle, don’t be fooled by the healthy bodies on the packaging. You deserve better.

So grab your food processor (or a friend’s or grandmother’s), some basic ingredients, and a couple of well-scrubbed kids, and get rolling! These handy snacks keep marvelously–on the counter or in the fridge where they’ll be even more refreshingly cool.

Continue reading ‘Homemade Energy Bars II: Walamee Balls’