Sustainable WNC

A recipe
SUN COOKED TOMATO SAUCE
Take some ripe tomatoes of your favorite variety, or a mix. Cut out the stem end and cut into 1/2″ dice. Toss with a few basil leaves cut into chiffonade (fine ribbons), a little olive oil, some salt and pepper. Place all this into a shallow glass or ceramic dish and cover with a piece of plastic wrap or a tight fitting translucent cover. Place outside in the afternoon sun for a few hours, a least 4. When ready toss some fresh pasta with the tomato sauce, sprinkle with some grated Parmesan and enjoy.

One of the things about food is the amount of energy it takes to get it from the garden to the table, as well as the amount of time involved.

M.F.K. Fisher’s book How to Cook a Wolf was first published in 1942, when wartime shortages were at their worst. At that time, the shortage was food itself and to her the Wolf represented this scarcity. It also meant a shortage of fuel to cook with as well. Her book is remarkable in that it could be published today and it would be very topical. I have been considering her lessons for a number of years and have devised my own rules to an efficient way to cook and serve a meal.

My first thoughts about cooking today’s Wolf is in the use of energy in the kitchen. In the summer, the last thing I want to do is heat up my house from the chores of cooking. (Of course, this is exactly what I have done for 30 some summers, standing in the searing heat in front of a wood burning grill or over a French hot top, with kitchen temperatures hitting 110 regularly, for hours on end.) So there are a number of things I do at home to use less heat. The most obvious is to eat more raw foods and to eat less. Because it IS summer, and the outside temperature naturally turns down our caloric thermostat, I eat less. Yesterday’s lunch was a tomato sandwich, Cornmeal Levain from Steve Bardwell at Wake Robin Farms, a bit of mayonaise on the bread, a tiny pinch of coarse grey salt. Two juicy peaches and a tiny piece of hard goat’s milk cheese. I think it took me 4 minutes to fix my meal. Breakfast was more fruit. With gardens in full riot now until frost, fresh raw vegetables are bountiful and at their cheapest price.

My tomatoes this time of year never see refrigeration and Steve baked my bread, so practically zero heat for breakfast and lunch. (I did boil water for tea at breakfast….)

How do I manage my use of heat this time of year? I usually plan to cook a few hours at one time and make enough that later in the week, I have essentially prepared a number of meals, requiring minimal effort later. If I make a stir fry (which I did for dinner) I made enough for a number of meals - for lunch, with a bit of greens, the cold stir fry becomes a salad, later in the week; mixed into a hot ginger flavored broth served with a bit of bread and cheese and a brilliant old gewurztraminer from Alsace and now I am dining. For dessert- more fruit! Believe it or not, those wonderful little golden cherry tomatoes satisfy my desire for sweetness, (a tomato, scientifically speaking is definitely a fruit, true fruits are developed from the ovary in the base of the flower, and contain the seeds of the plant.) I will eat them everyday right now - because come the end of summer and I won’t eat a fresh one again until next July…..

Actually, my home cooking “week” really begins on Saturday, when I make one of my two trips to the tailgate - and Sunday afternoon is usually my ‘heavy’ kitchen time, but more on that routine later.

The last thought I want to leave for now is the bread I mentioned I had for lunch - a Cornmeal Levain. I told Steve that I really enjoyed that bread. As a man filled with passion for what he does, his enthusiasm was apparent - he told me that this bread is the only one he invented. He explained out he shaped it into 2 intersecting semi-spheres and that if you cut it exactly in half and then sliced it crosswise, it was the perfect shape to hold a slice of tomato! The texture, he said was meant to soak up the juice of the fruit. The flavor of the cornmeal needed nothing else, beside a little mayonaise to set off the flavor of the tomato - he was adamant - NO basil or pepper! Simplicity taken to the sublime.

Take the time to dine….
Mark

It has been a while since I have written anything here. I have been thinking slowly about sustainability, food and my own behavior. I have also been thinking about what it is that I have to add to the discussion, something that might be helpful.

Finally, I have found a few things that I believe are important and are part of the discussion.

A little back tracking - when I moved to the mountains in 1972, having dropped out of Northwestern University. I came here seeking a “back to the land” experience, thinking I would live completely independent of “the grid”, have a small farm, solar house, and spring water to drink - a life of low technology. I thought Small was beautiful. As an individual, I am no closer to that than I was 35 years ago. But as a member of a larger community, I have gotten very close to the ideal that I was seeking.

I say this because there are some key points in that 35 year journey. One of the obvious keys for me, of course, is food. But it was a conversation a week or so ago with a gentleman I just met that put the other keys into focus. This conversation took place near Grant’s Pass, in the Rogue River Valley of southern Oregon. (A place many will recognize as having been considered the safest place to live and survive the fallout of a nuclear war - and the reason this gentleman was living there). Our conversation was exactly about this topic - how to sustain. The point he made was this: “we just have to learn to do with less”.

How do I tie this together into something coherent, into something I care share that makes a difference? What practical conversation can I start that is beneficial? What I realized is that the one thing I do have to offer is how to eat (and as I continue, I prefer the idea ‘how to dine’) and how to cook. I also realized that, along with so many other human activities, the art of eating; the craft of cooking have been disappearing. This simple, daily routine is the very core of my existence, so this is what I have to offer - a conversation of how to approach the routine of garden to kitchen and then to the table.

The other side of the coin is this, for the moment, I have no clear path how to communicate those things that make the act of dining part of a sustainable life, but this ramble is the starting point. I know that thought and practice can reinforce one another, so today, start with the thought that less is more, eat as much that is grown or produced by someone you know (and like) and as it is tomato season have one at every meal.

Most important - enjoy the society of a cultured table, make your next meal a dining experience.

Mark

I am just finishing Heat by Bill Buford. One of the best ‘insider’ stories on food, cooking and restaurants.

I want to pass on a quote from the end of the book that I think is a great take on ‘Slow’:

“My theory is one of smallness. Smallness is now my measure: a variation on all the phrases I’d been hearing, like the Maestro’s “it’s not in the breed but the breeding” or Enrico’s “less is more.” As theories go mine is pretty crude. Small food - good. Big food - bad. For me, the language we use to talk about modern food isn’t quite accurate or at least doesn’t account for how this Italian valley has taught me to think. The metaphor is usually one of speed: fast food has ruined our culture; slow food will save it (and is the rallying manifesto for the movement of the same name, based in Bra, in northern Italy)…….But it obscures a fundamental problem, which has little to do with speed and everything to do with size……..The problem was already in place, systemic in fact, and began the moment food was treated like an inanimate object - like any other commodity - that could be manufactured in increasing numbers to satisfy a market. In effect, the two essential players in the food chain ( those who make food and those who buy it) swapped roles. One moment the producer (the guy who knew his cows or the the woman who prepared culatello only in January….) determined what was available and how it was made. The next moment it was the consumer……”Heat - Bill Buford 2006

I think this idea is most profound. It points the way to a better ‘table’. Let the season and the producer guide you in what you eat. Go to the local tailgate this year and see what’s there - then decide what you are going to cook and what you are going to eat.

Read the book. As a chef and a passionate devotee of food, it is one of the best I’ve read.

Joyful dining - Mark

I usually try to spend at least one full day in my kitchen at home. At the moment I am working on a new menu featuring food from within 100 miles.

Today I have been testing some simple ideas, working with basic recipes. This evening’s meal will be Lasagne with Blue Hill Farm Egg Pasta, Local Milk Bechamel and Spinning Spider Cheddar. I might throw in some Jake’s Farm Spinach, or that could be my salad. I am very interested in the taste difference using these ingredients to make the lasagne.

What I did not expect, (but I shouldn’t be surprised by) is the color of the food, especially the milk! I am using some raw cow’s milk from a friend’s dairy to make the sauce.

I look into the jar and see a pond of pale silver-yellow milk with corn-gold butter fat floating on the top - cast like Spring pollen, or fallen cherry blossom petals after a light rain. The pasta, too, is brilliant, almost orange; due to the color of pasture egg yolks different than “production house” eggs.

There are many differences in food produced in your backyard, so to speak. Some subtle, some not. Food is more than calories to fuel a body, it is also the substance that feeds the mind and spirit. My dinner today started with an art show, the colors of life: Cream White Aztec Gold Painted by the Hand of Jasper Johns Lasagne. Thank you Chris, Wayne and Jon for the palette….

Joyful dining!

I probably asked more questions than I have answers.

I do know my own personal method of answering those questions is to find the simpliest approach to complex ideas. At least, that is the direction I have been heading and certainly applies to how I handle food.

There have been a number questions rattling around in my head since I attended Terra Madre in Turin, Italy last November. Terra Madre is a bi-annual convention of food producers around the world. At it’s second incarnation in 2006, 1000 chefs from around the globe were invited to attend along with 5000 producers and 500 educators.

At this conference, I heard Vandan Shiva speak. She left me with many radical questions about food - the “rights” of food and the “rights” of seed. Of particular note and deep impression was the idea of corporate ownership of the “invention” of life.

Additionally, at the closing session of the conference, she spoke emotionally about the destruction of the freedoms of farmers to grow food and the impact the loss of that freedom is having.

On Greenbean Radio, there is a link to her speach and to two documents: The Manifesto of Food and The Manifesto of Seed that are worthy of attention and your comments.

The simple answer I find, eat seasonally, buy locally, walk lightly.
Mark

At it’s most basic, I think of being “slow” as the preservation of Taste. The foods that cross our lips determine so much of who we are and who we have been and who we will become.

Until very recently, food has always been at the very center of culture and life. With the industrialization of food and the rapid pace of life the importance of the table has shifted. Slow Food is a response to that shift. I quote from a recent article in Slow entitled Complexity, Chaos and Love written by Cinzia Scaffidi: ” …think of Slow Food as a cultural movement defending the heritage of people’s material culture…” .

In a broader sense the Slow Food movement embraces these ideals:

The stewardship of the land and ecologically sound food production
The revival of the kitchen and the table as centers of pleasure, culture, and community
The invigoration and proliferation of regional, seasonal culinary traditions

At the local level here in Asheville there is a group of some 400 interested individuals sharing their stories and heritage, tasting local foods and sharing their community of the table. We have a Convivium, our form of “organization”, which you can find out more at www.slowfoodasheville.org.

35 years have passed since moving to WNC and starting a life as a chef. Having come to my work with a certain mindset - of cooking with what is available - there have been many opportunities to participate in the revival of a local food economy and culture.

We are fortunate that the opportunities continue to present themselves. Each season, a new surprise is revealed: another cheese, a different variety of tomato, a truffle producer across the mountain, wood fired bread, grass fed lamb, availablity grows. For the first time, to one that does not farm, it has become possible to eat mainly foods from our region, foods that are grown in a more balanced manner, foods that come from familiar hands, organic lands, according to season.

In this we are fortunate and a great opportunity presents itself. Around the culture of food is the opportunity to have a richer life, build a better community, revive the memory of taste.

There is also much danger to be mindful of, not necessarily from within the community of growers and “co-producers” (a Slow Food term for those of us who are not growers but eat locally), but from the greater community we are embedded. There is the pressure of development and losing more farming land, the continued commercialization of food, the expectation of any food at any time and in it’s extreme; the privatization of the seed and water.

So, it is to this - how to develop, promote, sustain and most of all to celebrate eating locally, that this blog begins.

-Mark R.