Amazed by Spring

The coming of each new season always thrills me with its incredible scenery change, but none so much as Spring. Its colors, smells and sounds intoxicate me. How can intricately cut geometrics appear on the tips of winter-dead branches? The lime green new grass and the neon-lit forsythia overtake the brown and grey yards, like colorizing a classic movie. The impossibly bright colors and sweet smells defy reason. But Robert Frost nailed it: that first hue is hard to hold; we need to enjoy the fleeting delicacy of Spring's pleasures before they succumb to the intensity of summer's heat.

The re-opening of the farm stand is equally sudden and amazing. I saw the "local asparagus" sign yesterday, and my heart skipped a beat. While I was cleaning up winter leaves and sticks at home, the delicate spinach and early lettuces were growing nearby. The long winter without Pete's Produce has ended!

I think asparagus should be the poster child for eating local produce in season. There's a reason why every grocery store prominently places the gems front and center in the produce. For a few perfect weeks, the locally grown are flavorful, sweet, and superior.

My family's favorite asparagus preparation? I grill it simply, on low if the asparagus is very thin, with a little olive oil and sea salt, and then give it a squeeze of lemon or a grating of parmesan at the table. We love the leftover as a cold snack. Note: if you don't serve the asparagus the day you buy it, store it like a bunch of flowers: cut a slice off the bottoms and stand it upright in an inch or two of water in a small bowl in the refrigerator.

Happy Earth Day

There are so many inspiring Earth Day columns on websites, so I won't make a single suggestion as to how to celebrate today. BonAppetit.com has "how to join a csa", "how to eat green", and "sustainable recipes." Foodandwine.com has "eco-friendly foods" and "sustainable seafood." Pick your favorite cooking site or environmental site -- far be it from me to reinvent the wheel.

I will brag that I roasted my chicken on Monday (the one there wasn't time for after gardening), and it made my day again yesterday. A roast chicken is one of the most perfect homey meals I can think of. It fills the entire house with rich aromas. It satisfies both the starving diners when matched with roast vegetables and gravy and the diet-conscious who just want to pick at the tender meat. A lot of people think roasting a chicken takes forever, like a turkey maybe, but a 6 lb. chicken cooks in only 1 1/2 hours. Monday night while the chicken roasted, tantalizing us with sizzling sounds and mouthwatering smells, I graded papers, paid bills, and cleaned a bathroom before it was time to make the salad, pasta, and gravy. It really is an easy dinner (as long as you get it into the oven in time; reference Sunday's failure).

And a roast chicken is very earth-friendly. The whole chicken costs less than parts do, price per pound, as well as saving on the costs/wastes of factory cut-up and packaging. The carcass can be used to flavor soup broth. Plus, I almost always get another two meals from one roast chicken, so the cooking-energy is saved as well.

Tuesday (yesterday) is my crazy-maniac-mom day. Up at 6:40, breakfast & lunch making for the kids, quick clean-up, out of the house at 8:30 for 9-10:30 tennis practice, tutor Xiaolin at 11:00. Dash home to change clothes and grab lunch (taboule in fridge yesterday = yum + filling), drive 20 minutes away to teach a group of homeschooled kids at 12:30, and back home by 2:30. Then comes the afternoon on-slaught of a few household chores, mail/e-mail/return phone calls, welcome kids home with snack and homework pep-talk, drives back and forth to viola sectional and quartet practice. But at dinner time, when everyone's stomachs were growling, I had my leftover roast chicken to save the day! I sliced up the meat, shredded cheddar and lettuce, slivered red peppers, uncapped some Green Mountain salsa (my favorite, from Vermont) and sour cream, and rolled it all into tortillas. Quick to prepare, quick to eat when everyone is headed in different directions. And I still have enough chicken meat left to make chicken salad (with celery, dried cranberries and pecans).

I most frequently use this method, a hybrid recipe which melds the pre-salting magic made famous by Zuni Cafe's Judy Rodgers, Ina Gartens roasting times and gravy, and lots of recipes that call for lemon, garlic, onion, and thyme.

Roast Chicken
The night before or the morning of cooking day, rinse and dry a 5-6 lb. chicken, preferably organic, or raised sustainably. I remove the one big fat-glob that is sometimes near the cavity opening. Salt it all over, generously, inside and out. I use kosher salt or sea salt. Cover and refrigerate. 2 1/2 hours before dinner, remove it from the fridge, rinse it and dry it again to remove excess salt, and let it lose that ice-cold fridge feeling. Preheat oven to 400.

Put the chicken on a rack in a roasting pan that leaves an inch or two (no more) of space around the chicken. Drizzle olive oil all over the dry chicken. Cut a lemon into quarters, squeeze the juice all over the chicken, stuff the spent peices into the chicken's cavity along with 1 quartered onion and a big bunch of thyme. Sprinkle the chicken generously with salt, pepper, and dried or fresh thyme. Roast it for about 1 1/2 hours, basting (if you must) no more than twice (or you let all the heat out of the oven!), or until the internal temperature at the thigh is 180. Don't wait for the little button-thingy to pop, or the poor bird will be over-cooked. Remember, don't slice it up until it rests on a cutting board, covered for at least 20 minutes, or you sacrifice the juiciness.

Gravy
If you like gravy (my daughter wants no part of roast poultry if there's no gravy), Ina's method is truly fool-proof and speedy. Pour most (not all) of the fat out of the pan and reserve it. Add a cup of chicken broth to the remaining drippings, set the pan over med-high heat, scraping up the flavorful bits crusted to the pan, and bring to a low boil. In a little bowl, whisk 2 tbsp. reserved fat with 2 tbsp. flour, and add to the pan, whisking and cooking until thickened. Turn it down low, add a bit of broth if too thick, and leave it there while you cut up the chicken. Perfect!

It's Spring, My Deer

I finally feel like spring has arrived. This was the first truly mild weekend, warm enough to get the whole family outside working on the yard. And my task was to prepare the vegetable garden.

I have always planted a vegetable garden; I was brought up expecting one each summer. My mother always planted tomatoes and a few other favorite veggies when I was growing up in Poughkeepsie. She found room in a flower bed at the bottom of our deck stairs, and we needed constant reminders not to trample it when friends came to play in the yard. My Aunt Mary's husband had a fine large plot with a huge variety. They would wake up early on a foggy summer morning, sit by the window to sip their coffee, and get startled by the hunched over figure of my grandmother, who had "driven over to pick the new zucchini before they got too big."

And when I moved to this house in August 1994, the previous owners had already planted a huge garden with full grown tomatoes, zucchini, peppers, raspberry bushes all ready to pick. Those tomato plants were like trees, I seem to recall: I think he was a bit addicted to Miracle Gro... Over the years, I redesigned the garden, eliminated the rows of grass between the beds, mulched instead, and finally fenced it in with chicken wire and posts. But that fence wasn't very sturdy, and after a few years it rotted and fell over in spots.

Here in Chester County there is rampant deer over-population. The township meeting battles between the animal lovers and the hunters would be entertaining if the issue weren't so serious. Sometimes deer are lying down in my backyard, comfortable and at home, when I drive one of the kids to school in the winter darkness. When my high beams shine on them, they lazily lift their heads, squinting at me as if to say, "Hey, someone's trying to sleep here, can you turn down those lights??"

So last year when I planted my garden, I put up a makeshift chicken wire fence, about 3 feet tall, with no gate, before I left for Maine for two months. I am pretty sure I saw the deer snickering with one another as I hammered in the little 1"x1" corner posts. The fence succeeded in keeping out the rabbits, who covet my arugula and sugar snap peas, but within a week, the deer could step right in. They got pretty good: they used to challenge each other not to drag a toe nail on the actual fencing, or to compete at how far back they could leap and still clear the wire. By early July, they had eaten not only the infant tomatoes, but the entire plants down to about a foot off the ground. (No fools, these deer -- they knew to leave just enough plant to continue supporting photosynthesis and growth, so they could decimate them further over the summer).

I had had enough. Last fall, when I returned from Maine, I was armed with plans for a sturdier, taller, and more attractive fence. I purchased pressure treated 4"x4"s for the corners, 2"x2"s for side support, all six feet long, set the corners a foot deep in concrete for stability (I wasn't playing games), and used TWO layers of chicken wire to be 5' tall, taller than the Guinness book world record for deer high jump. But the piece de la resistance is my gate. I framed it with 2"x4"s and a cross-support, used actual drills and power tools to screw it together, and crowned it with a latch onto the whole shebang. That's right. You can see a photo of my new beautiful fence at the top of my blog. I can tell you, the neighborhood deer are stymied.

All of this brings me to the joy of yesterday, planting the garden inside my new gate, which feels study as a house to me. Fessing up, I will admit that I'm a bit tardy: in this area, cold-weather veggies should be planted between St. Patrick's Day and April Fools Day, but the weather seems a bit tardy, too, this year. My daughter and I planted seeds for sugar snap peas (her fave), beets (mine), Swiss chard, mesclun and arugula. Those will all grow and be harvested before late June when we leave for Maine. After mothers day, I will plant four heirloom tomato plants and green beans and more herbs, which will all grow and be ready for our return home in August. My potted basil, parsley, rosemary, cilantro, dill and thyme are good little plants by now. They will transport to Maine for the summer, plus I've sown more herb seeds into my back porch planters.

All those hours of weeding, tilling, soil-turning, and seed-sowing occupied me until 6:30 last night, so the roast chicken dinner I'd planned was no longer possible. Instead, I turned to an old favorite from Lynne Rossetto Kasper's Italian Country Table, a pantry-ready "quickie" which cooks in the time it takes the pasta water to boil. My son cooked while I prepped, and the dish satisfied all of us, tired from a day of yard labor.

Spaghetti With Tuna and Black Olives (This is basically Lynne's recipe, but I have changed a few quantities, and I used capellini.)
Prepare the ingredients while the pasta water is coming to a boil. In a food processor, finely chop 2 large cloves garlic, 2 tightly packed tablespoons fresh parsley leaves, and 1/8 tsp. sea salt. Dice one medium red onion. Chop 4 anchovy fillets, and chop 1/3 c. oil-cured olives.
While pasta is cooking, saute the garlic, parsley, and onion in 3 Tbsp. olive oil. on med. low for 5 minutes. Add 1/3 c. pasta water and cook to nothing. Add the anchovies plus 4 tablespoons of tomato paste, plus another 1/2 c. pasta water. Stir in one can of oil-packed tuna. Add the drained pasta and toss well, adding some more water if it seems dry. Top with fresh-ground black pepper, the chopped olives, and 2 tablespoons vinegar-packed capers, drained.
We put crushed red pepper and grated loccatelli on at the table, but cheese is not traditional on Italian fish dishes.