The Week Ahead

     We are still transitioning from the dreary cold winter weather to the sunny warm days of Spring.  And thus far the transition has not been a smooth one.  Two mornings this week we had below freezing temperatures.  So just like the weather my weekly menu reflects the alternating climate varying between warming meals and food cooked on the porch overlooking the blooming daffodils.  Here is what I am planning to prepare this week:

WEEKLY MENU PLANNER

 Saturday

Philly Cheese Steaks

Steak Frites

Steamed Broccoli

 Sunday

Cheese Ravioli with Red Sauce

Grilled Chicken Salisbury Steak

Maple Mustard Green Beans

Fresh Fruit

 Monday

Grilled Tarragon Shrimp

Angel Hair Pasta

Spring Mix Salad

 Tuesday

Baked Tilapia

Roasted New Potatoes

Steamed Haricots Verts

 Wednesday

Abbondanza! Medley

 Thursday

Kitchen Closed

Until Further Notice

And the answer is...

     Yesterday I asked you to correctly name the vegetable that is only consumed raw, never canned or frozen.  The answer comes from the University of Illinois Extension Service:

     "Due to the extremely high water content, 94.9%, there are no successful method(s) of long-term preservation of lettuce.  Lettuce does not respond well to freezing, canning or drying.  For optimal nutritional value, lettuce should be eaten while it is fresh and crisp."

     So there you have it.  But what do you really know about this so called "rabbit food" that we can enjoy year round?  Let's take a look at its history and see if we can uncover some interesting facts about this quintessential vegetable.
     Lettuce is a temperate annual or biennial plant belonging to the sunflower family under the nomenclature  Asteraceae.  It was first grown by the Egyptians and eventually made its way to the Greeks and Romans.  The Romans gave it the Latin name "lactuca" meaning milk, due to the white substance that is produced when the stem is cut.  They also were the first to incorporate it into the meal, with other greens, as a first course.  It was thought alternately by those cultures to be an aid in fertility or a cause of sterility.
     As anyone who has grown a backyard garden knows, it is a hardy annual and is easily cultivated in the early Spring and grows best in the cooler weather before the heat of Summer.  Warm temperatures cause it to "bolt" or go to flower and eventually to seed too rapidly.  It is a good source of Vitamin A and K and also potassium.  There are between 65 and 140 distinct varieties and a general rule of thumb (a green thumb, if you will) is that the darker the leaf of a particular variety the more nutritious it is.  That being said, it is a fact that the pale iceberg lettuce that is most commonly sold in our super markets is the least healthful of all the varieties available.  World production of lettuce and it's relative, chicory, reached an impressive 23.62 tons in 2010, over half of that coming from China.
     Lettuce has a mild narcotic effect when consumed.  No wonder Peter Rabbit after eating the lettuce in Farmer MacGregor's garden felt so soporific.  And that also may account for the Anglo-Saxon term "sleepwort" when referring to it.
     One word of caution, however.  Lettuce should always be thoroughly rinsed before eating.  It can transmit certain serious diseases including E. coli, salmonella, listeria and shigella when grown in contaminated soil.  Isn't that correct, Rudi?

Thumbs Up, Thumbs Down

     This week I tried two new recipes.  I call them experiments.  And my long suffering wife becomes the unsuspecting victim of such attempts at culinary excellence.  One recipe combined several unlikely elements and worked out very well.  The other looked good in the magazine but was decidedly less than mediocre in actuality.
     So let's begin with the thumbs up recipe.  Here are the elements in order of appearance: bacon, Brussels sprouts, an onion, unsweetened apple juice, whole grain mustard, an apple, butter, cider vinegar.  Sounds odd, doesn't it?  But the flavors and textures worked very well together and at the dinner table we both decided the recipe was a "keeper."  I will post it below.
     The thumbs down recipe seemed good in theory and was certainly simple enough.  It just didn't deliver on taste or appearance.  It was for glazed radishes.  On that issue the verdict was that some things are just better eaten fresh from the garden.  Butter, sugar and heat could not improve on the familiar crunch of a radish right out of the ground, rinsed first of course.
     For the week, then, my record is 1 for 2 or in baseball terms, I'm batting .500.  And that's not a bad average to have.

     A question for my readers:  What vegetable is only sold fresh, never canned or frozen?  Answer tomorrow.

Braised Brussels Sprouts

4 strips bacon, diced                                        2 Tbsp whole grain mustard

2 lbs Brussels sprouts, halved                       1 Fuji apple, cored and diced

1/2 cup thinly sliced onion                             4 Tbsp butter, diced

1/4 cup unsweetened apple juice                  2 Tbsp cider vinegar

                                         salt & pepper to taste

     Cook the bacon in a large saute pan over medium heat until crisp, 7-10 minutes.  Transfer bacon to a paper towel lined plate then increase the heat to high.  Add Brussels sprouts and onion and cook until sprouts begin to brown, about 5 minutes; season with salt.

     Deglaze the pan with the apple juice, scraping up any browned bits on the bottom.  Add mustard, cover, reduce heat to medium-low and cook sprouts until nearly fork tender, 6 minutes.  Add diced apple, cover and cook until tender, 3 minutes.

     Stir in butter, vinegar and bacon then season with salt and pepper.

Serves 6

Cuisine at Home, Issue #92, April 2012, p. 43

A Culinary Caper

     Over the weekend I planted some recently purchased herbs in my porch pots.  Soon I will enjoy their use in a variety of different food preparations.  Parsley, oregano, chives, cilantro, and thyme will be a delight to the palate.
     But little did I know that when I bought a jar of preserved capers yesterday at the grocery store I was also adding to my list of essential herbs.  Capers look like little peppercorns but I never really knew what they actually were.  They are the unopened flower buds of a Mediterranean bush, Capparis spinosa, which have been gathered from the wild.  This process has gone on for thousands of years, according to Harold McGee, author of On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen.  Capers were even used by spice merchants as an informal currency, as was salt.

     The caper bush is distantly related to the cabbage family as is evident by its pungent sulfur compounds.  They dominate the raw flower bud which grows in parts of Europe where the bush flourishes in the nutrient-poor soil of the Middle East.  It has even been seen growing up between the cracks of the sidewalk and in the broken asphalt of roadways.  But by the time it reaches the Americas this tender immature flower bud has been preserved in one of several ways: in brine, in vinegar, or dry salted.  It is used as a sour-salty accent in foods and sauces, especially fish.  One taste tester commented that capers have the same burst of flavor as Dijon mustard.  And that makes sense since both the caper and mustard are related to the cabbage.

     I have a new found herb to add to those growing outside.  Now to experiment with some recipes that call for capers and to appreciate their distinct flavor and qualities.

A Pan for All Seasons

     Last night I browned some pork chops in my cast iron frying pan.  It was a Christmas gift from my family and it will be a cherished treasure for a long, long time.  Cast iron is an amazing material. 
     Recently in a Time magazine article Josh Ozersky spoke in glowing terms of a similar pan in his possession that he purchased in Jersey City over 20 years ago.  It was manufactured and distributed by the Lodge Manufacturing Co., a  116 year old family owned business located in South Pittsburg, Tennessee by Joseph Lodge.  Many of their original products, now over a century old, are still in use.  And in these days of high tech must have gadgets the primeval pan is making a comeback.  Cast iron cookware sales have grown from 4% of the cookware market to 10% in the past decade and last year, Ozersky writes, industry sales reached $114 million.
     And the reasons are obvious, he goes on to say.  "Heavy pans take longer to get hot than thin ones, but they hold their heat longer, and they are, for practical purposes, indestructable.  This pan, this mute dense tool, roots us to our parents and grandparents and the hundreds of generations that came before them...Everyone that was ever made, whether by Lodge or one of the thousands of nameless smithies across America, is basically the same: a heavy unbending piece of metal that picks up a patina with long use and grows to fit the hands that hold it."
     "Iron pans are no good for making Hot Pockets, Lean Cuisines or tofu tetrazzini," Ozersky admits.  "They're made for an elemental kind of cooking that uses whole ingredients and live fire, that has become marginal in the age we live in.  You don't leave them in the sink to soak; you don't even wash them."
     I'm really pleased by the timeless gift I've been given.  Now if I could only learn to cook fried chicken in it.

Tutu's Casserole

     On my weekly menu planner I listed Sunday's meal as "Tutu's Casserole."  You won't find that dish in any cookbook.  The reality of it is that there is no recipe for it, anywhere.  It refers to one of my mother's signature meals.  When she became a grandmother she boldly announced that she would be called "Tutu" because that means grandmother in Hawaiian.  How she knew that remains a mystery, but Tutu it was for our daughters.  And Tutu loved to cook.  She was good at it and as far back as I can remember she never used a printed recipe for anything she made.  That included the grape jam and strawberry preserves that she made from home grown ingredients as well as the phenomenal chocolate cake with vanilla icing and the sweet and gooey pineapple upside down cake that I used to take back to my college dorm each Sunday evening.  It was years later that my fraternity brothers finally confessed that they would wait at the dorm to help me bring in my belongings just to have a piece of one of those amazing desserts.
     Tutu also made some pretty tasty main meals, too.  Another specialty was her beef stew with dumplings.  Those dumplings were so light they almost floated off the stew.  She also made the best fried butterflied shrimp I have ever had.  And she loved to cook my Dad's favorite meals, too.  She thought nothing of preparing things like boiled cow's tongue, kidney, liver and brains, oh yes, and pig's feet, too.  But she would not cook lamb, because my Father didn't care for it.
     And when she hosted special Friday night meals with our daughters they were amazed with the way she could turn a simple meal into a feast.  Allison recalls the best broccoli at Tutu's house.  Can you imagine a child liking cooked broccoli?  But served with a hamburger and a side of fresh strawberries sprinkled with confectioner's sugar there was nothing better in the universe.  And Rudi still compares everyone else's pancakes to Tutu's as they were thin, bulging with chocolate chips that had a crisp edge on them from the griddle, served with real maple syrup.  Tutu cooked using real ingredients and I guess that made a difference.  There were no pre-packaged meals or artificial additives in our house.  Fresh eggs, meat, milk,  produce and bread were delivered to the door each week.  And Tutu created masterpieces from these basic elements.
     So I can only tell you that Tutu's Casserole combined crumbled sausage, large sea shell pasta, tomato sauce and peas to make a simple but filling meal for everyone at the table.  As for the recipe, I guess you will just have to create it yourself, just like Tutu did.



Out takes

     I didn't get to use every picture that I took on my Great American Culinary Tour.  There were some good ones that didn't make the cut.  So today I will provide a montage of the out takes from my trip through Vermont:



Menu Transition

     It's now officially Spring.  For the past week it was more like early summer with temps way above average.  But for the week ahead things will revert to more normal conditions.  That's what we can expect in late March and early April.  So my weekly menu will reflect these fluctuations as I eagerly look forward to adapting my menu to warmer weather while using up some of the Winter supply from my larder.  Here is my menu planner for the coming week:

WEEKLY MENU PLANNER

Saturday

Personal Pizzas

Fresh Fruit Medley

Spring Mix Salad

Sunday

Tutu's Casserole

Sweet & Savory Kale

Monday

Apple & Maple Pork Chops

Roasted New Potatoes

Creamed Spinach

Tuesday

Norwegian Salmon with Gravlax

Basil & Herb Couscous

Roasted Brussels Sprouts

Garden Salad

Wednesday

Chipotle Chicken Burgers

Stuffed Baked Potatoes

Grilled Sweet Onions

Thursday

Beef Skewers with Grape Tomatoes

Couscous Reprise

English Peas

The Real Vermont

     Thursday was the last day of my Great American Culinary Tour and I was in search of the real Vermont.  After being subjected to some blatant commercialism I was eager to find some authentic Green Mountain lifestyles.  The day before in my exploration of the tiny town of Rupert I noticed a sugar shack behind a farm house and decided to return to see if the owner was going to be boiling.  So after an amazing breakfast at Johnny Seesaw's I once again drove west and in short order was in Rupert, near the New York state line.  I was encouraged to see steam issuing forth from the cupola of the sugar shack so I drove back the driveway to investigate.

     Sliding back the door I met Michael Lourie.  He and his brother own a 300 head dairy herd which they milk three times a day, but for 6 weeks each year they are in the maple syrup business.  Last year they produced 4,000 gallons of the stuff that they sold in containers ranging from a pint bottle to a 40 gallon drum.  I said that I was there to learn and was greeted warmly and introduced to their oil fired system of evaporating the water out of the collected sap.

    

     Each morning their team heads out into the forest to collect the sap from the tubing that carries the sap into large vats.  It is then stored in huge tanks and gravity fed into the evaporator as needed.

 

     After reaching the proper temperature and viscosity the syrup is then filtered and stored for bottling,  Mike told me.  And as he spoke he offered me a sample of the still warm syrup, just fresh from the evaporator.  It was the best I have ever tasted!   This was the real deal, at last.  I thanked Mike and his crew and left the Mountain Valley Maple Farm with a restored enthusiasm for the Vermont way of life.

     It wasn't long until I spied another sugar shack just outside Manchester Center at the Dutton Farm Stand.  So I pulled in to have a look.  Soon someone from the store came up to let me know that they were behind schedule due to a problem with too much sap coming into their containers.  But I was given a personal tour and explanation of their process.  They are more high tech in that they have a reverse osmosis machine that extracts 75% of the water from the sap before it enters the evaporator.

     They also have taken the time to explain the state mandated grading system for maple syrup and have it cleverly displayed on the wall. 

     I was a bit disappointed that I wasn't able to see their operation up and running but was encouraged again by the kindness of strangers to enlighten me.

     On the way back up the mountain I noticed steam coming from the woods and quickly made a U turn to a small unpaved road and followed it to yet another sugar shack.  This was quite a find and the crowning event of a very successful day.  As it turns out it was a father and son operation and was very basic.  Hamilton and his son, Tom, use an old fashioned wood fired evaporator in a sugar shack barely larger than the unit itself. 

     And they were hard at work at the time I poked my head in the door.  Tom had taken time off as a federal employee in Grand Junction, CO to come back home and help his father with this annual rite of Spring.   

     We chatted as they worked and watched the sap boil down and turn into the golden amber liquid gold of the Green Mountains.  Their system was primitive by the previous standards I had witnessed, but the outcome was just the same.  Hamilton had special ordered glass bottles with ceramic stoppers to bottle his syrup and confided in me that "they cost $4 a piece."

     It was indeed an amazing day.  On my Great American Culinary Tour I had finally found the real Vermont.  I had seen 3 very different maple syrup operations yet they all revealed a similar spirit of ingenuity, pride and self-reliance.  My trip was complete.

Life in Rupert

     I parked my bag at Johnny Seesaw's Wednesday afternoon and set off on an adventure.  It was alleged that Christopher Kimball, founder and author of Cook's Illustrated magazine lived in Rupert, VT.  So I set off to look for his residence there.  He regularly waxes eloquent about life in Vermont, like in his editorial in the recent edition of his magazine even though his test kitchen is in Brookline, MA and the distribution office of his periodicals are located in Iowa.  But I wanted to make sure that Rupert actually existed and wasn't some fictitious place, like Garrison Keillor's Lake Wobegon.
     So I drove down the mountain and into Manchester Center and made my way west on Route 30.  Soon I was in the prim and proper town of Dorset with it's stately Dorset Inn on one corner and the staid Union Market across the street.  About a mile out of town I came across a collection of homes in East Rupert.  So I turned left onto Route 315 and followed a narrow serpentine that soon became the main road through the tiny village of Rupert.  I knew I was there only because of the sign on the post office:

 

     The town was so small that it didn't even have a crossroad, just a T intersection by the Methodist church.  There were only about a dozen homes but one stood out as being very different from the rest.  I drove down to the town garage and spoke to a couple of locals to inquire if Mr. Kimball did really live in Rupert.  They confirmed that was indeed the case and that he did, in fact, own several properties there.  The Rupert town employees then told me that the house I had suspected to be the residence was just back up the road, across the street from the church. 



     The house was strikingly different from the others, mainly because it looked like no one lived there.  There were no cars in the driveway, nothing on the porch and the window shades were all pulled down.  And there was another difference.  I noticed a central air conditioning unit on the side of the house, something a native Vermonter would never have.  The place was just too pristine to have someone actually inhabit it.

     So where is the real Vermont?



Vermont Schtick

     Wednesday was a travel day on my week long Great American Vermont Culinary Tour.  After another mediocre complimentary breakfast at my lodging in Stowe I stepped outside with my bag and immediately noticed that it was 40 degrees warmer than the day before at the same time.  It was delightful to once again be above freezing, albeit only by two degrees.  It was an exhilarating morning and the ride south on Route 100 was beautiful as I drove through snowy river roads where for only a few hours is there full sunlight.  Passing several ski resorts that were quickly losing their snow cover I arrived in Weston around noon.  It was time for a break and I decided to stretch my legs as I walked across the muddy parking lot of the famed Vermont Country Store. 

 

     The store and another like it are owned and managed by the Orton family since 1946 and are known for nostalgic and hard to find items.  They list their lengthy inventory in a catalogue and do an impressive mail order business.  So I was interested to see what the home base actually looked like.  It was indeed like walking into history.

Does the woman in your life need a new flannel nightie?  You can pick from a wide (no pun intended) assortment of them in the women's department.  In fact, you can get nearly any kind of attire you want as long as it is practical and style isn't a priority.

     Cheeses, smoked sausage, cans of soup, crackers and vintage soft drinks, like Moxie, were also on sale, as was Vermont maple syrup, too.  But as I strolled past the candy counter I couldn't help but wonder how long those chocolates had been sitting there collecting dust.

 

     As a wandered through the store I noticed that I was an "out of towner" like all the others looking over the expensive merchandise.  There were no local folks there shopping to restock their larder.  They were all across the street at the Weston Market.  It then occurred to me that the Vermont Country Store is really a consumer product museum and gift shop, sort of a hybrid Roadside America and South of the Border combined.  It is another attempt to promote a way of life typified in Vermont and to capitalize upon it.

     Back into my car, I continued driving back to Johnny Seesaw's hoping to find the real Vermont.





Agri-tainment

     There was still daylight left on Tuesday so I decided to take in one more Vermont culinary attraction before dinner.  I headed up Route 100 toward Stowe and turned into the Cold Hollow Cider Mill.  It was recommended to me by Bob, the tour guide at Ben & Jerry's.  I wasn't sure what to expect except that Bob mentioned free cider samples and cider donuts.  I found a parking spot by the front door and took a look at the place:

 

Immediately the phrase "crass commercialism" came to mind.  And as I walked through the front doors I found my suspicion to be accurate.  There was a viewing window through which tourists could watch bakers preparing foods to be sold at the counter where a tiny donut frying machine cranked out miniature cider donuts.  I was able to get one for free since I had a coupon from a map guide I had received earlier.  Then I had to wade through aisle after aisle of merchandise in order to get to the rear of the facility where the apple press was in operation.  There were some apple related food items for sale, like jams and jellies, but for the most part it was just a lot of stuff you could find at a bargain basement sale, including outdated cookbooks at discounted prices.  And of course there was the ever present Vermont maple syrup for sale, too.  All this was billed on their brochure  with the words, "Experience REAL Vermont Agri-tainment."  It was unfortunately about as unreal as it gets in Vermont terms.

     When I did finally get to the back of the building I looked through another large viewing window to observe the antique cider press squeezing out every last drop from a large multi-layered rack of apple mash called pomace.  



 Then as I turned around I spied a large container of chilled apple cider that I could sample in a tiny cup.  It was indeed good and I dared to take a second sample.  That was the highlight of my stop to Cold Hollow.

     I came away from my visit there feeling as if their entire business goal was to extract as much money from unsuspecting tourists as possible.  For my part, I did not assist them to achieve that and spent not a dime.  There was one brief educational moment there, however.  Here is a sign on the wall that helps to explain the process of producing apple cider: 

 

So I concluded Tuesday having seen the best and worst that Vermont has to offer.





More than a cuppa Joe

     I was still attempting to assimilate all the information I had gleaned from Doug Bragg about the process of boiling  sap down into Vermont maple syrup as I drove out of his driveway on Tuesday.  I was back on the road again, this time headed to downtown Waterbury.  It was about 1 pm when I parked the car across from the AMTRAK train station that had been converted into the visitors center for the Green Mountain Coffee Company.

 

     But before heading in I looked around for a place to grab a quick bite to eat.  There just a few steps away was the Park Cafe, reminiscent of Alice's Restaurant from a movie of the same name from my impressionable youth.  I fully expected Arlo Guthrie to emerge from the kitchen with a tray of silverware.  The soup was homemade, as was the bread for my sandwich.  All the staff wore do rags and had tattoos.  The food was quite good and the prices reasonable.  So I was satiated as I strolled back to learn about Green Mountain Coffee.

     I came to discover that the train station was divided into two parts: a self guided interactive information center, and a coffee and gift shop.  So I worked my way through all the spinning Q and A displays, lifted the over sized coffee beans that hid factoids, and looked into dark boxes to see pictures of far away places where the beans are grown, all the while images were being projected onto the walls and ceiling.  That small room contained quite a wealth of information!  Green Mountain Coffee has come a long way since it's inception in 1981 as a small cafe in Waitsfield, VT.  Just to give you the scope of their present operations, they now purchase over 164 million bio degradable coffee cups annually.

While they are not strictly a coop like Cabot Creamery, they do prefer to establish long term relationships with coffee growers around the world in places like Central America, Indonesia, and Africa.  They take into account the well being of their suppliers and are proud to sell only Fair Trade Certified coffee.  That means while also being mindful of their own bottom line they are also concerned about the economic viability of the thousands who make coffee growing their livelihood.  And Green Mountain also attempts to protect the environment as well.  So they are more than just a good cup of coffee.  They are also striving to protect the ecosystem where the coffee is harvested.  As I learned from their documentation:

"The customer's coffee experience is

environmentally sound,

socially just,

and undeniably delicious."

     And GMCR supports local communities as well.  They make donations to more than 1,200 non-profit organizations annually.  In addition, each employee is paid 6.5 workdays (52 hours) each year to contribute to their own community in a volunteer project.  So with over 6,000 employees that amounts to more than 300,000 hours of paid time off to enrich and restore humanity.

     I eventually found my way over to the coffee and gift shop, looking for the free sample that I thought I was promised in a brochure I had read.  Finding that not to be the case I instead looked at the merchandise for sale and longingly ogled over one of their Keurig K cup coffee makers.  (GMCR purchased Keurig in 2006).  But alas, they were a pretty expensive machine for my morning cup of Joe.

     I came away from the visitor's center with a greater appreciation for the efforts of the folks at Green Mountain, not just to provide a good product, but to also work toward a better world for all of us.

Vinny note:  After returning home I attended the 10th anniversary banquet of the Fire Department of Montgomery County and was delighted to win one of their many door prizes, a Keurig K Cup coffee maker and a year's supply of K Cups! 

Turning a corner

     This week we will officially pass from Winter to Spring with the occurrence of the vernal equinox.  We have already been enjoying spring-like weather but those days have been a pleasant surprise.  Now we can begin to expect warmer, longer days on a more regular basis.  My evening meals will also begin to reflect the change in weather.  Gone are the heavy, hearty soups and stews that sustain us during those chilly and snowy days.  So here is my weekly menu planner as we await the full bloom of Spring:

Sunday 

Onion & Leek Soup

Ham Loaf Sandwiches

Fresh Fruit

Monday

Chicken Cacciatore

Raisined Honey Rice

Brussels Sprouts

Tuesday

Steaks on the Grill

Potato Wedges

Grilled Asparagus

Wednesday

Sloppy Joes

Seasoned Fries

Steamed Peas

Thursday

Shrimp & Pasta

Green Beans

Friday

Kitchen Closed

Green Eggs and Ham

     I never did like green food.  So it's no surprise that the Dr. Suess book referenced in today's title didn't appeal to me.  In fact, as a child I once threw up when forced to eat peas at the dinner table.  That pretty much ended the campaign to get "Little Tommy" to eat his veggies.  And it wasn't until much later, probably in my college years, that I even tried such strange foods as green beans.  I tolerate lettuce and think celery is just plain boring and have just this year begun to extol the virtues of exotic stuff like kale, broccoli and Brussels sprouts.  After all, they are all very healthy.
     So what to do about St. Patrick's Day?  I can't say I've ever eaten corned beef and cabbage and have no desire to begin that tradition at my age.  So as I perused my cookbooks looking for a suitable green meal to prepare I came across a soup recipe that incorporates celery, leeks and onions into a creamy, savory broth.  And to bolster the flavor cubed cooked white meat chicken is added.  It sounded plausible and it did turn out mildly green after a spin in the food processor.  And the chicken will give me something to chew on, a vital element in any of my soups.
     As we say in Dublin, "The top o' the morning to ye, and the rest of the day to meself!"  Here's the recipe for a green soup to honor St. Patrick:

CHICKEN, LEEK & CELERY SOUP 

4 cups of chicken stock                               3 lg leeks, including green parts, thinly sliced

1 bay leaf                                                      2 stalks celery, thinly sliced 

7 oz skinned boneless chicken breast      2 tbsp heavy cream 

4 tbsp all purpose flour                               freshly grated nutmeg

2 tsp butter                                                    salt & pepper 

1 onion, finely chopped                               fresh cilantro or parsley, to garnish 

    

      Heat the stock in a small sauce pan with the bay leaf until it is steaming.  Add the chicken breast and simmer gently for 20 minutes.  Discard the bay leaf.  Remove the chicken and, when cool enough to handle, cut into small cubes. 

     Put the flour in a bowl.  Very slowly whisk in enough of the stock to make a smooth liquid, adding about half the stock. 

     Heat the butter in a heavy based saucepan over a medium-low heat.  Add the onion, leeks, and half of the celery.  Cook for about 5 minutes, stirring frequently, until the leeks begin to soften.  Slowly pour in the flour and stock mixture and bring to a boil, stirring constantly.  Stir in the remaining stock.  Reduce the heat, cover and cook gently for about 25 minutes until the vegetables are tender. 

     Allow the soup to cool slightly, then transfer to a food processor and puree until smooth, working in batches, if necessary.  Puree the soup solids with enough cooking liquid to moisten them, then combine with the remaining liquid.

     Return the soup to the saucepan and stir in the cream and nutmeg.  Season with salt and pepper to taste.  Place over a medium-low heat.  Add the chicken breast and remaining celery to the soup.  Simmer for about 15 minutes, until the celery is just tender, stirring occasionally.  Taste and adjust the seasoning, ladle into warm bowls and sprinkle with cilantro or parsley.

What's Cooking: Soups, Carole Clements, p. 138.

A Sweet Story

     Deb Maxwell at Cabot Creamery kindly gave me some advice and a map directing me to some local sugar shacks to visit.  So I was on the road once again Tuesday morning to continue my Great American Culinary Tour.  It wasn't long before I was pulling in the driveway of the Bragg Farm in East Montpelier to learn about maple sugaring.

 

I was greeted by Doug Bragg and his wife as I walked in the door.  They were only a day or two from beginning the process of evaporating the sap from the maple trees on their farm which occurs each Spring.  The timing of this ritual is dictated by the weather.  For the sap to begin to flow there must be above freezing days and below freezing nights.  When conditions are just right farmers put aside their other chores for 4-6 weeks and fire up their sugar shacks.  I learned quite a bit from Doug as he informed me how he boils down the sap to make maple syrup.   

 

While the end result is the same, there are different methods employed to achieve it.  First is the way the sap is collected.  Some farmers rig up a system of tubing that drains into large collection tanks at the bottom of the mountain.  If the land is level (not likely in Vermont) then a vacuum pump is employed to draw the sap into the tanks.  Doug, however, prefers to hang a bucket on each of his 2,500 trees and collect the sap from each one daily.  He even proudly has a display of the buckets he has used over the years:

The sap is then run through an evaporator to boil off the water content and must reach a temperature of 219 F.  Doug prefers to fire his unit with seasoned firewood that has been dried for at least one year.  When the sap has reached a specific density it is poured off then filtered and finally bottled as Vermont maple syrup.  Here are some of the containers that Doug has in his collection: 

 

     Here are some interesting factoids about maple sugaring in Vermont:

1. 80% of the state is covered in forests

2. Of that 80% 3 out of every 5 trees is a sugar maple

3. It takes 40 gallons of sap to make 1 gallon of syrup

4. A tree isn't tapped until it is about a foot thick in diameter, or about 40 years old

     I learned a lot in a short amount of time.  But my education was just getting started.















Cheesy

I began my Tuesday segment of the 1st Annual Great American Culinary Tour with a stop at the Cabot Creamery.

 

It was almost 10 AM and I was the only person in line for the tour.  Deb Maxwell, the visitors center manager, kindly agreed to show me the workings of the place, starting with a very informative video.  Cabot is a cooperative venture of dairy farmers begun in 1919 and processes a million pounds of milk daily from local farmers.  But only half of that amount becomes the well known Cabot cheddar cheese.  The other half becomes butter, sour cream, cream cheese, cottage cheese,  and yogurt.  I thoroughly enjoyed the personal tour as I watched the curds and whey being separated and eventually being formed into cheese that will age for years in a separate storage facility.

     After sampling several cheeses I then returned to my vehicle to resume my culinary tour.  It was a great start for my day!

Cherry Garcia

     On my way to my Monday evening lodging in Stowe I passed through Waterbury.  Little did I know that I would pass by the Ben & Jerry's ice cream plant.  It was on my list of places to visit on Tuesday but since I was already there I decided to stop and and tour the place.  Here is what I saw when I got out of my car:

 

Upon entering the building I discovered that tours were given every half hour, so with my senior citizen discount I plunked down my $3 and waited for the next one to begin.  Bob, the tour guide (all 6'10" of him) was eagerly awaiting our group at the front desk:

 

Soon we were off and up 24 stairs to view a brief video which described the humble origins of the landmark ice cream company.  Ben & Jerry learned their craft through a correspondence course on ice cream making from Penn State and combined that knowledge with a strong work ethic and social conscience to become the world's best known purveyor of ice cream.  Their fun loving flavor names are recognized around the globe.  The day I visited the plant was manufacturing Caramel Sutra.  They have a straightforward business principle: "You keep eating it, we'll keep making it."

     Following the tour we made our way down 24 stairs to the Research & Development room

where we were given a walnut sized sample of their product in a small paper cup, minus a spoon.  It was just enough to make us want to go to the ice cream counter and order up a real serving of one of their many flavors, which I did.  I got a large scoop of chocolate therapy.

     Here are some Ben & Jerry factoids:

1.  Only fair trade ingredients are used in their ice cream

2. Ice cream is best served when it is at 10 degrees F

3. The quicker the ice cream slurry is frozen the smaller the crystals in it.  Ben & Jerry's is flash frozen at -40 degrees

4. All ice cream contains air bubbles.  The lower the percentage the better the ice cream.   Ben & Jerry's has 15%.  Bargain brands have up to 50%

5. Ben & Jerry's is sold mainly in pint containers so the ice cream can be consumed at one setting.

     Here are some eager tourists enjoying a Vermontster: