Please bear with me, I’m afraid I’m going to go a little RadioLab on you today.   I’d like you to take a moment to listen the the recording embedded below (courtesy of rhubarb, rhubarb, rhubarb):

So you can probably tell from the name of the sound file what you’re listening to.  Rhubarb.  That is the sound of rhubarb growing.  Okay, but how was that recording produced?  Is it sped up, like a time lapse video for sound?  Nope.  Is it a hypersensitive microphone embedded in the soil?  Guess again.

It’s exactly what is says.  That recording is a real time,  un-enhanced recording of the sound of rhubarb growing.  Cool, huh?

To be slightly more precise,  it’s the sound of a lot of rhubarb growing in a shed in Yorkshire, England.  To produce an early spring crop, rhubarb is grown in warm, dark sheds.  Needing light, the plant expends all of its energy growing long, thin shoots trying to push its way though the soil and into the sun.  This “forced” rhubarb is a major crop in the area, and forced rhubarb grown in Yorkshire has actually been given PDO status in Europe.  This is the same protected status as (for example) Prosciutto, Champagne, and Stilton.

I found this so fascinating when I first heard it, because I’m so used to plants operating on a slower time scale than the human attention span.  And even with the faster growing plants, like dandelions, you still don’t expect them to keep you up at night with their complaining!  I mentioned hearing this recording to my farmer friend Rebecca, by the way, and she admitted she’ll sometimes stare at her beans and try to see them grow.  And even interrogating them about it: “Did you just move?  Did you?”

As awesome as it is that you can actually hear rhubarb grow, I still don’t really like it.  It’s too sour for my tastes.  Leslie loves it though, and every year she makes her strawberry and rhubarb preserves, as well as other rhubarb based treats you can read about here, here and here (that’s Rhubarb Jack pictured below).  And actually, I’m told that forced rhubarb is sweeter and more tender than traditional plants.  If you know anyone around here that grows forced rhubarb drop me a line, if not we may have to try it next year.

If you are inspired to make any of those dishes but you don’t have rhubarb in your garden, you can probably pick it up at your local Farmers Market.  Here in Mineral Point, the market is starting up this weekend (although it may be a few weeks before rhubarb starts to show up).

The Camel

We feasted on brats, burgers, chips, cookies, carrot cake, pesto pasta salad, spicy garbanzo bean salad, quinoa and carrot salad, and New Glarus ales.  The first time we went was in 2010.  We have met so many great friends there!

A Fine Evening

RECIPE

STEP 1:  In a large stock pot, place 2 lbs. oxtail and cover 3/4 of the way with cold water.  Add roughly chopped celery ribs, carrots, garlic cloves, and a whole onion.  Bring to a boil then turn the heat down to a simmer.  Cover the pot and let it cook for about 2 and 1/2 hours.  Take out the meat then strain the liquid.  Let it cool then store in the refrigerator overnight.

STEP 2:  Take it out of the fridge, scoop and discard the fat on top, then prepare the vegetables.  Peel and cut vegetables to roughly the same size.  Put everything in a stock pot along with the meat.  Cover it with the broth, bring to a boil, and simmer until the vegetables are done.  This will take about an hour and a half.

STEP 3:  Serve with some fresh chives.  It is also tradition to add some fish sauce to your liking at the table.

Enjoy!

King’s Hill Purple Jewels

The Scent of Lemon and Vanilla

RECIPE

Lemon Poppyseed Cake

Ingredients

• 2 c. flour
• 1/4 t. salt
• 1 t. baking powder
• 2-3 T. poppyseeds
• 1 stick butter (room temperature)
• 3/4 c. sugar
• 4 T. sour cream
• 4 eggs
• 1/4 c. vegetable oil
• 1 T. lemon zest
• 1 T. lemon juice
• 1 T. vanilla

Glaze

• 1/2 c. powdered sugar
• lemon juice
• water

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit.  Grease and flour a loaf pan.

Sift the flour, salt, and baking powder.  Add the poppyseeds and set aside.  In another bowl, cream the butter and sugar.  Add the eggs one at a time, then the vanilla, sour cream, oil, lemon zest and juice.  Bake for 50-55 minutes until a toothpick inserted comes out clean.

After you’ve taken the loaf out of the oven, invert it out of the pan and place in a cooling rack.  Prepare the glaze.  Add the lemon juice and water to the sugar a little bit at a time until you’ve got the right consistency (somewhere between honey and maple syrup).

It smells so good.  I suggest you go bake your own loaf.  Have a scrumptious day!

 We almost never wait for cakes to cool in this house.

Yum, right?

Until recently, the only member of our household who had eaten squirrel was Oliver, our dog.  And, despite his best efforts, the only one he ever managed to catch had already been dead for a while.  But one day, Leslie found one of those “100 things you have to eat before you die” lists online (this one, I believe) and filled it out.  She had eaten almost all of them, only coming up 5 or 6 things short.  One of those things was squirrel.  A few days later I was telling a coworker, Dave, about this list and he mentioned if we wanted some squirrel, his son Casey would be glad to hunt some for us.  And so, before we knew it, we had squirrels in the freezer.

I did a little research on recipes for squirrel.  The first thing I found was a tasty sounding Hmong squirrel stew on the blog Hunter Angler Gardener Cook.  The recipe was from a cookbook called Cooking from the Heart: The Hmong Kitchen in America.  (As an aside, it’s a small world: I noticed one of the blurbs on the book was written by a woman named Kalia Kao Yang, who I’ve never met, but had been emailing with back and forth asking her questions about Hmong food.)  Another recipe that sounded good was the squirrel ravioli on Deadly Food.  We also got a lot of recommendations from friends.  It’s not so uncommon to eat squirrel out here and at least one town has an annual squirrel dinner.  In fact, one of Leslie’s students named squirrel her favorite meat.

Almost all of the squirrel recipes we heard about started with slow cooking the squirrel until the meat came off the bone.  We first lightly floured and pan fried the squirrel legs (already cleaned and butchered) until brown, then put them in a covered dish with leeks, carrots, onions, celery, garlic and half a bottle of red wine and braised at 325 F for two hours.

This is the point in the story where we got a bit cocky though.  I thought: squirrel must pretty much taste like rabbit.  I know what goes with rabbit, I’ll just wing it. We decided to make a squirrel ragu, served over bucatini.  The ragu was made with san marzano tomatoes, red wine, porcini mushrooms, shallots, parmigiano, and lots and lots of garlic.  It was a rich, full bodied sauce meant to go with a dark, complex meat.

Here’s the problem: squirrel doesn’t taste anything like rabbit.  It wasn’t gamey at all; it wasn’t dark (in flavor) either.  Much more like chicken (cliché) with a little bit of pork mixed in.  As soon as I tasted the cooked meat I had two thoughts: 1) this is pretty good and 2) this doesn’t go with this sauce at all.  We made a few adjusts with the seasoning (such as adding parsley) which helped, but in the end it just didn’t work.  Cooking 101: taste your ingredients ahead of time.

So it likely wasn’t the best squirrel dish we’ll ever eat.  But that’s okay.  It leaves plenty of room for improve on the next go around.

I had been planning on making kimchi ever since I found Korean pepper (gochugaru) seeds from Dr. Dave of Midwest Chili Peppers based in Madison (who I first learned about from my friend Denise of Digging in the Driftless).  I started the seeds indoors then planted them in my summer garden but only got a dozen of peppers from 4 plants that survived.  I’ve also got my one Korean friend, Jikyung, who has eaten so much kimchi that it probably runs through her veins.  That would make her an expert.  She has also watched her mom make a lot of kimchi.  The weekend before the new year Jikyung brought some dried and roasted Korean peppers from her mom, some fish sauce, and something called saeujeot (salt fermented young shrimp).  Hard core kimchi makers use sauejeot or even fresh oysters but you can stick with just the fish sauce.

Can You Smell It?

The process that takes the longest is salting cabbage and letting it sit for several hours to draw out the moisture then squeezing and rinsing about three times.  The kimchi paste is then mixed together then massaged into the cabbage.  After that, it is ready to eat but pace yourself because the best stage to eat this is after two weeks.  Jikyung and I tried it right away with steamed jasmine rice, fried eggs, bean sprouts, and spinach.  You can also eat it with jabchae.

RECIPE

Ingredients

• 2 heads napa cabbage
• 1 large white radish
• 1 large carrot
• 1 c. pickling salt
• 2 c. water
• 1/2 c. glutinous rice flour 
• 1 c.  ground Korean peppers
• 1 T. saeujeot (salt fermented shrimp)
• 1/2 c. fish sauce
• 3 heads garlic (minced)
• a large thumb sized piece of ginger (minced)

Slice the cabbage into 1 and 1/2 inch squares.  Place in a large bowl and sprinkle generously with salt.  You probably won’t use the full cup.  Mix and massage until the salt is evenly incorporated.  Let it sit for 4-5 hours.  After that, the cabbage will be wilted.  Squeeze out and discard the liquid.  Rinse three times.

Cut up the radish and carrots and set aside.

For the paste.  Get 2 cups of water and mix in the rice flour using a whisk in a sauce pan.  Heat gently until you’ve got a gravy-like consistency and then liquid is semi transluscent.  Cover and let it cool.  In the same pan, mix in the pepper, fish sauce, fermented shrimp, garlic, and ginger.  Mix the paste into the carrots and radish then add the cabbage.  Massage until thoroughly incorporated.  Give it a taste and see if you’d like the balance of flavors.  Make adjustments according to taste.  Place the kimchi into canning jars.  Rinse the jars and store them out of sight for a week.  I had mine sit in a cool spot in the basement (about 60 degrees Fahrenheit).  After one week, you can refrigerate.  If you are worried,  you can choose to refrigerate right away.  That’s it.  Enjoy!

*You can buy  all of the ingredients at Asian grocery stores.  Just tell them that you are going to make kimchi.

 Ingredients

Now, a seven course meal (plus hors d’oeuvres) is a fairly decadent to begin with.  Add to that black truffles with every course and you’ve got a meal that would make Beau Brummell blush. Plus, being sensible people of moderation, we took a trip to the Milwaukee Public Market for a couple dozen oysters before dinner.

Despite the pig pictured on the menu, we have it on good authority the truffles were found by dogs.

The full menu is shown below.  Highlights for me were the cauliflower soup and the pigeon rossini (my first pigeon, I thought at the time, but I’ve since remembered an earlier one).  Upper right and middle right in the picture above, respectively.  Leslie’s vote for best dish goes to the rice pudding– she’s still a little mad at the waitress who whisked it away before she was finished.  Besides the chefs (a collection from all of the Bartolotta‘s restaurants, led by Adam Siegel) there was also a trufflist from France (I’ve made that word up) and the wine maker from Somerston (where all the wine pairing came from).  Andy also got more attention than he liked when he was introduced as “one of the best cheese makers in Wisconsin, and therefore, one of the best in the world”.

We really don’t know Milwaukee that well, but we are really growing to like it.  There is a great restaurant culture in Milwaukee that really respects ingredients and you can find so many of the wonderful cheeses, beers, meats and vegetables grown and made around us.  I just wish it was a shorter drive.

Bartolotta’s Lake Park Bistro 10^th Annual

Black Truffle Dinner

Wednesday January 16, 2013

And

Wednesday January 23^rd at the James Beard House NYC

Hors D’Oeuvres

Joue de Veau – Strauss Veal Cheek with Black Truffles

Mousse de Canard  – Duck Liver Mouse with Truffles

Gougeres – Gruyere Gougeres with Black Truffles

Tartare de St Jacques – Sea Scallop with Black Truffles

Le Menu

Potage

Creamy Cauliflower Soup with Lobster Cream, Brussels Sprout Leaves and Black Truffles

~~

Loup de Mer

Sea Bass with Crispy Potato, Truffle Jus and Black Truffles

~~

Oeuf Mollet

Fried Soft Boiled Egg with Mushrooms, Mushroom Cream and Black Truffles

~~

Pigeon Rossini

Roasted Squab Breast with Foie Gras, Carrot and Black Truffle Madeira Sauce

~~

Agneau

Priest Ranch Lamb with Mustard-Onion Compote, Cress and Celery Root Salad with Black Truffles

~~

Fromage et Miel

Upland’s Rush Creek Vache Style Cheese with Somerston Honey and Black Truffles

~~

Riz Au Lait

Creamy Rice Pudding with Amarena Cherries, Crème Anglaise and Black Truffles

RECIPE 

Ingredients

• 1 package of spaghetti
• 1 T. olive oil
• 2 cloves crushed garlic
• 1/2 t. chili flakes
• 8 anchovies
• 1/3 c. chopped black olives
• 2 T. capers
• 1 and 1/2 c. strained tomatoes (I love the Pomi brand)
• 1 T. fresh parsley

Boil a big pot of water to cook the pasta.  Add a little bit of salt to the water.  In a wide pan, sautée the anchovies in the olive oil until it has almost melted then add the garlic.  Toss in the garlic, capers, and pour in the tomato sauce.  Let is simmer gently until the pasta water is ready.  When the pasta is almost done, reserve a cup of the boiling liquid.  Put the drained pasta and a little bit of the water into the sauce and turn up the temperature a little bit.  Let it simmer together.  Add the fresh parsley right before serving.  Enjoy.

Julia Child’s Galette Dough

RECIPE

Ingredients

• 3 T. buttermilk, yogurt, or sour cream
• 1/3 c. ice water
• 1 c. all purpose flour
• 1/4 c. yellow cornmeal
• 1 t. sugar
• 1/2 t. salt
• 7 T. cold, unsalted butter cut into 6 to 8 pieces

Mix the buttermilk and ice water in a small bowl.  In a bigger bowl mix the flour, cornmeal, sugar, and salt.  Incorporate the butter using your hands, letting the flour and butter mixture fall through your fingers.  You will get different size lumps (the size of corn kernels, rice, and breadcrumbs).  Add the buttermilk and water mixture into the dough and handle until you can form a large ball.  It should only take a couple of minutes.  Wrap it in plastic and let it rest in the refrigerator for at least 2 hours.

Flour your counter and dough generously and roll it out.  I used a 6 inch cast iron pan but you can make a free form pie if you wish.  Preheat the oven to 400 °F.

Now I leave you with a bit of food porn.  Happy Monday!

Filling: lamb, potatoes, carrots, caramelized onions, ricotta and parmigiano cheeses, and thyme

Once it is full enough, fold over the crust.  You can wash the top with an egg and water mixture or not.

Bake for 35-40 minutes.

 Devour.