Our favorite two

You are not going to believe me, but here goes:

We are still pulling carrots I planted on June 24th, almost seven months ago. I know! I wouldn't believe it myself, except that I wrote down the date in my gardening notebook, and that notebook does not lie. I wrote out the varieties—Purple Haze and Danvers and Atomic Red—and drew a little diagram to show which kind I'd planted in each row.

Then I completely ignored them—forgot to thin them, even—until October, when Alex and I pulled the plastic greenhouse cover over the garden and shut the door. Apparently, they liked this treatment just fine, because when I went foraging after Christmas to see what I might find for a chilly afternoon lunch, I found them stout and sturdy, still a head full of green on top and bright oranges, reds, and purples popping up from down below.

A few of them were carried off by lucky rodents—a mouse maybe, or more likely a vole—but for the most part, we've been getting a full harvest from every row. Some are small, little more than pinky-sized, but others are as round as silver dollars, as long and straight as home-dipped candles.

Mostly, we've been eating them fresh—washed and trimmed and dipped into a bowl of homemade blue cheese dressing or bean dip. But at my mother's suggestion we've also been cooking them down into smooth, velvety soups.

Here are our favorite two—perfect for February and March, for seeing us through.

CARROT GINGER SOUP

This recipe is adapted from The Black Dog Cookbook: Summer on the Vineyard by Joe Hall. I like it because it is quick, easy, delicious, and beautiful. The recipe calls for a lot of ginger—don't add any extra (the soup will get bitter), but don't skimp, either. The ginger adds a lovely bright taste.

1/4 cup olive oil

1 cup diced onion

1/4 cup fresh ginger, peeled and grated

4 cups chopped carrots

4 cups vegetable or chicken stock

1/2 teaspoon salt

2 teaspoons ground coriander

sliced scallions or chives, for garnish

Warm up the oil over medium heat in a large, heavy-bottomed pot. Add the onion and ginger and sauté for 5 minutes, or until the onion starts to get tender.

Add all the remaining ingredients except for the scallions and bring to a boil. Turn the heat down to a simmer and continue cooking, uncovered, for about 15 minutes, or until the carrots are soft.

Puree the soup and serve hot with a sprinkle of scallions on top.

MOROCCAN CARROT SOUP

This recipe is adapted from one my mother found in a Moroccan cookbook from Williams Sonoma. The original name was Chorba b'khisou bil kseksou, or Carrot Soup with Spices. It has a stunning orange color and a lovely texture.

2 tablespoons butter

1 yellow onion, peeled and grated

1 heaping pound carrots, washed, peeled, and grated

2 cloves garlic, peeled and crushed

1/2 teaspoon turmeric

1/2 teaspoon ground ginger

1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon ground paprika

1/2 teaspoon ground cumin

1/2 teaspoon ground cayenne pepper

5 cups chicken stock

1/4 cup dry couscous

2 teaspoons lemon juice

parsley, for garnish

Warm up the butter over medium heat in a large, heavy-bottomed pot. Add the onions and sauté for 5 minutes, then add the grated carrots, garlic, turmeric, ginger, cinnamon, paprika, cumin, and cayenne pepper. Cook for a few seconds, then add the chicken stock.

Bring to a boil, cover, and reduce the heat to low. Simmer for 15 minutes.

Add the couscous, stir until boiling, then cover and turn the heat down to low. Simmer gently for another 20 minutes.

Add the lemon juice and serve hot, topped with a little chopped parsley.

Tang and pizazz

It was seven degrees here this morning when we woke up. Seven degrees! I would complain, but when I called my mother, she told me her thermometer read seven below. She tends to stop by here, so I have a feeling I'd better keep mum. Anyhow, the good news is that it's now up to a balmy 16.3, and I have tested the waters and found that with two pairs of sweatpants, a turtleneck, and a sweater on, it is warm enough to make soup.

Those specimens up there are a major component of the soup I'm making today, which is the same soup we've been eating now for about a week straight. It's a potato-leek-celeriac soup that I found in an old Bon Appetit cookbook—Entertaining with Style, circa 1996—and it's amazing.

(Celeriac, in case you're not familiar with it, is the knobby, gnarly root that grows under a certain variety of celery. Unlike most celery varieties, it's grown mainly for what's underground, but you can also use the leaves and stalks as you normally would. My friend Tracy grew a bunch in her greenhouse, and we are addicted.)

If I had to pick one word to describe this soup, I would tell you that it is velvety. The celeriac gives it a creaminess that is somehow different—somehow more subtle and more refreshing than the heavy, overdone richness that you find in most potato-leek soup recipes—and that, I think, is what makes it so wonderful. It has comfort food written all over it, but it also has tang and pizazz. I like that.

I also like that it cooks for a while, which means there's a stove burner on, which warms the house up. I have a recipe for Oatmeal Sandwich bread marked, which bakes at 400 degrees, and I'm thinking of making that too. But I'm starting with soup.

POTATO-CELERIAC-LEEK SOUP

The original recipe for this soup actually called for twice as much celeriac as potato, but even as a celeriac lover, I thought that was too much. I swapped the ratios, so that the celeriac to potatoes was 1 to 2, and I thought that was perfect. Also, the original recipe called for olive oil, not butter, but I ended up adding the butter for creaminess later on, so the next time around I never bothered with the olive oil at all. In a soup like this, I think you need the creaminess that butter adds. And for toppings, the original recipe recommended parsley and orange zest and red onions, but we stuck with just the red onions, and I thought they were more than enough. Soup this good doesn't need dressing up. Oh! and it serves 3.

3 tablespoons butter

1 leek, washed and thinly sliced (white and light green parts only)

salt

1 and 1/2 cups chicken or vegetable stock, preferably homemade

1/2 pound celeriac, peeled and cut into 1/2-inch pieces

1 pound potatoes, peeled and cut into 1/2-inch pieces

1 cup whole milk

freshly cracked pepper

1/2 red onion (optional)

Heat up the butter in a medium, heavy-bottomed pot. Add the leek and sauté for 5-8 minutes, or until it starts to get tender. Season with about 1 teaspoon salt (unless you are using a salty broth, in which case you should wait and season later on). Add the stock, celeriac, and potatoes and bring to a boil. Turn the heat down, cover, and simmer for about 45 minutes, or until the vegetables are soft.

Use an immersion blender or food processor to puree the soup. Add enough milk to thin the soup to your liking, taste the soup, and add salt and pepper as needed. Simmer for another few minutes to let the flavor deepen, then serve hot. We like it with a generous handful of finely chopped red onions on top.

I could lie

I could lie to you. I could tell you that we've been roasting Truro pork chops and using the bones to make big batches of broth for homemade Pho and lingering over fresh pumpkin muffins, or apple spice cake. But the truth is we have a leaky pipe and a flooded basement and no water, and since Saturday we've been relying on take-out and the generosity of friends.

Not that it's been bad, really. We had a nice lunch at Wellfleet Town Pizza on Saturday and our friend Gui grilled us prime rib from Northeast Family Farms that night, and we even contributed the box of just-picked Chinese cabbage you see up there, from the Mac's Shack garden. I could hardly believe the greens were still lingering, without any covering or attention.

Then yesterday we went over to Alex's brother's to sample cheeses from a new place called Robinson's Farm in Hardwick. The Robinsons started raising grass-fed cows in 2006, and this year, they just released a line of artisinal raw milk cheeses. Alex and Mac are thinking of selling them in the restaurants as part of a local cheese plate, and by the pound at the markets.

The Swiss was good with pickles and pepperoncinis, and a there was a buttery melting cheese that was top-notch over pan-fried potatoes. I'm hoping that Alex will pick up at least the melting one, so that I can make an all-local French onion soup.

In the meantime, of course, I'll take running water. When that happens, here's what's on my to-cook list:

1. this penne with garlic and kale
2. Stacey Glassman's squash with olive oil and garlic
3. cream of beet soup from James Peterson
4. buckwheat pancakes with the flour I ground down the other day from our grain CSA
5. deb's cranberry upside-down cake
6. more simple breakfasts like this
7. and maybe, just maybe, a batch of homemade pop tarts to use up our astounding supply of raspberry jam
   

Happy cooking, everyone.

Harvest minestrone

Breakfast: one fried egg over easy, from the girls next door + two slices homemade "French style" bread from Beard on Bread made with hard winter wheat from our CSA share + sautéed Brussels Sprouts from Cape Cod Organic Farm (yes, again).

Lunch: homemade minestrone soup, the one my mom ripped out from Cooking Light in September 1999—with Andy's onions + our own butternut squash + our own green beans + Anna's turnip greens + our own crushed tomatoes + my mom's cabbage + herbs from the yard + chicken broth from Drew's bird + Ben's garlic + Darnell's celery + our own carrots, pulled from the greenhouse and straight into the pot.

HARVEST MINESTRONE

My mom has been making this recipe forever. I wasn't much for minestrone soup as a kid (I was mostly interested in the Parmesan), but I've found as I've gotten older, it's grown on me. It is an excellent soup to make with summer veggies from the freezer, and it makes a perfect lunch with a piece of toast and some grated cheese on a gray, rainy day like this afternoon.

2 tablespoons olive oil
1 cup chopped onion
1 cup diced carrot
3/4 cup thinly sliced celery
3 cups crushed tomatoes
2 cups diced, peeled butternut squash (about 1/2 of the squash)
6 cups chicken broth
1 teaspoon salt, plus more to taste
1/4 teaspoon freshly cracked black pepper
2 garlic cloves, minced
1 cup green beans, cut into 1-inch pieces
2 cups thinly sliced green cabbage
2 cups thinly sliced kale, spinach, Swiss chard, or turnip greens
1/2 cup uncooked pasta or cooked grain berries (farro, rye, or wheat berries would work well)
1 teaspoon finely chopped fresh rosemary
2 teaspoons finely chopped fresh thyme

Heat the oil up in a large heavy-bottomed pot over medium-high heat. Add the onion, carrot, and celery, and sauté 5-8 minutes, or until tender. Add the crushed tomatoes, butternut, chicken broth, salt, pepper, and garlic and bring everything to a boil. Cover the pot, turn the heat down to low, and let the soup simmer for 2o minutes.

Stir in the green beans, cabbage, greens, and pasta, and cook for another 5-10 minutes, or until the pasta is done. Stir in the herbs. Serve hot, with a slice of crusty bread and a sprinkle of cheese.

Dear Parsnips,

I'm sorry.

I'm sorry it has taken so long. I'm sorry I've overlooked you in all your wispy, homely grace. I'm sorry I haven't grown you, ever, never thought twice about you when I paged past your seed in the catalog. I'm sorry I hardly ever buy you, and that when I do, you're shoved into a pan with all the others, roasted, hardly allowed to shine. And of course, I'm sorry that I ripped this recipe out of Yankee Magazine eleven months ago, and that it's taken me until now. Because Maple Syrup-Roasted Parsnip Bisque is absolute heaven, and I really should have known.

It's pretty obvious, when you start by roasting parsnips with olive oil and maple syrup and salt, that things are going to be good. It gets even more clear when you make the stock—parsley, onion, carrot, a bay leaf and a handful of peppercorns. When you mix the two together—when you drain the stock and add you—golden, roasted parsnips—things really start to come along. And as you simmer and puree, add a glug of cream and simmer again—well, then you really know.

So here's to you, parsnips—to a future of growing and buying and cooking—and to your endless possibilities.

MAPLE SYRUP-ROASTED PARSNIP BISQUE

I ripped this recipe out of the January/February 2009 issue of Yankee Magazine. It has everything I look for in a soup: simplicity, balance, just enough heartiness to satisfy. I've made a few tweaks and I've also cut the recipe in half—big batches of soup tend to languish around here—but if you have a big family, go ahead and double it. I have a feeling it'll disappear.

1 and 1/4 lbs parsnips, washed, trimmed, and roughly chopped
2 tablespoons olive oil
4 tablespoons maple syrup, divided
1/2 teaspoon salt
4 cups water
1 medium carrot
1 small onion, halved
1/2 small bunch flat-leaf parsley
1 bay leaf
1/4 teaspoon black peppercorns
1/2 teaspoon white pepper
1 and 1/4 cups heavy cream

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. In a small casserole dish, toss together the parsnips, olive oil, 2 tablespoons of the maple syrup, and the salt. Roast for roughly 45 minutes, or until the parsnips are tender and golden brown.

While the parsnips cook, get out a soup pot and combine the water, carrot, onion, parsley, bay leaf, and peppercorns. Bring to a boil, turn down the heat and cover the pot, and let the vegetables simmer for 30 minutes. Strain the broth and return it to the pot, discarding the vegetables and spices.

Take the parsnips out of the oven and add them to the broth, making sure to pour in any extra oil and maple syrup along with them. Add the remaining maple syrup and the white pepper and simmer for 20-30 minutes.

Puree the soup, either using an immersion blender or in batches in a food processor or blender, and return it to the pot. Add the cream, season with salt to taste, and simmer another 10 minutes. Serve hot.

The Local Food Report: warm, lush

Arthur Teubner lives in Truro. His roommates include one fig tree, one taro plant, a rosemary bush, a whole bunch of rainbow chard and spinach and arugula, and a potted banana plant. As you can see, it's very cozy in there.

The coziness has a lot to do with glass, and the sun. In the seventies, Teubner volunteered at the New Alchemy Institute in Hatchville, and he got very into the idea of incorporating growing space into living space. The Institute was a research center studying organic agriculture and aquaculture and bio-shelters, and it created an indoor eco-system called The Ark. The basic idea was to build a greenhouse for both shelter and food, and to populate it with species that would compliment and regulate each other as they grew. It was very successful, and Teubner took the idea with him.

He built his house about a decade later, with his own plans and hands and a lot of recycled materials. He designed it to sit on a south-facing slope overlooking his garden (which has since turned into a farm, First Light Organic Farm), and an orchard of fruit trees. It was an upside-down home with three floors: on top, a master bedroom and bathroom and study, in the middle a kitchen and dining room and living room, and on the bottom, an extra bedroom and an attached greenhouse. By building the greenhouse onto his home, he reasoned, he could grow warmer-climate crops or over winter native crops by regulating the temperature in conjunction with his living space. This seemed more sustainable to him than having a separate, independent structure that he would have to supply with nutrients and heat.

But that isn't even the cool part.

The cool part is that the way he did this was to incorporate the air from the greenhouse into his home. He cut power registers and ducts into the walls and ceiling of the greenhouse, so that if the sun creates excess heat, he can pull it into his home. He created heat sinks in the form of brick flooring and dark earth growing beds, and he built a row of cylindrical water columns to act as solar heat sinks. He also added a indoor fish pond that connects to an outdoor fish pond, so that the protein he raises can swim in or out depending on the weather or temperature or just what sort of an adventure it feels like taking that day. When the fish have been swimming and eating for a while, he takes the nutrient rich water from their pond to water the vegetable crops.


Finally, he planted grapes—Concords and a few other leafy varieties—along the east and west sides of the greenhouse. He trained them to grow up along the sides and over to cover the top, and in the summer, they leaf out. The greenery blocks the sun in the summer, keeping the greenhouse cool and shady. In the fall, the leaves drop, and the light is allowed back in.

There are clearly a lot of good features to this indoor growing space. For starters, when he's cooking dinner, Teubner can sneak downstairs in his socks or even bare feet and pick a whole meal's worth of chard and arugula and thyme.


He can also grow plants that normally wouldn't survive in this climate, like figs and bananas, because they spend the winter protected, inside. Lastly, and sometimes he thinks most importantly, when it is February or March on Cape Cod and the weather report says GREY for the seventy-second day straight, he has a warm, lush, almost Costa-Rican place to go. This insanity salvation, he says, is almost better than the fresh figs.

Of course, most of the year, his food production in the greenhouse focuses on leafy salad plants. The figs and grapes and whatnot come in a big September-October whoosh, and from there it's herb and cold crop time. The day I visited, last weekend, he had Swiss chard, arugula, lettuce mix, spinach, and Dinosaur kale going on. It actually looked a fair amount like what we have in our not-so-toasty, unattached greenhouse right now, except that everything was bigger, and a bit healthier, and not looking quite so desperate for heat and sun.

By the time I got home, I was trying to figure out how we could build a greenhouse onto the south side of our house and whether or not I would rather have a fig tree or a banana tree, or maybe even a lime tree, or if maybe I should just fill the beds with oregano plants. Of course, I was getting a little bit ahead of myself. In the end, I drew a lot of pictures and researched green design architects online and made myself a pot of barley and winter greens soup.

A Costa Rica Room would be nice, one day. But in the meantime, the soup turned out to be cheap, and tasty, and a very good second best.

SO FRESH AND SO GREEN (!)

[I am so, so sorry for the bad pun title. Hopefully Outkast will forgive me. And hopefully you will forgive me for discovering the Lala Song Player and, yet again, giving you a link with sound.]

As for the soup, it's excellent. It's adapted from a recipe I found the other day in the Feburary issue of Bon Appetit, now that I (ahem), finally got it back from my sister. Anyway, it's for a barley soup with kale, chard, spinach, fennel, lemon, and dill, which, as soon as I saw it, I knew was for me. I changed a few things, but the idea is the same. This soup is bright and light and hearty all at once, and in a much more wholesome way than the song, really and truly very fresh and very clean. There is something almost squeaky about it, in the same way that, say, lying in a mud wrap with cucumbers on your eyelids is. Best of all, it is an excellent first use for our brand new, New England grown ( ! ) barley.

2/3 cup uncooked barley
8 cups chicken broth, preferably homemade
4 cups water
sea salt
2 tablespoons butter
3 medium onions, chopped
1 teaspoon dried dill weed*
1 teaspoon dried, crushed fennel seed
1 teaspoon dried, crushed basil
freshly ground pepper to taste
1/4 cup dry white wine
8 cups Swiss chard, rinsed, coarsely chopped, and packed**
8 cups spinach, rinsed, coarsely chopped, and packed
1 cup cilantro, coarsely chopped, for garnish
4 ounces feta cheese, crumbled, for garnish
1/3 cup scallions, thinly sliced, for garnish
1 lime, cut into eights, for garnish

*The original recipe called for fresh herbs. If you're making this soup in the summertime, when fresh dill, fennel, and basil are readily available, I would certainly recommend swapping them in—1/3 cup each to replace the dried measurements.

** The original recipe also called for kale in addition to the Swiss chard and spinach. I think you could probably use any combination of winter braising greens you like—the more the merrier—with success.

Bring the barley, 4 cups of the chicken stock, the water, and 1 teaspoon of sea salt to a boil in a large, heavy-bottomed pot. Reduce the heat to low, cover the pot, and leave the barley to simmer for about 45 minutes, or until tender.

Meanwhile, pull out a skillet and heat the butter up over medium-high heat. Add the onions, stirring frequently, and cook for about five minutes. Sprinkle in the herbs, and season with salt and freshly ground pepper to taste. Continue cooking for about three more minutes, or until the onions are soft and translucent. Deglaze the pan with the wine, cook for a minute or two longer, and turn off the heat. Set the onions aside.

When the barley is tender, add the remaining stock and the onions to the pot. Add the chard and the spinach, and simmer for about six minutes, or until the greens are tender. Season the soup with salt and pepper, and pour it hot into bowls. Put the cilantro, feta, scallions, and lime wedges on the table to use as garnishes. (The cheese doesn't matter too much, and the cilantro and scallions are sort of personal decisions, but whatever you do, don't skip the lime juice. It brings out the flavors of the greens and brightens the barley and the broth.) This soup is good on day one, but even better on day two, so don't be afraid to let it sit.

An extra large pot

I am a firm believer in the power of soup.

A good soup, I am thoroughly convinced, can fix a lot of things. And in the past few weeks, I've heard of quite a few people in need of help.

For starters, there's Alex. We spent yesterday in the emergency room at Cape Cod hospital. Everything is fine—he just got boarded at his Sunday morning hockey game is all—and they thought he might have broken his clavicle, or maybe a few ribs. But he didn't, and although it hurts when he breathes deeply and his arm is in a sling and he is acting just the slightest bit loopy from all the vicodin, in the big scheme of things, he is a-okay. Groovy, really, compared to what could have been.

There's also the issue of my father. Last week, he broke his nose playing basketball. (Clearly, we need to do something about these mens leagues!) My mother took him to the doctor, who told him he would have to wait a week for the swelling to go down, and then, once he was starting to feel a little better, they would have to break his nose all over again. They recommended he go under general anesthesia for all this, but he courageously declared that if women can endure childbirth, than surely he could do this. (Go PAPA!)

There have been other people we know, too, weathering more difficult things. There's my mother's friend who just had a (successful! curing!) double mastectomy, and Alex's aunt who just survived open-heart surgery. But of course, none of these really compare to the main event going on down in Haiti. Figuring out how to respond to a crisis like that is going to take a lot more than soup.

There is so much to do in Haiti that it's hard to know where to start. People injured in the earthquake need medical help, of course, and food and water most urgently. Children need to be reunited with their families and parents need help searching for aunts and uncles and brothers and sisters and grandparents. Even more overwhelmingly, in the long term, a whole society needs to be rebuilt. This will take money and materials and laborers, and it will also take time. Internationally, everyone will contribute what they can, and eventually we will get the job done.

But in the meantime, it's hard to know what to do. Nothing heals overnight—not a country of survivors, or a broken nose, or an opened-up heart. I'm not much good at flowers, or get-well balloons, or even always cards, but I can always make soup. I made a batch this weekend—sautéed onions and carrots and mushrooms and sausage with a rich red wine and beef broth and thick blooms of kale and red kidney beans and farro hanging about. I brought some over to Alex's aunt, and I sent the recipe to my mom to make for my dad, and I heated Alex up a bowl when we got home from the hospital last night. If I could send an extra large pot down to Haiti, I would.

It isn't much, I know, but it's what I know how to do, and it comes with the best of hopeful thoughts in mind.

FARRO SOUP
with sausage, dinosaur kale, and kidney beans

The thing I like about this soup is that it is both delicious and truly good for you. There isn't an unhealthy bone in its build—unless you count the sausage, which I don't so long as it comes from a pastured, anti-biotics-free pig. The only unusual ingredient is the farro, an ancient variety of wheat also known as emmer. We discovered it through the grain CSA we joined this year (thanks to Andrea! more on that soon!), but it is also fairly readily available at health food stores. If you can't find it locally, barley would make a fine substitute. Also, we used ground pork sausage for the meat, because that was all we had, but I have a feeling if you had something more Italian sausage or kielbasa-like, it would make an excellent replacement. Oh! and one more thing: for the mushrooms, we used dried and then rehydrated shiitakes from Julie Winslow, but any other dried mushroom with the same depth of flavor and heft, like a porcini or an oyster, would be fine.

1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
1/2 cup yellow storage onions, chopped
1/2 cup carrots, chopped
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 tablespoon rosemary, fresh or dried
1/2 pound pork sausage
1/2 cup mushrooms, coarsely chopped
salt and freshly cracked pepper to taste
1 cup crushed tomatoes
1 cup red wine
3 cups beef broth, preferably homemade
6 ounces uncooked farro, rinsed and soaked overnight
1/2 pound kale, coarsely chopped
optional, but good: some sort of cheese for topping (grated Parmesan, feta, chevre, etc.)

Heat up the oil in a large, heavy-bottomed soup pot. Sauté the onions over medium-high heat for about five minutes on their own, then turn the heat down to medium and add the carrots, the garlic, and the rosemary. When the vegetables have taken up most of the oil and the onions are translucent, add the sausage. Wait a minute or so until it starts to brown, then add the mushrooms and salt and freshly cracked pepper to taste. Continue cooking, stirring frequently, for another three minutes or so, until the mushrooms soften and the sausage is cooked through.

Add the crushed tomatoes, the red wine, the beef broth, and the farro, cover the pot, and bring the soup to a boil. Turn the heat down to simmer and continue cooking, stirring and tasting occasionally, until the farro is almost tender, about 45 minutes. At this point, add the kale, and season the soup again with salt and freshly cracked pepper to taste. Simmer the soup, still covered, for another 15 minutes or so, or until the farro is soft and chewy. Serve the soup hot, and if you decide to go for the cheese, sprinkle it on top.

Quite a night

I'm not really sure I should be telling you this, but on Friday, I was a Bachelorette. Yep—that's right—with the help of my sister and my mother and a whole gang of friends, I was transformed from a perfectly nice girl into a tacky-veil-wearing, high-heeled, boozy wreck of a bride-to-be.

It was quite a night.

I'm not going to tell you too much—I am hoping, after all, to maintain at least some itsy-bitsy shred of dignity—but I will say that it was not nearly so bad a rite of passage as I'd feared. There may or may not have been a Karaoke Funk-Mobile involved, and at least one not-to-be-named person doing The Worm, but other than that, things were pretty tame.

Really, though, if we're being honest, there is only one part of the evening that I would ever like to revisit, and that is the arrival of two quarts of my mother's Thai-spiced squash soup. I know we just talked about squash soup the other day around here, and I swear I'm not trying to turn you into some sort of strange beta-Carotene overdosed gang of Readers with Orange Hands, but this one is worth bringing it up again. It arrived in two quart-sized Mason jars with my mother and my sister and my friend Emily in the backseat of my parents' Volvo, and it was by far the most wholesome, most re-tell-able part of the whole evening.

The way my mother makes it is this:

She rounds up a winter squash or two, maybe an acorn or a butternut or even a kabocha, cuts them in half, and roasts them in the oven on a big cookie sheet. Then once they're cooled she scoops out their insides, drops them into a soup pot with some hot olive oil, a can of coconut milk, some red curry paste, and a splash of chicken stock, and that's it. There's a little blending to be done once everything's hot, just to make sure the soup is good and smooth, but otherwise, it's the kind of thing you can make the day before your daughter's bachelorette party when you still have a wedding to finish planning and a full time job and several bedrooms to paint and not even have to stay up very late.

It's especially good on a day like today, which is when I finally got to sit down in peace with a bowl. It helps that October seems to have very officially settled the fall weather in for good, and that I was able to pick the last of the season's cilantro, chop it up fine, and sprinkle it on top. But most of all, sometimes, it is just incredibly nice to sit down and realize that you are eating your mother's soup.

THAI-SPICED SQUASH SOUP

My mother found the original of this recipe at Heidi's 101 Cookbooks over here. It was easy enough to start, but she tweaked it to make it even simpler without sacrificing one bit of the flavor that makes it so rich. I think she usually uses acorn squash, but feel free to use any kind of smallish winter squash in the acorn-butternut genre—they'll all work. Also, she uses light, organic coconut milk, but full fat is fine, too. Other than that, there aren't many places to veer off track.

1 smallish winter squash (acorn, sugar pumpkin, butternut, or kabocha will all work)
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 roughly 14-ounce can coconut milk
1 teaspoon red curry paste, or more to taste
1/2 cup chicken stock, and more as needed
finely chopped cilantro, for garnishing

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Cut the squash in half, scoop out any seeds and stringy flesh, and place both hollowed out halves face up on a cookie sheet. Drop a few spoonfuls of water into the center well of each squash—this will help it avoid losing too much moisture around the edges and turning dark as it cooks. Bake the squash for roughly an hour, or until the flesh is very tender.

Heat up the olive oil in a large, heavy-bottomed soup pot over medium heat. Add the squash, the coconut milk, the red curry paste, and the chicken broth, and bring everything to a boil. Puree the soup in a blender until it is very, very smooth, and return it to the pot. Season the soup with salt and pepper to taste and thin it with more chicken stock as needed. Leave the soup over low heat to simmer for about five minutes, stirring occasionally, to let the flavors come together. Serve hot, and if you'd like, sprinkle a garnish of cilantro on top.

My mother says this is definitely one of those soups that is better the next day, and I agree. Letting it sit around in the fridge before doling it out at a dinner party or in lunch boxes won't hurt.

A little kabocha sunshine

You know that part in the wedding vows where you promise to love and comfort and honor and keep each other in sickness and in health? Well, I think the God of Marriage has decided to test us. Not in some big, scary way, but instead, through this hilarious little device She calls a cold. (In ancient Greece at least, the God of Marriage was a woman, Hera. I'm pretty sure she's still out there, presiding over rituals and testing prospective couples and chasing bad suitors away.)

Anyway, a cold sounds pretty tame, doesn't it? When Alex spent the whole day in bed last Tuesday I thought maybe he was getting cold feet or overwhelmed by work or even just vying for a plate of cookies and a cup of tea, but now, I understand. This cold is NOT tame.

Instead, this cold is the kind that sneaks up on a Sunday afternoon while you're out in the garden puttering happily around, pulling the oak leaves from the strawberry patch and planting fresh rows of spinach in the greenhouse and potting your herbs for the cold winter months, and attacks. It throws your left nostril into continual sneeze preparation mode, takes away your taste buds, and kicks you into bed.

If it weren't for friends who leave kabocha squashes on your doorstep, I'm not sure we would have made it through.


The kabocha squash is the one on the right there, the deep ruddy orange one with the pumpkin shaped body and the tall stem. Kabocha is a Japanese variety, and while normally it has dark green skin and bright orange insides, this particular version is called a Sunshine kabocha. It tastes the same—smooth and a bit pasty, kind of like a cross between a butternut and a hubbard—but it is much, much more cheerful looking. And when you're in your room with the heat cranked up to 75 and the door shut tight and the covers up to your chin, nice bright Sunshine kabocha soup makes an excellent therapeutic tea.

Luckily, I made the soup last week when Alex was sick, before I got hit. I armed us with shallots and kabocha sunshine and chicken broth and ginger, and it appears to have done the trick. Between the soup and the half empty bottle of terrifyingly green Nyquil on the bathroom counter and a bowl of autumn olive sorbet brought over by a friend, we are most definitely on the mend.

I hope you don't need this soup—not at least, for any of Hera's tests—but just in case, you might make a batch. It's always good, in a month like this, to have a little kabocha sunshine on hand.

ROASTED KABOCHA AND SHALLOT SOUP

This recipe is adapted from one I found in Cooking Light last fall. While the original called for butternut squash, I think you could swap any variety with a nice orange flesh in and get very good results. If you do decide to use another variety, like say, butternut, keep an eye on the liquids. I ended up using twice as much chicken broth as Cooking Light called for, which I think might have been because of the pasty, suck-the-moisture-in nature of kabocha squash. Try adding 2 cups at first, then work your way up until you have the consistency you want.

1 medium-size kabocha squash (butternut, sugar pumpkin, or Hubbard would probably work too), peeled, seeded, and cut into 1-inch cubes
6 small shallots, peeled and halved
1 (1 and 1/2-inch) piece ginger, peeled and thinly sliced
3 tablespoons oil
1 teaspoon salt
4 cups chicken broth, preferably homemade
2 tablespoons fresh sliced chives
freshly cracked black pepper, to taste

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F. Toss the squash, shallots, ginger, oil, and salt together in a large casserole dish. Cover with tinfoil and bake for 30 minutes; remove foil and bake 30 minutes longer, or until the squash is soft. Combine the roasted vegetables and chicken broth in a blender (in batches, depending on how much space you have) and puree until everything is smooth. Pour the soup into a large, heavy-bottomed pot and bring to a boil. Simmer for roughly 5 minutes to allow the flavors to come together. Serve piping hot garnished with fresh sliced chives and freshly cracked black pepper to taste. A side of toast, especially if you're under the weather, never hurts as a side.

His name is Stevie

Friends, I am pleased to announce that we have a brand new addition to our family. [No, this is not going to be a shotgun wedding.] He's a cat, and his name is Stevie.

Alex and I met Stevie on the road, in the dark, on the way home from a dinner party last Saturday night. It was absolutely beautiful out, one of those September stunners of a night, and we had decided to walk the mile and a half through the woods to the house on Old Chequesset. In the pitch black coming back, we heard a meow behind us, and then another at our feet, and before we knew it, an orange cat was marching steadily toward home. We tried to send him back, or away, or wherever it was he might have come from, but he was Not Going to Budge. When we arrived at the door he weaseled his way inside, and then onto the bed, and although a certain Mr. Fisher looked none too certain, it became very clear very quickly that he was going to stay.

We called the animal officer and got him scanned for a micro-chip, and they said he was up for grabs. Today, I took him to the vet, and we officially rolled out the welcome mat. Or at least, most of us did. Some of us still aren't quite so sure.


At any rate, we are finding out very quickly what Stevie Does and Does Not like. So far, we know for certain that he is very amenable to teaspoons of dulce de leche and small bits of ham. Sunday morning we baked a fresh ham for brunch—slathered it in brown sugar and cloves and dry mustard and salt and pepper—and Stevie looked as though he had just landed on a soft, billowing cloud of pure, straight-from-God bliss. In fact, the hope of ham just might be why he decided to follow us home.

This morning, when I collected the leftover bone and scraped off fat and cracklings of skin to make black bean soup, I thought he might just dive right in. I don't blame him, of course—if I weighed 11 pounds, I'd go swimming in my ham and black bean soup, too.

I adapted this particular batch from a recipe I found in the Joy of Cooking with the very intriguing title U.S. Senate Bean Soup. According to the header, a white bean and ham hock soup has been served in the U.S. Senate restaurant since 1901. At first, I wasn't quite sure if that was a good sign or not—the words Senate restaurant sound sort of like code for cafeteria to me—but as it turns out, our elected officials have excellent taste. U.S. Senate Bean Soup is like a hijacked split pea soup, with whole white beans replacing the soupy green mash. I went ahead and took things one step further by throwing black beans in instead.

The resulting soup was just the sort of thing I would imagine a senator eating for lunch. It's nothing hoity toity—nothing high-powered or white linened or too sit-down—but the sort of thing I picture John Kerry sitting down with in a paper bowl and a plastic spoon and reading the newspaper alongside over lunch. It is simple, delicious, and solid—very much a by the people, for the people sort of soup. It's just the thing, come to think of it, that you might make to take over to a friend who just had a baby, or lost an aunt, or maybe got a new cat.

Around here, it has proved an excellent way to welcome Stevie home.

BLACK BEAN AND HAM HOCK SOUP

I made this soup with a bone from a fresh ham that had been baked for several hours. Fresh ham isn't as salty as cured ham, so be careful with the seasoning and taste as you go depending on what sort of meat you use.

1 and 1/4 cups dried black beans, soaked overnight
7 cups cold water
1 small ham hock
1 large onion, diced
3 medium celery stalks with their leaves on, chopped
1 large potato, peeled and diced
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 and 1/2 teaspoons salt
1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper

Place the beans, water, and ham hock in a large soup pot. Bring everything to a boil, reduce the heat, and simmer until the beans are tender (roughly an hour and a half). When the beans are soft, remove the ham hock. Discard the skin and any extra fat and the bone (read: give them to your dog or cat) and return the meat to the pot.

Add the remaining ingredients to the pot as well, and simmer for about a half an hour, or until the potatoes are soft. Turn off the heat and mash the soup with a potato masher until the potatoes form a thick broth. (Some of the beans will be mashed, too, but most should stay in tact.) Serve warm, with chopped fresh parsley and a dollop of sour cream.

To their own devices

Recently, time has sort of been slipping around here. Not really slipping away so much as moving very, very fast, sort of like that Steve Miller Band song that Seal covered in the nineties—slipping into the future. I'm guessing it has something to do with the fact that it's August on Cape Cod and it's awfully hard to take a left on Route 6, let alone get much of anything done, but that's just a guess. Sometimes, the way that time slips around here in the summer can be a little bit scary, like when I think about the fact that I haven't weeded the garden in three weeks or vacuumed the house or even sat down to a proper lunch, but for the most part, it's okay. It seems to have agreed especially well with my atomic red carrots, who have seen not one glimpse of me since I planted them in June.

I came out of the woodwork the other day, a mere three months later, to check on them, and they were perfect. They were sporting big, bushy ponytails up top and long, thin tubers underneath, and they were just the right amount of sweet. They were also just as fiery as advertised on the seed packet, a deep, ruddy orange shade of red. Considering how long they were left to their own devices out there in the dirt, I really couldn't have asked for a better crop.

The only trouble, really, with how long they got away from me was that I had to pull them all at once. There was no strategic thinning or extended harvest going on—just 5 pounds of atomic reds staring up from the kitchen sink, all hoping for a salad or a snack or a roast all on the very same day. Of course, I couldn't manage that, so instead, I decided to make a batch of carrot fennel soup. It seemed like the best solution, since I had a tired fennel bulb and a wilting fresh onion and a good amount of garlic on hand that wanted some attention, too.

It turned out to be a very good solution, indeed. The recipe was easy, with little more than a half hour of roasting and a good bout in the blender involved, and the flavors of the carrots and the fennel melded perfectly in the heat. I sat down to a good, proper lunch for the first time in weeks, and even managed to eat some of the scrubbed carrots, too.

Now before any more time slips away—even though if we're being honest I'd love nothing more than to stay here and spend it with you—I had better fork over the recipe already and go get ready for work. Of course, that implies that I'll be able to find a clean shirt and a presentable, if slightly rumpled pair of pants, but I've got my fingers crossed.

CARROT FENNEL SOUP

This recipe is adapted from one I found in Gourmet last November. Their version called for a bit more fennel, but as I can only take the bulb in small doses, I toned it down a bit. The result was quite nice: a subtly sweet soup with just the right amount of caramel and licorice in the background. I ate it hot when it first came together and then later on chilled, and both ways were good, but given the way the weather's been acting lately, you might want to keep it in the fridge.

1 small fennel bulb with fronds
1 pound small fresh carrots, halved lengthwise
1 medium onion, quartered
1 garlic clove
5 tablespoons olive oil, divided
1 teaspoon sugar
2 and 1/2 cups chicken broth
1 teaspoon fennel seeds

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees F. Chop the fennel stalks and fronds from the bulb and set both aside. Slice the bulb into rounds 1/4-inch thick and toss it with the carrots, onion, garlic, 3 tablespoons of oil, sugar, and salt and pepper to taste in a large Pyrex pan. Roast the veggies for about 20 to 25 minutes, stirring occasionally, until all are tender and browned in spots.

At this point, haul out your blender. Put the veggies in along with any oil that might have collected in the pan, and pour in the chicken broth. Blend the whole shebang until you have a smooth, even puree. Transfer the soup to a large pot and let it simmer for a few minutes. (The Gourmet recipe called for another 2 and 1/2 cups of water, which I omitted, so if you feel like thinning your soup, feel free to do so at this point. I thought adding any water would make it way too watery, so I left it out, but who knows. Maybe fiery red atomic carrots aren't so thick?) Season with salt and pepper to taste, and either serve at once or pour into containers to chill.

Before you quit, you still have to make the garnishes. No matter how tired you are, don't skip these, as they really do make the soup. Get the reserved fennel fronds back out and chop until you have about 1 tablespoon of the feathered herb leaves. Grind the fennel seeds in a mortar and pestle, and add the remaining two tablespoons of oil to the ground spice. When it's time to eat the soup, drizzle a bit of oil and sprinkle a few fronds on top.

To the top

I had something else in mind for you today, but this is so exciting, so big, that I had to pass it along instead.


A month or so ago, at one of the Slow Food dinners held in Eastham, the organization donated the proceeds to a local food pantry. Rather than simply offer the kitchen money (which in all likelihood would be used to purchase food from far away), they set it up instead so that the donation would be used to purchase fresh, healthy seafood from local fishermen. They did the legwork, so that the pantry didn't have to. After all, between cooking and ordering and scheduling, finding the time to track down fishermen is quite understandably a bit too much for most kitchens run by volunteers.

Now our First Lady is encouraging all of us to do the very same. Politics aside, that's a beautiful thing.

Just yesterday, my mother reminded me of Margaret Mead's words. "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has." She's right. Slowly, slowly things can begin to change. From the bottom, all the way to the top.

If you're anything like me, you probably can't imagine a happier way to volunteer than to cook. Well—there are plenty of soup kitchens around here. All you have to do to find out what you can offer is ask.

I just called Provincetown, and it couldn't have been easier. I'll let you know not this Friday, but the next, how it goes. I hope you'll keep me posted just the same.


FALMOUTH
Falmouth Service Center/Meals Program
611 Gifford Street
508.548.2794

HYANNIS
Calvary Baptist Church/Meals Program
25 Lincoln Ave
508.775.7018

Salvation Army/Hyannis Soup Kitchen
100 North Street
508.775.0364

ORLEANS
Lower Cape Lunch
61 Canal Street
774.722.3245

PLYMOUTH
Salvation Army/Plymouth Meals
8 Carver Street
508.746.1559

PROVINCETOWN
Provincetown Soup Kitchen
11 Shankpainter Road
508.487.8331

A bit backward

What is it they say? In like a lion, out like a lamb? This March is a bit backward, it seems.

I began the weekend with the best of cooking intentions, but when Saturday and then Sunday dawned warm and sunny, they simply didn't make the cut. Other things did, like dog walking and lettuce planting and beach visits and an afternoon of wine and spinach puffs on a lovely Sandwich porch. Even car vacuuming and house cleaning snuck in there.

But spending all day in the kitchen when March was offering 60 degrees seemed like a terrible waste. I don't have any regrets.

I did manage, once Sunday wound down, to muster the energy for a simple carrot soup. The fridge was empty, after all; I'd eaten through a quart of my mother's homemade minestrone, nearly a cup of sour cream, and far more banana bread than ought to be legal. I had to make something, and carrot soup seemed the easiest thing.

There was a pot of homemade chicken broth on hand, boiled down from the carcass of a bird we ate last week. I had several pounds of carrots still kicking around in the hydrator from goodness knows when, and lots of storage onions tucked away in the basement closet. All that was left was a few sprigs of thyme, and they sat happily potted in the greenhouse outside.


I cried an awful lot during the onion slicing, either because I knew the cold weather was to return today or because storing onions all winter somehow gives them a terrible ability to sting. I don't know which, but it was sort of cathartic in the end.

The whole endeavor—melting butter, sauteing onions, carrots, and thyme, throwing in broth and a pinch of salt—only took about a half an hour, from start to bowl. It's not a demanding soup; you can empty the dishwasher, wash the knives and pots, and generally have most of the cleanup done by the time you're ready to eat.

Late on Sunday afternoon, that's a very good thing.

CARROT SOUP

adapted from The Art of Simple Food by Alice Waters

I always turn to Waters' when I want a meal that is easy to make, requires only a few good ingredients, and will be simple yet elegant all at once. This soup is no exception, and beyond adding a bit more thyme, I really didn't change much.

4 tablespoons salted butter
2 onions, cut in half and then sliced thin
3-4 sprigs thyme
roughly 6 cups carrots, peeled and sliced into thin rounds
salt to taste
6 cups chicken broth

Melt the butter in a large, heavy-bottomed soup pot. Add the onions and thyme once it is hot, and sauté for about 10 minutes over medium-low heat, or until the onions are translucent and soft. Add the carrots and season with salt to taste.

Continue to cook the vegetables together for another 10 minutes or so (Waters points out that cooking the carrots with the onions is important to build flavor, so don't skip ahead to the broth). Once they are fairly soft, add chicken broth and bring to a boil. Lower the heat and leave the soup to simmer for 10 to 15 minutes, or until the carrots are cooked to your liking. Serve hot with a good rustic bread and maybe a dollop of sour cream.

The Local Food Report: Red Russian Kale

Kale, you are one tough cookie. February, the coldest month, and you're still going strong. Even under a blanket of snow?

You have some serious hutspa, that's for sure. From what I've gathered, it's a build up of sugar that makes you so strong. You use the sugar to push water from inside your cells into the extracellular zone, where it can freeze without doing you any harm. Now who came up with that?

Whoever it was, I think we both owe them a tremendous thank-you. You survive the winter, and we have charming winter greens. Hurrah!

The funny thing is, the person I met you through planted you by mistake. She meant to plant Eastham turnips, but picked your seeds up instead. I'm guessing you knew that all along, but chose not to say anything. I understand.


But the long and the short of it is, you turned out to be a wonderful mistake. Not necessarily financially, as you require quite a bit more work, but for those of us who simply can't take another day of root vegetables. In that department, you've been a miracle worker. Especially for the shoppers at Orleans' Phoenix Fruits. You get dropped off there most weeks—when the snow has melted for a moment or two, allowing your planter to pick—in a big, red, bushy case. She thaws you out in a bowl of warm water, lets you regain your strength, pats you dry, and you're off. You're Red Russian kale, after all, not just some everyday face. You could run out any day, any storm now, but that's okay. You're doing everything you can to see us through.


I like you especially in soups. The other day your planter left you for me in a cooler by her field, and I conjured up a big, burly pot of Portuguese kale soup: sausage and Maine kidney beans, stored potatoes, onions, and garlic, a bit of beef broth, and crushed tomatoes I'd put up towards the end of summer. It is one of my very favorite soups. You cooked down to the perfect consistency—hardly limp and lifeless like spinach—but instead soldiering on, limber and proud.

I can't thank you enough.

PORTUGUESE KALE SOUP

adapted from a recipe that Mac's Seafood serves at their clam shack on the Wellfleet Town Pier

1/2 to 1 pound (depending on which of these you choose, and how "meaty" you want the soup to be) sausage, chorizo, or linguica, in bite-sized bits
1 medium-sized white onion, finely chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 cups red kidney beans, soaked overnight, or until soft (simmer in water before adding to soup, if needed)
3 medium-sized potatoes, diced
1 quart crushed tomatoes
1 quart beef broth
1 large bunch kale (I used Red Russian, but whatever you can find locally will work)
salt and pepper to taste

Sauté whatever meat you choose in a large, heavy-bottomed soup pot over medium-high heat. When it has rendered a good amount of fat, add onions and garlic, and sauté until translucent. Next add potatoes, sauté for several minutes more, and then kidney beans. Keep stirring and season with salt and pepper to taste (but remember you will be adding beef broth, which adds salt).

Deglaze the pan with about a cup of the beef broth, let it reduce by about half, and add the rest along with the crushed tomatoes. Depending on how juicy your crushed tomatoes are, you may need to add a bit of water at this point. Bring soup to a boil and simmer, uncovered, for about 15 to 20 minutes. Throw in the kale and taste again for salt and pepper, adding seasoning as needed. Continue stirring from time to time, and cook until liquid has reduced by about 1/3 to 1/2 and has formed a nice, slightly thick broth.

Serve hot. This soup is especially good peasant style, with a chunk of hard white cheese and a hunk of county sourdough.

Onion soup without tears

When there is a new president, it is important to host a luncheon.

Even if it's only you, and your fiancé, and his cousin and his cousin's girlfriend who can attend. And even if you're cooking frantically, on a break from writing at your office across the street, just as the speech begins. Even if you've broken into his other cousin's kitchen to cook without consent; it doesn't matter the circumstance.


There is a new president, and so there ought to be a new recipe for lunch.

Also, it helps to use a new book. We're starting over, you see. From my Christmas pile, I picked Nigel Slater's latest cookbook to start the new term with. It's a kitchen diary, sort of like this one, except he wrote down everything he cooked, every meal, every day, for a year. The photographs are spectacular, and the text enchanting. The only trouble is, the seasons are a bit adrift. For instance, he starts the year like this:

January 8
The first rhubarb

Clearly, he lives in a much friendlier place. Around here, the first rhubarb appears in oh—say, April, probably May. Fat chance of digging any up today. Luckily, his January 11th entry offered something a little more realistic: namely, French onion soup.

I adore French onion soup. It is the absolute perfect evening winter meal: simple, warm, and just substantial enough to get you through the night. It can be made vegetarian, or carnivorous, and it is salty as the sea. Also, at the same time, it is sweet.

Slater's version is simple. It starts with roasting the onions with butter and salt and pepper in the oven, so that the whole experience is pleasantly tear-free. It then requires you to burn off a little white wine, simmer some vegetable stock, and keep the pot of soup warm while toast and Gruyére melt beneath the broiler. It's so easy that all of this can easily be accomplished, even while you are watching a speech on t.v.

I made a few changes—swapping vegetable stock for beef, and Shy Brother's cheese for Gruyére—but mainly, I stuck with his pot. I feel quite sure we'll be making it again.



ONION SOUP WITHOUT TEARS

adapted from The Kitchen Diaries, by Nigel Slater

5 medium onions
3 tablespoons butter
4 ounces (one glass) white wine
6 cups beef or vegetable stock
a loaf of crusty French-style bread
several ounces good melting cheese

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F. Peel the onions and cut them in half from tip to root, then lay them in a large, heavy-bottomed pot and add the butter, and salt and pepper to taste. Roast about 30 minutes, or until they are golden and tender. You may want to check on them a few times to see if they need turning.

Put the pot, with the onions, on the stove. Add the wine, and reduce it until the liquid nearly disappears. (As Slater explains, this is because you want the flavor, not the alcohol.) Pour in the stock, bring to a boil, and simmer about 20 minutes.

Just before you're ready to eat, put several slices of French bread beneath the broiler, or in the toaster oven (one slice per bowl of soup). Toast one side, then flip them and toast the other, layering several slices of cheese on top. When the cheese is bubbling and hot, ladle the soup into bowls and rest the cheese toasts on top. Serve immediately, with a spoon and a knife.

The Local Food Report: Four Season Farm

This post, I'm afraid, is a bit fraught for me. I'm supposed to write about Four Season Farm, and the guru Eliot Coleman and his spritely, lovely wife Barbara Damrosch, and their penchant for winter gardening. The trouble is, the picture that keeps coming back to me is this.


It's the town closest to the farm, Harborside, Maine, or maybe Brooksville, I can't remember to tell the truth. The picture was taken from the street, peering down a roadside hill, lens teetering out into the mist. It's where the fishmonger and I got engaged. He asked (of course) while we were walking, just minutes before the interview, so that when we showed up for lunch with Eliot and Barbara, I was flustered, to say the least.

But to their credit—or perhaps in testament to my fascination with the idea of growing winter produce in Maine—soon after entering their busy kitchen, I became so enthralled with the couple I just about forgot the ring. I swapped diamonds and white gold for spinach and carrots, and couldn't have been happier with the trade.

It started with lunch. First of all, we had the pleasure of sitting down not only with Barbara and Eliot, but also with their farm hands, a couple who had come over to think about buying a greenhouse, and their adorable, cheeky child. The table was set for twelve and the food cooked entirely on an old-fashioned gas cookstove, complete with a cast iron cooktop and tourquise enamel paint. The first thing I did, of course, was to swoon over it, a sentiment Eliot promptly dismissed. Please don't encourage her! he laughed. It was straight out of a 1930s kitchen, detailing and all, and he seemed to think it should go back.

But then there was lunch, which on November 7th, tasted more like September 28th. It was whole wheat pasta with carrots, Tuscan kale, red pepper, cauliflower, and maybe even broccoli. There was some sort of a lemon tahini sauce on top, which I originally thought was perhaps the only item bought from away, until we went out to get the greenhouse tour and I encountered the lemon tree. Yes, we were in Maine, and yes, it was November, and yes, there it was with three others in a row, churning out Myers like a champ.


This greenhouse was heated, the only one. It had a woodstove and a washing station, so that the workers could scrub the lettuce and carrots for market and still keep their fingers on. The other greenhouses—those with the leeks, the spinach, the candy carrots—were all insulated, but none had heat. They simply relied on a double layer of plastic, with a few inches of air trapped in between, to soak up what radiance they could from the day.

The land was amazing—part of the original Nearing Farm, that Helen and Scott and the back-to-the-landers so revered in the 50s and 60s. Eliot bought a piece and cleared it himself, and today it's a year round commercial farm. He and Barbara sell to local grocers and schools, and in the summer operate an out-of-the-way farm stand. They have interns coming and going, learning their ways of coaxing the land into production come snowfall or hail or rain.

There is certainly a lot to learn, what with tools and techniques and selecting seeds. Luckily, for those of us who can't spend a year on the land, they've written book upon book to inspire. The Winter Harvest Manual and Four Season Harvest I think are the best; they help with picking out spinach and raddicchio and radishes and whatnot, and how to best cover the plants. They span a wide ability range, too, from novice to accomplished hand.


There are a few other resources any aspiring winter gardener should check out: Moveable Greenhouses (in case you're looking to offload some serious bucks), and Grower's Supply if you simply want to get started, sans cash. There are also lots of winter seeds available through Johnny's online, and through FedCo in Maine.

But even if you don't make it this far, there's a winter recipe from Barbara to enjoy—butternut squash and leek soup, with a dash of tomato paste, and a good dose of chicken broth. It's quick, easy, and fantastic, and warm right down to your toes.

BUTTERNUT SQUASH AND LEEK SOUP

adapted from a Barbara Damrosch recipe, published in Food + Wine, February 2003

2 tablespoons unsalted butter
4 leeks, white and tender green parts only, coarsley chopped
1 celery rib, chopped
1 garlic clove, smashed
1 quart chicken stock, preferably homemade
1 large butternut squash, peeled and cut into 1/2-inch dice (3 cups)
1 tablespoon tomato paste
several leaves sage
sea salt and freshly ground pepper
1/2 cup heavy cream

Melt the butter in a large heavy saucepan. Add the leeks, celery, and garlic and cook over moderate heat, stirring occasionally, until softened, 7 to 8 minutes. Add the stock, squash, tomato paste, and sage. Season with salt and pepper and simmer over moderately low heat until all the vegetables are tender, about 25 minutes.

Puree the soup in a blender, then return it to the saucepan. Stir in the cream and cook until just heated through. Season with salt and pepper and serve hot.

Into the New Year

This is probably going to sound a bit fantastical. You might even think it's a lie. But it is the truth, I swear.

Remember that Hubbard squash I wrote about on August 25th? Well, it had a sister, and it's made it into the New Year. I got it around that same time, late August, maybe early September. I rubbed it all over with oil, and tucked it into the closet downstairs. I checked it every few weeks, but mostly forgot about it for these months. We were still getting fresh apples and carrots and cabbage, and there was turnip slaw and kale soup to make.

Only now, now that just about everything is closed (come Christmas we bid even Crow Farm adieu), did I venture down to pull it out. It had a few blemishes and rot spots, which I cut out, but for a four-month-old piece of produce, it was looking pretty handsome, I must say. (The onions from October are still firm and hearty, too, but that's a story for another time—perhaps with the company of a bowl of French onion soup.)

And though it had held up so grandly, I thought it might be best roasted and then pureed into soup. My mother made a squash soup over Christmas—Thai-spiced with butternut and coconut milk and a bit of red curry paste. She found it on 101 Cookbooks, an excellent recipe site, and whipped it up for the party the other day.

Given the weather recently (cold and windy, with plenty of snow), I thought it might be good for today. I changed it around a bit, added an onion and some chili flakes and a bit of Sichuan salt. The result was a thick, rich, delicious pot of brilliant orange soup. After a day in the snow outside, I think you'll find it just right.

THAI SQUASH SOUP

Makes about 1 quart

1 smallish blue Hubbard squash
olive oil
Sichuan salt, or Sichuan seasonings with a pinch of salt
1 onion
1 can coconut milk (13.5 oz.)
1/2 teaspoon ginger
1/2 teaspoon cumin
chili pepper flakes to taste
water

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Peel and chop squash into 1-inch chunks. Grease a 9- by 13-inch Pyrex with olive oil. Add squash and a sprinkling of Sichuan salt. Mix well with a spatula and cover. Bake for 20 minutes, remove cover, and bake for another 20 to 25 minutes uncovered.

Dice onion. Saute in olive oil in a large soup pot over medium heat for about 10 minutes, or until translucent. Add squash (and all the salt and olive oil from the pan you can get) and saute for several minutes. Add coconut milk, ginger, cumin, and chili flakes, bring to a boil, and simmer about 10 minutes. Transfer soup to a blender or food processor, and puree. Return to pot and bring back to a boil, adding water as desired to thin. Remove from heat and serve hot.