I'm over the moon about the cropping up of Spring produce. I mean to say beyond words excited , alive with the desire to consume sustenance from our local terra. I am hungry for the deliciousness that we nurture from the earth. Winter in the midwest, although wonderful in so many ways, presents a somewhat depressed food economy. Trips to the store find labels from far off lands. We are unable to feed ourselves locally in the winter.
I do my best to preserve food during our growing season. Last year I put up 30 quarts of applesauce, 27 quarts of tomatoes, 100 pounds of blueberries, another hundred of sour cherries, made 16 pints of jalapeno-onion-sweet pepper jam, 5 pints of corn relish, 8 pints of sweet pepper relish, 7 quarts of cucumber pickles, 4 pints of pickled green beans, many four ounce jars of pickled beets, roasted pureed and froze umpteen kabocha and red kuri squash, and oh the pesto, was there ever pesto, mint, basil and parsley varieties.
So Spring. Here we are, and I am going to eat it up! Did I mention that I love simple delicious food. Well sometimes I like things a little more complicated, but generally I tend toward helping ingredients to reveal their flavors. I'm some what of an intuitive cook, every now and then taking inspiration from recipes, but not necessarily following them to a T. That being said I have been deeply inspired by other peoples approaches to food.
Did you read or see the movie Julie & Julia ? It is the story of one woman, Julie Powell, who is drawn to the food of Julia Child. She spends a year cooking her way through Mastering the Art of French Cooking. It is a love affair of sorts, a striving to create and master a certain artistry, an adventure in feeding herself and her love. Well, on many occasions I've had a delicious meal somewhere and thought, oh dear goodness me I want to apprentice myself to this or that chef, cook in their shadow for a year and then bring all sorts of new and wonderful skills home. I don't really actually want to do this, but that is what's great about cookbooks. You can apprentice yourself to a certain chef by traipsing through their work at your own pace, reading between the lines, delving into and applying the practical knowledge laid out before you. I believe after Julie & Julia a certain trend of cooking your way through a book was kicked off. I remember hearing about people cooking their way through Ottolenghi's Jerusalem, starting food clubs and inviting fellow Ottolenghi lovers to join them to sample his recipes. I love this concept, expanding the restaurant into the community. Engaging in a larger food conversation. Cooking together, cooking for each other as an act of creativity, as an act of generosity, as an act of gratitude.
I would venture to say that I've had devoted love affairs with a few cookbooks. Over the past couple of years: Plenty by Ottolenghi, Small Plates & Sweet Treats by Aran Goyoaga, and Salt to Taste by Marco Canora. Last year I marked up and preserved with Saving the Season by Kevin West. And for delicious and nutritious gluten free baked goods I often refer to the Gluten Free Goddess blog.
A few weeks ago I was invited to an evening discussion of canning and strawberry jam making demonstration by Marissa McClellan. She is the host of the blog Food in Jars and has written a book by the same name. Most recently she published Preserving by the Pint. I can not say enough good things about her work. I had not experimented with any of her recipes prior to attending the event, but me oh my, I am now a devotee. (Yes, I have a moderately obsessive personality.) Preserving by the Pint is organized by the season and begins with Spring. I don't suspect I'll make every recipe, but I might come close. I've begun studying the book and tabbed the pages of things I am committed to making. Thus far I've made and made again and then made again in a triple batch her oven-roasted rhubarb compote, seven batches of ramp kimchi, four batches of pickled ramps, a double batch of butternut squash butter, pickled spring onions, a double batch of mustardy rhubarb chutney, blueberry maple jam, and from her blog, rhubarb orange butter.
I am usually so excited to have fresh local produce in the Spring and so many early season crops are short lived, a wake up call to the palette, that I never think to attempt putting them up. But this year, this year is different. I might venture to say Marisa's inspiration is changing my approach to food. I've already started adding more fermented foods to the side of my plate at most meals. For years I've read about the benefits, but have not been sold on fermentation only because my childhood picky-eater self crops her head up and draws a firm line in the sand, you will not eat that. Every now and then when I go out to eat, which let's be hones,t is really Really not very often, if we are having a tasting menu, from a forager's delight sort of a place like Elizabeth, I resolve that I will try whatever is put in front of me. That means I've tried a few more organ meats than I might have otherwise, and a crudo or ceviche something or other that definitely would not have otherwise graced my palette. But, even if I end up not liking a given item, I have learned much about preparation and presentation and that both can really sway the oral experience. Things that I might never have considered trying ten years ago, I am slowly learning to incorporate into my own diet. Steps I would have rejected out of hand, like soaking and dehydrating nuts, have become common place. The other day I was having a conversation with my husband about kimchi and fermented foods in general. Over the past few years we've dabled in fermentation, thanks to the inspiration of Sandor Katz. We've made beet kavass and attempted coconut water kefir, to good and not so good success respectively. But after reading parts of The Art of Fermentation I still wasn't confident in my ability to make something both tasty and fermented. I also get a little skeeged out when opening a commercial fermented product as my nose is a little skeptical about what bacteria might be running around in there. But after making ramp kimchi from Preserving by the Pint and having it with my eggs for the past week I am sold. I believe I can populate my gut flora with so many divine bacteria and not feel like I'm eating it just because it is good for me and I will someday acquire a taste for it, but because it is delicious and well I made it. Thank you Marisa for coming up with and sharing such deliciously flavorful and easy enough to make recipes!!
So here we are, in a time of growing. And next winter, when we are eating mountains of kale from California and our chickens have stopped laying I'm hoping I'll pop open a jar of rhubarb compote or pickled spring onions and be able to taste the sheer excitement of the beginning of Spring. Tell me, have you done much in the way of Spring food preservation? Have you had an unexpected love affair with a cookbook or style of cooking? Just curious.