Butternut-chestnut soup

One reason that more people do not chose the vegetarian option is the work involved. Eating vegetables for your nourishment and pleasure requires more time and effort than most people have. Job, family, school, etc. take up so much of daily life that it is tempting to get your grub from energy-packed sources that are pre-processed. Hungry? Need a quick jolt of proteins? Meat, bread from the bakery, frozen peas, and so on are the answer. The vegetarian, on the other hand, must assemble nourishment from a variety of sources, and it is even more difficult for the organic-only vegetarian. Not only are you faced with the labor of turning a pile of legumes into a balanced lunch (proteins and vitamins, minerals and fiber), you have to find an affordable source of makings which are organically grown.

These are the thoughts that will occupy you while cutting up a butternut squash. In fact, the prep is not an onerous task at all, and with a little practice (and with iPod earphones inserted properly and suitable music playing) it can become a moment for meditation. On this occasion, I am happy to report, my thoughts turned from the question of vegetarian labor to the colors and textures in my hands, the scents rising to my nose. Suddenly I realized that I was cutting up a melon. No kidding. And I think it was the aroma that encouraged this line of thought. A little whiff that carried my mind to a summer day and a melon brought back from the bio grocery down in Claira. Once this image had lodged itself in my awareness, I began looking for more signs of the butternut's kinship to the melon. The flesh is the same color, or nearly. This is especially true of the less-ripe parts, especially the neck, but the ripe center, where the seed cavity is found, turns a darker shade of melon, nearly red. The mush that comes out with the seeds is pungent, and the seeds themselves seem, to my memory, the same as melon seeds. Now it is July in December and I am tapping my toe to "Three Little Birds."

working on this . . .

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Christmas soufflé, a new tradition?

During the holidays, we read much advice for organic vegetarians on how to weather the season's food temptations and realized how much of what people anticipate about the solstice period is rooted in meat-centric habits. We've never been slaves to tradition, even in the days when we still partook of the occasional poulet rôti or grilled sardines. For the past couple of years, Juliette and I treated ourselves to a wonderfully tasty Christmas repast of roasted duckling with all the trimmings. We used as much organically produced fixings as we could find in local markets and shops. The result was, given the parameters of the project, a great success. We thought we had found our perfect holiday meal, a true culinary and gustatory delight and a project that kept us occupied all year long. In the spring we noted the effect on local cherry trees of every change in the weather, because the cérises à l'eau de vie (cherries put up in sugar dissolved in alcohol) that we would prepare from the fruit would be a major element of the stuffing for the little bird. We waited eagerly for the announcement that orders were being taken for bio cannettes at the bio grocery. Once the order had been placed, we waited eagerly once again for the duckling to arrive. Then we counted the days until Christmas Eve, which was feast day, followed on Xmas Day by a meal of leftovers in the form of a picnic, weather permitting.

But I digress. This essay is about a new culinary tradition for the holidays, the Christmas Soufflé.

to be continued . . .

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Omelet with hazelnut

This is the time of year when people grab hold of tradition for comfort and strength when the days grow short and the nights cold and damp, a darkness and dampness that can creep into the soul and ruin the holidays, if you are not careful. I wasn't thinking about this when Juliette suggested an omelet the other day, but it occurs to me that traditions are habits that become deeply ingrained. I am often called into service with my trusty omelet pan on days when a quick meal is desired for whatever reason, but especially (or so I like to think) when the day needs a little noontime kicker. On this particular dark and rainy day around solstice time, a jazzy omelet was more in order than usual. I had to deliver, so I quit thinking about it. Soon I was up to my ears in creating what might become a holiday tradition, because it did sparkle up the day.

First I chopped an onion and while it sizzled gently in the omelet pan (olive oil and a good teaspoon of curcumin), I went to the frigo to scout for a side dish and found a small head of broccoli, much too small for us to share. So I dug around and located a large black radish and a couple of good-looking carrots. I cut and sliced until I had a good colorful pile in the steamer. I gave the onions a stir and turned the heat down to let them braise a bit.

But I still had not come up with an idea for a making the omelet sing.

"Do we have any sprouts ready?" I asked Juliette when she passed through the kitchen. A good handful of sprouts, as I well know, can save a dying omelet.

"On the back porch, one tray of mung beans. They're really not what you'd call 'sprouted,' just soft and plump."

"Perfect."

I cracked four large organic eggs into a bowl and while I was absorbed in the dexterity involved, it hit me. Hazlenut powder. This will give the eggs an incredible aroma and flavor, a perfect compliment to the nuttiness I expect from the mung beans. I turned up the heat under the omelet pan and began stirring the hazlenut powder into the sauteed onions. When the mixture began to really bubble, I poured in the eggs. When the omelet was set but still runny in the middle, I put the mung bean sprouts across the omelet and turned the heat down. When the eggs had firmed up and the sprouts were hot, I folded the omelet over onto a plate.

to be continued

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Split pea soup with black radish

The main thing with pea soup is to find a different combination of ingredients. It's not the dullest soup on the planet. It has a delicate flavor. It blends well with a variety of other vegetables. But its delicacy and its blendability may be the reason why potages made with split peas can be bland as an old joke (or hackneyed clown routine).

Juliette is of the school that throwing in large doses of condiments just to give pea soup flavor  is not the way to go, and I concur. The flavors must come from the body itself, from the melange. The other side of this is the well-known fact, now that we're beginning to learn to cook, that what makes for good cooking is being ready, keeping a good back stock of compatible makings.

So it was that on one particular morning just before the holidays, we knew it was time for a good split pea soup using produce from a recent basket. The main ingredient, we decided, would be diced potatoes (three varieties), which is to be expected, along with an chopped onion, a couple of diced black radishes (radis noir), and some diced carrots to add a touch of sweetness and color. Split peas and water, but also a good helping of almond milk, which gives the broth a richness that you can't get with crême fraîche.

more to come

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The Weekly Pannier, December 24, 2009

This week we received two panniers, on account of the holidays. We contacted our farmer, who was taking a week off from delivering baskets, and asked for two, to tide us over until after the first of the year. We were rewarded with a supply of vegetables and fruits that more than satisfied our desire for variety. In this week's pannier: eggs, broccoli, leeks, lettuce, parsley, céleri rave, sweet potatoes, turnips, endives, a butternut squash, fennel, curly cabbage, rhubarb, avacados, oranges, clementines, kiwis, grapefruits, and a box of organically grown chestnut meat.

Not knowing much about rhubarb -- Garrison Keillor and Meryl Streep singing "Be-bop a re-bop, rhubarb pie" is what first comes to mind -- I decided to do some research and found that the plant has quite a story to tell. It's the stalks that you eat, not the leaves, which contain small amounts of the poison oxalate. Apparently, you have to eat huge quantities of the leaves in order to get the toxic effect, but why take the chance. Besides, the leaves are not spoken of as being all that good to eat anyway. Rhubarb figures in traditional Chinese herbal medicine, but mostly for the root, which when dried makes a good laxative. The leaves and stems may have some anti-oxidant value.

Another thing about rhubarb is that it is highly acidic, so it would not be a good food for people who are watching their acid intake. The acidity perhaps explains why the chopped stalks have to be cooked with lots of sugar in order to be worth eating, such as when making the famous Rhubarb Pie.

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The Weekly Pannier, December 19, 2009

This has been a week of cold weather food. Soups and stews mostly, with a version of our version of roasted sweet potato. The Weekly Pannier for the holidays is fruits and green vegetables (with some potatoes and a winter squash of some sort), which reminds us to take advantage of broccoli, winter lettuces, and spinach during a season that can rely heavily on heavier vegetables. Of course, the term Heavy Food hardly applies to vegetables, does it? Keeping the diet light is easy when you think about it. Juliette and I, we don't cook with flour at all (except for bread made with low-gluten epautre flour and seeds) and we no longer eat animal milk products, which means no gravies or other rich sauces. We make sauces with soy products, oils (olive, sunflower, colza, etc.), garlic, and other herbs and spices. Juliette tells me I ought to write a blog essay on the subject. All I could say was, yes, I'd like to do that, but given my busy schedule right now, who knows when it might be. She said, You'll know what to do, and gave me that enigmatic, sphinx-y smile of hers that always baffles me. Was she agreeing with the whiff of procrastination in my voice (Oh, go ahead, put it off, you have all the time you need), or was she posing a secret challenge of her own (Go ahead, put it off, but don't forget, time is precious).

The only new food this week is the potimarron, which is a cousin of the potiron which we have had earlier this year, plus: eggs, a big sack of spinach, lettuce, potatoes, céleri rave, broccoli, oranges, and kiwis.

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The Weekly Pannier, December 12, 2009

Glad to see some old favorites back, such as the sweet potatoes. We have a recipe for patate douce we love: broiling diced patate doux with chopped garlic and rosemary. With these ingredients for which there can be no substitutes, we have to wait until the rare patate douce shows up in order to have it. We can do great things with carrots, but we can get bio carrots almost any time at the supermarket. To have bio sweet potatoes, however: now that's a treat to savor.

In the Weekly Pannier: eggs, broccoli, salad, kohlrabi, fennel bulbs, sweet potatoes, leeks, apples, bananas, and pears.

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Why eat fish

Here is an interesting little piece, written by two ecological economists and one food system researcher, that argues for eating frozen fish rather than fresh, when the choice is between shipping fresh fish (in this case they are talking about salmon) half way around the world by air (the most ecologically unfriendly method) or freezing it where it is caught and processed and shipping by slower, less eco-damaging methods. They make a good point, but the article begs the question: why eat fish at all? Unless you can get it fresh from the fisherman, then you're probably causing severe damage to the ecosystem or yourself (or both).

When Juliette and I went totally vegetarian a few months ago, we clung to the eating of a little fish, some fresh smoked salmon we could get at the local supermarket which was advertised as eco-friendly in some way. It tasted good with slices of cucumber for tapas at dinner time and supplied us with vitamin B 12, which is very hard for vegetarians to get but which is a vital nutrient that comes mostly in meat and fish.

It's a dilemma, how to get the nutrients of fish without eating fish (or dairy products or meat). Frozen fish is out for us. Small freezer compartment in our frigo. No desire to buy A Freezer. So for now, we wonder if eating smoked salmon, even eco-salmon, from our supermarket chain is the best solution.

More to come.

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Winter salad with carrots, black radish, and bean sprouts

The black radish is so fresh right now -- and packed with such a good list of minerals and vitamins -- that Juliette is always looking for ways to use them. The sharp, tangy bite that you get when the radishes are eaten raw, to me this makes it hard to see them as good candidates for a fresh salad to go with a bowl of soup made with this week's butternut squash. The first and only time I tried eating a small bit raw, all I could think of was water and how much it was like eating horseradish.

Juliette came up with a good idea. She cut the radish into a couple of dozen slices and steamed them with a couple of good sized carrots. These she placed on the bluebird plates with a handful of just-germinated sprouts.

At the table, she handed me the little pitcher of sauce that she had made up and asked me to give it a stir with my fork. The sauce: some olive oil and about five or six others in small amounts (colza, hempseed, walnut, etc.) along with some puree of young garlic, soy sauce, and celery salt. The proportions of the ingredients depend on each day's whim and what's available.

Steaming the black radish did the trick. Although there is not much flavor, the slices of radish are firm, even crunchy, but most of all, healthy.

(We have quit using vinegar for salads, or for anything else, except for cleaning things around the house.)

More to come.

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Blette combo for an autumn day

It's not always easy to come up with a name for something new, but this one seems natural enough. This week's pannier was piled high with about a dozen huge blette leaves ready to cook. There being no time to waste, Juliette figures why not just chop up the whole lot, the white stems and all, and cook down in a pot with carrots, potatoes, and onion. Such a good idea, say I, and the work is soon done.

Cutting up the blette leaves, so many all at once, was a thrilling experience. But when I got through, I had a five liter cooking pot nearly full of chopped blette, along with the carrots, potatoes, and an onion. There were three varieties of potatoes, which helped give the potato portion of the mix more interest. Lucky for us, local potato growers seem to know what they are doing. Every spud from the Weekly Pannier is proclaimed the best we've ever tasted, and this is no hyperbole. Still, the humble potato, even at its freshest and tastiest still tastes, well, like a potato, so it was good to have the diversity of flavors and textures.

You would think that chopped blette leaves in this quantity would give the soup a dark bitter undertone, but such was not the case. Yes, there was a definite flavor of cooked greens, but subtle. I recalled my childhood experiences with turnip greens, which are probably the bitterest greens around. My relatives with roots in the South cooked turnip greens in a pot with fatty chunks of pork. The resulting mess was so bitter to my highly sensitive taste buds (a characteristic inherited from my French ancestors) that I would gag on even the smallest morsel that I could force past my lips. After a few episodes of turnip refusal, my mother didn't force the issue and let me watch the rest of the family smack their lips and tease me for being a turnip greens wimp. My God, they even soaked their corn bread in the potlikker and thus ruined the only food my mother ever cooked properly.

more to come

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The Weekly Pannier, December 5

This week's pannier contained few surprises, but that did not detract from its appeal. It was good to see some old favorites (the butternut) and we found a newcomer to our list of vegetables to depend on (the black radishes).

Eggs, lettuce, butternut squash, black radishes, potatoes, carrots, cauliflower, pears, kiwis, and oranges.

The black radish, also known as Black Spanish Radish, is an amazing root vegetable, not so much for its nutritional value (it is high in vitamin C and potassium) but for its reputed medicinal qualities. Our first reaction to its taste when eaten raw was that it was like a crunchy horseradish.

More to come.

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Salad with lettuce, Jerusalem artichoke (topinambour), and bean sprouts

When you think about it, fall and winter are the best seasons for organic lettuce salads. In the summer, it's too hot to grow the varieties favored by most people, around here anyway. A recent Weekly Pannier presented us with a fine head of lettuce that was so big and so fresh that we were eating on it all week, for lunch and dinner. One day, at lunch, I was running late with the dish I was preparing (I don't recall what it was, an omelet, maybe), so Juliette had to rush to get a salad assembled. The result, quickly done, made a sparkling picture of freshness at the table, so I grabbed the camera and snapped a shot.

Jerusalem artichoke, which is called topinambour in Catalonia, stays fresh in the frigo for a long time, if you keep it in the vegetable cooler -- in a brown paper bag, we've been told. Just wash one of the tubers and scrub it well, then slice it onto the lettuce and sprouts, which have already been tossed together in a serving bowl. To my taste, the thinner the slivers of topinambour the better (and Juliette agrees), so I use a very sharp vegetable peeler. I like the nutty flavor that the topinambour brings to the palate, but even better is the flavor of other ingredients which the topinambour soaks up in an instant and gives back with such grace and style. And from such a humble tuber, amazing.

On this particular day, Juliette whipped up a quick dressing of garlic puree mixed into some soy sauce (or was it tamari, I can't remember). A salad like this also invites creative application of oils à table: olive oil, for sure, but we also keep a bottle of five-oil mix on the table, which gives us lots of good omega threes and sixes: sesame, colza, walnut, evening primrose (onagre), and cannabis (chanvre).

The Jerusalem artichoke is no artichoke, by the way, nor does it hail from the Holy Land, so we stick with the common name around here, topinambour.

This vegetable is not truly an artichoke but a variety of sunflower with a lumpy, brown-skinned tuber that often resembles a ginger root. Contrary to what the name implies, this vegetable has nothing to do with Jerusalem but is derived instead from the Italian word for sunflower, girasole.
BBC Good Food

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The Weekly Pannier, November 28

In the Weekly Pannier this time we found: blette leaves, a head of lettuce, some beets, a few rutabagas, a couple of kohlrabi, a dozen kiwi, six or eight large eating apples, potatoes, a half dozen eggs, a big double handful of walnuts, a couple of what we think are persimmons, and some sprouted green lentils in a little plastic box. As Juliette says, "Take a good look. I hope you like what you see, cause that's who I'll be next week."

If that is the case, then this should be an interesting week. I have never eaten or cooked rutabaga. I know nothing about kohlrabi except how to spell it. Beets make me gag. I hope that whatever these things do to Juliette, I can still stand to talk to her when it's over. Let the week begin.

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Vegetarian diet and climate change, and other links

The misuse of water by creating inappropriate climates to improve specialised forms of agriculture (eg, to water beef and dairy cattle and other livestock in arid environments where they are not indigenous and to service waste disposal systems that use excessive amounts of water) might undermine efforts to tackle climate change through positive social action. Farmers use about three-quarters of the world's water supply: to grow 1 kg of wheat requires around 1000 L of water, whereas 1 kg of beef takes as much as 15 000 L. American or European diets require around 5000 L of water per person every day, whereas African or Asian vegetarian diets use about 2000 L per person every day.141 The social and political challenge of shifting dietary practices is enormous, especially as populations start to eat more meat as they climb out of poverty.
The Lancet, "Managing the effects of climate change," May 2009.

Maira Kalman's blog entry "And the pursuit of happiness: Back to the Land" is worth taking a look at: it is a visual essay as well as an essay-poem on the subject. She writes:

Do the wealthy have access to the really healthy food while the less affluent do not?
When you look at it that way, it does not at all feel like a democracy.
The fabric of our lives is bound in the food that we eat and the way we sit down to eat.

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Red cabbage with apples

What makes the red cabbage so interesting is not the cabbage itself but what you can cook with it to make a surprisingly tasty and not-so-cabbagy dish, one that doesn't lose its interest after being served a time or two or three. For this to work, it's important to have good cooking apples. Canada grise (Reinette grise du Canada is its full name) is the variety that came in a recent Weekly Pannier and seems to be popular with organic apple growers around here. I've read that it stores well, but we have not put this pomme to the shelf life test. We cut them up and put them in the pot with the chopped cabbage, along with some wine-marinated raisins and spices (cinnamon, cayenne pepper). The cayenne pepper (used judiciously), gives the mouth a warm glow, all the better to enliven the flavors of the apple and, yes, the cabbage. For some protein, Juliette added some chunks of tofu. A skeptic at first, I find something about purple tofu that actually excites my interest, aside from the health benefits, but what could it be? Purple cubes in my food. Living in Catalonia gives you a surrealist's view on the world after a while, so maybe that's it.

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Why vegetarian? Links

An essay on strict vegetarianism by a vegan, addressing many ethical points, pros and cons, with some very pertinent comments.

A recent book review gives mention to books by and about vegetarianism.

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Butternut-châtaigne soup: sublimely douce

One of the concerns that we had when Juliette and I decided to go All Organic Vegetarian was flavor, and it's a valid concern, given the rep that an all-vegetable diet has had. Lingering memories of back-to-nature Sixties cookery, of plates of brown rice and red beans served with chunks of dense wheat germ bread are not easily erased. So, from the start of our adventure, we've insisted on flavor, and this soup delivers.

The butternut squash has a naturally sweet taste, not at all unlike that of the American pumpkin, a variety of the squash family that we miss here in the Pyrenees, where the closest thing to be found is the potiron or the buternut -- which we prefer. So, if you're thinking about a soup like this but don't have a butternut squash on hand, pumpkin will do.

The process for creating this soup is much the same as for the potiron-châtaigne soup we cooked a couple of weeks ago. Saute an onion in your braising pot, then add the chunks of butternut squash and let simmer on the slowest fire until the squash has softened. If you need to add liquid, use a vegetable broth or just water.

After you have cleaned the châtaigne, chop a good cup of the meat until you have mostly tiny lumps and add to the liquid in the pot.

For spices, Juliette adds toasted sesame seeds, miso, curcumin, celery salt, dried ginger, and a dash of cayenne. All of these ingredients are certified organic and available from the organic grocery down in Claira. The miso may seem like an odd addition, but we've grown to appreciate the warm and mellow, almost woodsy undertone of miso and use it many ways, not just for an oriental taste.

(more to come)

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The Weekly Pannier, November 21

This week's pannier once again gives us quite a variety of fruits and vegetables, most of them grown locally, all of them organic/bio, including: eggs, lettuce, chard (blette), curly cabbage, parsley, carrots, parsnips, potatoes, pears, apples, and clementines. Nothing from the squash family this time, but that's okay. We found a spaghetti squash at the bio/organic market in Claira the other day and prepared our first dish with it yesterday. A recipe from that experiment will appear shortly.

A word about one of the new items in the basket: blette, which is known in English as chard. We've become so accustomed to calling it by the local name that "chard" sounds almost exotic, so we'll stick with blette. It's an ancient food in Europe, known to the Romans and was even singled out in the writings of Pliny the Elder. The vegetable pie called Tourte de Blette, is one of the most famous uses of the leaves, but we'll probably not bake a Chard Tart, having given up on glutenous baked goods (except for bread made with epautre (spelt in English), flour. The leaves can be chopped and sauteed for use in a variety of ways, including omelets, or just as a side dish with a main course.

As for the parsnips, the last time I cooked with parsnips was when I was still a roving lad, footloose in America, and took a dare to cook an Irish Stew from scratch. I knew nothing about the cuisine of Erin in those days, but I bravely took the challenge -- and even baked some Irish soda bread to go with it. The meal was quite delicious, as I recall, but that's another story. Whatever Juliette and I do with the parsnips, it will not include mutton or any other meat, of course, since we've grown quite used to eating meatless.

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Lentil soup with potatoes, fennel bulbs, and curly cabbage

Catalans like lentils. In the warm months, they cook them for use as a base for cold salads. In the winter, there's soup, often with potatoes. In our Weekly Pannier this week we found a head of curly cabbage (chou frisé), so Juliette added half of the head shredded, along with a couple of fennel bulbs. The bulb fennel is called a winter vegetable by many, but around here they are available much of the year, which is fortunate for us. Bulb fennel is rich in iron (among other minerals), so it highly prized by those who have given up red meat, but that's not the only reason why we like it. There's the delicate anise flavor and arome, of course, which does not dominate fresh salads and cooked dishes but, rather, gives delightful grace notes on the fringes of larger tastes.

(more to come)

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Ginger eggplant with Jerusalem artichoke and quinoa

Sunday is usually a day for not taking on big projects, but this Sunday was even more so than usual. We were in the clouds. Literally. Living in a village nestled up against the shoulder of the eastern Pyrenees with a view down the valley toward catalan country, the Roussillon plain, and the Sea, we are often in the clouds this time of year. Warm air from the Sea meets the cool air in the mountains, et voila! So we stayed close to the hearth and cooked up a good repast for the noon meal, using groceries from the Weekly Pannier and from the Carrefour just up the road.

This version of the basic braised eggplant focuses on the flavor of fresh ginger root. We started with a braising pot filled with a chopped onion, two eggplants diced into small pieces, and a good chunk of ginger root chopped finely. We let this simmer slowly until the eggplant softened. For some reason, these eggplants were a bit dry, so we added a little water.

(more to come)

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Recipes borrowed from other sites

Here is one from the French site, Satoriz:

Fondue de poireaux aux châtaignes Pour 4 personnes 1 bocal de marrons entiers au naturel Priméal, 5 - 6 poireaux (suivant leur taille), huile d’olive, sauce de soja (Shoyu ou Tamari), sauge, sésame complet grillé. Coupez en tronçons le blanc et le vert tendre des poireaux ; passez-les à la vapeur 5 à 10 min. Égouttez-bien, placez ces légumes dans une cocotte avec l’huile d’olive, salez et faites revenir à feu doux en ajoutant les marrons et 1 feuille de sauge pendant 30 min. environ. Au moment de servir ajoutez un filet de sauce de soja et saupoudrez de graines de sésame.

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The Weekly Pannier, November 14: More Variety

This week's collection includes the sun artichoke or Jerusalem artichoke, a new vegetable for us to learn about. Esploring foods that we have ignored in the past, when we were too busy worrying about where to get the tenderest lamb chops or the freshest goat cheese to pay much attention to those un-appetizing-looking roots and tubers, is one thing that makes the vegetarian adventure exciting. And it is exciting, to the senses and the mind (which are not really separate, after all), a total delight.

In this week's basket: red cabbage, curly cabbage (chou frisé), spinach, lettuce, pears, apples, celery root (céleri rave), and sun artichokes (topinambour).

Every country and every culture seems to have its own terms for many fruits and vegetables, and this week's pannier offers some good examples of this diversity. Take for example the curly cabbage, which is also known to English-speakers as Savoy cabbage. The Italians also have a variety of names for this cabbage, including Braschetta and cavolo riccio nero de Lucca. In France, the favorite term is chou frisé. For international travelers like Juliette and me, it can be confusing sometimes, but the effort to have a working knowledge of synonyms for foods can come in handy when ordering in a restaurant or making sense of a recipe.

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Eggplant Hunan, with upgrades

The first time we ever had genuine Hunan-style cooking was in New York's Chinatown back in the Eighties, when Ed Koch was mayor. Hunan Joy was the restaurant, which was known to be a favorite of the mayor's (his office was only a few blocks away). We spent two weeks in the city every December and never missed having lunch at least once at Hunan Joy, just to order their version of eggplant Hunan. It was a simple, no-frills, family place, with the dining rooms up a flight of stairs. Two tables overlooked Mott Street near the Canal intersection, and we usually were lucky enough to be seated at one. At least, that's how memory serves. Eggplant Hunan in Chinatown will always be seen in a gray December light with the flash and noise and bustle of Mott Street at Christmas time at our elbows.

The version of this peppery dish that we can do today is reminiscent of its inspiration -- we can use many of the same basic ingredients -- but the eggplants are different (Hunan Joy used the long white kind, ours are the dumpy purple ones) and we don't have the fiery pepper pods. Still, the essential idea is preserved: eggplant braised in a pepper sauce.

Among the many ways in the world to prepare eggplant, Juliette and I have settled on braising. This really is the simplest, most direct method. Just chop the eggplant into bite-sized pieces and add them to the stew pot, where you've already put a chopped onion with some olive oil.

At this point, Juliette steps in and works her magic by adding curry, curcumin, cayenne pepper, garlic puree, miso, soy sauce, and raisins marinated in red wine. All of these ingredients bring to the blend their particular flavors and smells, of course, but it's worth remembering that every element contributes to the nutritional value of the dish.

Just put a lid on it and let it simmer on low heat until the eggplant is cooked and has absorbed the spice- and herb-flavored liquids. If you want to give the concoction a good protein boost, add some tofu, either crumbled or cut into cubes, depending on which kind you have on hand.

Serve with rice if you like, or with quinoa.

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Happiness and the chatâigne search

The first time we ever saw chatâigne trees--and knew what they were--was the day we were driving from Rennes-les-Bains to Bugarach. This was years ago. It was autumn, one of those crystal sky days when there's just enough of a nip in the air to require a heavy jacket and a wool scarf for tramping through the woods. Our goal that day was to see the Pech de Bugarach up close with the crown of snow that had been added the night before. What we did not anticipate was the bottleneck of cars on the narrow road that parallels the river under the steep and forested hills of the upper Sals. We had taken the road many times and rarely encountered another car. The serene and untouched beauty of the dense forests was what drew us there in the first place. On this particular October day, however, the Sals was alive with chataigne gatherers.

If you are English or American, you're probably asking, what is the chatâigne, anyway? When we asked people in the village where we lived at the time in the upper valley of the Aude what chataigne were, they explained that they were like a wild variety of the marron, which is what the English and Americans call chestnuts. I've come to learn that it's not quite that simple, but no matter. The important thing is, you can buy chataigne in grocery stores around here, but for the true autumn experience, you want to go out and pick your own up off the ground, which is just what all those people were doing on the road to Bugarach.

Now what has all of this to do with happiness? Well, it seems that scientists are finding that happiness is contagious, as are a host of other behaviors, such as obesity and smoking.

(more to come)

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Potato-fennel omelet with bean sprouts

The aroma of onions filled the air and brought on a great sense of well-being and contentment. After a while, I wondered why I could smell the onions cooking, since I recalled having turned off the burner and left the skillet of onions sauteed in olive oil with leftover bits of potato-fennel stew chopped up. My attention had been taken, apparently, by reading some articles online.

One especially caught my eye, since we have been so curious lately about the chemical makeup of our bodies, by Nicholas D. Kristof, a columnist I thought usually writes on political matters. His essay raises my consciousness about bisphenol A, or BPA.

It’s a synthetic estrogen that United States
factories now use in everything from plastics to epoxies -- to the tune
of six pounds per American per year. That’s a lot of estrogen.

More than 92 percent of Americans have BPA in their urine,
and scientists have linked it -- though not conclusively -- to everything
from breast cancer to obesity, from attention deficit disorder to
genital abnormalities in boys and girls alike.

Now it turns out it’s in our food.

Maybe this is a sign that issues of health and industrial chemistry are becoming more and more political for the wider culture and not just for fringe characters (comme nous) who have been portrayed since the Sixties as cranks. Of course the chemical industry shrugs off the disturbing reports coming out of the research done by scientists outside Big Chemicals, saying that exposure to this stuff is okay for humans. The worst danger seems to be from canned foods and beverages, which can contain high levels of BPA.

The lesson for us is don't eat processed food or canned drinks. And if you do, choose glass containers.

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Potiron-chatâigne soup

The only way to try this soup is to cut up the potiron and boil and clean the chatâigne, so that's what I did this morning. Juliette calls it a Labor of Love, and I'll grant that there is a measure of commitment involved, and giving. But daunting as the task seems at the outset, it is soon accomplished, and we have a marvelous soup bubbling away while we watch the pensées on the front balcony dancing in the cold tramontagne and talk about how close winter is and the turning of the year.

The plant that people around here call le potiron is, in fact, its cousin, la citrouille. What you usually see in the markets is half of one of these huge pumpkin-shaped monsters, from which the vendor will slice you as large a piece as you want. The skin is thin but harder than you would think. With a little practice, though, I find that it comes off easily with a vegetable slicer, and I cut the orange-red flesh into spoon-sized bits.

Meanwhile, Juliette stirs a chopped onion into some olive oil in the bottom of a large sauce pan. The chunks of potiron (we decided to keep using the term everybody around here uses instead of the Correct One) go in next. Juliette puts the lid on the pot and sets the burner to the lowest possible temperature. When the mixture begins to soften and liquify, she returns and adds a large tablespoon of miso and other spices. The miso adds a salty taste (we keep salt intake to a minimum), besides being a good source of protein.

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Split pea soup with leeks and potatoes

You wonder how much better split pea soup could get than this, but there is no surprise in how it's done. Or so says Juliette when I ask her how.

It's like this, she says. Split pea soup, no matter how fine a thing it is in the cold seasons--not to mention how cheap it is and nutritious-- you can get tired of it fast. So yoiu try to have it every other week or so, not every day. Plus you're always looking for ways to liven things up. Make it interesting. And what I want to try this time is to add a little box of this almond milk.

Almond milk. I didn't know.

Neither did I, but here it is. Alamond milk: La Mandorle.

The second day, split pea soup with stewed apples. This is too good to be true.

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The Weekly Pannier, November 7

Around six Friday evening, as has become our custom since August, we walked up the street to the home and winery of our local bio vigneron (winegrower) to pick up our weekly pannier of legumes and fruits. Every time we do this, we take note of the changing season. The days are shorter now, which means that the street lights are on, and the guys taking their smoke and glass of beer at the tables in front of the Bar PMU on the corner are shivering as they stamp their feet and gesticulate forcefully as they talk.

This week's pannier: ail, échalote, oignon, CHOU romanesco/frisé, POIVRON «vert», POIREAU, SALADE «laitue rouge, COURGE, POMME « dalinette »RAISIN « ribol»

This week's pannier: garlic, shallots, onions, chou romanesco, sweet green peppers, poireau (leeks), lettuce, butternut squash, apples (dalinette), and grapes (ribol).

The new item we encountered this week is the chou romanesco, which is like broccoli crossed with cauliflower. I went to the Google and found this excellent explanation by John Walker on the site Fractal Food of the plant's various names:

The French name, chou Romanesco literally translates to “Romanesco cabbage”, placing it in the cabbage family even though it doesn't much resemble any cabbage you've ever seen. In German, it's Pyramidenblumenkohl: “pyramid cauliflower”; in Italy, where it was first described in the sixteenth century, it's called broccolo romanesco: “Romanesco broccoli”, but sometimes cavolo romanesco: “Romanesco cabbage”. Finally, in English it's usually called “Romanesco broccoli”, but you'll also see it referred to as “Romanesco cauliflower”. Even professional plant taxonomists can't decide precisely where it belongs; some place it within the Italica group with broccoli, while others argue it belongs in the Botrytis group with cauliflower. Broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower—beats me—let's just consider it sui generis and call it “Romanesco”.

So that's what Juliette and I are calling it, Romanesco.

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Butternut soup

The first time Juliette and I ever cooked a butternut was a month or so ago, after one appeared in the Weekly Pannier.

The butternut squash was a mystery to us. What is it and how do you cook it? We've seen the pale ocher object in markets for years but just didn't know what they were or what you might get out of them in the way of nourishment or food pleasure. Maybe we avoided them because of associations with the word squash itself, which always calls to mind the yellow mush you get from cooking the squash grown in the southern United States. Plus there's the object itself, which looks like a swollen bowling pin--or, in the interest of nutrition, I'd prefer likening it to the schmoo (which was an animal, so the similarity ends with the shape). In any case, our first Weekly Pannier of fruit and legumes that came to us in October this year from the organic farmers down the road contained a butternut squash. As with everything else the farmer couple selects for the Weekly Pannier, the butternut was fresh and ready to eat.

One feature of the Weekly Pannier that Juliette and I appreciate is the constant variety of fruits and vegetables that land on the kitchen counter. Indeed, it is the rare basket that contains only foods that we know well already. The couple who distribute the baskets in our town (who are themselves producers of bio (organic) wine) must enjoy the reactions they get from us. One time, I think I even said something like, "It looks like Père Noël has been here." So you can understand how fascinated we were to be presented with this new opportunity--and challenge, for we knew nothing about how to prepare it.

For a week or so, the butternut sat on our kitchen counter while we debated what approach to take. Should we peel it and cut it into pieces and cook it in a sauce pan to make a soup? Or would it be better to roast it in the oven, skin and all? Since it resembles a pumpkin (which is, we discovered later, a distinctly different sibling in the squash family), we thought we might simply treat it as one. However one cooks a pumpkin, we figured, ought to work for a butternut. And like all modern folks, we were tempted to give the internet a search for recipes (which abound, as we later found), but neither Juliette nor I wanted preconceived notions to stand in the way of our making our own mistakes--and successes.

For our first go, we chose soup, so the first task was to chop it into chunks. Cutting up the butternut was not easy--although the skin is not thick, it is dense and tough--but with a little practice, I got the hang of slicing the skin off. A sharp knife and a steady hand are required, you should know. But if you have one of those fancy professional peelers you can whack the skin right off in nothing flat (this video shows how it is done and it looks easy with the right tools--although I chose to scoop out the seeds first).

While I was wrestling with the butternut, Juliette put some olive oil and a chopped onion in a large sauce pan and I dumped in the butternut chunks. After that, it was simply matter of keeping the pan on the lowest heat for a couple of hours, stirring occasionally, until the butternut had melted into a thick soup. The aroma was subtle but definite, like pumpkin but lighter. To give the soup body and flavor, Juliette suggested some chopped fresh ginger and a half cup of almond puree that comes in a box.

At lunchtime, we sat down to a steaming bowl of butternut squash soup that delighted us so much that we wanted to phone up the Weekly Pannier folks and beg for another. But we didn't. We were patient, and our patience was rewarded when, a few baskets later, we were blessed with a nice, hefty one, which came with a heaping double-handful of chagaigne . . . but that's another story.

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