DORIE GREENSPAN

Granola Grab Bag

When Kerrin and Olivier Rousset (they of the wonderful wedding) came to spend this past weekend with us in Connecticut, they arrived bearing gifts: Granola, homemade and in three flavors!

It was a great gift, but it also turned out to be a funny one, since when Kerrin was roasting granola on Friday, I was doing exactly the same thing!  I hadn't made granola in years, but it seemed like just the right thing to have on hand when there'd be people in the house for a couple of days.  Obviously, that's what Kerrin was thinking too.

While I'd made a very basic oatmeal-honey-nut granola (more about it and the recipe in a minute), Kerrin played around with hers.  She started with thick-cut oats, assorted nuts (she used whole almonds, pecans and sesame seeds) and carob honey she and Olivier brought back from Morocco, and then, when the granola was cool, she added bits of dried papaya, plump golden raisins and pieces of Moroccan dates, another bring-back from their honeymoon.  The sack Kerrin labeled "au naturel" was this blend, and the little tag she'd tied to it said, "Best with thick Greek yogurt or cold milk"

Batch two was labeled "Melissa Granola" because it contained chunks of Pralus's Melissa chocolate, a spicy milk chocolate, that was a terrific addition to the mix.  Melissa's tag said, "Best out of hand (which is the way I've been eating it), in milk or with ice cream (vanilla or coffee)

The final batch, which was labeled "especially for Dorie," was the most unusual and, just as Kerrin had expected, my favorite:  "Reglisse Granola," aka Licorice Granola.  Mixed in with the oats and nuts and fruits were bits of black licorice cut from licorice wheels.  The tag read, "Best simply eaten out of hand," although it might just as rightly have said, "Best eaten before Olivier sees it," since when the new groom reached into the sack, it clicked that the little black snippets had been snatched from his private stash. 

It was surprising how good the licorice was in the mix and how well the licorice and honey, which are often used together in candies, worked with one another.

Kerrin and Olivier's grab bag was a great success and it made me think about packing up my own granola for the holidays.  As I said, my granola is a basic mix, but it's one that lends itself to lots of additions.  I usuallly add only dried fruits - raisins, for sure, but sometimes I toss in dried cherries or snipped apricots.  It could be spiked with some spices or it could take some Kerrinesque additions, like chocolate or licorice.

If you don't already have a favorite granola recipe, here's mine.  I hope it will get you started on your own house blend.

OATMEAL, HONEY AND NUT GRANOLA

Makes about 4 pounds

1 pound oats, I use thick-cut oats from the health food store bin

3/4 pound honey, preferrably one with some character

2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract

1 cup coconut, preferably unsweetened (available in health food stores)

5 to 6 cups mixed nuts, I usually make one-quarter of the mix raw sunflower seeds and one-quarter almonds, then I make up the rest with pecans, pistachios,  pumpkin seeds and whatever else looks good

while I usually coarsely chop the nuts, you can leave them whole, especially if you're going to be using the granola as a snack rather than a cereal

Dried fruits (or chocolate, or licorice, or ...), as much and whichever you like, cut into bite-size bits

Preheat the oven to 325 degrees F and have ready two large rimmed baking sheets lined with silicone baking mats (my first choice) or nonstick aluminum foil. 

Mix all the ingredients together in a big, big bowl.  Keep turning the ingredients around so that the honey coats everything.  Divide the mix between the two baking sheets and spread it out so that you've got even layers.

Bake the granola for 40 to 50 minutes, turning it with a wooden spoon every 10 minutes or so.  The turning is extremely important because you want to evenly toast and dry out the granola.  If you find that the granola is browning unevenly, rotate your baking sheets front to back and top to bottom (if you're working on two shelves). 

I can't give you an exact baking time, you have to keep looking at it.  You want the color to be dark -the cereal won't have much taste or crunch if it's not - and you might have to sacrifice a few burnt nuts to get it.  Just keep watching, particularly once the color starts to deepen.

Cool the granola on the baking sheets, turning it often as it comes to room temperature.  Stir in the dried fruits and store the granola in a covered container away from moisture.

Of French Gnomes and Elfen Friends

At the risk of sounding curmudgeonly, I'll admit at the top that I don't go in much for garden gnomes.  True, a gnome played a major role in one of my favorite French films, Amelie, which, incidentally, has a soundtrack that's so wonderful it coaxed a smile out of me even after I discovered that the 2 cups of sugar sitting on the kitchen counter belonged to the cake that was already in the oven!  (Note to self: Don't talk on the phone and bake at the same time.)

That's Audrey "Amelie" Tatou up there with her gnome (thank you Miramax).  Cute, I know, but not cute enough to make a gnome-lover out of me.  Even after the celebrated designer, Philippe Starck, whose work I love, created a family of garden gnomes (here's one)

I still wasn't about to make a place for a gnome in my garden, my home or my heart.

But it turns out that my little corner of Connecticut must be a hotbed of anonymous gnomial activity because, unseen, unheard and uninvited, the gnomes turned up.

I mean, take a look at this - it's what I found in my garden earlier this summer, just after returning from Paris

Pretty fabulous, isn't it?  And obviously the work of gnomes, right?  Who else would do such a thing?

Then yesterday, Michael and I pulled up to the house and, as I always do, I jumped out of the car and went directly to the garden.  Here's what I found

To you, this might look like an ordinary scarecrow.  But to me, it looks precisely like a mini female edition of Abner, the scarecrow who lives up the block.  Could Abner have wandered down and bequeathed me his firstborn?  I don't think so.  It's got to be the gnomes at work again.

Next thing I know, the ghost of Christmas past will be hovering over the garden.

If this keeps up, I might just start believing in the tooth fairy.  In the meantime, I'll keep believing in the adorableness of my friends.

Read to Grow - Rabbit's Bedtime and Cookbooks, Too

This week marked the tenth anniversary of Read to Grow, a nonprofit organization dedicated to improving literacy in Connecticut by starting early - as soon as a baby is born! 

Every mom who gives birth to a child in a participating hospital gets a visit from a Read to Grow volunteer and a goody bag containing a pamphlet detailing the importance of reading to children and a brand-new book, so moms can start reading to their little ones immediately.

It's a terrific organization doing very important work and, to get the word out and to celebrate their anniversary, Read to Grow held ten house parties over the weekend, each attended by an author.  I was not just flattered to be invited to speak at a party, I was delighted, honored and, frankly, very surprised.

As I told the group, when I decided to give up on my doctoral dissertation and go bake cookies in a Greenwich Village restaurant, only my husband was in favor of my move.  My friends thought I was nuts and my mother was pretty sure I was ruining my life.  I understood how she felt:  she was looking forward to saying, "my daughter, the doctor," and, instead, she was stuck with, "my daughter, the underpaid cookie baker who works in a cellar."

Being a chef and writing about chefs and food wasn't sexy or glamorous then - it wasn't even considered interesting.

Happily, a lot has changed, thanks, I think, to the James Beard Foundation, which honors chefs and cookbook authors, and, most definitely, to The Food Network, which makes chefs stars and food compelling.

I took being invited to speak about what Julia Child called "cookbookery" to a literacy group as another way to measure just how far we in the food world have come.

Of course, the best criterion of change is my mom.  She's very proud of me now - so proud that she doesn't even remember not being delighted when I gave up that dissertation!

If you want to learn more about Read to Grow, click here.

Of Macaroons, Memories and Missed Opportunity

I know I must have had my camera with me this morning.  Obviously, what I didn’t have was my with-it-ness because I missed a great photo op.  I was, as I usually am on summer Saturday mornings, at the Lyme Farmers Market.  I had just bought swordfish, Littleneck clams and a lobster (what a treat!) and was surveying the lines at the other stands, deciding on my next move, when Carol Dahlke came walking across the fields, headed in my direction.  Carol is due to give birth to Baby James any day now, so she usually leads with her belly, but today she led with an object I recognized immediately: a red and white box from Pierre Herme!

Carol’s parents had just returned from Paris bringing with them macaroons – lots of them.  And there was Carol, the box in one hand, the PH cheatsheet in the other, trying to decide between Ispahan and Satine and giving up (or giving in) and having them both!

I chose a classic coffee macaroon and ate it standing in the middle of the field looking out at the white market tents, the Saturday shoppers in shorts and flip-flops, the kids racing around and the horses grazing beyond the stone wall, and I just couldn’t get my bearings.  My feet were planted in the solid soil of New England, but with each bite my mind traveled further and further away until I could see myself leaving Pierre’s shop on the rue Bonaparte and walking toward my apartment.  I could see Place Saint-Germain-des-Pres stretching in front of me and I might even have heard the church bells chime if Michael hadn’t tugged on my sleeve to ask if I needed garlic. 

We all talk about that passage in In Search of Lost Time, the one in which Marcel Proust writes about how a bite of a madeleine transported him to another time and another place, but today I lived it. 

It was a wonderful moment, but a strange one, too.  I had trouble reconciling the meticulous construction, the flavor, the fragrance, even the spirit of Pierre’s macaroon with the setting.  The macaroon was so Parisian, what was it doing in Connecticut?  On the farm?  Would there have been this disparity for me if I’d never before tasted a PH macaroon?  Would I have enjoyed it less because I was missing a context?  Would I have relished it more because it would have been an initiation?  And why should food have a place?  Wouldn’t I be just as happy having caviar by a campfire as I would be eating it from a mother-of-pearl spoon in a grand chateau? 

Who would have thought one little bonbon could cause such confusion?  I know, I know - Proust!

Dinners at the Farm: Great People, Great Food and a Great Cause

When a day starts out like this, you've got to believe it can only get better:

What you're looking at is the team from Sunday night's Dinners at the Farm pushing the "chucktruck," better known as the thing without which there'd be no dinner.  At the lead is Jonathan Rapp, chef-owner of River Tavern, and behind the wheel is Drew McLachlan who, with his wife, Claudine, owns Feast Gourmet Market in Deep River, Connecticut.  Just a minute or two beofre I snapped this picture, this is what you would have seen:

That's me behind the wheel!  I was having such a good time until my husband told Jonathan that I was better at truffles than trucks and that I probably shouldn't be the one steering when they finally got the monster moving.  I love my husband, but sometimes he can be a spoil-sport.

Dinners at the Farm is the brainchild of Jonathan, the McLachlans and Chip and Carol Dahlke of Ashlawn Farm.  Carol, who is the roastmaster at Farm Coffee, stayed home, wisely - she'll be having a baby any day now!  But here's Chip, who, in addition to being the host of the dinners, started the wonderful Lyme Farmer's Market:

The dinners, which kicked off in June (click to read about the first one, complete with thunder and lightning), are usually held on a local farm (Sunday night's was the exception; it was held on the grounds of the Wadsworth Mansion, just after the annual open-air market pulled up stakes), always use ingredients straight from the area's farms and always benefit a not-for-profit organization.  Sunday night, the proceeds from the dinner went to the local chapter of American Farmland Trust.

This time, I was at the dinner as a volunteer kitchen hand.  It was an outdoor dinner for 150 people and nothing was prepped ahead - it all happened on a bunch of plank tables under a tent and on the truck and it was a testament to what precision organization and a lot of talent can do.

Of course, it didn't hurt that everyone was anxious to get their hands on the food - everything from the fruits, vegetables and fish, to the pork from Four Mile River Farm, was local and most of us knew all of the farmers personally.

When I climbed up onto the truck and gasped at how beautiful the food was, Jonathan said, "It's impossible not to make beautiful food out of stuff this wonderful."  Take a look at just a smidgen of what we had to work with:

There was a great sense of camaraderie among the team, which was made up of pros and volunteers, including my mates on melon brigade.  This is Steve Lapenta, who owns The Bridge, a tofu company in Middletown, and who just walked over and asked if he could lend a hand:

And here's Christy Wilson, who in real life is from Santa Monica, but who came East for a spell to be an art director on Righteous Kill, the upcoming DeNiro/Pacino/50 Cent/Scorcese film that's being shot in Bridgeport:

I couldn't stay through dinner - we had to drive back to New York - but I was there to help get the pizzas ready for the grill:

 

and to plate the Charentais melons with smoked scallops, heirloom tomatoes, cilantro and a dressing of toasted cumin, lime, chiles and extra-virgin olive oil:

I wish I had a picture of the soup that went out before the melons - roasted corn with littleneck clams - but I was too busy picking parsley for the next course to grab my camera.

Here, though, is the whole menu, large enough, I hope, for you to read it and smile in delight:

It was terrific to be part of a community helping a community and I can't wait to do it again.  And I will.  The Dinners at the Farm team will be in New York City at Farm Aid on September 9 and I'll be there too.  If you're around, come by, I'd love to see you!

Bubble, Bubble, Toil, No Trouble: A New Soap

Today, my husband heard me say something that would only have been more startling had I chanted it in Swahili.  The words I uttered were:  “I can’t wait to get home and clean!”

Even I (who, sadly, was born without the neatness gene) was surprised by my reaction, but as soon as I smelled the soap that Amelia Hunt of Falls Brook Organic Farm had created, I wanted to just bathe in it.  And I can.  Amelia’s soap is totally organic, non-toxic, fabulous-smelling, good-cleaning and really, as she says, all-purpose. 

 

Just so you know, the cute farmer on the bottle is Michael Newburg, Amelia’s husband.  You’ve heard me talk about him lots because he’s the man who grows the best greens on earth and also the person responsible for teaching me how to keep his great greens fresh.

Here are the uses for the soap listed on the side of the bottle:  Hands, body, oily hair and pets; dishes, appliances, counter tops, cabinets, porcelain and tile surfaces; floors, woodwork, walls; produce (Amelia and Michael say you can add a drop or two to a salad spinner, rinse and spin); laundry; carpets and fabrics with spots and stains; cars and, my favorite, tractors.  I love this idea of one-stop soaping.

Here’s what I think is so delicious about the soap:  its smell.  The soap, which is a concentrate (you pour a little into a dispenser, then add water), is based on organic coconut, olive and jojoba oils and aloe vera and gets its scent from essential lavender, rosemary, oregano, marjoram and nutmeg oils with some grapefruit and rosemary extract mixed in.  You can see why any foodlover would fall for the fragrance.

When I got to the Farm, Amelia had only four bottles of the soap left

 

But there’ll be a batch arriving Monday (August 27) and, by Monday, she’ll have everything about the soap and how to buy it on the Farm's site (where you can also sign up to buy the Farm’s handmade paprika).

Each bottle holds 32 ounces, comes with a foaming dispenser, costs $18 and, because you dilute it, is probably enough to keep even Mr. Clean happy for a very long time. I know it kept me happy through the lunch dishes.

Rainy Day Salad

My husband, Michael, couldn’t resist this Siamese-twin tomato at the Lyme Farmers Market this week (it would have been a perfect match for the boomerang eggplant I bought the week before, but that had already become caponata)

Then, having bought it, he went back to New York, leaving me to tackle the double-headed monster on my own, which I did with one of my favorite knives

The knife (so elegant), made in Japan by Kyocera, has a ceramic blade with microscopic serrations that slice through tomato skin and soft tomato pulp effortlessly and neatly – the skin never tears and the fruit never goes ragged. 

Once I had separated the twins, I tasted the tomato to see if it was worth continuing.  The answer: yes!  In fact, the tomato was so good that I dashed out into the pouring rain to get some basil from the garden. 

With a tomato this good, less is just enough, so all I did was cut it into chunks, sprinkle it with fleur de sel and splash it with great olive oil.  Then I added some sliced plums, an idea lifted from a salad Dan Barber, the remarkable chef, had made at the remarkable Blue Hill at Stone Barns.

With a hunk of bread and good butter, it was the perfect lunch, made perfecter by the fact that I was alone so, when I finished the salad, I could drink the luscious tomato “soup” that had accumulated in the bottom of the bowl.  It certainly brightened a gray, rainy day.

Dinners at the Farm

They’re being called Dinners at the Farm, but they might just as well be called a community revolution, since these summer meals could change everything about the way the people in our little stretch of Connecticut think about what they eat and whom they eat it with.

From now through early October, there will be ten dinners, each held on a farm, each benefiting a local non-profit organization and each serving only the foods sold at the Lyme Farmers Market – translation: foods from within about a 30-mile radius of dinner.

The series is the brainchild of Chip Dahlke, owner of Ashlawn Farm and host of the Farmers Market; the gifted Jonathan Rapp, chef/owner of River Tavern in Chester, Drew and Claudine McLachlan, who own Feast Gourmet Market in Deep River, and, of course, the farmers.

Friday night, under a sky that was alternately threatening, wet and gorgeous – we had a ray or two of sun, a couple of downpours, a rainbow, black clouds, then stars and a peek-a-boo moon – there was a kick-off dinner for the farmers and winemakers whose products we would be savoring all summer, organizers from the groups that will receive donations from the dinners, and local press. 

We all ate at one very long table and it was magical to look in either direction and see people eating and drinking fresh, beautifully prepared food, laughing, talking and marveling at the setting.

The menu was put together late in the afternoon, only after Jonathan knew what ingredients he’d have in hand, and everything was prepared on River Tavern’s “chuckwagon,” a red 1953 Ford flatbed outfitted with a commercial range, a smoker and some racks and counters. 

The food was both simple and amazing for its goodness, quality and perfect preparation: warm squid (see below), a mixed seafood salad with scallops, lobster, Stonington red shrimp and bass on a bed of pristine greens, a porchetta with roasted tomatoes and a strawberry crostata with whipped cream.  Every bite of food came from a farmer or producer who was seated at the table and we drank wine from local Chamard Vineyards with the winemakers right there.

Everything was served family style and it was lovely to be passing the food among us and serving one another.

There was a lot of table-hopping (if you can call jumping up to talk to people who are all at the same table table-hopping) and even truck-hopping – yes, that’s Jacques Pepin up there with Jonathan, who’s on the right.

In fact, Jacques will be cooking at one of the summer dinners and Jonathan asked me if I’d do desserts for a couple of them.  Yes, yes, of course, I said “yes!”

It was an inspired evening and I left wondering if such evenings would be possible at Farmers Markets around the country.  The effort is huge and it’s not every chef who wants to cook for a crowd when he doesn’t have a clue about what will turn up in the larder, but the rewards for a community are tremendous.

For me, it was extraordinary to be able to share the food of our region with the people who grow and produce it.  It was another lesson in the power of food and one I wish everyone could have. 

Can we start a movement?  Is there already a movement? 

For a list of the organizations that will benefit from Dinners at the Farm as well as dates and locations, click here. 

Greenskeeping

I know, it looks a little weird, kind of like a terrarium for lettuce, but it's really a little bit of low-tech genius.  It's a terrific trick I learned from Michael Newburg, who grows the best, best greens at his Falls Brook Organic Farm.  Put your fresh greens in a big plastic bag, gather up the neck, blow a little air, aka carbon dioxide, into the bag, then seal it up quick.  If your greens are perfectly dry and really fresh (when Michael brings his to the Lyme Farmers Market, they’re only two-hours old), they’ll stay bright, firm and flavorful for at least a week like this.  The only problem is the amount of space the puffed-up bag takes in the fridge – but scrambling for a few extra cubic-inches of room on the shelf seems a small price to pay for greens that stay great from market day to market day.

Sardines: Not so much on this side of the pond

My friend Kerrin just sent me this photo.  It was taken in a hypermarche, a super-big supermarket, outside of Paris and my guess is that, had Kerrin had a wide-angle lens, she could have shown us an equally long wall of canned tuna too.  Even in the not-so-big Monoprix grocery near my apartment in Paris, the selection of canned fish is generous enough to keep you in that aisle for a while, reading labels and deciding among sardines with hot peppers, mustard, lemon or basil, smoked or not, whole or filleted.  I always keep a stack of sardine cans in the pantry, they’re my rainy-day emergency munch, perfect for when I’m on deadline and glued to my computer.  A squeeze of lemon, a couple of slices of tomato, a little salad and some bread and butter and all is right with the world.

The last time I was in Paris, I brought a few cans of sardines back with me

because, while I can get pretty much anything in New York, including these really good Portuguese sardines

the selection at my local Stop&Shop in Connecticut is not great.  And, last night I discovered that it’s about to become even less not-great.  See these cans of Bumble Bee sardines? 

I picked them up last night for 50 cents a can because the store is discontinuing them. 

I guess we’re not a sardine-savoring society in these parts, but it made me sad.  Here’s a food, a real food, that’s inexpensive (even when it’s not on sale), high in protein, iron, calcium and precious omega-3 fatty acids (the stuff we’re all supposed to have a couple of times a week), and it’s going off the shelves. 

I didn’t notice any discontinued signs in the chips department.