Rural Projects Supperclub

Saturday 9/27/08 was the night of the Rural Projects Supperclub. Rural Projects is run by some dear friends of mine who are lucky to live in the beautiful and bountiful Columbia County, NY. Spending several days up there, I tried to hunt down as many immediately local ingredients as I could, in order to cook a dinner for twenty people. Though it was the end of the season, I found nearly everything I wanted- ( what, no local star anise?) at small farms, a co-op, and neighbors' houses.

There is an index I found of all the farms in every county in New York, with a handy description of their specialties and what-not. Over coffee in the tiny-hip town of Hudson, we plotted out where the organic farms were, and an efficient path to reach them. Though everything was found nearby, it still meant a fair amount of driving around in order to produce this dinner, but the trees were turning, so it was hard to feel bad about. Using the excellent advice of the Dear Friends, the farm list, and the help of an enthusiastic and patient co-navigator, the items were gathered, checked off and hauled in to meet their fate.

These sheep produced the yogurt and Roquefort.


One of several darling diners.

I used polenta made by Wild Hive Farm in Clinton Corners, which was technically out of my region, but jeez- how wonderful. I also found a vodka called Core (made from apples), that is produced in the county, but I had already started infusing my own, darnit. I got a chance to taste the Core and it was fabulous and smooth with an appley breath, and comes in a classy bottle. I will remember it for the future, upstate or not.

We were lucky to visit the homestead of some pals of my Dear Friends who grow almost all their own food. I was blown away to be in their beautiful house and garden, and be able to use a bit of their yield (eggs, squash, onions, 5 kinds of basil, tomatoes, carrots, and leeks-or rather, the largest single leek I've ever seen).

The most idyllic kitchen window.


Brown, blue, and green eggs, all laid by different hens.


A peek into their remarkable pantry!

After all the traipsing and collecting, there was cooking. Two friends of mine came down to help and were stellar, and there were plenty of helpers, logistical engineers, ambiance coordinators, and finally eaters, all interesting and talented and fun.

The evening began outside, with cocktail hour held underneath a sculpture by the first Rural Projects artist-in-residence. The piece is called Rt. 11 by Martine Kaczynski, 2007, and resembles an abandoned gas station canopy. Read more here.


My tribute to the location.

Rural Projects Supperclub Menu

Cocktails
"Rural Rose": Pluot Puree, Pernod, Cava
"Columbia Cocktail": Honeycrisp Apple infused Vodka, Rosemary Syrup, Soda
Hors d'oeuvre
Green Chile Mini-Tamales
Roquefort Walnut Shortbread with Sheep Yogurt and Apple Onion Pickle
Soup
Butternut Squash and Apple with Bacon and Walnuts
Salad
Spicy Greens with Shredded Beet, Fennel and Purple Basil
Entree
Moroccan Spiced Chicken, Smoky Eggplant Puree with Yogurt, Crispy Polenta, Roasted Tomato
Dessert
Corn Ice Cream with Sexy Star Anise Whiskey Sauce

Exotic Albany

Unexpected Jewels in New York's Capital City

I visited New York's capital region, a destination rich in Americana. Among the bowling alleys, drive-in movies, estate sales and homey porches are community vegetable gardens, old school diners, and a solid tradition of soft-serve ice cream.

There are piles of old cookbooks to be found in junk stores and garage sales, from church-lady collections to volumes compiled to promote a single product, such as Diamond walnuts or bananas or peanut butter. I love the illustrations of these books, especially the gelatin depictions. Luminous and futuristic, I try and understand the appeal; how it might have seemed modern to suspend food in any shape we wanted,with gem-like chunks set in a color-coded and quivering force-field. As interested as I am in texture and mouthfeel, imagining these dishes in my mouth does an effective job of reinforcing my interest in authentic foods. Especially ones I can't suck through my teeth.

At our visit to the Pig Pit barbecue joint I was thrilled with fried okra, sliced brisket and corn fritters. My southwestern genetic heritage giggled as I focused on my okra and glanced around to see the words "tamales", "Frito pie" and "RC Cola". I knew not to get too excited about the Frito pie, and was right to be skeptical as I saw one being made, apparently created with a dollop of everything edible in the room.

At the Snow Man in Troy, NY, I had the most perfect soft cone of my life. It had a beautiful texture and was so dense and smooth that it displayed the fine lines from my tongue for a moment before slumping slightly into a mirror-melt surface.

Lunch at the Miss Albany Diner was a wonderful adventure. Its a compact original diner on an industrial stretch of road and has clearly staked out its greasy place in the world. There are rules posted everywhere mostly pertaining to how your kids should behave ("perhaps you should look into acting schools if your kid is attracting the attention of other patrons") and how many people can sit in the small wooden booths on what days that there are no substitutions. The cook regularly comes out to serve food and joke or give people a hard time, and there is an inventive "gourmet" side of the menu, which is totally unique. I had some pork sausage ("we make it in the kitchen and it has herbs, such as sage") with eggs and several cups of coffee.

On the way out I go in an abandoned-looking office furniture place across from the Miss Albany Diner to see if they have anything old or interesting. It looks like no one is there, but eventually a towering, shiny woman appears from behind a bank of computers and shows me some old (lame) stock in the back room. As I am leaving without chairs I notice that the mysterious office furniture woman is tanned and made up and hair pouffed and is wearing several inch high black patent leather heels with ankle straps and a satin miniskirt and top. Maybe this is Miss Albany herself?

All-American Summer Camp

I did not grow up in a family of campers. I am a camping novice, but completely sold on this activity that requires constant attention towards the fire and the next meal and can be communal or solitary and filled with freedom.

A stick of butter with the impression of corn.

I have a feeling these sample cones acquired a muted palette after sitting out in the sun and a few thunderstorms.

Man, it was so pastoral and pretty it was like being in the label of some Hidden Valley Ranch dressing. For expanded discussion of this imagery in American food culture, read up in Michael Pollan's In Defense of Food.

Ew. Here was one option I spotted at a local grocery. Click on the picture to check out the ingredients and the disturbing hot pink color. There is a red seal on it that says "Inspected for Wholesomeness by the U.S. Department of Agriculture". The Secretary of Agriculture Ed Schafer suggests that boosting productivity at home and abroad is a solution to rising food costs. Apparently things are pretty simple for the Department and the Secretary.

And yes, we went with these, and they were delicious.

Homemade Chickens

Here is more maple syrup in action. My maple adventure was great, but truthfully, the maple was only part of the sweetness of that trip. People can tell me about their food politics, and I can read books and articles, and watch movies, and shop consciously, and its important; but going out of town and kicking it with a family that has a good idea about where their food comes from makes it actually register. My brain and body and memory heard it. See Amelia, there are these chickens and they run around over there, eat bugs, and get looked after. Then they make all this noise and lay eggs. Why don't you go collect them?

And then you get to eat them!!!

I am obviously very used to buying eggs, and even though I get the brown ones with "Omega-3" on the package and not the Styrofoam-packed ones with laser printed ads on the shells, I am so removed from chickens that it felt like a wild, jewel-like gift to pick up a warm egg. Which is what it is I guess. So now I know.

A beautiful view from the nearby town of Hudson, although not as dramatic as egg-laying.



On the way up to the maple trees, wild garlic grows.



Another stellar breakfast with homemade bread and bacon from a former resident pig.

I love cooking and eating homemade things, and eating locally if possible, but this was a new level for me. It was the edge of winter, so there weren't so many things from a garden, but there was homemade jam, pesto, sausage, bacon, bread, and eggs of course. I also had tea (PG Tips) steeped in half boiled maple sap (oh MAN). Spring creeps ever closer and so does the promise of fresh food, foraging, and more adventures...

March Maple

Spring is coming. I went to upstate New York for a couple days for a visit and to see what maple trees do this time of year. Up there, the day is getting warmer, snow is melting and the trees are thinking about forming buds. Actually they are doing far more than that. The inner core of the tree is dead, just a memory of the rest of the tree's life, a structure for the living part to hold onto. When the temperature consistently rises enough, the living outside aggressively pulls water up from the ground to nourish the buds it wants to produce. This is when the sap is collected and processed into syrup. When the buds are ready to go, the sap changes and slows down, and the syrup season is over.

There were 6 tapped trees, and while I was there, the sap flowed and each tree gave about a gallon and a half of sap per day. The sap dripped like a leaky faucet into buckets that had to be dumped into a larger bucket, then carried down a little hill and stored in a huge trash barrel on the front porch until it could be boiled down into syrup in small batches. The ratio is about 44 units of sap to one of maple syrup.

I loved collecting the sap, (illustrated above by a young friend of mine). I guess I expected it to look thicker. It looks like water, though I think it catches light a little softer, but that could be how I want to see it. The sap varies by day and weather and tree size, but usually has about a 2% sugar content. To drink it from the tree is just drinking cold and clean water with the faintest sweet taste and the knowledge that you are drinking out of the side of the tree you are leaning on. I didn't expect to feel the way I did about the trees sharing water with me. Sharing their blood. I liked that water moved underground and roots gathered it up and it filtered through the stable body of the trunk. Standing in between the tapped trees, soft dings and thwaps of drops fall evenly into buckets. It was moving.













Here is syrup boiling on the woodstove. Below is a large version, an evaporator in the garage of a neighboring syrupman. It also has a fire underneath which must be stoked. The sap is poured in the top and the liquid travels through a series of channels. The heavier sugar saturated sap stays towards the bottom and is eventually released from a spigot. The more watery sap has more surface area above to release steam, so processing more volume goes a little faster. It is still pretty slow, especially if you are up to your ears in sap.

Some of the syrup I jarred. This is grade B, or at least not Grade A, which is the lighter colored first batch. These jars hadn't settled yet, so they are a little murky looking.



I made this maple fudge candy, something you can't really get wrong. There will be smiling no matter what!

Autumn Opening

On a recent Saturday I had an excellent opportunity to run upstate for fresh air and to feel the proper onset of fall. It was nearly ninety degrees, but I think it still did the trick. I was giddy the moment we got in the car, and got progressively higher on oxygen as we left town, gripped with regular laughter as we hit and ran over falling leaves in the road. Our first stop was a Stewarts Shops, which had one bale of hay outside the front door. Stewart's is a regional gas station/convenience store chain covering a wide plume-shape area rising from New York City. They all have a lengthy self service counter that snakes around, offering all the convenience store items you would expect, but spread throughout a different landscape. I love the fat font that covers everything, identifying the brand's sacked, wrapped and bottled items, and even the occasional novelty spoon. I ordered my favorite: a maple walnut milkshake, and noticed the inventive and appropriately creepy spheres floating above.

Every breath smelled more or less the same. The even, humid air was constantly noticeable, slowly counteracting all the different breaths I took in the city, where there are at least five smells in every block. I felt an inner scale slowly slide towards health, and realized I was relaxing a little from a constant awareness of my immediate environment informed by my nose. Here, inhaling under a tree would probably be a similar experience to inhaling twenty feet away from it, and so I let go of an unconscious humming inside.

We attempted to pick apples, but a slight lack of planning and the bizarre hours of a pick your own place forced us to stop at this spot. I bought some lovely brown eggs, a bag of honeycrisp apples (the BEST), some fresh mozzarella and a maple candy shaped like a maple leaf. There were 15 kinds of apples, and a variety of fresh things, but two thirds of the shelves were stocked with high fructose corn syrup "jam", and 30 colors of "olde-fashioned stick candy". There were wooden things painted with "gone fishin'" and other country wisdom, and unfortunate quantities of bland, processed foods.

We recovered from our roadside retail experience with something cozy, beautiful, mysterious and familial: The opening of Martine Kaczynski's: Route 11. Visit www.ruralprojects.org to see more about this particular work and exciting space. Children ran around, there were arias sung, a bonfire lit, raspberries picked, a biodymic apple eaten.

At the end I stepped away from the fire which was burning one side of me, and walked toward the dark which was just as dark when my eyes adjusted. Maybe I should just camp out for a few days...