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The Food Maven Diary
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What's In Season?
I know it's been too long since my last letter. I took a vacation. When I lived in the country (Litchfield County, Connecticut), I used to say "I'd rather cook it than grow it." For the last few weeks, I've been feeling like I'd rather cook it than write about it.
(But speaking of my writing: Did you see I was quoted in the New York Times last week? Melissa Clark was inspired by a comment I made about flanken in Jewish Home Cooking. Take a look at Melissa's column. I am definitely making her recipe.)
Being an old-time newspaper man and news junkie, I have various TV news stations on while I cook, and listening to the media lately you'd think that eating locally grown food in season was a new idea. A revelation! It's like Alice Waters was born yesterday. (She's somewhat over 60.) It's like (does anyone remember but me?) Adele Davis and Gaylord Hauser never existed, like the Hippies of my generation never moved to Vermont.
The truth is, the idea that it is a good thing to eat locally and in season (not to mention organically) is finally catching on after at least 50 years of even lowly newspaper food writers extolling its pleasure benefits, as well as the nutritional, environmental and, yes, economic and political virtues. Finally, we are facing the problems caused by our industrialized, big-business food supply. See the recently released movie "Food, Inc.", the documentary about America's food issues. It barely skims the surface, but it will get you thinking. It may also discourage you from ever buying pre-ground meat again.
Mrs. Obama has helped focus attention on our national food and nutrition issues by planting the first White House vegetable garden, a simple, easy but significantly symbolic thing to do, although she wasn't the first First Lady to grow veggies on the Pennsylvania Ave. lawn. Eleanor Roosevelt had a Victory Garden. It also helped that last month the Queen of England planted a vegetable garden at Buckingham Palace, right in the middle of London. According to news reports, she's been spending time on the phone with her new buddy Michelle. But let's not forget that Eliazabeth II's son, Prince Charles, was considered a quack not many years ago because he turned his farm lands in Cornwall organic. (By the way, the cookies and crackers - biscuits in British English - produced from his organic grains are sold in the U.S. under the label Duchy Originals. They are expensive but excellent.)
Speaking of princes, my nephew-the-doctor, who, on a resident's paltry salary, cooks for himself most nights - and likes it - asked me recently, "How do you know when something is in season?" Great question! What with strawberries featured in the supermarket in February (Valentine's Day food?!) and broccoli available 365 days a year, who can know what's in season when? Americans have become totally disconnected to the sources of their food. It's like the old joke about city kids thinking chocolate milk comes from brown cows. (Oh? You didn't know it was a joke?)
So how do you know when foods are locally in season? Two weeks later, Dr. Alexander just showed me how his new AT&T digital gizmo has an "app" - computer-speak for "application" - that tells him what's in season, how to buy it, how to store it, etc. There used to be charts giving all that information published by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and by state agriculture departments. When I was a newspaper food editor (Newsday, N.Y. Daily News), I was sent these all the time. I haven't seen one in years, and for some reason I can't find one searching the internet. (If you do find one, let me know where it is.)
To know when what is in season, my best advice these days is to visit a local farmers market. Even if you can't get to a farm to see your food growing from the earth (or in an animal enclosure), buying direct from farmers certainly is a lesson in the local growing seasons. In New York City, the farmers at our farmers markets (Greenmarkets) must come from within 100 miles of the city. Well, at least you know the produce isn't from Florida, California, Texas, Mexico, or greenhouses in Holland or Canada.
Yes, strawberries are grown in Florida in February. You wanna say that's "in season," go ahead. But these, along with winter tomatoes and other foods not grown locally, have been hybridized and harvested for transport. They are varieties meant to withstand the rigors of their passage from field to your table, and they are picked not at the moment they are ready to eat, but before they are ready to eat, so they can make it to market in what looks like decent visible condition. In addition, it costs a lot in manpower and energy to transport food long distances.
Did you ever wonder why so-called "heirloom" tomatoes are called "heirloom" and why they taste so much better than even, say, famous New Jersey beefsteak tomatoes? Most of these old varieties stopped being grown because they were too delicate for the modern food chain. In America, someone, a big businessman-farmer or state university scientist, decided for us that we were willing to give up that flavor so we could eat tomatoes all year. They were bred to be round enough to roll on a conveyor belt and are picked hard and green, but not to have flavor or good texture. All you need to do is gas them with ethylene to make them red, if not fragrant, sweet and flavorful. I don't have facts and figures for a nutritional comparison, but I can't imagine that a fully ripe, freshly picked, locally grown vegetable has any competition.
GARLIC IS IN SEASON
We don't usually think of garlic as seasonal. It's available in the supermarket all year, although sometimes, I am sure you have noticed, it is better flavored and moister than at other times. The garlic you can begin buying now is plump and juicy, whether grown locally or coming from California. Almost all American-grown garlic is harvested in Gilroy, California, a town that I hear reeks of garlic and holds an annual, famous garlic festival , this year on July 23 to 26.
By January, this garlic will be either drying up or sprouting green, or both. Soon after Christmas, however, garlic from Mexico comes into our market, then garlic from Argentina - those large purple-skinned bulbs are usually Argentine. Lately, we have also been getting garlic from China, packaged in net bags. It's good. I like it. So I'm not suggesting that you eat only locally grown garlic, then give up imported garlic and go without garlic for the rest of the year. Garlic is a bulb that is easily stored, and travels well, apparently even from China.
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Right now, because the weather has been so cool, there are still garlic scapes in our local farmers markets. They are usually gone by mid July. (For an explanation of scapes, and a recipe, see last June's Maven's Diary entry.) More of the moment, you can now also buy freshly dug garlic, sometimes called spring garlic, whose skins, which eventually become dry and thin like paper, are still plump with moisture. Once garlic is harvested, until the end of August, it is cured by hanging it with good air circulation. Once the pulpy skin turns paper-like, the bulbs can be stored at room temperature, some varieties longer than others but usually at least several months. (Deck the halls with garlands of garlic!)
I can't seem to get enough of this year's freshly dug garlic, which has a fresher fragrance and more delicate flavor than cured garlic. I keep making bruschetta with it: Toast some sturdy, crusty bread and while it is still hot, rub a cut clove of garlic on it - on both sides if you love the garlic as much as I do. Then drizzle the bread with your best extra virgin olive oil and sprinkle with a little salt.
Or, slice the garlic thinly and cook it over low heat in olive oil for just a few minutes, then toss in any boiled leafy vegetable. I have been getting big bags of beet greens free at the Greenmarket. Many people don't know that the leaves are as delicious as the bulbous roots and they leave them behind. The farmers are happy to hand them out to anyone who asks. Other greens to garlic-up are Swiss chard, which is basically beets bred for their leaves and stems instead of their roots, and collards, which I also see in the farmers market now.
Time to get back to the kitchen.
