Then an old man, a keeper of an inn, said, "Speak to us of Eating and Drinking."
And he said: Would that you could live on the fragrance of the earth, and like an air plant be sustained by the light.
But since you must kill to eat, and rob the young of its mother's milk to quench your thirst, let it then be an act of worship,
And let your board stand an altar on which the pure and the innocent of forest and plain are sacrificed for that which is purer and still more innocent in many.
When you kill a beast say to him in your hear,
"By the same power that slays you, I to am slain; and I too shall be consumed. For the law that delivered you into my hand shall deliver me into a mightier hand.
Your blood and my blood is naught but the sap that feeds the tree of heaven."
And when you crush an apple with your teeth, say to it in your heart,
"Your seeds shall live in my body,
And the buds of your tomorrow shall blossom in my heart, And your fragrance shall be my breath,
And together we shall rejoice through all the seasons."
And in the autumn, when you gather the grapes of your vineyard for the winepress, say in you heart,
"I too am a vineyard, and my fruit shall be gathered for the winepress, and like new wine I shall be kept in eternal vessels."
And in winter, when you draw the wine, let there be in your heart a song for each cup;
And let there be in the song a remembrance for the autumn days, and for the vineyard, and for the winepress.
Over the past few weeks I have been slowly savoring Isak Dinesen's Out of Africa in rotation with two or three other books. I can't dedicate myself solely to this one work simply because I do not want it to end. It just so happens that my cousin in Oklahoma is reading the same book at the same time and is convinced that it must be the most beautiful book she's ever read. I do agree.
Dinesen, the pen name under which the Danish author Karen Blixen worked, stuns me with her ability to capture something almost unnameable into elegant prose - the wild sorcery of a cook. Living on her coffee plantation in Kenya in the early 1900s, Blixen introduces us to Kamante, her faithful African tribesboy servant, and his place in the kitchen. She writes,
"Now when I find Kamante at hand, as a familiar spirit to cook with, this devotion again took hold of me. There was to me a great perspective in our working together. Nothing, I thought, could be more mysterious than this natural instinct in a Savage for our culinary art. It made me take another view of our civilization; after all it might be in some way divine and predestinated. Kamante, in all cooking matters , had a surprising manual adroitness. The great tricks and tours-de-force of the kitchen were child's play to his dark crooked hands; they knew on their own everything about omelettes, vol-au-vents, sauces, and mayonnaises. He had a special gift for making things light, as in the legend the infant Christ forms birds out of clay and tells them to fly. He scorned all complicated tools, as if impatient of too much independence in them, and when I gave him a machine for beating eggs set it aside to rust, and beat whites of egg with a weeding knife that I had had to weed the lawn with, and his whites of egg towered up like light clouds. As a Cook he had a penetrating, inspired eye, and would pick out the fattest chicken out of a whole poultry yard, and he gravely weighed an egg in hand, and knew when it had been laid. He had a great memory for recipes. He could not read, and he knew no English so that cookery-books were of no use to him, but he must have held all that he was ever taught stored up in his ungraceful head, according to some systematization of his own, which I should never know. He had named the dishes after some event which had taken place on the day they had been shown to him, and he spoke of the sauce of the lightning that struck the tree, and of the sauce of the grey horse that died. He did at times taste the food that he cooked, but then with a distrustful face, like a witch who takes a sip out of her cauldron. He stuck to the maizecobs of his fathers" (p. 38-9).
It was only today that I discovered Blixen also authored Babette's Feast, the iconic French culinary fable that later became a film in the 80s - one of my favorites.
This weekend I ventured out of the city for a visit to the Hamptons. The weather was grand—surprisingly warm for October, and the warm, round autumn light fell in great big shafts across the landscape. It’s the kind of natural light that painters dream of. I spent the day breathing in fresh air—fresh air! I had forgotten what a little oxygen can do for the mind and spirit. The inviting, open terrain got me thinking about Windrose Farm. I knew I had been forgetting something…
My little outing gave me the same invigorating feeling that I experience each time I pay a visit to Barbara and Bill over at Windrose. A lot of it has to do with their diehard commitment to a progressive vision of community. The farm is a wonderful resource that has taught me a lot about the relationship between my social and physical environments. I love that Windrose welcomes everyone to the farm, and eagerly shares knowledge with anyone who is willing. Last February David and I stopped in for a late supper on our way to the Bay Area, and we brought some fresh seafood along with us. The snapper was perfectly complemented by that day's morning harvest. David put together a raw salad of fennel, cherry tomatoes, young garlic, and agretti—a crunchy, green vegetable that tastes both salty and bitter, and is technically a succulent shrub.
There was lots of rosé to go around, and the dinner conversation continued long after the last morsel of food had been eaten. I was delighted when Bill handed me the Windrose Farm Book List on my way out the door. At the very top it says:Books for those who wish to welcome the knowledge of others & engage in the future of man, here and everywhere. I felt like I needed to start reading immediately. It’s certainly an ambitious list, and I’m determined to work my way through it. Join me?
Windrose Farm Book List
A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson
Blessed Unrest by Paul Hawken
Stolen Harvest by Vandana Shiva
Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver
Anything! by Wendell Berry
Bad Dirt—Wyoming Stories 2 by Annie Proulx
People with Dirty Hands by Robin Chotzinoff
Hope’s Edge by Frances Moor and Anna Lappé
Hot, Flat, & Crowded by Thomas L. Friedman
1491: New Revelations of the Americas before Columbus by Charles C. Mann
The Revenge of Gaia by James Lovelock
The World Without Us by Alan Weisman
Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond
Collapse by Jared Diamond
Team of Rivals by Doris Kearns Goodwin
The Hummingbird’s Daughter by Luis Alberto Urrea
The Devil’s Highway by Luis Alberto Urrea
Across Realtime by Vernor Vinge
Plenty: One Man, One Woman, & a Raucous Year of Eating Local by Alisa Smith
Real Food by Nina Planck
The Last Farmer: An American Memoir by Howard Khon
The Rise and Fall of Alexandria Birthplace of the Modern World by Justin Pollard
The One-Straw Revolution by Masanobu Fukuoka
The Ethics of What We Eat by Peter Singer and Jim Mason
We have a lot of catching up to do. Oh goodness, where to begin? I’m in the Big Apple again, and am missing all of you so much. SummerWinter has been on a bit of a hiatus, but that doesn’t mean we’ve broken off our love affair with food. I don’t think we could ever do that. I’ve been reminded that there are always ways of coming around the table regardless of where you are and what you are eating. As long as you surround yourself with like-minded souls, the common act of sharing a meal will be a nourishing one.
And I have lots to share. I’ve been cooking more because Yella and David are not around to spoil me. Which means I’ve been familiarizing myself with the produce that the city has to offer. Sorry, New York, California’s impossible to beat in this department. Nevertheless, I’ve been delighting in reacquainting myself with New York’s seasons—real seasons, not make-believe ones—and of course, with its unending selection of delectable goodness. I’ve missed the restaurants—my favorite old haunts, the indispensable classics, and everything in between.
Two weeks ago I had the pleasure of hosting David for his first official visit to New York. We happily ate our way through the city. As most of you know, it’s impossible to squeeze everything in, but I did my best. We ate many spectacular things that I want to tell you about in a future post. But for now, I just want to remind you of the importance of coming together to share the earth’s bounty. Wherever you are, find a way!
Today, Henry, one of our wine dudes, delighted me with a glass of almost-one-hundred-year-old Portuguese Madeira (she fell but one year short!) at the end of a lovely little lunch on the patio. Raisin, maple, and butterscotch...remarkably not sweet, it made me pucker. X! This is just a quiet toast to all of you, if you're out there - cheers to summertime and LIFE, some things old, some things new.
May is already upon us but we’d like to reflect on last month’s gifts. Our April guest of honor, Corina, chef and owner of Canelé, offered her unmatched charm and insight about the farms SummerWinter has been involved with over the course of the past year. It was an absolute delight to finally get to feed her after relishing in so many exquisite meals at her cozy restaurant, hands down our favorite brunch in Los Angeles. The baked pancake with Meyer lemon custard is sweet breakfast perfection, a proud half-balloon that’s buttery, fluffy, and crispy on the edges. The creamy tanginess of the curd is a flawless accompaniment. We frequently make the trek to the east side just to experience Corina’s delightful, honest food and enjoy the view of her exposed kitchen which is always bustling.
There was also lots of hum about sushi at April’s supper. Mori Sushi. So far it’s been our favorite sushi destination in the area. From what we gather, Chef Morihiro Onadera has recently sold the place to his long-time protégé, and is currently working on another project. Mori accounts for every aspect of the meal he is serving, which is why dining with him has been so extraordinary. He personally supervises his own rice field in Sacramento, and polishes the grains daily. All of the serving dishes or Utsuwa in his restaurant are hand-crafted ceramics by Mori himself. He serves only fresh wasabi using the traditional Japanese method of grating with a sharkskin grater. He even brews his own soy sauce! Some memorable bites have been baby spring squid, his homemade tofu (so soft it melts away at the touch of your tongue), kohada (Japanese sardine), halibut fin, baby barracuda, abalone, and toro. His umeboshi roll makes me giddy, and the house black sesame ice cream hits those delicate and earthy notes just so. We’re not sure if the restaurant will remain the same without Mori, but we’ll definitely be keeping tabs.
Now, enough about restaurants! As for the meal we served, it was springtime at its best. Fresh peas—finally sweet, sweet, sweet! Grilled spring onions from Schaner Farm that dissolve tenderly in the mouth. Giant, and I mean huge, artichokes from Daisy at Life’s A Choke Farm that deliver – warm and deeply satisfying off the grill, nice and charred. An exciting pairing of fresh favas with Sir Francis Drake cheese, a Cowgirl Creamery cult favorite that is only occasionally produced when the culture stemming from their Mt. Tam staple gets a little funky. When this happens, the creamery will bathe the rind of their delightful mistake in a French fortified wine called Beaume de Venise, and top it off with macerated currants to create a once-in-a-blue-moon delicacy. It tastes like a little miracle—like the Pacific Ocean, then more like a marsh, then a burst of wildflowers.
Up next, please come join us for our one-year anniversary dinner at Windrose Farm in Paso Robles. There will be lots of talk, lots of bites, and lots of space to romp around. We’re going to make a night of it, so bring your tent and sleepover after dinner! Come out and play!
I see that Golden Gate and it’s no wonder I feel so at home here. No wonder to me at all. I was thrilled to have a whole handful of dear friends join my sister, Sandra, and I for a springtime romp last week around the Bay (and, I must admit, a much-needed break from wacky and wonderful Los Angeles). “Mixed bag”, said lovingly, is the only way to describe this group: friends and lovers, Midwesterners to Frenchmen to our very own Guy, all complete with some serious quirks and compulsions, distinct humour and taste. However, if there is one thing we all share deeply, authentically, and to the core, it is our love of food and wine. And let me assure you, we sucked the Bay Area bone-dry.
These four days we spent up North were marked by that true San Francisco weather – grey and damp, romantic and inspiring of (very) early cocktails. I realize how spoiled I have become living in the alternate universe that is Los Angeles, where to “brave” the wet weather is a rare necessity. Back home in the Bay I happily don my duckboots and wool coat to the Ferry Building for Market where I get an initial sense of what the earth’s best offerings are in the top half of my home state: the last of winter’s finest citrus, hearty red Russian kale and tiny, lacy mustard greens. I went home with plenty of treasures…
Apart from the weather, the other defining theme of this grand excursion was eating with our hands. From gleaming Steam Boat oysters at Zuni Café to impeccable pizzas at Delfina, this action is so informal, so satisfying, so basic. It has got to be one of my very favorite things to do. Hands down…ha!
After a few days of immense enjoyment our trip culminated with a rather impromptu SummerWinter supper held at the home of our godparents, Glen and Masae Gormezano, where we were given free reign in this kitchen, with David happily at the helm. After collecting plenty of booty from Monterey Fish Market and Berkeley Bowl, we returned to Mill Valley, nestled in a pocket between Mt. Tam, Muir Woods, and the Pacific, and began to prepare. One by one, friends began to turn up (turnip!), offering their hands to help create what resulted to be a truly glorious meal. To see a kitchen filled with those I love and admire shelling fava beans side by side – really, I couldn’t be more content. Moments such as these remind me of the natural law of food and eating that favors togetherness. It is an essential and wonderful tendency to share not just the food itself, but oneself. Time. Attention. When I find myself at the Supper table I know I have arrived because there is no other place I would rather be.
This time, SummerWinter manifested in a very Northern California sort of a way. I recall slow-roasted whole spring torpedo onions with aioli, live Santa Barbara spot prawns on the grill like candy, Red Hawk triple cream from Pt. Reyes with smoked Monterey Bay sardine on ACME toast.
Of course, the trip to the airport couldn’t have been more of a harried, mad dash and yet, we still found five spare minutes to grab a boxful of warm croissants almost directly from Tartine’s oven. If this means nothing to you from experience, let me say that it is something like heaven cracking open just a little bit for you to see in. I’m sure my fingers were still buttery when we landed back in L.A.
March 17th was small and intimate – eight lovely guests gathered around the SummerWinter table to share a meal and each other’s company. The menu was inspired by that early spring feeling in the air with just a hint of Saint Paddy’s for good measure. For this event we chose not to send guests a composed menu beforehand—a true exercise in trust! The liberty of designing a menu on the fly allows more room for creative innovation to naturally play itself out. Take a look at what we served below! Please join us for our next event on April 14th.
March Seventeenth Menu
Toasts
Radish & Celery Root Butter
Smoked Tomato and Asparagus
Scallop, pea tendrils & carrots
Cabbage leaves, beets, and Windrose whole green garlic
Duck egg pasta rags
Cacio e Pepe
Duck Breast, Puntarelle, Blueberry
and herbes de provence
Cheese & black sage honey
Vanilla pound cake with Neroli Ice Cream and citrus
& street scholars that's majoring in culinary arts
You know how to work bread cheese & dough
from scratch but see the catch is you can get caught
Know what ya sellin' what ya bought so cut that big talk”
Music motivates the soul, or at least it certainly motivates mine. Naturally, my inspirations come through my jams. I may have little to no direct connection to the food of the south, but my theory persists that the food I make is soul food. Whether at home or in a professional kitchen, I’m listening to the music that makes me happy as I work to make your mouths happy… and this is where it begins.
So, maybe my first post has taken a while. Maybe I’m just a procrastinator. Maybe you won’t read this and I’m rambling to myself. Frankly, I had to think about why I do this and what moves me to do it. I mean, I get passionate about food… real passionate. I ‘ve been getting carried away with this love affair for so long that I kinda forgot where it started. Farms, at home, as a kid and traveling were all considered; no doubt though, my love of food was nurtured by my love of music.
Like an iron skillet upside the head, I realized that the genesis of this came at a time when my mind was wrapped around lyrics and beats by artists like Mos Def, Talib Kweli, Tribe Called Quest, El-P, the roots and Outkast to name a few. The latter being whose lyrics I would open with and repeat in my head almost every day in the kitchen. Charged with a rhythm that kept me moving and lyrics that were insightful and in tune with a generation seeking change, these artists provoked, challenged and inspired my young mind.
In those days I worked on a farm in rural Michigan outside Grand Rapids. Hands dirty with soil, I would drive back to the city with my Cadillac’s trunk full of bounty. Preparing food for any number of my transient friends at the time, I discovered a spark. Furthermore, the music was the billows nurturing that spark. Inspirations fueled by passions wrapped in revelations made real by actions. How were farming practices affecting our food supplies? Why was the food at restaurants so shitty? Why don’t more people grow their own food? Are there ways to break down the walls that separate different cultures? Questions led to more questions.
What all this really equates to is an understanding. Food is life. Not just fuel, food is what brings us together. Like other forms of art, food has a place in our history present and future. I enjoy learning about the stories of the land and the people, as well as sharing personal stories. All this I want to communicate and record, for myself and for you, the reader. What inspired me to finally start writing were those exact lyrics at the top of my post. Music feeds the soul bringing you the food for taste and thought.
While, my musical taste has diversified extensively in mostly offbeat ways, those beats and lyrics are invariably what I turn to when I need a little extra push to get through a long day in the kitchen or preparing for an intimate supper. Maybe, this post will be the one that gets my regular contributions off to an awkward start, but I like awkward. Common grounds are what I live for, and I find that food and music are easy ice-breakers. One final thought, eat more radicchio.
At the center of Windrose Farm in Paso Robles, California, you will find an enormous Oak. Every so often, an acorn will drop from the tree, requiring that any farmer or visitor perusing the property wear a sturdy, wide-brimmed hat for protection. If you aren’t wearing one, you will be inevitably struck, and Farmer Bill gets a kick out of it every time. He’s also quick to take it as an opportunity for an ecology lesson: “Now, where do you suppose those acorns come from?” David and I both erroneously assumed that the acorns fall from the tree branches as a means of reproduction, like any other tree would spread its seed. But that would be too obvious, and upon arriving at Windrose one realizes that there’s nothing obvious or ordinary about it.
Farmer Bill explains: “Those acorns are little bullets! The birds are hunting for worms! The woodpeckers make a hole in the trunk, stick an acorn inside, and when they come back later, they find worms munchin’ away on the acorn, which means worms for dinner! Now, that’s clever.” Bill smiles to himself and gazes up at the oak, taking true delight in the micro-ecosystem’s natural intelligence.
Last year SummerWinter arranged for Windrose Farm to raise a lamb for supper club with the intention of educating ourselves, as well as our guests, about the process of a lamb slaughter from start to finish. We wanted to learn everything about the animal leading up to the actual cooking—the land, farmers, and slaughtering itself. Once the lamb was air-cured for a week or so, David broke down the animal himself before preparing it several different ways for a supper club event back in October.
Barbara and Bill were incredibly hospitable. Upon our arrival, we were invited into their home and offered Bill’s Tractor Bread, the famous loaf he bakes himself. Every day Farmer Bill kneads his dough on an old butcher’s block that sits in the center of his modest kitchen, which is lined with countless treasured cookbooks. After our small morning snack, Bill showed us a Native American stone mortar and pestle he had found on the property. Up until 1930,Windrose Farm was inhabited by the Salinan Native Americans who hunted and gathered on the Central Californian land. They would break open the acorns with a small stone and place them in the sun to dry. Once dried, they were pounded in a stone mortar until a fine flour was obtained which could be used for acorn mush soup or bread. Clever and practical, just like those woodpeckers.
As opposed to the privileged choicewe are given to eat locally today, this kind of sustenance was not an optional course of action. It was simply the relationship shared by the Salinan people with the land based on locale. Wherever you are, eat what’s available, when available. This instills an intrinsic respect for the land, which Bill and Barbara have worked hard to maintain and establish as a founding principle of Windrose Farm. When it comes to farming, they subscribe to a biodynamic philosophy. In short, “that the farm should be seen as an ecosystem in its own right, and that our striving should be to move towards building and maintaining plant and animal communities, which are ecologically suited to its unique combination of soil, climate and place." Ultimately, they would like to create a self-sustaining farm that relies on no outside source materials. That’s the intention, and every day they get a little closer to this goal. Thank you, Barbara, Bill, and Windrose Farm!
We are hoping for a SummerWinter supper on the farm come SPRING. Stay tuned and jump on the wagon!
Maybe it’s all the California inside me, maybe it’s my hunter-gatherer tendencies shining through, maybe it’s the association I’ve given it to my father – I can’t rightly say. All I know is that I find my true love in a palm full of granola. I always have.
Ideally, I seek out the following qualities in this whenever-food: a dry-crispness to the oats, which is absolutely not a mark of boring flatness but slow-roasted freshness. It's the slow-roasting that offers the comforting depth that granola should have. Under-sweetness and more-than-expected sea-saltiness are essential. I’ve found using a combination of molasses, buckwheat honey, and maple syrup together, each very moderately, creates yet another dimension, giving the granola that mysterious appeal that keeps everyone poking like pigeons for more. And it’s a treasure hunt. My treats are deeply toasty pecans, walnuts, pepitas, and thick flakes of coconut. The object, as far as ratios are concerned, is to have just enough treasures so that it’s not too hard to find them but it’s still exciting when you do. The final and most important note – a little butter never hurt anybody. Never forget that.
As far as fruit is concerned, I like to leave that up to the eater. My granola serves as a blank canvas and welcomes additions of raisins, currants or banana slices – anything at all. Lately, though, I’ve been giving bee pollen and a sprinkling of cacao nibs a whirl.
