happy new year!

This is just to say - happy new year! Better late than never. We ushered in twenty twelve in style...Cappuccinos and eggs with James' giant cabbage and shaved white truffles. Cheers to living a luscious life!

giving thanks.

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.

Khalil Gibran

divine and predestinated.

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. 

here and everywhere.

            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

Wisdom of the Last Farmer by Mas Masamoto

Foot Matters by Mark Bittman

Taming the Tiger Within by Thich Nhat Hanh

The Hero with a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell

The End of Materialism by Charles T. Tart, PH.D.

i heart new york a lot.

          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! 

something old.

            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. 

an april affair.

April Fourteenth 2011

Sir Francis Drake cheese

with fava beans and chive buds

Grilled artichokes 

with King Oysters and Spring Onions

Grilled Sea Bass, shaved fennel,

Oro Blanco, mustard greens 
and crispy skin

English pea ravioli with Yella’s ricotta,

pantaleo Sardinian goat cheese,

brown butter, and sage

Lamb chops with creamy lentils, leeks,

roasted olives

Roasted pineapple ice cream

macadamia nut cookies

           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!

Photos courtesy of Joe Lazo.