nana's hands

I don't remember my great grandmother's face nearly so much as her hands. I remember thinking they weren't much bigger than mine, but severely arthritic and bent. Somehow voluptuously so, with how her enormous knuckles joined by slim digits formed two hourglass shapes on each finger and one more on her thumbs. She passed away when I was in second grade, so my memory of nana is fading, not unlike looking at an old picture of her. One part is clear: her bony little fingers poking the surface of some focaccia over and over and over......

Nana's mother brought her to San Francisco from Genoa just after the turn of the century. Landing in the City at that time must have been a sight to behold. Her mother had helped bring babies into this world, no doubt having tough little hands full of tender loving. My nana learned through these hands, then taught her children, and so forth. Focaccia was but one of the foods handed down, but it holds the distinction as the only one I remember seeing nana make. Years later, seeing my grandma make focaccia reminded me how she poked the dough the same way and and how her mother must have taught her. I'd also notice how grandma's hands looked just like hers. Would I inherit these bony looking hands? I used to wonder.

Six years ago, my grandmother was not doing good. Being carried around everywhere by her husband was wearing on them both and she wasn't going to be around much longer. I had come for a visit to cook her some lunch and hopefully pick her brain about some recipes I could write down. I can't remember what I made, but afterwards I recall being on the back porch with afternoon light roasting me and just barely touching her, she was so thin. I asked her about crab cioppino and got a nice outline that was easy to transcribe. I asked about minestrone and got a similar rough outline. I looked at her gnarled fingers and then I asked about bread.
"It's easy."
"Yeah, like nana's focaccia?"
"Easy."
"So, how about ingredients grandma?"
"Eh, flour, water.........bread is easy dear, don't worry."
I looked down at my notebook

flour
water

"You'll figure it out."

I don't think nana or grandma used sourdough for their leavening. No matter, because somewhere back in that line of knowledge, someone did, and someone else converted over to dried yeast. Besides, grandma's recipe said flour, water.
And so that, is where I start.

fresh picked produce

This past weekend, we went on down to Reedley, to my wife's folk's house. Being that it is the month of July, and her father is a gardening fiend, a trip to their house is like a trip to the market. As usual, we picked stuff for a few hours before packing the car and heading back home, this time resulting in a whopping 111 pounds of produce. Which come to think of it, is about half of our all time biggest load.

While visiting, I was speaking with my father in-law about our recent jam adventures and intentions of preserving stuff from this trip. He mentioned some of the things his mom used to "put up," including elderberry and blueberry when the berries had a good year. His reference to putting up food struck a chord with me. It reminded me of being very small and wandering into my grandma's pantry to stare at the multi-colored glass jars filled with food. He meant preserving and putting on the shelf for storage too, and coming from a child of the depression, this was something nearly everyone did. It wasn't considered liberal, or hippy or new age. You weren't considered weird or even strange in the least bit. You had an excess of a particular kind of food, so you feasted on it and then preserved it for later. No contemplating whether you needed to, or should. No pledging to folks that you would. You just did it.

So are we. I guess that makes me a child of the depression. Only this one is defined as the time when we forgot for the most part, how to grow, prepare and preserve our own food. We rely on others for our processed food needs, keeping the source obscured, cheap and distant, resulting in a massive depression of another kind marked by excess filled with emptiness.

As I write this, we have golden ketchup, seasoned tomato sauce and dried figs. There are peaches to jam, dry, or cut up for freezing. Plums to eat. Not pictured was corn and carrots. There were a number of white onions. That paper bag was half filled with green bell peppers and these light yellow, medium-hot kindamagigs. After picking up a pork roast, tomatillos and jalapeños yesterday, I've been having fun with chile verde in grandma's test kitchen today, and the aroma is making me weep with happiness.

Keeping this one short today, so I gotta go. Gotta stir, peel, chop. Salt and boil. Try not to burn the hell out of myself in the process. A lot of work, that will be yummy later. September and beyond is going to be delicious.

Time to put up.

summer rice torte; grandma's test kitchen round 2

The monkey and I were on our way to Grandma's. I wanted to work on a summer version of rice torte. I wanted to make one sourcing nearly everything from the Berkeley Farmers' Market. I'd pull the store bought butter from the freezer for my one market exception, but the trick would be using brown rice instead of white and still getting that creamy rice pudding quality the dish is known for. A challenge was at hand, but I felt confident that a day in the test kitchen would yield some tasty results.

I used some familiar ingredients and proportions to hang my summer flavors on. For the rice component, I measured out 1 cup of medium grain brown rice, pouring 1/4 cup at a time into a spice grinder and giving it a pulse for a second or two. Mildly ground and cracked, I heated 2 cups of water with 1/2 stick of butter to a boil, adding the rice and simmering for about 30 minutes. The pot on the top right is this now, rice porridge. The cheese is tangy and hard, nice for grating. The squash is a sort of zucchini and some sunburst. That would be fistfulls of garden herbs. One large yellow onion and half dozen crimini later, generously splashed with olive oil and we're ready for a sauté. Put it all together with the eggs, bake it in a pan, and a bit of magic occurs. But more on that after the frying.


This dish makes the kitchen glow with aroma. Toss the onion, mushroom and squash together, cooking over a medium low heat. Add a few piches of salt early on. After ten to fifteen minutes, while the onions are translucent but not yet brown and the squash is getting tender, add the fresh herbs and some more salt. Cook it for another 5 or 10 and adjust the herbs to your liking. While seasoning, you will probably want to eat most of this before using it in the torte. Please refrain, as it will ruin the proportions later on. Trust me.

With the rice cooked, veggies soft, eggs mildly beat and cheese grated, combine everything in a large bowl, being careful to not scramble the eggs while mixing the hot ingredients together. Pour the entire thing into a 9x9 square plus some other fun round-thingy, or put the entire thing into a 9x13. Top it with even more cheese before putting into a very hot oven.




While the torte is in the oven, I like to treat myself to a little something. A little bresaola on sourdough, with a few green leaves and slices of cheese perhaps. It goes down real easy. Maybe even with a dry red wine. With a red beer, I'm sure.




I start the oven out hot, like 425 or even 450. Then after it starts getting poofy and a touch golden, I turn it down to about 375 and finish it. It usually takes about 45 to 55 minutes, with the amount of brown determined by personal preference. With this being a summer torte, I wanted to enhance the golden hues so I kept it on the lighter side. It tasted pretty golden too.



Did I mention this makes a great breakfast? With all the veggies and rice it's downright healthy too. Just don't eat it all in one sitting and have a little patience. It keeps and travels well (don't freeze it though) and will have your friends saying "what was that one dish you made that time, the tasty one with the.......what was that?"
To which you respond "Rice torte."
And they say: "Yeah! That one! MAN I love that torte stuff. Wait, did you say rice? I thought it had cheese or something?"
"Yes, and vegetables."
"Yeah, something green, I liked that, whatever it is."
"Squash. And it has eggs too."
"Yeah.....really?"

Start making this with any consistency, varying the ingredients as the seasons pass, and you will have a conversation along these lines. It's one of those dishes that certain ingredients do well to hide in. Perfect for getting in different foods you don't always like, but couldn't necessarily identify if pressed. So let me take a little inventory. Summer torte: it's yummy, local, ovo-lacto vegetarian, stores well, and allows parents to hide the greens.

I love summer.


SUMMER RICE TORTE
(I've included where I purchased the ingredients with a link if available, if not, then the BFM Vendor Directory link has been provided)

1 cup brown rice (Massa)
2 cups water (EBMUD)
1/2 stick butter (Straus)

2 pounds summer squash (Riverdog)
1 onion (Full Belly)
6-8 medium brown mushrooms (Solano Mushrooms)
1/4 cup olive oil (Stonehouse)
1 T salt (Aged Bay Salt - my own)
1 bunch parsley (from my backyard)
1 t rosemary (frontyard)
1 t thyme (backyard)
2 t oregano (sideyard)

6 eggs (Kaki)
1/3 pound hard cheese (Spring Hill)

Measure out 1/4 cup of brown rice into a spice grinder and give it a whirl. Do this with with the rest of the rice. Heat 2 cups of water and 1/2 a stick of butter to a boil. Add the rice and bring to a simmer. Simmer for 30 minutes or more, stirring every so often to check for consistency and lack of burning. While this is cooking, chop the vegetables and mince the herbs. Start sauteeing the onions, mushrooms and squash. When squash is softening and the onions are translucent but not brown (maybe a bit golden) add the fresh herbs and cook for another ten minutes. All of the vegetables should be soft. Crack the eggs and lightly beat with about 2/3rds of the cheese (finely grated). Combine the cooked veggie mix, cooked rice mix and raw eggs and cheese. Pour into a large caserole dish, cover liberally with more cheese and bake at 425 for 15-20 minutes, then 375 until finished. No more than an hour later and you have a golden summer torte!

Notes:
I have made something like this dish, and other versions of it several times. I have even had it using leftover brown rice and veggies from another dish, married them with cheese and eggs and voila! Yet another torte! There are endless combinations and you'd be surprised how forgiving all that eggs and cheese can be.

grandma's test kitchen

Each week when we cross the bay and visit grandma, I try to get something done that is food related. Whether it's hitting the store, or driving out to west marin for a visit to one great food vendor or another, we usually come home bearing some kind of sustenance (even if we cross the bridge back home empty-handed and have to get a burrito on the way). This past week, I brought some whole wheat dough and the ingredients for a winter version of great-grandma's rice torte and spent the day experimenting in my mom's kitchen.

I've been wanting some rice torte lately. It is a family recipe from italy that incorporates rice, milk, veggies, cheese and eggs, and it is certainly one of those things where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Its flavor is imbued in my genes from eating it so much. Each time I take that first hot bite, it is like hugging the memory of my ancestors, but somehow doing it with my mouth. But in my quest to eat more seasonally I've been unable to make it, for there are no local zucchini at the moment. So I rummaged around the farmer's market veggies we had, picked some of the spinach from my planter box outside my bathroom window, made a few adjustments to the recipe in my head, and dragged it all to my ma's and began.

I cooked my rice with butter and milk while beginning to saute my veggie items. When the cooked items were done and ready for combining, I lightly beat a few eggs, grated some cheese, then combined the whole mess together and threw it into a caserole dish to bake. I topped it off with a sprinkling of more cheese and baked it for almost an hour. Even though it had many different ingredients than usual, it smelled familiar. I mentioned to my ma about the dry jack in particular and she told me that my great-grandmother sometimes used it in place of parmesan in her torte.

Whoa! I had unknowingly re-created a tweak on nana's torte recipe by using a different cheese. No wonder it smelled so familiar. Can you say: "deep-seated aroma memory being recalled........*deep nasal inhale*......ahhhhh."

The finished product looked like the real deal. I couldn't wait to cut into it, but it really needs to cool some and de-gas a bit. I put my flat whole wheat baguettes in the oven and prayed that they would poof up some. I had brought a "new" whole wheat sourdough with me, but it really needed to be fed more before having the strength to lift all that whole-grain goodness. The baguettes tasted nice in the end, even if they could be yielded as weaponry as soon as they cooled. The torte though, was worthy of note and needed to be recorded so that I may re-create it some other winter or spring while awaiting the arrival of garden fresh zucchini.

WINTER RICE TORTE

1 head of broccoli
1 large yellow onion
6 small stalks celery
3-4 ounces trumpet mushrooms
1 bunch Italian parsley
6 ounces baby spinach

1 c arborio rice
4 c milk
1/2 stick butter

4 eggs
1 c grated dry jack

cook rice in milk and butter with salt and pepper to taste, until tender but not completely done (about 20 minutes). while cooking rice, saute onions, mushrooms and celery in olive oil. when onions are translucent add chopped broccoli and most of chopped parsley. saute until most of moisture is gone and the veggies are soft. toss in spinach and remainder of parsley and continue to saute until popeye begins to wilt. remove from heat and set aside. do the same with the rice. crack them eggs and mix with the grated cheese. combine the rice, veggie saute, and egg/cheese mixture and mix thoroughly. pour into a 12 inch oval caserole dish or 9x9 inch square and sprinkle with more grated cheese. bake at 375 for 45-60 minutes, depending on the initial wetness of the cheesey rice n' veggie glop and the degree of brown you like on the top.

As usual, this goes well with a nice dark, high-alcohol beer. In this case, I was wishing I had a Moretti La Rossa. For you TJ's folks out there, it's that Italian 6-pack in the red carton with the guy who looks like he's gonna blow the head off his beer. I think it's $5.99 (a great deal considering it says "doppio malto" and carries a 7.2% rating). The green lager Moretti makes is fine and all, but the dark red is MMMM! If you've never had two or three of them, go get yourself some and give it a try, when they open at 9 am.....