Sugar and Spice

I contend that my mom’s gingersnap recipe makes some of the best cookies in holiday circulation. Of the myriad baked goods and confectioneries that accompany the fall and winter, these spiced cookies are amongst the most classic, simple, and comforting indulgences. My mother’s recipe seems to have the perfect balance of different spices, and always produces a beautiful brown cookie with the traditional cracked top. While the ginger and molasses are the predominant tastes in these cookies, it is complimented by cinnamon, cloves, and nutmeg, staples of fall and winter seasonal fare.

Ginger, of course, is a root the flesh of which has a distinctive and pungent kick to it. The cultivation and use of it in food and medicine began in India and southeast Asia. It is widely regarded as an effective digestive aid, as well as useful in the soothing of colds. I find it makes a good warming and healing tea in the colder months because of its sharp flavor.

Cinnamon cultivation began in Sri Lanka and it comes from the bark of an evergreen tree. The bark is peeled from the young shoots of the cinnamon tree, then left to dry and form the quills we know as cinnamon sticks. Nutmeg is ground from the seed of another evergreen tree indigenous to southeast Asia. Cloves are the dried flower buds of a tree from Indonesia.

Spiced cookies and breads became very popular in Europe in the Middle Ages, once the routes of trade with Asia were opened. Gingersnaps themselves are German in their origin, while England and Scandinavia also have long histories of dark and flavorful cookies like these.

This recipe produces a relatively soft cookie, but if you are looking for a harder, snappier texture an extra minute or two in the oven might be able to give you some of that.

Gingersnaps

1 cup sugar
¾ cup butter (a stick and a half)
¼ cup molasses
1 egg
2 ¼ cup flour
2 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. cinnamon
½ tsp. salt
1 tsp. ginger
½ tsp. cloves
½ tsp. nutmeg
¼ cup sugar

In a large bowl mix 1 cup sugar, butter, molasses and egg. Beat until light and fluffy. Add the flour, baking soda, cinnamon, salt, ginger, cloves and nutmeg. Mix everything together. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and set in the refrigerator for about an hour. It will make the dough much easier to handle.

After refrigerating the dough, heat the oven to 350 degrees.

Take the dough and shape into 1-inch balls, rolling each in the extra ¼ cup sugar. Place the balls 2 inches apart on ungreased cookie sheets.

Bake at 350 degrees for 8 to 12 minutes until set. They should expand, puff up, then flatten and begin to crack. Once set, take the cookies out allowing them to cool for 1 minute on the baking sheet. Remove from the cookie sheets to finish cooling.

This recipe should yield about 5 dozen cookies, and take about 2 hours, including the refrigeration and the baking time.

Cold Crop

I'm sitting right now at a little cafe in Petworth, drinking a cup of Polish coffee, and warming my hands from the past hour of weeding and thinning turnips. It's currently 35 degrees in Washington. Looking at the forecast for the next week, it's doubtful that temperatures will climb above 45 degrees. We are past the 60 degree, bucolic, golden leaved days of fall, and it feels we are rapidly approaching winter. I have already seen snow in the city twice. Just a few flakes really, and nothing that would stick, but it was snow. All around me I hear people predicting a long cold winter, and the conditions now seem to indicate as much. It is deeply cold, and not even December. I certainly don't want to argue with Nature and its cycles of temperature, but the current weather conditions are causing a shift in the patterns of my life.

It is dark now when I leave work which is frankly a little dejecting sometimes. The most significant outcome of this daylight rearrangement is that I find myself having very few opportunities to go out to the garden. At the same time, I think it's pretty amazing how the earth does go through cycles. If the darkness starts to get me down, just thinking about reasons for it and the tilt of the earth remind me that that it is good and right for the natural word to cycle thusly. It is the necessary counterpart to the long hot days of summer. With the weather as it is I can be a hermit, huddled inside with a cup of coffee, reading or writing, and not feel guilty about it. It is a time that I can seek a different sort of cultivation, both in my own life and in the life of my garden.

After all, the weeds are not deterred by the cold weather. I should not be either

I have been harvesting a hearty crop of lettuces for the past month and a half, and it seems as if I still have a fair bit of that to look forward too. The Oakleaf lettuce and Arugula in particular seem to withstand the cold heartily. I had my first harvest of the purple sheened kale this last week, and cooked most of it up with potatoes and olive oil in a creamy soup.  I will be sharing some of these greens with my family at Thanksgiving in a few days.  We'll see what happens with my cabbages... it may be to cold for them to fully mature.

My greatest joys come from the root vegetables: the large

 round white turnips, the radishes that come in rose or black. As much as I love cultivating these though, I'm still not an expert at using them in the kitchen. I'll eat them raw, or roasted with onions and garlic. The radish tops are usable in soups. But I definitely want to expand my root recipe lexicon.

With Daniel's help I was able to clear out the last remnants of summer's crop. The beans, eggplant, and peppers have all been uprooted, and laid back down in the plot where they will decompose back into the land. After a long summer of making homes in the dirt, these plants were pretty persistent and it took some good tugging to get some of them up out of the ground. 

It is good to have a reason to go outside, a motivation to deal with the cold.  The grey and barren city can deter from this.  I have hope that I will be able to reap some harvest until January when I leave the city.  

The Great Pumpkin

Just before Halloween, my partner and I found ourselves making our way down Sugarloaf Mountain in Dickerson, MD after a day long venture through the woods and the rocks, to the summit of this low but lovely peak. The mountain itself is small, at only about 800 feet higher than the surrounding farmland, but this allowed for some spectacular views of the Potomac. It was a crisp fall day, brightened by the seasonal foliage, and only 40 or 45 minutes out of the city. While the mountain itself was our destination, one of the highlights of the day for me was the drive through the bucolic farmland of northern Montgomery County, some of the highlights of which include a vineyard and the largest and most diverse squash stand I have ever seen. We passed the stand a few minutes before reaching the mountain itself, and I declared definitively that we would be stopping there on the way back. I had a mission in mind that I had to fulfill.

That mission was a pumpkin. Not just any pumpkin, but a sugar pumpkin that I could use for baking. Most pumpkins you encounter are no good for cooking with; they are bred to be carved and decorated, sacrificing size and shape for bland flavor and unappealing texture. Sugar Pumpkins, however, are small, round, and sweet. There are a number of different kinds of baking pumpkins, though the sugar is the most common. Cinderella is a French Heirloom variety also known as Rouge vif d'Etampes, that look just as you would imagine the carriage from the Fairy Tale conjured up by a fairy godmother. Or there is the Jarrahdale Pumpkin, with blue-grey skin, and bright orange flesh, with a wonderful culinary reputation. The stand had pumpkins and other squash of all shapes, sizes, and colors, many of which I don't think I have ever seen before. Also, hot apple cider for you to drink while you browse. I stuck to the basics though, and get my archetypal little sugar pumpkin.

Before using any kind of squash, I prefer baking it for a while, though you can boil or even microwave them to get them soft and workable. To bake, cut the pumpkin in half, getting rid of the stem, then scoop out the pulp and seeds. Save the seeds for roasting later. You need a good large knife you can get some leverage out of. Once cut, place the two halves face down in a shallow baking dish, and cover with aluminum foil. Bake at 375 for an hour and a half. You'll need to let it cool for a bit after this (I usually get lazy and stick it in the freezer for 15 minutes). You can then very easily scoop the flesh out from the skin and puree or mash it.

After letting the pumpkin decorate the coffee table for a few days, I decided it was time to utilize my find. I thought about bread or pie, but came down to pumpkin soup because it is one of my favorite things ever. I have also come to feel like using curry is also one of my favorite things to use in the fall or winter, and makes a deep rich addition to the seasonal cuisine. It meshes perfectly with all kinds of squash. So, I combined the two in the following recipe:

Curried Pumpkin Soup

2 cloves of garlic, minced

1 medium onion, diced

1 hot red pepper, coarsely chopped

3 large carrots, sliced about 1/4 inch thick

2T. olive oil

Flesh from 1 pumpkin

3 cups of chicken or vegetable stock

1/2 cup brown sugar

1 bay leaf

2 tsp. curry powder

1 tsp. turmeric

A pinch of cayenne pepper

1 1/2 tsp. salt

Raw pumpkin seeds

1 cup cream

Flat leaf parsley, a few sprigs, coarsely chopped

Heat 1 T. olive oil in a stock pot over medium heat; add garlic and onion. Sauté until onion is translucent, 6 or 7 minutes. Add the red pepper and carrots, cooking for another 5 minutes. Next comes the pumpkin, chicken stock, bay leaf, 1/2 cup brown sugar, curry, turmeric, cayenne, 1 tsp. of the salt, and pepper to taste. Bring it all to a boil, then reduce heat and cook until everything is tender and infused with flavor, about 20 minutes.

In the meantime, toast your pumpkin seeds in a small saute pan with 1 T. olive oil and a touch of salt. Keep it on medium heat, and stir frequently, until they are slightly browned.

Returning to the soup, take it off the stove to allow it to cool. Again, I will often stick it in the freezer to expedite. Once cooled, puree in a food processor. Pour back into the stock pot and adjust the seasonings to taste. Stir in the cream just before serving. Add the roasted pumpkin seeds and parsley as a garnish on top.

We ate this with corn bread, though I think using Roti or Naan would be an excellent pairing.

Old Grand-Dad

One of the best decisions I've made all week was making a pot of chili the other night. It's the perfect sort of comfort food for the weather that has descended upon us in the past few days; outside it's crisp and cold and clear, and pretty thoroughly October.

I think I have discovered a new fondness for making things with beans, and its because I've finally made a transition from using them canned to going through the steps of soaking and cooking them. This process takes about 8 million hours, which flies in the face of the prevailing convenience food culture. While it's tempting to try and speed up the soaking or the cooking, I think there is some sort of value to engaging in the long slow process. It's similar to the sort of feeling when you're waiting for bread to rise. It's nice to find these certain realms where you can just set something off to do its slow and sure magic, and by taking part in this it reminds you that you don't need to be in such a hurry about everything either. Also, it's not like soaking beans is hard or anything. You just soak them. AND, they are a lot cheaper than buying the beans in cans. For a dollar fifty I can get a bag that is I dunno, maybe three or four cans worth. I'll start soaking on a Monday morning, cook them in the evening, and then have a ready supply for the whole rest of the week.

That is exactly what I did this past Monday, and so on Tuesday, after a cold and windy bike ride home from work, I decided it was time for some chili. The main inspiration in my chili making was this bottle of Old Grand-Dad whiskey that had about 1/2 a cup left in it. This is my second recipe this month to whiskey. I think that it is a crucial additive to fall and winter cooking, and there are probably only a few things that wouldn't benefit from it. One of my housemates just shared a weekend camping anecdote about cooking apples and peaches over a fire in aluminum foil and their own inspired moment of adding whiskey to the fired fruit mix. There is no way that doesn't sound delicious.

In the chili wanted something that would be deep, dark, and sweet, so in addition to the whiskey some of the other important tones came from brown sugar, blackstrap molasses, tons of cumin, cinnamon, oregano, and rosemary. It was also a really great way to use some stray peppers and eggplant I had lying around from the garden, as well a pile of tomatoes given to us recently from some other gardens. My own tomato supply is now a thing of the past, and has been replaced by rows of radishes.

Old Grand-Dad's Chili
Red and black beans cooked (I made about 3 dried cups worth)
Corn or vegetable oil
2 Onions, diced
1 tsp. salt
Green peppers (I used 2 bell and 3 or 4 banana peppers), chopped
1 small eggplant, chopped
4 carrots, chopped
1 Serrano chili, minced
3 garlic cloves
2 rosemary sprigs
3 oregano sprigs
3 T. cumin
2 tsp. chili powder
1tsp. cinnamon
3lbs tomatoes, chopped
(You can always use a canned tomatoes if you don't have fresh. In fact, if they are out of season definitely used canned tomatoes. When the product is canned, it is canned in a ripened state, whereas the fresh ones you buy in stores are only fake ripe and kind of gross.)
1 can tomato soup
2/3 cup brown sugar
2 T. Blackstrap Molasses
1/2 cup whiskey
Salt and pepper to taste

Cook the beans in a big pot. Set aside.

In a large skillet, get the vegetable oil going and saute the onions with the salt until they are nice and translucent. Add the rest of the vegetable, first the peppers, then the carrots, then the eggplant, and finally the garlic along with the herbs. You can add some of the cumin and chili powder at this point, but I usually reserve the bulk of this until the mixture is in soup form. Cook for another 5 minutes. When everything starts to look a little brown dump in your chopped tomatoes, and then the tomato soup. At this point you should add the rest of your cumin, chili powder, and the cinnamon.

This should simmer in the skillet for 15 to 20 minutes. While it's sitting there, you can mix in the brown sugar and the molasses. The molasses really helps give it a deep rich tone. Also, the whiskey can go in at this point. Once things are really smelling good, add the skillet contents to the big soup pot full of beans. Everything should simmer together for another 20 minutes. Feel free to adjust the sweetness, spiciness, and saltiness of it all as you see fit.

I paired it with toasted bread and some garden lettuces. This makes a lot of chili so there will be leftovers for the coming week.

A Letter to the next president

By Michael Pollan. So good.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/12/magazine/12policy-t.html?pagewanted=1&_r=4&ref=magazine

October's Beginning

I think that October is marking a very positive time for me. The growth in the garden is mirrored by my increasing excitement over things to come in my own life. First of all, it's fall which means really exciting things in the realm of root vegetables, my favorite things ever. The carrots, turnips and exotic radishes are doing so well, and I got a new area all ready yesterday to plant some more. I will have to pull out the tomato plants soon, and while this seems to mark an end to some sort of era, I am happy for the space to plant new and different things.

Also, it means sweaters, and soups, and trees changing color, blankets, bundling, and reading. Also writing more. It means I finally feel like doing things, and really loving a lot of the things I'm doing. Oh, and sweet potatoes. Maybe an outing into the mountains, and a cabin weekend. Music. Also apples! The real stuff, not that stuff found in grocery stores. I am hoping to delve into the unexplored realms of pastry, and hone my bread baking. In one of my more momentous moments, I just bought two tickets to India for next February, which marks the start of a new sort of life that I will be so happy to live with my companion.

One of my first culinary homages to the fall came last week, inspired by a visit to the Williamsburg, VA farmer's market. I was down there to visit one of my best friends who decided to move a little further south. The market was so great. It had everything I could have wanted but without all the alienating bustle of the Washington DC markets. I came away with so many treasures: goats' milk soap, delicious cheeses, spelt bread, orchard apples, and 3 pounds of sweet potatoes. My first sweet potatoes of the year! I bought the apples and potatoes together, and new instantly how I wanted to handle them:

Whiskeyed Appled Sweet Potatoes

3lbs Sweet potatoes

2lbs Apples

2/3 cup brown sugar

1 tsp cinnamon

1 pinch nutmeg

1 Cup cheap whiskey

1/2 Cup butter (1 stick)

Salt and pepper

Preheat oven to 350 degrees

Start out by piercing the skins of the sweet potatoes, and then microwaving until they are softened slightly. I had two large ones, and it took about 6 minutes each. Slice them into a good eating size. Then, core and chop the apples, placing all this into a 9 X 13 baking dish. Sprinkle the brown sugar, cinnamon, and nutmeg on top, mixing it in a bit among the slices. Pour the cup of whiskey over the ensemble. Dot with slices of butter. Top with salt and pepper to taste.

Cover the mixture with tin foil, and place in the oven for about 20 minutes. Take the foil off, and bake for 15-20 minutes more, until everything is soft and done looking.

Bear in mind that the quantities here are very general, and can be changed according to taste. The most important aspect is having good base ingredients. I find there is a huge difference between store sweet potatoes, which are pretty bland, and locally grown ones raised on a smaller scale. In fact, I hated sweet potatoes until I started digging them up for myself on a farm. I wish I had gotten my act together and started planting my own sweet potato slips this year. The farmer's market product made a fine replacement though, and made a really simple dish that evokes so much of the goodness of fall.

September's End

My little turnip sprouts have turned into big leafy plants. I rode my bike to the garden straight after work today to give some much needed care to my garden by the metro. While I continue to visit the garden frequently I have been finding it harder to spend good solid chunks of time there. This might get even more difficult as the light leaves the day sooner. At the same time, I love the fall and I love being outside in it so much, so I'm sure I will continue to spend a significant amount of time in the garden. Today I thinned the different seeds I planted early in September: turnips, radishes (red and black), mesclun, oakleaf lettuce, arugula, and mustard greens. I made a lot of progress in this, though I will probably need to go back and do a final thinning in another few days. I came away with significant amount of the leafy greens, just from the thinnings. I think I will never buy lettuce from a store again.

Also, I accomplished some weeding, and more harvesting. I have another crop of bush beans going strong that I was finally able to harvest. A lot of eggplant, some of which I roasted for dinner tonight. A lot of peppers that I will begin drying. More basil, rosemary, thyme, oregano. I also picked a handful of tomatoes, though the plants are in the final throws of fruiting.

I just planted some kale and some more lettuce the other day, which is already starting to sprout. In a rather sad moment, I decided to finally pull out some of my squash plants. It was a very final sort of action, but I am excited about putting new things in their place, and

the gradually changing landscape of the garden. I started to prepare the former squash bed for another planting, getting some hummus and manure into the ground. I am going to start a second crop of mustard greens, turnips, and radishes in their place. Maybe some more carrots.

There was a row of radishes I planted a few weeks ago, that was refusing to grow. I found this strange and frustrating, because all the other rows have come up so well. I though that maybe I had simply forgotten to plant anything in there at all. Well, today I discovered that I had planted something, not radishes, but carrots. That made for a nice little surprise. I do hate waiting for carrots to germinate though... they seem to take forever, especially next to the turnips and radishes which provide such instant sprout gratification.

In the plans for the near future is a really good go at my herbs. I need to pick some serious quantities to dry and have ready for the winter months.