Late August Irish Roots

I can go months without thinking of something or someone and then a smell, a glimpse, a sound, or a dream plunges me right back to a time, a place, an experience. We all experience the sensory triggers of memory. The smell of freshly ground curry always sends me back to two places and times: the curry and sari stalls in the center of Cambridge, England, in 1968, on my way home from school; and a harrowing ricksha ride through the heart of Agra, India in 1978, dodging elephants and seemingly moving back through time as we retreated from the tourist section into the twisting, narrow streets of the city’s heart. This past week a road detour, a visit from an aunt and uncle, and the garden have brought back my grandmother and my father with such force it’s as though they both stand next to me.  They stir this week’s Addison Independent PATCHwork column:

Late August Irish Roots

Deep in the garden

As I pick ripe tomatoes for one of Kate’s gazpachos (see last week’s column) and slow roasting, I think of the story my father-in-law tells of sneaking to his mother’s tomato patch brandishing a salt shaker spirited from the dining table, then squirreling himself inside the bower of sweet-earth smelling vines to devour tomato after tomato, warm, salted, sublime. It’s tough to imagine a disease brought on the wind marring this image or wiping out full crops of tomatoes and potatoes. But that’s what late blight does and it’s back in Vermont.

Last year I detected late blight as it whispered into my garden’s ear. Although only a couple of leaves showed early signs, I pulled out the tomatoes, heavy with unblemished green fruit and cooked enough chutney to feed half the state.  Ironically it was a stellar batch of spice and tang, sweet and hot, the best I’ve ever made. Like Judy, I safely harvested the potatoes, too, as the first telltale spots crept onto their leaves.

When late blight struck last year, I hauled in bushels of green tomatoes

As I scan the garden for signs of blight this season, I think of my Irish ancestors who came to this country in part because of this disease. They had little warning or recourse, and no other crops to fall back upon when the spuds rotted in the fields.  I think, too, of my father’s Irish palate and how foreign it is to me. Give him potatoes, fish, soup and ice cream.  Lots of ice cream.  My mother had to slip in garlic and insist on raw vegetables. While he loved to order salad in restaurants, he didn’t much like salad or restaurants.  What he did love was to be asked what kind of dressing he wanted: French, Italian, or Russian. “Irish, of course,” he’d reply. “No dressing. Plain. Irish.”

My mother said he had no capacity for complex flavorings because his mother had murdered the beautiful vegetables that tumbled from her extensive garden and into her unfortunate pot. My grandmother’s cooking bordered on the criminal, according to my mother, except when it came to sweets, which had nothing at all to do with gardens and fresh ingredients. Then she was a wizard, conjuring up the most extraordinary pies, candy and cakes. When I lived in Ireland in the 90s, I found the same delight in treacle-y sweets and plain hearty fare heavy on the potato, light on non-root vegetables. No surprise that my father loved to visit us there.

Right about now, as fall feathers quietly into full summer, my grandmother would start making fruitcake for winter.  No one, of course, admits to liking fruitcake, but tasting hers, after months and months of basting in Irish whiskey, was like chewing a fine, fruity cognac. My unimpressed brother would snort that a loaf lasted forever because the thing was embalmed.

Last year, in solidarity with my Irish ancestors after my brush with late blight, I tried my hand at making the fruitcake.  My mother whispered good luck when she handed me the yellowed index card, my grandmother’s slanted handwriting outlining loose measurements and directions to “prepare a stiff dough” and “cook in a slow oven.”

Slow-roasted tomatoes in olive oil

Several of my old cookbooks and preserving guides give similarly vague instructions.  I once thought those writers withheld their secrets. Now I appreciate their insistence on finding one’s own balance of flavors, on gaining kitchen wisdom over time. When my husband organizes the spice shelves alphabetically, I rearrange things according to how they’re used (chervil has no business being next to cinnamon). My shelves carry a trail of my cooking history and guide my next adventure—ah yes, grinding cinnamon with coriander and allspice worked wonders with garlicky spinach.

Indeed, only when I departed from strict recipes did I learn how to cook.

Paying attention

Good cooking, just like good gardening, means paying attention–to the conditions, to the signs with more than just the eyes. Dried herbs from the grocer are usually much paler in taste than the ones I grow and dry, and so amounts need to be adjusted accordingly. How can I squeeze lemon into a salad dressing before tasting the fruit for tartness and flavor?  One lemon might be juicy and sweet, another dry and with more pith than flesh. When people ask me for a recipe, I usually shrug and say I don’t exactly have one, at least not one anyone could easily follow—it all depends…

And so I welcomed my grandmother’s approach to recipe writing.  I thought it would be a snap to conjure up her full Irish loaf if I heeded the interplay of ingredients the chemistry and the alchemy.  But my fruitcake was the stuff of bad dreams.  Inedible.  Criminal.   Blighted.  I’m not quite sure what went awry apart from not enough or the wrong whiskey. Sometimes disaster floats in on the wind.

I’m thinking of trying again.  I replanted potatoes and tomatoes this year, and so far so good—more slow-roasted tomatoes than chutneys are coming out of the kitchen right now and that’s as it should be.  I should, then, also find the thread back to my family’s fruitcake, if I just pay attention to the telltale signs, learn how to read them and have a little luck.

Slow-roasted tomatoes

For more information about late blight, see Cornell University’s late blight site.

Recipes

Verna Ganley’s Fruitcake

(As she wrote it)

1 cup each white and brown sugars
3 eggs
three-quarters stick creamed butter
1 cup applesauce
half cup or so milk or wine
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon cinnamon
half teaspoon nutmeg
pinch of cloves
as much flour as you use in a normal cake
1 lb. mixed cut fruit
quarter cup or so diced dates
1 cup small raisins
1 cup currants
one third package crumbled mincemeat

Prepare a stiff dough that holds the fruit together.  Bake in slow oven.  After cooling, brush with brandy or whiskey.  Repeat two-three times a week.

My Favorite Salad Dressing

(With thanks to Stacie Cassarino)

Minced shallot
Freshly squeezed lemon juice
Sea salt
Champagne vinegar
Your best olive oil

Play around with the balance, depending on the flavor of your shallot and lemon and what you intend to pair with the dressing—if I am serving a simple leafy green salad, I’ll intensify the lemony flavor; if I am using it to dress cooked vegetables, I might add a touch more vinegar. It all depends…

Start with a teaspoon of finely minced shallots and a pinch of sea salt (I rub it between my fingers to release its scent) in the bottom of a shallow bowl.  Add a tablespoon of champagne vinegar and let it sit for at least a few minutes (and for as long as you like). Whisk in olive oil, little by little, tasting as you go.  Adjust amounts to suit your palate and accompaniments.  Add lemon zest if you like or any fresh herb calling from your garden.

Green Tomato Chutney

cheddar and chutney

See Amanda Hesser’s recipe in The Cook and the Gardener.  I start with her basic ingredients: 6 peeled, sliced apples (for the pectin) to 4 lbs. of peeled, cubed green tomatoes (I peel them with a vegetable peeler), fresh ginger, raisins, onions, garlic, 3 cups raw sugar, 2 cups red wine vinegar, peppercorns and allspice and then embellish and adjust according to what I have in the garden. Sometimes I’ll replace some of the tomatoes with summer squash; this year I’ll add tomatillos, perhaps figs or pears, cloves and coriander.

Throw everything together in a large pot (keep out a cup of vinegar) and cook over low heat for an hour, add the reserved vinegar and simmer until it has the consistency of jam—it will take another hour at the very least.  Ladle into sterilized jars and process for 20 minutes in boiling water bath.

Slow-roasted Tomatoes

Slow-roasted tomatoes bathed in olive oil

Ingredients

Plum tomatoes (or small globe)
Sea salt
Sugar

Early in the day, harvest perfectly ripe tomatoes (or get them at your farmers’ market).  Cut them in half along the long side. With a small spoon, take out the seeds. Lightly sprinkle the cut sides with salt and sugar and lay on a baking rack about a cookie sheet, cut sides up. I use a cake-cooling rack.  Place in a low, low oven (mine goes down to 150) and roast slowly until still pliable but dry.  It could take 6-10 hours.  Check them from time to time as they cook—you don’t want them to over-dry and become hard.

I use these delectable tomatoes to intensify Italian tomato sauces and alongside preserved lemons in Moroccan-inspired dishes. Chopped into a bit of olive oil, they are tasty on top of bread and cheddar.