Rhubarb. I really didn’t know if I should pick it. Nothing else in my April garden looked as ready.
Yet there she was, boasting her verdancy amid a swirling carpet of troublesome buttercup and clumps of new grass. Rhubarb shouted out with big fat leaves the size of platters.
She had erupted from the cold wet March soil as blood red crowns, quickly morphing into crinkly, neon-green bundles. I stopped trolling rhubarb for a couple of weeks and was shocked to find her wings unfurled. Her massive (and toxic) wavy green leaves were hiding edible stalks beneath.
She identifies as a fruit but is a vegetable, our lady rhubarb.
I took a deep breath and harvested five stalks today, yanking each one from the base, a thin white filament sliced from the root ball clinging to the bottom of every stalk.
In the kitchen, I washed and trimmed my April bounty, covering the base of a wide pot with a half-inch dice. Splash went sweet apple juice over the red chunks, just to cover. I took a large spoon and scooped out an ample portion of fine, local honey from our friend and arborist Gordon MacKay.
Covered, the rhubarb gently simmered for no more than 10 minutes dissolving into a tangy compote ready for breakfast yogurt, dessert-time ice cream or simply solo and divine.
Once home, I carry my two bulging forest bags into the kitchen. I climb a step stool and reach for the tallest pasta pot I can safely lift down without breaking my neck. Once boiling and salted, the water is ready for my nettles to take the plunge.
“I’ve been doing this since I was five, but I still yelp when they nip me.”
I chickened-out and made a tentative reach into an unoccupied box to find five or six abandoned eggs.
Next, crack an egg into the mix and lightly oil a measuring cup to ensure easy lift-off for the half cup of molasses needed.
Place a chopped piece of candied ginger on each sugared ball. Using the bottom of a glass, flatten into 3 inch rounds.
But that hasn’t stopped my love affair with this root.
Carrot soup is not that far a leap from baby food.
David, my apple farming husband, is still incredulous three years later as he lugs 15 boxes full of apples into the back of the SUV. It’s our third annual harvest and the first to go to McBarley’s juice and fermentation facility in Duncan. It’s not even the fall and we have harvested and boxed all of Number Two and Three trees. (These round, red and green apples the size of a fist resemble McIntosh apples – but doesn’t every Ontarian call apples that?) 
McKay had started with the buds, pointing out their difference, which I could not discern. 
David and I are killing this year’s harvest. Four or five full apple boxes are at the base of Number 8, the only tree we sort of know the varietal name for, due to its rusty, russet skin. Because we’re professionals, we don’t pretend to know the true varietal names of any of our ten trees but we are carefully recording their appearance, taste and botanical behaviour like the untrained scientists that we are. 
Many hours later, we left with 5L boxes full of hot pasteurized juice packaged into vacuumed plastic bags. Just like boxed wine, this juice comes out of a tap and is shelf-stable for 6 months without refrigeration. 
Sarah really understands flavours and how to pair them. A former rose horticulturist with the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, this woman knows and loves blossoms, buds, roots, seeds and fruits. She bakes like a true artist and luckily for us, she’s written down all of her highly novel, well-tested creations. Who would have thought to make popovers with spring chives and dandelions? Or pair cocoa-spiced pork with rhubarb in a pot pie?
Full disclosure: I have a thing for amaretti. They are classic among Italian sweets and like most classic things, vary wildly from cook to cook, region to region. I’d made it my calling to sample them all, be it fresh from a bakery or ripped out of a supermarket package. Yet all the recipes I’d baked were abysmal. I was resigned to never finding my dream amaretti recipe until that fateful day in Rocca’s kitchen.
Rocca delivered it the next day in a text, taking a photo of Lucy’s typewritten recipe. It was short and sweet. Only five lines of ingredients and a very brief sentence of instruction below. The title read “Almond Cookies.”
“Oh, throw in a teaspoon of baking powder,” said Rocca flippantly. Were these Puglian sisters in collusion?! What other ingredients were somehow missing in this recipe meant for mangiacake me?
“Be careful,” said Rocca, relieving my paranoia slightly. “The almond flour is not cheap. I was so shocked the first time I bought it: Fourteen dollars! And don’t buy blanched flour. Whole almond flour tastes best.”
As to the cocoa powder, the taste is negligible. The cookie batter is dark but bakes out into a light brown cookie. This single teaspoon seems to counter that entire bottle of extract.
Truth be told, my problem was the eggs. I really didn’t like them plain. If I’d practiced with a bowlful of very frothy, very beaten eggs, and had let them slide into a buttery, perfectly heated cast iron pan, they might have had a chance. They just needed time and singularity, so their eggy selves could focus on setting rather than accommodating all those interlopers.
So I moved over to poaching. Again, I was saved by a gizmo. This time it was my grandmother Nonnie’s poaching pan, a lovely deep, copper bottom saucepan fitted with a rack in which four egg saucers nestle inside. One fills the pan with water, covers with the egg rack and follows with a lid. Once the water comes to a boil, the hot little saucers are ready to be buttered and loaded with a freshly cracked egg.
for this because it contains lamb-loving turmeric and other warm spices like cinnamon and cloves. This is a curry that must include potatoes and I was happy to toss in three different organic varieties, starring a dark, red-skinned beauty with deep purple flesh. Lots of green herbs should swim through every Thai curry. I always keep a stash of lime leaves in my freezer and wished I had fresh Thai basil to toss in, too. I improvised with half a frozen cube of homemade basil pesto and was happy with the results.
layer of parchment paper tucked over the curry before it is lidded. The parchment paper layer prevents any drop of fragrant moisture from leaving this slow-cooked beauty. Just before serving, I brighten these heavy flavours with tamarind paste, fresh mint and coriander. Cooking time varies depending on the cut of lamb and whether it contains bones or not. Don’t stop braising until the meat is fork tender. Enjoy!
Dutch ovens or Lodge Pan combo cookers: When Jim Lahey of Sullivan St Bakery published his 
Bannetons and baker’s linen: Artisanal bread dough is risen in baskets to preserve the shape and to create a pretty swirling flour pattern on the finished crust. You plunk the shaped loaf in bottom-side-up, let it rise, then place a parchment-paper-lined paddle or rimless baking sheet over it and flip the loaf back over, right side up. I dust my bannetons liberally with rice flour which prevents sticking and also creates nice, white contrasting lines on the finished crust. I never wash my bannetons, because moisture encourages mildew. I use a natural bristle brush to clean the bannetons and store them in a dry, airy cupboard. Round bannetons should be no wider than eight to nine inches in diameter or your loaf will be too big for the combo cooker. Another option is baker’s linen liners that can be fit over medium sized bowls.
Razor blades and lamés: Just before your risen dough goes into the oven, it is time to score. A score allows hot air to emit during the bake without tearing open the crust. Bakers traditionally scored loaves in distinct patterns but nowadays it has become an art. The angle and depth of a score will affect the final shape of the loaf. I like to hold a slightly curved sharp blade between my thumb and index finger but others like to use a handle for the razor called a lamé. A sharp, serrated knife can do the trick, too.
Digital scale: I cannot bake without a scale, I am so used to weighing versus measuring flour, starter and water. You need a scale that can “tare” back to zero so that you can put an empty bowl on the scale, tare to zero, add a pound of flour and tare back to zero, add 8 ounces of water and tare back to zero and so on. Zyliss makes a light, flat scale about the size of an Ipad.
Just three ingredients: Flour, water and salt: Organic flour makes a big difference. I buy unbleached organic hard white flour by the 10 kg bag and am happiest when it is locally milled and has a date stamp to guarantee freshness. Locally grown, freshly milled whole rye, kamut, spelt and red fife all make incredible sourdough bread.
Salt. Avoid iodized salt and choose sea salt. I like the big bags of coarse grey French salt from Ile de Noirmoutier that I found at Thrifty’s.
So very British of them, I thought in disdain, but their marmalade reverie was so very infectious, slipping deep into my flavour brain.
Here they were, half-ripened in my dark, unfinished basement and I could not ignore them. Nor could I forget that bag of organic lemons I’d bought recently…
I had three and a half pounds of SunGolds the size of marbles. They looked so dainty and pretty as they tumbled into the pot alongside cups of sliced lemons. I cranked the gas up high. In just a minute, liquid started to form in the base. After a short, five minutes the mixture was sloshing about. I dumped in the organic sugar and all that fruity sweetness shimmered to a gloss.
I ventured into this recipe carrying the baggage of a failed gel-maker. After the first ten minutes, I pulled out the Pomona’s Universal Pectin. I even filled a small bowl with sugar, ready to mix with the pectin powder to prevent that nasty clumping and frothing. I started to calculate, figuring this batch would need four teaspoons each of Pomona’s calcium water and pectin.
Tony and I were on a first name basis ever since I interviewed him for a newspaper column and he revealed that his Rosedale customers didn’t really care about price (!) All they wanted, he claimed, were tidy piles of the best looking bounty from every corner of the globe.
Did I know? 
Now who was I kidding? Both me and my saner-self had seen the timer. It was just 30 minutes into the one-hour bake. One jiggle of the pie sent yellow, eggy waves a coursing. Dinner for eight was doomed. If the quiche didn’t stay in the oven, despite the smoke and my concurrent mania, I’d have nothing to show for.
Despite better judgement, I continued to bake and smoke and bake, making a frenzied relay from front door to back, swinging doors madly until I saw The Flames.
The guests arrived 10 minutes later. The table wasn’t set. The salad and its dressing had to be made. The kitchen was a disaster zone: dishes, food, crumbs everywhere, not to mention the air drenched in smoke. I needed a valium but found a glass of wine instead.
But back to the muffin. The Mars muffin. It was big, filling and dotted with plump, fat raisins. They were served hot from the oven, sliced in half with a large pat of cold butter wedged inside and fully melted in seconds. Diners, breakfast eggs, take-out baklava and percolated coffee played large in my coming of culinary age. These gigantic muffins were new to diners in the 70s and customers would line up in front of the cash register hoping to leave with half a dozen of these towering –no, glistening – babies stuffed inside a Mars embossed, white cardboard box.
But back to the muffins. I made some today in my West coast kitchen as the rain pelted across a gray, foggy horizon in a day-long deluge. I searched through my baking boxes and pulled out a bag of wheat bran, which now looks oddly old school next to newer fibrous fads like chia, flax or hemp. I found some spelt which adds such friendly nuttiness to any baking equation.
1 lb ground lamb or beef
Mado Food 