Tao of Food

"Hilly village lanes,
Whitewashed sunlit walls.
Cerulean sea.
The laughter of children."










Barley Vegetable Soup



Food is bound not to be thought of as any one thing for any one person. Meals are always occurring. Tastes change, time is of the essence, trends drag or rise depending on hot new items, diets, or TV shows.  All said, commonly though, we might think of food in our daily lives in certain categories that have to do with things like how sweet it is, convenience, calorie percentages, ingredient grams, allergic tendencies or whether it fills out a plate for a stated price. It takes a bit of a calculated act of imagination to consider food itself as a tangible thread to history.  History itself, often reduced to battle numbers, boundary lines, generals turned politicians and those who counter all of it, can only be fully appreciated through an imaginary reaction to the people or events.  Food is similar.  What did the potato taste like to the ancient farming tribes of Orkney, a set of islands off the coast of Scotland?

Years later, still in Scotland, what did the ritualistic dish of "tatties and neeps" (potatoes and rutabagas), often served with

haggis, taste like?  Certain meals bring alive that associated history to your kitchen.  Smells of roasted carrots must have been similar.  Textures, tastes, and the desire for certain additional spices, if available, would have come to mind to all those before us.  From inside the hut kitchen, looking out the stone framed window, the same sea.  The sound of children laughing. 

This soup makes it easy to imagine the ancient farm table from all around the world.  Barley, one of the oldest known cultivated grains, boiled smooth to tiny pearls, adds a soft and comforting filler.

Rutabagas, very rarely found in modern recipes, is a root vegetable that tastes as "of the earth" as anything else grown for as a crop – it tastes like it looks.

Parsnips lend a subtly spicy crispiness that tends to steam and sink into other flavors.  Diced carrots,

a couple of bunches of broccoli, a pinch of oregano and thyme, a couple of clips of onion, simmered in broth, and what you get is a flavor mixture that is a subtle yet brilliantly mild soup that would have tasted like a small treasure chest of nourishment to families for millennia.   

Nature Journal

Oct. 25



The trail rider hangs onto every last open golden day of autumn just like it might be the last.  Although all signs warn of the coming cold – the trees are becoming spinier and leafless, bugs non-existent  – the surge of warmth brings in enough bikers to fill the entire parking lot at Levis.  Out onto Yellow Jacket Trail, a couple of miles inland from the parking lot, out in the vast Clark County Forest, what used to be limited

Julia on Swamp Cut Trail, Levis Mound Trails

close-range viewing as you pass now opens to grander spaces.  Sounds of the forest become crisper as the leaves have coated the trails and every turn of the tire crunches, once in awhile skipping over hidden roots or timber placed to jump. The occasional wooden planks used to cover marshy patches are smooth sailing and fun to try to stay on.

      

Weeknight Cooking

"The Irish prefer them, evidently, to starvation, and the English, too.  And in mid-western Europe, in a part where dumplings grow on every kitchen-range, there are great cannon balls of them, pernicious as any shrapnel to a foreign plate, but swallowed like feathery egg-whites by the natives."
      –M.F.K. Fisher, from "Let the Sky Rain Potatoes"



Potato Pork Chop Casserole

For every golden moment in cooking, for every slight dash of salt that stirs flavor in the right spot at the right time, for every perfect recipe chosen to suit its audience, there is a dud.  The chef, I assume, will assuredly take his or her duds very seriously for there is a waiting, paying mouth at the other end of the fork, but fortunately, for the simple home cook, a dud a week can be handled without any more major repercussion than a snide remark or a boycott by the children (usually quickly followed up by snacks and sweets from the pantry that seem to satisfy every time).

If I remember correctly, an early-week golden moment here at home was a pureed white bean soup with ham and bacon. Later that week, though, the potato pork chop casserole tasted (so I've heard) and felt like the worn rubber toys of a teething puppy dog.

M.F.K. Fisher, the great culinary writer of last century, gives us a good run-down of the potato and helps me, the home cook of a dud, to

understand better why you don't build an entire entree out of a potato.  She comes around to say that when it comes to potatoes, "Although there are few ways of preparing [them] to approach the perfection of a royal plate of fish, and none I know of to make them worth the compliment of a bottle of Chateau Yquuem, they in their own way are superlative compliments." This is her way of saying potatoes make great sides like hash browns, bakers, au gratins, scalloped, mashed, or the most common, fried.  My own recipe called for four tubers sliced thinly and spread out along a baking pan, then covered by onion, a couple of hands full of mushrooms, some milk, sage, then topped by the pork chops, to be placed in the oven uncovered for some 45 minutes.  45 can be a long time to wait in our house once the witching hour of hunger hits.  I sped up the process by trying to broil this pan of duds but what I got, rushed, was a brown crisp edge to the too thick pork chop while the too thickly sliced potatoes below had not received enough slow bake time to soften.  Result?  From another quote from the article, this one by a disappointed potato cooking house wife of yesteryear, "Never have I tasted such a poor, flaccid, grey sad mixture of a mess."  My chops were overcooked and chalky; my potatoes like sharp stones repelling all that attempted flavor piled over it.  And the table of mouths, needless to say, got up at once and rushed to the pantry.

Songs from the Coulee

Neshonoc


1.


When the urge of autumn blossoms,
when the sky fills-in as if by blue paint
when a wintering Jay darts
across the swollen lake,

in the foreground where the water's raised
  over aged dam
and the crickets no longer speak
beholden to the coming cold...
we know our pioneers.

We can see the long treks behind
lumbering oxen from county Dane,
   the bull's heavy breath,
the clippety-clop of slow hooves
over mud caked fields

when the father held his knuckles tight
to lean on leather reins,
and mother to the girls'  low flung dresses,
the hovering of slow bees
beholden to the coming cold...
we know our pioneers.

Neshonoc West Salem

Lake Neshonoc, an impoundment, was nothing more than a squiggly creek before Norwegian settlers in 1851 built the grist mill at the head of what is now called the La Crosse River.  There wasn't much here at the time but the criss-crossings of Winnebago Indian trails, much untamed timber, a very young settlement at La Crosse several miles toward the Mississippi, and the creek itself.  Miss Mattie Larson, daughter of an original Norwegian immigrant family to West Salem, recalled in an article

dating back to 1940, that the crude transportation her family used to get to this area from Madison were very rough-hewn wagons, "kubberulle," rolled on wheels "nothing but logs sawed straight through."  When the carts encountered even small hills, they would have to unhitch the oxen and lower the wagons by rope.  When the food supply ran low on these cross land trips, the family was put on rations.  Miss Mattie further recalls in later years – after the small settlement at West Salem

An original home (octagon in shape) in West Salem by founder of mill

had been finally dug out, so to speak, and flattened for agriculture – Sunday treats that consisted of two-days' old cream set in a pan mixed with sugar and cinnamon, then dipped with bread.  

"In the evening, supper would consist of oyster soup, sylte, lefse, rul, peresylte, bread and butter, and some kind of fruit sauce.  Then as we children grew tired, our parents would begin to talk of going home.  But first, we would have to have lunch, which consisted of coffee and cake, sandwiches, torte, fattigmand, pigekysser.  I don't remember any stir cake when I was small, except sukkerbrod, and that very seldom.  When our lunch was finished, it was time to get our wraps on, say good-bye, and thank yous and pile in the sleigh and home to the jingle of sleigh bells."  Mattie goes on to describe great Norwegian Christmas songs with phrases like "Ta dinerhn old den vardra tea den one vil den acre," public school with no music, unfortunate illnesses, and Indians that would arrive at their doorstep to beg.  "Whatever we children of the pioneers may have lacked, at least we had the pleasure and privilege of seeing nature at it's best."

Travel Songs

Longenecker Gardens (Arboretum UW Madison)
    – after Whitman



Ash leaves like golden swords,
Sugar maples, Hemlock, Crabapples, Vibernum,
red eruptions from every limb at the peak of autumn.
Here it was Leopold who planted
the long ridge line of experimental pines eighty years ago
at the far end of Redwing Marsh near the Grady Tract.
Where the prairie oak endures
its lone perch among the bunchgrass of the Savannah,
its corked bark evolved to expel fire.
Grasses wild and swaying.
Wild crisp music of the wind,
the wild music of the hawkwing cutting,
the music of the wild turkey scratching leaves
  baked of the underbrush.
Oh, for all to climb up the stem of such
a festival of color!
Hand by hand, foot by foot, up the steeples of color!

Travel Songs

Mirror Lake
         –after Whitman


The faint muse of the sun, early October morning
over Mirror Lake,
the squirrels in the forest dim and low volume,
walnuts fallen to the ground in broken shells
re-seeding themselves, saying thank you,
re-seeding the world anew reaching for no fame.
Here is where the world
of the Winnebagos, the Ho Chunk, the thousands
of peoples of the unknown races once roamed
in oaken dugouts carved by tribal elders,
paddled around the unglaciated
plates and dunes of sandstone...at Echo Rock,
they bore paddle down into shallow water
where the Pike fish once lay offspring, silver streaks
against gnarled rocks; and eagles sprang
from pine needle lily pad bog.
To this, the midwest is like All other.
To this, we, skipping from smooth beach under
a faint sun, looking onto the shoreline
which holds old Echo Rock, old Cambrian guard
of all the other shore-world in its microcosm,
we, by air, jumped, from grass, over water,
to rise up into the past,
and sent our thoughts
into a land carved by ancestors.

The Wisconsin Supper Club

Every great restaurant tries to capture some essential identity mark that carries along with the customer far after the dining.  Because Ishnala is built on the edge of Mirror Lake, nestled in under the hanging pines (a few pines growing inside the building as well) and across a small bay from the ancient Winnebago Indian spiritual gathering point Echo Rock, this place doesn't have to try very hard at being nearly mystical.

The wooden dugout canoe hanging on a stand at the entrance, an immediate reminder, was once pulled up from the bottom of the lake.  The Winnebagos, before wintering down in Arizona, had to figure out a way to hide some of

their non-transportable goods, so purposefully sunk their canoes to keep them in waiting for the next season.  Trail, rock, pine and walking bridge

lead to a restaurant entrance which, when entered, feels as though it seamlessly moves on through

the very landscape itself.  That imaginary wish of what might be the most interesting restaurant experience plays out as you move inside and sit down at your table: 'what would it be like to eat in a restaurant that is the woods, is the lake, the sandstone rock?'

We tried the vineyard steak filet (sun dried tomato and goat cheese encrusted), and a cognac-orange glazed duck (glaze on the side for Julia), and it was certainly earthy but prepared in a non-formal supper club way that would appeal to most folks.  Brandy old-fashions, the most popular cocktail in Wisconsin, was not exactly an uncommon sight here; pines rose up from below the dining room, and waved at the dying sunlight which shone in patches off the surface of the lake that then shone back at us, keeping its namesake, mirror, with us every bite.  

Weeknight Cooking

Nicoise Salad


When the mood is French, the taste is for tuna, and you feel like saying the word Nicoise (little squiggly emphasis mark underneath the 'c') out loud a few times for fun, then gather up a good bunch of kale, some green fresh beans, little potatoes – red or yellow – eggs, tomatoes, anchovies, garlic, olives, a pinch of lemon, and a favorite

dressing to drizzle. Most important, some good fresh tuna.  In the description to this recipe, it suggests that Nicoise salad is set apart from the mixed salad because the components are set on the plate somewhat for the sake of the look of the plate, but also so to allow each of the ingredients to stand strongly on their own.  That is, the green bean tastes just as it is: a good cooked green bean.  A slice of hard boiled egg is its own flavor; the tuna, a fine meat selection.  Even though this might have a French name, it is a type of salad that is very much in the 'local' vogue right now – simple, quite raw, good for you, and if you are lucky enough to find fresh local produce, so much the better.

Key hints to success are to first boil a pound of red potatoes until tender, quarter them, season, drizzle on some olive oil, then broil until crisp on the outside, this way the surface carrying crisp flavor.  Another is to

sautee minced garlic, a pinch of anchovies and chopped olives to provide the base for a batch of cooked kale.  What comes out of the fry pan becomes the important 'salty' base of the salad plate.  The last is the careful preparation of the tuna steaks.  Tuna is very easy to over cook because it is difficult to follow the cooking instructions for only one and a half minutes of pan time per side, but this does allow for that ruby red middle which, if warm, is the perfect preparation because it too allows for the real taste of the steak to come through.  In the end, it is a salad of taste choices.  You find your own favorite fork combinations as you go along.  The heavy starchiness of the potatoes contrast the crisp kale; the egg and tomato play well off each other; the crisp green beans are helped along by the coating of oil, vinaigrette or lemon.  Kids, oddly enough, eat it.

Echo Rock

Mirror Lake State Park, Wis. Dells

When the wind is high, the air moist and the sun dim, sometimes just getting on the trail takes its own special kind of courage.  All around, the fall colors are at their peak; folks walking around with cameras waiting for that stray patch of resistant sun to climb down onto the pine floor and illuminate the millions of jewels of seasonal leaves; but for the moment the walk will have to be about something else: what's it like walking in among these ancient sandstone cliffs? How did this slender body of water come to be called Mirror Lake?  Where does the famous Ishnala Supper Club sit overlooking all of this?  Echo Rock Trail rewards all of these questions very quickly as it meanders through the forest quickly out-letting to the famous rock outcropping which stands set back and above the water as though

conceived by a great landscape designer for the sake of climbing and finding the best view imaginable.

Only one boat motor stirred from a farther corner of the lake – no paddlers today. A family of fishermen threw out a line down on the shore below, but it didn't last long.  Just below the rock, further down the

trail, you could see Ishnala perched over the shoreline through the trees, connected, we found

out in just a few more minutes, to the network of Mirror Lake Trails.

Weeknight Cooking

Veggie Burger

If there's a more common go-to form of food in America than the hamburger, I'd be interested to know what it is.  Spaghetti maybe, mac and cheese, the chicken breast sandwich?  Open up the fridge and these are the ingredients on hand; roll up a patty of burger, dash on the salt, give it a quick flash in the pan and any kind of bread will do to cover.  Thinking about hamburgers just a moment though, you start to wonder about just what it is we're getting?  What is it we like about them, exactly?  All of this came to mind after making an attempt at veggie burgers the other night for the first time.  We've all tried them before from somewhere else, and probably even microwaved at some point those frozen versions that come as discs in the freezer section.  But when we bit into our own version, we were a little bit shocked to find out that not only were these just fine for you, but the taste was more complete – the entire burger tasted good, not just the salty surface or the so called marbling of fat and juices we normally associate with our craving.  This leads me back to the question, just what is a common burger?  In the old days, when beef held more natural flavor due a different quality of meat based on how we fed our cattle, you could assume that the burger you were eating was good because of its internal flavor; add your spices and ketchup and toppings and you probably really had something...hence the true American food, the burger joints galore, etc., etc.  Now, though, for any number of reasons, we may be looking at the burger a little bit differently, depending on how it is prepared and from what meat source.  The common burger on the grocery shelf, tending to be quite lean, carries little or no flavor of its own.  When we cook these burgers, then, what we taste might be texture itself, the salt on the top, and then the toppings.  Add some fat to this equation, and that is what we will taste, more fat, and therefore it might seem more satisfying and fulfilling.  The better the burger joint, usually the higher quality of the beef, and yet I would still say something is lacking.  What's interesting about the veggie burger, or the burgers we made, combining burger and veg, is that the ingredients you add to the meat gives taste throughout the burger and is pretty good for you.

The recipe we looked at – from a sort of farm to table book – was vegetarian, with a wheat bulgar and walnut base.  Looking down the rest of the ingredients list, though, there were a few things like cilantro, cumin and red onion that started to make it feel too much 'veggie,' and not enough burger.  It's one thing to eat a giant hunk of fat, like some burgers, but then it's another to eat a veggie patty.  I liked the idea of finding a balance, so bought our standard pound of turkey and lean beef burger,

processed some walnuts, pinto beans, two cloves of garlic, and a few pinches of soy sauce into a fairly runny paste, which I then folded back into the pound of burger, then added an egg according to needed consistency.

I balled those up and smashed down on the middle with my potato masher, cooking them for the standard burger time of five or so per side, maintaining a pinkness to the middle.  I used only a pinch or two of salt on the outside; cut up large strands of iceberg lettuce; cut open homemade hamburger buns; offered slices of tomato and avocado.  Biting into these burgers, I think the shock of the positive taste was probably moreso than really anything I've cooked at home.  Sometimes good strong flavor comes in small doses: one bite is excellent, but another next to it nothing special.  Because the garlic and soy was built right into the burger, every bite held a strong zing of that saltiness and spice that most of us crave in a hamburger, yet we knew what we were eating was low fat: beans, walnuts, a pinch of soy sauce, just enough garlic and topped off with greens.  The carbs were still there, but the fat had disappeared; fiber replaced cholesterol and there were no oddball bites that were co-op smelling funky vegetarian.  Looking at the burger from the outside, I had laid down a deep brown and plenty of olive oil to impart an oily surface.  The burgers were real in every sense except for the usual two hour stomach ache associated with the fast food version.  We figured if walnuts and beans worked, then any number of other ingredients were possible.  Wild rice burgers with ground mushrooms?  Quinoa?  Chili and bean burgers?  Avocado chunks...inside the beef?  Sounds fun.