Weeknight Cooking:
Ricotta, Ham and Scallion Tart

So easy, so fast, and potentially so diverse in ingredients, the simple tart is a nice find for the expanding recipe box.  In essence, a tart recipe includes a crust and a filling of egg, cheese and cream.

For any one ingredient that this particular recipe calls for, I could easily see swapping it for something that suits the cook's taste (scallions, for example, could become asparagus without an ounce of trouble). This one calls for a fluted 9-inch tart pan, greased, to be lined with a refrigerated tube of pizza crust.  The pizza crust is massaged into the creases of the pan and rolled up over the ends as high as wanted, but remembering that the exposed crust above the pan will darken the quickest (I eventually placed aluminum foil over the edges so not to blacken).  Whisk 1/4 cup ricotta cheese, 1/4 cup heavy cream and an egg together; mince at least two scallions (optional, other stalk greens); add ricotta mix along

with parsley and a pinch of dill.  Meanwhile prepare diced ham however convenient.  I like to leave ham thickly diced and brown it well, sometimes with a touch of brown sugar, or even a splash of orange for zest.  Add the ham to the ricotta cheese mixture, lay into the prepared pizza crust pan and

set into 425 oven for 20 minutes, depending, again, on the color of the crust.  What really steals the show in this recipe are two things: the pizza crust in a pan becomes very fluffy and reminds you of the same sort of texture as deep dish pizza.  The other is the good ham suspended in all that ricotta cheese.  If thought of as something like pizza, then, this tart recipe could easily seen as a sausage tart, or pepperoni tart...or maybe no meat at all, but instead seasoned eggplant, zucchini, whatever. As long as there is the crust, the cheese, the egg, the cream, all should be well after 20 minutes.

On Useppa

"When the fish was at the stern, plunging and cutting from side to side in desperation, the old man leaned over the stern and lifted the burnished gold fish with its purple spots over the stern." Old Man and the Sea








The old men of the Calusa tribes spoke of the strange objects that might wash up onto the shoreline when the tide turned out, or that was sometimes felt at the toes of the fishermen as they waded out with their nets to catch their schools of pinfish.  These silver objects, often objectless, but raw, undefined, did not come from these islands.  There had been spoken over the years stories of large floating houses that might trail one another in the distant sea.  Sometimes, when the great southern wind blew the

palm trees flat, when the hut roofs would shake and shutter, the traveling fisherman would report of a great floating house sunk far off shore.  Salvage parties of Calusa might have paddled out to the wreckage where, before the great mass had been fully plunged into the bottom sand and reef, large trunks of timber might still stick out of the surface and teeter to the expanding blue waves.  Dolphins often inspected the new phenomenon for themselves and could be seen in bent backs diving into the underworld without a second thought.  It might take days for this news to travel back to the Useppa home island, but goods of all sorts, all foreign to the Calusa, might begin washing up ever closer to the shore.  The silver was heavy but would churn over to shore – it did not, of course, have the same value to the Indians as the Spanish, yet, being gifts from the sea, from some foreign power that randomly patrolled their aquatic territory, the silver was in fact precious.  The Indian chief had his men bring in all the new treasures and he set it aside on a wooden bench to watch over.  Young tribal boys might

gather around the treasures and begin to speak among themselves of the days to come when they might carve their own dug out canoes and set off beyond the reef lines of the ten thousand islands to seek what must be more treasure.  Mothers would warn against such cavalier attitudes; the great floating houses from a foreign land likely were present to do harm to the Calusa and should be avoided at all costs.  There had also been stories of other tribes at other islands who had been taken away by the floating houses never to be seen again.  The chiefs set out alarms, armed the men in newly sharpened pikes, spears, bows and arrows and axes.  At the sight of anything out beyond the islands, scouting parties were sent, which this night had happened as a new ship had arrived very close to their own god-chosen island.  The ship had purposefully run aground sideways and the men on board,

according to the scouting party, had begun to tie the great large timbers sticking straight up into the sky back onto the trunks of trees and pulled the boat down sideways to shore.

On Useppa

"He saw it first when it jumped in the air, true gold in the last of the sun and bending and flapping wildly in the air. It jumped again and again the acrobatics of its fear and he worked his way back to the stern and crouching and holding the big line with his right hand and arm, he pulled the dolphin in with his left hand, stepping on the gained line each time with his left bare left food." Old Man and the Sea





There would have been a time in the Ten Thousand Islands that, despite some inter tribal warfare, the aquatic world in which the Calusa Indians lived and dominated would have seemed like

something of a blue paradise.  At this time, the only evidence of the lowering of the water to reveal the islands, would have been nothing more than a far-fetched story around a beach fire by a great grandfather.  Just now, at the time of European contact, as it has been called for most of the Americas, the mother ocean, so blue and abundant that it would have been believed the great god herself, a bounty of pin fish, oysters – the occasional dolphin – and the raw timber of untamed forests, would have served the Calusa well enough these people would have perceived themselves as both a dominant force and, most importantly for ancient times, looked down upon with the grace of gods.  The women spent their days toiling over the fine mesh nets made of Spanish moss, cabbage palms and

saw palmetto.  These were strung together by the men who would then tie the ends to cypress or willow trees.  It was not, for those halcyon years, a terrible or tedious chore to haul the nets into knee high water in order to stake the timber into the soft pulsing sand.  Children might be seen following for as long as they could reach the sand with their small toes.  You could sea gulls stirring like passing clouds overhead awaiting the free meal of a soon to be flapping pinfish.  Occasionally, a young child, bobbing himself along at the soft lumber of the blue water, might see the broad back of a sea turtle and claim it his own, only for the prehistoric creature to just as quickly dip back down unseen.  If the great schools of fish were not cooperating that particular day at the shallow coastline, the men would paddle in tandem inside cypress dugouts, which were burnt in their midsections then chiseled away at by the sharp end of a whelk axe, out into the deeper pools where the nets might be slung then sunk down fifteen feet to the bottom.  And then one day, perhaps out of the corner of one fisherman's eye, slanting out from the bay of three islands to the east, what would one day be called a Spanish galleon...

Weeknight Cooking:
Hoppin' John with Andouille

"Eat poor that day, eat rich the rest of the year.
Rice for riches and peas for peace."
– Southern saying on eating a dish of Hoppin' John
on New Year's Day






How Hoppin' John, a Carolina low country dish with Carribbean / African roots, found its way on the pages of the "Weeknight Cooking" section of Food Network's magazine might not be as unusual as it first looks.  Beans, rice, and super food greens are trending upward on the American culinary scene at

a fast rate.  Beans, legumes, rice and greens add complex nutrients to our diets while also providing in some cases fairly substantial proteins.  What used to be eaten as a festive southern dish thought to be bring good luck for the coming year, now offers the eater a dish of great variety, health and substance.  At the base of the dish is a combination of black eyed peas, a 10-oz bag of frozen okra, white rice and celery; at the top of the plate is the sausage (I chose Polish as a family-friendly option, but recipe calls for the more spicy Andouille), cut into 1/4

inch thick pieces (I cut the slices into quarters, which spread the sausage out nicely), and two plum tomatoes, seeded and chopped.  To begin, the sausage and okra is cooked together in a pan, just long enough so that browned but remembering that when okra is cooked too long it becomes gooey as it

contains soluble fiber.  Set aside, then cook a diced yellow pepper, scallions and three stalks of celery in skillet.  Add three minced garlic cloves, a pinch of thyme, salt then 1 cup white rice to coat.  Stir in black-eyed peas and two cups of water, allowing to boil then reduce for around 18 minutes.  Once you re-top this panful with the sausage and okra, even though it resembles something like a true hodgepodge of ingredients, the result is a sort of comfort food stew which is dynamically textured and 'hops' with each forkful of sausage.

On Useppa

"Just before it was dark, as they passed a great island of Sargasso weed that heaved and swung in the light sea as though the ocean were making love with something under a yellow blanket, his small line was taken by a dolphin."
     – Hemingway, Old Man and the Sea






The ten thousand islands were but a hundred in reality, but as you navigated them yourself, in among the mangrove inlets, past the hundreds of dune beaches, it felt as though you might very well be at all times floating just above land.  This was because the ten thousand islands used to be the continent land of Florida in ancient times.  Sea levels had risen and turned land to islands, floating mangroves, mere tufts of sand four feet deep where now the catfish, pinfish, pigfish, rays, sharks,

oysters, whelks, conchs, and clams thrived in the slow beating churn of the milky blue waters.  Here we can see the huts of ancient natives spred along the upper coastline.  A young boy might be handed

the curved and safe bottom of a whelk axe, ground down to a sharp edge over time by the tribal craftsman, digging out the center line of a recently upturned stump for a canoe to fish or hop islands.  The natives leave quahog clam-shell anvils; chert tools; hammers, buried burned wood, and later, A.D. 500-800, Belle Glade pottery showing sophisticated manufacturing and communication among tribes.

Nature Journal

"When the glacier came down out of the north, crunching hills and gouging valleys, some adventuring rampart of the ice climbed the Baraboo Hills and fell back into the outlet gorge of the Wisconsin River. The swollen waters backed up and formed a lake half as long as the state, bordered on the east by cliffs of ice, and fed by the torrents that fell from melting mountains.  The shorelines of this old lake are still visible; its bottom is the bottom of the great marsh."
Leopold, from "Marshland Elegy"



24 Jan


Speeding along the beltline highway in Madison, you pass the Leopold Pines at Seminole Drive without really noticing. The old pines were planted there back in the 30's by Leopold himself and a few other UW Arboretum pioneers.  On the other side of the pines is the Curtis Prairie, the largest restored prairie in the world, where Leopold used to test his controversial notions of the prescribed burning of the landscape for the sake of natural rejuvenation. Walking trails criss cross the now frozen long prairie grasses, then duck and weave into the woods back behind the nature center and old WPA barracks and organic raised garden.  The Gallistel Woods houses a turkey feeder ten feet tall and from there endless rows of turkey feet stamped across the snow like hieroglyphs.  They trudge across the Longenecker woods, we assume seeking more seeds or handouts from passers-by and circle around every species of tree imaginable.  Each tree is metal tagged, listing species and year planted.  Alders are grouped by alders, lindens by lindens.  River birches of all varieties spiral up out of their trunks and seem to sleep alone in these artful rows. We crossed the road at the far end of Longenecker to a trail that we hadn't seen before at Lake Wingra where we came across open water not yet frozen.

We later found out that these series of two or three open inlets are natural springs.  At one, small ripples came bubbling up from under mossy rocks; at another, the water came out of the shale

underground layer underneath the roots of an old oak.  The water wasn't warm to the touch but warm enough to keep the ice off.  Vibrant green duck weed floated around the springs. We took a deer trail out into the marsh beyond the spring where giant deer beds had formed in a cove of cattails that glowed golden under the falling sun.  When we laid down in the cattails the wind seemed to stop.  The sun warmed the grass, the ice but another layer of insulation for the creatures of the night.

From the Galley

Captain Merle might not be able to sail a dinghy across a windy pond, but he could cook like a galley pirate.  In truth, you could say he gravitated toward sailing not merely for the wind and water but for the sloop kitchen, a dazzling little teak box full of more gadgetry than a James Bond Lotus Esprit.

As chef Nanou began to demonstrate her coq au vin he felt the curl of pesky questions form at his lips.  They stood around the kitchen workspace and watched as chef systematically dismembered a chicken into its useful parts.  "What is the key with coq au vin," she would ask over and over again, so to make sure each step was remembered.  "Edible art is as great as you would like it to be.  Why not just pan sear and fry the chicken with some vegetables and be done with it?" As she asked this, Captain Merle  could still see the faint images of Her Bounty beached just down the lake.  God, what might become of her by now?  Would the anchor hold in the sand?  Is there such a thing as beach police, would they slap a parking ticket on her, unmanned as she was?  He slightly expected three men dressed in police garb to storm the kitchen doors looking for him.  "Are you the proprietor of Her Bounty, the forty foot sloop wobbling around the public beach just down the lake," they would ask before they slipped on the cuffs.  He smiled and nodded at the chef, having made this French dish himself many times, his own peculiarities already built into the process.  "Now, normally you want to let the chicken sit in a pan overnight to absorb your marinade of

garlic, carrots, leek, mushrooms and diced onion, a good red wine.  Don't forget to use half of the cut onion to stud your cloves into.  One bay leaf, fresh thyme is mandatory. Tonight I have already done this for you." The ladies of the group, despite their very obvious cooking experience by now had turned the volume dial up from hushed murmur to full cackle.  Merle had been in demos before where drinking was strictly forbidden until the finished product resulted, for fear of flaming shish kabobs or fish left in the pan still swimming unfried.  Merle slipped another swig of rum and wished for both the images of the boat and the cackle to sail away.  Madam Nanou was a soulful teacher, both brisk in her calculated execution of vegetable cuts, but always able to provide an appropriate story to go along with the food being dissected.  "When your chicken and bacon fat go in the pan along with the vegetable and reserved red wine marinade, I want you to then fill up the pot to the very top of the chicken with your best chicken stock. That itself will be another demonstration altogether.  And voila," she said, pressing down the chicken along the sides and then placing the large dutch over a medium heat, simmering, as the concocted aromas drifted in among the copper pans dangling overhead, "that is  your coq au vin."