Quinceaholic

Nov 24

Quince, coing, membrillo, mela cotogna, safarjal

Those who have been tiring of my obsessive ravings about quince recipes will be pleased to know I have not touched a paring knife for about a week now. I had been blessed this year with a large quantity of quince– which I did my best to whittle my way through before abandoning a last box to others and disappearing off to England.

Before I left I tested just about every recipe I had time to try, both sweet and savoury. Here’s a recap of some of the ideas I checked out, including those already mentioned in an earlier post.

Quince jelly is, of course, just about the best thing to do with quince. Beautiful, aromatic and delicious. But I didn’t make any this year, at least none that set properly. Instead I used some of the unset jelly (or quince syrup, we’re calling it) as the base for oven-poached quince, which was gorgeous. Three hours in a slow oven turned the fruit and its syrup (flavoured with orange and vanilla, or lemon) ruby red. It also helped the fruit remain firm enough to can for future use, in a quince sticky cake, for example.

I know that many people faced with a quantity of this fruit immediately think of quince paste (membrillo). I have made my share of this tangy sweet which takes a cheese plate to new heights. But not this year. I have learned that there is only so much quince paste one really needs in one’s life, and it can be tricky to hand off to others as it can’t just be stuck in a gift box, but needs to be refrigerated and dusted with sugar before serving. When it’s been stored for a while, it has a tendency to drool a glorious puddle into its dish, as messy as it is delicious. And sadly, it does not keep forever, though it can last several months in the fridge.

This year, I’ve been browsing some savoury dishes. Lamb tagine with quince is a popular one, as quince has a subtle flavour that pairs well with lamb and is popular in Middle Eastern cooking. Quince soup comes in many varieties: with sweet apple cider and dates; with kabocha squash and Thai spices; with celeriac; and with plum wine and chocolate crème. Pumpkin chestnut risotto with quince sounded wonderful – but also like rather a lot of ingredients competing for attention.

Quince dessert recipes are quite numerous (particularly in French) but quince clafoutis seemed to be one of the most popular. A quince and apple pie that I was lucky enough to sample at La Piola was wonderful. Cakes include an upside-down, one with almond, a pudding cake and a sticky quince & ginger cake.

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Scallops, poetry and lots of SPIN

Nov 14

It’s been quite a week. Tuesday I enjoyed a meal at Camille‘s which was very nice food, very nicely served. Starters included some gorgeous scallops, sporting leafy hats and nestled on a bed of bacon. A nice bit of organic beef came with a curiously delicious egg that had been poached and then deep-fried and made to feel crisply oriental. And the apple dessert trio – kaffir lime frozen ricotta the highlight – outclassed my caramel pot de crème with apple foam, but we shared. And the wines were wonderful, particularly the apricot-raisiny delights of the Pentâge Late Harvest dessert wine, dessert wines being one of my favourite things.

The Malahat Review is another of my favourite things, and its Fall launch reading at The Well was jam-packed with literature lovers. I must say I’ve seldom enjoyed a reading more. Attentive and large audience, talented and entertaining fellow readers, nice ambiance. And some rather good salt and vinegar kale chips, which in their clear plastic baggie rather gave me the appearance of a purveyor of puff than an advocate of antioxidants.

Anyway. I was up first, followed by Julie Paul reading a tantalizing beginning to a short story; then Richard Osler in good poetic form, Tom Wayman in passionate voice dedicating his first poem to the Occupy people, and Zoey Peterson sending us home to contemplate his delightful prize-winning story.

Thursday night at Fernwood Community Centre I’d guess there were nigh on a hundred of us gathered to hear Curtis Stone, the cycling SPIN farmer of Kelowna. He gave a terrific talk about his business and a great preview of the three-day workshop he’ll be leading in April.

When he started Green City Acres, he had no farming background at all – just nine years of tree planting and a great love of cycling, and so he took himself on a tour of urban farms in Canada and the US to see how urban agriculture was being done. He learned his trade from the manual sold by Wally Satzewich and Gail Vandersteen’s SPIN farming enterprise, and through a couple of years’ trial and error. And has emerged as a generous and enthusiastic teacher-farmer.

In his first year of operation he made about $22,000 and worked 16 hour days. “Like you would for any startup small business,” he says. This past year so far he’s pulled in $60,000 from the three quarters of an acre he farms – spread across half a dozen backyards. With a partner helping ease the load this year he’s been working 50 hour weeks – and adds “most of our time is cycling.” On their bikes they pull custom-designed trailers piled with tools, compost, produce, even bales of hay and a small rototiller. His startup capital costs were around $7,000 and he believes it’s possible to make $100,000 an acre.

He tills lawns in three stages to kill the grass and give himself time to test the soil for clay-sand ratios and pH level, so that he knows what amendments to use to boost its fertility. He gets food waste from restaurants and composts prolifically for his production which is organic but not certified. His first plot was a needle-strewn wasteland with poor, contaminated soil which he had to fill and remediate. He says the drug users who used to shoot up on the property still come by there, but now they come to look at the garden, which is flourishing.

He thinks that the scattered fields of SPIN farming offer a lot of advantages, as plantings are spread between different microclimates, soil conditions, light conditions, biodiversity (weeds and pests) and land configurations, so if one row or crop is lost, chances are that the other plots – all planted in standard 2″ by 25″ beds – will be ok. And growing intensively on such a small scale offers other advantages: SPIN farmers can grow a wide variety of produce in small amounts, much  closer to their market than rural farmers; they have a much smaller capital outlay – hand tools and small machinery; and because they deal directly with their market (CSA, restaurants or farmers markets) their profits stay in their own pockets.

Stone is a big proponent of CSA programs, which he dubs “modern crop insurance” as it spreads the risk of growing between farmer and consumer. And the customers are well served too, by eating food that is extremely fresh, very locally grown, by someone who lives and works in their own community.

On Friday, I escorted a veteran to the cenotaph in Duncan and was rewarded with lunch at Bistro 160, which was chanterelle soup and a very fine roasted yam and apple salad. The fuel was needed to tackle the very large quantity of leaves that had blown up my driveway on that stormy day: gifts from the gods of mulch, to be enjoyed by my garden beds (and a whole new generation of slugs, I’m sure) over the winter.

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Breaking bread with Capital Nuts

Nov 7

I attended a workshop yesterday organized by the Victoria Transition Capital Nut Project in Playfair Park, a restored Garry Oak Meadow in Victoria. It attracted a couple of dozen brave souls willing to stand in the November chill and learn how to make Garry Oak acorns edible. Being the proud custodian of a very large tree myself, and being overshadowed by a number of others, I thought it would be a worthwhile skill. We were led through the process by ethnoecologist and wild food forager Abe Lloyd.

We learned about defects to watch for. Sprouted acorns (Garry Oaks are white oaks, a class of tree whose seed germinates in the autumn) are not necessarily a problem, although they are often cracked, which may allow insects or mould into the nut. Acorns with caps still in place when they fall are no good because the cap usually covers some mould. A small hold indicates that a worm has eaten the contents and left the premises. Spotting – especially dark discolouration – can indicate damage. The best way to find out is to open the nut (they are soft enough to crack with your teeth) and check. This time of year – October or November – is the best for hunting acorns. Early falls (August, September) are usually unripe or damaged nuts so should be avoided.

 

 

 

 

 

He showed us some samples – with a couple of English Oak acorns for comparison (there are a few of these trees in Victoria, though Garry Oaks are the native species). The ones that were still in their shells had been dried; his guideline for readiness was when the shell could be cracked easily by hand or nutcracker (or hammer). The shelled samples included some black ones which he said were still fine, but he’d hastened the drying process and discoloured them (they can be dried on racks, with fans or with a dehydrator). After drying, he ground them to flour in a blender. Because they have an oil content of about 10% they’re not well-suited to grain mills that use stone grinders, as they might gum them up (there is less oil in flour grains like wheat).

 

 

 

 

 

As it circulated, Abe invited us to have a sniff and a taste of the flour. We could smell the sugars in the flour, but it tasted bitter, because of the high tannin content in these acorns. The next step was to leech out these tannins, by soaking the flour in water for four or five days, pouring the liquids off morning and night, and then tasting the final product to check for bitterness. The colour of the liquid changes, growing lighter as the tannins are removed. The final sludge can be used straight away as a batter for flatbread, or dried and used with flour for flavour (bearing in mind it is low in glutens so wouldn’t make great yeast bread on its own).

 

 

 

 

 

Abe demonstrated his flatbread technique. He usually adds maple syrup to sweeten the bread a little, but it worked well without.

 

 

 

 

 

A morsel of hot acorn flatbread: just the ticket. Someone had brought some Spanish chestnuts – the edible variety which unfortunately don’t have quite enough time to ripen in our temperate climate. And local agrologist Kendell Neilsen was on hand with a sample of hazelnuts she’d gathered in the area.

 

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Reading at Malahat Review Fall Launch Wednesday November 9

Nov 2

Next Wednesday, November 9 The Malahat Review is holding its fall launch party at The Well in Victoria. The launch party is one of the things I really love about this magazine: never more than in these days of precarious arts funding, every literary publication deserves celebration. On this occasion I am delighted to be reading with Tom Wayman • Zoey Peterson • Richard Osler • Julie Paul.

I have crossed paths with Tom Wayman numerous times over the years, and did so again yesterday when we shared the airwaves on CFUV radio, being interviewed by Colin Dower and Brian Mason. Tom was asked about his passion for work poems: he’s edited a couple of anthologies of these, and my poem “The Grievance” (from Creating the Country) was included in the “Less Like Ants” section of  Paperwork, back in 1991. He also included “Infinite Beasts” (from Hour of the Pearl) in The Dominion of Love, an anthology of Canadian love poems published in 2001.

The publication of “Dowsing Stick” in Issue 176 marks my fourth appearance in Malahat Review since 1984, and I’m happy to be back in its pages. Hope to see you at the launch! 7:00 p.m. Wednesday, November 9th at The Well, 821 Fort Street, (between Quadra and Blanshard), Victoria BC. FREE Admission.

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Readings & mushrooms & quince

Oct 24

On Wednesday I went along to Bolen Books to hear Lynn Coady reading with Douglas Gibson. Gibson was in good form, spinning tales I hadn’t heard on my last listen, from WO Mitchell’s farewell joke, to respectful admiration of Alice Munro, to the dangers of crossing Montreal streets with Pierre Elliot Trudeau. Coady read a mesmerizing passsage from The Antagonist, which I must get my hands on one of these days when I can force myself to sit down and read something.

Last night I joined about 50 others to enjoy wild mushrooms, many of them unearthed earlier that day by participants in a foray led by our mycophilic host Sinclair Phillip. The chefs of Sooke Harbour House were given the challenge of coming up with a menu to suit the finds (on top of regular restaurant duties and, I think they said, a reception as well). They more than managed to offer us four fine courses, starting with a Matsutake broth in which were floating the selfsame pine mushrooms, surrounded by assorted wild morsels, a bit of nettle emulsion and a few nasturtium petals and shuagiku leaves.

Second course was a trio of tasties: porcini quinotto topped with boletes; pear-poached white chanterelle; and a bear’s head and spot prawn herbal salad with pickled hedgehogs.

 

 

 

 

Third course, the “wild plate”, included morels (from Eric Whitehead) stuffed with polenta; a venison croquette of Sidney Island fallow deer (these are culled annually, a fellow diner told me) with shallots and hunter’s stew (made from assorted foraged mushrooms) ; a pretty triangle of beet-mushroom terrine; and boletus grilled in leek oil with Red Fife “soil”. And the finale was Kabocha squash pie accompanied by an amazing candy cap mushroom ice cream, candied chanterelles and a darling meringue mushroom. The jelly that topped the pie was made from a delicious mushroom reduction (from the icecream making).

 

 

 

 

 

Back in my own kitchen, it’s preserving time and I’m wearingmy fingers to the bone making quince everything.

My lunch today was a modest harvest feast: a tomato-mustard tart, some fresh sauerkraut which made itself while I was away in Banff, and a crunchy baby cucumber from the garden; then a slice of yesterday’s Sticky Quince & Ginger Cake – part of my ongoing quest for new ways to use quince.

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