Brining olives, bringing back memories

| Green Card Gardener

Pomegranates and olives are the two things that I associate the most with my Tunisian grandmother. Of course I cannot grow either in my Pennsylvania garden so when I saw fresh olives for sale the other day I could not resist buying some to try my hand on brining them.

Those olives brought back vivid memories of my grandmother. Most of them have to do with food, as I did not speak a word of Arabic as a child, and my grandmother did not know French. And, like most women of her generation, she was illiterate. She basically communicated with me through food. I remember her putting things on my plate, and when she realized I liked it, she nodded or chuckled, or both, and put more on my plate.

My grandmother’s cooking was as Mediterranean as they come – no dairy whatsoever. Before trips to Tunisia, I remember my mother buying gingersnaps for her at a spice store in downtown Frankfurt, a place where she usually never shopped. In the 1970s, gingersnaps were something very exotic for Germany, and certainly not cheap. I tried one and found it awful (today I love gingersnaps) but my mother told me that these were the only cookies my grandmother liked and was able to eat. It only occurred to me now that she had a milk allergy.

At my grandmother’s house in Ksar Hellal, a town in the Tunisian coastal area called the Sahel, the meals were taken in the large courtyard. We sat on straw mats, with the starry night sky as the ceiling. You could faintly hear voices and music from neighboring houses, and cooking smells wafting over, yet it felt ultimately private.

The middle of her courtyard had a small, rosette-shaped elevated garden with an orange tree, a pomegranate tree, and some turtles roaming around. My grandmother knew how much I loved pomegranates, so each time she came to visit us in Germany, usually in the winter, she brought me pomegranates from that tree.Storage roomOlives, especially olive oil, was omnipresent in her cooking. The greenish oil was so thick that a spoon could stand in it. Like all her other provisions, she kept the olive oil in earthenware amphora, neatly lined up in the long narrow storage room. The olive oil came from the family’s olive groves and she used it for everything, from frying thick wedges of potatoes to her delicious hot pepper sauce, which was much milder than harissa, and which I never managed to fully recreate. She did not distinguish between light olive oil for cooking and the thick cold-pressed grade.  I never use extra-virgin olive oil for cooking, I find its flavor too strong, but back then I did not mind. Then, of course, there is the price issue. Good extra-virgin olive oil is expensive. Early this summer I finally found a mail order source for Tunisian extra-virgin olive oil. I bought three liters thinking it would last us a whole year. We were out after a few months and I recently had to reorder.

My grandmother also made her own olive soap. I still have one of those irregularly shaped chunky bars, and I never thought of using it because it is one of the few objects that connect me to her. When I went to her house ten years after she died, I took as many photos as I could. The house was deserted and clearly falling apart. For a short while I hoped I would be able to save that gem, with its beautiful Moorish tiles, its wrought-iron windowpanes, and its sleeping alcoves with elaborate multi-colored woodwork frames. But renovating it was too big of a task for me at a time when I was just starting my career. Then, life took me elsewhere and, eventually, to the United States.

Brining olives takes time. Mine are still at the stage where I need to soak them in water and change it daily to remove the extreme bitterness. I hope it will work out and I will end up with tasty olives in a couple of months so I can post the recipe. (Update, January 2012: The cured olives failed, they were awfully bitter. I will rely on the pros for olives but it was fun to try).

In the meantime, all this thinking and reading about olives put me in such an olive mood that I concocted a quick salad with olives, using leftover chickpeas and sun-dried tomatoes from the garden. This is, like most salads in Arab and Middle Eastern cuisines, a compact affair, small and filling, like Tabouleh.Chickpea Salad with Green Olives

Chickpea Salad with Green Olives

2 cups cooked chickpeas, rinsed and drained

1/2 cup pitted green olives, coarsely chopped

2-3 cloves garlic, finely chopped

2 tablespoons finely chopped sun-dried tomatoes (packed in oil)

Finely chopped fresh chili to taste

1 teaspoon dried oregano

Salt

Freshly ground black pepper

Lime juice to taste

Extra-virgin olive oil to taste

Mix all ingredients. Let sit a few hours before serving. Refrigerate if not serving the same day. Serve at room temperature.

Makes 6 servings

Jerusalem artichokes, a Trojan horse?

| Green Card Gardener

It might be that next summer, after Jerusalem artichokes have taken over the herb garden, I will curse the moment I planted them, disregarding all warnings against this supposedly highly invasive crop. For now, I am quite happy with my very first harvest of those crunchy little tubers. Boldly I am thinking that if I can can keep various mint plants under control, why shouldn’t I be able to do the same with Jerusalem artichokes? We’ll see next summer if they are manageable, and not a Trojan horse.

Jerusalem artichokes, aka sunchokes, are a native American crop. If that’s half a good enough reason to plant them, their wonderful taste and texture make up the other half.

I love artichokes, yet my two attempts to grow real artichokes in the garden, in the rainy summer two years ago, and again this summer, failed miserably. Jerusalem artichokes taste like artichoke hearts, but without the hassle of removing the leaves to get to the meaty portion.

The plants usually grow about six feet tall. Because of abundant rain, mine were so high that I needed a ladder to spot the small, sunflower-like heads. The tubers should be dug after the first frost, which came in the form of a major snowstorm in late October. Lacking a cool basement or a root cellar, I store the Jerusalem artichokes on the basement steps leading to an outdoor Bilco door. That’s fine for now but in sub-zero weather I will need to find another place, as the tubers should be stored close to 32 degrees F. To keep the moisture at the required 95 percent I spray the sunchokes with water every now and then. Properly stored they should keep through the winter.

After much scrubbing, the tubers are spick and span and don’t need to be peeled. But for this salad, I wanted uniform pieces so I trimmed and peeled them. The peeled Jerusalem artichokes must be immersed in acidulated water (lemon juice or vinegar) immediately to prevent them from browning.

Salad of Jerusalem Artichokes, Apples and Walnuts

1/4 cup walnuts

12 ounces Jerusalem artichokes (about 8 ounces peeled)

White winegar

1 tablespoon olive oil

1 large crisp tart apple (I used Honeycrisp)

1 tablespoon lemon juice

1 stalk celery

2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil or walnut oil

1 tablespoon apple cider vinegar

Salt

Freshly milled black pepper

1. Lightly toast the walnuts in a pan without oil. Remove them from the pan and set aside to cool.

2, Thinly peel the Jerusalem artichokes with a vegetable peeler. If they are very gnarly, trim them a bit to make peeling easier. Halve or quarter depending on size. Drop them immediately into a bowl with water and a few tablespoons of white vinegar.

3. Heat 1 tablespoon olive oil in a pan. Drain and dry the Jerusalem artichokes with paper towels and fry them in the hot olive oil for about 5 minutes, just long enough to brown them a bit from all sides. turning them often. Remove with a slotted spoon and set them apart on a plate lined with a paper towel. It is important to give them space when they cool, otherwise they will turn soggy.

4. Peel and quarter the apple, remove the core, and dice. Put them in an salad bowl and mix with the lemon juice immediately. Slice the celery and add.

5. Whisk the extra-virgin olive oil with the apple cider vinegar. Add salt and pepper to taste. Coarsely chop the walnuts and add them to the bowl with the cooled Jerusalem artichokes. Toss and serve, or refrigerate.

Makes 2 generous servings

Pleading for recipes, and playing with persimmons

| Green Card Gardener

Some people pride themselves that they don’t ever cook from recipes. Not me. I rely on recipes, daily and heavily. And that is not only because being a cookbook author and food editor, I feel that the shunning of recipes – viewing them as the crutches of mediocre cooks while real, natural talents cook without – undermines the very foundation of the trade.

Why should I burden my already overcrowded memory with things that others (and mostly pros, or cooks far better than me) have figured out and conveniently written down, such as the amount of baking powder in a cake? Julia Child failed her exam at the Cordon Bleu the first time around because she had not memorized the recipes from the school’s cookbook. There is no need to say anything more about the connection between memory and cooking talent.

Rather than piecing a recipe together from memory, I like to spend my time exploring. The few vegetables still growing in the garden in mid-November – beets, radicchio, kale, and cauliflower – do not require any more work, so one of my Sunday morning luxuries is to explore new recipes and ingredients. Today I tinkered with the persimmons I found at a local farm stand yesterday. Call me a culinary greenie but I have never eaten nor prepared persimmons!

I wanted to leave the persimmons as unaltered as possible. After leafing through cookbooks and surfing the web, I settled on poached pears with persimmons, inspired by a recipe I found in Deborah Madison’s Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone. It is best served chilled.

Poached Pears with Persimmons

1 cup sugar

1-inch piece fresh ginger, peeled and finely sliced

Grated zest of 1 organic lemon

4 firm, slightly underripe Bosc pears

¼ cup dried cranberries

2 ripe Fuji persimmons

1. Bring 1 quart of water to the boil in a wide pot. Add the sugar and stir to dissolve. Add the ginger and lemon zest.

2. Peel, halve, and core the pears. Place them in the simmering water and put a small heatproof plate on top so they are fully immersed in the poaching liquid. Simmer for 20 minutes, or until the pears can be easily pierced with a knife.

3. Transfer the pears to a bowl. Strain the poaching liquid and pour it back in the pot. Bring to a rolling boil and cook for 10 minutes, stirring and scraping the sides often so the syrup does not burn.

4. Stir the cranberries into the hot syrup. Pour over the pears. Cool, then refrigerate.

5. Remove the blossoms ends from the persimmons. Using a serrated knife, cut the persimmons into thin slices. Serve with the sliced pears and cranberries, drizzled with syrup.

Makes 4 servings

Empowering pear pie

| Green Card Gardener

After a major power outage, just grinding coffee in the morning feels fantastic. The freak snowstorm left us without power for a little under three days, about the same amount as after Hurricane Irene but the loads of heavy snow caused quite a bit of damage on our trees. On my way to the orchard to buy pears yesterday I had to make a detour, as some roads are still closed.

When the power is back, and the mess of candles, dirty dishes, laundry, candle wax, water buckets and other remnants of living without electricity is cleaned up, I usually tackle the fridge and the freezer, throwing out soggy frozen herbs (wondering each time why I even bother freezing them, those are the first to spoil), and cooking with whatever can be saved.

It always takes me a few days to switch from the rescue cooking mode to the fun cooking mode. Today was the day. The gorgeous fall weather simply called for a pear pie. It is hard to believe that a week ago I walked around in snow boots knocking off a foot of snow from trees and shrubs.

For the pear pie filling I used pre-cooked custard, which is common in German recipes. It makes the pie wonderfully moist without being too sweet. I used Dr. Oetker Cream Pudding, which is available in the United States. The brand’s Vanilla Pudding can be used instead, which is even more widely available.

Pear Pie with Custard

Crust:

2½ ounces shortening

1 cup flour

¼ teaspoon salt

Ice water as needed

Filling:

1 package Dr. Oetker Cream Pudding (or Vanilla Pudding)

2 cups low-fat milk

¼ cup sugar

Topping:

3 slightly underripe Bosc pears

½ cup dry white wine

½ cup + ¼ cup sugar

1 teaspoon grated organic lemon zest

2 tablespoons Amaretto

1. For the crust, put the shortening, flour and salt in a food processor. Pulse to a crumbly consistency. Add just enough ice water, one tablespoon at a time, to the dough so that it forms a ball.

2. Roll out the dough between to sheets of wax paper to fit a 9-inch greased springform pan plus a 1-inch edge all around. Remove the upper layer of the wax paper and flip the crust over into the pan. Even out the edge and place in the freezer.

3. For the filling, mix the custard powder with a few tablespoons of the cold milk and the sugar. Stir until smooth.

4. Bring the rest of the milk to a boil. Remove from the heat and whisk in the custard mix. Put it back on the burner and cook for about 1 minute, stirring vigorously, until the custard thickens. Remove from the heat and let cool, whisking every so often.

5. For poaching the pears, bring 2 cups of water, the wine, ½ cup sugar and lemon zest to a boil in a wide pot or a deep skillet. Stir to dissolve all the sugar.

6. Peel the pears and cut them in half. Remove the cores and place the pears in the poaching liquid. Reduce the heat and simmer for about 15 minutes, until the pears are easily pierced with a knife. Turn them once or twice during poaching.

7. Drain the pears (you can refrigerate and re-use the poaching liquid). Place the pears cut side down on a cutting board and cut them into even slices but do not cut them all the way through so that you can place them on the pie like a fan.

8. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.

9. Whisk the cooled custard. If it is lumpy, you can smoothen it by blending it with a stick blender for a few seconds. Pour the custard into the pan with the crust.

10. Place the cut pears on the custard in a circle, tips to the center. Fan them out as much as possible.

11. Mix the amaretto with ¼ cup sugar and drizzle over the pears.

12. Bake in the preheated oven for 35 minutes, then increase the heat to 375 degrees F and bake for another 30 to 35 minutes, until the crust and the top are golden. Let cool for 5 minutes, then pass a knife around the edge and carefully remove the rim. Let cool completely on a wire rack. Refrigerate until serving but take out of the fridge 30 minutes before serving.