Because Patrick is from Arkansas, I don’t get to complain about New Mexico’s heat and occasional humidity.  “Humid!”  He declares.  “You don’t know humid!”

And he’s got a point. This is the southwest, not the south. As for the heat, it doesn’t seem to bother him, despite which has been damn hot, mosquito filled, and to my mind and most everyone else I know, humid. Or at least humidish. The problem with such weather is that it messes with dinner and cooking in general. It’s easy for a gin and tonic or cold grapefruit juice with Campari and soda to stand in for a meal, but despite the juice and the lime, drinks really aren’t food. Just cool comfort and there’s nothing wrong with that.

A salad makes a good supper, though, as does a fish taco, or soup. Cold organic tomato juice with cilantro, diced avocado and lime is a good way to go. A chilled carrot and ginger soup, a thin crouton with a swipe of goat cheese is another. I can’t imagine attempting much more when it’s near 100’ in the evening, but yesterday I did.  I made a beet soup, something I haven’t made in quite a while. I had bought beets thinking we should have more substantive vegetables on the menu, and a vision of beet soup came to mind. I recalled my grandmother’s lady friends who used to puree borsch with sour cream and drink it by the glass on hot days. As a child I thought it was raspberries and cream they were enjoying, and was pretty let down with my first sip. Now I know better.

So I turned on the fan, opened my soup book, and made the Red Beet Soup with Beets and Their Greens. I don’t know why it’s in the chapter devoted to winter vegetable soups because it’s a great summer soup.  I made the stock because you really need it here. I diced the beets, carrots, and pepper, ignored the fact I didn’t have any leeks, steamed the beet greens, and used more than a pinch of allspice and anise seed. In less than a calm hour I had a gleaming red on red soup.  Patrick came home, we sipped our drinks and didn’t discuss the heat, then I served the soup.  It was tepid, and we had it that way, with the beet greens and a good spoonful of sour cream. It was sweet, cool, chunky and just right for dinner. Well chilled, it was just right for lunch today, and I’ll be it will see us for dinner tonight as well.  Maybe pureed with some sour cream just to have a different texture and hopefully, though it’s unlikely, some good black bread.

So if you’re in the summer heat doldrums, you might give this, or some other beet soup, a try.

Red Beet Soup                   

This beet soup uses the whole vegetable—roots, stems, and leaves. You’ll do well to make the stock, which simply uses more of the vegetables that you’re already using for the soup.  Begin it first and by the time you’re ready to add it to the vegetables, it will be ready. As for the pepper, peel it, especially if the skin is waxed.  Peeled, there won’t be any skins to roll up into little scrolls. (In a pinch, I’ve used jarred roasted peppers and they were fine.)  

The Stock

1 tablespoon olive oil

1 cup leeks greens and the roots, well washed

1 onion, 1 carrot, and1 celery rib, all chopped

3 bay leaves

pinch of thyme or a thyme sprig

few pinches oregano or a fresh branch of leaves

3 garlic cloves, smashed

the stems of 1 bunch red beets

a handful of lentils

1 teaspoon sea salt

 The Soup

1 tablespoon each olive oil and butter

3 small leeks or 1 large, the white parts only sliced into rounds

1 onion, finely diced

2 thin carrots, peeled and thinly sliced in rounds

1 red pepper, peeled and diced

3 medium sized beets, about 8 ounces, peeled and diced

3 small bay leaves

1/2 teaspoon dried oregano

hefty pinch of allspice or anise seeds

1 finely minced large clove of garlic

1 tablespoon brown sugar

1 15-ounce can organic diced tomatoes, fire-roasted or not, or 1 cup fresh, peeled tomatoes, diced

the beet greens, roughly chopped

sour cream and 1 lemon, quartered or apple cider vinegar

1.  To make the stock, heat the oil in a pot, add the leek greens and root, onion, carrot, celery, garlic and herbs.  Give a stir and cook over high heat, stirring frequently, until the vegetables take on a little color.  Add the rest of the ingredients and 6 cups water.  Bring to a boil, then lower the heat and simmer gently while you prepare the soup vegetables.  Be sure to turn it off after 30 minutes as it will go from red to brown about at that point.  As you peel the beets, add the peels, along with any other vegetable trimmings, such as the ends and veins of the bell pepper, to the stock.

2.  While the stock is cooking, heat the oil and butter in a wide soup pot. Add the vegetables, (minus the beet greens), bay leaves, oregano, allspice, and garlic.  Stir to coat, then cook over medium heat for 12 to 15 minutes. Season with 1-teaspoon salt and the sugar.  Strain the stock directly into the pot.  Simmer, partially covered, until the beets are tender-firm, 20 to 25 minutes.  Taste for salt and season with pepper.

3. Cook the beet greens in a little water with a pinch of salt until tender, 3 to 4 minutes, then drain.  Serve the soup and add a clump of greens and spoonful sour cream to each.  Serve with the lemon on the side, for those who wish.

Makes 2 quarts. 

From Vegetable Soups from Deborah Madison’s Kitchen

There’s nothing unusual about cooking dinner alone. I cook dinner for myself and my husband (and quite possibly others) pretty much every night of the week. I look forward to getting out of my head and into my hands, getting away from the computer and into foodstuffs. Cooking dinner is never a chore.

Cooking is slow time for me, often alone time.  I don’t usually play music. Maybe, if I need a serious energy boost, I put on a Michael Franti CD.  But the silence is good, too. That is, the sounds of cooking. Water running. Chard draining. The hum of the gas. The thonk of the knife on the board. The sizzle when onions are thrown into a hot pan.  Just the sounds of everyday activities in the kitchen, plus the evening wind in the trees.  The other night I asked myself, do I think when I cook? Or chatter away mindlessly in my head?  Or is cooking more a quiet meditation?  Sometimes it is the latter, a focused, non-thinking activity, but sometimes I’m thinking, too.  The other night I found myself thinking about how the same day I turned in my book Seasonal Fruit Desserts, my food processor quit.  A part wore out; it’s a rubber ring of some sorts that made the top and bottom cohere. I called the Kitchen Aide people but didn’t get any leads as to a replacement part, so basically I gave it up. I’ve never found a food processor I’ve wanted to replace it with so I’ve done without for the past 2 years.

I was thinking about this because I was going to make a hazelnut frangipane for an apricot tart, which involves mixing together nuts, butter, egg and a few other ingredients until absolutely smooth. The food processor is, in fact, an ideal tool for the job, but since I didn’t have one, I got out my Zyliss cheese grinder and ground the toasted hazelnuts by hand. It was a hot day and the butter softened and eggs warmed up. In the end it wasn’t a big deal to make frangipane by hand, or the tart dough, and dessert was too good for just two people.

Basically, this has been true of everything I used to unthinkingly pull out the food processor for —making pie dough, salsa verde, breadcrumbs.  There isn’t a thing you can’t use a knife, a whisk or another tool for, including your hands, and end up with good results, a bit of a workout, and a lot less stuff to clean.  As I smoothed the cream into the pre-baked tart shell, I realized that I’ve rather enjoyed this stretch of time without the food processor.  My knife skills are probably better and I get a lot more direct contact with my food while slowing down in a nice focused sort of way.  Handwork provides a kind of governor on my kitchen activities, too. I might think twice about making dessert, and that’s not a bad idea. Or if making frangipane was enough of a process, then I’ll skip the tart dough and use it to fill a halved apricot or plum and save a bunch of calories, too.

Hazelnut Frangipane By Hand                                         Enough for or or 2 9-inch tarts or galettes

You can use almonds, but hazelnuts are awfully good, too. Use this with stone fruits, especially apricots and plums, and also with pears. You can use it to line a tart shell, smooth over galette dough, or drop it directly into a halved fruit, which you’re planning to roast. It’s good stuff to have around.

1 cup hazelnuts, toasted and skinned

 1/8 teaspoon salt

 ½ cup organic sugar

1 tablespoon flour

2 tablespoons hazelnut oil

4 tablespoons soft butter

1 whole egg

1 egg yolk

1 tablespoon Frangelico (optional)

Grind the hazelnuts by hand in a nut or cheese grinder to make delicate flakes, then mix them with the sugar and flour. Add the oil and butter and beat with a wooden, then add the egg, egg yolk, and Frangelico, if using. Beat until well blended. Use immediately, or store in the refrigerator to use later in the week. If you just can’t find an immediately use for it, freeze it until you do.

April consisted of waves of travel given over to Seasonal Fruit Desserts. But a few days at home that gave me time enough to plant some peas, lettuce, chervil, amaranth, and an assortment of brassicas that I didn’t have time to label. Travel is grueling, but each time I come home there’s some change to be seen as seeds go from their first green bits to true leaves and beyond, change that’s harder to see when you look for it each day. A watched pot doesn’t boil, and the same can be said for a sprouting seed. I love coming home and being surprised by the progress.

I ate some amazing food while away—dinner at Nostrana in Portland, always high on my Portland list—and breakfasts too, for Portland is great breakfast town. It also has a huge number of food carts. I was invited to judge them at the “Carty Awards” as part of the IACP conference, just held there. I had the idea that they’d be like the carts I’m familiar with, which, while spirited, are not the cleanest foods in the world —no organic products or hormone free meat, to be sure. But these were as far as that as Nostrana is from a pizza chain. Little sandwiches and bruschetta in one, Hungarian goulash in another. Divine ice cream spiked with Oregon whisky in a third. Roast suckling pig, amazing vegan smoothies made from kale (!), soups, light as a feather granola with rich yogurt and fresh raspberries, and lovely light tamales, not the heavy ones we eat in New Mexico were featured in other carts. And while bratwurst and schnitzel aren’t my kinds of foods, those from the carts were excellent, especially the sauerkraut and slaw sides. The quality of food in carts can be stellar, it turns out, making them a great place for young, energetic chefs and people cooking the foods of their recent pasts in Trinidad, Thailand, or Mexico to get a start without undertaking the costs of opening a restaurant. But regardless of the quality, you’re going to be standing up and eating off a napkin or a paper plate, mostly likely, though not always, with your hands.

After the food carts event I took part in a “Food Salon” on a ranch in South Texas, an weeken that was mainly about cooking and eating vast quantities of very lusty foods (read lamb and pork) cooked by an assortment of Texas chefs and one New Mexican, myself. I brought the last of my Concord Grape Pie filling and turned it into a cobbler. Pastry queen, Rebecca Rather, was brought forth some pretty tasty pastries. My Olive Oil Cake was sliced into layers and interspersed with whipped cream and deep red strawberries from Austin’s Boggy Creek Farm. The farm also contributed bags of peas, bunches of sorrel, chervil and lambs quarters, lettuce, spring onions and herbs, which we transformed into a pea and onion braise and a big herb salad—the only green foods to be seen for days. A bag of Steve Sandos cannellini beans were braised in cream and herbs. Fried oysters were grabbed by the fingers and dipped in a searing jalapeno-tomatillo sauce and all in all, this was big sumptuous, dig-in food.  No one was wearing their best clothes, beer was an ideal beverage though some Texas wine appeared, too, and I wouldn’t have dreamed of pulling out my camera and surrendering it to all those good greasy drippings.

Quite in contrast to this Texas food fest was a lunch of magical garden-like dishes that I ate on a very rainy afternoon at Ubuntu in Napa. I’ve written about Ubuntu before, but this time I was especially struck by the thought that only people who work in the world of the garden could visualize the dishes that come out of that kitchen. Each was a landscape unto itself, a dazzling world of plant material where even the usually discarded (tiny) tops of carrots and their greens are included. While the Texas ranch food was that kind you want to dive into, pick up and chow down, my dining companions and I could hardly bring ourselves to disturb the plates at Ubuntu. We looked, admired and questioned them long before we even picked up a fork. And while I really don’t like to pull out a camera in a restaurant, I couldn’t help myself. I wanted to visually dive into these plates and come back up with an image before eating.  But the odd thing about Ubuntu’s food is that I don’t really recall the flavors. Were they too subtle? Were they simply overwhelmed by the visuals? Do I now have a heathen’s palate? Or was I just tired from a late night and a long hard drive in the pouring rain?

I loved the enchantment of this food, but I have to say I also like eating off a napkin in front of a food cart, chocolate oozing out of waffle or crumbles slipping off a sandwich, and I can just as easily get into gnawing off a bone or leaning over a juicy stuffed tortilla, a long-neck at hand. Back home there’s my garden to challenge me, but I’m wondering if I can bring that enchanted little world of tender green things into more lusty proportions. The enchanted dig-in –that’s what I’m going to aim for. Will let you know what I find – or tell me what you’ve found in that department. And sorry that there’s no photo. I accidentally put my i-Photo program in the trash and now I can’t find it.  Next time.

One thing about commercial fruit is that the quality is generally dismal. And that’s a shame because fruit is meant to be seductive. Its scent should lure birds and beasts who will eat it and leave seeds, and stones to germinate and eventually flourish. But fruit should lure in human beasts as well. A floral, white peach is one of the most seductive fruits imaginable – “It’s like eating a flower!” a young girl told me after her first bite. Kids cannot be kept away from ripe strawberries or cherries. When I watch people buy fruit at the supermarket, I notice that they just drop it into a plastic bag without taking a whiff, but it’s the smell that tells you whether a fruit has promise, is over the hill, or is not worth bothering about. Industrial strength fruit, picked green from tasteless varieties, offers nothing. This has turned fruit into a “duty food”, something we eat because the government tells us to, not because we can’t stay away from it.

Thankfully this is not true at the farmers market where you can actually follow the scent of strawberries and where bees might be hovering around the peaches. If the farmers haven’t tried to rush their season by picking fruit that’s not yet ready (note to farmers: no one wants an unripe plum!) but have waited until the right moment, then there’s fruit worth talking about! We will buy good fruit because it’s that rare and that compelling. Another frustrating thing fruit is its lack of distinction in the naming department. There are hundreds of varieties of plums, but what do we see? Red plums and black plums. Plums can be blue, violet, yellow, gold, purple, green, black, red and all shades in between. They will have unique flavors and different uses in the kitchen. And they all have names: Coe’s Golden Drop, Pearl, Green Gage, Mirabelle. The same is pretty much true of all fruits. While we’ve learned the distinctions among vegetables and now know the names of our favorites, we’re behind with fruit. And this relates directly to biodiversity, because when plums are reduced to red and black, what happens to the others? They disappear, just as hundreds of apple varieties have disappeared and those of many other fruits as well. Names matter because if we don’t know what to call a something we can’t make a relationship to it and ask for it again. The taste may have been fantastic, but without a name it is completely ephemeral. How do you ask for that peach you loved the year before? “It was round, and reddish, it was really good, it was juicy …” It will take a great deal of specifics, probably not remembered, to lead you back to the source. A name is much more efficient. “Do you have any Babcoks, or that great Suncrest you had last year?” Much easier.

To make a more repeatable universe and encourage diversity rather than sameness, I encourage shoppers to ask the names of the foods we buy at the farmers market, then try to remember them and use them. And the farmers can help enormously by posting the names. I know many farmers view this as an unnecessary chore, but I feel it’s important because it makes us a more literate, well-informed society about the good foods we eat. And an informed society is one that is likely to speak up for and protect biodiversity because it means something. Imagine not having those little shishito peppers you’ve come to love. Then apply that feeling to whatever else your love in the market. Not that many generations back our ancestors (this would include my botanist father), knew very well about the pleasures and distinctions of different apples, pears, grapes and other fruits as they fussed over their own cultivars, traded scions, or made trips each year to a particular orchard. We need to regain that knowledge and cultivate a passion for it if we don’t want to see the variety that sustains life and makes it so delicious disappear. I hear it’s going to be a good fruit year, and that’s good news!

One day every body is complaining about snow and winter, then, the minute the temp sores to 50 degrees, suddenly it’s spring and all is forgiven.

At least that’s how it was this past Sunday.  And Monday. And even Tuesday.

There wasn’t a piece of green to be seen on Sunday. The rain, wind, sun took their turns appearing throughout the day, and the warmth was a pretty fragile one. But it was enough to pull people outside and make them feel giddy. I closed my lap-to, opened the door to my office, pulled on my gardening gloves and grabbed a rake.  I was so tired of those brown leaves and besides, I was dying to see what was going on beneath them.  Here’s what I saw:

     A few nibs of chives poking out of the withered strands that froze months ago.

    Thyme that looks fleshy instead of merely dried.

    The first red shoots of lovage —barely visible to the uninterested eye.

The first sorrel leaves to appear.

This may not look like salad to you. But in a few weeks there will be a garden salad that will include, along with the lettuce still under safe cover of remay, one or two snipped chive blades, a few torn sorrel leaves, probably not the thyme, but perhaps a tender lovage leaf. And despite the snows and freezing nights to come, this tiny bouquet will be enough to launch both spring and summer. This is the wild joy that the garden promises every March. And even though I’m heartily tired of brown, I rather love this time of year because every day there’s something new poking up and leafing out, usually plants I’ve forgotten about. I stare at some leaves and remember, oh, the agastache!  The daffodils. The wild strawberries. The little signs of life appearing, taking hold. It’s like seeing old friends and it makes me just as joyful.

What I’m wondering, though, would these tender shoots and leaves be happier with their blanket of leaves left to cover them a little while longer. Or can I take them off? Tell me if you have an answer to this because I really want to know. I suspect the leaves should stay, but I’m really eager to see them go.  Thanks in advance to any words of wisdom.

Last week, (Feb. 2), I arrived in Wooster, Ohio, just in time to miss the snowy onslaught that took over the country, but also in time for a superb local foods-based dinner at the South Market Bistro and a visit to Local Roots Market and Café, which had opened the previous Saturday. I’d been alerted to Local Roots before my arrival and I wanted to see what it was all about. It appears to be a hybrid effort to supply local, organic foods to its community, offer a winter indoors farmers market, a café that offers locally made pastries, an educational component, a membership element and some other features, such as the ability to order your food on-line. In short, Local Roots is a fresh expression in the growing local foods movement, and just as with farmers markets, it isn’t necessary for one size to fit all when it comes to co-ops.

Wooster, a small college town about an hour’s drive from Cleveland, has a summer farmers market but nothing happens in the winter. The health food store I visited in search of a lipstick didn’t appear to be championing local foods, but Local Roots now fills these gaps. Located in an spacious old store-front that was once the home to farm machinery, there are wooden tables for the various farm products (the farmers need not be there), a cash-register, cold cases, the bakery area and a meeting room fitted out with information on gardens, seed catalogues, pamphlets etc. A group seed order is in the offing, and there is enough space available for future projects, such as a kitchen where people can make jams and other foods for sale. They’ve already shown Food Inc. and held a discussion following the film, something we do at our farmers market in Santa Fe.

Even though the store wasn’t officially open for business the night I visited, I saw eggs from several farmers, many different cuts of grass fed beef and lamb, maple sugar and syrup, honey, sesame crackers and spelt crackers plus some baked goodies for good dogs, corn for popping, little butternut squash as well as giant Musqee de Provence, several varieties of potatoes, beautiful plump shallots, a variety of cow’s milk cheeses and some terrific recycled but freshly printed tee shirts.  I am the proud owner of one that says “Soil, Not Oil”.  After reading Plenty and knowing how badly the authors yearned for flour to make bread with within the limits of their 100 mile diet, I thought it was especially auspicious for anyone trying the same experiment that Local Roots also showcased both spelt and wheat flours.

I thought this was a pretty decent showing of wholesome things to eat for February in cold, snowy Ohio, and it didn’t even include the fresh foods farmers would bring a few days later, (which they did, despite the snow) tatsoi, arugula, salad mix, radishes, turnips, and breads of all kinds.  Wild black walnuts and hickory nuts, two unusual varieties that I recommend in my new book, Seasonal Fruit Desserts along with maple sugar, can also be found here. Maple sugar is hands down my favorite sweetener and hard to find outside of places like this co-op. I came home with both a bag of the sugar and a dozen gorgeous eggs from roaming chickens and have already used both. Next visit I plan to delve into the unusual selection of jams and conserves featuring local wines and other ingredients, such as a Chardonnay and Lemon Verbena jelly, or one made with Merlot and black peppercorns.

Local Roots impressive mission is “to establish a year-round market place for the purpose of connecting consumers and producers of locally grown foods and other agricultural products. Our goals are to encourage healthy eating, expand local economic development, promote community involvement, and sustainable living.”

Membership in the co-op isn’t necessary but is encouraged, as are volunteers, for this is truly a grass roots movement.  The web site, www.localrootswooster.com tells it all. Although the co-op is just getting started and figuring out what it is and wants to be, I’ll bet that within a year Local Roots will have put out runners, and it wouldn’t surprise me if before they know it, they’ll be a model for others who want to serve their own communities. For now, bravo to all who put this wonderful effort together!

A lot of people e-mail me with their questions about cooking about produce, or food in general. Often they’re questions other readers have as well, and while I always answer them personally, I want to answer them in a public way. I’m hoping that doing so will solicit responses (and questions) from you, because I’m very interested in learning what you feel you need to know when it comes to cooking and being comfortable in the kitchen, at ease with vegetables, or presenting a vegetable-based meal.

Here’s a question for the first week of 2010 from a 21-year old college student, who wrote the following:

“Though I’m not a vegetarian, I consider vegetables and other non-meat foods the most interesting and I trying to get as close as I can to cooking all my meals. I want to move away from snacking and actually making simple meals from your cookbook consistently.  Should I develop 3,5,10 recipes I like and just stick with those?” 

Actually, this student asked several good questions in his e-mail, but this is one I know that others struggle with, too. Here is my answer:

Often people try so many different types of dishes when they’re starting out that they get confused and have a hard time developing enough focus to become competent at one or two things. I think your idea of choosing a few recipes to work on is an excellent one. It will give you a base to move from, and confidence, too.

First, figure out what you like to eat. Do you love stir-fries or prefer gratins? Are you a soup eater? (They’re inexpensive to make and leftovers improve in flavor.)  Then choose some dishes that seem interesting to you, but not too many, as you suggest. Cook them until you feel so at ease that you don’t need to keep referring back to the recipe.  About the time you start to get bored with a dish, you’ll be fluent enough with the process to start thinking about how you might change the recipe or move onto other soups, gratins, or stir-fries or whatever it is you’ve decided on.

 I’m pretty sure that one day you’ll want to try something entirely different from the 3, 5, or 10 recipes that you’ve mastered. When you do, don’t be surprised if you find you have some new techniques under your belt. Repetition is very useful when it comes to learning to cook.

After running to keep up with summer’s perishable fruits I appreciate the inertness of dried fruits and nuts. I think of these as slow fruits in that you don’t have to keep your eye on them the way you have to watch a peach. Winter foods are something of a relief to deal with, which is a good thing, because there’s usually a lot going on in December. Here are a few desserts that have the inherent advantages of being uncomplicated, versatile, festive, and not too damaging to one’s figure or health. Of course, they’re good to eat, too.

First there is fresh fruit. Satsuma tangerines begin in November and are especially good around Christmas. Oranges are coming in. There are handsome Comice pears that you buy firm and allow to ripen over a few days before putting out with the walnuts or pecans in their shells, with a cracker. Folks can crack their own. Why not? If you’re a fan of cheese, have a plate of 2 or 3 cheese with your pears —blues, goats, goat blues, hard cheeses like Vella’s 2-year old Dry Jack, or a soft Latour. A small glass of dessert wine is festive, too.

Then there’s dried fruit. I’m thinking of dates, especially Medjools and Deglet Noors. Buy some almond paste, mix it with a drop of pink or orange color and flavor with rose or orange-flower water, then roll the paste into little lozenges and use them to replace the dates’ seeds. Or fold dried figs around a toasted almond or a walnut and enjoy it with a glass of anise liquor and a simple nut cookie.

A winter dessert that’s both festive and practical is chocolate bark. Chocolate barks are easy to make and terrific to have on hand for winter entertaining. You can make them with dark chocolate or white, and you can make them interesting and beautiful in so many ways. Chocolate bark keeps well (theoretically, anyway) covered and refrigerated so you can take it out as you need it. You don’t really need measurements, as you’ll see the first time you make bark.

For the dessert —because it’s not going to just the bark (white chocolate and coconut in this case)—take out a tray or platter and a selection of pretty dishes. Break the bark into jagged pieces and put them in a dish. Fill a small bowl with some tangerines. You might have some chunks of pomegranates on another dish.  Definitely include a pile of luscious Medjool dates, a bowl of walnuts and the nutcracker, or perhaps dried figs stuffed with a roasted almond and anise seeds. You might also include a small cheese. Add anything else you like to nibble on and bring it all to the table.  Pour a dessert wine. You’ll find that people can pick endlessly at all these bites, putting them together this way and that. The conversation continues and no one leaves feeling stuffed—just beautifully fed. 

White Chocolate and Coconut Bark with Lavender and Tangerine Zest

This is one of the prettiest barks you can imagine, and if you love the flavors of coconut and orange, you’ll be very happy indeed.  I can’t resist adding a few green pistachio nuts.  I use salted ones – both because the salt adds to the flavor and because they tend to have the best color and texture.

     2 3.5-ounce bars of Lindt white chocolate with coconut

     1-2 tablespoons green pistachio nuts, finely chopped

     blossoms from 3 stems of culinary lavender – a scant 1 teaspoon

     the zest of a tangerine removed with a citrus zester rather than a microplane so that you get nice, long, thin pieces

Lay a piece of tinfoil or parchment on a tray, about 8 X 10 inches.

Melt the chocolate over barely simmering water.  Keep the heat low and take care not to let it burn by scraping down the chocolate as it melts. 

Spread the melted chocolate thinly over the foil.

Sprinkle over the nuts, lavender and zest and refrigerate until set. Break into pieces and store in an airtight container set in a cool place, or a waxed paper bag set in the refrigerator.

Over Thanksgiving I was at Rancho la Puerta, the most magical spa in Tecate, Mexico. I am not a spa person, but I love this place for its gardens, its kind staff, the chance to walk a lot, practice yoga, and for many other reasons. I always teach either writing or cooking classes when there, and for sure I visit the six acres of organic gardens. All the gardens –those that produce vegetables and those that cover the rolling hills with aromatic Mediterranean and native plants, are at the heart of the pleasure I find in being at the Ranch.

When I do a cooking class, I always partner with the head gardener, Salvador, to take students outside to visit the various plants they’ll be cooking. Salvador is so enthusiastic about all the plants he grows he infects others with his joy. He plucks plants out of the earth, strips away leaves, cuts off bites of what meets his hand— chile, radish, beet, escarole—with his garden knife, takes a bite then, exclaiming, “Is good!” The he offers bites to others. It’s  hard to refuse tasting even an onion at eight in the morning when confronted with Salvador’s excitement.

This past week I was especially struck by the foliage, the huge outer leaves of the cabbages with their raised veins, the thick, dark deeply lobed broccoli leaves, and those that crowned the kohlrabi, that I suggested to the students that we cook them and see what they taste like. I myself didn’t know. It’s not just that we don’t think to cook these leaves, it’s that most of us never even see them unless we have a garden, so to everyone, these enormous leaves were a new aspect of the edible garden. We cooked one kind of leaf in each of three classes, slicing them into thin ribbons, simmering them in salted water, then tossing them with olive oil and crushed garlic. Even though the leaves were leathery and dense, they all cooked surprisingly quickly, in five minutes or so,  into luminous shades of green, from light (the cabbage), to spinach colored (the kohlrabi), to as dark as possible (the broccoli). They were robust tasting, but not bitter or old or rank in any way. They tasted like the essence of green matter —chlorophyll and sunshine— and it felt like eating good medicine. Not a shred remained. They were so delicious that the classes practically wolfed them down. What a surprise, for usually these are the parts that are thrown away. 

If you have a garden with some winter broccoli growing under a tunnel of remay or plastic, don’t overlook the greens. I’ve got an eight-foot bed of red sprouting broccoli and I’m not sure it’s going to make those sprouts. But if it doesn’t (and even if it does) I’ve got my eye on those leaves. In fact, I might not even wait to find out what the rest of the plant is going to do. (Warning: the leaves are feeding the plant, so if you’re tempted, to sample and still want a crop, don’t take too many!)

Everyone in the writing workshop gathered for lunch on the first day in a chilly hall. The young cook, festooned with dreadlocks, announced the menu: it would be gruel. I admit that I wasn’t too excited about gruel, even though I had just been reading about its virtues in Emma. I have eaten a lot of monastic gruel dinners in my life that were not all that appealing. I hoped our chef would do better, but when I noticed there were no burners warming the food, I was doubtful.

But this was different because we would eat with the gruel our fingers. Rasta-chef talked about eating in countries where fingers replace forks, and he was clearly eager for us to have this experience. As a teacher in the workshop I was given a wooden spoon (why the teachers got this option I’m not sure), which I did use before giving in to group pressure. Together we all worked our way through a mound of only slightly warm, stewed root vegetables spooned over cold, stiff blue corn meal, using our fingers to lift each bite to our mouths. Fingers do limit bite sizes more than a fork or a spoon do, but I missed my spoon. We were clumsy. We were hungry. It was food and it was elemental. It was also sticky, but oddly satisfying.

The next day we ate lunch outdoors in the warm sunshine of the school garden. We were brought a small salad of kale, radishes, and onions from the garden, a delicious salad. Then there was nothing. Was this another teaching meal, I wondered?  I was pretty sure it was, and that the lesson today would be about eating little and finding out it’s enough.  I could do that, I thought. I considered how I felt, and sure enough, I wasn’t that hungry. The salad would be enough. It felt good to stop here. I thought this was pretty daring of the (same as the gruel) chef.

But then there was another course, a thin beet soup. It wasn’t too filling and it was full of flavor. Clean and unfussy. I dropped in cubes of a local goat feta and liked it even more. Kale salad and thin beet soup still made a pretty modest meal, but one that was also sufficient. It still felt good. Again, how daring of the chef to stop with so little, I thought.

But then came the winter squash, stuffed with a bison ragout, and the leftover vegetables from the previous day sauced with tomato or yogurt. Was there rice, too?  Although it was organic and wholesome and good, I wished we had been given the lesson contained in the more Spartan meal of thin soup and robust salad. Of course I had been given that lesson, but being a food person, ever curious, (frankly greedy), and too polite to give my plate back to the chef, I ate my meal.  All of it. And the dessert that followed. And I learned once again, that habits often trump lessons, even good lessons. But something stuck, the experience of sufficiency as well as that of too much. It got my attention. And now to practice it.  Hard work when you’re not naturally minimal about food, but worth more than a few tries.