Squash Dependency

My name is Joe.

Altogether now, HI, JOE!

I don’t know how it happened. I was walking around the greenmarket and I saw it, an eight pound sweetmeat pumpkin. I didn’t mean to buy it, but it just appeared in my bag. When I got home, that was when I realized I might have a problem. Butternut and delicata squash were vying for attention on the shelf, the table littered with small pie pumkins. Worse yet, cheese pumpkins aren’t even really out yet, and I’ll have to buy one when they are. What to do?

My treatment begins today: soup, ravioli, maybe a pie and puree into the freezer for a handy side dish.

I was vacillating about making ravioli because of time constraints, but what the hell? They’ll be time to sleep when I’m dead, right? Like almost every word in Italian, the precise definition of *raviolo* is hard to pin down and dependent on geography, demographics and the mood of the person in question. Tortelli is a popular word in the north for filled pastas, as is tortelloni (meaning, loosely, ‘big tortelli’, which itself means loosely ’smaller form of cake’), although I have alternately heard both of those terms applied to full and half moons. Logic and the majority of experience suggest that tortelli are the folded, half moon shape, and tortelloni the round.

Ravioli, on the other hand, I have only ever seen to be one thing, and though I always associate it with southern Italian food, the fact is there is no basis for that other than being raised by southern Italians; the word is just as popular in the north.

Regardless, squash and pasta are a classic fit, and if time permits we’ll make some together.

And leave some comments, for Christ’s sake. People tell me they read this thing all the time, but I won’t *know* unless you leave comments.

Getting Personal

I’m going to come right out and say it: I miss the Greenmarket. This year is the [Greenmarket's](http://www.cenyc.org/site/) 30th anniversary and I’m going to miss the events (September 16th for those of you who can attend) and the benefit dinner at Blue Hill (although the $1000 ticket price may have kept me away even if I was home) and the Greenmarket Restaurant Week (although I will beeline to [Union Square Cafe](http://omnivorousfish.com/node/1) the moment I get back, where it’s always Greenmarket week).

When you go there as often as I do (nearly every Saturday and often Mondays and Fridays, year round) the Greenmarket becomes like a like a familiar organism, with its cycles and patterns, and you meet people. You see how they and their products fare through the season, then it gets cold and many of them go away for a little while. In the spring, they come back, ready to be part of the cycle again. I’m missing one of the most magical times of the year, though, and I’m a little sad about it.

As July ramps up to August, people wander through the market looking for the corn and tomatoes that aren’t there yet. They see the greenhouse tomatoes and the early corn (which sucks, IMHO) and wonder where the summer jewels are. Then, one day, seemingly out of nowhere the place is overrun with tomatoes: there are enormous fire engine red beefsteaks; wrinkled, bursting smoke-on-the-water brandywines (sorry, I couldn’t resist the Deep Purple reference); luscious crimson federles; picture-perfect white and yellow striped green zebras; and tiny, bursting teardrop and cherry tomatoes in yellow, red, orange and green. There are suddenly stacks of corn as high as the tents that hold them; white, yellow, bicolor, jersey, sweet, red, horse corn; it’s all there. Berries abruptly decrease in price as the wild bushes fruit with the increased heat.

I’m going to miss **Bruce and Tom** from **Coach Farm** getting more and more sleep deprived as the summer wears on, becoming more random as they hawk their goat cheese like carnival barkers. I’ll miss the obscenely long lines at the **Egg Guy** (Knoll Crest Farms), with the once-a-week-yuppies stocking up on chicken and eggs. Of course, I get my eggs from **The Secret Egg Guy** (don’t know his real name, he’s the guy who sells heirloom Italian squash varieties, west side of market, across from Gorzynski’s) when I pick up one of the enormous *striata d’italia* squashes he has. The eggs at Gorzynski’s are better than either of them, but they only have a small amount, always gone by 8AM, and they don’t grade them, so they’re difficult to bake with.

I’m going to miss the h-h-h-hotties from **Frat Boy Farms** (read: Sycamore Farms), who sell lasciviously swollen tomatoes (cheaper than anybody else in the market) in t-shirts with the sleeves torn off, their perfect muscles tanned from the sun and glistening fr- UH OH. Sorry about that. There are prurient reasons for going to the market, too. (Someday I will figure out how to diplomatically tell the parable of **Pretzel Hottie**.)

It’s sad not to be there, but kind of beautiful how the market goes on, impervious to the loss of any single element. The organism thrives not just on its own energy, but the energy of the community.

Listening: the sadly defunct The Low Road’s “Devil’s Pocket.”

Last Supper with The Agent… for a while

I’m going to try and recall the Agent’s and my Last Home-Cooked Supper. He wanted to go whole hog, down to the cheese, and we opened a ludicrously expensive Burgundy he had bought me for my birthday for the occasion. (Thinking about it for a second, based on some things I have written and the reviews I have done thus far, you might think we make a lot of money. Let me assure you this is not the case. I merely spend a disproportionate amount of money on food, wine and kitchen equipment, and a disproportionate amount of time writing about said things.) Anyway, we had some Salmon Run riesling to whet our gastronomic whistles while we cooked. If you don’t know Salmon Run, you should. It’s Dr Konstantin Frank’s second label, and they make fantastic wines from $7-$14.

Here’s the menu:

>Tomato Soup with Purple Basil
>It’s the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown (Stuffed Pattypan Squash, Sicilian-Style, with wild watercress salad)
>Medallions of Venison with Cumberland Pseudo-Sauce and Glazed Turnips
>Cherries *Clafoutis*

We also had planned on a salad of arugula and sorrel together (the Agent’s idea, he ate it solo after I left and said it was great) and a cheese course of cabrales, sweet gorgonzola and Coach Farm extra-aged green peppercorn goat cheese. We were just too tired to eat that much, so we had a little piece of clafoutis each and hit the sack. (I made off with the Coach Farm and ate it last night with Fess Parker Syrah from 2000. More on that later.) We had a bottle of Chambolle Musigny with the venison and dessert. Cherries and burgundy… mmmmmmmmmmm.

I started dating the Agent in the spring, and wooed him with the last of the hubbard squash ravioli and young lettuces. After a few weeks, we moved on to pork shoulder with garlic scapes, but I went in for the kill during tomato season. The first time he had dinner with friends of mine (who range in age from 5 to 35 years older than him) we had scamorza-stuffed squash blossoms, tomato salad and green zebra tomatoes stuffed with bacony succotash. Needless to say, the tomato and her friends have become an integral part of our relationship. Since I was leaving at the tomato season opener, I went for soup, because soup can forgive a lot where tomatoes are concerned.

The pattypan squash was an impulse buy at Gorzynski’s Ornery Farm’s stand at the Saturday Union Square Greenmarket. If you haven’t been to their stand, I recommend it. It’s on the west side of the market, a tiny, little non-descript stand across from Paffenroth. They grow a wide array of stuff completely naturally: no pesticides and no [gimmicks](http://code0range.net/node/1526). By and large their vegetables are great, and some of the things they grow- like the lettuces and herbs- are worth the sometimes exorbitant prices they charge. Some of it looks a little funky, but I assure you it is merely in a more natural state than you are used to seeing it.

The Gorzynskis are very nice people, and the farmer, John, and his partner (farming/business partner, not domestic/life partner) Gary are very nice and are happy to answer all sorts of dumb questions like “what the hell is amaranth and why would I want it” and “what is this huge purple flower at the end of what looks like a chive.”

Anyway, the squashes were bigger than I’m used to seeing them (3-4″ across), but they were excellent, regardless. I stuffed them with their insides, seeded, chopped and sauteed with garlic, pine nuts, raisins, onion and herbes de provence. I wet the mixture with a little milk and baked the squashes for about 40 minutes. The “Great Pumpkin” name comes from their presentation with a wild watercress salad (from the Secret Egg Guy, I’ll have to do a post on my greenmarket nicknames). The picture isn’t very good, but I thought it was pretty funny. The salad was barely dressed with a sprinkling of salt, a squeeze of lemon and a drizzle of olive oil.

It’s the Great Pattypan

There were some new berry guys at the market, and we wanted to try them out, so we got some black currants and some blueberries. They also had strawberries, which I thought was odd, but their farm was way up about Binghamton, and they say it stays a lot cooler there. Whatever, we tasted them, the strawberries weren’t that good. The blueberries and the currants, however, were extraordinary. I figured we could make use of the currants with meat and I was thinking quail or whatever little birds Quattro might have had, but the Agent was adamantly for red meat. Long story short, the Agent had never had venison before, and even though it’s hardly the season, we figured ‘what the hell,’ and we got a frozen tenderloin at Citarella.

I’m a big fan of an old (and old-fashioned) sauce called Cumberland Sauce that’s made with port wine and red currant jelly, in fact the oldest recipes are just melted jelly and reduced port. Years ago, I learned how to make a more refined version with veal stock and some other flavors like onion, clove, orange, cinnamon and ginger, but very subtle. It’s an excellent sauce that you can’t throw together at the last minute, so I ran the currants through a food mill and started cooking. The agent made a nice, vinegary marinade for the venison, and I cut them into little medallions. After sauteing briefly, I deglazed the pan with a little white wine, then added sweet muscat wine(Chambers-Rosewood, love that stuff), some chicken stock and the currant puree, then simmered it for a bit. I put in some sour cream for a little richness and that’s about it. We had glazed turnips (also from Gorzynski’s) with it. When I glaze turnips, or any vegetable, I do the caramel first, and then only add as much water as I need to cook the vegetables. When the water is gone, the butter and sugar start to do their thing again and the vegetable is imbued with a slight brown caramel flavor from the sugary water.

The clafoutis recipe I use is from [Saveur magazine](http://www.saveur.com/article.jsp?ID=3885&typeID=120), but I don’t recommend making it in a blender. If you blend the batter too long, it wants to rise in the over, and you don’t get that perfect, browned rustic top. The batter will rise up over the berries and look like a manhole cover. How do I know? I’ve done it. Oh, and stop sniveling and leave the damn pits in the cherries. They add a singular flavor and you’re cheating yourself of the real *cerises clafoutis* flavor.