Fight for Your Right to Garden!

Ok, so we didn't actually have to fight for our right to garden.  But if you watch the video at the end of this post, you'll understand the title.

What we did do is decide that despite the limitations of our suburban apartment's balcony, we'd garden nonetheless.  With help from our good friend over at Arcadia, Farmer Mo, we decided on a combination of deep pots for vertical veggies like tomatoes, some more shallow boxes for shorter plants such as herbs and radishes.

Dina and I celebrated Easter by heading over to Cravens Nursery and Pottery last Sunday to choose seedlings for our garden.  We were wowed by exotic bushes from Japan and lovely little lemon trees, but made our way eventually to the vegetable section.   As we strolled through the herbs and tomatoes, the excitement of growing our own food took hold.  I think, if we could, we would have walked away with one of everything.  But given our budget and our space limitations, we had to make tough choices - green zebras, cherry peppers, and chocolate mint, for example, all made the final cut.

We then headed over to Home Depot for deep pots, long planters, railing box holders, and organic soil.  Before long we were home and elbow deep in warm, dark soil.

Except for today's torrential rains which shook some of the more fragile herbs up a bit, the garden's great.  We even have radish sprouts breaking through the soil!

I'll keep you posted on our progress.  And in the interim, here's a first garden video...

Earth Day with Compost Cab

In honor of Earth Day, Compost Cab and The Farm at Walker Jones Elementary School teamed up to provide an opportunity for volunteers to get their hands dirty.    I heard about the opportunity through the D.C. Farm to School Network and thought it would be a fun way to enjoy the day while exploring my new-found interest in urban agriculture.  I was joined by a dozen or so folks who pitched in despite the inclement weather.


The farm and the school are located about ten blocks North of the U.S. Capitol, close to where New York and New Jersey Avenues intersect.  When I received the invitation to volunteer, the address was most of what I knew about the project.  A quick trip to their blog and I was immediately impressed by their vision.

Imagine dining at a restaurant and loving the fresh figs served with your prosciutto.  You inquire about their origin and your server says, "Oh, the kids over at Walker Jones grew them."  Or maybe you live in the neighborhood and visit weekly what will be the school's "farmers market" where sixth graders learn math skills while selling you Swiss chard.  Biology lessons will come alive.  Cafeteria waste will become compost.  And child-cultivated veggies will wonder across the street into school lunches.  From what I understand, the project is still young and their vision will take a few years to unfold.  It's exciting, though, and I can't wait to watch it grow!

On Friday our job was to help convert old, plant-waste-only composting bins into a new system that would integrate local food waste picked up and delivered by Compost Cab.  Some of the volunteers knew each other - a sizable contingent had come (bearing doughnuts, I might add - yum!) from a local law firm - but most did not.  Our common bond was compost, so that's what we chatted about:  Do you compost meat?  What about bones?  Cooked veg?  Have you tried worms?  My worms died.  So did mine.

Worms, I have come to realize, are compost's best friend.  And so they come up at every event I attend.  You can't talk about urban agriculture without talking about compost.  And you can't talk about compost without talking about worms.  The resulting vermicompost (or worm compost) is great for gardens and the best way to speed up the time it takes for food scraps to morph into fertilizer.  If you're curious, here's some helpful information.

The city is full of folks who could compost.  But without back yards, where's it going to happen?  Think about all the dorm rooms of all the colleges, all the apartment complexes, all the office kitchenettes.  Then think about all the coffee grounds at all the coffee shops and all the food scraps produced by restaurants, markets, and hotels.  Now think about all the produce tossed by grocery stores because it didn't sell before it went bad.  That's a ton of compost!

Enter Compost Cab.  As Jeremy Brosowsky pointed out on Friday, recycling programs didn't spread widely because the masses demanded it (although grass-roots organizing, I would add, did help sound the alarm); their spread was catalyzed by their profitability.  Entrepreneurs figured out that there was money to be made in recycling and this resulted in the wide-spread infrastructure needed to make recycling available across America.  The entrepreneurs benefited and so did the planet. 

He added that this same trend is possible with compost.  If we wait for the government to decree it (now I'm editorializing), we may be waiting a very long time.  But perhaps right now, some forward-thinking entrepreneurs can help galvanize this effort.  Compost Cab is a good example.  From what I understand, it has quickly found a receptive green niche here in D.C.

As I mentioned in my last post, Dina and I are experimenting with our own compost.  We own an anaerobic indoor composter that uses a substance called bokashi to speed up the break down while absorbing the resulting odor.  There's a spout on the bottom for retrieving compost "tea" which you mix with water and give to your plants.  I have to confess, we should have done a little more research before going this route.  Yes, the tea is great and the bucket is odorless.  But in order to convert the half-broken-down food waste into usable compost, you have to bury the contents under soil and wait two or so weeks for it's final conversion.

Soil...hmm...that's the stuff we had to buy for our balcony garden because we have no yard and therefore no soil.  So what are we supposed to do with a bucket of half-digested waste every week?  I called the County of Fairfax's Composting Department (well, that's what Google Places called it), but they don't actually compost, just recycle and mulch.  I called the City of Vienna, but they don't compost either.  The City suggested I try looking for local community gardens.  The County worker was blunt: "I have no idea; that never really comes up."

Undaunted, we now plan to give worms a shot.  We're going to invest in a little Worm Factory and several hundred Red Wrigglers and see if we can't fertilize our garden while minimizing our waste.  As we struggle to find our way, I'm glad that the Compost Cabs of the world exist and I'll try to check in on Walker Jones now and again to see how The Farm is shaping up.

Vertical Farming

Can you imagine a five-story vertical farm built smack dab in the middle of Milwaukee?  2008 MacArthur Fellow Will Allen can and he's on his way to making it happen.

 On Saturday, April 16th, I got up early and hopped on the Metro.  I was headed into D.C. for the "2011 International Urban Sustainability Action Summit".  The event - held at, and sponsored in party by, UDC - brought a hundred or so folks together to discuss this year's theme: "Food - Sovereignty, Security and Justice".


There were panels and workshops, guest speakers and information booths - so much that I could write about.  But for me, Will stole the show.

Will's organization, Growing Power, started in 1995 when he bought the last urban farm in Milwaukee.  He had grown up on rural farmland in Maryland, just outside of D.C. (land, he pointed out, that has transformed over the years into a chain of suburbs).  But in Milwaukee, he translated rural know-how and determination, as well as entrepreneurial savvy, into urban miracles.  He built up farms, and he also built up the community around him.  He activated youth volunteers, for example, teaching them not only how to grow crops, but also how to read, write, and perform math.

His operation has grown substantially.  Here are a few of the details:

Vegetable Hoop House

• Developed an urban farm model that feed 10,000 people per 3 acres.
• Redirected 22 million pounds of food waste away from landfills and into compost.
• Used compost to insulate the inside and outside of large hoop houses, creating the ability to grow certain crops year-round (even in the midst of Midwest winters!).
• Worked with communities to target high crime urban areas for flower garden projects and to convert empty lots where drug deals often occur into community gardens.
• Converted abandoned buildings into vertical gardens and aqua-ponic farms (indoor fish farms, basically).
• Remodeled roofs into gardens for local businesses.
• Used solar power to power farms.
• Collected rain water to irrigate.
• Built machines that convert compost into methane gas; that is, fuel to power his operations.
• Raised goats, chickens, turkeys, and bees in urban settings.
• Targeted "farm deserts" (urban areas with no local markets for purchasing groceries) for farmers markets and hoop houses.
• Grown network of farms to expand across the U.S. and even abroad (London, Kenya, and Ukraine, for example).

His organization relies on over 40 different funding streams.  He's making money while doing good - a model, he suggests, more non-profits need to consider.

His next big project is a five-story vertical farm in the heart of Milwaukee.  The building will include a first floor market, educational areas, aqua-ponics, and tiered green house space.  I'm not sure what the time-line is, but I hope to make it out to Milwaukee when it's done.

If you're curious, I found an interesting article in The Economist entitled, "Vertical Farming: Does it really stack up?"  I'm new to the concept and the technology, so I'll wait to weigh in.  But I will say this: Will seems like the kind of guy who can pull rabbits out of hats.  I'll be waiting optimistically for word from Milwaukee.

Post Script

Will would be disappointed if I didn't share with you what he feels is the most important point of his presentation: "It's all about the soil."  His research suggests that in the U.S., today's soil is 50% as nutrient as soil was in the 1950's.  Less healthy soil means less healthy fruits and vegetables; less healthy animals, for that matter, because they feed on the fruit of the soil before we feed on them.  Both mean a less healthy humanity.

Dina and I are experimenting with anaerobic compost in a little unit that sits on our balcony.  In our first week of using it, I was shocked by how much compostable material we produce.  Multiply that by a globe full of couples and families - it blows my mind!  We're starting a little garden on our balcony (tomatoes, herbs, chard, and peppers - more on that in future blogs) and hope to use our compost to fertilize our food.  It's a drop in the bucket, I know, but as drops go, this one feels pretty good.

Seared Scallops with Citrus Mint Gastrique

What, you're probably asking, do seared scallops have to do with the farm?  Nothing, really.

I tried to craft some clever connection, but here's the truth of it: my last blog touched briefly on Chef Tony Pope and his restaurant, Le Bistro.  One of the many lessons Tony taught me was how to cook "Oh my God!" scallops; you know, the scallops that melt onto your taste buds and demand an "Oh...my...God!" on impact.

Tonight I took a culinary tour down memory lane and prepared a riff on Tony's scallops for me and Dina.  Here's the recipe...

Seared Scallops with Citrus Mint Gastrique

Ingredients:

• Fresh, as-local-as-you-can-get-'em scallops
• Fresh mint
• Fresh lemon and orange (I used a couple of clementines, but you could use navel oranges...or blood oranges, that would be fun)
• Fresh ginger
• Shallot
• White wine
• Honey
• Canola oil (or blended or grapeseed - something with a subtle flavor and a high smoke point)
• Crushed garlic clove
• Salt, pepper, and cayenne
• Sauce pan, cast iron skillet (or other good skillet), fish spatula, and a metal spoon

Steps:

Starting the Sauce

1. Pick the leaves off a couple of sprigs of mint.  Rough chop or chiffonade the mint leaves (depending on the look you're going for) and reserve them for use later in the sauce.  Keep the stems handy for use in the gastrique.
2. Fine dice a shallot.
3. Smash up and inch or so of ginger.  I recommend using the tip of a metal spoon to scrape the skin off (a trick another chef taught me - works like a charm).  Then cut it it half length-wise.  Take the back of your knife (yes, the dull end) and whack up and down the ginger.  This breaks down the rigid root and prepares it to give up more flavor to the sauce.
4. Heat a heavy sauce pan on medium high.  Let a little butter melt in the pan as it's getting hot.  As the butter starts to brown, toss in the shallots and sautee until they are translucent (I like to add a little fine sea salt to build flavor.
5. Add some white wine - maybe a 1/4 or 1/2 cup, depending on how much sauce you need - and bring to a light boil.  Then lower heat to a simmer and start to reduce.  
6. A note about cooking with wine: you don't need to use expensive wine to cook with, but at least buy something that is pleasant to drink.  If you cook with bad wine, you're just reducing and concentrating that bad flavor.  And think about the impact you want it to have on your sauce.  This sauce is a little sweet with citrus notes, so I'm going to look for a crisp white wine, something with a touch of grapefruit, for example, might be nice.
7. Here's where the fun starts.  You can get creative, exploring with lots of fruit and spice and sweetness.  I wanted the light sweetness honey lends, so I added a little.  Not too much - you can always add more later, but can't take it out.  I also added the ginger pulp, the mint stems, a little lemon juice and the juice from two clementines.  Remember, you'll have an opportunity to boost these flavors later, so don't go overboard.  Taste the reduction along the way and if a flavor is growing too strong, take it out of the pot.  At any point you can strain out the solids and continue reducing the wine by itself.
8. This isn't a step, but I want you to know that it's o.k. to make mistakes...as long as you correct them.  I, for example, didn't add enough ginger and mint, so the flavors weren't showing up in the reduction the way I wanted.  So I threw in a ginger mint tea bag - yup, my favorite after-meal tea - and let it steep for a few minutes while the wine continued to reduce.
9. Once the liquid had starts to get thick, add about a half a cup of light veg stock (made from water, onion, celery, parsley stems, a green apple, and an orange - you can make it in an hour) and bring it back up to a simmer.  Once the combination of liquids has re-thickened, strain off any solids left in the sauce and leave off the heat nearby.

Searing the Scallops

1. Get a well-seasoned cast iron skillet good and hot.
2. While it's warming, roll the scallops in some canola oil.  Liberally salt both sides (again, fine sea salt) and if you like a little spice, sprinkle a touch of cayenne on one side only (scallops have such great natural flavor - don't go overboard with the cayenne).  And, make sure you have a little white wine handy to de-glaze the pan.
3. When the skillet is hot (a drop of water should hit the pan, hiss, dance around, and evaporate quickly), lay your scallops down flat in the pan.  Don't crowd.  
4. This next step is very important:  BE PATIENT!  If you try to flip the scallops too soon, they will stick to the pan and you'll loose that beautiful, dark, tasty sear.  So just relax and let the scallops do the same.
5. A note on pan heat: If the pan isn't hot enough, you'll never get a good sear.  The scallop will cook through and it'll ruin the texture before you ever get a good, crisp exterior.  If, at any point, the pan starts to smoke, the pan is too hot and you risk burning the scallops.  Take the pan off the heat for a while.  You could add a little room temperature oil to help protect the scallops, but do NOT add cold water and do NOT add butter.  The former will make the sear mushy and the latter will burn right up (because of butter's low smoke point) and give that burnt flavor to the scallops.
6. Once you see a dark rim form around the scallop where it touches the pan, test and see if the scallop is ready to release.  You can use your fingers or tongs (be gentle), but just wiggle it a little to see if it's sticking.  If so, let it hang out for another minute and try again.  If you're still having trouble, add a little butter to the pan.  This will often aide the release.  This is where the fish spatula comes in real handy.  You wanna flip the scallops over without leaving any flesh on the pan.
7. Once the scallops are flipped, toss a little butter in the pan, as well as a little lemon thyme, a crushed clove of garlic, maybe some sprigs of mint.  Tilt the pan at a slight angle so the melted butter and herbs are all together on one side (not too steep, however, because you want the scallops to sit tight).  Use the metal spoon to bathe the scallops in the flavored butter.
8. High quality scallops can be eaten raw and at this point, your scallops are probably sitting at rare.  I'd baste them 'til about medium rare and take them out of the pan then, but it's up to you and your guests' preferences.  Tent them with foil while you finish the sauce.

Finishing the Sauce

1. Remove any herbs/garlic from the pan and pour in a little wine.  You can use the same metal spoon to incorporate any scallop juices in the pan.  And scrape up any fond, incorporating it into the thickening wine.  As it thickens, pour in some (or all, depending how much you made) of the foundation sauce from earlier.  
2. Taste the sauce and add more salt if needed.  Whisk in some butter to make it thicker and more rich.  Hit it with a little more lemon and/or orange juice if you want to bump up the citrus flavor.  This is your "second bite at the apple", a chance to add anything that's missing or re-balance as you like.
3. The final step is to stir in the chopped mint.  If you do this too soon, the mint will turn a nasty, dark color.

Plate the scallops, ladle sauce generously, and enjoy! 

---

For my birthday this year, my good friends The Jenkins got me a beautiful Himalayan salt block.  Tonight, instead of flipping the scallops in the skillet, I flipped them on to the stone which I had heated at 450 degrees for 30 minutes.  Great flavor!

If I had had a table of guests, I would have brought them out to the table this way - still sizzling - with the salt block lying on a decorative towel folded onto a plate (this way you don't get burned and neither do the plate or the table).

Two Donkeys and a Septuagenarian

What do two donkeys, a septuagenarian, an Italian apothecary, some monks, and a D.C. sommelier have in common?  It was never a question I knew to ask, but I'm exceptionally grateful that I now know the answer.

Last Friday night, in honor of my friend Drew's birthday (that's Drewberto for those of you who knew and loved him back in the day at Le Bistro), his sister Katie organized a celebratory dinner.  At first, she had made reservations at Citronelle.  No, not because of their 60-hr short ribs (although that would have been and excellent reason).  And no, not because of Chef Michelle Richard's cooking (which would be a poor reason since he spends so little time there).  But instead because  Drew, Katie, Blake, and I - four of the evening's six revelers - had worked together under Chef Tony Pope and Tony, long ago, had worked in Richard's laureled kitchen.

On occasion, Tony would regale us with stories from the pressure cooker that was the kitchen at Citronelle.  I own Richard's cookbook.  It's entitled "Happy in the Kitchen".  But according to Tony - and others who have corroborated his stories - "happy" is not the best adjective to describe Richard in the kitchen at Citronelle.

In one story, Tony brings a brand new Global Japanese knife to work (a cook's knives are his or her dearest possession and on a line cook's salary, a real splurge!).  Richard walks by and uses one of Tony's knives to demonstrate a cut.  Appalled by how dull the knife is, Richard raises the knife high into the air and drops it, tip first, onto the unforgiving concrete floor.  The tip cracks, but Tony does not.

We've all wanted to visit and experience the restaurant behind the stories.  But at over $100 a person for the prix fixe, Citronelle, on second thought, did not seem like the best pick for our crew. 

So after a flurry of last-minute texts and emails - and a noble effort by Katie to call all of the restaurants on our list - we decided on Bibiana.  I wasn't, I have to confess, actually interested in eating Italian that night.  I had planned to prepare a very Italian meal for some friends on Sunday and was hoping for something different: Jose Andres' Oyamel or maybe Indian food at Risika.  Thank you, food fates, for not listening to me!

Chef Nicholas Stefanelli

We started with the charcuterie plate which was strong, but didn't wow.  However, it and the bottle of prosecco we ordered were a lovely way of easing into the evening.  Next we shared a few small plates.  Blake and I shared the hay smoked veal sweetbreads.  The hay flavor was so subtle, it lingered on the palate, recalling memories of the farm.  And the way they plated the dish - white plate strewn with hay, thyme, and rosemary, topped with see-through glass plate, topped by sweetbreads and sauce - created a lovely, heightened aromatic experience.

I should pause and say a little about sweetbreads.  First, I love them!  They are tender and creamy, flavorful and satisfying.  Second, they are offal, the "off" cuts of meat, the parts that fall "off" a carcass when it's being butchered - basically the organs and what-not.  Chris Cosentino - a culinary hero of mine whose restaurant Incanto I staged at one night before moving away from San Francisco (the chefs and the food there ROCK!) - maintains and entire website about offal, if you're interested.

Third, sweatbreads - in my mind - are the gateway offal.  Their flavor and texture are much more approachable than other organs.  So if you're feeling adventurous and are looking for a good place to start, here's a dish, if prepared well, that will ensure you have a good first experience (you can try tripe or "Rocky Mountain Oysters" first if you're feeling daring - but I warned you!).

Fourth, and this is perhaps the most important, for me sweetbreads emergent popularity in American restaurants embody the hope that someday soon we will remember how to respect the sacrifice made by the animals we consume.  We, unlike the rest of the world, seem to have forgotten that in addition to the 8oz of filet mignon and 16oz rib eye, there are over a thousand other pounds of usable beef on a cow, not to mention a flavorful tongue, unctuous marrow, and a tasty thymus, aka "sweetbreads".  But enough sermonizing, back to dinner...

To start, Dina ordered the ricotta.  So simple - buffalo milk ricotta, wild rose honey, chives , and almonds - yet so sublime.  The night could have ended there and I would have walked away raving about the place.

But it didn't end there.  We enjoyed squid ink spaghetti with crab meat and burnt wheat cavetelli (who knew burnt wheat would taste so good!) and an osso bucco of veal cheeks and much more.  Everyone ordered their own dish, but we passed the plates around the table, sampling a little bit of everything.


Dessert was delicious.  The Bomba al Cioccolato was just that, a divine, decadent "bomb" of chocolate.  The green cardamom white chocolate foam and cassis compote that accompanied the Semifreddo was so delicate and sophisticated.  And the kitchen sent out an extra dessert in honor of Drew's birthday.  It was the perfect way to end the evening.

Wine Dir. Francesco Amodeo

Well, we thought it was perfect until Bibianna's Wine Director Francesco Amodeo pushed the night right right past perfection.   

We had been intrigued by the dessert menus listing of Rosoli, described as "Amalfi Coast homemade digestives" and offered in a collection of three or a flight of six.  The waitress sent Francesco over to help us make a selection.  His first piece of advice?  Order six different flavors and share.  Done.  He then offered to let us sample a must-try: "Concerto".  Why so special, we asked.  Evidently there is a group of monks in Italy who have perfected this recipe.  They won't give you the recipe, but they will give it to a 77 year old woman who lives in the neighboring village.  She cleans for them.  They like her.  She can then make you a batch of Concerto.

So if you rent two donkeys, one for you and one for the septuagenarian, and travel up the grueling path to the monastery, then pay really close attention as she's making the secret recipe, then order special ingredients from an Italian apothecary, then bring all that back to the U.S., you too can proudly serve Concerto in your restaurant...if, that is, you have the patience to invest several months into a single batch.

The drink is dark, cloudy, an intriguing and alluring mystery.  The nose suggested coffee and the flavor...well, there was coffee and licorice and earth and spice...it was like light passing through a prism and breaks into so many wonderful, new colors.  There was so much nuance; it was perfect.  

Francesco asked us to wait and sample it last, even though he brought it out first and I'm glad we did.  It was so good, nothing could have followed it...nothing, except for a second round of Conerto...which is exactly what we did.  I have to warn you: there is no more Concerto.  If there had been, we certainly wouldn't have left.  But never fear, if you wait patiently until June, his next batch will be ready.

On a final note, the food philosopher in me has to ask: would the drink have been as good if Francesco hadn't told the story?

No, on second thought, I don't have to ask.  It was an amazing story, an awesome beverage, and the best birthday celebration we could have ever hoped for.  And that is all that needs to be said.

Picasso and Blogging

Do you remember the film Memento?  It came out in 2000 and I loved it!  It ripped back and forth between the present and the past, piecing together a story with a fragmented plot.  It did with film, I think, what Picasso and cubism did for painting; that is, synthesize sensory fragments in a way that generated an impression of meaning and truth.

Guernica by Pablo Picasso

My college art professor described it this way: Step 1, take a mirror image of something; Step 2, shatter that image; Step 3, forget what the original image looked like; Step 4, remember what your experience of it felt like; and Step 5, reassemble the shattered fragments in the way that best recreates that feeling.

What, you're probably wondering, do nonlinear narratives and cubism have to do with the farm?  Well, I  no longer work on the farm.  I'm up in the D.C. area living and looking for work.  I've still got a ton of blogs-in-process that recount my adventures on the farm.  But each week I enjoy new adventures that I'd like to share.

So much like Memento, this blog will begin to jump forward and backward between the present and the past.  I'm hoping not to jar your sensibilities, but rather to share with you an impression of the experience I'm having as The Apprentice.  It's no Guernica, but I hope you enjoy.