Mustard Green Malfatti

Malfatti.  The translation is something like, "badly made."  I'm not sure.  I think that's what I remember Tony Priolo say when I worked at Piccolo Sogno.  But hell, badly made is easy.  I can make something that looks like a human made it!  That's my favorite way to make things.  I had SO much mustard.  From just a square foot garden plot I pulled near 5 pounds.  I also pulled that weight in Swiss Chard today but I focused on the mustard because having too much gave me anxiety.  I began to grow these before my dinners were over and used the more tender baby greens wilted on top of course twenty, rabbit ravioli.  Now the greens are big, fluffy, and spicy.  This is my third turn on that plot already this season!  I'll likely have about one more.  Currently my plots have greens growing that I hope to bolt in time for edible flowers for Elizabeth's opening along with other items I will pickle and use for garnish.  Either way I gave some mustard and chard to my neighbors but the rest I will use this week in different preparations, some I will also turn to sorbet.  I love green sorbets.  Tonight I decided on malfatti, last minute decision but at this point it's only appropriate to make the best pheasant food I can considering I'm on a tight tight budget and ramen hurts my belly. 

I don't think I even made this malfatti in any traditional way.  I didn't have ricotta on hand so here's what I did and remember I eyeball then I write it down in what I think it might be appropriate measurements so you have to taste, touch, and experiment for yourself.

3 cups of chopped mustard greens.  Quickly blanch in salted water, chill then strain.

1/2 cup of buttermilk

2 eggs

1/2 cup parmesan cheese

1 cup flour

1 1/2 teaspoon of salt

1/2 teaspoon fresh cracked pepper

1/8 teaspoon fresh grated nutmeg

Place the mustard greens, buttermilk, eggs and cheese in food processor and blend until nicely incorporated.

Transfer to a large mixing bowl and add the salt, pepper and nutmeg.  Slowly add the flour, incorporating with a spatula.

Let set for twenty minutes.

Bring 4 quarts of water to a simmer, using two spoons, scoop a small amount (about ounce) of malfatti onto spoon and use other spoon to push it off into the water.  You can put about 5-8 in pot at a time.  Allow to cook until they float for one minute and the using slotted spoon transfer to an oiled sheet tray to cool.  Repeat until all malfatti batter is used, should be around 3-4 cups malfatti when finished.  

I heated mine in a chicken glace with chicken thighs, zucchini flowers, butter and finished it with parmesan cheese.  You can do whatever you want.  You can also use any green you want.  It's scrumptious.

Target Practice/Hunting For Berries

He told me how "This area was once all covered in water.  That's why the soil is so sandy."  I told him, "I want a cabin.  Right in the middle of the woods.  Maybe I'll find a little plot of land and just get one of those kind of cabins that you snap together, but then it couldn't be in an area with lots of wind or anything rambunctious like that."  He said, "Grandpa had two cabins in the woods on the farm."  I pictured it.  It was like a long lost memory.  And then I don't know if it was really a memory or my imagining a memory but I saw myself standing in the woods, tall as my dad's waist.  Looking at those cabins I remember thinking that's where Hansel and Gretel went!  Who lives there?  What is that place?  Why is there a stove?  Who cooks there?  Why are there bullet holes in it? And then he said, "The only replica I've seen of the porcelain stove that was in there was being sold for 37 thousand.  It was quite an antique."  "Where is it now," I asked and he said, "It's still there."  

"Why don't we get it?  I'd love to have it." 

"It's all shot up.  Cousin Vince shot it up with some of his buddies."

"What?"

"Yep, they just shot up all the cabins."

And then I picture our pistols in the trunk and thought, well at least we are going to use targets, paper targets.  Ugh, why'd they have to be so dumb?  Why do cousins have to do weird stuff like that?  

Anyways I wondered if it was this memory, the picture of me wondering at these cabins in the middle of the woods, was my reason for wanting this myself.  If it's my desire to get back to that safe feeling of just being a child, the height of my dad's waist, stomping through the woods, absorbed in the magic of the green, the leaves, the wild animals, the sounds of leaves...

I knew exactly this is why my dad and I have the rituals we do.  He told me frankly, "I sure miss that farm."  I said, "me too."  We do this because while we are building new memories we are both trying to get back to that lost time full of comfort.  His father's farm.  I realized that day how much he loves and misses his dad.  For him, that farm is where the spirit of his father lives.  So we go to the game preserve right down the road from the farm and each time we do we drive past the house.  He points at the pines that line the vacant cornfield and says, "I planted those."  Last time I even got out and knocked on the door to see if whomever was there would let us go into the woods and walk around but no one was home.  Honestly, we are both a little afraid of who might be in that house.  We are afraid of what we might find out in the woods.  It's not so magical anymore as now it's just a house with a lot of land out in the middle of nowhere where no one does anything to keep it up.  He said, "all our restaurant tables and chairs are probably still in the barn.  If I had them I'd give them to you."  

"Geez dad, I don't know but I don't think I want the tables and chairs you got resale yourself in the 60's for your Polish diner.  I'm not sure it would fit my concept."

"Yep, that's a unique concept."

Back at the preserve we searched forever to find area 7 again.  When we did I found one lone blueberry.  All the rest had fallen already or the deer and squirrels ate them.  Everything is still coming early this year due to that hot streak back in March.  He pointed out sassafras that i just about walked on.  I stopped, knelt down and rubbed the leaves between my fingers and inhaled.  It's one of the most gorgeous smells.  I cut it down. 

We went down a gravel road to check out a tiny lake where there were bluegill and bass.  I told him, "you can eat lily pads."  He said he never did.  But the flowers were so beautiful he searched for a stick and pulled one out of the water while I looked for wild carrots.  I threw down what I pulled up, not certain if I might have had water hemlock instead.  We smelled the flower and it was approximately a  musty lily.  I wanted to eat it but I wasn't certain that I could.  I know the tubers of the lily pad can be consumed.  A future dish!!!!  "Lily Pads, Frog Legs, and Seaweed," of course.  

We stopped every so often along the side of the road so that I could hop out and grab elderberry flowers.  He said, "I never used the flowers.  Only the berries."  He told me to throw the flowers out because he only knows for certain that they are elderberries when the berries form in late summer, early fall.  He was concerned as I was earlier about the water hemlock but I was certain this time.  I couldn't help but think there is so much bounty in the woods I don't even know where to start.  

He told me, "where those mounds are you'll always find arrowheads."  We found arrowheads all the time in our garden on the tiny farm where I grew up.  They always seemed to show up after the garden was freshly tilled along with a heavy rain.  He said those mounds were where the Native Americans set up their camps, because of the water in this area they had to be high up.  He also said the duck hunters from Europe use to come to this area to hunt.  They treated it like people once treated safaris.  They'd make the 7 day boat ride across the Atlantic, then travel with carriages and horse.  I asked what they did with the ducks.  Did they preserve them somehow to take them back?  I was assuming they were hunting for their families, but he said, "no, maybe they ate some but it was just for sport."  He said they use to just go wild with killing animals.  That's why buffalo are now only ranched and no longer roam free.  Oh.

I'm thirty two years old and somehow my dad who certainly doesn't know everything, but has a way of saying it that you believe it, makes me still think he knows all the answers.  When we are out there, in the moment, I believe him.  This is the man that still asks if I think I should get a secretarial job at the Union.  Honestly I'm not even sure what the words, "secretarial job at the Union," mean.  This is the man that while not homophobic, worries about me because I'll never have a husband to take care of me.  But somehow,with all that I believe stories he tells me about what happened out on these farms and in these woods before they were irrigated or civilized as they are today.  I'm not sure what the truth is and I have other things I like to wikipedia.  But I know that when we go there together we go to a place that we both feel safe in.  A place that we remember we loved where we spent time with people we loved and escape from our everyday into the magic.
Over the 6 hours we spent together that day about half an hour was spent shooting guns, one hour was spent hunting berries.  The rest was willy nilly stomping and memory making.

Bittersweet Wildest Dreams

Is it true you really know you are living if reality is better than your dreams?  I've always felt alive in a way.  I've always sensed the reality of my life even if I was dreaming of living on another planet or even in some of my worst moments.  However, I haven't always been able to see things clearly or exactly for what they are.  Let's just say I've, at times, had the inability to differentiate the true from the false.  Sometimes there is a part of me that thinks, "I did this," "I made this food, dish, course, menu."  Certainly I had something to do with it.  But all that thinking is only fooling myself and I wouldn't want to ruffle feathers by saying how I really think it's done.  Ok, I will sort of say.  I think it's more of a channeling than anything else.  It's like it all exists above me and is channeled through me.  And I'm alright if you now think I'm a weirdo.  I don't mind.  What I can also say is that wherever all this loveliness is sourced and how it transpires and what will be happening in the near future is and beyond my dreams.
When I began One Sister the goal was a restaurant.  I remember my first entrepreneurial endeavor.  I collected armfulls of zucchini and tomatoes from our garden.  I set up a table on our front lawn and laid them all out with a FOR SALE sign.  I think I got sidetracked, probably by an afternoon cartoon or Gilligan's Island (I loved that show) and while I stepped away, the one car that was to stop did and drove off while I was gone.  It's interesting that 23 years or so after than day, when I started my company I was doing close to the same thing, just with a touch better service.  While growing up I told my friends that someday I will have a restaurant.  Maybe it was even an intuitive inclination as I had told many people, "One day I will have a garden and grow lots of my own herbs and produce and flowers and then sell them in my front yard and at night I will invite people in to have dinner."  It's really not that much different. So yeah, I'm kind of doing that, kind of.   The location is different, certainly then I thought I would be living in the country somewhere dreamy and magical with fireflies all over the place and a cabin set deep in the woods.  I want to do that too, have a cabin in the woods and I'm saying it now as I once said I will have a restaurant so it will come true!
I began One Sister when I realized I was no longer afraid to put myself in front of people and say, "yeah, I can do this."  I didn't want to wait for some future date and time was not reversing itself.  I couldn't wait for permission either because there was no one on this planet that would have given it to me. Sometimes some people just have to show the world.  I had to prove it.  And for the most part rightly so, I don't have a cooking school degree and I don't have a long list of chefs on my resume that I had trained under.  I had certainly worked for and with some great chefs but not "trained under."  I taught myself with patience, research, watching, asking questions, working for free in the kitchens of others, ambition, fortitude and a hard head.
One Sister grew fast.  I had to keep up with her rather than her keep up with me.  I did take a couple short breaks to work in full-service restaurant kitchens to get up to speed (since it had been about 8 years) and quickly became the head of them, but it was in places that I really didn't find exciting and working for others...  I felt as if I just could not work for restaurant owners.  It was important for me to own a restaurant myself.  It was important for me not to let go of the dream I had.  Either way, within two short years even with the breaks One Sister had a product, pierogi, that reached a Best Of list.  Then within two more short years putting myself out there, the underground dining brought me to this time and place.  This bittersweet moment where One Sister ends, and Elizabeth Restaurant begins.
I wanted this to happen and while I was taking all the steps for it to happen I wasn't ever certain it would.  I have never "expected" it and while at times thought I "deserved" it, the emotion I carry with me is one more of gratitude than anything else.  I have worked my ass off to get here, a point where I will continue to work my ass off.  I have worked so that I can work and I do that because I love to create, cook, and feed people so much that it doesn't feel like work at all.  I am not striving for perfection but I am stiving for excellence, which I find in being perfectly imperfect.  Elizabeth is an extension of who I am just like my sister the human Elizabeth and I were extensions of each other.
This new dimension has opened up and it is difficult to become too afraid of or proud of the big picture, the fact that I now have Elizabeth Restaurant, because there is so much to do.  I am blinded by the daily tasks.  But before I know it there will be a moment where I relax and I'm lying in bed, blinking at the ceiling and thinking, "Holy shit!  I'm living beyond my wildest dreams."

Carrot Top Pesto

About two weeks ago I went into a preserving frenzy.  I pulled a lot of swiss chard, beets, and carrots from my garden.  There is just something about growing your own food that for me, makes it so hard to throw any little bit away.  Not only did I use the beets on my current menu and can some of them but I also pickled and canned the stems.  I used the swiss chard on my menu as well, a touch for my own consumption, made sorbet, pickled and canned stems, and gave some to my neighbors.  The carrots I pickled and preservered.  They were so tiny and cute.  They look beautiful in the Ball Mason Jars, swimming in an orange tinted liquid with coriander seeds.   The tops were so lovely, green and vibrant there was no way in hell I could toss them in the trash so I made pesto.  This pesto is the loveliest I have ever had.  Ever, I think.
So here is what I did.  I took about three cups of carrot tops, cleaned and roughly chopped.
I added them to the food processor with two peels cloves of garlic, about a cup of cashews and 1/2 teaspoon of salt.  As usual please excuse my recipe explanation as I do eyeball everything, so just taste as you go.  So the I processed it, adding grapeseed oil as it spun, until it moved freely and had the consistency of pesto.  Also just before that point I added a dash of lemon oil for an acidic touch that would not turn it brown.  However I did can a small jar which did discolor it a touch.  I also served some of it at my dinners on my dish appropriately titled "Carrots and Cashews."  But for everyday use it is amazing on steak, fish or pasta.