Log Cabin Cooking

Ugg. Somewhere due east of remorse is regret. And I have it bad. But at least I didn’t dawdle away the chance to make three fetching early summer flavorings in the aftermath. And I hope you don’t dally either, if you have any of these in mind to make. Before I tell you what they are, here’s my regret confession ….

This was at a yard sale last weekend and I did not bring it home.

A 1953 Chambers gas stove in perfect working order to be had for a song. All I had to do was find some way to move the billion pound beauty in an hour, on a Saturday afternoon. Rather than gather my wits, I talked myself out of it because to take on this stove would have been like buying my first car: A 10 year old 1966 VW bug which came with a copy of this book, which I came to know all too well:

But now I’m sorry because I’ve been looking for a vintage stove like this for years and years. It’s a trivial regret, to be sure. But to be a pussyfooter, which is a real word, by the way, is to be cautious in a “don’t dance in the rain, you’ll catch a cold” sort of a way. No thank you to that. Lesson learned, let’s make Maraschino sour cherries.

You’ll need a bit of Luxardo Maraschino liqueur, a slightly bitter, sweetened cherry liqueur.  Mind you, Luxardo = luxury = pricey. But at least it’s a huge bottle for $35. Brandied cherries are wonderful as well. Anyway, pit fresh sour cherries such as Montmorency or whatever kind you can find at your local farm market and place them in a pretty jar. Warm up about a third of the amount of liqueur as you have cherries … don’t boil, just warm. Pour over the cherries and refrigerate. If using brandy, dissolve sugar to taste to the warm brandy and add to the cherries.

Now on to #2: Garlic scapes.

The little twisty seed stalks of hard-neck garlic are ready and available in your garden or at farm stands right NOW,   depending on where you  live. You have some time if you live in the North. You can read about garlic scape pesto here, but all you need to do is buy about 5 or 10 bunches of them (usually around $1.50 a bunch), if you don’t grow your own, and just store them in the fridge in an open bag. They’ll be good until August. They will change your life.

On to the most urgent of the three non-regrettable summer pantry items: Elderflower cordial.

We planted two varieties of “bought” elderflowers which have just about finished blooming. York and Nova. And the native wild bushes are in flower TODAY here in Asheville.

Elderflowers smell like happy. So sweet and seductive. The fragrance of the blossoms and of all they infuse is subtle, yet memorable and so fresh. Like that summer rain we’re going to dance in.

Pick the flower clusters just as they all open before the petals start to fall off. Thanks, Annie, for going for the high ones! Do you know that old saying …. “Reach for the high apples first, you can get the lower ones anytime!”

Pluck the flowers off with a fork straight away, the blossoms will not wait. All parts of the plant but the flowers and berries are toxic. So do as you’re told, dear.

You can make a syrup out of the flowers, which will keep in the fridge a couple weeks, or you can freeze in ice cube trays. Store the cubes in jars.  Into fizzy water, prosecco, or rhubarb mojitos they go, with a few fresh berries and mint. Here’s a prosecco, elderflower cordial/strawberry ice cube, and maraschino cherry fizz. Maybe, just maybe … almost as good as a 1953 Chambers gas stove.

Or not. Cheers!

Elderflower Cordial

2014-06-12 16:22:16

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Ingredients

1. 15 heads of elderflowers, about 2 cups of blossoms
2. 2 cups water
3. 1/2 cup sugar for light syrup. Up to 2 cups sugar for heavier syrup.
4. One organic lemon, sliced (or 1/2 a lemon and 1/2 an orange)
5. 1/2 tsp. citric acid (optional)

Instructions

1. First make absolutely positive that you have identified correctly your elderflower bush. Pluck off the blossoms of 15 freshly picked flower heads with a fork. You should have about 2 cups. Pick out any green stems while you prepare your sugar syrup. Boil water and sugar until sugar dissolves. Then add lemon and orange slices and citric acid if you're using it. (See note below.) Allow the syrup to cool a little. It should be warm but not super hot. Add the flowers and place all in very clean jar. Sit at room temperature for 24 hours and strain off flowers through cheesecloth. Store in a sterilized pint jar in the refrigerator for two weeks, or freeze to plop into summer beverages.

Notes

1. Most elderflower cordial recipes call for the use of citric acid. This will keep the cordial from going funky for about 4 weeks or so, but I'm not a fan of the taste of it. So I just freeze mine, sometimes with a strawberry in the middle. You can also make an alcoholic version by stuffing a jar with blossoms, filling with vodka, and then placing lemon slices over all. Strain after a few days or up to a week. Sweeten to taste with sugar syrup (two parts sugar dissolved in one part boiling water, then cooled).

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There’s a dandelion emergency pending, ya’ll. Our cheery yellow polka-dot pals are about to get the perkiness froze straight out of them tonight here in the mountains. So I suggest you run outside and pick as many as you can, just in case, because you don’t want to miss a chance to make this spritz.

I have a recipe in my Garden Supper Tonight book for Dandelion Honey, which I learned from our Bohemian friends, Martin and Denisa. They live in a little village  just north of Prague with their two kids in a fairy-tale cottage that sits on the edge of a forest that is enchanted with wild edible mushrooms. Martin plays, teaches, writes books about American Appalachian old-time music … in the Czech Republic. Listen to him play the banjo here to get you in a dandelion mood. In the photo below, he’s on the right playing his banjo and Denisa is playing the guitar. I could talk forever about this wonderful and talented family, but we need to get our dandelions tended to.

Here’s Martin’s voice describing the Dandelion Honey recipe that he and Denisa make every spring:

“This is a traditional recipe passed down from the old-world Europeans. We use it as a substitute for honey in any recipe that I’m trying to make wild.” What Martin means is that this delicate floral-flavored syrup tastes of the outdoors … an unmowed yard teeming with dandelions and wild violets, morel mushrooms laying in ambush in the woods, and cherry blossom petals swirling in the breeze, which by the way is a bone-chilling breeze at the moment.

To make the Dandelion syrup, you pick as many flower-heads as you can 100-200 is a good amount at a time. There are about 150 in this bowl.

Pinch the flowers out of the green lower leaves, and measure out the petals only. Don’t worry if you get some green leaves in with the petals. “They” say these will make your syrup bitter, but a little bitter is the taste of spring and it goes perfectly with a Prosecco spritz. The recipe particulars are below, but basically you infuse water with the petals overnight, strain in the morning, add sugar and reduce liquid by half. You can simmer it super slowly like Martin suggests, in order to keep the color pale; or you can do as impatient Barbara does and boil the heck out of it for 30 minutes and it’s light amber. Slow cook it if you want it to be the color of honey. A spritz doesn’t care as long as it’s not scorched.

The syrup will keep refrigerated for at least a couple of weeks. To keep for longer, make into ice cubes, which you can remove from freezer and plunk into your summer drinks. To make an alcoholic dandelion honey cordial, add a cup of vodka to every cup of cooled syrup. This will keep indefinitely in the refrigerator.

To make your spritz, pop open a bottle of chilled Prosecco, Cava, dry white wine, or fizzy water. Add a tablespoon or so of dandelion cordial to each glass, top with Prosecco, lemon wedge, a dandelion or mint spring and keep your fingers crossed that our fruit trees don’t get frostbit!

I have a story that is so profound, that I’m afraid it will be diminished by the telling of it. So I’ve been hoarding it. And to be honest, this is nothing new because my career/life’s work was all about being a repository for people’s profound stories. So many tales of suffering, triumph, and resolve invariably ended with the need to make the world a better place for the learning of some malignant and often unjust lesson. I was a family therapist, and those tales are not mine to tell, but as it turns out, I have a little piece of one to share from those who want it told. It’s about being thankful.

It all started with corn. Italian corn. Just a month ago, I returned from visiting our daughter, Annie, who lives in the Italian Alpine town of Aosta. You can read her story here. Anyway, Annie’s obsessed with polenta as much as a human can be. So when I visited her in October, we went on a two week long polenta adventure across the far northern mountains and piemonte region. We called on antique corn experts, met with university academics, chatted with farmers & visited farms, ancient mills, and rural museums. There were Polenta sagre (festivals), a corn-husking party, lots of wine drinking, and accidental driving on blood-curdling half-lane gravel Alpine roads accompanied by screaming and cursing.

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