Cleaning Out the Fridge

eat. We’re about to wing our way once more to our lovely Hilo home on the Big Island of Hawai’i. My parents and I are leaving this coming Tuesday, and Robin will join us a few weeks later. Robin and I will be gone this time until mid-June, and are therefore renting our Santa Cruz house to a visiting professor from Norway (though he’s originally from Northern California) and his family.

Last week therefore found me cleaning out the refrigerator for our tenants, and trying to figure out how to use up the odds and ends that were sitting on the shelves.


Noting the near-full head of celery, I decided to make a casserole, using that as the focal point. I’d braise the celery and parsley in some butter and the half-bottle of white wine, and then add eggs and Romano cheese.


I coarsely chopped the parsley, cut the celery into large chunks, put them into a beautiful casserole that my mom's friend Garnet Hopkins made, and poured in the wine.


Next I added some chunks of butter, drizzled in a couple tablespoons of truffle oil, covered the casserole, and put it in a 350° oven to braise.


That done, I started opening cupboards, seeing what else was on hand that needed eating up. Spying some spuds, I decided to add them to the mix. Robin’s not crazy about celery, but she adores potatoes. So I sliced a few up,


and blanched them in a large pot of boiling water.


As soon as the potato slices started to get a little soft (poke ’em with a fork to see), I poured them into a colander and ran cold water over them to stop the cooking process.

Next I beat up the five eggs that were left in the fridge, and added grated Romano cheese and salt and pepper to them.


When the celery was soft (which took almost an hour—that’s one tough plant!), I mixed in the potatoes, and then poured the egg/cheese mixture over it all.


I baked this—uncovered this time, but still at 350°—until the eggs were set (about a half an hour).


I took the casserole out of the oven and let it sit on the counter while Robin and I enjoyed cocktail hour together. Then, about fifteen minutes before we wanted to eat, I sprinkled more grated Romano cheese and some panko crumbs on top,


and set it under the broiler to brown.


It wasn’t bad—sort of like a frittata, but heavier on the veg and potatoes and with less egg than its Italian cousin.


Since I preferred the celery, and Robin the taters, we swapped them from our plates at the table. You know, Jack Sprat, and all that. It makes for a healthy relationship sometimes.

Four and Twenty Blackbirds

eat. Other people’s dreams are generally pretty boring stuff, so I won’t go into detail about the one I had last night. Suffice it to say that it concerned my need to come up with an interesting dessert for a party, and I hit upon the idea of baking a pie—one containing live birds, which would fly out upon the top crust being cut open.

web image [source]

The origin of this dream is not terribly obscure. First of all, I am indeed going to be making a variety of desserts for a holiday singing party that my parents are hosting next week, and have therefore been ruminating about what to prepare for the last few days.

Second, for some years I’ve been wanting to try my hand at making a true mince pie, i.e., one with minced meat and suet, in addition to the fruit and nuts which tend to be the sole filler in modern-day mince pies. (In Britain, what we Yanks call “ground beef” or “hamburger,” is referred to as “mince.”)

meat pies are hugely popular in the UK

Finally, my dream surely derives in great part from the English nursery rhyme, “Four and Twenty Black Birds,” the memory of which must have been for some reason dislodged as I slept, floating into my subconscious in the form of a dream.

I quote you from a “History of Pie” that I found on line:

Animated pies or pyes were [once a] popular banquet entertainment. The nursery rhyme “Sing a Song of Sixpence [pocket full of rye,] four and twenty blackbirds baked in a pie,” refers to such a pie. According to the rhyme, “When the pie was opened, the birds began to sing. Wasn’t that a dainty dish to set before the King.” In all likelihood, those birds not only sang, but flew briskly out at the assembled guests. Rabbits, frogs, turtles, other small animals, and even small people (dwarfs) were also set into pies, either alone or with birds, to be released when the crust was cut. The dwarf would emerge and walk down the length of the table, reciting poetry, sketching the guests, or doing tricks.

You can see a reenactment of a such a pie served at a banquet attended by the young King Henry VIII, here.

The funny thing about dreams is that when you first wake up, they seem perfectly reasonable—at least for a while. So as I slowly gained consciousness this morning, I lay in bed thinking, “Maybe I should try to make such a pie. I could bake it, and then carefully cut off the top crust, and put live birds in it right before service. What a show that would be!” I remember even thinking I could put a layer of wax paper between the birds and the mince-meat filling, so that the pie could actually be eaten after the birds had flown their nest.

web image [source]

But then later, as I sat sipping my coffee, I realized that it was a silly, unrealistic idea. Where would I get the birds? And wouldn’t it be cruel? And who would want to release a bunch of birds indoors, anyway?

Too bad, though, ’cause it would have been really cool.


For those of you who want to attempt the silly and unrealistic, here is a 1598 recipe for a pie with live birds (hat tip):

To make Pies that the Birds may be alive in them, and flie out when it is cut up.

Make the coffin [i.e., crust] of a great pie or pastry, in the bottome thereof make a hole as big as your fist, or bigger if you will, let the sides of the coffin bee somewhat higher then ordinary pies, which done put it full of flower and bake it, and being baked, open the hole in the bottome, and take out the flower. Then having a pie of the bigness of the hole in the bottome of the coffin aforesaid, you shal put it into the coffin, withall put into the said coffin round about the aforesaid pie as many small live birds as the empty coffin will hold, besides the pie aforesaid. And this is to be done at such time as you send the pie to the table, and set before the guests: where uncovering or cutting up the lid of the great pie, all the birds will flie out, which is to delight and pleasure shew to the company. And because they shall not bee altogether mocked, you shall cut open the small pie, and in this sort you may make many others, the like you may do with a tart.

(From Epulario, 1598)

Have Your Steak and Eat It

eat. The New York Times Diner’s Journal had a link yesterday to this map of the factory-farming of animals in the United States. It’s fascinating to look at, as you can click county-by-county to see what animals (beef cattle, dairy cows, hogs, layers, broilers) are raised, the average number of animals per site, and the change in density between 1997, 2002 and 2010. (I note that Santa Cruz County has no factory-farms, whereas Tulare County is host to some four-and-a-quarter million broiling chickens.)

pastured laying hens at the now-defunct TLC Ranch

The map made me think back to a paper I wrote several years ago for a class I took through Cabrillo College’s culinary arts program. The essay was about my quest for a locally-raised, dry-aged, grassfed rib-eye steak for my 50th birthday celebration.

local and grassfed, but not dry-aged, steaks

I’ll quote you a bit from the section of the paper on the grassfed aspect:

And I wanted the steak to be grass-finished. Not just “free-range” or “pastured,” mind you. (“Grassfed” now seems to be the most common name used for pasture-finished beef—though there are no government regulations controlling the use of such terms.) Most cattle, even in this country, are still raised for the majority of their life in pastures. But as anyone who’s up on current food-trend issues knows, something like 99.9% of the beef consumed in this country is “finished” on grain—good ol’ American corn. This fattens the critters up quick, and gives them that marbling so prized by fans of eateries like Morton’s Steak House.

But, alas, feeding corn to cattle—which are ruminants, and thus unable to digest the stuff—gives them gas, and makes the sick. So they are pumped up with lots of antibiotics as a short-term fix.

Moreover, the reason beef is now so cheap (just check out all those “dollar menu” hamburgers at your local fast food joint) is because cattle are treated in our culture as commodities, and—like corn and car chassis—are mass-produced. For the last four to six months of their lives, the steers are jam-packed into what have become known as “Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations” (CAFOs), where thousands of animals are penned up and finished on a diet of mostly corn. Here’s a frighteningly descriptive passage from Michael Pollan’s The Ominvore’s Dilemma (at p. 66):

“And then it’s upon you: Poky Feeders, population, thirty-seven thousand. A sloping subdivision of cattle pens stretches to the horizon, each one home to a hundred or so animals standing dully or lying around in a grayish mud that, it eventually dawns on you, isn’t mud at all.”

It was after I read Pollan’s exposé of the beef industry in the New York Times Sunday magazine back in 2002 (which piece—entitled “Power Steer”—he reworked and incorporated into The Omnivore’s Dilemma) that I decided I couldn’t buy CAFO meat anymore. Not for my sake, but for the sake of the animals.

hogs at TLC Ranch

I had, of course, already been aware of factory farming. But like so many of my compatriots, I passively followed the ostrich-in-the-sand, “I don’t want to know about it” philosophy. Once I did know, however, it just broke my heart. I looked Rosie—my border collie mix—in the eyes, and imagined her in one of those pens. I decided then and there: If a cow or chicken is going to give its life so I can enjoy a juicy rib roast or a succulent dish of coq au vin, the least I can do is make sure it’s had a happy and comfortable existence up until its demise.

Well, the good news is that it’s become pretty darn easy to find grassfed beef in most places in the country (though not so easy, unfortunately, to find pastured pork or chickens).

two youngsters eye each other at TLC Ranch

Click here for a state-by-state directory of farms producing pastured meat.