HARVESTING SUMMER & DEEP HISTORY

WITH TONNATO SAUCE, SUMMER GRILLING, AND KITCHEN RESCUES

Last week brought a glowing fat full moon that floated across the clear dark blue southern sky. Perfect weather marked the week: a light breeze, sunshine, clear air…barely a cloud.

sumac fattening and beautiful at a farm near Orillia

The day after the full moon I pushed a spade into the still-soft garden soil to loosen it, then was able to pull out a garlic. I repeated that harvesting until I ‘d pulled all the garlic easily out of the ground, about 15 bulbs altogether. The plants have already given me scapes: now here’s the small mother lode. I’m especially grateful for this harvest, given how late I planted the garlic (late December, or perhaps even early January, in a brief moment when the ground had unfrozen).

freshly pulled up

I rinsed the dirt off the garlic in the fountain, then laid the bulbs and their stalks out to dry in the sunshine for a couple of days. Treasure.

out drying…

Saturday August 1, was my brother’s birthday. He died in April 1973, so long ago that it’s unimaginable. I think of him often these days. Somehow the loss of Tashi has brought my brother forward. I used to catch glimpses and echoes of him in Tashi’s physical presence, his ease with people, his openness, his sense of play.

The pile-up of loss comes to me in waves sometimes. I know I need to develop the muscle to carry this reality of love and loss. I also realise now that I really didn’t know about grief in my early twenties, didn’t take the time to acknowledge my pain at losing my brother. That was partly my youth and ignorance. But it was also because I was aware, even though she kept it inside, that my mother’s anguish was so great that I couldn’t somehow go there.

valiant lilies in my garden, flourishing despite neglect

Now I have more insight into my mother’s grief and have become a member of the host of grieving mothers. I am grateful that Tashi’s brother Dom and I talk often. We describe to each other the way Tashi is on our minds, and how he reverberates for us during our days and nights. I didn’t have those kinds of conversations with my mother after my brother died. Another difference is that my brother’s death was a sudden shock, not a long-anticipated awfulness. (He died in a sailing accident off Vancouver Island.)

Raw shock makes grieving more complicated in lots of ways. There’s the fierce urge to reject the reality: “no it can’t be true” and the constant reimagining of the tape in which the terrible thing did NOT happen, as if it were possible to reverse time. A death from cancer or other disease, fended off but always known to be inevitable, is quite different. It’s a long slow lesson in loss, even before the end.

All of it is heavy, all of it is life in the raw.

Yesterday I went north out of town to a one-day Sacred Harp singing that was held in a barn near Orillia. It was a wonderful singing, with a pause for lunch and then an early supper. There was a large farm pond a short walk away, so I took a moment to have a quick swim in the early afternoon, my first swim in fresh water since last year. Heaven, truly.

outside the barn at our singing

I had a ride to and from the singing with a kind friend who did all the driving both ways. Perhaps because of the emotions loosened by singing, and because he was on my mind on his birthday, I talked to her about my brother as she drove us back to Toronto in the early evening. It wasn’t a plan. It just happened. Stories and events interwove themselves in my telling, bringing a whole era back to life.

Recounting past events and their cross-connections gives me insights and helps me inhabit the complicated realities of life. I think it’s the same for others. But was I being like the Ancient Mariner, talking the ear off a captive audience?

at Biidaasige Park, the huge new park at the mouth of the Don River, is this piece by Lisa Hirmer, called Lodestar. It’s a reminder of layers of human and pre-human history and an acknowledgement of all that lies buried beneath the land we stand on

KITCHEN EXPLORATIONS: tonnato sauce, white currant attempt, retrieving tired carrots, rendering pork fat

My friend Dawnthebaker has taken to making tonnato sauce, a terrific flavouring for many kinds of salad/combinations of ingredients. I asked her for instructions. She describes it as a great non-recipe recipe. She makes a one-yolk mayonnaise with olive oil, then uses a blender or processor to whizz some rinsed off tuna, a few anchovies, and some capers. She adds the mayonnaise to make a smooth sauce, tastes it, and adds a little lemon juice and some water, to get the consistency she wants, a kind of thin creaminess. Yesterday evening we had it as a dressing for a salad of fresh chopped tomatoes and lightly cooked fine green beans. Perfection.

Last week I had houseguests, good friends from Montreal: Lesley Chesterman of Lick my Plate, and her partner Jean Aubry of Du vin dans l’encrier. For supper we started with a chilled roasted red pepper gazpacho made by our friend Haralds, and moved on to charcoal-grilled lamb marinated in pomegranate molasses and salt and served sliced; potato salad dressed with a vinaigrette loaded with herbs and scape-pesto; grilled corn on the cob; and a side-sauce of cooked white currants. We ended with cheeses that Lesley and Jean had brought from Montreal, and with a delicious tart that Lesley had assembled and baked here (with tart dough and fillings she had brought with her).

The pleasure of sitting out in the garden eating our meal under a clear darkening blue sky with the fat moon rising was like a distillation of summer. As the temperature cooled we moved inside for our cheese and for slices of Lesley’s tart.

The white currant sauce I mentioned above was an experiment in tart-sour-acid that didn’t land perfectly. I’d cooked the berries with a little sugar and with slivered garlic and minced green cayenne chile. I stirred in salt and a sprinkling of powdered coriander seed. I had imagined the currant sauce would be delicious with the grilled lamb. It was, but the tannic edge to the berries was a too forceful. (It was also a challenge to the wine.) I should have sweetened the mix more and perhaps cooked it longer. I topped it with chopped tarragon leaves. Tart fruit rewards experiment and play, even if it doesn’t always work perfectly. It can be such a fresh addition to the savory part of the meal.

white currant sauce with garlic and chile; needs more tweaking!

I came across some neglected small carrots early last week. They were soft and unappealing. I washed them, chopped them, and simmered them until soft in a little salted water left over from cooking green beans. I used a small skillet to pop some mustard seed in olive oil along with nigella seed, a pinch of fennel seed, and some minced garlic. I put the carrots with their small amount of water plus the contents of the skillet in the processor and reduced it all to a slightly coarse paste. A squeeze of lemon, a dash of pimenton, a sprinkle of chopped mint, a little splash of more oil, and I had a delicious side-salad/condiment to round out a simple supper. Using up tired vegetables takes a few moments of thought. The rewards are not just flavour, but also the absence of regret!

getting close to done: rendering pork fat last week

A similar satisfaction comes when I remember to render fat that’s been trimmed from, say, pork chops or roast. It’s a simple matter to chop the fat small and add it to a cast-iron skillet over low heat, with a little water. As the pan heats the fat starts releasing; the water prevents the solid pieces from sticking to the pan early on. Eventually they shrink into tasty little morsels that you can crisp up a little, after you’ve poured off the liquid fat into a small jar (label the jar!). Salt the cracklings and then add them to a potato salad at the last minute, or to another vegetable dish, or use them to top flatbreads.

the night after full moon last Thursday…onward