Edible Portland Blog

Photo by Christine Alicino

A FOOD WRITER TO REMEMBER
THE LEGENDARY M.F.K. FISHER
Heidi Yorkshire
For Summer 2008

July 3, 2008, marks the 100th anniversary of the birth of writer M.F.K. Fisher, whose vivid, impeccably detailed memoirs and essays are among the treasures of American letters. Her first book, Serve It Forth, was published in 1937, yet for decades her works were cherished by a relatively small number of readers. W.H. Auden once called Fisher “the best prose writer in America,” but she remained, in her own words, “a secret little cult figure,” largely because much of her writing is about the transcendent pleasures of eating.

I showed up at her house on August 15, 1989, accompanied by the man who would become my husband. Though Joe was also a journalist, we had never worked together; still, when he heard who I was going to interview, he refused to be left behind. It was lucky he was there: Fisher, a passionate character even in her eighties, clearly loved men, and flirted like crazy with Joe throughout the interview. I suspect it was a much livelier conversation than we would have had if I’d come alone.

KEEP OUT. CROSS FIRE. RIFLE RANGES.

The sign was unequivocal, but no one, it seems, kept out. During the last years of M.F.K. Fisher’s life, an increasing number of the reverent and the curious ignored the warning, bouncing down a rutted one-lane road to a little pink-and-white stucco house with a shingled roof. There, they shuffled respectfully into the presence of a reed-thin, gray-haired woman with a crackly voice and piercing wit, recording her words, noting her thoughts, and making her thoroughly uncomfortable with their praise.

On the eve of her 82nd birthday, Mary Frances Kennedy Fisher had become, much to her surprise, an institution. But the greatest food writer of all was not a food writer at all. Her books are filled with stories, not recipes; her ingredients are people and emotions, not flour and sugar. Food is a metaphor for human passion, and writing about meals a way to illuminate relationships, hopes, and desires. “Her subject matter matters not at all,” said Jack Shoemaker, former editor-in-chief of North Point Press, the Berkeley firm that re-published many of her books during the 1980s. “North Point was interested in her as a literary stylist. She writes exquisitely well, and only secondarily about food.”

From 1970, Fisher lived in the Valley of the Moon, a few miles north of the town of Sonoma, on a ranch owned by her friend David Pleydell-Bouverie, an architect who designed and built her house. When I rang her bell, we were ushered into her bedroom office, a long, narrow room with a wood stove at the center of one wall. Red-painted bookshelves, crammed full, lined the alcove around the stove. The shiny black vinyl tile covering the floor imitated Spanish ceramic. Near the door stood a nondescript wooden desk, heaped with papers; at the other end of the room was a hospital-type bed, with two mobiles slowly twisting above it. The brown summer pastures radiated heat, but the room was cool.

Our friends at Edible East End brought to light this simple, wonderful recipe from M.F.K. Fisher’s wartime classic, How to Cook a Wolf — a book that expresses the natural ascendancy and great possibilities of seasonal cooking during times of hardship. Below is Fisher’s introduction to the recipe, with her 1951 additions differentiated in brackets. While enjoying your frittata, read Edible Portland's Summer 2008 story: "A Food Writer to Remember: The Legendary M.F.K. Fisher."

FRITTATA OF ZUCCHINI
From How to Cook a Wolf, by M.F.K. Fisher (1942, 1951)

“This frittata is a good dish. It can be made with almost anything: string beans, peas, spinach, artichokes. Cheese can be sprinkled over it. [As an older and easily wiser frittata cook I almost always, these richer days, add a scant cup of good dry Parmesan cheese to the eggs when I mix them. Often I add rich cream, too. How easy it is to stray from austerity!] Different kinds of herbs like sweet basil, summer savory, on and on, can change its whole character. And with a glass of wine and honest-to-God bread it is a meal. At the end of it you know that Fate cannot harm you, for you have dined.

3 Tbsp olive oil
1 onion or 3 green onions
1 clove garlic
5 small zucchini
1 large fresh tomato (or 1 cup solid-packed canned tomatoes)
1 tsp herbs, including parsley, sweet marjoram, or thyme
9 eggs
Salt and pepper

Heat oil in skillet and cook minced onion and garlic slowly in it 10 minutes. Add zucchini cut into thin slices. Add peeled and cut-up tomato, seasoning, and herbs. Cover, and cook until vegetable is tender. Take from stove and cool.

Beat eggs lightly, season, and mix with cooled vegetables. Pour back into skillet, cover tightly and cook over a slow fire until the edges of the frittata pull away from the pan. If the middle puffs up, prick it with a long sharp knife […or better yet, pull away from sides once or twice with large spoon, to let the soft middle flow outward].

When it is solid, brown lightly under a slow broiler flame in a preheated oven, cut in slices like a pie, and serve at once.”

THE BLUSHING APRICOT
By Ellen Jackson
For Summer 2008

Every apricot I ate last summer was more luscious than the last. My memory of the season is that it was deliciously long, and full of astoundingly good fruit that made my jaw drop, then quickly snap shut, to savor the exquisite textures and intense flavors. Like a sweetly fragrant peach that sends sticky juices dripping down wrists and chins, the faintly rouged cheeks and heady aroma of apricots tell me we’re in the thick of summer.

The sensory appeal of apricots is undeniable. When compared to their stone fruit brethren — peaches, nectarines, plums and cherries — they are somehow more exotic. Maybe it’s the velvety smooth skin or the concentrated flavor, round and full of honey. Perhaps it’s the way the two deeply orange halves fall away easily from the smooth stone between them, or the surprise inside that pit: a small, almond-shaped seed with a subtle perfume and delicate flavor reminiscent of almonds.

The seed of an apricot stone, called noyau (French for “pit material”), contains oil similar in flavor to bitter almond oil. Because it is far less expensive, confectioners often use it to flavor sweets. Eau de Noyaux, a liqueur manufactured in France, is made from the seeds, as is Amaretto, the famous Italian liqueur that combines noyau with bitter almonds. (Like bitter almonds, noyau — which includes apple seeds and apricot, cherry, and peach pits — contains infinitesimal traces of cyanide. You’d get sick eating the fruit to get to the pits long before the pits themselves would have any ill effect. However, if this is a concern, lightly toast the seeds to denature the cyanide.)

Use noyau as an accent in recipes that call for almond meal. Finely grind a few and add them to Parisian-style macaroons or a crust made with almond meal. Use them in a frangipane (almond cream) filling or to flavor custards and ice cream.

APRICOT TART PROVENÇAL WITH ALMONDS AND HONEY
From Ellen Jackson
Yields one 9-inch tart or 8 servings

1 cup all-purpose flour
1/4 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup almond meal, toasted
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, cold
1 egg yolk
2 Tbsp ground, toasted apricot kernels or bitter almonds

4 oz crème fraiche
1 egg
1/2 tsp vanilla
2 Tbsp honey
1 Tbsp all-purpose flour
1 1/2 lbs fresh ripe apricots, stoned and halved

1. Sift the flour, sugar, almond meal, and salt together into the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment. Cut the cold butter in 1/2-inch chunks and add to the dry ingredients. Mix on low speed until the mixture resembles coarse meal. Add the egg yolk and blend on low just until the dough comes together.

2. Use the tips of your fingers to press the dough along the bottom and sides of a 9-inch fluted tart pan with a removable base. Pierce all over and chill for at least 1 hour. Bake in 350-degree oven for 12–15 minutes, or until golden brown and puffy. If necessary, press down on the dough with metal spatula halfway through baking. Sprinkle the ground bitter almonds over the bottom of the crust.

3. Starting at the inside edge of the tart shell, neatly overlap the apricot halves, cut side up, at a slight angle. Make two or three concentric circles, working toward the center. Fill the middle in with any remaining apricots. Combine the crème fraiche, egg, vanilla, and honey with a pinch of salt and whisk to blend. Whisk in the flour. Pour the cream evenly over the fruit and bake until firm, about 1 hour. The apricots will shrivel slightly, so it’s nice to dust the entire tart with powdered sugar just before serving.

Zoë Bradbury left her urban job in Portland to start farming on the south coast of Oregon. She's blogging here about her experiences. Below is her ninth entry in Diary of a Young Farmer.

BIRD'S-EYE

I got a bird’s-eye view of the farm last week…in a tiny, yellow, Ultralight airplane that looks like a dragonfly on steroids. Our good friend, Joe — an ex-Air Force pilot turned organic cattle rancher — keeps his pip-squeak plane in a hangar 10 miles down the road. He offered to take me up early last Sunday morning when the winds were calm and the fog was high, giving me my first-ever aerial view of a landscape I have known only terrestrially since birth.

The wheels left the runway within seconds — the full mile of the old WWII Cape Blanco airstrip wasted on us — and we were airborne over dark coastal spruce forest, grey sand dunes and red cranberry bogs. Joe banked east away from the ocean and we followed the serpentine cut of Floras Creek five miles up the valley to the last reach of bottomland before the canyon closes in.

The farm was laid out below in all its straight rows: brown fields bisected by green farm roads, flanked to the north by the river. I could see my strawberry patch, and the mosaic of color that is my block of head lettuce. I looked down on the greenhouse I built this winter, and the scar from the irrigation trench we dug this spring. There was the mile of deer fence we put in a year ago and the newly plowed ground that will be planted to orchard next February. From the sky, Barney and Maude could almost be mistaken for regular-sized horses.

To see it all there, real, put a lump in my throat. Not too many months ago it was just sketches on graph paper and numbers on Excel spreadsheets. Clipboards, seed catalogs, and ideas. An empty, unirrigated hayfield. All at once from Joe’s little plane it was possible to see how far it’s come. There is a farm here now.

Not that I didn’t know that, with every day spent amidst the rows of asparagus and newly germinating carrots. It’s just that down at ground level, it’s easy to be distracted by all the things that still need doing — the tool shed that needs to be built, the weeds that need to be hoed, the cover crop that needs to be seeded, the credit card balances that need to be juggled. Farming is one of those jobs where the to-do list is never done, and in the daily hustle it takes conscious effort to stop and appreciate all the things that have been checked off the list.

Being up in that tiny yellow plane with a bird’s-eye view of it all, I had a chance to see how far it’s come. I snapped a picture so that now and then, in all the hustle, I’ll remember.

Photos courtesy of Food Alliance

HAND PICKED
ROW BY ROW, DAY AFTER DAY
Zoë Bradbury
For Summer 2008

“Strawberries are too delicate to be picked by machine. The perfectly ripe ones even bruise at too heavy a human touch. It hit her then that every strawberry she had ever eaten — every piece of fruit — had been picked by calloused human hands. Every piece of toast with jelly represented someone's knees, someone's aching back and hips, someone with a bandanna on her wrist to wipe away the sweat. Why had no one told her this before?” — Alison Luterman, “What They Came For”

At the end of Oregon’s winter, the orchards and vineyards need tending: pruning, spraying, thinning. The months advance and heat waves start to belly-dance above the soil. Row crops are planted: Onions and watermelons take root near Hermiston; beans, peas, squash, lettuce, potatoes — an almost endless list of crops — are planted in the Willamette Valley. Irrigation pipes are moved in the mint fields of eastern Oregon. Weeds fall flat behind the sharpened edge of a hoe. Berries are picked, one by one, and packed into plastic clamshells.

Oregon’s agricultural diversity is profound. It is a state that produces some 220 crops and livestock commodities — a greater variety than any state except Florida and California — totaling more than four billion dollars in agricultural production each year. Oregon agriculture is labor intensive, every berry and every pome fruit must be picked by human hands, which explains why Oregon’s agricultural payroll expenses are the fifth highest in the country, despite the fact that the state ranks twenty-sixth in total agricultural production.

Ours are farms that rely on opposable thumbs and an eye for ripeness, on manual dexterity and skilled use of tools. In short, on something so advanced, so complex, and so capable of movement and learning that no amount of engineering has managed to fully replicate it with a machine: the human being.

The Farmworker Experience
There are approximately four million migrant and seasonal farmworkers in the U.S. today, with Oregon agriculture reliant on up to 90,000 each year, according to the Oregon Department of Agriculture. Roughly half of Oregon’s farmworkers are settled in state and half migrate to Oregon for all or part of the growing season. For the migrant population, including 14,558 migrant children and youth, the year might take them from winter reforestation work in the coast range, to spring pruning in the vineyards, to the autumn apple harvest in Hood River, to a Christmas tree farm in the Willamette Valley.

According to the National Agricultural Workers Survey, more than 90 percent of all farm workers are Hispanic, primarily from Mexico. Most are young men under the age of 35. An estimated 70 percent are undocumented to live and work in Oregon.

It’s impossible to generalize the farmworker experience, but interviews conducted by the League of Women Voters for the Farmworkers in Oregon report (2000) reveal a common storyline. From Mexico, a young man borrows money to pay a “coyote” to help him cross the border illegally. He may get caught once, twice, even five times before making it into the country.

Three thousand miles distant from his home and family, his first season will likely be punctuated by a string of migrations, labor camps, and labor contractors. Like every single farmworker in the United States — documented or not — he will not enjoy 15-minute paid breaks, receive overtime for a 12-hour workday, or get benefits.

In a year, he will earn less than $7,500 in Oregon’s fields. He’ll pay his share of taxes, including Social Security and Medicare — none of which he’ll ever see again when, or if, he turns 65. The average life expectancy for a migrant farmworker is 49 years, compared to 73 for the general U.S. population, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Each day, as he moves irrigation pipe or travels back and forth to work, he’ll live with the worry of la migra (the Immigration and Naturalization Service, or INS) and the risk of deportation. What money is extra, he’ll wire home to his family, who may have to wait two, three, or four years to see him again, since the border crossing has become difficult and expensive.

America has prided itself on a history of basic worker protections and rights, including minimum wage, overtime, Social Security, unemployment insurance, child labor protections, and the right to organize into a union. These labor reforms, put in place by the 1935 National Labor Relations Act (NRLA), apply to everyone except farmworkers.

Such a pointed exclusion of farmworkers from basic labor protections has been blamed on various influences, including powerful agriculture lobbies that insisted the industry needed to be insulated from harvest strikes and high labor costs in order to ensure food security for the nation. The other theory is that the NRLA’s omission was an entrenched expression of racism against African-Americans working on farms in the South.

Despite the historic campaigns of farmworker rights advocates like César Chávez and ongoing efforts to improve farmworker protections over the decades, the disparity in labor law has never been fully reconciled in the U.S., creating an ugly double standard.

Among the inequities in Oregon: There is no clause that requires employers to pay overtime to farmworkers, even though a typical workday is 10 to 12 hours long; farmworkers are exempted from Oregon laws requiring minimum meal and rest periods; and farmworkers are not automatically granted the universal right to organize, strike, and collectively bargain with employers. On top of all that, unemployment insurance laws are written such that fewer than one-third of all farmworkers receive unemployment benefits, despite the fact that the average farmworker is employed for only 24 weeks of the year.

Oregon law does mandate certain protections for farmworkers — things like workers’ compensation, minimum wage, and workplace safety — but poor enforcement and uneven power dynamics meddle with their efficacy.

In the U.S., inadequate enforcement of safety laws contributes to the 300,000 acute pesticide poisonings that occur among farmworkers each year. Documented incidents show that farmworkers — particularly recent immigrants and those who aren’t proficient English speakers — are vulnerable to underpayment, especially when being paid piece-rate (by the pound or other unit). On-the-job injuries often go unreported, and workers’ compensation benefits go unclaimed, for fear of being fired — or worse — reported to the INS.

All together, it adds up to a set of working conditions that makes farmwork one of the most dangerous occupations in the U.S. and farmworkers the most indigent population in the country, according to a General Accounting Office (GAO) survey.

This is an uncomfortable story. But not a new one.

Raspberries are ripe! Overwhelmed with your short-lived backyard abundance? Pix Patisserie offers this delicious solution...

LA FRAMBOISE
From Cheryl Wakerhauser, Pix Patisserie

3/4 cup almond paste (room temperature)
2 eggs
1 egg yolk
1/4 cup pastry flour, sifted
1/4 cup butter, melted
1/2 cup frozen raspberries

Glaze:
Powdered sugar
Lemon juice
Dab of cream

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Place almond paste, eggs, and egg yolk in mixer with paddle. Mix well to combine. Next, add flour and mix JUST until incorporated. Follow with the melted butter and mix again until just incorporated.

In a food processor, chop up the raspberries. Promptly and gently fold them into the batter.

Fill Flexi pan molds or mini-muffin tins halfway full with the batter. Place one raspberry in the center of each and then cover with batter. Bake until set and corners are just starting to brown, approximately 15 to 20 minutes.

Remove the molds or tins from the oven and let sit for 2 minutes. Mix together some lemon juice, powdered sugar, and a dab of cream to create a thin glaze. Flip over, unmold, and glaze each. Delicious on their own or served with fresh whipped cream or ice cream.

Illustration by Eben Dickinson

POSTCARDS FROM BERRY CAMP
Ashley Griffin
For Summer 2008

Growing up, my sisters and I would creep outside to the blueberry bushes in our backyard and sneak swelling berries past our eager lips before Mom realized we were stealing a vital ingredient for that night’s dessert. Quite often, we cleared those branches before she caught us in the act.

Years after my first foray into berry thievery, I again find myself perched in a position to snatch sweet, sun-ripened berries from the vine. Only this time, I am being encouraged to do so.

These tantalizing berries before me are not yet available to consumers. I am visiting the North Willamette Research and Extension Center with a diverse group of writers who received an invitation to attend a two-day berry camp centered on the history and future innovation of Oregon’s berry industry. Located just 20 miles south of Portland, the research center is our first stop of many, and a key one, as it will inform everything we learn about the industry from this stop forward.

As part of Oregon State University’s Agricultural Experiment Station and Extension Service, the staff conducts research focused on strengthening and sustaining communities, economies, and natural resources. One field of study focuses exclusively on berries, as evidenced by the berry plots that fan out from the center’s offices. It’s here that researchers test hundreds upon hundreds of berry cultivars as well as growing and harvesting techniques. Their goals: address changes in consumer taste and growing technology, and help push the margins of the berry industry forward to ensure that berries remain a food source in Oregon.

As we wander through the plots, our tour guide stops often to encourage sampling of the variety of new cultivars and crossbreeds growing in the plots. This early in the game — new cultivars can take more than a decade to make it to market — the staff has tagged them only with numbers, my favorite being cultivar 1523-4. Later, our guide says, they’ll receive names, which is how I learn that a blackberry is not just a blackberry.

Photo by Leah Harb

YOUR PERFECT PICNIC
Here are three simple ways to make your alfresco dining even more relaxing and delicious this year.

Find an Oasis
Avoid the crowds at Multnomah Falls and Washington Park and head over to the more secluded Grotto, which has walkways and benches where you can sit and share a quiet lunch. For a romantic vibe, stroll through Hoyt Arboretum on the Holly Trail to a viewpoint where, on a clear day, you can see Mt. Hood, Mt. St. Helens, and Mt. Rainier. And if you want to be surrounded by nature but still get the best views of the city, dine atop a volcano at Mt. Tabor Park.

The Grotto | 8840 NE Skidmore
Hoyt Arboretum | 4000 SW Fairview Blvd.
Mt. Tabor Park | SE 60th & Salmon

Bring a No-Fuss Gourmet Feast
Foster & Dobbs Authentic Foods has just made your life easier (and your relationship stronger) by creating Picnics To Go (above). They pack a backpack with cheeses and salamis, mixed dried fruit and nuts, olives, crackers, chutney and mustard, Two Tarts cookies, and wine glasses. Pick it up, have fun, and drop off the pack when you’re done.

$40 for two, $70 for four | Foster & Dobbs Authentic Foods | 2518 NE 15th Ave. | 503-284-1157

Top It off with a Rosé
This is the time of year when wild-man winemaker John Paul of Cameron Winery releases his subversively titled Vino Pinko with a portrait of Che Guevara on the label. Or, you might have one of last summer’s surprise hits, Elk Cove Vineyards’ Pinot Noir Rosé. These wines are red-hot for summer sipping, both retailing for about $15 a bottle.

Cameron Winery Vino Pinko | Elk Cove Vineyards Pinot Noir Rosé | Available from most Oregon wine retailers

- By Kathleen Bauer of goodstuffnw.blogspot.com