Food headlines hardly bring comfort these days: tales of lost harvests, hunger riots, agrichemical runoff, tainted pork and tomatoes.
A society's foodways surely reveal something about its quality of life. From studying the industrial-food system, as I do, it's easy to conclude that we live in a brutal culture: content to destroy the ecosystem, exploit labor, and torture animals to produce unhealthy but profitable food.
When such dark musings grip me, I try to remember to take pleasure and comfort in small things. Industrial agriculture has in many ways consolidated its grip over our land. Profits for agribiz giants like Monsanto, Cargill, Mosaic, and Potash of Saskatchewan have reached epochal levels.
And yet, people are fighting back -- starting small-scale farm operations, joining community gardens, turning over lawns to put in veggies patches, and going out of their way to buy directly from farmers whose practices they trust.
I find consolation for the brutalities of existence in the kitchen and at the table. Right now, nothing is soothing me more than the early-summer bounty of the garlic harvest. Across much of the country, now is when garlic plants are sending up the green flowering shoot called the scape. Farmers and gardeners snip it off to concentrate the plant's energy into its below-ground bulb. Turns out that scapes deliver great garlic flavor -- as well as an additional source of income for farmers.
Now's also the time for green garlic -- the immature bulb of the garlic plant, harvested before it . It's the lb before it has developed has fully developed cloves. To me, it's the purest, freshest way to experience garlic's blissful pungence.
Get thee to the farmers market and find some green garlic and scapes. Here's a great recent article in The New York Times on how to use these special, quintessentially seasonal ingredients. And below find two recipes from my short-lived cooking blog Maverick Eats.
Pasta with sauteed bitter greens, scapes, and green garlic
1 pound dry pasta (spaghetti, farfalle, linguini, whatever is on hand)
2 large handfuls greens (such as kale, chard, or mature arugula or spinach), bunched and sliced into ribbons
2-3 garlic scapes, trimmed of tough part, cut into half-inch pieces
One stalk green garkic, peeled, and chopped fine
1/2 cup walnuts, toasted for a few minutes at 300 F and chopped coarsely
Extra-virgin olive oil
sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
Crushed chile flakes
Red-wine or balsamic vinegar
Parmeson-style cheese for grating
Put
water on highest heat for pasta; prepare ingredients as stated above.
Put a skillet (large enough to handle the greens) on low heat. Add a
little more than enough olive oil to cover the bottom, and add garlic,
scapes, a pinch or two of chile, a pinch or two of salt, and a vigorous
grind of black pepper. Give it all a stir, and let it cook until garlic
and scapes are sizzling and fragrant; be careful not to let the garlic
brown. Add the greens and turn heat to medium, tossing the greens so
that they're coated in the garlic-scented oil. (When the water boils,
which might be about now, salt it well and add the pasta.) Now cover
the greens and turn heat to low. Cook, checking and stirring often,
until the greens are tender. Once they're tender, remove from heat and
taste. If the flavor is bitter, give them a splash of vinegar or lemon juice. Once the
pasta is done, drain it and return it to its pot. Scrape the cooked
greens into the pot, the walnuts, and a healthy splash of olive oil.
Toss and taste; correct for salt and pepper. Serve. Pass the cheese and
grater at table, and be sure to have a bottle of olive oil handy.
Pasta with scape pesto and sardines
1 pound dry pasta, such as spaghetti
Extra-virgin olive oil
½ cup to 1 cup garlic scape pesto (see below), to taste
1 tin good-quality sardines packed in olive oil
A pinch or two of crushed red chile flakes
Sea salt
Black pepper
2 oz fresh goat's cheese (optional)
Put
pasta water on to boil over highest heat. Put a large skillet on medium
low heat, and add enough olive oil to cover bottom. Add chile flakes
and a grind of pepper. Add pesto, working it into the olive oil with a
wooden spoon. Open the can of sardines. With a fork, lift the sardines
one by one out of the can--letting them drain a second or two of the
olive oil they were stored in--and drop them directly into the pan. When
they're all in there, use the wooden spoon to smush the sardines into
the pesto. What you'll end up with is a kind of coarse--and quite
fragrant--sauce. Remove from heat. When the pasta water boils, salt it
liberally. (Mario Batali, the famed New York chef, says it should have
the salinity of seawater.) Add the pasta to the water when it returns
to a rolling boil. Just before the pasta is al dente, take a ladle and
scoop up a cup or so of the pasta water; add it to the sardine sauce
and stir it in. Now drain the pasta and, return it to its pot (which
will be empty of water but steamy hot). Scrape in the sardine sauce,
add a dash of olive oil and a grind of pepper (hold off on salt here;
you've already added salted pasta water, and the sardines can be
briny). Toss, and correct for seasoning. Serve.
Optional note:
Though no Sicilian would do it, we've found a way to make this dish
even more delicious. When you've dumped the pasta into the colander and
you have a steamy but empty pot, add 2 oz fresh goat cheese and
immediately dump the pasta on top. This will melt the cheese. When you
toss the pasta after adding the sardine sauce, you'll be incorporating
the cheese.
scape pesto
1 pound scapes, trimmed of tough flower part and chopped coarsely
I handful Italian flat-leaf parsley
1/2 cup walnuts, lightly toasted in a 300 F oven
sea salt, to taste
black pepper, to taste
Extra-virgin olive oil
Combine
first five ingredients in a food processor and process for 30 seconds
or so. Scrape down sides of bowl and process again. With the blade
running, add a thin stream of oil until a paste forms. Scrape down
sides of bowl and process again, adding more olive oil if needed.
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Comments
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MAD MAC Posted 1:50 pm
20 Jun 2008
I would say "we" includes every country in the world.
Man, what I would give now for a good burger.
Victory in Pattani
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Grouchy1 Posted 5:39 pm
20 Jun 2008
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Jeremy Cherfas Posted 10:50 pm
20 Jun 2008
It isn't as if farmers actually smear feces on the tomatoes, which is what you would like us to think.
There is contamination via water and via soil, and the best guarantee of safe produce is to buy from people who grow as if they will have to eat it themselves.
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gristle Posted 12:00 am
21 Jun 2008
The difference is that organic actually has standards regarding manure applications which industrial crops do not. Seems one is much more likely to be made ill if the food is not organic. How silly the way you tried to put it as if organic farmers are out smearing the fruit on purpose. But you also neglect the fact that the tomato crisis covers several states and that means it's a huge operation. Pity that it so difficult to trace down the haystack while you sit accusing the needle.
Go back to the Hudson Institute Dennis.
All in favor of losing your rights, please do nothing
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Grouchy1 Posted 1:47 pm
21 Jun 2008
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MAD MAC Posted 2:51 pm
21 Jun 2008
If you live in the Northeast, in some way shape or fashion you have to preserve your food cause it doesn't grow all year around.
Victory in Pattani
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gmunger Posted 3:42 pm
21 Jun 2008
Oh, and love your posts, btw. Keep up the good work.
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gristle Posted 3:27 pm
22 Jun 2008
Surely you'd never allow any of those petri-dish animals to touch your lips. Death-traps on styrofoam trays!
Grouchy (Avery), you're the only one smearing around here. Organic scares you and your corporate clients because it's more nutritious and produces just as well if not better but isn't profitable to those in the suits who sit at tables collecting profits from value-added patented seeds that require buying particular chemicals from those same companies adding to Wall Street's fat bottom-line.
I hope you wash your corn with soap and hot water. :)
All in favor of losing your rights, please do nothing
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MAD MAC Posted 8:14 pm
22 Jun 2008
If it produced just as well, then it would be the norm and that is what industrial sized farms would be doing. They use fertilizers and insecticides for a reason - because they allow for greater production.
There is something to be said for the health and environmental advantages of organic farming, but remember it IS a trade off as concerns quantity. If it wasn't, everyone would be doing it as you could save costs on fertilizer and insecticide and enhancing your bottom line........
Victory in Pattani
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MAD MAC Posted 2:54 am
26 Jun 2008
Victory in Pattani
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gristle Posted 4:43 pm
27 Jun 2008
Organic produces as well, and often better, but it doesn't use those profitable-to-the-companies-that-produce-them insecticides, fungicides, herbicides, fertilzers... so the industrial method is what gets pushed especially in government policies via lobbyists then enshrined into law via things such as the Farm Bill which pays out about 100 to 1. And organic doesn't use bio-tech patented seeds made just for their dependence on those
chemicals.
They use fertilizers and insecticides for a reason...
The reason for industrial "farming" is just pure profit motives for the corpo-rape-tions selling the inputs.
I didn't say what I did in my comment above just because it pleased me and Avery no doubt knows the numbers; that's why he didn't challenge me. Probably as he didn't want me coming back with these truths as I have so thank you for giving me a reason.
Please do some research and discover that Monsanto's soy actually is less productive. Try the New Farm section of, Rodale, and many other sources including the Organic Center. That's just to get you started.
What industrial does with its methods of killing all is throw it all out of balance and then basically strip mine the soil and water so that converting back to traditional farming -- with modern knowledge and techniques -- is more difficult because it requires recultivation of the checks and balances destroyed by the money grubbing industrial ways. Once done, labor costs are a bit more but chemical costs are less which sends Wall Street into fits.
Please get a copy of the Future of Food to watch, and then fight for the Seventh Generation rather than playing ringer for the Agribusiness church.
All in favor of losing your rights, please do nothing
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MAD MAC Posted 2:18 am
01 Jul 2008
Are you telling me that someone smart enough to invest huge amounts of capital to purchase the land and machinery and run massive farms is too stupid to understand which type of farming grants the largest yields? Can you explain that? Because your explanation makes zero sense.
People farm to make money. Not because it's fun - it isn't. My father in law is a farmer, and it's back breaking work.
Note the following:
mproving seeds through experimentation is what people have been up to
since the beginning of agriculture, but the term "Green Revolution" was
coined in the 1960s to highlight a particularly striking breakthrough. In
test plots in northwest Mexico, improved varieties of wheat dramatically
increased yields. Much of the reason why these "modern varieties"
produced more than traditional varieties was that they were more
responsive to controlled irrigation and to petrochemical fertilizers,
allowing for much more efficient conversion of industrial inputs into
food. With a big boost from the International Agricultural Research
Centers created by the Rockefeller and Ford Foundations, the "miracle"
seeds quickly spread to Asia, and soon new strains of rice and corn were
developed as well.
By the 1970s, the term "revolution" was well deserved, for the new
seeds-accompanied by chemical fertilizers, pesticides, and, for the most
part, irrigation-had replaced the traditional farming practices of
millions of Third World farmers. By the 1990s, almost 75 percent of Asian
rice areas were sown with these new varieties. The same was true for
almost half of the wheat planted in Africa and more than half of that in
Latin America and Asia, and about 70 percent of the world's corn as well.
Overall, it was estimated that 40 percent of all farmers in the Third
World were using Green Revolution seeds, with the greatest use found in
Asia, followed by Latin America.
Clearly, the production advances of the Green Revolution are no myth.
Thanks to the new seeds, tens of millions of extra tons of grain a year
are being harvested.
Victory in Pattani
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