by Holly Hughes
Whether you’re making traditional Burgundian escargots or another snail dish, the first steps of cooking snails are the same: Bring a pot of water to a boil. Add plenty of salt. Rinse off the snails—making sure they are poo- and slime-free before you start! Dump them in the pot and cook them for about 3 minutes. Drain the snails and rinse them with plenty of cold water. Use tweezers or a small fork to pull the snails out of their shells. Be warned that there will be more mucus involved here. In some cases a lot more mucus.
On the upside, when you pull the snails out most of them will stretch out as you pull and then spring back into a curlicue shape in a most pleasing and delightful way. On the downside, some of the snails will look like globs of gray diseased snot because they will be coated in so much mucus.
While you’re removing all the mollusks from their curly shells, bring a pan filled with ½ water and ½ distilled white vinegar to a boil. Plop in the deshelled snails and boil them until they are slime-free, about 3 minutes. A snail you pull out of the water should not feel slimy and you will probably be able to see bits that look like tiny specks of curdled egg in the water—that’s the mucus that’s cooked off the snails. Drain the snails and, obviously, rinse them in plenty of cool water to get all the bits of cooked slime off of them. The snails are now ready to be cooked in a recipe.
I made traditional garlic butter–slathered escargots as well as a salad with crisped pancetta and sautéed snails. Snail lovers found them sweet and tender; I found them somewhat mushroom-like but, honestly, thoughts of slime and poo would not leave my head long enough for me to enjoy them.
My son, however, had no such trouble. He swiftly ate a dozen from their shells. Then, when I found a dish of eighteen un-shelled snails that I had accidentally left in the oven after the photo shoot, he downed those too.
When the big one hits or my son asks with verve, I am prepared, if necessary, to tackle buckets of slime and poo again. For the moment, though, I prefer my snails packed up in a neat ovenproof tray with a pretty French sticker on top. Better yet, I’ll take them sizzling hot and set in front of me by an aloof but efficient Parisian waiter.
YES, WE CAN: SUPPORTING OUR FARMERS, PRESERVING THE HARVEST
By Kim O’Donnel
From EcoCentric
Former Washington Post food blogger Kim O’Donnel now lives in Seattle and marches to a different drummer: Writing vegetarian cookbooks for carnivores (The Meat Lover’s Meatless Cookbook) and blogging on seasonal produce for the environmental website EcoCentric.com. She shares here the passion for preserving that led her to found the Canning Across America collective.
I am a little piggy that goes to market, and I do so dutifully every Sunday (often twice during growing season). I am hip to what grows when, but without soil to call my own, I rely on the agronomical know-how and stewardship of folks who know a whole lot more about growing food than I do.
Usually, I survey the weekly offerings, then hone in on what looks good and inspires me to cook. It goes without saying that I care about where my food comes from and how it’s grown and raised, and that I prefer farmers’ market stands to supermarket aisles. But even with my reusable bag chockfull of heirloom this and organic that, by and large my experience is little more than an exchange of money and goods, with some conversational pleasantries thrown in for good measure.
Until now.
Summer in Washington is typically the dry season, but this year was historically parched, creating conditions that fueled explosive wildfires in one of the state’s rich agricultural centers. We city mice watched the flames on the local news in mid-August and our coastal sunsets had grown hazy, even so far away from the scene.
That same week, I set out for one of Seattle’s mid-week farmers’ markets and stopped by to see what was on offer at the River Farm Organic Produce stand. As I gathered cucumbers and deliberated over melons, farmer Eric Welsch told me and another customer that his house in Ellensburg, Washington (about 75 miles east of Seattle) had just been destroyed, a casualty of the wildfires, and that he and his wife, Liz Goronea, had had just 20 minutes to evacuate. Their 50-acre farm, which has been in Goronea’s family since 1976, was untouched, and everyone was safe. But as those who grow and eat seasonally know all too well, the produce doesn’t wait, and here they were at the height of the growing season, which meant rebuilding would have to wait. For now, Eric and Liz, who is pregnant, were sleeping on the floor in their office.
My arms full of their melons, I suddenly lost my footing and was unable to utter anything remotely comforting or intelligent in response to Welsch’s crumbling news. He was clearly still in shock, quiet and somber, yet he stood tall in the face of a horrible situation and carried on.
I quickly paid for my items and told him I’d see him at market on Sunday. Uttering those few words—See you on Sunday—I know exactly what I can do to help: Keep showing up.
Sunday comes and I tell Welsch I’m gearing up to make marinara sauce. Last year, I put up about nine quarts of sauce that proved to be so delicious and gratifying I nearly cried when I opened the last jar in March. With plans to double this year’s pantry allocation, I ask him if they grow Roma tomatoes, which is what I used the previous year. He walks me to the other side of the stand and shows me something called a Stupice. “It’s a Czech heirloom,” Welsch tells me. “And it makes killer sauce.”
I would need 25 pounds, I say.
He smiles.
At that moment, the speed-dating transactions of farmers’ markets past made way for a two-way committed relationship. We were in this together.
I spend several hours the next day heating and crushing tomatoes,
then passing them through a food mill to remove the skins and the seeds. I divide the nearly translucent crimson puree into two pots, add onion and garlic and simmer for two hours, a slow and steady transformation from the raw to the cooked. There is no checking e-mail or updating my Facebook status. This is a messy, physically demanding endeavor that requires my full attention. The air is heavy with sweet tomato perfume, and the windows are fogged up, like a protective layer of insulation from the outside world. Could this be my new way of a moving meditation?
The sauce has thickened and is now ready to move into jars, where it will live, some of it for months, after a short dip in a monster-size pot of boiling water. To each quart jar, I add lemon juice and salt, then ladle in the sauce. I wipe the rims, place the lids and screw on the rings, then lower the jars into the canning cauldron. Forty-five minutes later, I have nine quarts of Stupice sauce, a delicately sweet, sun-kissed tribute to Welsch and Goronea’s hard work.
Sunday morning comes again, the last one of September, and my husband and I greet Welsch. I spot more of his juicy little tomatoes, packed in 20-pound boxes, Mother Nature’s penultimate love apple shout-out for the year.
The produce doesn’t wait. Make the time.
I’ll take a 20-pound box of the tomatoes, I tell him. Plus five.
He nods and calculates the price, and I write a check for 50 bucks for all of our goods. He nods again and says thank you, and I feel his gratitude in my bones.
Once again, I set aside the electronic devices and all other business, don a smock and do-rag and dive into the harvest before me. Six hours later, I’ve got nine more quarts of sauce. My husband notes we have enough to enjoy two quarts per month until June.
Now it’s my turn to be grateful.
Marinara Sauce and Putting It Up in Jars
Adapted from Put’em Up! by Sherri Brooks Vinton, with water bath processing steps from The Meat Lover’s Meatless Celebrations by Kim O’Donnel
Makes 7 to 9 quarts.
25 pounds plum tomatoes, washed and sliced in half (aka paste tomatoes; or Stupice, the Czech heirloom recommended by farmer Eric Welsch)
1 pound storage onions, finely diced
4 garlic cloves, peeled and minced
3 tablespoons bottled lemon juice per quart
1 teaspoon Kosher salt or ¾ teaspoon fi
ne sea salt per quart
Tools
Food mill, wide-mouth funnel, jar lifter (aka canning tongs), canning rack, a pot deep and wide enough to fit a canning rack and quart jars, with lid on, ladle.
Note: I highly recommend canning with a partner, so that you can share the work load, equipment and cost of ingredients and supplies. For solo voyagers, estimate 6 to 7 hours, from start to finish. As a team of 2 or 3, estimate 4 to 5 hours, particularly if you have two food mills on hand. If you need to brush up on the basics of water bath canning, here’s a cheat sheet.
Method
Place 5 pounds of the tomatoes in a large non-reactive pot. Bring up to a lively simmer over medium heat, crushing and stirring the tomatoes occasionally to release their juices.
Add an additional 5 pounds of tomatoes and repeat, continuing to crush and stir as you go. Repeat with the remaining tomatoes until all are crushed and boiling. (Note: You may need to divide tomatoes among two pots.)
Reduce the heat and simmer the tomatoes for 15 minutes. Run the tomatoes through a food mill in batches to remove skins and seeds.
Return the tomato puree to the pot(s). Add the onions and garlic and bring to a simmer. Cook over low heat, stirring occasionally until the sauce is thickened, 1½ to 2 hours. (Note: Avoid tall, deep pots if possible; the sauce cooks more evenly in pots that are wide and more shallow.)
Meanwhile, prepare the jars for processing using the water bath method:
Use quart jars with the two-part lids sold by Kerr and Ball brands. Wash the rings and lids in hot soapy water and rinse well. Set aside.
Use a pot that is deep and wide enough for a canning rack. Make sure the lid of the pot is still able to sit on top with the rack inside. Arrange the quart jars in the canning rack. Add water to the pot until it is at least 1 inch above your jars. Cover and bring the water to a boil. Keep the jars in the boiling water until ready to process.
Remove the hot jars one by one from the boiling water to a kitchen towel-lined “staging” area. Keep the pot covered and the water boiling.
Add the lemon juice and salt to each quart jar. Rest the wide-mouthed funnel on top of a jar and ladle in the sauce, leaving ½ inch of headspace. With a nonmetal chopstick or other flat-edged item, release trapped air by running along the inside edge of the filled jar.
With a kitchen towel, wipe clean the rim of each jar. Place the lid on top, then gently screw on the ring (not too tight). Using a jar lifter (aka canning tongs), return the filled and covered jars to the boiling water.
Cover and process for 45 minutes. Turn off the heat and with the jar lifter, transfer the jars, one by one, to the towel-lined area. Listen for the “ping” of each jar, a sign that you have a proper seal.
Allow to cool for at least 12 hours. Remove the rings. Check once more for a proper seal by lifting each jar by its lid. Label and date the jars and store in a cool, dark place; the sauce will keep for up to one year.
The Meat of the Matter
HOGONOMICS
By Barry Estabrook
From Gastronomica
In his 2011 book Tomatoland, investigative journalist Barry Estabrook delivered a harrowing crash course in the true economic and social cost of supermarket tomatoes. Next up: The true cost of supermarket pork chops.
The best pork chop I have ever eaten came from a hog raised at Flying Pigs Farm about 225 miles due north of New York City. The animal that produced my chop was a rare, heritage breed, either a Tamworth, Gloucestershire Old Spot, or Large Black. It spent its life in the open air and on pasture. After a quick turn over the coals, the meat was so rich, porky, and succulent that the pleasures of all other chops paled. Ever since, I have flatly refused to buy the wan, watery factory-farmed offerings in supermarkets. On the downside, my Flying Pig chop cost fifteen dollars a pound.
In an era of eight-dollar-a-carton organic eggs and accusations of foodie elitism set against the background of an evolving two-tiered food system—healthy food for the Prius set while the rest of the nation subsists on empty calories and dreary, mass-produced meat and produce—there is one question anyone concerned about sustainable food should ask: How can such a high price be justified?
Because I live less than two hours from Flying Pigs Farm, I took my query directly to the source. I wanted to ask how the farmers who produced my chop justify charging $15.00 a pound on the very day when the same cut from the folks at Swift Premium could be had for $3.49 at local grocery stories. I wasn’t going to settle for feel-good, aesthetic answers. I wanted hard facts. Dollars and cents.
As I crested a hill on a little-traveled road leading up to the farm, I realized that maintaining unbiased resolve about Flying Pigs was going to be tough. If you had to imagine a picture of hog (or human) heaven, the farm would be close. A nineteenth-century house with stone-walled flower beds and weathered rail fences stood across the road from a red barn. To one side, a trail disappeared up a hill into a deciduous forest. On the other, the land rolled down to the Battenkill River, one of the Northeast’s most famous trout streams, renowned for its clear, swift water. The spread was the epitome of what well-heeled New Yorkers envision when they hear the term “country place” (a fate that nearly befell the farm). Only it wasn’t investment bankers and Wall Street lawyers who were soaking in the view or meandering along the edge of the forest, but scattered herds of black pigs, reddish brown pigs, and pigs that had the spotted markings of overstuffed Dalmatian dogs.
The owners of Flying Pigs, Jennifer Small and Michael Yezzi, an attractive couple in their forties, ushered me inside their bright, fully restored living/dining room to give me my crash course in Hogonomics. Having kicked off rubber boots in the vestibule, they were sock-footed and in jeans, he wearing a red-and-black checked flannel shirt, she a gray boat-neck sweater. Their two young children were at school. Small and Yezzi were barely out of college when they bought the two-hundred-acre farm from developers in the late 1990s. Since 2000, they have been raising pigs. Their operation is typical of most farms in the United States in that at least one of the owners—in this case Jennifer—has an off-farm job. Michael devotes all his working time to the operation, which produces about 750 pigs a year.
“People assume that there will always be farmers around,” said Small. “And even though farmers are very talented, thoughtful, and entrepreneurial, if they can’t earn a decent wage, then there won’t be any left to feed you.” The bottom line, they said, is that a dozen years after the first trotters touched their land, meat production at Flying Pigs is financially viable, though not generating mountains of cash. All the profits are reinvested in buildings and equipment.
The Price of a Piglet
The financial facts of life for the rare, heritage pig that produced my fifteen-dollar chop began decades, if not centuries, before it was born. The sows that produce piglets for modern factory farms have been bred for one thing: the ability to produce large litters of ten or more. Essentially, the sow is a piglet machine, efficiently milling out 2.5 litters every year for the three or four years that she will live—if it can be called a life. Commercial sows tend to be ill-tempered and will fight. To prevent injuries, they are confined in gestation crates. Each six-hundred-pound animal is penned in a metal cage that is too small for her to turn around in. She must sleep on her chest. Temple Grandin, the well-known livestock welfare expert at Colorado State University, has said, “Basically, you’re asking a sow to live in an airline seat.” Shortly before giving birth, the sow is moved into a slightly larger farrowing crate where she can lie on her side—barely—to nurse her piglets, which live in an eighteen-inch-wide caged area separated from the sow by bars that allow the young to suckle, but prevent the mother from accidentally rolling over and crushing them, or coming in contact with them in any other way.
Heritage pigs, on the other hand, were bred to retain the ability to give birth independently and possess the instincts necessary to be good mothers without reliance on gestation and farrowing crates. They were also sele
cted for their genial temperaments. In the days when pigs still roamed barnyards at will and had to be fed and mucked out manually, no farmer wanted to work around quarter-ton creatures with vicious dispositions. Because producing huge numbers of offspring was not a priority, heritage sows tend to have smaller litters than their commercial cousins—typically, eight or so a litter, although some varieties give birth to half that many. “So right off the bat, you have a 20 or 25 percent difference between the output of a commercial ‘pink pig’ and one of ours,” Yezzi said. Furthermore, Flying Pigs’ sows are not confined to crates. Allowing sows to have the freedom to live normal lives carries the unfortunate cost of having the occasional piglet smothered by its mother, further reducing the rate of successful reproduction.
Not only do factory pigs produce more pigs per litter than heritage pigs, they produce more litters per year. It’s common to wean commercial piglets at age three weeks or even earlier, when they weigh about twelve pounds. In the industry, this practice is called “early weaning,” and Yezzi says it can be detrimental to the health of the piglets, which have to be housed in climate-controlled buildings and fed a special diet supplemented with drugs to survive. Weaning brings the sow back into heat within a few days, and after another four months in her gestation crate, she produces another litter. That works out to two litters every ten months.
Flying Pigs piglets live with their mothers and nurse for two to three months, until they weigh between twenty-five and forty pounds. When they are a couple of weeks old, they begin to nuzzle at the feed troughs of the mature pigs, slowly weaning themselves. A sow left to nurse her brood until the natural age of weaning requires thirteen to fourteen months to produce two litters, meaning commercial sows produce 20 percent more piglets per litter and produce litters 30 percent more often than pigs allowed to breed naturally. Given those numbers, I could understand why a heritage piglet costs Yezzi and Small about 120 dollars, while twelve-pound early-weaned commercial piglets cost factory farmers only about fifty dollars each, and at forty pounds sell for about seventy dollars. Even before the hog that produced my chop had been released on Flying Pigs Farm’s pastures, my chop was worth twice as much as the one mass-produced by Swift.