The ads which cast doubt on corn syrup-related health problems are so bad that even Karl Rove must be shaking his head. (Besides, who takes a popsicle — let alone one popsicle for two people — on a picnic?)

All my life, I have wanted to be a professional tomato taster. I am happy to report that on August 18, 2008, I had the chance to serve as a judge (unpaid, so, OK, not exactly professional, but still …) in the 24th annual Massachusetts tomato contest, organized by the Massachusetts Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs and held at City Hall Plaza in downtown Boston.

I was actually just chilling with friends who were going to serve as judges (How pathetic is that? I am a tomato taster groupie!) when — oh lucky day! — some of the anointed judges didn’t show up (as if they had something more important to do that day than taste tomatoes! Where are their priorities?).

The organizers must have noticed how forlorn I looked hanging around on the sidelines and they took pity on me and handed me a clipboard with a sheet to fill out. A little voice inside my head (that sounded a lot like Tina Fey channeling a cartoon mouse) said, “You’ve been called up to the big leagues, kid! This is your big tomato-tasting break! You can do it!” and when they asked, “Who wants to judge cherry tomatoes?” my hand went up like a shot. (The other categories were slicing, heritage, and heaviest. There were 73 entries in all.)

I, the Jury

I took my duty seriously. There were five points to consider: taste, firmness, color, shape, and size. As you might imagine, shape and size vary a whole lot less in the cherry tomato category than in heritage or slicing, but we still had to judge whether the shapes and sizes were correct and uniform. All the cherry tomatoes had good color and their firmness was generally excellent, but the taste fell far short of the mark. We had so much rain here this summer that the lack of sun caused the flavor of the tomatoes to be very faint and “washed out.” It was as though the flavor was being whispered from the farthest corner of the plaza instead of being sung aloud with full-throated abandon by one of the nearby street performers — in short, a major disappointment.

Champion tomato specimens.

Photo: Roz Cummins

After performing the duties of my office, I took some time to look over the entrants in the other categories and listen to farmers talk about how disappointed they were in the flavor of this year’s crop. I also checked out the trophies — regular-looking trophies but with big plastic tomatoes on top. They really appealed to the kitsch hound in me, enough so that I am thinking of making one for myself, commemorating the day that I was plucked from obscurity and proudly served my commonwealth as a tomato judge. (I may sound lighthearted in my description of the proceedings, but it’s actually a serious responsibility — winners get bragging rights that enhance their sales and their reputations — and I am genuinely honored that I had the chance to serve along with all of the other food writers, chefs, gardening experts, and state officials who took the time and made the effort to come downtown.)

As for the results, Matt’s Wild, normally my favorite type of cherry tomato because it tastes more like a regular tomato rather than the sweet blast of most cherry tomatoes, came in ninth. I blame the rain. Red Fire Farm’s Sungold and Supersweet 100s took first and second place, with third going to Kimball Fruit Farm’s Sunsugar. The tomatoes had no signage on them at all during the tasting. Not only did it not say what farm they came from, but there also was no indication of what variety they were — but I can tell a Matt’s Wild from 100 paces. I am really sad that it was bested by its bigger, sweeter cousins, but that’s the way it goes. Even I had to admit that the Matt’s Wild weren’t up to par this year and I voted for the Sungold and Supersweet 100s like everybody else.

Supporting Local Farmers the Delicious Way

The purpose of the tomato festival, according to Doug Peterson, the commissioner of the Massachusetts Department of Agricultural Resources, is to boost consumer awareness about local agriculture. “Farmers can spend up to 10 hours a day preparing for and attending farmers markets and some travel as far as 100 miles away. We are truly fortunate to be able to enjoy the fruits of their labors at markets like this one at City Hall Plaza,” he said.

Ian Bowles, secretary of Energy and Environmental Affairs, gave some background on the state’s agriculture. “Massachusetts is home to over 6,000 farms, supporting more than 518,000 acres of working landscapes,” he said. “Farmers markets play a vital role in keeping these farms productive and profitable.”

As for me, I got an invitation to come back and serve as a judge next year. Maybe it won’t rain so much next year and the Matt’s Wild will have their day in the sun. (And maybe the Red Sox will win the World Series. Those two events would make me a happy woman.)

To Everything, a Season

It’s fitting that I should have the opportunity this week to write about tomatoes — my favorite food — as this is my last regular ‘Tis the Season column. I have two unfinished cookbook manuscripts sitting on my desk — one, The Official Handbook of the Society for the Preservation of Afternoon Tea, contains a year’s worth of sustainability-minded tea party menus, and the other, The Kitchen Almanac, is a seasonal flexitarian cookbook — and I need to spend the time that I usually devote to writing this column to finishing my books and finding a publisher. I will be starting a biweekly email newsletter next month and if you’d like to receive it, or if you’d like to be a recipe tester, read the instructions for signing up at my website.

In the meantime, I want to tell you how much fun it has been to write for all of you and to sometimes hear back as well. It’s been gratifying to know that I helped someone to figure out why his peanut sauce always broke (the noodles were still too hot to pour the sauce over them) and that one reader “has never bought another bottle of salad dressing since making your maple-basil dressing.” I’ve given a lot of thought to what people have said about the ethics and environmental impact of eating meat, and I’ve had the chance to consider at length what we can and cannot safely take out of the oceans.

I’ve enjoyed hearing about your family traditions and favorite dishes, and I have felt especially blessed to be able to spend time talking with all the farmers, fishers, chefs, and artisans who have shared their time and expertise with me. Other food writers and researchers have been incredibly generous with their work and knowledge as well. Good luck, have fun, and don’t forget to make time to sit down to a home-cooked meal with family and friends as often as you can — ideally one that contains foods that are local and organic.

Goodbye Garden “Gumbo”

Feeds 10-12

I developed this recipe as a way to say goodbye to the garden for the year, and to use up the loads of tomatoes that friends have given me. (I realized afterwards that it’s also appropriate since it’s my last article.)

This isn’t a true gumbo since it doesn’t have a roux — oil and flour sautéed together until they are a deep brown — as its base, but it contains many of the other flavors and ingredients that define gumbo: tomatoes, bell peppers, and okra. (I like red bell peppers, but if you like green ones, they’re fine too.) Onions and celery round out the lineup. I love the texture of new potatoes in a soup so I threw them in too, and I added some fresh sweet corn as part of the goodbye-to-summer effort. I planned to make it with cubes of smoked tofu for protein, but I ended up cooking it for some friends who are not fans of tofu, so I substituted chicken apple sausage instead.

The soup missed the smoky flavor that the tofu would have provided, though, so I added a tiny amount of liquid smoke, and that made it fantastic. (I used to be afraid of liquid smoke because I assumed it was a cocktail of chemicals and artificial caramel coloring, but it turns out that it really is just smoke! A chef who cooks natural foods turned me on to it.) You could also add smoked turkey or chicken, or smoked sausage. If you want to stay vegetarian, add beans. You could also add some cheese tortellini if you wanted to turn it into a wild and crazy minestrone.

I did all my shopping at a regular supermarket. I bought Campbell’s tomato juice, which contains tomatoes and salt, so I didn’t salt the soup at all because it already contained enough.

Music aside: Tab Benoit’s “We Make a Good Gumbo” will put you in the mood while cooking this up. (In addition to being a great musician, Tab is a long-standing wetlands advocate.)

Ingredients

Optional add-ons

6 cups cooked rice if you want to serve the gumbo over rice (that’s 1/2 cup for each portion)

1. Heat the vegetable oil over medium heat. Add the onion and sauté until translucent.
2. Add the tomato juice.
3. Add all the chopped vegetables: tomatoes, potatoes, bell pepper, celery, corn, and okra. Add the thyme and oregano. Cook for 20 minutes. Stir often to prevent the bottom from scorching. They may need another 10-15 minutes. Check periodically.
4. Check the texture of the potatoes and okra. I like them kind of al dente, but you might like them a little bit softer.
5. Add the black pepper. Taste to see if salt is needed; add if necessary.
6. When you like the texture of the potatoes and okra, and you feel the soup is ready to serve, add the lemon juice and stir. Take the soup off the heat.
7. If using rice, turn rice into each individual soup bowl by packing it into a teacup and then inverting it. Pour the soup over the rice.

For years, I’ve drooled over photos of summer pudding — a traditional British dessert that’s the same deep blue and purple color as a serious bruise. Summer pudding features a little bread and a lot of berries, and Massachusetts, where I live, is known for its delicious late-summer harvests of raspberries, blueberries, etc. One of these summers, I’ve long thought to myself, Olde England and New England will intersect in my kitchen, resulting in a stunner of a summer pudding.

Well, it’s been a weird summer here in Massachusetts: lots of rain, lots of thunder and lightning (ask any dog!), and consequently not much chance to go berry picking. Nonetheless, I could no longer resist the pull. It was time to carpe berrium (seize the berry).

Berry, Berry, Quite Contrary

Traditionally, summer pudding contains strawberries and red currants along with other berries. I am not crazy about the texture of cooked strawberries, and red currants can be hard to find. Also, I like to use organic produce whenever possible, particularly when it comes to berries, since strawberries and raspberries are high on the “dirty dozen” list of fruits that are best purchased organic. Cherries make the list as well.

My plan was to go to a local organic U-pick farm, but the weather didn’t cooperate with my schedule, so I ended up buying all my berries at the local Whole Foods. Since this was my summer pudding, I decided to fill it with the fruits that I thought would be delicious together: blueberries, blackberries, and cherries. On the day that I was shopping I was able to get fresh, local organic blueberries but I didn’t see any fresh organic cherries or blackberries, so I bought frozen ones.

I knew that it was traditional to add some sort of wine or liquor to the berry mix. I could have used ruby port, cream sherry, a dessert wine, or any one of a number of fruit liquors. In the end I chose to use blackberry brandy. I also decided to use a tiny amount of cinnamon — not enough so that you could identify the taste, but just enough to give the fruit some extra depth and complexity. Fresh lemon juice added a bright flavor to the mix.

I also added sugar. I thought that I wouldn’t need very much, but I was wrong! When I took a taste of the sauce by itself it seemed perfectly sweet, but once I tasted a spoonful of the sauce with the berries in it I was able to tell that the berries were tart enough to require the addition of extra sugar. My advice to you is to start by adding one cup of sugar to the sauce, cook the fruit in it for a while, and then take a taste of the fruit and sauce together. If it’s still too tart, add the extra half a cup of sugar.

Weighty Matters

After I made the sauce and cooked it long enough for the sugar to dissolve completely, I added the fruit to the sauce. It was so beautiful — the combination of the blueberries, blackberries, and cherries looked like a pot of garnets and rubies, and the smell was intoxicating. (The cinnamon helped to create the heady fragrance.) You’ll want to cook this mixture long enough for everything to be warmed through but you also want the berries to still hold their shape. If you defrost any frozen fruit that you’re using first (don’t forget to add their juices to the pot) or if you use all fresh berries, the whole cooking process should only take 5-10 minutes on a medium-low flame. If you are using some frozen fruit, start by cooking the frozen fruit in the sauce and then once the frozen fruit is warmed through, add the fresh fruit and cook just until the fresh fruit is also warmed through.

Making the bread shell was easy. I used brioche, but you could also use challah or any sturdy white or egg bread. I have always scored ridiculously high on spatial-relationship tests, but you’d never know it from my bread shell-making experience. Someone who is more perfectionistic than I am would probably make a clever plan of how best to minimize the number of places where tiny pieces of bread needed to be torn and stuffed into the gaps left between the larger slices. Not me. I just buttered the inside of the bowl, put the bread slices in somewhat randomly, and then just stuffed the holes with abandon. (Spoiler alert: It turned out fine, so don’t get too worried about doing this part “right.”)

Once I had the bread shell finished, I took a slotted spoon and moved all the berries and cherries into the shell. Then I added two cups of the juice to the mix. (I reserved the rest of the sauce for pouring over the pudding once I unmolded it. I stored the extra sauce in the fridge.) I added the top layer of bread slices to cover the berry mixture. Then I put a layer of parchment paper over the pudding and added two saucers on top of that to put some weight onto it. I covered the assemblage in plastic wrap (but none of the plastic wrap touched the food because it was kept off the pudding by the parchment paper and the saucers) and stuck it in the fridge. Once the pudding was in the fridge, I added additional weight to compress the bread and berries enough to make it into a single, unified object. (The recommended weight is two pounds but I don’t think I had much more than one pound of weight on it. Again, it worked just fine.)

Euphoric Reaction

I let the pudding chill overnight. My vegetarian dining co-op was meeting on Sunday night so I hopped in the car (we carpooled — there were three of us) and drove to Boston’s Southie neighborhood, where we were meeting at my friend Kama’s apartment. Kama prepared a delicious Spanish-influenced vegan meal. I was happy to take advantage of access to a hungry crowd, since I assumed that the pudding would lose its structural integrity once it was cut open, and I wanted as many people as possible to see it and eat it while it was at its peak. A dinner party for seven seemed like the perfect occasion to test-drive the recipe.

After dinner, I whipped some heavy cream with a little sugar in it and added some garnishes at the last minute. The seven of us each had a huge slice of pudding with one giant piece left over. It could easily have served 10 less-piggy people. Once cut, the pudding held its shape fairly well, but I don’t think it would have lasted more than a few hours before falling down. The slices maintained their shape as I moved them from the platter onto the dessert plates.

The taste was amazing. It had the freshness and sweetness of the berries and cherries, the bright note of the lemon, the deep purple flavor of the blackberry brandy, and the depth created by the cinnamon. Nobody spoke for a few minutes. There was, however, a lot of wordless moaning. I have no doubt that someone passing by the apartment door might have thought there was some sort of orgy going on within because all they would have heard was the sound of seven people moaning with pleasure. Repeatedly.

 

Photo: Roz Cummins

 

Summer Pudding

Feeds eight gluttons, 10 hungry people, or 12 people with modest appetites.

Butter (to grease the inside of the bowl)
A loaf and a half of brioche, challah, egg bread, or sturdy white bread, cut into slices that are anywhere between 1/2 and 3/4 inch thick. Cut off any crusts.

For garnish:

1. If you are going to use frozen fruit, you can let it defrost (be sure to save the juice for the sauce) or you can put it straight into the sauce you are going to make. Pick over any fresh fruit you are going to use and take off any stems and remove mushy berries. Wash the fresh fruit gently under a light stream of running water.
2. Make a sauce in a pot set over a medium-high flame by heating 1 cup of sugar in the cup of water. Cook until the sugar is dissolved. Add any frozen fruit and cook until it has warmed through. When the frozen fruit has warmed through, add any fresh fruit that you are going to use.
3. Add the cinnamon as well.
4. Cook the fruit for about 5 minutes so that it is thoroughly cooked through but still holds its shape. Add the liquor. Add 1 tablespoon of the lemon juice.
5. Taste a spoonful of sauce with some of the berries in it. Add the extra half a cup of sugar now if needed. Add the extra tablespoon of lemon juice if you think the berry mix needs a “brighter” flavor. Take the berries off the flame and set aside to cool.
6. Butter the interior of the bowl thoroughly. Cut crusts of bread off and cut bread slices into “finger” shapes and use the pieces of bread to line the inside of the bowl. Fill in any “blank” spaces with small pieces of bread. Make sure the entire surface is covered but don’t worry about making it look perfect. It won’t matter in the end.
7. Using a slotted spoon, transfer the berries to the bowl. Pour two cups of the sauce from the berries into the bowl as well. (If for some reason you don’t have enough sauce, add another cup of water to what you have and stir it until it’s incorporated.)
8. Place slices of bread across the top of the bowl. (This surface will become the bottom of the pudding when it’s unmolded.) Cover the bread with parchment paper, then put two saucers or plates that fit inside the bowl on top of the parchment paper so that it puts pressure on the pudding. Cover the saucers (and the top of this entire affair) with cling wrap. Place the pudding in the fridge and put two big, full soup cans on top. Add more weight if you think it needs it.
9. Now let it sit in the fridge for at least 12 hours. I think the perfect thing to do is make it the night before you are going to serve it, which gives it about 20 hours to set up.
10. When it’s time to serve it, unpeel the wrap and parchment paper. Place a platter over the top of the pudding and then flip it over. It should release easily, but if it doesn’t just run a knife around the outside perimeter of the pudding. I did that and the pudding popped out beautifully once I let a little bit of air get between the pudding and the bowl.
11. Whip the cream and sugar together until they hold soft peaks. Use a chilled bowl and beaters if possible.
12. Place some berries on top of the pudding for garnish. Pour the extra sauce around the bottom of the pudding. Serve with whipped cream.
13. Moan with pleasure. Make the neighbors wonder what you do on the weekend.

Jamie Bissonnette.

In my most recent article, I described my experience attending a hog-butchering workshop led by Boston chef Jamie Bissonnette. He mentioned during the workshop that he had been a vegan when he was younger. I wanted to find out more about what would make someone change his eating habits so dramatically, so I set up an interview with Jamie to talk about the influences and experiences that led him to follow a different path than the one he set out on as a young man.

After settling into a comfortable seating area near the bar at KO Prime, Jamie and I talked about his experiences with food when he was growing up in the ’70s. He remembers always loving being in the kitchen. At age 7, he made an egg dish that was thick with cheese and he served it to the guys who were painting the house next door. They told him that they really liked it. That was the first time that he remembers people appreciating what he had cooked for them. He said that by the time he was 11, he realized that he was a better cook than his mom.

Playing It Straight Edge

Between ages 12 and 14, Jamie began to transition into being a vegetarian, largely under the influence of the budding “straight-edge” movement in Hartford, Conn. (The straight-edge aesthetic combines a love for hardcore punk with an aversion to “poisoning the body,” often leading its adherents to give up meat.) He started touring with bands, playing electric and stand-up bass. Soon enough, he became a vegan.

I asked what the band ate while on the road. “A lot of Twizzlers and Fritos,” Jamie says. “Because we were vegan we ate a lot of fast food fries and fruit. We’d stay at people’s houses, usually the house of the parents of whoever had booked the show. We ate a lot of bagels and tofu. When we had a few days off we’d have big cookouts and I’d make a huge vegan feast. I loved Indian food and I’d look for dishes that were vegan or could be made to be vegan: fried rice, lentils, white beans, pasta, things like that.”

Eventually Jamie realized that he wasn’t making any money from music and that he didn’t like touring, so he decided to go to culinary school. He entered the culinary arts program at the Art Institute of Fort Lauderdale and graduated at 19. He was still a vegetarian and an on-and-off vegan, but he had needed to taste cream and butter as part of his culinary training.

After chef school, Jamie returned to Boston. He began doing Mixed Martial Arts and found that his energy level was much higher if he avoided eating meat. But a chef in told him that in order to become a great chef he had to cook meat, and in order to cook meat he would have to eat it.

I asked Jamie what made him decide to do as the chef commanded rather than continue to do what made him feel best physically. He replied that he met the chef’s demands because that’s the kind of relationship that a young chef has with a mentor. “The chef is like a sergeant in the military — you don’t doubt the people who’ve been doing this a long time.” He was 22 years old at this point. “I said to myself, ‘Well, I want to be a chef, so this is what I need to do.’”

Waste Not, Want Not

How had his interest in butchering started? Jamie replied without hesitation: “Waste! I saw a lot of people wasting stuff. I was a daytime sous chef and we were getting in already fabricated [pre-cut] pork loins. I could see fat and connective tissue still on the meat and I wanted to do something with all that stuff. This was in the mid-’90s and pâté was not in vogue — maybe in NYC or France but not in Boston. I decided to learn how to cook all of this stuff. I found a book from an old Time-Life series: Terrines, Pâtés and Galantines.”

To this day, Jamie snaps up editions of the out-of-print book when they come up on eBay. “One year I gave them as a holiday present to every cook in the kitchen.”

Meanwhile, he traveled, learned more about charcuterie, went back to Europe, and then returned to Boston in 2001 after working in Paris at a restaurant that had its own garden.

Right after 9/11, fine dining slowed down considerably. Jamie was working for Mark Orfaly at Pigalle, a highly regarded fine-dining restaurant. Jamie wanted to figure out a way to save money on what they were cooking. They decided to try to make food out of what they already had on hand. Jamie expressed his admiration for Mark’s leadership style: “Mark said, ‘Let’s do this together. Let’s make this a journey.’” Jamie was in charge of a Sunday tasting menu featuring regional food from France, and he focused on areas such as Normandy, which allowed him to incorporate charcuterie.

Jamie then did a second stint in France. When he returned to Boston, Eastern Standard was opening in Kenmore Square, near Fenway Park. Everyone told him not to attach himself to the restaurant, that the neighborhood was dead, that only Red Sox fans were there, and that Red Sox fans did not want to eat fancy French food. Jamie decided to take a chance and signed on at the restaurant anyway.

Their P.R. rep told them that they needed to showcase what made them different from other restaurants. They decided to make Eastern Standard known for charcuterie. Eastern Standard began to feature dishes like “offal of the day.” Boston University owns the Hotel Commonwealth, where Eastern Standard is located, and Rebecca Alstead, the head of B.U.’s Gastronomy Program, ate at Eastern Standard frequently. Impressed by Jamie’s skill at charcuterie, she asked Jamie to give a lesson on making it at the program.

The class went well, and Jamie came away with a reputation for being able to teach chefs how to use all the parts of an animal efficiently and well.

The Whole Beast

Many chefs feel that making the best and most thorough use of an animal is a way of respecting animals whose lives have been sacrificed in order to feed people. I asked Jamie what he would say to anyone who wants to know what he thinks about the ethics of eating meat, since he has the unusual perspective of having been both a serious vegan and a dedicated carnivore as well as a purveyor of meat dishes.

“I like to look at different sides of an argument. I’m a big devil’s advocate,” he says. “That said, I don’t know the answer to that question. I’d have to take two years off of work to travel and visit many farms, and even then I don’t know if I’ll ever find the answer. Also, I think that if we cut meat out of our diets it will be a devastating blow to our economy. The balance in our lives would be affected.”

We talk about other aspects of eating responsibly. “With the economy starting to tank, it’s been getting harder to be a responsible consumer,” Jamie remarks. “If you want to eat in a sustainable way, only grass-fed beef, etc., then you’re going to have to reduce your caloric intake, because it’s going to be a lot more expensive to eat that way.” He adds: “I think that grass-fed beef doesn’t taste that good, by the way.”

I respond that the way I deal with the expense/responsible eating equation is to have reduced my red meat consumption substantially. I eat it very rarely, and so when I do choose to eat it I can afford to buy a little bit of high quality, sustainably-raised meat.

“We need to educate people,” Jamie agrees. He points to the example of Share Our Strength, which educates the public about childhood hunger. “We need to reeducate people about how to eat less meat.” This may seem to be an unusual sentiment from a chef who prides himself on his butchering skills. But the point of whole-carcass breakdown is to use “everything but the oink,” as they say in the South, and that makes for a more sustainable way of using animals for meat.

Tripe à la Collinsville

Recipe by Jamie Bissonnette
This recipe makes 15-16 servings.

Jamie named this tripe stew after his hometown, the way French chefs often name the dishes they create. It will keep well for 7-10 days in the refrigerator, and freezes well for six to eight months.

The recipe calls for mirepoix. Mirepoix is a mixture of diced onion, carrots, and celery. It always has a ratio of 50 percent diced onions, 25 percent diced carrots, and 25 percent diced celery. A flavor-builder for other dishes, it’s not usually served alone. Tripe à la Collinsville also calls for making a sachet. This website provides instructions on how to do that. Esplette is a type of chili pepper. Jamie used ground, dried Esplette in this recipe.

Jamie says this stew makes a nice dinner served alongside an arugula salad and a toasted baguette. Serve it with dry, spicy white wine, or a white with a minerally character.

If frozen, defrost the tripe in cold water in your refrigerator. Once defrosted, soak the tripe in a fresh pot of water mixed with the half-bottle of white wine for 3-12 hours. Store in the refrigerator while soaking.

Clean by scrubbing off the small pieces of fat with blunt side of a large kitchen knife. Rinse, and cover again in a pot of cold water with 2 cups of white wine, and 1 cup of salt.

Bring to a simmer. Turn off immediately and strain.

Return to the pot, and cover by 4 inches with chicken stock. Add a cheesecloth sachet (or wire screen tea ball) that contains the mirepoix, caraway, coriander, fennel seed, and mustard seed. Bring to a boil, reduce to low simmer, and cook for 5-6 hours with a tight-fitting lid.

Cool the tripe overnight in its liquid. Put the bowl that it’s in over an ice bath (i.e., a bigger bowl full of ice), which will help it cool faster. When it’s cool enough to go into the fridge, refresh the ice in the ice bath bowl and place the bowl of cooling tripe above it once more and move the whole setup into the refrigerator.

Ready to meat its maker.

A few months ago, I decided to force myself to confront issues surrounding meat-eating head on — so to speak — by attending a hog-butchering class. Taught by Boston chef Jamie Bissonnette of KO Prime and offered through the Chefs Collaborative, the class focused on utilizing the whole animal, from head to tail.

As usual, I was beset by the dilemma of what to wear. What looks attractive, creative, and professional — yet also looks good splattered in blood? I finally gave up trying to solve this particular sartorial puzzle and just decided to wear jeans and a T-shirt. As far as accessories go, I decided that this was probably not the moment to wear a charm bracelet.

My intern Anna joined me. A committed vegetarian, she too wanted to confront her ideas about meat-eating. Much of her childhood was spent in France where carnivory is an accepted and unquestioned part of life. She ate meat before going vegetarian three years ago.

Meat of the Matter

We had to check in at the door (it was like giving a password to get into a speakeasy during prohibition) to show that we were sincerely interested in learning about “whole-carcass breakdown” and that we weren’t anti-meat activists.

Once we got settled in, I was both relieved and disappointed to discover that this would be a demonstration rather than a participatory workshop. I wouldn’t get to confront my meat-eating issues as directly as I had expected to, but I wouldn’t go home covered in raw pig parts, either.

After some mingling (will I ever learn to enjoy mingling?) the demonstration got under way. Jamie placed a whole hog (although it had been eviscerated — i.e., the innards had already been removed) on the counter in front of us, with its little dead piggy eyes staring straight ahead — and right at us.

I wasn’t as disturbed as I expected — and perhaps even hoped — to be. For one thing, I’ve been cooking all my life and dealing with meat and poultry is second nature to me. Also, if you’re a cook, I think that there’s something inside of you that says, “People are counting on me to cook for them. I will do whatever is needed to deliver a delicious and nutritious meal.” You ignore your own feelings and perceptions in order to accomplish the task at hand. There’s no room or time for squeamishness.

Jamie worked his way from snout to tail, detailing all the ways in which he would use each cut. As he described each preparation (“this bit I’ll turn into head cheese, this I’ll use for choricio … “) I could hear Anna — committed vegetarian Anna — moan softly with pleasure. What can I say — you can take the girl out of France, but you can’t take France out of the girl.

By the end of the demonstration, Jamie had used the hog completely, leaving nothing behind but a bloodstain. Using the whole carcass makes sense on many levels. Not only is it less wasteful, but it also shows respect to the animal being eaten by not letting any of it go to waste, as well as being more responsible environmentally because it squeezes as much food value as possible out of each animal.

When the demonstration ended, we all had a chance to try some of the sausages, pâté, and headcheese that had been prepared for the crowd. And, of course, there was more mingling.

Jamie Bissonnette shows off a hog head.

Going in for the Kill

Jamie mentioned during the presentation that he had been a vegan during his teens, so Anna asked him how he went from being a vegan to a top butcher and chef. He answered that during his stages (internships) in French kitchens, the chefs to whom he was apprenticed told him if you want to be a great chef you need to know how to cook and handle meat. Hearing Jamie relate this story to Anna got me interested in interviewing him about how and why he made such a dramatic transition in his life. My in-depth interview with him will follow in the next column.

In the meantime, I found that this experience didn’t change my feelings about meat-eating at all. I eat very little meat for environmental reasons, but I don’t think that it’s morally wrong to eat a small amount now and then. Indeed, there are studies that show it’s more environmentally responsible to eat chicken than cheese since cows (which produce a lot of methane and consume a lot of grain) have to be maintained in order to produce the milk necessary to make cheese.

Also, I acknowledge that I am an animal that eats meat, just like many other animals. I understand that I don’t need to eat meat or poultry in order to stay alive, but I don’t feel that it’s wrong to include a little bit of meat in the mix of vegetables and grains that I do need to eat in order to sustain myself.

In short, I didn’t find that this experience really tested me, which leaves me to assume that only if I had to kill an animal would I ever really know what it means to cause suffering in my quest to eat meat. Maybe someday I will arrange to put myself squarely in the hot seat to see if my feelings change if I am directly responsible for taking an animal’s life, but for now I am OK with just eating very little meat and using it as wisely and thoroughly as I can.

Pâté Campagne

By Jamie Bissonnette
Makes 1 terrine or loaf pan size pâté

To make this pâté, Jamie recommends that you use a terrine mould or a loaf pan. He says not to worry about using exact amounts in this recipe, but to use it as a guide for what the ratio of ingredients should be (e.g., if you only have one pound of pork belly, make only half a batch).

Espelette is a kind of pepper. Jamie uses powdered Espelette.

Cut the first three ingredients into a 1/4 inch dice. Grind through a meat grinder on the 1/4 inch setting into a metal bowl resting on another bowl of ice. Mix in other ingredients. Scoop out a “test” spoonful and pan fry on a lightly oiled hot skillet until cooked. Taste for seasoning. Adjust with salt, Espelette, and mace as you see fit. Keep in mind that the pâté is served cold, and that flavors become somewhat muted as food cools, so adjust seasonings accordingly. When warm from the pan, the “test” mix may taste over-seasoned and even overly salty, but remember it will be less so when served cold. Fold in nuts if you are using them. This mixture is called a pâté farce.

Preheat oven to 325 F. Lay three slices of bacon length-wise into a terrine mold, roughly covering the bottom. Pack in the pâté farce. Top with the last three slices of bacon. Cover with foil. Bake in a water bath for 1 hour to 1 hour 45 minutes, or until the internal temperature reaches 150 degrees.

Allow to cool to room temperature, and then press with a 2-pound weight while cooling in the refrigerator. Wait at least one full day to eat this terrine.

In her new book The Dinner Diaries: Raising Whole Wheat Kids in a White Bread World, Betsy Block writes compellingly about trying to feed one’s family and oneself in a nutritious, sustainable, economical, and harmonious way — and dealing with various likes and dislikes within the family dining unit.

Betsy Block

Photo: Andrew Pockrose

I imagine reviewers will liken the experience of reading this book to sitting and talking at the kitchen table with a trusted friend, and they’ll be right. How do I know? Because Betsy is my trusted friend, and I am sitting at the kitchen table of her Boston-area home.

Well, that’s not entirely accurate. We’re standing, not sitting. Betsy is pouring me a giant glass of ice water (it’s only 10 a.m., and already it’s in the high 90s) and before we even sit down I start gushing about how much I love her book. I tell her that what I like most about it is that it takes place on a human scale. “You know how Google Earth has aerial views and street-level views?” I ask her. “Yes …,” she says slowly, wondering, I’m sure, where I am going with this. “Well, I often feel that advice about nutrition and child-rearing is delivered from on high, as remote as an aerial view, but your book takes place right in the trenches, at street level. In fact, the word ‘embedded’ came to mind.”

“Thank you,” Betsy says softly. “That’s exactly what I was going for. I’m so glad it came across that way.”

“You know what else I liked about the book?” I say between sips. “It’s so real. The chapter on your attempt to keep a food diary of everything your family is eating, and how everything suddenly goes all to hell one day when Roxy has a stroke, is the way life really is.” (Roxy is their beloved mutt, and I am happy to report that she recovered from her stroke and met me at the gate this morning with her tail wagging.)

The Dinner Diaries: Raising Whole Wheat Kids in a White Bread World, by Betsy Block

That provokes Betsy to bring up another messy situation portrayed in Dinner Diaries. Grinning devilishly, Betsy reminds me that the book tells the back story of an infamous soirée I had attended at her house (on a weeknight … how decadent … suburban moms gone wild!). “I bet you didn’t know about the lice infestation the week of the Girls, Greens, and Grains party!” Betsy laughs. I was amused to read of Betsy’s frantic efforts to delouse the house before her guests arrived for a party featuring recipes using grains that most of us didn’t grow up eating and greens that we should cook and eat more often. (I brought chocolate. I just can’t leave well enough alone.)

We discuss the territory the book covers: nutrition, ethical concerns about eating meat and fish, organic food, and family dining dynamics, in addition to chapters concerning vexing situations like people offering your kids things you’d rather they not eat, and children trading healthy homemade lunches with schoolmates for unhealthy choices.

One Step at a Time

Betsy devoted most of a year to doing exactly the kind of research that most people would like to do if only they had the time and resources. Not only does she share her research in clear and easily understood (as well as very entertaining) prose, but she also describes the walls she runs into, either in terms of inadequate information, conflicting opinions, or unrealistic suggestions.

I ask Betsy whether changes in the way we eat can make a difference. “Yes! Absolutely!” she answers. She reminds me that, not long ago, consumers routinely bought canned tuna harvested in a way that harmed dolphins. Now, dolphin-safe tuna is ubiquitous. “That’s an entirely consumer-driven change,” Betsy says. “Our actions do matter.”

We talk about how making changes seems like pure sacrifice — especially when we steer our diets away from what we’re used to, what we’re comfortable with, what we know we like. Betsy said that in her experience transforming her family’s diet, “there have been lots of sacrifices … and lots of gains too.” To lighten their ecological footprint, they’ve cut back on meat and seafood — but also made new discoveries, such as delicious greens and grains. “Our diet is much more diverse now, and we’re all more willing to try new things. Sometimes our experiments end in flaming failure … but lots of times they’re a hit.”

In the book’s opening, Betsy shows just how challenging the transformation was. All of the other members of her family are picky eaters — and they dislike different things. The lists of what her son and daughter refused to eat had me thinking, “That poor woman! How does she do it?” But her husband’s list was even longer. How does she do it?

Short answer: She takes it slow. “I started this meal makeover with a bang, immediately alienating all three beloved members of my family and increasing tension in the home,” she says. Chastened, she switched from giant steps to baby steps: “Taking it one step at a time and practicing more than I preach are both helpful.”

I ask her how she feels about raising children in an ecologically challenging time. “It might be contrary to common sense, but having kids has actually made me more joyful and hopeful about the future,” she says. And that joy and hope, in turn, inform her parenting. “I think that the most important thing that I can do for my kids is to live joyfully … and not fake joyful, but really joyful. How are we going to get to a lighter world on a dark path?”

As we wrap up our interview and prepare to go our separate ways, Betsy reflects on the message of the book. “What we eat matters for ourselves, for other people, and for the planet, and it doesn’t have to be a huge overhaul. A few small changes does it.”

Bob Sargent’s Bean Soup with Just a Little Pig

Bob Sargent owns Flora, a restaurant in Arlington, Mass. He gave this recipe to Betsy to use in her book.

Serves 4

Heat the oil gently in a three- or four-quart soup pot over medium heat. Add the onions, carrots, chard stems, and sausage. Cook until vegetables are slightly softened and fragrant, about 10 minutes. Add garlic and salt, and stir. Pour in the beans and enough water or stock to cover, plus 1 inch. Bring to a boil, then turn the heat down and cook at a lively simmer for 1 to 1 1/2 hours, or until the beans are as soft as you like, adding more liquid as needed. Toss in the chard greens, taste for seasoning, and cook until the greens are wilted. “We eat this with garlic bread and salad,” Betsy says.

The Portola Café and Restaurant, the fine-dining venue within the Monterey Bay Aquarium, is an airy, light-filled space surrounded by windows on three sides. The soothing, understated interior showcases a breathtaking view of Monterey Bay, where one can watch otters wrap themselves in kelp while cormorants swim and dive nearby.

It is here that I have the chance to talk with Alton Brown, creator and star of Good Eats on the Food Network. Alton combines his background in film and video with his culinary training — he attended the New England Culinary Institute — to produce a show that offers clear and clever scientific explanations of everyday cooking processes.

We sit at a window-side table in a corner of the restaurant. Alton has just come from presenting awards to sustainability-minded chefs and delivering a lecture at the closing ceremony of the Cooking for Solutions conference. Although still beautifully dressed in the suit he wore for the presentation, he manages to look informal as well as dapper. Is it possible to describe someone as wearing an entire suit at a rakish angle? That’s the feeling I get when we sit down to talk. I realize how long it’s been since I’ve had occasion to use the word jaunty, but that’s the one that comes to mind when I search for ways to describe Alton.

During his lecture, Alton announced that his TV show would begin focusing on sustainability issues: how crops are grown and animals are raised. The shift in focus would be a form of penance, he said.

At the restaurant, I ask him what he meant by that. “I’ve spent the last nine years influencing what people do with food, but I haven’t taught them about the real essence of feeding themselves, and I feel that it’s high time to step up to bat,” he says. “I’ve been busy being clever, but now I want to use what credibility I may have to help people think about sustainability.”

To Serve and Protect

Alton went on to explain that his eight-year-old daughter has had an enormous impact on his life. She forces him to think about the future quality of life on the planet. He has also been thinking hard about what she should learn about the environment, he said, adding that watching his daughter engage with the world reminds him of his own experiences when he was her age. His childhood heroes were two public-television icons: Julia Child of cooking fame and Jacques Cousteau, the seafaring French ecologist/explorer.

He wants to combine what he learned from both of them by taking a “serve and protect” approach to cooking and eating. “It’s the same motto as the L.A. police department,” he said. “I think it makes sense to try to change the way food is grown and animals are raised rather than by, for example, just not eating animals. We can’t fix problems by shunning them.” In effect, he is calling for a kind of enlightened omnivorism. “I sometimes wish that Theodore Roosevelt were still around,” he said. “He believed that we can eat and care for animals at the same time.”

The first step in this revolution, Alton believes, is to examine and rework our current system of values. “We place the highest value on cheapness,” he said, harking back to a point he had made at the lecture: that while we like to think we value the lives of the animals we eat, it’s obviously not so, as is clearly demonstrated by the way that we waste animal products.

What’s Your “Chicken Moment”?

Alton stressed that people are too far removed from the foods that feed them, adding that his generation is the first in his family not to farm at least some of the food that they eat. This distance between farm and plate has forced us to accept inferior food. “A friend of ours had chickens and she gave us fresh eggs and I got addicted to them,” he said. “Once you eat fresh eggs, you realize what eggs are really supposed to taste like. Fresh eggs have deep yellow yolks and a lot of flavor.”

The experience led to an epiphany: everyone should raise hens. “There’s no reason you can’t raise chickens in the city,” he said, adding that he keeps 25 chickens at the television studio he uses in Georgia.

Chicken also played a pivotal role in his daughter’s understanding of food systems. The family was having dinner at Bolo, a restaurant owned by Brown’s Food Network colleague Bobby Flay, on a trip to New York City. Brown’s daughter was served a plate of roasted chicken. She looked at it for a while, and then declared “That’s a chicken!” She made the connection between the chicken on the plate and the chickens that populate farms and children’s books. Alton explained to her that yes, these chickens are the same as the ones from the barnyard, and that people care for them, then kill them and eat them. She was silent for a moment, then said, “I’m OK with that.”

Alton wishes everyone could experience his or her own “chicken moment” — the moment when we realize, in a visceral and undeniable way, that the animals we eat have lives, and that we are as responsible for the way they live as we are for the way they die.

Kitchen Failures and Dinner Invitations

I told Alton that one of the things that I think is wonderful about cooking is that, apart from a small investment of time and money, the stakes are generally pretty low. When you mess up, you can usually eat the mistake. I added that I purposely write about my screw-ups and failures so that readers will feel more comfortable messing around in the kitchen.

Alton picked up the theme and ran with it. “If something I cook turns out badly, I serve it anyway, even to company,” Alton said. “When I cook something that’s really awful, my daughter will spear it with a fork and hold it up and say, ‘Dad! What’s the story here?’ which I find very funny.”

I asked Alton whether, once he started being a TV chef, people stopped asking him over for dinner. “No, thankfully,” he replied. “I never criticize food. I never take anyone’s hospitality for granted. I am genuinely appreciative. I would eat a communion wafer smeared with mayo if that’s what I was offered.”

I watched as a nice young woman from the aquarium staff brought Alton two glasses of white wine and apologized for not remembering the names of each wine. “Not to worry!” Alton said as he quickly poured the contents of one glass into the other and then back again, like a mad scientist working with beakers. It was like watching an episode of his show.

Balancing Act

The topic turned to ways of inspiring people to think hard about sustainability. “People need to learn about sustainability as the need for a system in balance,” he began. “The first step is to question everything. Question different aspects of the food system, one at a time. We might not get answers right away, but non-answers are just as valuable!”

As the waves lashed outside the window, he turned his attention to the high seas. “Somebody’s got to get serious about what’s happening to the oceans.” Alton talked about illegal fishing as a form of modern-day piracy, “with fish as the booty.” He wasn’t kidding. Then he added this: “Somebody needs to sink the Japanese tuna fleet. Everyone’s willing to point the finger, but nobody’s willing to pull the trigger.”

Surprised by such a rash declaration, and wanting to present a more effective, lasting, and peaceful alternative, I asked Alton if he would be willing to crew on a Greenpeace boat. Several Greenpeace ships are currently documenting and publicizing illegal tuna fishing operations and the subsequent transfer of tuna to refrigerated mother ships (a practice that’s called, accurately yet still unbelievably, “tuna laundering”).

“Yes! Absolutely!” he answered. “Even the Rainbow Warrior?” I asked. “Well …,” he replied, laughing, “do they have any boats with better names?” (They do, the Esperanza and the Arctic Sunrise among them.)

Hey, Greenpeace, I think you have a recruit. (To see what life is like on a Greenpeace boat, read the blogs of some of the crew members.)

We finished our conversation and I returned to the halls of the aquarium, where hundreds of people were tasting wine, eating asparagus flan, sampling grilled bison, and savoring goat cheese. I tasted a few dishes and then headed back to the hotel to type up my notes, and to wonder what the future holds for Alton and for the world’s shrinking tuna population. I’ll be tuning in to the Food Network to find out.

Mojo Moulies

Recipe courtesy of Alton Brown

Alton shared with me this delicious, simple preparation for mussels (moules in French) — labeled an “excellent choice” in sustainability terms by the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Seafood Watch.

Flex your mussels.

Hardware:
8-quart nonreactive, stainless steel stockpot
Metal colander or steamer insert

In the stockpot, sweat the garlic, leeks, and salt in the olive oil until softened over medium-low heat. Place the mussels in the colander and spray them with cold water to remove any excess dirt or grit. Remove any beards with a pair of needle-nose pliers.

Add the chopped tomato and the wine to the stockpot and turn the heat to medium high, and bring to a simmer. Insert the colander of mussels into the stockpot and cover. After 3 minutes, check to see if the mussels have opened. If some are still closed, cover the pot, and cook for an additional 30 seconds. Discard any unopened mussels.

Place the mussels in a serving bowl. Remove 10 mussels from their shells and add them to the stockpot. Using a stick blender or a bar blender, puree the mussels until the liquid is of a sauce-like consistency.

Pour the sauce over the mussels and garnish with chopped parsley. Serve immediately, with a loaf of crusty bread.

About 15 years ago, a friend brought an organic wine to a dinner party I was giving. He explained to me that in addition to being made from grapes that are grown organically, organic wines don’t contain any added sulfites (some sulfites occur naturally as a result of the fermentation process). Since I try hard to use organic products as much as I can afford to, I began to look for organic wines when I went shopping.

The choices were few and far between. Wine-industry people I knew seemed to hate the organic wine. They’d say, “Organic wine is awful! No winemaker in his or her right mind would make a wine without sulfites!”

Recently, however, I’ve seen more organic wines appear on the shelves, and I decided it was time to explore this topic in greater depth. So I visited the Boston Wine School to talk to Jonathon Alsop, the school’s founder and executive director, who kindly created a personal magical mystery tour of organic wines for me.

He set out a plate of cheese and bread as well as a small dish filled with shards of dark Taza chocolate to accompany the wines. We sat down and began our tasting as is traditionally done, moving from lighter selections to darker ones. First, though, Jonathon gave me a brief primer on organic wine.

Great Wine Starts in the Dirt

Wise vintners, Jonathon told me, make great wine by taking care of the land and the grapes and then “getting out of the way.”

“They know that a good wine is made in the vineyard,” he said. “These winemakers do everything they can to minimize the amount that they interfere with the natural processes that take place. They recognize that things like driving a tractor through the vineyard instead of doing work by hand will ultimately have a negative effect on the wine.”

He added that, like all farmers, winemakers can’t control the weather. When there’s more rain than usual, molds sometimes attack the vines, threatening the harvest unless a fungicide is used. Such seasonal vagaries make some vintners reluctant to seek organic certification, even when they generally use organic techniques.

Luckily for consumers, most really good wines come from winemakers who avoid agrichemicals as much as possible. “Winemaking doesn’t really lend itself to the practice of Big Ag, because whatever you do to the grapes you will ultimately taste in the wine,” Jonathon said.

Of course, some winemakers who use organic agriculture use sulfites in the winemaking process. Sulfites act as a preservative and keep white wines from changing to a golden or brown color. (They are not used as often in red wines.) The labels on these wines may say that they are made with organic grapes, but they do not — and, by law, cannot — identify the wines themselves as organic.

So the organic label is only one way to find wines that are grown with an eye toward ecologically minded practices. Another way to look for environmentally sound wines, Jonathon suggested, is to look for small-batch wines from a single vineyard.

Matter of Taste

After chatting, we tasted a few organic (and organic-ish) wines. We started with a 2005 Lolonis ($22) Chardonnay from Redwood Valley in California. Jonathon said that Madge Lolonis runs her vineyard in a completely organic way. The wine has a ladybug on the label, reflecting the fact that they shun pesticides and instead practice integrated pest management involving beneficial insects. The wine showed a crisp yet not overly sharp lemon-lime flavor. It actually kind of reminded me of 7-Up. I tend to prefer the more “buttery” style Chardonnays, but I can easily imagine finding this one refreshing on a hot summer day.

Next, we sampled a 2005 Domaine Montanet-Thoden Bourgogne ($22), a Pinot Noir from France’s celebrated Burgundy region. Its major flavors are Bing cherry, cranberry, and raspberry, commonly described as tangy, garnet berry flavors. We paired it with some Humboldt Fog blue cheese and some Brebis, a sheep’s milk cheese. The wine and cheeses interacted beautifully, each enhancing the other.

Next we moved to a California-made sample, Trader Joe’s Organic Syrah ($5.99). It tasted deliciously of jam and white and black pepper. Note the price — a glass only costs you $1.20! Mulling over a sip, Jonathon observed that “This is the golden age of great, tasty cheap wine.”

We then moved on to Parducci ($11.99) from a Petite Sirah grape. The wine was dead black — so dark and opaque that you can’t even see through it. It was dry and lacked any sweetness whatsoever (it reminded me of unsweetened cocoa powder) but it remained really drinkable despite the dry quality. I wanted to play with it with my tongue the way that I used to play endlessly with a loose tooth when I was seven. It tasted of aluminum, minerals, and stones — and I mean that in a good way. I rarely eat red meat, but this wine made me desperately crave a great big slab of prime rib, Yorkshire pudding to sop up the juices, and even plum pudding for dessert. It’s the perfect wine for a winter holiday dinner.

A 2005 Treana Red ($35-$40), a blend containing mostly Cabernet Sauvignon grapes, was next. The wine had a pleasing, almost chewy mouthfeel. Jonathon described its texture as almost like superfine sandpaper on the tongue. I was knocked out by the taste. I wouldn’t exactly call it sweet, but I longed to use it to flavor an egg custard or as a sauce for an egg custard, because I thought it would provide a deep, red-fruit flavor contrast to the sweet, mild, creamy taste and texture of the custard.

That’s not going to happen, though; this is no budget-priced cooking wine. Oh, well! At least I experienced the brief thrill of feeling inspired to cook with it! (Actually, if I could buy just one glass for $8 I might use it to make a dessert for a fancy dinner party for four people, but, of course, you can’t buy just one glass for $8.)

My custard-planning prayers were answered, however, when we tasted the last wine in the lineup, Rosenblum’s 2004 Black Muscat Gallagher Reserve ($18), a dessert wine from Alameda, Calif. It tasted like super-ripe plums — “a plum so ripe that it’s about to go bad,” Jonathon elaborated. Imagine the gooeyest, sweetest Passover wine that you’ve ever had — and now imagine what it would taste like if it were good! That’s how this wine struck me. And it’s priced low enough for me to consider using a glass for cooking — as I did when making the following dessert.

Syllabub

This rich, wine-flavored dessert is a traditional English favorite that lost favor with the advent of ice cream. In its original form, it could only be made on a farm: you would combine wine, cider, or ale in a bowl with sugar, spices, and citrus zest — and then hold the bowl under a cow’s udder to add fresh milk! Modified for the modern cow-free kitchen, it remains a delicious way to bring wine’s flavor to the after-dinner table.

Dessert wine, dressed up.

Photo: Piperita Patty

Serves 4

Chill the bowl and beaters in preparation for whipping the cream. Ten minutes in the fridge should do the trick. Set out four glasses into which you will place the peach slices and spoon the syllabub. If you plan to use cubes or cake or torn ladyfingers, distribute them among the four glasses now.

Mix the cream, wine, sugar, and orange zest in the chilled bowl and then whip the cream until it holds soft peaks.

Peel and slice the peaches. Put half the slices from one peach on the bottom of a glass and then add about 1/4 of the syllabub mixture. Put the rest of the slices from the peach on top of the syllabub. (If you are using six small peaches, then add some extra slices from the extra peaches now.)

Serve immediately.

A couple of months ago, I wrote about how the Monterey Bay Aquarium in California comes up with its wallet-sized cards — the ones that tell us what seafood choices are sustainable.

I got so interested in the topic that when I got an invitation to attend the aquarium’s annual Cooking for Solutions conference, I couldn’t pass it up. The event brings together high-profile chefs from across the country who are devoted to sustainability, and puts them in the same room with luminaries from the sustainable-food world. For me, it was a chance to plunge myself into a sea of conversation — to be able to learn a lot all at once, rather than slowly and ploddingly, one conversation and interview after another.

The food was lavish — proof that sustainability need not mean self-denial. At the reception, we were served oysters with a mignonette sauce, pasta with asparagus, little bits of beef served with a sort of Bordelaise sauce on top of some kind of blini or pancake, and sushi made from sustainable tuna from Hawaii. I haven’t had tuna sushi in years because it’s so hard to get sushi made from sustainable tuna. I greedily ate three pieces. I have missed the satiny texture of raw tuna, and the way that the sweet heat of the preserved ginger sets off the tuna’s dark, meaty taste.

Rick Moonen, a chef much admired for his way with seafood, attended the reception. Chef and owner of Las Vegas-based rm Seafood, Moonen is committed to introducing his customers to species of fish that they may not have tried before, such as barramundi (a “best choice” on the MBA Seafood watch website). In his new book Fish Without a Doubt, Moonen gives several recipes for this delicacy, including grilled whole with charmoula sauce (a yummy Moroccan sauce made with garlic, lemon, parsley, cilantro, and cumin) and sautéed with Orange-Soy Vinaigrette. He also introduces readers to new and enticing ways to cook more familiar yet underappreciated fish, such as mackerel and mussels. Just thinking about his recipes like “Pineapple Rum Ceviche with Mackerel” and “Mussel Paella” make me wish that I had access to a kitchen right now.

Properly for a conference devoted to food, we sometimes seemed to be moving from meal to meal. The second morning started with breakfast beneath a whale skeleton hanging from the ceiling and in front of the otter exhibit. It was easy to pick out all the East Coast writers: we oooh and ahhh over the fresh California fruit, cooing like parents looking at newborns through the window of the hospital nursery.

At the conference we hear from farmers, fishmongers, academics, and business people about the situation in which we find ourselves (climate change, overfishing, agriculture’s use of water and the resulting effect on the oceans, an anticipated increase in weeds that will accompany a warming climate, etc.) and what can be done about it. The information came way too fast and furious to be summarized in this column. For those interested, I’ll be detailing what I learned in my forthcoming website, thekitchenalmanac.com.

At this sort of event, a lot of interesting conversation happens late at night, after the formal programming. Given that most of the attendees devote themselves to food production and how it can happen sustainably, the talk often turns to big issues. Can we save the planet and ourselves? Or are we past the point of no return?

Those are questions that I personally struggle with. Both in the session and in the conversations afterward, I got a distinct sense of hope from people directly involved with saving the food system from itself. I’ll take that hope back to Massachusetts with me. And I’ll remember it when I talk to people who are convinced that any changes we can make now are pointless, so they feel free to drink bottled water shipped in from Fiji while driving their Hummers to a tanning salon. (I call these folks the DFRB’s: Desperate to Fiddle while Rome Burns.)

My Monterey experience will help me hold fast to a core belief: that we have to try to change our ways in the face of ecological disaster. It is our responsibility — to ourselves, our children, and all the other living beings on the planet — to at least try to stop global warming, the decimation of the oceans, and the population pressure on our limited natural resources. And trying means joining forces and sharing discoveries and best practices with an eye toward the future — the spirit of the Cooking for Solutions conference.

And in that spirit, I offer a recipe from Rick Moonen’s Fish Without a Doubt. I absolutely love trout and am always happy to find a new way to prepare it.

Trout frying in America.

Photo: Ben Fink

Chicken-Fried Trout

Recipe from Fish Without a Doubt by Rick Moonen and Roy Finamore. Text copyright © 2008 by Rick Moonen and Roy Finamore. Used by permission of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

For the marinade:

For the rest of the dish:

For the marinade: Combine the buttermilk, onion, scallions, dill, garlic, zest, and chili paste in a baking dish. Whisk or stir well.

Lay the fillets in the marinade, making sure you’ve got them completely coated. Cover with the plastic and marinate in the refrigerator for at least one hour and up to eight hours.

When you’re ready for dinner, remove the fish from the marinade and season it with salt and white pepper. Coat the fillets well with flour.

Heat 1/4 inch of oil in a heavy skillet (this is a good time to pull out your cast-iron pan) until very hot but not smoking. Fry the fish in batches for about 1 1/2 minutes on the first side, then turn and fry for another 45 seconds. The crust should be golden. Serve immediately.

Peak oil.

Didi pulled a dark green glass bottle from her rucksack. I wondered what the other patrons thought, since it was a bit early in the day for a tipple. But once we tore our loaf of bread into pieces and started dipping it in the liquid that we poured out of the bottle, I suspect they realized that the bottle contained olive oil, not some early-morning libation.

It wasn’t just any olive oil, but olive oil pressed from unripe olives grown in Tuscany, Italy’s most celebrated olive region. My previous experience with what I realize in retrospect must have been oil pressed from unripe olives was a distinctly unpleasant one. I was at a very nice Italian restaurant in L.A., and I ordered the olive oil tasting plate. When I tried the three oils that were presented, I experienced what Didi describes as “machetes down my throat.” Wow! It was like having lemon juice rubbed into esophageal paper cuts. It was hard to consume this oil on even a purely mechanical level.

And yet it is precisely this quality that makes many Tuscans seek out oil pressed from unripe olives. What seems inedible to me is a gustatory thrill for them, and they stand in line to get the oil as soon as it is available each year. Didi explained that it mellows in the bottle over time. The one we were tasting, from the 2007 harvest, had been in the bottle for several months and had a smooth flavor followed by a pleasant, peppery finish. “It doesn’t taste of olives, does it?” Didi asked me. “It tastes like a playground of all of the good things the earth has to offer: minerals, essential oil …” I interrupted her to add, “It tastes like a reduction of sunshine.”

“You get so into this oil,” Didi continued, “that you begin to think of it as a solution to all of your problems. You want to use it everywhere … you begin to think that it might taste good on top of your cereal in the morning. It’s like falling in love with a really good cheese that you want to eat all the time — except it’s healthy!”

This kind of oil is expensive, so you don’t want to use it for cooking. “Heat would make it lose its flavor,” Didi noted. “Essentially, you’re buying a sauce. Use it that way. Pour it on top of hummus, use it in a white bean purée, use it in any potato dish. Don’t use it with something that has a really strong flavor, like pesto — that would just be a waste.”

She recommends cooking with a cheaper yet still good-quality olive oil or an expeller-pressed canola oil. I use a relatively inexpensive extra-virgin organic olive oil for everyday use, and Didi likes Trader Joe’s Kalamata olive oil for uses that don’t involve high heat or strong competing flavors. In the course of my conversation with Didi, I learned that Italy had passed a new law in response to a recent counterfeit olive oil scandal. To get the full story, Didi pointed me to Rosemary Melli, an importer of artisan olive oil and also the governor of Slow Food New England. Rosemary informed me of an important new law governing the labeling of Italian extra-virgin olive oil. (To be “extra-virgin,” an olive oil must be completely cold-pressed — no heat or chemicals can be used in the chemical process.)

According to Rosemary, unscrupulous producers were making oil from sources other than olives, adding chlorophyll for a pale green color, and labeling them as extra-virgin olive oil. To protect the reputation and value of Italian extra-virgin olive oil, the government recently decreed that any Italian product labeled extra-virgin olive oil must be produced as a “single estate” oil — “meaning that the oil must be made from olives grown on the same estate where they are pressed,” Rosemary said. That means Italian olive-oil producers can no longer buy olives from unknown sources, press and bottle them, and slap a “product of Italy” and “extra-virgin olive oil” label on them.

All this talk of olive oil got me to thinking of inexpensive dishes that let olive oil shine. I remembered Didi’s recipe for skordalia — a spread made of potatoes, garlic, olive oil, and lemon juice — from her book Entertaining for a Vegetarian Planet. Anytime you can serve one carbohydrate on top of another, well, count me in. Didi’s version is made even better than the traditional rendition by adding basil and scallions.

I used a very nice organic extra-virgin olive oil from Italy that gave the location where it was grown. It cost $9.99 for 16.9 oz (about half a quart). That might seem like a lot of dough for a small bottle, but its price is quite tame compared to the fanciest available oils, which range in price from the mid-twenties to forty dollars. This recipe contains strong flavors — garlic, lemon, basil, scallion — so while it’s nice to use a good olive oil, an extraordinary one would likely be overpowered.

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Photo: Eddie Jim

Green Skordalia

Reprinted with permission from Didi Emmons; makes about three cups.

1. Place the potatoes in a large saucepan and add cold water to cover and salt. Bring to a boil, then reduce the heat and simmer until tender, about 25 minutes. Drain the potatoes and return them to the pan.

2. Add the olive oil and garlic to the hot potatoes and mash with a potato masher until smooth. Add the basil or cilantro, scallions, and lemon juice, and mash until everything is incorporated and smooth. Stir in 1 and 1/2 teaspoons salt and the pepper.
3. Transfer the skordalia to a serving bowl and serve warm or at room temperature with the grilled or toasted bread. If the mood strikes, lay a few streaks of top-quality olive oil over the top.

This dip can be prepared up to two days ahead and stored in an airtight container in the fridge.