A Snack Attack Journey: Part I

One thing good about getting old is having a sense of utter accomplishment in knowing how to do things. Because travel is so important to the Chef and me, we make decisions quickly about booking trips, choosing lodgings and flights. We also have a seamless rhythm when we pack for a road trip—he deals with kitchen cleaning and supplies, I deal with everything else. With last summer’s pandemic month escape to Saugerties, NY in the heart of the Catskills Mountains, and this months’s two-week stay close by in Woodstock and eight days in New England, I feel we have mastered the art of cooking in the country (OK, so the Chef has mastered it, but I still make “a perfect sandwich.”)

Everything but the kitchen sink: What we bring to the country

First: you never know how well equipped your host’s kitchen will be. At one rental we arrived to find a chopping board the size small paperback book. So we’ve learned to ask our hosts if they have our specific necessities: a large pasta pot, a Dutch oven, a colander, a good sized chopping board, a big sharp knife. With our Italian diet, the Chef packs the following items: sea salt, our pepper grinder filled with Malabar peppercorns, pepperoncini, a bottle or two of the EVOO we like, and then, if we have them in stock: anchovies, capers, olives, or canned goodies like artichoke hearts. We bring boxes of DeCecco pasta, bottles of red wine. At this summer’s Woodstock rental, the kitchen was so well equipped as to have a Kitchen Aid stand mixer and three different sizes of Springform pans. Yet there was no grater Since it seems a cardinal rule of AirBnBing is to tread lightly with host questions, the Chef cut his finger badly using the peeler to grate parmigiana rather than text the host who lived next door.. Next time, we’ll bring our microplane!

Woodstock Potatoes: What We Cook in the Country

For cooking in the country we rely on the baskets of fresh produce at farm stands. In Saugerties and Woodstock, our go-to is Story Farms (in Catskill), staffed by a bevy of fresh-faced teenage girls. After we buy our shining zucchini, eggplants, ripe to bursting tomatoes and giant heads of lettuces we’ve never met, we go across the street, breathe in the comforting, close smell of manure and commune with the cows.

WOODSTOCK POTATOES
Consumed copiously in the Catskills, this dish is now our summer staple. For the dressing put a good amount of EVOO in a bowl with a crushed garlic clove or two, some red wine vinegar, black pepper and sea salt. Let sit for an hour or so. Then boil (if time) or microwave some small white, red or Yukon gold potatoes, cut them into small 1 inch wedges, cut up two juicy ripe tomatoes and a whole peeled cucumber into same, tear up several basil leaves (or whatever you like—scallions, olives etc.). After dressing has sat long enough, discard garlic, mix all together and serve.

ZUCCHINI CARPACCIO

This is a summer dish that never fails to awe our guests and, yet, it is so simple. The Chef says: Slice zucchini lengthwise very thin (Use a Benriner or other mandolin if possible).  Lay out in single layer and sprinkle with EVOO sprinkle liberally with toasted sliced (not slivered!) almonds and then thin shavings of parmigiana, salt and pepper and then sprinkle with more EVOO.

PAN GRILLED PORTOBELLO MUSHROOMS WITH BRIE CHEESE

In Woodstock, the Chef made this dish, inspired by a Gunk Haus standard, baked mushroom caps stuffed with homemade jam and layered with Brie. Remove stem from whole portobello and place caps in pan in EVOO bottom down and cook until soft; turn over and place the cheese inside the “bowl” of the mushroom and continue cooking til soft enough.  Salt and pepper. Done!

Smashed tomatoes on rice in a crappy kitchen!

Later in August we went to stay at Loch Lyme Lodge, an old-fashioned funky collection of cabins we used to go to summer after summer with our children. Through those summer we made some fast friends with other couples, and Jim and Kate, the one couple we’ve stayed in touch with all these years since, asked us up to stay a few nights in their extra cabin. Payment for the cabin? The Chef was to cook two dinners for the four of us. When he asked them to send us pictures (above) you can see it’s pretty much the diametric opposite of the kitchen in our Woodstock “Cozy Cabin,” with the full set of Henkel knives.

The chopping board was thick but minuscule with an ominous crack on one end. The colander was the size of a dog bowl. There was no counter space, no dish drainer. I wondered if the Chef would simply throw up his hands, especially after a day of strenuous hiking. But, no, he is up to almost every culinary challenge. He wowed our hosts with artichoke, goat cheese and basil bruschetta, followed by Trapanese pesto for which he spent maybe an hour chopping up basil, mint, parsley, tomatoes, garlic and almonds on the tiny board. The next night the Chef made the zucchini carpaccio followed by an incredibly simple peasant dish by Julia Della Croce, which I call “smashed tomato and rice.”

SMASHED TOMATOES ON RICE
This deceptively simple dish is both the ultimate in comfort food yet elegant, too. For four people bring water to boil in large pot then add 2.5 cups of the Italian rice (superfino arborio, carnaroli or vialane nano) and cook at rolling simmer adding one tomato per person after about 5 minutes so they cook 15 minutes max. Drain and then pour EVOO over, adding sea salt, black pepper and grated Pecorino with basil leaves, doling out the tomato on top of each mound of rice. Our friend Jim kept saying, “This is the BEST rice I’ve ever tasted!” And it’s fun to smash the tomato into rice (or pasta) as you eat, creating the sauce. This is originally made for pasta. In that case, just put the tomato in with the spaghetti and drain w/ spaghetti. Same sauce.

Londonderry Beets, and Rupert Raspberries

After New Hampshire, our outpost in Southern Vermont was an AirBnB we stayed at twice before that is distinguished by being the former art studio of art historian/educator/artist Meyer Shapiro (1904-1996), for sixty summers! It’s quirky and charming and has a fairly well-equipped kitchen (2 colanders, four chopping boards, a grater but now no vegetable peeler). Our first night there we walked a mile down the road to Honeypie on Route 30. More on that in a future post, but this wonderful former-filling station turned burger & more bar was packed; it was the night of the Bondville Fair, the oldest fair in Vermont! While waiting an hour + we got chatting with locals at our picnic table, and a woman told us that the West River Farmer’s Market (in Londonderry) had the BEST BEETS EVER! We strolled through the market the next day and picked up beets that were finally true to the common beet descriptor: “red as a beet.” We roasted them in a 350° oven for an hour or more and ate them cold with arugula and vinaigrette the next evening. They were deeply flavorful and the color of a blush!

The weather was chill and cool in Vermont, but we still had a picnic at the odd and beautiful Merck Forests and Farmland Center in Rupert. This 2700 acres of farm, field and forest presents itself as an educational venue, but it seemed fairly abandoned. While a map neatly laid out “raspberry picking,” “sap house,” and “small animals barn,” and promised lessons on “how to break a horse,” there was no educational signage as at other working farm attractions, and the “picnic area” was one lone table where we sat and had my “perfect sandwiches” (see photo above): Pugliese bread, sliced ripe tomatoes and local Parish Hill Creamery’s “Humble,” a whole milk Tomme, mild, nutty and golden (all from the farmer’s market).

After lunch. we admired different breeds of sheep and went to find raspberry bushes fairly taken over by goldenrod, but this made the art of finding the jewel-like berries more challenging. I love getting the feel for when the frangible berry will loosen into your waiting fingers. All I could think of for the rest of our hike was keeping the pint of berries from getting squished. That night we had them with vanilla ice cream. Oh glory be! Pleasures of eating and cooking in the country…

More pleasures of eating and cooking in the country to come…