Stirring the Cauldron

New Moon Newsletters from Jessica Prentice

New Seed Moon

April moondark kitchen notes
from Jessica Prentice

Happy New Seed Moon! The moon is new today at 12:22 in the afternoon (west coast) and 3:22pm on the east coast. In 16th century England, this moon was called the seed moon -- and was a perfect time to plant new seeds -- either actual or metaphorical. Some Native American and colonial American traditions called it the green grass or sprouting grass moon, or the egg moon, or the pink moon, or the fish moon. In any event, it is time to make another wish-list if you care to (just another way of planting seeds...). I'm going to make a list, and though I am told that wishes made for others don't work (make wishes for yourself only), I'm going to find a way to include a prayer and a wish for the Middle East. It should be noted that both the Hebrew calendar and the Islamic calendar are lunar, and so we are at the beginning of new months in both of these calendars -- can we even begin to hope that the seeds of peace are planted this month? The Hebrew month that begins today is called Illar (that's illar with a capital "i" in case you can't read the font, or sometimes written Iyar.) The Islamic month begins when a thin new crescent Moon is actually sighted by the human eye in the western sky after sunset within a day or so after the New Moon. So the Islamic month of Safar probably begins tomorrow at sunset (there may be local variations). The Christian calendar is also still affected by the moon: Easter Sunday is the first Sunday after the first full moon after vernal equinox, which is called the Paschal Moon (which was the full sap moon on March 28, 2002).

In honor of the New Seed Moon and the Sprouting Grass Moon this month, it might be a good time to sprout some seeds in your kitchen for cooking and eating (in addition to maybe sowing some seeds in your garden for summer harvest!). You don't need any fancy equipment to do this. The first time I ever made sprouts I did it with an Indian woman, who taught me the traditional South Asian method for sprouting mung beans. We soaked the beans overnight, drained them, and then laid them out in a thin layer on wet cloth, and covered with another wet cloth. We drizzled water on the cloths to keep them damp for about two days, and when they had just begun to sprout (about a 1/4 inch), we used them to make a traditional Gujarati salad with lemon juice and minced bell peppers, following a Madhur Jaffrey recipe (other ingredients were celery, onion, cilantro, garlic, a hot chile, and salt and pepper) -- it was delicious.

I have since made sprouts the way that seems more common in the U.S.: take a mason jar with a removable lid insert. Cut a piece of screen (you can get a non-metal, easy to cut screen at the hardware store) to fit into the screw-on lid rim. Fill the jar about 1/5 or 1/4 full of seeds, beans, nuts, or whole grain and soak over night. Then pour out the water and leave the jar draining at an angle, and rinse twice a day or so to keep them damp. They will begin to sprout after a day or two, and then can either be used or sprouted longer for a longer tail. Sprouts are really good for you (though, surprisingly, there is some controversy about alfalfa sprouts -- tests have shown that they can inhibit the immune system. They contain an amino acid called canavanine that can be toxic to humans and animals in quantity. Go figure.). Mung bean sprouts, however, have been eaten as a health food for centuries: Chinese sea voyagers took the beans with them on the ships and sprouted them as they journeyed, and consumed enough of them to prevent scurvy. The sprouting process produces vitamin C. It also increases vitamin B content and carotene. Perhaps most important, sprouting neutralizes phytic acid, which is present in all grains and inhibits the absorption of calcium and other minerals, and sprouting also produces many enzymes which help our digestion. Good candidates for sprouting include: wheat, barley, dried beans, radish seeds, onion seeds, chia seeds, chick peas (and other whole peas), almonds, pumpkin seeds and sunflower seeds. Whether you think of it as a science experiment or a seed moon ritual, it is a fascinating and magical thing to watch happen.

Other goings-on in my kitchen... I have been having a lot of fun experimenting with the sourdough starter that I keep in my fridge. This starter is a 'sponge' of lactic-acid-fermenting wheat flour and water that's main raison d'etre is as a natural leaven for bread. This kind of fermentation of dough performs many of the same nutritional functions that sprouting does: neutralizing phytates, releasing vitamins and minerals bound in the grain, and making it more digestible. I have used the leaven for bread, and also for making 'small beer' -- non-alcoholic herbal ale. Lately I've been using the starter as a base for flatbreads like crackers, tortillas, and chapatis. Also as a base for crusts for tarts, and in a dough for my first-ever homemade knishes. Most recently, it occured to me it would be a great ingredient as a binder and leavener for all kinds of fritters, and I've made some with leftover whole oat porridge and another with cottage cheese, based on a Macedonian recipe. Both were really delicious. Its use in fritters seemed so natural and obvious that I became convinced that such things were probably originally made with natural leaven, rather than a flour and baking powder combination, or flour and beer. I looked up "fritter" in my Oxford Companion to Food, and low and behold: "the roman scriblita, described by Cato in the 2nd century BC, was probably a precursor to both fritters and doughnuts. Lumps of moist dough (leavened with sourdough) were spooned onto hot fat, and allowed to stream in random shapes..." I knew it! Anyway, I love natural leaven and am sure I will find more and more ways to use it. I also like to think of it as the quintessential local food: it is made by harvesting the wild yeasts in the air all around us -- two inches in front of our nose is as local as it gets!!

One other recent kitchen memory stands out: I was feeling depressed one evening recently, as nothing in my life seemed to be going right. I didn't feel hungry, but figured I probably was, and went to the kitchen to fix myself some supper. As it always does, starting to cook immediately cheered me up some. I had some hominy that I had soaked and then cooked, but done nothing with, sitting in the fridge. I needed to use it up, so started to make myself a simple posole, with canned tomatoes, some shavings of dried ancho and chipotle peppers, onions, herbs and spices. But it felt uninspired, boring, predictable, and my mood was such that I wanted the meal to have some unexpected, intriguing element, something to get the juices flowing so to speak, something to make me feel alive and connected and comforted at the same time. And it came to me in a flash: chocolate. I had some unsweetened Sharffenberger (the most complex, dark, wonderful chocolate I've ever tasted) on the shelf, and so I began shaving it and adding it to the stew. I tasted it and lo, it was good. Using the idea of mole as a rough guide, I added more and more chocolate, and then cinnamon and other spices, a pinch of raw sugar, and finally, in a moment of reckless inspiration, some vanilla extract. When I had added all the chocolate I thought it could handle, and it was a rich red-brown that brought the movie Chocolat to mind, I put it in a bowl over rice and grated lots of cheddar cheese on top, and ate it with relish. It made me feel so much better, I dubbed it Holy Mole Posole, and jotted down the ingredients so I wouldn't forget, and then was inspired enough to sit down and begin putting together a website for myself!

Which brings me to my final point: I'm putting together a website -- a very basic one -- that should go up in the next couple of days. I have put the holy mole posole recipe (a very rough one) on the site, and will put information about my workshops, and about my availability for professional cooking gigs, some newsletter highlights, and favorite links. The address will be: Cauldron.WiseFoodWays.com.