Stirring the Cauldron

New Moon Newsletters from Jessica Prentice

New Strawberry Moon

June moondark kitchen notes
from Jessica Prentice

Happy New Strawberry Moon! We have just moved into the Strawberry Moon cycle, when we are delighted by the season's first ripe berries. Also called the Rose Moon and the Strong Sun Moon, in this coming month we know that summer is truly here. San Francisco Bay Area farmers' markets have been full of strawberries for a few weeks now, and they just keep getting riper, juicier, and sweeter. I even found one farmer selling fraise des bois [frehz day BWAH], tiny wild strawberries that conjure up images of fairie forests and alpine meadows. In a time of uniformly large, juicy, bright red hybrid strawberries, the fraise des bois harkened back to a time when hunting wild berries was an early summer ritual, and a patch of ripe ones was a little treasure trove.

I have been enjoying the market's abundance of berries just as they are, without having bothered yet to cook a single one -- though I was given a delicious jar of jam by one inspired mother who cooked down a whole flat of them! Hopefully by the end of the season I will get it together to do the same. At one recent catering job we sliced the tasty berries from a nearby farm, tossed them with equally delicious raspberries and diced local peaches, put them in bowls and drizzled them generously with a lavender creme anglaise. This was a stunning combination, if I do say so myself. The lavender added a complexity to the fresh flavor of the fruit, the creamy sauce was rich and wonderful, and the juice from the fruit mixed with the creme anglaise in the bottom of the bowl, and I for one had to stop myself from sticking my fingers in the bowl and lapping it up!

For those of you not familiar with creme anglaise: it is a stirred custard made of milk, cream, or half-and-half with egg yolks and some kind of sweetener. I infused the half-and-half with fresh lavender blossoms (also from a local farm), strained the liquid into the yolks, and then stirred the mixture in a bain-marie (double boiler) until thick. Once it had cooled slightly, I added in a mild local honey (raw and unfiltered) and a splash of vanilla extract, and chilled it until cool. Over the berries and peaches, it was June in a bowl.

Strawberries aren't the only wonderful fruit in the market -- all the stone fruit are here: cherries, peaches, plums, apricots, nectarines, pluots (a cross between a plum and an apricot) in an array of colors from deep red to bright yellow to pale white with a slight blush. I have been especially enjoying the cherries, which I can't seem to resist on any market trip. I am eating them by the bowl-full. It seems like an exceptionally good season for stone fruit -- is it all the heat we've been having?

In other kitchen experiments... I finally tried my hand at making pâté. I had cooked twelve wonderful local family-farmed chickens for a curry for a big lunch, and was left with a few pounds of organs: hearts, livers, and gizzards. In my obsession to use every part of the animal and not let anything go to waste, I fed the gizzards and hearts to my ecstatic dog, and then followed a pâté recipe using the livers. Basically, you sauté the livers with minced onions in lots of butter, deglaze the pan with brandy, and then puree that mixture with spices (in this case, salt, black pepper, powdered mustard seed, cloves, nutmeg and a pinch of cayenne), and press it into a bowl, pan, or mold. Cover and put it in the fridge, and as it chills it hardens into that characteristic pâté thickness. When I sliced into it the pale brown surface yielded a delicate pink-hued interior. It made for a number of satisfying, tasty, and deeply nourishing meals -- spread on good naturally-leavened bread with a whole grain mustard and, on one occasion, topped with fresh watercress or arugula leaves. I had no idea it was so easy to make.

I also finally splurged and spent $10.00 on a small crock pot. No, mine doesn't have kitchy little flowers on it -- it is plain white. I did this primarily as a way of deepening my already cozy relationship with porridge (particularly oatmeal), which I believe to be the ultimate breakfast food. I became quite enamored of the idea of waking up to a pot of hot porridge already cooked to perfection, and further loved the idea of being thus able to cook breakfast for my partner (who often has to be at work at 7am), without having to stir from my deep morning sleep! It has worked wonderfully. I soak the grain (sometimes rolled, sometimes whole, sometimes cracked) through the evening (and even all day when I'm especially organized) in water with a bit of yogurt in it. This process of soaking grain before making porridge is as old as the hills, makes the nutrients in the grain much more accessible and the cereal much more digestible. Before going to sleep I add a pinch of sea salt and some butter, plug in the crock pot, and in the morning there is the perfectly cooked pot of cereal. In addition to oats, I am experimenting with rice, wheat, amaranth, rye, t'eff (a tiny, dark brown African grain used to make injera, Ethiopian flat bread), corn, barley, and various combinations of these. It is oats, however, that create that creaminess and soothing quality I love, even when using whole oats, which add more chewiness and body to the cereal. Plus, I am of largely Scottish descent, and eating oatmeal I am able to commune with my ancestors.

Speaking of ancestors... I went to a family reunion in Minnesota this past weekend, and took the opportunity to re-read my grandmother's memoir of her childhood on a Minnesota farm in the 1920's. I must admit a pang of jealousy and nostalgia as she described the creamy raw milk they got daily from their cow, Bossie, the fresh eggs and meat from the chicken coop, the corn, beans, berries, peaches, and other fresh vegetables and fruits they harvested from their garden and orchard, and the fresh homemade bread my great-grandmother would bake regularly, spread with the butter they churned themselves. It struck me sadly that at the reunion brunch we spread our waffles with butter-flavored "land-o-lakes" margarine (Minnesota IS the land of lakes) from a plastic 'crock', and poured maple-flavored corn syrup on them, rather than the real maple syrup so beloved in my grandmother's childhood home. We drove out to visit the old farm land -- it is still undeveloped: a lake and a field of weeds by the side of the highway, where cars speed off an exit ramp from one interstate onto another. Such is the nature of 'progress.'

I do hope you have a wonderful Strawberry Moon, and enjoy the sweet bounty of summer.