Walking the Berkshires

Bad Clams

Red Tide seems poised to hammer the shellfish beds from New Hampshire to the Cape and perhaps beyond as it did three years ago. 

"The state Division of Marine Fisheries closed Cape Cod Bay shellfishing in Sandwich and Bourne yesterday afternoon. The rest of the Cape and Islands remain open to shellfishing. As a result of yesterday's closures, the coast of Massachusetts from the New Hampshire border to Cape Cod Canal is now off-limits to shellfishing.

Experts are concerned this spring's algae bloom will be a repeat of the devastating toxic algae outbreak of 2005, when shellfish bed closures stretched from Maine to Martha's Vineyard and Massachusetts sustained estimated losses of $3 million a week to fishermen and related businesses."

If it is in Bourne at the East End of the Canal, it will probably be in Buzzard's Bay at the West End in no time. All in all I'm unlikely to go Quahogging this weekend.

If You're Happy and You Know it, Kiss a Fish

Bluefish, that is.  David Churbuck placates the fickle fates by offering the first Blue of the season back to Neptune.  Carpenters nail a tree branch to the ridge board of a new house to bestow good luck, so why not kiss a fish?

The Weed We Need?

I am used to thinking about invasive species in a negative light.  If the first blush of spring is dappling our woodlands, you can be sure it is not from native ephemeral wildflowers but from the sickly green of Asian honeysuckles, Japanese barberry and overwintering garlic mustard poised to explode and smother. When one of these "botanical thugs" turns out to have a potentially beneficial aspect as well, it is a good reminder that good and bad are not attributes of species but value judgments that we make based on their behavior.

Another sign of Spring in these parts is the emergence of disease bearing ticks looking for their first blood feed of the season.  I picked one up on a lovely walk in the woods last Saturday, and today have the telltale bullseye of Lyme Disease.

At the doctor's office this morning, I learned that in addition to a heavy course of Doxycycline, there is an herbal treatment for Lyme that includes Polygonum cuspidatum - Japanese knotweed.

In his book Healing Lyme, Stephen Harrod Buhner writes;

"The three main herbs [and two supplemental herbs] in the core protocol - andrographis, Japanese knotweed (Polygonum cuspidatum) and cat's claw (Unicaria tomentosa) [astragalus and smilax] - will significantly lower or eliminate spirochete loads in the body (including central nervous system and brain), raise immune function in ways that will specifically empower the body to respond to borrelia infection (such as raising CD57 white blood counts), and significantly alleviate the primary symptoms of Lyme disease - brain fog and confusion, lethargy, arthritic inflammation, heart problems, and skin involvement."

This example of Buhner's prose may be somewhat tortured - parenthesis, brackets and dashes, oh my - but the medicinal potential of knotweed may cause me to reevaluate my opinion of this species.  I was aware that young knotweed shoots can be used in pies as an ersatz rhubarb, but if an 8-12 month course of knotweed supplements helps with Lyme, then we've got plenty of the whole herb growing around here that I'd love to see go into capsules and out to herbalists and homeopaths where it can do some good for a change.

Signs of Spring

There are bluebirds in the backyard, darting down to scratch the damp earth where I have been raking.  I pulled the spiles from the maple today and the afternoon sun made the dry holes weep anew.  Last night, the first official Berkshire peepers of spring where heard and confirmed in Ashley Falls, Massachusetts and late this afternoon I grilled two pork tenderloins and watched my children run without coats through the ground is still frozen.  The shoots of ramps and trillium push through the earth where last week there still was snow. Each day an old acquaintance renewed and new wonders turning toward the sun.

Hedgehogs and Haggis: Eating Locally in Ancient Albion

During my years in southern Africa, I encountered one or two bona fide delicacies in the traditional foods enjoyed by local people, but there's no getting around the fact that boiled goat offal tastes like the inside of a goat.  I did my best to be polite but just couldn't tuck in to the enormous, eviscerated frog that appeared on my plate one evening, nor crunch the tiny birds knocked from the mopani trees by barefoot boys with slingshots for my dining pleasure. 

Eating locally means eating whatever is available, and for every neolithic hunter/forager who made the fortuitous discovery that something as bizarre as a lobster was not only edible but delicious, there must have been hundreds of discoveries of other things whose main virtues were that they were near to hand and did not result in excruciating pain or death when consumed.  After generations of subsistence on such stuff, people not only grew accustomed to what outsiders might deem noisome fare but even preferred it over unfamiliar tastes and cuisines.  For a modern example of this phenomenon, see the many decades of American preference for a single, insipid style of beer prior to the craft brewing revolution of the mid-1980s.

So I am not surprised to learn that the just announced 10 oldest British recipes include such concoctions as Nettle Pudding, Roast Hedgehog and a proto-haggis featuring sheep stomach, heart and lungs.  Ancient cooks probably didn't have access to mace, nutmeg, and black pepper as called for in the haggis recipe, but I rather doubt whatever herbage was available could counter the overwhelming smell. Sheep offal is not that different from goat, after all.

Xanthe Clay, intrepid food writer for the Daily Telegraph, attempted some of these 8,000 year old recipes, with decidedly indifferent results:

"'I am not eating this,' muttered my husband as he donned gloves to gather a bouquet of nettles, while I picked the dandelions growing round a tree stump, hoping I'd got there before the dogs.

Back home, the reek from the sheep's stomach was overwhelming, not so much farmyard as farmyard floor. I put it outside, and concentrated on the nettle pudding and "smokey stew", a sort of fish chowder.

The nettles needed a good wash, although in a salad spinner rather than a running stream.

Chopped into a green mound, they looked quite appetising, and the barley flour coated them lightly.

Tying the pudding mix in a cloth took seconds and it looked very homely bobbing next to the pork and pot herbs in the pan.

The fish, meanwhile, simmered in milk with leeks and bacon, then doused liberally with cream and chives, was rich and filling, and a huge hit with the family.

It would have been nice with crusty bread, but there was little high-gluten wheat in BC-Britain so the oat and barley bread (more of a scone) in Jacqui Wood's Prehistoric Cooking (Tempus, £15.99) did the job.

The nettle pudding was a neat, moist dumpling, but rather bitter to eat, probably because of those over-mature dandelions.

I'm sure a Bronze Age Mrs Beeton wouldn't have made that mistake.

As for the sheep's stomach, frankly if that's what those cavemen were stuck with, I'm not surprised that they didn't make it over 30."

I am not surprised either.  But then, I'm not a tartaned Scot or a rural Namibian with plenty of sheep or goat offal ready for the pot.  Bring on the Patina of Elderberries!

Ingredients:

6 bunches of elderberries

tsp pepper

1 tsp anchovy essence

4 fl oz (125ml) wine

4 fl oz (125ml) passum

4 fl oz (125ml) olive oil

6 eggs

Method:

Remove the fruits from the elderberry bunches. Wash, place in a saucepan with a little water, and simmer gently until just softened. Drain and arrange in a greased shallow pan. Add the pepper, moisten with anchovy essence, then add the wine and passum and mix well. Finally add the olive oil and bring to the boil. When the mixture is boiling, break the eggs into it and stir well to bind. When set, sprinkle pepper over it and serve hot or cold. If you are unsure of any of the plants in these recipes please check before picking in the wild and eating.

Given in Roman Cookery by Jane Renfrew (English Heritage, 1985)

Hat Tips: Revise and Consent and Ralph Luker

Armada of Flotsam: Bath Toys Reach Britain After 15 year Odyssey

It sounds like something straight out of Captain Quint's monologue: "28,800 plastic turtles, ducks, beavers and frogs went into the water, a few hundred washed up in Alaska, the wind and tides took the rest."

15 years after a container of child bath toys tumbled into the Pacific, the Friendly Floatie flotilla is still sailing the world's oceans and has started to arrive on the shores of Britain.  They have been buffeted by storms, gnawed by animals and frozen in pack ice, but they would have encountered harsh conditions in a toddler's bath, too, and their rugged construction makes them an invaluable aid to oceanographers studying ocean circulation patterns.  There is a $100 reward from the toy's American distributor, First Years Inc., for any beachcomber finding one and reporting the location where it made landfall.

The ducks and other flotsam from the lost container began their journey in mid-Pacific at the International Date Line and 45th parallel in January, 1992.  Curtis C. Ebbesmeyer has been tracking them since then and traces the Rubber Duck Armada's dispersal in this Beachcombers Alert:

"After the tub toys first arrived in Sitka, flocks headed west along coastal Alaska and the Aleutian Islands where — 3,500 miles from the spill — hundreds invaded Shemya...Many continued on westward to Kamchatka, Japan, then redoubled the Pacific back to Sitka completing the 6,800 mile loop around the Pacific Ocean’s northernmost gyre, the North Pacific Subpolar Gyre..."

Research, aided by beachcomber finds, indicates that the ducks and their other plastic companions made 4 circuits of the Gyre in cycles averaging three years.  As many as 19,000 of the toys drifted into the larger Subtropical Gyre and reached Australia and South America.  Another group headed into the Arctic and moved eastward, often frozen in pack ice, to Greenland and the Gulf of Maine where they started turning up in 2003.  The ones approaching Great Britain were caught up in the Gulf stream.  Those that remain afloat could continue their journeys for decades to come. 

Clambake

It's the New England tradition that few of us have truly experienced: the iconic seaside clambake with the rockweed and rock-lined pit and great weather and nary a "no seeum" to be seen.  Most clambakes are not like this at all, but rather professionally catered, steamed over gas and served at company picnics or even indoors.  This save a great deal of time and mess but the expense is beyond most household budgets. The authentic article requires a few things that few of us have, including a private beach and a ready source of rockweed.  Even if you are fortunate enough to have access to these two indispensable items - as we have at Windrock - the subtle art of the bake master may not be part of your family tradition.  In any event it is a heck of an undertaking. 

I have attended two clambakes at Windrock - one catered at my cousin's wedding in 1993 and one supervised by my Uncle Rob at a family gathering in 2000.  I appear to be on a seven year cycle with these things, and when my two oldest friends from high school made plans to visit while I was at the shore, I figured I had enough exposure to the art of the clambake to attempt one on my own. 

The idea behind this ancient form of communal cooking is to bake the feast in the steam generated by hot rocks and rockweed.  I dug my 3' diameter pit above the high water mark on a cobble beach.   Getting to the right depth and finding the right stones to line the pit took about an hour.  I did this step several days in advance of the bake, partly out of anticipation and partly to see whether I had truly placed it well above high tide as it would be in full flood when the fire was lit. 

There is no good tidal flat nearby for steamers but we have an abundance of the hard shelled quahog and Emily and Elias helped me forage 35 of these to bake and stuff.  Wrapped in aluminum foil, these went into the bake with the other ingredients and came out moist and savory.  Also on the menu were seven pounds of steamers ($3.50/lb), 12 ears of sweet corn ($3.98), 4 pounds new potatoes ($5.00), and five 1.5 pound lobsters $10.99/lb).  We had purple cabbage slaw straight from the garden as well as mixed salad greens, with hot dogs for the kids and homemade blueberry pie for dessert.  It promised to be a spectacular feast, if in fact I could pull it off.

The rockweed came from the breakwater lying about 50 yards offshore.  The children and I wadded out as the tide started to flow and collected a 20 gallon bucket full that turned out to be just enough for a a 3' pit.  At about 2:15 we lit the fire using ceder and oak and tinder-dry laths from an old horsehair plaster wall that was replaced with new sheetrock several years ago.  We let this burn for three hours to get the rocks as hot as possible, but here I faced my first technical challenge.  Most of the guides to clambakes tell you to remove all embers before starting to lay down the bake, but our pit had a deep bed of coals when we were ready to get cooking.  I ended up shoveling them out and drenching them in water, but in retrospect I would recommend an old metal bucket to contain them rather than making all those trips with hot cinders on my shovel.  Unless you are into fire walking.

Now came a layer of rockweed and the pit started to sizzle and spit.  Research determined a six inch layer was recommended, but for a small pit like mine I might have done better with a little less: perhaps 4 inches.  I would also have added the potatoes first, as they seem to take the longest to cook.  Instead, I went with clams and lobsters, followed by unshucked corn, quahogs and potatoes.  I have found it unnecessary to remove the silk or any outer layers from corn when I roast it, and this proved also to be the case when steamed in my clambake.  We put another light layer of rockweed over the food and my old waxed canvas tarp provided a cover, weighted down with leftover wood.  This left us an hour before all would be done to get the rest of the food and utensils down to the beach and for guests to engage in a bit of boating after bluefish before dinner.

The results were very fine indeed.  Clams a bit too done, potatoes underdone, but the lobsters, corn and quahogs were outstanding.  No bugs except sand fleas - and these fried like tiny shrimp when they settled on the hot tarp.  We overturned a pound of melted butter in the process of removing the feast from the bake but there were no other mishaps.  I am told the pie was something truly special, and can only reveal that I winged it and used both lemon and vanilla to good effect.  Mostly, it was a joy to offer good friends a New England clambake as we have all imagined it and largely living up to expectations.  I may not feel the need to attempt another until 2014, but I've got experience under my belt now and a few improvements in mind for next time.  In the meanwhile, I've been thinking about a luau...

Down at the Shore

The pit has been dug on the cobble beach and lined with stones.  There was a charcoal layer about 9 inches below the surface: evidence of clambakes past, possibly the one in 1993 from my cousin Jay's wedding, judging from where I chose to dig.  I found a blackened rock in my hole that shattered when tossed onto the jetty, proof of its prior distemper in flame. 

The bucket of quahogs is an archival image - hard-shelled clams I baked and stuffed in June - but we will add some more to the feast on Sunday.  Anything larger than a chicken lobster goes for $11.99 a pound and I'll be getting five of them on Sunday as well as sweet corn and 10 pounds of steamers to go with the new potatoes, hot dogs and linguica I plan to pile on the bake.  The old waxed tarp from Namibia will do nicely for a cover to trap the steam.  Drawn butter, watermelon, slaw made from our own red cabbage, and black caps picked on site will round out what should prove a magnificent feast for two of my oldest and dearest friends this weekend.  I might even bake a cherry pie. 

If it rains, we'll break out the washboiler and do it all on the stove.  Any day at the beach beats one at the office.

It's great to be down at the shore and smart to start things off in midweek rather than crawling through Friday traffic.  There's an osprey crying on the wind above the buff - the "buzzard" for which the bay is named - and I made myself a pot of chipoltle chili succotash with stewing beef that is just on the sweet side of painful.  Not everything eaten down here is South Shore cuisine.  Emily and Elias have gotten used to their Dad cooking weird stuff on vacation and are fine with it so long as there is plenty of pasta, peanut butter and whatever else they are eating these days on hand for them.

"O Oysters, come and walk with us!"
The Walrus did beseech.
"A pleasant walk, a pleasant talk,
Along the briny beach:
We cannot do with more than four,
To give a hand to each."

First Encounters

"(W)hen the morning broke, I saw not far to seaward a great island that was backed like a whale" wrote David Ingraham, a sailor who voyaged to Monhegan with Giovanni da Verrazano in 1525.  Nearly 500 years later, that description aptly applies to this deep sea island. Monhegan still greets visitors approaching from the mainland with the profile of a great leviathan, and often anticipates the roll of an actual finback or a pod of blackfish out in the cold Gulf of Maine. 

Verrazano made the first recorded European landfall on Monhegan, but Native Americans here thousands  of years before his arrival.  The voyages of the Cabots may have brought them within sight of the Island, and before them those Greenlanders ranging south to Vineland could well have come this way.  Indeed, there are what some have claimed are runic inscriptions above a spring on Manana Island - the tail of Monhegan's whale - though their authenticity remains in dispute.  What is clear is that Monhegan was visited throughout most of the 16th century and on into the 17th by European exploring expeditions and seasonal fishermen who made use of its secure harbor and resources.  The chronicler of the Waymouth voyage in 1605 describes Monhegan Island as "the most fortunate euer yet discovered", with its fresh water and primeval forest lying so far out to sea:

"This iland is woody, grouen with Firre, Birch, Oke and Beech, as farre as we saw along the shore; and so likely to be within.  On the verge grow Gooseberries, Strawberries, Wild pease and Wild rose bushes.  The water issued forth down the Rocky cliffes in many places; and much fowle of diuers kind breed vpon the shore and rocks....While we were at shore, our men aboard with a few hooks got above thirty great Cods and Haddocks, which gaue vs a taste of the great plenty of fish which we found afterward wheresoeuer we went vpon the coast."

Captain John Smith visited Monhegan in 1614 and marveled at its "high, craggy Cliffs, Rocks, stony Isles, that I wondered such great trees could growe vpon so hard foundations."  Monhegan's woodlands have changed greatly since those times; the beech and oak were hewn for pasture, then replaced by spruce and balsam fir that now give way to a parasitic mistletoe that brings the vaulted woods low and releases the deciduous understory.  The fabled fisheries of Maine are but a shadow of their former abundance, where according to Smith "the Saluages compare their store in the Sea, to the haires on their heads."  I shall have more to say on these matter in subsequent posts, but to understand what has been lost requires discovering it anew, in the eyes of those first voyagers who came to this most fortunate Isle, and those like my children making the pilgrimage afresh toward the whale-backed shore.

"Now is the Winter of Our Discontent Made Glorious Summer..."

"Now is the winter of our discontent / Made glorious summer..."

I think of those vegetables I despised as a child and now adore - beefsteak tomatoes, swiss chard, roasted Brussels sprouts - and attribute this change of heart partly to the satisfaction of having grown these things myself and partly to learning new ways to prepare them besides in a steamy, soggy mess.  If I could plant only basil and tomatoes I would still be happy, and they are regular fixtures in my garden, but there are also spinach and baby greens, and broccoli and red cabbage, and cucumbers twinning toward the apex of their triangular trellises.  I like nothing better than a tart rhubarb pie (strawberries optional), unless it is a cherry pie made fresh from the tree.  I drink peppermint iced tea by the gallon thanks to herb gardens at Windrock and my own backyard.

And so I turn my hands to the earth of my garden and my thoughts to those gustatory pleasures to come.  As a forager and gardener I mark the days of light and warmth by when my rhubarb will be ready for pies and tomatoes grow heavy on the vine.  I carry the gardens of my youth in my heart, surprised to find myself inter-planting gladiolas among the beans and basil until I remember my grandfather's garden in the 1970s and its glorious ranks of glads.  I think of my mother's strawberry beds and gooseberries she made into jam.  Some children remember the tyranny of weeding before play, but I think of the pennies we got for every Japanese beetle dropped in the kerosene jar, and nickels for every tomato horn-worm. 

What we cannot grow on our own patches of suburban earth, others in this region are glad to produce.  Connecticut abounds in Farmer's Markets and there are half a dozen in Litchfield County.  In my corner of the Northwest Corner you are more likely to visit a farm stand than a farmer's marker, unless you hop over the line on Friday afternoons to the one in Sheffield in the southern Berkshires.  There are also a growing number of Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farms in our area,  where shareholders pick up bags of seasonal produce for an annual membership fee.  Folks are more concerned with where their food comes from and how it is raised, and nothing gets you closer to the source - besides raising it yourself -  than belonging to a CSA.

This is also a season of wild foods in plenty.  Quahogs by the shore and cattails in the swamps entice me to culinary delights.  Berry picking, inky-fingered, is all the sweeter at the field edge with the wood thrush trilling in the shadows of the forest.   I have not yet attempted dandelion wine - my jack-of-all-trades grandfather Barker experimented with such concoctions but lacked the vintor's patience to produce something more than merely drinkable - but expect to give this a try as well this summer.  I will have to wait until next year to try any of my bottled sunshine, but will certainly let you know the results.