As the business of tourism grows in Vietnam grows, so do ways to “handle” would-be indie travelers trying to get around the tour bus/day boat routine. Yesterday was a wet stretch of dubious promises and mystery maps and rough negotiations with drivers of overstuffed minivans that got us, finally, to Vinh Long, our entry point into the Mekong Delta.  I was mesmerized by the sandal-clad motorbikers threading through highway traffic in driving rain and ankle-high muddy water. Ponchos covered their cargo from the spray–inkjet printers and flat-screen TVs, tanks of swimming eels and crates of crabs, yards of lumber and giant coils of pipe and wire, human-sized arrangements of pink wedding flowers, stacks of garbage bags filled with bread, and most likely, a grandma or little dumpling squeezed in the middle.

It was sweet relief to be on foot and out in the open air again when we reached Vinh Long, with the rain settling into a mist, the dank smell of the Co Chien river, and dim lights coming on in the market stalls.  (And grilled sausage bahn mi and fish hot pot…)

r

shaking off the Xanax and 20 hours on planes at Ben Tranh market

because plunging into the city’s tidal wave of masked motorbikers is not for the jet-lagged,

It's like a really loud Davis, with noxious fumes and no traffic laws.

but that’s how you get to the banh xeo.

BRRRRRR

Oh fall, so beautiful and so full of reckoning. Sunsets here are like stage lights, upside-down funnels streaming gold on the fields, lavender on the hills, and that pink grapefruit color in the evening sky. The chickens huddle up earlier each night and the eggs are slowing down. Fennel is molting–she’s looking plucked and puny– but Paprika just grew back her fluffy coat and healthy appetite.

It’s been four years now since October meant a farm to get in shape for fall. Around this time, most flowers had long since succumbed to the August bug blitz. But the hot weather heroes–zinnias, gomphrena, centaurea–would still be in bloom, and the cooler temperatures would revive  snapdragons, scabiosa, and nigella for a final flush.  A few–amaranth,  statice–would keep their color if we hung them on the sunporch. We’d thread chiles on strings to dry beside them. Peppers always got off to a slow, stubborn start but they’d finally be reddening full blast. We’d smoke the bell peppers and anchos and bag them for the freezer.  The tomatoes were still coming on, but the fruit was misshapen and the vines were shriveled. Sweet corn, okra, and sunflowers would have left thick jungles of toppled and tangled stalks to level.  Herbs and spring-planted greens were parched, woody, or gone to seed.

It was hard to face clearing the summer beds, even to transplant cabbages and seed lettuce and beets and carrots again. I would look around and see everything that dried up, fed the cucumber beetles, or couldn’t outgrow the weeds. I’d think about how I meant to run drip tape out to the furthest rows of flowers, and hang shade cloth over some, and plant field peas in the clay-iest beds. I’d curse myself for letting another season go by without learning this or remembering that. I’d wonder how I could possibly want to do it all over again next spring. I’d sit down in the field and let another year’s worth of regrets roll in.

moral support and liquid courage

And then I’d get over it. If I could handle Kentucky winters, I can handle Winters winters, right? Especially without rows of dying plants to turn under. And with no T-tape to roll up, and no trellises to dismantle and no stakes to dig out. And no killing frost.

Plus, here there’s new olive oil and the freshest, butteriest, alpha-linoleic-iest walnuts. And we’re surrounded by walnut orchards, so there’s also an insanely loud tree-shaker thing and an insanely loud blower thing they use to harvest. Starting rather early in the morning for some people.

This year I’ll miss the beginning of that noisy/productive fall ritual. Even better, I’ll miss the dreary day they make you turn the clocks ahead.  I’ll be eating bún bò giò heo (spicy beef soup) and bahn xeo (rice flour crepes with shrimp and pork) in a balmier place. See you in a few weeks, on the other (colder, darker, nuttier) side.

A few from Burnt Ridge Road, circa 2004.

heavy mulch plus layered low tunnels of spun-bonded fabric and UV plastic can keep hardy veggies alive through a Kentucky winter

oops--the collards and arugula got a little too warm that afternoon

fall means sweeter carrots and beets

and redder lettuce, because there's more sunshine

and mustard with a softer bite

and tender salad greens

that would "cut and come again"

and heads that weren't milky

and hardly any cabbage loopers!

and flowers that snap back

in fiery fall colors

like a final spree

before a last goodbye

On J’s birthday, before feeding the towering ego that is Bob Dylan at Berkeley’s Greek Theatre, we popped in Ryowa for steamy ramen.  (To ponder: why butter corn?  I tried to find out how such un-Japanese ingredients became a popular ramen broth, but all I learned is it’s a Kit Kat flavor too.)

I made a fall-ish fig tart to celebrate. Crème chibouste is pastry cream that has been lightened with meringue. This one’s amber-colored because I caramelized the sugar for the custard and steeped a cinnamon stick and a little nutmeg in it. It’s more common to see pastry cream mixed with whipping cream as a filler for tarts, eclairs, etc., but chibouste sets up more firmly. (Of course you can add gelatin to either.)  The texture is airier and spongier than the creamy kind—kind of like a soufflé—and it takes well to torching.

Chibouste is also called Crème St. Honoré, after a horrendous classic cake made of puff pastry piped with caramelized balls of cream puff dough, filled with a stupid amount of chibouste, and topped off with mounds of whipped cream. St. Honoré is the patron saint of pastry, and this monstrosity is still common to find in French bakeries. I saw it plenty in Italy too, and actually it went over well in East Memphis. (I worked with grads of Lenôtre, the grandpère of exquisitely formal, insanely complicated cake making.)

I like to think St. H would take a rustic fruit tart any day. Figs and raspberries are a killer combo, but you could give apples or pears the same treatment.

Saturday we joined a bunch of bike-minded Sacramentans for a traveling dinner party. We met up in North Oak Park for Bloody Marys and rode from home to home, stopping for drinks and bites and project demos (native plant garden, kitchen renovation,  foreclosure rescue) along the way. Our route took us past cozy 1920s houses and quirky yards in the old Sac neighborhoods of Oak Park, Land Park, and Curtis Park.  We got lots of happy waves and honks and a local bike activist/movie maker even came out to do a spot.  Windblown but warm from ridin’ and imbibin’, we ended our night with apple crumble and Persian tea by the fire in a secret Midtown garden.

I want to move to this pillow-strewn, Persian rug-lined reading chamber in a tree.

It’s not as hip as nose-to-tail, but lately there’s been growing love for plant parts formerly cast off as compost. Ethnic cuisines have always cherished their B-side plant anatomy, including squash blossoms, almond pits, fig leaves, pea shoots and spinach roots. We didn’t keep much of the less waste/more taste veggie tradition in the US, although there are regional exceptions like carrot and radish tops in gumbo z’herbes. I’ve been seeing other recipes using carrot tops recently, usually combined with carrots as we know them—the roots—in slaws and soups. Likewise tomato leaves have a new fan base, thanks to a leafy tomato sauce for pasta in Paul Bertolli’s book Cooking by Hand. (The NYT published both the recipe and a toxicity clearance from Harold McGee this summer.)

While the leaves of beets are well-known as a friendly relation of chard, I think beet stems are still a sleeper. But they’re milder than the grassy leaves, less intensely sweet than the roots, and tender like celery when roasted. How many plants have not one or two, but three tasty parts?

beets deconstructed

dressed with walnut oil, Greek yogurt, lemon, and chives

Last spring at New Orleans’ French Quarter Festival we were sitting in Woldenberg Park, admiring our cochon de lait po-boy and this guy’s style.

Then there was a little thunder, a slight breeze blew off the river, and the hair on my neck rose. Something didn’t feel right.

It’s a city of dark charms. And if you’re gonna transmogrify something…

Memphis has had its share of swine flu H1N1 (not a town to dis pig in) tragedy–three children died in the last month.

From what I’ve heard, washing your hands won’t help slow transmission because the virus is mostly spread through airborne particles. But hygiene is still crunk. Check out this infectious (oh goodness) PSA from local rapper Sir Vince.

Also in the “Only in Memphis” file, the deli inside the shooting range on Whitten Road got a rave review in Monday’s Commercial Appeal.

Can you tell I’m homesick?

Payne's, in an old gas station, is my fave for burnt ends

and it's SO on the way to the airport

You may have gotten wind of my relative hospitality to indoor visits from wildlife. In the Ozarks there was a snake that would slip through a hole in the floor to lie on a sunny doormat. The occasional curious crab crawled inside when I lived on the Chesapeake Bay. All my houses have had bats or squirrels in the walls. Silverfish, spiders, dirt daubers—happy to host. And when our cupboards on the farm were raided by your Kentucky kin, we spent a whole winter on the Berea College Forest Mouse Relocation Corps.

Then came the early spring night you tiny devils plowed through hundreds of vegetable seedlings in flats on our sunporch. Flats and flats of seedlings that had been pricked out and carefully transplanted to new cells, that were slowly growing tender roots and their second set of leaves. Seedlings that were painstakingly hand-watered and misted every day.  Seedlings from heirloom varieties that were expensive and/or hard to find. Seedlings that would become vegetables we were going to eat and flowers for market.

See Mice, that’s when it was out with the Havahart, in with the Little Nipper. It’s dispiriting to empty traps each morning of small furry dead creatures. I still feel guilty, although not guilty enough to eat a mouse. And not guilty enough to regret defending our plants. I mean it would have been one thing if your country cousins stuck to Quaker Oats and De Cecco pasta. But homegrown fennel and baby leeks?  Already fragrant Black Prince tomato starts? Little rosettes of Firecracker lettuce? You can’t just buy those at IGA, Mice.

We’ve been tolerant here in Winters, because there aren’t any precious seedlings at stake, just avocados and raisins and Scharffenberger chocolate and a 10-pound bag of basmati rice. But scattering pellets on the stove, in the sink, and throughout the couscous is pretty irresponsible. Carry In, Carry Out is just sort of a good code to live by. And when we lock up our food in glass, you loiter around peering through the jars and strewing more pellets in frustration. I hate to be all “this land is my land, this land is not your land” but how about taking a hint sometime?

This weekend I discovered that three hand-sewn pincushions, filled with stuffing and rice, stored way upstairs in the sewing corner of a closet, had been shredded. OK, Mice, I give you points for distance and danger. Pincushion plundering is an extreme sport. Surely when you whisker through a forest of daggers in search of those golden grains, you know your mortality is dangling before you. You’d probably say it’s part of the thrill, right?

Well Mice, it’s not for me to judge your reckless rice hunting. I assume rodents have adrenaline too and living on the edge makes you feel more alive.  But speaking of life and death we went to Ace Hardware yesterday.

Just sayin’,

The Woman Who Sewed Those Pincushions And Was Going to Make Paula Wolfert’s Pumpkin-Lamb Couscous

Nothing says cool and refreshing on a hot day like a cauldron of boiling pork fat.

Which is why we decided to try making carnitas last weekend. Eighty pounds of carnitas, in public, for a panel of judges, at our town’s Mexican community festival.

Carnitas is pork chunks deep-fried in lard. It’s the measure of a taqueria’s worth, sort of like a French bakery is only as good as its baguette. It’s from Michoacan, in west-central Mexico, where traditionally a whole pig is cut up and fried for a crowd, maybe at a wedding or a harvest party. At some roadside places you can still choose a mixture–skin, tongue, stomach, and random joints–but around here it’s usually boneless shoulder.

Some of the contestants had cazos they’d bought in Mexico, about three feet wide and made of hammered copper.

We borrowed an iron cauldron from two local metalsmiths, who also lent us their beautiful handmade griddle, kind of like a comal but deeper. It’s fashioned from an old plow plate with horseshoes for handles.

We did some research but as with all epic dishes, no one agrees on anything.  Tequila is the secret ingredient. Or Coke is the secret ingredient.  Cut small chunks for surface browning. Big chunks for tenderness. You simmer slow and low. You keep it at a rolling boil. Pour off the extra lard and let it dry fry. Finish in deep fat and drain. And of course each method is the “authentic” one.

We went with three-inch pieces and limes and oranges to help brown the meat. The only twist was some ham hocks we’d smoked the day before and put to simmer in the lard. Because pork fried in pork fat isn’t self-referential enough.

The best part was hanging with the competition, drinking rum, sharing sausages, and picking up pointers.

Because you can’t not bond over 500 pounds of pork, 200 pounds of lard, and 103 degree weather. Aka a lot of blood, grease, and sweat.

puttin the carnal in carnitas

Which is why we got props for having the only woman on the cooking crew.

We kept the big cauldron at a gentle simmer until the end, when we transferred the meat a batch at a time to brown over high heat in the shallow pan.

The bigger chunks were golden on the outside and soft in the center. The smaller pieces broke apart, and the shreds got crackly. Next time we’d do like the winning team did and leave the meat in 8-10” slabs to prevent shredding.

Surprisingly, they also kept their lard at a furious boil–dudes were kicked back with their meat wrapped and ready in two hours.  Experts talk about “the change” that occurs when all the liquid evaporates, the lard turns clear, and the meat starts to caramelize.  Our low heat meant the change was a long time coming.

The favorite version was rich and succulent despite its short cooking time. It was delicious, although hardly browned. Another entry was as soft and wet as pot roast. Burnt ends make a barbecue sandwich for me, and I prefer crispy bits in my carnitas too. Some tasters favorited our cracklins, but velvety soft and moist was clearly the standard bearer.

The winner was also classic in terms of seasoning–all you could taste were pork and salt. There was a super-sweet version (various soft drinks and orange juice at the end) and one that suggested a Lowry’s or McCormick jar. We won some approval for our smoky touch, including kudos from a guy in an “Everything’s better with bacon” shirt. But maybe the three little pigs were one too many for some judges?

It was good to pack up the propane and hit the beer booth at the end of the day.

Some team members had to hurry home and un-swine before Yom Kippur, but others got to stay and praise.

We heard unofficially we were neck and neck for second, and the clean-up crew thought we did well for a bunch of Anglos.

They encouraged us to get more practice, after Vegetarian Awareness Month of course.