Ratatouille

Last night I saw the movie Ratatouille. I wasn't planning to, but then I heard a Talk of the Nation interview with Ruth Reichl in which the movie's food critic character was discussed, and then after that I read this review at Megnut, and my interest was piqued.

Naturally after seeing the movie with its climactic ratatouille-related episode, I had to make myself a dish of . . .



ratatouille!

I got almost all the ingredients fresh this morning at the farmers' market:

• eggplant from the Farm at Red Hill


• tomatoes from the Farm at Red Hill


• zucchini from Waterpenny Farm


• onion from Double H Farm


• red bell peppers from the farmers' market


• basil from Radical Roots


• thyme from Planet Earth Diversified


• salt and pepper


• brown rice to serve on top of

The result: not too bad. I haven't been a big fan of ratatouille when I've had it before, but the fresh tomatoes and herbs made the dish.

I loved the fact that I could get every ingredient (short of the salt and pepper, and the rice, which is ancillary) fresh and in season from local farmers. This made me reflect on how nicely attuned traditional recipes are (because in the past they had to be!) to the seasonal and regional availability of produce. Lately I've been eating tortilla española and gazpacho on a daily basis; I've been making both almost entirely with fresh, local ingredients, apart from a few pantry staples used mainly for seasoning (salt, pepper, vinegar, olive oil).

By contrast, this afternoon I plan to try to make a fruit salad recipe from the recent issue of Cook's Illustrated. The recipe calls for both peaches and strawberries, which are not in season at the same time! As it happens, I managed to get a box of "last of the season" strawberries from the Farm at Red Hill, and of course peaches from Critzer's. Before I started trying to eat more local food, I would not have thought twice about a peach-and-strawberry recipe, but now, it looks a little absurd to me.

My Other Locality

I've been away from the blog for a little while, chewing on a tough piece of dissertation.

I've also been away from Charlottesville for a long weekend. I spent five days at home in Maine.



The weather was gorgeous (except on Saturday) and the home cooking was delicious, of course. This is the season for my parents' rhubarb patch to be going gonzo . . .



. . . so I enjoyed some rhubarb coffee cake, some raspberry rhubarb crisp (with home-grown raspberries frozen last year), and some more rhubarb coffee cake! Mmmmm.

And now a side note that has nothing to do with eating, and nothing to do with Charlottesville, but does have to do with localness:

While I was home, my old high school had its graduation, and the local Project Graduation sent busloads of graduating seniors on a victory lap through the school district, with a bleating and blaring escort of emergency vehicles.

Here are two things that small towns are proud of, and will defend fiercely: their schools and their fire trucks.





I like seeing the graduating seniors get this local-heroes' treatment. It's pretty nearly the closest thing that a small town can do to throwing the classic ticker-tape parade. When the town sends its fire trucks and ambulances out to escort you down the main drag, the town is saying, "You are special. We are so proud to have you here and call you ours."

Further Notes on Dairy in Virginia

Shortly after finishing my post about converting (putatively) local milk into yogurt, I came across this post at the Eat Local Challenge. The writer deems Shenandoah Pride to be not really local because it has been bought out by a larger corporation. I have not been able to find any definite information on where the milk in a Shenandoah Pride carton actually comes from: does it all come from Virginia herds? Does some of it come from Virginia herds and get mixed with milk from a larger region? I don't know. I more or less took the Virginia address on the carton at face value.

One issue here is the question of why I am trying to eat more local foods and what I consider "local" to mean. I intend to do a longer post or small series of posts on this topic soon. For now, let me just observe that there are many reasons for eating local, and sometimes whether a particular food fits with your reasons for seeking out local food will not be entirely clear. Reducing "food miles" is one reason to eat local; putting money into the local economy and dealing with smaller, locally-owned businesses is another reason. Usually these two reasons go together, but it's possible for them to be in conflict. Let's assume for the moment that the milk inside a Shenandoah Pride carton does, indeed, come from dairy herds in Virginia, and let's assume that the milk is processed and bottled locally as well. Does the fact that Shenandoah Pride is not locally owned mean that the milk does not count as "local"? What about the opposite situation, with a small local business that imports foods from far away. Several of the food suppliers that I have been considering "local" for my purposes—such as Bantry Bay and Kite's Hams—would fit that description. Imported cinnamon from Bantry Bay or a midwest-raised ham from Kite's would have a lot of food miles behind it, but its purchase would benefit a small, local business. How fully local does "local" have to be?

For me, the short answer to that question is that a product which satisfies some of my reasons for trying to eat local is preferable to a product which satisfies none of them. And I am not, at this time, willing to restrict my diet to foods that meet every conceivable criterion for localness.

Another question raised by the post at the Eat Local Challenge is the issue of rBGH in milk. I'm not thrilled to have rBGH in my dairy products, and I always appreciate when dairy is produced without the cows being given extra hormones, but at the moment, it is not a high priorty for me to seek out rBGH-free dairy products exclusively.

Finally, I was interested to see Kathryn Russell of Majesty Farm responding in the comments on the Eat Local Challenge post. I thought about mentioning Majesty Farm in my post about yogurt, but decided to skip it. I think their cow share program sounds fantastic, and the argument in favor of raw milk sounds pretty good. I drank raw milk from a local farm on many occasions as a kid, and I remember it tasting wonderful. I've decided that I don't drink enough milk currently to make it worthwhile to buy into the Majesty Farm cow share program (assuming they have cow shares available), which is why I went to C'ville Market looking for the next-best, next-most-localest thing.

Partly Local . . . In More Than One Sense

This afternoon, out of nowhere, I was hit by a craving for an Italian sandwich.

The Italian is a regional specialty from the Portland, Maine area. To me, it is a taste of home, in a different way from the way that my parents' cooking tastes of home. I can go months without thinking of Italians at all, but then a day like today will come along and suddenly I won't be able to get my mind off Italians until I prepare an ersatz version for myself and wolf it down (or, better, get to Maine and enjoy the real thing). It's like when you get a bit of music stuck in your head and can't shake it until you dig out the CD and listen to the whole song.

The ingredients for an Italian the way I like it are: Italian sandwich bread, sliced provolone cheese, tomato wedges, long slices of green pepper, dill pickles, black olives, olive oil, and salt and pepper. (A more traditional Italian would have sliced ham as well, and would probably come with so-called "American cheese" instead of provolone, and would likely include chopped raw onions.) Italian sandwich bread is the one ingredient I cannot get in Virginia. The base for an Italian sandwich is a long, narrow roll, similar to a "sub roll," made of a very soft, slightly chewy white bread. I have never found anything like it outside of Maine. So, when I am in Virginia, I make do with whole wheat sub rolls. Since I can't get real Italian sandwich bread anyway, I figure I might as well go for the benefits of the whole wheat.

Today I prepared this semi-locally-sourced, out-of-region comfort food for myself:

• tomatoes from the Farm at Red Hill


• green peppers from the Farm at Red Hill


• dill pickles from the Charlottesville farmers' market


• whole wheat sub rolls


• sliced deli provolone


• black olives


• salt, pepper, and olive oil (which in a Maine sandwich shop would be pronounced "salpepperanoil")

I had hoped to make an even more locally-sourced version of this treat. A week ago, I purchased these delicious whole wheat rolls from a vendor at the Tuesday afternoon farmers' market that has started up in the parking lot at Whole Foods:



I was amazed to learn that not only were the rolls baked in Virginia, but the wheat was grown and milled here, too. I had thought that, like James and Alisa of The 100 Mile Diet, I would have a lot of difficulty finding wheat grown in my region--if I could ever find it at all. I was surprised and delighted to find these soft, chewy yeast rolls made by Portwood Gardens over in the Shenandoah Valley from local wheat.

Last week I enjoyed the whole wheat rolls with my cock-a-leekie soup and tomato, basil and goat cheese burgers. They were gone by the weekend.

Today I went back to the Whole Foods farmers' market hoping to buy another couple pans of the rolls. They are the wrong shape for Italian sandwiches, of course, but I figured I could find some way to adapt them. To my disappointment, the baker from Portwood Gardens was nowhere to be found.

So, my Italian sandwich this afternoon turned out to be not as locally-sourced as I would have liked. (Naturally some parts of the sandwich--the olives and olive oil come to mind first--are impossible to find locally raised.) But I enjoyed it nevertheless. It satisfied the craving that I had. And it set off a train of thought about eating local.

I am hoping to do a post sometime soon about my reasons for trying to eat more locally-sourced food. For now, I'll just say that one of the pleasures of eating local is getting to know the flavors of a region. Focusing on eating local food here in Virginia has led me to try things I might not have otherwise, like collard greens (now a favorite) and traditionally-cured slab bacon. But I arrived here in Virginia with a gastronomic history from another region, and sometimes the pleasures of eating local (in a certain sense: clearly olives have never come from Maine) are the pleasures of eating in a locality that is far away.