Two Birds at Bide-A-Wee (Part Two: Pan-Roasted Grouse in Cider Cream Sauce)

Annabel, our senior griff', is eleven years old now, and though she has slowed down quite a bit, and gets up a little gimpy from her frequent naps--a touch of arthritis, most likely--she can still find and point grouse. She sort of moseys through the woods now, not looking particularly intent on anything, but when her nose detects the scent of a bird, everything changes. Very few pointing dogs actually assume the "classic" pointing pose, front leg lifted and cocked. In fact, when one of my dogs stops on a hunt with her foot in the air like that, I pretty much know it's not a serious point.

Instead, they will stop with all four feet planted, stop as soon as they catch the scent of a bird, and turn their heads toward the scent. Then it's my job to find them, frequently in thick cover (an electronic beeper collar helps here), figure out exactly where the bird is, maneuver to gain the best angle for a shot, walk in to put the bird up, and knock it down with my 20-gauge side-by-side shotgun.



Matters do not often unfold in exactly that fashion for me. I miss my share of birds, or they flush wild or fly low through the brush or disappear behind trees. Then Annabel will break her point and run in crazy circles, barking in excitement, or frustration, it's hard to tell which. This is by no means "classic" bird dog behavior, either. In fact, even if I do manage to hit the bird, she still runs around barking at the sound of the gun, and she is of almost no use in helping me find the down bird. Lily is much better. Every bird I've shot with her in the field, she has been right on it. She doesn't retrieve, but that's fine by me. Having a bird in a dog's mouth for any amount of time does nothing to improve the quality of the meat.


On a rare warm day in October, I went out with just Annabel to hunt a smallish state hunting ground near Bide-A-Wee. We started late morning with the temperature climbing toward 60. We hadn't gone far into a stand of young aspen before my moseying dog stopped at the edge of a clump of dogwood within the aspen, and as I approached her a grouse flushed and escaped low behind thick cover. As I watched it go without firing a shot, a second bird got up and disappeared into a grove of white pine before I could locate it.

That was encouraging, and as we worked our way through that patch of aspen we located a couple more grouse as well as two or three woodcock. I think I missed on one of each, and had no shot at the others.

As we left the aspen stand and started up a little knob of a hill covered in dogwood, small oaks, prickly ash and assorted scrappy cover, Annabel stopped--again at a juncture of aspen and dogwood. I moved around to her right, to try to get the bird between us, and just as I crossed an opening in the trees, the grouse flushed. I hadn't expected the bird to be that close to my pointing dog, but the opening in the trees gave me a perfect shot. I turned to my left as I raised the gun, and brought the bird down with the first shot.

Annabel began running around, barking.

I had shot the bird at quite close range, and thought I had seen where it fell, but these animals are extremely well camouflaged. It took me a couple of minutes to find the bird. Annabel was no help whatsoever, but I certainly would never have shot that bird without her point. When I found the bird I called her over, and we engaged in a sort of dog-and-hunter high fives. "Whatta you know, we got one," I said. "Good girl, good dog." But she was off already to look for more.

It was nearly noon then, and getting hot for hunting, so we called it quits shortly after. In just an hour we had moved at least eight ruffed grouse and four or five woodcock.



I gutted the bird as soon as we got back to the cabin, and plucked it a day or two later back in Saint Paul, let it air dry in the fridge, and took it back out to Bide-A-Wee to cook for dinner the following weekend. I had thought I might grill it, then finish it in a cider and cream sauce, but October had returned to its chill, wet, blustery ways, that sun-washed morning in the woods a distant dream, so we fired up the Haggis and got out the cast iron.

First, I want everyone to appreciate the superb job I did plucking that bird. I know that anyone who has ever tried to pluck a grouse will be impressed by how clean that bird is, how intact is the skin. The skin of a grouse is delicate, and often torn by shot or dog tooth. It's no mean feat to wind up with a bird that nice. It's a tedious process, but it's worth it to me, and then, I'm not usually burdened with dozens of grouse to pluck in a season. A lot of hunters don't bother with plucking. They'll usually skin the bird, a quick and simple process. Others will "breast out" their birds in the woods, leaving behind everything but the boneless breast meat. This is both illegal, for a variety of reasons, and a terrible waste of excellent meat and bones--the carcasses of grouse produce a spectacular stock, and there's a decent amount of meat on the legs, too.

In preparation for cooking, the well-plucked bird is cut in half, seasoned with salt and pepper, smeared with butter. It's a very lean meat which benefits from a little added richness. It also benefits from bacon, but then, what doesn't? I rendered off a couple of tablespoons of lardons from our home-smoked bacon, and in that fat I browned an apple, cored and cut into eighths, not peeled.


Some sliced red cabbage and onions, sautéed, then simmered with a bit of water and cider, cooked on the Coleman stove. A handful of fingerling potatoes I grew at Bide-A-Wee were boiled separately and kept warm on the side of the wood stove.


Then I browned the grouse. Threw in some chopped leeks.

Added a cup of chicken stock, a half cup each of Cedar Summit cream and our own apple cider, a few sprigs of thyme (we can reach out the window and snip it from our potted herb garden on the south side of the cabin!). I finished cooking the grouse in the slowly reducing sauce--it was barely bubbling--for ten or fifteen minutes. Towards the end I put in the precooked potatoes to warm up.



And we served it forth. A well-cooked grouse is among the most exquisite things you can eat. This bird, well, I'd say it produced some of the finest meat I have ever tasted, lean but moist and tender, with a flavor both pronounced and subtle (but I'm not going to say it tasted wild...).

Just a really fine thing to eat, and a celebration of the land and the season. That said, there's no reason you couldn't do the same thing with cornish hens, or chicken.




Thanks, Annabel.

Text and photos copyright 2009 by Brett Laidlaw

Two Birds at Bide-A-Wee (Part One: Duck Breast, Haw Sauce, Celery Root Fries)

As much as I love cooking over an open fire--grilling over hardwood coals, smoking or smoke-roasting with apple and oak--it is also extremely pleasant to move indoors as the weather cools, fire the woodstove, heat the cast iron skillet, and listen to dinner softly sizzle or simmer while we sip an apertif by candlelight (which is both wonderfully romantic and entirely necessary, as we have no electricity at Bide-A-Wee). With all the gadgetry in the modern kitchen, and the widespread misconception that more expensive equipment will make you a better cook (and your life, therefore, complete), it's a particular pleasure to be able to turn out wonderful seasonal meals from a hunk of black iron sitting on a hot metal box. This time out, it's duck breast with haw sauce served on fried polenta with celery root fries and fillet beans. Next time, pan-roasted grouse with cider cream sauce, fingerling pototoes, red cabbage.

I've mentioned my fascination with the hawthorn tree, and with its fruit, the haw or hawberry. Hawthorn grow wild and profusely on our land in Wisconsin. Here above you see the haw, and the thorn. Wicked thorns. You want to be careful if you find yourself in the midst of a hawthorn thicket. The shrike, the only carnivorous songbird, sometimes impales its prey, small rodents and other birds, on the thorns of hawthorn. A perching bird, it doesn't have the raptor's claws to hold and tear apart its meal, so uses the thorn like a fork, its beak the steak knife. It has earned the nickname "Butcher Bird." (We saw a northern shrike take a vole from under our bird feeder last winter; a remarkable thing to see.)

There are lots of types of hawthorns. Some seem to make little or no fruit, and some bear pomes no bigger than a blueberry, and the best for eating that we have found carry bright red fruit that closely resemble rosehips, and indeed roses and hawthorns both belong to the botanical family rosaceae--apples are in there, too. Hawthorn trees are disctintive in the landscape, small and gnarled, the trunks and branches often colored with lichen. Those thorns set them apart from small, wild, seedling apple trees or wild plums. In late fall and into winter, they often hold their bright red fruit, and the contrast between those cheery berries and the tortured shapes of the trees is striking--a tormented artist who paints serene and beautiful canvasses.

That's our 3 3/4-year-old griffon Lily giving scale to a hawthorn tree with nice fruit. You have to taste around to find nice hawthorn fruit, and you have to use your imagination. Even the nice, plump haws that we have found are mostly skin and seeds, and what flesh there is is rather pulpy and dry. These are not for eating out of hand, though you could probably survive on them if you had to.


But when you cook them in water for a rather long time they soften, and then you can push the mash through a seive, and you wind up with a good amount of fragrant mush, slightly sweet, with an aroma that's somewhere in the midst of vegetable, fruit, and roses. You can sweeten that to make a simple jam. In Britain hawthorn jelly is well known.

Those are nannyberries with haws, above. I sometimes fall into the lazy shorthand of describing the flavor of a wild food as "wild," and while that characterization is no doubt literally true, it also strikes me as close to meaningless. A mushroom, a berry, a game bird, a trout, all are wild, and may be said to taste "wild," but what does that mean, for each type of food, and do they share anything in common, all being wild? And then, on further consideration, I think that there is something valid there, as long as it is further qualified. In fact, all those things do taste wild, in that they have a flavor very different from their domestic counterparts. If you've ever picked wild blueberries from the top of a lichen-covered rock in northern Minnesota, Canada, or wherever those wild wonders grow, and compare their sun-warmed flavor with the bloated, bland, watery farmed type, I think you'll see what I mean.

When a wild food is domesticated, it is bred to emphasize certain characteristics, to eliminate others. Sometimes the favored characteristics are good ones--like sweetness or juiciness in fruit--and sometimes they are merely convenient--pickability, shipability, shelf life. And sometimes the characteristics that are selected out--well, rightfully so, one might say. There's often a slight or even a pronounced astringency to wild fruit that we rarely find in farmed fruit today. There is also, I would say, a much broader range of flavors than we are accustomed too, and it may take a bit of tasting to become so. Some will find it not worth it, but if you're a regular reader of these pages, I imagine you would want to try.

Start tasting haws in mid-September, and when you find they've acquired some flavor--some sweetness, some perfume--pick a good cup or so. They seem to improve with a frost, and the fruits stay on the trees long after the leaves have fallen.

Rinse the haws and remove any stems. Add three cups water, bring to a boil, slowly simmer, covered, for about 45 minutes. The haws may still look quite intact at this point, but if you press them they should yield, skin splitting, pulp emerging. Keep some of the water, which has quite a bit of flavor, and will help as you sieve the pulp. Just dump the berries and some water into a wire mesh sieve, and press with the back of a spoon. The juicy stuff with come right out, and with a little more pushing, the pulpy stuff will follow. Soon you'll have nothing but dry seeds and skin in the sieve. Be sure to scrape the last of the pulp from the outside of the sieve.

Now I realize this has been more about the berries than the bird, but everyone knows what a duck breast is, and how many have tried haws? But, on with the bird: You've got a nice fat magret de canard. That's the breast of a fattened duck raised for foie gras--ours from Au Bon Canard and Clancey's. These things usually weigh 12 ounces or better, so for us, one feeds two. You may have to look around, or use both breasts from a regular-size duck.

I have heated my cast iron skillet on the Haggis (our pet name for our woodstove; I know...), and I've cross-hatched the skin of the duck with a sharp knife or razor--just cut a titch down into the fat, not reaching the meat--to let the fat flow forth as it cooks. I cook it slowly, skin side down most of the time. As the fat flows forth I add to the pan about a half a celery root trimmed and cut into french fry shape, and also a handful of fillet beans, last of the season from the market, and absolutely wonderful. Now everything sizzles away in duck fat. Meanwhile:

On the propane camp stove my sauce is making. It's a generous half-cup each of chicken stock and dry red wine, which I reduce by half, to which I then add about three tablespoons of haw purée and a tablespoon of maple syrup, a grind or two of pepper, couple pinches salt, taste for seasoning. Simmer very quietly as the duck rests.

I have pan-fried some slices of set-up polenta. I finish my sauce with a knob of butter (I would call that a tablespoon and a half...). We find the magret properly rosé. We find in the celery root and beans a splendid counterplay of late-fall flavors. We find that haw sauce is something unique and delicious, and an excellent partner to the rich, savory duck in all ways--in its mild sweetness, its fragrance, and even in that lingering astringency. We find that we are happy campers, delighted to have made the acquantance of the haw.

Text and photos copyright 2009 by Brett Laidlaw

Roasted Vegetable Stock / Autumn Vegetable Ragout on Polenta

The last week of October is nearly upon us. How on earth did this happen? I really enjoyed the cool summer just past, and I liked the warm September, too. I even appreciated the gusting, rainy, snowy drama of autumn's premature arrival. I guess I just thought we'd have another little respite, an Indian Summer idyll, before we had to pack it all in for the season.

So it goes. It's looking every bit November outside my window this morning, though we have a long week of October to go. We've been stocking up on vegetables at the market, pulling things in from the garden. We have more produce that we know what to do with...except, fortunately, we do know what to do with it, a lot of it, anyway. One great thing to do with the glut of autumn vegetables is to make a batch or two of vegetable stock. And then, to reward yourself for your industry and economy, cook up a beautiful vegetable-lentil ragout to serve over polenta. Or, call out for pizza. It's up to you.


The beauty of a vegetable stock like this is that it's made largely from stuff that might otherwise wind up in the compost pile. The tops of a celery root do not look very appetizing. You would not use this to make a plate of "Ants on a Log" to munch with your happy hour martini. But it adds great flavor to stock. Likewise, those overgrown leaves of kale. Chop them up, stems and all. When they're roasted, and then simmered, they impart a deeply savory quality to the stock. It's that sort of "sixth flavor" called umami, I do believe.

I like a lot of oniony things--onions, of course, and leeks, garlic, shallots--in a stock, veggie or otherwise. Not too much of the sweet things like carrots or parsnips. The well-washed skins of organic potatoes could go in. A tomato added toward the end of the oven browning adds depth of flavor.

So here's the basic method for...


Roasted Vegetable Stock
makes about seven cups

Preheat your oven to 450. Add one tablespoon canola or olive oil to an oven-proof dutch oven or stock pot. To the oil add around six cups of vegetables, chopped into smallish pieces--this won't cook for hours and hours like a meat stock, so you want the pieces fairly small.

An example of the vegetables you might use:

a rib of celery, or some celery root tops
three or four leaves of kale
one ear corn--chop it up, cob and all; slice off some of the kernels
one onion
one medium leek or equivalent--I used some tops of leeks I found in the crisper, and some of the tough outer layers
3 or 4 cloves garlic
celery root trimmings
one carrot

You could also add mushrooms fresh or dried, shallots, scallions, parsnip, potato skins. Maybe a few chard stems. Green beans, why not? Other greens, like turnip or mustard, would probably be fine--just don't use too much of strongly flavored or "cabbage-y" things.

Roast the vegetables for 30 minutes stirring every 10 minutes, until the vegetables are getting brown and a nice glaze is developing on the bottom of the pan--but watch that the pan-bottom stuff isn't getting too brown, as there's lots of sugar in many of these vegetables, which could burn and make your stock bitter. If it looks like it's getting too brown, add a little water and scrape with a wooden spatula.

After 30 minutes, stir in one tomato, chopped. Roast for another 10 minutes.

Remove the pan from the oven. Deglaze with a cup of water, then add three more quarts of water, 1/2 teaspoon salt, a couple of bay leaves, a few sprigs of thyme, a couple of whole cloves if you like, and give it a few coarse grinds of pepper. I added some additional leek greens, some fennel stalk, and a few carrot greens (which you might not have known are edible; they are, but use sparingly), all chopped up.

Simmer for one hour partially covered, and then 45 minutes more, uncovered. Strain the stock, then put the vegetables back in the pot, add another cup and a half of water, sluice it about, strain this into the rest of the stock.


There you go. What I wasn't going to use right away I froze in plastic containers, popped the frozen stock out of the containers and returned to the freezer in a zipper bag. Use it as a soup base, in braises, sauces, rice dishes, etc.

That same day I made this

Vegetable-Lentil Ragout on Polenta
serves two

Parcook 1/2 cup lentils in boiling water for 20 minutes; drain and set aside.

Preheat your oven to 400.

In a large skillet, heat 2 tablespoons olive oil. Add one half onion and one half a small leek, chopped. Sauté for one minute.

Add a couple of wedges of cabbage, six leaves kale stemmed and chopped, one half delicata squash, seeded, cut in chunks (you don't have to peel delicata squash, but I used a vegetable peeler to remove some of the rind). Cook over medium-high to lightly brown the cabbage and squash and wilt the kale.

Add one or two cloves garlic, chopped. Cook one minute more.

Add the lentils, one and a half cups vegetable stock, one half cup water, a good pinch salt, a few sprigs of thyme and a few leaves of sage. Put the pan in the oven and cook for 20 minutes, or until the vegetables and lentils are tender and the top is nicely browned. Add additional water or stock if needed. Serve on polenta, if you like.

We garnished this with a drizzle of olive oil and a handful of grated Roth Kase gruyere. It is entirely vegetarian. If you omit the cheese (and the butter we stirred into the polenta), it's even vegan, for cripes sake. This is easily adaptable to whatever vegetables you have on hand. You could also substitute dried beans or chickpeas for the lentils. A damn fine way to eat your vegetables.

Text and photos copyright 2009 by Brett Laidlaw

Fruitful

A few weeks ago, on a warm September morning, I took a pleasant amble around the land out at Bide-A-Wee. The meadows were full of glorious color, goldenrod and asters, and nearly every tree and shrub I saw held some tasty, brilliant bit of fruit for me to taste. Before noon I had sampled wild black cherries, blackberries, chokecherries, apples, crabapples, wild plums, hazelnuts, grapes, nannyberries, haws (the fruit of the hawthorn tree). The last three weren't ripe yet. The grapes were especially, tremendously, mouth-puckering (so maybe the fox was right!).


After lunch I felt I still had a little rambling in me, so I drove to a nearby woods, a small piece of state land where we hunt grouse and woodcock in the fall. Just a five-minute drive from our cabin, the terrain could hardly be more different. Where Bide-A-Wee's acreage is nothing but up and down, and the soil is heavy clay, and there's no water on the property, this pleasant woods is flat, sandy, wet and low, with boggy forest and a couple of small streams running through. A nice change of scenery. I found some mushrooms under a stand of jack pines, and to my fruit tally I added highbush cranberries, elderberries, and rose hips.


It has been, needless to say, quite a fruitful year in west central Wisconsin. We've been somewhat frantic trying to figure out what to do with all of it. Apples have gone to cider, crabapples and plums to jelly, blackberries to jam. We have sacks of black cherries in the freezer, waiting for the calm of November to be processed.

Many of these fruits I had never tasted before--notably nannyberries, which ripen to dark, shriveled, sugary nuggets that remind me mostly of dates; and haws, which taste absolutely awful before they ripen, but once ripe take on a fascinating, complex flavor, mildly sweet, slightly astringent, with a perfume which--I swear--reminds me of roses, to which they are related. More about those two fruits later.


And highbush cranberries: Well, I'd heard of them but had never seen or tasted one. Then over lunch that day between rambles, I was scanning my main resources for wild fruit identification, our friend Teresa Marrone's books, and Sam Thayer's Forager's Harvest , paying particular attention to highbush cranberries (which are not actually related to cranberries, but are a type of viburnum). And dang if I didn't go out that afternoon and find some, in a wet area in the woods, bright red berries on a leggy shrub. Their flavor was tart and vibrant--easy to see why they're compared to cranberries.


I didn't get a lot of them, just enough to cook into a bit of syrup, adding some sugar, which I then stirred into iced vodka, thereby creating the first ever Bide-A-Wee Highbush Cran-Tini (or, perhaps, a "Bide-A-Wee-Breeze"?). Just the thing to refresh a weary forager after a long day in the woods.

Text and photos copyright 2009 by Brett Laidlaw

Cider-Braised Chicken with Cabbage and Bacon (Not Half Bad)

I've been having a hard time keeping up with all the great foods of this autumn which arrived about three weeks ago with a definitive gale. In one blustery weekend thoughts went from what to throw on the grill to what shall we put in the braising pot tonight? I made a chicken braised in cider and cream a few days ago, and I wanted to write about that, but I would have to make it again to have a real recipe to share. I'm doing this all the time, making up a dish at dinnertime, taking a few photos of it, thinking I'll remember what I did when I sit down to write about it a few days later, and inevitably, of course, I've forgotten important points because I didn't make detailed enough notes.

This dish, chicken in cider with cabbage and bacon, I threw together in the midst of making doughs and mixing up sourdough sponges for our market baking last night. And while making it I came up with a trick to help me remember what I was doing: I added most of the ingredients in "half" measures--half a leek, half an onion, half a cup cider, of stock, etc. I should be able to relate this in no more time than it took to make it, so here goes.

Preheat your oven to 275.

2 ounce chunk good slab bacon, cut into 1/2"-inch cubes
4 chicken thighs (skin on or off, according to taste)
salt and pepper

1/2 a small onion, sliced
1/2 a small carrot, cut in half the long way, then across into thin half-moons
1/2 a small leek, sliced into 1/4-inch rounds
1/2 a small cabbage, cut into four wedges

In a dutch oven or deep-sided sauté pan that can go in the oven, slowly cook the bacon over low heat until most of the fat has rendered and the bacon is brown. Remove the bacon from the pan, pour the fat into a small dish and reserve. Salt and pepper the chicken on both sides, then add it to the pan, bring the heat to medium high and brown the chicken well on both sides, about five minutes each side.

Remove the chicken from the pan, and drain off any fat. Return a teaspoon of bacon fat to the pan, add the onion, carrot, and leek, and cook for about five minutes, until the vegetables have softened and just begun to brown.

1/2 cup apple cider
1/2 cup chicken stock
1/2 cup water
1 sprig sage

Deglaze the pan with the apple cider, then add the stock and water, the sage, and return the chicken to the pan. Add a good pinch of salt and a few grinds of pepper. Bring it up to a boil, then cover the pan and place it in the oven. Cook for 40 minutes (check it after about 10 minutes to see that it's bubbling gently; if it's not, increase the heat to 300 and check again in another 10 minutes.)

After 40 minutes add the reserved bacon cubes to the pot and nestle the cabbage wedges in between the chicken pieces. Cook, covered, for 20 minutes.

Increase the oven heat to 375. Remove the cover from the pan, turn the cabbage wedges over, and cook for another 10 minutes, or until the cabbage is tender.

Serve the chicken and cabbage out into wide soup dishes. If the sauce seems thin, reduce it over high heat on your stovetop for a couple of minutes to desired thickness. Serve it forth. Taste for salt.

I was going to serve this with boiled potatoes, but Mary discovered some leftover spaetzle in the fridge, so we used that instead, briefly fried in a little butter. We drank an Austrian gruner veltliner, a crisp white with good body; an Alsatian riesling or pinot blanc would have been another good choice. Or a lighter red, a cabernet franc like a saumur, or a modest pinot noir. Or, indeed, a glass of honest hard cider.

Nothing hard about this dish, and by the time it has braised all that long while, the cider is completely integrated into the sauce--you'd be hard-pressed to tell there was cider in it, at all (I really didn't intend the pun, but I'll take it...).

Text and photos copyright 2009 by Brett Laidlaw

Harvest Time

It has been a very good year for apples, and we've been trying to keep up with picking, pressing, and preserving before they all hit the ground. That's why communication has been a little sparse here lately.

But now that the weather has turned toward autumn (26 degrees at Bide-A-Wee Wednesday morning! Deep frost covering all!), that's when we really hit our stride, kitchen-wise. Be back soon with warming, sustaining foods of the season.

Rat' on the Grill

I like the idea of ratatouille better than I've liked most of the ratatouille I've been served. It's a dish that sings out "Provence!" at the top of its vegetal lungs, with all that that implies--summer sun, the vibrant colors and flavors of the warm south, sweet pungent garlic, perfectly ripe tomatoes, olive oil.

The basic elements are constant: eggplant, summer squash, sweet peppers, tomato, garlic. But ratatouille's final form and function can vary greatly, from main dish stew to side dish gratin to a sort of elaborate salad. When ratatouille is done right, the various ingredients blend harmoniously, yet somehow remain distinct. The sound of a well-grooved jazz combo comes to mind (is it any surprise I'm suddenly hearing Django Reinhardt and Stéphane Grappelli in my head...?).

When ratatouille goes bad it becomes an overcooked, non-descript mush with the tinny back-taste of lousy tomatoes. Ironically, most of the bad rat's I've had, I've had in France--but in northern France, and that's the key. Much as I love French cooking, it must be recognized that the French are almost comically inept at incorporating foreign influences into their cuisine. When curry and chilies make their way into the French kitchen, the flavor is often so faint, it's as if the cook just held the jar of spice up for the stew pot to see, then put it away unopened. An "egg roll" we were once served at the vaunted Atelier de Joel Robuchon in Paris was such a silly, useless thing, any pho joint on University Avenue would kick its derrière right back to culinary school.

But I digress, just a little. My point is that the same lack of comprehension that befuddles French cooks dealing with foreign ingredients also seems to afflict northern chefs dealing with dishes from the south. They just really don't get garlic, olive oil, and tomatoes--not in a Provencal way, at any rate. But then, you wouldn't go out for choucroute garnie in Arles, would you?


Well, I'm not Provencal, and I haven't even traveled there, so I'm probably just talking through mon chapeau. What I do know is that when confronted with the gorgeous eggplants, chilies, tomatoes, garlic, etc., now spilling off the tables at our farmers market, you just have to put them together, one way or another, and this grilled ratatouille that we cooked up out at Bide-A-Wee last week made a fresh and delicious variation on the Provencal theme. We neglected to pick up any summer squash, so our grilled version is actually one zucchini short of a ratatouille, but I can't say we missed it much.

The eggplant was the star, a fantastic Italian heirloom variety that came from our market neighbors and pals Joe and Laura of Honey Creek Farm. It made a sweet, creamy base that really brought the rest of the flavors together. Many recipes using eggplant call for slicing and salting the eggplant to draw out bitter juices, but I think that with fresh, firm summer market eggplants, that's unnecessary (and it may go without saying, but I wouldn't do this dish with anything else; winter ratatouille, merci, non). The skinny Asian eggplants are always mild and sweet, and could be used here.

The peppers we had were mildly hot, splendidly red, thick-fleshed and sweet despite the heat. Wonderful. The traditional bell peppers can be grilled and peeled just the same. I would only use ripe red peppers, as I detest green bells, but that's a question of taste.

Here's what we did, then: For two people we had one medium eggplant, around a pound. One half red onion (but any other color would work as well). Two red chilies--the equivalent of one good-sized bell, I'd say. The white of one leek. One really big clove of SuperGarlic!, which would be like three large cloves of any other, mortal garlic--from Jackie of Sylvan Hills Organic Farm . A couple medium, exquisitely ripe tomatoes. A handful of fresh basil leaves.

The eggplant we sliced about 3/4-inch thick, and brushed the slices with olive oil. The other vegetables went on the grill as is--if you're using summer squash, treat it the same as the eggplant. Over natural wood coals, grill the vegetables until they are nicely charred and tender. For the eggplant, that meant four to five minutes on a side. Ours got pretty dark, but didn't taste burnt in the final dish. For the peppers or chilies, cook until the skin is blackened all over, let sit a while, then peel, seed and chop. (Placing grilled chilies in a paper bag to help loosen the skin is common practice, and does work, but isn't necessary.)

The leek we grilled until it was really black on the outside, then we took off that layer and chopped the rest. The onion, just keep turning until it gets nice color on all sides. (While the vegetables rested, we grilled Pastures A'Plenty country-style pork ribs, to be glazed and served with a cider-red wine sauce.)

To assemble, finish, and serve: Roughly chop all the grilled vegetables. Seed and chop the tomatoes. Slice the garlic medium-thin. In a large saucepan or sauté pan, heat about two tablespoons of good olive oil. Add the garlic and swirl it about until it just barely starts to color. Add all the other vegetables, and a couple good pinches of salt, and a grind of black pepper. Toss it all about for a couple of minutes only. Turn off the heat, tear the basil leaves up and drop them in. Serve.

The ribs, some polenta (organic, Whole Grain Milling Co.), the ratatouille, slice of Real Toast.

There was some of the ratatouille left over; it was even better two days later.

Text and photos copyright 2009 by Brett Laidlaw