A glass of gold

Chris Graham reports in The Augusta Free Press that one of the state’s newest wineries won one of Virginia’s most coveted awards, and the winners are right here among us. Barren Ridge Vineyards won a gold medal in the Virginia State Fair Competition for Barren Ridge 2007 Viognier. The viognier grapes, harvested last fall at the beautiful Mt. Juliet vineyards outside Crozet, made a wonderful wine ready just in time for the state fair entry. John and Shelby Higss have planted their own viognier grapes, but it will be a while before they’re ready.

There’s a reason why viognier, a spicy white wine, is fast becoming the pride of Virginia whites. The state’s humidity, sudden thunderstorms, late spring frosts and early fall frosts make wine-making more of a challenge here than in, say, California, where conditions rarely vary. This grape has a thick skin to protect it from insects and from absorbing too much water from untimely rains at harvest time. The resulting wine is full of flavor. if you’ve never tried it, go out to this spectacularly beautiful spot and ask for a taste or buy a glass full.

In the short time they’ve been open, John and Shelby have welcomed many non-profit groups to their tasting room and patio. Earlier this week, they supported a Boy Scout fund-raiser and I had a chance to sample a glass of Viognier with the shrimp, fruit and meatballs served near the winery bar. The Barren Ridge Viognier had enough character to accompany all three, a wonderful wine born from the rocks, earth, sun and water of our own home.

A Sweet Dip for a Humble Hot Dog

Photo by Mark Heim

Robin Vance of Highland County has cooked hot dogs like this ever since he was a kid, helping his grandfather, Lohr Vance, at the fire. First, the hot dogs are cooked in a kettle of Highland County maple syrup diluted with Highland County well water. Once saturated with the maple flavor the hot dogs are finished on the grill to bring out even more flavor.
With beans and coleslaw, maple dogs made a wonderful evening meal outdoors at the home of Jeff Richardson in beautiful Blue Grass. Oatmeal cookies followed, a perfect conclusion. The maple dogs are a fitting local creation: Highland County is known for its maple syrup, celebrated by a festival each March.

An exotic sauce for simple greens

It’s still looking good in my garden, long after the other greens have gone bitter and limp. This is the first season I’ve grown Swiss chard, and for each leaf I’ve picked, two have grown back. I think it’s pretty, with its bright red stalk and deep green leaves. When the leaves are cooked, they taste earthy, with a faint rhubarb flavor. The stalks are good, too. Here’s what I do:

Cut the leaves from the red center stalk and cut them in ribbons. Then dice the stalk fine so it cooks quickly. Plunge the bits of leaves and stalk into a big bowl of cold water (no need to keep them separate), agitate a bit and drain them in a colander. Saute some finely chopped onion in olive oil in a heavy pot, add some mushroms (or not) and cook the chard with just the oil and water that clings to the leaves. Cover the pot and cook on medium-low heat until the chard is tender.

Meanwhile, make a sauce. You can use the following recipe, or it can be as simple as sauteeing a little garlic in a pan, adding a can of light coconut milk, mixing in 2 tablespoons of red curry paste, 4 teaspoons soy sauce and 1 tablespoon of brown sugar and heating slowly until all are warm. While the following recipe is more complex, the simpler version has all the elements you need for a curry sauce: hot, sweet, salty and creamy, plus the delicate flavor of coconut. Drain the tender greens and serve with the sauce.

Red Curry Sauce

1 teaspoon dark sesame oil, divided
2 teaspoons minced peeled fresh ginger
2 garlic cloves, minced
1 cup finely chopped red bell pepper
1 cup chopped green onions
1 teaspoon curry powder
2 teaspoons red curry paste
1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
4 teaspoons low-sodium soy sauce
1 tablespoon brown sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt, divided
1 (14-ounce) can light coconut milk
2 tablespoons chopped fresh cilantro

The road less traveled

Alhough it’s often mentioned as a possible solution to our energy problems, rail travel is never quite taken seriously. There are too few trains and too many people needing to go places that trains don’t go.  it’s possible, though, that an improved train system might solve individual struggles with travel costs, congestion and exhaustion.

Early this week I had a meeting in Richmond, a meeting in Washington, and a family gathering back in Richmond.  Reluctant to face I-95 between Richmond and DC during rush hour, I parked my car at the Staple Mills station and for $22, headed north. We chugged along through swampland and forest and, two hours later, I was there. What did I do with my extra two hours? I read a book, drank coffee, and, during a flat stretch, worked on my computer. On the way back, I took a nap, drank a beer and held a baby while his mother went to the dining car. I also saved $40 because I didn’t have to park.

Traveling this way uses half the energy consumed by airplane travel and just a fraction of the energy used by the hundred or so Amtrak passengers who might have driven their own cars. It also addresses the harder-to-measure aspects of commuting: massive traffic tie-ups, high-speed accidents and personal anxiety.  The trains between central Virginia and Washington have been especially popular, and Amtrak is looking into a daily commuter train between Lynchburg an and the nation’s capitol.

Sure, it’s not the whole answer, and there are many drawbacks. Amtrak is often late and often overbooked, and its usefulness is limited by the quality of public transportation at the other end.  Think of it as an alternative sometime when you have to go to New York, Chicago, Cincinnatti, Charleston, Philadelphia or Baltimore as well as DC, and try it out: www.amtrak.com.

 

Market adds festive touch to weekly shopping

New at the Waynesboro Farmers Market this week: music provided by Roger Merchant, activities for children and a new vendor, Roller’s Bakery, selling whole-grain breads, cookies, giant sticky buns and chocolate cake.

Vendors from last week said sales were increasing, and a steady crowd moved between tables in the Waynesboro Pavilion, picking up honey, vegetable plants, spring produce, and fresh eggs.  Gary and Tammy Cash, the owners of “Still Pork’n,” said the sales at the market made it worthwhile for them to haul their mobile barbecue joint across town on Wednesdays. Gary buys 30 pork shoulders every week for Pork’n, cooks them slowly over charcoal for his smoky barbecue, chops them and adds his tangy sauce.

Why should we support these vendors? Because we know who they are, and we know their food is fresh, gathered or prepared by human hands. The money goes back to the community, to be recycled to improve famland or bakery ovens, or to go in the collection baskets of local churches, or to support the Boys and Girls Club rather than to further enrich a group of Arkansas millionaires.  

Be sure to visit the market every Wednesday from 3 to 7 p.m. Next week: asparagus from Heartland Harvest and shiitake mushrooms from Hungry Hill will give early shoppers some of the best-loved Virginia spring delicacies money can buy.

It’s a miracle

In abandoned orchards and in secret spots often guarded jealously by families, people are gathering morels, the distinctive mushrooms that pop up literally overnight after a spring rain. They’re often called “merkels” because these meaty and indescribable delicacies are stars among the thousands of miracles of spring in the mountains. Veteran hunters swear that finding a dead elm tree is the key to a morel bonanza. There’s a website for devoted morel hungers with tips for finding, cooking and storing.

In Rappahannock County, Sylvie Rowand of Laughing Duck Gardens posted the photo above and said she’s used her morel harvest in omelets, sautés, fricassees, quiches, pasta, and pizza. To prepare morels, simply wipe with a cloth, chop and cook.

Everything you need is right here

That’s what Amy Childs said about the Waynesboro Farmers Market, reappearing at the downtown pavilion after several years’ absence. She was right. It was easy to envision a meal made entirely from the homegrown products on display at the market’s rebirth: farm-raised chickens and pork, homemade breads, homegrown grains, asparagus and watercress from Heartland Harvest in Mt. Solon; bedding plants, greens and vegetable plants from Singing Earth in Hermitage; honey and candles from Hungry Hill in Shipman, and wine from Flying Fox Vineyard in Afton. Barbecue, hot dogs and sides were dispensed from Still Pork’n of Crimora, adding to the festive atmosphere.

Amy Childs is the market master for the Nelson County market, and she was in Waynesboro Wednesday as a vendor, selling mint, ajuga, vinca and sedum — all plants unloved and untouched by deer, she said, an important feature for rural gardeners. In the next few weeks she’ll have annual vines, fast growing landscape elements also eschewed by deer.

There’s a reason why the success of the Waynesboro Market is terribly important to farmers in Nelson and Augusta County as well as to the people of Waynesboro, she said. Those who sell on Saturdays in Nellysford, like Hungry Hill Honey and Childs;or in Staunton, like Heartland Harvest and Singing Earth, need a second selling day to make a full-time go of market farming. The biggest benefit, though, is for you, the consumer. No food safety or marketing program is as powerful as meeting your producer and inspecting your food before you buy it.

The Waynesboro Farmers Market will be at the Pavilion every Wednesday from 3-7 p.m.

Greens, eggs and sausage

At the Staunton-Augusta Farmers Market, I bought some fat bags of creasey, a wonderful spring vegetable I think of almost as a yearly tonic. Creasey always makes me remember Aunt Lucy Barlow, now long gone. In the tiny Southside community of Sugar Hill, Aunt Lucy began her search for creasey as soon as she could see it coming up in late February in patches of unplowed ground. It grew beneath the melting orange snow, stained by the heavy clay under the white sand that gives the rural crossroads its name.  I’d never seen this dry land cousin to watercress until I married into Lucy’s Campbell County family.  With its tiny leaves and rosette structure – kind of like dandelion greens except with delicate, round leaves – the creasey plants looked so much like weeds that I was surprised when Lucy brought a washbasin full into the kitchen to simmer with bacon for an April meal.  I grew to love the greens for their spicy taste,  like watercress, only sharper.  Lucy would chop them before and after cooking, drain them and heap them on a huge platter, surrounded with cooked and peeled hardboiled eggs. Chopped green onions and vinegar were passed with this meal, a complete spring dinner for when the backyard hens were laying. 

It was chilly, with a misting rain Saturday, and I wanted a hot soup. I took the creasey from Elk Run Farm some of the bulk sausage from Heartland Harvest Farm and some green onions and cooked everything together for a wonderful soup, from Simply in Season, available from Ten Thousand Villages. 

Fast food five: first bite

Which would you choose? 

Health magazine chose five restaurants to honor for making fast food a little healthier.  While on the road this week, I had a chance to try a couple of the magazine’s selections.  At Au Bon Pain (in Washington’s Union Station and other locations throughout the city) hungry travelers can choose between more than a dozen different  little packages of marinated vegetables, crisp greens, cut-up fruit, lean meat and bits of flavorful cheese, all for less than 200 calories.  I grabbed the smoked turkey, asparagus, cranberry chutney and gorgonzola package – about 10 flavorful bites for 140 calories. This is a good start, allowing customers to see a exactly how those bites add up.  But I had a few questions: you can look at a couple of pieces of smoked turkey wrapped around asparagus and assume it’s pretty low-cal.  Other choices are more ambiguous: Surrounding the perimeter of the restaurant were piles of gorgeous muffins, scones, bagels and cookies, chocolate-dipped shortbread, huge meat and cheese wraps and thick, beautiful sandwiches, each lacking any nutritional information. It would be easy for you to grab a cranberry walnut muffin, for example, thinking it a better calorie choice than, say, a breakfast quesadilla sandwich. You’d be right, but just barely (500 and 590 calories, respectively.) Au Bon Pain has a web site with lots of nutritional information, but only the low-calorie choices were labeled at the restaurant. This seems backwards to me.

People make bad choices partly because it’s so confusing to make the right ones.   

Bobby Flay on heat and balance

Bobby Flay blew into Norfolk last weekend with a stiff March wind, but everything about the famous food network chef was sunny and calm.  Behind the scenes at Norfolk’s scope, there was a shortage of poblanos, tomatillos and tortillas, but the show went on after a Farm Fresh manager opened up the nearest store and delivered Flay’s signature southwest ingredients.

 Flay had spent Friday challenging a Chesapeake chef to an impromptu throwdown involving a pulled-pork sandwich.  Both Leigh Ann Whippen of Woodchicks BBQ and Flay are masters of the grill, but they do two different kinds of grilling. Flay sears his fish and meat over a blazing fire, using limes, peppers, tomatoes and honey to deliver flavor and depth. Whippen’s grilling is low and slow, relying on the natural flavor of the meat for taste and texture., and Flay tried to match her hour for hour in the surprise challenge.  Who won the Tidewater throwdown? Flay said he couldn’t tell us until the show aired. Meanwhile, he entertained hundreds with his demonstration of rib-eyes on the grill and a lobster-avocado cocktail.  Find video from Delores Johnson of the Virginian-Pilot and read the full story of Bobby Flay’s Virginia appearance, including a peek behind the scenes of a cooking show, a few of Bobby’s secrets; and his recipe for Striped Bass with Succotash.