Butternut Update
week 23
June 11, 2007
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The first butternut squash flower in full bloom
This week the butternut squash settled into their new mid-living room location and I started to wonder about their lack of contact with actual sunshine. I always thought of my house as light-filled, especially during the 8 month-long Dutch winter, when the trees are bare and my apartment on the 3rd floor is blindingly well-lit during the 6 hours of sun we have up here in the Polar Circle. The sun hits the water and my house is all a-dazzle with reflected light, animations on the ceiling and walls.
But in week 23, the effects of moving the plants just 1 metre away from the windows and into the living room are enormous. The squash, pumpkin and calabash are effectively always in the shade and the leaves of the butternut almost never get actual sunlight. Consequently, they’re not growing very vigorously, compared to outdoor growth. I had to move the pumpkin and calabash back into the kitchen to get some big time sun-dosing. It’s a pain in the ass, those big tubs taking up space. Whatevs. Beauty is suffering.
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Calabash and pumpkin in the kitchen doing much better thanks to contact with actual sunlight. I know, I need to wash my windows.
Flower buds have started forming and although I can’t tell which ones are male and which ones female, (the female being the only fruit-bearing ones) I’m counting about 8 buds per plant. Yesterday KvR convinced me it was OK to cut a few off, to encourage the others to thrive even more. I’m afraid to do so because it doesn’t feel that abundant and because I’ve never done this in an outdoor garden situation.
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The beginnings of a living room divider that will soon arch over the couch and form a guest room.
Growing indoors is in no way as satisfying as growing outdoors. In the Occitanian Kitchen Garden it seems like you can watch the squash grow. But I’m still enjoying endlessly fussing with the plants and my guests are completely mesmerised by the large plant life in the living room. We’re all fantasizing that there will be squash archways (squarshways?) forming a little guest room around the couch.
debra at 12:19 | Comments (0) | post to del.icio.us
Wonderfood in Arnhem
June 8, 2007
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Rosemary and violet candy by Katja Gruijters, photo by Annemarieke vd Broek used entirely with permission
Last Saturday I was invited to experience the opening dinner of Dudok in Wonderfood. Café Dudok is a very forward thinking brasserie that during the Arnhem Fashion Biennial participates in the city-wide embrace of design and fashion. Dudok doesn’t just pull out all the stops for ‘fashion month’ either, they do this several times a year. It’s rare and commendable that a classical café/bar is so devoted to regularly breathing fresh life into their venue, that they make it a habit of dispensing with the classical grand café atmosphere and cuisine. They change their menu, train the kitchen staff to adapt, and alter the interior and service. It’s as if Dudok actually believes that rot about collaborating with designers!
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Coreander candies by Katja Gruijters, photo by Annemarieke vd Broek used entirely with permission
This year the theme of the fashion biennial is ‘happy’ (no comment, I’m a bitch) and designer Katja Gruijters was called upon to design the ‘food concept’ that became Wonderfood.
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Okay, I’ll drink you. I’ll drink you up.
Without giving away any secrets, and there are secrets worth keeping, I can tell you a bit about a menu which will put your mind to wondering, in the most positive sense of the word. It’s an embellished 3-course menu fixe with options for peskies and vegetarians. I had the vegetarian menu because this year I’m making something of a career of lording my ethical superiority over all of the omnivores I know. From a culinary standpoint, vegetarians are well aware that the veg-option is rarely the most delicious, but because I’ve been a porkatarian for so long I feel qualified to say that the Wonderfood lacto-ovo mains is wing-flapping delicious, non, je ne regrette rien!
I can go on about one flavour or another, and say that this was great or that was great, but what I actually really liked is that Wonderfood worked so harmoniously within the context of a café that also wants to put on its best Beligan designer outfit for fashion month. This is the success, that the dinner, the menu, even the place settings, appropriately position Dudok as a platform within the Biennial. Bravo.
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Raspy…
Maybe the wonder in wonderfood stands not so much for wonderment as wondering. And though it would be unfair to compare this menu to a Michellin-starred dinner, it is fabulous to be confronted with uplifting combinations and narrative-rich ingredients and formats. Elixers and tears, sweet and salty crystals hailing from all manner of mines, Gruijters’ Wonderfood is truly a happy-making dinner, and not just because of the mysterious rockin’ silverware or the cock-ring - which ends up being totally useful, by the way!
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I want candy…
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The cock-rings that end up being totally necessary!
- Wonderfood by Katja Gruijters, a food concept for Café Dudok in Arnhem on the occasion of the Internationale Fashion Biennial (Mode Biënale) 2007
- Food designer, Katja Gruijters
- Dudok in Wonderfood
June 1-30
Koningstraat 40
6811 DH Arnhem
t +31 (0)26-3511872 - Ontwerp Platform Arnhem initiated the project and collaborated with Dudok to produce Wonderfood
- Annemarieke van den Broek Fotografie
- Graphic design of Wonderfood by Roel Vaessen and Marloes de Laat from In opdracht van designers
debra at 19:02 | Comments (2) | post to del.icio.us
Capture the yeast within
June 5, 2007
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That’s a chopstick for stirring, not a straw for slurping.
My girlbud and twisted lifecoach K’tje has been baking bread for hoards of guests and is in desperate need of yeast. Fresh yeast. Down in Occitania it seems that many a masterbaker is in fact a boulanger truqué. Dang faker bakers don’t even have a proper block of yeast on the premises! K’tje asks if I’ll bring some on down next time I come by to water my garden. But considering the amount of yeast this girl piles through, it’s prolly better she learn how to make her own dang yeast.
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A few days on, evidence of the breath of life
This quote is from Allrecipes.com, used entirely without permission.
Wild Yeast and Starters
Before yeast was available in grocery stores, bakers kept colonies of yeast for making bread. These colonies were known as starters, and were sometimes passed on from generation to generation. You can make your own starter using commercial yeast, by using potato water (from boiled potatoes) to attract and feed wild yeasts present in the air around us, or by using the yeast found on the skins of organic grapes or organic raisins. Keep the starter in a one-quart crock, jar, or airtight container.
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Stir it up
How to capture a wild yeast
Mix equal amounts of flour and water and let sit in a warmish place. Indoors on top of the electric fridge is ideal. I mention electric fridge because some people I know are considering making one of those non-electric Nigerian pot-in-pot fridges. Those things are only for cooling, they’re incapable of warming up the environment and therfore unsuitable for growing yeast colonies.
In about a day you should start noticing signs of life (bubbles, maybe a slightly funky smell) give it a stir and add some more flour. Keep doing this for about a week, each day stirring and adding flour (and possibly some water, if it feels too dry to stir).
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The bubbles come from little yeasts breathing
At a certain point, you’ll have grown too much yeast colony because we’re not big on the carbs anymore and we don’t eat sourdough pancakes everyday. Common practice is to throw a bit of the beige gold away. Wasteful! Once you have baked with your own yeast and have some notion of its potency, there’s nothing stopping you from placing large blobs of it in decorative recycled jars and giving them to your friends as presents.
You know that I’m kidding, right?
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Feed them
Alternatively you can slow down the process by putting the colony in the fridge. Feed it once a week. When you want to use some, take out a blob plus some (because this stuff isn’t as strong as the industrial stuff) and re-animate it again by putting it in a warm spot (above the fridge) and feeding it for a day or two.
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If you can’t stop kneading beige things, yeast is so needy that it’s more like keeping a pet than leavening.
Making yeast starter links: They’re all from one website, because I really like the simplicity of these recipes the best. Plus, I’m suffering from CO2 information overload and don’t particularly want to hear about it in my yeast recipes as well. ‘Nuff said!
- yeast Basics
- Wild Grape starter for hippies
- Basic Sourdough Starter Recipe
- Sourdough II
- Amish Bread Starter for nerds
debra at 21:21 | Comments (4) | post to del.icio.us
