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The morning before the picnic, Mama spent cooking. That is, if it was a serious, planned-in-advance feast, like the Ceramic Department Annual Picnic. If it was an informal get-together, she would bring whatever she had planned for dinner. To this day, I make deviled eggs and pickled beets for a summer dinner with friends. “Wow,” they say, “deviled eggs! I haven’t thought about deviled eggs for years!” Any day now I expect to pick up one of the fancy food magazines and see a recipe for deviled eggs, and one for pickled beets. Until then, here are my mother’s recipes for both:
Put as many eggs as you need in cold water with a teaspoon of salt. Bring them to a boil and simmer them for 10 minutes. If you boil them violently they are apt to crack and the whites come out in a very disagreeable fashion. Cool them by running cold water into the pot in the sink, and peel the eggs carefully. Old eggs will peel easily, very new eggs will take irritating bits of white with them. For this reason middle-aged eggs are best. But if they are too old the yolks will be green around the edges and not in the middle of the egg. After you have peeled them, cut them carefully in half and reserve the whites. Mash the yolks with the back of a fork, adding salt, pepper and mustard to taste, with some mayonnaise if desired. Gently put the yolk back into the whites with the fork, making a pleasing pattern on the tops with the tines. Sprinkle with paprika. Chill and serve.
You can add all kinds of things to these, and sometimes I put a slice of olive on top, or a little parsley, but if you have good fresh eggs you can keep them very simple and they are delicious. I use yellow mustard.
First, cook the beets. Cut the greens off leaving about an inch near the root. Put the beets in cold water and bring to the boil, then boil gently until cooked, usually about 45 minutes. Drain the beets and cool slightly, then slip off the skins with your hands. Slice the beets into a bowl. Heat water, vinegar and sugar until the sugar is dissolved and pour over the beets. The proportions are about 1/3 C. vinegar and 2 tsp. sugar to 2 lb. of beets, with water as needed. My mother used to slice an onion with the beets, and sometimes add a few hard-boiled eggs as well. You can easily make these with canned beets, just use the beet juice with vinegar and sugar added instead of water. The amounts of sugar and vinegar can be adjusted for taste.
And what about the corn? The corn we ate at home, cooked in a big pot of water on the stove. There was Golden Bantam, and Country Gentleman. Golden Bantam was yellow and Country Gentleman was white. That was before the modern hybrids, so the minute the corn was picked the sugar began to turn into starch, so you got it (always from a roadside stand or your neighbor’s garden or the university ag store) right before you were going to cook it and rushed it back home, shucked it and threw it into the boiling water. We kids often had to shuck it and there was always a worm or two – this was before spraying as well – and you broke off the tip with the worm in it.
I like corn to be a bit “corny” – that is, starchy – probably because that’s what I grew up with, and I still don’t eat it until it comes in here on the farm. One summer, the farmer grew some Golden Bantam just for me. The new corn is better, but the heavy taste took me right back to Illinois in August.
Corn is better, but tomatoes are worse. I wait all year for the first real tomatoes, heavy and warm from the field, the old-fashioned beefsteaks with their cracks and green streaks, each one big enough to make a whole sandwich from one slice.
From Food on the Food, Tammy Donroe (Waltham)
30-Second Vinaigrette
Here’s my everyday vinaigrette technique. There’s no recipe—just a basic ratio that you can scale up or down depending on how many people you’re feeding. Store any extra in a jelly jar in the fridge. The olive oil might congeal, but some time warming at room temperature and a brisk whisking will revive it.
1 part red wine vinegar, white wine vinegar, or apple cider vinegar
Touch of Dijon mustard (optional)
2-3 parts extra-virgin olive oil (I like my dressings tangy, so I use closer to 2)
Salt and pepper
Whisk together vinegar and mustard. Add oil in a slow, steady stream until the mixture thickens and emulsifies. Season with salt and pepper.
To upgrade this to a 3-minute vinaigrette, juice a lemon instead of using vinegar, add the mustard along with some minced garlic or shallots and chopped herbs. Then whisk in the oil, salt, and pepper.
Buttermilk Herb Dressing
2 parts buttermilk
2 parts mayonnaise
1 part minced shallots or onions
1 part chopped herbs like tarragon, parsley, and chives (but the seasonal variations are endless)
Salt and pepper
Whisk or shake together in a jar, adding more buttermilk if too thick, or more mayo if too thin. Season with salt and pepper. Store in the fridge. Always shake before using. This is also great for crudité platters. Use extra mayo for a thicker consistency.
The farmer was having a quiet talk to himself the other day about growing corn, and I took some notes. So here they are, I call them Corn Facts.
The farmer begins by picking varieties, about ten out of the hundreds available. He chooses the varieties based on several considerations; taste, of course, and growing characteristics for the time of year are the important ones. Experience and knowledge of the land he grows on guide his choices.
In early spring here in New England we are apt to have cold weather, wet weather, hot hum id weather, or a combination of them all. There are varieties of corn for each kind of weather: early spring corn that germinates out of the ground easily in cold weather, reliable but not especially tasty, varieties which are not reliable but taste good, and varieties which fall in between these extremes. The farmer tries to strike a happy medium, planting those which he knows from experience will taste best and are as reliable as can be without sacrificing taste. He tries a few new ones each year and keeps growing them or not, based on experience and feedback. He will not list for me the varieties he likes best. He says it’s a secret.
As the season progresses and the corn grows, the weather determines how well and quickly it matures and how it tastes. Cool, cloudy weather at the time the silk appears means less sugar production – the corn tastes less sweet. In hot weather the corn matures quickly which means the sugar turns to starch fast. Good corn taste is a combination of sweetness and and starch, and is a matter of taste. The farmer prefers the corn to be on the sweet side, so he tends to pick it when it is young. Every day, he tastes the corn raw in the field, finding the balance between the two. Those taste tests determine what he picks and when. Too young, and the corn tastes crispy and sweet, but not like corn. Too old, and it’s starchy and heavy. Also, by picking the corn on the young, sweet side, he can keep ahead of the bird damage. He says that if the birds finish with the old corn – the picked- over field – before you pick the new corn, they will “jump on it” and ruin it before you get a chance.
All during the spring, he has been planting different varieties at different times in order to have a consistent crop from late July until the first frost, usually sometime in late September. Different varieties have different tastes of course. Some are sweet and not corny, some are corny and not sweet, and all are affected by the weather, the kind of soil, the cultivation they get, and when they are picked. Wet land gets one variety, dry land gets another. All these factors are balanced by the farmer, who knows the soil. As the summer draws on, the varieties he has planted are longer-maturing, the ears are larger, the quality os better and the picking time is shorter, because the weather is hotter. Corn sales increase now too, from now until the middle of September. They decrease then, which is a pity, because the last corn of the season is sometimes the best.
This knowledge, experience, constant testing and tasting goes on all season. It reminds me of a painter who revisits each corner of the canvas, touching up here, changing that, making the composition better, or of a poet revising a poem, changing a line, shortening it, lengthening it, adding an image, subtracting a word, both artists striving to arrive at the perfect image, the poem that says exactly what is meant and no more, that will satisfy the reader of the poem, the viewer of the picture, the devourer of the corn .
