65 ~ Fat living in the lean time (and an olive oil update)

Here in the March lean time, spring has thus far been come-and-go, teasing us and then withdrawing, and the flow of maple sap has been corresponding fitful. With the biting cold of this past weekend, it felt a good time to make something particularly comforting and nourishing for Sunday dinner last night – call it ‘Driftless soul [support] food’.

Sunday morning, after finalizing a batch of maple syrup, I pulled from the chest freezer three venison backstrap cutlets (from the doe Corina and I killed in November) and a bag of chopped roma tomatoes. I rummaged on the bean shelf and found some of my favorites, for both beauty and taste (and story) – Hidatsa Shield Figure beans, plump like babies. 

I soaked the beans in a solution of salt and baking soda, to loosen the pectin and thus soften them. The cutlets I rubbed in advance with a mixture of salt, good black pepper and diced garlic. A tip for cooking any meat is to lightly salt it at least a couple hours in advance, giving time for the salt to be drawn into the interior of the meat, to both flavor and tenderize it throughout. 

With the beans and the venison prepped, it was time to visit one of my favorite spots, a beautiful spring near the house, which is lush with watercress this time of year. There is no other 200 square feet I know on Earth that offers as much nourishment for both soul and body as this spring. Its cold, clear water emerges silently, almost miraculously, from the rocks, into a pool covered by a cloak of vibrant green. It positively glows amid the drabity of March. A trip to the spring is like visiting a church. With a few snips of scissors, and some gratitude imparted, I collected a sufficiency for multiple salads, for that night and the week ahead. 

Back home, I drained the beans, put them in the InstaPot on top of some sautéed onions and garlic, and covered it all with a few inches of maple sap instead of water. Just that morning, while tooling around the kitchen, I’d picked up a tip listening to Thomas Kimball’s Milk Street Radio:  Don’t add tomatoes, nor any other acid source, at the beginning when cooking beans (or other foods that need to soften with cooking, such as potatoes).  Acid impedes the further breakdown of pectin, and beans or potatoes swimming in tomatoes will retain hardness even under long cooking.  So I pressure-cooked the beans about half-way on their own, then added the romas, some smoked paprika and Penzey’s Galena spice blend. 

When the bean stew was finished and just coasting, I uncorked a bottle from the Douro Valley of Portugal – a wonderful, deep, hearty red (specifically, 2017 Quinta das Carvalhas).  I then tossed some of the watercress with a pinch of salt, some of my nephew Keegan’s Italian olive oil, balsamic vinegar, and a touch of maple syrup to bring some ‘yin’ to the ‘yang’ of the spicy watercress and vinegar.  Next and last, I quickly grilled the cutlets on a hot cast iron. On the plate, I side dressed the cutlets with a dollop of Corina’s Swiss spruce bough jelly (tannenschössling), and sat down to an extraordinary meal.  Simple, yet sublime. 

I was additionally sated by the knowledge that nearly everything in the meal – the beans, tomatoes, onion, garlic, maple sap, maple syrup, tannenschössling, venison, watercress, and my nephew’s olive oil - was grown or gathered by me or people I love. The only ‘externals’ at the table were the wine, some salt & pepper, a pinch of baking soda, smoked paprika, some Galena spice blend and balsamic vinegar (and I’m working on a sub for the last one – I’ve found a recipe for maple vinegar, and will let you know how it goes…).

Life continues to be good amongst these hills, and may it be the same in your space, and your place at the bounty.

Italian olive oil update:

The Bird in the Bushers response was tremendous!  Dear readers, we completely sold my nephew out of his organic olive oil. I’ve sent him the money you’ve sent me, and 41 half-liter bottles are now on their way to the US.  I’ll be in contact with those who put in orders as soon as the shipment arrives. 

What I’m reading and can recommend:

 The Trail to Kanjiroba: Rediscovering Earth in an Age of Loss, by William deBuys (2021)

 This is the latest non-fiction work by the award-winning writer I got to know when he wrote a book about the wildlife conservation work I'm involved in, in Laos and Vietnam (The Last Unicorn). Trail weaves together multiple, intelligent layers of the history of science, history of the Earth, Buddhism and the culture of the Himalayas.  And my gosh, deBuys is deeply skilled with the pen (and/or keyboard), and a seemingly bottomless well of acute observation and fresh metaphor and simile (that is, unlike “bottomless well”). The book’s setting is Nepal, and this is a deeply important work – offering hard-won insights into how to maintain emotional well-being, even happiness, in a world where nature is being continually, and perhaps inevitably, lost.  We may not able be able to save the natural world to the extent we’d like, but we may be able to save ourselves.