For the last two nights, the low temperature hit 30° – a bit scary for the grapes, which are already in bloom. Tender young leaves were frostbit on about 50% of the shoots. It’s a little early yet to tell how much damage was done to the blossoms. Viewed through a loop, it looks like most may have escaped harm even though surrounding leaves were killed. Hopefully. It would be a bit discouraging to lose half the crop this early in the season.

Tomatoes, which are still covered at night, escaped damage. Elsewhere in the garden, spring is in full spring. The side panels have come off the solarium. With hot weather in the forecast, squashes and cucumbers are now in the ground and protected from foraging ducks.

Our first batch of ducklings has hatched – a communal effort among three hens, who laid and incubated the eggs as a team. Seventeen hatched – a single flock, with three mothers. Here they all are, on a walkabout.

With a couple of weeks of warm, dry weather promised, it’s time to get corn and beans seeds in the ground. And at the end of the month, peppers.

Flowers are blooming like crazy.

Nasturtiums

Dogwood

Iris tenax, growing around an erratic – a chunk of Montana granite, detritus from the Missoula floods

Even the oaks are beginning to leaf out. It’s spring in earnest on the farm. No reason to go anywhere else.

It’s been cold and wet – too cold and wet to work much outdoors. Indoors, the greenhouse is full of seedlings.

Everything is thriving – the heat mats really make a difference. Two heat mats now cover the entire top shelf. This week when my new cables and thermostat arrive, I’ll redo the bottom shelf so the the entire area can warm the seed trays from the bottom. Currently the lower heat mat is not quite as warm as we would like. The external thermostat should enable us to better adjust and control the temperature.

We’ve got more spinach and lettuces ready to plant out, as soon as we get a break in the weather. Herb seeds are planted – basil, parsley, chervil, and cilantro (which we renew repeatedly, throughout the summer). Various members of the onion family are up. Brassicas (cabbages, broccoli, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts) are sprouted and growing. Having lots of space in the greenhouse presented the opportunity to start a wide variety of tomatoes and peppers, for friends’ gardens as well as our own. In a couple of months when the weather will at last be warm enough for them to be planted out, the plants should be big and strong.

In the solarium, geraniums and nasturtiums are already growing. By the time the danger of frost is past and they can be moved outside, they may be already blooming.

Our citrus and artichokes are thriving, as well.

A couple of days over the last couple of weeks the sun saw the sun triumph briefly over winter clouds. On those days, temperatures in the solarium got up to over 100°. Next time the sun is forecast, I’ll have to reinstall the automatic vent that I disconnected and plugged for the winter.

Those precious days of sunshine presented a window of opportunity to help a neighbor build a horse shelter, using salvaged sheet metal and timbers. And just in time. The short respite of sunshine was followed by a mid-March snow storm.

Our neighbor raises Puerto Rican Paso Finos. He claims to be the only breeder of this variety west of the Florida panhandle. Irina passes this spirited fellow every day on her morning walk. She insisted he gets a feeder for his alfalfa and a bedding of fresh straw.

It’s been a quiet week on the farm. A few weeks of warm, almost springlike weather in January and February have been followed a renewed (hopefully last) assault from winter. Too cold and wet to work outside. A good time for cozying up by the wood stove and catching up on more sedentary tasks.

And time for comfort food. A friend surprised us with a gift of four duck carcasses. Ooh, duck soup! We have a favorite recipe, from the south of France.

Alicuit

Ingredients, for each carcass:

Carcass of duck (including wings & neck)
1 onion, diced
2 carrots, diced
1 turnip, diced
~ 1 doz. mushrooms, sliced
~ 1 doz. Kalamata olives, rinsed and sliced
1 large potato, diced
~ 1 T flour
1 C white wine
bouquet garni (thyme, parsley, bay leaf, celery)
1 clove
1 piece star anise
salt & pepper

Preparation:

Roast the duck carcass(es) in a roasting pan in a 400° oven, turning a couple of times, for about an hour or until bones are golden brown. Move to stove top. Add a healthy splash of white wine & add water until carcass is immersed. Add a couple of cloves, a piece of star anise, salt and pepper, & bouquet garni. Bring to boil and simmer for about an hour.

Strain stock through a colander (don’t forget to put a pot under the colander to catch the stock!). Skim the duck fat from the surface of the duck stock & save – it’s precious stuff.

When the carcass has cooled enough to work with, pick out and discard the bouquet garni and then pick the duck meet off the bones (save the skin, fatty bits & other bits you don’t want to eat as a treat for your dog).

While the carcass is cooling: in a stock pot, sauté the diced onion in duck fat until softened and translucent. Add the diced carrots and cook a bit, then add the turnips, then the mushrooms, & finally the olives. Add the flour and cook a bit (we were having a gluten-intolerant guest for dinner, so we left out the flour  & thickened with corn starch at the end instead). Add the stock, first a little bit at a time, stirring to incorporate the cooked flour as a paste.

Add the duck meat to the stock pot, bring to a boil, and simmer for ~ 1½ hours. About 30 minutes before the end, add the potatoes. When the potatoes have cooked so they’re just tender, serve.

Speaking of comfort food, nothing says “comfort” on a cold winter day better than a pot roast. I remember as a kid looking forward to a trip to Grandmother’s house on Sunday afternoon, where a pot roast would be simmering on the stove top. We’ve since discovered that adding a couple of spicy sausages to the pot makes a pot roast even more delectable.

Pot Roast à La Ferme Noire

1 beef rump roast
4 of your favorite sausages (we prefer something spicy, like Hot Italian or Southwest Chicken)
1 onion, diced
2 carrots
1 doz. mushrooms, sliced
1 oz olive oil
2 T flour
1 C red wine
1 T tomato paste
bouquet garni (thyme, parsley, celery, bay leaf)
2 cloves
salt & pepper
1 C beef stock

Pat the beef roast dry, then coat generously with salt and pepper. In a stock pot, heat the olive oil. Brown the meat and the sausages on all sides; remove and set aside. Add the onions and cook, stirring, until softened and translucent. Add mushrooms and cook a bit, stirring. Add flour and cook, stirring, for a couple of minutes. Splash in some red wine, stirring to make a paste with the flour. Add the rest of the red wine, stirring, then the beef stock. Add the tomato paste and stir in. Return the beef roast and sausages to the pot. Add the carrots, bouquet garni and cloves. Bring to a boil and simmer, covered, for 1½ hours or until the beef is tender enough to pull apart. Discard carrots and bouquet garni. Arrange roast and sausages on serving platter, surround with sauce, and serve.

Pot roast served with boiled potatoes & shredded turnips steamed with apple

We had a set of triplets this week, all girls. Triplets are always a bit worrisome, as you never know if the mother will be willing or able to handle all three. Two were big and strong, and appeared to be faring for themselves okay from the get-go.

But the littlest one, even though she’s feisty, gets a bit of supplemental feeding.

Zooey is mighty interested in that new lambchen

The forecast is for the weather to warm up and dry out a bit. As soon as it does, I’m back out into the garden. We took care of the deer problem last year. This year:  gophers, consider yourselves on notice. You’re not getting my carrots again!

A couple of weeks ago I mentioned that we were using a borrowed, home-made heat mat to start seeds. That worked out so well that we decided to add a permanent heat mat as a feature to the greenhouse.

First, a couple of problems surfaced that needed to be addressed. The borrowed heat mat was made by fastening heating  cables to the top of a used, stainless steel grass seed cleaning screen. The seedling trays are placed directly on top of the heating cables. Trouble is, the heat cables aren’t designed to be used this way – rather, they are designed to be placed in the bottom of a planter and then covered with soil. Also, the instructions warn against placing plastic trays (or anything flammable) directly on top of the cables. The bigger problem was that the thermostat that is build into the heating cables doesn’t work if it’s not immersed in soil, so the heating cables are “on” all the time. The soil in the seedling trays tended to get too hot and to dry out. In addition, the dimensions of the mat didn’t match the dimensions of the seedling trays, so  a lot of space was wasted. Only three trays could be placed on the mat at any one time, although room could be found for other six-pack containers and single 4″ pots.

For our permanent mat, we purchased a 48′ “Gro Quick” electric soil warming cable from our local Nichol’s Garden Nursery. We laid it out directly on the lower shelf of the greenhouse, in a pattern something like this (this example is from the included instructions).

Our layout had one more run, so the thermostat was on the other end from the power supply. Dimensions are 22″ by 8′; just the right size to fit nine 10.5″ x 21″ seeding trays. At 2112 square inches, this is just a bit larger in area than the recommended 12 square feet (1728 square inches) for the 48′ cable. We then buried the cable and thermostat in sand, and covered everything with six stainless steel screens we picked up from Burcham’s Metals for a mere $6.30.

With our friends’ permission, we also set about to reconstruct and reconfigure the borrowed heat map. Since we wanted this one to be portable, we laid the cable out on a 21″ x 74″ piece of ½” exterior plywood – exactly the right size to hold seven seedling trays (we were limited to 74″ in length because that’s the length of the plywood scrap we had). We glued plywood strips around the edges; six more strips across the width formed individual”compartments” within the overall length. We filled the compartments with sand, burying the cable and the thermostat; then stapled a sheet of scrap aluminum sheeting on top, running a bead of caulk along the edges and across the divider strips to prevent any sand leaking out.

The area of this mat, at 1554 square inches, is a little less than the 1728 square inches recommended for a 48′ cable; consequently, it’s proving to be a little warmer than our larger, permanent installation.

Here are both heat mats, with a couple of seedling trays removed to show how they were put together.

And here’s the whole set-up in action.

As you can see, the seedlings are thriving. And funny enough, we’re out of room on the heat mats already. Two weeks ago, we had none. Then again, a year ago we would wait until March to begin starting most seeds.

Hmm, Cory says she has yet another homemade heat mat that would benefit from being rebuilt . . .

Snows in December, a solid week of 23°- 24° lows just this last week. Yet we’ve been eating lettuce out of the garden all winter long. Row covers have proved to be the trick.

The wire framework is made from 5′ wide remesh, which comes in 150′ rolls. The wire frames are covered with 6 mil polyethylene sheeting; a weight at each end an another section of wire mesh thrown over the top keeps the plastic from blowing away when the wind blows. The row covers not only provide additional warmth during the days and protect from frost at night. They also keep the soil from becoming soggy and compacted from the rains, keeping the soil loose and fluffy.

We’re now harvesting lettuces we planted out as seedlings late last fall.

We planted spinach at the same time, but it mostly got eaten by voles. A few surviving plants are finally beginning to send out new leaves.

In early January, we planted out a new set of seedlings which should be ready about the time the bed we’re harvesting now is done.

We grow mostly loose leaf lettuces to be harvested leaf by leaf: Australian Yellow, Black-Seeded Simpson, Flashy Butter Oak, Royal Oak Leaf, New Red Fire, Merlot, Red Sails. We’ve also planted a couple of head lettuces: Anuenue, a batavian; and Winter Density, a romaine type.

After years of frustration, mâche is finally thriving beneath the Solexx row cover.

In the greenhouse, seedlings are growing for the next planting of mâche, lettuces, and spinach.

And we’ve started other seeds as well, so plants will be ready to transplant out when the weather warms up in spring: onions, scallions, shallots, and leeks; pak choy; a selection of tomatoes; and a few sweet peppers. Normally we wouldn’t start tomatoes and peppers this early, but rather wait until temperatures warmed up a bit in March. But a friend loaned us a home-made heat mat, and since we’ve now got an outlet in the greenhouse we just had to give it a try. We’ll see what kind of germination rate we get.

The worst of the cold weather is probably behind us, as spring approaches. The sun is out, and thoughts once again turn to the garden. It’s timely to review: how did our solarium perform over the short days and freezing nights of winter?

Adding thermal mass proved not to be enough to protect tender plants if outside temperatures dropped below ~25°. For the coldest nights, we needed to come up with a supplementary heat source. We use brooder lamps for ducklings. Why wouldn’t the same concept work for plants?

Electricity was the primary problem: a source wasn’t readily available, and providing a permanent hookup didn’t seem worth the cost or effort since power was needed only a few nights out of the year. So I wired an outlet at the solarium ceiling for two heat lamps to hang above our most sensitive citrus, an Improved Meyer Lemon and an Owari Satsuma Mandarin from One Green World that we planted right in the ground.

Power is provided when needed by plugging as extension cord into a male receptacle in a weatherproof exterior “inlet”.

This system works so well that we’ve moved into the solarium all of the cold-sensitive plants that we previously overwintered in the greenhouse. Space is at a premium in this 7′ x 7′ structure, so we’ve had to be inventive. Around the Yuzu Ichandrin, we installed shelving for pots . . .

. . . and above, a piece of ¾” pipe serves to hang containers.

Staggering the height of the plants allows more to be squeezed in along the pipe.

In the ground within the solarium, we’ve been growing herbs all winter long, herbs that otherwise wouldn’t grow in winter: cilantro, parsley, and an herb form of celery.

Fresh “cutting” or “soup” celery is great to have in the garden as celery, along with carrots and onions, are the three essential aromatic vegetables used in making stocks and sauces. Buying a whole head of celery in the store is wasteful. Although a good market will let you buy one stalk at a time, we’re a long way from a market. So keeping fresh celery on hand would otherwise be a challenge. Now all we have to do when celery is called for is wander outside -  with the solarium, any time of the year – pluck a few stalks, and tie them together with other herbs in a bouquet garni. Nichols has the seeds: VCE185, Afina. Plant seeds once, and from then on the celery will self-seed prolifically.

An added benefit: as long as I was wiring the solarium, I installed an outlet in the adjacent greenhouse to provide power for a heat mat. A heat mat will enable us to begin sprouting seeds in early February, a month earlier than would otherwise be possible. So it’s now time to begin perusing the seed catalogs and planning for spring plantings. Nichols and Territorial, here we come!

Friday night. What could be better for a simple dinner on a frosty night, while sitting on the sofa watching a DVD, than Flammkuchen – German pizza?

Flammkuchen – literally, “flame cake” – is a dish from the Alsace-Lorraine region (much of which bounced back and forth between France and Germany over the last couple of centuries).

Flammkuchen is made like a thin-crust pizza, topped with crème fraîche, onions, and Speck - a salt-cured and lightly smoked ham. My first taste of Flammkuchen came about two decades ago while Irina and I were staying in Cousin Alexander’s Bauernhof, right in the heart of the small German village of Oberotterbach.

Elements of Cousin Alexander’s “farm” house – like the rear wall, which the house shares with the town Catholic church and cemetery – date from the 13th century. All the while we stayed there those church bells pealed every fifteen minutes, day and night, ringing out the quarter-hour and the hour. It’s enough to make one an atheist.

It really was (and is still) a farmhouse, dead square in the middle of town. Behind those big doors are a central courtyard; barns, stalls, and sheds; tractors and wagons; a well; a kitchen garden; and a wine and root cellar beneath the living quarters. Farmers live in the village, and sortie out to their fields each day.

Oberotterbach lies just across the border from the French town of Wissembourg, which marks the start of the Deutsche Weinstrasse. Here’s the Deutsches Weintor through which we drove back and forth between Germany and France in our ancient, borrowed Fiat Cinquecento.

The border control station was just on the other side of the “wine gate”. The border controls were a joke, as they were easily circumvented. Rather than staying on the main road, instead take one of the numerous back roads that crisscross the border through the vineyards. During our stay there, EU borders were opened and the inspection stations between Germany and France shuttered.

 We often walked the ~4 km to Wissembourg from Oberotterbach through the vineyards and over a shoulder of the Sonnenberg, avoiding roads completely, ending up in a bar where the Gitanes and Gauloises smoke hung so thick and heavy you had to crawl on you hands and knees to see and to breath. But I digress.

 The oldest building in Oberotterbach contains a Zehntkeller (literally, “10th cellar”), which was used for storing the local baron’s “10th” share of the harvest from the surrounding area. Kind of like a 13th century headquarters of a local IRS. Centuries later, a cramped corner of that vaulted cellar housed a jazz club called the Musikantebuckl.

Along with the music they served local beer, local wine, and Flammkuchen baked in a wood-fired pizza oven. Love at first bite: I was closer to heaven than a kid from Sacramento could ever reasonably expect to find himself.

Though the Musikantebuckl is still jumping, getting there on a Friday night is now out of reach for us. But it’s easy to recreate a bit of that heaven right here. The biggest challenge is to find a substitute for Speck, which isn’t readily available here. Some recipes call for bacon, but we find bacon too fatty and too smoky. We’ve found that the uncured side of pork we get when we buy a half a hog (which would be called bacon if it were smoked) works just fine once it’s trimmed of all fat.

Flammkuchen à La Ferme Noire

For two 12″ Flammkuchen:

1 lb Irina’s bread dough
½ lb well-trimmed pork belly, cut into small cubes
1 medium red onion
6 oz crème fraîche (we use the delicious crema Mexicana that is available locally)
Sea salt
Crushed black pepper
A small piece of a whole nutmeg, crushed.

Place the dough on a well-floured surface. Divide into two pieces and roll into balls, coating liberally with flour. Flatten a bit with the palm of your hand, and roll out with a pizza roller, dusting with additional flour as necessary.

This dough is really wet, so it demands a bit of special care for the process to go smoothly. When you’ve finished rolling the skins out, make sure they are well dusted with flour. Fold into halves, then quarters; place on a board covered with wax paper (we use a couple of pieces of Masonite cut into 12″ x 12″ squares), unfold, and set aside to rise for an hour or so and to dry on top a bit.

While the dough is resting, rising, and drying, trim any fat off the pork and cut the meat into small cubes. Put the cubes of meat in a bowl, add salt, crushed pepper, and crushed nutmeg, and toss until the meat is evenly coated. Peel the onion and cut into thin strips, separating the layers.

About half an hour before cooking, put your pizza stone into the oven to pre-heat. You’ll want to use a very hot oven (like 500°). We most often cook pizza outdoors on a gas barbeque, especially in the summer when you don’t want to be heating up the kitchen.

While the oven and pizza stone are getting hot, prepare the Flammkuchen. The pizza skins must be transferred to a make-up board. We use larger and thicker pieces of Masonite for this purpose, 16″ x 24″ x ¼”; Masonite has a slick and slippery surface, and the ample size of the make-up board allows plenty of room to get the pizza sliding around freely before sliding it onto the hot pizza stone to bake. First sprinkle the make-up board liberally with corn meal (the corn meal acts like little ball bearings). Then flip the pizza skin on top of the corn meal so it’s waxed-paper side up, and peel off the wax paper.

Spread the crème fraîche over the pizza skins. Sprinkle evenly with the onions, then with the seasoned meat. Tap the side of the make-up board to make sure the pizza is sliding free, then slide the pizza off the make-up board and onto the hot pizza stone.

Close the cover (or the oven door) and bake until the crust is browned and crispy. As my dear departed father would say, video camera in hand, here we are.

We had planned to save one of the two Flammkuchen in the freezer for another day, but it tasted so darn irresistible we ate them both!

We have made vegetarian versions of Flammkuchen, substituting local wild mushrooms (from The Mushroomery) for the pork. While not traditional, it’s really delicious, too.

After a barren spell in November, our Muscovy ducks are laying again. Keeping a light on in the duck shed until 10:00 every night seems to have made a difference, as they began laying again shortly after we began that regimen.

Some of the ducks are content to lay in the duck shed. When we open the doors to let the ducks out in the morning (having been shut in over night to protect them from predators) there the eggs are, in the nests the ducks nestle into the straw in the corners of the shed. All we have to do is bend down and pick them up.

For other ducks, laying their eggs in the duck shed simply won’t do. So they seek out less convenient places. Some locations become semi-permanent, and they revisit them regularly: underneath the outdoor workbench behind the potting soil containers, behind the garbage and recycling cans, underneath the tarp covering the compost pile.

A few hens, however, are really secretive. They don’t want you to know where they are laying their eggs, and if you discover one location they tend to abandon it and find yet another. When the duck shed door is opened in the morning these secretive hens set off: alone, determined, and with a purpose. If you want to find their eggs, you have to follow them, and do so carefully and innocuously.  If they see they’re being followed, they will abort their clandestine mission. And if you divert your attention for just a moment they can vanish, disappearing into the brush.

Meet one of our surreptitious hens.

After watching this hen for several mornings I finally succeeded in tracing her to her nest right in the middle of a pile of brush and prunings waiting to be burned. And I do mean right in the middle. I had to carve my way in, using hand shears to tunnel a passageway through the bramble. Stretched out flat on my belly with only my ankles hanging out, I retrieved eight eggs.

Crawling on my belly like a reptile to find eggs simply wouldn’t do. I set a torch to that pile. She’ll never use that nest again.

The next day, that hen once more set out for her burn pile. What few coals remained of that pile were still smoldering. She circled it again and again, repeatedly coming back to and stopping at what had been her entrance. You could almost see her scratching her head: what the hell happened here?

Still, every morning she’s setting off towards where her burn pile used to be. There’s got to be a new nest. One morning I’m trying to follow two hens. Our burn pile hen disappears behind a copse of trees and brush. I rush to see where she’s gone. Damn, lost them both!

This morning, she’s off again. I’m keeping a loose tail. When I see her round that copse, I high-tail it over there. She sees me, pretends she’s just out on a stroll. But I’ve seen where she’s been looking, where she was headed.

That’s an abandoned wood rat mound, next to an old, rotting Douglas-fir stump. A little searching, and there it is, nestled under and inside the wood rat mound: her latest nest, containing a half a dozen eggs.

Another victory, albeit temporary. Tomorrow the game begins anew.

When you buy a whole or a half lamb from a local farmer, it’s not like going to the supermarket where you can pick out the exact cut you want, whether it be shoulder chops, loin chops, or a leg. Around here, you’re lucky to find a store that carries any lamb at all. In the mid-valley, the nearest place to buy a choice cut like a leg or a rack is probably Corvallis, at an upscale market such as Market of Choice.

When you buy local locker lamb, (half or whole) you get everything – from the neck to the shanks. You have to know how to cook the various cuts, as they each demand to be treated differently. And when it comes to an valuable cut like a rack, you don’t want to ruin it. Unlike a rack you buy at a market that’s been trimmed by a butcher, you cannot simply throw it in the oven and roast it. The rack has to be prepped for cooking first. If your rack comes wrapped in white paper from your local slaughterhouse, you have to prep it yourself.

A rack of lamb comes with a thick layer of fat across the back.

You have to take that layer of fat off. Leave it on and the rack will be impossible to cook properly. What’s more, the result will be a rack that is difficult to cut and serve; and the meat will be drenched in excess, unpleasant-tasting fat.

Fortunately, removing the layer of fat is easy. Simply grab it by one corner and rip it off – it comes off in one piece.  Begin by separating the fat from the meat with a knife at a corner, then pull on the fat, continuing to cut between the fat and the meat with a knife as necessary as you pull the fat off.

Now doesn’t that look better?

There’s some meat embedded within that layer of fat that shouldn’t be wasted. Trim it out rather than throwing it away.

There’s more . . .

You’ll end up with a nicely trimmed rack, a little pile of lamb meat – enough for maybe a soup or a burrito or a stir fry – and a big chunk of fat to be thrown out.

If you want, you can cut out a little of the meat between the rib bones, leaving little bone handles to grab onto when eating. Add that meat to your pile of saved meat trimmings.

We’ve trained our butcher to cut off the chine bone, and he mostly gets it right. With the chine bone off, it’s a simple thing to cut between the ribs, carving off individual chops for serving when the rack is done. If the chine bone is left on the rack, this is impossible – so you have to make sure the chine bone is removed completely at this stage. If some of it is still there you’d best cut it off. A hacksaw works. The picture above shows the chine bone properly removed.

Now the rack is almost ready for roasting. Rub it with sea salt and freshly crushed pepper. Chop up a clove of garlic or two, and the leaves from a nice sprig of rosemary. Put in a bowl with a teaspoon of prepared stone-ground mustard and a splash of red wine.  Whisk in an ounce or so of olive oil. Coat the rack on all sides with the marinade and let sit at room temperature for a while, until you’re ready to pop it in the oven.

Roast the rack in a pre-heated 450° oven for 20 minutes or so, or until the internal temperature reaches 116° (check with an instant-reading thermometer).  Do not overcook! Rack of lamb should be served rare. Remove the rack to a serving dish and let it rest for a few minutes while you get the rest of the meal on the table and prepare the sauce. The sauce can be really simple -deglaze the roasting pan with a healthy splash of red wine, scraping up all the tasty brown bits.  Carve the rack, cutting between and separating the individual riblets. Pour the sauce around the rack and serve.

Bon Appétit!

Old friends from Seattle days, who now live near Hillsboro, were coming to visit this last weekend, along with their son home from college during break. As a special treat, we pulled a package of moose roast, labeled “strap steak”, from the freezer. Saturday morning, I unwrapped it to begin preparing it for cooking. Lo and behold, a flank steak! Of moose!

Flank steak holds special status in our home. The first meal I fixed for Irina back when we were courting was a beef flank steak, cooked over coals on little hibachi at my bachelor pad in Winslow, cooked rare and sliced thin, served with Brussels sprouts, steamed just crisp. Guys: quite the thing to impress the ladies. It worked!

Three exclamation points already, a bit much. But the sentences are true and righteous exclamations – and it gets better. We had already procured special mushrooms for the meal: white elm, and wild hedgehog and chanterelles from The Mushroomery. Grilled flank steak of moose, served with a rich mushroom sauce and mashed potatoes.

First, the sauce.

Wild Mushroom Sauce

4 T goose fat (or duck fat, or butter)
¾ lb. wild or good quality mushrooms, brushed and coarsely chopped
1 large shallot, finely chopped
1 clove garlic, peeled and finely chopped
2 T flour
1 C red wine
1 C beef stock
½ C tomato purée
bouquet garni (parsley, celery greens, thyme, bay leaf)
1 whole clove
2-3 carrots, whole
Salt & pepper to taste

Heat the fat in a saucepan over medium-high heat. Add shallot and sauté until softened and translucent. Add garlic, cook for a minute or two, then add mushrooms. Cook, stirring, for a few minutes, then add flour. Mix well and cook for a few minutes, scraping the bottom of the pan so the flour doesn’t scorch. Add wine a splash at a time, stirring to form a smooth, thick paste. Continue adding wine, stirring, then add the beef stock and tomato purée. Add bouquet garni, clove, and whole carrots. Bring to boil and simmer for 1 – 1½ hours until reduced to desired consistency. Remove and discard bouquet garni and carrots and season with salt and pepper to taste. May be done ahead of time and re-heated just before serving.

Fresh vegetables are scarce this time of year, but lightly cooked sauerkraut tastes crisp and fresh.

Light winter sauerkraut

1 lb sauerkraut, rinsed three times in fresh water to remove salt
1 small yellow onion, coarsely chopped
1 large apple, peeled, cored and cut into chunks
2 T butter
1 clove
1 small chunk of a nutmeg
6 juniper berries
1 bay leaf
½ C white wine (riesling or gewürztraminer are perfect)
Salt and white pepper to taste

In a saucepan, heat the butter and sauté the onion until softened and translucent. Add apple and cook a bit. Add the rinsed and drained sauerkraut and toss until well mixed and cooked a bit. Smash the clove, nutmeg, and juniper berries and add to sauerkraut along with bay leaf, salt, and crushed white peppercorns.  Add white wine and cook, covered, for ½hour. Remove bay leaf and serve.

The moose flank steak was simplicity itself: rub with a little sea salt and freshly cracked black pepper, and goose fat which we happened to have on hand; let sit out at room temperature for a couple of hours before cooking; and cook over a hot barbeque until just rare (116° internal temperature at thickest part). Slice thinly and serve.

We began with a little salad made with fresh lettuces from the garden, dressed with a choice of local olive oil or local hazelnut oil. Our guests brought a bottle of Cliff Creek Cellars 2005 Syrah, made from grapes from Sams Valley Vineyard in the Rogue Valley. The wine was big, robust and full-fruited, a perfect accompaniment to the rich and deeply flavored moose.

Next morning before our guests departed, we fixed a brunch of scrambled duck eggs, yellow potatoes fried in goose fat, and Irina’s bread toasted and served with raspberry/pinot noir jam. A dozen duck eggs, and duck eggs are big. 20- year-old young men eat a lot – no leftover moose from dinner for a lunch burrito.

Life is hard on the farm. I’m going to miss that goose fat when it’s gone.