fish mashed potatoes

I have a recurring nightmare where I attend the first day of a class, it feels like college and I come to it with a particular desire to make up for past mistakes. Like, to be a good student this time. Time then warps (classic dreamtime) and I am lost, moving through a fog of confusion I find the classroom and it feels like just in time. It’s the third to last class, I’ve missed every lecture and assignment with a few to go for me to soak in the shame of my failure.

This has been happening a little more lately, speaking to the power that “back to school” still has even though it’s been over 8 years now. The butterflies are still deep in my stomach and I am thinking about how to attend to them. Which makes me crave brandade. A treat from cod, salted to preserve it indefinitely, also a little ritual and a lesson. When I told my boyfriend (and frequent collaborator) Mac about this week’s blog he remarked that there is no food I’ve learned more from. And I had never thought about it explicitly, but now I am.

When I was actually in college I would often go read at Jody Williams’ restaurant Buvette in the West Village. Everything was really small and expensive, also delicious. It wasn’t really a productive place to be, teetering on a stool at the bar with a thimble of water and a single tiny plate. I was really just going to eat brandade. At Buvette they served you a pot of brandade, cold from the fridge with a side of warm toast made from craggy bread. I was enamored with the fishy potato spread, though it took a few years, the distance of another city, and the responsibility of explaining difficult menus to reconnect with that dish.

This particular dish served in this particular way demonstrates the value of both texture and temperature in food as the toast and the spread contrast. The toast is warm and dry, sometimes scratching the top of your mouth. The spread is the salve, cool and soft, sort of soothes the incident with the toast. I realized I noticed these things before I noticed how it tasted, which is also good actually. But the flavor was secondary in a way I just didn’t know how to value before (this is represented actually in the “How to Taste Food” suggestion list I wrote for my coworkers, shared in Flavors saved my life pt 1). This felt so new and refreshing to me, watch any Food Network program and they say the word flavor or phrase “amount of flavors” many times. It also recently has opened the door to my love of the breakfast burrito from Milk & Honey, a study in soft. And a good food for when your wine job butts heads with your flower job. We haven’t spoken much about hangovers here but maybe someday. The other lesson is one about labor and pressure in restaurants. I’ve come to love that this can be made before service by someone cooking, devoting their attention to this one thing (who knows if this is the kitchen at Buvette I am just riffing) to be passed off to the server for the final touches. Putting bread into a toaster, putting these two things on a plate. Handing it to me. I sometimes think about how it would be possible to reorganize labor in a restaurant, this sometimes makes me think it could be possible.

I obviously also tried to make it to pretty ill effect. The first was for a dinner party that had a dips appetizer spread. I used Jody Williams recipe and maybe did it wrong (? I was young), but it was too liquidy. Would never set to create the thick fishy mashed potato I was looking for. Giving up a bit too easily, I wouldn’t try again until 5 years later when I was thinking about Rainbow Wines actually. A bar menu, how Cub and I could have a “Big Night” that didn’t break us. Brandade had become essential to that.

I’m still learning from brandade, you really can always go deeper. Salt cod appears in many cuisines, with roots as something cheap and accessible in Portugal, Southern France, and Italy. It is no longer that cheap and definitely not accessible (salt cod can be hard to find, but Fresh Market in Bucktown usually stocks it in a box and Armitage produce has it in large pieces). It was also a food produced in the US for export, to feed enslaved people working sugar plantations in the Carribbean. Links that I learned from are here and here. While the roots for this dish and American salt cod production are a bit different they intertwine in my kitchen (when I buy salt cod from Fresh Market it is from “Bos’n”) and show me a part of history that was hard to get in school. These are the stories I’m interested in learning and working with now. Perpetually back to school I guess.

Brandade and butter I made for my bday this year

Brandade Recipe (a tweaked version from Margot Henderson’s cookbook “You’re All Invited”) for 6-8 people

This is not a spur of the moment recipe, but I think appropriate for a food that has offered so much meditation. It also uses a lot of kitchenware (sorry).

250g salt cod fillets

couple sprigs of thyme

2 bay leaves

1 lemon

200g yukon gold potatoes (or similar)

150ml olive oil

2 cloves gently smashed garlic

100-150 ml heavy cream

salt & pepper

1. Soak the salt cod in water for 24-48 hours, changing the water as much as you can.
2. Put the fish in a small pot with fresh cold water, the thyme, bay leaves, and half a lemon.
3. Bring to a boil, then turn down to simmer for about 15 minutes.
4. While the fish is going peel and chunk your potatoes. I just throw them into the pot that had the fish when it’s finished cooking, turn the heat up and let them boil until soft (20-25 minutes).
5. When the potatoes are in the pot, measure out your olive oil and put it to a pan on low heat. Add the garlic and let them infuse into the oil for about 5 minutes.
6. Take the potatoes out and mash them in a bowl big enough to eventually fit all the ingredients.
7. Add the fish to a food processor and blitz it while slowly adding most of the garlicky oil.
8. Put the fish in the mashed potato bowl and mix. Add the cream until achieving your desired consistency, probably adding a little more oil as you go too. 
9. Use the other lemon half, salt, and pepper to taste.
10. Serve cold, drizzled with olive oil and a side fresh toast as an appetizer, snack or part of a larger spread. You can also warm it up and eat it as an entree if you’d like, maybe with braised green beans and possibly a sausage, it is getting colder out.

a "spread" from the same day (the pot is full of beans and greens)

For wine, I didn’t drink wine when I would eat this so they are not necessarily twinned in my head though I do think it’s excellent wine food. Cub and I were just talking about how this is the best time of year to drink whatever you want because the Chicago weather doesn’t feel so exhausting and demanding. A time you can afford to be a bit more intellectual. So I would suggest to open something you’re curious about, get distracted by it and dig into it. You can always DM us with questions about the stories of the wines, a lot of the time there is almost too much to say in other places.  Or you can try this Aligoté.

A carton of plums, embracing acidity & astringency

 
Quiterie, 1840

• Damsons    - 

Plums appear at Midwestern markets for a long stretch, from July to October, as the many different varieties like Greengage, Mirabelle, Italian prune, French prune, and more come into ripeness. Some are very tannic, some are very sour, some are mild and sweet. Some are ovular, some more round, some larger, some tiny. It’s always worth making sure you know which kind you are buying. 

That being said, getting caught with an unexpected plum is what led to this post. I got a clamshell container of small, round plums from the grocery store. They were marked just as “local plums.” I think if I bought them at the farmer’s market, someone would have given me a heads up as to the profile of the fruit. I’m not going to the big farmer’s market for a little while, however, because my car was towed there recently, and I’m still recovering from going to retrieve it from the sub basement of Lower Wacker drive, which falls somewhere between the fifth and seventh circle of hell. 

I bought these plums intending to eat them as snacks. When I bit into one at home, the skin was tannic, and the flesh was unpalatable and sour. For this post I did some research and learned they are damson plums. I can’t believe I didn’t realize this earlier, as it explains so much. I heard damsons are bright and astringent, making them excellent for things like jam-making and infusing gin and vodka. They are smaller than most other plums, and have blue skin and yellow flesh. I know them in large part due to their similarity with beach plums. The mighty beach plum, prunus maritimus, is a deciduous, salt- and cold- hearty bush native to the east coast. There are many of these bushes where my husband is from in the Long Island Sound, although, when I asked him about it for this post, we realized he’s never actually seen a beach plum. (He thought he had but in fact had confused them with rosehips). 

• Plum sauces  - 

I haven’t made time for baking or jam-making lately, and so, the plums ended up being used for dinner. I didn’t set out to experiment with these fruits - rather, they were just there in my kitchen, and I thought, I ought to toss these in something, not let them go to waste. 

On the first occasion, I was going to make a bolognese with some of the roma tomatoes we had just picked from our plants. there were the tomatoes, sitting next to the plums. The petite size of these little plums may be what made them seem more approachable towards an idea that, now looking back, is a little wild.

In cooking the damson plums, I discovered how wonderfully easily the fruit broke down, and how that tannic skin imbued such a gorgeous deep pink hue. This explains all the more how readily they are used in jams and jellys, and to add color and flavor to liqueur. The smooth pink pulp seems to emulsify really well with different animal fats, too. 

Once you pit them, you can use them a lot where you might use roma tomatoes. They are even more acidic than tomatoes, however, so you have to calibrate around that. This is also something to consider when deciding on what wine to drink. You’ll need something higher in acidity - which we have in spades at the moment. 

I made two sauces - a kind of Bolognese sauce, and a kind of pan sauce for chicken. 

• A note on cooking with fruit - 

I feel very comfortable combining fruit and meat, especially pork and poultry. My deep affection for Cantonese food has meant a lifelong love of plum sauce. In my experience, this sauce was always brown, not orange, as it is sometimes in jars at the grocery store. I have yet to prepare a Cantonese plum sauce, but would very much like to explore it more with a different variety of plum (I thought damsons would be too astringent for that). Based on some quick online research, China is where plums were first cultivated. The damson plum is named for Damascus, where it is believed to first be bred. 

My comfort with fruit and meat maybe also comes from working in wine. It’s been part of my work for a long time to think about how wine goes with food, and thus, what kind of fruit flavors go with meat, a common facet of american cookery. I also grew up in a home where my mom made seared and roasted pork tenderloin for parties, served with an orange or, in the later years, a pomegranate sauce.

Cooked fruit and meat became further intuitive to me when i was at the Ballymaloe cookery school in Ireland. I learned how to make a very simple rhubarb sauce, which is usually served with pork belly loin that has been roasted then broiled to crispen its fat. My second day at the school I stumbled on another fruit sauce. The students were offered wild game that had just been hunted that day. I took a duck back to my cottage that night, eager and determined to prove I wasn’t too squeamish to feather and field dress a bird. I seared the breasts. I snagged some kumquats from the potted trees in the dining room at the school, sliced them into rounds, cooked them down with water and sugar, and hoped for the best. The sauce turned out well, and, incidentally, this is the same basic technique for the rhubarb sauce I later learned. 

Damson bolognese 

4 entree portions 

1 tsp neutral oil 

1 lb ground pork

½ red onion, chopped 

1 carrot, finely diced

1 stalk celery, finely diced 

4 tablespoons butter 

10 - 12 damsons, cut in half to remove pits 

3/4 cup milk 

Salt & black pepper to season 

Heat a heavy bottomed skillet with high sides, then add the oil. When oil is warm, add the pork, season with salt and brown, then set aside on a plate. Add the onion and cook until translucent. Then add the butter, carrot and celery. Cook on medium- high heat for about 5 min, stirring occasionally. Season with salt as you add ingredients. Add the pitted damsons, and cook until flesh becomes pulp and skins separate completely from pulp, about 10 minutes. Add milk and turn heat down to a simmer. Cover and cook for 1 hour. 

To serve, toss with a cooked pasta noodle like tagliatelle or rigatoni, along with freshly chopped parsley and marjoram, if you can find some, and some grated parmigiano reggiano cheese. 

Eat with a racy white wine. There’s no wine in the recipe because the damsons have so much acidity. To drink I recommend the new aligote we have in from Vini Viti Vinci. At first I had this dish with Cantina Giardino Paski, because I had one cold in the fridge and that was delicious to drink, but with the sauce, it edged on astringent. Going instead with the naturally acidic Aligote from a cooler part of France, and also a white wine without tannin, serves the pasta much better. 

Crispy Chicken thighs with damson sauce 

This is sort of two recipes - the first, for the chicken - a kind of like rough and ready chicken under a brick, or at least the concept behind it. The sauce works like a creamy cranberry sauce to serve on the side. The sauce could also be made with pan drippings from an oven-roasted chicken. For that  - after roasting the chicken in a skillet, remove the bird. Set the skillet on the stovetop at medium heat and follow the sauce recipe from its start. 

2 tablespoons neutral oil 

4 boneless chicken thighs, skin on, tossed in salt and pepper

8 - 10 damsons

¼ cup white wine 

2 teaspoons of sugar 

Heat a cast iron or heavy bottomed skillet, then add oil. When oil is very hot, add chicken thighs, skin side down. Place another cast iron or other heavy object on top of the chicken, to get a very brown and crispy skin. Cook for ten minutes with that weight on top, then flip thighs over to cook another 2 - 4 minutes. Set aside to a plate. With pan still on medium-high heat, toss in damsons. Cook 2 - 3 minutes, until skins start peeling away. Add white wine and cook for another 8 minutes, whisking periodically. The fruity pulp should emulsify with the chicken fat and oil in the pan. Stir in sugar to keep some of that crazy acidity in balance. 

Drink with bold, juicy and fresh-feeling red wine. The Primitivo Amphora from Cristiano Guttarolo that we just got in would be delicious here. It has soft edges but buoyant acidity to sink into. 

Survival Soupe

 

It’s been hot here recently but the days are noticeably shorter and nights noticeably cooler. 

It’s time for us to get some grapes from Michigan or from a truck from California to make wine again in our garage. That means we need to move the juice from last year that has been maturing in the aging vessels we have in the basement. I didn’t bottle that juice earlier because I didn’t feel it was anywhere near ready, and there was no reason to rush. Miraculously, they have been tasting better recently, just in time. Em wrote about this last week in On Projects - this is my follow-up post, about a dish to fuel project-doing.

I needed a few pairs of hands to help lift heavy tanks and keep the bottling process moving swiftly along. I invited all my wine-loving friends and offered to feed everyone. I thought back to when Em and I made potato and squid stew (detailed in her post “squid for 30”) as a way to feed a small crowd. 

Hot soup in summer doesn’t always feel fitting, but these dog days are perfect for soupe au pistou. Pistou is similar to pesto, though traditionally it is made without nuts. The soup celebrates the bounty of the harvest, typically including freshly shelled haricot beans, zucchini, tomatoes, onions, garlic and carrots, newly pulled from the earth. It is similar to Italian minestrone. I think of it as ratatouille in soup form. It also often includes some sort of small pasta, like a minestrone. I didn't include the pasta - instead I ate it with a big slice of Bennison’s Bakery miche, to soak up all the liquor that lingers at the bottom of the bowl. Each bowl is topped with a spoonful of pistou, which you then stir in yourself. 

My spiritual understanding of soupe au pistou, which may or may not be true to the French tradition of it, is to use whatever you have that reflects the summer season, and to liberally replace with preserved ingredients where you don’t have a fresh option. The freshness of the pistou is really the height of lightness that defines the dish, and if you need canned or dried ingredients otherwise, it's not so bad. So, for instance, I used canned tomatoes because our tomatoes were not quite ripe yet. I used dried white beans because I could not find fresh shelling beans of the right size. On the other hand, I did use lots of fresh herbs and kale, and new carrots, red onion, leeks, eggplant and zucchini from the farmer’s market. People also often include pumpkin or fall squash, and different hearty greens like swiss chard. 

I learned a few lessons from the aforementioned squid stew that I brought to this recipe. It’s beneficial to cook in smaller batches, or, if you don’t feel like using a bunch of pans as I did this time, you need to be patient, cooking things in stages, making sure each vegetable gets cooked enough but not too much. I spent all day Saturday before serving this on Sunday slowly adding the elements of the soup, tasting and seasoning often, building it up. I was doing other things around the house, ad it was nice and easy to just have the big pot going on the stove. Second, chopped garlic is awesome for this. I’ve gotten in the habit of only ever using pureed or crushed garlic, but it’s worth it to take the time for even just a rough chop of a few bulbs for this soup. 

We ate the soup that day of bottling wine and many more days beyond then. It is acidic and garlicky, yet settled in my belly happily, neutrally. It felt wonderfully nourishing - a complete meal to fuel busy days in pursuit of whatever project. It fed my partner Dave and I the whole week leading up to our wedding. “It kept us alive,” Dave said today. “Without the pistou, I’d be dead.” 

Pistou* 

Makes about 1.5 cups

*This is not really a pistou recipe, it’s a maybe a pesto recipe that even then breaks many rules. It is very different from my early summer pesto - detailed in an earlier blog post. For that pesto I used a Vitamix and a lot more water than I do here. That one makes an almost mousse-like, airy, light green pesto. I prefer the deep emerald hue and piecey-ness of this one for the soup. For this I use a food processor. But don’t be afraid to let the food processor run for a while, the sauce still needs to be broken down and fused together quite a bit. You can also use a mortar and pestle, it’s a very nice method as well. 

1 clove garlic 

5-6 large handfuls of basil leaves, about 4 cups 

Optional: 1 small handful parsley and mint or other tender leaf herb

⅓ cup pepitas 

⅓ cup panko or you can also use plain pretzels or saltines 

⅓ cup coarsely chopped parmigiano reggiano 

2/3 cup very good olive oil (we have beautiful Lamoresca, it’s worth it.)

⅓ cup cold water 

Drop that clove of garlic in and blitz it up. Add the herbs and blitz, then add each following ingredient, blitzing between, until you reach the oil and water. Drizzle in the oil and water, alternating between them. Taste and make sure you like the texture and seasoning. Season or add panko or pretzels to bulk up the sauce, or thin with more olive oil and water. Keeps well stored in fridge for 2 weeks. Remove from fridge and bring to room temp before serving. 

La Soupe 

Makes about 4 quarts, 10 or so entree portions 

Cooking time: 5 hours over low heat 

This soup is best made the day before eating, so the flavors can fuse. It can take a good bit of long, slow heat, as you see in the cooking time. 

Ingredients: 

¼ c olive oil 

2 tablespoons butter 

2 Leeks, halved then sliced into ⅛” half moons, soaked in cold water and rinsed thoroughly to remove any sand

1 Red onion, chopped

5 cloves of garlic, chopped  

2 stalks celery, chopped 

4 Carrots, halved then sliced into ⅛” half moons 

3 zucchini, halved then sliced into 1/2” half moons

1 medium eggplant, peeled, halved, then sliced into ½” half moons 

2 tablespoons chopped marjoram or oregano 

2 quarts water (or chicken or veg stock, water is traditional) 

400 ml dry white wine 

1 can peeled whole tomatoes 

1 bunch kale or other hearty green, chopped 

Salt and pepper to taste 

For the beans: 

2 cups dried or 1.5 c freshly shelled small white beans. I used Alubia Blanca from Rancho Gordo 

I didn't bother to soak the beans, there are many opinions about this but this is my preference. 

Bring a large pot of water to a boil. Add beans and some aromatics if you feel like it (I tossed in some bay leaves, thyme and black peppercorns i had to later fish out) and cook, covered, at a medium-low simmer, for 1 hour. Set aside. 

Melt the butter in the bottom of a large, heavy-bottomed pot. Add leeks and cook until melted. Then add red onion and cook until softened (don’t have to be totally translucent). As you add the rest of the ingredients, use the olive oil and the white wine as liquids to keep things from sticking to the pan. Toss in garlic, celery and carrots, and cook for about 20 minutes on medium-low heat. Add herbs, zucchini, eggplant, water and any remaining wine. Cook uncovered for 10 minutes, then cover and cook at a low simmer for another several hours.

Continue cooking and reducing (cooking uncovered) if you want a thicker soup. Add beans to soup before putting the soup away for the night, reheat next day with beans in soup. 5 minutes before serving, bring soup to a simmer. Add greens and cook uncovered for 5 minutes. Serve with a spoonful of pistou on top, and a drizzle more of olive oil. 

Pour boire, to drink: 

I had this for lunch a lot with a big glass of water, but one night added a glass of wine at dinner. Bobinet Poil de Lièvre (hair of the hare) is a wonderfully simple wine -  unfussy, crisp chenin blanc. I love how unassuming this wine is, like this rustic vegetarian soup. Poil de Lièvre has enough acidity to match the tomatoes, and adds a little more salt and roundness to the finish of the soup. 

on projects

On Sunday Cub invited me to help bottle some of the wine that had been fermenting in their basement since the end of last summer, basically since they got the house. I had already poached some chickens that morning for dinner that night and destickered a decent amount of glassware for an upcoming project. I was on a roll and ready to figure this out. We got through a few cases, troubleshooting a little and laughing a lot. And spilling wine. Even though it was really my first afternoon with Cub’s wines, pushing the cork into the bottle felt like a small pat on the back. I had forgotten about “projects” and I wanted another one right away.

cork station

Waking up the next day I remember an abandoned project, started in October(?) of last year inspired by apple season. It was to become “someone that offers you cake”. Which is a little bit because I am “someone that offers you wine”, another type of person I chose to become a few years ago. Making the conscious move from asking for a bottle of wine that I wouldn’t mind drinking in a hot room or sharing with someone I don’t necessarily like to buying three bottles at a time for no apparent reason at all. Just to have on hand, in case someone came over, in case I wanted a glass while in the studio working on another kind of project, in case I couldn’t imagine the future. Wine and cake can be gentle mood enhancers, can be taken together, and an excess gives me a stomach ache.

So here I am trying to offer you cake now. I’ve never been a baker, if anything that’s my sister’s job in our family. But I do have a strong idea about the type of cake I want to know how to make. It is a simple cake you could have for breakfast (if you are European, I am not), after lunch, or after dinner. It can be dressed up a bit for a fancy dessert but is also delicious on its own. Ideally I’d like to make 5 or 6 of these cakes, appropriate for different seasons. Something that might inspire a comment like, “Oh Emily’s bringing that cake of hers”. Like you would already know what it was and were excited to have it again. Right now I have two and a half and they are all basically a secret. This is the half, an almond cake from Dorie Greenspan’s book Baking Chez Moi. It is the half because I’ve already counted torta caprese in my repertoire, a similar cake but with chocolate and butter or milk as well. You need fourish ingredients to make Dorie’s. It doesn’t need anything more but one reason I chose it and not the torta caprese is because this would be nice with some cooked fruit. Raspberries, apricots, and peaches come to mind immediately. I didn’t have any at home but I did have some preserved strawberries with lemon.

embracing the wip

Dorie Greenspan’s “Plain and Simple” Almond Cake

5 large eggs, separated, at room temperature

200 grams (1 cup) sugar

Salt

200 grams (2 cups) almond flour

something to grease the pan, I used butter

*Dorie also uses vanilla extract but I don’t think you have to

1. Preheat oven to 325, spread your almond flour out onto a baking sheet covered with parchment and toast for 5 minutes. You can skip this but I did it.
2. After the flour comes out of the oven raise the temperature to 350.
3. Grease a 9” round pan and put parchment paper on the bottom then grease that too.
4. Whisk the egg yolks and all but 2 tablespoons of the sugar together until the mixture becomes light in color and thickens.
5. In a stand mixer or with an electric hand mixer in a separate bowl whip the egg whites with a good pinch of salt until they turn opaque. Then add the reserved sugar and whip until the whites hold medium peaks (not too stiff).
6. Scrape on quarter of the whites into the yolk mixture and mix together to lighten.
7. Add the rest of the egg whites, one half of the almond flour, and fold together, this does not need to be thoroughly mixed at this point.
8. Add the rest of the almond flour and mix until homogeneous.
9. Pour the batter into your prepared pan and tap gently so it settles across.
10. Put in the oven for 33-38 minutes, turning after 20. It should be golden and springy to the touch when finished.
11. Let rest for 5 minutes then remove gently from the pan. Serve with fresh or cooked fruit or a sprinkling of powdered sugar.

with yogurt and strawberry lemon preserves for a friend (the point of cake)

I wanted to say that it was easier to become a person that always had wine but I don’t know. That one is an issue of simply spending money vs. learning a skill but it’s not really the case. Sharing wine, wine time, takes practice too. To feel the way that I wanted to feel doing it and I wanted people to feel partaking in my house. I think I’m still working on that, shifting your person is always time consuming. I did pick some wines from the shop that I would be happy to open any time and would be perfect to have stashed away in a closet because yes, I value always having wine on hand.

pantry wines, in the spirit of any time cake:

Complemen’ Terre NoLem $29

Domaine Bobinet Poil de Lièvre $27

Gazzetta Bianco Misticanza $33

Les Petites Mises Ping Pong $32

wine from Simon Busser $20-22 (we have one in store and some others too, happy to bring you some just ask @rainbow_wines)

ONE LAST NOTE: We are closed Saturday 9/11 because Cub is getting married that day.

Grapes to eat, drink & cook

When I moved to Chicago one of the first things that struck me was the bounty of summer fruit. I knew Michigan was famous for berries and apples, but I had no idea about the many varieties of delicious grapes there are. When I grew up, we didn't have a farmers market in my suburban town. In the grocery store there were big grapes we ate all year round from California, Washington state or Chile. They typically lacked flavor, and were fairly watery and just a little tart. Sometimes there were these fancier grapes available in the grocery store from Chile that were tiny and popped in your mouth like caviar. They came in a clamshell and cost a lot of money, my Mom would splurge on them sometimes to decorate a cheese board at a party.

At the farmers market in Chicago, I thought, wow, so many of the grapes look like the fancy clam shell grapes for parties. They tasted even better. Mouth-puckeringly bright and also deeply sweet. There is a huge range in size and character. The renowned  Mick Klug Farm grows eight varieties of seedless grapes alone.

Our midwest-grown grape varieties vary so much in sweetness, sourness and thickness of skin. This isn’t surprising because many varieties are hybrid crosses of Vitis Vinifera and those table grape species like Vitis Labrusca. The Jupiter grape, one such hybrid, is grown at Klug farm. It was created at the University of Arkansas in the late nineties, and its parents are called ‘Gold’ (Vitis vinifera) and ‘Reliance’ (Vitis Labrusca). The ‘Gold’ is part of the Muscat family. We have several great wines with Muscat in stock right now, particularly from Les Cigales dans la Fourmilière, in southern France, in the Languedoc. I thought it would be fun to try these with a dish containing the Jupiter grape. 

When I started writing this post, I intended to write about cooking with grapes. I bought several different varieties from Mick Klug, Seedling Farm and Ellis Farm. I got really into this Jupiter grape because of it’s Muscat heritage. The thing with this grape is, while it’s aromatics and flavors are beautiful, there isn’t a ton of acidity. So I didn’t want to cook this grape and make it more concentrated. Instead, I made a kind of salad/condiment with it to go on the side of a roast chicken dish. This was good but felt like fighting the nature of the thing, and I also didn’t want to give you another quick pickle recipe. Finally, I did cook the grapes, though I decided to add the tart green Himrod. The pop of acidity from this variety helps you appreciate the juicy Jupiter. It’s a little cuvee. Even when I was snacking on the grapes I loved to grab a few Himrod between a handful of Jupiter.

My most common association with cooked grapes is on pizza. I think of Italo  - California in the nineties, of Nancy Silverton stretching dough and tossing sharp cheese and grapes on a pie.

As much as I wanted to innovate a new way to use cooked grapes with a protein I wanted more to eat this pizza for lunch with a glass of Muscat. Some things are too right for the moment (seasonally, emotionally) to not indulge in a little nostalgia.

Pizza w Grapes

Highly recommend with La Polonaise, Maree rasse or Le Blanc, fruity and floral wine for a fruity and floral pie

Make or buy pizza dough (I like the wisdom of Susan Lenzer's NY Time recipe, but Bungalow x Middlebrow also sells dough, and they sell Klug grapes too!)

Heat your oven as hot as it will go. Take the pizza dough from the fridge and let it come to a malleable temp, about room temp on this seventy-five degree days. Shape your pizza dough by first making a little indentation with your fingertips around the edge of the ball, about 1/2" from its edge - this helps form the crust. Then stretch it by gently shifting its weight between your fists. Place on a well-floured baking sheet or pizza peel if you have it. Top with a sprinkle of salt and olive oil right away. Put every kind of cheese you feel is appropriate that you have in your fridge on there (I had a little bit of gorgonzola, highly recommend a blue cheese with the grapes, but also a little bit of fresh ricotta and a bunch of ricotta salata worked nicely) then top with grapes. Put pizza in oven and bake, I had my oven at 525 degrees and baked for about 7 minutes. Top with whatever greens or herbs you can find (I had some nasturtiums - but arugula would feel more consistent with the other flavors) Slice and eat!