Fleur-de-Package

“Wij kleden ze niet uit.”

It’s a Flemish saying that translates roughly as “We do not undress them” which, in the words of my favorite Ghent gent, means: “We pay a fair price for good produce.”

Only this time, it has a few other meanings.

A package notice arrived in our post office box the other day. If you’ve never been in the State College post office during Christmas season, let me take a moment to describe the scene. It’s not unusual to have 20 box-laden customers waiting in a line in the main section of the post office with one or two holding the glass door open to the postal box lobby to cram another dozen or so customers into the snaking line. And it’s 4:50 p.m., 10 minutes to closing. There are only two clerks working. Then a third appears and shouts, “Anyone here for a pickup?”

My lucky day. I was able to jump to the head of the line for Clerk No. 3. I handed her my slip. A few minutes later, she returned with a battered and tattered heap. Originally, it was a cardboard box about the size of two shoeboxes. But it had been slit and crushed and ripped and slashed to nakedness. Then, it was wrapped with clear plastic tape. Then twined with plastic cord and wrapped again with Shrink Wrap. Before Clerk No. 3 would hand it over, I had to sign an orange notice.

Apparently customs clerks on both sides of the Atlantic have a motto that’s quite contrary: “We do undress them,” rifling through the birthday-Christmas package for my mom and me from our Belgian family.

If customs officers were expecting contraband, it must have been a disappointment. From Richard, there were Belgian melt-in-your-mouth chocolates and a smorgasbord of regional/European, edible delights such as canned Belgian “faux gras”, a tin of Portuguese sardines, and a package of Icelandic sea salt flakes. There was also a special treat from my rascally granddaughter Lais: Jimini’s Crickets. From Marina and Koen, a Naaktkalender. Now, you don’t need to know Flemish to figure that one, just pronounce each letter out loud—N-aa-k-t (naked) k-a-l-e-n-d-e-r (calendar).

The package was a gift of years and Christmases past, present, and to come.

The snack packet of pepper and dried tomato crickets brought back memories of this year’s visit to Penn State’s Great Insect Fair…and stirred up desires of looking forward to introducing my granddaughter to the wonders of nature. The company motto at Jimini’s is Think Bigger, Eat Smaller. Check out their products at www.jiminis.com (text available in English and French.) Jimini’s began in October 2012 with an idea, followed by crowd funding. Insect snacks were sold in France the following year and reached supermarkets in Belgium by 2014. All insects used in Jimini’s products are raised in Europe, and the snacks and energy bars are manufactured south of Paris. There are lots of sustainability reasons to intentionally include insects in our diet in the coming years, and, a few nutritional surprises. Crickets, for example, contain twice as much iron as spinach!

Faux Gras de Gaia (www.fauxgras.be —available in French and Dutch) is an animal friendly pate made of mushrooms, champagne, aromatics such as coriander, cinnamon, and cloves, and other organic ingredients. The product information says 200,000 ducks in Belgium are caged and force-fed until their livers swell 10 times their normal size to provide the country’s appetite for foie gras. For me, this gift recalls our first Christmas in Belgium with Marina’s au pair family: Christmas Eve dinner, Liege-style, with foie gras and champagne and midnight Mass in French. Directions say to refrigerate the pate before serving. The faux gras will be cut it into bite-size pieces and then each is placed on a slice of toast, for a single bite. My Chocolate & Zucchini blog guru, Clotilde Dusoulier, instructs that foie gras should never be “spread” on toast, a foie gras and Faux Gras faux pas.

The tin of Rio Azul sardines in olive oil from Setubal, Portugal, brought an immediate smile to my face. I recalled my travels in 2016, picnic lunching on sardines with good Portuguese bread and cheese, gazing at monoliths, cork trees, and beachside cliffs. The people of Setubal (south of Lisbon) have been preserving fish since Roman times. You can order your own at www.rioazul.pt (Website available in English, etc.)

The sea salt may be a gift of future travels, but how did Richard know? I’ve been daydreaming of visiting Iceland for years, prompted by a book I read on Icelandic ponies (A Good Horse Has No Color: Searching Iceland for the Perfect Horse by Nancy Marie Brown). This fantasy raised its head once again just this month, listening to a friend’s tale of watching school children in Iceland save baby puffins. Infant puffins, it seems, fall out of their cliff nests with regularity, and students go on field trips to pick up the birds and return them to their nests. The beauty of Mother Nature is that puffin moms don’t care which baby is returned to which nest—they mother whoever ends up in their nest. On second thought, Richard probably just remembered my mom’s salt mill was getting low… Nordur Sea Salt Flakes are blended with handpicked Arctic rhubarb in Karlsey, Iceland, where sea salt has been harvested for 260 years. www.nordursalt.com

All of this discussion leads me to the coming year and the calendar from Marina and Koen, the Ghent food team (VZW Voedselteam) and the team’s motto: “Wij kleden ze niet uit.”

Apparently the food team farmers and food purveyors decided they would undress themselves. Most years they open their farms for tours or events, but this year they stripped off their overalls and work shirts to promote another form of transparency within their food system. The calendar idea struck a soft spot with me because I loved the 2003 British comedy Calendar Girls (starring my favorite Helen Mirren). Just this summer, I went to a local Boal Barn production of Calendar Girls in which a Master Gardener friend had a role. With the Naaktkalender hanging on my wall, it promises to be an interesting new year. Happy 2017. Laurie Lynch

Written on Slate: “Live each season as it passes, breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit, and resign yourself to the influences of each.” Henry David Thoreau

Fleur-de-Kabocha

A few weeks ago, Valerie wrote a comment about her favorite winter squash—kabocha—and I responded saying I didn’t know anything about it. Days later, I went to pick up my winter Plowshares. Eureka, kabocha!

Kabocha (pronounced kah BOH chah) is a dark green winter squash with splashes of orange, round and squat with a flattened top. Inside, hunter’s orange flesh surrounds a small seed cavity.

Botanically known as Cucurbita maxima, it is one of a family of winter squash that originated in South America. Like all winter squash, it is a powerhouse of vitamins A and C, with calcium, iron, and some vitamin B as well.

Kabocha

Kabocha is drought tolerant and easy to grow in Pennsylvania. It is a warm season crop so it should be harvested before the first frost. To develop optimum flavor and texture after harvest, kabocha should be ripened for 13 days in a warm space, and then cured in cold storage for a month. Like all winter squash, it keeps for several weeks/months in cool, dry storage.

What I find fascinating is that the South American winter squash has a Japanese name. From what I’ve read, it was Portuguese sailors who introduced the squash to Japan in 1541. Centuries later, it is known throughout the Western World as Japanese pumpkin, and is intertwined in Asian foods and fable.

In Japan, they call it haku kabocha or “nutty pumpkin.” It is eaten around winter solstice (Dec. 21) with adzuki beans in a sweet soup believed to boost the immune system. The Japanese also serve it battered and fried with other tempura vegetables.

In the1980s, to keep up with the demand, the Japanese introduced kabocha to Tonga in an effort to create a cash crop. In the years since, kabocha has become Tonga’s primary export, the bulk of supply going to Japan and Korea. I must admit my ignorance, but I had no idea where Tonga was—I would have guessed somewhere in Africa. As I used to tease my kids, “I didn’t have Mr. Cottone for Geography,” so I had to look it up. Tonga is a Polynesian kingdom of 169 islands, east of Australia in the South Pacific.

OK, so back to the kabocha sitting in my Central Pennsylvania kitchen. Kabocha can be roasted, steamed, pan-fried, baked, braised, pureed. It has a sweet, buttery texture and holds its shape well, so it can be added in cubes to risotto, soup, stew, curry or pasta.

Some sources suggest microwaving kabocha for a few minutes before cutting to soften its hard shell, but with newly sharpened knives I had no problem cutting, peeling and chopping it uncooked.

After days of enjoying Thanksgiving leftovers, I was ready for a change in taste, so this Thai Red Curry with Kabocha Squash recipe on Chowhound caught my eye. As usual, I made a few adjustments. If red chili paste isn’t a staple in your kitchen, it should be, along with unsweetened coconut milk.

Thai Red Curry with Kabocha Squash

1 T. vegetable oil

1 medium yellow onion, diced

Salt to taste

2 red bell peppers, cut into strips

4 cloves garlic, minced

Peeled and chopped fresh ginger, 1”-2” piece

3 Tbsp. Thai red curry paste

1 can (13-14 oz.) unsweetened coconut milk

½ cup water

1 Tbsp. tamari

1 medium kabocha squash, peeled, seeded and cut into 1-inch cubes

2 tsp. lime juice

Heat oil in large frying pan over medium heat. Add onion and salt, cook and stir until onion softens. Add peppers, garlic and ginger, stir to combine and cook until fragrant, about 1 minute.

Add curry paste, stir for another minute. Then, add coconut milk, water, tamari, and bring to a simmer. Stir in squash, return to simmer and reduce heat to low, stirring occasionally. Simmer until squash is fork-tender, about 20-25 minutes. Remove from heat, add fresh-squeezed lime juice, and salt to taste.

Serve over steamed rice.

As the winter solstice approaches, perhaps it’s time to chow down on kabocha. Laurie Lynch

Follow-Up: Watermelon radishes are fun for salads, but they’ve taken on a new role in our kitchen. They are nice for roasted vegetable dishes. The radishes slices retain their bright magenta color but don’t bleed like beets do. And, the taste is mild.

And S’More: In my last blog, I mentioned s’mores. I opened the mail this week and there was a birthday card from my sister Leslie for my mom and me (we share the same birthday). It is a photo of a Sandy-lookalike and two other dogs toasting marshmallows over a campfire. Open it up and out pops…