Veritable Viridity

KA and I often drive to a supermarket in the next district so it is possible to keep a distance from other customers while grocery shopping. Unfortunately, it has less vegetable variety than one of the (cramped and swarming) supermarkets within walking distance. (Don’t get me started on how I suffer from not being able to find Swiss chard, one of the hallmarks of culinary civilization). While white cabbage (Kraut) is quite common, Savoy cabbage is less so. The bowling ball Kraut that we bought a month ago has finally disappeared. Half of it went into soup and the other half was mixed with leeks, onion, cinnamon, pine nuts, and parsley to make a filling for a vegetable strudel based on this recipe. White cabbage can be tasty but heavy, and now that spring has arrived, we are ready to leave Kraut behind us like the winter. We had even agreed on this strategy while I drew up the shopping list, determining it was time to move on to other vegetables. So when I was dazzled by the beauty of the dark green crinkled leaves of the Savoy cabbage, I pointed to it and asked KA if he was sure there should no more Kraut, he gave me a look. “Das ist Kohl.” Oh. (Here I thought it was Wirsing in standard German, but when in Vienna, do as the Viennese do). Kraut is out; Kohl, ja wohl! Into the cart it went.

This spring, I am playing a game with myself. Spring is all about the landscape erupting into green. Every evening since the equinox, I have written down what I ate that day that was green. For example, broccoli. The second recipe I tried from Rachel Roddy’s An A to Z of Pasta was Casarecce with Broccoli, in which the star vegetable is boiled for a few minutes and then sautéed in olive oil with garlic and chili. The broccoli becomes super soft and disintegrates into a clingy sauce. The pasta (here cornetti rigati instead of casarecce) is cooked in the water in which the broccoli was boiled, then added to the broccoli mixture – saving energy and water. Toasted breadcrumbs top it all off. This dish was a revelation – so creamy yet vegan. Roddy also presents the technique here.

While the broccoli pasta used storebought factory made pasta, I finally tried my hand at making handmade pasta, following the A to Z recipe for pici, which uses a mixture of soft wheat and hard wheat flours. You roll out the dough into a disk, cut the disk into thin strips, then roll the strips between your hands to round them. The sauce is not the one from the pici chapter but the tomato and basil sauce from the spaghetti chapter. Basil counts as green too.

While there have been a variety of dishes coming out of the kitchen, my knitting focus has narrowed to the sand linen pullover, whose back I hope to finish this evening. The pullover is knit in the round from the hem to the armholes, after which the back and front are each worked flat and then joined at the top. One challenge of knitting with linen is that gauge can change dramatically from round to flat knitting. Knitting flat usually results in a looser gauge than knitting in the round, which means a needle change is in order to avoid a line developing in your knitting. I went down from a US size 3 to size 2, and thankfully that did the trick. I thought I had started with the 2 but after a few rows I realized I had used a 3. Since I was too lazy to redo these rows, there is a bit of a stripe, but I am sure no one will notice except if the person in line behind me at the coffee shop or store is a textile nut and scrutinizes what I am wearing. It is exciting to see the pullover take shape.

Wishing you lots of green in the kitchen and outdoors!

Of Sand and Spring

My nature observations journal reveals there have been many changes in the past week. The clock cannot be turned back on spring. From primroses appearing in new places to the first brilliant yellow of forsythia blossoms, from just one green woodpecker to two on the ground and in the trees, ditto for the wood pigeons, there is a lot of flora and fauna action. A couple of new crows on the block have started building a nest in a tree where the sidewalk out of the apartment complex meets the street. It is not visible from our windows, so checking up on it will involve venturing out into the world. Temperatures warmed up over the past few days, but the high concentration of particles in the air caused by a Sahara sandstorm prevented us from taking a nice walk. The last of the sand should blow through today. While not as dramatic as these pictures of Granada in Spain and the ski slopes in Vorarlberg in the far west of Austria, it has been quite hazy in Vienna and there are ruddy sand deposits on KA’s car.

Another reason it feels that spring is on the way is that I was struck by an idea for what do to with the sand-colored linen yarn I bought last spring. Having successfully disconnected myself from two news live tickers on the war in Ukraine (one in English, one in German), I find myself with more time to pursue my interests. How refreshing to get lost while looking at patterns on Ravelry! When I find myself gravitating towards the same patterns, over and over, it is clearly time to knit them. Many that I like are from the Montreal yarn store Espace Tricot. The sand linen is rapidly turning into a Léger Redux, which will be perfect for early mornings at the harbor on hot summer days. The Schoppel El Linio yarn is a 100% linen tape yarn. Tape or ribbon yarns are constructed as chains. Since this forms a space in the middle, a Russian join is the perfect way to connect two skeins. Take your two pointer fingers and hook them together. That is basically how the Russian join works, and then the yarn tails are threaded through the middle of the yarn. The result is that you can’t see the join except for a slight thickening of the yarn. Can you see where one skein ends and the other begins in the picture below (which reminds me of the Uffington White Horse chalk figure on the cover of XTC’s album English Settlement)? I can’t anymore.

Also from Espace Tricot, there is a second project on the needles that is halfway done, Aisé II. And then there is a third project just started in the same yarn, a slinky wool-silk-ramie cardigan, and the ideas for other pieces keep coming. Yes, the fountain of inspiration has started bubbling again. Now all I need is ample time to knit.

My plan to eat vegan during Lent hit a setback in the form of a tub of ricotta that had expired. Since KA has no interest in my dietary experiments, I baked him a ricotta and dark chocolate spelt cake. It smelled so good I had to taste it. But that wasn’t the end of it: there was mozzarella right at the best by date, so I made pizza. Instead of throwing in the towel on vegan in Lent as I normally do, I am pressing on. There are no more dairy products left in the fridge that will expire any time soon, so from here on in I have no excuse.

There is a new book in my life, Rachel Roddy’s An A-Z of Pasta: Stories, Shapes, Sauces, Recipes. It is dedicated to me (“To pasta makers and pasta eaters”). Each chapter describes a different pasta shape and features one or more recipes. From the proper salting of pasta water to the history of ravioli, there is enough material to provide the syllabus for an Italian Pasta 101 course. The first phase of my book encounter strategy has ended: read the book from start to finish. The next phase – try out the vegan recipes – has just begun. The first recipe I tried was solid: ditalini and lentils. This recipe is similar to one from a prior Roddy cookbook that I regularly cook but calls for just one pot and leaves out tomato. Using fresh rosemary instead of bay leaves made the kitchen smell incredible as I cooked it and the vegetables gently in olive oil. The supermarket brand of pasta has ditalini made of whole spelt flour from Austria. The Italian word ditale means thimble, so a ditalino is a small thimble. I have small hands, but even my thumb can’t fit through these pasta forms. Which is fine, because they are meant to be eaten, not worn.

The big question: Which recipe should I try next? Busiate with basil, tomato and almond pesto? Casarecce with broccoli? Pasta e fagioli? Potato gnocchi? Pasta and chickpea soup? Orecchiette with arugula, potatoes and cherry tomatoes? If asked, this crow would most likely vote for the almond pesto – anything with nuts. What do you think?

May you pursue your spring interests with a newfound verve!

Birds, Bertha, and Wheat

An icy wind has continued to blast Vienna from the north and northeast, limiting the number of pleasant walks outside. On most days the sun shines deceptively, luring the unwitting to set off on a stroll, but for those of us who can read the dancing of the tree branches, it is clear that staying inside is the better option, regardless of how much legs weary of wintering want to walk. Sometimes I see birds fluffed up and staunchly clinging to branches like this occasional visitor, the common wood pigeon (Ringletaube, Columba palumbus).

The rooks have left on schedule. One remained a few days longer. KA had noticed it in the grass and wondered if it wasn’t able to fly. It eventually did. Yet it continued to hang out in the branches of the tree, hesitant to swoop down and eat the peanuts we threw to it. I had started to wonder if it would stay here for the season instead of flying to Russia and dubbed it Bertha in honor of Bertha von Suttner, the Austrian pacifist who was the first woman to receive the Nobel Peace Prize in 1905. Ahead of her time, she warned against using aviation for military aims and believed uniting Europe was the only way to ensure peace. I haven’t seen Bertha the rook in a few days now.

KA and I enjoyed our pancakes for peace on Fat Tuesday, and now it is Lent. It seems like every year I try to be vegan for Lent and fail. As usual, I have gotten off to a good start. The first week is never difficult. I hope that this year will be different as I have a number of filling soup recipes up my sleeve. I am also encouraged by the ease with which I left the rest of the berlingozzo cake for KA to eat. Two days before Ash Wednesday, I came across a recipe for this anise and orange zest-flavored cake for Carnival and spontaneously baked it. Yum. As Tuesday turned to Wednesday, I was well stuffed with crepes and cake and ready to shift my focus to vegetables and legumes, soups and pasta.

There are many lenses through which you can view the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, and one that I find especially interesting is through the lens of wheat. I am old enough to have learned in school that Ukraine (back when it was still “the Ukraine”) is the breadbasket of Europe. Today a more accurate description would be that it is the breadbasket of the world. Not only do wheat exports from Ukraine feed people in Turkey, Egypt, Indonesia, the Phillipines, and Tunisia, wheat grown in its fertile black soil provides more than half the grain that the UN World Food Programme distributes to countries in need. Any rise in the price of wheat or disruption in wheat exports will inevitably result in more people going hungry. Russia also exports wheat to populous countries like Egypt, Turkey, Bangladesh, and Nigeria, which are unlikely to agree to sanctions that could ultimately lead to starvation. We are all more closely connected than we realize, and we are all united by our need for nourishing food every day. Let us hope for a swift end to the violence in Ukraine as well as an end to hunger.

May all our words and actions foster peace!