The perils of cooking off the cuff

The end of the CSA season is full of crucifers--cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower and brussels sprouts--and root vegetables, especially carrots and beets.

For weeks, when I was too busy to shop and cook deliberately, I kept seeing yummy-looking kielbasa sausage in the farmers' markets, and thinking, "I remember my mom making kielbasa with sauerkraut. That sounds cozy. The first thing I'm going to do when I get some time to cook is make kielbasa with sauerkraut."

So while math class was going on in our home last Tuesday, I found a recipe for sauerkraut in The Art of Simple Food and started a batch. Making sauerkraut didn't turn out to be nearly as hard as I thought it would be. You chop up cabbage and work salt into it with your fingers until it starts to release its liquid. (It says 3.5 tsp. for a whole cabbage. I used a half. You can put in a teaspoon of caraway seeds, too.) Then put the cabbage a non-reacting 2 qt. container. It's supposed to create enough liquid to cover itself, but if it doesn't you add brine made from 1 c. filtered water and 1 T. salt., and then put a weight in the top of the container to keep the cabbage submerged. And then you cover it with a dishtowel leave it for a week or more. I used some glass storage jars that I usually keep hot cereal in for the container, and for the weight I used a water bottle. After a couple of days, I had nice purple water spilling over the top of my container!

Then I went to both local farmers' markets to look for the kielbasa. No one had it. Finally I figured out where I had seen it, but it was all gone. They promised a "date with the pig" later in the winter. But now I had sauerkraut started! No kielbasa at Whole Foods, either. Two days later, I found some at a local gourmet market.

So then I asked my mom for the recipe, only to find that she had no recollection of it whatsoever! (Obviously it was not a treasured family tradition, except with me.) But by this time I was committed, so I found a nice Choucroute recipe in the NY Times. I didn't necessarily want all the meat this recipe called for, but the base looked delicious!

Last night I tasted the sauerkraut. Not quite sour yet. But while looking for the kielbasa recipe, I had found the very same Ligurian walnut sauce I used to like so much when I stayed in Cortona 26 years ago. Only this recipe added broccoli rabe, which I happened to also have on hand. And about this time of year I really start craving dark greens, so why not? (Some stands are still selling greens, raised in a greenhouse, no doubt.)

Bob had another idea: He took the two cups of white wine I was saving for the kielbasa, and poured it to go with the farfalle and walnut sauce. After all, it did say "perfect for cream sauce and pasta" on the back.

(I'd insert a photo of the walnut sauce and pasta here, except that we ate it too fast, and besides, it looks just like the photo in the NY Times recipe, except that I used farfalle.)

This afternoon I finally read through the entire kielbasa recipe. Hmm, two hours was just too long to wait to start cooking after Bob came home with more wine, and I just didn't happen to feel like dashing out to the store to get some. So I substituted a dish that used carrots and beets instead. I've got pounds and pounds of beets and carrots, and more on the way tomorrow.

So, I still haven't made kielbasa with sauerkraut, but I guess that's what happens when you cook by the seat of your pants! But really, I wouldn't have it any other way, because I like cooking when everything comes together, seasonally, with what I've got on hand.

Maybe tomorrow.

***

December 18: We finally ate our sauerkraut and kielbasa, and though perhaps not quite worth all the fuss I put into it, it was quite good!

Basilica di S. Ambrogio

The facade of S. Ambrogio, as seen from its portico

This weekend when Bob was sending out follow-up e-mails for his business trip to Milan, we noticed that our inbox was filling up with "out of office autoreplies." Oh, yes! We'd forgotten, St. Ambrose's Day is this week.

St. Ambrose is the patron saint of Milan. His feast day is a major holiday, combined with the Immaculate Conception on the 8th. I have no idea how many of the Milanese go to church on these days, but no one is at work.

CZ and I were at the Basilica di S. Ambrogio just a couple of weeks ago during our trip, so I thought I'd post some photos of it in honor of this early Bishop of Milan who baptized St. Augustine.

These first two photos above are of 12th C. Lombard-style relief sculptures, the first on the doors to the basilica, and the second on the pulpit. The Lombard style is the sort of Celtic Romanesque style which seems to be characteristically Milanese. Lombard architecture is more "primitive" than the earlier Roman style, but it has a charm of its own. The church's facade (top of post) is also Lombard.

Most of these churches were actually first constructed in the 4th century (this one under the auspices of Ambrose himself), but only small parts of the original structures remain. And they used bits of the earlier Roman buildings as foundations. If you find all this jumble of construction and reconstruction a little hard to follow, so did I! If I counted right, there were at least six building phases going on in this one church. Even the altar above is made of bits saved from a roof collapse during the Lombard era.

The photos above are of medieval frescoes on a column inside the church, and of the mosaic in the apse. What you can't tell in the photos, of course, is that there was some lovely a capella singing going on in a mass behind and under the apse.

To the right, in the treasury, is an even older mosaic from the original 4th C. church. (Not pictured.) This older chapel is bracketed by an ornate Baroque foyer. Somehow, it works.

And this is just me outside in the portico, trying to figure out what all those signs say in Italian. I can't tell whether my confusion springs from the language or seeing so many different building phases at once. But I do know that Milan is very nice in the fall. Everything looks and feels quite different, and I find that Italian life has a cozy side. Or as they say, accogliente.

The light that shines in the darkness

This seems an appropriate way to start of the Christmas season: While we were visiting the church of S. Ambrogio in Milan, we came across this nativity scene in the church's treasury. It was made for Christmas of 1944 by Italian soldiers in a Nazi concentration camp. They worked in secret, using scraps of the men's clothing and anything else they could find. When they were liberated, they left behind the ox to commemorate those who died while in the camp. If you look closely, you'll see that the figures include a Franciscan friar, a hunter, soldiers, and a woman weaving--that is, people from all walks of life. (Sorry, my photo, taken in dim light, is a bit blurry.)

Though I haven't found anything about this story online, and I'm not sure of the circumstances that would have caused the soldiers to be imprisoned, there were certainly Italians, as there were Germans, who ran afoul of the Nazis. This scene reminds me of the complexity of human circumstances, and of the mixture that comprises men's hearts. What an appropriate place to find the Christ Child.

"The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it."