Gardening at Greystone

"What happened to your face?" Rosario suddenly asked me the other day. My friend in the dish room at school was deeply concerned about the sunspots on my cheeks. I explained to her that I often get funny pigmentation on my skin in the summertime, underscoring that it was totally fine because I'm actually trying to look like a catcher's mitt by the time I'm 40.

But seriously, the real reason for my super dark complexion these days is the amount of time I've been spending in the student garden here at Greystone. The work can be exhausting, but I consider it an opportunity to get three birds with one stone: gardening, exercise AND some stress-busting vitamin D production all at once.

Located between Highway 29 and the Silverado Trail on Deer Park cross road, our two acre garden plot is not impressive at first glance. Started four years ago by a small, dedicated group of students, the student garden is neither well-funded nor perfectly organized. We don't weed every day. The chain link fences that divide our plot from neighboring vineyards wouldn't mesh with a landscape architect's vision for a Napa Valley garden.

Somehow, none of that matters. I've wandered the neatly manicured rows of the French Laundry garden, across the street from that temple of haute cuisine in Yountville. I've poked around Brix' beautiful beanstalks and I've picked perfect parsley from Plump Jack's herb garden in Squaw Valley. I love our garden the best, if only because it's ours.

Our student garden has hay bales all over the place, but we know that hay, when strewn over the rows of plants, will help retain moisture. The fava bean remnants have been laying around for weeks, but that's only because we were waiting for them to dry out so we could clear the rows easily with a rake. The rose bushes need to be trimmed. Sometimes, the irrigation tape running the length of the rows will spring a leak, and pools of excess water- and weeds- will erupt uninvited.

But when smitten, we see what we want to see, and all I see is beauty.


Left: Serrano chiles waiting to spice up my avocado salsa verde

On days when I feel overwhelmed in the kitchen, I long for the garden. Cooking challenges me, but gardening soothes me. An afternoon in the garden erases bad knife skills, missed plating window times and disappointing dishes. An afternoon in the garden reminds me that cooking is only the final expression of a long, delicate process of coaxing dirt and seed to bear fruit. An afternoon in the garden gives me cotton-candy sweet sungold tomatoes and eggs with golf-ball sized golden yolks. Edible flowers pop with color that begs to brighten my dinner salad. Blackberries tease me with a few winners but mostly still-bitter fruit. I see geese swoop down to the irrigation pond in perfect formation, while our garden manager, Luis, tells me jokes that shake my ribs with laughter.

Soon-to-be-blackberries

Do I sound like my father the poet, waxing philosophical about dirt, flowers and weeds? The apple doesn't fall far from the tree, I suppose. But things are happening in the garden this summer, both with vegetables and flowers, and within me. I feel closer to the person I want to be.

Now if only I could remember to wear sunscreen.










When we have enough of it, we sell our produce at the St. Helena Farmer's Market. Left: Our price board from the season's first market in May.





Edible flowers and herbs for sale

The gallina girls

Sungold tomatoes at various stages of ripeness

Sunflowers in bloom

Dusk at the garden

Did you know...? Nigiri and Sushi

...what nigiri means? or sushi for that matter?

Whether I go to Blue Ribbon in New York, Mamasake in Squaw or Fuki Sushi in Palo Alto, I love getting nigiri sushi. But before our Cuisines of Asia class today, I never really knew what I was ordering.

Nigiri is a thin slice of fish laid over an elongated ball of rice, with fresh wasabi underneath for some punch.

However, the word nigiri means finger, and the name comes from both the thin, curved shape of the fish and the hands that create it. The elegant curve is meant to evoke a fish jumping clear out of water. Gorgeous, right?

Sushi itself refers to the rice, not the elaborate rolls we have come to equate with the name. Su- means vinegar and shi- refers to the cooked rice. Thus, the most important element in sushi is the quality of the rice. Supermarket sushi rice is invariably a cold, sticky mess, more closely related to wallpaper paste than the melt-in-your-mouth quality of good sushi rice.

Once we get the rice down, the fish element poses a larger question: what about the health of our oceans? A recent New York Times Magazine cover story warned of the end of blue fin tuna and the decline of our fisheries. How do I reconcile my love of sushi with a desire to be sustainable as well?

Here at school, our instructors frequently point us to the Monterey Bay Aquarium Seafood Watch for the latest information on sustainable fisheries. There's even an iPhone app for that! You can search by fish or by region, and Seafood Watch will rate how sustainable your choice is. Now it's easy to have your cake...er, fish and eat it too.

Tip of the Day: Cleaning A Pan with a Burned Bottom

I learned today's tip from the ladies in the dish room at Greystone. Day after day, they take our scorched, greasy pans and clean up our mistakes without grumbling. I've burned a couple pans pretty bad, but they taught me how to release the nasty, tough bottom layer without hours of soaking or scrubbing.

Fill the pot with enough water to cover the burned area and place it back on the stove. Turn the burner on to medium-low and just let it simmer. In the meantime, do other dishes. Try to make the dish over again, this time without the bitter, burnt taste. Or, if the creation can be salvaged, go ahead and eat. Twenty minutes at a low simmer will release the burned crust easily. Simple as that!

The Key to Perfect Chocolate Chip Cookies

Everybody loves a good chocolate chip cookie; they're simple to make AND they're wonderfully delicious. The recipe I've been using for years came off the Toll House chocolate chips bag. I love how easy the measurements are with just one stick of butter and one egg.

However, recent conversations with Corrie Beezley, a Greystone graduate who now runs her own cookie bakery The Farmer's Market Pantry, revealed that I've been missing two important components in cookie baking: 1) I haven't been using enough brown sugar, and 2) the cookie dough should be baked from frozen, not room temperature.

Following Corrie's advice, I tweaked my recipe a little. Instead of equal parts brown and white sugars, I upped the brown sugar ratio. I also used room temperature butter and egg, and then froze the scoops of dough before baking. This technique prevents the dough from melting across the pan. Cold butter holds it shape better and produces a taller cookie, rather than the flattened pancake type I've struggled with for years. Be patient with first, the butter coming to room temperature and second, the freezing process before baking. By freezing the dough, I finally achieved the moist, chewy cookie I've been trying to bake for years.

Notice I'm not saying they're the best EVER- those of us who have been to Wildflour Bakery in Squaw Valley know that would be a tough claim. But this recipe comes from years of tinkering and a few small changes in the method that really make a perfect homemade cookie.

Chocolate Chip Cookies
yield: 16- 2" cookies

1 stick butter, softened to room temperature (do not microwave to soften, this just produces runny cookie dough)
1 egg
1/4 cup sugar
3/4 cup brown sugar
1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract

1 cup + 3 TBSP flour
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 cup chocolate chips

1. Combine the butter, egg, sugars and vanilla until creamy.
2. Mix the remaining ingredients before adding to the butter mixture to insure ingredients are evenly spread.
3. Combine dry ingredients with butter mixture.
4. Using an ice cream scoop, make balls of dough on a plate and place in the freezer for at least an hour. Be patient. This step is the crucial part of the recipe.

5. Preheat oven to 375F.
6. Grease a baking sheet with a little butter, or use a SilPat silicone sheet if you've got one.
7. Place the cookies an inch apart on the sheet, and bake for 12 minutes, or until very light golden in color.

8. When the cookies look like they're a minute or two away from finished, pull them out and allow them to finish cooking on the pan. This technique creates a soft center without over-browning the outside of the cookie. Even if the cookies look underdone when you pull them, another two minutes on a hot pan will finish them off nicely. As soon as the cookies are firm enough, transfer to a wire rack or paper towel to cool.


9. Pour yourself a glass of milk and enjoy!

Tip of the Day: Kitchen Tools

People often ask me "What is one kitchen tool you can't live without?" While there are a few specialty tools that really make the difference between the professional and the home kitchens, most tools aren't anything nifty or high tech. Specialty stores like Sur La Table and Williams-Sonoma would have you think otherwise; how else are they going to sell that Christmas Tree shaped spatula or motorized bread knife?

The truth is: most of the tools you need are already in your kitchen, you just need to re-purpose them.

Don't have a super sharp chef's knife for slicing tomatoes? Don't have a mandolin either? Use a serrated knife. The teeth will grab the tomato skin while you slice, keeping the tomato from squirting away from you under a dull knife.

Tired of cupcakes, muffins or cookies that turn out all different shapes and sizes? (I've run into this problem when children feel slighted because of a much smaller cookie or cupcake.) Use an ice cream scoop for even amounts of dough. With cupcakes, the ice cream scoop transfers the batter to the liners with much less spillage than a spoon.

For large parties, use an ice cream scoop to portion guacamole, mashed potatoes, and potato or pasta salad. (Just be sure you wash it after those chocolate chip cookies!)

Don't have a melon baller to scoop perfect spheres of fruit or to clean out cucumber seeds? Use a tablespoon measure.

No rolling pin in your kitchen for pizza dough or pie crust? Wash off the side of a wine bottle.

Is the salesman at Williams-Sonoma urging you to buy elbow-high oven mitts made of space age silicone for a cheeky $150? Tell him to buzz off; those gloves only make your hands sweat. Instead, keep a folded kitchen towel hanging on your apron string or just sitting on the counter by your workspace. You're not Homer Simpson in a nuclear reactor; you're a cook!

So don't sweat the equipment, really. Make like MacGyver and get creative with whatever you've got. Nine times out of ten, professional chefs are doing the same thing.