A Winter Dinner

Saturday was the first day of the Ithaca Winter’s Farmer’s Market. It was also the first day of my Winter CSA. I don’t do a summer CSA, because I grow my own vegetables, and I’d rather choose what and how much I’m going to buy. Also, the prices are better when you hunt around farm stands. But in the winter it works out financially, and I like to help support Blue Heron Farm through the winter. Because the winter has been so mild the market reminded me more of late fall. There were piles of fresh looking kale, collard greens, bok choi and cabbages. Cabbage this time of year is usually tough, the blackened outer leaves removed leaving a pale green or purple bowling ball. But Muddy Fingers Farm had beautiful, juicy savoy cabbages, green with a blush of purple. I bought one and decided that for dinner on Sunday we’d have a winter salad, to go with roast chicken (I bought two from Autumn Harvest Farm) and polenta (from Cayuga Pure Organics). Having local, organic, coarse ground corn meal for polenta has been an amazing thing. Cayuga Pure Organics has transformed local food with its beans, grains and flours. The cornmeal is variegated with red and orange and yellow flecks, the grain is coarse and fine and it flows through the fingers into the pot in a steady stream.

A winter salad is one of those things that are infinitely various. I make them through the winter months, with whatever root vegetables I get in my CSA and local cabbage. They key is to salt the tougher roots and cabbage, and combine them with other shredded, julienned vegetables, toasted nuts or seeds, dried and fresh fruit, garlic and scallions. Sometimes I use parsley, sometimes cilantro. Often I add avocado, which is in season. Fruit can be citrus, grapefruit, tangerines or oranges, or apples, or pears. I toast walnuts, pumpkin seeds and sunflower seeds, pecans or almonds. Dried cranberries, raisins or cherries are great. And I barely plan. Is there celeriac? Turnip? Beets? Watermelon radish or daikon? Sprouts? It’s all good.

I squeezed lemons on the chickens, inside and out and salted them, then rubbed a mixture of minced garlic, olive oil, dried rosemary and a little black pepper in the cavities, on the skin and up between the skin and breast meat and the between the thigh and the body. I rested it breast down in a dish to marinade in the lemon juice for a few hours and come up to room temperature. Then I roasted the birds in a 425 degree oven, breast side down, on a bed of chopped onion, carrot and celery, until the back was browned and crisp, flipped them and finished them breast side up. About a half hour into it I added quartered potatoes and rutabaga pieces.

To make the winter salad:

4 cups shredded cabbage (shred it as finely as you can)

1 beet, peeled and julienned

1-1/2 teaspoons of salt

Combine salt and beets and cabbage in a bowl, mix thoroughly, rubbing the salt into the vegetables. Leave for at least an hour.

1 cup julienned carrot

1 cup julienned daikon or watermelon or other winter radish

1 stalk celery, thinly sliced on a bias

1 apple peeled and sliced into bite sized pieces

¼ cup chopped parsley

3 T walnut Oil

3 T red wine vinegar

1 clove minced garlic

¼ cup toasted nuts and seeds (toast them in a skillet over low heat, don’t burn!)

¼ cup dried cranberries

Black pepper to taste

Combine the apples and remaining vegetables (not the parsley) and garlic. Add the oil and vinegar and mix thoroughly. When the cabbage and beets are done macerating, combine with the vegetables and taste to see if you need more oil or vinegar. Garnish with parsley, nuts and cranberries. Toss it again after everyone has looked at the mix of colors.

After the chickens came out of the oven, I let them rest on a platter and returned the roasting pan to the oven to finish the potatoes and rutabaga. I made the polenta: into 6-1/2 cups of boiling salted water I slowly whisked two cups of coarsely ground cornmeal and stirred it, over medium heat, for 25 minutes, until it behaved like a single organism, pulling away from the sides of the bot, big lazy bubbles winking and popping at the surface. Cover it. Remove the roasting pan, plate the potatoes and rutabagas, pour off most of the oil and make a pan gravy with white wine. Carve the chickens and pour the polenta into a bowl, to be served like mashed potatoes.

These dishes can be altered by circumstance. I might have roasted parsnips and celeriac, might have added avocado and tangerines instead of apple to the salad and used extra virgin olive oil, lime juice and cilantro. Or lemon juice, olive oil and parsley. Or what have you.