Popcorn, oysters, homebrew, and brownies
Photos by Donna Campbell
FIRST OF THE MONTH NEWS
Food Pilgrim has been eating popcorn for dinner lately—a very fine Japanese wild hulless popcorn from Red Tail Grains—a farm and milling operation in Mebane, North Carolina. No popcorn is without some sort of hull, but this small, Japanese heirloom variety has a very thin skin and leaves little residue at the bottom of the pan. It pops evenly and fast the old-fashioned way—in a pot with a lid and very little oil.
Red Tail Grains is committed to growing healthy grains without pesticides, herbicides, fungicides, and synthetic fertilizers. Their website is a schoolbook on heirlooms from Einkorn to Spelt to Rye, along with recipes and gorgeous photos. The crops they’ve planned for 2024 include the Japanese white popcorn and a Dakota black popcorn which I can’t wait to try. They also grow Dixie Lee Crowder Peas and Pink Eye Purple Hill Peas which will likely be available dried this time next year. They sell their products at the Durham, Chapel Hill, and Carrboro farmer markets. They will also ship, but the shipping cost is steep. For those of you farther afield, perhaps you can keep an eye out for other providers of the Japanese White hulless in your gourmet grocery store and give it a try!
This popcorn is so pure and simple it got me to thinking that maybe we’d soon try some Hatch chile-infused olive oil to flavor the next batch. We could do the same, of course, with rosemary infused oil or lemon and garlic oil. The savory possibilities are intriguing. I’ll report on this experiment as soon as I can renew our supply of flavored olive oils. Unfortunately, it seems that Covid took out the vendors I once depended on. Stay tuned.
In other news, we sampled some delicious wild-caught oysters from the Newport area on the NC coast this past week. They were plump and salty. Our hosts, Steve and Nora Esthimer procured them from Tom Robinson’s Seafood Market, tucked behind Acme Restaurant in Carrboro. Steve also makes an easy-to-drink homebrew which he fashioned after Anchor Steam, an historic craft lager made in San Francisco, now off the market. Anchor Steam was bought out by Sapporo and then shut down last summer. The brewery’s assets have recently been part of a bidding war for a possible revival.
As we sipped Steve’s homebrew, the supper guests had all tucked themselves under tarps set out near the barn. It was raining sufficiently to require poking the tarps every few minutes to drain the bulge of cold water over our heads. Steve’s usual steamer (large and open air) was out of commission in this downpour, but he had cleverly put a large cast iron pan over a small grill under the tent, added water and steamed the oysters in small batches. The elements and the challenge made them all the sweeter.
Meanwhile, Nora had made brownies for dessert, according to a recipe, she said, in Joy of Cooking, the classic, in print continuously since 1936. In the ensuing years since my mother left us, we have hunted through her papers for her famous brownie recipe to no avail. She made these delicacies often—without extra icing, stuffed with pecans, and cut into teasingly small squares. For a time she would take them to some mysterious vendor in Atlanta to be canned. She then sent them to my homesick brother, studying abroad for two years in Austria. They were that good.
Well, I think we found the recipe. Nora—who once drove my mother from Little Switzerland to Carrboro and heard as many family stories as possible in that journey—was pleased that she had offered us the most wonderful edible memory to finish off our evening as all of us circled around the radiant woodstove in the Esthimers’ barn!
Yes! I still have Mom’s copy and first need to see the edition which my brother has. Thanks for the info!
That was a delightful read!