The Ethics of Eating (a fish tale)

One pleasure of having a vegetable garden is that it embodies sustainability. It is sad that this good word is overused today, but it still speaks to a good concept and ethos. The classic expression was voiced by the UN Brundtland Commission , defining sustainable development that "meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs". It implies good resource management and renewal. With a vegetable garden, nothing is wasted; you draw vegetables and life from the good earth, and every stem, stalk, leaf and giant squash that isn’t used goes back to compost to begin again the next year. This has the satisfaction of an ethical act.

The ethics of sustainability are more difficult to achieve with purchased food. If you are a conscientious person, eating most foods requires a considerable amount of selective forgetting. Every bite completes a long chain of events, many of them with ethical coloration. Since it is unpleasant to ingest sins and indiscretions with one’s food, the natural thing is to overlook them. But when we see ourselves as part of the greater scheme of things, it is possible and good to stop sometimes and look that forkful in the eye (or whatever part has been impaled). Here are some ethical questions to consider over dinner.

1. Has the food required the sacrifice of another animal’s life?
2. Was the individual food animal treated humanely before death and was it killed humanely?
3. If the food required restraint of an animal (as, for example, with eggs and milk), was that humanely managed?
4. If harvesting a wild animal was involved, did the process endanger the survival of the species? Were only the animals to be eaten killed?
5. Were whole ecosystems damaged in order to grow a particular food crop?
6. Were people enslaved, maltreated, deprived of their own food choices, or subjected to bad governance in order to grow or process the crop?
7. Is the crop practice appropriate to the whole ecosystem, or does it cause erosion, overfertilization of water sources, greenhouse gas emission, accumulation of toxic chemicals in wildlife and humans, loss of gene plasm diversity in the crop species, air or water pollution?
8. Is the energy cost of processing and transporting the food excessive for the little food value contained in it?

We who seek sustainability are making more and more ethical choices about food. It may restrict the variety of things we can eat or be more expensive but at some point the food looks back at you from the fork and you have to make that next step. We gave up veal a couple of decades ago and never even consider fois gras. Lately we’ve been seeking out meat from grass-fed animals and buying “Amish” poultry because they are reputed to be better treated. We try to buy as much food that is produced locally as is feasible (if it is organic, even better) and look carefully at the selection of fair trade coffee and chocolate. In the process, we change our taste for food so that the unethical choices don’t even look appealing any more.

Michael Pollan certainly laid out a lot of this for us in The Omnivore's Dilemma. Reading that was a life-changing experience for many. Now Mark Bittman, writing in the New York Times, hits us with the bad news about fish.

Here is the short version: Worldwide, we have almost depleted the populations of the most desirable wild fish. In 2003, 32% of populations had crashed, 39% were overfished, and the remaining 29% were "fully exploited", at the limits of sustainability. Even more troubling, industrial fish farming is threatening the stocks of the smaller fish that are the food of the larger ones like salmon and tuna. Huge quantities are being ground up to feed to farmed salmon. Salmon and shrimp farms cause immense water pollution (a farm of 200,000 salmon produces as much fecal matter as 60,000 humans) and despite heavy use of antibiotics, pose a disease threat to wild populations. Bittman proposes that we should avoid farmed fish (though tilapia can be farmed sustainably, he dismisses it as tasteless, which has been my experience) and eat the smaller ones, like sardines and anchovy.

I've been eating more canned sardines and use canned wild salmon, but what about fresh fish? One option is to eat more locally - freshwater fish native to this continent. I love walleye though it is expensive and somewhat seasonal. But in following Bittman's "small fish" lead, I remembered smelt.



The Rainbow Smelt (Osmerus mordax) is not native, but has been established in the upper Midwest freshwater lakes, originally seeded as food for salmon. They are still caught by locals during "smelt runs", typically in March-April. But they are available and cheap (the pound I bought cost $3.49) in the freezer as headless and dressed individually frozen fish.


These little babies are eaten whole and can be panfried or baked. But deep-fried smelt are popular in many Asian cuisines and lakeside fish restaurants. And the bones are good for you. As you crunch, think sustainability. Have your friends over - one pound will feed 4, or 6 with the fried vegetable sides and a salad. There are many possibilities for the breading (including the classic flour-egg/milk-bread crumbs or cornmeal), but I think a very light tempura batter is nicer.

Deep-fried Smelt

Tempura batter: combine 1 egg yolk with 2 cups of ice-cold water and 1/4 t baking soda. Stir in 1 2/3 cups of flour. This should produce a thin batter that is a little frothy.

Drop dressed, thawed and drained smelt into flour (may be seasoned) on a plate, shake off the excess, then quickly drop one at a time into the batter, retrieve with tongs (edit: on trying this again, I found that using one's hands are the easiest and most effective way to take the fish from the batter, though messy), then drop into hot oil. Oil should be deep enough to submerge the fish completely. Do not try to cook more than 3 or 4 (edit: or about 6) at once. Remove with a slotted ladle or frying strainer or tongs after each is light brown (2-4 minutes). Place in pan in a 200° oven while finishing the batch. Serve immediately with any preferred sauce, from mayonnaise-based tartar sauce to Asian soy sauce-based, or just offer lemons to squeeze. Note that this recipe has not included salt unless it was added with the flour. (Edit: a tomatillo/green chile/cilantro salsa or Indian chile/cilantro green sauce are excellent with this and the vegetables. Think pakora.)

Great additions: sweet potato rounds, half mushrooms, cauliflower buds, onion rings, or any vegetable that is not too wet and can stand up to this treatment. Or - make potato (French) fries - the batter makes them wonderful. Dip them in the batter without the preliminary flouring and fry separately from the fish. Remember not to crowd - if the temperature of the oil drops, they'll be oily.

Notes on deep-frying: the secret of delicious fried food, crisp on the outside, moist inside and not oily, lies in using the correct oil temperature. This is usually stated as 325-375° but keeping to the higher temperature is better. Use a kitchen thermometer. You should use only oils that can stand up to the heat. This is dependent on their smoke points - no oil with a smoke point under 400° should be used. I prefer peanut oil because it has a neutral flavor; I find that canola oil develops an unpleasant odor when heated to a high temperature.

There is real danger in heating oil on the stove - you can be severely burned from splashes and it should never be left unattended or allowed to heat to the oil's smoke point. One way to avoid trouble is to use a cast-iron Dutch oven for deep-frying. The steep sides prevent splashing. Don't fill any fuller than necessary. I usually use about a quart of oil in my 7 qt pan. Oil can be reused once if filtered and stored in the refrigerator.

May You Live in Interesting Times

We have certainly arrived in that moment. Although today is a day of hope for new beginnings, it is also surely not the end of a run of really bad news and there is a mountain of uncertainty ahead. Humanity has just about succeeded in ruining the planetary weather systems, kills off an increasing number of other species every year, and it seems that every other week natural disasters like tsunamis and earthquakes claim more human lives. In addition, new plagues (whether AIDS, avian flu, or foodborne toxic E. coli) continue to pose a threat, civil wars in many parts of the globe seem to trend toward genocide in their cruelty and viciousness, food scarcity is increasing, and government regulation has proved ineffective against adulteration of imported foods and drugs. In this country as well as others, civil liberty and freedom of thought have been damaged with the apparent complicity of a good half of the population. On top of all that, the world economic system has been destabilized. What to do? Voltaire had the answer. "Il faut cultiver notre jardin." Or, as usually translated, "We must cultivate our garden."

Voltaire's garden has virtually become a kōan for Western writers. Everyone has an interpretation of what Voltaire meant by this innocent-sounding conclusion to Candide. Surely one of the most leaden ones is that of a recent translator, Burton Raffel. In a rejoinder to a review of his translation, he asserts that "Candide is a novel, not a philosophical tract" and vigorously defends his translation of the phrase as "we need to work our fields", arguing that the verb cultiver meant in Voltaire's time "to bestow labor upon land in order to raise crops".

But as Adam Gopnik argues in a beautiful review of the book Voltaire in Exile, "By 'garden' Voltaire meant a garden, not a field—not the land and task to which we are chained by nature but the better place we build by love. The force of that last great injunction,'We must cultivate our garden', is that our responsibility is local, and concentrated on immediate action." Gopnik also notes that though the conclusion of Candide "seems to retreat from a confrontation with human cruelty to an enclosed garden, its publication marked Voltaire’s... moral development ... toward a faith in liberal meliorism."

Voltaire lived through "interesting times" too. He was born François-Marie Arouet in 1694 in a France where the excesses of the aristocracy and monarchy were already laying the foundation for the French revolution that began nearly a century later (1789). He made his way into the outer circles of high society as a poet and playwright (and assumed the name of Voltaire), was exiled to England for a time because of his impertinence, made money by what appears to be a bit of a scam involving a public lottery, wrote a number of very serious treatises, some of which were iconoclastic, was eventually exiled from France and settled near Geneva. He was appalled by the suffering caused by the Lisbon earthquake of 1755, by the cruelty of the Spanish inquisition, by the destruction caused by the Seven Years' War, by the pitiful condition of the peasants. His disgust at the torture and capital punishment used in France and elsewhere (in which living bodies were rended asunder), especially on religious grounds, led to his campaign against l'infâme.

So what did he do? He made a garden. In exile near Geneva, he developed estates, first at the leased villa Les Délices, then at one he purchased at Ferney. He really did garden, writing the friend who owned Les Délices, "Many thanks for the lavender; I promise to have it planted in all the borders of your kitchen garden...at this moment I am sowing your Egyptian onions...Please send me everything you can in the way of flowers and vegetables."

But Voltaire's garden wasn't just about producing food or having pretty views, though it certainly did that. He created a productive enterprise to benefit his little corner of the world. When he first took possession at Ferney, he wrote to a friend that the landed estate was depopulated and miserable, without industry or resources. "My land is excellent, and yet I have found (50 hectares) belonging to my inhabitants which remain uncultivated...it is seven years since the curé celebrated any marriages, and no children have been born...poor people who have scarcely even any black bread to eat, are arrested every day, stripped, and imprisoned, for having put on this bread a bit of salt which they have bought (without paying taxes)...One's heart is torn when one witnesses so much misery. I only bought the Ferney estate in order to do a bit of good." He immediately put workers to cleaning and widening ditches, plowing fields, and planting vines. He visited his cowsheds: "I love my bulls...I stroke them and they make eyes at me". He bought and bragged about new farm implements. Over time he brought in more people and became the patriarch of a little community. He even initiated an industry to support his people, a watch factory which, with his astuteness in merchandising, became a successful business. (Quotes and information from Voltaire In Exile, by Ian Davidson.)

So, the point - the meaning of Voltaire's garden is not a retreat but an engagement. In times like these, we must make our little corner of the world into a generative force. This includes the support for local farming operations, community gardens, the ability to keep chickens, local commercial enterprises, growing and preparing our own food and in general the betterment of our small community to enhance our sufficiency. This is where reality truly lies and where goodness begins. Now I must go cultivate my garden.

Roots

We have had several frost scares, though no hard frosts yet. The appetite turns to warm baked dishes with apples and orange-fleshed winter squash. But there are also root vegetables that come into their own now and continue to thrive during these cooling days.

The red root on the left is Scarlet Queen turnip. This can be larger than the specimen shown and it has continued to grow and thrive through the cooler weather. It has a much finer texture than the common purple-top turnip and gets large without being either woody or pithy. It is from Johnny's Select Seeds. On the right is President celery root (celeriac). Its green leaves are still perfect and the roots are just now beginning to fill out. I started the seeds, from Cook's, very early but waited to put the plants out until it became warm, on the advice that the plants might otherwise bolt in warm weather.

I was introduced to these last year by a local organic grower, Tantré, and because I had both of them in my refrigerator I made a serendipitous discovery that they make a lovely salad in combination with each other. Scarlet Queen can also be cooked any way you cook turnips and celeriac is used in cooked dishes or made into a purée. But the fine firm texture of the two roots combines into a light fresh salad that can be kept for days in the refrigerator.

Julienne of Fall Root Vegetables

Peel Scarlet Queen turnip roots and celery roots in equal numbers and cut off any discoloration. Cut each into long narrow strips and combine with a vinaigrette (3 T olive oil to 1 T good vinegar, salt and pepper), a scallion cut into disks, and a smattering of dried basil or other herb. Marinate in the dressing a few minutes and serve.

Frontiers of fermentation

I've been fascinated for some time with the practice of fermenting foods for preservation and have spent some years perfecting the production of sauerkraut from cabbage. Last year my husband gave me a Christmas present of a fancy crock from Germany (Harsch) that adds some low-tech ease to the process. While I have learned to use a standard crock with a wooden cover for the kraut, a weight (quart jars filled with water), and covered with a tea towel, then a bath towel, this crock takes care of a number of those requirements. The essential requirements are that the vegetable needs to be pressed firmly to make "juice" (after being salted at 3 Tablespoons pickling salt to 5 lbs cabbage), pressed down with a weight and covered with brine, then protected from molds and yeasts and allowed to ferment to an anaerobic condition. For a pictorial account of this method, see Kim's account.

The fancy German crock has its own ceramic weights that substitute for finding a plate to fit or buying a wooden cover, and the rock or jars used to weight it down. They are two semicircles that drop in elegantly. Then a water seal consisting of a grove in the top of the crock plus the lid prevents any contaminants from getting in and helps promote the anaerobic progress of the fermentation.

I used the crock this year for my second batch of sauerkraut. Since I had already made a batch using my standard recipe, I became a little more experimental. Both the recipes that came with the crock and those in a book on preserving food (Preserving Food Without Freezing or Canning,Chelsea Green Publishing Co.) had made me aware that some European traditions do a lot more with sauerkraut, adding different vegetables and some spices to the mix. Apparently one can make turnips into shreds for this process, and carrots are another popular addition, but there are many variations. I chose a very conservative combination of several recipes. I added one onion, shredded very fine, and 3 bay leaves, 3 sage leaves, 3 whole cloves, and 6 juniper berries to my 10 pounds of cabbage, layering as I went. After 4 weeks of fermentation, the kraut was flawless and my husband says it tastes "spicier". The taste of the added spices is barely detectable, very subtle, and probably would not be detected if cooked.

This year I abandoned the practice of canning my kraut and have preserved all of it in quart canning jars in the refrigerator. It is delicious but this method results in some bad moments when trying to find places for other things around all the kraut jars. The kraut is very good as is but also serves as a salad with a simple vinaigrette (3 T oil to 1 T vinegar, pepper, no salt) and a chopped scallion. Cooked with sausages and a few caraway seeds, it is just as tasty in a different way.

I grew two varieties of cabbage for use in kraut this year. The one I have grown for several years, "Stonehead" from Jung, began to crack in mid-August. Kim and I made it into kraut that was decanted mid-September. The other variety, "Tendersweet" from Johnny's Select Seeds, I used for the second batch in mid-September, decanted in mid-October. Tendersweet has odd flattened heads and very thin leaves. I thought it would be superior for kraut because it made very fine strands. However, the resulting product is not as crisp and clings together when served rather than standing out a bit. I probably won't use it again for that, but it is a superior eating cabbage.

Timing of kraut production has been related to head splitting, which ruins the cabbage for making kraut and invites bacterial soft rot. Tendersweet appears to be somewhat more resistant to early splitting. I've discovered that the splitting of the head is preparatory to blooming. Cabbage is a biennial but apparently our climate has enough cold shocks to induce flowering. Perhaps I should investigate to see what varieties the kraut packers in Wisconsin use. I recall that they had huge basketball-size heads and might be resistant to splitting.

A Bounty of Peppers

For several years now, red bell peppers have been an important crop for my garden. There has been a vogue for purple, yellow, and even "chocolate" peppers, but to me, a ripe pepper can be any color as long as it is red. We eat them fresh, but I've learned to roast and peel them for freezing or pickling, so I've dedicated a noticeable fraction of the garden to them.


This has also entailed a search for the best variety. This year I tried three. From left to right: Crispy (Burpee), Maxibelle (Burpee), and Karma (Park). Note that "Crispy" and "Maxibelle" are both the yield on one day from one row of 5 plants; "Karma" is the yield from two rows. I keep on growing Karma because the fruits are big, blocky, and thick-walled. But they take a long time to grow and ripen. I've noticed in the past that I was picking red fruit from Crispy before any coloring on Karma at all. This year I tried for a third choice with Maxibelle. But contrary to the name, the fruit is no bigger than Crispy's, and the yield appears inferior. (Since these were photographed, the plants have now borne a new crop of red fruit ready to pick.) So the answer to the Desert Island question is apparently Crispy. Still, I'll probably continue to plant Karma. The fruit really is more impressive than this photograph shows.

Then the real punishment: an afternoon and early evening spent cutting, roasting (broiling) till the skin blisters, and peeling. The resulting slabs of pepper essence can be used in salads or cooking and I'll now be freezing them in small portions to use all winter. From the fruit shown above, I prepared 3 1/2 pounds of finished peppers.

Steakplant

The late Clifford Simak wrote many science fiction novels in which the protagonist lived a quiet life in the rural backwater of some distant future world, often sitting on his porch, fishing, and of course tending his garden. One of the concepts I thought particularly intriguing was that one such garden included a "steak plant" right next to the potatoes and carrots - a plant that produced little steaks hanging from its branches instead of fruit. Obviously genetic engineering was well developed by that time. How nice not to be involved with caging and butchering animals, but simply to go out into the garden and pick a nice steak to go with your vegetables of an evening. (Simak used folksy phrases like "of an evening" a lot.)

Well, we are almost there. Eggplant satisfies a lot of that part of our appetites that yearns for solid meat-type food along with all the greens and starches. It is a staple of many vegetarian dishes and extends others that contain meat. I've been planting the variety "Neon", from Cook's Garden, for several years, after experimenting with other varieties. It has a firm nonbitter flesh and remains at a high quality in the garden for a long time (when it becomes seedy, it obligingly turns a lighter, duller color). While most recipes for eggplant call for salting and pressing to rid it of a bitter flavor, this is never necessary for Neon. I find that my husband, who usually expects meat as a part of dinner, will tolerate the occasional meatless dinner made with eggplant.

We used to visit an Italian restaurant in San Diego (Capriccio) where the Eggplant Parmigiana was so good that we skipped the similar Veal Parmigiana. Unlike most recipes for this dish, the poor eggplant was not breaded, fried, and baked with layers of sauce and cheese, but rather served up straight with the sauce on the side. The result was remarkably meatlike.

Eggplant Parmigiana à la Capriccio

Slice a large fresh peeled eggplant into disks about 1/2 inch thick. If eggplant is not overmature, it should not require salting and pressing and doing so will ruin the character of the dish. Dip the freshly cut slices into flour (they will be very thinly coated), then into a mixture of egg and milk (about 3/4 c milk, beat the egg into it). Then press the eggplant slice into a seasoned bread crumb mixture (try oregano, dash of garlic salt, and paprika). Sauté in olive oil until browned on both sides. Place on cooking sheet and arrange a slice of mozzarella on top. Bake the slices briefly until the mozzarella is puffy. Serve with any good Italian sauce on the side, such as a marinara, basil-tomato-onion-garlic, or a roasted red pepper sauce as shown here.

Squashed

Summer squash is a rewarding and easy vegetable to grow. The tiny tender fruit come along reliably once the plant reaches a decent size. Apart from a long-ago problem with borers and the occasional fruit rot in really moist conditions (Aspergillus, I think), I've experienced few pest problems. Those first succulent fruit are so tasty, just steamed or lightly sautéed. This year I grew two varieties, Magda, a kousa-type squash from Park Seed, and Supersett, a yellow crook-neck from Renee's Garden. (I consider zucchini to be bitter and overrated.) I was so late getting started that I just direct-seeded into warm garden soil rather than starting plants early in peat pots. Even so, the plants were generous. We had both squashes, sometimes one at a time and sometimes as a mixture. I like to cook slices with just a little butter and some fresh dill, and steam them in my grandmother's old chicken fryer. Magda has a subtle fresh flavor and Supersett is sweeter, with a bonus for cooking them till they are slightly caramelized but not scorched.

After a while we get a little more jaded and I start making squash gratin. This has various versions. I cut and steam the squash briefly before placing in a baking dish, usually with onions sautéed in butter, and perhaps some red or green pepper. Then either I make a white sauce (best with a little grind of nutmeg) or just drizzle some cream straight over the fruit after salting and peppering. Add a generous sprinkling of gruyère or Swiss cheese, and bake till bubbling and a light brown on top. I used to add buttered bread crumbs but this makes a heavy dish. If made with a large quantity of squash and a white sauce enriched with cream, the dish freezes well.

Eventually the squash stay in the produce drawer longer and longer as the season progresses and the generosity of the vines begins to overwhelm the menu. Even with various innovative ways to slip them into mixed vegetable dishes and soups, the delight of the early summer has become the albatross of the refrigerator.

Finally I go to the garden and find the dreaded Submarine. These are a known terror. Gardeners offer them to their friends and leave them on porches. Barbara Kingsolver (Animal, Vegetable, Mineral) admits to locking her door to keep from having them left in her kitchen. About this time of year (late August to September), newspaper food columns begin to feature recipes for zucchini bread and offer chirpy suggestions like "scoop out the seeds and stuff". But after years of guilty efforts to use this bounty, my advice is — Compost. The goodness of the earth will be enhanced next year and you will still have the courage to plant squash again in the spring.

By now the Squash Monster is in full cry, with a new Submarine, it seems, every time I go to the garden. At least this year I didn't grow Renee's "Trombetta di Albenga" squash - a horrifyingly prolific long-necked squash that is at least a foot long even in youth. I would advise growing this squash only if you have (a.) a family of 10 to feed; or (b.) a distant relative has come to stay, rent-free, for the duration. Squash soup, squash casserole, baked stuffed squash, squash bread and squash omelettes should take care of that problem.