Morsels

The market is ending next week so I went up and bought 25 pounds of potatoes. And we don’t even eat many potatoes. But everyone is out blowing leaves around on this beautiful fall morning, my amish Covered Bridge Farm friends are giving out free samples of their incredible eggnog and I got worried about having enough potatoes to last through the winter. Plus they were seconds so they were less than fifty cents a pound. Still…. well, it should be interesting to see how many I have left at the end of the winter.

I also bought a lovely whole duck and some short ribs. The hardest part about getting through the winter is worrying about getting good, local meat but it turns out the beef guy will deliver to Crocker Park once a month. If I plan accordingly, that ought to work out just fine.

Meantime, it is a lovely, warm fall day and the entire neighborhood is out attacking the leaves with their loud blowers; the town leaf-sucker is out and it is general mayhem. You’d think leaves were a scourge or something! It’s a little disturbing. I took a quiet walk through the woods this morning and crunched through the leaves — in their place, ready to crackle with frost and turn sodden after thaws. Making warm, fresh earth. And then there are all these poor suburban leaves, blown to the curb. It’s so loud out there, one really would prefer to stay inside — even on such a pretty day.

My sister is in Paris for the year. I love saying that. It makes me feel very glamorous (imagine how she feels!). She is ensconced with her husband, Wes, in a tiny, lovely place just off Place de la Nation. They go to market and buy beautiful, fresh eggs and chickens. Wes buys a baguette every day. Sometimes he gets overexcited and buys two.

Anyway, my sister and I skype with our video cameras and it’s almost like being together. Luckily Susanna and Wes love food as much as we do (actually, maybe more). They called us from their Paris dining room to our Finger Lake kitchen and told us about their Easter meal. It would involve Maigrets of duck and a gratin and white asparagus. I was on the prowl for a gratin recipe and asked Susanna for it. But she thought she might make it first and then give it to me so I could post it. She was making a gratin based on the Union Square Cafe’s potato and gruyere gratin but was improvising because she didn’t bring her Union Square Cookbook with her to Paris. Note: this is a woman who packed so light she only brought one pair of earrings with her. She has reported in a later email that it turned out splendidly. The Union Square cafe’s original calls for 3 cups of heavy cream (ouch!). Susanna made hers with half cream and half whole milk. Much more reasonable, I say.

In any case, here is her version — complete with her narration.

Of course, I became obsessed with making a gratin of my own for our easter dinner. Our main course was going to be salmon with riesling butter sauce but Wegman’s had only farmed salmon and I couldn’t do it. So, I substituted halibut. It was terrific but I am getting sidetracked. The gratin I found on epicurious is made with mascarpone and dried porcini. I had to substitute dried portabellos because there had been a run on porcini (only at Wegman’s, I tell you). It ended up being a wonderful combination of the earthy mushrooms, the unctuous mascarpone, garlic, cream sauce and the tanginess of a very good parmigianno reggiano grated over all. Here is that one.

Easter evening came and even though we were time zones apart and by the time I was tucking into my gratin, seester was sound asleep in her cozy apartment, I cooked my way past that and thought happily of her while the sky outside darkened enough to show its stars. And those we share too.