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I Could Eat
food explorations with Rose VG
Pansotti
Grown, Foraged and Bought in Brooklyn
Pansotti: Image
It is early Saturday morning, and I am in the Phoenix Community Garden in Brooklyn, hunting for some of the stranger ingredients that are a part of pansotti, a pasta stuffed with foraged greens. The late autumn garden is mostly spent and brittle, but there are some treasures - raspberries, somehow, golden marigold blossoms, and the self-seeding herbs getting ready for spring. There’s a cinderella pumpkin curing in the hoop house, backlit and looking important through the plastic walls.
I'm obsessed with Pasta Grannies, a video series and cookbook showing the Nonnas and their hyper-regional food, made by hand with veggies from their garden, olive oil from their trees, pork from their pigs. I don’t have a pig or an olive grove, but I want to make their recipes in the spirit of the cooks-- using what is fresh and local, and making it delicious for the ones that you love.
Pansotti: Text
So, I’m cooking for my little family and foraging in Phoenix Garden to make "Cornelia's Pansotti with Walnut Pesto." My neighbors have grown a bounty here, but most of the traditional greens for pansotti are out of season. Nettle is found in the spring, and I’d never considered eating borage, even though herbalists say it will cure melancholy, but none is here. I tried to find purslane and amaranth, both abundant, delicious weeds here in summer, but in December, only the hardy greens are left.
In the spirit of eating seasonally, I start picking the rainbow chard, their candyland stems glowing against the dry ground. I wander through other beds - brussels sprouts, sage, thyme, horseradish, oh -- parsley—I need that. The next bed is all fronds— is it fennel? Fennel tops are a traditional filling. I taste a leaf. No, it’s licoricey. Anise? I’ll pass. But in the middle of that patch, a thatch of sorrel is hiding, red veined, lemony and bright. I cut a bunch.
Pansotti: Text
☙ I still need more greens so I head to see my farmer friends at the Grand Army Plaza Greenmarket. I hope someone will have fennel -- and garlic! I’m really in trouble if there’s no garlic.
I beeline for Kira’s Evolutionary Organics stand I am immediately smitten by a fuchsia and green head of radicchio -- I must buy it. Chatting with Kira, she tells me her farm has flooded twice already this season. I’m grateful for what she has and I add some garlic to my basket. She’s one of the only women farmers at the market, and I’m sure her salty demeanor is what makes her greens so delicious. I see another woman inspecting a 3 foot bunch of pale greens. “Excuse me, is that dandelion?” She nods, frowning, making sure to get the best bunch for herself. Dandelion is also typical for pansotti. I carry my bouquets across my arm like a beauty queen.
Pansotti: Video
Pansotti: Image
I get more garlic from Ray at Bradley Farm (no fennel here either) and see my old friend Greg Lebak; he’s been selling flowers here for decades. He has already had a frost, so I can only snag some eucalyptus for my bathroom. He puts some garlic in my bag, too. You really can never have too much.
Oh! I almost forgot the eggs. I have been looking for Brooklyn eggs, but did you know that chickens lay less when the days are shorter? Turns out eggs are seasonal too, so I’m buying them from the professionals at the market.
Can we just pause to say loudly that small-scale farmers are essential? These in particular are among my favorite people. They feed me! And, they have taught me a lot about the determination needed for farming: uncooperative weather, complicated labor laws, and customers who expect these crops tended with love and hard work to be somehow both better and cheaper than those bought at their local supermega organic chain. Give them all your money. Their food tastes better.
Pansotti: Text
Pansotti: Image
☙☙ Home again, time to make the walnut pesto. I consult the Pasta Grannies. Walnuts and pine nuts are blended with bread crumbs,… soaked in milk? I’ve never made a sauce that way. But I remember that this is a dish born of necessity, turned tradition. Using yesterday's bread ensures nothing goes to waste, and soaking it in milk makes it creamy, and is cheaper than cheese. And, nuts give essential protein to fortify this vegetarian meal.
I know there are black walnut trees in my neighborhood, but I've never eaten one. In my insanity for local ingredients, I connect with Jerry, a forager who a hook-up. He wants to meet half-way for the exchange.
Pansotti: Text
Half-way for Jerry, who lives in Yonkers, turns out to be metaphorical, and I end up riding to the end of the 1 train, to 242nd Street. There, I find a spry old man setting up a nut cracker on the trunk of his blue sedan. He breaks open a craggy shell – much more wild-looking than the English Walnuts we are used to. I’m a bit afraid he’s going to snip his fingers as he uses wire cutters to get deeper into the shell. He gives me a shopping bag with a couple of jars -- exactly the amount of black walnuts I need, shelled just for me, plus some bonus pine nuts. "My wife says walnuts in pesto can be too heavy,” he advises. They taste delicious, sweet and earthy.
So, I toast the foraged black walnuts and Jerry’s wife’s pine nuts (plus some almonds, because we ain’t rich). I cut some marjoram in my yard. Oregano’s sweet-smelling cousin, marjoram is one of my favorites, though pungent. This recipe wants a lot, whizzed until luscious with the nuts, bread, milk, garlic and salt. I know all these ingredients, but I’ve never had them all together. It’s exciting to have some new flavors in my life. But, I’m exhausted after all this foraging, so I crash in front of the TV.
Pansotti: Video
Pansotti: Pro Gallery
☙ In the morning, I start again. Honestly, how do the nonnas do it? I need more hands to get this done in a day. Is this why generations live together? Back in my yard, I pick some more greens from my own pots. Now I have the seven types for the preboggiòn or posy of greens for the filling– though most are non-traditional: rainbow chard, sorrel, parsley, radicchio, dandelion, and home-grown kale and chicory. I sample a few of the leaves; all my tasting notes say “bitter”, “lemony-bitter”, “pithy”.
I fill my biggest pot with water and salt it - salty like the sea. The parsley stays raw, but all the other greens are boiled. Wild greens are often a desperation food, so a long boil does a lot to remove bitterness and potential toxins. I always feel like a bit of a witch when I’m stirring a boiling pot; I don’t hate it!
Ten minutes later, a pound of greens is melted down to nothing. The greens get squeezed out, finely chopped and mixed with more marjoram, garlic crushed in salt, an egg, and some Parmigiano cheese – this is our pansotti filling.
Pansotti: Video
Pansotti: Pro Gallery
Now I follow Pasta Grannies' pasta-making directions, to a point. Make a well of OO Flour on the counter and courageously add an egg, olive oil and water. Stir together and knead until supple and smooth. Let it rest, then roll it out into a thin sheet.
But I’ll tell you, I do not have the upper arms for rolling out sheets of pasta. Sorry, Nonna. I pull my pasta maker out of the basement and crank it through. I drape the thin sfoglia across every flat-weave towel in the house. This is beautiful, but I remember that the book advises “air is the enemy of decent pasta”, so I use up all my plastic wrap stacking the sheets one on top of the another.
Pansotti: Video
Finally, like 30 hours later, it is time to assemble the pansotti. This is supposed to be the fun part, folding cute little packets of pasta, greens and cheese and chatting with friends, “an excuse to sing and gossip,” according to the book. But, I’m tired, my friends called out sick, and the dough got too dry. I wet my finger to help seal the pasta corners together to make plump little pansotti – fat bellies. Some look pretty nice, but some are just not cooperating. I realize I forgot to add the parsley. But, my kid thinks it seems fun and wants to fold his to look like Chinese dumplings with twisted tops. Why not? Some of mine look like ravioli. He goes to bed and I keep folding and stuffing. It’s all a bit Zen, but I am very hungry.
Pansotti: Video
Pansotti: Pro Gallery
Once folded, I put a fresh pot of salty, salty water on to boil. The pansotti plunges in for a few minutes and is skimmed out onto plates. I spoon the walnut pesto over it, and grate more parm on top (always more cheese in this house).
Pansotti: Text
We sit down and I try to think about Thich Nhat Hanh’s How to Eat, and to be mindful of the experience of eating. Those new flavors in the sauce are strange - creamy, nutty, the twinge of marjoram. Nearly delicious, but somehow not quite. I keep eating. The pansotti greens are aggressively bitter. And then, my husband says “is the roof of your mouth tingling?” Well, yes, actually. We pause. Did I do enough research for this foraged dinner? I try another bite. No. This is not right. Instead of poisoning myself or something dramatic, I dump it in the garbage. Instant sorrow.
Reader, I will eat almost anything; but not this. Now, I am grumpy, and still hungry. I cooked for two days and all I got was a headache.
Pansotti: Text
We had to eat something, so I made a completely different Emergency Pasta. Now fed, I can think more clearly. Have I come so far from my food-stamp youth that this poverty food is too assertive for my soft palate? Eating boiled greens sauced with foraged nuts is just a challenge? Or, more likely and less whiny, I did something wrong.
I re-read the recipe. In my zest for wild greens, I overlooked a critical note: “dandelions are bitter, while others are mild.” Mild greens! I needed more chard and some spinach – and to boil the bitter dandelion and radicchio longer. But does this explain my tingly mouth? I’m googling and find ‘oral allergy syndrome’ a mild reaction to walnuts. Am I a grown adult finding out now I have a walnut allergy? I don’t think I misidentified anything I harvested. Is there some other mistake? Is it ironic that a Brooklyn-sourced dish is too bitter?
Food can be an adventure, an exploration of the new, so I guess it’s ok to have a spectacular failure now and again. In my quest to be my own Nonna, I don’t have the guidance of my elders, only my own instincts – and mistakes. But I do have these farmers and foragers, wonderful and dedicated to food. And I want to eat all the things. I’m even considering doing it again – is that nuts? I want to eat it the way it’s supposed to taste. Do you want to come over and help?
Pansotti: Video
Pansotti: Text
Pansotti: Image
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