Timeless techniques for an all-season harvest supper

BY YESS BRYCE

Food has been my life for as long as I can remember. I spent my childhood days in my mothers kitchen on the coast of British Columbia, Canada. She is still the best chef I know, and I owe most of my culinary successes to her and what she taught me about food. Living in a coastal floating town, we had less than several sources for ingredients. What you had was what you had. I learned to substitute certain ingredients for others, and I know now the value in that. I find it fun, a challenge maybe, as a chef thirty eight years later, to be faced with the hurdles of product availability and seasonality.

Each season brings us all a new way of looking at our tables and plates. “What colors do we have to paint with this time?” is a question we could ask when seeking Farmers Market ingredients for a menu we plan to serve to friends. Hosting a dinner can be stressful, especially when trying to stick to a plan. My aunt told me once, don’t make plans. Plans often don’t work out and someone inevitably gets upset. Have an idea instead, because you can always have a better idea. So I often serve suppers with just an idea in my head. That is what I would like to impart to you with this story.

My favorite time of the year is autumn. Not for the colors or the leaves, but for the food. The harvest is coming, and friends will gather. The anticipation I feel in the heat of summer is palpable, and when October hits I feel a certain sense of relief on many levels. The garden has survived, the produce is ready, the butcher is working hard, and the hens are happy. Fall brings me joy. Sourcing ingredients locally is pure happiness for me, a passion that I have chosen to cultivate and nurture. I left commercial restaurants many years ago, and started a private chef business sourcing as much as humanly possible from local producers. Not only is it enjoyable for me personally, it is also an excellent way to support my local community, as well as showing kindness to the planet.

Working with high quality, locally made ingredients is my love language. Love for an ingredient is a lot like music, a lot like any art, the brightest paint and color, the stroke of a brush, the stir of a spoon. The most gorgeous amalgamation of nature. That is what Harvest Season has become in my life. It has become the time to celebrate surviving fire season, surviving drought, surviving the onslaught of tourists and hundred degree weather. We are the garden, and the garden is us.

This stands to reason that Thanksgiving Supper, or Harvest Supper, as I’d like to refer to it, is an opportunity to revel in the beauty of the harvest. Living where we do, in the Inland Pacific Northwest, we have no shortage of tremendous products to choose from. The first stop on my grocery list was Pilgrim’s Market in Coeur d’Alene, and the next stop would be the Sandpoint Farmers Market. I spent a weekend in August, shopping for a Harvest menu to cook and to research. Just what is it that a locally sourced Harvest menu has that makes it so special? I had a good idea what that was, and I was determined to find out.

I considered many recipes, complex and intricate recipes, fun and exciting ones where the original main ingredient was no longer recognizable. I decided eventually to just head to the stores and see what was there, waiting for me. The seasonality of sourcing locally does make it more difficult to predict what may be ready to harvest on any given day, especially with as unpredictable a summer as we have just had. Sure, yes, I could tell you to make roasted squash. But… what kind of squash? I had a good idea of what properly roasted squash could be. I bet you do too. Or maybe I could give you a recipe for roasted rutabaga, but what if there isn’t any rutabaga?

And that, my friends, is when I realized I wasn’t going to give you a recipe at all, I would give you a guide instead. I hope this gives you some ideas.

Roasted bird was definitely on the menu, walking past the freezer at Pilgrims, I saw a perfect little bundle of duck. What do I do with “any” bird? I brine them with citrus, herbs and allium, and stuff it with citrus, herbs, and allium. (Allium = any type of garlic or onion). I keep the citrus and herbs the same across the board for the bird. In the stuffing, the brine, the seasoning rub, and the gravy. Voilà, I had our main star of the menu. For this duck I went with thyme, lemon, and red onion. Maybe you aren’t cooking for twelve adults and four kids, maybe it’s just you and your partner. A duck is perfect then. Or maybe breast of turkey? Who knows, but I have an idea that maybe you can find something that suits your table, like I did.

Strolling through the produce section, I saw beets so bright they seemed to glow. Perfect, I thought, grabbing gold and red ones. Snagging a bag of onions, I figured the Farmer’s Market might have some incredible produce, and wandered over to the meats and cheeses section. Bacon, thick and ribboned, of course. What a good idea, I would use that in the sauteed greens. Cream cheese for something, not sure what yet, and port salut cheese for snacking on while I cooked. Butter, the good stuff, for the mashed potatoes. Gathering my wares, I headed for the check stand. It all seemed standard for a Harvest menu, and I had high hopes I would find the rest of the items I sought at the Farmers Market.

Saturday in August was smokey, I am sure you remember. I wasn’t certain who would be out selling their products. It was possible for there to be very few vendors out, with the sheer volume of evacuations and forest fires, I had no idea what to expect. Lo and behold, the market forged on. It was quite busy, and the vendors were lively and happy. Customers were shopping like stockholders at the stock market. I was thrilled. We made a loop around the market once, to check out what was available. Coming back around to Mountain Cloud Farm’s stand, I was blown away at the perfection and glory of the ingredients piled high upon their tables. What good fortune, I whispered as I gathered handfuls of produce. The smiles of the people selling this gold was as priceless as the food itself. There were piles and piles of good ideas.

Garlic and shallots at Allicin’s Ranch stunned me, and into my shopping bag some went. Being sure to grab a jar of garlic powder, and honey too. A loaf of bread from Tender Earth Bakery and I was set. Heading back to our airbnb to cook this pre-harvest Harvest Supper, I was giddy with excitement. Setting the ingredients on the counter, I pondered how to cook each one. I still had no recipe in mind, and was just playing around. When I teach cooking lessons, I like to press the idea that if you know your ingredients, you can cook anything. I wanted to showcase the ingredients as they were. Perfection.

I set some baby white turnips down beside the beets. The shallots, red fingerling potatoes, a head of lettuce, red scallions, rainbow chard, strawberries, raspberries, some local peach jam.

Staring at the bounty of a smoked midsummer day, I got right to work. Root vegetables are interchangeable in their cooking processes. I wrapped a bundle of beets, a bundle of shallots & garlic, and a bundle of turnips. Not bothering to peel any of them, I drizzled each with salt, pepper, olive oil, and honey. Into the oven they went at 350 degrees. You could use rutabagas, potatoes, carrots, kohlrabi. Any root will do. Roast them until tender, and slightly GBD. (Golden brown and delicious).

The duck I had brined, and giving it a good rinse, I rubbed it all over with my chosen seasonings. Into the oven it went, breast side down. Letting it absorb all its delicious fats and juices as it cooked. A sauce, we would need a sauce, I said aloud. My partner glanced at me across the kitchen and grinned. “You are saucey” he said. This sauce is another guide I will give you, like the roasted roots and the roasted birds. My idea of a good sauce.

A wine reduction sauce can be almost any version of its basic infrastructure. Start with shallots or onions and fat. (I used duck fat, obviously). Deglaze with wine, I used champagne. Add fruit and jam, herbs on the stem, hot sauce, stir it well, and reduce it til “sec”. Sec means almost dry in french cooking terms, and all it means is you will reduce that pot of deliciousness until it is thick. Pull out your stems, add some salt and pepper, and blend it. Blend it well, and you should have a lovely sweet, spicy, savory, tangy sauce.

This time I went with peach jam, fresh strawberries and sambal olek chili paste. You could use any jam, any fruit, any hot sauce, any wine. The possibilities are endless. A simple sauteè of leafy greens with garlic, lemon juice, more allium of some kind, a touch of salt and pepper and a drizzle of honey. Any greens, any citrus, any sweetener.

You see where I’m going here, right? You are likely a foodie, or at the very least, a good cook, if you have read this far. I imagine you are a lover of a Good Ingredient. I have faith that you can go to your local market and find something perfectly ready and ripe, and cook it in a way that shows both its beauty, and its depth. Kind of like life, like art, it is always different and always the same. This wasn’t my plan, it was just an idea, and my partner and I were quite happy with it.

Same same but different, Happy Harvest to you and yours.

Dance on, dancers.