Ninecooks

Two squash stews

If the picture tells the story, then this photo — yes, it's a pot of orange blobby-looking stuff with green things swimming in it, which is in fact a fantastic stew made this morning by the Wednesday Lunch Group — this photo is why I don't think pictures of food are the best way to tell the story of Ninecooks cooking groups.

It's not about the food.

it's about this:

and this:

and this:

and this.

Oh, I could tell you about the two stews we made, with butternut squash as the common denominator. One was Thai-inspired, with tofu in a coconut base; the other, a Native American adaptation, made with chile peppers and black beans, packed a bit more punch. Served over rice, either one could be the star of a dinner party, but each of these vegetarian stews came together in less than 45 minutes, so they'd be perfect for weekday cooking.

Because our menu was quick to prepare, we had time for a leisurely lunch: seven cooks, two stews, and one apple cake for dessert.

It doesn't get any better than that.

Another opening, another show

Only one more day until the start of the Fall season for all Ninecooks cooking groups.

First up, the Family Cooking Group takes on pasta sauces. Then The #1 Cooking Group takes the cake — well, two cakes, actually. Next, our World Cuisines Cooking Group travels to Senegal for a taste of West African cooking. And the Wednesday Lunch Group travels to the local farmstand for a supply of butternut squash, the key ingredient in two potluck vegetarian stew dishes.

Two weeks prior to cooking day, each group receives a shopping list, parcelled out so everyone brings a share of the groceries. I've stocked the pantry with spices, flours, sugar and salt. The herb garden still promises plenty of fresh herbs, though the cold snap may do in the basil. The knives are sharp and the stove's got gas.

So, let's get cooking!

Happy as clams

What could be better than getting together every few weeks, spending the morning cooking and eating and laughing and, occasionally, learning?

Not a thing, according to the response to the questionnaire I sent to the Wednesday Lunch Group.

I remember the day, two years ago next month, that this group first met in the Ninecooks kitchen to plan our cooking future (the hardest thing was finding a day of the week, and time of day, that fit into everyone's schedules). As each person arrived, he or she discovered with delight at least one other familiar face. In some cases, friendships went back twenty years or more. Nobody knew everyone in the kitchen, but everyone knew someone.

Our first actual cooking date was in November 2004. Today, the same seven cooks have become friends. One was married earlier this year, and invited everyone in the group to the wedding. We've welcomed into the kitchen one daughter and one sister. We've shared tales of woe about our parents, our in-laws, our kids and grandkids, our ex-spouses.

In other words, we've grown into a family, in the best sense of the word.

And we're a pretty happy family, as it turns out. Last Spring, at the end of our cooking season, I asked the group to consider: the frequency of our group cooking; the mix of menus and skills taught; the level of chaos (really!) — do we make too many things at once, too few, etc.; food cost; skills and topics of interest they're like to explore; field trips and ingredient tastings; and willingness to teach.

I didn't hear from everyone, but here's the response to date:

1.    We're cooking every 5-6 weeks, which everyone feels is just right.

2.    Most people are happy with the mix of menu and skills; one person asked that we focus more on method. Will do.

3.    Everyone felt the food cost is reasonable. Each person is assigned a shopping list prior to our cooking sessions; I try to keep the cost between $5 and $10 per person, and I provide the pantry items.

4.    Particular topics of interest: curries and Indian dishes, Mexican, US regional cooking, one-pot, lunches, potluck dishes. Yes, to all.

5.    Most would like occasional field trips, but not in place of cooking together.

6.   One person is willing to teach, and another is willing to consider it. That's great. Meanwhile, they seem happy enough with me (whew).

My favorite feedback nugget? "I use the recipes when I need to 'wow' someone!"

Wow!

Making maki

If you don't believe in magic, you've never cooked in the Ninecooks kitchen. In under two hours, presto change-o, the Wednesday Lunch Group turned chaos (above) into order (below), and into the perfect lunch for our final cooking session before the summer.

This month all four Ninecooks groups have been going to the mat — the bamboo sushi mat called a sudare. Each group starts from scratch, making the rice, mixing it with seasoned rice vinegar, sugar and salt in a traditional wooden tub or wooden salad bowl, toasting the sheets of nori, and prepping a variety of fillings including colorful vegetables, fruits, roast beef, seafood salad, peanut butter, and, today, shredded rotisserie chicken from the supermarket. (Actually we were pleased to discover that every ingredient we needed for making sushi could be found in our local grocery store. Given that we live in rural northwest Rhode Island, this means our markets have come a long way.)

For condiments we sampled hoisin sauce and a praline mustard, plus hot chili paste with garlic. We all fell in love with Gold's Wasabi Sauce, a prepared, somewhat mild alternative to kick-it-up wasabi powder, that we found in our market's seafood department; it turned out to be the perfect accompaniment to everything — chicken, turkey, veggies, smoked salmon. Finding the Gold's a bit tame, Pete decided to kick up his wasabi sauce (in the blue rice bowl in the photo below) with...yes...super-hot wasabi paste (on the little cow plate). Wowie zowie.

By the time we were on our second and third maki rolls, we were experts!

A few fearless flyers tried their hand at inside-out rolls, with a sprinkling of toasted black sesame seeds adding dramatic effect...

...abracadabra! Success! The inside-out mango-strawberry variation was a bit gooey, but we figured out how to stop the fruit from sliding out, and the rolls provided a sweet counterpoint to the spicy veggie rolls.

While Bev regaled us with stories of her recent travels in Peru, everyone — including a five-year-old guest cook — mastered the art of making maki.

We did pretty well on the eating part, too, but we'd made far more than we could eat. Practice certainly made perfect, but it also made way too much sushi for our lunch! My lucky husband Ted will find a bit of leftover tucked away in the fridge for tomorrow's dinner.

Hi-ho, hi-ho, it's off to the farm we go!

This morning, at the table where I'm sitting right now, the Wednesday Lunch Group devoured an asparagus and gruyere tart, a serving bowl of soba noodles with asparagus and cashews, an asparagus frittata with mushrooms and thyme, a platter of asparagus wrapped in wontons, and "naked" asparagus that had been charred on the grill. In all, we went through four pounds of asparagus, and that's one big heap o' spears.

Our exploration of all things asparagus really began yesterday, when Marcia, Lora, Charlotte and I visited Falls Creek Farm in Oneco, Connecticut, to select our asparagus and take a peek at the sorting process. Farm manager Laura Pailthorpe (who's also the resident baker, in farmers' market season, of amazing breads and addictive quiches) welcomed us to the sorting room.

It was a kind of slow day at the farm, Laura explained; they'd only harvested 500 pounds (!) of asparagus that morning. The process is extremely hands-on. The spears are placed one at a time on a conveyor belt that sends them through a machine that washes and trims them to a uniform length. Then, the asparagus are sorted by hand into five sizes, from pencil thin to grill-perfect spears half an inch in diameter.

We were mesmerized by the banding machines, in which a stretched rubber band is placed around one-pound bunches of asparagus.

At the farm stand, we selected three sizes of spears: the next-to-smallest, for our frittata; medium, for the soba stir-fry; and large, for the grill. For all of the personal attention each spear receives on its way to market, you'd expect to pay a lot, and this year the Pailthorpes have had to raise the price – to a still-very-budget-friendly $2.25 a pound.

So, we brought our incredibly beautiful asparagus back to the Ninecooks kitchen, and made an incredibly beautiful array of dishes. And a good time was had by all.

End of story, right?

Not quite.

Marcia had a wonderful surprise for us – a selection of garlic scallions from her garden! We had an impromptu show-and-tell and a tasting, and decided to add the garlic scallions to our asparagus and cashew stir fry. Marcia explained how the "scallions" (they're really called green garlic, but they look exactly like scallions) grow, burrowing deep into the ground; how to plant them; and when to harvest, before the individual cloves begin to multiply into whole heads of garlic. None of us had ever tasted something that looks like an onion but has a distinct garlic taste, and after everyone went home, I went online to learn more. Marcia also brought us the gift of garlic cloves, sprouted and ready for planting.

I'll plant my cloves in the Ninecooks herb garden, so in a few weeks, all of our cooking groups will be able to enjoy home-grown garlic scallions.