The Problem of Winter's End

dwindling storage crops and the idiocy of the "local, seasonal" establishment

For most folks living in the Hudson Valley, arriving at mid-February is a hopeful thing. A thing of buoyancy–of increasing light and occasional blue. A reminder that life exists. That waking in the dark is temporary, and that leaving one’s house is possible. The equinox is just over a month away; visions of crocuses dance in dreams; snow melts, even if only as a temporary, well-intentioned gesture.

Arriving at mid-February in the Hudson Valley is a funny thing, though, when you are a chef here. If you are the owner of a food business, many times of year in the HV are humorous, but when you are a chef in February, it is even more silly. Because you are not immune to the feelings of hope that naturally creep up–but you have something else to consider: that though impending spring often reminds us of green things–like vegetables–there will scarcely be any until June. And so, as folks start to emerge from their duvets; wrap up long books or the last remaining, unwatched TV series; and set their hearts on pink wine and peas, we have a bit of a problem.

For the next three or so months, there will be just potatoes and maybe beets.

When I moved to Hudson in twenty-eighteen, I was excited to get closer to the farms that trucked down to the city for the Union Square greenmarket and occasionally delivered to the restaurants where I used to work. And I did. Cooking and living in this part of the country has been one of the greatest gifts in my career and life. The farmers in and around the Columbia County area are the most incredible people, they grow produce and raise meat of excellent quality, and they often deliver multiple times per week directly to our doors.

It’s entirely different to cook up here, where these growers supply the bulk of our produce for much of the year, unlike back in the city, where using such produce felt like a sometimes rare treat. But the growing season is fairly short, and the expectations around what it means to be a chef in this locale–both from within and without–are very specific. Even for us, the cooks who peddle bologna, make entire men out of bologna (iykyk), and may even ourselves be made of bologna, vegetables and fruits are such important parts of our cuisine.

It’s nearly impossible to find much writing about a modern restaurant in the Hudson Valley, especially in Hudson proper, that isn’t associated with serving the hard-ridden, wetly-bedded, dreaded, tired, abused and otherwise blasphemously invoked “Locally Sourced, Seasonal Cuisine.” I am pretty sure I am also guilty of having used these cruel, nauseating, and long-ago-rendered-meaningless words myself here or there. But what in the ever loving shit does anybody mean, truly, when we really aren’t able to uphold this fairytale for half of the year? And please understand that I am aware of the diverse combinations of access, storage capacity, and financial capability that make relating to those ideals different for everyone cooking in these parts–I am just explaining an experience I have to which I suspect at least some others relate.

For us, a year in cooking, especially cooking with vegetables, is like this:

January: Broke as hell. Carrots still around. The last of the celery root. Beets still here but avoiding them until desperate. Beloved turnips still sweet, decreasingly available, and bruised. Clinging to turnips. Loving turnips. Offended by the lack of enthusiasm for turnips. Cabbage still here, gloriously burdened and unbothered, heroic, but with less variety. Short days; isolation and its faithful partner, sadness; and stewing inside oneself. Brain clunking around in a big, empty skull.

February: The same as January, but a lot of the farmers are running out of shit. The bitter thought of waiting until June for things to emerge from soil sends down a root of its own and makes a mess of the gut.

March: Less cold outside, longer days, potatoes. Possible sky but impossibly stiff menus. Beets finally unavoidable. Business not so great when I thought it would be good. No money is OK because no vegetables to buy. Potatoes and beets. Beets and potatoes. People talk about starting seeds.

April: Lol. Mushroom company selling ramps from downstate or PA for one million dollars. Ramps in my back yard or behind the gym or at Edith Wharton’s house not here yet. Surprise frosts. Surprise: I want to say Peas and Favas. Other people saying Favas and Peas. Asparagus from CA has its own centerfold on Baldor’s website. Say no even though I want to say yes. Not understand the problem with a little import when the world is so dumb anyway. But the fuel. But tired of potatoes. Say no because stubborn. Say no because it will unsweeten the reward of patience. Complain about springtime events trying to invoke the color green. Become green myself when all the other menus say Asparagus. Count my own faulty morals, run out of fingers. My April is green but only from jealousy.

May: No money left in the bank so gratitude for ramps on the bank of the river. Farmers reaching out to say what they will be growing this year. Some wild mushrooms might emerge if we are very good and nice and the rain allows it. Potatoes. Beets need to shut the hell up but buy them to spite myself because I Need to Shut the Hell Up. New Jersey is close enough, so buy Asparagus You Petulant Child and Quit Whining. If do buy it and I don’t sell out of it right away and so witness the last, flattened layer of asparagus laying around flaccidly in a thin pool of its shameful, who-smelled-like-urine-first poaching water on the bottom of a sad hotel pan, never order it again because I’m sensitive.

June: When I moved up here from the city in Feb of twenty-eighteen, I was told that summer through October was The Busy Season. It is actually just the two months of July and October, so one never has much money for vegetables by the time those months arrive on the scene. But the growing season here is so highly anticipated that it has a way of forcing one to let go of all notions of financial security. Trade potato bills for happier but higher ones. Buy radishes and arugula and dream of tomatoes.

Become greedy and dumb and wish for more but also get annoyed that customers don’t clamor to my sainted, muslin-clad, plain and perfect, dressed pile of punishingly spicy arugula, because they’ve been going all around town with the imported favas and peas for months and I know it. Hope for rain for mushrooms but not too much for fruits. Misremember past growing seasons and tell tall tales about this much rain and that much drought and the great bolete harvest of twenty-eighteen.

July: Yay, money and vegetables coming in at the same time. Wonder if life is allowed to maybe be happy. Breathe both in and out. Tomato sandwiches. Onions galore.

August and September: Oh divine crescendo of fruiting crops and too much of everything. I have spent all my money on tomatoes and Everything Else, because the sun makes it all so visible and alluring, and so cannot afford to buy extra produce to put away for winter. Oh overwhelm; oh lack of sufficient refrigeration. Oh sneaking fistfuls of cherry tomatoes in the pantry for lack of a hide-in refrigerator. Oh burning chilis and the presumptuousness of squash arriving on the scene before we are ready, although we find we actually are completely ready for a sign of cool weather, and so Oh Halloween and Oh the end of it all. And just give it all up because I’m a sweaty little bitch, and I’m tired and need a nap.

October: decorate for winter because we cannot handle the heat and the sky is starting to descend and make us feel safe. Tell self this is wrong and to show some respect to the continuous flow of fruits; roll in the pumpkins anyway. Drool at roots. Drool at the smell of crisper winds creeping into the valley. Sigh relief in the earlier darkness. Wash hands and brains of abundance. Misremember simpler times.

November-December: scheme to drum up some holiday sales during a strictly retail season. Call on sugar and butter. Forget about leaves. Forget about tomatoes. Dump booze on dried fruit that comes from anywhere. Ignore the six months of gloom looming on the horizon. Be whatever about it. Be a little brat. Pour what fermented vegetables remain in house into a pot of soup and laugh at the demise of summer’s preserves. “Oh well.”

And so you can imagine, with just three great months of produce and two medium-OK ones, we don’t always feel or act quite as Local as we might want to, and when we do, it means the dwindling storage crops for the majority of the year. Of course, there is variety in what all I say–my experience is just about where we are, who we work with, and maybe also does not account for Danny Amend and his eerily optimistic, ever-spritely, life-saving hydroponic lettuce or Tivoli Mushrooms’ prolific, year-round, farmed fungus party. We are blessed for these things.

But what I am really saying is that Seasonality and Locality feels a bit like a sliding scale mind game we all play in different ways here in the HV. You’re as Seasonal as you can bare to be, with the majority of the menu. For some, there is no putting a pause on garnishing greens, on tomatoes, on fresh berries. For others, potatoes haunt our dreams, but we can’t deny ourselves some great citrus in the winter to get through. With certain evergreen menu items, you’re as seasonal as you care to be asinine–as in finding an understudy for celery in a Bloody Mary garnish (me, I cannot). For all of us, at some point, beets will force us to scream, “uncle.”

Cafe Mutton, particularly, is a restaurant that tries hard not to do very much to great fruits and vegetables. Part of what we do is just source great stuff and serve it simply, so that folks are able to enjoy the truly miraculous work of the earth, alongside our more involved charcuterie and other meat dishes. I know that sounds boring and perhaps emotionally vile to some people, but we are just not a “chef-y” restaurant. An apple is–regrettably to some and happily to others–allowed to be an apple within these walls. And so it doesn’t often suit us to serve produce of random provenance. Although we sometimes do.

To arrive at the late-winter-early-spring time of year can feel at times hopeless, maddening, tiring, and hilarious. Hopeless because one hundred days is a long time; maddening because of how hard it is to wait for the good and near-grown stuff, even though it’s usually always worthwhile; tiring because there is much more required of us and our ovens when fresh vegetables and ripe fruit are not here to unburden the prep-heavy menu; and hilarious because of the way Springtime events fill up the April calendar, implying that we chefs might be able to conjure genuine green from this as-of-yet still rock-hard earth with a wave of a spoon, or even more possibly, that the ethos of being a chef in the Hudson Valley implies propping up symbolism over reality.

We all want the same thing: vitamins and to not get bored. But we have only just entered the season of nothingness with regard to produce, no matter how much less depressing the weather has begun to feel. So, forward we must go: deal in grains and meat paste, we must; let our ravenous Tables cheat on their beloved Farms from time to time with randoms, like my now-and-then side piece, Andy Boy, just for the sake of getting by. Pretend springtime at people when beckoned to do so during events heralding the vernal equinox. Get past the point of hatred with fusty beets and become wed to them instead. But never pretend Beets is Meats, even if they were doing that at certain restaurants in the twenty-tens, because Everyone Makes Mistakes.

If you, like me, are experiencing a vitamin deficiency and long for some blueberries, you can try out Buying Vitamins instead of Writing A Newsletter That Complains About Seasons while cooking in a part of the world with at least four of them. Or you can respond to this newsletter and tell me your produce woes or How to Lactoferment (don’t do that second part). Here’s to getting into the fresh light and to the arduous months of pantry items ahead.

Cheers,

Shaina