Côtes de b(l)ettes

As far as Elizabeth David was concerned, blette was edible only if cooked by a master's hand and swimming in a rich cream sause (An Omelette and a Glass of Wine, 1984).
Blette? As in 'overripe and rotten'? No wonder it wasn't one of her favourite dishes. But this vegetable becomes tastier if we get rid of the l: bette, French for beta vulgaris, chard or Swiss chard in (American) English, silver beet in down-under-English, Mangold in German and snijbiet in Dutch. Nomenclature and food, it's no easy thing. Witness for example The Old Foodie, a marvellous weblog on historic food topics, who discusses the multilingual ethymology of Scarcity Root, another name for the very same vegetable.

So, let's pick a name: chard. It is an easy crop, as every gardener can tell you. The leaves can be treated as spinach, though I wouldn't eat them uncooked, the stems as celery or asparagus. I prefer the lucullus variety (Lucullus, an 'able soldier' and Epicurean who 'after unpleasant experiences in Caesar's consulate retired to live in refined luxury and lapsed into insanity', The Oxford Classical Dictionary) or the multicoloured rainbow chard to the more common dark green cicla.
In The Netherlands you need a kitchen-garden(er) if ever you want to eat chard, as it is nowadays a 'forgotten vegetable', a crop that is no longer commercially grown. Spouse confessed she has had to eat hotchpotch with chard in her youth, which her mother must have gotten from the greengrocer's (but then, she is three years my senior). A Dutch food encyclopaedia from the fifties (Culinaire encyclopedie, Elsevier 1957) still gives a number of recipes, all traditional French style: Côtes de bettes à la béchamel, à la mornay, au jus. We usually eat chard, stems and leaves, Italian style: sautéed in olive oil with plenty of garlic and the optional anchovy.

Now where does the l in blette come from? It's not a typo, as Elizabeth David is not the only one to use this word. So does Stehpanie Alexander in The Cook's Companion (Lantern 2004). I'll give you my theory, for want of a better one. In Alexander's book I came across yet another name for chard: leaf beet. Now the German word for leaf is Blatt, pl. Blätter. No need for much Chinese whispering to get to blette, is there? Si non e vero, e ben trovato.

Lobsters from Zeeland

It's not only asparagus or other vegetables that have seasons, so have game, fish and lobsters.
A few weeks ago Spouse and I decided we deserved a day off and drove to Zeeland, in the south-west of The Netherlands - fairly unknown territory to us. We had nothing big and fancy in mind, just drive around a bit, see the area, spot some birds, eat a herring or, if we could be that lucky, a roll with smoked eel. And as fish is best found near the water, we kept to the coastal route and didn't enter the sometimes touristic villages.
De Vluchthaven (port of refuge) in Zijpe looked like a sailor's club where members only could order a cup of soup. We were mistaken. It was all about lobster. Dutch lobster or Oosterscheldekreeft, caught right in front of our noses by one of the five licenced fishermen between April 1st and July 15th, as we learned from a promotional booklet.
It's only since 1883 that lobsters are found in these waters, that had become saltier due to the blocking of the river Schelde a few decades before (you know us, building dykes and making land out of water etc. etc.). Till then, lobsters were imported from Norway; nowadays they are still flown in (half alive and barely kicking) from Canada. Maybe it's because of lack of tradition or the overall low consumption in this country of fish, let alone creepy animals with lots of feet, that the Dutch lobster needs promotion. And care: there is always the danger that it will be pushed out of existence by escaped Canadian ones. One of the aims of the Foundation in charge (Stichting Promotie Oosterscheldekreeft) is to advance environmentally sustainable fishing methods. Diny Schouten (Het spek van slager Blom [Butcher Blom's Pork], 2003:81) hints at another: research and protecting measures.
All of this didn't darken our spirits. It was a beautiful day, the sun was shining, terns were diving into the water and we had fabulous lobsters, without even realising we helped sustaining the species by eating them.

Asparagus

The season for asparagus (asparagus officinalis) is short, roughly from the beginning of May till the 21th of June. Of course, this being The Netherlands, the first date is highly dependent on the wheather. The latter one is quite fixed, though.
These six weeks don't go by unattended. Every restaurant with only the slightest culinary aspirations serves asparagus as amuse, soup, starter and main dish. Butchers sell 'special' asparagus ham and in every magazine you'll find advertisements of Alsatian wine. Shelfs in supermarkets are crammed with instant sauce Hollandaise. The asparagus themselves are neatly packed in plactic, kept well dry and laying in wait for us for days.
Did I say 'plastic', 'dry' and 'days'? No wonder supermarkets need all their marketing skills to get us to buy these sad, dried out, wooden sticks. As Diny Schouten rightly wrote in her Het spek van slager Blom. Over wat er nog te eten is (Butcher Blom's pork. About what is still there to eat, Pereboom 2003:41), one can only eat asparagus if bought directly from the farmer.
We are happy to have one nearby in a staunchily Roman Catholic (!) village, who sells his asparagus the very same day he has harvested them and until that moment keeps them in water basins. No dry ends here.
As we do not have anything against a good Alsatian wine in any season, we let our meal be accompanied by a terrific 2004 Riesling by Zind Humbrecht, found in what we thought to be a cheese farm, but which was actually a well assorted wine and cheese shop in that same pious - and rich - village.

Asparagus the Dutch way

Take 500 gr white asparagus per person. Cut off ca 2 cm from the cut end. Peel the asparagus and cook them (with cut off ends and peeled skin - gives more taste) in water for about 10 minutes (depending on thickness). Eat with slices of cooked ham, hard boiled eggs (chopped up with a pinch of nutmeg), melted butter and potatoes (traditionally boiled, but do bake them if you like a bit of bite among all this fluffy stuff).
Do not throw the liquid away but sieve it and keep it frozen to make a risotto with grilled green asparagus after the 21th of June.

A Roman dinner

Italian cuisine has changed over the years. In the old days (we're talking first centuries of this era) pasta didn't exist, and instead of salt the Romans used garum, a liquid of fermented fish, to spice up their dishes. Garlic was eaten by peasants and poor people only, because of the odour. Slaves got just enough leftovers and garbage to stay alive.
All this wisdom I learned from J who is setting up a course in Roman cooking and invited some friends as a tryout. Recipes were deducted and translated by J from Apicius' De Re Coquinaria, some poems by Martial and one by pseudo-Virgil.
Academics might think it a pity that all we know about Roman society is restricted to the life of the happy few. For our dinner it was no loss. As appetizers we had moretum, epiturium and salted fish accompanied by a tasty mulsum. The main dishes consisted of cooked fish with a sweet and sour sauce and roasted doves. Pudding came as apothermum and patina (a platter of peaches cooked with cumin, parsley-seed, pepper and garum - and yes, it's delicious), although the latter is in fact a starter.
As I was chosen to try my hand at the moretum, I'll elaborate on that one.
You need a mortar (the name moretum is no coincidence), a lump of parmesan cheese (ca 200 gr), one or two cloves of garlic, fresh celery-leaves, fresh coriander, olive oil and a drop of balsamic vinegar. Put roughly two handsfull of the leaves (and stems) in the mortar with the garlic and crush them till they are an unidentifiable green mass. Add grated parmesan, oil, vinegar and if you like a bit of sea salt. Continue crushing until you understand why the Romans had slaves for this kind of work. By then the moretum should be a vivid green paste. Tastes great on unleavened bread.