Fresh from a Monastery Garden: A-Z of Delectable Vegetable Recipes - Hardcover

D'Avila-Latourrette, Victor-Antoine

 
9780385490399: Fresh from a Monastery Garden: A-Z of Delectable Vegetable Recipes
Hardcover
ISBN 10: 0385490399 ISBN 13: 9780385490399
Verlag: Bantam Doubleday Dell, 1998

Inhaltsangabe

The author of From a Monastery Kitchen presents more than two hundred vegetable recipes for both entrees and side dishes that draw on the culinary traditions of southern France and the produce found in American gardens, along with techniques for preserving and canning.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Brother Victor-Antoine d'Avila-Latourrette lives, works, and prays at Our Lady of the Resurrection Monastery, which lives under the Rule of St.  Benedict, drawing its inspiration from the ancient monastic traditions of the East and West.  It is perched on a secluded hilltop in upstate New York.  In addition to his bestselling cookbooks, From a Monastery Kitchen, This Good Food, and Twelve Months of Monastery Soups, Brother Victor-Antoine is the author of Table Blessings and A Monastic Year.

Aus dem Klappentext

Through the great success of From a Monastery Kitchen and Twelve Months of Monastery Soups, Brother Victor-Antoine d'Avila-Latourrette delighted the world's palette and soul with his own simple and natural recipes.

Now this famous chef turns to the richness of his monastery's garden for inspiration. Fresh from a Monastery Garden contains over two hundred vegetable recipes--appropriate for either casual or formal events, full meals or side dishes, vegetarians and nonvegetarians--that can be adapted to even the busiest of schedules.

Combining the richness of Brother Victor-Antoine's own southern French background with the abundance of an American vegetable garden, these recipes are easily reproduced by any home cook. Fennel Ratatouille, Asparagus Risotto, St. Paschal's Barley Soup, Alsatian Tomato Salad, and Zucchini à la Monegasque are just a few of the savory possibilities readers will enjoy making and sharing with friends and family.

And because nothing beats being able to taste the flavors of a garden year-round, Brother Victor-Antoine has also included his secret techniques and recipes for preserving and canning fruits, vegetables, sauces, and chutneys, such as Tuscan Tomato Sauce, Apple-Sweet Potato Chutney, Salty Cucumber Pickles, Corn Relish, and Monastery Salsa.

Fresh from a Monastery Garden is the one cookbook that can forever absolve readers of soggy or flavorless vegetables, ensuring a lifetime of vibrant, zestful, and healthy eating.

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Introduction

A few years ago, a fine young student who occasionally liked to visit our small monastery went off to France.  While there, he decided to see some of the many monasteries that are to be encountered everywhere across the French landscape.  Upon his return to this country, I asked him what he had discovered or what had most impressed him in the places he had visited.

Without hesitation, the young man exclaimed, "Ah, the gardens of the monasteries, those gardens lovingly tended by the monks."

At first, I was surprised at his response.  I had expected him to mention perhaps the beauty of the monastic churches or the unforgettable music of the chants in the Offices, for example.  Of course, he found the prayerful Offices to be a deeply spiritual experience, he said, but he was most enchanted by what he found in the monastic gardens.  "There is real life in those gardens," he went on, "and one can almost feel the pulse of a particular monastic community by the work that is being accomplished there in the gardens." And he recalled for me how the charming and brightly colored miniatures from the ancient monastic manuscripts, where we often see the monk or the nun depicted steadily at work in the garden, suddenly became alive for him and deeply expressive of meaning.

In all our monasteries, of course, the occupation of gardening is as old as monastic life itself.  Gardens and the constant tending of them have always been an integral part of our tradition.  The first monks went about elaborating the principles of monastic gardening in the deserts of Egypt and Palestine, in the same way and at the same time that they elaborated the first rules and principles that were to become the base of their monastic living.  For example, we read in an early life of Saint Antony, the first monk and the father of all monks, an episode that relates to his work in the garden: "These vines and these little trees did he plant; the pool did he contrive, with much labor for the watering of his garden; with his rake did he break up the earth for many years."

It is obvious from this description that Saint Antony worked very hard in his garden, and that the main reason for cultivating it was to provide food for himself and other monks, as well as for the poor and the pilgrims that came to see him.  Saint Antony took to heart the biblical counsel that one must eat from the labor of one's hands.  Two centuries later, Saint Benedict would insist on the importance of the same teaching by stating in his Rule that "they are truly monks when they live by the labor of their hands, as did our fathers and the Apostles." That meant for Saint Benedict that the monks had to work long hours in their gardens, orchards, and mills, producing the food necessary for the monastic table.  And since the monastic regimen tends to be almost exclusively vegetarian, the cultivation of vegetable gardens and the care and maintenance of vineyards and orchards became of primary importance in the life of all monasteries.  In this context, we can understand how some monks became passionate gardeners down through the centuries.  There is, for example, the eighth-century monk Walafrid Strabo of the Abbey of Reichenau, who went so far as to praise gardening in a work called De cultura hortorum (On the Cultivation of Gardens).

And it was not only the monks who devoted time and skills in great measure to the work and the art of gardening.  The nuns, living under the same Rule of Saint Benedict, invested their unique talents in this work, as we see from the case of the twelfth-century abbess Saint Hildegard of Bingen.  Her combined knowledge of agriculture and medicine inspired her to write two treatises on the nutritional and medicinal qualities of the various plants, herbs, and vegetables that her nuns cultivated in the monastery gardens.  Saint Hildegard recommended strongly that the vegetables prepared in the kitchen be fresh and recently harvested in order to retain the vital energies of the produce and all nutritional benefits.  Saint Hildegard insisted on the principle that as human beings we don't exist in isolation but always live in a mutually dependent relationship with the whole universe.  Thus it was extremely important to her that people should learn to live harmoniously with the rhythm of the seasons, and this was to include a diet based on the fresh vegetables and fruits harvested from their gardens and orchards.  She firmly believed in what we would today call an "organic-biological process" that respects the rhythm of the seasons, the inner cohesion of all creation, and the natural laws that help maintain order and balance in the universe.  By living thus, Saint Hildegard believed, human beings could achieve balance and health in their own personal lives.

History has shown that both monks and nuns have always been vigilant stewards and avid cultivators of the land entrusted to them.  The time allotted to them each year for full- or part-time gardening, from the moment of planting the first seed to the moment the last vegetable is harvested, is for the monk or nun gardener a rewarding and, indeed, an intense time of joy.  This is so in spite of the hard and never-ending nature of the work.  Of course, the real reward is felt when the fresh new vegetables begin to be served at the monastic table, delighting all who partake.  Gardening in a monastery is both a task and an art.  It is the solid experience accumulated over many years that brings the monk gardener mastery of the proper methods and many intricate secrets necessary to achieve reliable success.  Nothing, indeed, can supplant that experience! The monk or nun gardener, just as anyone else who is serious about this, needs to be sensitively attuned to the growing seasons, to the local weather, to the quality of the soil, and so forth .  .  .  and always to allow Mother Nature to be the guide.

Each season has its own significance.  There is a time to prepare and build the soil, a time for planting and germination, a time for cultivation and growth, and a time for yielding fruit and harvesting.  Each season, too, provides its own unique variety in vegetables--some for spring and summer, some for fall and even winter.  Living and gardening in tune with the seasons permit the monk or nun gardener to provide for the table vegetables rich with vitamins and nutrients, wonderful with the taste of freshness, and beautiful in exquisite colors and textures.  The vegetables thus harvested are brought to the monastery kitchen, where they are treated with great respect.  It remains for the cook to use talent and taste to create imaginative dishes that can be savored and remembered by the monastic palate long after the food has been consumed.

Of course, not everyone has a plot of land or the time to cultivate a garden, infinitely desirable as this may be.  However, in the present day and age, that is not a good reason for passing up fresh vegetables.  Today we have enviably wide opportunities to find fresh vegetables at supermarkets throughout the land, as well as at farmers' markets, at roadside stands, and in a variety of other ways in cities and in the country.  And freshness makes all the difference in the world.  Any cook concerned about solid nutrition and wonderful flavors will seek out the freshest possible vegetables to be found locally.  Fresh vegetables retain most of their original nutritional value and provide a...

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Verlag
Bantam Doubleday Dell
Erscheinungsdatum
1998
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0385490399
ISBN 13 
9780385490399
Einband
Gebundene Ausgabe
Anzahl der Seiten
256
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