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This second episode in our weekly series, The VPR Table provides an in depth look at the beloved Vermont potluck. When it’s squash season, how do you decide what to bring to share with neighbors and friends? This VPR program offers inspiration and
practical advice to all of us who prepare food and enjoy eating. Listen Friday at 5:55pm during All Things Considered or Saturday at 8:55am during Weekend Edition.
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Vermont may have more cooperative spirit than any other state in the country. We shop
at coop markets, send our kids to coop day care centers, and bank at credit unions. Our cooperative spirit extends even to the dinner table.
Hence:
the pot-luck.
The words "pot luck" were first
welded together in Elizabethan England, when they were use to describe a
last-minute guest taking "the luck of the pot." The phrase took on its current
meaning – of a communal meal – in 19th century America. In fact, 1879, the New York Times described a "pot
luck picnic" that was sort of like a
cook-off, in which guests were challenged to produce their best dishes: gumbo,
lobster cutlets, plum pudding and more.
At your next pot-luck, take a tip
from the 19th century: and bring something with pizzazz! Face it, bringing your dish home with food
still in it is the culinary "walk of shame."
Don’t worry about pleasing the children; You want the kind of dish that
at least one adult will want the recipe for. And avoid the same-old same old.
Does any dinner really need another bowl of sesame noodles?
It’s okay to be cheap. Since the general
rule is to bring enough food to feed twice the number of people in your party,
it makes sense to count pennies. Oysters Rockefeller get pricey. Roasted
vegetables from your garden do not.. But…Speaking
of your garden; go easy on the obvious seasonal picks. Remember the potluck
where nearly everyone brought something made of rhubarb…or zucchini…or beets?
My own go-to pot luck dish is a wild
rice salad. It’s a better-than-the-sum
of its parts mix of wild and white rice,
tomatoes, almonds, raisins, and hot peppers. Someone ALWAYS asks for the recipe.
The only problem with it is: I never
want to share.
You’
find the recipe below – and please – post your own potluck favorite.
Next week on The VPR Table – a big bowl of popcorn
WILD RICE
SALAD
1 and 1/2
cups cup wild rice, rinsed OR 3/4 cup wild rice and 3/4 cup white rice
water as
needed (to cook rice)
1/4 cup red
wine vinegar
1/2 cup olive
oil
1 cup pitted
black Greek (Kalamata) olives
1 cup raisins
3 bottled hot
cherry peppers, drained, seeded and chopped
1 cup cherry or
grape tomatoes, halved if necessary
salt and
pepper to taste
1/3 cup
chopped cilantro or parsley
1/2 cup chopped
toasted almonds or toasted whole hazelnuts
Cook
the rice according to package directions; do not add any salt or butter. If you
use all wild rice, the salad will have a very deep, robust, nutty flavor. The salad made with half white rice is a bit
milder (my family prefers it).
Remove
rice from heat and add vinegar and oil.
Mix well. At this point you can refrigerate the mixture for several
hours or overnight.
Just
before serving, toss in the remaining ingredients. Serve at room temperature.
Yield: 4 to 6
servings
This recipe
was adapted from an old Craig Claiborne recipe that appeared in the New York
Times in the early 1980s.
Marialisa Calta is a nationally syndicated columnist, food editor and
cookbook author. For her latest book, "Barbarians at the Plate: Taming
and Feeding the Modern American Family" Marialisa traveled around the
country interviewing working parents about the whys and hows of getting
food on the table.