Charity Robey

Off the Fork: Celebrating the Chinese New Year | Shelter Island Reporter

CHARITY ROBEY PHOTO

The two-week celebration of the Chinese New Year combines the gluttony of Christmas with the family dynamics of Thanksgiving, spiced with the fireworks of the Fourth of July.

Today, Thursday, February 19, is the first day of the Chinese New Year. The New Year is either the Year of the Ram, the Goat or the Sheep, depending on who you ask. This confusing situation is caused by the fact that it’s the “yang” year, a Mandarin word that means hoofed ruminant.

No one is calling it the year of the Hoofed Ruminant. I’m going with the Goat.

You’ve heard of Whole Foods? During the Chinese New Year holiday, it is customary to eat whole foods, as in an entire chicken, all parts of a pig, an intact duck. If you have a rule about “no feet on the table,” go with something without feet, like this fish, steamed with fragrant ginger, scallions and fermented black beans.

The best way to make this dish is to use a bamboo steamer basket, set over a wokful of boiling water. If you don’t have a wok, any lidded metal steamer that will hold your fish on a plate above boiling water will work.

Don’t forget a side dish of rice to sop up the wonderful broth.

Fish Steamed with Black Beans, Ginger and Scallions

(Serves 4)

2-pound fish: striped bass, blackfish, tilefish or any mild, flaky fish that will fit in your steamer. The fish should be cleaned, with the head left on.

2 tablespoons rice vinegar

2 tablespoons soy sauce

2 tablespoons sherry

2 teaspoons peanut oil

Pinch of salt

Pinch of white pepper

1 tablespoon fermented black beans, rinsed and lightly mashed  (or substitute black bean paste, which is available at the IGA)

1 tablespoon garlic, smashed and coarsely chopped

2 tablespoons minced ginger

5 scallions, root ends and most of the green parts trimmed off, and cut into ½ inch pieces

1 tablespoon sesame oil

2 tablespoons chopped fresh cilantro

1. Make sure all scales and gills have been removed from the fish, rinse and dry it. Place the fish in a dish that is deep enough to hold the broth and small enough to fit inside your steamer.

2. Mix the rice vinegar, soy sauce, sherry, peanut oil, salt and pepper together in a small bowl and pour it over the fish. Turn the fish in the liquid to coat all sides.

3. Mix the mashed black beans, the garlic and the ginger together in a small bowl and sprinkle half the mixture in the cavity and the other half on the sides of the fish.

4. Put 1/3 of the chopped scallions under the fish, 1/3 in the cavity, and sprinkle the rest on top.

5. Heat plenty of water to boiling in your steamer, or wok, place the fish in the steamer over the water, cover, and steam the fish for 20 to 30 minutes. Do not allow the water to actually touch the bottom of the dish, but don’t let it boil away either. Keep an eye on the water level and top it off with more boiling water as needed.

6. Test the fish for doneness with a table knife poked into the flesh near the spine at the thickest part of the fish. When the fish is done, the knife will go in easily.

7. Slide the fish onto a serving platter, pour the broth over it and sprinkle the sesame oil and cilantro on top.

via shelterislandreporter.timesreview.com

Island profile, Father Charles McCarron | Shelter Island Reporter

Father Charles McCarron and his Yorkshire terrier, Bogart. Charity Robey Photo

Published in the Shelter Island Reporter on February 5, 2015

Father Charles McCarron moved to Shelter Island in January, the new vicar of St. Mary’s Episcopal Church.

Last June his predecessor, Father Joel Ireland, resigned as pastor of St. Mary’s after less than two years in the parish. By all accounts, the events leading to Father Ireland’s departure were contentious and painful.

A professional who turns an ailing organization into a healthy enterprise is known as a turn-around artist.

“It’s what we call in the church business being a non-anxious presence,” Father Charles said. “As stuff swirls around, you are able to be present, not personalize things, try and see what is really going on, and help things heal.”

Father Charles brought with him a five-year-old Yorkshire terrier named Bogart and a gift from his former parishioners at St. Lawrence in Dix Hills when they heard St. Mary’s would be his next church — a 5-foot-tall statue of the Madonna and Child, originally carved in the 1930s for St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church in Astoria.

Born and raised in the Fordham section of the Bronx, Father Charles was the only child of Scottish parents who met in the U.S. but had no family here. “Our street had a large concentration of Scots,” Father Charles said. “My playmates and babysitters were all Scottish people. I spent many summers as a kid in Scotland. I’m the only Yank in my family.”

Raised Roman Catholic, Father Charles’ early life centered around St. Nicholas Tolentine, aka “The Cathedral of the Bronx,” which was his church, grammar school and high school. Offered a full scholarship to Fordham Prep, he turned it down to stay with his classmates. “We were together from first grade through 12th. Most of us are still in touch,” he said. “Those were the days when the city was more like small towns. Very close.”

At Catholic University in Washington, D.C., he began his journey to the priesthood, becoming a postulant in 1973 at 17, the first stage to becoming a Capuchin Franciscan Friar. His director and mentor for those years was Father Seán Patrick O’Malley, who is now Cardinal O’Malley, Archbishop of Boston, one of eight cardinals appointed by Pope Francis in 2013 to reform the central administration of the Catholic Church.

Father Charles took a break from the seminary, moving back to New York where he became a social worker and a New York City probation officer working with violent first-time offenders in the South Bronx. “I held on to my badge,” he said, and held it up for inspection.

After a year he returned to the order, completed his studies for priesthood, and was ordained in 1986 by Bishop Francis Mugavero of Brooklyn.

In the 1980s the AIDS epidemic was beginning, and Father Charles began to work with people suffering from a disease that was not well understood at the time. “Clergy really were not stepping up. Another priest told me that the chaplains were avoiding AIDS patients in the hospitals, so I went,” he said. “I thought work with people with AIDS would be a very Franciscan thing.”

Explaining his desire to work with people living with AIDS and HIV, Father Charles described one of the main events in the life of Saint Francis: his encounter with a leper. “He had a great horror of lepers but instead of running, he got off his horse and kissed him,” Father Charles said. “That was Francis’s moment of conversion. It’s always been part of the Franciscan tradition to go to those who are outside, on the edges.”

After working to help people with AIDS on Long Island and chairing a national AIDS conference, Father McCarron become parish outreach developer for HIV and AIDS at Catholic Charities Health Services. In this role, he was in the difficult position of being on the front line for controversial issues where the official teaching of the Church and the pastoral response were not always the same. “When there was a question from Newsday, it would often get referred to me,” he said.

He took a leave of absence, got a law degree, and Catholic Charities invited him to come back as the administrator of the AIDS programs, but not in a religious capacity.

During this period, his connection to the Catholic Church was changing.

During the years he worked at Catholic Charities, Father Charles began to attend an Episcopal Church in Forest Hills, Queens. “The Episcopal Church is very open and welcoming,” he said. “It’s a liturgical church, an ancient church.”

He approached Bishop Walker of the Long Island Episcopal Diocese and asked if he would consider receiving him as an Episcopal priest. When an Anglican becomes a Catholic, it’s called “Swimming the Tiber,” a reference to the Roman river. Father McCarron decided to “Swim the Thames.”

With Bishop Walker’s help, Father Charles spent two years studying to get an Anglican degree at the General Theological Seminary in Manhattan, spending two months in the Church of Uganda working in their AIDS program. He became vicar at the Church of the Resurrection in Queens, a landmark church in terrible physical and financial condition that had not had a permanent priest for 15 years. “It’s a beautiful church, but it was falling apart,” Father Charles said. “I got government grants and helped rebuild the place and put it on stable footing.”

While still the vicar at the Church of the Resurrection, he was asked to take over administration of Family Consultation Services, a troubled agency with financial and personnel issues. Later he started Great Neck Episcopal Ministries, and then went to be vicar of St. Lawrence of Canterbury in Dix Hills. “But I always wanted to be a parish priest again,” he said. “They asked me to consider coming here.”

With the exception of a ferry-to-ferry tour eight years ago, Father Charles had little experience with Shelter Island until he was asked about the St. Mary’s post. “I went on retreat and brought the Chamber of Commerce Shelter Island map, thumbtacked it to the wall, and prayed about it,” he said. “By the end of the retreat, I had decided this would be my new adventure.”

“I’ve had a very hectic life,” Father Charles added. “With my monastic training, it doesn’t worry me, the quiet of the winter. I’m single, I’m alone, and so I had no problem with that. It’s a different kind of ministry. It certainly is rural, but it’s a special kind of rural.”

Less than a week after Father Charles arrived, he met with Father Peter de Sanctis of Our Lady of the Isle and Pastor Stephen Fearing of Shelter Island Presbyterian Church over drinks. “We’re not competing.

There is the sense that we all bring something different,” Father Charles said, “keeping our diversity and the unique gifts of our traditions. Respecting each other.”

His goal is to help define the mission of St. Mary’s, “to help figure out what we should all be doing together, to surface our unique approach as Anglicans.”

“I have to be willing to change myself to be part of the community,” Father Charles said. “I look forward to living into my new life here.”

Off the fork: How to cook a country ham: The whole hog | Shelter Island Reporter

 

CHARITY ROBEY PHOTO | Creative use of ham leftovers, like this hash, can feed you for a good part of the winter.

Published in the Shelter Island Reporter on January 29, 2015

When I prepare a country ham, I feel I’m carrying out a ritual that has more in common with ancient purity rites than with frilly aprons and parsley garnishes.

These hams are salt-cured, aged for months, and arrive — usually by mail —  hard as a rock and covered with mold. The job of the cook is to clean, desalt and soften an object that looks about as delectable as beef jerky that’s been wedged for a year in the sofa cushions. This is the highest calling of the cook: to produce from an unlikely start a delicacy that has been part of the American larder for as long as there have been hogs on our farms. 

While attending a college in Virginia, I acquired my first salt-cured country ham. In my experience, the best country hams are made there. I’ve had good results with hams from Edwards of Surry, Virginia (edwardsvaham.com) and Smithfield hams (smithfieldmarketplace.com).

The first time I made ham on my own, I had to ask my Kentucky-born father for instructions. Here is what he told me.

Virginia salt-cured country ham

1. The bath

After weighing the ham (you’ll need to know the weight to estimate the cooking time), remove all of the wrapping, which may include burlap bag, layers of paper and twine netting.

Use a stiff brush and cold water to wash the mold and any other detritus off the surface of the ham. Throw the brush away.

CHARITY ROBEY PHOTO | Step one in preparing a country ham is the ritual bath.

2. The soak

Place the ham in the pot you will cook it in and fill the pot with water. This pot must be large enough to hold the ham completely submerged in water. Let the ham soak in the cold water for 24 hours, changing the water every six or eight hours. The more frequently you change the water, the less salty the final product will be. This water is HAZMAT, so salty that if you pour it on the lawn, it could kill the grass.

3. The simmer

Put the ham (which will be much softer now) in the pot with fresh cold water. Add 10 bay leaves, two cups of cider vinegar and a handful of mustard seeds. Bring the water to a boil and then turn the heat down to maintain a slow simmer, with some bubbles every second or two. During the simmer, the water should always cover the meat; so top it off with fresh hot water as necessary.

Use a thermometer to monitor the temperature. Ideally the water should stay around 190 degrees for the duration of the cooking, which can be anywhere from 2 to 6 hours depending on the size of the ham. Allow 15 to 20 minutes per pound. The ham is ready when it slips easily off a large fork, or when the internal temperature reaches 160 degrees in the thickest part of the ham.

4. The flaying

Remove the ham from the cooking water and allow it to cool enough so you can handle it easily. Remove the tough layer of skin from the ham, peeling it away where possible, and using a sharp knife to free the skin when it won’t peel off. Leave a thin layer of fat on the ham as you remove the skin.

5. The glazing

Score the fat into squares, by making a series of shallow, parallel cuts in the same direction, and then a second set of cuts perpendicular to the first set. Rub the entire ham with brown sugar and press a whole clove into the center of each square. Cook the ham in a 375-degree oven for 20 to 30 minutes until the glaze is browned and the fragrance of ham is causing passing cars to pull over in front of your house.

6. The carving

Country ham must be cut very thin. Allow the ham to cool completely before carving and use a very sharp knife. Start by carving a V into the meat, close to the thick end, and then make thin slices from there.

7. The eating

If you are having a party or feeding farmhands, serve thin slices of ham stuffed into biscuits. Or, you can serve slices with cornbread and a side of red-eye gravy (made with drippings from the roasting pan and coffee).

The afterlife of your ham is long. Kept refrigerated, you can take a week to eat the rest of the meat and even freeze the bone for a batch of soup a month from now.