Simple beauty of the harvest table
Sunflowers join acorn squash, peppers, fresh corn and homemade candles in glass chicken votive holders as decorations for Susan Mall's autumn table at home in her backyard in Healdsburg.
BETH SCHLANKER / PDPublished: Friday, September 24, 2010 at 3:00 a.m.
Last Modified: Tuesday, September 21, 2010 at 5:11 p.m.
For Susan and Jeff Mall, party preparations begin in the field.
With Jeff behind the wheel of his green 1964 Ford Custom Cab pickup — complete with wood rails — the culinary pair head down to the vegetable patch where they grow the goodies that feed customers at their Zin Restaurant and Wine Bar in Healdsburg, and 20 subscribers to their Eastside Farm CSA.
Here, not far from the little homestead where they also can, keep honeybees and raise chickens, the Malls set about gathering for an end-of-season garden get-together.
On this crisp September morning, they are looking for tomatoes and peppers for the pot, as well as other colorful crops to garnish their outdoor table, a weathered hacienda-style trestle Jeff inherited from his grandmother.
He heads for the peppers; she, protecting her fair Northern European skin beneath a straw hat, makes a beeline for the sunflowers.
This is how the Malls entertain — farmstyle and home-grown. They're caterers and restaurateurs but also stalwart contributors at major food and wine events, like the recent Sonoma Wine Country Weekend. They've been invited to cook at the prestigious James Beard House in New York's West Village.
But when it comes to sharing time with family and friends, they keep it simple, drawing almost everything from their backyard, their farm and their own kitchen.
“You don't have to own your own farm to entertain this way. It can be reproduced with what makes you happy, what gives you joy to look at,” says Susan. She's a compact woman equipped with an internal Porsche engine, always revving at high RPM with ideas, enthusiasm and do-it-yourself projects.
For her mid-day harvest lunch table, Susan picks a bouquet of small sunflowers, applying her design rule of thumb: always go for an uneven number.
“It's the one flower I like to decorate with,” she says of this quintessential symbol of autumn. “They go so well with our farm. They're just so happy.”
Later she arranges them in a vintage indigo pottery vase, removing the wilting leaves and stuffing them like tissue among the stalks to help them stand tall. As Van Gogh discovered more than a century ago, sunflowers don't need accessorizing.
Other forage that finds its way into the farm's wooden CSA boxes includes orange Marconi and red Jimmy Nardello peppers, a jaunty corn tassel, orange persimmon tomatoes and elegantly fluted tomatoes grown from seed the Malls brought back from Italy in a napkin. There also is a classic orange pumpkin and an acorn squash with bright green strands.
After harvesting, it's back to the kitchen, a shrine both to good cooking and the Mall's collectibles, California pottery and blue Le Creuset pots and pans.
The pair are compulsive collectors, constantly adding new curiosities. They make a point of trolling antique stores and flea markets while traveling, buying extra duffle bags to haul home the loot.
A lot of their scores wind up outside in their “barbecue,” an open outdoor kitchen equipped with a wood fired oven and barbecue, both hand-built by Jeff. It is a smaller recreation of the screened-in outdoor living room on the family farm near Modesto where he grew up.
The Malls bought this simple 1940s country fixer-upper primarily for the big backyard, generously sized to accommodate outdoor entertaining, a collection of fruit trees and up to 50 chickens. Beyond their blackberry fence is a gently sloping hillside cloaked in vines, the consummate Wine Country setting without the vineyard maintenance.
“Our style is very much what I call rusty and dusty. We love the old stuff,” says Jeff, slipping a chicken into the wood-fired oven. It's decorated with terra cotta tiles bearing 16th century food guild logos that he and Susan brought home from Italy.
Wherever the eye wanders, something elicits a laugh. Branding irons, license plates from Jeff's grandfather, hand-cranked ice cream makers, a metal bread box, an antique slot machine and mystery machines like the wooden box Susan suspects was a slow cooker. There's a boiled egg dispenser (10 cents apiece), a Smith-Corona typewriter and rusty metal advertising signs brought back from a trip to Texas.
It's a smart and witty look that requires more whimsy than money. The “furnishings” are all repurposed salvage. A metal wash tub serves as the sink. A cast iron baby bath makes a perfect wine chiller. An upended steamer trucks serves as a side table
Susan found old farm tables at yard sales, refinished the tops and set them up as serving counters and prep areas for outdoor parties.
On the day of the Mall's get-together, they make a fine buffet on which to display a farm feast that includes baked chicken, heirloom beans, roasted banana squash and sweet pepperonata — Italian carmelized peppers slow-cooked with extra virgin olive oil and a touch of garlic.
Dessert is buttermilk panna cotta pudding with home-made blood peach jam served in Ball jars.
Virtually every Mall party features Susan's deviled eggs, given an extra kick with homegrown and pickled jalapenos and arrayed in vintage deviled egg dishes.
Into the entertaining scene, Susan inserts seasonal farm touches like the miniature hay bales from Jack Monroe's Covelo Hay Farm (soon to be featured in The Pottery Barn catalogue). Dotting the table are votive candles she made from beeswax from their hives and melted into chicken shaped egg cups. Food is displayed on Susan's vintage cake plates, each different and of varying height.
“When you're serving, you want to have things that are different levels and things that catch your eye,” she advises.
Jeff serves the appetizers — figs he just picked and artisan cheeses drizzled with Eastside Farm honey — on bread boards he makes from wine barrel staves.
Before the guests are called to sit down, Susan remembers the advice of her mother.
“She taught me to stand back and look at things with fresh eyes. You literally turn your back and turn around as if you're looking at it for the first time.”
She notices a few rakish sunflowers and plumps them up. Then it's time to enjoy the fruits of the farm, while chickens cluck and roosters crow.
You can reach Staff Writer Meg McConahey at meg.mcconahey@pressdemocrat.com or 521-5204.
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