Living to Eat

Hushpuppy! No, Holden is not barking.

2009-08-25T15:59:00.006-04:00

I blame Gatton. You hear that, Gatton? I blame you! After my post about oven fried okra and hot pepper poppers, Gatton had to go and say the one word that would burrow under my skin and plant the seed of a food obsession: hushpuppies. Hushpuppies! I love hushpuppies! What southern girl doesn't love hushpuppies? I haven't had them in years. You can't really get a good hushpuppy up here on LI - and let me go on record saying that the hushpuppies at Long John Silver's are NOT good hushpuppies. Shudder.

So Gatton plants the hushpuppy seed and I have a big bowl of those gigantic hot peppers I wrote about before and my brain starts to put two and two together - hot peppers + hushpuppies = yummy!

Of course, a real hushpuppy is a lovely mixture of cornmeal, flour, baking powder and soda, eggs, and milk (along with salt and sugar and stuff) plopped by big spoonfuls into hot fat and fried until they're GBD (golden brown and delicious). It's like a big fried cornbread dumpling. It's so good. If you've been following me lately, you know I've been trying to cut down on my favorite food group (fried) by revamping recipes and baking foods until they are crispety and crunchety.

Oven-fried hushpuppies are pretty simple. Start with your favorite hushpuppy recipe and plop tablespoonfuls onto a greased baking sheet or into mini muffin cups and bake them up. I wanted to stuff my hushpuppies with big slices of hot pepper, so the free-form hushpuppy was not going to work for me. I opted for the mini muffin pan preparation, which resulted in hushpuppies that look like mini muffins - whatever - they tasted good.

I mixed up a box of my favorite cornbread mix (I told you, I love this stuff and it's so convenient) with less milk than I would use for cornbread or muffins and egg whites instead of a whole egg (I am trying to make this recipe just a bit healthier, don't you know). I then scooped a small amount of the hushpuppy batter into the (greased) bottom of each muffin cup. I sliced up some hot peppers and pressed the slices into the center of each cup, nestling them down into the hushpuppy batter.

Back to scooping batter - just enough to cover and seal in the pepper was plopped into each cup.

See how the peppers are still showing in some cups? I used a wet finger to push and press the batter around so that the pepper was sealed into the hushpuppy like a little surprise inside.

These baked in a 450 degree (Fahrenheit) oven for about twenty minutes (actually, I baked mine for nineteen minutes - I warned you about my prime number issues) until the tops started to brown and the bottoms were nicely browned.

My favorite hushpuppies are always the ones fried the darkest, so I like to bake mine nice and dark. I flipped over a couple for the picture above so you could see the color. Oh yeah. Those look good. So what if they look like mini muffins? They're hushpuppies I tell you! They are!

These are no ordinary hushpuppies, though. Remember the little surprise I tucked inside each of my little hushpuppy friends? These are hushpuppy/pepperpoppers - sweet and salty and spicy and good.

I made three dozen of these to use up all of my peppers. I used several boxes of corn bread mix in the process - good thing I keep them stocked up in my pantry. Two dozen are now nestled into my freezer, waiting for a cold night and a pot of vegetarian chili. I'll pop those little puppies into the oven while the chili bubbles away and serve them together, piping hot and spicy hot and everything my soul will need when there's snow on the ground.

We've Been At This For 14 Weeks? Cool!

2009-08-24T17:13:00.007-04:00

While I stood over my favorite orange cutting board this morning, slashing away at a green bell pepper with my trusty four inch santoku knife, J noted that green bell peppers are an unusual presence in our kitchen. It's true. I never buy green bell peppers. I hate them. They taste too...green and grassy...that's the best I can describe them. Why were these bell peppers in my kitchen, let alone being hacked apart for use in a recipe? Blame the CSA. J and I had talked about joining Community Supported Agriculture for years, but this year I grabbed the bull by the horns and signed us up. We've been getting lots and lots of our favorite produce all summer and we've been challenged to try new things or retry foods we have written off in the past (must I remind you about the beets? - let's not go there - shudder!).

Last week we brought home two big green bell peppers as part of our share. If this had happened in June, when I was new to the CSA mindset, I would have freaked out trying to find a way to use them. I would have searched all of my favorite food blogs and recipe sights for green bell pepper recipes. I would have been crazed. Three months into cooking out of a CSA basket, I'm able to better handle a strange/rogue/odd ingredient. The second I saw the peppers, I knew it was time for me to make red beans and rice - without a can. I've always used canned red beans that I've doctored up with some onion and garlic - and I've been happy with that. But I had these green bell peppers to use up and it was time to make red beans from scratch. I probably never would have attempted this recipe in the past because (a) I was satisfied with the canned beans - gotta love Blue Runner - and (b) I never would purchase the green bell peppers necessary for the recipe. So, thank you, Garden of Eve CSA, for sending me home with green bell peppers last week. These fourteen weeks of new/strange/challenging/odd ingredients has pushed my cooking into many new areas.

So, week fourteen's haul was a big one. Let's take a look.

Within an hour of getting home from the pickup, the basil and arugula had been turned into pesto. Some of the arugula pesto hit the freezer and the rest was spread onto grilled bread for an amazing sanwich featuring the heirloom tomatoes and some fresh mozzarella. The basil pesto is waiting in the fridge for a quick pasta dinner later this week when I get home late from setting up my classroom. This will be a practice run for my school-year-dinner-in-twenty-mintues plan I've been working on all summer. I'm contemplating tossing the sungold cherry tomatoes into a hot skillet and giving them a quick saute with garlic and olive oil to serve on the side of the pasta. Mmm...

The lettuce got processed right away and joined forces with slices of a homegrown heirloom tomato and some soy bacon for the best vegetarian BLT ever. I grilled up thick slices of whole wheat bread and slathered them with some Baconnaise (yes, it's vegetarian) before layering on the B, L, and T. J and I were two very happy campers with these sandwiches.

While I was processing produce (in record time I should mention), I washed and dried the mesclun and the baby bok choi. They're tucked away in my refrigerator waiting for salad and stir fry inspiration to strike.

I cooked down the tomatoes into my first batch of Mexican rice with some veggie stock, hot peppers from the green market, and plenty of cumin. This might make it's own post because it was so easy and so tasty.

The watermelon was a surprise as part of the vegetable share. It's so small and cute.

I can't wait to eat it, but I don't want to be the one to hack it open - it's just too adorable. J will have to be the watermelon mauler in this house.

I also brought home what was minimally described as a "sweet yellow melon."

I have no idea what this melon is, but it's huge and, I confess, I'm rather intimidated by it. I'm tossing it into the refrigerator tonight and cutting it up for dessert. J loves any and all melon, so I'm sure he's going to like it. I stashed a few of the ripe nectarines in the fridge earlier today just in case the melon and I don't get along.

I used a few eggs for a breakfast of huevos rancheros on Sunday morning. This is becoming a bit of a tradition around here. I whipped up some black bean puree (with lots of garlic and hot peppers) and toasted up some corn tortillas in the oven (I love them fried, but my waistline doesn't) and spooned on lots of homemade salsa.

Mixing the yolk with the salsa and beans and scooping all of it up with the crispy tortilla is perhaps one of the most satisfying culinary experiences I've ever had. This could very well be my most favorite breakfast ever. J and I had given up on huevos rancheros as a breakfast a while back, but our first CSA bundle of cilantro pushed us into the world of homemade salsa and an overabundance of homemade salsa pushed us back into the world of huevos rancheros. The amazing free-range organic eggs pushed us, too, because you've got to have a great recipe when you've got incredible eggs. Thanks again, CSA, for pushing us out of our routines and into loads of fun new recipes.

Pesto Fest

2009-08-23T15:49:00.005-04:00

Our CSA shares have included arugula and basil for weeks now. Back in July, we were buying giant bunches of basil at the green market every week. These tasty little leaves are delicate, so they need to be used quickly once they're brought home. Our strategy for long-term preservation? Pesto.

I'm no pesto expert, but I know what I like and I know how to make it. Pesto, to me, is a combination of a tasty leaf (basil, spinach, arugula, parsley) with a tasty nut (pine nut, almond, pecan, pistachio) and some garlic, Parmesan cheese, and olive oil. I take a mix-and-match approach to pesto, using what I have and what I like and trying new combinations of flavors to see what works.

Some of my favorite pesto combinations are basil & almond, arugula & pecan, and spinach & parsley & pistachio. Pine nuts make me itchy, so I try to avoid them, but they are the classic pesto nut.

You can leave out the nuts and cheese altogether and make a pistou - a French sauce made with basil, garlic, and olive oil. (Hey, Lisa M., that would be vegan!) Modern pistou makers like to add cheese (Parmesan, Pecorino). This would also be great if someone has a nut allergy.

The teacher in me is dying for a mini-lesson. Indulge me, and let me walk you through how I make pesto.

These are the basic ingredients for a small batch of arugula pesto:

I had about a third-pound of arugula from my CSA, seven garlic cloves, two handfuls of pecans (I love pecans with arugula - peppery and earthy are a tasty combo), a one-inch by three-inch by half-inch chunk of Parmesan cheese, cut into smaller chunks, some kosher salt, and my favorite go-to olive oil.

I've worked out a technique to keep me from having to fuss with the food processor when I make pesto: I layer in the ingredients - garlic, nuts, and cheese chunks on the bottom with some salt and leaves on top.

With everything but the oil in the food processor, I pulse about 13 times (I told you I had issues with prime numbers), until everything has been pulled into the blades and chopped finely. I then let the food processor run while I squeeze in the olive oil (I love my squeezy bottles of olive oil!) until everything combines into a thick paste.

Some people like their pesto to be thinner - more oil or some water will give you that texture. I leave the pesto thick because I thin it down with pasta water when I'm making pasta and I like it thick as a spread.

The photo below is NOT the arugula pesto I made yesterday. It is a garlic scape pesto I made in June. I was so into my rhythm of make pesto, jar it up, and freeze it yesterday that I simply forgot to take a picture. Sigh. This photo shows you how thick I like my pesto, though.

Pesto freezes well and keeps in the refrigerator for a few days (if you can keep people from eating it). It should be stored with a layer of olive oil over the top so that it does not oxidize and turn black. It's still tasty and edible after it oxidizes; it's just ugly, so use the oil trick.

So, what do we do with all of this stuff? J loves pasta with pesto. Just toss the sauce with some hot pasta (thin it down with some of the pasta water if necessary). I like a cold pesto pasta salad with some peas, carrots, roasted red peppers, and a little extra olive oil. We spread pesto onto pizza dough instead of tomato sauce and melt mozzarella cheese over it. Pesto on a baguette makes for the beginning of a tasty garlic bread. We slather pesto onto our tomato and mozzarella sandwiches instead of using basil leaves. It's also good inside a mozzarella panini. We enjoy pesto as a sauce for steamed, fried, or oven fried veggies. It was really good with our oven fried eggplant last week.

At last count, I had over a gallon of pesto in the freezer (in small half-pint jars). As long as the CSA keeps sending home basil and arugula and the green market tempts me with big fragrant bunches of basil for a song, I'll keep making pesto. It's so simple and tasty and fun.

Week 13 Pickup - Better Late Than Never

2009-08-22T10:42:00.004-04:00

It has been an entire week since our last CSA pickup, but I haven't written a word about it. Strange. Well, in my defense, we did head into NYC for a green market run on the same day as the pickup - which we've never done before - so I claim discombobulation. Better late than never, though, to talk about what we got and what we've done with it.

The veggie share is the bulk of the pickup, as usual, and there were some great finds this week. The basil and the arugula both found their way into pesto. The basil pesto was spread onto tomato and fresh mozzarella sandwiches - yum. We froze most of the arugula pesto but saved a bit to eat with our oven fried eggplant and squash I wrote about earlier this week. That was a tasty combo and, obviously, how we used up our one large eggplant from the share.

The bell peppers will find their way into the batch of red beans and rice I'm making today. I will confess that I usually pop open a can or two of Blue Runner red beans when I'm craving a taste of New Orleans, but I've been wanting to try making my own red beans and rice for some time now. Since neither J nor I really like green bell peppers for any other recipe, this is the time for my experiment.

The tomatoes and jalapenos joined forces with more tomatoes and chiles from my garden and the green market to make a tasty salsa (and accompanying tomato margaritas). The salsa was particularly good on some crusty panini I made with cheddar cheese and some roasted hot peppers.

The sungold cherry tomatoes sat on the counter for a couple of days while we ate the grape and cherry tomatoes spilling out of our garden. I decided to take pity on the beautiful orange-hued sungolds and froze them into big cheery cherry tomato marbles. They're in a baggie in the freezer awaiting a winter's evening when they'll be popped into a saute pan with some olive oil and garlic for a fabulous quick pasta sauce. They'll taste of summer in the dark of winter.

Lettuce = salad and sandwich ingredient - as usual.

I haven't been using the broccoli to my best advantage all season. I'll have to get on that soon. Time for some research.

The fruit share was slightly modified. J got a melon that looked like a canteloupe and was called a canteloupe but had some honeydew coloring on the inside. He also got some white peaches that he said were wonderful and some tiny little donut peaches that I thought were the cutest thing ever. Notice that J got all of the fruit this week. Did you know that I'm ambivalent about melons other than watermelon (of which I simply cannot get enough)? Since J loves all melon, this one was entirely for him. Anyone who really knows me knows that I cannot stand peaches or anything peach flavored. Thank goodness J loves the fuzzy little buggers, or I don't know what I would have done with them. I can't even touch them - the fuzz gives me the creeps.

Some of the egg share was cooked up with some greens and grilled slices of bread for a fabulous breakfast. Some of the egg share is still in my refrigerator, awaiting its destiny.

The flower share was a bouquet of six sunflowers, evenly divided between two different varieties. They are so happy and cheerful. I set them up in my kitchen to make me smile and even J comments on them every once in a while.

Sorry I had to make this one so quick. We're getting suited up to head out for our week 14 pickup today. We're also hoping to make a stop or two at some local farms for a bushel of tomatoes to can. So far, all of our tomatoes have hit the freezer and we're running out of space. It's time I bite the bullet and learn how to can these buggers up. Wish me luck. I'll take pictures - I promise.

Eating Our Greens

2009-08-21T10:50:00.010-04:00

Greens are in season and will be until we get close to the first frost. Different greens will be in season at different times throughout the spring, summer, and fall, but some green leafy vegetable will be in season at any given point during this time.

We started the summer with tons of pea shoots from our CSA. Then we were inundated with kale and chard. For a while there I was constantly searching for new ways to prepare our greens, outside of our standard saute with garlic and olive oil. I kept fighting the saute. One of the most important things I learned from my CSA experience this summer is don't fight the saute.

The saute of greens with olive oil and garlic (and, in my kitchen, lots of red pepper flakes) is more than just a side dish. You can make all sorts of stuff with sauteed greens. It's a fabulous filling for enchiladas, quesadillas, and panini.

Want some variety? Try stuffing your enchiladas with the greens, different kinds of cheeses, add onions or carrots, use different sauces (red, green, whatever).

Try a whole wheat quesadilla with pepper jack cheese, roasted hot peppers, greens, and salsa verde. What about a multigrain quesadilla with cheddar, greens, and a spicy tomato salsa?

How about a panini of fresh mozzarella with greens and pesto? Or perhaps try squeezing some greens in between your bread with slices of fresh tomato, swiss cheese, and some shards of Parmesan and give that puppy a good toasting. Switch the quesadilla fillings with the panini fillings. Use different tortilla flavors and different kinds/sizes of bread.

By the way, you can toss your sauteed greens with some pasta and Parmesan and, if you're feeling a bit wild at the moment, a splash of cream.

J and I like cracking a few eggs into little wells we dig into the greens while they're cooking and letting them set up before scooping them out, greens and all, and gobbling it all down with crisp slices of toast or grilled bread.

Then again, just poach an egg or two and serve it atop a mound of greens or your pasta/greens combo. Let the yolk run through the greens to dress them in the richest, yellowest ribbon of flavor you can imagine.

Stuff an omelet with greens. Add some cheese or tomatoes or salsa.

Tumble some greens together with some roasted potatoes and garlic cloves for a yummy side dish.

I'm telling you - this stuff is versatile.

Are you all fired up to get some greens and garlic and get cooking? I hope so. Let's talk about greens, shall we?

Collard greens are broad and leafy with a stiff stem that you don't want to eat. Cut out the center stem of each leaf, stack the leaves together like a deck of cards, roll them up like a cigar, and slice into ribbons.

These will take a bit longer to cook than other types of greens, so you may want to blanch them for a minute or so in boiling water, then shock them in some ice water before you add them to your saute.

Black Tuscan kale can have woody stems as well. If they snap easily when you bend them, they're fine. Chop up the leaves before you saute. If the stems are tough, remove them before you chop.

Everyday, regular curly kale can be chopped up, stems and all. Be sure to check for yellowed, blemished, or rotting leaves before scrunching up a bunch of leaves at once and whacking away at them.

Red mustard greens add a great tangy, pungent taste to a pot of mixed greens. They have soft stems, so they're easy to prepare.

Turnip greens (once separated from the turnips - use them for something else, of course) are some of my favorite greens. They're mild and tasty.

After cooking up batch after batch after batch of greens this summer, I've developed a routine for cleaning and cooking the greens that makes for quicker and more thorough grit removal and better texture in the final cooked product.

To clean the greens, I fill a big bowl with cold water, grab a bunch of greens by their stems and give them a good swirl/swoosh/plunge in the bowl for a minute or so. I shake off the excess water, chop the greens, and give the chopped leaves a soak in a bowl of fresh water (agitating them to loosen up any sediment) before draining, squeezing, and taking them for a spin in my salad spinner. I pour them out onto a baking sheet to continue drying while I prep the next bunch of greens.

To cook the greens, I use a ratio of eight cloves of garlic to one bunch of greens. Yes, that's a lot of garlic, but I like my greens nice and garlicy. I chop all of my garlic at once in my food processor with some kosher salt and have everything in a bowl ready for the cooking.

I should note here that, although it is entirely possible to cook lots of greens in one big batch, I like to cook mine in smaller batches to control the texture of the greens and the amount of moisture they give off. Although I'll prep many bunches of greens at once, I'll cook off one bunch at a time, combining everything together at the end for the final cooking step.

Cooking: heat up a pan, add a nice swoosh of good olive oil, add some of your chopped garlic (divide the garlic evenly between your batches - if you have four bunches of greens, use a fourth of the garlic per batch), add about one bunch of chopped greens. Use a good pair of kitchen tongs to move the greens and garlic around the pan, taking care to get the hot stuff off the bottom of the pan and up to the top - you wouldn't want that garlic to burn - yuck. When the leaves have wilted down but remain a lovely vibrant green, slide the contents of your pan into a bowl and proceed through the remainder of your garlic and greens.

Once all of your garlic and greens have been cooked down, add all of them back to the pot over high heat. Get those leaves sizzling! Add some kosher salt and some red pepper flakes (I like a lot of heat) and some black pepper. Some people like nutmeg in their greens. I don't. When everything is nice and hot, give it one final stir and slap on the lid to your pan. Turn off the heat and step away from the greens. Leave them alone. Give them a good ten minutes. If you're eating them right away, they should still be plenty hot. If you're freezing them for another time, let them cool a bit more before bagging them up.

Don't they look tasty? This was a mixture of kale, black Tuscan kale, red mustard greens, and mustard greens. I made this batch this morning and dispatched it to the freezer. It will be filling panini (with my homemade bread) and quesadillas (with my homemade tortillas) during the winter months when good fresh greens are nowhere to be found.

My Favorite Food Group

2009-08-20T13:01:00.007-04:00

If you haven't heard one of my raves about being from the South, you haven't been listening carefully while I'm speaking or you've never spoken with me. Yes, I'm a southern girl with southern tastes and southern sensibilities. I'm a southern girl with some southern eating habits.

What's a southern eating habit? Well, there are a few. I only have some of them because, well, there's a squeamish picky eater dwelling within this particular southern girl (hence most of the reason I'm a vegetarian). I do, though, possess the most southern of eating habits - the preference for all things FRIED.

Fried food is the very best food there is. Whether you're a sweet or savory person, one of your top ten favorite dishes is probably fried (you may not want to admit it, but one of them is fried and you know it). There's just something about the effect hot fat has on food that causes me (and you too, admit it) to swoon. Fried food smells good. It has that satisfying texture (sometimes crunchy, sometimes achingly giving with a toothsome resistance, sometimes crisp on the outside and creamy or fluffy on the inside). Fried food is rich and flavorful and, let's face it, downright fun. Who doesn't have fond memories of a funnel cake or french fries or corn dog or doughnut? Face it, fried food is good stuff.

Of course I'm not ignorant of the lousy nutrition news on the fried food front - trans fats, saturated fats, high cholesterol, obesity...yadda yadda yadda. Yes, fried foods, for all of their tasty and comforting virtue, are HORRIBLE for your health. I get it. Moderation. Yeah yeah yeah.

As a fried food fiend married to a fried food fan, I've worked hard to work the flavors of our favorite food group (well, J may call frozen dairy his favorite food group, but he's not writing this blog now is he?) alive and well in our diet without killing us both before we're 50. I've been "oven frying" since college and have worked out some techniques that make for some mighty tasty cuisine (is fried food too populist to refer to as "cuisine"?). Some fun and interesting green market finds this summer have given me the chance to play with oven frying with some tasty results.

I love fried okra. It's definitely a southern thing. Okra can be really intimidating and freaky looking to some (I witnessed a few people "ew"-ing at the green market recently while pointing at a beautiful mound of $4 a pound okra. I've also had people warning me about the "yukky slime" inside the okra.).

It's tasty and healthy (okra itself is low in calories and high in dietary fiber and vitamin c). Of course, when you coat it with eggs and cornmeal and sling it into a vat of hot fat, the calories skyrocket and the negative health effects start to outweigh the positive. I'm not a fan for steamed or stewed or boiled okra, so my okra purchases at the green market were destined for a healthier version of my favorite okra preparation - fried.

Frying okra involved a few basic steps: slice the okra, swath the bits in something that will get the coating to stick, stick on the coating, fry those babies up, and eat.

I decided to use egg whites as my glue instead of whole eggs. If you're not into eggs or egg whites, this works pretty well with fat free Italian salad dressing. It's a little heavier than eggs so it tends to slide off in large clumps, but with some patience, it does indeed work.

For the coating, I love a cornmeal base. You can look up recipes on line for straight cornmeal, seasoned cornmeal, cornmeal lightened with flour, and more. I, being the lazy cook that I am, like to use cornbread mix out of a box for my fried okra. Yes, I buy cornbred mix in a box. It's what I grew up on and I like it. It's got a good balance of grainy corn meal and lighter flour and some sweetness along with saltiness. Best of all, it's easy peasy, Lemon Squeasy. So, after taking a swim in some egg whites (or egg substitute), my okra rolls around in cornbread mix.

J thinks I'm a bit neurotic for lining up the breaded okra slices on my (foil-lined, and oil-sprayed) baking sheets, but there's something comforting about this ordered assembly of my little okra soldiers.

I give my okra army a spray of oil (I like canola for this job) and deploy them into the hot battle zone of a 500 degree (Fahrenheit, of course) oven. They bake for about 13 minutes (I have a thing for prime numbers) before I flip them and bake them for at least another 13 minutes. When they are GBD (golden brown and delicious), I scoop them into a bowl and run and hide in another room where J can't find me and my tasty little goodies. No, I actually do share them. They are crunchy and sweet and salty and oh so satisfying. Of course they are not just as good as the fried okra of my southern youth - I don't lie to myself or you about that. They are good, though, and very little guilt is involved in sharing a bowl of these with my Bubba.

I used the same technique on some funky hot peppers I found at the green market last week. These were SPICY and delicously good. Who needs jalapeno poppers (filled with cheese and other uhealthy bits), when I can oven fry some hot pepper poppers and be just as satisfied? J and I like these with some refreshing cocktails for our own spicy happy hour.

I use a similar technique, substituting seasoned bread crumbs for the corn bread mix, for oven frying eggplant, zucchini, and summer squash. The larger slices of these veggies need to bake a bit longer than the okra or the peppers, but the results are just as good.

Of course, fried foods love to be dipped in sauces. J likes cocktail sauce for zucchini. I suspect cocktail sauce would be good on the okra as well. I did serve the eggplant with some freshly made pesto - that was fabulous. Although we ate the hot peppers straight, I can imagine taming their fiery heat with a tasty sour cream based dip (low fat sour cream, of course).

I picked up a few pounds of okra and hot peppers at the green market yesterday. Although J doesn't want me firing up the oven during the summer, he won't argue with me today because he knows he's getting "fried" okra and peppers served along side his dinner tonight.

My Promise

2009-08-19T16:09:00.004-04:00

I know. I know. I have been a very bad girl. I have not been keeping up with my blog and I have no good excuse. It's not that I haven't been thinking about my blog. In fact, I've been thinking about ways to make it better and I've taken steps. I really have! You want proof? Okay, here's just one example: I've been dragging my camera into the kitchen while I prep and cook every day so that my blog could be made more interesting and visually dynamic through the inclusion of photographs of the food experiments about which I write. Here's another: Since my photographs were rather flat and dark, I had J lug a desk lamp into the kitchen to properly light my work and photo space. Here's a third: When the desk lamp wasn't working to my liking, I dragged J to Ikea to buy some under-cabinet lighting for my task/photo area. Want more? Okay: When J couldn't find the right screws to install said under-cabinet task lighting, I tied the light cord to my cabinet handle and levered is against the edge of the cabinet to achieve better lighting in the meantime. I could give more examples, but this is getting a bit crazy.

Needless to say, I've been doing a lot of cooking and photographing. Obviously, I have not been doing a lot of writing and posting. Sorry. My bad. I am working to rectify that. I will make a concerted effort to post something (howsoever short) each day until I return to school. Not every post will be fascinating, but there will be posts.

I am sitting at the moment in World Wide Plaza in Manhattan, sipping an iced (decaf!) Americano. I need to leave in a few minutes to pick up J and some of his family members, so I need to be quick with today's perhaps-fascinating post.

While J and his family went to see Wicked today, I made a rather half-hearted attempt to go to my school to start setting up my classroom. When I couldn't find a parking spot, I hit the gas and headed down to Union Square. It is Wednesday after all and I did have my shopping bags and cooler bag in the back of the car.

This was my first completely solo trip through the green market and it was fun! I made a quick sweep through the entire swath of vendors (thanks for the advice, Alice Waters) and doubled back to scoop up the long, hot chiles I cannot identify, handfuls of plump green jalapenos, and the reddest and least-expensive roma tomatoes in the market from one vendor. A couple of stalls down I scooped up red mustard greens, kale, and a couple of pounds of tomatillos. Across the way I bought fresh red and yellow onions, black Tuscan kale, and a new funky type of cilantro (cilantro delfino) that I had never tried or heard of before. I was told that restaurants buy this type of cilantro because it keeps better and chops up more finely. Down around the corner I bought beefsteak tomatoes, warm from the hot August afternoon sun. Up the way a bit I scooped up the sticky long green pointy fingers of okra that will find their way into my favorite oven "fried" recipe before being gobbled up with spicy cocktails. I even found a couple of less-expensive pints of sweet hybrid strawberries.

What am I going to make with this bounty? Wouldn't you like to know! I'll write about it soon. I promise.

Nothing Goes To Waste

2009-08-11T09:47:00.005-04:00

Between our garden and our green market sprees of late, J and I have found ourselves overwhelmed in the kitchen at times. It can be difficult to keep up with the coolers crammed full with produce that we schlep into our kitchen twice a week. Last week we went crazy at the Union Square green market (that's another post) and brought home a mess of farm fresh (not hothouse - I love this time of year!) tomatoes and jalapenos and cilantro. My intent, of course, was salsa - the first fully-fresh salsa of the year. After a couple of months of canned tomatoes, fresh tomato salsa would be light and fresh and sweet.

When we got home, we discovered our garden had been thinking the same thing.

Jalapenos and tomatoes abound! We harvested a couple of small colanders of grape tomatoes and a few larger tomatoes, with plenty of ripening fruit still on the vine.

It's no surprise, then, that I went a little crazy-obsessive about using these beauties up before they started to soften and go bad. I stuffed my food processor full of farm fresh onions (red and yellow), cilantro, jalapenos, and tomatoes then seasoned it all with salt, pepper, and lime juice. Okay, I may have overdone it with the tomatoes. I crammed them in, squishing down chunks of one tomato to make room for the next one and the one after that. The result? A very tasty fresh tomato salsa filled and overflowed my food processor. I grabbed a big bowl to transfer the salsa and, while the salsa sat, pink-tinted clear tomato water began to seep out of the bottom of the Cuisinart bowl and rise to the top as well. Of course! I hadn't created an emulsion (no oil), so the tomato water was naturally going to separate. Since I had used an awful lot of incredibly juicy tomatoes, you can imagine the quantities of tomato water that were struggling to pour out of my food processor.

I slammed a strainer over a very large bowl and dumped out my salsa. I ended up with a wonderfully tight salsa without the extra liquid in which my chunky vegetables would normally swim about. I also ended up with a quart and a half of tomato water. I'm not one to waste anything in the kitchen, especially anything that I've worked so hard to schlep from Manhattan or coax out of my own soil, so I knitted my brows together and did my best Winnie-the-Pooh impression. Think! Think! Think! What can I do with this tomato water? I tasted it and discovered that it was highly seasoned with the other salsa ingredients - lots of fresh onion, lime juice, essence of jalapeno and cilantro.

I could freeze it and add it to a tortilla soup I'll cook this winter. Sure. I could add it to tomato juice for a lovely spicy kick in a Bloody Mary. Yum. Mother Inspiration struck - the perfect use for this spicy flavorful tomato water was one that highlighted it's Tex-Mex flavor profile - Tomato Margaritas!

Oh yes, add some more lime juice, some hot sauce, and tequila and flavorful tomato water becomes a fantastic savory and spicy cocktail. It's the perfect drink for a snack of homemade tortilla chips and farm fresh salsa or oven fried jalapenos (another post) or a dinner of kale and cheese enchiladas. Perhaps I could serve it as a brunch cocktail with my nearly-perfected huevos rancheros recipe. So much potential.

Of course I was rather pleased with myself. I had not only saved a big bowl full of tomato water from being poured down the drain, I had created a tasty cocktail at the same time.

I spent the next day processing greens and greens and more greens (yet another post) and I neglected the fresh carrots, celery, and daikon we had brought home with the bounty of tomatoes. I should have cut off the leafy tops to stop the veggies from losing moisture. I should have stashed them in the chill chest but it was overflowing with veg that had to be kept cold and carrots and daikon could keep for a couple of days in my kitchen. After all, don't they keep in root cellars for weeks? I was wrong. When I got to them, the carrots and daikon were rubbery imitations of themselves. I could tie a long thin carrot into a knot. The celery smelled wonderfully fresh, but it too was rubbery. Sigh.

These veggies would not go to waste. I washed and roughly chopped them up then threw them into a pot of water with some onion, black peppercorns, and a couple of bay leaves and boiled away. Veggie stock would be mine. I stole a cup of stock to help me saute down a stubborn batch of greens and bagged up the rest (about a gallon) for the freezer. I tend to make a soup and bread supper at least once a week in the colder weather (heat up the house with the stove and oven and my body with hot soup and warm bread). This veggie stock will give me a couple of pots of soup. I'm dreaming of white beans and escarole, vegetable, three bean, black bean, and Tuscan white bean soups. I hate cold weather, but this gives me something special to look forward to later this year.

In the meantime, I'm enjoying this warm weather bounty. I'm headed back to the green market tomorrow for more tomatoes because I'm out of salsa and I need a nice spicy cocktail too!

The Suspense Is Killing Me - Refrigerator Pickles and Cherry Bounce

2009-08-04T11:49:00.004-04:00

I am not a patient person. Time just never moves quickly enough for me. I am the person who has to sing the alphabet to herself to know how long to wash her hands. I also make sure to hum the Jeopardy theme four full times while brushing my teeth, ensuring a proper brushing duration. My sense of time is indeed slightly warped and running on the fast side. It makes sense, then, that any recipe that takes four or more weeks to come to fruition would make me absolutely BONKERS!

When a bounty of white cucumbers found their way into my refrigerator three weeks ago I knew it was time to attempt pickles. J loves pickled and fermented foods - spicy pickles from vendors at street fairs in Manhattan, kim chee, the pickled radishes I put in congee, bread and butter pickles straight out of the jar, the pickled daikon and carrot salad that comes with our favorite Japanese take out - so at some point in my life with him, I was going to have to learn to pickle stuff. That time had come.

Since J and I both have a spicy tooth (I am half Cajun, after all), I decided to make my first batches of pickles with plenty of heat. My jalapenos and habanero peppers in the garden were not ready for picking in the middle of July (they will be soon, though!), so I grabbed some jalapeno peppers at the market as well as some baby carrots (I was so not in the mood to peel and cut down carrots that weekend - cut me some slack).

Here's the plan: Stuff wide-mouth pint jars with alternating layers of jalapeno slices, thinly sliced onion, cloves of garlic, and the pickling veg of choice (I made jars with cucumber and jars with baby carrots). When the jars are packed quite tightly, pour over a boiling mixture of equal parts white vinegar and water that has been seasoned with kosher salt, all spice (whole), clove (whole), celery seed, mustard seed, and copious amounts of red chili flakes. After I filled the jars with the hot liquid to the tippy tippy top, I sealed them up and let them cool on the counter. I could have boiled them and canned them properly, but I was not about to heat up my house. These pickles would be refrigerator pickles and I had just the place for them in the little tiny refrigerator (from my first year of college - yes, it still works) in my garage. They had to go in the outside refrigerator so I would not stalk them as they did their whole pickle thing for at least four weeks. That's right, four weeks - four weeks of waiting, impatiently, to find out if these things are any good. Sigh. Not a recipe for the impatient.

I've got one week of waiting left. The suspense is killing me. Are they going to be spicy enough? Too spicy? Soggy? Crunchy? Underseasoned? Overseasoned? Delicious? Awful? Come on! I've got to know!

With only a week left, though, I find myself wishing I had a couple more weeks before I find out if I really messed up the recipe. I mean, who wants to taste something that required this much of a time investment to find out it was a failure? Aaarrrrggghhh!

Another long-term recipe pushing hard on my patience button is the Cherry Bounce I wrote about a couple of weeks ago. Since then, J and I have purchased more cherries and whiskey and put up a third bottle of Bounce. This recipe requires that I wait FOUR MONTHS (heavens!) for the final product! I can hardly stand it. I've had to squirrel my three bottles of Bounce into a difficult-to-access cabinet so that I stop paying them daily visits to check on their well being. They lived on the counter for their first ten days so that they could get their daily bouncing to help dissolve the massive amounts of sugar called for in the recipe (thanks again, Merideth!), but they had to go once J caught me obsessively lifting and turning each bottle, examining the way the cherries bobbed in the liquid and checking for any crystals of undissolved sugar, on day fifteen.

Maybe these kinds of recipes are good for me. After all, bread making has forced me to slow down my time table in the kitchen, allowing me to enjoy the process as much as the final product. Maybe pickles and Cherry Bounce will help be slow things down even more. Maybe the waiting will enhance the flavor of the final product not only physically but also emotionally. I've got a lot of time invested in these recipes. Time has to taste good, right?

That's A Lot Of Food - Week 9 Pickup

2009-08-03T11:52:00.008-04:00

I can't believe it's August already. Where is the summer going? Last summer was filled with leisurely days of lounging in my back yard on a comfy chair with my pups tethered nearby and a cocktail and a good book on a tray next to me. I was well-rested, brown-skinned, and all smiles (the cocktails might have had quite a bit to do with the smiling) last summer.

This summer has a completely different vibe. Yes, there are still good books and cocktails in the picture this year, but I've only spent one afternoon in my comfy back yard chair and I am certainly not well-rested or brown-skinned.

This has been a busy summer. J and I have been busy working on our house, running errands, processing and cooking our CSA shares, and hitting green markets for fresh and in-season produce to put up for the winter. We're working hard this summer to make ourselves happy and comfortable this winter. It's hard to keep our eyes on the prize, though, when we seem to be work-work-working our summer away.

J has been getting frustrated with the amount of time we've been spending in the kitchen, so I know it's time to reflect on finding some balance. I know, though, that the more cooking and preserving I can do now, the more free time I'll have during the hectic school year. This is a tough call, because free time now is so warm and fun and pleasant and the promise of free time later is simply too abstract to grasp. During the summer I forget how sleep-deprived, overworked, and stressed I get during the school year. I need to find some time for warm summer fun and I need to make time to squirrel away all of the amazing produce coming into season this month so that we can eat well and conveniently during the school year.

Saturdays are always about running out to the farm for our weekly pickup of farm fresh fruit, veggies, eggs, and flowers. These runs are a fun weekly ritual. We're forced to get out of the house and we treat the pups with an always-appreciated ride in the car. Riley especially loves to stick his head out of the window and snurfle when we're winding through the rural roads of the North Fork.

Don't my boys look like they're having fun?

Just as much fun as the ride out to the farm is the moment our haul for the week is finally revealed to us. Yes, the farm often posts a list of items for the weekly shares earlier in the week, but the list is often wrong. So, when we get to see the CSA board for the first time, it's like waking up on our birthdays. Here's this week's goody list:

This pickup had our bag bulging with the bounty of mid-summer. There was a lot of food to bring home this week and all of it was fresh and beautiful. I've got big plans for all of this produce.

The lettuce, baby bok choi, turnips, broccoli, and bunching onions will join forces with some green market carrots, sweet onions, garlic, and celery and some of my home grown jalapeno peppers to make tasty lettuce wraps. I love the contrast of hot (veggie stir fry) and cold (lettuce cups) and sweet (carrots and turnips) and spicy (jalapenos). When the lettuce runs out, this stuff is tasty served over some brown rice.

The arugula will make a tasty green salad, dressed with lemon juice and olive oil.

Cucumbers find their way into everything in my kitchen. Sometimes they're just a tasty snack with some kosher salt and freshly cracked black pepper. Sometimes they find their way into a salad or onto a sandwich when I want something crunchy. Sometimes they're a great cracker-or-chip-substitute when I make hummus or some other kind of dip. Sometimes they are an essential side dish, especially when I make curry. One of this week's cucumbers has already been a salad ingredient and a snack. The other two will probably join the tomatoes turning red and yellow in my garden and some green market red onions for J's favorite summer salad. He'll eat this straight out of the fridge as is or stuff it into whole wheat pitas with some baked falafel balls (we did this last week) or toss it on top of a bowl of lettuce.

I've completely overdosed on corn this summer. I've just hit that wall where I can't eat any more corn. J, on the other hand, can't get enough of the stuff. So, some of the corn will be grilled up for J's dining pleasure and the rest will be trimmed off the cobs and dispatched to the freezer. I'll boil down the cobs to make corn stock again because I'll be making tons of corn chowder for J after the first frost. He loves the silky, velvety, earthy combination of corn and potatoes and cream. I love making soup and bread when the weather is cold. I can see it now - homemade bread bowls filled with steaming hot corn chowder (with my home grown potatoes bobbing in the creamy broth) waiting for us after shoveling down the sidewalk and driveway after the first big snow. You know, I hate winter and I despise snow, but I'm actually looking forward to both just to get a bread bowl full of corn chowder. Bring it on! (Give me a couple more warm months first, okay?)

I haven't used marjoram until now. I know it's part of the mint family and it bears some resemblance to both thyme and oregano. I'm thinking of drying some for later use and experimenting with some now. It will probably find its way into the big vat of tomato sauce I'm making this week and maybe sprinkled over a salad or pasta dish. I need to play with it to learn more about it.

J says he loves apricots, but I've never seen him eat one. If he doesn't eat these apricots I'll probably turn them into jam. I've read several recipes for apricot jam and I'm fascinated with all of the techniques for using the apricot kernels in the cooking process.

I loved loved loved the yellow plum sorbet I made with our last batch of plums. I might whip up another batch because it was just that good. On the other hand, a jar of plum jam or plum compote would make for a happy Sunday morning breakfast with some freshly baked biscuits or scones or waffles.

I love blackberries. As much as I'd love some homemade blackberry compote for pancakes and waffles (when I have pancakes, I want them smothered in blackberry compote), half a pint of blackberries just isn't enough. These little black-purple-bumpy jeweled beauties will be eaten straight up in one sitting, popping in my mouth like caviar and turning my lips a funky shade of violet. I hope we get some more in next week's share. I'll be searching for them at the green market this week for sure.

I got some new dishes at Fishs Eddy for making baked eggs. Some of our organic free-range beauties will find their way into these dishes atop some of homemade tomato sauce. I'll serve them piping hot from the oven with slices of homemade crusty bread.

The flowers this week were colorful and cheerful.

See how heavy the bag was this week?

Okay, enough writing. I'm off to the kitchen to prep some produce so that I can sit in the yard later with the pups and a good book.

Produce Overload: Week 9 CSA Pickup and Green Market Shopping

2009-07-26T15:20:00.008-04:00

We can hardly get the refrigerator door shut this week. J and I have been very busy in the kitchen after a green market shopping spree earlier this week and yesterday's CSA pickup. I can't believe we've been picking our our shares for nine weeks now. Looking back, I realize that (not counting cherries and citrus products) I've purchased less than a shopping bag full of produce from the supermarket since late May - almost everything has come from the farm share or a local green market.

What were we up to this week? J and I headed into Manhattan on Wednesday to shop at the Union Square green market, grab some goodies from Chinatown, and meet some friends from work for good company and libations. We stocked the car with a cooler, a cooler bag, and several canvas shopping bags and headed out to take advantage of all of the amazing produce in season this time of year.

I was determined to find a real, honest-to-goodness, locally grown tomato. Yeah, I've gotten some small ones from my own plants, but some local farm had to have an early tomato or two for sale this week, right? Most of the tomatoes we found were hot house tomatoes. J and I were being obnoxious (well, it was mostly me being obnoxious) and stuck to our guns, holding out for the real deal. They were hard to find, but I came home with three funky lumpy but deliciously ripe tomatoes. Mmm...tomatoes...it's difficult to believe I'll be sick of them by this time next month. Until then, I am going to savor every bite.

The first of the three lumpy beauties found its way into a delicious tomato, mozzarella, and pesto sandwich on a fabulous baguette. Tomato sandwiches will become my daily lunch within the next couple of weeks, when I'm pulling the tomato right off the vine and slicing it, still warm from the sun, before wedging it into one of my homemade rolls. Oh my, I'm getting excited just thinking about it.

At the green market we also scooped up some fresh onions (both sweet yellow and red), leeks, dandelion greens (regular and red), escarole, cilantro, baby bok choi, some amazing scallions (two feet long), two more giant bunches of basil (can't resist its scent), a couple of kinds of bread, and some zucchini blossoms.

Aren't they pretty? They're incredibly delicate and were already getting soft by the time we got home. I battered them (I stuffed a few with some fresh mozzarella first) and lightly fried them for a crispy breakfast. I'm going to have to harvest some of my garden's blossoms to practice and perfect my recipe. They are tasty.

We ran down to Chinatown to get some noodles and a couple of cooking tools (including a new tortilla press - don't ask) and some produce one cannot get at the green market or farm stands on the North Fork. We needed some Chinese broccoli and other greens. We found even smaller baby bok choi - perfect for cooking (and eating) whole.

Fast forward to our Saturday CSA pickup and our goodies for this week:

Within seconds of snapping this photo, my wheels were spinning and I had plans for a lot of this produce.

The romaine would make lovely little lettuce cups for a spicy veggie meat stir fry during the week. The kohlrabi would add a tasty crunch to said stir fry.

The corn would be (part of - okay most of) dinner that very night (the ears were quite small - look!)
To give you a sense of perspective, the little ears in the front row were about 4 inches long. Note that there are only eight ears pictured here because we found some caterpillar friends in two of the ears (ah, the joys of organic produce!).

The kale would probably find its way into some quesadillas after being cooked down with garlic, olive oil, and red pepper flakes.

The basil was a beautiful purple basil, which I processed into a tasty basil-parsley pesto (right after I processed the two big bunches of basil from the green market into a couple of pints of pesto). This was the pesto on our tomato-mozzarella sandwiches. The rest of the pesto found its way into our freezer.

The cucumbers will find their way into a salad with the remaining tomatoes and some of the fresh red onion. Maybe I'll toss in some of the cilantro. Most of the cilantro and fresh onions were blitzed up into a big batch of salsa this morning. I can't wait to make salsa with fresh tomatoes.

Zucchini...zucchini...zucchini...so much zucchini and my plants have just started producing fruit. The big zucchini we picked up this week will probably find itself either pickled with lots of sweet onion and jalapeno pepper or on top of a pizza with some caramelized onion and roasted garlic and fresh parsley. Said pizza might even have a couple gorgeous free-range eggs perched on top amidst freshly shaven shards of Parmesan cheese. Okay, I'm feeling it. Pizza sounds good!

The cherries and blueberries from the fruit share will find their way into my food dehydrator. I'm preparing for those winter Sunday mornings when J wakes up craving something sweet and I'm craving some extra heat from the oven. Scones and muffins will warm his belly and the oven will warm my toes.

I forgot to mention that J scooped up twelve pounds of cherries this week. (J has a cherry problem.) A couple of pounds found their way into a big bottle of Cherry Bounce and I need to thank Merideth for this fun recipe. In a gallon container (I used an old growler that once held some stout) combine a couple of quarts of cherries with three cups of sugar (yeah, that's a lot) and a fifth of whiskey (not the expensive stuff - not necessary with all of that sugar). Every day for ten days, give the container a bounce to incorporate some of the sugar. Store the bottle away for four months and try not to obsess about it. I can't wait for this sweet cherry and whiskey liquor to be ready to mix cocktails. J loves Whiskey Sours, so how can we go wrong with a Bouncy Sour? I'm dreaming of a Bouncy boozy cherry cola. How about a blend of Bounce with some chocolate soda for a Black Forest Bounce? Oh yeah, this is going to be some good stuff in a few months.

The yellow plums were tiny and deliciously sweet-tart. I cooked them down with some simple syrup until they were soft then stirred in a generous glug of Triple Sec before chilling it down to make sorbet. This will hit the ice cream maker tomorrow morning. I know it's going to be fabulous because J and I attacked the bowl of the food processor after I poured out the sorbet mix. It's sweet and tart and orangy (from the Triple Sec) and wonderfully sunshiny.

We took the pups for an extended ride after our CSA pickup (check out Holdy in his Doggles).

Our destination? Harbe's Family Farm for another bag of their sweet corn. We ate six ears last week and they were amazingly sweet. Since we had ten ears of organic corn from our CSA already, the bag of a dozen ears from Harbe's was destined to be cut off the cob and frozen for all sorts of dreamy winter recipes - corn chowder, a lovely maque choux to serve along side my favorite Malaysian-style potato curry, corn and black bean quesadillas with black bean soup. I don't want to rush away my summer, but these winter dishes sound good. At least I have something to look forward to during the dark, cold months of winter. Maybe we'll get another big storm and a snow day (or two) to give me some quality cooking time! Before any of that can happen, though, the corn had to be de-cobbed.

Twelve ears of de-cobbing later, I had three lovely zip top bags of sweet corn nestled in my freezer, dreaming of blizzards and snow days and chowder.

Speaking of chowder, my corn cobs did not go to waste. I boiled them up with some water and salt and pepper and made a couple of quarts of homemade corn stock for a big pot of corn chowder. The stock is nestled into my freezer, next to the corn. I'm planning on using my own home grown potatoes in that recipe. But that's another blog entry for a much much later date. I've got a refrigerator full of summer goodness to cook through before the door pops off!

Week 8 Pickup: You Can't Make Me Eat That!

2009-07-20T20:46:00.011-04:00

We were given ample warning that this would happen. I've made it a habit to check the Garden of Eve web site (http://www.gardenofevefarm.com) around mid-week to see if any share news has been posted. This week we got the news on Wednesday - beets would be part of our pick up on Saturday. Cue ominous sounding music here.

Beets have haunted me since childhood. They are the one vegetable that I have flat-out refused to try - ever. Many people have postulated that the canned beets that were served as part of school lunch from Kindergarten through Fifth Grade are the only beets I have known and have therefore tainted my opinion on the vegetable. True enough, but I never tasted those beets. It's something about the color and the weird bleeding thing beets do that turns me off. I have been reassured by several people that fresh beets neither look nor taste as awful as canned beets. I promised J and myself that I would give these beets a try.

Alas, the online update, which is usually wrong in some tiny way, was correct. Beets! Beets? Beets! Noooooooo! Actually, the update was correct about the beets but incorrect about the yellow squash. I ended up with an extra head of garlic and a couple of extra potatoes in exchange.

The flowers were lovely this week.

See how I can always find something positive to say? It's that good southern upbringing.

Let's stay happily positive for a minute and talk about our adventures after our farm pickup. Stop #1: Harbe's Family Farm in Mattituck, NY (http://www.harbesfamilyfarm.com/). Harbe's is our favorite stop for roasted corn and delicious baguettes. We grabbed a couple of ears of the former and shared them with the puppers.

Notice that their little fuzzy noggins make a heart shape as they lick corn kernels from J's plate.

Aren't they adorable, my little corn dogs?

As for the baguettes, they are delicious and amazing and we scooped one up along with a couple of hothouse tomatoes. Yes, Ms. I-want-to-eat-in-season-and-local succumbed to the hothouse tomatoes. The bread was talking to me. The warm weather was singing to me. The delicious tiny home grown tomatoes from last week were haunting my palate. I wanted a tomato sandwich. I needed a tomato sandwich. I would have a tomato sandwich.

I needed some mozzarella for that sandwich - good mozzarella - not that plastic stuff you get at the Stop-and-Shop. We had asked the cashier at Harbe's about the source of their bread and she told us that Scotto's Pork Store (http://www.scottosporkstore.com/home.html) in Hampton Bays delivers both the baguettes and the mozzarella they use in their sandwiches at the farm stand. Okay, the title "pork store" does bother this vegetarian, but I'm in search of cheese, not pork, so, off to Hampton Bays we went!

My BlackBerry and Google Maps made the trip an easy one. I navigated and J drove. On our way to bread-and-cheese-deliciousness, we passed a landmark we've only seen on TV and in print: the Flanders Duck!

Isn't it cute? Okay, not as cute as my pups, but cute. Please excuse the dark gray smudge on the left side of the photo. J's nose (schnoz, as I lovingly refer to it) found its way into the one shot I got of the ducky as we sped by. I tried to wipe the schnoz smudge out using Picasa, but I was less-than-successful. I've got to get some photoshop classes from Gatton.

At Scotto's we scooped up some tasty lunch and a ball of fresh mozzarella. We also grabbed a hero roll because I know how much J loves tomato mozzarella sandwiches. We'd need a lot of bread.

I forgot to mention that Harbe's finally had their own corn for sale at the farm stand, so we scooped up a bag of six ears. Later in the season, I'm sure I'll be lugging home larger sacks so that we can eat some now and freeze some for the winter.

Enough about the extra stuff - let's get back to the shares.

Mesclun mix? Easy. Salad. I figured I'd make the roasted beets with baby greens and fried goat cheese and candied pecan salad I've seen variations of on most restaurant menus recently. This covers the lettuces and the beets. Cool.

Not too cool. After roasting and peeling and slicing the beets (and turning my hands a glowing purple in the process), I mustered up the courage to taste some. Nope. Nope. Nope. Don't like them. Nope. Not gonna happen - for me, at least. J loves them; thank heavens! I'll make the salad for him!

The zucchini found itself in a tasty pair of zucchini pies. That's a recipe for another post. It requires more attention.

The white cucumbers and some carrots and jalapenos and onions found their way into some pickling jars as part of the Great Pickle Experiment of 2009. That, too, is another recipe for another post.

The potatoes, garlic, and parsley will make for a nice batch of lyonnaise potatoes for breakfast later in the week, along side of a couple of the amazing eggs we pick up with each share. These potatoes are a childhood favorite from a restaurant in New Orleans that probably no longer exists. I try to recreate this recipe a couple of times each year. I guess it's time to try again. Mmm...starchy deliciousness.

I'm sorry to say that I don't like peaches either. Don't ask. J, on the other hand loves peaches; but, I'm sorry to say, he didn't like these. Evidently they were mealy and tart and otherwise flavorless. Oh well.

The cherries ended up in J's belly when they started to get fuzzy too quickly to get them into my food dehydrator. Super ripe fruit requires quick action and I was hoping the cherries would hold out until Tuesday. They didn't, so J enjoyed a lovely dessert of fresh cherries tonight.

The blueberries are destined for the food dehydrator. The resulting dried morsels will be wonderful in scones on a very cold day when firing up the oven not only results in a delicious treat, but helps warm up the kitchen and my chilly bones.

Did I cover it all? Whew! Okay, enough writing - time to get cooking!

Scent of a Tomato Plant

2009-07-20T16:25:00.007-04:00

There is nothing more perfect, more heady, or more aromatic than the smell of the leaves of a tomato plant. I can often be found out in the garden rubbing my hands along the tops of the tomato plants and taking deep breaths, hoping to inhale as much of the grassy, herbal, mineral scent as I can. I've been known to rub tomato leaves on my wrists and walk around all day sniffing myself as if I had just gotten a sample of Chanel No. 5. Tomato plants smell that good to me.

While surveying our lands last week, J and I noticed the first of our grape tomatoes turning red.
We had to exercise the utmost in restraint to not rip the almost-perfectly-red beauties off of their vines and gobble them down on the spot. No, the first tomatoes would be the most perfect tomatoes. We would wait...(not so) patiently...wait...until the tomatoes were absolutely perfectly wonderfully red and ripe and ready to be devoured.

That day came last Sunday.
The photo doesn't do these two little gems justice. They were vibrant red, plump, just firm, and warm from the sun. J and I couldn't even wait to get the kosher salt out of the kitchen. We tapped tomatoes (you know, like clinking glasses) and popped our little rubied fruits into our mouths.

Nothing beats the taste of the first real tomato of the season. especially when it is eaten outside, straight off of the vine, and still sun-kissed. It was rich - slightly acidic but very earthy. This bite always has me regretting every bullet-proof hothouse tomato I suffered through during the winter and spring. This singular bite of tomato perfection has me swearing off tomatoes between the months of October and July (a promise, I admit, I am too weak-willed to keep). This perfectly juicy-sweet-musky taste of sun, soil, and fragrant tomato leaf is one I'd like to freeze in time and bottle. No other taste of tomato comes close to it. I will eat tomato after tomato after tomato this summer. I will subsist on tomato sandwiches for days at a time. I will cook them into sauces and soups. I will toss them into salads. I will stuff them into tacos and falafels and salad wraps. I will eat so many tomatoes that I will not want to touch another tomato (until the urge returns sometime around January or so). Not one bite of any of those many tomatoes will be as perfect as that first bite, in the yard, next to J, feeling the sunshine on my face and smelling the scent of my tomato plants.

I'll need to get over it, because I've got a garden full of tomatoes starting to grow and ripen.

Week 7: A Farm Run and Some Fun

2009-07-18T17:39:00.005-04:00

I’m so behind. I had a feeling this would happen sooner or later. I knew I’d start to let the summer get the best of me and I’d start slacking off on my farm run updates. How far behind am I? I’m currently in the car on my way to pick up this week’s farm shares and I haven’t blogged about last week’s shares at all. The horror! The horror!

So here’s what we got:

The lettuce and mesclun mix were easy. We dined on a couple of tasty salads with yogurt ranch dressing that I had zipped up with some bacon salt. (Keep giggling, Di, I did say BACON salt!). Speaking of the vegetarian-friendly bacon-flavored seasoning, I might mention that the Bacon Salt guys are having an anniversary sale, so you might want to check that out.

The broccoli found its way into the noodles I made for Donna’s party last week. It was smaller than a grocery store head of broccoli, but it was tasty indeed and made friends with some of the farmer’s market baby bok choi and the Chinatown Chinese broccoli. If you’re interested in the noodle recipe and you haven’t been keeping up with my blog, be sure to check out the Nikki’s Noodles post from earlier thiis week.

The rainbow chard found its way into a braise with some of the braising mix. Cooked down with some onion, garlic, vegetable stock, and curry powder, the greens softened up as much as they could before I stirred in a couple of packets of curried lentils (Heavens! Prepared food in her kitchen?! Um, yeah!). We gobbled up this fiber rich dish with some naan. Curry-licious.

The flowering cilantro is pretty useless, honestly. I tasted the leaves (few as they were) and flowers and there wasn’t enough flavor in them to bother using it. It was pretty, though. Sigh.

I’ve got plans for the kohlrabi. I need to grab an apple or two and some carrots to make a slaw. I’m thinking of a yogurt based blue cheese dressing for the slaw. Maybe I’ll toss in some grapes. I’ll let you know when it happens.

I keep forgetting I've got raddichio in the refrigerator. Got to get to work on that. Hmm...

Although I have a plethora of recipes for zucchini and squash, I just can’t get myself excited about cooking and eating them. They’re just not registering as sexy to me this year. Don’t know why. I know I’ll be getting more and more zucchini in my shares and some of the plants in my garden are showing little tiny squash, so I’d better get over it and get cooking soon.

The cherries and blueberries are still sitting in the fridge, waiting for inspiration to strike. I think I may dry some in my new food dehydrator. They’ll be great in muffins and scones in the fall.

We downed the eggs in two meals. Half of them were used in the noodles I made earlier this week and the other half were turned into huevos rancheros with the last of my homemade salsa. Mmm….homemade salsa. Time to make more of that. Memo to myself…stop at farm stand for more cilantro.

So, where’s the fun part from the title, Nicole? Ah, the fun. J and I decided to keep heading east after our farm pickup to our favorite North Fork stop for roasted corn: Harbe’s in Mattituck. Have you ever been to this place? It’s like a farm meets a florist meets a fun park. They’ve got lovely produce, delicious roasted corn, tomato and mozzarella sandwiches, pony rides, rabbits, plants galore, a lovely picnic spot, and some wooden play structures for the kiddos. We grabbed a couple of ears of corn, which we shared with the pups. That’s right, we’ve got a couple of corn dogs here.

Note Holden’s superior technique. He’s training Riley. Maybe I’ll be able to convince J to take us back today for more corn dog training. Ah, no wonder I get so lazy in the summer. I’m having way too much fun.

Nikki's Noodles

2009-07-16T13:15:00.004-04:00

I always took noodles for granted as a child and teenager. My dad made noodles every weekend and sometimes we had noodles a couple of nights during the week as well. Mom even sent noodles in my lunch box once a week. We didn't eat a lot of pasta; but we ate a lot of noodles. I thought everyone ate lots of noodles. When I got to college, kids were slurping down ramen, so that reinforced my idea that noodles were a staple in everyone's diet and that everyone took them for granted.

I was wrong.

J has always made a big deal about noodle meals. I thought I was being a lazy cook (more on that below). He thought I was a noodle genius. J suggested I bring some noodles to a block party last year and people raved. Raved about noodles? Yes, I was genuinely confused. So when my friend Donna asked me to make noodles for her party last week, I was surprised and spent several days trying to find something fancier, less ordinary, to bring. I brought the noodles anyway because I could not for the life of me figure out what else to make. People loved them. People asked for the recipe. I don't really get it.

See, noodles are an everyday kind of food in my family. We make them the same way other families make sandwiches. They're easy. They're quick. You can use whatever leftovers you have in the refrigerator to make them. I call them "refrigerator velcro" because noodles hold all of the bits and pieces and odds and ends in the refrigerator together into a single (hopefully) coherent dish. Noodles are what we make when we don't know what to make for dinner. I've spent years standing next to my dad as he concocted noodle dish after noodle dish. I learned a lot about noodles and sauces and what I liked best. Nowadays, I make a few different noodle dishes depending on my mood and what's in the fridge. They're what I make when I have no idea what else to make.

So I made noodles for Donna's party. I did my usual thing, using my usual sauces, trying to use up the veggies in the fridge before they started to wilt. They weren't anything special to me - just my normal, every day noodle mish-mosh; but they got a reaction.

So, as promised, I am sharing the recipe. Now, this is not the easiest thing in the world for me to do because I don't really work from recipes. I cook with ideas, techniques, ratios, and lots and lots of estimation. I have never measured the ingredients for this recipe. Heck, there aren't even ingredients for this recipe. I just use what I have in the house. So, this is not really a recipe, but a set of guidelines and steps. Trust me, you can't do this wrong. So, here we go.

You'll need to gather up some basic ingredients.

Noodles
Choose from ramen, spaghetti, linguini, Chinese egg noodles, Vietnamese rice noodles -the thicker ones. All noodle-like substances work although I have not tried this with udon (how could that be bad, though?).

Veggies
I always have onions and garlic and ginger (although ginger isn't a veg, I get it with my veggies, so it counts for me).
Then there are the other veggies: broccoli, Chinese broccoli, bok choi, Napa cabbage, snow peas, red peppers, mushrooms - I like shiitake -, etc... Depending on how much of each of these I have, I'll use one or two or five. It doesn't really matter. I like a lot of veggies, so I use a lot of veggies. Just cut them into bite sized pieces.

Sauces
I use vegetarian oyster sauce (you can use real oyster sauce), soy sauce, sesame oil, Sriracha (chili sauce - yum), rice wine vinegar, and Splenda (you can use sugar or any other sweetener of choice).
The sesame is for earthiness. If you don't want it, don't use it.
The Sriracha is for heat. I like heat. If you don't want it, don't use it.
The vinegar is for zestiness - for zip. If you don't want it, don't use it.
The oyster sauce, soy, and sweetener are all necessary, though, for flavor and texture.

Once you've got the ingredients ready, it's pretty quick and easy going from there.

Start with the base sauce and veggies. Heat up a large skillet. It will need to be big enough to hold all of the noodles and veggies and have room to stir/toss them all together. Saute a sliced onion in some vegetable oil until it softens and starts to turn brown. I actually don't saute my onions, I sweat them which means I add some salt to the saute at the beginning to get the onions to give up their liquid sooner. When the onions are soft and tinged with caramel color, I add sliced garlic (I use 4-8 cloves, depending on their size), grated fresh ginger (about a teaspoon), and the sliced mushrooms and a bit more salt. If you've got peppers or other veggies that don't like to be boiled, add them in now too. Saute these until the mushrooms are soft but not falling apart.

When the onions and their friends are ready, add about a half cup of oyster sauce, two tablespoons of soy, a tablespoon of sesame oil, Sriracha to taste (I like it hot so I use a lot), a teaspoon or two of rice wine vinegar, and about three Splenda packets (or the equivalent in other sweeteners). [PLEASE NOTE: these measurements are all approximations based on ratios. I don't measure anything. I pour sauce straight from the bottle into the pan. This is why I taste everything and tweak it before I serve it!] Stir this all together with the veggies in the pan. Turn off the fire. TASTE IT! Decide whether you need more saltiness (more soy), more earthiness (more oyster sauce), more heat (more Sriracha), more zing (more vinegar), more nutty-earthiness (more sesame oil), or more sweetness (duh). Add ingredients and TASTE again! The sauce makes the noodles, so get it to your liking!

When the sauce is ready, get the noodles and other veg going. In a large pot of boiling water (I set this to boil while I'm prepping the veggies so that it gets to the boil while I'm making the sauce) toss in your noodles/pasta. Use the directions on the bag/box as a guideline for cooking time. When your noodles are about two minutes away from being fully cooked (I taste them a lot), add the veggies that can take boiling (broccoli, Chinese broccoli, bok choi, Napa cabbage, snow peas) and let them cook for a minute or two. Drain everything, noodles and all, into a colander and shake them until they are pretty dry. We don't want to water down our lovely sauce, do we?

Pour the noodles and the veggies into the sauce and mix/stir/toss everything together. I like to use my trusty kitchen tongs to do this and, be warned, this takes a bit of time. You want to coat everything with the sauce. Do this while the noodles are freshly out of the pot, otherwise they will definitely stick together, which makes tossing impossible. If you find you don't have enough sauce to go around, add more of each of the sauce ingredients and stir-stir-stir. Don't forget to taste again to make sure everything is to your liking.

You can add meats and things to this. We're vegetarian, so I like the veg as is, but I've been known to toss some sliced up soy dogs or other soy meats in with the onions and mushrooms. You can also add previously cooked meats to the sauce to heat them through before you add the noodles.

I often serve this with some thinly sliced omelet on top. That's really easy. Beat some eggs and pour them, into a non-stick skillet that has a light film or spray of vegetable oil. Only pour the thinnest of layers of egg. It's better to make several thin omelets than one thick one for this task. Season the omelet with salt and pepper as it cooks. Let it get lightly browned on both sides before removing it from the pan. Let it cool slightly (while you're cooking up the other thin omelets) then slice them into short, thin strips. I actually cook the egg before I do any of the prep work or other cooking. It gives the eggs time to cool before I slice them. Besides that, I don't have to let the noodles get cold while I cook the eggs. Sprinkle the egg strips over the top of each bowl full. Oh yeah, that's good stuff.

That's it. It's fast. It's easy. It's tasty. It's good. I apologize that I can't give you a hard and fast recipe with exact measures, but that's not the way I cook.

If you make these noodles, let me know how they came out. Tell me what veggies you used. Tell me what noodles you used. Tell me all the cool stuff you think of that I will steal from you and use in my next batch - and there will be a next batch. With noodles, there is always a next batch.

A Sorbet A Day

2009-07-15T14:43:00.005-04:00

Anyone who knows J, knows of his weekness for frozen confections. He has a particular allegiance for ice cream and other dairy treats, but he does not discriminate against popsicles, ices, slurpees, sherbets, granitas, and sorbets. The boy likes his frozen sweet treats. Who am I to deny him?

As a belated anniversary gift, I - no J acting through me - ordered the ice cream maker attachment for my KitchenAid. I had envisioned making batch after batch of ice cream for J and frozen yogurt for me. When faced with an over abundance of both strawberries and cherries on the verge of becoming overripe earlier this month, I decided my maiden voyage into the world of frozen desserts would be to the land of sorbet.

Some initial research through my cookbook collection and some favorite food blogs on the Internet taught me that a good fruit sorbet needs only a few basic ingredients: pureed fruit, sugar, a bit of acid, and some alcohol to keep the mixture from freezing solid. With some basic proportions in mind, I headed into the kitchen and began the Super Sorbet Spree of 2009.

All super-ripe-fruit-without-a-dedicated-use in my kitchen gets pureed with sugar, lemon or lime juice, sugar, a pinch of kosher salt (I don't make a sweet dish without salt), and a shot of something from my liquor cabinet. Before the fruit can go bad, I turn it into something delicious. The resulting mix gets chilled down until my ice cream maker is cold enough to turn it into a lovely small-crystal frozen taste sensation. Thirty minutes of mixing and I've got a soft sorbet, perfect for margaritas or daiquiris on the spot. A few hours in the freezer after the mix up and we've got honest to goodness sorbet.

With all of the fruit in the house, I've been making up lots and lots of sorbet mix lately: strawberry margarita, cherry, cherry-lime, more strawberry, more cherry, and watermelon caipirinha, Because the ice cream maker needs fifteen hours to freeze properly, I really only have time to make one batch of sorbet each day. To get the fruit out of the fridge and into the freezer, we've developed our Sorbet-A-Day routine, which involves freezing off a batch of sorbet each morning while I prepare breakfast. It goes a little something like this. I get inittial breakfast prep work done (chopping, slicing, toasting, etc...). During a break in the action, I grab the sorbet mix out of the fridge, taste it for final flavor and texture tweaks and J grabs the ice cream maker bowl out of the freezer and sets it up on the KitchenAid. We pour the mix in, I set the timer, and J occasionally monitors the sorbet-in-progress while I return to my breakfast preparations. Usually, the sorbet is just finishing up its spinning dance as we are finishing up our last bites of huevos rancheros or eggs en cocotte. Perfect timing! We spoon most of the sorbet into a freezer jar and stash it in the freezer, sample the left overs, and clean up the ice cream maker while doing the breakfast dishes. We're always sure to the the ice cream maker bowl back in the freezer to chill down for tomorrow's sorbet.

We're excited for a lot of the stone fruit to come into season so that we can try nectarine and plum and pluot sorbets. Of course, full-blown melon season will be a treat too. I'm a bit hesitant about apples and pumpkins in the fall, but you know I'm going to try it.. It's nice to freeze a bit of summer sweetness into a sorbet to enjoy when there's no fresh fruit in season later in the year.

Green Day

2009-07-15T11:45:00.004-04:00

It had been a while since we had a nice sunny and dry day to get outside. Noticing all of the weeds in my garden while looking out the window over my morning cup of decaf (sad, I know, but I'm far too hyper without fueling the fire), I decided to head outside and survey the garden. J set up the lawn chairs and tethered out the pups and settled in to read (yes, J does read - books even!) while I puttered around the tangle of leaves and stalks and shoots.

The peas have finally gotten big and firm and plump like the peas I've been seeing in the farmers' markets. They are so adorable hanging from their thin, fragile-looking vines. I harvested about three cups of fat pods and started contemplating dinner.

Next to the pea plants are the string bean plants. I've never grown string beans before and I was giddy when I found lots of big beautiful beans hanging from their vines like icicles off of the house in winter. I greedily picked the biggest and fattest beans, leaving the little thin beauties to plump up some more. I got two big hand fulls (in my little hands - or one big hand full in J's meaty mitts).

The peas, green beans, and a bag of local spinach in my refrigerator were all calling out to me to be cooked - that night - and the zucchini wouldn't shut up either. A very green meal was to be the order of the day.

The menu:

Fettuccine Pesto (with spinach and pistachio - more green - pesto and freshly shelled peas)

Sauteed Green Beans (simply blanched then sauteed in olive oil until they just began to brown and get nutty)

Smothered Zucchini (cooked down with long strands of onion until incredibly soft and just a bit of sweet caramelized brown appearing on the unctious coins of squash)

I contemplated making a salad, but I thought it would be green overkill and just too much food. That, and the leaves were tipped with red, spoiling my fabulous green color scheme.

I had never made a spinach pesto before and found it creamier than a basil pesto. Maybe the leaves had more moisture which emulsified with the oil. I had also never used pistachios in a pesto. We had a big bag of salt and pepper pistachios sitting on the counter and I couldn't help but wonder how they would taste in a pesto. So, fifteen minutes later (with some sore fingertips), I had shelled a large bowl of pistachios to blend up with my big bag of L.I. spinach, some garlic, a tasty chunk of Parmesan cheese, and my favorite olive oil. We had enough pesto for dinner and a pint to freeze for later.

I knew people when I was a kid who wouldn't touch any green food on their plates at all. I wonder how they would have reacted to a plate of nothing but green food?

Buried in Cherries

2009-07-10T17:16:00.005-04:00

[Note: while coming back to tag my older posts (who knew I'd write more than just a few?) I found that a significant portion of the original post was missing. Hmmm... I'll do my best to recreate it, but with my memory, who knows what you're going to get.]

Have I ever mentioned that J is obsessed with cherries? I, too, enjoy the sweet-tart squirt of a perfectly rubied ripe cherry in the summer time, but J goes way beyond enjoying cherries. He loves them. He waits (not very patiently, mind you) for June each year to get his grubby paws on as many cherries as he can. He'll even stalk the produce section of the market in January, hoping to scoop up some South American cherries. The boy has cherry issues.

Each June and July I can expect J to come home from one store or another with bags full of cherries. He's been known to bring home twelve pounds at a time. He eats them all, too! He'll plop onto the couch with a giant stainless steel bowl filled with cherries and chomp his way all the way through in one sitting. That's at least a couple of pounds of cherries at a time. I told you - issues.

Upon his return from Las Vegas, J sat on the couch and perused the shopping circulars that arrived during his trip. He discovered that, heavens above, cherries were on sale at ridiculously low prices at almost every local market. Cherry season had officially hit its peak! Further noting that that very evening was the last day of the sale prices, J grabbed his wallet and keys and rushed himself out of the house. An hour later he returned and he wasn't alone. He brought back (brace yourself) twenty-eight pounds of cherries. Yes, that twenty-eight pounds.

With very little free space in the fridge, J and I got very very busy the next day prepping cherries for the freezer, jam making, sorbet making, and more. Those cherries had to be processed fast before they went bad. Who's the brain trust who decided to handle twenty-eight pounds of cherries at one time?

A quick tip to all you cherry lovers out there. Do not give your spouse the spiffy cherry pitter and resign yourself to using a paring knife to pit a giant bowl full of juicy black-purple-red ripe cherries. Your fingers will turn purple. Your clothes will get spattered and stained in juice. You will poke your hand with the tip of the blade repeatedly. You will wonder if you poked yourself hard enough that you're bleeding, but you won't be able to tell right away because your hands are red already.

Yeah, I was a little bitter. A few burstingly sweet cherries later I got over it. These are really good. They're plump. They're firm. They're wonderfully sweet and just tart enough to be pleasing. They're perfect. Twenty-eight pounds? Not even close to enough.

So we spent the bulk of the day getting stained with cherry juice. I made sorbet mix. I froze trays of pitted cherries. I'm about to make another big batch of jam. I'll freeze more trays. The payoff for funky stained fingers and clothes and all of this hard work? We've got this lovely kiss of summer sweetness saved to enjoy during the excessively gray and cold days of February. I'll be able to blend them into tasty beverages (smoothies, margaritas, cherry mojitos) and snuggle them into baked goods (muffins, scones, clafoutis, pies) and cook them into more jam or a lovely sauce or chutney if I run out.

I'm set for cherries for the rest of the year.

Are you?

Pesto and Salsa and Jam - Oh My! (Sorbet too!)

2009-07-09T22:46:00.004-04:00

I spent the bulk of the day on my feet in the kitchen. We went crazy at the farm stands and green markets this week and J and I had to take care of a lot of very perishable produce before it started to turn brown and mushy. Thank goodness there were two of us in the kitchen today, because I never could have gotten all of this done by myself. I'd still be standing in front of the stove stirring two pots of jam at once.

The day started with pesto - more pesto than you can shake a stick at. I don't know why you'd want to shake a stick at pesto, but you certainly couldn't shake a stick at this much of it. (We ended up with about 8 pints of pesto by the end of the day.)

Pesto #1 - Basil Pesto
In the food processor combine almonds (pine nuts make me itchy), garlic, Parmesan cheese, basil leaves, salt, and really tasty olive oil. Blend until a rich herby-earthy paste forms and you wish someone made basil scented eau de toilette.

Pesto #2 - Garlic Scape Pesto
In the food processor combine almonds (no itchy pine nuts for me), Parmesan cheese, salt, roughly chopped garlic scapes, and your best olive oil. Blend until you just can't wait any longer and have to get a spoon full of the herbal/cheesy/nutty mixture into your mouth. Pause for a moment and be amazed at how garlicy and herbal garlic scapes are.

By noon, we had moved on to salsa. We blended fresh red onions (from Briermere farms) with some Vidalia onion, cilantro (Briermere again), jalapeno peppers, a habanero pepper, lime juice, salt, black pepper, and two cans of organic plum tomatoes (no juice). Sometimes I add garlic, but not today (there was enough garlic in the pestos to power me through next week). We ended up with two quarts of salsa.

After a bite of lunch and a short break to update my Twitter status and check on my Facebook news feed (I'm an addict), it was time to focus on the fruit. Jason pitted six (yes six) pounds of cherries and I washed and measured out four pints of blueberries. We made jam, jam, and more jam.

Jam #1 - Cherry Jam
Simmer cherries, sugar, lemon juice, and salt for about 45 mintues. Let it cool. Portion into jars (I used plastic freezer jars). Try to resist eating it directly out of the pot or spooned over vanilla ice cream. I made two and a half pints.

Jam #2 - Blueberry Jam
Simmer blueberries with sugar, lemon juice, and salt for about 30 minutes. Let cool and jar it up. This stuff smells like heaven and I want nail polish in blueberry jam color. I ended up with one pint. I need more blueberries!

Jam #3 - Blueberry/Cherry Jam
You know how I make jam by now - fruit, lemon juice, sugar, salt, simmer, cool, store, try to resist pouring this over everything in the refrigerator. The blueberry and cherry combo is amazing. I made one and a half pints but I only froze one pint. The other half pint is in my refrigerator, waiting for me to make waffles. Oh my!

While the jams were cooling, I blitzed up the strawberry sorbet mixture that I had macerating in the refrigerator overnight and poured it into my ice cream maker. Thirty minutes later, J was licking off the dasher and I packaged up a quart of strawberry margarita sorbet. We actually made slightly more than a quart so we had to eat some of the sorbet before we could seal the lid. The things we'll do for quality product. We all make our sacrifices.

Once we cleaned up the kitchen and sat down for a well deserved rest, J started reading the grocery circulars that came in the mail while he was in Las Vegas. He was beyond excited to find some amazing prices on fresh cherries. Upon further inspection of the circulars, he realized that today is the very last day of the specials. So, he jumped off the couch, grabbed his wallet and keys, and ran out to the grocery store.

He returned home forty-five minutes later with (I'm not joking here) twenty-eight pounds of fresh cherries. Seriously. Since they don't fit in the refrigerator, they are hanging out in the cooler with lots of ice until J and I can get to them tomorrow morning. We'll pit them all, freeze some for use during the winter (J loves making smoothies and froyo with frozen berries), make some into sorbet (J loves his frozen desserts), make some into jam, make some into chutney, put some into sangria, and eat some as is. It's going to be a very busy day. I might even experiment with making my own cherry-yaki marinade (a take on teriyaki sauce).

Anyone want to come over and pit some cherries for me? Anyone? Anyone?

To Market, To Market...

2009-07-08T23:09:00.003-04:00

With J back in town and the season for some of my favorite produce coming to a close, I've been on a shopping and cooking and freezing tear. Ive been hitting farms and farm stands and green markets in search of the last strawberries and garlic scapes of the season and scooping up the blueberries and basil and cherries which seem to be hitting their respective primes right about now.

Tuesday afternoon J and I threw the pups into the car with us and headed out east in search of the last strawberries of the season and as many garlic scapes as we could get our hands on. In middle of a tremendous downpour, we got to our usual favorite organic farm, Garden of Eve (http://www.gardenofevefarm.com), and bought almost all of the garlic scapes they had out in the store. Actually, I did buy all they had out and the lovely manager refilled the basket and I picked up most of those too.

What are we going to do with all of these garlic scapes? (If you don't know what a garlic scape is, it's the flower of the garlic plant, cut off before it opens. The stem is garlicy and herbal and crunchy and delicious.) Pesto, my friends, lots and lots of pesto is what we do with them. In my trusty food processor, I chop almonds (pine nuts make me itchy) then add the garlic scapes, some Parmesan cheese, a bit of salt, and some fabulous olive oil. I process that into a gorgeous green-studded-with-almond-brown-and-crumbly-cheese-white paste and try to hold J back. This stuff is heady with the scent of garlic, earthy with the taste of ground almonds and cheese, rich with fruity olive oil, and redolent of herbs without any basil or parsley.

I put aside a cup or so of the pesto and froze the rest in freezer jars (I love these things! Check them out: http://tinyurl.com/freezerjars). During the day Tuesday, I slathered the pesto onto my homemade bread and and wedged some fresh mozzarella in between the crusty slices and pressed them in my Foreman grill. Pesto-mozzarella pannini are delicious. I envision using this pesto in the fall and winter on pasta (very traditional), in pannini (duh!), in salad dressings, in soups, with eggs (scrambled or en cocotte), in quesadillas, you name it.

The strawberry season is over but I couldn't resist looking for a last quart or two of the delicious local beauties that have made me so happy over such a short period of time. Everyone was out of strawberries, but I found two lonely quarts at one farm. They had been grown in Connecticut. I couldn't help myself. My vow to buy only NY and NJ berries was broken because I needed these last berries to be mine. The shame and guilt and pleasure of it all!

These berries were destined for one last batch of sorbet. They currently slumber in my refrigerator, mascerating in their own juices and enjoying the company of some sugar, salt (just enough to temper the sweetness), the juice of some lemons and limes, a shot (or two or three) of tequila, and some triple sec. Tomorrow, they will get blitzed up in the food processor and poured into the ice cream maker before being stored in some extra-large freezer jars. I've convinced J to let me save a couple of quarts of strawberry sorbet for later in the year by promising him some watermelon sorbet this weekend. I know. I know. Watermelons are not yet in season. Don't tell J. I scooped up a small seedless beauty to appease his frozen treat tooth while I stash away the strawberry goodness for a snowy day.

Wednesday, J and I headed into the city to hit the Union Square Green Market. Our goal: blueberries, basil, mushrooms, and some local cheese. If anything else were to catch our eye, all the better.

We got basil. Tons of it. One farm was selling whole basil plants (each about 2.5 feet tall), so we bought three of them. Each plant was enough for a tremendous batch of pesto. Here's more pesto to put into the freezer. Yum!

We picked up some blueberries. Since it is the beginning of their short season, they're still pricey, but I needed some more to bring my share blueberries up to critical mass to make some jam.

We also picked up some broccoli rabe, baby bok choi, shiitake mushrooms, olive cheese, jalapeno cheese, and a whole wheat baguette. We scooted over to Whole Foods for some jalapeno peppers too.

Then we headed down to Chinatown.

The cherries there are not local, but they were ripe and inexpensive and beautiful. We bought six pounds. J thinks at least three pounds are for him to eat, but I might get greedy and cook them all down tomorrow. That depends on how lazy I am when it comes to pitting all of those little buggers. I want some cherry jam and some cherry-blueberry jam and some cherry-ginger chutney. I need one of those cool cherry pitting machines that you pour the cherries into and lovely pitted cherries pop out (http://tinyurl.com/cherrystoner). For now, I hand pit them with a cool little gadget that requires a bit more hand strength than I really have, spurts juice all over my shirt, and is bound to cause a repetitive motion injury (http://tinyurl.com/cherrypitter). It's better than (1) not having cherries at all and (2) cutting out the pits by hand with a knife (the staining! the staining!)

I needed to pick up some fruit for a big sangria this weekend, so I grabbed some decidedly non-local strawberries, blueberries, nectarines, and some more cherries. I know. I know - but it's for a party. I can't let everyone down because I read Animal, Vegetable, Miracle and became obsessive, can I?

J managed to forgo the lychees mounded on every vendor's table, much to my surprise; but he did scoop up a pint of freshly cut jackfruit. It smells wonderful. I'm going to try a bite with my breakfast tomorrow.

We also scooped up some Chinese greens, fresh noodles, dried noodles, and a couple of different kinds of dumpling wrappers. I've become obsessed with noodles and dumplings lately, and I feel the need to experiment. My first guinea pigs will be at the party this weekend. I'll ply them with sangria then spring the noodles on them when they least suspect it!

The shopping was fun, but we had a monumental set of tasks we had to complete upon our return home. This was not all going to fit easily into the refrigerator. So some items would have to be broken down before they were stored and other items, including some from the fridge, would have to be processed for alternative storage (at this point, "alternative storage" means the freezer).

We set to work on the strawberries. Three quarts of tiny beauties went into my favorite saucier with some sugar and lots of lemon juice for the final cooked strawberry jam of the season. The cooled jam was spooned into freezer jars and stashed away for another day. The two quarts of Connecticut berries were sliced and seasoned with sugar, lemon and lime juice, salt, tequila, and triple sec before being stashed in the fridge to chill down before they become sorbet.

When the counters were cleared of strawberry stickiness, we turned our attention to the basil. We used the blender jar and the salad spinner bowl as vases, filled with cold refreshing water for the roots of the plants, as we harvested the fragrant leaves. Once harvested, J disposed of the spent roots and stems and rejected leaves (bruised, torn, eaten by something else) while I washed, rinsed, and spun the leaves before wrapping them in paper toweling and nestling them into a zip top bag. They're ready for a marathon pesto making session.

We cleaned out a drawer in the refrigerator and I repackaged some of the take out food we brought home with us to minimize space issues. Of course, that meant that J had to have a nibble of this and a bite of that because not all of the food would fit into my containers, but he didn't complain. That's my boy!

Okay, with all of the shopping, food prep, cooking, and freezing, I'm exhausted. J and the boys are all asleep while I type this and I'm longing to dip into slumber as well. Stay tuned for the saga my upcoming marathon pesto and jam session to be followed by a day of cooking for a party. I'm even more tired just thinking about it!

Week 6's Shares

2009-07-07T17:23:00.006-04:00

I made my share pickups solo this week. Well, not completely solo, I did pile the pups into the car with me. HB and RiRi were not to be deprived of their weekly ride in the car to the farm just because J was off blowing things up in Las Vegas. So, I snapped the boys into their leads and popped on their bandannas and let them jump into the back of the car. Off we went for a lovely sunshiny ride to the farm.

We were on a mission. Not only were we scooping up our shares for the week, we were hunting for some about-to-go-out-of-season goodies. Garlic scapes and strawberries were at the top of our list. I had a feeling I was going to get a few garlic scapes as part of our veggie share, but I definitely needed a whole lot more.

Here's what we got this week:
The sign was not completely correct, though. The fruit share, as in weeks past, was not correct. There were no raspberries to be found - not really a disappointment for me, though, as I'm allergic to the bumpy red beauties. When I eat a raspberry, I start to turn into a plump bumpy red berry-like version of myself. I ended up with two pints of blueberries and one pint of gooseberries.

Have you ever heard of braising mix? I hadn't until just recently. Evidently, when the greens get too mature and tough to be eaten raw, they get mixed together and sold as braising mix - best eaten after cooking. I'm not going to braise any of these greens, though, because I'm a rebel and I'll never never be any good. I'm planning a lovely saute to stuff into a quesadilla or pannini or something of the like.

The two (much bigger) zucchini we got this week brought us up to critical mass in squash, so my wheels have begun spinning. I can't decide whether to grill or smother these little green beauties. I suppose both the weather and J's preference will decide for me.

The lettuces had me most excited. I immediately washed and spun both heads when I got home and stored them, rolled in paper towels, in a zip top bag. I knew a couple of lovely fresh salads would be in order this week. The fun part would be the crafting of the just-right dressings for these lovely soft greens.

The broccoli, bok choi, and snowpeas will find their way into either a fried rice or lo mein dish - probably the one I bring to a friend's house for a party. They'll add nice crunch to an otherwise starchy dish.

The rainbow chard is kind of a question mark in my head. I know I can saute it with garlic and olive oil, but I'm always sauteing new greens with garlic and olive oil. Some internet research is in order here. I need something new, something different, something cool to do with this little bundle of chard.

Gooseberries? That's a big question mark and I've already done quite a bit of research. I know that I'll have to thoroughly wash them and cut off the tops and tails before I do anything with them. I've read recipes for gooseberry pie, crumble, and fool. None of them turn me on. I think I'll have to work up the courage to taste a berry first (I know they'll be tart) and let that inspire their ultimate use.

The blueberries taunt me with all of their potential - jam, muffins, pancakes, pie, syrup. This is the opposite of the gooseberry situation - I've got too many options here. What to do...what to do... I'll figure it out.

The garlic scapes are destined for big batches of garlic scape pesto (garlic scapes, almonds, Parmesan cheese, salt, and olive oil), most of which will be frozen for use during the fall and winter.

The strawberries? They found their way in to freezer jam (both with sugar and with Splenda), cooked jam, and sorbet. I know the season is coming to an end, so I'm buying up every quart of strawberries I can find and putting them up for the bleak strawberry-less days of winter that lie ahead.

Enough of talking...let's get down to the cooking!

While J's Away...

2009-07-06T19:45:00.005-04:00

When J isn't around, I tend to eat strangely. I dine on cereal, almost-plain pasta (and pasta leftovers), and toast - lots and lots of toast. I don't get fancy. I don't spend a lot of time cooking. The way I see it, I'm pretty happy with cereal, pasta, and toast. On top of that, I don't like doing lots of dishes. That's J's job. He does the dishes. I cook; he cleans. I hate the cleaning up part.

In preparation for J's six days out of town, I bought a couple of boxes of Special K, whipped up a batch of bread dough, and scooped up a block of Parmesan cheese (the best minimalist pasta topping). J is coming back tonight and I haven't touched the cereal. I did eat one pasta dinner (and the leftovers for breakfast and lunch). Toast was consumed in quantity, as expected, although it was all from home-baked loaves.

So, I ended up doing quite a bit of cooking. I also ended up doing quite a bit of cleaning, but I didn't mind it too much because I cleaned as I cooked. I never let a bunch of dishes (or pots or baking pans or appliances) pile up. I strategically washed what I used before moving on to the next step. One can do that when she's not in a rush to feed her husband.

It's obvious that I baked a lot of bread this past week. My obsession with ciabatta and making the perfect loaf played out in ciabattas large and small. I also made a small pizza bianca with some olive oil and red pepper flakes worked into the crust. Most of this bread was consumed either freshly sliced from the loaf or toasted. I do that. I eat plain bread - lots of plain bread. I can't help myself. The rest of the bread was either pressed into pannini or toasted and eaten with homemade strawberry jam (more about that below) or eggs. The pannini were the result of an impulse buy I made while at Fairway last week. They have set up a stand where a haggard-looking soul makes fresh mozzarella all day long and packs it up for the crowds gathered around him. When the crowd thinned down, he sighed and looked at the piles of mozzarella balls piled up in front of him. I couldn't help but scoop one up and give him a smile of encouragement. I used up the ball of mozzarella over the course of the week, pressing it between thick slices of my homemade bread or melting it onto my pizza bianca. It was a delicious soft and creamy contrast to the crunchy crust I've been working on perfecting.

When I didn't feel like turning on the oven to bake bread, I turned to the stash of vegetarian chicken salad I picked up during my Fairway run. When I ran out of chicken salad, I made pasta (tossed with a bit of butter and some fluffy grated Parmesan cheese). When I ran out of pasta and didn't feel like cooking more, I made more bread. It was a starchy week.

When I wasn't cooking for immediate personal consumption, I was cooking for long-term storage. I scooped up several extra quarts of farm-fresh local strawberries while out and about and made batches of freezer jam. I had never heard of freezer jam until recently and I was curious. Using a special type of pectin, you can make jam without cooking it. The jam can be sugared (using much less sugar than cooked jams), left unsweetened, or sweetened with an artificial sweetener like Splenda. I made a batch with sugar and a batch with Splenda. I just mixed the crushed berries with the pectin and the sweetener until the mixture began to thicken then I poured the quickly-gelling jam into freezer jars. (These things are cool!) The jars can remain frozen for a year. So two and a half quarts each of no-sugar-added and low-sugar strawberry freezer jams were the first items that got "put up" in my new chest freezer. Now I'll be able to enjoy the taste of sweet July strawberries in December. I'm looking forward to it.

I had more strawberries and some cherries I picked up (at Fairway, of course) that needed some long-term preservation. Since my new KitchenAid ice cream attachment arrived on Thursday, sorbet was in order. After some recipe research, I determined that a good fruit sorbet recipe needs four basic ingredients: fresh fruit puree, citrus juice, sugar, and alcohol. The fruit puree and sugar are no-brainers. The citrus juice is a much needed shot of acid to prevent the sorbet from being sickeningly sweet. The alcohol prevents the mixture from freezing into a solid block of ice and could serve as a nice flavor enhancement. Strawberry margarita sorbet was my first experiment. I pureed strawberries with a little bit of sugar, some lemon juice, a shot of tequila, and a dribble of triple sec. Oh yeah. This stuff was good. I followed it up with a second, larger batch of the same with lime juice instead of lemon. It was good, but the lemons had a stronger presence. Maybe next time I'll mix both juices. After pitting two pounds of cherries, I pureed them with lots of lime juice and some vodka (I didn't want an alcohol flavor in this batch). In retrospect, I needed to add some more liquid to this batch because cherries aren't as watery as strawberries. I also needed some more lime juice as the cherries are a strong flavor unto themselves. I've got to scoop up some more berries and cherries while they're still in season and mass-produce some sorbet for J to enjoy later in the year. I think I'll experiment with watermelon too.

I wanted to take some time to make and can some cooked strawberry jam over the weekend, but I found myself either too tired or otherwise occupied with general housekeeping duties. I must confess that I'm quite intimidated with the idea of water-canning but I'm equally fascinated by the process as well. I've got three quarts of berries in the fridge that are prodding me to face my fears and get that giant pot of water boiling on the stove. I know what I'll be doing tomorrow!

Cooking Up A Storm

2009-07-04T20:19:00.003-04:00

It has been a wild week at Casa Horowitz. It was our fist full week off from school, but it was as busy as a work week. The first half of the week was spent getting J ready to go to Las Vegas to work on a fireworks show. He's a pyrotechnician for Grucci Fireworks and he loves making things go boom! during the summertime. The second half of the week was spent running errands and trying to have some fun while J was away. On top of all of this activity, I cooked almost every meal during the entire week and I got back into the routine of baking all of our bread from scratch. This week, I baked a boule, two ciabattas, a sandwich loaf, and a pizza bianca. I love the yeasty smell of rising bread dough.

We managed to use up everything from last week's shares except the zucchini. There really wasn't much I could do with two tiny little zucchini. Fortunately, this week's shares contained more (and bigger) zucchini, so I think we've finally reached a critical mass of squash for something good this week.

Let's take a look at how the produce got used up. Everything in green below came from our shares. Everything in blue below came from the farmer's market in Union Square.

broccoli rabe + garlic scapes + garlic + local white wine + really tasty olive oil + red pepper flakes (in abundance) + mozzerella + homemade bread = fabulously crusty, crunchy, garlicy panini

kale + olive oil + salt + red pepper flakes = crunchy spicy kale chips (so good as a potato chip-like side with the panini)

mesclun + blue cheese dressing + bacon salt + wood fired bread + soy bacon = salty, smoky, creamy, crunchy bacon salad panini

spinach + garlic scapes + garlic + shiitake mushrooms + olive oil + red pepper flakes + nutmeg = garlicy greens and mushrooms saute served on the side of fettuccine alfredo (not the lightest meal of the week)

sliced snowpeas + baby bok choi + vegetarian Vietnamese noodles + soy sauce + sesame oil + Sriracha + vegetarian oyster sauce + eggs = noodle stir fry garnished with slices of thin omelet

eggs + corn tortillas + homemade salsa = huevos rancheros

strawberries + lemon + cornstarch + graham crackers + sugar + butter = strawberry refrigerator pie

strawberries + lemon + tequila + sugar + triple sec = strawberry margarita sorbet

I actually cooked a couple of meals without using any ingredients from the shares during the week as well. It felt good to be back in the kitchen and it felt even better to be cooking from the "What do I have in the refrigerator?" point of view rather than the "What do I feel like cooking?" point of view. Now that we're eating more local foods and trying to take advantage of what's in season at the moment, I've been pushed in the creativity department. That's a lot of fun!

Stay tuned for news of this week's shares and my culinary adventures!

Week 5 Pickup

2009-06-28T10:41:00.007-04:00

Sunshine! I can't believe it. We actually had a day of lovely, bright, intense, warm, glowing sunshine! Even though I wasn't feeling 100%, who could resist the opportunity to get out in the gorgeously gossamer golden day?

Time to survey our lands. Just when I thought the asparagus couldn't get any taller, they sprouted up and feathered out even more. One asparagus is taller than the tomato cages we've got in the garden for the pea plants to climb. All but one our our asparagus roots have produced an asparagus or two at this point, so I'm not feeling nearly as anxious as I did last month about sacrificing all of the square footage I did to the asparagus plants. That one root frustrates me to no end, though. Arrrg! Why won't it grow when all of the others did?

We've got tiny little green beans hanging from curlicued vines and plenty of plump pea pods filling up with their sweet little peas nestled in tightly together.
The fingerling potatoes I planted a few weeks ago are now sprouting and leafing. I'm waiting for another dry-enough day to get out there and start mounding the soil around them, giving them incentive to start growing little potatoes and lots of them.

Our peppers (hot and sweet) are in flower as are the zucchini and squash. Last year, our zucchini and squash flowered brilliantly all season, but not one went to fruit. I'm debating as to whether I should harvest some blossoms to stuff and cook or just leave the plants alone and let them do their thing. I'm torn because if I'm not going to get any fruit out of the plants, I should at least get some tasty blossoms, right?

The tomatoes are in flower too, at least most of them are. One plant, the grape tomato, has lots of tiny little green fruits hanging off the dangling branches, weighing them down and making them droop. I'll have to get out there with some more twine to tie up the branches and thwart gravity.
Another plant, the Lemon Boy, has one lone almost-golf ball-sized tomato nestled between big fragrant leaves.
Have I mentioned that I love the smell of tomato plants? You can't beat their herbal, green freshness. There's something almost mineral-y about their heady scent. I find myself touching the tomato leaves and bringing my fingers to my face to breathe in the vegetal aroma.

Survey complete, we threw the bandannas on the dogs (don't leave home without them) and threw the dogs into the car and headed off to the farm for our weekly CSA share pickup.

We drove with the windows down for as long as we could tolerate the blizzard of golden and white fur in the car. Yes, indeed, the golden retrievers are shedding!

We've gotten the art of picking up our shares down pat at this point. We've finally got our name on the sign in sheet so I don't have to produce the receipt for the shares every week. J and I head back to the cooler, knowing exactly how we're going to get in and out of the frigid room full of produce as quickly as possible. We've even started bringing our own plastic bags for the loose produce (like pea pods and strawberries) so that we can reuse and be more efficient at the same time (those thin plastic bags on the roll make me crazy!).

Into the cooler we plunged. J opened up our insulated grocery bag and found a stable surface for it as I snapped a photo of the CSA board for the week.
I methodically located every item and handed them to J in the order best suited for not crushing the produce in the bag. I poured our snowpeas and strawberries into our zip-top bags from home and scooped up the pre-bagged spinach and mesclun and bok choi. The only disappointment this week was that there was no rhubarb, despite the sign. I can't believe I was actually looking forward to more rhubarb, but I was hoping to experiment with cherries and rhubarb this week. Oh well.

The flower share was a lovely bouquet of sunflowers and lavender.
My bouquet of a sunflower with wheat stalks from last week is still healthy, so I've got two happy arrangements cheering up my cooking space in the kitchen. J doesn't see the value in the flower share, but they make me smile.

We didn't use any of the new share goodies yesterday, since we're still trying to use up last week's shares. I used the last of the sauteed pea shoots and a few eggs in a giant pressed sandwich for dinner last night. This was the week of sandwiches! J and I bought a whole wheat boule at the Union Square farmer's market on Friday. It was golden and crusty, but when I sliced it open, it was undercooked in the center. I scooped out the gummy insides then filled the bread bowl with the last of my shredded mozzarella, the garlicy greens, and lots of red pepper flakes before popping the reassembled bread into the Foreman for a pressing and a toasting. In the meantime, I fried four eggs in a skillet the same size as the bread. When the boule was flattened and golden-crisp and the cheese was thoroughly melted through and the whole sandwich was warm and fragrant, I opened it up and slid in the pan of eggs. Using a fork, I breached the creamy vibrant yellow yolks and spread their oozing richness around, poking through the whites to allow the velvety golden liquid to seep into the greens below. I plopped the top back on and sliced through the crisp crust of the boule and watched the juices of the greens mix with the slowly flowing egg yolks and leak out onto the cutting board. I sliced a wedge out of half of the sandwich and put it on a dish for myself and J took the rest of the half, unsliced, and bit into it with abandon. While he was munching away on what I have to admit is an amazing sandwich, I carefully removed the top crust of my tiny wedge and scooped up all of the spilled egg yolk with it before replacing it and enjoying my enriched first bite. Yum! I'll be making this one again this week, but with my own homemade bread and some broccoli rabe I picked up at the farmer's market. Maybe I'll use some Parmesan instead of the mozzarella next time, as the greens and egg yolks provide more than enough lubrication for the dry crusty peasant loaf.

I've been stressed out about the unused strawberries from last week, especially since we picked up another two quarts yesterday. When I started waking up every 15 minutes this morning (first wake up was at 6am), I decided to get up and salvage whatever berries I could to make an experimental lower-sugar jam. Surprisingly, most of the berries were okay. I washed and hulled them and tossed them, whole, into my saucier. About six cups of whole berries survived. Most recipes call for anywhere from three to five cups of sugar for that volume of berries, but, this being an experimental jam, I only added one cup to the berries before boiling them for 30 minutes. I stirred in some lemon zest and juice (for tartness and pectin) and made what I think is my best jam yet. It's sweet, but not tooth-achingly so. It's tart, in a fresh and zesty way. It won't gel up as well as my last sugary batch, but it will be delicious spread on toast or poured over a slice of cheesecake (I'll be making some of this for Donna's cookout in a couple of weeks) or eaten off of a spoon directly out of the jar. It's fresh and sweet and bursting with the taste of sunshine and spring rain. I am definitely picking up a few extra quarts of berries next week (while J is out of town) and making several batches of freezer jam so that I can enjoy this taste of summer on a spoon during the dark days of December, January, and February.

All of the bread from the farmer's market is gone, so it was time for me to get back into my bread baking habit from last February and March. During a dark, cold February commute, I listened to a podcast of an interview with Jeff Hertzberg and Zoe Francois, authors of Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day (http://tinyurl.com/lymf2p), and made several batches of their high-moisture dough over the course of the next few weeks. I experimented with the dough, making rolls, boules, baguettes, ciabatta, bagels (lots of bagels), and jalapeno-cheese bread. I stopped making dough before Passover and never got back into the swing of it again. I dug up my copy of the book yesterday and read it from cover to cover. Although I'm inspired by the variety of applications for this basic dough, I'm going to stick to mastering the ciabatta and baguette for the next few weeks. So, there's a baker's bucket full of dough rising next to my stove right now and I've got a ciabatta and broccoli rabe sandwich on my mind for dinner tomorrow night.

As I write this, J is in the kitchen cleaning out the refrigerator. It really is overcrowded and things are getting lost in there, only to be found when they're really not edible anymore or after the perfect recipe for using them up has come and gone. I think - no, I know - J is afraid of me cleaning out the refrigerator because I'm ruthless. I'll throw out anything he hasn't touched in recent memory. When he's done, I'll head back into the kitchen to prep the greens for the week and contemplate dinner tonight. We haven't had a good pasta in quite some time, so maybe the garlic scapes and spinach will meet up with some penne or fettuccine or rigatoni. Whatever pasta I use, you know I'm going to use almost-too-many red pepper flakes!

The Last Week of School = The Week of Little Cooking

2009-06-27T17:47:00.004-04:00

Ah, the last week of school has finally come and gone. I’m usually a strange mixture of excited (I look forward to sunny afternoons in my lawn chair with a good book, a cocktail, and the company of my pups) and wistful (as I say goodbye to the little ones who have been my company, my audience, and my focus for the past ten months). This year, though, I find myself rather emotionally numb. Although I’m most assuredly looking forward to two months without lesson planning, grading, early morning alarm clocks, and LIRR commutes, I can’t seem to muster up the enthusiasm I usually have at this point of the year. Although I will miss the interaction with my students, especially those few extra-special kids that always bring a smile to my face, I don’t find myself feeling particularly emotional because of the impending separation (there was no crying this year – a first for me). Maybe I’m just overtired. I haven’t been sleeping or eating well during this last (and busiest) week of the school year. Maybe the veil of sleep deprivation has grown thicker and more opaque during this crazy school year so that it blocks some of the intensity of my feelings. Maybe it was just a very different year. Maybe I’m changing as I become a more and more experienced teacher. Maybe. Who knows?

I do know that I am excited about having more time to focus on my garden (which, by the way, is starting to flower and fruit as the rains start to taper off) and my cooking (I actually busted out a cookbook this morning and pored through it cover to cover) and my writing (this blogging thing has brought back the writing bug from my high school days). I don’t need to travel or have a big adventure this summer as long as I have all of that, plus some good quality time with J and my fuzzy ones. That suits me just fine.

So, as you can imagine, very little in the way of cooking got done this past week. Last Suday we picked up our shares and I prepped all of the greens and sautéed off some for use that night and throughout the week. Sunday night I stuffed homemade enchiladas with the cooked down kale and garlic and a mixture of pepper jack and sharp white cheddar. I baked off two pans of my kale enchiladas and froze one for enjoyment later in the year when my refrigerator isn’t bursting at the seams with greens. I served the enchiladas with some vegetarian refried beans, some shredded iceberg lettuce (mesclun mix does not work here at all), and a handful of organic tortilla chips. Of course J and I splashed on heavy-handed doses of hot sauce and dolloped on some low-fat, rennet-free sour cream.

Sounds great, right? It was, but it came with a high price. While heating up some canola oil to soften the corn tortillas for the enchiladas, I turned to the refrigerator to grab some ingredients. J, noticing that a pan was on the stove with the heat on under it, thought I had accidentally left the stove on under a dirty pan and picked it up to wash it. Now, J is excellent at cleaning pots, but he usually makes a mess while moving them to the sink, sloshing the contents about during transport. Have you figured out what happened yet? Yep, as I turned back towards the stove, J picked up the pan containing the hot oil and managed to slosh the hot (fortunately, not yet scalding – but indeed hot) oil down the right side of my body. Ouch! Ouch! Ouch!

Fortunately, being married to J for twelve years has trained me in the fine art of burn treatment (ask me about the second-degree burns on my hand from our fifth wedding anniversary sometime). I bolted into an ice cold shower and stayed there for a very very long time, letting the frigid water run down my shoulder, arm, and side, cooling down the angry red skin. When I finally emerged, I made large bundles of ice in paper towels and iced down my arm (it had taken the brunt of the direct oil contact – my shoulder and side were protected by my favorite gray t-shirt) for another agonizingly long period of time. Finally, I slathered my whole right side in aloe (with some lidocane for the pain) and headed back into the kitchen to finish the enchiladas. They were good, though, and I didn’t blister or scar at all, so J has been allowed to live for a while longer. I will admit that I shouted some not-so-ladylike things at him while running to the shower and while in the shower. The tirade may have continued during the icing portion of the treatment as well. He ate well and he did carelessly fling hot oil at me, so I’m not going to let the guilt eat me up.

Monday night was a fast dinner kind of night. Working on report cards, I caught a late train home and needed something tasty and fast. I had a ciabatta in the bread box and a block of mozzarella and a bowl of garlicy sautéed pea shoots in the refrigerator. Panini night! I fired up the Foreman grill while grating up the cheese. I layered greens and cheese and (duh!) red pepper flakes between crusty slabs of ciabatta and grilled them to golden-brown, melty, crunchy, herbal-green, garlicy goodness. We tore into the toasty toothsome crusts and let the cheese and the juice from the greens dribble down our chins until nothing remained on our plates but large flaky crumbs of ciabatta. Although we were full, we still wanted more.

Tuesday night was my last night of cooking for the work week. Wednesday night was the Black & White Ball for our sixth and seventh graders at school and J and I dined on pizza slices and cups of Doritos sold at the Black & White Bar run by the seventh graders. Thursday was graduation and I ate leftovers from lunch in the car during the long drive home. Friday was the last day of school before summer vacation and J and I dined on nibbles from the farmer’s market in Union Square and various other favorite restaurants. Tuesday, though, was all about the bacon. Bacon? Yes. Vegetarians eating bacon? No. I’ve mentioned Bacon Salt and Baconnaise before. (Remember www.baconsalt.com?) Tuesday night was a celebration of both. One final ciabatta toasted in the Foreman Grill while I cooked up some Morningstar Farms bacon strips in the microwave and stirred some Baconnaise into some yogurt-based blue cheese dressing. I tossed the bacony blue cheese with some of the mesclun mix from the share pickup and sprinkled it all liberally with Bacon Salt. When the bread came out of the toaster, I pried apart the crispy pressed layers and stuffed them with soy bacon and my bacon and blue cheese salad greens. Talk about a smoky, creamy, pungent, crunchy, grassy-green sandwich! I can’t wait to try this one again once my tomatoes start coming out of the garden. That is going to rock.

J and I picked up some goodies during our Friday-Last-Day-Of-School-Fest in Manhattan, so Saturday’s breakfast was leftover dumplings and other delights from our favorite restaurant in Chinatown. Lunch was yet another panini (we were heavy into the bread this week) made with slices of cheddar-jalapeno bread we picked up in Union Square. Paired with pepper jack cheese, the spicy bread was pressed and crisped in the Foreman while I tossed the rest of the mesclun mix with some light blue cheese dressing and a ton of Bacon Salt. I was going to use my new bottle of Jalapeno Bacon Salt, but I thought it might be pepper overkill. Once the bread was thoroughly toasted (and the cheese embedded in the bread was melting against the plates of the Foreman), I pried open the slices and spread the cheese-glue around before stuffing in the bacony and blue cheese slathered greens. This was a glorified grilled cheese with a creamy salty smoky salad stuffed inside. The peppers in the bread and cheese gave it a nice kick and Jason wanted seconds. Alas, I had used up the greens, so Jason turned to his secret stash of hummus in the fridge and grabbed the bag of tortilla chips.

For only a few days of cooking, I’ve babbled on quite long enough. Stay tuned for the tales of this week’s share pickup and my plans for its bounty. Happy eating!

Using Up Week 4's Shares

2009-06-21T08:50:00.005-04:00

What a crazy week! I'm really looking forward to July and August, so that I can have time to focus on my garden and my cooking. It has been raining every day for about two weeks now, so I haven't been out in the garden for anything more than a drive by inspection. The yard is water logged and flooded in places and the constant pouring from the sky makes going outside a very unpleasant experience. Most of my inspections are from the comfort of my living room via the big windows that line our eastern wall. The asparagus are now flowering out. Have you ever seen an asparagus go to flower? It looks like a tall, thin, fern-like tree. They're strange, but so much fun to watch. The zucchini and squash plants are getting big from all of the rain, but the eggplant plants are unhappy. The green bean plants continue to grow skyward, but I don't see much in the way of flowers yet. The strawberries in the front yard are putting out tiny green fruits, but they're not ripening. The rain is good for the plants, but they're craving some sunshine and heat.

Last Sunday, J and I resolved our ongoing debate about how to use up the big bunch of cilantro we got in last week's share by making a huge double batch of salsa. We got some good canned organic whole tomatoes and blitzed them in the mini food processor with a good handful of cilantro, a couple of jalapenos, red and white onions, freshly-squeezed lime juice, and some salt and hot sauce. I don't usually like salsa, but this stuff is good. We heated up plates of tortilla chips sprinkled with jalapeno-jack cheese so that the cheese got good and melty, then dolloped the whole thing with our spicy, herbal, onion-sharp salsa. We made pannini with the same cheese on slices of a good rustic loaf and dipped the crunchy-melty-warm sandwiches into the salsa before devouring them. I crisped up some whole wheat tortillas in a skillet before frying a few of our organic, free-range eggs, and assembled huevos rancheros (tortilla, egg, salsa on top) in big bowls, sprinkled with crumbles of tortilla chips for crunch. Salsa was a good investment of time and cilantro. I can't wait to make this with our fresh tomatoes in August and September.

The radish question mark still loomed until J started talking about daikon. I decided to slice the radishes impossibly thin (using my Japanesse mandolin) and pickle them in rice wine vinegar and sugar. Word to the wise: heating the vinegar to dissolve the sugar and to speed up the pickling process is good. Inhaling a snoot full of warm vinegar is bad. After I finished my cough attack, I layered the some-red and some-white radishes in a shallow covered dish with the pickling liquid and some kosher salt and stashed it in the fridge. Within 24 hours, the pickling liquid turned pink from the red radish skins and J was happily chomping away on wafer-thin rounds of radish. I can't get past the smell of the radishes to try them, so this snack will be J's.

We ate the homemade strawberry jam spread on every bread product we could find in the house throughout the week. The sweetness has been tempered by the coldness at which we serve the jam, so it is really pleasant now. The jam even set up into a nice, thick consistency in the refrigerator, so it is easy to spread and it doesn't run off the bagel or biscuit or muffin or spoon. J and I munched happily on bagels and jam yesterday morning, discussing the ways we could use up the rest of the jam: mix some into a strawberry smoothie or milkshake, top a cheesecake with it, blend it into cream cheese or butter, use it as a filling for a cake or cupcake or sandwich cookie, mix it into whipped cream for strawberry shortcake... We had more ideas, but some are not sharable in such a public forum. ;)

We learned a valuable lesson about leeks last week. Did you know you could get a seed leek stalk in your leeks? It's a very hard core in the center of the leek that is difficult to cut and too woody to eat. We got three seed leeks in our share last week, so I labored in the kitchen to salvage the few outer layers that seemed soft enough to eat. I ended up with about a cup and a half of long, thin leek slices that lived in the fridge while I figured out how to use up this not-big-enough amount to its best advantage.

Saturday morning found me at the stove making creamed leeks and mushrooms. I sauteed the leeks and some sliced crimini mushrooms in a bit of butter until they were meltingly soft (not easy with these woody leek leaves) and stirred in a drizzle of cream and let it reduce to a velvety-smooth consistency. The cream turned a light brown, almost beef stroganoff color, from the mushrooms and it was redolent of the earthy mushrooms themselves. I stirred in some blanched asparagus (we had two small bunches left over from the shares) and spooned some of the mixture (creamy sauce and all) into two small consomme bowls. Eggs in cocote were my goal, with the creamy vegetable mixture as my base. I cracked two eggs from our share into each bowl, seasoned them with kosher salt and freshly ground pepper, and drizzled a tiny bit of cream over each before placing the bowls in a skillet of boiling water. I slapped the cover on and, just a few minutes later, we had softly-cooked egges (okay, I waited a bit too long - inexperience - and a bit of the yolks was not softly-cooked enough for my tastes) with bubbling warm veggies underneath. J and I cracked what little of the yolks that remained creamy and stirred it all into the veggies and cream sauce below. J dunked bits of toasted bagel into his bowl (I found a couple of leftover bagels in the freezer and toasted them up. I would have preferred some baguette, but a girl can't be too choosy on a rainy Saturday morning.) and I slurped my eggs up with a spoon (saving my bagel for strawberry jam - it's addictive).

We were more than adequately fueled for the morning after our eggs in cocotte and we stashed the left over veggies (I dream of them over egg noodles) in the fridge before setting out to run errands.

We didn't make it to the farm yesterday because of the weather and a ton of traffic between us and the farm. We had dinner plans with the NY/NJ family so we pushed off our pickup until today.

I've still got pea shoots and arugula in the refrigerator from last week and two eggs remain. I just nudged J (still half-asleep next to me) to begin the process of getting him up and out to the farm to pick up this week's goodies. J went a bit crazy at Costco earlier this week and bought TWELVE pounds of cherries (you can't see my counter tops with all of the cherries in my kitchen at the moment). I'm thinking about making a cherry chutney with some of the share bounty this week. I'm pretty sure we'll be getting more rhubarb, so it will be a cherry-rhubarb collaboration of some sort this week.

It's the last week of school, so I won't have much time to cook, but the promise of next weekend and the summer that follows it lies in front of me, beckoning me to plow through the week, full steam ahead, and get to that promised land to enjoy a summer of cooking and eating. I'm looking forward to it.

Week 4 Pickup

2009-06-14T10:28:00.011-04:00

I'm the most tired energetic person you'll ever know. I don't sleep much, I'm always on the move (hyperkinetic, according to a recent blog comment - thanks, Gatton), I'm jittery all of the time and I've been off of caffeine for a couple of years. I'm exhausted, though. I dream of long naps and full nights of sleep. I wish for refreshing wake ups and days without yawning. Not gonna happen in this lifetime!

That said, I am often a victim of inertia. Without proper motivation, I could stay in bed all day. I'll read, surf the web, catch up on my phone calls and emails, plan lessons, grade papers, and even groom the dogs; but I won't get out of bed unless I have to. There are variations on this routine - I can remain planted to the couch or to my lawn chair in the sunshine. I get plenty done (though not the things J wants me to get done), but I really will stay put all day if you let me.

Getting up to go to the farm on Saturdays has been a push out of the house for me for a month now. Each Saturday I have, quite uncharacteristically, gotten up and showered and gotten J and myself fed and out the door, pups in tow, well before the noon hour. For me to wear any clothes other than pajamas on a Saturday is rare indeed, so imagine J's surprise when I'm suited up in jeans, a t-shirt, and sneakers and packing up my bag on a Saturday morning. This CSA thing might be good for me in more ways than one.

J slept in yesterday, so I had time to scrub down the shower and bathtub, read a few chapters in my latest favorite literary series (have you read the Chronicles of Chrestomanci yet?), shower, get dressed, make and eat breakfast (including coffee - decaf, of course), and hang out on Facebook before he staggered, bleary-eyed, out of the bedroom. Coaxed awake by coffee (the real stuff for him), he showered and dressed and "surveyed our lands" with me.

The asparagus have gone bananas! We don't have a lot of them, but the ones we have are growing like crazy! They're huge. We brought a tape measure in the garden to get a sense of just how tall an asparagus can get and we were really surprised.
There are some tiny red berries on the strawberry plants and lots of little green berries peeking out of the pots.
We've got some pods plumping up with peas and tiny tomatoes popping out on a plant or two.

The green bean plants are climbing their cages, spiraling their way up the wiry frames.
Everything is growing, but little is flowering. It has been very gray and rainy so far this spring, and the plants want their heat and sunshine. I hope it comes soon before I have a garden of plants that miss their opportunity to bear fruit this year.

Lands surveyed, we loaded the pups into the car and headed east. I popped my netbook onto my lap and wrote about how we used up last week's food while J listened to the radio and exceeded all posted speed limits until he came upon a $1 iced coffee special at McDonalds. That slowed him down for a couple of minutes.

Before pulling into the farm's parking area, we checked out an 8 acre farm for sale next door. It's got a big house, several out buildings, and a golden-retriever dream pond. We drove around the property edge for a few minutes, each fantasizing about life on a farm:

Nicole: I've got my neatly-laid out rows of veggie plants and fruit trees next to my chicken coop full of silky chickens in every color. One of the out buildings hosts my commercial kitchen space, where I bake cookies, cupcakes, and cheesecakes to sell to the masses of people who flock to the North Fork for wine tastings and pick-your-own fruit and roasted corn at the farm stands. My pack of a dozen or so golden retrievers swim in the pond and torture the chickens by shaking out their wet coats near the coop.

Jason: He's got one out building housing his home brewing operation and another to hold all of his stuff so I stop complaining about how much of it he has.

Holden: He's chasing ducks in the pond and bossing all of the other goldens around because he is the oldest and the favorite.

Riley: He's drinking dirty pond water and chasing anything that moves fast enough to be chased. When he's tired, he naps in a sunny patch on the grass, within earshot of me, so he knows when treats are being given out.

It's a happy fantasy world for all four of us, each in our own special way, but one that is not going to happen any time soon unless someone knows how I can get my hand on $1.3 million to make it happen. Sigh.

Garden of Eve's animals were lively and particularly noisy yesterday. The big white sheep let J touch his curly coat while he munched on whatever he could get his mouth on and the goats bleated out happy hellos to all. The piglets had gotten noticeably bigger (in just a week)and were frolicking with a couple of little white sheep.

The cooler was full of good stuff, waiting to be taken home. Here's this week's haul.

The wheels started spinning right away. I knew the strawberries would have to be cooked somehow because they were so very ripe that they would hardly last a day in the refrigerator at home. I didn't want to repeat the strawberry-rhubarb combo two weeks in a row, so I had to use the rhubarb either alone or in combination with something else. Hmm... J wanted to try the pea shoots cooked this week, so I know some garlic and olive oil will be involved with that. What to do with a bunch of cilantro? No tomatoes yet for salsa... The arugula and lettuce would easily be used up in salad or on a sandwich or two. The radishes? I'm still a big question mark with radishes. Leeks? More leek pasta? It's too warm for leek and potato soup. (Don't tell me to make a chilled soup. I'm not a fan of cold soup.) Asparagus...maybe on the grill this week...

The strawberries and rhubarb were a top priority as both were very ripe and very soft. I still had a few apples left from the first couple of weeks. They were going soft, but still usable. Aha - apple-rhubarb compote. The apples are almost too sweet and the rhubarb is quite tart - that should balance out, right? Right. Apples, rhubarb, butter, brown sugar, a sprinkle of kosher salt and some bubbling on the stove time made for a tasty sweet-tart-tangy treat. J spread some on a toasted bagel (or two) and pronounced it delicious.

Two quarts of strawberries, hulled, and cut in half, and slightly mashed with a potato masher hit the heat for ten minutes before I doused them with sugar and cooked them for another half hour. I had combined ideas from several different recipes I found online and used more berries and less sugar than the average of all the recipes I had seen. It was still too much sugar. The jam is loose (not enough sugar to tighten it up) and tooth-achingly sweet. Some lemon juice and kosher salt stirred into the mix tempered the sweetness some, but it's still very sweet to me. I know I need the sugar to get the jam to set, but I'd like to stay cavity-free. I'll have to look into using pectin next time so that I can cut down on the sugar some more but still get the jam to gel properly.

All of the fruit cooking on the stove smelled amazing. Even Holdy and Riley were drawn toward the kitchen, where both camped out by the gate we use to keep the furry beasts away from the food. The sweet stuff is cooked and put away, now to figure out what to do with the rest of the shares.

Finishing Up Week Three

2009-06-13T20:58:00.003-04:00

I have a love-hate relationship with June. I think all NY teachers must have it. June is the cusp of the school year and summer. June is the point at which we see the light at the end of the tunnel. June is the threshold of the freedom, whose promise has motivated us for months.

June beckons similarly to our students as well, turning what once was a relatively normal gathering of children into a minion of monstrous souls. They suddenly have no volume controls, or off buttons for that matter. They’re not only noisy; they’re more energetic than ever. They’re not only energetic; they’re completely unfocused. They’re not only unfocused; they’re absolutely insane!

Needless to say, the last three weeks of school are difficult for teachers. My classroom has been sucked into a power struggle between sixth graders, longing for the glory days of elementary school movies in class and field trips and popcorn parties to round out the school year, and me, their teacher hell-bent on squeezing at least some of the as-of-yet uncovered curriculum into their skulls so that they can start off next year without weeks of review. I will win, of course. There is no question about that. The only question is – how bruised, bloodied, and beaten (physically and emotionally) will I be after my victory?

Why all of this talk of school on a blog about Community Supported Agriculture, home gardening, and overeating? Because, through June 26th, school controls my life, how I use my time, and how I think. I’ve been blogging mentally all week, but I haven’t had the time or mental energy or focus to type or post anything. I have been cooking, though. I’ve been making the time to cook. That time will not be available to me for the last two weeks of school, what with report cards and packing up my room and all, so I’ve got to make the most of this weekend to write, cook, and eat up a storm.

What did I do with the rest of last week’s shares? I had a lot of fun with them. In the interest of full honesty, though, I confess that I had designs on a pasta recipe to use up most of what’s left of the food last night, but I was just too tired to cook. We had takeout for dinner, and I don’t regret it. It was tasty and it involved very little in the way of fresh vegetables, but it was comforting and emotionally therapeutic. A good enchilada can work wonders on a moody girl.

I learned last Saturday that locally made does not always mean better tasting. The bread we bought from a local farm stand/bakery was, well, blah. We did snazz it up with the local lettuce, some Baconnaise (so darned good and bacony), and some crisp vegetarian bacon (you can never have too much bacon). I finally served up the pea shoots in a crisp salad tossed with lemon juice and rich olive oil with some homemade labneh dolloped on top. I wanted to toss in some home-grown mint, but I was too hungry and too lazy to run outside to grab some. Next time, though, the mint will be a fresh and tasty addition to the salad. It will contrast well with the labneh.

We didn’t fill up too much on dinner because dessert held the promise of many smiles. I cooked the two stalks of rhubarb down with a pint of the strawberries (so tiny and fresh and, surprisingly, tart), some of the strawberry juice we purchased, and some sugar. I stirred in some lemon zest before giving it all a whir in the food processor and letting it cool and set up. It was sweet-tart-tangy-strawberry deliciousness. I should have let it cook a bit longer to get it to set up into less of a sauce and more of a jam consistency, but my inexperience in this area got the best of me.

In the meantime, I baked up a batch of cream scones and sliced up another pint of the strawberries while I directed J into whipping up a small puddle of cream. Within a half hour we had homemade strawberry-rhubarb shortcakes – my way. Picture this (you’ll have to because we ate them before I could take any pictures): a rubied glistening puddle of strawberry-rhubarb sauce in the bottom of a shallow white bowl; a golden-brown blushed scone, glistening with the crystals of sugar I sprinkled on top before baking, nestled into the pink-scarlet pool; a generous dollop of softly whipped cream pillowed over the scone; thick slices of the tiniest almost-glowing red strawberries pouring over the cream; and a not-so-artful drizzle of the strawberry-rhubarb sauce over the top. Again, some fresh, homegrown mint would have been a lovely garnish, but my appetite and laziness won again. Besides, who needs garnish when you’ve got a plate like this just waiting to be eaten?

I managed half a plate before sugar overload meltdown struck. J ate his bowl, the unfinished half of mine, and a second bowl he fashioned for himself while I lay drooling on the couch. It was so very very good.

Sunday morning found me and J in the kitchen snacking on leftovers from the previous night’s dinner and dessert. Lunch was salt-and-pepper pistachios and hummus with flatbread out in the yard after some gardening in the sunshine. Since it was Riley’s fourth birthday, dinner was to be a true celebration. While J ran out for a haircut, courtesy of everyone’s favorite Unkie Scot, I shelled a pint of fresh organic peas, sliced asparagus and garlic, and sliced and thoroughly washed the leeks (boy were they sandy!). While I cooked a big pot of fettuccine I sautéed the leeks and garlic until they were soft and yielding and just beginning to turn golden at the edges. Before they could dry out and crisp, I threw in my customary handful of red pepper flakes and I doused it all with a glass of a crisp local white wine. While that reduced into an amber syrup, I blanched the asparagus in the pasta water, beat a couple of eggs and had J, freshly coiffed, grate some Parmesan cheese. In one fell swoop, we tossed the pasta, asparagus, raw peas, and eggs into the leeks and tossed it all together with a generous glug of spicy olive oil and a fluffy mound of cheese. A sprinkle of kosher salt and a few grinds (okay, maybe more than a few for me) of black pepper later and dinner was served. I hate to brag, but this was a mighty fine bowl of pasta. The leeks were almost creamy and the wine-syrup was thickened and lush and clinging to the noodles. The peas, few as they were, were the stand out flavor of the dish, carrying through every bite, laden with pea or woefully pea-lacking. The asparagus were crisp-tender and the fluffy threads of cheese were wonderfully salty. J and I ate like two greedy piglets, but I couldn’t finish my bowl. Riley and Holdy eyed the pasta hopefully, but there was no hope for them – J laid claim to any and all leftovers. Sorry, pups, maybe next time.

The second quart of strawberries was not going to make it another day. The only problem with getting absolutely ripe fruit from the CSA is that ripe fruit’s shelf life is miniscule compared to the bullet proof stuff we buy in the grocery store. It demands to be eaten now or it will dissolve into a puddle of brown mush. A strawberry dessert was clearly in order, but what to make? I’m starting to learn to think of meals from a “What do I have?” perspective rather than a “What do I want?” starting point. Remembering the strawberry-rhubarb concoction in the refrigerator and the whipping cream and strawberry juice snuggled in behind the milk; it came to me – Strawberry Fool! I set J to work whipping cream again while I sliced the rest of the strawberries. Tonight, I thinned out the strawberry-rhubarb sauce with some of the strawberry juice and, while looking for the Gran Marnier, I stumbled upon my bottle of cachaca. Oh yeah, this is going to be good and I feel a cocktail forming in my head. I sent J to rummage through the refrigerator for a can of seltzer and to fetch some glasses. Now I was making both Strawberry Fool and its beverage cousin, the Strawberry Foolish. Party!

Strawberry Fool assembly: drop several sizable dollops of pillowy whipped cream into the bottom of a shallow dish, toss sliced strawberries with strawberry-rhubarb sauce thinned with strawberry juice and cachaca, nestle spoonfuls of syrupy strawberries and sauce into the mound of whipped cream, crumble leftover scone over the top.

Strawberry Foolish assembly: spoon strawberry-rhubarb sauce into a glass, thin down with strawberry juice and a shot of cachaca, add ice, top off the glass with seltzer, and mound a spoonful of whipped cream on top. If you like your drinks creamy, stir some cream in with the juice and cachaca before adding the soda. Next time, I’m blending this up into a delightfully frozen concoction.

The rest of the lettuce was used up on Monday night’s black bean and bacon jalapeno cheese burgers. Tuesday night was a wash because of a doctor’s appointment. Wednesday night was falafel night (I thought about slicing the radishes into the salad I stuffed into my whole wheat pitas, but chickened out). Thursday night was Panini night with some fabulous Zarro’s bread and some homemade tomato sauce (I wanted to make spinach Panini, but I was too wiped to clean the spinach). Friday started with the best of intentions to use up the spinach and asparagus in a pasta dish with a radish salad, but the week got the best of me. Thus, the need for Mexican takeout to soothe my soul.

Wow, all of this writing and I haven’t even hit this week’s bag full o’ goodies. That’s another entry for another day. So much great stuff, so little time.

Week 3 Pickup and Recipe Planning

2009-06-06T14:22:00.010-04:00

The animals at the farm were active today. The turkeys were particularly vocal. I think one of them freaked J out a bit with his gobble gobbles. The goats were climbing everything in sight. One little white goat flopped onto his back and rolled around on the ground like Holden does when we let him outside. Ah, the joy of rolling in the dirt!

There were two mud-spattered pink piglets frolicking in a penned-in area next to the CSA cooler. I watched them while waiting for the cooler to empty out (the guy ahead of us had NO idea what he was doing – hello! – it’s not brain science!). Of course, the piglets made me feel a bit sad. J tried to cheer me up by insisting that the pigs were not for food, but instead for “the whole agricultural experience” – not buying it. There’s only one reason to keep pigs, and it’s not for their cuteness or manure. I then had to explain to my dearest husband that the turkeys were being kept for Thanksgiving, reminding him of the story of the barn fire taking last year’s harvest. My big, tough guy gave me the saddest little boy face when he finally got it.

When the cooler finally emptied out, it was time to assess our goodies for the week:

Veggie Share: 1 head lettuce, 1 bunch leeks, 2 bunches asparagus, 1 bag spinach, 1 bag pea shoots

Fruit Share: 2 quarts strawberries, 2 stalks rhubarb

Egg Share: ½ dozen eggs

Flower Share: 2 nasturtium plants (there were more sunflowers and cosmos, but they let us choose from the other flowers for sale

There are still pea shoots and apples left over from last week’s share. Two eggs remain as well. They will be added to this week’s haul, which I’m really excited about cooking up this weekend. We also scooped up a pint of peas and I’m looking forward to shelling them (strange, I know). A quick stop at Briermere farm next door tortured J with too many pies to choose from, so we settled for a baguette and a bottle of fresh strawberry juice (too tart for drinking straight, but will be great in this weekend’s desserts and cocktails).

Before I start planning for this weekend, I should tell you how we used up some of last week’s share during the week. On Tuesday I sauteed the rest of the young shallots with some garlic and onion and the spinach (J cleaned the spinach this week!) and cracked some eggs into little wells I made in the bubbling mixture. We scooped the greens and aromatics and just-barely-cooked eggs onto thick slices of toasted batard from Tom Cat Bakery. While I was cooking, J attacked a new wedge of Parmesan with the vegetable peeler and made a bowlful of long, thin shards of salty, pungent slightly grainy cheese. We broke some of the longer strips into smaller wafers and sprinkled all of this umami-riddled goodness onto our eggs and greens. We always take our first taste of food in the kitchen to check for seasoning. J and I ended up eating in the kitchen, standing at the counter, because once we started digging into the creamy egg yolks and garlicky greens atop the crunchy bread we just couldn't stop. Before spinach goes out of season, I’m going to have to buy up a lot of it, saute it with tons of onions and garlic, and freeze it so we can enjoy this dish in winter, when it would surely bring back spring in quite a delicious way.

Tonight’s dinner will be a low-key production highlighting one of my newest internet culinary finds: Baconnaise. Have you heard of this stuff? It’s bacon-flavored mayonnaise. It’s vegetarian and kosher and delicious! More vegetarians are lost to the lure of bacon than any other meaty substance. I totally get it. There’s something about the smell of bacon that beckons me from my happy vegetarian place. I miss bacon. When I see cute little plump pink piglets frolicking on a farm, though, I don’t want to touch the stuff. J & D’s (www.baconsalt.com) has a line of bacon-flavored sprinkles, Baconnaise, and (yes!) bacon-flavored lip balm – all vegetarian and kosher – to bring the happiness that is BACON back to my life. J and I taste tested the Baconnaise on a breakfast sandwich this morning. We pronounce it delectable! So, tonight will be soy-bacon and Baconnaise sandwiches on the baguette we just purchased. We’ll use some of the lettuce from the share and lots of Morningstar Farms soy bacon. I’ll toss the pea shoots and some mint from the garden with some olive oil and lemon juice and serve my little salad with a dollop of my homemade yogurt cheese and some shavings of Parmesan. It’s too bad tomatoes aren’t in season yet, because a BLT would be so good right about now. I’ll be patient. It will be worth the wait for the first BLT with all local produce and a schmear of Baconnaise. Oh my, I’m beginning to feel a bit flushed!

I’m super excited about the two quarts of strawberries we’ve got. I think I’m going to bake some cream scones tonight. J loves scones for breakfast, but I’m going to serve scones with fresh strawberries and a bit of honey-sweetened whipped cream for dessert tonight. Top this with a chiffonade of mint, and my strawberry shortcakes should knock his socks off. He might eat the same thing for breakfast tomorrow.

We’re out and about running errands now. I’m typing on my Netbook in the car while J attempts to navigate and yells at the dogs for shedding in the car. The radio is way too loud, so my concentration has reached its limits. I’m going to shut down for now and enjoy the scenery and the company of the pups on this beautiful sunny end to a rainy week.

I’ll let you know how dinner goes and what I plan to do with the rest of the goodies tomorrow.

The Best Laid Plans...

2009-06-01T14:37:00.000-04:00

J woke up Sunday morning with a hankerin' for something sweet. So much for my soft boiled eggs and asparagus plan. I had an awful lot of apples to use up so it was pancakes with sauteed apples (with butter, brown sugar, cinnamon, and vanilla) for the big guy. I had soft boiled eggs with some toasted leftover ciabatta - yum. Life is better with toast, isn't it?

We spent much of the day outdoors, planting the final seedlings, fertilizing everything, and doing general garden maintenance. J put together his outdoor armoire/shed (I say armoire. He says shed. Potato-potato - let's call the whole thing off.) The big project was taking all of the tomato hanging baskets down to fertilize them. That's a lot of overhead work. One of the hanging tomatoes didn't make it (not bad for 12 hanging pots), so we replaced it with a seedling left over from our already-crowded garden. Let's hope the little one takes.

I headed inside while J worked on the cars in his manly way (changing oil and other fluids and plugging two tires with nails and screws in them). It was time to cook up a mess of applesauce. Thirteen apples, half a stick of butter, a fair amount of brown sugar, kosher salt, cinnamon, and cognac later, I was whizzing the soft, fragrant apples (pink lady and red delicious) in my Cuisinart. (Sorry Teri, it's not a KitchenAid). Man, that stuff is tasty. It's sweet and soft and tinted a faint pinkish-brown (pink = apple peels, brown = cinnamon). If we don't eat the rest of the apples by the end of the week, another batch of applesauce will definitely be in order.

While the applesauce cooled on the counter, I cleaned out the Cuisinart (Teri, calm down!) and whipped up a batch of hummus. I usually don't like the stuff at all, but I've been craving it like crazy this week. Fortunately, I always have several cans of chickpeas handy and J likes keeping lemons in the house for his soda habit. With a little garlic, olive oil, tahini, kosher salt, and a lot of Tabasco (a Cajun girl's pantry staple), I had a big batch of hummus in no time. I toyed with the idea of sending J out to scoop up some pita chips before I remembered I had some low-fat whole wheat pitas in the house. I cut them into wedges, sprayed them with canola oil, salted them, and slipped them into the toaster oven until they were crispy. Awesome! They were so crunchy and toasty delicious.

Dinner was not going to involve a compromise to suit J's sweet tooth. I was making pasta with poached eggs for sure. I switched up my recipe this time to include the shallots and young garlic we picked up with our share. I also threw in some of the asparagus. Penne was the lucky pasta of the day. I cooked down some onions with the shallots, young garlic, regular garlic, and (you guessed it) tons of red pepper flakes and a generous glug of olive oil. Before everything burned, I splashed in a glass of a tasty local white wine. That reduced to a chunky amber-hued syrup while the penne cooked. I tossed it all together with some pasta cooking water until the penne was fully cooked and coated with the good stuff. Off the heat I added some olive oil, lemon juice, chopped chives (fresh from my garden), and fluffy shredded Parmesan cheese. I plated the pasta in bowls and snuggled a couple of poached eggs on top of each. A fresh grinding of black pepper was the finishing touch before I popped open the yolks and coated the whole bowl of pasta and veg in their velvety lusciousness. Boy, was that tasty!

J was kind enough to put all of the food away (he ate well, so I didn't feel guilty about refusing to get off of the couch after dinner). Our fridge is bursting at the hinges full of food from the shares and my cooking spree this weekend, so life is good. I'll grab some of the tomato sauce from Saturday and the whole wheat ravioli I've got tucked into the top shelf of the refrigerator to whip up a quick dinner tonight. I may toss the pea shoots with lemon juice and olive oil for a light salad on the side. One thing is for sure...it's applesauce for dessert!

Week 2 Pickup

2009-05-30T17:38:00.000-04:00

We started the morning off “surveying our lands” (J’s words – I think he had too much beer last night). Our asparagus are starting to do their thing. We’ve got one really tall, skinny spear, one shorter skinny spear with a tiny fat spear growing next to it, and a pair of twin fatties just starting to break above the soil line.

The peas and green beans are starting to grow up their cages and flower. All but two of the tomato plants have turned themselves upright and started to fill out. About half of them are starting to flower. Coolness!

Instead of flying through the barn doors at Garden of Eve ten minutes before closing, we headed out early to pick up our weekly shares. The drive was beautiful since the grayness of this past week has been burned off by the vibrant sun today. I’m looking at the beautiful newly-constructed houses, freshly-turned fields with rows of seedlings growing through black anti-weed barrier, and greenhouses tucked in behind the older houses and barns. I’m fantasizing about owning one of the older houses with a charming little barn and a small greenhouse and a tiny coop big enough for a pair or two of silky chickens. J is plotting out the fastest path from our house to the farm, wondering where this road or that path will take us (and how quickly), and announcing every time we pass an RV dealership. The boys are both snurfling out the back windows, breathing in the air sweetened by the scent of the grass being mowed by the guy with the awesome tractor we just passed.

Garden of Eve had a crowd in the barn when we arrived. We were greeted by a bleating black sheep when we got out of the car and my favorite goat (with the funky sideways-rectangle pupils in his amber eyes) was munching on some hay. We headed back to the cooler, wondering what this week’s goodies would be, since the farm blog hadn’t been updated with news of the shares.

The veggie share included two bunches of asparagus, one bunch of shallot scallions, 1 big spring garlic, half a bag of pea shoots, a bag of spinach, and a half dozen eggs. The fruit share was six pounds of apples (half red delicious, half pink lady). The egg share was our usual half dozen, bulked up to a full dozen thanks to the veggie share. We got a sunflower plant and a cosmo plant for our flower share this week.

My brain is spinning away with ideas for using up this delicious haul. On the one hand, I want to remake everything I made last week – the sandwich, the eggs and asparagus, the pasta, the sangria… On the other hand, I want to see what else I can do. J made it clear to me a few minutes ago that I will be making the pasta with the poached eggs again. I’ll be changing it up, though. No mozzarella this time, but I think some of the asparagus and spinach will be making a cameo in the dish and I’ll use some lemon zest and cannellini beans and substitute rigatoni for the fettuccine. Breakfast tomorrow will definitely be soft-boiled eggs and asparagus. If we can get our hands on a beautiful loaf of bread (I haven’t whipped up a batch of bread dough since before Passover – got to get back to that soon), I imagine dunking some toast soldiers into those vibrant yellow yolks too. Oh my, that sounds way too good.

*** (Brief pause in the action as my netbook’s battery dies and we continue to run errands) ***

We ran errands for a while this afternoon, including a run to pick up my car at the train station (J had beer yesterday, I had pear vodka - there was no driving for me last night) and checking out a farmers’ market not far from there. It’s got LI and Jersey produce. We picked up some Jersey escarole and I’m dreaming of some garlicky white beans and escarole with the crusty ciabatta we scooped up while out and about. I’ll cook the beans and greens with some tomatoes and some basil (fresh picked from the garden). Of course, I’ll season that generously with my favorite red pepper flakes and garnish it with a drizzle of my favorite Pugliese olive oil. Mmmmm…. I hope we’ve got a nice bottle of red wine in the house.

Although I had planned to get into the garden to finish up some last-minute planting and the two (now three) week fertilizing, I just didn’t have the energy after schlepping around all day. I’m getting ready to head into the kitchen, though, to make my weekly giant pot of tomato sauce and start cleaning the spinach and escarole (so sandy). Once the sauce is simmering and the greens are nice and clean, I’ll work on dinner. Hopefully, we’ll still have some sunlight by then and J and I can set up our comfy lawn chairs and our cute little glass bistro table and dine alfresco. Of course, we’ll tether up the pups and maybe Addison (kitty) too. What a lovely way to end the day. Now, where is that red wine?

Using Up The Last of This Week's Share

2009-05-26T19:00:00.000-04:00

The pea shoots went bad...quickly. How do you know pea shoots are bad? They stink! It's just awful. I didn't even have 24 hours before they began to reek. Oh well.

After our sumptuous breakfast yesterday of soft-boiled eggs (again, organic and free range) with boiled asparagus spears for dipping, we were left with only a few eggs and some apples from our original haul. I was really surprised at how quickly we ate up our shares. I really thought we'd have food in the fridge when we headed out for our second pickup. Well, there probably will be a few apples left.

Inspired by an egg poaching technique I saw on one food blog or another (wish I could remember which), I phoned home the second I got off the train and instructed J to boil up a pot of water and grate up the remainder of the Parmesan cheese in the fridge. My goal? Fettuccine aglio e olio (made with a prosecco we've been saving for a special occasion - well, yesterday WAS our wedding anniversary, right?) topped with poached eggs and slices of fresh mozzarella left over from the giant sandwich we enjoyed over the weekend.

Have I ever mentioned my obsession with red pepper flakes? I put them in everything (and I use them in abundance). My Pugliese olive oil, fresh garlic slices, and glass of prosecco reduced to a rich golden syrup with an overly-generous sprinkling of red pepper flakes bobbing around amidst the bubbles. Pardon me if I wax poetic about my pasta, but I am talking about olive oil, garlic, prosecco, and red pepper flakes here. What more could a girl want in the world?

After I got the pasta and the sauce all tossed together with a little more olive oil (one can never have too much good olive oil) and a snowy mound of Parmesan cheese (yes, the good stuff - not the green can stuff), I plated it up with some slices of fresh mozzarella (melting lovingly over the ribbons of pasta) and a couple of poached eggs perched atop. Word to the wise, break open those yolks right away and stir, stir, stir the glistening yellow puddle into each and every strand of pasta. Oh yeah...

I'm still working on my bowl of pasta and J has downed his super-sized bowl and a half. I know he's thinking about the quart of ice cream he's got in the freezer. He's welcome to it. I'm going to sit here and slurp up this pasta, strand by strand, thinking about the ways to use the half-dozen eggs I get to pick up on Saturday. Oh my.

And the apples we've still got around? I read a recipe for salted apples somewhere that I'm dying to try. Sliced rounds of apple sprinkled with flaky sea salt? Sounds awesome to me!

If you're reading this and jonesing for a plate of creamy-spicy-garlicy-rich pasta right now, I'll consider this a job well done on my behalf. Now, get out of here and let me finish mine!

First Share Pickup

2009-05-24T20:37:00.000-04:00

We've been putting it off for years. Either we were too busy or we didn't enroll in time - we never got around to buying a CSA share until this year. We've been talking about it for quite some time; but it took a fit of passion to actually get us enrolled this year.

The fit of passion was sparked by reading Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, MIracle earlier this year. I walked into the school library and there it was - it's lovely green cover calling out to me. I had just listened to a podcast of an episode of The Splendid Table that had an interview with Kingsolver, so the compulsion to pick up the book was strong. I read it in less than a week and became obsessessed with eating locally.

J wants to kill me for reading this book. I admit, my tendency to become obsessive can be truly annoying, so I don't completely blame him. Maybe it's my refusal to eat bananas. Maybe it's the fact that I don't talk about much besides eating local. Maybe its the FORTUNE I've spent on garden supplies so far this year. Maybe it's all of the above. He'll eat well this summer, so I don't feel too bad about it.

I decided to buy a Mega share from Garden of Eve, an organic farm in Riverhead about 20 minutes away from our house. We've shopped for produce there in the past, so I was excited when a Google search revealed that GoE offered CSA shares. The Mega share includes a vegetable share, a fruit share (not organic, but from a neighboring low-spray farm), an egg share (organically fed free-range hens), and a flower share (J doesn't see the need for this, but I'm a sucker for flowers).

Our first pick up was yesterday (05.23.09). We were running errands all day, so we made it just before the farm closed up for the evening. We ran inside, grabbed a bag (we'll bring our own bag next time), walked into the cooler, and picked up our stuff. Here's what we got:

Veggie share:

1/2 lb spinach
1 bu onions or leeks
1 stalk green garlic
1 bu or bag kale
1 lb local non-organic asparagus
1/2 lb pea shoots
1/2 dozen eggs

Fruit share:
6 lbs apples

Flower share:
potted sunflowers and a plant of our choice (I chose an heirloom Green Zebra tomato plant)

Last night I chopped up three of the apples and added them to a giant batch of sangria I made for a friend's party today. The apples are tart, sweet, and crisp. I'm thinking of cooking some down into apple sauce and maybe baking a few apple dumplings (have I mentioned that J has a sweet tooth and wants sweet things for breakfast all of the time?).

This morning I cleaned about a third of the spinach (lots of rinsing and removing of stems) and sauteed it with some Vidalia onion and garlic. I cracked some of the amazingly fresh eggs into the pan and let the eggs cook nestled into the spinach sautee. The yolks were so rich and particularly tasty as a "dressing" for the spinach.

For dinner tonight I cleaned the rest of the spinach and the kale and sauteed them with the young onions and garlic and some more Vidalia onion. I stuffed it into a delicious hollowed-out Italian boule from a Brooklyn bakery and guilded the lily with some buffalo milk mozzarella. I popped everything into the oven to meld together and managed to burn myself on the cookie sheet while taking my mondo sandwich out of the blazing hot oven. The giant blister and its accompanying pain are worth it because this sandwich is GOOD! Yum! Yum! Yum!

I should have taken pictures of everything, but I got so carried away in all of the excitement that I just plain forgot. I'll be better about that from now on.

I've got the pea shoots and asparagus in the fridge still, and lots of eggs left (since we got an extra half dozen this week). I'm thinking about soft-boiled eggs with asparagus spears for breakfast tomorrow. I'll have to contemplate a use for the pea shoots. Hmm...

Okay, my burn is finally calming down so I'm going to sneak into the kitchen for a sliver of my rockin' sauteed greens pannini. Don't tell J!