Sweet Squash

Saturday, November 03, 2007

I’m on a quest to master winter squash before spring.  It’s a vegetable staple for local foods eating through the long stretch until those first greens are popping up.  Even though our garden is still producing quite a bit of stuff, we’ve been eating the loads of butternut and acorn squash that we picked for about a month now.  I’m always on the lookout for new ways to use it, and my latest attempt was a butternut squash soufflé (recipe).

The squash and sage were from our garden, and the eggs were local.  The only tweak I made to the recipe was to reduce the white sugar from ¼ cup down to one tablespoon. And, really, even that tablespoon was pretty unnecessary given how sweet the squash is on its own.  As an aside, have you noticed how all of the recipes in Southern Living are a bit Paula Dean-esque with the butter, sugar and shortening?  My mother-in-law sends me some good recipes from that magazine but I’ve got to wonder if people really eat that much sugar at dinner. (And yes, I’m aware of the irony of using a recipe from a Southern magazine on a Northeastern local foods blog.) Anyway, the soufflé was creamy and fluffy, and the sage and nutmeg were nice complements to the squash.  It would be lovely in individual ramekins. Gotta get some of those!

My Mani-"pesto”

Friday, November 02, 2007

If you know Italian food, then you know that there is no such thing.  There is food from Emilia-Romagna and food from Puglia.  Further, there is food from regions within Puglia and food from regions within Emilia-Romagna – and even micro-regions within those regions.  Italian food is, if anything, intensely local, achieving its effect by enhancing the flavor of local, seasonal ingredients. So what happens when you cook Italian food outside of Italy? 

At first, I sought to cook only foods from a particular region, Emilia-Romagna, but that proved expensive, wasteful, and – in retrospect – arbitrary (why Emilia-Romagana over Puglia, Lombardy or Piedmont?).  Now, I think I’ve found a better way.

Now, I am looking to transpose recipes (as opposed to replicate) using ingredients from this region.  Obviously, this has its limits: I still prefer to cook with olive oil for health and taste reasons.  Still, why can I not use local parmesan-style cheese or pancetta? 

This pesto recipe is, I think, a good representation of the balance between imported products and local ones.  The basil, parsley, and garlic are from Red Earth Farm, the walnuts from the Headhouse Square Farmer’s Market. The cheese is from Hendricks’ Dairy, and sea salt from Maine (purchased at the Fair Food Farmstand in Reading Terminal).  I tend to make this with whole-wheat pasta from Severino, but it works beautifully over fish as well. 

One final note: my wife and I do not enjoy oily pesto, so I’ve modified the original technique slightly in an effort to use only as much olive oil as necessary.

(Almost) Local Pesto

2 cups basil, washed
¼ cup parsley, washed
3 tablespoons walnuts, toasted
½ cup (or more to taste), Parmesan
1 clove garlic
1 pinch sea salt
olive oil

1 lb. whole-wheat pasta

Set a pot of water boiling, aggressively salt the water, and dump in the pasta.

Meanwhile, in a food processor, combine basil, parsley, walnuts, Parmesan, garlic, and salt.  “Pulse” several times until the ingredients start to blend.  Then, turn on the processor and drizzle in only enough olive oil to blend everything to a paste-like consistency.

Drain the pasta, but reserve approximately one cup of the pasta water (it should be nice and cloudy from the starch).  Combine the pasta, butter, and pesto in a bowl, gradually adding enough pasta water to blend everything.  (Suddenly, the pesto should magically seem to coat everything.)

From the depths of the freezer

Tuesday, October 30, 2007

Soup weather has officially arrived here in Philly.  To mark the occasion, I trolled through my freezer full of locally grown produce and settled on the many bags of corn hibernating there.  Corn chowder!  Woohoo!

3 cups of corn kernels (CSA share)
1 large red onion (CSA share)
2 tablespoons butter (Fair Food)
1 tablespoon olive oil
2 cups chicken stock (homemade from a local chicken)
6 new potatoes, cubed (CSA share)
2 cups milk (local)
1 tsp fresh thyme leaves, minced
salt and pepper
1 cup heavy cream

Heat the butter and oil in a large soup pot and sauté the onion until translucent. Add the chicken stock and then the potatoes. Bring this to a boil and then reduce heat and simmer for a couple of minutes.

Now add milk, thyme and pepper. Let this simmer for about 8 minutes until the potatoes are tender.

Add the corn and the heavy cream. Let this simmer for 5 or 6 minutes until the corn kernels are cooked. Depending on how you like your soup, you may want to use an immersion blender to puree a bit of the soup.

Taste and adjust seasonings with salt and pepper.

It was exactly what I wanted on a cold Fall night. Yum!

Dark Days: steak and hookers

Monday, October 29, 2007

The other day I did my first volunteer shift at the Fair Food Farmstand.  Sadly, I spend so much time perusing the produce there I didn’t need much of an orientation as to what goes where.  At one point, though, I was mystified when I opened a box and pulled out what I thought were radishes - giant radishes and baby radishes.  Sarah, the manager, set me straight - they were Hakurei turnips.  In my head, I heard “hooker eye” turnips, which sent me into giggles.

The Hakurei turnip is a Japanese salad turnip.  They are quite sweet, and much softer than a regular turnip.  And they’re gorgeous.  I kept eyeing them up the entire time I was working at the Farmstand, and after my shift ended I bought two bunches of them, along with a porterhouse steak from Natural Acres, to make for dinner on Sunday night.

It turned into a great meal for the Dark Days Challenge - the only things not local: walnut oil, salt and pepper.  In addition to the steak (cooked rare, just the way I like it!) and turnips, I also sauteed some local mushrooms in local butter.

This is how I cooked the Hakurei turnips:

2 bunches of Hakurei turnips with greens
1 clove of garlic, minced
1 small red onion, diced
Salt and pepper
2 tsp. of walnut oil

Heat walnut oil over low-medium heat in a large skillet.

Trim greens from turnips and set aside.  Trim turnips and slice in half.  Add to the skillet with a sprinkling of salt and cook for 10 minutes or until turnips are just starting to brown.  Stir the turnips now and then to turn them.  Add garlic and onion; saute for five minutes.

Tear greens into bite sized pieces and add to the skillet.  Add a bit of salt and pepper. Cook until greens are wilted, another couple of minutes.

The turnips were excellent - even my husband loved them!  And that makes me think perhaps I should consider growing them next year.  Johnny’s Selected Seeds sells Hakurei seeds.  They appear to be relatively easy to grow - and it takes only 38 days to reach maturity.  It’s definitely something to consider for next Spring!

October Tomato Sauce

Sunday, October 28, 2007

The recent weather has kept our garden overflowing with summer crops as well as the colder weather stuff. So this morning I got out in the garden at sunrise (literally...the Sprout woke up at 4:30 and I couldn’t go back to sleep) and picked as many tomatoes as I could, as well as loads of parsley and some green beans.  I feel like I’m tempting fate by leaving this stuff in the ground so close to November, so I feel better having harvested a lot of these hot weather foods.  With at least 30 pounds of tomatoes to work with, I set out to make a big batch of sauce to divide up for the freezer. 

My method is based on Barbara Kingsolver’s recipe from Animal, Vegetable, Miracle (which I highly recommend as a great read on local eating, by the way).

First, I blanch all of the tomatoes in boiling water for about three minutes to loosen the skin. As one batch is in the pot, another is draining over the sink and I’m working on coring and peeling the drained tomatoes. Then, I just throw the skinless, cored tomatoes into the food processor and puree them for a few minutes.  This whole process can take quite some time if you have a lot of tomatoes and you’re working by yourself (or with a toddler “helping").  It’s also pretty messy, especially if, like me, you’re not the neatest cook in the world. Once all of the tomatoes are pureed, I saute some onions and garlic in olive oil, and add the tomatoes along with whatever fresh and dried herbs I feel like using.  Today I harvested bunches of parsley to freeze in cubes for the winter, so I added a lot of that as well as basil leaves whose days were numbered. Of course, lots of salt and pepper go into the pot too.

Depending on the types of tomatoes, it may take a few hours before the water cooks off a bit and the sauce is a good consistency. The smell is divine and the taste of fresh tomato sauce in January is definitely worth it.

Preserving the harvest is such an important part of eating local. I’ve seen deals on tomatoes from local sources recently, so it’s a great time to stock up even if you don’t have a garden before these gems are gone for another year.

An apple a day

Friday, October 26, 2007

Last weekend my husband and I made the mistake of trying to visit Linvilla Orchards. We sort of forgot that it was the Pumpkinland Harvest Festival.  It was wall-to-wall people.  All we wanted were a couple of apples!  And we did walk away with a bag of Stayman-winesap apples after much negotiating of traffic and people.

I finally got to use those apples in a very yummy apple cake.  My family is not big on passing down the family secrets or having special family recipes, but apple cake is an exception.  My mother routinely made stellar apple cake every Fall, and finally gave me the recipe when I moved into my first apartment many years ago.  Everyone loves the apple cake.  I have no idea where she got the recipe from, and it’s not like she protects it with her life or anything.  So today I’m sharing it with you:

2 c. sugar
1 c. butter
2 eggs
1 c. milk
3 c. flour
2 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp baking powder
8 medium apples, cut into small chunks [not quite diced]

topping:
4 Tbsp flour
2 tsp cinnamon
1 c. brown sugar
4 tsp melted butter
1 c. chopped walnuts

-Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
-Cream the sugar and butter; add the eggs.  Mix in the milk.  Sift together the flour, soda, salt, and baking powder; add to mixing bowl and beat to combine.  Stir in apples by hand - if it looks like you have more apples than batter, the ratio is right.
-Combine topping ingredients; stir to combine and spread over top fo the cake.
-Bake for one hour and ten minutes.

A good portion of the ingredients are locally sourced.  The apples, of course, were from Linvilla.  The eggs were from Hendricks Farm.  The butter and milk were local.  I used Daisy Flour.  And the walnuts were local.

The walnuts!  Let me just say a few words about these things.  Last week I bought a half pound of black walnuts from the Fair Food Farmstand.  I had no idea what I was in for.  I ended up out on my backporch with a hammer to open them.  Pieces of walnut blasted across the porch.  It took forever to collect all the pieces and then pry the meat out of the shells.  Black walnut shells have to be harder than diamonds, people!  Surely there must be an easier way to open them?  Granted, it was worth all the effort - my apple cake is extra good with the black walnuts in the topping!

Cranberries in the crannies

Thursday, October 25, 2007

Cranberries are in season right now, and plentiful at local farmer’s markets.  If you look hard enough, you can even find the white variety (shown here).

If you’re like me, the first thing you think of when you hear the word ‘cranberry’ is cranberry sauce.  I cook a full Thanksgiving dinner every year, and cranberry sauce is always on the menu.  Rather than settling for that crappy canned stuff, I always opt to make my own.  It’s easy and way, way better.  Last year I made a fantastic bourbon cranberry sauce.  This year I’m making cranberry sauce with blueberries.

That said, there are about a billion other things to do with cranberries.  In that spirit, below is a list of five things to do with cranberries that doesn’t involve cranberry sauce:

1. Cranberry Milk Chocolate Truffles (recipe).  There is nothing I like better than the combination of cranberries and chocolate. Yum!
2. Cranberry Pancakes (recipe).  The addition of tart cranberries in your pancakes is sure to wake you right up!
3. Cranberry liquer (recipe).  Old grandpappy would be proud if I made my own bootleg liquor!  Well, maybe it’s not quite like that, but you’ll be able to offer guests something unique.
4. Cranberry Orange Bread (recipe).  I just love quick breads, and this one is lovely and flavorful!
5. Cranberry Granita recipe).  Think of this as high class water ice, yo.

Dark Days: Rabbit Pot Pie

Saturday, October 20, 2007

I put the garden to bed today.  Well, most of it.  The brussels sprouts are still out there growing.  It seemed crazy to tear up almost all the plants, though.  We’ve had an incredibly warm Autumn here in the Philly area and I had fresh buds on my tomatoes and lima beans, the herbs still looked good.  But I know what will happen if I don’t take the garden down now: it’ll go directly from 75 to 35 and I won’t want to get out in the garden.

The big highlight of the day was digging up the potatoes.  We have fairly heavy clay soil out here in my part of Delaware County, so I wasn’t sure if potatoes would grow for me without a lot of work.  Yes, I dug up the bed and amended it with all sorts of things.  All for naught, apparently: out of the 12 hills of potatoes I planted, we only got five potatoes.  Yes, really.  Five.  Weirdly, it was at least a sampling of all the varieties I planted. 

I was heartbroken over the sad, five potatoes, but it made me determined to use them well.  I started thinking about what else I pulled out of the garden today - lots of herbs and a few teeny little baby carrots.  I also had a single head of garlic left from my garden, and onions from the CSA share.  And a rabbit from a local source.  What else could I make but pot pie?  A Dark Days Challenge meal is born!

1 rabbit, cut into bite sized pieces
water
vinegar
salt and pepper
flour
1 red onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
3 carrots, diced
5 potatoes, diced
a bit of dill and basil, chopped
pizza crust (no, the crust wasn’t local - it was store bought)

Soak rabbit in equal parts of water and vinegar overnight.  Remove rabbit from water/vinegar mixture and dry. Season with salt and pepper to taste and roll in flour (I used Daisy Flour from Lancaster County).

In a large skillet, heat a little oil and brown the rabbit quickly on both sides.

Add enough water to cover the rabbit. Cover and simmer for 45 minutes.

Add the onions, garlic, carrots, and potatoes. Cover and simmer until carrots are tender.  Add in herbs.

Roll out pizza crust and press into a greased baking dish.  Bake for five minutes at 375 degrees.

Ladle the filling into the crust, and top with another layer of crust.

Cook at 375 degrees for about 30 minutes.

I know the idea of eating rabbit is unappealing to many people, but farm raised rabbit is really very mild and not in any way gamey.  It was tender and delicious, and the pot pie was fabulous!  It could only have been improved with a cooler night and a fire in the fireplace.

Comfort Food

Wednesday, October 17, 2007

I’ve been all about the comfort food lately, probably because it’s fall and even though it’s not all that cold outside when the temperature dips below 50 my 100+ year old house gets cold. And honestly, we’re a bit too cheap to turn on the heat when the days are still in the 70s. So comfort food it is, and most of it’s on the unhealthy side with lots of meat and cheese. But it’s still local!

My husband was thrilled that I’ve made Sloppy Joes with beef from Meadow Run farms (is that in the meat list on the sidebar?), and tomatoes and hot peppers from our garden. I think he may have actually pumped his fist in the air and shouted yes! when I served patty melts made with local beef, cheddar, and caramelized onions served on Le Bus bread with oven fries from local potatoes on the side. Getting away from the ground beef, I cooked a big sweet potato enchilada casserole with homemade enchilada sauce using all local veggies and cheese (though I did cheat with the black beans and tortillas) and a few days ago with homemade tomato sauce, local eggs, freshly ground breadcrumbs from a day old loaf of local bread, basil from my garden and eggplant from Red Earth Farm, I made Eggplant Parmesan using an America’s Test Kitchen recipe.

The recipe is pretty similar to the ones I’ve used in the past, only it calls for baking the eggplant on preheated baking sheets rather than frying it, and dotting the top layer with sauce instead of drenching it so the eggplant stays crispy. I’ve made Eggplant Parmesan dozens of times before, but I’m definitely sticking to this recipe. A little bit of crunch goes a long way.

Eggplant Parmesan
from the America’s Test Kitchen Family Cookbook

2 globe eggplants sliced into 1/4 inch thick rounds
salt
1 cup flour
pepper
4 large eggs
4 cups plain dried breadcrumbs
3 oz Parmesan cheese grated
6 tablespoons vegetable oil
4 cups tomato sauce
2 cups shredded mozzarella
fresh basil leaves, torn

Toss the eggplant with 1 teaspoon of salt and let drain for 40 minutes. I take Lidia’s advice, and line the eggplant up the sides of the colander, place a heavy bowl over the eggplant, and weigh it down with a couple of cans of tomatoes.

Adjust the oven racks to the upper and lower middle positions, put a baking sheet on each rack and preheat the oven to 425. Combine the flour and 1 teaspoon of pepper in a large ziploc bag and shake to combine. Beat the eggs into a shallow dish. Combine the bread crumbs, 1 cup of Parmesan, 1/4 teaspoon salt, and 1/4 teaspoon pepper in another shallow dish.

Rinse the salt off the eggplant and pat dry with paper towels. When the eggplant is thoroughly dried, place a handful of slices in the ziploc bag and shake to cover with flour. Shake off excess flour, dip in the egg, then coat with breadcrumbs and let drain on a wire rack. Work in batches until all of the eggplant has been dredged in flour and breaded.

Remove the preheated baking sheets from the oven. Spread 3 tablespoons of oil over each sheet, tilting the sheet to coat evenly. Spread the breaded eggplant in a single layer over the hot sheets. Bake for 20 minutes, or until the first side is brown and crisp. Flip the slices over and return to the oven until the second side is browned, about 10 minutes more.

Spread a cup of the sauce over the bottom of a 9×13 inch baking dish. Put half of the eggplant over the sauce, overlapping. Cover the eggplant with a cup of sauce, a few torn basil leaves, and half of the mozzarella. Layer the remaining eggplant in the dish and dot with a cup of sauce leaving most of the eggplant exposed so it stays crisp. Sprinkle with 1/4 of Parmesan and the remaining Mozzarella.

Place the dish on the bottom oven rack and bake for about 15 minutes until the cheese is brown and bubbly. Remove from oven, top with the remaining basil leaves and let sit for 10 minutes. Pass the rest of the sauce and Parmesan around when you serve.

Wonton soup for the soul

Saturday, October 13, 2007

I’m not overly familiar with Asian vegetables like bok choi and joi choi.  I grew bok choi last year in the garden, but never got very creative with it.  In the past couple of weeks choi has shown up in the CSA share and it seemed like a good idea to try something a little different with it.  I came across a recipe for wonton soup and instantly decided to make it.  And, better yet, I was able to source the a lot of ingredients from local growers!

The recipe itself takes a lot of time to make.  Not active time, mind you.  But you’ll need eight hours, start to finish, if you choose to make it all in one day.  Stock can certainly be made on one day, and the wontons can be made in advance and frozen.  Don’t let the idea of an eight hour soup throw you - it’s easy to make and the end result is well worth the hour of active time this recipe calls for.

First off, you’ve got to make soup stock and this is what takes the longest.  Sure, you could use premade chicken stock but it wouldn’t have the depth of flavor in homemade stock.  Homemade stock is to ready made stock as Brie de Meaux is to Cheese Whiz, OK?  There’s just no comparison.  Gather the following:

2 lb country-style pork ribs
2 lb chicken, a combination of thighs, legs, and wings (picked up from Godshall’s Poultry at Reading Terminal Market)
3 heads of baby bok choi, coarsely chopped (from the CSA share)
4 scallions, coarsely chopped (found at the Fair Food Farmstand in RTM)
1 (2-inch) piece peeled fresh ginger, coarsely chopped
14 cups water (good old Philly tap water)

Throw it all in a giant soup pot and simmer the crap out of it for five hours.  Go knit or watch television or play with the dog or something.  Come back in five hours, pour the stock through a sieve to remove the solids (discard the solids), and refrigerate the stock for about two hours.

Unless you’re making the wontons in advance and freezing them, I recommend making the wontons about half an hour or so prior to the end of the stock refrigeration period.  The wontons will get a little sticky in places and dry out in others.  To make the wontons, you will need:

1/2 lb ground pork or turkey (turkey, from Harry Ochs in RTM)
1 large egg yolk (from Fair Food Farmstand)
2 scallions, finely chopped (from Fair Food Farmstand)
1 (1 1/2-inch) piece peeled fresh ginger, finely chopped
1 tablespoon soy sauce
1 teaspoon rice vinegar (not seasoned)
1/2 teaspoon Asian sesame oil
salt and pepper
About 30 wonton wrappers

Combine pork or turkey, yolk, scallions, ginger, soy sauce, vinegar, sesame oil, salt, and pepper in 1 direction with your hand until just combined (do not overwork, or filling will be tough).

Put 1 wonton wrapper on a work surface (keep remaining wrappers covered with plastic wrap). Spoon a teaspoon of filling in center of square, then brush water around edges. Lift 2 opposite corners together to form a triangle and enclose filling, pressing edges firmly around mound of filling to eliminate air pockets and seal. Moisten opposite corners of long side. Curl moistened corners toward each other, overlapping one on top of the other, and carefully press corners together to seal. Make more wontons in same manner.

When your wontons are all made, break out the chilled chicken stock.  Skim the fat off the top and bring to a simmer.  Grab another bunch of choi, maybe a pound or a pound and a half, and chop it all up into bite sized pieces.  Put the choi in the soup pot and simmer for four minutes.  Season with salt and pepper.  Add wontons and simmer three minutes.  Cut open a wonton to make sure the filling is cooked through and, if it is, serve!

The soup turned out delicious - a true comfort food!

If the shoe fits

Friday, October 12, 2007

I know this is very un-local eating of me, but it has never really occurred to me to make pumpkin pie from scratch.  Don’t get me wrong, I’ve made many a pumpkin pie...but only using canned pumpkin puree.  And there’s nothing wrong with it - pies made from the canned stuff taste just fine to me.  But since I’ve never tasted a pumpkin pie made from homemade pumpkin puree, how would I know the difference?

As luck would have it, the opportunity to find out has presented itself.  Last week there were two baby pie pumpkins in the CSA share, and this week there was one (grown by Green Acres Organics and Countryside Organics).  Pie pumpkins in hand, there was only one thing to do: roast them.

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees.  While the oven is preheating, cut the pumpkins in half and remove the pulp and seeds.  While you wouldn’t use a big jack-o-lantern type of pumpkin for a pie (they’re too watery), you can save the seeds out of pie pumpkins and roast them - so hang on to those seeds!  Place pumpkin halves cut side.down on a baking sheet, and roast them for about an hour.  Peel off the skin, puree in a food processor, and voila: pumpkin puree!  It’s all ready for the addition of sugar and spices for a pie.

My three baby pie pumpkins yielded about four or five cups of puree.

The beautiful Butternut

Sunday, September 23, 2007

Winter squash, like Butternut, Delicata, Sunshine, Spaghetti, and Kabocha, have been finding their way into our CSA shares and farmers market trips lately.  I’ve had lots of Butternut, in particular.  In the past couple of weeks, I’ve roasted at least three of them.

I do prefer Butternut roasted, no matter what I’m doing with it - it’s just easier to peel that way.  Peeling and chopping uncooked Butternut is hard work, and I like to take the easy way out whenever possible!  To roast a Winter squash, just preheat your oven to 400 degrees, cut the squash in half, scoop out the seeds, and roast (cut side down) for about 20 minutes or so.

Some of my Butternut was cubed and frozen.  Some of it was used immediately.  Like in this soup I made last week…

There’s nothing quite like soup to use up all your extra produce!  And temperatures were cool enough around here last week to actually make some soup.  The soup contains Butternut squash, onions, and swiss chard from my CSA share, tomatoes from my garden, and some homemade chicken stock I made last month from a local chicken.  I also used some non-local parmesan rinds to flavor the soup up a bit.  It was delicious!

Tonight for dinner, I made Butternut and mushroom bread pudding.  A lot of people are familiar with sweet bread puddings, but hardly anyone traffics in savory bread pudding.  It’s a lot like bread stuffing, and is a great way to use up whatever veggies you’ve got lying around the house.  In this case, there was a Butternut from last week’s CSA share, and some mushrooms from Mother Earth Mushrooms in West Grove.  In fact, everything I used for the bread pudding was local, except the parmesan cheese, salt, and pepper.

3 cups Butternut squash, roasted and cubed
1 c. sliced mushrooms
1 tsp olive oil
1 c. chopped onion
1 garlic clove, minced
2 c. milk
1 c. aged parmesan, shredded
salt and pepper
3 large eggs
2 large egg whites
9 c. day old bread, torn up into bite-sized pieces (I used Le Bus brioche)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Heat oil in a skillet over medium-high heat.  Saute onion, garlic, and mushrooms for about five minutes.  Remove from heat and cool slightly.

Combine 1/4 tsp salt, a pinch of pepper, milk, 1/2 c. cheese, eggs and whites; whisk lightly.  Stir in squash and onion mixture.  Add bread and stir gently to combine.  Let stand 10 minutes.  Spoon into a large baking dish coated with cooking spray or butter.  Sprinkle with remaining cheese.  Bake for 45 minutes.

This is some great comfort food and makes excellent leftovers!

Keeping it simple

Saturday, September 22, 2007

After my last attempt at an all-local meal proved frustrating, I decided not to overthink things the next time around. And I didn’t. I’ve made a number of all-local meals the past few weeks, from an almost entirely local brisket dinner for Rosh Hashanah to a quick spaghetti squash garlic and cheese bake. Last night I was in the mood for potatoes and and I knew my husband was dying to eat the sausage that came in our meat delivery the day before.  I have a habit of pairing sausage with tomato sauce and pasta which I never serve with potatoes but I decided to throw caution to the wind and do something different. I’m a mad woman, I know.

The result was Italian fennel and garlic sausage (Meadow Run Farm) with sauteed onions and multi-colored bell peppers(Red Earth Farm), roasted red potatoes with garlic (Red Earth) and rosemary(my garden), and steamed broccoli (Lancaster County). I picked up the broccoli at the farmer’s market because it was the first local broccoli I’ve seen since spring. My poor son has been deprived of broccoli, which he loves, all summer long. The only non-local ingredients were the olive oil, salt and pepper. 

We all got what we wanted. My husband must have eaten more than half a pound of sausage, my son ate almost all of the broccoli, and I couldn’t get enough of the potatoes and continued snacking on the leftovers as I cleaned the kitchen after dinner.

The recipe for the potatoes came from a cookbook by the editors of Cook’s Illustrated. Though their recipes aren’t the most imaginative or exotic they are always reliable. I’ve found their potato recipes have been superb. In the past when I’ve roasted potatoes tossed with garlic the garlic burns and doesn’t always stick to the potato. This recipe calls for tossing the hot potatoes with a garlic paste rather than cooking the potatoes and garlic together.  The potatoes come out crisp and garlicky (though I have to admit I was feeling lazy and cut the potatoes badly so they didn’t cook as evenly as I would have liked.)

Roasted Potatoes with Garlic and Rosemary
from The Best Vegetable Recipes

2 lbs red bliss or other low starch potatoes, scrubbed halved and cut into 3/4 inch wedges
3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
salt and ground black pepper
2 garlic cloves
2 tablespoons chopped fresh rosemary

Adjust the oven rack to the middle position and preheat the oven to 425 degrees. Toss the potatoes with the olive oil in a medium bowl to coat; season generously with salt and pepper and toss again to blend.

Place the potatoes flesh-side down in a single layer on a shallow roasting pan. Cover tightly with aluminum foil and cook for 20 minutes.  While the potatoes are roasting mince the 2 medium garlic cloves. Sprinkle them with 1/8 teaspoon of salt and mash with the flat side of a chef’s knife blade until a paste forms. Transfer the garlic paste to a large bowl and set aside. Remove the foil from the potatoes and roast until the side of the potato touching the pan is crusty brown, about 15 minutes more. Remove the pan from the oven and with a metal spatula carefully turn the potatoes. (Press the spatula against the pan as it slides under the potatoes to protect the crusts.) Return the pan to the oven and roast until the side now touching the pan is crusty golden brown, 7 minutes more. Sprinkle the potatoes with rosemary and cook another 3 minutes. Remove the potatoes from the pan with the metal spatula (again taking care not to rip the crusts) and transfer to the bowl with the garlic paste. Toss to distribute and serve warm.

The dastardly Daikon

Thursday, September 20, 2007

No, I didn’t spend the day slaving away in my kitchen to make handmade pasta.  This is the ‘something new’ with Daikon radish I alluded to in my CSA report.  Yes, those noodles are really ribbons of radish!

Was the experiment a success?  It depends on who you ask.  I thought it was really good - an unusual taste combination, but light-tasting and yummy.  My husband was not as delighted.  That’s really not very shocking, though.  He’s a lovely person, but not very adventurous when it comes to eating and trying new things.  If it looks like pasta, it should taste like pasta.  The Daikon most certainly does not.  The homemade pasta sauce is very comforting and familiar, and the radish is crisp and slightly bitter.

I am not an evil genius who dreamt this up on my own - we have Iron Chef Morimoto to thank.  While searching for something interesting to do with my latest batch of locally-grown Daikon, I came across his recipe for Daikon Fettucine with Tomato-Basil Sauce.  I monkeyed around slightly with the recipe, and here is what I made:

1 pound diakon
About two cups of crushed tomatoes with juice
3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
1 small onion, chopped
2 garlic cloves, minced
1 teaspoon salt
1/4 c. chopped fresh basil
salt and pepper

• Trim the daikon of its outer skin and then use a vegetable peeler or mandoline to cut fine strips of daikon into ribbon-like slices.  Soak the daikon in water for about 15 minutes and then drain and dry on a towel.
• Heat oil in a skillet over medium-high.  Saute onion and garlic for about five minutes.  Stir in tomatoes and juice, and a bit of salt.  Cook for 10-15 minutes or until sauce gets thickened.  Stir in basil, salt, and pepper.
• Add daikon to skillet and gently combine with sauce.  Cook for about one minute until heated through.

What’s even better than learning something new to do with Daikon radish?  Being able to use all locally grown ingredients in the recipe, with the exception of the olive oil, salt, and pepper. 

Beet and goat cheese stacks

Friday, September 14, 2007

We are a one beet-eater household.  I adore them; my husband thinks they’re vile.  Because the opportunity to make lunch or dinner only for myself rarely materializes, I don’t make beets very often.  Today, though, I took a sick day off from work and started to feel better toward lunchtime, so I figured I’d make something soothing and comforting.  There just happens to be a bag of beets from Paradise Organics and a big old chunk of Shellbark Hollow Farms sharp goat cheese in the house right now, so it seemed a clear choice: roasted beet and goat cheese stacks with sorrel from the garden.

Eating this made me feel loads better - it’s pretty to look at, didn’t take a lot of effort to prepare, and has a lot of flavor without being hard on the stomach.  It’s the perfect sick day food!

I started by roasting the beets in a 375 degree oven for about 30 minutes.  After peeling the skin off the beets, I sliced them up and let them cool.  A quick walk to the garden procured a bit of the sorrel, which was then cut into chiffonade using kitchen shears.  The cheese was warmed to room temp, making it very easy to handle.  Putting the layers together was a snap.  The only ingredient that wasn’t locally grown was the balsamic vinegar I drizzled over top before eating.