Cool! Persimmons! (Now what??)

Thursday, November 20, 2008

Last week 2 persimmons were in my Highland Orchards fall share. Neato! But then I thought, what do I do with these things that salutes their uniqueness among fruits? Often when this happens, I think about it so long that whatever wonderful item it was goes to Compostland before I get around to the “right” thing. I did remember that The Savory Way (Deborah Madison) had a persimmon bar recipe, but then tonight I found a gorgeous looking cake/bread by following my yarn habit to a blog that just happened to stray from woollens into persimmon territory. It’s a James Beard recipe adapted by David Lebovitz and available on his blog.

He has many wonderful recipes on this blog for quince (another one of those “special” fruits!) and other fruits and veg, plus a simple Jam Tart that could dispatch a couple cups of homemade jam or preserves you’ve been “saving” for no particular occasion.

The family heirloom stew

Monday, November 10, 2008

With soup weather upon us, I’ve been concentrating on making soups that are can-able or freeze-able.  But there’s something so delicious about creamy soups.  And I can never resist trying new recipes for oyster stew - the perfect oyster stew is sort of the holy grail for me.  My great grandmother, a native Nova Scotian, made killer oyster stew, the likes of which I have never been able to recreate. 

A recipe in the November issue of Saveur does come pretty close, though!  And better yet, it’s pretty easy to make using all local ingredients.  Even the oysters can be locally sourced, although I did not use Cape May Salts or any other local oysters this time around.

The recipe is from Antoine’s in the French Quarter.  Apparently, oyster stew is a popular first course for Thanksgiving dinner in New Orleans.  Who knew?  I think I’d probably get run out of town if I tried that at my house, but I’m content to make oyster stew for myself every now and then!

Pickle Time!

Tuesday, November 04, 2008

The last of the harvests are coming in and that can only mean one thing: the final frontier of preservation, pickling! My husband has tried pickling in the past, to varying degrees of success (can’t get the regular, cucumber pickle to not turn to mush, but he makes a mean sauerkraut and pickled green tomato!). So this year, I’m trying 2 different pickling methods: the regular refrigerator pickle and the canned pickle.

First, the refrigerator pickle. I’m trying my hand at an Indian-style pickled cauliflower. I’m thinking it can’t be that authentic (got it from a PA Dutch book). But hey, those people know how to pickle! Besides, a refrigerator pickle is such an easy thing, if I mess up, oh well. There’s still some more cauliflower-time left.
The other pickle is a shelf-stable canned red wine beets. I don’t know who I’m fooling: both pickles are not the fermented kind, so there’s really no fear of failure. But there’s something scary about cooking something and then letting it sit for a few weeks. What if I forget? What if it tastes like crap? It feels like an investment. I just hope that pickling doesn’t turn out like our economy…

On a final note, I’d like to get suggestions from farmers and farm market supporters about marketing issues or questions that they’d like discussed in future postings. I had such great feedback about the website needs of farmers and I’d like to throw in my two cents where possible. So send them in! 

Turkeys, Challenges, Sprouts, and Oysters - Oh My!

Sunday, November 02, 2008

It’s November and that means one thing: it’s Turkey Day Challenge month!  Contributors to Farm to Philly will be sharing their favorite Thanksgiving dishes with you all month long!  My own Thanksgiving should be interesting this year.  My in-laws have been coming for Thanksgiving dinner for the last couple of years, but this year my own parents might be joining us.  This puts me in a bit of a pickle - while my mother will at least try anything you put in front of her, my stepfather is deeply suspicious of high-falutin’ cooking (and when I say “high-falutin” I mean that anything other than plain old mashed potatoes with milk and butter, for instance, is considered bizarre and potentially dangerous).  And so I might need to do a lot of cooking this year - stuff that I want to make, as well as stuff that my stepfather will eat.

Oh, and speaking of Thanksgiving, Fair Food Farmstand is now taking orders for Thanksgiving turkeys.  They’ve got naturally raised turkeys from Green Meadow for $2.99/lb, certified organic turkeys from Lancaster Farm Fresh for $4.50/lb, and Bourbon Red heritage breed turkeys from Griggstown for $6.50/lb.  If you’re trying to save a bit of cash, you might consider signing up to volunteer at Fair Food - volunteers get a discount.  I’m a seasonal volunteer, and my first shift back after dragon boat season was this past Saturday morning.  Stop by and say hello if you’re around - I’ll be there loading up vegetables, bagging spinach, and wrapping cheese every Saturday from 7:30am to around 11am.

My first contribution to the Turkey Day Challenge is a very simple way to prepare brussels sprouts: brown halved sprouts in olive oil with finely chopped bacon.  That’s like crack in a bowl right there.  I don’t eat bacon too often because I don’t like the texture, but I do like the bacon available from the Fair Food Farmstand.  I believe it’s double smoked bacon from King’s Butcher Shop - nice, thick bacon.  My husband, who generally thinks brussels sprouts taste like dirt, will eat brussels sprouts this way.  For him, bacon makes everything taste better.  For an extra special dish, use walnut oil in place of olive oil.  Delicious!

As an unrelated aside, my husband and I had dinner at Ansill’s last night (I had the Trick or Meat Halloween special - squid cooked in its own ink, a skewer of beef hearts and veal kidneys, and Tongue in Cheek - a bowl of veal cheek and pig tongue with white beans and pumpkin.  Everything was delicious!).  On the appetizer menu they offer raw oysters - the oysters of the day were Cape May Salt Oysters.  Offal aside, I would have gone to Ansill’s just to have the locally grown oysters!

Fall is for Stew

Sunday, October 26, 2008

I had been thinking about making a good, hearty chili for the last couple of days.  Then I started cooking...and ended up with a sort of stew-like concoction instead. 

My approximate recipe:

1 T olive oil
1 t mustard seeds
1 t cumin seeds
spices: salt, pepper, cumin, fenugreek, garam masala, dried hot pepper; to taste
1 medium onion, coarsely chopped
2 giant cloves of garlic, minced
1 lb ground beef
1 large beauregard yam
3 medium carrots
4 leaves chard
1/3 c dark beer
1 c slightly fermented cider

Heat olive oil and seeds until seeds start to pop, about 1 minute.  Add onion and sauté until clear around the edges.  Add garlic and sauté another minute or two.  Add beef and stir until it’s mostly come apart (I often forget to thaw it ahead of time).  Add (chopped) yam and cover.  When yam is half cooked, add carrots.  When carrots are half cooked, add chard stems.  When everything else is nearly done, add chard leaves.  Add beer and/or cider whenever the liquid is lower than the surface, at least until the yam is cooked.  Serve with cornbread.  (I use the recipe in the Tassajara Bread Book.)

(Everything except the spices, the olive oil, and the beer were local.  Any recommendations for local oatmeal stout would be welcomed.)

Modest but Tasty Apple Cake

Monday, October 20, 2008

Clearly, this was my big day in the kitchen because I also made my favorite apple cake recipe. I’m afraid that only the apples from my Highand Orchards CSA were local, but the eggs were from cage-free hens. This cake is terrific with very ripe pears (especially Bartletts) in place of apples.

1/2 C butter
2 eggs
3/4 C brown sugar (can be mix of brown and white)
2t vanilla
2t baking powder
1t cinnamon
1 3/4C flour (I used 40/60 King Arthur wheat and white flours)
1t salt
1C chopped walnuts or other nuts, or a couple handfuls of millet are great
1/2C milk
4 medium apples, peeled and cut into small chunks or slices—whatever you prefer

10” springform pan or regular cake pan
I use parchment paper for all cake baking b/c it’s so easy to get the cakes out!

350 oven

Sift the dry ingredients. Cream butter, sugar(s), and vanilla, then add eggs. Add half the dry ingredients, the milk, then dry. Mix in the nuts/millet and apples. Spread in the pan and bake for approx. 40 mins. It makes a great breakfast cake, too.

Onion and Shredded Chicken Soup

I am so glad that it’s getting colder. I like the cold, and I like cold weather food. To wit, I’ve had a roast chicken carcass in the freezer since July (from the terrific Meadow Run Farm buying club), and today felt chilly enough to boil it up with some starting-to-get-bendy carrots and some starting-to-get-wilty parsley from the fridge, A couple hours later, I had about 4 quarts of broth and a couple of good handfuls of boiled chicken. Two quarts went into the freezer.

For the soup, I had 2 onions from Highland Orchard’s CSA (I like them b/c they have small shares and give you a mix of fruits and vegetables) and very s-l-o-w-l-y coked them down, mixed in leaves from 3 sprigs of thyme (garden), added about 2 quarts of broth and 2 medium tomatoes (seeds, skin, and all; also from the garden), and then went at the mixture with a stick blender. Then in went about 1/2t of dried, piquant but not hot pepper from , some salt, and the chicken. This reduced about 15 minutes, and then I dropped in some egg noodles (from the bag--apologies!). Soup was on when the noodles were done. Chives also from the garden.

On Rainy Afternoons: Part II

Saturday, October 18, 2008

I am always looking to substitute ingredients.  I’m not sure if it’s an egotistical attempt to claim the recipe as my own, simple curiosity, or a combination of the two.  The substitutions can be based on an affinity in taste, similarity in texture, or just my own “imaginative” (i.e., questionable) associations.  Predictably, the results are mixed, but I press on (I’m sure Chef Gusteau would be proud). 

In this case, I wanted to find a new use for celeriac.  Tom Culton called it the “frog prince of vegetables,” and he is absolutely right.  As unappealing as it may look, it is a fantastic, versatile root vegetable.  It works well as a mash (like potatoes) and as part of a vegetable soup (again, like potatoes), so I thought that vichyssoise was the next logical step. Thankfully, this is one of the successes. 

Vichyssoise
Based on Anthony Bourdain’s Les Halles Cookbook

2 celeraic bulbs, peeled and cubed
8 leeks, trimmed whites only
4 cups chicken stock
2 cups cream
4 tablespoons butter (I used 2 tablespoons butter and 2 tablespoons olive oil)
Nutmeg
Salt and Pepper

1.  Melt the butter over medium-low heat.  Add the leeks and sweat for 5 minutes, but do not brown them.  Add celeriac and cook for 1-2 additional minutes.  Stir in chicken stock, bring to boil, and reduce to simmer.  Cook on gentle simmer for 35 minutes.  Allow to cool for a few minutes.
2.  Using an immersion blender, blend the soup (Bourdain has you transferring to small batches to a blender, but this is much easier.)
3.  Whisk in cream and nutmeg.  Season with salt and pepper.  Return to boil, reduce to simmer, and continue cooking for 5 additional minutes. 
4.  Transfer to a mixing bowl, cower with plastic wrap, and chill in the refrigerator.  (This may be heresy, but we also like to eat directly off the heat - particularly in the colder months.)

On Rainy Afternoons: Part I

If my favorite food-related activity is putting away everything we’ve purchased at the Farmer’s Market (and taking a step back to admire a well-stocked refrigerator), then a close second would be the day I can devote a few hours to converting produce into food.  Thus, on a recent rainy afternoon, I set out to make the following: whole-wheat flatbread; naturally-fermenting pickels; and celeriac vichyssoise.

For reasons both good (finding time, lacking equipment) and bad (finding time, daunting parent-induced fear of botchulism), we have made only halting steps in canning (though, Nicole, thanks again for this).  However, this year we did attempt chutney, thinking its acidity made it a safe bet for novices.  Based on that initial success, we decided to attempt pickling.  Using this as our basis (except we omitted the chili and substituted bay leaves for grape leaves), it was surprisingly easy.  My only regret is that I did not pack the jar even more tightly.  Who knew how many kirby pickles could fit in one jar? 

One week later, they were delicious half-sours.  Two weeks later, they were delicious pickles.

(To be continued...)

Acorn Squash

Thursday, October 16, 2008

Acorn squash is a vegetable I didn’t discover until college. My boyfriend’s parents lived in the small town and we’d often go there for dinner. Almost all of their vegetables came from their large garden. Most everything was cooked in insane amounts of butter until mushy and practically unrecognizable, but the acorn squash was something extra butter just improves and it helps that it’s pretty hard to overcook it.

Generally I serve acorn squash as is, in the shell. I cut it in half through the stem end with a strong knife, scoop the seeds and bake for 35-45 minutes in a 400 degree oven with the cut side down. Usually during the last few minutes of cooking I’ll flip the squash over, add a pat of butter and either a sweet or savory seasoning to each half. For savory I like butter and rosemary. For sweet I like either brown sugar or maple syrup. Either way, you can’t go wrong.

Acorn squash (and most other sweet winter squash varieties) pair very well with citrus and hot peppers.  Yesterday I planned on making enchiladas by roasting an acorn squash from Red Earth Farm for 20 minutes- just enough so it would be easy to peel and dice- then finishing it on the stovetop with onions, peppers and spices. I wanted to combine the squash mixture with cheese and black beans, roll it into tortillas, smother it with more cheese and sauce made from the last of the tomatoes waiting to be picked in my garden, and bake it until it was hot and bubbly.

But I forgot to set the timer when I roasted the squash early in the afternoon and ended up roasting it until it was fully cooked. When it got to be time to actually make dinner my baby was asleep in a carrier on my stomach and my 2 year old decided he couldn’t live without physical contact with me. That meant chopping vegetables, making enchilada sauce, and even picking the tomatoes was out of the question. Instead I combined the roasted squash with shredded meat from a leftover roasted chicken leg from Meadow Run Farm. I added cumin, chili powder, shredded cheese, salt and pepper to the mixture and put my husband to work making quesadillas. In lieu of the planned enchilada sauce we topped the quesadillas with a quick salsa we made with a combination of fresh and roasted tomatoes, hot pepper, leeks, lime juice and cilantro. The quesadillas were probably just as tasty as the enchiladas would have been and took half of the time to cook. 

Can it, buddy!

Monday, October 13, 2008

Via Ramping Up the Garden, I learned that the National Center for Home Food Preservation has a free, self-study course in home canning.  It’s offered by the University of Georgia WebCT system.  How cool!  It includes:

• Introduction to Food Preservation
• General Canning
• Canning Acid Foods
• Canning Low-Acid Foods

For those of you who want to learn to can but don’t have a class near you, this is a great opportunity to bone up on the basics!

I’ve been on a soup canning kick lately.  I will thank myself later when I drag my frozen carcass home from work and can immediately sit down to a nice, hot, homemade bowl of soup.

Spaghetti Squash 101

Spaghetti squash always seemed kind of weird to me.  A squash that could be a pasta substitute? What?  But curiosity got the best of me and I eventually gave it a try.  Now I’m sort of hooked.  It seems I’m not the only one, though, who was a little bit frightened of the spaghetti squash - most people I know have never tried it.

Apparently, spaghetti squash can be cooked in a bunch of ways - roasted, boiled, microwaved, or even slow cooked in a crock pot.  I’ve only ever roasted it, though.  It’s really simple: just preheat the oven to 400 degrees and poke a bunch of holes in the squash with a knife.  Put the squash on a cookie sheet in the oven, and roast it for 30 minutes.  You’ll probably get a brown spot on the bottom of the squash like the one in the photo - but never fear: the outside rind gets tossed.  It’s the inside of the squash where the magic happens!

If you would cut open an uncooked spaghetti squash, you’d find a squash that looks like any other.  It’s solid and orangey with guts and seeds.  But when cooked....well, I’m getting ahead of myself.

First, you’ll notice that the squash, as I said, has guts and seeds.  You should remove these, but try not to get any of the flesh - just the goopy parts.  The seeds, by the way, can be roasted like pumpkin seeds.  They’re very tasty!

Take a fork and drag it along the inner flesh of the squash.  The flesh pulls away from the outer shell in strings!  Just keep scraping, leaving the shell pretty much empty.  As you might imagine, letting the squash cool after roasting is important - I’ve burnt the crap out of my hands before trying to hang on to a squash while scraping the strings out.  Not fun!

So now you’ve got all these stringy squash innards - what to do?  Well, take a taste!  Spaghetti squash is good all by itself - it’s got a classic Winter squash taste with an interesting texture.  I know lots of people who eat it just with butter and herbs, or with tomato sauce.

My very favorite spaghetti squash recipe of all time is spaghetti squash and pork stir fry.  Tonight for dinner I made a variation of this spaghetti squash and mushroom gratin.

There are a million different ways to prepare spaghetti squash, all of them delicious!

Other ideas:

Spaghetti squash with spicy braised greens, raisins, and pine nuts
Spaghetti squash curry
Spaghetti squash with glazed chestnuts
Creamy spaghetti squash with asparagus and rosemary
Sausage and spaghetti squash
Spaghetti squash frittata
Sweet Potato, Spaghetti Squash, and Rutabaga soup
Spaghetti squash, Shiitake, Pistachio spring rolls
Lamb with Spaghetti Squash and Pears

A Perfect Breakfast

Monday, October 06, 2008

Breakfast has always been the most important meal at our house, and my wife habitually cooks an impressive meal every weekend: fruit-filled or fruit-topped pancakes, basil omelettes, a smoky hash, improvised muffins.  For whatever reason - perhaps it was the breakfast issue of Saveur - this breakfast surpassed her already-high standards.  Either way, this breakfast was superb: arepas, made with grilled Jersey Corn from the previous night’s dinner and local corn meal from the Fair Food Farmstand; poached eggs and bacon from Meadow Run Farm; and a broiled-tomato salsa from some of the season’s last grape tomatoes. 

I am of the mind that a perfect meal contains a few outstanding (and, therefore, locally-sourced) ingredients used in a way that maximizes their flavor but perfectly compliments each other.  By that or any other standard, this meal was perfect. 

radish greens

Sunday, October 05, 2008

I found some local radish greens at my food co-op on Wednesday, and I was really curious about them.  I figured that spicy greens would go well with a vaguely-Thai curry, so I tried a variation on a yellow curry last night.  Perhaps the greens were milder than I’d anticipated, or maybe the sauce overwhelmed their spice, but they just tasted pleasantly of Green Leafy Vegetable.  If I see them again, they could be a nice addition to my usual chard/kale rotation.  (Also local: tofu, hot pepper, sweet pepper, zucchini, garlic, milk.)

Landisdale Farm CSA, week 17

While I was competing at yesterday’s Philadelphia Dragon Boat Festival (my team took the women’s club championship - we’re the fastest chicks on the river!), my husband picked up our Landisdale Farm CSA share yesterday at Clark Park.  Here is what we received this week:

• 2 bunches of kale
• 2 small broccoli heads
• 5 white sweet potatoes
• 5 apples
• 8 baby turnips
• 5 tomatoes
• 2 Kuri winter squash

I am not the biggest fan there ever was when it comes to kale.  There was kale in our share two weeks ago, too, and I haven’t used that yet (and no, it hasn’t gone bad - kale seems to last forever).  There are very few ways that I really like kale, but I’ll be trying to use it.

One way I do like kale is in soup.  My plan is to pick a few soup recipes, make up giant batches of it, and either freeze or can it.

White bean, kale, and sausage soup
Lentil Kale soup
Carrot and kale soup
North African Chickpea and Kale soup
Roasted Pumpkin and Kale soup
Cream of Kale soup
Chestnut Kale soup
Potato Kale soup with Seitan
Island Kale and Sweet Potato soup
Sweet Potato, Corn, and Kale Chowder
Yellow Split Pea Soup with Sweet Potatoes and Kale
Sweet Potato Kale soup

Now, dairy doesn’t freeze or can well...which does leave out a few of the recipes above.  But you can definitely can meat, and any of these soup recipes that are mostly vegetarian would can or freeze perfectly.  There’s something to be said for coming home from a busy day at work on a super cold, blustery Winter day and being able to have a warm bowl of hearty soup without toiling in the kitchen!

On a related note, I thought it would be interesting to compare what was in my Landisdale Farm share this week to what was in my Lancaster Farm Fresh share last year at this time.  Fascinating!