Dark Days and Turkey Day: the loaf and the sweet, sweet potatoes

Sunday, November 11, 2007

Last night’s Dark Days challenge meal (my third for this week!  The other two: a tomato omelet and a grilled cheese sandwich and ‘kitchen sink’ soup) coincides with FTP’s own Turkey Day challenge (Farm to Philly writers and their favorite Thanksgiving meal recipes) - how serendipitous!  The Dark Days meal is meat loaf, cabbage gremolata, and cranberry glazed sweet potatoes.  It was delicious - a meal full of bright flavors!  And I’m happy to say that there are enough leftovers for a couple of lunches throughout the week, which is always fantastic!  The meatloaf, a blend of local ground beef and turkey, was about as close to totally local as you can get - local garlic, carrots, shiitake mushrooms, parsley, my homemade, local catsup, bread crumbs from local bread, and local eggs and milk.  The only things not local: olive oil, salt, pepper, and soy sauce.  I was especially excited with the meatloaf, because this is the first opportunity I’ve had to use the catsup I made.  It’s yummy and ended up having a really great consistency.

The cabbage gremolata finally used up the cabbage from my CSA share that’s been hibernating on my counter for weeks!  Aside from the lemon juice and lemon rind from two lemons in it, it’s entirely local - cabbage, butter, shallots, garlic.  It was a really excellent way to use cabbage, and a new favorite side dish for my very picky husband. And last but not least, the cranberry glazed sweet potatoes - and the Turkey Day portion of the meal!  I will confess to you that I do all the cooking for Thanksgiving for a very specific reason: I refuse to be in the vicinity of mashed sweet potatoes with melted marshmallow topping.  I think that particular dish is one of the most vile things on the planet.  Strangely, I think a lot of typical Thanksgiving fare is pretty grotesque - I also can’t abide the infamous green bean casserole with the canned cream soup and crispy onions on top…and I think I’ve expressed my hatred of canned cranberry gel before.  I know people love this stuff, but I just don’t get it.  Hey, different strokes and all that, right? So anyway, as a replacement for the dreaded sweet potato/marshmallow concoction I always offer up cranberry glazed sweet potatoes.  The cranberries offer a wonderful sweetness and the sweet potatoes are delicious!

2 large sweet potatoes, sliced into 1/4 inch rounds (I use a mandoline to ensure uniformity) 1 c. water 4 Tbsp. melted butter 2 Tbsp. bourbon salt and pepper 3/4 c. cranberries 1/3 c. brown sugar a pinch of both cinnamon and cayenne Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.  Butter a large baking dish and arrange the potato slices in concentric circles, overlapping the slices slightly.  Pour 1/2 c. water over the potatoes and bake for 40 minutes (cover the dish with foil). Increase the temp to 425 degrees at the end of the baking period. Mix the melted butter and bourbon; pour over the potatoes and season with salt and pepper.  Continue baking 25 minutes.  Baste midway through. Combine cranberries, 1/2 c. water, and brown sugar.  Bring to a boil over med-high heat until cranberries start to pop, about 10 minutes.  Drain the cranberries, reserving the liquid.  Stir cayenne and cinnamon into the liquid and drizzle it over the sweet potatoes.  Bake an additional 20 minutes.  During the last five minutes of baking, spread cranberries over top of the potatoes.

The brown sugar, bourbon, salt and pepper, cayenne and cinnamon are not local.  However, I think this would be just as good using local maple sugar in place of the brown sugar, and Sailor Jerry’s rum in place of the bourbon.

Turkey Day Challenge: Forget the Mashed Potatoes!

Thursday, November 08, 2007

Okay, maybe you shouldn’t really forget the mashed potatoes this Thanksgiving since they are awfully good.  But a nice supplement to the “mashed vegetables alongside the turkey” category would be mashed turnips with roasted garlic.  Mild turnips, such as the white Hakurei, are best for those who aren’t huge turnip fans.  If you enjoy their spicy, somewhat bitter taste, opt for a variety such as Scarlet Queen.  Turnip season is in full swing and many varieties are available around the city’s various farmers markets.  These lovelies came from Weavers Way Farm. 

TURNIPS AND ROASTED GARLIC MASH

2 bunches of mild turnips (Hakurei variety works well)
1 large head of garlic
2 T. butter
generous pinches of salt and pepper
fresh chives to garnish

Preheat the oven to 350 F.  Place whole head of garlic, unpeeled, on a baking sheet lined with foil.  Roast garlic in oven for 30 minutes or until very squishy.  Remove from oven and allow to cool.

While garlic is roasting, bring a large pot of salted water up to a boil.  Wash turnips well, trimming off tops and roots.  Cut into 1 inch pieces and boil until tender, about 20 minutes depending on the variety.  Drain off water and allow to sit for five minutes.  Turnips will release more water as they cool.  Drain additional water off and use either a potato masher or an electric mixer to begin mashing up the turnips. 

Cut a half inch off the top of the roasted head of garlic, exposing the cloves inside.  With your hand, squeeze out all the garlic pulp into the turnips.  Add butter and salt and pepper before continuing to mash turnips to the desired consistency.  If turnips appear to be releasing more water after being mashed, drain it off and add more salt if necessary.

Serve immediately with a few snips of fresh garlic chives.  If desired, serve cooked turnip tops along side turnip mash.  To cook turnip tops, simple wash and roughly chop.  Heat olive oil or butter in a skillet and add turnips when hot.  Season with salt and pepper.  Turnip greens are fairly bitter.

Local note about Potato and Pea Curry

Tuesday, November 06, 2007

I forgot to mention what local stuff we use in the Aloo Matar curry (“Nobody Nose You Like I Nose You” entry), and why it’s such a good winter dish. 

Here’s the three ingredients we use from nearby—the onions from our neighborhood once-a-week Amish farmstand, the peas from ones we picked and shelled at a conventional pick-your-own farm in NJ, and the potatoes from our CSA farmshare.  We usually have spuds at the of the CSA season, because it’s something that will keep as we’re madly eating up what won’t.  Onions also keep for a bit, of course, and we’ve frozen and dried onions for curries throughout the winter.  Finally, while the dish does have the word “pea” in the title, we’ve used broccoli, lima beans, kale, and any other number of substitutes when local peas aren’t available.

What’s left is the oil, rice, and tom paste, which are organic but not local; and the spices, which are neither.  I’ll keep looking for replacements (either home-made or otherwise)!

Nobody Nose You Like I Nose You

I had sinus surgery 10 days ago.  It went well—it always does—but I lost my sense of smell.  This may seem like a no-brainer, but in fact, in recent years the packing they have to put in your nose at the end of the surgery has gotten so minimal that I usually quickly recover my sense of smell.  I think perhaps the surgery was more extensive, or happened to cover more of the sense of smell territory (how does that work?).

But whatever the reason, I found that the lovely cool autumn air came through my nose scent-free.  A couple of days after the surgery, I noticed that the spray bottle containing one part vinegar to four parts water (plus a little lemon juice) that we use for cleaning everything, from sinks to countertops to apples, was low.  However, we heard that there was some use of animals in the filtering process of making white distilled vinegar, so I thought, why not use apple cider vinegar which I knew did not use animals?

I poured a bunch of apple cider vinegar into the spray bottle, and merrily cleaned our kitchen countertops.  Once I even put my nose close to the counter top to see if I could smell if it was too strong.  But only the faintest whiff of vinegar came to me, so I cleaned everything.  When M came home, she practically choked on the fumes!

How does this relate to food?  Well, the day after my surgery my father told me he would cook me whenever I wanted for dinner, and there was really no question.  My favorite dish in the whole wide world is my father’s potato and pea curry with home-made chapatis on the side.  The funny thing was I couldn’t smell the dish at all, which made it fascinating to have the textures and the heat of the curry in my mouth.  Also, usually when my nose is stuffed up and I can’t smell I’m not hungry, either, but now I was stuffing my face with the potato and pea curry.  I’ve put the recipe below, in case anyone else turns out to love it as much as I do.

I know this is a long entry, but the slow and gentle increase over the week in my ability to smell and taste what I was eating has been like the pleasure of the autumn trees changing.  You notice that little Japanese maple starting to glow red, and then another tree, and then another, but it seems like they’ll never all go, and then one day you look out your window and there are fireworks.

P.S. “Nobody nose you like I nose you” is what my brother wrote on a card for me for my first sinus surgery in 1988 when I was 14!

Potato & Pea Curry (the Indian name is Aloo Matar)
3 TB veg oil
1 med onion, chopped
1/2 tsp cumin
1/2 tsp tumeric
1/4 tsp cayenne (Dad uses less)
1 tsp ginger (grated or sliced)
pinch of ground cinnamon
pinch of ground cardomom
pinch of ground clove
2 TB tom paste (4 TBs=1/2 can)
1/2 cup boiling water (just reserve it from spud water, below)
3 med potatoes, quartered, cooked
1 1/2 cup frozen peas
1 tsp salt
1/2 cup yogurt (opt.)
Fry onion in veg oil ‘til transparent.  Add all spices, med fire, 2 min.  Put in tom paste and spud water.  Stir in spuds, peas, salt.  (If using white basmati rice, put it on now for 14 min.)  Leave spuds on LOW, 15 minutes until rice is done.  Mix in yogurt or leave it out if you’d rather.

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!

 

 

End of season limbo

Sunday, October 28, 2007

This is my first entry, so bear with me!

I sliced up apples to dehydrate today, getting close to the bottom of the half bushel box M’s mother and I picked at Linvilla Orchards a few weeks back.  It always pleases me how long good apples last, stretching the season of fresh things.  We’ve started in on the freezer, though, getting out a quart of blueberries and one of strawberries to put on our breakfasts of oatmeal or granola.  I made some semi-successful blueberry muffins with lemon and lime juice, but M’s amazing apple muffins with a crunchy sweet crumble on top were softer and tastier.  It seems like my food cravings are very weather related.  On those warm indian summer/global warming days, I want the fresh stuff—the last greens of the CSA season, crisp apples, potato salad.  But when the snap comes, the cool snap that reminds me we will soon be in my favorite season of winter, I want soups, soups, and more soups.  That’s when I start baking again, too, making chocolate chip and chocolate crinkle cookies for my honey.  The cats are back, sleeping on our bed again, as if they hadn’t disappeared from this activity since May.  I look forward to talking with you all about your winter foods and loves!

October Tomato Sauce

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.

A peck of pickled… cucumbers!

Thursday, October 18, 2007

To supplement my garden and CSA tomatoes for canning, I bought a box of tomatoes from the Shoemaker’s road side stand.

A side note here, that the link will take you to the Shoemaker’s machine shop. The family has run their welding and machining business and lived on Leidy Road since the 1950’s. It’s been as long as I can remember that they’ve sold their garden crops out front. Out here in the ‘burbs, among all the McMansions and age-restricted townhome developments, there are occasional glimpses of realness that reflect the area’s agricultural, small town roots. The several front yard road side stands in town are probably my favorite of those reflections

While I was there, I couldn’t pass up a few delicious-looking cucumbers. I don’t usually see cukes so late in the season, and my mouth was watering at the thought of a crispy cucumber sandwich.

Shortly after, when my tomatoes and I headed over to my dad’s for canning, I was surprised with a bunch of local kirby cucumbers. Thanks pops, but yikes - what to do with them all? Naturally, pickles seemed out best option, though neither of us have preserved them before.

Thank goodness for the Pickle Preservation Society (seriously, who knew?!). They have several recipes on their site, and I copied the one we used below. We went with an easy, traditional kosher recipe that required no hot-packing, and also one that utilized local ingredients we had on hand. The recipe called for dill and garlic, which I received in my CSA share that week (though the dill was not flowering as the recipe recommends). Man, I just love it when things work out like that!

 

Kosher Pickles: The Right Way
From Mark Bittman, New York Times

1/2 cup kosher salt
1 cup boiling water
2 pounds small Kirby cucumbers, washed, and cut into halves or quarters
5 cloves or more garlic, peeled and smashed
1 large bunch dill, if desired, fresh and with flowers OR 2 tablespoons dried dill and 1 teaspoon dill seeds, OR a tablesoon of coriander seeds

1. In a large bowl*, combine the salt and boiling water; stir to dissolve the salt. Add a handful of ice cubes to cool down the mixture, then add all remaining ingredients.

2. Add cold water to cover. Use a plate slightly smaller than the diameter of the bowl and a small weight to hold the cucumbers under the water. Keep at room temperature.

3. Begin sampling the cucumbers after 2 hours if they are quartered, 4 hours if they are halved. In either case, it will probably take from 12 to 24 hours, or even 48 hours, for them to taste “pickly” enough to suit your taste. When they are, refrigerate them, still in the brine. The pickles will continue to forment as they sit, more quickly at room temperature, more slowly in the refrigerator.

Yield: About 30 pickle quarters.

*We went with pickling in one of those giant industrial-food-sized jars instead of bowls. We tried the bowls, the jar was just way easier to manage.

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These turned out quite garlicky, so next time we’d probably use only three or four cloves. I can totally see how people get into making their own “special recipe” pickles. With slight adjustments to so many different and easy-to-find ingredients (garlic, hot pepper, peppercorns, mustard seed, onion, celery, sugar), there are endless taste possibilities. This is definitely a project we’ll be doing again next season!

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.