Farmers’-Market Saturday

Sunday, May 11, 2008

When I got home from yesterday’s farmers’ market with a bunch of asparagus, I decided to try a version of the asparagus quiche that I’ve been seeing around the internet.  Mine contains spring onions and spring garlic as well as asparagus, and local yogurt instead of milk and cheese. 

Other foods (aside from the asparagus and spring garlic) available at the Clark Park market included rhubarb, kale, chard, dandelion greens, spinach, various lettuces and other salad greens, storage crops such as onions, potatoes, carrots, and cabbage, some jerusalem artichokes, mushrooms...and the usual assortment of meats, dairy products, baked goods, and chocolate.  The fresh flower stand is back, too, as is the booth of flowers and herbs to plant.  It’s really feeling like spring!

A Little Something In Advance

Saturday, May 10, 2008

Truthfully, I am not a very good meal-planner.  The moment I realize that I want chicken for dinner, I remember it’s still in the freezer.  Or, when I decide I want bolognese, it is going to be a couple of hours before dinner.  If these decisions occur on a weekend afternoon, so be it, but when they come at the end of a workday, it’s not nearly so leisurely and pleasant. 

As a solution, I am slowly training myself to some advance preparation.  I am always wondering what professional cooks (like my hero, Marc Vetri) do in a restaurant kitchen to prepare excellent dishes so quickly and consistently.  After reading Anthony Bourdain’s Les Halle Cookbook, I started to understand how much professionals do in advance.  While I am obviously not a professional, some of those concepts can still apply to an amateur’s home kitchen.  In this case, it’s caramelized onions. 

It started one night when I was making Nigella Lawson’s Lamb Ragu with buttermilk mashed potatoes (or mash, as she might say).  The recipe calls for store-bought onion confit (it is from her Nigella Express Cookbook, after all), but that’s not something we would ever buy.  Thus, before I do anything else, I have to make caramelized onions.  Instead of taking thirty minutes, it takes nearly an hour.  One of these days, it occurred to me that I could make the caramelized onions days in advance, store them in the fridge, and then just pull a few out when I need them.

So, what follows is my version of the Metropolitan Bakery’s caramelized onions.  They would use balsamic vinegar where I use wine, but the concept is still the same.  The key, I think, to caramelized onions is patience. It takes time to soften and sweeten, but it’s worth the wait.  The onions can compliment pasta sauces (particularly sauces with few ingredients and are not tomato-based), fill an omelette, or top off a thin-crust pizza.

Caramelized Onions

2 large yellow onions, sliced into quarter-inch think half-rounds
1/4 cup red wine
1 tablespoon butter
2 tablespoons olive oil
Pinch of salt
Pinch of sugar
(Note:  The measurements of the fat are my approximations, so use your judgment.  Also, you could use any combination of butter and olive oil you want - from all butter to no butter.)

1.  Bring a saute pan to medium heat and add the butter.  When it’s melted, add the olive oil and swirl together.
2.  Add the onions and stir to coat.  Allow them to soften at this heat (five to eight minutes), stirring occasionally.
3.  Add salt and sugar, stir, cover, and turn the heat to low.  Cook until complete soft and browned (twenty to twenty-five minutes).
4.  Uncover (typically there will so moisture in the pan at this point, which is fine - it’ll cook off).  Turn the heat to medium-high, add the wine, and stir.  Stir frequently as the moisture and the red wine cook off.  Once most of it is evaporated (the onions should be wet, but you should not see any liquid at the bottom of the pan), take off the heat.  Store in the refrigerator for up to one week.

Spring supper

Wednesday, May 07, 2008

A lovely spring supper with new potatoes, salmon on a bed of local spinach, and New Jersey asparagus.  M and I have been sick, and sad that we haven’t cooked as much local stuff lately, so this asparagus was a treat.  (I’ll be posting soon about what’s left in our freezer, Emily!)

We got our first CSA box on Monday, which was a joyful occasion.  We’ve eaten some of the mushrooms, Asian greens, scallions, lettuce, and spinach.  Left is a bag of baby spring greens and a couple of things I’m forgetting.  I ate all the radishes standing over the sink as I washed them (M’s not a big fan), which was a zingy, wet, crisp delight!

Pantry Confessional

The tomatoes are gone. The frozen peaches are long gone. Even the carnival acorn squash in this photo are gone- unceremoniously roasted in early March. I know I’m not the only hoarder in the Farm to Philly community, and could you blame us? Other Philadelphians are sipping margaritas on Sunday afternoons in July while we’re sweating over a canning bath. We soldier on like an army of urban, modern-day Laura Ingalls Wilders: oven drying tomatoes, freezing blueberries on sheet trays, and putting up preserves for what sometimes feels like the whole neighborhood. In the spirit of this kind of down and dirty local food heroism- especially since we’ve got so much interest in One Local Summer!- I’m confessing the local foods that have somehow managed to escape my snacking, baking, party-throwing maw.

1 quart bag grated zucchini, frozen
at least a gallon of sour cherries*
2 quarts black raspberries, frozen (a birthday present for my Mom that I’ve been sneaking into for smoothies)
1 pint concord grape puree, frozen
1 dozen jalapenos, frozen
6 pints blueberry jam
5 pints strawberry jam

*which I stupidly froze in one giant plastic container after I nearly had a nervous breakdown pitting them with a paperclip. I treated myself to an OXO cherry-pitter at Foster’s this very week.

Time to ‘fess up, people. What’s in your freezer?

Spring Salad

This beauty has got to be one of my favorite spring meals which, like a tomato salad with basil in August, is a natural fit to spring produce in the Delaware Valley. It has become something of a weekly ritual for Lindsey and I to pick up produce at the Saturday Clark Park Market, followed by a lunch salad paying homage to whatever season we’re in. This one, while firmly rooted in the optimistic green of Spring, keeps the not-so-distant winter in sight with the rich underpinnings of smoky bacon and tangy shallot.

Spring Salad with Asparagus, Bacon and Hard-Cooked Egg
-serves two as a meal, four as an accompaniment

two good handfuls of lettuce mix, mesclun, or young spinach
one shallot, thinly sliced
one pound asparagus, tough ends snapped off
1/2 pound smoked bacon, sliced
4 eggs
salad dressing- spicy, mustardy vinaigrette is great with this rich salad

1. Begin by laying strips of bacon on a rimmed baking sheet. Place bacon in a cold oven and turn on to 350ºF*. Check on your bacon periodically as you prepare your eggs and wash your greens. It is ready to come out when it has little white bubbles on top. Drain bacon slices on paper towels or torn up paper bags.
2. Submerge eggs in water in a small saucepan. Place pan over high heat. Just as water begins to boil, turn off heat and cover pan. Time ten minutes and rinse in cold water to stop cooking.
3. While you wait for your eggs and bacon to cook, wash your salad greens. Fill your salad spinner or a large bowl with cool water and swish the greens around gently to allow any grit to settle to the bottom of the bowl. Drain by pulling handfuls of greens into the basket of your spinner (or into a clean pillowcase). Dump out water (look at all that grit!) and either spin dry, or take your pillowcase outside and swing gently overhead to fling water from the greens. Set aside however many greens your would like for this salad and store the rest in an airtight container in the fridge.
4. Rinse your asparagus and snap off tough stem ends that have a purple or white appearance.
5. Once your bacon is cooked and happily draining away, pour off your expertly rendered bacon fat into a jar for later use. Spread asparagus on the same baking sheet and give it a shake to distribute the residual bacon grease. Pop them back into the oven to roast for 8-10 minutes.
6. Peel and thinly slice your shallot and peel your now-cooled hard-cooked eggs.
7. Remove asparagus from oven and allow to cool slightly on the pan as you finish readying your ingredients.
8. Customize each bowl of greens with a sprinkle of shallot, several stalks of asparagus, crumbled bacon and egg.
*Starting the bacon in a cold oven allows the bacon fat to render instead of sear and you’ll be able to use it as a nice [local] cooking fat later.

Breakfast of Champions

Monday, May 05, 2008

Dear French Toast,

I love you.  I know I didn’t always, but now I do.  The line of crispiness around your edges, the squashy eggy goodness of your middle, your teamwork with local blueberries (frozen from a pick-your-own place in 2007) and local syrup.  I made your bread, and the phenomenal eggs are from a local farm for Winter Shares.  You are cozy and cheery and you made my day.

Love,
Eliza

Let them eat cake

Saturday, May 03, 2008

Last Saturday I was waiting in line to buy asparagus from Daryl Rineer at the Clark Park Farmer’s Market. Making it’s shocking debut as the only red in a sea of spring greens, the rhubarb was a popular item on that particular morning. Daryl was weighing out handfuls of it for two little boys in spangled superhero capes. Apparently, a pie was going to grace someone’s dinner table on that particular weekend. They boys handed Daryl their cash and cackled maniacally as they made off with their take, “We have so much RHUBARB!” I smiled at one of my fellow line-waiters and wondered whether I could have identified rhubarb at the age of eight or nine.

The only way I can think to describe springtime is as the ultimate annual relief, a reward for a long winter of chapped lips and turtlenecks. Feeling the warm sunshine and the easy air, and seeing the return of fresh things to the markets is enough to make those among us who have outgrown our sequined capes heft a sigh and breathe easier. Fickle Springtime is also an ideal season for baking. The days are warm but the early hours still call for a pair of socks and a twilight beckons a sweater. Whenever I see a recipe for oven-roasted anything in July or August I can’t help but wonder who these cooks are that they can bear to have a 400 degree oven anywhere near them with insects and air-conditioning units humming outside. Aside from the occasional pie - because what would summer be without pie?- I believe that oven usage should be reserved for the other seasons, which is where this coffee cake comes in.

Please excuse this yellow, slightly blurred photo of rhubarb on cake batter. This rushed shot does not do the finished coffee cake justice so I will refer you instead to Deb’s lovely photos of Melissa Clark’s recipe. My excuse for posting this shoddy photo is one of logistics: by the time I thought to snap a shot of the finished product it had already been devoured as breakfast, snack and dessert. 

Eat your weeds

Monday, April 28, 2008

Dandelions are popping up everywhere I look lately.  They are the bane of my existence in the garden, mostly because they’re so hard to permanently get rid of. Maybe I shouldn’t try so hard and, instead, use the overabundance of weeds to my advantage. In terms of foraging, the dandelion is useful in a variety of ways - from the leaves to the blossoms.

The most common use of the dandelion are the greens.  You’ll pay a small fortune for dandelion greens at the market - if you can even find them.  They’re great in salads as a bitter green, or fantastic cooked down in a saute or soup or warm salad.  Just walk out to your back yard or where ever dandelions are plentiful and pick the leaves off the plant!

I only recently discovered that you can eat the dandelion blossoms, as well!  Try fried dandelion blossoms, dandelion jelly, or dandelion wine.  You can even use dandelion root to make coffee.

Dandelions can even be used for home remedies - dandelion oil is used to treat rheumatism.

There’s treasure in those weeds you keep mowing over - be sure to pick those dandelion flowers and leaves before you mow next time!

Other dandelion recipes:

• Dandelion Salad with Lardons and Goat Cheese Phyllo Blossoms
• Creamed Dandelion Leaves
• Dandelion and Shiitake Calzone
• Crustless Greens Pie
• Pan roasted chicken with wilted dandelion leaves and bacon
• Cream of dandelion soup
• Dandelion syrup

Chocolate Zucchini Cake

Pregnant women have to follow many rules. Some of them, like avoiding smoking, drinking and drug use make sense. Others, like avoiding soft cheeses, deli meats and sushi just seem unfair. This is my second pregnancy so I’m not quite as terrified as I was the first time and I haven’t quite followed all of the rules. I’ve never been a sushi lover so avoiding raw fish hasn’t concerned me. As for my indulgences, knowing that the majority of soft cheeses widely available in the United States are pasteurized I’ve continued my goat cheese and feta habit. And since Philadelphia is the hoagie capital of the world (in my opinion anyway- where else can you get a sandwich this good?) I haven’t exactly avoided lunchmeats.

Yesterday, in a quest to fill my freezer with some foods for when the baby arrives and use up the last of the fruits and vegetables frozen last summer, I spent a good portion of the day cooking. I made pancakes and muffins for breakfasts, a baked ziti with local sausage from Meadow Run Farm for dinners, and chocolate zucchini cake to eat, not freeze, just because I wanted to clear out the rest of last summer’s zucchini from my Red Earth Farm CSA. Of course no recipe calls for enough zucchini to clear out the stash in its entirety, and even after adding more than the recipe called for I still have three cups of frozen shredded zucchini ready to bake later this week, but the cake is just so good that I have to share the recipe.

The cake is so good that I think I may have accidentally eaten more batter than necessary, raw eggs and all, and everyone knows that you shouldn’t eat raw eggs, local or not, especially when you’re pregnant. But should you bake this cake you might want to throw caution to the wind and give the batter a little taste- just a little one because you may not be able to stop once you start. And perhaps by tasting the batter (and licking the bowl clean) you’ll be able to stop yourself from eating entirely too much cake once it’s baked, cooled and glazed.

Chocolate Zucchini Cake
adapted from Simply Recipes
1 1/2 cups regular all-purpose flour, unsifted
1 cup whole wheat flour, unsifted
1/2 cup cocoa
2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon cinnamon
3/4 cup soft butter
1 cup sugar
1 cup packed light brown sugar
3 eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla
2 teaspoons grated orange peel
3 cups coarsely shredded zucchini
1/2 cup milk
Glaze (directions follow)

Preheat the oven to 350°F.
1 Combine the flours, cocoa, baking powder, soda, salt, and cinnamon; set aside.
2 With a mixer, beat together the butter and the sugars until they are smoothly blended. Add the eggs to the butter and sugar mixture one at a time, beating well after each addition. With a spoon, stir in the vanilla, orange peel, and zucchini.
3 Alternately stir the dry ingredients and the milk into the zucchini mixture.
4 Pour the batter (the batter will be very thick) into a greased and flour-dusted 10-inch tube pan or bundt pan. Bake in the oven for about 50 minutes (test at 45 minutes!) or until a wooden pick inserted in the center comes out clean. Cool in pan 15 minutes; turn out on wire rack to cool thoroughly.
5 Drizzle glaze over cake.

Glaze: Mix together 1 cup powdered sugar, 1 1/2 Tablespoons milk, and 1/2 teaspoon vanilla. Beat until smooth.  If you really like orange flavoring omit the vanilla and add ½ teaspoon of orange zest.

This cake won’t last long. Now I need to find a good recipe for the last of the sour cherries.

recipes for invasive plants

Saturday, April 26, 2008

Last week, a friend of mine showed me the APWG recipe page, called Eat Your Weedies.  Some of the links there include recipes for garlic mustard soup, Japanese knotwood and apple pie, barberry jelly, and rose hip jam.  I know some of us have talked about trying to learn to identify and hunt mushrooms, but most of these invasives are much easier to spot.  And, hey, eating invasive plants gives the native plants just a little more of a chance, in addition to being relatively simple to find nearby.

(Lilac shown because I bought a branch of lilac blossoms at the farmers’ market this morning.  I don’t recommend eating them.)

Sorrel revisited

Friday, April 25, 2008

There are a few things that over-wintered in the garden and are now going all crazy: the garlic, French sorrel, and chives.  Only the sorrel was a surprise.  And what a nice surprise it was! 

Sorrel sort of looks like spinach, but there’s no mistaking the flavor - it’s tart and lemony.  And it’s good for you!  Sorrel is high in vitamin C, vitamin A, iron, and fiber.

I tend to use sorrel more like a garnish, cut into chiffonade and used in sandwiches and with beets.  However, since I’ve got such an early and large supply of it, I’m looking into some other uses.  One interesting idea I came across is a sorrel pesto sauce for pasta.  Another really tempting idea is sorrel and goat cheese quiche.

Radishes will be one of the first crops we get when the CSA’s start shipping, and I found a recipe for butter-braised radishes with sorrel The combination of spicy and tart sounds delicious!

Here are some other ideas for using sorrel:

• Sorrel vichyssoise
• Sorrel, pea, and leek soup
• Halibut with tomato-sorrel sauce
• Smoked salmon benedict with sorrel sauce
• Sorrel dal

It’s definitely not too late to plant some sorrel in your own garden - as I discovered, it’s a perennial...so it will give you many years of lemony goodness!

Miso Delight

Wednesday, April 09, 2008

M made a lovely eat-from-the-freezer dish last night.  We’ve been trying to finish everything up, as our Lancaster Farm Fresh one and a half shares will be starting soon! 

This is from the Moosewood Cooks at Home, which we find a useful book for quick eats and very adjustable recipes. 

Miso Sauce

1/3 cup medium to light miso (M used yellow)
1/3 to 1/2 cup water
2 TB rice vinegar
1 tsp fresh grated ginger

Mix miso and 1/3 cup water until smooth.  Add vinegar and ginger, mix well.  Add a little more water if needed to make a saucelike consistency.

None of that (except the water--you must not forget the water, Best Beloved) was local, but M steamed yummy things from the freezer including kale, green beans, red and green peppers, and corn.  I made a grain mix (lentils, brown and mixed rice, job’s tears), and the whole thing was very good.  The sauce is quite sharp, but with frozen veg, zing can add summer zest.

p.s.  this was our first experiment with the ginger that we had (as Mollie Katzen suggested) put in white wine and put in the fridge so it wouldn’t go off before we could get to it--roaring success!

Shouldering the Burden of Easter Dinner

Sunday, April 06, 2008

If I had to select one ingredient in my kitchen as the most important, I think I would have to bypass the olive oil (even the single-estate, “crack oil” as we call it in our house), the pancetta, and sea salt.  I would eschew all of those for one simple, free ingredient that requires absolutely no storage space: time.  The more I cook, and the more I cook locally, the simpler I want my dishes to be.  (I have read that Tuscan cooking, in particular, adheres to a single herb in many dishes.  While that may seem rather austere, it is in the same spirit.) I want to extract the most flavor from each ingredient and balance that flavor within the whole.  The fewer ingredients, the less room for error or blandness, as each component is essential.  The most important ingredient, then, is really time.  If it is a quick saute or grill, then time spent preparing (or, “mise en place,” as Anthony Bourdain might call it) is crucial.  In other instances, as in this slow-roasted pork shoulder, everything is dependent upon time cooking. 

We ordered this beautiful, seventeen-pound, bone-in, skin-on-and-scored pork shoulder from the Fair Food Farmstand (thanks again, Ruth) only the Monday before Easter.  We picked it up on that Saturday and promptly set it in a roasting for roughly thirteen hours.  It was an incredibly simple preparation: some root vegetables in the bottom of the pan, which caramelized beautifully (and which I then pureed as part of a gravy); a simple rub of salt, pepper, and fennel seeds; and time, lots and lots of time.  Most importantly for me, as I am a frustrated perfectionist when it comes to cooking meat, I didn’t really need to worry about internal temperature or exact cooking time: i just waited for the meat to fall away from the bone, which it did quite beautifully. 

Obviously, this was more than enough food for the seven of us, but we were able to send everyone home with leftovers and still have two days worth of lunches for ourselves.  What better parting gift could their be? 

Hoarding

Monday, March 31, 2008

Last winter and early spring, after my first year with a CSA, I determined that my goal for the upcoming growing season was to put a concentrated effort into food preservation.  I felt a little overwhelmed by the amount of food we were given at each pickup, and having absolutely no previous knowledge of canning, freezing and drying food, each week was a kind of trial by fire with researching, buying freezer bags, trying to remember what needed to be blanched, what should be shredded, what couldn’t be jarred, etc.  That, on top of my eyes being larger than my family’s collective bellies (sure, we can eat two pounds of greens, sixteen tomatoes a bunch of basil and a twelve summer squash in six days!), meant that a little bit too much of our bounty ended up as compost fodder.

I had tried my hand at canning a jar of tomatoes the previous summer, mostly as an experiment, but it was enough to instill confidence that I could do it on a larger scale.  I also knew from previous experience, that during the height of growing season, when I’d be bringing home gobs and gobs of veggies from Blooming Glen on top of harvesting our own garden, I needed to leave my pickup day open.  Taking a couple hours on that day to sort through the produce, make a decision as to what I’d be likely to use before the next week and immediately preserving the rest was something that I’d have to commit to, as well.

Overall, I’d say I did pretty well.  I had several canning days at my dad’s, during which we canned straight-up-’maters, spaghetti sauce, salsa and applesauce.  I committed to memory what veggies didn’t need blanching and would therefore be the quickest to get into the freezer.  I I learned how to dry herbs.  I stocked up on freezer bags and even received a FoodSaver as an early birthday gift, making preservation that much easier.

Yes, last season, I was a produce-preserving queen.  How I loved stacking jars of tomatoes and applesauce on the cellar shelves, lining them up like little soldiers, their brass rings gleaming like a sergeant’s stars.  Putting onions and potatoes to bed, covered with cloth and tucked into a quiet corner.  I’ll even admit to “checking in” on my preserved veggies and fruit, opening the freezer door simply to admire the piles of vacuum-packed bags, each filled with bright green broccoli, vibrant red peppers and glowing orange butternut squash.  As one might imagine, this attachment to preserved food has a predictable downside:  I don’t actually want to use anything.

I realize this is a problem, especially now, on the cusp of a new CSA and garden season.  I’ve begun to force myself to plan meals around the food we have stocked.  Most recently, I added some spicy vegan sausage to a sauce made with the tomatoes, thyme, basil, onions and peppers pictured above, and served it with rice.  The meal was fresh and fabulous—a fact that I’m hoping to parlay into more using of the preserved food in my house.  Fingers crossed!

Gone fishing

I like to head down to the Italian Market sometimes and visit the fish mongers.  Sometimes the fish look good and fresh, and sometimes they don’t.  Whatever the case, it’s rare that the fish guys have a good sense of where exactly that fish came from...and chances are that it definitely isn’t local.

It is something of a sore point with me that we live so close to the Jersey shore and the waters of the Chesapeake, yet there’s no good mechanism in or around Philadelphia to find local fish.  It’s simple to find locally grown produce and meat - farmers are proud of it and they advertise.  Why that isn’t the case with locally grown/locally caught fish, I’ll never know.

But let it never be said we can’t take matters into our own hands, especially if you’ve got a husband who likes to fish! 

For Philadelphians, fishing for your own food is problematic.  I mean, the very idea of eating fish caught in the city limits parts of the Delaware or Schuylkill Rivers is unthinkable.  Corporations routinely dump arsenic, untreated sewage, and all sorts of things into our waterways, and I’m on the water enough to know there are a plethora of dead bodies in both rivers.  You can eat some of the fish caught in the river, but there’s a severe limit on what you can eat and how much of it you can eat.

The suburbs offer a better solution.  In some cases, not much better.  But at least you don’t have to worry too much about eating super contaminated three-eyed fish!

In Southeast Pennsylvania trout season started on March 29.  Out here in Delaware County, there are a few good spots to fish trout.  Saturday morning, my husband took his first fishing jaunt of the season and brought home a rainbow trout and a brown trout.  My hero!

We did have a discussion, though, about whether or not you can call a trout caught just a few miles from the house but raised further away local.  In this case, the trout that were stocked are from somewhere in Lancaster County and that means they’re probably within our 100 mile radius.  But if the fish came from further away, I’m not sure if that would count.  Thoughts on this?

After all my griping about not being able to find a reliable source for local fish, I was so happy to have these trout!  You just can’t get any fresher than that.  I pan-fried them in some butter I made last week, and served the fillets with some lightly cooked baby spinach from, I think, Green Meadow Farm and sauteed mushrooms from Mother Earth Mushrooms.  It was fantastic, and I’m looking forward to more freshly caught trout this season!