Making and Transforming Food

Our Ridgeland Harvest CSA has begun for the season - we're in our fourth of twenty weeks of the bounty of Wisconsin veggies. After fifteen years in CSAs, we know what each week is likely to bring and are delighted at the challenge of the unexpected veggie.   This Fourth of July weekend was particularly fun because it contained three days to make after being gone to a conference for the entire previous week. I missed cooking!

In the box we had rhubarb, green onions, 2# of peas, 1# of lettuce, napa cabbage, swiss chard, cilantro, broccoli, garlic scapes and a fennel bulb. What could be better? It's fun to spend 3-4 hours on each of these three long weekend days making and transforming these goodies into food for today, tomorrow...and the months ahead!

We started with rhubarb/strawberry fruit crisps. We make them in little coffee cups - a perfect bite and easy to share with friends and family.

Next, time to make garlic scape pesto. While reading the Fresh Food Nation: Simple Seasonal Recipes from America's Farmers,  the author MArtha Holmberg suggested lightly sauteeing the scapes first to soften them - and their sharp flavor. Oh baby, that pesto is to die for. It is frozen and ready for a winter's night pasta when we miss the sun and warmth of summer so much we could cry.

Then we must deal with those sweet plump peas. For us, it is Risi e Bisi or nothing. Our recipe comes from Saveur magazine and we use up those lovely green onions as well.

Our first cilantro features heavily in burritos we make and freeze for lunches. We make rice and add minced cilantro and juice of a lime. Combine that with refried beans, green chiles, and taco meat made with plenty of chile powder, cumin and onions and we have a burrito factory. We have twenty fat little lunches all frozen and ready for the months ahead.

Napa cabbage is delicious in slaw that is lightly dressed with rice vinegar, a hint of honey and soy and a splash of sesame oil - add a few toasted peanuts or cashews and mmmmmmmmmm.

The broccoli gets a light steam and is dressed with the same rice vinegar, honey, soy sauce and sesame oil - we add toasted sesame seeds for a wonderful undertone.

The lettuce is part of sandwiches and salads. This is the one time of year, in an homage to a favorite sandwich of my childhood, that I buy braunschweiger (liver sausage) and pile lettuce high on it for a tasty treat on Lloyd's homemade wheat bread.

The chard and fennel will be part of a Vietnamese rice stir fry that we make and munch the few days following - sesame oil, soy sauce, a little sugar and finished with eggs. It's a great place to include any other veggies lurking from last week too.

When people ask me if getting a CSA is worth it, I always answer yes...as long as you love to make and cook as much as we do!

What's Cooking as the Year Ends and Begins

Tourtiere - French Canadian meat pie

I asked friends to share some of their New Year's Eve and New Year's Day epicurean traditions on Twitter and Facebook. Saying goodbye to the old and blessing the new can bring out deep and complex traditions of delight.

One of my fondest New Year's memories was when I was living across state in Menasha. A friend, born and raised in Europe, invited us to share a meal of New Year's lentils for luck. Beyond the warm friendship and sharing of a meal, the subtle flavors she coaxed from the lentils brought them from legume to legendary. 

I blogged about our tradition last year - cassoulet shared with friends.  What else are people preparing?

Cheryl: We are having a New Year's Eve homemade pizza, and a New Year's day breakfast. Jim calls the breakfast a "lumberjack breakfast;" I don't know why. (Eggs, potatoes, onion, cheese, ham or sausage or Canadian bacon, sometimes breadcrumbs, all together in a skillet.)

Melissa: Homemade pasta for New Year's Eve and homemade pierogis for New Year's Day....oh,and Bailey's cookies on New Year's Eve!

Ally: On new year's day, everyone I know eats black-eyed peas for luck. I've been informed that this is very southern. :)  My grandmother also insists on collard greens!

Jennifer Ann (in response to above):  SUPER Southern. This WI girl had never heard of such a thing until she married a Texan. Oh, a Cuban friend of mine makes us eat 12 grapes at midnight (1 for each clock-stroke) and you make 12 wishes!

Roxane and Steve: Venison/veggie stew and Bloody Mary's with our own pepper infused vodka. 

Meagan: Collard greens, black eyed peas & ham on New Years are a Southern tradition for luck & prosperity. I'm slow-cooking a soup with collards, peas and a crunchy bacon garnish...hopefully it will trick my husband into liking greens!  

Sue: Some day I'm going to get a taste of that cassoulet! But I do have my jar of herring ready for the stroke of midnight!

Stacy:  We do tourtière on New Year's Eve.

I can't help but want to share in all that delightful food. Happy New Year, my friends!

 

The Power of a Made Meal

For the past ten days, both Lloyd and I battled a seasonal flu that had us down low.  Low energy, low appetite, low brain, low motivation.  At the same time, our refrigerator was not staying cool  - we had to keep it closed as much as possible to maintain safe food temperature. So we were limited in food at hand while we had repair folks out twice over five days fixing the problem.

Canned soups became the food of necessity. And we got tired of them very quickly.  After five days, with a refrigerator fixed, I finally had enough energy that I could stop relying on a can opener.  We started eating the real food we love again.

We had purchased a small bundle of pork from our CSA and with our final delivery of potatoes and onions, our first home-cooked meal after a week was scalloped potatoes with ham. I used an old recipe from Betty Crocker, a carefully used mandolin, parts of a ham steak and plenty of potatoes and onions.

It was comfort food from both our childhoods - a welcome homecoming back to making our own food again. It seems like a small thing, but the moment I could summon the energy to make a meal of real food again made me feel immeasurably better.

For the past few days we have been able to make our own simple meals again - pancakes, lambburgers, cooked carrots, oatmeal, scrambled eggs, scotch broth, roasted fish, pasta with our own sauce. We feel the comfort of familiar flavors and believe in the healing that a meal made with our hands from scratch makes possible.

 

Making Beef Broth

I make foundational beef or chicken broths about 3-4 times a year.  When I do, they last us for many months of cooking and recipes.

Fall and winter is the big broth making season for us because our soup and stew making increases by leaps and bounds in the dark, cold, hibernating seasons. To make the broth for these, all we need is a day when we will be hanging around the house - puttering, reading, doing the laundry, blogging or staying close.

Preparation is easy and results in a deeply rich flavored beef broth. The organic ingredients (since we are extracting the essence of all these, we don't want pesticide or hormone-laden stuff) don't need to be prepared in a fussy way. Carrots go in washed with ends nipped off. Celery, we cut in half to make sure it gets immersed. Onions go in peeled and whole. The long slow cooking time will reduce these veggies down.

The most active part of the recipe is roasting the beef bones before I begin. I learned this trick from the cookbook "Caprial's Bistro Style of Cuisine." Set the oven at 450F. Put the bones on a lipped tray with an unpeeled garlic or two and roast in the oven for an hour.  Put the bones in the soup pot, squish the garlic into the pot and then the fun part. Deglaze the roasting pan with a little red wine and scrape up all the little tasty, roasted bits and add to the soup pot.

Add water to cover and simmer 6-8 hours. Strain the broth through a cheese cloth (toss out the cooked out veggies - they've done their job flavoring and enriching the broth). Refrigerate (or put outside) until cool. Skim off the fat, put into 1 or 2 cup containers and freeze. Pop the big cubes out the next day into a freezer bag and voila - heart and soul warming broth that YOU made, ready for every recipe!

And So It Begins...

Today, I went to the garden and dug my first garlic of the season.  I love nothing better than pulling these first delicate slips. It means spring really is here and the growing season is upon us.

Last fall, I buried many individual cloves and covered them heavily with straw. Since then, these  little beauties have been sleeping away the winter.  The first hint of light and warmth brings their shoots up above the ground.

When I dig them, the clove is wet and withered. I peel off that layer, and inside there is a thin shoot, looking much like scallion.

This first garlic is sweet and mild enough to put raw in salads.  Tonight, we're making Miniera, a Brazilian dish that marries thinly sliced collard greens with bacon (yes, greens and bacon - a match made in heaven). A few slices of this sprightly spring garlic serves as a perfect mild flavor maid of honor.

Collard Greens Miniera

1/2 # collard greens, halved lengthwise and stems and center ribs discarded
2 slices of bacon, finely chopped

Stack the collard leaf halves and roill cross-wise into a cigar shape. Cut crosswise into very thin slices (1/8"). Cook bacon til crisp. Add collards, tossing to coat and cook until just bright green (about 1 minute. Season with salt and serve.

Gourmet Magazine January 2001

Making Chicken Broth

My mom made her own broths for our many soups. I learned that from her and have been glad of it. I've tried canned and boxed broths and...meh. It took me awhile to get a tasty result - I had bouillon cubes at the ready to get that "chicken" taste when I first started cooking on my own. I learned to use organic chicken and with their profound flavor, I never used bouillon again. It was then I realized that factory-farmed birds had lost their true chicken taste.

I hear people say it takes too much time and work to make a broth. Maybe so. But it's mindful, meditative cooking of the best kind. It's a great weekend activity and the broth can be frozen and used in ensuing months. The prep time is pretty small and much book reading can be done while the pot simmers.

The broth-making always starts with organic ingredients. I am extracting everything I can in the making of it and the thought of added pesticides, hormones and chemicals simmering out is more than I can bear. All my broths are made in a big honkin' 3 gallon stock pot - plenty of room for the good stuff.

I put a whole chicken in the pot (with heart and gizzard - no liver) and throw in whole onions, carrots and celery; then cover with water; and toss in salt and a bouquet garni of thyme, parsley and bay leaf. After an hour, I remove the breast and leg meat (it is nicely poached and can be used for anything) and put the carcass back in the soup pot to simmer happily another 4 -5 hours. Then I drain the broth through cheesecloth and refrigerate. I discard all the mushy solids - they've done their work and made the broth rich.

The next day I skim the congealed fat off the top and pour the broth into 1 cup and 2 cup containers to freeze. The day after I pop them out like ice cubes into a freezer bag and use as needed in soups and recipes over the next few months.

It's satisfying and nothing tastes better!

Changing the Food System

Here are 13 Resolutions on Changing the Food System in 2013 found in the Huffington Post (thanks to our Viroqua Co-op - we love you guys!).  I love this - and we can all do so much of this - eat  real food and veggies; make meals; eat meals together; prevent waste; support farmers and food workers and more.

These are common sense and bring food back from corporate control and back to consumer's control. We can do this. Join us!

Image: 'fractales naturelles / natural fractales'  http://www.flickr.com/photos/47757737@N00/2877551607 Found on flickrcc.net

New Year's Cassoulet

For almost ten years now, we've been making cassoulet for New Year's Day. It takes awhile to put it together so I always need about three days off to get it prepped. The run up to New Year's Day affords me the time and leisure to make this savory peasant stew. Nothing is overwhelming in the preparation but it has many parts - duck legs to confit (or buy already prepared); lamb and bean stew to make a day ahead; chicken broth to make; bread to put out to grow stale for crumbs.

I discovered the pleasures of this stew in the January 2002 issue of Fine Cooking  in an article written by Chef Jean-Pierre Moulle (online at their website  for the short version). Now the pages of that article and it's recipe are crinkled, spotted and thin. I start looking at it in October and thinking about where I will find my ingredients. That article is with me all the time over those months running up to January.

Each year, we play with the contents - changing a thing or two: growing the shell beans in the garden; looking for local artisan sausage to include; using our home-baked bread for the crumbs; skipping the pancetta and using the dark applewood flavor of a chunk of Nueske's bacon. The next year we do it entirely differently. Cassoulet isn't fussy.

It's meaty and plain and rich and delicious. It is always a party dish - friends have joined us for years - there are seldom many left-overs. It is mindful cooking in the deepest way I know. It starts the new year. The pleasure of good food, good wine and good friends warms us in the winter.