Brew-sketta

Yes, that is how “bruschetta” is pronounced, or so I’ve been told by my Italian-speaking friends.  And it’s what’s for dinner!  I had always thought of it as an appetizer, so who knew it could be so filling?  Thanks to the first pick-up of my CSA shares, I now have a ton of new greens, some of which I’ve never heard of.  Hon tsai tai, anyone?  Why, don’t mind if I do!  This little gem looks like giant mint leaves with gorgeous little yellow flowers, both of which are edible, and mild and flavorful.  I’m not a huge fan of turnips, but their greens suit me just fine; it’s important to use these greens right away, though, as they will dry out quickly.  So—time being of the essence—I decided to take advantage of their fleeting flavor and nutritional offerings and use them all, including some of the arugula from the sustainable student farm.  I ended up with about a pound of greens, chopped rather small (fingernail-sized pieces).  Loosely using a recipe from the cookbook I got with my CSA shares years ago, I first sautéed them with a freshly chopped bulb of young CSA garlic, then added enough vegetable broth to cover.  I then braised them for about 15 minutes, adding ¼ cup of Malbec near the end.  Meanwhile, I cut six generously thick slices of my husband’s whole-grain bread and slipped them into the toaster.  While still warm, I rubbed them with a halved clove of garlic, then topped them with the greens mixture, which had turned into a kind of paste.

OK, that doesn’t sound good.  Paste. Think pesto, but with wilted greens.  That doesn't sound good either, but I promise it tasted divine; especially topped with an Italian four-cheese mixture and popped under the broiler for a couple of minutes.  Yum!  Just two of these bruschetta made a surprisingly filling dinner, and were huge on nutrition—imagine, a third of a pound of greens per serving!  Brew-sketta (bruschetti?) are a convenient way to use up lots of odds and ends of veggies in your fridge.  Mix and match, chop fine, add garlic and olive oil, top with cheese, broil, and you have a light, vegetarian meal with a name you can be proud of serving and pronouncing properly.

Good Doggie Bag

So…I caved.  There it was, on the way home from swimming, and we were all starving.  The restaurant was not local, but it was close and convenient.  Smoke Que & Brew (which I’m still not quite sure how to pronounce correctly—“Smoke Q?”  “Smoke?” “Smoke-kay?”  as in, Smoke What?!) seemed to have what we needed—food and fast, without being fast food.  As soon as we tasted our burnt ends and my son’s smoked sausage, we knew it wasn’t our beloved Black Dog (a locally-owned, always-crowded barbecue place which uses lots of local farm goods), but we were hungry.  After an unsatisfying tear-in, we asked for a container and took home half of our burnt ends (which were incredibly fatty), half a baked sweet potato, and a couple of ounces of smoked sausage.

The next day, nobody wanted to eat them.  The following day, I knew I had to use them somehow, or guiltily toss them—complete with Styrofoam containers—into the landfill-bound trash can.  I have a really hard time throwing away a half a pound of meat, so I had to be imaginative.  Fortunately, on the same day, I read on the e-bulletin board at work that my college’s sustainable farm had picked its first crop, and would have greens and radishes available for a small donation.  For five dollars (which seemed an extremely reasonable donation to me) I got two quart bags of arugula, two quart bags of spinach, a quart bag of kale, and a huge bunch of radishes. Everything was sparkling clean, and gorgeously dark green.  I had to sample the arugula before I even got everything home.

At home I thawed a quart-sized container of black beans I had cooked and frozen previously and added four cups of vegetable broth; I sautéed a large onion, then chopped up and added the quart bag of kale (a very nice-sized bunch) for about five minutes.  These were added to the beans and broth and brought to a boil.  I chopped the burnt ends and smoked sausage, then decided to add the leftover half of the sweet potato cut into very small pieces as well.  A little of my favorite gourmet garlic salt went in right before I put on the lid.  I left it on for a slow simmer for my son’s 45-minute swim lesson.  When we got home…oh, what an aroma!  The burnt ends lent a smoky flavor to the beans, the potato a touch of sweetness.  The fresh kale gave just the right earthy backdrop.  And, best of all, we felt like we finally got our money’s worth from the less-than-perfect eating out experience.

Spring Chèvre

It’s spring!!  How do I know, you ask?  The blooms are blooming like mad, the lawnmowers are fired up, everybody’s in full-force sneeze mode, and….Don brought me goat’s milk.  My friend and co-worker Don has a goat farm. He can’t really sell his milk, but he’s happy to give it away to anyone who would like to have some of this blessed elixir.  Don’s goats have had their kids, and he milks the mothers daily, sometimes offering me three and four gallons at a time.  When fresh, my family can’t tell the difference between this and cow’s milk on cereal or a big glass with cookies.  I’m personally not a big fan of it heated up with my coffee, but there is one way I LOVE goat’s milk:  made into a creamy mound of chèvre.  “Chèvre” in French is the word for goat, but also the word for the wide range of cheeses that can be made—fresh or aged—from goat’s milk.  I am so in love with the simple variety, which is similar to a dry cream cheese, that I haven’t ventured into attempting the aged or rinded varieties.  Time and space are also issues, but fortunately chèvre is so easy to make, and freezes very nicely, so it’s never a problem.

Making your own chèvre is really, really easy.  I mean it.  I got turned on to cheesemaking by my friend Heidi, who invited me over one afternoon to make mozzarella.  I was intrigued; she used store-bought milk, nothing special.  We heated it, we added little packets of something, we donned rubber gloves, stretched it, then rolled it into little balls and dropped it into ice water.  Ta-dah!  Add some sliced tomatoes, fresh basil, a drizzle of olive oil and balsamic vinegar, and you have my favorite caprese salad.  I HAD to know how to do this!  Turns out, Heidi had gotten the recipe and packets of rennet (the stuff that curdles milk into cheese) in a kit she had ordered from http://www.cheesemaking.com/.  Awesome.

When I looked on the website and discovered the direct-set cultures for goat’s cheese, I ordered a box and waited breathlessly for Don’s offer of milk.  The direct-set culture is really like Cheesemaking For Dummies; you put the milk into a non-reactive pot that will hold a gallon of milk.  You heat it slowly to 86 degrees Fahrenheit.  You turn off the heat, add in the direct culture, stir lots, then cover it and put it somewhere with a constant room temperature.  I use a cooler.  Then you wait.  Twelve hours.  Or 24 hours, if you forget it.  Then you line a colander with cheesecloth (the really dense food-grade kind; the website also sells these), and spoon out the solids, saving the whey for some yummy bread or soup (adds flavor and protein to many things).  Make sure your colander is sitting on a plate or cookie sheet. Then you wait.  Four hours.  Or more, if you forget it (but best to forget it in the refrigerator or a cool place, just in case).  When you’re done, dump it into a bowl and add a teaspoon of cheese salt (also sold on the website) or sea salt.  Mix well.  The instructions say to avoid adding salt if you’re going to freeze it, but I’ve never had any problem freezing the salted batches.  It probably changes the texture a bit, but I usually use the frozen stuff for pizzas or omelets.

Don's an agriculture professor, so I trust my source and usually don't worry about using raw milk, as long as it's fresh.  That having been said, another step I would add if you aren’t sure of the source or freshness of your goat’s milk is to pasteurize it before lowering the temperature to 86 degrees.  You do this by heating it to 165, keeping it there for 15 seconds, then putting the pot in an ice bath to quickly cool it down.  This preserves the good proteins and fats while killing undesirable bacteria.  Most importantly, when cheesemaking, make sure everything is unbelievably clean.  I usually use pots, bowls and utensils that have been through the sterilization cycle on my dishwasher.

Cheesemaking is by nature unpredictable.  Some batches come out creamy and spreadable, others are more crumbly.  This depends on the milk, the time of year, the humidity level, the quality of culture, and so many other factors.  I love each difference, but my favorite is a spoonful of the creamy white yumminess spread on multigrain whey bread.  A rich reward for surprisingly little work!

Loca-What?!

My good friend and Spanish professor Kim recently made a comment on my blog, “Every time I see ‘locavore’ I think ‘crazy eater.’ But it means ‘local,’ right?”  Which instantly made me realize that I really haven’t yet explained the thought process behind my blog and my philosophy of eating.  According to Wikipedia, the definition of “locavore” is quite simple: A locavore is a “person interested in eating food that is locally produced, not moved long distances to market. The locavore movement in the United States and elsewhere was spawned as interest in sustainability and eco-consciousness became more prevalent.”  If you want to read more in Wikipedia, I encourage you to visit here.  And here’s a fabulous link which will tell you more about the movement, giving you lots more information about why one would become a locavore.

Locavores generally become so for a few strong reasons.  First, eating in season is delicious, as foods are at their peak of ripeness and aren’t picked green, then transported long distances, then forced to ripen at or just before the supermarket.  Second, our bodies tell us that more delicious foods are more nutritious; we get more bang for our buck, so to speak.  Third, not transporting food long distances saves money and resources, and puts more money directly in the pocket of the farmer growing our food, instead of umpteen middle men, meddling in our meals.  Finally, eating local is a viable way to support a local economy and a small-scale farmer who hasn’t given in totally to corporate farming practices.

I wish I could say that I knew about all this long ago, and decided to make a drastic change for the better.  But my decision to “go locavore” wasn’t sudden; after reading about it, talking about it, finding resources to support it, the change was, well…organic.  Pardon the pun.

I’ve been a serial dieter.  I worked as a waitress in the early ‘90s, and all my indie-music-loving, hard-drinking, alternative friends were vegetarian.  You can’t hang out with a bunch of vegetarians and eat meat without earning disdain, so I became one myself; not out of a love of animals or an eco-consciousness, nor out of health concerns.  I became a vegetarian by default.

For five years, I was perhaps the most unhealthy vegetarian who ever lived.  Mac and cheese, chocolate, all kinds of carbs and fat —by strict definition, vegetarian—were my steady fare.  After waiting tables, I was in grad school, then floating from part-time job to part-time job, moving cross-country and back.  My weight ballooned to being 100 pounds above the top of the range of my recommended BMI.  I ate crap and felt miserable.  Ultimately, I went on a medically supervised liquid fast for four and a half months, then a strictly supervised count-your-calories and exercise regimen thereafter, and lost 100 pounds in a year.  I did a lot of soul-searching while not eating any food.  During this time, I had to come to terms with some of my food issues, and I realized that a serious lack of iron (I was often anemic), protein, and vitamin B12 (of which meat is the richest source) had contributed to my obesity problems.  I still preferred vegetarian fare to meat dishes, but recognized that—somewhat ironically—meat would have to once again become a part of my diet in order for me to eat healthfully.  I also swore permanently off of fast food at that point.  I am proud to say that I have not been to McDonald’s—except to use the restroom—since 1997.

It was around this time that I met my husband.  He is French, and the son of pig farmers.  We visited his family in France several times, and I was reminded of how the French eat very rich foods, but are also very picky about the quality of their food.  His parents and grandmother had lovely vegetable gardens, and cultivated, canned, and preserved without use of chemicals.  The flavors were intense.  Less food was more satisfying.  It made me think about my childhood, and my attitudes toward food.

My parents used me as slave labor in the garden in my younger years, and I of course hated it.  My arms, back and legs ached from weeding, and I always had sunburns in weird spots where my shirt pulled up or my neck was exposed.  It was always hot and humid, and I could smell my own sweat, and the earth, and the plants.  There was never enough breeze.  You thought you were done picking beans, then you would look up again, and there were always a few more to be picked.  The mosquitoes were fearless, even in the middle of the day in this spot next to the woods and river.  The corn leaves left cuts like paper cuts that would burn when the sweat trickled down your legs and arms.  That misery left me with a serious lack of appreciation of how delicious the food was at that time compared to today, unfortunately. My parents both had full time jobs, but somehow we used evenings and weekends in late summer to can beans, pickles, tomatoes and fruit preserves; freeze corn, strawberries, and rhubarb; in fall, to pick turnips and make pies of pumpkin and squash and can grape juice.  Somehow, I didn’t register at the time the changing seasons of vegetables and fruits, and the lusciousness of picking something out of the garden and eating it right at its peak.

When I became pregnant with my son, I realized that I was affecting not only my own body, but also someone else’s body and future health with my food choices.  I started investigating organic sources for food, and focusing on eating more healthfully.  We and three other couples had started a dinner club, and much of our conversation was about the Slow Food movement, enjoying eating slowly and consciously, eating for health, eating for enjoyment, eating in a social context, and searching for environmentally responsible and sustainable food-raising practices.  We bought a bread machine, and my husband began baking all our bread at home (no small feat, considering the average amount of bread generally consumed by the French!).  Not long after this, I began reading more:  Michael Pollan’s books (The Omnivore’s Dilemma, In Defense of Food), Barbara Kingsolver (Animal, Vegetable, Miracle), and wondering what I could do to change in small, yet measurable, ways.  No, I couldn’t eat entirely local like Barbara Kingsolver’s family’s yearlong experiment.  No, I couldn’t avoid entirely the politics of food by never going to the grocery store again.  But I could do many things:

1.     Eat at home, mostly.  Rarely eat out.  (which also saves money for buying more expensive organic items)

2.     Buy local.  We have a fantastic farmer’s market in the summer months, and a co-op selling local food year-round.  Restaurants have also fortunately started using more local food.

3.     Join a CSA.  Community Supported Agriculture has been around a long time, but has just in the last few years become more organized.  I buy a share in a local farm and during the summer months I get a large box of vegetables every week, delivered to a house just a few blocks away.  I don’t have to slave away in a garden while working full time (which wouldn’t work anyway, since our yard is too shaded by a giant black walnut tree poisonous to most of the veggies I like to grow). The CSA sends me weekly email updates on the farm and recipes.

4.     Join a meat-buying club.  Our club supports the farm directly.  We are invited to a feast at the farm once a year, where we can see the animals grazing contentedly in the open air.  I have progressively stopped buying any meat outside the club; unfortunately, I still have to buy my fish and seafood at a supermarket.

5.     Find alternative ways to get farm-direct products (more in a later post).  I get eggs and goat’s milk from colleagues who have farms.

6.     For those things I can’t avoid going to a supermarket to buy, only buy organic or all-natural products, following Michael Pollan’s rules of five-ingredient limits and only ingredients I could spell in a spelling bee.

Sometimes, I have to make choices that don’t perfectly follow my philosophy.  I consequently do not judge those who don’t have the same philosophy; my path is not easy, and it’s not for everyone (although I do tip my hat to those who make efforts to eat better, even in small, but appreciable ways).  It can be very expensive and time-consuming, especially during the growing season.  But my goal is to incorporate at least one local ingredient in each meal I make for my family (including breakfast!).  Ultimately, I want to know that my food source is close to me, and in turn, I am closer to my food, and all the benefits eating well provides.

Simplicity

Sometimes I get overwhelmed with the thought of making dinner.  I know it sounds silly, but today was one of those days.  I haven’t been sleeping well lately, and I finally took a day off of work to try to rest, even though actual deep sleep eludes me.  I sat around, planning dinner in my head, but every recipe required planning and chopping and cleaning and prepping….well, you get the idea.  I finally managed to wander to the basement to stare into the depths of my chest freezer, hoping a good idea would pop up and smack me in the face.  Not quite, but the top chunk of meat was a flank steak, so I picked it up and brought it upstairs to defrost.

I was already roaming on the internet, so I searched for a flank steak recipe.  Most involved grilling and marinades.  I was not about to operate the grill; even though it’s been unseasonably warm, I feared injuring myself in the 40-mile-per-hour wind gusts.  All the marinades involved food-processing ingredients I didn’t have; and even if I had them, my food processor is toast, so I’d have to do them in the blender or something.  Sigh.

So I picked up my son from school and went to the library.  I don’t know why, but I suddenly started craving baked potatoes.  Well, that’s easy enough, I told myself.  I’ll just broil the flank steak and have baked potatoes and some random green vegetable from the freezer.  When I got home, I opened the fridge, took out the steak, and a container of leftover shallot vinaigrette caught my eye.  Perfect!  I smeared it over the steak, added some fancy garlic salt, and let it marinate while I baked the potatoes.

Flank steak is a fairly muscular cut of meat.  If cooked right, it can be tender and full of flavor, and there are a couple of secrets to getting it that way.  First, marinades, especially with tenderizing ingredients like salt and vinegar, add flavor and make the meat more malleable.  Second, these cuts must be eaten rare or medium rare.  Cooked more and they become almost inedible.  I had a one-inch-thick piece, and I broiled on high five minutes each side.  Third, they must rest at least 5-10 minutes after coming out of the heat before slicing.  I’m sure there’s some sort of chemistry and/or physics here at work,  but I don’t know exactly why it works.  But it works.  Finally, be sure to cut perpendicular to the grain.  This is easy with a long cut of meat.

While this was going on, I steamed some green beans to go with it. Nothing fancy; I just decided to enjoy the simple flavors of good beef, green beans and a baked potato (with salt and a dab of sour cream).  And that was exactly what my tired brain and body needed.

Invention

From inside, it looked like a warm summer day.  When I met my friend at the park, however, I realized that it was bitter cold and blustery, despite the clear blue sky and warm sunshine.  Our walk warmed me up a bit, but I got chilled again as I watched my son run around the play structure afterwards.

I needed hot soup, stat.

If necessity is the mother of invention, I’d have to say that this particular brainchild came out just fine.  I’d just simmered a Triple S chicken carcass for a couple of hours yesterday, so I had plenty of lovely stock.  I looked in the freezer for an appropriate meat base, but all I could find was some Triple S bulk breakfast sausage.  I wasn’t really sure what I’d been thinking on that one—I can’t remember the last time I had sausage for breakfast—but it would fit the bill now.  I had just bought four $1 organic “baby bella” mushroom (8 ounce) packages, knowing that meant they would need to be used up right away.  "Baby bella" mushrooms are actually crimini mushrooms, and are quite good for you, as mushrooms go.  I cleaned them and quartered them, including the stem.  I chopped two medium-sized onions, then shredded three giant Blue Moon Farm carrots (making about a cup and a half of shredded carrots).

I had recently seasoned my cast iron “cauldron”.  I had been recently noticing black flaking off the cooking surface, so I knew it was time.  Seasoning requires a very hot oven (450 or 500 degrees), some oil which can withstand very high temperatures (peanut, grape seed and coconut come to mind, but there are others; check labels), and time.  The result is an almost non-stick surface, minus the Teflon.  This was perfect for browning my pound of breakfast sausage, then adding in my onions and shredded carrots to sauté for a few minutes.  After that, the mushrooms were added in.  At this point, you couldn’t say that they were sautéing, but the mushrooms changed color a bit, and added some moisture to the mixture.  After all the mushrooms were no longer white, I added a half a cup of flour and cooked for a couple of minutes, stirring constantly.  The flour took up all the spare liquid, and all the vegetables were coated (much like my roux in the gumbo).  I added a half a cup of pinot grigio that was threatening to pack up to move to warmer climes, and a scant half-gallon jar of chicken stock, poured through a strainer to remove the top layer of fat.  Thyme, you ask?  But, of course!  A couple of teaspoons seemed to be the right amount.  I added a pinch of rosemary for good measure, and some of my favorite gourmet garlic salt.  The whole thing came to a boil, and then simmered for 30 minutes.  I added a half a cup of heavy cream at the end (which is, of course, optional), and could hardly wait to taste it.

By this time, I was thoroughly warmed up and didn’t really need the soup, but it seemed a nice way to end a lovely day outside.  I was also anxious to post this recipe; most of my past inventions have never been repeated, as I never write them down.  This one I can make again, on another chilly day.

Bacon Fat Tuesday

I hardly ever use recipes.  I should re-phrase that, actually.  I use recipes quite frequently; I never follow them to the letter.  Most dishes I make are an amalgam of several recipes I’ve downloaded from the internet, read in a cookbook, or inherited from family members, and my own quirky shortcuts.  And so it was with my shrimp and sausage gumbo last night….what was always a slightly complicated and time-consuming gumbo was reduced to its basic elements for a weeknight prep.  I had read several recipes and found the commonalities:  some sort of fat and flour to make a roux, onions, peppers, shrimp or fish, and spices providing that specific brand of Cajun heat.  Sausage was in several of the recipes, and I happened to have some Triple S Farms Andouille Bratwurst.  I cut it into bite-sized chunks and fried it up in the Cauldron.  I started defrosting the "anti-eco" shrimp (I promise I'll buy it from another source after I exhaust my supply!).  I then removed the sausage to a plate and kept it warm in the oven.  Triple S pigs seem to get a little too much exercise to provide enough fat to make a roux from the sausage, so I added in some stored (Triple S again!) bacon fat I’d saved from my breakfast-for-dinner meal.  It totaled about a half a cup of fat; I heated it thoroughly, then added—bit by bit—a half a cup of unbleached flour.  The tricky part of a roux is the temperature; too high and it will burn and be bitter; too low and it will taste like flour and not get that kind of cake-batter consistency.  Really, it should look like caramel-colored cake batter when you finish, even a bit more chocolaty if you can wait longer—which I couldn’t.  To avoid burning it, you should keep stirring constantly.  If you do it right, it will take 20-25 minutes.

Which is where my “quirky shortcut” comes in.

I figure if it’s blended, not burnt, and smells good, a light brown roux won’t kill anybody, so I save a chunk of time by adding the cut up vegetables earlier and not waiting until it’s dark brown (the dark roux tastes better, of course, but that will have to wait for a weekend).  A couple of cut-up bell peppers (I don’t like green, so I use orange and yellow), two cups of diced onions, and 3 or 4 stalks of cut-up celery are the most important.  Second shortcut:  I let the roux cook them for 5 or 10 minutes (not allowing them to burn) and make sure all the veggies are coated with the roux.  I don’t cook them for the whole 30 minutes that my recipe recommends.  At this point I add in diced tomatoes (3 large fresh or one 28-oz of canned) and 4 cups of chicken broth.  Stir, stir, stir.  Back in goes the sausage, then a package of cut-up frozen okra (fresh would be better, of course, if it’s available), and some Cajun spice (not too much, as the Andouille is pretty spicy) and a couple of bay leaves.  If you have leftover cooked chicken, you can add that in too, of course.  I bring the whole thing to a boil, then turn down to simmer, cover, and start my rice. The gumbo needs a good 35-40 minutes yet.   

I like brown rice for many many things, but it just doesn’t seem right for gumbo.  Long grain white rice cooks fairly quickly, so it will be ready and waiting by the time the gumbo is done.  I sauté the dry rice in a little olive oil, then add the water, cover, and bring to a boil.  When boiling, I lower the temperature to the lowest setting and don’t lift the lid for 15 minutes.  I check quickly, lifting the lid for a brief second without letting the steam escape.  When the rice looks done on the top and has little holes (like rabbit holes) all around the surface, it’s done.  Replace the lid tightly and let it sit for another 5-10 minutes.

Meanwhile, I pour a glass of wine and thank my husband for chopping veggies in advance.  I check my son’s homework and set the table.  My shrimp has been defrosted, and I make sure there’s not a lot of water left in the strainer.  I add it in to the gumbo for the last five minutes of cooking, just until the shrimp is pink, and the whole thing is heated through.  A scoop of rice and a ladle-full of gumbo—suddenly I’m in the Mardi Gras mood!  I’d give up many things for Lent, but not delicious food.