Under Pressure

My mother had no microwave, no toaster oven; and although she was not the best cook in the world, she did attempt to make well-rounded, nutritious meals for us in short time.  One of the only tools of convenience she used was her pressure cooker.  Many a meal was cooked quickly (and often ended up in a colorless mush, frankly) in that rather frightening-looking contraption.  Her aluminum version looked like it had been through several wars, and the disk on top had holes of different sizes which determined the amount of pressure; it sort of looked like an instrument of torture.  When it was cooking, it made an irritating rattling sound that could be heard throughout the house. She removed it with the tines of a serving fork, and the steam eruption threatened to blow off the ceiling of our kitchen. 

The concept of a pressure cooker is rather simple:  foods are prepped, meat is browned, then all is added with water or broth in a pot with a seal and interlocking lid.  When heated, the valve on the lid closes, and pressure builds up inside the pot.  I vaguely remember a pressure/temperature equation from high school physics (and something about water boiling at room temperature under a bell jar), but all I can tell you now is that food in that pot under 10 or 15 pounds of pressure cooks quickly.  I’ve heard it also retains the nutrients of the food better, since it is time, as well as temperature, that break down nutrients in food.  Think of it as a slow-cooker meal, but in 1/20^th of the time.

My husband bought me a pressure cooker for Christmas a couple of years ago, and, oh, boy! have they improved the technology.  Mine is an electric Cuisinart with a non-stick surface and settings for browning, simmering, low and high pressure, and keeping warm.  It came with an easy-to-understand booklet of charts and recipes.  The steam emitting from the pressure valve, when opened for quick-release, is still an impressive sight, but the loudest sound it makes is from the beeping of the electronic timer.  Quiet and safe, a far cry from my mother’s version.

I often forget about the pressure cooker, tucked away in my cabinet next to the ice cream maker and the blender.  But tonight I had thawed a pound of stew beef (from Triple S, of course!), and needed to make something quickly for dinner.  Cooking stew beef quickly can end in an unchewable disaster, but the pressure cooker can do the job while tenderizing the meat in a matter of minutes.  I peeled a bunch of carrots (about 7 or 8, I think) and cut them into coin slices.  I washed and cut the bad parts out of a couple of pounds of potatoes, then quartered them.  I chopped a half of a gigantic onion and two cloves of garlic.  I also chopped up a huge bunch of fresh thyme (probably a couple of tablespoons after being chopped).  With my pressure cooker setting on “brown” I added a couple of tablespoons of olive oil, got it hot, and then browned the meat.  I added the onion and garlic, and finished the browning.  I then added three tablespoons of Grey Poupon Dijon mustard, stirred it in, then added ¼ cup of flour to coat the meat.  After the flour had disappeared, I added 1 ¾ cup of beef broth (from bouillon) and made the thing come to a boil.  I popped on the pressure cooker lid and set it for high pressure for five minutes.  (That’s right, five [5] minutes!)  After a quick pressure release (which always thrills my nine-year-old), I opened the pot and added the carrots, potatoes, and thyme, and about ½ cup of water.  I closed the lid again, and set it for another six minutes (yup, six [6] minutes!). This time I did a natural pressure release (allowing the pressure to escape the valve slowly while the food is still cooking), which adds another 10 minutes or so.  Once the indicator shows the pressure has released, the lid opens, and, voilà! dinner is ready!  This meal could even sit a while in the pressure cooker on the warm setting for a few minutes while you toss a salad or warm some bread.

Including prep time (15 minutes), browning time (10 minutes), pressure-cooking time (11 minutes, plus heat up and natural pressure release), I had a delicious stew with tender pieces of beef ready in about 40 minutes. And leftovers for tomorrow’s lunch!

Fast Food

On my way home from work I drive past a couple of fast food places.  Usually I smirk at the long line of cars snaking around those buildings, waiting to pay for and consume grease, salt and sugar in various forms, wrapped in overabundant packaging.  But sometimes I have to admit that I wish I could order some simple, local fare from a window.  Someone else could cook it, package it, and have it hot and ready to serve when I get home.  Fortunately, I have a few quick and easy dinners up my sleeve that my family enjoys, so I sigh and drive on past, towards the grocery store.

A new find at my local grocery is uncooked tortillas.  Although packaged and not local, they fit into Michael Pollan’s definition of “real food”, the only tortillas in the refrigerated case with five or fewer ingredients:  wheat flour, water, canola oil, salt, sugar.  Less than a minute on each side in my heated cast iron skillet, and they are puffy and slightly crispy, just perfect.   Tonight I fry half of a giant onion from the Moore’s farm with a pound of ground beef from Triple S farms.  I sprinkle with some chili powder and salt, then add in a giant can of organic black beans which I’ve rinsed to get the bubbles out.  In goes a half a cup of water, then it all simmers for a few minutes while I cook the tortillas.  I crumble up some homemade goat cheese that I’d gotten out of the freezer earlier, and chop a huge bunch of cilantro I bought at the market this weekend from Blue Moon farms.  I take a jar of jalapeños and a tub of fresh deli-made salsa from the co-op out of the fridge.  It takes me longer to get my men off their respective computers and come downstairs than it did to make dinner.

No wrapping, no Styrofoam, no paper napkins.  Everybody rolls up their sleeves and stuffs as much as they can of their favorite combinations into the tortillas; they’re messy and dripping as we dig in.   (I didn’t even have time to make my specialty margaritas!)  No window, no waiting in line, no indigestion afterwards.  I remind myself that my version of “fast food” is worth the tiny bit of extra effort I put in.

Locavore Temporarily Transplanted

I’ve been on hiatus from the blog, but not from eating locally.  Just this past week I’ve been eating locally in a completely different locale—my in-laws’ home in the Pays de la Loire region of France.  We were visiting to help them celebrate their 50^th wedding anniversary, an incredible milestone, and an attestation to their work for the relationship, their longstanding sense of humor, and their strong love for each other.  As I could fill an entire blog entry on the dinner of that celebration, I will save it until later, but every day leading up to it exposed me to local foods and wines.  Being a locavore is not a novelty in rural France, but a long tradition that still lives today.  The classic French homemaker knows what’s in season and what’s not.  She generally has pots of herbs and a “jardin potager”, and the vegetables flourish with France’s long growing season advantage.  She knows what seafood is available in the market, what herbs should go in which sauce in autumn, what makes a winter meal hearty and a summer meal light.  She knows how to preserve the fruits of summer for the long and gloomy winter days.

We arrived to blessedly sunny September weather with cool evenings.  Having gotten off a plane that served us the usual mystery meat with flaccid vegetables, and having driven nonstop from Paris, I was hungry.  Dinner is served at around 8:30, and only the children get a formal “gouter” or snack at around 5:00.  No worries, though; I simply had to wander my in-laws’ couple of acres’ worth of fruit trees and bushes to find my own delectable snack. It doesn’t get much more local than one’s own back yard. First stop, plums.

These little beauties are called “quetsches” or “prunes bleues.”  My mother-in-law whispered in my ear that they’re also locally called “les couilles du pape.”  The pope’s balls; for obvious reasons, especially when they’re more….let’s say….ripe and wrinkled.  France has so many great varieties of plums—mirabelles, reine-claudes, and pruneaux.  The quetsche is best eaten while still firm.  The flesh softens quickly and loses its sweetness.

Next, I moved to the apple trees.  Three different varieties, none of which I knew the name of.  One had skin like a paper bag, but was juicy and sweet-tart on the inside.  Others blushed red in the sunset.  A third variety looked like a distant cousin to our Granny Smith, robust and firm.

My father-in-law led me to his favorite, the peaches.  This particular peach was small and white-fleshed and incredibly sweet.  He showed me two more trees in the middle of the vegetable garden that had come up volunteer; their branches were bowed with the weight of the fruit.

The pears came in different shapes and sizes, many of them long and tapered.  Usually I don’t like the skin of a pear, but it didn’t stop me at this moment from plucking a juicy specimen from the tree and gulping and slurping my way into the middle.

Sad remains of the blackberries

We passed by the cherry trees, which had not really produced this year, my in-laws reported with a wistful tone.  I didn’t know how one would miss them with all this other fruit!  Bits of brilliant red caught my eye as I wandered over to the raspberry bushes.  As they were in their second run for the  season, I could pull off ripe ones by the handful, but the blackberry bushes were finished for the year.

I could get used to this, I thought.  My mother-in-law reminded me that they were loads of maintenance, however.  Pruning the trees, picking, cleaning and preserving the fruit, all of this takes time and great effort.  On her cellar shelves sits the proof:  over 200 quart-sized jars of fruit jams and preserves, requiring hours and days and weeks to can.  The next morning I sampled plum, pear and raspberry preserves on my bread, and, oh! I could taste the sunshine in the jar.

Overwhelmed

This is what I saw on Sunday afternoon after I dragged everything out of my top vegetable drawer and washed it.  Lovely, no?  So colorful, so seductive.  And yes, you read correctly, I said my top vegetable drawer.  I have two vegetable drawers, the bottom one containing greens, two monster-sized daikons, more cucumbers, cabbage, and more peppers.  This photo also does not picture the stuff I leave out of the fridge:  onions, garlic, potatoes, and tomatoes (the ones I couldn't resist from Blue Moon farm at the Urbana Farmers' Market).  Just the top vegetable drawer.  It seems a little like a tent or a car in Harry Potter book, or the TARDIS of Dr. Who fame—much bigger on the inside than on the outside.  How could one tiny drawer contain so many vegetables?  And they're just so gorgeous, how could I deny them at their peak of flavor and beauty?

So…this is the time of year when I question my sanity and my decision to join two CSAs, for a total of one and a half shares.  It’s usually like this at some point with just one share, but later in the season.  This year’s severe drought has forced our CSA farmers to harvest as much as they can earlier in the season, because the season may just not last very long.  And so, I’m faced with an overabundance of yellow squash, cucumbers, eggplant, peppers, etc.

As I stare at this pile, frantic thoughts run through my head.  “Whom could I give this to?”  “Could I just sneak it onto someone’s doorstep with a little note?” “We could run a test to see how long these veggies hold up until they rot, write down the results, then have a guide for next year.”  “I can’t let this go to waste, I paid good money for this!”  “I could make a zucchini bread, then pickles, then I could make moussaka for dinner!”  Never mind that it was already 4:00pm and the natives’ tummies were already getting restless.  Never mind that the lamb was still frozen, and every moussaka recipe I found on the internet took at least two hours to make.  Never mind that I was tired from a super-busy week, cranky from the heat, and achy from long hours in the car from two trips to Chicago earlier in the week.  Never mind that it was Sunday night, and I had promised myself to get more sleep before my workweek.

I poured myself a gin and tonic with lots of lime and ice, the perfect avoidance strategy.  I sat out on my front porch and thought about vegetables.  I felt a little bit like crying.  Whether the gin and tonic gave me courage, or I just got sick of listening to myself, I finally got up, went back in the kitchen, washed my hands, and called the crew to come downstairs from their computer silos.  With a silent thanks to Anne Lamott for the “Bird by Bird” strategy (used for the writing process, but also works for anything that currently seems insurmountable), I started with the yellow squash.  The plan:  I would cut off the ends and brown bits, and the nine-year-old would write the date and contents on the Ziploc freezer bags.  We alternated shredding and scooping into quart bags.  As much as I hate plastic, I have to admit that the bags are the most practical and take up the least amount of space in my freezer.  If they lie on a relatively flat surface for the initial freeze, they become very easy to stack or put side-by-side for easier viewing.

My husband joined us to peel eggplant, cut peppers, chop onions and peel and chop tomatoes for caponata.  This delicious little appetizer also freezes well, and has been a very easy thing to pop out of the freezer and thaw quickly for impromptu guests.  I love it on Wasa crackers or thin multigrain toast.  I love this simple recipe at Cooks.com, and it’s very easy, and uses so many ingredients I have on hand:  eggplant, bell peppers, tomatoes, onions, green olives, capers, red wine vinegar, sugar and pine nuts.  There is a lot of chopping, though.  My added note to the recipe is to make sure everything is chopped very small; this makes for faster cooking and easier dipping.  After blanching the corn, I dunked it in ice water, then my husband cut the corn off the ears with a tool from my parents’ canning and freezing days (this can also be done with a very sharp chef's knife).  We would now have frozen corn kernels, begging to be made into winter corn chowder.  I prepped the cucumbers for agurke salat, another favorite recipe that’s an easy pickling process, and keeps well in the fridge.  I just wish I wasn’t the only one in the family that liked cucumbers and pickles.

Finally, the caponata was bubbling on the stove, the sweet-sour vinaigrettes were prepared, and it was almost my son’s bedtime.  “But we haven’t had dinner yet!” he complained.  Ironically, I had totally forgotten about dinner, so deep was I into food preparation.  But how to explain to my son that none of this was for eating immediately?  The caponata needed to be chilled for 12 hours, the agurke salat had to be rinsed and sit in the vinaigrette, the freezer items were, well, for the freezer.  I’m not sure how my grandmothers and great-grandmothers did it, all day in the kitchen to prepare for winter, at the same time keeping up with the daily needs of hungry people.  They didn’t have huge refrigerators or freezers.  They canned everything they could, a laborious process.  I feel like a total wimp.

Fortunately, once again, leftovers came to the rescue.  I went to bed after we all cleaned up the kitchen, and felt happy with my efforts.  That is, until I remembered our next CSA pickup was just two days away…..

Cooking with Amy

Last week my dearest friend Amy came to visit from Belgium with her family.  I had been looking forward to Amy’s visit for months, not only to catch up with her and her lovely husband and three teenage sons, but also to do one of our favorite things to do together:  cook.  Amy and I have been cooking together since November of 1988, when we attempted our first complete Thanksgiving feast for some international friends living in her university housing complex.  We spent hours of searching for and inventing recipes, calling our mothers in turn for advice and instructions, posing with the raw turkey for photos, then serving what we both deemed to be American home-cooked cuisine at its finest.

Since that time, we’ve been sharing recipes and food ideas across the Big Pond, and have had a few more opportunities to be in the kitchen together.  When Amy and her family visited in 2007, we prepared her eggplant-basil quiche, a wonderful addition to my recipe list.  I am always a bit intimidated by the quantities necessary to feed our broods simultaneously (eight people at every meal), but Amy cheerfully helps me use whatever is on hand to create a masterpiece, and this visit was no exception.

Eager to use up more greens from my CSA share, I suggested a recipe for our last evening together for a baked ziti with Swiss chard.  Amy smiled hesitantly, and never one to mince words, she said, “I’d love it, but I know my kids won’t eat it.”  Hmmm.  Well, to be quite honest, I thought to myself, my kid wouldn’t eat it either.  I’ve become a master at disguising vegetables, but Swiss chard has an earthy flavor and a rather tough texture that wouldn’t just disappear in a mass of pasta and sauce.

And now comes the mutual creativity part.  What to do?  Well, we had four lovely heads of fresh broccoli and several zucchini and yellow squash from the CSA share Amy had come to pick up with me earlier that day.  We soaked the broccoli for worms, and cut it up for steaming.  Amy set to work shredding a couple of zucchini and a yellow squash. I’m always astounded at the ease with which Amy orients herself to a new kitchen, new utensils, and the location of pots and pans.  I opened industrial amounts of canned diced tomatoes and set them to drain, then opened three packages of penne pasta.  We sent Florian, her eldest, to the garden with a pair of scissors to fetch the basil that’s been flourishing in the heat.  I minced a head of fresh garlic and a fresh onion from the share.  We made an extremely simple sauce by sautéing the onion and garlic, then adding the shredded zucchini and yellow squash, then the minced basil leaves (a huge bunch).  The diced tomatoes, a pinch of sugar, and a healthy tablespoon of dried oregano rounded out our sauce, which we set to simmer while we prepared the pasta.  We steamed the broccoli to a brilliant green, and served everything piping hot.  I added a large dollop of my homemade goat cheese on the top of the pasta and sauce for the finishing touch.  We stood back, amazed once again at how we two women—each of us normally a bit “control freak” in our own kitchens—were able to dance around each other to create another crowd-pleaser.

The eight of us sat together, the adults sipping a lovely Malbec, the children blissfully unaware of how many vegetables we had managed to sneak into their meal.  Everyone took seconds.  And Amy and I lifted our glasses in a toast to each other, creating a new memory of cooking together for our recipe box.

Condiment Inspiration

My son has recently discovered that his favorite meat is chicken.  For some reason, I was craving chicken too this evening, so I got two packages of Triple S chicken thighs from the freezer.  I was wondering what to do with them, standing gazing into the fridge for inspiration, when my eye fell on my condiments.  I’ve been on a mission to minimize our condiments recently, so I scanned the small bottles and jars for the oldest, saddest representatives.  One tall jar stood out, only about an eighth full of green olives; the rest was briny olive juice and dejected looking pimentos.  That's the one, I thought!

For some strange reason, I have a bunch of recipes for Moroccan chicken stew.  I glanced at a couple of them and realized that they all had some base ingredients in common:  green olives, garlic, diced tomatoes, broth, white wine or lemon juice and bay leaves.  I dumped in the olives and juice, some white wine (1/2 cup, I think), some garlic, a can of diced tomatoes, four bay leaves, a huge bunch of chopped fresh thyme.  I realized afterwards I forgot to throw in a cinnamon stick, the flavor that really makes the dish exotic.

Not one to waste time on a Monday evening, I threw all of this over the chicken without browning it (when it’s a stew anyway, I just don’t see the point) in my giant cast iron cauldron; I heaved it into a 425 degree oven for an hour (the chicken was still partly frozen; once again, I just don’t see the point of defrosting it completely for a stew). I then sliced up some beets from our shares, tossed them in olive oil and spread them in a shallow baking dish to go in at 30 minutes.  After a frantic scouring of the pantry shelves for couscous, I finally found some quinoa instead.  I felt like I had successfully combined the flavors of North Africa, Eastern Europe, and South America—a global meal success!

Now, I wonder what I can do with that half-full jar of jalapeños….

My inspiration

Cheek , Lips, Tongue (and other [un]desirable parts)

When I was in my first semester of undergraduate study abroad in France, we toured the Loire Valley.  One afternoon we checked into a hostel housed in a former chateau.  We were charmed, and despite the more-than-modest furnishings, were expecting a sumptuous midday meal befitting a duke/duchess-in-residence.  What we got?  Boiled beef tongue with lentils.  With a fit of the giggles tingeing on hysteria, we tried our best to tucker in.  Like most new foods, it is texture, not flavor, that the taster often objects to.  This was definitely my case.  Cutting the tongue was too easy; chewing was….well….chewy.  I was well on my way to swallowing my first bite when my friend Rachel leaned conspiratorially over the table and whispered sotto voce, “why do I feel like I’m French-kissing a cow?”

I couldn’t even swallow it.

I tried to make do with the lentils, but I’ve never been a fan of that texture either.  My “sumptuous” lunch now consisted of bread crusts (everyone else had grabbed the good pieces when they caught sight of the tongue) and a sad little yogurt.

Never one to be easily defeated, I once again tried tongue.  This time, my French roommate had invited me back to her parents’ house in Mâcon for an anniversary celebration.  There could not be a dish more diametrically opposed to the tongue and lentils of the chateau--veal tongue swimming in demi-glace with morels.  I’m glad I wasn’t put off by the first experience, because truly the veal tongue was one of the most deliciously memorable meals of my life.

I’m still not a big fan of organs, or—as I like to call them—“clearly identifiable body parts.”  I remember fondly a moment when a beautiful Brazilian man named Wellington offered me his heart…and handed it to me on a stick.  I smiled seductively, or as seductively as one can when staring down a chicken heart.  Was it worth all the chewing?  I’m still not sure.  I am pretty sure, however, that he’s still laughing at the gringa  who couldn’t fully appreciate one of Brazil’s favorite street foods.

So when my dear friend Silvia sent me a recipe for beef cheeks earlier this year, I took it as a sign from the gods to once again step outside of my comfort zone.  But….cheeks, for god’s sakes!  My tongue rolled around my mouth, stroking the soft insides of my own cheeks.  Try to be objective, I thought.  They’re soft, sure to be tender.  But, could I even find them?  By the time I was looking at the order form for my monthly meat-buying club order I had completely forgotten them; but guess what jumped out at me?  That’s right, there they were, available, fairly inexpensive, and organic.  Huh.

The cheeks, I will have to admit, have been languishing in my deep freezer for a couple of months.  I finally took them out to thaw.  I started with Silvia’s forwarded recipe (http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Braised-Beef-Cheeks-107803), and her suggestions for changes (substitute leeks for celery, add garlic, etc.), and I took a short inventory of what vegetables we had recently gotten in our shares.  Leeks?  Check (cute little pungent fellows from my CSA share).  Celery?  Nope, but I could pick up a package of organic celery at the store.  Wine?  Of course.  Canned tomatoes?  Wouldn’t be caught dead without them.  Carrots?  No, but I do have other root vegetables:  turnips and a couple of teeny-tiny beets.  Onions?  Always.  Garlic?  Oops, no cloves, no jar, forgot both at the store.  But, hey, here’s a chance to try out those garlic scapes winding their way around my crisper drawer.

I chopped the veggies the night before into small bits:  1 onion, 2 ribs celery, 3 very small turnips, 2 teensy beets, 3 small but mighty leeks, 5 garlic scapes.  On my lunch hour the following day I decided to forgo actual lunch and brown the meat (about 5 pounds), remove from frying pan and add all the veggies and sauté for about 5 minutes.  I added 2 cups of cabernet sauvignon, ½ teaspoon of cocoa powder, two 14-oz. cans of organic diced tomatoes, salt and pepper.  I tried to make everything come to a boil, but I didn’t really have enough time; I ended up dumping it into my crock pot, turning it on high, and timing it for 4.5 hours.

When I got home, I strained out as much broth as I could and reduced it by 2/3 in a saucepan.  The veggies lent an earthy flavor, the sauce was rich and velvety, and the cheeks were magnificently tender.  I didn’t even need a knife to cut through.  Success.  And a little of my fear of body parts went away, thanks to Silvia.

After dinner, my son was standing in the kitchen.  Kissing him on the head, I asked, “What’s up?”

“Chicken butt,” was his prompt reply.

No, I will not be trying that any time soon.

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.