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!