Edible/Usable

Thanksgiving Success Including Apple Sour Cherry Pie

Just a short post about some of the great food I had this Thanksgiving.  We went to a friend's for dinner where they made their famous turkey on the BBQ which is a fast and delicious way to make a turkey that I'd never seen done before.  There were also some delicious parsnips roasted with Parmesan, fantastic roasted potatoes and carrots with ginger.   I made brussel sprouts roasted with pancetta, one of the few ways I like brussel sprouts, and I spent literally 2 hours peeling pear onions for balsamic roasted pearl onions from The Cutting Edge of Ordinary blog which were fantastic.  Since I was dining with Brits, they requested that I not make the normal American version of sweet potatoes (the marshmallow ones), so instead I made Sweet Potato Gratin from Smitten Kitchen.  I made a few changes/substitutions since some of the 200+ commenters (!!) mentioned that it was a little watery: I used fresh spinach instead of chard (the chard at Fairway looked uninspiring), I baked it twice - once the day before, then I reheated it right before dinner.  And before I reheated it, I sprinkled some bread crumbs on top along with another sprinkling of Gruyere cheese.  It was a huge hit and definitely a keeper.

For desert, rather than the standard pumpkin or pecan pie (apparently Brits don't like Pumpkin) I made the Beet Pie which has become a new favorite, and since I had about 2 cups of sour cherries left from what I'd frozen this summer, I made an Apple Sour Cherry Pie.  Although it came out a little 'juicier' than I'd like, here's the recipe exactly as I made it.  I may try it again (next year when I have sour cherries again) and I'll drain the sour cherries before adding them, and I'll add a bit more flour and corn starch - corn starch being something I only use in berry pies that I know will be really juicy.

Four things I've been experimenting with lately with pies and pie crusts that I've been happy with: First, I've been making the pie dough in a food processor up to the point where I add the first half of the water (a few tablespoons), then turning it out on the counter and adding the rest of the water.  And I always make each top or bottom separately (it just seems easier to me that way).  Second, I've been using my standard recipe for pie dough (flour, butter, ice water, salt, sugar) but for sweet pies I've started adding about 1/4 cup of very finely chopped nuts (walnuts or pecans). Third, after reading the section about flour in Harold McGee's "On Food and Cooking"  where he talks about gluten and how it develops in pastry dough, I've been making the dough a day in advance and letting it sit overnight in the fridge.  Fourth, I've been using at least half raw or turbinado sugar http://www.sugarintheraw.com/ in the fruit filling, the other half regular granulated white sugar.  So far, my experiments have been successful.

Apple Sour Cherry Pie

4 apples - mix of baking types like Rome, Macintosh or Cortland
2 cups pitted sour cherries
1/2 cup raw sugar
1/2 cup white sugar
2 T lemon juice
Lemon zest from one lemon
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 t nutmeg
1/4 t cloves
2 T flour
2 T corn starch
1 T Port or Whiskey (or 1 t of vanilla if you prefer)

For crust: (makes one top or bottom crust)

1 C plus 2 T flour
1 stick cold butter, cut in pieces
2-4 T ice cold water
1 t salt
1 T sugar
1/4 cup walnuts or pecans

The day before you are going to bake the pie, make the crust recipe twice:  add the nuts to the food processor, and pulse until nuts are very finely ground.  Add flour, sugar and salt to the processor and pulse briefly to mix dry ingredients.  Add pieces of very cold butter and blend until it looks like cornmeal with a few bigger lumps.  Add about 2 tablespoons of cold water and mix briefly just until the dough starts to come together.  There will still be loose bits of flour/butter mixture.  Dump mixture into a bowl or onto a floured surface and add the remaining ice water and gently knead together until it easily forms a ball.  Don't over knead!  Pat it into a round disk, wrap well in plastic wrap and refrigerate overnight.

For the filling: Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.  Peel and core the apples and cut into slices or chunky pieces (or both), adding lemon juice as you go to keep apples from turning brown.  Add sour cherries, port and lemon zest.  Mix all dry ingredients together in a small bowl, then add to the fruit mixture.  Mix well and set aside.

Roll out bottom crust into 9 inch pie pan.  Add filling and cover with top crust.  Cut small holes in the top crust and sprinkle with raw sugar.  Bake at 400 for 10 minutes.  Reduce temperature to 375 and bake for 55 - 60 minutes until filling is bubbling and crust is brown.  You may need to put foil or a pie crust ring around the edge of the crust to keep it from getting too brown.  You may also need to place a pan on the rack below the pie pan to catch any escaping juices.

Serve with vanilla ice cream or whipped cream.

Beet Pie

I am actually working on blog posts about UX and usability (really, I've got two in the works...) but this is an emergency recipe posting!  A few weeks ago, we went to visit some friends in Pennsylvania.  They live in the northern part, past the Poconos - a really nice part of the state that I'd never been to before.  They have a beautiful hill-top apple orchard that they are in the process of reviving.  It's all organic, so I picked some apples and planned to go home and make an apple pie (which I did last weekend).  I forget why it came up, but I think I started going off on how much I love beets and how wonderful they are.  Our friend volunteered that she had a great recipe for a beet pie.  Not a savory beet pie, but a sweet beet pie.  I was intrigued and asked for the recipe.

I wasn't really sure what to expect.  But when I did get the recipe it sort of made sense.  It's officially called "Ruby Red Fruit and Nut Pie" which is really disingenuous because the only fruit it has in it according to the original recipe is raisins.  Maybe they thought people would be scared to make it if it was really called what it is.  Rather than being cagey about it, I'm officially renaming it Beet Pie.  I'm not sure what newspaper it was cut from, so I can't take full credit for it, but I did make a few changes to the recipe as it was sent to me (I used dried cranberries instead of raisins, and maple syrup instead of dark corn syrup).  It's actually similar to pecan pie, and it turned out much better than I expected.  I think it is now one of my new favorite pies.  It may even be on the desert line up for Thanksgiving.

Beet Pie

1 single unbaked pie shell (9 inches)
2 medium beets
1/2 cup grade B maple syrup
3 eggs
1 t cinnamon
1/2 t nutmeg
1/2 t ground cloves
1/4 t white vinegar
1/2 t salt
1 t vanilla
2 T butter
3/4 cup brown sugar
1 T flour
3/4 cup dried cranberries
3/4 cup roughly chopped walnuts

Cut tops and bottoms off beets and boil for 20 - 30 minutes until tender.  Cool and peel.  Preheat oven to 400 degrees.  Chop roughly and put into a food processor.    Pulse until beets are in small pieces, being careful not to puree them (you could probably also shred them with a box grater to get the same effect).    Remove the beets from processor and set aside.  Add all other ingredients except walnuts and cranberries to the processor and blend well.  Add 1 cup of the chopped beets (you may have some beets left over), the walnuts and dried cranberries.  Pulse until just blended.  Pour into the unbaked pie shell.

Bake for 10 minutes at 400 degrees.  Reduce temperature to 375 degrees and bake for 25-30 minutes or until pie is firm.  Cool on a rack and serve still warm with vanilla ice cream.

Sweet Tomato Chutney

 

I'm having a blog identity crisis.  I've been ignoring my other half.  I'm not married, so no, I don't mean my husband.  I mean the other half of what this blog is supposed to be about.  I've been having a nice summer creating lots of salads, canning stuff when I can (and freezing it when I can't can) and doing a bit of baking here and there.  But I haven't been writing at all about usability and user experience.    Definitely part of is has been that I've been taking advantage of all of the social media, promotion and blog marketing tools that I've discovered in the food blog world, so I've been focusing a lot on writing recipe posts.  I'm pretty amazed at the sheer number of food blogs there are out there, many of them excellent and inspiring.   But it's also a little overwhelming.  I definitely feel like I need to both step up my game in the quality of food photos (which means investing in a decent digital SLR) and the variety of recipe posts.   But I also need to really find my niche and differentiate my blog from others.  I still think that the differentiator should be a focus on usability and user experience with cooking, so I plan on focusing on that a little more down the road.  Those kinds of posts are more difficult to write, and generally not as much fun, but really, I'm not doing this to have fun.

But for now, here's a fun chutney recipe.   At this point you must think that I'm chutney crazy.  I sort of am, but my real reason for making chutneys this summer/fall rather than jam, jelly or simply freezing fruit has been twofold:  first, I've made jams and jellies all of my life and I don't find them particularly challenging anymore.  Chutneys have more ingredients, have more complex flavors and the end result can be used in ways other than just spread on toast.  I serve this chutney with curries, with a cheese plate, as a condiment for egg rolls, on a sandwich, with chicken, fish or pork.  Yesterday, I was making some chicken soup, so I added a teaspoonful of the chutney, and it added a nice acidic sweetness that really added to the overall flavor of the soup. 

The second reason is economic.  I think it can be argued that price isn't an issue if you are learning something about preserving food, so it doesn't matter how much you spend on home canning.  But it can also be argued that the main reasons to preserve food at home is to control the quality and sources of what you eat and to save money.   I didn't can tomatoes this summer.  The late blight on the east coast and New England drove up the price of organic tomatoes, and it didn't make sense for me to pay $50 for 11lbs of tomatoes (nice organic tomatoes run about $4.50/lb at the farmers market) which would translate to probably 5 or 6 pints of canned tomatoes - a cost of roughly $8/pint.  I didn't get out of the city often enough to canvas rural farmers markets for cheaper tomatoes.   I wanted to do something with tomatoes before they all disappeared from the farmers market, so I decided to make this chutney.  I bought some cheaper, non organic tomatoes at $2.00/lb from the farmers market.  I got a little over 5lbs of tomatoes for the chutney, which in the end resulted in 8 half-pints of chutney.  Figuring in sugar, vinegar, spices and raisins (organic where I could, all cost approximately $4.00) each half-pint ended up costing me about $1.75 each. 

The magic of fruit chutney is to have idiosyncratic yet complimentary blends of fruit, sugar, spices and acid.  The amounts of each vary depending of if you are making a spicier chutney or a sweeter one.  This chutney is pretty sweet, but it's also very acidic, with equal parts of sugar and vinegar.  You probably could make this chutney spicier by adding fresh chilies or more cayenne, but I think I'd rather have a hot chutney (like lime or a specific spicy chili chutney) as a separate condiment.   This chutney is fairly easy to make - it doesn't require a lot of preparation besides peeling and cutting the tomatoes, chopping garlic and ginger.  It calls for garam masala, a ground spice blend which you can make yourself by grinding your own spices (cinnamon, cumin, clove, pepper, ginger, anise, etc) which I did with the last chutney I made.  One of the great things about living in NYC is that you have close access to specialty stores that carry fresh spices and spice mixes.   I found some already mixed garam masala from Dual Specialty Store  on 1st ave and 6th street - their custom house blend is great.

Three notes on this chutney.  First, it WILL make your apartment/house smell like vinegar while it's cooking (but in a nice way, of course).  Second, you really do need to cook it for longer than you think you do.  It should get to the point where it is dark, thick and shiny, about 90 minutes.  Third, the recipe below makes approximately 8 half-pints so I processed them in a boiling water bath.  If you don't feel up to processing them, cut the recipe in half, and after cooking put the chutney in glass jars while it's still hot, let cool and refrigerate.

Sweet Tomato Chutney

Adapted From Madhur Jaffrey's World of the East Vegetarian Cooking

• 5 lbs of fresh tomatoes
• 4 cups white sugar
• 4 cups white vinegar
• 1 1/2 tablespoons finely chopped fresh ginger
• 2 tablespoons finely chopped fresh garlic (about 10 cloves or 1 medium head)
• 1 teaspoon ground fennel seed
• 1 teaspoon ground fenugreek seed
• 1 1/2 teaspoons garam masala
• 1 t cayenne pepper
• 3 t salt
• 4 bay leaves
• 1 cup raisins

Peel tomatoes by scoring the tomatoes and blanching for 20 -30 seconds in boiling water.  Chop into large chunks.  Place all ingredients, except raisins, in a large non-reactive heavy bottomed pot.    Cover and bring to a boil.  After 30 minutes, remove the lid, add raisins and adjust the heat so you have a low boil.  Continue cooking uncovered for approximately another hour, until it  has reduced by half, is thick, dark and shiny.  You will need to stir it more frequently towards the end as it will be thick and you don't want it to burn on the bottom.

If you are going to can the chutney, prepare your jars by sterilizing in boiling water.  Fill jars with hot chutney, gently tap to remove air bubbles, wipe jar edges, and place lids on the jars.  Process in a  boiling water bath for 20 minutes.  Confirm all jars are sealed.  Chutney will last for approximately 1 year in sealed jars.

Homemade Granola

As promised, at long last, the granola recipe.  Granola is one of those things that can seem really difficult and intimidating, but really, it's very simple to make, and is almost limitless in the way you can customize it.  I've been making this granola off and on for the past 3 years or so, experimenting with different levels of liquid, sweets and oats, and I feel like I've finally found a good base recipe to which I (or you) can add your own personal favorites.  I've actually been seeing a lot of 'homemade' granola for sale around Brooklyn lately (Early Bird Granloa is usually on sale at the Brooklyn Flea).  But at $8 for a 12oz bag, it's not cheap (disclaimer: I haven't actually tasted their granola).  This recipe makes about 24oz, and depending on the quality of ingredients you use, can cost as little as $5.00 to make.

So first, some notes on my methodology that affect the outcome: 

• Use thick cut oats - I use Bob's Red Mill organic thick cut rolled oats, so this recipe is formulated I think with the right amount of liquid for this type of oats.  It would probably work with regular cut oats (Quaker or another brand), but I wouldn't recommend using quick or instant oatmeal for this recipe. 
• You can add your own mix of nuts - I generally use sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds (pepitas)  and one other kind of nut - usually pecans or walnuts.   But really, you could use any kind of raw nut in pretty much any proportion that you like.   Make sure you use RAW nuts. The recipe below has a 2:1 oats to nuts ratio, but you could add more nuts if desired.  If you add more oats, I would increase the amount of liquid.
• Dried fruit - I also usually make this with dried cranberries, but recently made it with dried cherries, coconut and dried apricots.  Just be sure to add the dried fruit AFTER you've cooked the granola or the fruit will be really hard and chewy.  I most recently added coconut after I baked it, but next time I might try baking the coconut and see what happens. 
• Go organic - I try to use organic ingredients whenever I can, including organic nuts and seeds and dried fruit. 
• Sweetness - This recipe doesn't have any refined sugar (unless you use sweetened fruit juice), so if it's not sweet enough for you, either add more maple syrup or add some brown sugar to the dry ingredients.  Obviously, if it's too sweet, decrease the amount of either maple syrup or honey, or use entirely unsweetened fruit juice.
• It's not clumpy - This granola doesn't really cluster together - but I like this way.  If you want more clustery granola, you could probably add more juice (or other liquid) and stir it less often while baking.

Homemade Granola

3 cups thick cut rolled oats
1/2 cup raw sunflower seeds
1/2 cup raw pepitas
1/2 cup raw peacans
1/2 t cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
1/2 t salt

1/3 cup canola oil (plus 1 T for the pan)
1/3 cup maple syrup
1 c fruit juice (apple, cranberry or a mix)
2 T honey

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Grease a large, shallow roasting pan with canola oil and set aside.  In a large bowl, mix all of the dry ingredients including spices.  In a smaller bowl or a 2 cup Pyrex measuring cup, mix together all of the liquid ingredients.  Tip: If you measure out the oil first and use the same measuring cup, the maple syrup and the honey will slide right out of your measuring cup.  Mix all of the liquid ingredients well, then pour over the dry ingredients.  Mix well, and pour into the greased roasting pan.  Spread evenly across the bottom (ideally it isn't more than an inch or so thick at the bottom of the pan.)

Bake for 45 - 60 minutes, stirring every 10 minutes or so, making sure to bring the granola from the edges of the pan to the center so that it all browns evenly.  You may need to stir more frequently towards the end of baking, and keep a careful eye on it so that it doesn't burn around the edges. 

Granola in the baking pan before going in the oven

Granola after baking

Breakfast!

What to Eat When Your'e Camping: Shopping, Preparation and Storage Tips

Part of my  menu preparation for our camping trip required some deep thinking about what foods were "camping friendly" and convenient to have on a 8 day trip.   This meant food that didn't require more than the three days of the refrigeration we would get from our collapsible cooler, food that was relatively lightweight and compact, had minimal but sturdy packaging, and food that could be prepared before-hand so it was fairly easy to prepare in camp.  And it also had to taste good.

On our fourth day camping, we decided to take a longer day trip from the Middle Saranac Lake where we were staying, over to the Upper Saranac Lake.   On our way back, we met a family of 5 (two parents with 3 kids aged probably 9 - 15) who were on a long Canoe trek from the Raquette river to the Middle Saranac (part of the Northern Forest Canoe Trial  that goes from New York to Maine).  They were at the second of two canoe portages of the day (first one was 1.5 miles and the second .5 miles).  They had two canoes and had all of their gear packed in 5 backpacks for easy portage.  I was duly impressed with the hard trek they had, but I was really wondering what food they had to eat.    I assumed they had packaged, dehydrated backpacking/camping food and I felt really sorry for them - that after doing all of that hard work they wouldn't have any good food to eat for dinner.  As you can see from some of the menu highlights of our trip, I think we ate pretty well.  Part of it was planning, part of it shopping and part of it was actual cooking.  So here are my tips for better camp food:

Planning Your Menu & Shopping

Generally speaking, the most convenient foods for camping are foods that don't need refrigeration, that pack and store easily and that are simple to cook or heat up.  Smaller packages or single servings help reduce food waste and mean that you don't have to refrigerate leftovers.  A few of my favorites:

• Boxed milk - I bought Horizon organic in the 8 oz packages.  We used it for granola, making pancakes and occasionally for tea.
• Cured meats - Salami and other cured sausage doesn't need to be refrigerated, don't require cooking and only require a knife to cut and eat.  And they are usually delicious.  I got some Saussion Sec (french style garlic sausage).  I also got some beef jerky from Trader Joe's, (I'm actually finding it really hard to believe that here is a site of JUST reviews of beef jerky, but here it is) that we both found it overly sweet and didn't really like.
• Flat bread - I prefer this rather than loaf bread because it's easy to pack and doesn't get smashed.   It's also easy to warm directly on the fire, on the grill or in a pan.
• Instant noodle soups - Annie Chun's Korean Kimchi Noodle Soup only requires boiling water, comes in a re-usable, biodegradable bowl with a lid that you can eat the soup out of, doesn't have MSG and tastes really good.
• Tuna - We didn't actually eat any tuna on this trip, but I always bring a can or two just in case.  Cans are good for day trips, as long as you remember to bring your pocket knife and know how to use the can opener.  I've recently seen tuna packed in flat plastic envelope type packages, but I haven't tried them.
• Crackers - Alhough you have to be careful with packing, crackers go with cheese, tuna, salami or other stuff for snacks.  I brought Trader Joe's wheat crackers (similar to Triscuits) because they come in a bag in a box and don't crush easily.
• Nuts & Trail Mix - A must have for day trips and for snacking around camp.  Not to mention Trader Joe's too much, but they have great trail mixes at decent prices.  You can also make your own by buying nuts, seeds and dried fruit.
• Peanut Butter - I'd like to say that I don't go anywhere without peanut butter, but it's not really true.  I would if I could. 
• Sweet stuff - I planned on making homemade cookies, but didn't get around to it with all of the other packing and preparation I was doing.  So I just brought some Nutterbutters and some Raspberry Newtons.
• 'Smores - If you are one of those people who MUST have 'smores when you camp, a great tip that a friend passed on to me.  Instead of buying graham crackers and chocolate separately, buy some Petit Écolier - either milk or dark chocolate, warm them by the fire, then put the toasted marshmallow between two chocolaty cookies.

Keeping Food Cold

I had planned for there to be about 3 days worth of cooler coldness on this trip, but I think because of the preparations I did before-hand, and because the weather wasn't too hot, we got about four days from our small collapsible cooler.    These are a few tips that I found helpful for this trip:

• Block Ice - It's really important that you use a block of ice rather than individual cubes.  One great way of doing this is to freeze a gallon (or several if you have a larger cooler) of water (thanks Camping Blogger for this idea)  and use these as ice blocks in your cooler.  For one thing, it stays cold longer because it keeps the water close to the ice.  It also means you don't have tons of water in your cooler as the ice melts, and if you are carrying your water in, you can drink the water after it melts. 
• Make a 'Freezer Chest' -Freeze anything you can before hand (all of your meat, bread, butter).  Get a plastic container with a tight lid that fits snugly in your cooler.  The day you leave, put all frozen food together in the plastic container.  Your food will defrost slowly and will retain some of the cold as it does so.  When you want to defrost something, remove it from the plastic bin and place it at the top of the cooler, away from the ice.
• Butter, cheese and eggs keep fairly well as long as it doesn't get too hot and you have a shady place to keep a cooler.  I moved the butter and cheese into the 'freezer chest' after we defrosted and ate some of the meat, keeping all of the coldest things together.

Keeping Food Away from Animals

Unless you are camping in your living room, you will most likely encounter some sort of animal - be it insects, mice, raccoons, or god forbid, a bear.  I've been on previous trips to Saranac Lake where we were practically attacked by marauding mice, so I try to be tidy, clean up any dropped food, and store food in tight containers or put it out of reach.   Some tips for keeping animals away from food:

• Buckets with lids - Last year we hit upon the solution of bringing along two 3 gallon plastic buckets with tight fitting lids.  We use them to store food at night (I used them for the especially tempting animal favorites like trail mix, peanut butter, crackers and cookies) and they can do double duty as water gatherers and a dish sink. 
• Tree Hang - For food that doesn't need to stay dry, or simply doesn't fit in your bucket, we rigged a rope between two trees that could easily be lowered and raised.  We put food in plastic bags, clipped a carabiner clip  to each bag, then clipped the bag to the rope and hoisted it up into the air out of reach.  We hung up our trash each night and when we left camp in the daytime this way as well.
• Ziplock bags - whether it's in your cooler, the plastic buckets or just in your backpack, ziplock bags help keep moisture, dirt and insects away from your food. 
• Use your kayak - if you have a kayak with a closed hatch in the front or back, you can generally store food there away from little animals.  Just make sure that you park your kayak out of the sun so your food doesn't get too hot and spoil.

Two important notes about bigger animals:

1. It is highly recommended that you don't keep food in your tent (this actually applies to small animals as well).  I could imagine what a horrible thing it would be to wake up in the middle of the night to find mice, racoons or bears rummaging through your tent.    If possible, keep your food cooking and storage area on the other side of your camp away from your tent.  Luckily, I've only once had a bear encounter in camp (when I was a kid, and I slept through it), not including hitting one with my car a few months ago on the Taconic parkway (it was his fault, and he was OK enough to run off into the woods)
2. If you are going into an area where bears have been sighted, it's a good idea to bring a bear safe or metal food locker.   And just to be even more service-y, here's some info on what you should do if you encounter a bear  and other bear proofing tips   (excellent tip here: "Never try to move a grizzly bear!")

There are a few things that I forgot to bring for my kitchen set up and that aren't included in my previous post on Tools for Your Camp Kitchen:

• TONGS! - I can't believe that I forgot this super important utensil.  From turning meat to grabbing hot things from the fire, tongs are a must for any camp kitchen.
• IKEA blue tarp bags - If you haven't ever been to IKEA,  you may not know what I'm talking about.  But those of you who do, may understand the utility and value of the blue tarp bag from IKEA.  You used to only be able to use them when you were shopping in the store, but a year or so ago, they stopped using plastic bags for purchases and 'make' you purchase a blue tarp bag.  They are super handy and versatile.  We used them for collecting wood, storing food, and carrying tools.  You could probably also use them for collecting water if you needed to.
• Stove canister stand - Also in my previous camp kitchen tools post, I mentioned that the small camp stove I have is a little difficult to use because it's unstable.  I found this canister stand at EMS before I left, and it came in very handy.  It fits on most gas stove canisters and provides a little bit more stability than just using the can alone.

Up next, the very last camping post, the recipe for Homemade Granola.

Carrot Blueberry Salad

After a rainy, chilly June and July, August has been hot and steamy (and rainy again).   It's really seemed like a short summer for me.  I live near from Pratt Institute  in Brooklyn and this weekend seemed to be the weekend that all of the new students were being dropped off by their parents and were attending orientation. That means that summer is nearly over.  For me, starting college was such  a great time in life - starting a whole new chapter in a totally new place.  And even though I haven't been in school for longer than I will reveal, I still get an unsettled and yearning feeling each fall - like I need to be starting something new.  But at the same time, I'm really sad that summer is over.

I love summer, I really do.  Even though it gets really hot in my apartment and it is uncomfortable to bake or cook or do laundry, there are tons of fresh fruit and vegetables available from the farmers market for making simple salads and simple fruit based desserts (I will get either my rooftop garden going or will find that perfect country house at some time in the future - it's just not happening yet).   We go on trips to the country.  I don't have to wear sweaters and jackets and gloves.  Everything is lush and green.   So before fall really kicks in, and before I go away for my camping trip where I'll be eating lots of meat and nary a green thing, I'm going to celebrate summer by making and eating a lot of salads.

I like odd food.  I don't mean food that is in itself odd, but taking different normal foods and pairing them in ways that  you had never thought of before.  It's so revelatory.  Watermelon feta salad was the salad revelation for me two years ago.  This year it's been this salad - the carrot and blueberry salad.  Two very simple and tasty ingredients, tied together with some lemon and roasted sunflower seeds.  I think nuts (or seeds) go well in almost any salad, and this salad is testament to that.   It's from the NY Times 101 Simple Salads article by Mark Bittman that I've mentioned before.  Last week I got as far as number 1.  This week it's number 7.

Carrot Blueberry Salad (from the NY Times)

3 Cups shredded or matchstick carrots
1 Cup blueberries
1/2 T olive oil
1/2 cup raw sunflower seeds
Juice of half a lemon
Salt
Pepper

In a shallow pan, heat the olive oil over medium heat and add he sunflower seeds.  Stir constantly for 3-5 minutes until most of the seeds are brown and toasty.  Watch them very carefully since they burn easily and remove them from the pan immediately when they are done.  Set aside to cool.  Either grate or matchstick the carrots and mix with the blueberries.   Add the cooled seeds, lemon juice, salt and pepper.  Mix thoroughly and enjoy immediately.

Fennel Salad

It seems like all summer I've been on a feta/mint combo salad bender:  I'd walk through the farmers market or rifle through my fridge and everything that I bought or pulled out seemed like it would be a perfect fit with mint that I have growing in a big pot in my window, and my new favorite feta cheese.  But yesterday at last, I got a craving for a great summer salad that has neither feta or mint - Fennel Salad.

I adapted this recipe from something that a good friend of mine used to make at her regular summer Williamsburg Brooklyn backyard BBQs.  She is an amazing cook, and was a great hostess, but has unfortunately (for me) moved to London  so I thought I would make this nice salad in her honor.  

It's actually funny that I like this salad - or that I like fennel bulb.  I don't generally like the anise-y licorice flavor that comes from anethole, an aromatic compound in fennel that is also found in anise and star anise. I don't like Pernod or Absinthe or black licorice, but I really like fennel.  Raw or cooked the flavor of fennel is complex and goes well with other vegetables, meat or cheese, but holds its own. 

Two notes about this salad: It is actually very easy to make, especially if you have a mandoline.  I actually don't currently have a mandoline, so I partly used my box grater and partly sliced it very thinly with a knife.  I'm planning at some point on doing a 'mandoline off' where I compare 2 or 3 mandolines and rate them accordingly.  I think I've read all of the reviews of different ones on Amazon, and they all seem to have some issues (dull blades, cut fingers and awkward orientation to name a few).  Any recommendations on which ones I should try would definitely be appreciated.  But even if you don't have a mandoline, you can still make this salad fairly easily.  It just takes a little longer.

The second note is that the recipe calls for pistachio oil.  If you haven't ever tried pistachio oil, you are totally missing something.  Like many nut oils, pistachio oil has a strong toasty flavor that goes really well with both sweet and savory foods.  I raved about how delicious it was to my fennel salad friend the first time I had it, so she generously brought back a bottle of it from France the next time she went.  Unfortunately, like many good things, it's very expensive - especially if you buy it here imported from France.  But I think you can easily substitute another nut oil like walnut or hazelnut oil (or even dark sesame oil) and get a similar flavor.  Just now, as I'm writing this, I'm thinking that this salad would be really amazing with the addition of some toasted nuts - hazelnuts would be nice.  You could probably get away with using a good strong olive oil and some toasted nuts and get a similar effect.

Fennel Salad

2 fennel bulbs
1/2 cup chopped Italian parsley
2 T finely chopped fennel greens
3 T pistachio oil
Juice from 1 lemon
Shaved parmesean cheese
Salt & Pepper to taste

Cut the tops off the fennel, reserving a few of the greens.  Clean the fennel, and lightly peel any spots off the outside.  Slice very thinly using a mandoline  or a sharp knife. Finely chop the Italian parsely, the reserved fennel greens and mix into the sliced fennel.  Add the lemon juice, pistachio oil and salt and pepper and mix well.  Using a vegetable peeler or a cheese slicer, shave thin pieces of cheese over the top.  Crack fresh pepper over the top and serve.

Tomato Peach Salad

This week's Summer Fest is all about tomatoes.  I thought long and hard about what tomato recipe I could share - I have so many  favorite ways of eating tomatoes, but very few actually written down or codified.  One of my favorite events of each summer is the first tomato sandwich:  some sort of nice white bread toasted, mayonaise, heirloom tomato, salt, pepper.  Super simple and super delicous.  Or, there is my favorite sweet tomato chutney - but that is actually long, hot and complicated, so I'll save that one for later.   

It's finally been hot here in NYC - August hot.  Humid, sweaty and smelly.  That means I've been cooking a lot less and just making salads or simple dinners of toast and cheese for dinner at home.  Since I've been working in an office near Union Square, I've been able to shop for food the way I like to - just picking up a few things that I'll need in the two days until the next market happens - rather than doing a big shopping trip once a week and lugging tons of bags home.  I've been getting lots of peaches, carrots, zucchini and radishes.  Sunday afternoon, I ventured on to the NYTimes site for the 101 Simple Salads article to get some inspiration.  I remembered seeing something about a tomato peach or tomato watermelon salad, so I thought I'd give it a shot.  The recipe called for tomatoes and either peaches or watermelon, a simple vinagrette and basil.  I didn't have any basil on hand, but I did have some mint, so I used this as a starting point and mixed it with the basics from my favorite watermelon salad and made a tasty peach tomato salad:

Tomato Peach Salad

2 ripe tomotoes, cut into chunks
3 ripe peaches, cut into chunks (I left the skins on)
1/3 cup feta cheese
1/2 cup chopped mint
Fresh ground pepper

Mix all ingredients in a medium bowl and prepare the dressing:

Basic Vinagrette
2 T white wine vinegar
1 T balsamic vinegar
Juice of 1/2 lemon
1 T pistachio oil (this is kind of difficult to find - but it is amazing oil if you can find it.  If you don't have it, sub olive oil)
4 T olive oil
Salt

Whisk together, taste for salt.  Pour half over salad - you may not use all of the dressing - toss and taste before adding more.  Grind fresh pepper and toss again.

Corn Pie - Local Food from a Country Fair

I love country fairs.  They are one of the few things left from the 'olden days' when a huge percentage of the American population lived in rural areas and fairs were the way that people came together from far-flung places to show their talents, do business, learn the latest agricultural techniques, and socialize.   I used to show my horse in my local county fair, and for me it was all about winning ribbons and meeting boys.

This weekend, I went out to Kutztown, Pennsylvania to the Kutztown Fair.  I've been going out to this part of Pennsylvania for a few years now, but I really don't know much about the area or Pennsylvania in particular.  The area around Kutztown is fairly rural - a lot of big and small farms and active Mennonite communities.  The fair offered plenty of country fair highlights - a midway with carnival rides and games, livestock judging, a demolition derby, craft shows and 4-H exhibits, tractor and hit-and-miss engine displays and, of course, plenty of food. 

There was the standard fair fare - hot dogs, hamburgers, funnel cakes, cotton candy, etc., but there were also several local specialties made and served by surrounding town granges, fire houses and social clubs.  I've encountered several local Pennsylvania Dutch delicacies that I have yet to try (scrapple, chipped beef on toast, fried balogna, chow-chow, shoo-fly pie, whoopie pies) but something caught my eye that I hadn't seen before, but was billed as a 'fair favorite:'  Corn Pies.  While my friends had locally made sausage sandwiches from the Virginvile Grange, I got myself a Corn Pie made by the ladies from the Kutztown Firehouse. 

A Corn Pie is exactly what it says it is:  sweet corn with some butter and salt, mixed with a hard boiled egg and baked in a double pie crust.   Generally, it's served with warm milk poured over the top, but I chose to have it plain (it was so good that my friends went and got one with milk after we all ate the first one).  It sounds a little heavy, but because the corn was so sweet, it was a perfect compliment to the flaky crust and the salt & pepper that I added on top.

Fair food isn't really known to be healthy food.  And I often hear people complain about the street fairs in NYC - they are essentially all the same vendors that travel from fair to fair during the summer serving  lemonade, fruit drinks, roasted corn, Italian sausage and selling socks, bags and t-shirts.  To me, a fair is all about local.  It's the opposite of what it used to be where people came to the fair to see what was going on in the world outside of their own small town or farm.  Even though there are still the traveling fair/carnival vendors that set up at fairs across the country, you can still find local, small town food made to benefit the local organization like the grange or the firehouse.  That's what I seek out when I go to country fairs.  And that's what I got with the corn pie.

In general though, my experience with food in and around Kutztown hasn't been the best.  It's odd to me that in a place surrounded by farms, most of the food you get at restaurants - even locally owned non-chain restaurants - most likely comes frozen in a box, delivered by Sysco.  At one diner, we asked the owner why he didn't put granola and yogurt on his menu so that people had a healthy choice for breakfast.   After admitting that he didn't actually eat breakfast, so he didn't really think about what was on the menu, he said that he would ask his Sysco representative what he would recommend.  He didn't say he'd talk to his chef, his cook or his customers.  His Sysco rep.  This was an eye opener for me, and something that I'll definitely be writing about in the future.

A few more fair photos:

Summer Salad: Haricot Verts

Another Summer Fest Post!  This week is beans and greens.

I never made it through the 101 Simple Summer Salads article in the NY Times a few weeks ago.  And by "made it through" I don't mean making them all.  I mean reading them all.  I didn't even get past the first page.  There were so many great salad ideas on the first page that I got a little overwhelmed and didn't go any further.  But that doesn't mean I haven't been making salads for dinner this summer. 

I've been inspired by two recent discoveries in the farmers markets.  First, radishes.  I've realized that I really love radishes - even just cut into chunks, lightly salted, eaten right off the cutting board.  But they are also a great addition to almost any salad.  The second thing is the goat cheese feta that I found at a stand at the Brooklyn Borough Hall farmers market.  It's sweet and salty and not too overpowering. 

Earlier this week I found some haricot verts (French green beans that are longer and thinner than most American varieties) at the Union Square market on my way home, so I put together this simple salad with my new favorites.

Haricot Vert Salad

1 lb haricot verts (or young, thing regular green beans)
2 small gherkin cucumbers
3 medium radishes
2 small spring onions or 4 scallions
1/3 cup crumbled feta
Salt
Pepper


Dressing*
1 clove garlic, smashed
1/2 small shallot, minced
1 T dijon mustard
1/4 cup white wine or rice vinegar
1/2 t salt
Juice of 1/2 lemon
3 T olive oil

Trim the beans and place in a vegetable steamer over boiling water.  Steam for 4-6 minutes, stirring a few times until the beans have changed color and have a nice aroma.  Don't steam them too long (to the point where they are flimsy) You want them to be crunchy and crisp.  Immediately run under cold water and set aside.  Slice the gherkins, radishes and the onions in thin slices with a mandoline.  Place in a bowl with the cooled beans, crumble the feta cheese on top.

For the dressing, smash the garlic in the bottom of a small bowl.  Mix in the shallot, mustard, vinegar, salt and lemon juice.  Slowly whisk in the olive oil.  Pour half of the dressing over the salad and mix well.  Let it sit and marinate for 15 -20 minutes.  If desired, add more dressing, and taste for salt.  Crack fresh pepper over the top just before serving.

*This is actually the same dressing I made for the Fava Bean Salad I posted awhile ago (with the addition of some shallots).  I had some left over, so I thought I'd try it here.

Pickled Beets

Amongst friends, I'm kind of known for a few food specialties: Molasses sugar cookies, any kind of pie and pickled beets.  I've been reluctant to share the recipes for the cookies and the beets - the cookies because it's a recipe from my grandmother that was one of her favorites and the beets because they are good enough that even people who don't like beets have told me they like them.  I've decided to share the beet recipe (with all of the 35 of you that are reading this blog...)

Standard pickled beet recipes use spices like cinnamon, cloves and/or allspice to enhance (or some would say 'mask') the beet taste that some people say resembles dirt.  I love the earthy flavor of beets, but for some people it can be overpowering.   I picked up this recipe from an ex-roommate in San Francisco that uses umeboshi which is itself a pickled fruit  (usually called umeboshi plums, but they are actually related to apricots).  I've used both versions of umeboshi for pickling beets - the paste or whole plums  that you can get at most asian food markets, or the umeboshi vinegar  that you can find in most health food stores.  I'm not particularly fond of the cinnamon-y flavor of most pickled beets, but you can, if you want, add a stick of cinnamon and/or some whole allspice to one or several jars before you seal them up.  But in general, these pickled beets are more savory than sweet.

If you haven't had pickled beets before, you might wonder what you actually do with them.  I always tell people they can do the same things they would do with any pickle: put them on a sandwich, add them to a salad, eat them on their own.  My favorite way of eating them is with a little chunk of multigrain bread (or a simple water craker), some extra sharp cheddar (Canadian or English) and a few slices of pickled beets.

 

This recipe uses rice vinegar.  I only use unseasoned Japanese rice vinegar (which is clear), not seasoned or Chinese rice vinegar (which is dark colored).  Rice vinegar is only 4.2% acidity, which technically is not recommended for boiling water bath canning (recommended 5% acidity).  I do it anyway and I've never had a problem (I don't dilute the vinegar with water as many recipes that use regular vinegar suggest).  But if you aren't comfortable with this, make a smaller batch and just keep them in the refrigerator.  They will last for several weeks in the refrigerator.

Pickled Beets

1 dozen medium beets
1 1/2 cups unseasoned rice vinegar
1 small head garlic, minced (about 5-7 cloves)
1/2 c ume plum vinegar (or 1 tablespoon ume plum (mashed) and 1/2 c more rice vinegar)
2 t kosher salt
optional cinnamon sticks (1/2 for each half-pint jar) and whole allspice berries (can also use cloves)

Before you start cooking, wash 8 half pint jars and new lids.  Put the canning pot on to start heating. 

Wash beets, peel and cut into bite sized slices (some people cook whole beets then peel them, I've had issues with beets cooking evenly that way, so I peel and cut before I steam them).  Steam in a vegetable steamer or a pot with a steamer basket for 20 - 25 minutes, stirring occasionally until tender but not mushy.  While the beets are cooking, in a glass bowl mix together the rest of the ingredients including the cinnamon and allspice.  Immediately after the beets are done cooking, add the hot beets to the vinegar mixture.  Stir well.  If you're going to can the beets, prepare jars for filling by sanitizing them in boiling water. 

Fill each jar with beets, leaving about 1/2 inch of headroom, then pour remaining vinegar solution evenly into each jar.  Add 1/2 cinnamon stick and 1 or 2 nutmeg berries to each jar (or add to some and not to others) if you are using spices.  Seal jars and process in boiling water bath for 20 minutes.

Makes 7 half pints

Another Favorite Summer Fruit - Sour Cherries

When I started writing this blog, I signed up for a bunch of email newsletters from different sites and publications.  Some of them have been good (Serious Eats) but some have been really inspiring.  One of the most inspiring ones has been the "Gourmet Weekly" from Gourmet Magazine.  And according to the email I got today it's Sour Cherry season! 

I haven't seen them yet at the farmers market, but I'm keeping my eyes peeled and will grab them when they come in because the season is very short.  Last year I got a few pounds, froze half of them and used the rest to make sour cherry and rhubarb compote - a delicious treat with granola and Greek yogurt, ice cream or almost any kind of cake.  It's definitely helpful to have a cherry pitter, (I have one of these, which also works for olives) but apparently you can also pit cherries with a paperclip.

Cold Butter, Soft Bread

I've been on a low glycemic index diet for the past few weeks.  This means eating beans, meat (or eggs) and vegetables for pretty much every meal, limited fruit, dairy, and no sugar or white carbs like bread, rice or pasta.  One of the best things about the diet is that you get a cheat day once a week - one day where you can pretty much eat anything you want, including all of those delicious carbs you've been avoiding all week.  Last week I was really craving biscuits, so we went out to breakfast at Maggie Brown on Myrtle avenue where I had the Maggie Brown (eggs scrambled with cheddar cheese, chives and horseradish) along with a biscuit with raspberry butter, and a virgin Bloody Mary.  This week it's been more about craving fruit, rice, and a lovely french baguette with nice creamy butter and homemade jam.

Which brings me to what this blog post is really about:  a butter bell or butter crock.   I don't remember when I saw one for the first time, but they are now one of my favorite gifts to give to people as a house warming or 'thanks for letting us stay' kind of gift.  The idea is old and simple: before refrigeration, there needed to be a way to keep butter fresh at room temperature.  Often, butter would be kept in a clay or porcelain crock, and the crock submerged in cool water.  New butter crocks work the same way.  You fill the lid with 1-2 sticks of butter, fill the crock with a few inches of cool water, then turn the lid into the crock.  The water forms a seal, keeping the butter fresh, but allowing you to keep the crock on your counter at room temperature, so you have soft butter to spread on your bread or measure for recipes.  Change the water every 3-5 days, and your butter will stay fresh for weeks.

Ode to Mason Jars

November 30, 1858 is a date that most people don't realize changed food and home cooking dramatically - especially for rural homemakers.  It's the patent date for John Mason's machine that could cut threads into glass jars, thus making it possible to use screw-on reusable lids.  Before this, farm families and city dwellers alike relied on root cellars, smoking, salting and other forms of cold storage to keep food.  John Mason's patent made it possible for rural families to easily can and preserve fruits, vegetables and even meat for later use.

I use Mason (or Ball, or Kerr) jars in my kitchen all the time, not only for preserving (or canning, or 'putting-up') foods that are abundant in the summer, but for general storage.  For me, they are much better to use than plastic for several reasons:

1.  They don't keep the smell of whatever food you put in them, and they don't stain
2.  You can use them for dry storage in your cupboard, cold storage in the fridge or use them to freeze food as well
3.  They come in all sorts of shapes and sizes, but only use 2 different sizes of lids - wide mouth and regular, with two ring sizes.  No more searching through the plastics bin for the lid that almost fits.  Replacement lids are easy to find (most hardware stores, even here in Brooklyn carry them).

 

(Photo 1: from left to rigtht - pesto frozen in 4oz jar; tomato chutney in 1/2 pint jar; peach jam in 1/2 pint jar; empty quart jar; frozen chicken stock in a 2 quart jar.  Photo 2:  the two sizes (only!) of lids and rings.)

4.  They look nicer - I'm happy to display a pint sized Mason jar of dried beans on an open shelf in my kitchen.  I would never do that with something plastic.
5.  You can also argue that they are multi-purpose as well because they can be used for serving food and drinks.  I actually don't like drinking from them, but apparently it's a trend.

Obviously, one drawback vs. plastic is that they break much more easily.  Don't drop them!

I do think that anyone who likes cooking and doing things in the kitchen should learn basic canning techniques.  Acidic vegetables (tomatoes) and pickles and chutneys are very safe to can at home with simple hot water bath canning techniques.  Fruit jams and jellies are easy as well.  My grandma Dot used to spend days in the hottest part of a Georgia summer, canning everything that came from their garden: tomatoes, corn, green beans and pickles, so I learned a lot from her.  But one of my favorite resources on home canning is a little book called "The Busy Person's Guide to Preserving Food."  Organized by food type, it gives multiple ways (drying, canning or freezing) to preserve all sorts of food, gives recipes, and highlights the best method for each type of food.

And really, it's one of the best things, sometime in the middle of February, to go to your cupboard and to pull out and open a jar of home canned tomatoes.  It smells just like summer.

Spring = Rhubarb

I love rhubarb.  Rhubarb pie, rhubarb jam, a stalk of rhubarb plain or dipped in a little bit of sugar.  Rhubarb also means that spring is finally here and summer is on the way.  Growing up in Colorado, our neighbor up the road, Leona Nelson, had a huge patch of ‘wild’ rhubarb growing in her pasture.  Leona was mean.  She was my school bus driver (I swear that she is the model for the bus driver on South Park), the leader of my 4-H club, and the step-mother of our most frequent babysitter Marsha.   But even though I was terrified of her, I used to sneak into her pasture in the early summer and steal some of her rhubarb.

Now, luckily I can just get it from the farmers market in Fort Greene.  I bought some yesterday, but I didn’t have time to make a pie, so this morning I just whipped up some rhubarb compote:  rhubarb cooked with water, sugar and lemon.  It’s great with yoghurt & granola, spread on toast or pancakes, or with greek yoghurt and soft coconut macaroons as a simple dessert.    As soon as the sour cherries are out, I’ll definitely be making a rhubarb and sour cherry pie.  Can’t wait.