Winter Share

So guess what? Remember how I said that November was the last of the CSA? Well, I kind of signed up for a winter share from Winter Sun Farms, in New Paltz, NY. It's monthly, not weekly, but it should be enough to get me through these upcoming bleakest of days. My first pick-up is on 12/15, and below is the full list of what we'll be getting over the course of the winter.

Summer Squash: Yellow and Green
Green Beans
Edamame
Blueberries
Peppers: Red Peppers, Yellow Peppers, Green Peppers.
Broccoli
Yellow Tomato: Carolina Gold Tomatoes
Raspberries
Strawberries
Blackberries; San Marzano Plum Tomatoes
Fall Greens: Kale and Collards.
Carrots
Potatoes
Pea Shoots

New Toys

I have been coming across recipes for homemade ice cream, frozen yogurt, and sorbet for months now as I've been perusing other people's blogs, and every time I do, I think "Damn, too bad I don't have an ice cream maker, because that sounds delicious." So instead I just go to 40 Carrots at Bloomingdale's and spend way too much money on their preposterously good plain frozen yogurt (usually with honey and blackberries).

I adore yogurt. And I don't mean low-cal low-fat concoctions that are called yogurt and meant to sort of vaguely resemble soft-serve ice cream. I mean plain, tart yogurt, in any form possible. My favorite flavor of helado when I studied abroad in Spain was yogurt--yes, that's right, yogurt-flavored ice cream.

So when I used part of my birthday gift card to Williams-Sonoma (thanks, Dad!) on this Cuisinart ice cream maker, the first thing I made was honey lavender frozen yogurt. I was sort of looking at this recipe on 101 Cookbooks, said to rival Pinkberry's (I've eaten there a few times, too...), but since the "recipe" basically consists of Greek yogurt + sweetener, I figured I could wing it.

So here we have 3 cups of Greek yogurt, maybe half a cup of wildflower honey, and a teaspoon or so of minced lavender.

Mix them all up in a bowl, turn the machine on, and pour it in while it's running.

Watch it go!

Give it 20+ minutes (I think it needed less time because I only put in 3 cups--this machine holds up to 6, if I recall) and then give it a taste and see where you are.

And we are in a very nice place indeed.


My first lesson of frozen yogurt is that low-fat yogurt will freeze pretty damn solid, even after it's been churned for half an hour. (I used a combination of 2% and 0% Fage, so there's nearly no milk fats in it at all.) Scooping out a serving immediately after making it was no problem, but when I went back in the next night for my dessert, it was a different story. Good flavor, but impossible to scoop, and the texture was a little off. Oh, well, I guess I'll have to keep trying...

Not My Grandmother's Rösti

So in spite of roasting and freezing some beets, and bringing some to PA for pre-Thanksgiving dinner, I still had almost 2 pounds left in my fridge. Lucky for me, K. directed me to this Bittman recipe for Beet Rösti with Rosemary.

Rösti to me means potatoes, the way my Austrian grandmother made them thinly sliced and I guess sauteed with onions in oil, kind of like hashbrowns. But I'm always up for trying something new, especially if it's got the Bittman imprimatur. So we pulled out the Cuisinart and went to work.

The recipe is impossibly simple, although there is some technique involved with the cooking. Grate 2 lbs of beets (and other root vegetables if you need to supplement--I added a potato and a turnip) on a box grater or a Cuisinart. Toss them in a bowl with salt & pepper, a few teaspoons of fresh chopped rosemary, and a half cup of flour.

Mix it up thoroughly and meanwhile, heat a 12-inch nonstick pan over medium heat, and melt in 2 Tbsp of butter. Once the butter starts to brown, pour the whole mess into the pan and let it cook for 8-10 minutes.

Then you have to do some fancy kitchen wizardry. Get the biggest serving platter you have (well, I needed my biggest one--you might have a better stocked kitchen) and put it upside down on top of the pan. Palm the back of the plate with one hand, grab the handle of the pan with the other, and VERY QUICKLY flip it over. If your pan is truly nonstick and you used enough butter and are having a lucky day, you should find yourself with a plate full of a half-cooked beet pancake, nicely browned.

Then gently slide it back into the pan so the other side can cook. It might be a good idea to add a little more butter to the pan first. Cook for another 8-10 minutes and then slide it back out onto the platter (or you can flip it back out if you're feeling brave).

Top it off with some fresh chopped parsley and serve in wedges.

Monster Carrots

My mom and I were taking advantage of our neighbors' fenced in yard, to let the dogs romp freely for a little bit, and she walked over to the garden section. It's late November, of course, so there's not much there, but there are still some carrots that weren't picked. And it turns out that carrots just keep growing if you don't harvest them. So we plucked a few out of the ground, and then just because they're so awesomely big, I decided I had to make something with them for Thanksgiving.

The big ones weigh over a pound each. It's hard to see in the photo above just how big they are, so for reference, here's me holding one:

So I decided on a grated carrot salad from Orangette, which I've made before, and a carrot ginger dressing from Gourmet, which I've also made but not posted about. This recipe makes about 2 cups, and even though I could happily eat it by the spoonful and finish that amount in a day or two, I figured it would be a nice thing to leave in my mom's fridge.

To start with, peel your carrots, and if they are Monster Carrots, cut out as much of the core as you can, because there's not much flavor there. (This was one of the 1+ lb. carrots, but after removing the core it was only about 10 oz.)

You'll also need a shallot or two, and a chunk of ginger, peeled.

Toss all of it in the Cuisinart with 1/4 c. rice vinegar (conveniently EXACTLY the amount left in the bottle in my mom's pantry), 1 Tbsp. soy sauce, 1 Tbsp. sesame oil, 1/2 c. vegetable oil, and 1/4 c. water. Run the machine for as long as it takes to get a puree.

It doesn't have to be baby-food-smooth, but you want the chunks of carrot to be as small as possible. (It takes a bit longer to get to that point with Monster Carrots.)

This dressing is lovely on salad greens, or steamed vegetables, or just by the spoonful...

Pre-Thanksgiving

I took off the whole of Thanksgiving week, partly as a birthday present to myself and partly to avoid having to travel on Wednesday. One side effect of this plan was making dinner for a bunch of family friends at my mom's house on Tuesday evening. The menu:

*pecan-crusted catfish filets
*roasted beet salad with goat cheese and caramelized shallots, with a fall-themed dijon vinaigrette (made with apple cider vinegar and maple syrup)
*colcannon, very loosely adapted from this recipe
*Fish Market apple pie, aka my birthday pie (apple cider crust, sour cream-based filling)

I hesitated for about a second and a half when deciding to make the colcannon, because I know potatoes were bound to feature heavily on everyone's plates on Thursday, but I figured this would be a good chance to make a non-traditional mashed potato dish (not traditionally American, that is).

The first step is to cut the stems off the kale and boil it in salted water, just until it's tender, 5-10 minutes depending on the age of your kale.

Drain it, chop it roughly, and set it aside.

Then cut up the potatoes and boil THEM in salted water (you can peel them if you like, but I prefer not to).

While they are cooking, chop up a few shallots

and saute them in a good amount of butter. When they have started to brown a little, add some milk/cream/half & half/sour cream/dairy of your choice, and also the kale. Season with some dill, nutmeg, salt, and pepper.

When the potatoes are mashable texture, drain them and then toss them back in the pot. Add in the kale/shallot mixture and mash it all up until it's the consistency you like.

It probably won't be super creamy, but I think that's for the best.

Monochromatic but Polygustative

My birthday dinner this year is brought to you entirely by Monica Bhide's Modern Spice. My friend L. came over and we picked a few things to make that required only a few additional ingredients to be purchased. I had been fixated on the garlic smashed potatoes for a while, and to go with that we chose cauliflower roasted with a fennel chili spice rub (which I'd made once before), and a tamarind chicken recipe adapted for tofu, because I'd been eating a lot of meat lately.

The cauliflower couldn't be simpler. The spice rub is a mix of toasted fennel seeds crushed up with dried red peppers, black pepper seeds, and coriander. Toss it together with some cauliflower florets and some vegetable oil--

and roast at 400F for 30 minutes, tossing once halfway through.

Then for the potatoes, cook potatoes as for regular mashed, and mix in some melted butter. Then cook some mustard seed, shallot, garlic, and hot peppers (yay for a stash of jalapenos in the freezer!) in vegetable oil, mix in some shredded coconut, and then mash all that into the potatoes.

The result is very flavorful and not as cream-laden as traditional mashed potatoes (a welcome alternative, since Thanksgiving is just around the corner and we're all bound to O.D. on butter and cream soon enough). Garnish with fresh cilantro.

And then, for the tofu. Saute some shallot and hot peppers in vegetable oil--

and add in some cubed tofu.

Cook, stirring, until it starts to brown a little, and then stir in a little turmeric.

Then turn off the heat and mix in some tamarind chutney--or, if you were planning last minute and live closer to an Italian gourmet market than to Kalustyan's, a tablespoon each of tamarind paste and fig jam. A surprisingly good combination--L. and I were very proud of our ingenuity--and one that worked very well with the tofu.

When we put everything on the plate, I commented that we happened to choose three recipes that were all in a white/cream/yellow color palate--a white meal, as my mom would call it. But while they were maybe not so visually stimulating, there is a TON of flavor in these three dishes.

And then we O.D.'d on cupcakes from Crumbs for dessert. Because that's what birthdays are really about.

Culmination and Congruence

The CSA deliveries are over for the year (sort of--I signed up for a winter one, but it's only once a month), and even though the cooking won't stop, the blogging is bound to slow down some. So it seems like the right time for some reflection.

I have long thought about the environmental and ethical implications of what I consume, broadly speaking. And I think I have always cared about food in some ways. The overlapping of those two interests has not always solidified, however. I gave up red meat for many years after learning about the ins and outs of slaughterhouses, but not pork or chicken (long, personal, irrational explanation for that). I thought eating organic was a lovely idea, though maybe something of an indulgence, and shopping at greenmarkets was a luxury I was lucky to be able to afford even some of the time. But in all honesty, I was not terribly mindful of what I was bringing into my kitchen and putting on my plate.

And then I read Michael Pollan, and the world changed. That is not an understatement. It is safe to say that I would probably not have joined a CSA this year if I had not read The Omnivore's Dilemma. I would not be thinking about the biodiversity of the ingredients on my plate (too much brassica? who talks like that?). I would not spend all of my spare time menu planning and reading food blogs. Life would not have been so delicious this year, to say the least.

And so it struck me as something of a coincidence when I learned that the website I work for, eMusic.com, was suddenly in need of a quick review of that very book, for inclusion on a list of the best books of the past decade. I was a little nervous about how I would do justice to what I view as not just one of the best but one of the most important works of non-fiction to be written in recent years. But I sat down at my computer, just a few days before the official end of my first CSA year, and wrote up my 200+ words of praise on the book that put me on the path to alimentary salvation.

And here, for your reading pleasure, is my review of The Omnivore's Dilemma.