Lost Arts Kitchen

Lost Arts Kitchen has moved

2011-03-12T07:12:00.000-08:00

I've moved my blog over here.

Sloppy Joes from Home Food Storage

2011-02-25T17:28:00.000-08:00

What do you do if you're fiercely determined to stay out of the grocery store, but want to make a dish that calls for ingredients you don't have on hand?

Break it down and build it back up. I had a couple round steak roast thawing in the freezer and a plan to make Sloppy Joes. This isn't something I make often, but one of those kid-friendly recipes I pull out occasionally.

The recipes I found online call for ingredients I don't have on hand or don't want to use. Ketchup, for example, I have, but I don't want to use my son's special canned ketchup (each jar is labeled "Luc's Ketchup") for this dish nor do I want to use up the last of my lactofermented ketchup. So, I break down ketchup and use that instead: tomatoes cooked to a paste plus vinegar, sweetener, seasonings. I don't keep Worcestshire sauce anymore, but have found that tamari is a fine substitute. We're just looking for some liquid saltines. I don't have brown sugar, but molasses is what makes white sugar brown anyway, so why not use that?

So, here we have Sloppy Joes à Chez Musser. This makes a large batch and could easily be halved, we froze leftovers in pint jars. I served the Sloppy Joes as open-faced sandwiches with lactofermented pickles and Silvana Nardone’s gluten-free double corn bread, the best corn bread I've ever made. Lots of corn flavor and just a touch of sweetness.

2 round steak roasts, cut into 2-inch cubes (save bones for stock-making)
2 tablespoons tallow or ghee
2 stalks celery, diced
1 large carrot, diced
1 large onion, diced
4 cloves garlic, minced
1 pint tomato paste
4 tablespoons molasses
4 tablespoons apple cider vinegar
2 tablespoons tamari, more to taste if necessary
1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
1/2 teaspoon black pepper
1 tablespoon paprika

Heat a large, heavy-bottomed saute pan on a medium-high burner then brown meat in batches. Don't crowd the meat or it will steam rather than brown. You want to create a nice brown crust on at least two sides of each beef cube. To do this, let meat sit in one place for 2-3 minutes, resist the urge to move it around. When the meat releases easily from the pan, that's a good sign that the meat is browned. Place brown meat in the bowl of slow cooker. Add a tallow or ghee to pan, then saute carrots, celery, and onion until brown and softened. Add garlic, warm for a minute, then scrap vegetables into bowl with the meat. Add tomato paste to the slow cooker bowl, then rinse the jar or cans and put the rinse water in the saute pan. Cook the water in the pan, scrapping up any bits that are still in the pan. Pour water into slow cooker bowl.

You could skip all of the proceeding steps and simply throw the cubed meat and diced veggies into your slow cooker, along with all the other ingredients, but by browning everything first, you are creating, through the Maillard reaction, a greater depth of flavor.

Add molasses, vinegar, tamari, cloves, cumin, and pepper to the slow cooker. Mix well, cook on high for 4-5 hours or low for 8-9 hours.

Neighborhood Notes: Eating Locally in Mid-Winter

2011-02-21T19:20:00.000-08:00

Seriously, I don't seek out all this press! Melissa Reeser of the Portland community news blog Neighborhood Notes interviewed me recently for a story about eating locally in mid-winter. Photographer Heather Zinger came to Sunday's Lactofermentation class to get some pictures. Fun!

Bringing Cooking Home: An Interview with Mid-County Memo

2011-02-11T09:06:00.000-08:00

Heather Hill did a remarkable job capturing the spirit of Lost Arts Kitchen in her piece for the February issue of the Mid-County Memo. Thanks, Heather!

Interview with Tony Fuentes on LaunchPad Radio

2011-01-28T09:08:00.000-08:00

Well, that was fun! I met with Tony Fuentes, host of LaunchPad Radio and co-owner of the fabulous Milagros Boutique, and we talked about kitchen literacy, lactofermentation, and the social and economic benefits of DIY food. Check it out.

Charcutepalooza: Duck Breast Prosciutto

2011-01-26T15:19:00.000-08:00

When my husband and I were about to be married, we did what many couples do and set up a registry. Rather, I did what many brides do and set up a registry. Husband-to-be wasn't especially keen on the idea, but when I explained that whether we registered or not, people would be buying us gifts and we might as well let them know what we'd most like, he relented and gave me his wish list. On it, a smoker. Uh. Okay? Really? A smoker? And a lawn mower. Alrighty then. A smoker and a lawn mower. He got both.

Well, I'll admit, I was a silly girl to question the smoker. Over the years Mike has made fantastic smoked salmon, bacon, brisket, smokey pulled pork, smoked trout. He's smoked eggplant for me to make baba ganouj, smoked peppers and zucchini stuff with pork sausage. All good.

Bacon, Summer 2009

For Christmas a couple years ago, I bought him a copy of Charcuterie by Michael Ruhlman. Good stuff got even better as Mike's understanding of curing and smoking developed. Recently, good friends bought a house with its own freestanding smokehouse. Right smack in the middle of suburbia.

Meat!

Those two guys are always looking for an excuse to fire up the smoker and we wives are happy to oblige them.

The Guys Smoke Ribs for a Party, April 2010

Myself, I don't mess with smoke, but have made gravlax, pickled salmon, liverwurst, and goose liver pâté (not technically foie gras, as the liver came from the well- but not over-fed goose we raised in our backyard). I also fantasize pretty regularly about making salami at home though I have yet to act on those fantasies. When I stumbled across the Charcutepalooza challenge to make something from Ruhlman's book every month for a year, I signed us up right away.

I hope we'll get to salami.

Duck prosciutto was a particularly fitting first challenge as last year I finally discovered how much I love duck and tucked several locally raised Pekin ducks in the deep freeze in the fall. Mike took care of the preliminaries late at night, after I'd gone to bed, so no pics of him cutting up the duck, setting the breast halves in a bed of salt, or, 24 hours later, wrapping each in cheesecloth and hanging them up to cure. We set up our basement bathroom as our curing area, opening the little window to let in the cold winter air. After 8 days, the duck breasts had not lost 30% of their initial weight, but I took down the smaller of the two as it did feel sufficently firmed up to me. I sliced it and found this:

I immediately cut the slices into bits and fried them like this...

And added them to my morning eggs:

For dinner that evening, I made a salad starring thin slices of prosciutto, with mandarin oranges poached in zinfandel*, blood orange segments, water chestnuts, and black sesame seeds drizzled with ginger-miso-blood orange and grapefruit marmalade* dressing:

The orange-duck combo was naturally delicious and the bitter-sour flavors from the dressing balanced the fat beautifully. I kept making myself perfect little bites of prosciutto, blood orange, a bit of orange zest from the marmalade, and romaine.

Still thinking about what I might make with the second duck breast. What would you suggest?

* Canned during my citrus canning class earlier this month.

Celery-Celery Salad

2011-01-24T21:48:00.000-08:00

I'm caring for a family member with a urinary tract infection. We've been using herbs, homeopathic remedies, and healing foods rather than resorting to antibiotics and noticing an improvement after 24 hours of active treatment. Along with lots of water, I've been encouraging my patient to eat parsley and celery as their natural diuretic effect helps flush bacteria out of the urinary tract. Probiotics boost the immune system, so I have been offering probiotic-rich lactofermented veggies. Raw garlic, with its strong antibiotic properties always does a body good.

I wanted to come up with a light, appetizing meal that would bring all those healing foods together. I happened to pick up the February/March issue of Fine Cooking (which is chockful of great recipes, including a piece on quick pickles by Eugenia Bone, author of my favorite canning book of 2009, Well Preserved) and immediately noticed a salad featuring celery, fennel, parsley, and anchovies with a lemon-Parmigiano vinaigrette. I loved the idea and came up with this variation (ignoring the Parmigiano, as my patient is avoiding dairy while fighting this infection). When people taste preserved lemons and lactofermented vegetables for the first time in my classes they love them, but are unsure about how to use them in meals. Here's a great example.

Celery-Celery Salad
Serves 4

1 medium fennel bulb, shaved thinly (a mandoline helps with this)
2 stalks celery, sliced thinly on the diagonal (you can do that on a mandoline, too)
1 tin of sardines, mashed
2 tablespoon minced preserved lemon peel
4 tablespoons lactofermented celery root (I'll post about how to make those soon)
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1 tablespoons olive oil
2 tablespoons lactofermented mayonnaise
1 clove garlic, finely minced
salt and pepper to taste

Combine fennel, celery, sardines, preserved lemon, and celery root in a medium bowl. Whisk together lemon juice, olive oil, mayonnaise and garlic. Drizzle dressing over salad and toss.

Leftovers by Design: Salmon Chowder, Cakes and Fritters (Gluten-Free)

2011-01-03T17:30:00.000-08:00

Chinook salmon Mike caught out of the Willamette River last summer

Have I said this before? Well, I'll say it again: leftovers make it easy to put together a quick and tasty meal. Especially after preparing multiple elaborate holiday dinners, I'm usually ready to spend a little less time in the kitchen for a while at the same time I have a fridge bursting with bits of leftover this and that. With some creativity, those bits can become something altogether new and delicious in short order. In The Way to Cook, Julia Child called this notion of turning leftovers into something more than just ho-hum reheats, "Feasting on the Remains." It's all about attitude.

Last summer, members of our buying club bought shares of wild Alaskan sockeye salmon from Iliamna Seafood Company. Each share included 22 pounds of frozen fillets and the fillets are about two pounds each. My family can't eat that much salmon at one meal, so we've been having lots of salmon leftovers. Here are a few favorites.

Gluten-Free Salmon-Corn Chowder
Serves six

I make a big batch of breakfast potatoes once or twice a week and often use the leftover potatoes in chowders. If you have preserved lemons, chop up the peel from half of one and pass it at the table to garnish. If you do not have fish stock on hand, use vegetable stock, chicken stock or more milk.

1 pound red potatoes, diced or a couple cups leftover cooked potatoes
1/2 pound sliced bacon, cut crosswise into 1/4-inch-wide strips
1 large onion, chopped

3 cloves garlic, minced

1 teaspoon finely chopped fresh thyme
1 bay leaf
1 tablespoon sauce from jar of chipotles en adobo (or add chopped chipotle to taste)

1/2 cup of salsa
2 cups fish stock

2 cups whole milk
1/2 cup heavy cream
1 cup fresh or frozen corn
leftover cooked salmon fillet (preferably wild), skin discarded and fish cut into 1-inch pieces

(I augmented with some of my husband smoked salmon)
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon black pepper
2 teaspoons fresh lemon juice

Bring 1 quart of salted water to a boil, then add potatoes and cook until just tender, about 8-10 minutes. Drain and set aside.

While the potatoes are cooking, saute the bacon in a 6- or 8-quart pot until crisp. Remove bacon with a slotted spoon and leave fat at least 2 tablespoons of fat in pan (I leave all the rendered fat in the pan). Saute onions in bacon fat until soft, then add garlic and cook for a minute. Add thyme, bay leaf, chipotle, salsa, fish stock, milk and cream, bring to a boil and then immediately turn down to a simmer. Add potatoes, corn, and salmon and cook until everything is thoroughly heated. Add salt, pepper, and lemon juice and serve.

Gluten-Free Salmon Fritters

No potatoes on hand? How 'bout making fritters? Try this recipe for gluten-free corn-shrimp fritters from Cooking for Isaiah, substituting one cup of cooked salmon for the shrimp. If you use wheat flour, use that 1:1 in place of the gluten-free flour.

Gluten-Free Salmon Cakes

Serves 4-6

I've been making fish cakes--with leftover crab, halibut, salmon, tilipia--for years. Crab cakes were a restaurant favorite of mine growing up in Maryland and at home today, I still usually make them Maryland style, which in essence means seasoned with Old Bay, a blend of herbs and spices that's predominantly mustard, paprika, and celery seed. This Thai-style recipe has a lighter, zestier flavor. In the winter, I serve these with a coleslaw of shredded cabbage and carrots tossed with Oregon pink shrimp and dressed with lime juice, rice wine vinegar and sesame oil. In the summer, Cucumber and Wasabi Soup makes a perfect accompaniment.

3/4-1 pound cooked salmon

6 kaffir lime leaves, snipped into thin strips with scissors or zest of one lime
3 tablespoons coconut milk
2 tablespoons fish sauce
1/2 teaspoon shrimp paste (optional)
1/2 tablespoon chili powder

1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
1/4 teaspoon ground coriander
3 green onions, sliced
1 thumb-size piece galangal or ginger, grated
3 cloves garlic, minced

small handful cilantro
1 red chili, sliced OR 1/2 teaspoon dried crushed chili
1/4 cup or more almond flour

coconut oil for frying

Break salmon into chunks and place in food processor or large food chopped. Add coconut milk, fish sauce, shrimp paste, chili powder, cumin, ground coriander, brown sugar, lime leaf strips, green onion, galangal or ginger, garlic, cilantro, chili, and almond flour. Pulse to create a thick paste.

Picking up a small amount in your hand (about the size of a golf ball) pat the paste into a small cake and set on a clean plate. If the paste is too wet to easily form into cakes, add a little more flour to the mix. As you continue making the cakes, it helps to rinse your hands every so often with cool water to prevent paste from sticking.

Set plate of cakes in the refrigerator for 10 minutes to firm up. Melt coconut oil in a frying pan over medium high heat. Fry several fish cakes at a time, about 2 minutes per side. Fry until golden-brown and drain on a cooling rack set over a sheet pan.

Celebrating Fall & Farmers with Chicken with Tomato Sauce & Black Olives

2010-09-22T21:53:00.000-07:00


From 40 pounds of tomatoes: 1 pint dried peels, 2 pints soup, 3 liters juice, 6 quarts sauce, 3 pints salsa, 5 cups jam.

Monday, with the help of friends at Red Hog Farm, I butchered our fifteen 16-week-old Le Poulet meat chickens. Tuesday afternoon, I bagged and put all but one bird in the freezer. That one went into the evening's supper, browned in tallow rendered from the fat of the cow we bought from the Deck Family Farm, simmered in a pint of sauce made with tomatoes from Frog Meadow Farm that I canned over the weekend, onions from PD Farms, garlic from Greenthumb Garlic...and Natural Value black olives from California. Honestly, after several long days on my feet, I was too beat to make anything else...so we just had this simple stew all on its own...but it would have been great with some quinoa cooked in chicken broth and a Caesar salad.

2 tablespoons tallow or other fat suitable for high temperature sauteing (coconut oil, ghee)
1 chicken, cut up (I save chicken backs for making stock)
salt, pepper
1 large onion, saute sliced
4 cloves garlic, finely minced
1 pint tomato juice
1 14-ounce can pitted black olives

Melt fat over medium-high heat in a large, heavy bottomed saute pan. Sprinkle salt and pepper over chicken pieces, then brown on each side for 3-4 minutes. Remove from pan onto a clean plate. Add more oil if necessary, then cook onions until soft (about 6-8 minutes). Add garlic and saute for 2-3 minutes. Add tomato sauce and deglaze the pan, scraping any cooked bits off the bottom. Add olives and chicken. Bring sauce to a boil, then turn down heat and simmer for 45-60 minutes.

2010 Tuna Put-Up + Gluten Free Thai Fish Cakes

2010-09-14T13:42:00.000-07:00


Albacore Tuna in the Ocean

For health reasons, I am increasing our family's weekly consumption of seafood. We can't afford quality, sustainably caught fish at retail prices, so I have been organizing bulk purchases with our buying club and working directly with fishermen whenever I can. This summer, we purchased 22 pounds of sockeye salmon fillets through Iliamna Fish Company's CSA and my husband caught two chinook salmon on the Willamette. He may fish for salmon again this fall. Recently, I ordered ten pounds of Marine Stewardship Certified halibut fillets from Azure Standard. I would like to stock up on other fish and seafood as well. Dungeness crab are high on my list, as are Oregon pink shrimp and Pacific sardines, but this week, it's all about tuna.

Albacore Tuna in Jars Before Processing

Last year I made my first foray into canning tuna at home. I bought three whole, flash-frozen fish (each about ten pounds) from an Astoria fisherman. The canned tuna was marvelous--even my husband, who has always insisted he does not like canned tuna, liked Chez Musser brand tuna. As so many have said, once you've canned your own, you'll never go back to the pet food sold in grocery stores. (By the way, don't feed your cat canned tuna, it has too much sodium. Offer occasional raw or cooked tuna. My cat prefers raw tuna and I only offer him what I would eat myself.) While I was determined to can my own again, I did not relish the process and mess of filleting several tuna at home. Also, while many people in our buying club were interested in stocking up on tuna, they didn't know how or didn't want to fillet their own.

Albacore Tuna in Sealed Jars

I was still unsure about what to do when I met someone who mentioned off-hand that she and her friends bought tuna pre-filleted by the fishermen who caught it. Well, Hello! Why hadn't I thought of that? Google led me to Oregon Tuna, a family owned operation that fishes off the Pacific and docks in Warrenton. Our buying club ordered 150 pounds of filleted tuna from them altogether, which I picked up at the dock on Wednesday, filling four coolers to their brims.

I appreciate tuna because it's local, abundant, and versatile. Because we're buying smaller fish than those caught for commercial canneries, I worry less about mercury contamination, but still limit our tuna consumption to no more than one serving a week. The 42 pounds I canned and froze this week will provide my family of four just that for most of the year.

Before I begin a big preservation project always have a plan for what I'm going to do. Most frequently, I follow a divide and conquer approach. I decide on several ways to preserve and figure out ways that I can keep some of what I have on hold while I process the rest. In this case, I wanted 48-50 half-pints of canned tuna, which would require about approximately 20 pounds of loins, and that I would have scraps and loin ends leftover from canning, as well as some whole loins.

We now have

50 half-pints, canned
ten 1-lb packs of loins for sushi, searing, or smoking, frozen
four 1-lb packs of loin ends for fish cakes, frozen
three tail pieces (about two pounds) for smoking, frozen
one 3-lb pack of loins for November canning class, frozen
one pound of scraps leftover from canning for Thai fish cakes.


Albacore Tuna in the Freezer

I adapted the Thai Fish Cake recipe from Elana Amsterdam's Gluten-Free Almond Flour Cookbook. These were simply delicious served with a quick pickle of cucumbers made with rice wine vinegar, though I might have made a relish with cucumbers, lime juice, fish sauce, chile sauce, and sesame oil if I were serving guests. Also, I realized while we were eating that lemongrass would have made a wonderful addition to these fish cakes...probably just a tablespoon finely minced would be perfect.

1 pound fresh tuna, chopped into 1/4-inch cubes
1/2 cup blanched almond flour
1/2 cup unsweetened coconut flakes, toasted
3 large eggs
2 tablespoons finely chopped cilantro
1 tablespoon minced ginger
2 teaspoon minced shallot
1/2 teaspoon sea salt
1 tablespoon fish sauce
1 tablespoon lime juice
2 tablespoons coconut oil

In a large bowl, thoroughly combine all ingredients except coconut oil. Heat oil in a 12-inch skillet over medium-high heat. Form mixture into 2-inch patties, they will be quite moist. Gently place each patty into the pan as you form them. Cook for 4 to 6 minutes on each side until golden brown, turning carefully (I used two spatulas to turn mine). Drain on a cooling rack.

Steak & Red Peppers with Coconut Curry & Zucchini

2010-09-08T13:25:00.000-07:00

It's funny, I'm sensitive to raw sweet peppers and even the smell of them turns me off most of the year (when they're not in season here anyway), but as the weather cools in late summer and the local bells finally ripen, I begin to crave them cooked. One of my favorites is Chicken Paprika with Red Bell Pepper, but last night, I had a couple steaks, red peppers, and a hankering for a coconut curry. This dish incorporates coconut oil, coconut milk, ginger, garlic, turmeric, and grass-fed beef, all healing foods. Instead of rice, I fried up zucchini to sop up the delicious gravy.

4 tablespoons coconut oil
1 onion, sliced
2 red peppers, sliced
1 tablespoon ginger, minced
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 pound steak, sliced into strips
1 teaspoon turmeric
1 teaspoon curry powder
1 tablespoon fish sauce
1 can coconut milk
1 medium zucchini, sliced into 1/4-inch thick half-moons

In a heavy-bottomed saute pan, heat 2 tablespoons coconut oil over medium-high heat. Add onions and peppers to pan and cook until softened. Add ginger, garlic, steak, turmeric, and curry powder. Cook for several minutes, then add fish sauce and coconut milk and deglaze pan. Bring to a boil and cook until coconut milk thickens.

In a separate pan, heat the other 2 tablespoons of coconut oil over medium-high heat. Add the zucchini, making sure each piece is flat in the pan. Sprinkle with salt and pepper to taste. Cook on each side until brown and crispy. Serve topped with curry.

Salad Niçoise(ish)

2010-08-12T22:12:00.000-07:00

Recently, a friend was over helping me work through some of the clutter that has accumulated around the house. When lunchtime rolled around, I made us a what I call Salad Niçoise(ish): a bed of lettuce with pickled green beans, hard boiled eggs, home canned Oregon albacore tuna, a handful of cherry tomatoes, and some leftover breakfast potatoes with a simple lemony garlic dressing. She marveled that I was able to throw it together in just a couple minutes and noted how difficult it was for her to plan and put together healthy meals.

I understand that. I'm lousy at meal planning myself and I'm too busy, or too tired to cook from scratch everyday. So, I don't. Instead of plans, I go with what we have on hand and what's in season. Instead of cooking from meals scratch, I rely on leftovers and pantry items, plus a few simple fresh items, for the majority of my family's meals. What I don't rely on is recipes and opinions from various authorities about "classic" this and "authentic" that. Oh, I pay attention to methods and combinations that work, but I also know what my family likes and don't get too caught up in doing things the way some guy across an ocean or continent believes they must be done. What does he know about my four-year-old's love of mayonnaise with everything or my seven-year-old's hatred of potatoes?

Also, a while back, I finally admitted to myself that it was okay for us to eat a collection of the same things over and over again. When I was single, that's how I cooked for myself--a had a dozen or so favorite meals that I made regularly and when I had time, I experimented with new dishes, and eventually some of those joined the ranks of regulars. When my husband and I married, though, for some reason I convinced myself that we must have more variety. 'Cuz that's what married people do, right? I would pour over cookbooks, magazines, and blogs looking for new recipes, come up with elaborate meal plans, shop at three or four different markets, spend an hour or two putting dinner together, and leave piles of dishes for my poor husband afterward. (Wasn't that fun, honey?)

All that became virtually impossible once we had two young children, who preferred familiar foods and left me with little time to find new recipes, make plans, or shop. Man, I hate shopping with my kids.

So I came up with a different way of getting food for my family and of getting it on the table. Instead of weekly shopping trips and elaborate meals, I bought in bulk once a month and cooked in big batches. Buying in bulk saves me time shopping, cooking big batches saves me time in the kitchen. So, when I make sugar snap peas for dinner, I make extra for throwing into salads or for the kids to snack the next day.

While we enjoy variety and once a week or so, I prepare something new or that I haven't made in a while, for the most part I stick to favorites that use what we already have or, when I'm in the mood, come up with twists on the same ol' same old. Salads and soups are terrific for both these approaches. You can make what you usually make, but tossing in leftovers or substituting pickled green beans for olives can work, too. And you might find a new favorite.

That's how my Salad Niçoise(ish) came to be. I wanted one, bad. I knew the rules for making the classic version, but I didn't have green beans handy, I had leftover steamed sugar snap peas...and potato salad. In they went. The next time I wanted the salad, I didn't have leftover peas, but my daughter had just opened a can of garbanzo beans. In they went. Then, when making lunch for my friend, who loves pickled green beans, it occurred me that they would be terrific on the salad and a good briney substitute for olives. And so it goes. Sometimes I used canned salmon instead of tuna. We're grilling halibut tonight and tomorrow, I'll probably toss leftovers from that into my salad. The key is being open to the possibilities are right there, in the house, rather than wedding oneself to a list of ingredients in someone else's recipe. Preparing extras of basics like breakfast potatoes and hard boiled eggs makes it possible to throw together a quick meal later. Now that I don't have bread or pasta to fall back on, I make a big batch of breakfast potatoes (diced red potatoes, onions, thyme, salt, and pepper fried in tallow or ghee) a couple times a week, for breakfast, naturally, but also for tossing into salad. I also make a batch of potato salad once a week, which can also go into salad or just with a bowl of sauerkraut for a quick snack.

Personally, I prefer a lemony dressing with this salad. It offers a bright, yet not at all harsh tang, especially when combined with plenty of good quality olive oil. If you have lemons, and feel like squeezing one, go for it. But consider keeping a bottle of organic lemon juice in the fridge for those days when you don't happen to have a lemon. Lemon juice is handy stuff.

So, I'm giving you a "recipe" for Salad Niçoise(ish), but as you can see, it's more a series of suggestions than a list of ingredients and specific method. What you should get from looking at the suggested ingredients is that you want a fishy protein, some raw or steamed seasonal vegetables, something pickled to lend a bright note, and some potatoes to ground it all. In Oregon, August is the perfect time of year to enjoy this salad, while the Albacore tuna comes to us fresh from the coast and the tomatoes, green beans, and cucs come fresh from our gardens and the fields of local farms. Having it at the spur of the moment is going to take some time, but if you think ahead just a bit, cooking up extra beans, potatoes, eggs, and fish beforehand, the rest falls into place in minutes.

Salad Nicoise(ish) for Two

Dressing
juice from one lemon, or about 2 tablespoons bottled lemon juice
1/4 cup olive oil
1 teaspoon Dijon mustard
a teaspoon or so of anchovy paste if you have it
small clove of garlic, finely minced (a Microplane is perfect for this)
finely chopped fresh herbs if you have them...basil, parsley, thyme
salt, pepper

Salad
salad greens
some legumes (leftover steamed green beans, snap peas, cooked fava beans, lentils...)
some plainly cooked or canned fish...tuna, salmon, halibut
a hard boiled egg or two, sliced into quarters
something pickled...green beans, olives, artichokes, mushrooms, onions
cooked potatoes...leftover breakfast potatoes, boiled potatoes, potato salad
sweet onions, thinly sliced
fresh tomatoes, cucumbers, zucchini...sliced or chop however you prefer

Combine the dressing ingredients in a small jar (half-pint canning jars work well), screw on a lid and shake vigorously to emulsify. Taste and adjust seasoning as needed. Compose your salad as you like, drizzle with dressing, and enjoy.

Top Five Food Preservation Books

2010-08-12T17:24:00.000-07:00

Anyone's who's been in my home knows I'm a a bit of a bibliomane...an entire wall in our living/dining room is devoted to books (and just as many are shelved in the basement). Cookbooks and books about preserving abound, and especially this time of year, you can hardly find a flat surface that doesn't have a recently perused preserving book on it. Here are the ones you're most likely to find lying around right now:

Well Preserved by Eugenia Bone was my favorite find from last year. Many of her Italian-influenced, mostly savory preserves found a place in my pantry, including Marinated Artichokes, Roasted Red Bell Peppers, Tuna in Olive Oil (my first pressure canning project), and Smoked Chicken Breast. Bone has a no-nonsense, anyone-can-do-this and it's-gonna-be-great attitude and her book has delicious recipes for using every preserve. Be sure to visit her blog.

Fancy Pantry by Helen Witty covers an amazing variety of preserves. Her head notes are mouth-watering and completely draw me in every time. Some of her methods--like no-added-pectin preserves, are traditional, yet within the realm of USDA safe canning guidelines. I especially like that many recipes call for the by-products of other recipes. For example, Sweet Pickled Bing Cherries yields vinegar from which you can make Cherry Vinegar, while the seeds and pulp leftover from making Raspberry Jelly get a second life infusing a lightly fermented European-Style Raspberry Syrup. The book is out of print, but used copies are usually available at Amazon.

For Southern style canning, I like Putting Up, by Stephen Downdy. Sunchoke Relish (just add to cooked potatoes for amazing potato salad), Corn Liquor BBQ Sauce, and Peach Chutney are good examples of what you'll find in there.

If you are at all interested in lactofermentation, check out Sandor Katz's Wild Fermentation. He'll teach you to make mead, kraut, miso, cheese, beer, sourdough...if it's made with the encouragement of microscopic life, Sandorkraut has got it covered. He encourages a no-fear sensibility that is refreshing against the "follow USDA food preservation guidelines or die" attitude found in many conventional canning books.

Lastly, my favorite all-around preserving books, especially for beginners, is Preserving the Harvest by Carol Costenbader. Clear instructions on all preserving methods, charts for things like how long to steam or blanch vegetables before freezing, tips galore--kinda like having an experienced food preservationist at your side, reminding you to do things like get all your gear washed and ready to go the night before heading out to pick berries or buy a couple bushels of tomatoes, so you can get right to it while your produce is still at its peak.

What are your favorites?

Returning to Life, Returning to the Kitchen

2010-08-12T15:04:00.000-07:00

Early this year, long-standing, relatively dormant health issues resurfaced with a vengeance and by spring, I found myself overwhelmed with fatigue, chronic pain, and a "brain fog" that would not lift. I took a break from teaching so that I could get a handle on what was going on and after a few months of doctor visits, a new diagnosis (Hashimoto's thyroiditis), diet and lifestyle changes, my health is improving. My energy and focus are returning, the aches and pains are diminishing. I continue to be amazed at the turnaround and how just a few relatively small changes have put me on the path back to wellness.

Hashimoto's thyroiditis is an autoimmune disorder in which the immune system mounts an attack against the thyroid gland. (To learn more about Hashimoto's and the latest thinking on managing this common yet under-diagnosed disease, read the Healthy Skeptic's series on the thyroid.) Following a protocol developed by Dr. Datis Kharrazian under the care of a local naturopath who has studied with him, about six weeks ago, I quit consuming gluten and virtually all grains because of the strong connection between gluten intolerance and Hashimoto's and the impact that high-carbohydrate foods have on blood sugar and thyroid function. I've increased my consumption of fermented vegetables and broths, both of which have remarkable healing properties, while I've reduced my sugar intake overall and use minimal amounts of honey as my primary sweetener instead. To an extent, my classes will begin to reflect these changes. I will no longer be teaching my Baking Basics class and my canning classes will include honey-sweetened preserves as well as those made with cane sugar.

(In addition to the dietary changes I've made, I supplement with vitamin D, cod liver oil, and an omega-3 fatty acid complex daily, all of which help support and balance the immune system. I swim laps three mornings a week, see an acupuncturist once a week, and began a meditation practice, following the method developed by Eknath Easwaran for transforming the thought process through meditation on the words of great prophets and philosophers from around the world. Stress was having a tremendous impact on my health and my nascent meditation practice has already made a big difference in how I think and feel about life's up and downs. The acupuncture is doing wonders for the exceedingly stubborn plantar fasciitis that has been with me for six years.)

For some time, I've been learning about gluten- and grain-free cooking from friends who preceded me in these dietary changes (knowing in the back of my mind that someday, I too might be making the same changes). Many of you have asked about gluten-free cooking and baking classes and while most of my current offerings are already gluten-free by nature, in the future I will offer classes specifically for those making the transition to gluten- and grain-free eating. While I miss some of the foods I used to enjoy, I am excited about getting back into my kitchen and exploring new culinary possibilities and I look forward to sharing that excitement with those who also find themselves making dietary changes for themselves and their families.

The Food Revolution Begins at Home

2010-05-12T12:22:00.000-07:00

In the wake of Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution show (which I have not watched on television, but have viewed clips and snips of on the web), I have been part of so many discussions with other parents about feeding kids healthy foods. My daughter turned seven recently and her little brother turned four earlier this year. Like most parents, I struggle with helping my kids make healthy food choices. My daughter has aversions to potatoes and most cooked vegetables, while my son has a sweet tooth and is currently in a phase of not eating much of anything. Overall, though, they eat a fairly balanced diet, understand some cooking basics, and have a taste for real food. Here are some of my tricks and tips.

Try serving vegetables such as asparagus, broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, green beans, and peas raw or blanched in boiling water just long enough to brighten the color (30-60 seconds) and then immediately chilled in ice water. Sulfur compounds in green vegetables can cause bitter flavors during cooking and children have an instinctive aversion to bitterness (most poisons are bitter, so this makes sense from an evolutionary standpoint).
Encourage vegetable eating with dips, especially the tasty ones you can make at home, like mayonnaise, ketchup, or yogurt. Mix cream cheese and mayo with herbs and finely chopped, blanched spinach or kale. Ranch dressing is another quick dressing kids love. Nut butter, thinned with water and seasoned with honey, salt or tamari, miso, and a touch of pepper sauce (optional, of course!) is another favorite. Jar up salsa in the summer and invite your children to help. My son loves our tomatillo salsa, which he fondly recalls helping to make last year (he ran the food processor...he's not actually canning, yet).
Get kids involved with the food that they eat at home by inviting them to help you in the kitchen. Give yourself time and start with easy tasks, like retrieving items from cupboards and the fridge. My kids love cracking eggs and peeling garlic (I slightly crush the garlic first for them, to crack the peel a bit). Practice counting and fractions while measuring out ingredients. Explain both kitchen safety and how to avoid messes, to make your time together safe and fun.
Talk about nutrition matter-of-factly, without judgment about good foods vs. bad. With my kids, I talk about the effects different foods have on the body, like how fats and eggs help our brains, protein-rich meat, nuts, and legumes grow and rebuild our our muscles and organs, grains give us energy, and fruits and vegetables give us vitamins and minerals that help all over our bodies and protect us from disease. Taking a cue from the Cookie Monster, we talk about "sometimes" foods, like chips, cookies, and cake, without turning them into ever-more-tempting forbidden foods.
Get them involved in their food choices when they're away from home, too, and pack a meal or snack that includes their choices.
Children, and many adults, naturally avoid foods that are unfamiliar. This is instinctual--as omnivores, we have to be careful about new foods lest they prove poisonous--so you may have to work at helping your children become familiar with new foods. Some say a food might be introduced as many as 20 times before a child can enjoy it. Encourage children to try one bite of a new food each time you prepare it. Be persistent, but don't make an issue of it.
Eliminate or reduce soda, juice, and processed "milk" (soy milk, almond milk, etc.) consumption and switch to drinking water, especially with meals. The health consequences of sweetened drinks are well known, but they effect the palate, too, by making us need more sugar in a food to sense its sweetness. Save fresh-squeezed juice or homemade nut milks for special occasions. Make your own kombucha or water kefir if you need a transitional drink or try soda water with a splash of pure juice or squeeze of lemon.
Grow something to eat with your child, be it a cherry tomato plant in a container on your apartment balcony or a whole "pizza garden" with plum tomatoes, onions, garlic, peppers, and herbs in your back yard. Fast-growing lettuce can be very gratifying for a child--and eating it right in the garden a delight. My kids love garden peas. Growing food in a garden helps children develop a sense of competence as well as knowledge about where food really comes from.
Take children to farms--many welcome visitors and some even hold open farm days, with activities for families. Get a basketful of berries at a u-pick. Go fishing. Find out if your local Fish & Wildlife department stocks a fishing area just for kids. Locally, the ODFW hosts free fishing weekends, youth angling events, and stocks ponds for kids.
Want to beat the processed food manufacturers at their own game? Do what they do: use salt, fats, and sweeteners, but choose mineral-rich unrefined sea salt, healthy fats like coconut oil, butter, lard, and tallow from pastured animals, and minimally processed sweeteners such as honey, maple syrup, or Rapadura. One of my kids favorite vegetable dishes is onions, garlic, and green beans or peas sauteed bacon fat (cook any nitrite-cured meats over medium heat to reduce the formation of carcinogenic nitrosamines). By controlling the quantity and quality of these enticements and combining them with real food, you are helping your children develop a palate for healthy choices that will last a lifetime.

I respect that there is more to our children's food choices than what parents offer and that food manufacturers, fast food restaurants, media, schools, and other government institutions aren't making our job any easier, but our kids can't wait while the grownups debate about how to improve school lunches and change agriculture subsidies. They need us to act now.

This is my Real Food Wednesday post.

Leftovers by Design: Chicken

2010-03-01T20:26:00.000-08:00

I was having one of those days. Tired and hungry at five o'clock after a very busy day during which I hadn't thought even once about dinner. There were some leftovers from the previous evening's experimental spaghetti squash "lasagna" with stinging nettle pesto, but I wasn't in the mood for that (and apparently, no one else has been, as it is still in the fridge, untouched). Lots of leftovers from a chicken I'd roasted previously, too. In the pantry, chicken broth I canned after last week's stock making class, and in the freezer, corn I froze last summer. Happened to have some hard-boiled eggs in the fridge (now that our hens are laying in earnest, I usually have a stash of hard-boiled eggs). Chicken-corn soup is a family favorite and with just a few basics on-hand, something I can put together in just 15 or 20 minutes. Making soup using meat leftover from a roast chicken and what I have on hand demonstrates my favorite technique for dealing with those too-busy-to-cook days; what I call leftovers by design.

A couple years ago as I began cutting back on our family's meat consumption, I hit upon the idea of cooking a large amount of meat (one 3-4 pound roast, a whole chicken or turkey breast) once a week, serving just a portion immediately, and creatively using the leftovers in a number of completely different meals later on, so it would not feel like we were eating leftovers all week. I found that not only was this economical, but it helped me save time in the kitchen as well. Often it seems that the preparation of meat takes more time and hands-on effort than any other part of a meal, by getting that work out of the way once a week, I spent less time overall, without resorting to massive and exhausting "once-a-month" cooking and freezing sessions. Typically, in the summer, I grill and use the leftovers in salads. During the rest of the year, I mostly make roasts and use the leftovers in soups. Here's what I did most recently with a whole chicken.

Roast Chicken
1 whole roaster (5-7 pounds)
sea salt
sugar
1 lemon, cut in half
1 teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon pepper
1 tablespoon butter

The night before you plan to roast, brine the chicken. Brining makes for moist, flavorful meat. Place it in a large pot and add just enough water to cover, noting how many quarts of water you have used. Heat one more quart of water on the stove, and dissolve two tablespoons of salt and two tablespoons of sugar for every quart in the pot plus the one on the stove. Once the salt and sugar are dissolved, remove from heat and allow to cool to room temperature (you can speed cooling by putting the pan in a couple inches of water in the sink). Add the salt and sugar solution to the pot with the chicken. Brine overnight.

The next morning or after eight hours, remove the chicken from the brine, rinse it and pat it dry. Place the chicken breast-side up in a pan just large enough to hold it, then into the refrigerator, uncovered. Air dry for several hours--the longer, the drier the skin and the crisper the skin of the cooked chicken.

Preheat the oven to 475F. Place chicken breast-side up in a roasting or baking pan. Cut off the wings tips--poultry shears are handy for this, but a sharp knife will do. Mix 1 teaspoon salt and ½ teaspoon pepper together. Rub butter all over the skin, then sprinkle liberally with salt and pepper mixture. Place lemon halves in the cavity and sprinkle salt and pepper inside the cavity as well. Place chicken into oven with legs pointing toward the back of the oven. Roast for about 1 hour, checking the temperature after 50 minutes by inserting a thermometer into the thigh, being careful not to touch any bones. Yes, fat will sputter all over your oven. Smoke may billow out of it. Have no fear. You are roasting the most amazing chicken ever. Just turn on the fan and open some windows, maybe have someone else stand by the nearest smoke alarm and fan smoke away from it with a dish towel whenever you open the oven.

When the temperature reaches 160-165F, remove chicken from the oven. Allow to rest for 15-20 minutes before carving. After dinner, remove meat from the carcass; don't forget the delicious bits on the back. Store in fridge. Save the bones...I even save the one the kids have gnawed on...and put them in the freezer. Or, you could start some stock.

Chicken Broth from Leftover Carcass
1 carcass
1 carrot
1 stalk celery
1 onion
(or, having planned ahead, a couple cups of frozen vegetable trimmings, saved just for the purpose of flavoring stock...)
1 bay leaf (optional)
½ teaspoon thyme (optional)
1 tablespoon vinegar (I usually use cider vinegar)

Place carcass and vinegar in a stock pot and add enough water to cover, about 2 quarts. Let sit for one hour, giving the vinegar time to draw minerals from the bones into the water. Bring the pot to a boil, then immediately turn heat down until a steady gentle simmer is maintained. Using a large spoon, skim the foamy impurities that rise to the top of the pot, but don't get too obsessed with this step. Cook for 5 to 8 hours, adding the vegetables, bay leaf, and thyme during the the last hour of cooking. Remove from heat, then strain the stock from the vegetable and carcasses through a couple layers of cheesecloth or a thinly woven dish towel (potato sack cloth) lining a colander. Freezes well for months, refrigerates for a week or so.

Chicken Salad Sandwiches
Uh...mix mayo, celery seed, salt, pepper, and chopped cooked chicken together in a bowl. Serve between two slices of bread, maybe with some arugula, watercress, or other greens if you have them on hand. Lunch in an instant.

Chicken-Corn Soup with Dumlings
I do this with and without the dumplings, depending on my mood and time, though really it takes only a couple minutes more of active work time.

1-2 tablespoons ghee, butter, or olive oil
1 onion, chopped
1-2 stems celery, chopped
1 clove garlic, minced
1 teaspoon thyme
½ teaspoon sage
1 teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon pepper
1 quart chicken broth
1-2 cups frozen corn
1-2 cups cooked chicken meat, chopped
1 egg
½ cup milk
1 cup flour
2 eggs, hard-boiled and chopped (optional, but authentic!)

Melt ghee in a heavy-bottom soup pot over medium high heat. Saute onions and celery in butter until soft, about 5 minutes. Add garlic, thyme, sage, salt, and pepper and saute for 1 minute, then immediately add chicken broth. Add corn and chicken. If there is not enough broth to generously cover the meat and vegetables, add some water. Whisk the egg in the milk, then mix with the flour. Bring soup to a simmer, then add spoonfuls of dumpling batter to the soup. Cook for another 5-7 minutes, stirring gently. Add chopped hard-boiled eggs just before serving.

Smells Like Spring Spirit

2010-02-24T09:53:00.000-08:00

We were enjoying a lovely spring tease here last week and my mind began turning to nettles. I strongly believe that our bodies, if we let them, will guide us to the foods we need for health. In the winter, I crave citrus, just when I need that extra boost of vitamin C. This time of year, as I notice the first signs of spring, my body craves green things, especially nettles, and I think it is more than a revolt against the root vegetables that have sustained us the last month or so. Call me crazy, but I think my body knows that now that the trees are beginning to bloom, a regular dose of nettles with their powerful anti-histamine properties, are just what I need to combat seasonal allergies.

Luckily, a friend with a nettle patch invited us over to meet her baby goats (that's Annabel with sweet boy-kid Eden) and pick to our hearts' content. She suggested trying to make pesto with our nettles and last night, as I was trying to figure out what to do with a bounty of cream cheese, I stumbled upon a couple recipes for savory pesto cheesecake (one with basil and another with spinach) and on went the light bulb. We have lots of delicious roasted hazelnuts from local grower Freddy Guys, so naturally they joined the experiment.

The pesto smelled and tasted like spring, all fresh and green, and even had hints of cucumber. While most cheesecake recipes call for whipping the cream cheese in mixer, adding one egg at a time, and then adding flavor components, in my dishwasherless kitchen, I am loathe to dirty both the food processor and the mixer bowl while prepping a weekday night dinner. So, once I had the pesto, I just added the cream cheese, eggs, and milk to the food processor and ran it until the mixture was thoroughly blended. The cake was airier than most cheesecakes I've made, which may have been due to using the food processor. No one seemed to mind and after a couple bites, Annabel, who had been a bit miffed when she learned earlier that I wasn't making sweet cheesecake, asked if she could have more for breakfast.

Finally, while the recipe suggests using a springform pan, my secret cheesecake weapon is my nine-inch round mold from Demarle. Like everything I cook in my Demarle pans, cheesecakes unmold perfectly every time. I may host a Demarle party here this spring. If you would like to come for some yummy food and to learn more about Demarle, let me know.

Stinging Nettle-Hazelnut Pesto Cheesecake
1 cup fine, dry breadcrumbs
½ cup hazelnut meal
½ cup grated Parmesan cheese, divided
½ cup butter, melted
3 cups fresh stinging nettles
¼ cup hazelnuts
1 large clove garlic, cut in half
¼ teaspoon salt
¼ teaspoon freshly-ground pepper
⅓ cup hazelnut oil or olive oil
24 ounces cream cheese
3 eggs
¼ cup milk
Garnish: crushed hazelnuts

Preheat oven to 425ºF. Combine breadcrumbs, hazelnut meal, ¼ cup Parmesan cheese and butter; press on bottom and 1 inch up sides of an 9-inch springform pan. Bake for 15 minutes, then cool while you prepare the filling. Reduce oven to 300ºF.

Position knife blade in food processor bowl; add nettles, ¼ cup Parmesan cheese, hazelnuts, garlic, salt, and pepper. Top with cover; process until smooth. With processor running, pour oil through the food chute in a steady stream until mixture is blended.

Add cream cheese, eggs, and milk to food processor and process for a minute, until mixture is thoroughly blended.

Pour mixture into the prepared pan. Bake for 1 hour or until the cheesecake is almost set. Turn the oven off, and partially open the oven door. Leave cheesecake in oven for 1 hour.

Garnish, if desired, and serve immediately or let the cheesecake cool completely on a wire rack. Cover and chill.

Figuring Out Fennel

2010-02-12T08:04:00.000-08:00

Fennel bulb intrigues me and I love it in salads and roasted, but ideas for how to combine its nutty licorice-ness in a cooked savory dish have alluded me. Two fennel bulbs and a chuck roast in my fridge inspired me to do a little searching on the web. A beef stew with fennel gremolata stood out, but I could see I would have to make a few changes to suit my cooking style and what I had on hand. Since I was going to be zesting an orange for the stew, I knew that I would have to make my son's favorite salad, a combination of arugula, fennel, and orange that we enjoy with Dungeness crab on special occasions.

In reviewing the recipe for the stew, I knew immediately that I would not use red pepper, both because it's out of season and because I wanted to emphasize the flavor of the root vegetables. While I have canned tomatoes in my pantry, that much tomato did not go with what I had in mind either, though it seemed that a bit of my lactofermented ketchup, with its cloves and celery seeds, would complement the dish and thicken the braising liquid somewhat. If you don't make your own ketchup, use plain tomato paste. Most commercial ketchups will add too much sweetness.

I only used four ¾-inch strips of orange zest--about half of the zest from one medium size blood orange--but that was enough to give the dish a rich orange flavor that worked well with the beef, fennel, and root vegetables. I used a vegetable peeler to remove just the orange zest, leaving behind the bitter white pith. I left the remaining strips of zest on a rack to dry. I keep the dry strips in a jar to add to dishes like this one when I don't have oranges on hand.

As I mentioned in my post about Beouf Bourguignon, when braising in my sauteuse pan, I have to keep a close eye on things as the liquid tends to dissipate thanks to the pan's large surface area. I cooked some potatoes to go with the meal and added some cooking liquid to the braise. You could do the same, or add more broth. If you're using a Dutch oven, you probably won't have this problem. Got picky eaters who don't like cooked root vegetables? Remove all the meat from the finished dish, purée the vegetables with a immersion blender, then return the meat to the deceivingly delicious gravy.

Braised Beef with Orange, Fennel and Root Vegetables

Serves 6-8

1 teaspoon salt

½ teaspoon pepper

2 tablespoons tallow

2½ to 3 pounds chuck roast, cut into ¾-inch chunks

1 large onion, sliced

1 large fennel bulb, sliced

1 carrot, diagonally sliced

2 medium beets, sliced

1 parsnip, diagonally sliced

3-4 cloves garlic, finely minced
1 tablespoon finely minced ginger

2 tablespoons lactofermented ketchup or tomato paste

1 teaspoon fennel seed

1 teaspoon dry thyme or several sprigs fresh

1 pint beef broth, more if needed

4 ¾-inch wide strips strips of zest peeled from one blood orange, reserve rest of orange for salad

Preheat oven to 400ºF. Melt tallow over medium high heat in a Dutch oven or sauteuse. Mix salt and pepper together in a small bowl, then sprinkle half of it generously over cubes of beef. Brown beef in on all sides, then remove from pan. Saute onion, fennel, carrot and parsnip in the same pan, adding some more tallow if necessary. When the vegetables are soft, add the garlic, ketchup, fennel seed, and thyme, cook for 2 minutes then add the broth and orange zest. Return meat to pan, cover, and bring to broth to a boil. Move pan to oven and cook until meat is tender, about 1½ to 2 hours.

Arugula, Blood Orange, and Fennel Salad
Serves 4

juice from 1 Meyer lemon or other small lemon

1 tablespoon rice wine vinegar

3 tablespoons sesame seed oil

3 tablespoons olive oil

1 teaspoon miso (optional)

salt and pepper

1 small fennel bulb

1 blood orange

1 pound arugula

Combine lemon juice, rice wine vinegar, oils, and miso in a jar, cover, and shake vigorously. Taste and add salt and pepper. Set dressing aside. Cut the fennel bulb in half lengthwise, through the root. Remove the core. Holding the stem end of the bulb half, thinly slice the fennel on a mandolin or with a very sharp knife. Repeat with other half. Place slices in a bowl. Section the orange, holding it over the bowl of fennel to capture the juices while you work and dropping freed orange sections in bowl. Toss the orange and fennel together--the citric acid from the orange will keep the fennel from browning. Just before serving, toss fennel, orange, and arugula with about half of the dressing, reserve the rest for another day.

Portland Area Home Food Production Resources

2010-02-09T06:54:00.000-08:00

Two people ask for local gardening/food production resources last weekend...must be all the fine weather. Here are my faves. Please comment with yours!

Books About Growing Food Here
Growing Vegetables West of the Cascades by Steve Solomon
Maritime Northwest Garden Guide: Planning Calendar for Year-Round Organic Gardening by Carl Elliot and Rob Peterson

Local Organizations
Growing Gardens
Portland Permaculture Guild
Home Orchard Society
Oregon Tilth: Organic Gardening Classes
OSU Extension, Gardening
Trackers PDX

Email Lists
PDX Goats
PDX Backyard Chickens

Web Sites and Blogs
Throwback at Trapper Creek
(Nita farms and blogs out in the gorge)
Portland Nursery has a ton of gardening brochures here . I find their vegetable calendar is especially helpful.
Rainy Side Gardeners
Raising Rabbits in the Pacific Northwest
Rabbit Revolution

Local Businesses
Naomi's Organic Farm Supply
Urban Farm Store
Pistils Nursery
Portland Nursery

New Twist on Potato, Leek & Asparagus Soup

2010-02-07T15:12:00.000-08:00

Potato-leek soup has been with me for a long time. Most famously it was the base for an asparagus-potato-leek soup I made for President Jimmy Carter years ago, when I worked as a bookseller and he came to our store to sign a book of poetry. Back then I followed a recipe from Perla Meyer's Art of Seasonal Cooking, but nowadays I let my pantry (by which I mean, all my food storage areas: my pantry, freezer, fridge, and even my garden--I'm "storing" potatoes there now) guide me instead. I discovered a quart of spring 2009 asparagus lingering in the freezer this weekend and with the hints of spring 2010 popping up all over the place (why, Hello, Hyacinths!), I thought that would be a good addition. Annabel wanted a cheese soup, so grated cheddar went in too. (She even agreed that potatoes, as long as they were pureed, would be okay, which is a big step for a girl who has hardly let potato in any form pass her lips in three years.)

The twist? We're out of chicken broth. And vegetable stock. There's a jar or two of beef broth in the pantry, but I've always thought that beef is too rich for this soup, which has a light spring air about it, especially with the asparagus. I have been saving up chicken backs and veggie scraps in the freezer for my upcoming Stocks, Soups, and Stews class and not made any stocks for my own use lately. What to do? A friend recently asked on Facebook what she could do with the abundant whey she had leftover from making cheese. Someone suggested soup and, fortunately, I have lots of whey too. So, into the pot that went as well. I was concerned that it would add an excessively tangy flavor, but not at all. If you have "way too much whey" on hand, here's a way to use some up...otherwise, chicken broth or vegetable stock will be just fine.

2 tablespoons butter
2 large leeks, white and pale green parts sliced
2 pounds potatoes (I used German butterballs from our garden), chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
2-3 cups whey (or chicken broth or vegetable stock)
1 pound frozen asparagus
1 generous cup grated cheddar cheese
salt, pepper
creme fraiche, sour cream (optional)
bacon bits (optional)

Melt butter in a soup pot over medium high heat. Sauté the sliced leeks in butter until soft. Add the potatoes and garlic, then add enough whey to cover everything. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer for 20 minutes or until potatoes are soft enough to mash with a fork. Add the asparagus and cook for a couple minutes, long enough to barely soften the asparagus. Remove pot from heat and purée with an immersion blender or in batches in a blender or food processor. Return the puréed soup to the pot and add the cheese. When the cheese is melted, add salt and pepper to taste. Serve with a dollop of cream fraiche or sour cream and a sprinkling of bacon bits.

When Life Hands You Liver...

2010-02-05T06:09:00.000-08:00

Recently, I took a package of what I thought was pork sausage out of my deep freeze and put it in the fridge to thaw. Imagine my horror when I opened the package to find pork liver when I was supposed to make pizza for dinner that night. Yuck, right? Well, I found a pound of actual sausage, thawed it in the microwave, and my son's birthday dinner was saved. This package of liver sat in the fridge a couple days while I contemplated what to do with it. No way we were going to eat frank liver, especially pork liver, which even some liver-lovers can't abide. Liverwurst seemed like a good choice, but the recipes I found online called for ingredients I didn't have on hand or didn't want to use in an experiment that could go horribly wrong. So, in my usual idiom, I improvised. According to several of the recipes I found, you're supposed to let the cooked liverwurst age for a couple days, allowing the flavors to meld. Well, I baked this yesterday afternoon and it's half gone. Guess they liked it?

I grind most of my spices fresh--it really does make a difference. I have a dedicated pepper grinder that I use for small amounts and a coffee grinder for times when I need to grind larger amount or larger spices that won't go through the pepper grinder. Allspice is one of those. To grate nutmeg, I use my Microplane grater, one of my most used kitchen hand tools.

Braunschweiger (Liverwurst)
Makes one small loaf

1 pound pork liver
1 pork heart
1 pound unseasoned pork sausage
1 medium onion, chopped
2-3 teaspoons sea salt
1 teaspoon ground cloves, freshly ground
½ teaspoon black pepper, freshly ground
¼ teaspoon allspice, freshly ground
¼ teaspoon nutmeg, freshly ground

Preheat oven to 300º F. If you are use a food processor for grinding, cut the liver and heart into cubes and freeze for 30 minutes, so that they will not turn to mush during processing.

Sauté the onion in a little pork fat or butter until it is soft. Sprinkle with the spices to warm them. Process the onion mixture, liver, and heart until you have a smooth purée, then add the sausage until just blended. Fry a spoonful of the purée over medium heat until cooked through to taste for seasoning. Adjust if necessary, but note that flavors will be less intense after the finished paté is cooled. I felt mine tasted to salty when it was fresh out of the oven, but once cooled it did not taste overly salted.

Pack the purée into a loaf pan and cover tightly with foil. Put the dish in a pan with an inch or two of boiling water and bake at 300º F until meat is cooked but not browned (meat thermometer should read 160-165º F), about 2 hours.

Remove baking dish from the pan of water and let paté cool in the dish. Refrigerate 1 to 2 days before using, if you can.

Deck Family Farm Meat Buying Club Intructions

2010-02-05T06:02:00.001-08:00

The beef, pork, and poultry are raised by them, the lamb and goat by other local farmers near Junction City, Oregon, just west of Eugene. All animals are raised on pasture. The Decks follow the intensive rotational grazing method on their farm to maintain and increase the fertility of their soil and use no synthetic fertilizers, herbicides, hormones or antibiotics. Their retail meat is butchered at Dayton Meats, which does not "wash" the meat in citric or lactic acid (this is done to most meat you buy at the store, even at New Seasons). I think the Decks must need to update their web site, because it says that they are "looking for a nitrate-free cure," but Christine Deck told me recently that Dayton does indeed do a nitrate-free cure.

Buying club orders are 20% off the retail price. You can order boxes as well, but they are same price as listed on the Deck web site. If there is enough interest in the ground beef, we can get the wholesale price of $4.99/pound. (The organic ground beef comes from culled dairy cows, who have received small amounts of grain during milking. The regular ground beef is from 100% grassfed cattle.)

Delivery is free. The Decks prefer payment by check at the time of delivery, though if you would like to pay by credit card, we can make arrangements for that. The meat will arrive frozen and there will be a two-hour pick-up window. Delivery is expected before noon. Pick up will be at my home, 13228 NE Eugene Street, a few blocks north of 132nd & Halsey.

Place your order by Wednesday, February 10. Please follow these instructions to order:

Use the ordering page on the Deck's web site to calculate your order estimate (do not actually place your order thru their site),
Subtract 20% off the retail cuts you want to order (boxes and wholesale ground beef are not subject to the 20% discount),
Indicate what you would like in this form.

I also organize a food buying club, with a monthly Azure Standard drop, plus we do bulk orders of produce during the growing season, bulk meat purchases (mostly from the Decks, but some other local farms as well), and starting this year, hosting a CSA pick up site. You can join the buying club by signing up for the Yahoo group we use.

Boeuf Bourguignon à Chez Musser

2010-01-23T21:13:00.000-08:00

I mentioned on Facebook how divine my house smelled last night while I was cooking Beouf Bourguignon and got some recipe requests. I looked online for a recipe similar to my version of the classic French beef stew, but they were all so much more complicated than necessary, so I am feeling bound to type up mine. This peasant dish, raised to haute cuisine by Antoine Carême, then brought to American home cooks 40 years ago by Julia Child is now experiencing a resurgence of interest thanks to last year's film Julie and Julia. (I can't help but wonder why the upstart's name is first in the title?)

The recipe, as described in Mastering the Art of French Cooking, appears complicated, but really, this is home food and none of the techniques involved are beyond the scope of a home cook. Preparing the meat and sauce is simplicity. You get the onions and mushrooms ready while the meat is cooking. I do find peeling the two dozen pearl onions tedious and if I don't have them on hand or don't want to deal with them, I just saute a sliced onion along with the carrots and add them to the meat. That said, the browned whole pearl onions bring a welcome contrasting sweetness to the dish that is worth the effort, so do try it that way at least once. Sadly, no one in my family but me likes mushrooms, so I have to cordon mine in a corner of the sauteuse pan I use for braising, then scoop them into a little serving bowl for myself before putting the rest of the meat and sauce in another serving bowl.

You may notice there is no bacon, fat back, lardons, or any other form of smokey pork fat goodness in my recipe. I'm all for it much of the time and we even go so far as to cure and smoke our own bacon, but I feel the act of soaking, which Julia recommends to remove the saltiness, just negates the whole purpose of using a cured fat. When I've just used bacon fat, I have found the dish gets too salty and the smokiness doesn't add to the dish. So, I use tallow, which is rendered beef fat. If you don't have any tallow, clarified butter or ghee would work. You can DIY, of course. Or, you can completely ignore me and go for the pork fat. C'est la vie.

I also find flouring the meat unnecessary and knowing that so many are trying to avoid gluten and grains, I can assure you that you are missing nothing. I quit doing that ages ago, when I started using the sauteuse pan, which, because of its large surface area, readily thickens the sauce without the addition of flour. If you are using at Dutch oven and find that your sauce isn't thick enough in the end, you can always thicken with a beurre manie or potato starch if you eschew gluten (to avoid lumps, first whisk a few tablespoons of the cooking liquid with a couple teaspoons of starch, then add the mixture to the sauce).

I served last night's beouf bourguignon with homemade crème fraîche. O. M. G. Really, just plan a day or so ahead and do it. Your taste buds, if they could, would bow down and say, "Bless you!" Sour cream, quark, or even yogurt would be fine. I believe Julia says to serve this with boiled potatoes, though it is also quite good with roasted or mashed potatoes, buttered egg noodles...oh anything to catch that sauce! And don't forget a side of halved Brussels sprouts, boiled for a few minutes, then browned in bacon fat. Nom-nom-nom, says the lady who doesn't like Brussels sprouts.

Someone asked if using grass-fed beef made a difference in the cooking time. I simply cook this until the meat is tender, not according to any specific time. Do keep an eye on things during what you expect to be the last hour or so, especially if you use a sauteuse, rather than a Dutch oven. The sauce can go from perfectly thick to not-so-perfectly dry rather quickly if you are not paying attention. I simply add more broth or even the rinse water from the jar of tomato sauce if more liquid is needed toward the end.

3 pounds lean stewing beef, cut into 2-inch cubes
Salt and pepper
2-4 tablespoons tallow
1 carrot, diced
2 cloves mashed garlic
2 cups red wine, young and full-bodied (Pinot Noir or Burgundy is usually recommended, though I often use an inexpensive Bordeaux)
2 to 3 cups beef stock
1 pint tomato sauce
leaves from 4 sprigs fresh thyme
1 bay leaf
18 to 24 pearl onions
1 pound cremini mushrooms, quartered
4 tablespoons butter, divided

Preheat oven to 325F. Sprinkle salt and pepper all over the cubed meat. Melt tallow over medium high heat in a large saute pan or sauteuse. Add seasoned meat to the pan in a single layer, browning in batches if your pan is not large enough to accomodate all the meat at once without crowding. Remove the browned meat to a bowl. Saute the carrots in the pan for several minutes, until they are browned. Add the garlic and saute for 60 seconds. Put the browned carrots and garlic with the meat, return the pan to the heat and immediately add the wine. Using a flat wooden spatula, deglaze the pan, scraping the browned bits off the bottom of the pan. Add the stock, tomato sauce, thyme leaves, bay leaf, meat, and carrots to the pan. Bring to a simmer on the stove. Cover the pan and cook in the oven for 3 to 4 hours, or until you can easily pull the meat apart with a fork. Add the onions and mushrooms and cook for another 2o minutes. If you feel the sauce is not thick enough, remove the meat and vegetables from the sauce. Put the cooking pan on a medium-high burner, then thicken with a potato starch or beurre manie (typically, one uses flour to thicken at the start of cooking and a root starch for thickening at the end of cooking, but in a pinch, the flour-butter mix works). Return meat and vegetables to the pan and gently stir, coating everything in sauce.

In the meantime, prepare the onions and mushrooms. To peel the onions, boil them for 1 minute, then drain. Cut off the ends, the slip off the skins. Melt 2 tablespoons of butter in a saute pan over medium high heat. Brown the onions in the pan for 10 minutes, remove and set aside. Return saute pan back to burner. Melt the remaining 2 tablespoons of butter and saute the mushrooms for about 8-10 minutes. If you, like me, must keep the mushrooms out of the finished dish, as they begin to brown sprinkle salt on the mushrooms and add a splash of red wine to the saute pan and cook for 1 more minute. Feel free to add some more butter, too. You deserve it. Set the mushrooms aside with the onions.

When the meat is tender, gently stir in the onions and mushrooms, then serve. Bon Appétit!

Taking Stock, Making Stock

2010-01-18T03:11:00.000-08:00

Happy New Year! After months of preserving followed by weeks of holiday baking, travel, and celebrations, I am relieved to spend some time in January quietly taking stock of the previous year and making plans for the new. I've been thinking in particular of the new food-related skills I acquired in 2009 and the people who helped me learn something new, either in person or through their books and blogs. Here is my list of Kitchen-Inspiration Books, Blogs, and People of 2009.

Helen Witty and her book Fancy Pantry taught me to make gravlax for our New Year's Day open house and inspired me all year, from spring's Ginger-Rhubarb Chutney and summer's Countrystyle Chile Sauce to Cranberry Cordial in the fall and now, Candied Kumquats!
Joining The Nourished Kitchen's Pantry Challenge in December 2008 pushed me to keep better records of how much I spend on food, showing me how much I save by cooking only with what I have on hand and giving focus to my 2009 food preservation efforts.
Michael Ruhlman. Oh, let me count the ways he has inspired me. My husband and I learned to cure bacon and ham from his Charcuterie: The Craft of Salting, Smoking, and Curing. I keep Ratio: The Simple Codes behind the Craft of Everyday Cooking on the top of my cookbook stack as it provides a springboard for experiments in everything from muffins to pickles. His blog fires me up. He is as passionate as I am about empowering everyday people in their kitchens, though he's far more articulate and has his wife Donna taking extraordinary, mouth-watering food photos!
Two other writers that really get my gears turning, Hank Shaw at Hunter, Angler, Gardener, Cook and Langdon Cook at Fat of the Land. Thanks to them, I've become more confident cooking with wild foods this year.
Tips from Diane Morgan's Online Cooking School and Deb Perelman's Smitten Kitchen (plus what I already knew and practiced from Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking) helped me make even better pastry with less effort.
Eugenia Bone's Well-Preserved: Recipes and Techniques for Putting Up Small Batches of Seasonal Foods taught me to pressure can tuna without fear and we here at Chez Musser love the results.
I can't count how many times I've wanted a simple recipe for something, gone to Simply Recipes, and found just what I needed. Recently, I began to think Elise must be psychic, such as when I went looking for a good roasted Brussels sprouts recipe to find she posted about Roasted Brussels Sprouts the very same day.
I have to admit, fusion food is not normally my thing and I even feel a little intimidated when I visit White on Rice Couple. This couple—meat-and-potatoes Oregon rancher boy meets bold and fiery Vietnamese girl—have such a bright, beautiful, SoCal thing going on. I can't help but feel my frumpy, sodden PNW self does not belong there, but they make me feel welcome despite my sensible shoes and I've been learning so much about flavor from them. I especially ♥ their Tomato with Ginger "Ah...you so Asian!" Jam and Ultimate Umami Burgers.
My friends Sierra and Teri at Grain-Free Foodies have shown me delicious ways to cook and bake without wheat and other grains. They make "going without" look and taste so good!
And finally, my friend Melisa of Magpie Eats, who taught me cook my new favorite comfort dish, uppma with cranberry chutney. In listening to her rhapsodize about her favorite foods, I've gained a greater appreciation of bold seasonings and unexpected flavor combinations. Oh, and her sweet tomato chutney? I drool a bit just thinking about it.

In December, Melisa gave me a copy of Laurie Colwin's Home Cooking and in reading it I became aware of how much great food writing I have missed out on with my focus on cooking technique. This year, I want to read more Colwin, plus some of the other grand dames of food lit: Elizabeth David, MFK Fisher, Judith Jones, and Ruth Reichl. I'm looking forward to exploring the more sentimental side of cooking. I also want to continue explore grain-free cooking, dive more deeply into Indian cookery, and keep dipping my toes into those fusion food waters.

What about you? What did you learn about food and cooking in 2009? Who inspired you? What do you want to learn in 2010?

My Winter 2010 Schedule is up. Highlights include Winter Canning this Saturday; Chocolate Loves Fruit January 30; Stocks, Soups, and Stews February 19; and One Chicken, Many Meals February 20. If my schedule doesn't fit yours, contact me to arrange for a private lesson or a class at your home, office, school, etc. I can customize classes to meet your needs and location.

Leftovers by Design: Ham

2009-10-20T15:52:00.000-07:00

I am spending more time than usual in my kitchen nowadays, as much as 10 hours a week just canning, freezing, curing, and drying food destined for storage. Despite being in the kitchen so much, I don't have a lot time or energy to cook meals, so I do what I can to prepare large batches of basics that I can reuse in meals for days to come. This week, that's meant baking a 6 lb portion of ham, several squash, and a couple sweet potatoes plus a couple bunches of chard sauteed in bacon fat for Sunday dinner. Here's how I'll get at least three more meals out of the leftovers:

Leftover chard and some of the ham will go into Monday's no-crust quiche.
The ham bone went into a pot with some water, celery ends, and chicken broth leftover from that afternoon's canning to become make broth for of a slow cooker ham and bean soup that I'll start on Tuesday morning. Monday, I soaked a double batch of white beans, so I can make a big batch of soup and pressure-can half of it (it would freeze well, too) or cook half the beans in water and use them for a bean and marinated bell pepper salad (I haven't decided which I'll do yet).
The leftover squash and some more ham go into a stovetop mac-and-cheese on Wednesday.

All of those meals will in turn make good leftovers themselves for lunch the next day. In fact, we find that quiche, soup, and most casseroles improve overnight. None of these secondary meals takes more than 20 minutes of prep time, leaving me with more time to make pints and pints of pickled peppers and make a batch of Wimpy's Delight (the web site should credit Helen Witty, as the recipe is copied word-for-word from her book The Fancy Pantry).

Fall Supper

2009-10-19T12:19:00.000-07:00

Sometimes it takes a bit of desperation to try a food that you have convinced yourself that you don't like. For me, it was cooked bell peppers. Until almost four years ago, I couldn't stand them--even the smell of them cooking made me gag. Then, after our son Luc was born, my friend Katie brought over a dish that changed all that for me. Her recipe for Chicken Paprika came from The Big Book of Casseroles by Maryana Vollstedt, a Eugene cookbook author. Since that comforting postpartum supper, the dish has become a favorite of ours and one I look forward to making this time of year, when the local bell peppers finally, finally ripen before succombing to frost and rain. (What I finally realized is that it's cooked unripened peppers I can't stand.)

Here's my adaptation of her recipe. I made it last with a 7 pound chicken and simply doubled everything.

Chicken Paprika with Red Bell Pepper
Serves 4-6

1/4 cup flour
1 teaspoon salt
3 teaspoons paprika, divided
1 chicken (3 to 3-1/2 pounds), cut into serving pieces (reserve back and neck for making stock)
4 tablespoons oil or fat appropriate for frying: sunflower oil, ghee, lard, schmaltz
1 medium onion, sliced
2 medium red bell peppers, cut into 1-2" squares
ground pepper to taste
1-1/2 cups chicken stock
1 cup sour cream, creme fraiche, or quark

Preheat oven to 350F. Combine flour, salt, and 1 teaspoon paprika in a wide, shallow bowl. Toss chicken pieces in mixture to coat and reserve excess flour. In a Dutch oven or other heavy-bottomed pan, melt oil or fat over medium high-heat. Brown chicken, 5 to 10 minutes per side. Remove to a plate. Reduce temperature to medium. Add onions and pepper and saute until tender, about 5 minutes. Add remaining paprika, pepper, and remaining flour and stir until the flour coats the vegetables. Add stock and stir until thickened. Return chicken to pan, cover and bake until chicken is no longer pink in the center, about 50 minutes. Blend in sour cream and bake, uncovered, 10 minutes longer. Serve with spaetzle, rice, or egg noodles.

Sweet corn fresh right from the cob has always been a summer favorite of mine, but I just tried Michael Ruhlman's recipe for Baked Butter Corn for the first time recently and loved how it makes the most of the starchier corn of fall. This is such an easy way to prepare corn, I now it will become a regular part of my fall cooking repertoire. I may try it with frozen sweet corn in the winter, too.

My son loves fruit sauces...apple sauce, pear sauce, peach sauce...as a baby he lurved stewed dried apricots mashed into a sauce. When I had a bunch of pears to process last week, I originally planned to follow this recipe for Pear Butter, but Luc so liked what we had by the end of Step 2 that I just stopped and canned it up. Later, if I decide I still want some pear butter, I can always open up a quart or two of sauce and cook it down. Or, I can keep doing what I did this morning and making pear sauce muffins.

Spiced Pear Sauce Muffins
Makes 24 mini muffins or 12 full size muffins

3/4 cups whole wheat pastry flour
3/4 cups white pastry flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon ground mace
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 large eggs
1 cup Rapadura or packed brown sugar
1 stick (1/2 cup) unsalted butter, melted
1 cup unsweetened pear sauce
1 cup pecans or walnuts (3 1/2 ounces), coarsely chopped

Put oven rack in middle position and preheat oven to 400°F. Grease muffin pan.

Stir together flour, baking powder, baking soda, spices, and salt in a bowl. Whisk together eggs and sugar in a large bowl until combined well, then add butter, a little at a time, whisking until mixture is creamy. Stir in pear sauce then fold in flour mixture until flour is just moistened. Stir in nuts and divide batter among muffin cups. Bake mini-muffins for 15 minutes, full-size muffins for 20 minutes. Cool on rack. Keeps for a day in an airtight container or freeze for a month.

Montavilla Food Co-op?

2009-10-18T09:51:00.000-07:00

On Monday October 19th from 7-9 pm at the Montavilla Food Co-op Working Group will meet at at the Montavilla Methodish Church, 232 SE 80th Avenue, to discuss starting up a co-op in the neighborhood. They have already hooked up with some Olympia folks who help people start co-ops and Lori Burge the development person at Peoples Food Co-op will be there to give her input. They want to have a storefront co-op and that they figure it will take about three years to pull that together, so in the meantime they will have a buying club. If you're interested in helping with this effort but can't make the meeting, join the group's email list.

Pumpkin Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies

2009-10-08T06:18:00.000-07:00

My mom used to make these pumpkin chocolate chip cookies when I was a kid and when I had a hankering for them years later, she sent me a scanned copy of the Libby* ad she clipped decades ago that included the recipe. A little heavy on the refined flour and sugar for my tastes these days, I set to making some of my usual changes: substituted whole wheat flour for some of the white, Rapadura for the refined sugars, and coconut oil for half the butter (the last change I make primarily for flavor). I don't remember if the original recipe included oats or not. Today, we were out of rolled oats and I used barley flakes instead, which worked just fine. Dried cranberries and chopped roasted hazelnuts make tasty additions. That's my boy, "sneaking" a dollop of cookie dough. Freshly canned tomato juice on the right.

1 cup white pastry flour
1 cup whole wheat pastry flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
pinch ground cloves
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup rolled oats
1/2 cup butter
1/2 cup coconut oil
2 cups Rapadura (or 1 cup brown sugar and 1 cup white sugar)
1 egg
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 cups cooked and pureed pumpkin or 1 15-ounce can pumpkin puree
2 cups chocolate chips (I prefer bittersweet)

Preheat oven to 375F. Sift together flours, baking soda, spices, and salt, then mix in oats and set aside. Cream butter, coconut oil, and sugar in a large mixer bowl until fluffy. Add egg, vanilla, and pumpkin and mix until well incorporated. Add dry ingredients to pumpkin mixture with mixer set on low, then add chocolate chips. Drop spoonfuls of dough onto parchment or Silpat-lined baking sheet. Bake for 15 minutes. Remove from oven and allow to cool on baking sheet for a couple minutes before transferring to cooling rack.

* Libby is owned by Nestle and does not make an organic canned pumpkin. I have been super pleased with the Farmer's Market brand of canned organic pumpkin puree.

Ode to the Tomato

2009-08-18T21:27:00.000-07:00

After last year's dismal tomato harvest, I went all out this year to ensure that we would have lots of tomatoes and I'm so pleased to find my efforts paying off now. I started plants from seed indoors late last winter, growing them up under lights in our basement. In April, I moved them outside, snugged up next to the house under an eave to harden off. By the time I planted them into the garden under hoop houses in mid-May, they were robust, thick-stemmed beauties. My son discovered our first ripe tomato on July 9th--a full month earlier than we've had ripe tomatoes here in previous years. And now?

August 18th tomato harvest...more to come.

That's about 30 pounds I picked Tuesday morning. The yellow ones are my favorite slicing tomato, Persimmon, which I've grown for nine years. They will be part of my entry into Michael Ruhlman's BLT From Scratch Challenge, but they're so good I am perfectly happy with plain tomato sandwiches for lunch most days. The small round ones are Stupice, an early variety that I haven't grow for a while because they don't have tremendous flavor. I found though, that they're great for drying and roasting, both techniques that intensify flavor. The elongated tomatoes are San Marzano, the classic Neopolitan plum tomato, a meaty, nearly seedless variety, with a fantastically pure tomato flavor, sweet yet astringent. Summer on the tongue. Those will go into sauce I'll be making in small batches in my slow cooker, following my friend Melisa's lead, and on top of a margherita pizza or two. This is my first year growing them and I'm amazed with their productivity, their vines covered with these heavy gems.

My obsession with growing tomatoes is thanks to the special relationship and role they've played in my development as a lover of real food. As a girl, I watched my parents grow seedlings in our suburban greenhouse, which I helped them market at the garden club sale every spring. Later in the summer, my brother and I would pull a wagon full of tomatoes and cucumbers around the neighborhood, knocking on doors offering them for sale for ten cents a piece. What we didn't sell, my mom turned into sauce, which would bubble and sputter on the stove for days before she canned enough jars to provide us with spaghetti sauce for a year. I can remember waking up many a morning during tomato season to the appetite-stimulating aroma of tomatoes, garlic, and onions that had been simmering away all night on the stove and making myself a slice of bread with tomato sauce for breakfast.

At the same time, sliced tomatoes made a daily appearance on the dinner table, sprinkled with a pinch of salt and pepper. This was long before I'd ever heard of a caprese salad and I was then and am now perfectly content to eat fresh tomatoes this way. They were one of the few vegetables I really liked growing up and one winter, when I was about seven or eight years old, I spied some "fresh" tomatoes at the grocery store and asked my mom to buy some. I thought she would be pleased that I was asking her to buy a vegetable, but she said no, explaining that the only fresh tomatoes worth eating are the ones we grew ourselves or bought at a farm stand, that tomatoes from the grocery store taste like "soggy pink cardboard" because they are bred to withstand being trucked long distances, not for flavor. That was an important early lesson in real food, which gave me an appreciation for how fortunate I was to have a family that knew how to grow and find things like good tomatoes. I also learned how deceiving looks can be in the grocery store and was inspired to learn more about the differences between foods bred and grown for flavor and food grown for other reasons.

When I was in my 20s, my father began canning tomato juice, and I spent many hours helping run tomatoes through his hand-cranked juicer. The mindless repetitive nature of the work made for the perfect backdrop to lengthy conversations on all manner of topics. For me, juicing tomatoes with my dad as a college student was a time of reconnecting with the man I'd lost touch with as a teen.

With so many fond memories associated with this jewel of the home garden, it perhaps should come as no surprise that later in life, a flat of tomato seedlings would bring me back from the brink during a bout of severe depression and help me resurrect my true self, that had been buried underneath years of unbearable sadness.

Today, growing and canning tomatoes still gives me an excuse to call my mom and dad with questions and reminds me of spending cold spring mornings in the warmth of our tomato-scented greenhouse and hot summer afternoons harvesting tomatoes with my brother. Tomatoes have given me so much over the years, I am grateful for this wonderful plant, with its unmistakable scent that sticks to my fingers whenever I prune or harvest, and its marvelously versatile, delicious fruit. So, I hope you'll forgive me for bragging about my tomato harvest and understand that for me, that overflowing basket represents far more than a few jars of sauce.

This is my Real Food Wednesday post. Be sure to find out what other Real Food bloggers are saying today.

Cheese Should Not Be Licensed

2009-08-13T22:30:00.001-07:00

I just returned from hearing Joel Salatin speak here in Portland about how food safety regulations burden small farmers and producers to the detriment of local food systems and the consumers who would be healthier and happier eating real food produced by people they know. I was prepared for Salatin's firebrand speaking style, overloaded with lengthy descriptions, such as "a disconnected, Greco-Roman, Western, egocentric, compartmentalized, reductionist, fragmented, linear thought process," "irradiated, amalgamated, prostituted, reconstituted, adulterated, modified, and artificially-flavored, extruded, bar-coded, un-pronounceable things," and "mob-stocking hervbivorous solar conversion lignified carbon sequestration fertilization." I didn't expect to hear him speak about food safety, though I know that railing against those who proclaim to keep our food "safe" is a favorite topic of his. After the way my week started, getting the chance to hear this vocal advocate of local food systems speak and to talk briefly with him while he signed my copy of his book Everything I Want to Do Is Illegal, connected my problems, as a home cooking instructor wanting to introduce people to the tastes and textures of real food and a home food producer wishing I could sell what I make to my friends and neighbors, to the catastrophe that is our modern food system.

A couple months ago, the manager of my favorite farmers market asked me if I would do a cooking demonstration at the market. Delighted and honored, I happily agreed to do several demonstration over the coming months. The manager mentioned that many people she talks with at the market don't even know how to make salad dressings, so for my first demo, I showed market visitors not only how to make salad dressings at home, but mayonnaise and ketchup as well and discussed how to use those as foundations for other condiments, like tartar sauce, barbeque sauce, and sweet and sour sauce. People sampled my creations and told me how inspired they were by the demonstration and to see how simple it can be to make these tasty accompaniments at home. Pat myself on the back for a job well done--inspiring and empowering people to cook at home is what this is all about for me.

For my second demonstration, I decided to show folks how to make soft dairy products at home, like yogurt, ricotta, chevre, buttermilk, sour cream, and creme fraiche. These are all dead-easy to make and they taste so much better than what's available in plastic tubs at the grocery store. While they are easy to make, culturing dairy does take time. Yogurt takes eight or more hours to set up once it's been cultured. Chevre must be cultured for several hours, then drained for a couple more. Sour cream and creme fraiche can take up to 24 hours to achieve their proper consistency. Since I know that tasting the real deal is a big part of convincing people that making these foods is worth the little bit of effort, I made batches of everything ahead of time so that I could offer samples. As I set up in the demonstration booth, a certain busybody market vendor, who shall remain anonymous, came up and told me that Oregon Department of Agriculture regulations prohibit anyone from offering samples of food prepared in a non-licensed kitchen. "As a market member, I'm concerned about the market's liability," she said. In preparation for starting up my business teaching cooking classes, I had looked into the state regulations and from my research, my understanding was that as long as I was just giving away samples, I didn't have to prepare them in a licensed kitchen. The busybody insisted that I was incorrect, adding, "Cheese should be licensed." Seriously. Those are the words that came out of her mouth. Cheese should be licensed. Had I not been so upset by the situation, I would have laughed at the absurdity of her statement. Then she mentioned that what I was doing, teaching people to make dairy products at home, was in competition with her own business. Ah-ha, now we get to the heart of the matter. Empowering people to prepare food with their own hands might get in the way of commerce.

The market manager saw us talking and approached to find out what was going on. Not knowing herself whether offering homemade samples was in compliance with ODA regulations or not, she quickly convened the market's board and it was decided that no, I could not allow anyone to taste the food that I had made in my unlicensed home kitchen. I fully understand their decision and the last thing I would want to do is create a situation that would harm the market, so I agreed to go ahead with the demo, but not offer samples of my homemade delectables. Fortunately, the demo went well and afterward a number of people told me they felt inspired to start making their own cheese and such at home. Mission accomplished. Nevertheless situation pained me because it seemed to call into question of my integrity and my ability to produce safe, wholesome food. This food I made at home, that I feed to my own children, was apparently unfit for public consumption, according to the ODA and others who feel that "cheese should be licensed."

In his talk, Salatin mentioned that during a recent conversation with Michaal Pollan, they discussed how it would be possible to find a compromise between what Salatin described as liberal democrats, who feel that food safety regulations are necessary, and libertarians, who find such regulations an infringement upon their freedom. They came up with a scale, with a McDonald's meal at one end, and a meal consisting of of backyard-raised chicken and homegrown veggies at the other. Which meal should receive the most regulatory scrutiny, he asked. I hope, Dear Reader, that you would agree with Joel, Michael, and me, that the McDonald's meal, which travels across hundreds of miles and though dozens of hands, requires the greatest level of regulatory scrutiny, while regulators would leave dinner from "Aunt Mabel's backyard," as Salatin put it, alone. And while you may agree that a system that doesn't burden small producers, who are directly accountable to their customers, with costly regulations that stymy innovation and local food systems, surprisingly, many people in power feel that the opposite is true. Salatin said that he recently asked Virginia Senator Jim Webb what he thought about whether the McDonald's or Aunt Mabel's meal should be more regulated, and Webb responded that the backyard producer should undergo greater scrutiny.

And the sad fact is, there may be some of you out there reading this who are still convinced that the edible foodlike substances that the industrial food system belches out are somehow safer, thanks to USDA regulations and the like, than food grown and prepared by your neighbor. Many have become so fearful of food, real food, that is, that we ignore all the warnings about what's wrong with the system. Swine flu, BCE, salmonella, algal bloom, diabetes, obesity, heart disease...the list of signs that all is not well with our industrial food system goes on and on. Yet, we fear that canning our own food at home will put us at risk for botulism, when in fact, since the 1970s, there have been on average only about 24 cases of foodborne botulism per year and a large percentage of those cases involve food prepared in factories and restaurants. Thanks to a time in US history when urban dairy cows being fed an unhealthy diet of distillery waste produced milk that was unfit for human consumption in its raw state, many people, disconnected from farms producing clean, wholesome milk from pastured cows, came to accept that the only safe milk is pasteurized milk. Yet people have consumed raw milk and made all sorts of products from milk at home for thousands of years. How did we, in a historical blink of an eye, forget that? How have we come to the point at which someone could say with a straight face that cheese should be licensed?

I could just go on and on (obviously), but it's time I get to bed so I can get up early and can some food in my unlicensed kitchen. Don't worry, I won't sell any to my neighbors. I just have one last thing to say: Cheese should not be licensed. Make it yourselves. If not cheese, try canning, drying, freezing, or fermenting some of the summer's bounty. In his talk tonight, Salatin challenged us to develop the skills we need to fill our pantries with more food without barcodes than with them. What a great notion.

This is my first Fight Back Friday post. Be sure to check out what other Real Food bloggers have to say today. Thank you Kristin for hosting and for your terrific post about how rampant imitation foods are in our culture.

The Best Mayonnaise...

2009-08-12T08:58:00.000-07:00

I've been making mayonnaise at home for a while now. Twenty years ago, when I first began exploring French cuisine, trying recipe after recipe in Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking a decade before Julie Powell began her own quest, I made mayonnaise for the first time while working my way through Chapter Two: Sauces.

In my first attempt, I nervously whisked store-bought eggs by hand, wondering if it was worth the effort and risks, and what in the world I would do with a cup-and-a-half of mayonnaise in the couple days before it would spoil. Except for special occasions when I knew I would use it all quickly, I found homemade mayonnaise not worthwhile. Years later, I hit the trifecta when I discovered how easy it is to make mayo with a food processor, learned the technique of fermenting mayonnaise that keeps it from spoiling for several weeks, and had a lovely friend willing to share eggs from her backyard chickens. I've been making homemade mayo ever since. For the last year or so, I've been using my own chicken's eggs and making mayonnaise every couple weeks during the summer high-season of mayo use, when cold foods seem to just call out for this luscious, simple sauce.

Of course, having excellent eggs helps this mayo tremendously. My truly free-ranging hens live on a diet of worms, grubs, and backyard vegetation, plus a homemade supplemental mix of whole grains, fish meal, flax seeds, and kelp, sunflower seeds from our garden, and kitchen scraps. They lay eggs with bright, orange-yellow yolks and egg-errific flavor. Since you are not only using raw eggs for this recipe, but leaving the finished product out at room temperature for several hours to ferment, it's essential to use the highest quality eggs you can find. Seek out a backyard chicken keeper (check craigslist) whose chickens spend at least part of their day outdoors, with access to green plants and bugs. Chickens raised in confinement are understandably stressed and crowded conditions are ideal for spreading disease. Free-range chickens have stronger immune systems and are therefore less likely to be overwhelmed with salmonnella bacteria. Plus, their eggs will be higher in omega-3 fatty acids, as well as vitamins A and D.

The real beauty of this mayo, however, is not its health benefits, but its flavor and how it contributes marvelously to just about anything it accompanies. Perfect all-American coleslaw, lip-smacking tartar sauce (culinary surprise of the year for me was discovering how much I like tartar sauce when I make it myself with my mayo), Green Goddess dressing, Thousand Island dressing, dips galore, amazing egg salad, tuna salad, chicken salad, deviled eggs...

Besides good eggs, you need good oil, and unless you want a mayonnaise that has a strong taste of olive oil, use mostly a neutral flavored oil, sunflower and safflower being the best in terms of nutritional profiles amongst the neutral oils. Use more assertively flavored oils sparingly. There is nothing to hide any off-notes, so use the very best you can find and afford.

If you don't make cheese at home and need a bit of whey for making this fermented mayo, buy a high quality plain, whole milk yogurt with live cultures (Nancy 's is a great local brand here in Oregon), scoop out a bit of the yogurt, then wait a few hours or overnight. The liquid that pools in the spot where you scooped is whey, which you can use for this recipe.

Cuisinart owners: Examine the pusher for your machine, that plastic cup-like do-dad that helps you push food down the tube. Notice the little hole in the bottom? The folks at Cuisinart put that there to help you slowly drizzle oil for mayonnaise. Wasn't that thoughtful of them? You can literally pour all the oil in there, turn on the machine, and walk away while it makes mayo for you.

Lost Arts Kitchen Mayonnaise
Makes about 1 pint

3 egg yolks
1-2 teaspoons Dijon mustard
1-2 tablespoon lemon juice
1 tablespoon whey
1/2 teaspoon salt
pinch of freshly ground white pepper (black is fine, too, but the mayo will have black flecks in it)
1-1/4 cups sunflower oil, safflower or other neutral oil
1/2 cup olive oil, or if you prefer a different flavor, try walnut, hazelnut, or sesame oil

Start with all ingredients at room temperature...or at least the eggs and oil. Process the eggs yolks in a food processor for 30 seconds, then add the mustard, lemon juice, whey, salt, and pepper and process again for another minute or two, until slightly thickened.* With the processor running, slowly add oil in a very thin stream--practically drop-by-drop at first. You can begin pouring the oil a little more quickly after adding about half of it, though I just add all the oil via the pusher. Once you have added all the oil, taste the mayonnaise, you may want to add a little more lemon, mustard, or salt. Let sit out at room temperature for 7-8 hours, then refrigerate. Keeps for about four weeks.

* You can of course do this by hand, using a whisk, or, if you have a helpful assistant, an egg beater. It's a good shoulder work out, if you're into that sort of thing.

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Beat the Heat with Leg of Lamb

2009-08-05T05:12:00.000-07:00

As much as I enjoy working in my kitchen, when the dog days of summer hit, I can't stand the heat and I become obsessed with avoiding it as much as possible. I'm also always looking for ways to get more than one meal out of anything I cook. I have never been keen on what most of us think of when we hear the word "leftovers," you know, the sad, soggy repeat of last night's supper, warmed over with the Reheat button on the microwave. Yuck. Then, a few years ago, as an exhausted, pregnant, soon-to-be mother of two, I began to develop a sort of mad genius for creating what I called "leftovers by design." These days, I almost never cook just for one meal. I'm always scheming for ways I can take a little extra leftover this or that and turn it into something new. Kinda like those crafty folks who turn old wool sweaters into felt handbags.

So, here's what heat intolerance and an obsession with leftovers look like at our house. When we fire up the grill, we cook enough meat and vegetables for that evening's dinner plus sandwiches and salads later in the week. Also, I can frequently be found in the cool of the morning cooking a big batch of potatoes, grains, or legumes to use as a base for salads that we'll dip into for several days. Because they generate heat and humidity, my crockpot, steamer, and dehydrator all go to work outside during the summer, on a table set up temporarily under the eaves behind our house. The food processor is one appliance that keeps its place indoors and I use it almost daily to julienne vegetables for salad, make up a batch of cold soup, or whip up mayonnaise that makes ordinary canned tuna, hard-boiled eggs, and garden tomatoes so finger-lickin' good.

Recently, Mike butterflied a leg of grassfed lamb (from our homesteading friend Mary), rubbed it with a mix of Indian-inspired spices, then marinated it in homemade yogurt over night. He grilled it, along with several zucchini, over a low fire until the meat was cooked rare, while a pot of basmati rice cooked in the steamer outside and I put together a quick raita with cucumbers and mint inside.

A couple mornings later, I prepared fava beans (making a couple extra pounds for a half-batch of Alice Waters' Fava Bean Puree) and stored them in the fridge until it dinner time. I sliced the leftover lamb into bite-size pieces, seeded and sliced a cucumber, and tossed the lamb, cucs, and favas with a couple shakes of curry powder, juice from half a lime, and enough yogurt to cover, and announced that dinner was ready. Fava beans are a bit of trouble to prepare, but I find their fresh pea flavor and creamy texture worth the effort. If you have young kids, get them into the act of popping the blanched beans out of their jackets. Just make sure you prepare some extra to make up for what your little laborers eat in the process!

The leftover zucchini made their way into my standby grain salad, the Lemon-Garlic Quinoa Salad from Cynthia Lair's Feeding the Whole Family or I could have easily tossed them into a Wheat Berry Salad or this lovely French Barley Salad. Grain salads are filling, pack easily, and keep well in the fridge for a couple days.

Mike's a great cook; he learned from his mom and French grandma what flavor combinations work, but he doesn't work from recipes--it's all improv--and with his ADD, there's no remembering just what he did. Drives me just a little nuts, but I'm used to it by now. I'm not so good at the keeping-track-of-what-I-done-in-the-kitchen thing either, so I really have no business complaining. Anyway. I have adapted a recipe I found online that looks like it will give your similar results.

Grilled Leg of Lamb Marinated in Yogurt with Indian Spices (adapted from Basic Recipes)

2 cups of plain yogurt
4 garlic cloves, minced
2 tablespoons fresh ginger, minced
2 teaspoons of ground coriander
2 teaspoons of garam masala
1 teaspoon of ground cumin
1/2 teaspoon of ground allspice
1/2 teaspoon of cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon of ground cardamom
1/2 teaspoon of ground fenugreek
6 pounds leg of lamb, butterflied

Mix yogurt and spices. In a shallow glass baking dish pour yogurt marinade over lamb and turn several times to coat. Cover and refrigerate at least 6 hours and up to 48 hours. Light a charcoal grill or preheat a stovetop grill until very hot. Add lamb and grill, 25 to 30 minutes, or until an instant-reading thermometer registers 130 to 135ºF for rare meat, 140 to 145ºF for medium. Remove to a carving board, cover loosely with foil and let meat rest for 10 to 15 minutes. Slice thinly to serve.

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BLT from Scratch Challenge

2009-07-26T06:25:00.000-07:00

Well, I bake my own bread, grow my own tomatoes and lettuce, make the best mayonnaise, ever, and have been talking with Mike about doing our own bacon when we get our side of pork this fall (we were disappointed with the bacon from the butcher that processed our meat last year). One of my favorite authors and bloggers, Michael Ruhlman, issued a challenge to readers to make their own BLT from scratch: that is homegrown veggies, homemade bread and mayo (ours with backyard eggs, natch), and home cured bacon. I'm so excited! I'll look for pork bellies at the Hillsdale farmers' market today, where I'm going to pick up fresh chevre culture and rennet from Chrisssie of Kookoolan Farm. If I don't find pork belly there, Laurelhurst Market has bellies and is open today. The race is on...hope our lettuce doesn't bolt this week!

Have a Couple Cold Ones on Me...

2009-07-22T17:08:00.000-07:00

Sometimes, even I, Ms. Homemade-and-Farm-Direct, find myself at Trader Joe's with my kids, throwing a bunch of convenience foods into my cart. Yesterday was such a day. I blame the abscessed tooth and low-grade infection I've been dealing with for weeks that's left me super tired (sleeping as much as 11-12 hours a day when I can), with little time or energy for baking or preparing our usual snacks and fixings for on-the-go meals.

So, there we were, two hungry kids and a hungry mom, aimlessly wandering through the prepared food bonanza that is TJs. We headed for the tasting station at the back of the store; the offering of the day was a tomato and tsatsiki soup. Cool and refreshing, Annabel and I both liked it, Luc, not so much. Trader Joe's "recipe" combined one quart package of Trader Joe tomato soup with one pint of Trader Joe tsatsiki. While I could make my own tomato soup, I knew that with how I've been feeling, that wasn't going to happen soon. I also immediately recognized that after I have my tooth removed Wednesday morning, I'd be glad for nourishing, liquid sustenance, so I grapped one of the aseptic packages of tomato soup. I had my own yogurt, cucumbers, and everything else I need to make tsatsiki at home.

As I reviewed a couple tsatsiki recipes, I was reminded of another cold, yogurt-based soup that I love this time of year. Since I'm on antibiotics for this infection, I've been making sure I eat lots of yogurt, sauerkraut, and other probiotic-rich foods to keep my gut flora happy, but I'd enjoy these for their cool, refreshing flavor whether they were good for my gut bugs or not!

When I have a bit more energy, I'm making Elise's gazpacho soup on Simply Recipes, using roasted tomatoes and red peppers.

Refreshing Tomato & Tsatsiki Soup
About six one cup servings

1 quart tomato soup
1 pint yogurt
1 cucumber, peeled, seeded, and chopped
1 clove garlic, minced
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 tablespoon red wine vinegar
1/4 cup fresh mint leaves, chopped
1/4 cup fresh basil leaves, chopped
salt, pepper

Combine ingredients in a large, flat-bottom bowl or pan. Use an immerson blender to liquify cucumber.* Season with salt and pepper to taste (I used 1 generous teaspoon salt and a pinch of pepper).

*If you don't have an immersion blender, use a regular blender or food processor to liquify the cucs, then combine with remaining ingredients.

Cucumber and Wasabi Soup (adapted from Epicurious)
Six one cup servings

3 cucumbers, peeled, seeded, and chopped
1/2 tablespoon rice wine vinegar
1-2 teaspoons sea salt
1/2 tablespoon fresh lime juice
1 teaspoon wasabi paste
1 pint yogurt
2 tablespoons finely chopped fresh chives

Use a blender or food processor to liquify cucumbers with all but the last two ingredients. Whisk cucumbers with yogurt and chives in a bowl. Can be made up to one day ahead of serving.

Visit Kelly the Kitchen Kop for more Real Food Wednesday posts!

Do You Drink Bottled Water?

2009-07-18T22:49:00.000-07:00

Water Disaster

Southern Potato Salad with Sunchoke Relish

2009-07-16T04:01:00.000-07:00

Last Sunday I stopped at the Sassafras Kitchen stand at the Montavilla Farmers Market, intrigued to find Southern food amongst the Sol Pops and Thai-2-Go, and drawn by the half-pint jars of something stacked on the table. Drawing near, I learned that there was Sunchoke Relish in those jars and eagerly accepted an invitation to try some on a chip. Like all good relishes, this one had a perfect balance of sour and sweet, with a nice mustard tang and crisp, thin slices of sunchokes. Longing for more, I was delighted to see the offering of Potato Salad with Sunchoke Relish on the stand's menu. Along with a plate of potato salad, I bought a jar of relish, looking forward using it in potato salad with my homemade mayonnaise later in the week. I typically make a more German-inspired potato salad, with a sour cream-based dressing, dill pickles, and Westphalia ham, but this tangy Southern version was the perfect complement to my Maryland Fried Chicken.

Southern Potato Salad with Sunchoke Relish

If you can't pick up a jar of Sassafras Kitchen's Sunchoke Relish yourself, try this recipe from Lemonbasil, which looks to me like it would make a very reasonable facisimile.

2 pounds fingerling potatoes
1/2 cup mayonnaise
1 cup sunchoke relish
salt, pepper to taste

In a large pot containing enough water to cover by a couple inches, bring potatoes to a boil and cook for 15-20 minutes. Mix mayonnaise and relish. Drain potatos in a colander. When they are just cool enough to handle, slice potatoes into bite-size pieces and return to cooking pot. Toss sliced potatoes with mayonnaise and relish while potatoes are still warm, which helps them absorb the flavor of the dressing better. Add salt and pepper if desired. Serve warm or cold.

Oregon-Raised Maryland Fried Chicken

2009-07-13T22:28:00.000-07:00

Warning: This post contains descriptions of slaughtering and butchering chickens.

For many reasons, I have long been interested in raising chickens for meat, but until recently, the only meat (as opposed to egg-laying) breed I knew of was the Cornish Cross. This is the white chicken raised by commercial growers, but I was reluctant to raise them myself as they have many health problems due to their extremely rapid growth. Cornish crosses tend to have weak legs, heart attacks, congestive heart failure. They don't forage well or tolerate heat, because they tend to just sit around the feed trough and won't cross a yard to get water. Not the bird for me to include in my free-ranging backyard flock!

This spring, I learned about the availability of chicks derived from American and European heritage breeds that were developed to meet the standards of the French Label Rouge Free Range program. The "Le Poulet" breed retains the chicken's natural instinct for foraging outdoors and because they are slower growing, do not have the health problems associated with the Cornish Cross. I knew I had found my bird.

So, in late April, we picked up five Le Poulet chicks and three layer chicks and kept them inside under a warming light. A few weeks later, we moved them outside and by the 4th of July, the broilers, now pullets, were nearly the same size as our hens and twice as big as the layer pullets that had hatched the same week. Independence Day morning, Mike, the kids, and I loaded our meat birds into our car and took them to a friends for butchering. Her family had raised 35 of the same chickens and had rented equipment to ease slaughtering and feather removal. Another family, along with a couple other women who were interested in learning about the butchering process, were already working when we arrived.

The gendered division of labor reminded me of when I helped butcher on my uncle's farm as a girl: the men dispatched the animals, while the women took care of most of the remaining details. Honestly, I preferred my jobs to theirs, though I watched Mike put a chicken in the killing cone and slit its throat. If I didn't have him around for such a task, I'm sure I'd find the mettle to do it myself, but I was glad not to.

When I arrived, Tiffany, who has been helping raise and butcher chickens for three years now, showed me how to remove a chicken's oil gland, feet, head, neck, and organs. The work was fascinating and gruesome at the same time. We worked outside, shaded from the hot summer sun by a canopy set up on the deck over an old kitchen counter top. Doing productive work in convivial, supportive company made the morning go by quickly. (I don't have pictures, but Matron of Husbandry, one of my favorite bloggers, has a post about butchering chickens that depicts a process much like the one we used, though we were working on a much smaller scale.)

Our kids wandered in and out of the house, occasionally asking the moms questions about chicken entrails or watching the dads do their work. My kids (3 and 6) had known from when we first got the chicks that some were going to become meat for us, and while both of them had expressed some sadness that morning about butchering them, in the end, they were excited about the opportunity to complete the circle and eat meat from these animals they had helped raise.

A few nights ago, we finally did just that. I love fried chicken in the summer, and especially like cold leftovers, so I thawed the two smallest birds, both just over two pounds (the others had been between 3.8 and 4.0 pounds), and cut them into pieces, which I soaked in buttermilk for 24 hours, dredged in seasoned breadcrumbs, then fried in beef tallow. Frying chicken is messy work--the stovetop was covered with grease afterward--but this was well worth the clean up required. Crisp skin enveloped tender, moist meat. After giving thanks to the chickens whose meat we were about to eat, we enjoyed our first bites in silence puntuated by an occasional, "Mmmm..." That was the best ever. Thanks again, chickens.

Southern Potato Salad with Sunchoke Relish is the perfect accompaniment.

Maryland Fried Chicken (adapted from Alton Brown's Fried Chicken)
Old Bay is a classic spice combination that Marylanders like myself usually associate with eating Chesapeake Bay blue crab in the summer. You can find Old Bay at some retailers or make your own blend. Beef tallow is an excellent frying fat, with its high smoking point and savory flavor, but sunflower seed oil is a good substitute. Maintaining the correct temperature is key when frying. Too high, and the skin will burn before the meat is cooked. Too low, and the chicken will be greasy. If you don't have a thermometer, monitor the chicken closely. You want it to develop a crisp skin quickly, but brown slowly: note that it must cook on each side for 10-12 minutes. With practice, you'll learn what setting on your stove gives you the correct temperature.

Serves 8

2 2-3 pound fryer chickens, cut into eight pieces
2 cups buttermilk
1 cup fine breadcrumbs
2 tablespoons flour
2 tablespoons Old Bay seasoning or similar homemade blend
about 1 cup beef tallow or sunflower seed oil

Place chicken pieces in a non-reactive bowl or pan and cover with buttermilk. Cover and refrigerate 12 to 24 hours.

Melt enough beef tallow (over low heat) to come just 1/8-inch up the side of a 12-inch cast iron skillet or heavy fry pan. Once the fat liquefies raise heat to 325 degrees F. Do not allow fat or oil to go over 325 degrees F.

Drain chicken in a colander. Combine bread crumbs, flour, and Old Bay in a shallow bowl. Dredge chicken in the bread crumbs and shake off excess.

Place chicken skin side down into the pan. Put thighs in the center, and breast and legs around the edge of the pan. Cook chicken until golden brown on each side, approximately 10 to 12 minutes per side. The internal temperature should be right around 170 degrees. (Be careful to monitor fat/oil temperature every few minutes.)

Drain chicken on a cooling rack set over a sheet pan, which drains better than paper towels or bags.

Strawberry Meditations

2009-07-01T00:01:00.000-07:00

Recently, I had a rare afternoon at home alone while my husband took the kids fishing. I still had most of a flat of strawberries leftover that I had bought early in the morning for making a small batch of jam for a canning class. Sitting in the quiet house, I sat myself in front of the flat and slowly hulled and carefully sorted the berries, enjoying the buzz from their intoxicating aroma. The smallest, most perfect specimens went into a bowl for no-pectin preserves. Larger perfect ones I sliced in half for the dehydrator. The slightly mushy, slightly underripe, or otherwise imperfect but edible went into another bowl for sorbet, cheesecake, and syrup.

It was the first time in a while that I've had some quiet time to myself and I relished every slowed down minute of it. I wouldn't trade being a parent for anything, but I do miss meditative moments spent doing mundane, yet enjoyable tasks like hulling and sorting strawberries. It seems to me my grandmothers and aunts had more time for these things. As I worked, memories from when I was a girl, shelling beans for my Aunt Helen under the shade of a giant oak in front of the Pennsylvania farmhouse where my dad grew up flitted through my mind. I could feel the gentle afternoon breeze, hear the leaves rustle and the 'plunk plunk plunk' of beans in the enamelware bowl. I often find myself transported across tens of years and thousands of miles when I'm working with food, whether in the kitchen or the garden.

I sometimes wonder why I spend the time that I do preparing food. Sure, we save some money, my homemade food tastes better and is more nutritious that store-bought, but I do worry if I'm using my time as wisely as I should. Could I make more money than I save if, for example, if I spent my baking day doing something to generate income? Perhaps. That's the rationale many people use to explain why they don't prepare food at home and I understand it. The truth is, I enjoy the craft of preparing food, how it engages all my senses, evokes deep seated memories, and helps create what I hope will be fond memories for my own children. I feel connected to my faraway family and to those who have passed away, to the earth and its amazing abundance, and to people everywhere, who are, at that very same moment, sorting strawberries or shelling beans.

What is it that you enjoy most about preparing food at home?

This is my first Real Food Wednesday post! Visit Cheeseslave to read posts from other Real Food bloggers!

Persian Love Cake, Modified

2009-05-28T09:00:00.000-07:00

That was my birthday cake! The dairy connection to this cake is the saffron-infused buttercream frosting. I made several modifications to this recipe for Persian Love Cake.

Per the recommendations from several reviewers, I added 1/4 teaspoon cream of tartar to the egg whites, to prevent the cooked cake from falling. Instead of buying powdered sugar, I whirred some Wholesome Sweeteners Organic Fair Trade Cane Sugar in my blender for a minute. Since I rarely use powdered sugar, it makes sense to just powder what I needed rather than buy a whole pound of it. I also used slightly less sugar than called for--only about 12 tablespoons. I used twice as much cardamom as the recipe suggested, but wish I had used more. I ground the cardamom seeds--whole seeds sounded unappetizing to me. I love the combination of pistachios and saffron, so I added crushed ones between the cake layers, as well as on top for decoration. Yum!

Sirkand

2009-05-28T08:58:00.000-07:00

Sirkand offers a perfect finish to an Indian inspired meal. Here's a recipe that a student sent to me.

20 ounces yogurt
1 cup sugar
pinch of saffron
1 tablespoon rose water
¼ teaspoon cardamom
1 tablespoon chopped almond
1 tablespoon chopped pistachio

Hang yogurt over night in cheese cloth to drain whey and form curd. Add saffron to rose water and let sit for 10 minutes. Mix yogurt curd with sugar, cardamom, and rose water with saffron. Place into small serving cups and top with chopped nuts.

Rethinking Conventional Thinking: Every Day Is Egg Day

2009-04-30T06:44:00.000-07:00

One of the challenges I have found in my classes is with helping people overcome their intellectual and emotional obstacles to eating real foods, especially in their full fat, cholesterol-laden glory. For decades, researchers, nutritionists, media, our mothers, and friends have repeated the conventional dietary mantra that fat and cholesterol are baaaad. Unfortunately, much conventional thinking about what we should eat is not based on sound research. There are many reasons why different nutrients and even whole foods become lionized or demonized and it's easy to fall into conspiracy theories, placing blame on Big Food, Big Pharma, or Big Guv'ment, but there is more to it than the big guys. There is also our own desire to find simple answers to complex questions about nutrition, health, and sustainability and a loss of traditional knowledge about growing, preparing, and eating food.

In the coming months, I will address different demonized foods and what new (and old) thinking has to say about why we might reconsider including them in our diets. As I upset the apple cart, I don't expect you accept what I have to say without question. Quite the contrary, while I hope to give you some food for thought, I encourage you to do your own research and spend some time thinking for yourself.

This month, between our six hens all laying for us everyday, taking a Ukrainian egg decorating class at Gossamer, and teaching an egg cookery class at Friendly Haven Farm, I have eggs on the brain. So for my first installment of Rethinking Conventional Thinking, the eggs have it...let's learn more about the egg's most misunderstood and maligned nutrient, cholesterol.

Growing up in the 1970s, the first time I heard the term “cholesterol” was in news stories reporting that eggs, especially egg yolks, were dangerously high in this supposedly artery-clogging substance. I remember seeing egg-white omelets appear on menus and egg replacements next to the real eggs in grocery stores. I never gave up on real eggs and continued to enjoy them scrambled, fried, hard-boiled, in omelets, quiches, and custards. For me, this was the beginning of a lifelong practice of questioning and eschewing conventional dietary “wisdom” whenever it suggested that people should quit eating foods that humans around the world have enjoyed for millennia. As a child and a teenager, I didn’t have any good reasons for ignoring such warnings, except my gut telling me that that foods my grandparents (who all lived into their 80s and 90s) enjoyed regularly couldn’t be all that bad. Despite decades of throwing caution to the wind, I have always had relatively low cholesterol levels. Well, it as it turns out eating real eggs has nothing to do with cholesterol levels, but the thinking that lead to warnings about eggs and cholesterol has everything to do with bad science and political expedience.

In the 1960s, researchers were using powdered eggs in their studies, but the process of turning an egg into powder—liquifying, pasteurizing, and spray-drying—oxidizes the cholesterol in the egg. Dr. Kilmer McCully, an expert on cholesterol metabolism, says that scientists have known since the 1950s that oxidized cholesterol causing atherosclerosis, but natural cholesterol does not. The animals used in these studies, rabbits, are herbivores that do not have the capacity to metabolize cholesterol. What these studies found is that force-feeding creatures a substance that isn't naturally part of their diet causes them to develop arterial cholesterol deposits. The basic science behind these studies was fundamentally flawed. Researchers around the world agree that natural, non-oxidized dietary cholesterol does not cause heart disease. Rather, our modern Western diet full of processed foods and deficient in omega-3 fatty acids, folic acid, vitamins B, C, and E and other nutrients cause heart disease (which did not exist before 1900).

And why did eggs in particular become so maligned? In 1968, food scientists met to discuss dietary cholesterol and determined that people should consume no more than 300 mg cholesterol a day. They came to that number not by observing the reversal of heart disease in people who limited their average daily dietary cholesterol to less than 300 mg, but by simply halving the average daily consumption of 568 mg. With over 200 mg of cholesterol in the yolk of a large egg, an inexpensive, traditional food became a guilty pleasure for some and an excuse for Big Food to come up with new, cholesterol-free products.

What are we missing out on when we give up eggs? Fresh, real eggs are an excellent source of protein, with a ratio of amino acids very close to the ideal for human nutrition. Egg yolks contain lecithin, which helps the body digest fat and cholesterol. Lecithin is the source of choline, a B vitamin-like agent vital to the fetal brain. Eggs contain many antioxidants, including gluathione, which helps other antioxidants fight cancer and prevents oxidation of LDL. Yolks are rich in the antioxidant lutein, which is more readily absorbed than the lutein found in spinach. Yolks have the highest concentrations of biotin—a B vitamin essential for healthy hair, skins, and nerves and the digestion of fat and protein—of any food.

Eggs from pastured birds are superior to those from hens raised indoors. Pastured yolks are rich in betacarotene from the green plants that truly free-ranging hens eat in abundance. The eggs from my own chickens, who are outside all day, every day, are unquestionably orange. They also contain more vitamins A and E, folic acid, lutein, and beta-carotene. Pastured eggs are dramatically richer in omega-3 fats, which prevent obesity, diabetes, heart disease, and depression. The ratio of omega-6 to omega-3 fats in pastured eggs in ideal (about 1:1), while an indoor egg has almost 20 times more omega-6 than omega-3 fats.

Some eggs are advertised as vegetarians, but as any keeper of free-range chickens knows, chickens delight in eating worms, grubs, insects and kitchen scraps that contain meat, cheese, or sour milk. The “vegetarian” label came about in the late 1990s after Mad Cow disease scares spurred a demand for eggs and meat from animals that had not been fed protein from ground-up pigs, cows, and chickens. While it’s laudable to keep such feed out of the diet of livestock, what all these animals need is their natural diet, found on pasture, and a life in the open air. For your health and the welfare of animals, look for eggs, meat, and dairy products from pastured animals and don't be afraid of real food!

To learn more about cholesterol, read any of the numerous articles at The International Network of Cholesterol Skeptics web site, Real Food by Nina Planck, Ending the Cholesterol-Heart Disease Myth by Andreas Moritz, or The Benefits of High Cholesterol by Dr. Uffa Ravnskov.

Managing the Asparagus Harvest

2009-04-29T05:19:00.000-07:00

Seven years ago, I planted 25 asparagus root crowns in deep trenches in a bed running the length of my garden. The first couple years, we let the plants develop and harvested nary a spear, but a few years ago, we started getting so much asparagus that we would give it away to anyone who expressed the mildest interest. While we still give a lot away, we've developed a system for preparing and preserving this spring bounty so that we can enjoy it year round. You can use this method with your own garden's bounty or what you pick up at farmers' markets.

Start by setting a large pot of salted water to boil on the stove and filling another pot or kitchen sink with ice-cold water. While the water heats up, cut the tips off the spears (the top 2-3 inches) and set them aside. Cut the stems into 1- to 2-inch long pieces. Place the stem pieces in boiling water for a minute or so, just until they turn bright green. Remove from the water using a slotted spoon and immediately transfer to the cold water. Stir to cool the stems completely, then spread in a single layer on a rimmed baking sheet. Place baking sheet in freezer for four hours, then transfer frozen asparagus to zip-top freezer bags or freezer boxes. Cooking food in boiling water briefly is called blanching and cooling it in cold water is called shocking and I find the combination of techniques useful for preparing many spring and summer vegetables either for freezing or fresh eating.

You can prepare the tips the same way, especially if you want to include them in a salad, or you could just blanch, roast, stir-fry, grill or prepare them however you wish. The incomparable taste and texture of asparagus tips are best appreciated when fresh, but the frozen stems make fine additions to soups (especially pureed potato-leek soup), twice-baked potatoes, stir-fries, casseroles, and quiche.

If you like pickled asparagus, try putting up some yourself. I'm currently experimenting with lacto-fermenting asparagus and will share my results!

Gingered Rhubarb and Pear Crisp

2009-03-27T09:17:00.000-07:00

Oh how I love this dessert! Ginger and rhubarb are an amazing combination! Hooray for spring! Serve this with a dollop of farm-fresh vanilla whipped cream.

Serves 8

4 tablespoons unsalted butter, diced, plus extra for greasing
1½ pounds rhubarb (trimmed weight)
1½ pounds peeled and chopped pears
1 teaspoon grated fresh ginger
2 teaspoons crystallized ginger
½-¾ cup Rapadura or sugar (depending on how sweet you like your dessert)
2 tablespoons flour

For topping:
1 cup rolled oats
½ cup hazelnut meal
½ cup chopped toasted hazelnuts
½ cup maple syrup
2 teaspoons ground ginger
2 tablespoons butter

Preheat oven to 350ºF and lightly grease eight 6-ounce ramekins. Cut rhubarb into 1” lengths and place in saucepan with pears, fresh and crystallized ginger, Rapadura and flour. Cover and cook gently over low heat for 6 to 10 minutes until rhubarb is just softened, but still holding its shape. Transfer to prepared ramekins.

Place oats, hazelnut meal, hazelnuts, flour, and ground ginger in bowl and stir well until combined. Mix in maple syrup, then add butter and rub into mixture to form a rough crumbly mixture. Spoon over rhubarb in ramekins and bake for 25 to 30 minutes until bubbling and golden. Serve while still warm.

Asparagus, Pea, Radish, and Scallion Salad with Ginger-Miso Dressing

2009-03-27T09:10:00.000-07:00

I rinse off the peas, but don't cut off the tips or cut them into the size until after I blanch and shock them. I have found that if I remove the tips first, that the pods fill with water while they’re blanch, making the salad watery. Be sure to have a pot or sink full of cold water before you start blanching--you want to stop the cooking immediately or you'll wind up with mushy peas. (And nobody wants mushy peas in salad!)

The secret to this dressing is the orange marmalade. Many ginger-miso salad dressing recipes call for sugar and I wanted to try making it without the sugar. It’s a divine marriage of flavors.

Serves 4

2 cups (8 ounces) snow peas or sugar snap peas or a mix, trimmed
1 cup asparagus tips
2 scallions (white and green parts), thinly sliced
4 radishes, trimmed and cut into thin strips (about 1/2 cup)
¼ cup black sesame seeds

For dressing:
1 tablespoon rice vinegar
2 tablespoon sesame seed oil
3 tablespoons white miso
1 teaspoon tamari
1-2 teaspoon ginger
2 tablespoons orange marmalade
2 tablespoons water

Bring two quarts water to boil. Blanch peas for 1 minute, submerge in cold water to stop cooking, and drain. Cut the snow peas on the diagonal into ½-inch diamond shapes, discarding the end pieces. In a medium serving bowl, combine the peas, scallions, radishes, and sesame seeds. Put all dressing ingredients in a jar and shake to combine. Pour dressing and sesame seeds over the salad. Toss and serve immediately.

No-Crust Quiche with Wild Mushrooms & Nettles

2009-03-27T07:55:00.001-07:00

This is an easy and versatile egg dish that my family enjoys throughout the year. As the seasons change, I use different green vegetables, cheeses, and meats (or no meat). Kale, spinach, asparagus, broccoli, zucchini, and green beans all work well. Depending on the vegetable, I use cheddar, chevre, parmesan, or mozzarella with bacon, prosciutto, or corned beef. My favorite combination is with my husband's smoked salmon, my homemade cream cheese, and fresh asparagus from our garden. The first asparagus tips have began to emerge this week, so it won't be long 'til we're enjoying that one again!

Serves 8

1 pound waxy potatoes, such German Butterball or Yukon Gold
¼ pound thinly sliced ham
9 eggs
1 cup milk
1 teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon ground black pepper
¼ teaspoon ground nutmeg
1 cup chopped wild mushrooms
½ pound stinging nettles
3-4 ounces fontina cheese, cubed

Preheat oven to 400ºF. Butter 10” quiche pan. Blanch nettles in pot of boiling salted water for 1-2 minutes, until bright green and softened. Drain in colander and let cool. Slice potatoes into thin rounds and layer rounds in the bottom of pan. Lay ham on top of potatoes. In a separate bowl, whisk eggs, milk, salt, and pepper together. Squeeze excess liquid from nettles, remove any woody stems, and then roughly chop. Mix chopped nettles into eggs, then pour egg mixture into quiche pan. Drop of cubes of cheese on top of eggs. Bake for 35-45 minutes, until eggs are set.

Olive Oil Crackers

2009-03-27T07:45:00.000-07:00

I adapted this from a recipe at one of my favorite blogs, Super Natural Cooking author Heidi Swanson's 101 Cookbooks. If you try her original recipe note the teaspoon of salt really ought to be a tablespoon (believe me, we tried it with just a teaspoon and they were not good). The semolina flour gives these crackers a somewhat gritty texture that you may like. If you don't, try using another flour, like amaranth, which would add a nice nutty flavor.

Makes 60 or so 2" square crackers

1 1/2 cups semolina flour
1 1/2 cups white whole wheat flour (or all-purpose flour)
1 tablespoon fine-grain sea salt
1 teaspoon coarse ground black pepper
1 cup warm water
1/3 cup extra virgin olive oil

In a food processor, mixer with a dough hook, or bowl, mix together the flours and salt. Add the water and olive oil. Process or mix until the dough comes to together in a ball--just a minute or two in the food processor, or 3 to 5 minutes in a mixer, and a little longer by hand. The dough should be just a bit tacky - but not stick to your hands when you work with it. If you need to add a bit more water (or flour) do so.

When you are done mixing, shape the dough into a large ball. Cover with a clean dishtowel or put in a covered bowl and let rest at room temperature for 30 - 60 minutes.

While the dough is resting, preheat your oven to 450F degrees. Insert a pizza stone if you have one.

Cut the dough ball in half. Using a rolling pin, shape into a roughly rectangular piece of dough a scant 1/8" thick--the thinner dough, the crisper the cracker. Move dough onto a parchment paper-lined baking sheet and cut it into cracker-size squares (or whatever shapes you desire!) using a pizza cutter. Poke each cracker with the tines of a fork to prevent puffing, add any extra toppings, and slide into the oven. Bake for about 20-25 minutes. Bake until deeply golden--they will taste like raw flour if undercooked. They will become more crisp as they cool. Repeat the process for the remaining dough. Store cooled crackers in an airtight container for a couple days.

Lacto-fermented Russian Dressing

2009-03-15T22:25:00.000-07:00

1/3 cup lacto-fermented mayonnaise
1-1/2 tablespoons lacto-fermented ketchup
1-1/2 teaspoons prepared horseradish
1/2 teaspoon tamari
sea salt, to taste
freshly ground black pepper, to taste

Mix all ingredients. Enjoy!

What Cheap, Industrial Food Let Us Forget

2009-03-15T18:54:00.000-07:00

On Thursday last week, I attended the Food Alliance Sustainable Food Industry Forum and Gala along with a few hundred other regional food producers, processors, and others passionate about making sustainable eating a way of life accessible to all. After an afternoon of hearing what the general public thinks about the term “sustainable” and discussing sustainable sushi with the founders of Bamboo Sushi here in Portland, I sat at a table of Country Natural Beef ranchers from eastern Oregon and southern Idaho for a delicious dinner highlighting seasonal foods from our region. After dinner, Paul Roberts author of The End of Oil and more recently, The End of Food, started out his keynote address by asking, “How self-sufficient should we be?”

He went on to briefly outline the now well-known history of the rise of industrial agriculture, but in a twist not often mentioned, he cited the farming know-how that was lost with the rise of monoculture. One hundred years ago, farms is Iowa and Oregon looked much the same, with a mix of row crops, field crops, and livestock. Farmers were “integrated systems specialists,” who knew how to conduct the orchestra of plants, animals, soil, water, and sunlight that made up the 19th century family farm. Today, farmers in Iowa specialize in growing corn, soybeans, and little else. While many of us know of many farms in Oregon full of variety, here too we have vast grass farms, single-fruit orchards, and feedlots. With that specialization and dependence on cheap oil for machinery, fertilizers, pesticides, and transport, farmers have lost the knowledge necessary to manage the diversity essential to maintaining truly healthy, vibrant farms.

According to Roberts, ordinary citizens (aka consumers) have also lost once knowledge thanks to their dependence on processed foods made possible by cheap, abundant oil. As an answer to his question about how self-sufficient we should be, he argued that along with supporting smaller scale, diversified farms, he said, we all need to learn how to prepare food at home again. Know anyone who’s helping people with that? As he spoke, the group of ranchers I’d gotten to know over dinner all turned to me and smiled. Validation is a wonderful sensation!

Harvesting Sunlight Organic Gardening Classes

2009-03-15T18:38:00.000-07:00

I’m excited to announce that Nita Wilton, of Graf Century Farm and one of my favorite bloggers, has offered to come to Portland to teach gardening classes. This is a great opportunity to learn from someone with decades of experience growing food. She will be teaching two classes in the next few weeks, one for spring and summer garden prep, another for harvesting and winter garden planning. Sign up soon as space is limited!

Harvesting Sunlight I, March 28 at 3pm
Find out which varieties of vegetables and small fruits to plant to round out your CSA share and where to buy the best seeds and plants. Observe how to start your own transplants and direct sow in the garden. Discuss soil preparation and compost, avoiding common garden pests by changing your eating habits, and controlling pests organically.

Harvesting Sunlight II, April 11 at 3pm
Learn how to fit the winter garden fit in with your spring and summer garden plans. Understand which varieties work well in our climate and why. Discuss of age-old gardening methods that reduce the need for watering and fertilizing. Learn how to rotate crops, save seeds, then harvest and store your crops.

About Nita
Nita Wilton farms and gardens on her family’s Century Farm which is nestled in the Cascade foothills near the Columbia River Gorge. A desire to preserve the history of her local foodshed has led her to devise ways to avoid the supermarket by growing almost all her family’s food, using a blend of old and new techniques. Read more about her farming and gardening efforts at her personal blog Throwback at Trapper Creek, or where she writes collaboratively at Simple, Green, Frugal Co-op or Not Dabbling in Normal.

Lost Arts Kitchen Hits the Road

2009-03-04T23:10:00.000-08:00

So, I have a few classes and demonstrations coming up in town and in the country. Have a look-see:

Cooking demonstration and talk on eating local for the residents of South Waterfront on Thursday, March 26 at 6pm.
Lacto-fermentation class at TrackersNW, our family's favorite outdoor ed organization and school of real life, on Saturday, March 28 at 10am.
Eggs? Eggs! Eggs!?! class at beautiful, biodynamic Friendly Haven Rise Farm on Saturday, April 4 at 3pm.

Oregonian Features Lost Arts Kitchen!

2009-02-20T19:13:00.000-08:00

Just a quick note and link to Thursday's article in The Oregonian about Lost Arts Kitchen. Thank you to everyone who has been so supportive of my new business and thank you to Emily Puro for writing such a terrific article!

The Art and Science of Lacto-fermentation: An Ancient Process Reborn

2009-02-13T16:39:00.000-08:00

Lacto-fermentation is an ancient food preservation technique that both enhances the flavor and nutrition of food. Many foods that we consume everyday have undergone fermentation, including beer, bread, cheese, miso, salami, tempeh, wine, and yogurt. Many more, such as pickles, sauerkraut, ketchup, mayonnaise, sushi, and chutneys, were commonly fermented before the rise of commercial canning. For those interested in preserving food at home, who favor taste over transportability and nutrition over years of shelf stability, lacto-fermentation is a technique well worth exploring. Fermentation enthusiast Sandor Katz, author of The Revolution Will Not Be Microwaved: Inside America's Underground Food Movement (Chelsea Green, 2006), notes, "It's only in the past century that fermentation disappeared behind factory doors. Reviving those practices is a way of reclaiming control of your food."

Lactobacillus is the name of a family of bacteria naturally found in all living things (including humans) that convert carbohydrates into lactic acid. These bacteria, when present in the digestive tract, create an environment inhospitable to unhealthy organisms, improving digestion and boosting the immune system. Some of us are familiar with L. acidopholus, which is one of several bacteria used to turn milk into yogurt and is sold in a pill form to counter the side effects of antibiotics. L. sanfranciscensis gives sourdough bread its characteristic taste. Guess what L. kimchi does?

The lactic acid produced by lactobacilli during fermentation preserves vegetables. While modern preservation methods such as canning and freezing destroy nutrients, lacto-fermentation enhances food's nutritional value. Indeed, this ancient method creates new nutrients, such as the B vitamins folic acid, riboflavin, niacin, thiamin, and biotin, and omega-3 fatty acids, which are essential for cell membrane and immune system function. Some ferments have been shown to act as antioxidants, removing cancer precursors--free radicals--from the cells of the body.

So, with all those big Latin names and nutritional factoids, there's obviously a lot of science behind lacto-fermentation. The art is in making these fermented foods so delicious we don't eat them out of obligation to our health, but because of the pleasure we experience in the process. Humans have been fermenting foods for millenia because they taste so good, not because they are full of omega-3 fatty acids and riboflavin. Lacto-fermented foods are more complex and tangy than commercially processed foods. If you're accustomed to the flavors conventional sauerkraut, pickles, or even ketchup, you may be pleasantly surprised at how different and delicious these foods can be when preserved with this ancient method.

But What Do I Do with It? Using Up All That Kraut and Beyond

2009-02-13T12:29:00.000-08:00

Before deciding to buy, preserve, and store any new food, it is essential to have some ideas about how you'll use it someday. This month, I'll share a few ways I've been using my fermented foods at home to improve everyday meals.

Lacto-fermented foods are good in small quantities on their own, but where they really stand out is as condiments or accompaniments to other foods. The tang and crunch of many lacto-fermented veggies make them a perfect compliment for savory foods, especially anything that's heavy or bland, like sausages or beans. Lacto-fermented condiments like mayonnaise and ketchup are so superior to what you can buy in the store that once you've tried them (and seen how easy they are to make at home), you'll never go back.

You have heard it from me before. I love sauerkraut. I eat it plain, sometimes for a mid-morning snack. I add it to all sorts of soups--lentil soup, pork and bean soup, split pea soup. I always add the kraut just before serving, so that it stays crunchy. I also make borscht with lacto-fermented beets, cabbage, and turnips and a dollop of yogurt (which is another lacto-fermented food) that's the best I have ever had.

Lacto-Fermented Borscht
Serves 4-6

2 tablespoons olive oil
1 onion, diced
1/2 teaspoon caraway seeds
1-1/2 quarts beef stock
3 Yukon gold potatoes, cut into bite-size cubes
2 cups lacto-fermented beets
2 cups lacto-fermented sauerkraut
1/2 cup lacto-fermented turnips
salt and pepper
fresh dill, finely chopped
yogurt

Heat olive oil in stock pot over medium heat. Once hot, saute onion and caraway seeds until onions are soft. Add beef stock and potatoes, and turn heat to high until broth begins to boil. Gently boil on medium-high heat for 15 minutes or until potatoes are cooked. Turn heat to low, add beets, sauerkraut, and turnips. Cook for a couple minutes, until just warmed through. Taste and add salt and pepper if desired. Serve with dill and yogurt.

My husband loves tartar sauce, though I have always found commercial versions of it insipid--not unlike most commercial ketchups. While I was making some pan-fried halibut a few weeks ago, I got inspired to make my own.

Tartar Sauce with Lacto-fermented Mayonnaise and Pickles
Doesn't make enough, apparently. This was devoured seconds after dinner started.

½ cup lacto-fermented mayonnaise
2 tablespoons diced lacto-fermented pickles
1 tablespoon salt-packed capers
1 tablespoon raw cider vinegar
1 teaspoon coarse-grained mustard

Mix all ingredients together in a bowl.

Sweet & Sour Pork with Lacto-Fermented Ketchup
Serves 4-6

Coconut oil, for frying
1 pound pork loin, cut into 1-inch cubes
1 onion, diced
3 stalks celery, diced
3 carrots sliced 1/4-inch thick, on a bias
2 teaspoons minced garlic
1 tablespoon minced ginger
1/4 teaspoon Chinese mustard powder
1/8 teaspoon red pepper flakes (or more to taste)
2/3 cup tamari
1 cup lacto-fermented ketchup
1/4 cup honey
1/4 cup raw cider vinegar
1 cup fresh pineapple, cut into 1-inch cubes
1/2 cup chopped toasted almonds or peanuts
1 tablespoon sesame oil
salt and pepper to taste

Heat about 2 tablespoons coconut oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat. Saute pork loin cubes until cooked through, about 5 to 6 minutes. Remove pork from skillet, add another tablespoon or so oil, then saute onion over medium heat for 2 to 3 minutes, then add carrots and celery and continue cooking another 3 minutes, covered. Scrap any browned bits off of the bottom of the pan. Add garlic, ginger, mustard powder and red pepper flakes, cook for 1 minute. Return pork to pan. Mix tamari, ketchup, and vinegar in a separate bowl and add to pan, along with pineapple and nuts. Cook for just a couple minutes, remove from heat and add sesame oil. Taste for seasoning and add salt or pepper if needed.

Fermented Chocolate Cake?

2009-02-13T12:27:00.000-08:00

What does chocolate cake have to do with fermentation? Did you know that chocolate is a fermented food? Without fermentation, cacao beans yield little or no chocolate flavor.

While that's interesting about chocolate being a fermented food, few of us will ever get the opportunity to ferment cacao at home. What you can do is make a chocolate cake that is moist and rich, yet not cloying or heavy. For Christmas, I received a copy of The Art of Simple Food: Notes, Lessons, and Recipes from a Delicious Revolution, by Alice Waters. The more I cook at home, the more I appreciate simple recipes that highlight the natural flavors of real food, so I have really been enjoying this new book. When my son asked for a chocolate cake for his birthday, I turned to Simple Food for inspiration and was not disappointed.

I did make a few adjustments to ingredients, based on what I had on hand. She called for unsweetened chocolate, but I had a 74% cacao bittersweet chocolate, so I used that and reduced the kind and amount of sugar, from 2 ½ cups brown sugar to 2 cups of Rapadura. Her recipe called for 2 cups of cake flour, but not only do I not buy cake flour as it is bleached to weaken its proteins, I really don't think such a delicate flour is appropriate for this cake. Instead, I use a combination of unbleached white pastry flour and whole wheat pastry flour (both from Bob's Red Mill). Finally, I didn't have buttermilk, but I almost always have some soured raw milk in my fridge, which I frequently use in place of buttermilk. Sour milk provides the acid necessary to react with baking soda and create the gas bubbles that make baked goods rise. I have only tried this with raw milk, I don't know if pasteurized milk would work.

4 ounces bittersweet (about 75% cacao) chocolate, coarsely chopped
1 cup unbleached white pastry flour
1 cup whole wheat pastry flour
2 teaspoon aluminum-free baking soda
½ teaspoon salt
6 tablespoons cocoa powder
8 tablespoons (1 stick) butter, softened
2 cups Rapadura
2 teaspoons vanilla
3 eggs, at room temperature
½ cup buttermilk or soured raw milk, at room temperature
1 ¼ cups boiling water

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Butter a 9-inch cake pan and line the bottom with parchment paper. Butter the paper and dust the pan with flour or cocoa, shaking out the excess.

Put the chocolate into a heat-proof bowl. Set the bowl over a pan of simmering water (The water should not touch the bowl. Turn off the heat. Stir the chocolate from time to time until completely melted and smooth. Remove the bowl from over the pan.

Sift together cake flour, baking soda, salt and cocoa powder.

In a large bowl or a stand mixer, beat butter until creamy. Add sugar and vanilla and beat (cream) until light and fluffy. Beat eggs into mixture one at a time.

When egg are fully incorporated, stir in the melted chocolate. Add half the dry ingredients to this mixture and combine. Then stir in milk. Stir in the rest of the dry ingredients.

Gradually pour in 1 ¼ cups boiling water, mixing just until incorporated.

Pour batter into prepared pan and bake for 45 minutes or until toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Place the pan on a wire rack and allow cake to cool completely.

Run knife around the edge of the pan to loosen the cake. Remove the cake from the pan and peel off the parchment paper. If not using the same day, store the fully cooled cake in the pan, tightly covered.

Variations:

For a sheet pan, prepared a half-sheet pan as above. Pour in batter, smooth the top and bake for about 20 minutes.

Or, bake in two 9-inch cake pans for a two-layer cake.

For 24 individual cupcakes, bake for about 30 minutes.

January Newsletter

2009-01-20T18:17:00.001-08:00

Happy New Year from Lost Arts Kitchen!
However you celebrate, I hope you and yours enjoyed a wondrous Season of Light and also found time to rest, reflect and rejuvenate. A lengthy bout of illness delayed this month's newsletter, but I'm glad to get a small collection of news, recipes, kitchen tips, and class updates out to you now. Dig around amongst the Roots & Tubers and you'll even find a story about my brush with Presidential Greatness...

Stocks, Soups, and Stews Class Rescheduled
In the last month everyone in my family was hit by a nasty bug. The kids got it first, just before Christmas, then Mike and I succumbed after the New Year. I developed bronchitis and felt worse than I have in years. With the Stocks, Soups, and Stews class just days away and my husband and I still battling fevers and coughs, I decided it would be best to postpone the class until we regained our health. If you are interested in learning how to prepare delicious, mineral-rich stock at home and new ways to use it, the class will now be held on Saturday, January 24th at 10am. Thanks again to those of you already signed up who were so gracious about the schedule change.

Share the Love with Chocolate
Join me at Friendly Haven Rise Farm on Saturday, February 7th at 6pm, as we make a trio of chocolate delights in preparation for Valentine's Day. We'll start with a Chocolate Pavé, or flourless cake, made with chocolate sourced from small farms in Ecuador by Oregon chocolate maker Dagoba, local eggs and butter, and topped with rosewater cream for a special treat for that special someone. Then we'll make our own chocolate and flavor it as we wish, for amazing cocoa or just eating with a spoon. Finally, we'll make bite-size vegan chocolate fruit & nut balls, perfect for snacking or sharing the love at your next potluck. To enroll, email or call Friendly Haven Rise Farm (360)687-8384.

Dark Days Challenge: Eating Local in Winter
Eating from our regional foodshed during the dark days of winter can challenge the heartiest locavore, but we're fortunate to have a variety of fresh foods available in Portland even now. When using foods in season, try simple preparations that highlight natural flavors. Get to know overlooked veggies by cooking them without complicated sauces or hiding them amongst a dozen other ingredients; you will save yourself time and effort in the kitchen while coming to appreciate why people have cultivated them for millennia. Read more...

Banner Week for a Real Food Foodie: Michael Pollan AND Mark Bittman
So, while I was still recovering from bronchitis and super busy preparing for my first official class, I put everything aside to see two of my favorite food writers last week. Michael Pollan spoke at a sold out Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall as part of the Portland Arts & Lectures Series on Tuesday evening and Matt Bittman spoke to an SRO crowd at Powell's on Thursday. Both writers had lots to say about what's wrong with how most Americans are eating today and suggestions about changes we could make that would benefit our health, our communities, our planet, and palates. Read more...

Survey Says...
If you haven't already done so, please take a couple minutes to fill out this survey so I can schedule the classes you are most interested in taking. I appreciate your input.

Sign Up Now for Winter Classes or Arrange a Class with Friends
As I mentioned previously, the Stocks, Soups, and Stews class has been rescheduled to January 24th. Due to popular request, I added the Baking Basics class on February 7th. In March, I am offering Dairy Magic, Baking Basics, Italian Family Favorites (Abbondanza! This one's going to be fun!), and So Long Supermarket, Hello Pantry. Visit the Lost Arts Kitchen web site to learn more about class offerings and to register. Also, if you are interested in taking a class that's not currently scheduled, please don't hesitate to ask about it. Arrange to take a class with a group of six and everyone gets a 20% discount--we can schedule a date and time that works for your group and I will come to your kitchen if you prefer.

Thanks to all of you who have been so amazingly supportive of my new business, who have signed up for classes, bought gift certificates, told your friends and co-workers about Lost Arts Kitchen, mentioned it on your blogs, or asked me to teach at your schools, shops, and farms. I am truly humbled and honored.

Wishing You Peace and Abundance,
Chris

Banner Week for a Real Food Foodie: Pollan and Bittman Come to Portland

2009-01-19T19:47:00.000-08:00

So, while I was still recovering from bronchitis and super busy preparing for my first official class, I put everything aside to see two of my favorite food writers last week. Michael Pollan spoke at a sold out Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall as part of the Portland Arts & Lectures Series on Tuesday evening and Matt Bittman spoke to an SRO crowd at Powell's on Thursday. Both writers had lots to say about what's wrong with how most Americans are eating today and suggestions about changes we could make that would benefit our health, our communities, our planet, and palates.

Pollan started off by explaining the concept of nutritionism. He argues that because people in the United States have become so disconnected from the sources of their food, they no longer heed their natural instincts or cultural precepts that previously guided our decisions about what, when, where, why, and how to eat. Instead, we have come to rely on nutritionism, an ideology that assumes that it is the scientifically identified nutrients in foods that determine their value in the diet. Pollan identified the following premises of nutritionism:

Food is primarily a conveyance for nutrients.
We need experts to help us understand nutrients, for they are impossible for us to see and understand.
We eat for health, not for enjoyment, companionship, etc.
There are good nutrients and bad nutrients, though the definition of which is what is constantly shifting.

Nutritionism arose in the late 19th Century to solve the problem of heart disease. Scientists and others attempted to desconstruct foods to determine their health-giving nutrients. But, as Pollan notes, the healthful essence of a carrot isn't its beta carotene, as that nutrient alone doesn't have the same benefits of the carrot. Despite a hundred years of nutritionism, we still have heart disease, plus diabetes, obesity, and a host of other diet-related issues. The elephant in the room, Pollan noted, is the Western diet. It's been shown over and over again that when people forgo their traditional diet in favor of the Western diet of processed food, they developed our modern, Western diseases.

So, what's the solution? Can we get off the Western diet without abandoning Western civilization? If we can’t count on scientists to tell us what to eat, who can we count on? Pollan reminds us that there are other systems of knowledge besides science, culture being one. If we apply cultural rules to eating, rather than nutritional ones, perhaps we can find ways to eat that not only improve our health, but bring us pleasure and connection with others. Here are some of the cultural rules for eating that Pollan suggested:

Don’t eat anything your great-grandmother wouldn’t recognize as food.
It’s not food if it has ingredients you don’t recognize or have in your own pantry.
Shop the perimeter of the grocery store. Foods that spoil are kept in those easy to access areas.
Don’t eat food that won’t eventually rot. If microbes won't eat it, neither should you.
Use small plates, don’t snack, don’t eat in your car or buy fuel for your body at the same place you buy fuel for your car.
Don’t eat alone or in front of the TV. Eat at tables.
Food you cook is better than food that’s cooked for you (you don’t add HFCS to food you cook).
Eat all the junk food you want, as long as you make it yourself.

Want to hear Pollan yourself? Here's his TED talk. And here he is on Portland's own Cooking Up a Story, parts one, two, three, and four.

People are calling Mark Bittman's new book, Food Matters: A Guide to Conscious Eating With More Than 75 Recipes, "applied Pollan." Like Pollan, Bittman has some rules about eating that can help us improve our health, though, being The Minimalist, his rules are even simpler: "Eat less of certain foods, specifically animal products, refined carbs, and junk food; and more of others, specifically plants, in close to their natural state."

In his talk, Bittman related his personal reasons for following such a prescription. A few years ago, with knee-surgery looming, unhealthy cholesterol levels, and 50 pounds overweight, his doctor advised him to "go vegan." While Bittman couldn't bring himself to making such a radical change to his diet, he struck upon a simple rule that helped him lose weight and improve his overall health. He became, "vegan before six," eschewing all animal products before dinner (except, he admitted later, cream in his morning coffee). One tip he shared for sticking to a vegetarian regiment at restaurants is asking if there are any side vegetables leftover from the previous evening's dinner menu.

One statistic that I found most striking is that of the approximately three pounds of food the average American eats per day, a half-pound is meat and another one-and-a-half pounds are other animal products. The other pound? That's plant foods, primarily in the form of potatoes, corn, and wheat. Bittman doesn't argue that we need to become vegetarians, but "less-meatarians" and that our current meat-centric diet is not only bad for our health, but unsustainable, especially as more and more people around the world emulate the American diet.

Cooking Up a Story interviewed Bittman during his visit, so if you missed him at Powell's, you can hear what he has to say here and here.

Having read Omnivore's Dilemma and In Defense of Food and spent much of my life studying the intersection of farming, the environment, health and culture, there wasn't much new to me in either Pollan's or Bittman's talks. Nevertheless, I found them both inspiring and enjoyed seeing so many other people who care deeply about food.

Dark Days Challenge: Eat Local This Winter

2009-01-18T15:12:00.000-08:00

Eating from our regional foodshed during the dark days of winter can challenge the heartiest locavore, but we're fortunate to have a variety of fresh foods available in Portland even now. When using foods in season, try simple preparations that highlight natural flavors. Get to know overlooked veggies by cooking them without complicated sauces or hiding them amongst a dozen other ingredients; you'll saving yourself time and effort in the kitchen while coming to appreciate why people have cultivated them for millennia.

Greens
I didn’t grow up eating greens. In fact, I don’t think kale, mustard, turnip, beet or collard greens had ever passed my lips until seven years ago when a co-worker offered me a bowl of her homemade beef, barley and kale soup. Now, I use greens all winter long in soups, pastas, twice-baked potatoes, and egg dishes. You can roast greens, steam greens, boil greens, and saute greens. Here's a preparation my family calls Eintopf Essen, which means "one pot meal" in German. Put quartered Yukon gold potatoes in a pan with enough garlic-infused beef broth to cover, place greens on top of the potatoes and fully cooked sausages, such as weisswurst, knackwurst, bockwurst, or weiners on top of the greens. Cover the pot, bring to a boil, then turn down to simmer for 20 minutes or so, until the potatoes and greens are thoroughly cooked; the sausages will be heated through as well.

Roots & Tubers
Get to know your roots and tubers. Beets, carrots, celeriac, fennel bulb, parsnips, potatoes, rutabaga, sunchokes and turnips are all readily available this time of year. If you're not used to cooking with them, consider adopting a new root or tuber this year and trying out a few recipes. One of the simplest ways to enjoy their earthy goodness is to peel them (or not), cut into bite-size pieces, toss with olive oil, salt, and pepper, then roast at 350-400°F until golden.

Our Christmas Eve feast was made unforgettable this year with the combination of fennel bulb, arugula, oranges, and Dungeness crab. I've experimented with similar combinations in the past, but this time, I have to say I really got it right. My not-quite-three-year-old son surprised me with his passion for this salad--he became quite miffed when I told him the salad was all gone after his second serving. I modified it for my five-year-old daughter, putting everything but the arugula in a purple cabbage leaf bowl for her. She quietly "ummmmed" her way through her big salad and declared it a "great dinner," high complements from my pickiest critic! Though I particularly like the crabs with fennel, crabs are a little out of our budget for everyday, so I tried this with leftover roast chicken earlier this week, using Napa cabbage with the arugula for some added crunch. Fantastic yet again...a definite keeper. For the dressing, combine the juice of 1 lemon and 1 orange, 2 tablespoons rice vinegar, 2 teaspoons Dijon mustard, 1/2 teaspoon salt, 1/3 cup olive oil.

Another tasty root joined us for dinner Christmas Eve: celeriac. Also known as celery root, it's a relative of the plant that makes celery stalks and has a similar flavor. I have made pureed celeriac and potato soup in the past, but we really liked the apple in this recipe. I skipped the buttermilk and topped ours with cream rather than olive oil.

Cabbage
I waxed poetic about this versatile veg last month. Besides my beloved lacto-fermented sauerkraut, I really enjoy an Asian-inspired coleslaw for salad during winter. I shred cabbage, grate carrots and celeriac if I have some one hand, chop an apple, and toss with sesame seeds and a vinaigrette of rice vinegar (2 tbsp), sesame seed oil (2 tbsp), white miso (1 tsp), tamari (1/2 tsp), and freshly ground white pepper.

Leeks
My favorite way with leeks is simplicity itself. Cut off the roots and all but the bottom inch of green, slice the leek in half lengthwise and wash if necessary (fan out the upper layers of leek and run under cold water briefly). Lay them cut-side up in a small baking dish, spray or drizzle a little olive oil on the leeks, and sprinkle with sea salt and ground pepper. Roast at 350°F until the ends begin to brown. These come out buttery soft in the middle and crispy on the ends, with a delicate allium flavor.

As we celebrate today's historic inauguration, I would like to share with you a story about another president, leeks, and me. In 1995, I was a manager at Borders Books & Music in Rockville, Maryland. As our store prepared for the arrival of former President Jimmy Carter, who was coming to sign a book of his poetry, we were asked to provide him a light supper before his book signing. His publicist suggested that we pick up a sandwich for him from a deli. I simply could not abide by the idea of this great man sitting in our stock room eating a cold sandwich and offered to make the President soup and salad instead. I prepared Potato-Leek Soup and a Gorgonzola and Apple Salad, served on another manager's fine china in one of the store's back offices. President Carter and I talked about food and cooking while I served him soup. Later, he had seconds!

Legumes
Now is a good time to use those beans, lentils, and dried peas in your pantry. Soak dried pulses water overnight or even longer, with a tablespoon of apple cider vinegar to help break down the enzymes that inhibit digestion. Here’s a lovely recipe for White Bean and Kale Pasta with Smokey Bacon from one of my favorite bloggers, Kimi at Nourishing Gourmet. I made this dish with black-eyed peas instead of white beans and we all enjoyed it tremendously.

Citrus
While lemons, limes, oranges, grapefruit, mandarins, etc., are not grown commercially here in Oregon, citrus fruits are naturally in season this time of year and now is a good time to enjoy the extra boost of vitamin C. My two favorites are page tangerines and blood oranges. Here's a lovely recipe for buttermilk scones that features citrus, from one of my favorite cookbooks, Julia Child's Baking with Julia. I intentionally underbake some of these (utilizing my oven's handy Uneven Baking feature) and freeze them. When I want a warm scone, I just pop one into the toaster oven for a few minutes. Try substituting some or all of the all-purpose flour called for in the recipe with whole wheat pastry flour or using Rapadura instead of white sugar.

Kiwifruit
Many people think of kiwi as a tropical fruit, but in fact, it grows right here in Portland. We have been enjoying some from a farm in Hillsboro. Fuzzy kiwi are harvested in the fall, but store well and you can still find locally grown fruit in the winter. We enjoy fruit salad with kiwis, oranges, pears, and apples, topped with a bit of honey and shaved coconut (which I toast while slicing up the fruits), sometimes over homemade yogurt, sometimes not. In fact, that's exactly what I'm craving right now.

Apples and Pears
Both of these popular fruits are grown in Oregon and Washington. While they are also harvested in the fall, they store quite well and are worth buying in bulk. Some varieties will even improve with age. The Fujis we bought in November became sweeter and more fragrant over the weeks we had them, for example. I buy 20 pound boxes of them at a time and store them on my front stoop, where I can keep a close eye on them and remove any “bad apples” (when temperatures dip below freezing, I bring them in and keep them in the basement). For the most part, though, I find the grade A, blemish-free fruit I buy rarely goes bad in the month or so it takes us to eat. We've had some for almost three months now and while they are a bit wrinkled, the kids still enjoy them. When I do find a fruit with a soft spot, I use the good part in coleslaw or gather a few handfuls and make a small batch of apple-pear sauce.

For even more ideas about eating local year 'round, sign up for Eating Local: Meal Planning for All Seasons on February 28th.