Wednesday, February 24, 2010

Let It Snow





So the forecast is calling for more snow. Once you're back from the required trip to the grocery store for your Baltimore Papier Maché supplies -- bread, milk and toilet paper, which I've always thought everyone must somehow use to make art projects while snowed in -- here's a column I wrote for this week's issue of the Baltimore City Paper on food you can make using snow as a prime ingredie


Maple Syrup Snow Candy:

Saturday, February 20, 2010

Butternutty

For a blog about eating locally and sustainably, I've sure been cooking a lot of grocery store ingredients this past month. Paht thai is pretty much straight Trader Joe's provender, and the pasta al sarde and lasagna both were born of Wegmans. But when there's three feet of snow on the ground, it's so easy to slip back into old food habits, buying stuff that's traveled a long way from producer to my table with many stops in between.

Time to get serious about eating locally even though it's February, bleakest month of the food year. (In the Cherokee language, the word for February translates as "hungry month"). The larder is emptying, and space on the once-crammed freezer shelves is starting to open up. We've eaten through much of what I squirreled away last summer and fall, and it's time to take a hard look at what's left.

I estimate 7 weeks until asparagus rings in the new food year, so these next couple of months are going to be all about combining things, possibly in unexpected new ways. If indeed, as Ralph Waldo Emerson said, "A creative economy is the fuel of magnificence," then things are going to be getting pretty freaking magnificent up in here.

But for my first shot at cleaning out the freezer I can pick the low hanging fruit, make something from ingredients that obviously go together. Like winter squash and apples, rendered into a soul-salving soup. The squash grew in my garden, we picked the apples on a nearby farm, the onions from Tuscarora Organic Co-op and the butter and milk that I used to make the yogurt came from the Amish grass farmer we buy our outlaw raw milk products from (for more about that, check out this raw milk story I wrote a couple years back for the Baltimore City Paper). So, other than some sea salt and spices, the ingredients tossed into the pot for this particular soup are all local.

I was waiting for my friend Brian to send me the recipe he came up with for his subtle but very nice butternut squash soup -- the boy's got some big butternuts -- but got impatient and went ahead on my own. It turns out I would've had to be inventive anyway, because I was using squash I'd roasted, then puréed and frozen in 2-cup portions. My squash purée stash is a mix of butternut, acorn, sugar pumpkin and freak delicata, all of which cook up into basically the same sweet-savory orangish goo. Winter squash is sort of universal, so use whatever.

The freak delicata grew from my compost heap -- two years ago I composted a couple rotten delicata from our CSA share, and the seeds volunteered in last summer's garden after I spread the compost on it in the spring. Apparently by late fall my compost pile wasn't hot enough to sterilize their seeds. I also tossed in our Hallowe'en pumpkins that year, so I can only conjecture as to what kind of squash nookie took place in there: cucurbits are rampant cross-pollinators, among the sluttier citizens of the vegetable patch. Their offspring came up as extremely vigorous squash vines producing bright orange squash with delicata's distinctive striated ridges, some oblong, some ballooning into pumpkin form. Here are a couple as yet uneaten freak squash:



Brian's recipe, which I'll post after my recipe, calls for using butternut in the raw. Either way you try you'll end up with some very good soup, but the two are very different destinations!

CURRIED WINTER SQUASH & APPLE SOUP

4 cups winter squash, cooked & puréed*
2 cups coarsely chopped apples (cored, but not peeled) (2 c applesauce would work too)
1.5 cups onion, chopped
1 cup cider, apple juice or water
2 cups stock (vegetable or chicken)
2 teaspoons curry powder, or more or less to taste
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup or more whole milk yogurt, to taste
2 tablespoons butter

1. Melt butter in heavy deep skillet or pot over medium-high heat. Sauté onions and apples until soft, about 8-10 min.

2. Add squash purée, cider, stock, salt, and curry powder -- add this in increments and taste as you go, because you want deep curry flavor but too much can make things bitter -- it's a thin line. Add fresh ground pepper to taste. Bring to boil, then lower heat and simmer 15 minutes partially covered.

3. Purée soup in blender/food processor, or in pot using immersion blender. Return to pot, add yogurt to taste, and heat gently until warmed through about 3 minutes. Alternatively, I add the yogurt to each bowl as it is served, swirling it in the soup to make a pretty presentation.

4. Soup tastes even better garnished with very thin apple slices, cilantro, or big crispy croutons.

* To make squash purée: heat oven to 375 degrees. Cut squash in half (lengthwise) and scoop out seeds. Put halves cut side down in baking pan and bake until tender, 45 minutes to an hour. Let cool. Scrape flesh from inside squash skins, and press through sieve or pulse in blender/food processor. Freezes well and you can always throw the extra in muffins, pancakes, etc.



BRIAN'S BUTTERNUT SOUP


1 butternut squash, peeled, cut into 1/4" slices
1 onion, chopped
butter
thyme
cinnamon
chile powder (i just ground up some dried random chiles i had - a mixture of different chiles is nice)
garlic, chopped
chicken/turkey stock (a cup or two) - not absolutely necessary
plain, whole milk yogurt

1. Saute onion, butter, garlic, thyme and cinnamon with a pinch of salt.
2. Add BN squash slices. Add stock and then enough water to cover squash.
3. Simmer ~1 hr, or until squash is very soft.
4. Puree all of the soup in a food processor.
5. Return soup to pot.
6. Salt as needed to taste.
7. Start adding chile power a little bit at a time and tasting. The soup will start becoming more complex before you notice any added heat. Keep adding chile powder until there's just a tiny about of spiciness. It shouldn't be a spicy soup, but there should be just a hint of the heat.
8. Add yogurt to balance acidity. You might need to add a little more chile powder after adding the yogurt.

Tuesday, February 16, 2010

Not to overlook the oily little fishes


In general, fish is good food -- high-quality protein rich in omega-3 fatty acids, and also delicious. What's not to like? Oh, just that in our hunger for tasty fish dinners, humans are rapidly depleting the earth's fish populations, destroying habitats and polluting the water via unsustainable industrial fishing practices. (For a lucid, empowering analysis of the state of our oceans and fisheries, plus things you can do to help turn the tide, check out the Monterey Bay Aquariums sustainable seafood info site, with handy pocket guide to safe, sustainable seafood choices).

Possibly as a means of revenge on the havoc our species is wreaking on the piscine world, many fish are now actually dangerous to eat. Big boys at the top of the marine food chain -- swordfish and all tuna species, shark -- are not only endangered species but contain high levels of mercury. Mercury is released into the air through industrial pollution; it then precipitates into our streams and oceans and turns into methylmercury in the water. Fish absorb the methylmercury and it builds up in their flesh; although human bodies can eventually flush mercury from our systems, it takes a long time -- a year -- to rid yourself of even one meal's worth of mercury exposure.

Fortunately, it's possible to still eat fish in good conscience and minus the mercury. Small plankton-eating fish don't accumulate as much mercury as do larger predator fish and so are safer; also the fisheries for sardines, anchovies and mackerel are well-managed. Since these are oily little guys, they contain a lot, proportionally speaking, of the beneficial omega-3s. All around a sustainable and healthy choice.

My friend Brian and I have been talking about sardines recently, trying to think of ways to eat them rather than just, well, eating them, like on crackers or bread. Brian came up with a tasty avocado-and-sardines sandwich, while I've been struggling to recall a dish I enjoyed several times while living in Italy that involved sardines tossed with breadcrumbs in pasta. Since fresh sardines are pretty rare around here, our experiments have involved preserved fishies, but good-quality canned sardines are widely available. I prefer to buy sardines and anchovies in glass jars rather than metal tins due to bisphenol-A exposure from the plasticized linings now used in all canned foods
(more about that here).

As for buying sardines, look for Spanish or Italian-packed brands. The best sardines are caught near near Portugal or Spain, and the olive oil they're packed in tends to be better quality. Skip those packed in soy oil, really really skip those packed in tomato sauce or mustard -- often a ploy to cover up inferior fish -- and be sure to check ingredients: there is no need for anything but fish, oil and possibly salt in that can. Italian groceries tend to carry good selections of sardines and anchovies; in Baltimore, Trinacria is my favorite place to shop for salty, oily little fish. (I personally just can't get past the cat-food smell and flavor of mackerel, so I can't speak to eating or shopping for that particular fish).

So last night I had dinner just for my own self, no picky little boys to displease with funny fish, and so played around trying to recreate pasta alle sarde from memory. There are two ways canned sardines are paired with pasta in Italy: one is Sicilian, where the sardines get tossed with a little tomato paste, fennel, golden raisins and pine nuts. The other is more typical of Sardinian "cucina povera" -- literally "poverty cuisine" -- using just bread crumbs, garlic, and olive oil plus seasonings, and that's the one I remembered fondly.



While the pasta water heated I heated an iron skillet, drizzled in a couple tablespoons of olive oil, then sauteed 4 cloves of garlic until just aromatic. Then I tossed in about 3/4 cup of bread crumbs -- fairly rough crumbs from stale bread chunks pulsed just a few times in the food processor. (On the rare occasion we don't wolf down a whole loaf before it's stale, I run the remainder through the Cuisinart and toss it in a ziploc I keep in the freezer, bread crumbs in the bank). Once the bread crumbs were golden and crispy I scraped them into a bowl, wiped out the skillet, and reheated it with 2 more tablespoons of oil.

Turns out that was a little bit of oil overkill -- since the sardines came in their own oil bath, and of course you want to use that in the pan since it has all that good fish flavor. (Also, as I sauteed the sardines over medium-high heat they expressed a surprising amount of moisture; the whole thing got pretty soupy, so I drained most of the liquid off -- straight down the sink. That turned out to be a mistake as the final dish was pretty dry, so next time I'd save the juices in a ramekin until finished). After the sardines sizzled for 3-4 minutes I sprinkled in some flaked red chile pepper with seeds -- just basically crumbled one small red chile in -- and a big handful of chopped flat-leaf parsley, plus some coarse sea salt. I used kitchen shears to cut up the whole sardines into bite-size pieces as they cooked, and then tossed them around with the seasonings. Once things were well incorporated and heated through, I folded in the bread crumbs, then mixed in the al dente spaghetti.

Pretty good, but a little flat -- needed more salt, which helped, but was still lacking something essential. After a few tastings and a little ruminating, I hit upon lemon zest -- a little citrusy pick-me-up to accent the bold sardine flavor and counteract the oiliness. A few scrapes of an organic lemon across the fine end of the grater and, voila! Dinner was served, a little something from nothing. Or at least from ingredients I commonly have sitting in pantry and fridge.

So, to summarize:

1/2 lb spaghetti (or any other long pasta), cooked al dente
1 jar or tin of sardines in olive oil (I like Angelo Parodi brand)
4 cloves garlic
chile pepper flakes to taste
coarse salt to taste
flat leaf Italian parsley, chopped, to taste
lemon zest to taste
3/4 cup coarse bread crumbs (make these yourself -- the packaged kind will ruin this dish)
olive oil

Sautee minced or sliced garlic in olive oil until just fragrant, about 30 seconds, then toss in bread crumbs. Toss and stir until golden brown, about 3 minutes. Remove from heat, set aside. Wipe out skillet and reheat with more oil -- perhaps the oil drained off the sardines plus additional if that seems scant. Drop in the sardines, which should be whole and firm. Heat them for 2-3 minutes, then sprinkle on salt and red pepper, then cut the sardines up in the pan, tossing everything around. Once heated through, add the bread crumbs, toss, then the spaghetti and parsely, toss, and taste. Add lemon zest last, to taste, and then buon appetito!

Sunday, February 14, 2010

Paht Thai

Everyone has a few go-to recipes, things you can throw together more or less while sleepwalking through the kitchen simply because you've made them so many times before. In our house we have paht thai at least once a week, although we call it "peanut noodles" because that is what Jack named it when he was three and trying to request it for dinner one night.

(So what's your staple dish? There's a comments box down below, don't be shy...)

This is a pretty straightforward version; my one modification is to add peanut butter while stir-frying the noodles. Hardly authentic, I know, but using a couple tablespoons of creamy peanut butter on the hot noodles naps them with this wonderful, rich coating that then grabs all the other ingredients/garnishes and makes a really rich, satisfying one-pot meal. All modesty aside, I make the best paht thai I've ever had

I use really wide rice noodles, but really any kind works; I've even used the super skinny thread-style noodles in a pinch. Also, if I don't have tofu or any meat on hand to throw in, I just scramble an extra egg. I nearly always make this with shrimp (wild caught, not farmed, especially not farmed in Viet Nam or Thailand -- shudder). It's also very good with tofu, which I slice and pan fry in oil and garlic until the edges crisp a bit.

PAHT THAI

1/2 lb rice stick noodles
4T oil
2T coarsely chopped garlic
8 shrimp, peeled & deveined (or tofu, chicken, etc)
2 eggs, slightly beaten
2T fish sauce
2T peanut butter
3t sugar
4T chopped peanuts
2 c bean sprouts
8 scallions cut into 1-inch lengths, then split if you feel up to it
large handful cilantro
2 limes, quartered lengthwise

Soak noodles in very warm water to cover, 20 min or until soft. Heat pan over med-hi heat. Add 2 T oil & swirl to coat; when 1 bit garlic sizzles in pan, add rest and toss until golden, about 30 sec. Add shrimp and toss until pink and opaque, 1 min. Remove & set aside.

Add egg and tilt to coat pan in thin layer, then scramble into lumps, salt lightly, set aside.

Add remaining oil, heat 30 sec, add softened noodles. Spread and pull noodles into a thin layer covering surface of pan. Then scrape into clump again & gently turn over. Repeat until noodles soften into ivory ringlets. Add fish sauce, turn & stir; add peanut butter, turn & stir; add sugar and peanuts, turn & stir.

Reserving some for garnish, add bean sprouts, cilantro, green onions & shrimp-egg mix. Cook 30 more seconds, turning often. Serve. Garnish with cilantro and bean sprouts, more peanuts, and squeeze lime quarters over each plate. When I have some on hand I sprinkle those tiny salty dried shrimp on top too.


This papaya salad is a terrific accompaniment to paht thai, but actual green papayas are hard to come by. I usually find them at H-Mart or other Asian groceries; green papayas are a separate papaya variety that is green, permanently -- they never turn red. I have, however, used less-than-ripe regular papayas, and the results are still very good, though a good bit jucier. I've also done this salad using finely shredded cabbage and carrot for a kind of Thai cole slaw, and it's great that way. Warning: very very spicy.

SOM TUM
Green Papaya Salad

6 fresh kii noo chillies, whole, or 2 serranos thinly sliced
1 T coarsely chopped garlic
1 t coarsely chopped shallot
1 small hard green papaya, shredded, -- 2 cups, or 2 c finely shredded carrot and cabbage
9 green beans cut in 2 inch lengths
1 tomato in wedges or 7 cherry tomatoes, quartered lengthwise
1 t palm sugar or sugar
1/4 t salt
2 T fish sauce
1 lime

Combine chillies, garlic and shallot in mortar and grind until broken down but not mushy.

Add papaya and pound until stiff shreds become limp and soft, about 3 min. Use a spoon to scrape and turn over as you work. (If you use a regular papaya skip this step and begin pounding papaya when you put in the green beans).

Add green beans and pound to bruise them. One at a time add sugar, salt, & fish sauce, pounding in between. Squeeze in juice from 1/2 lime then add pieces and pound those too. Add tomatoes and pound gently so they release some liquid.

Taste sauce in bottom of mortar and correct for balance of sour, hot salty and sweet. Transfer salad to platter with slotted spoon and drizzle on some remaining sauce, serve.

Wednesday, February 10, 2010

One in the Oven

If you hang around this blog often enough I imagine some recurring themes will emerge, and I am willing to bet that one of those themes is going to be pie. Got one in the oven right now: apple, with almond crumb topping (recipe and notes on topping here).

Jack and Cole were chasing each other in a circuit through the kitchen, hallway, and dining room, getting faster and faster and louder and louder until they threatened to turn into butter. (Not familiar with the story of Little Black Sambo? He gets chased by tigers, then cleverly begins to run circles around a tree which he then climbs, as the tigers run faster and faster around the tree until they eventually turn into butter. Which Sambo then eats with pancakes -- my kinda children's story!)

Fortunately the words, "Who wants to help me make a pie?" stopped 'em in their tracks, and we all settled down to slice apples (that we picked back in the fall -- a little wrinkly, but still tasty), toss them with a little organic evaporated cane juice (an -ose by any other name is still sugar) and cinnamon, and then tuck them into a pie crust.

This is my favorite Cuisinart pie crust recipe, supposedly developed by Julia Child.

JULIA CHILD'S CUISINART PIE CRUST

1 3/4 c. flour
1 stick (1/4 lb.) butter, cut up
3 tbsp. vegetable oil
1 tsp. salt

Blend ingredients in food processor (I just use the metal blade) until crumbly. Add 1/4 cup of ice water and continue blending just until ball forms.

I like this recipe because it makes enough for one large pie -- all my pie plates are the large 10 inch Pyrex pans -- plus enough left over to satisfy the dough rolling, patting, and pounding needs of two little boys. I used to feel bad for wasting food when I let them basically destroy about a third of a pie crust through enthusiastic playing-with, but when I let them hands-on help rolling out the big crust for us to eat it would end up tough -- not just tough but nigh bullet-proof -- from over-handling. Everyone needs a fair turn with the rolling pin, see? So we waste a little, but I have come to feel it's justified in the interest of the tender, flaky bigger picture.

My grandmother, Grace Phillips, who had a terrifically talented hand with pastry, always looked down on my reliance on the Cuisinart for pie crust. She did everything by hand, cutting the shortening into the flour with two knives criss-crossing in a silvery, chiming blur. She was also a big believer in Butter Flavor Crisco, though, so clearly intergenerational pie crust preferences must be allowed.

I use the food processor for just about everything -- it's my desert island kitchen tool, were I to be banished to a desert island and limited to one cooking utensil, this would be it, assuming the island had electricity. There are times when mixing things by hand is essential, but pie crust does not seem to require careful hand blending. To be honest, my Cuisinart crusts are better than when I do it by hand.

18 minutes left on the timer...house filling with scent of cinnamon and carmelizing sugar...

I am a believer in starting fruit pies at a high temperature -- 450 degrees -- for the first ten minutes, and then dropping the oven to 350 for another 45 minutes or so. Got to check the crust every so often for over-browning, though. I've sort of thought about buying one of those pie shields -- even gave one as an xmas gift last year to my best friend Heather, who is also known to bake the occasional apple pie. However, I'm not much of a kitchen gadget gal and as a rule don't clutter up my cabinets with single-use-specific gear when a little aluminum foil does the same job.

Sunday, February 7, 2010

Donner, party of seven, your table is ready...

So it snowed, again. Big time, this time -- some people are calling it Snowageddon, but my favorite thus far is SnOMG.

Just as the first flakes began to fall on Friday afternoon the guys & I paid a visit to Wegman's for gettin'-snowed-in supplies. People were rushing around in there like it was the fall of Saigon, everyone clutching their bread and toilet paper wild-eyed as though the last chopper were leaving at any moment. We should maybe have been shopping for loin cloths and pointed sticks for use after civilized society collapsed under the weight of two whole feet of snow...

Anyway, I wanted to gather ingredients for a few cooking projects this weekend. Since we've been snow bound and all I basically cooked my ass off all weekend (when I wasn't washing dishes, anyway, or shoveling snow).

Friday night: spaghetti and meatballs, meatballs being a sort of homemade convenience food around here. I make a bunch, 2 or 3 lbs of grass-fed ground beef worth at a time, cooking and then freezing them by the dozen to have on hand for those "it's 5:30 on a Tuesday, what in the name of god are we having for dinner?" days. Amish-raised beef from Lancaster, homemade marinara canned back in August, Trader Joe's organic spaghetti. Plus a salad from the last little bit of arugula and spinach from Gardener's Gourmet at Waverly Farmer's Market last weekend -- I'm betting there was no market yesterday.

Saturday: cranberry-walnut muffins for breakfast and all day snacking. Pierogi (frozen, from last Easter I think, trying to clean out freezer) for lunch, with tons of onions in even more tons of butter. Ummmmm...followed up by homemade play-doh (purple). Then macaroni and cheese, at Jack's request. Finally, at 5 pm, I got started on short ribs braised in red wine, with turnips and pearl onions. I had forgotten how complicated this recipe is, and so dinner was served at 10 pm.



I was a little afraid of messing up the short ribs -- I'd made this recipe successfully on multiple occasions with regular beef short ribs, getting delectable results every time -- it's been a stalwart in my cooking repertoire. Then I switched to pastured beef, and the very same recipe, my beautiful never-fail braised short ribs, turned out disastrously! I finally realized that what the grass-fed short ribs needed was a whole lotta supplementary fat, which I now supply with either bacon or lard. The problem is, it's a judgment call how much fat to add -- you sort of need to eyeball the ribs and see if they'll need a lot, or a whole lot.

Fortunately I nailed it this time, and the results are super-tender, with lots of flavor. The recipe is really long so I'll put it at the end of this post.

Sunday: so far I've only done another batch of cranberry-walnut muffins plus another batch of play-doh (green this time) and reheated some short ribs.

PLAY-DOH

1 cup flour
1/2 cup salt
1 cup water
1.5 teaspoons cream of tartar
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
food dye or liquid watercolor of your choice

Stir together ingredients in saucepan over low heat, adding coloring as you stir. When everything pulls together into a ball in the center of pan, after about 3 minutes, it's ready.


SHORT RIBS BRAISED IN RED WINE WITH TURNIPS AND PEARL ONIONS

1 lb. uncured bacon OR about 4-6 tablespoons rendered lard
5 lbs. bone-in beef short ribs
3 cups dry red wine (I used Three Buck Chuck, but better wine=better ribs)
2 Large onions, chopped
2 large carrots, peeled and sliced 1/2" rounds
1 large rib celery, sliced
8 medium garlic cloves, chopped
1/4 cup unbleached flour
4 cups beef or chicken stock (or mix them)
1 can diced tomatoes
1/2 tablespoon dried rosemary
3 bay leaves

2-3 turnips, peeled and sliced
1 bag frozen pearl onions (do not thaw)
1 teaspoon sugar

Flat leaf Italian parsley (fresh)

1. Fry up bacon in large, oven safe stock pot or dutch oven; save bacon for BLTs while this incredibly long recipe braises in oven.

2. Oven to 450 degrees. Place short ribs, bone side down, in single layer in a baking pan. Drizzle bacon fat over short ribs, at least 4 tablespoons -- more can't hurt, you'll make the ribs more tender and be draining the fat later. Roast for about 45 minutes, until well browned.

2.5 Meanwhile, sautee carrots, onions and celery in remaining bacon fat until soft, about 10 minutes. Add garlic, cook 1 min, add flour and cook about 2 minutes until flour browns. Remove from heat and rest.

3. Once they are browned, remove ribs from oven and reduce heat to 300 degrees. Place ribs on platter and reserve. Deglaze pan with wine: you can place it on a burner to do this, if it's a flameproof pan, but coming out of a 450F oven it'll be hot enough to deglaze as is -- be sure to protect your hands.

Return vegetables to heat. Stir in wine from roasting pan, stock, dried herbs and undrained tomatoes. Season to taste with salt and pepper, bring to boil.
Add ribs and any juices that they've exuded, completely submerging ribs in braising liquid. Once the pot has returned to simmer, cover and place in oven. Braise until ribs are tender, about 1.5 - 2 hours, maybe even longer -- start checking after 90 minutes.

4. Transfer ribs from braising liquid to platter. Strain liquid, pressing solids to get as much juice as you can back out. Set liquid aside, discard solids.

Wipe out dutch oven/braising pot and heat over medium-high with 2 tablespoons bacon fat or lard -- or if you've run out olive oil will do. Add the peeled, quartered and sliced turnips and pearl onions, plus sugar and then salt to taste. Sautee until beginning to carmelize and brown in spots. Meanwhile, if you're fat-o-phobic, now is the time to skim off the fat on the surface of the braising liquid (I never do this). Add the braising liquid to the turnips and onions, bring to a simmer. Add the ribs (and any accumulated juices) and submerge them, and heat over medium flame until ribs are warmed through and turnips are tender, about 5-7 minutes.

Serve over mashed potatoes, with lots of flat-leaf parsley.

Wednesday, February 3, 2010

Through Wegmans, Local-ly. Ish.

The potato soup lasted less than 36 hours and so last night I needed to make another big batch o'something. I've had an intense craving for lasagna for several weeks but have been putting off making one because I just haven't had the time, spare gallon of raw milk, or proper enzymes to make mozzarella. I don't know if it's possible to buy locally produced semolina to make the noodles, but everything else -- ricotta and mozzarella, tomato sauce I made and canned last summer, eggs, basil -- could be made from locally procured ingredients.

And by locally procured, I don't mean purchased at Wegman's -- I had to explain the difference to my mom last night, who was hanging out with me while I put the lasagna together. I was lamenting its near utter lack of local provenance -- that I'd purchased the ingredients to assemble into a semblance of lasagna, instead of making them myself from scratch. She said, completely straight, "But Wegman's is less than 10 miles away, surely that counts as buying locally." (Though now that I think about it, she was probably joking; I get a tad overfocused when I'm cooking and humor is often wasted on me at such times).

Yesterday, utterly overloaded by Big Life Stuff and feeling pretty desperate lasagna lust, I decided to just go for it, go to the store and buy the noodles and cheeses and just make a fricking lasagna already. While I was at it, I satisfied another craving -- this time, for out-of-season vegetables -- and roasted some eggplant and zucchini (thank you, Mexico!) to use as part of the filling.

Aside from the eggs (mixed into the ricotta as binder) not one ingredient was Baltimore-based. I could have made it sorta half-assed local by using homemade marinara but decided to go whole-ass grocery store ingredients -- why squander a precious quart from my dwindling supply of home-canned organic heirloom tomato sauce on factory cheese? The Classico Tomato-Basil sauce was probably the best tasting ingredient I bought, actually.

I didn't work from a recipe, though maybe I should have. The lasagna smelled great but ultmately tasted only so-so; the flavor lacked oomph -- I should have thrown garlic in while roasting the vegetables -- and I used no-bake lasagna noodles, which turned out to seriously suck.

When standing there in the pasta aisle I thought, hey, Barilla is making them, the no-bake thing must really work!, but they cooked up all weird and pasty. Easy, yes, but boiling noodles out of a box isn't all that much harder, and now I know they taste much better. The no-bake ones, they just taste like you used the box.

I'm not sure what lesson to take from the experience. Many people consider making lasagna from scatch to be exactly what I did last night: buy each premade ingredient, put 'em together in a pan, and bake. I don't think of this as cooking, however, so much as assembly. I've made lasagna truly from scratch -- rolling out the pasta myself, making the mozz and ricotta, using homemade marinara, basil from the garden -- so I know what really great homemade lasagna tastes like, and this wasn't it.

I only wish that my fall from the locavore wagon had yielded tastier results. I mean, we'll still eat the rest of this lasagna, probably tonight, but unfortunately fantastic flavor won't be drowning out the slight residual taste of regret. Though maybe some butter-drenched garlic bread will help...

Monday, February 1, 2010

Going Thru the Mill for Potato Soup

So, like, it snowed this weekend. Maybe you noticed. Nothing like a week's worth of
sub-freezing weather and then half a foot of snow to create a deep existential need for soothing, super-rich comfort food.

I wasn't sure what to make -- all kinds of starchy, lipid-laden candidates sprang to mind: Macaroni and cheese. Tamale pie. Biscuits and gravy. Whatever the dish, though, I was going to have to go food shopping -- I've been working a lot recently and the cupboards at our house are getting pretty bare.

I had missed the Waverly farmer's market on Saturday, alas, and was feeling a tad bummed about having to rely on supermarket supplies for Project Comfort Food. Then my best friend Heather suggested we take a stroll through Mill Valley General Store in Remington -- or, as she calls it, "the farmers market quickie mart." (more here at Mill Valley General Store).

Mill Valley, in case you've never been there, has all kinds of great gardening supplies, which you'll be needing sooner than you think, plus food from local/organic/ sustainably farmed vendors: Trickling Springs creamery, Tuscarora Organic Co-op (veggies), Whiskey Island Pirate spices, Zeke's coffee. Next best thing to the farmer's market, absolutely, and they're open four days a week, hallelujah!

And thus it was decided: I'd troll Mill Valley for ingredients, and whatever presented itself would inspire the dish I'd make.

Produce pickings were somewhat slim, it being deep winter and all. Most of the options were storage-hardy items like turnips, apples and Jerusalem artichokes, but then that is absolutely the appropriate kind of thing to be eating right now. The wheels in my brain started turning when I got a look at Tuscarora's beautiful organic potatoes, and I decided to make Brass Parrot Baked Potato Soup.

This is one of those perennial semi-famous recipes that gets constantly reprinted in Southern Living collections and local newspaper food sections -- the Brass Parrot is an actual restaurant in Texas and their contribution to the world is this soup. Really, it's nothing earth-shattering; it's just basic potato soup. However, I'm sentimentally fond of the recipe because the first time I cooked it, about 12 years ago, was the very first time I ever made a roux.

It seemed so magical to me then, and honestly it still does: when you melt butter in a pan and then add some flour, brown it a little while, and then slowly whisk in some milk, it will get thick! No matter how rotten a day I have had out there in the world I can come home and perform this reliable kitchen miracle. I find it deeply reassuring.

You can find the classic B.P. recipe all over the 'net. Here is the version I made, with changes dictated partly by my taste and partly by what Mill Valley had to sell me on Saturday. My main changes were to use half bacon fat and half butter, rather than all butter, for the roux; to use cheddar instead of the called-for American cheese, and to use cream instead of milk. (Clearly this soup is not for the faint of fat).

I bought all the central ingredients at Mill Valley. Flour, homemade chicken stock, and organic, locally pasture-raised bacon and butter I had at home, and chives -- I did have to get those at the grocery store. I thought about skipping the chives in the name of making a truly locally-sourced concoction, but this soup lives or dies by its garnishes and chives are essential to elevating it from basic potato soup to really really good potato soup.


Here's a photo of the very last bowl, dinner for our fantastic babysitter Miss Alyssa on Monday night. Having just served it to her and then run out the door, I called from the road to say, "Stop eating! Take a picture first!" Because she is the greatest babysitter of all time, she obliged me. So, potato soup, garnished with bacon, chives and lots of black pepper, one bite gone.


Baltimore Parrot Baked Potato Soup

6 starchy potatoes, peeled and diced (Tuscarora Organic Co-op)
6 cups chicken stock (Springfield Farm)
1.5 teaspoons white pepper (black is ok if you don't have white)
1/2 lb cheddar cheese, shredded (Trickling Springs)
1 cup flour
4 tablespoons butter (I get mine from an Amish grass farmer)
2 cups cream or milk (I used Trickling Springs heavy cream)

1 lb uncured bacon (Amish grass farmer)
chives (Superfresh, sigh)

1.) Fry up the bacon. You don't have to use a whole pound; basically, you want to render the fat for the roux and have some crispy bacon to crumble on the soup for garnish. The rest is to snack on while you cook. I defy you not to eat it.

2.) In large soup pot, bring stock to boil. Add potatoes and white pepper, salt if your stock is unsalted. Cook potatoes until about halfway done.

3.) Drain all but 4 tablespoons of the bacon fat and save for some other delicious application. Return pan to medium heat and add 4 tablespoons butter. Once butter and lard are melted together, slowly whisk in flour a little at a time until roux forms. Cook roux about three minutes, until lightly brown and raw flour taste has faded.

4.) Over medium heat, add roux to potatoes and stock a little at a time, whisking gently but thoroughly each time. Add cream and cheese, again stirring thoroughly but gently, and bring to a simmer. Keep an eye on this stage and stir often so the bottom doesn't scorch. Once at simmer, lower heat to extremely low, cover, and cook 15 minutes.

5.) Serve! Garnish with crumbled bacon, chopped chives, lots of black pepper, and more cheese if you like. Some people add sour cream as a garnish but I find this to be gilding the lily.