Notes on November

Frost has finished off fresh fruits and vegetables in most parts of the land. So we're down to root veggies and winter squashes, the berries we managed to freeze in their heyday and the greens from greenhouses. Not local food of the moment would be persimmon and quince.  Persimmon pairs perfectly with turkey and it's orange color is certainly in keeping with the holiday. Think persimmon pudding instead of corn pudding, for a change. Or make a risotto--out of rice or farro--with persimmons, toasted pecans and bitter braising greens like arugula, mizuna or chicory. Right now I'm shaving it onto a very colorful and delicious mesclun salad with pomegranate arils, avocado, toasted almonds and goat cheese.

 As for quince, since it can't be eaten raw and I don't have my Spanish friend Sonia's sensational recipe for Catalan chicken braised with prunes and quince,  I make a kind of vanilla flavored jam/paste of it, my own personal membrillo without all the sugar. It's a real treat on croissants and baguettes, especially with hard cheeses on top.  It's not that hard to make, just requires two steps instead of the one for ordinary jam. Think three quince because these will make a winter's worth of paste. You peel and chop them, put them in a pan, cover with water and boil for about an hour until they finally soften.  I usually throw half a lemon in that water. Next, you drain the quince but keep a bit of the cooking water, and puree the fruit with about 1/3 cup of it. Put this into a large pot with 1 tbsp vanilla extract or 1 whole pod, juice of 1/2 lemon and 1 3/4 cup white sugar and 1 tbsp brown sugar. Stir to blend. (you can really gild this lily with 1 tbsp rosewater because quince itself get very fragrant when cooked.) Bring to a boil over medium heat, stirring and stirring. Continue cooking until you get a consistent paste that sticks to a wooden spoon.  Preserve in properly boiled jam jars.  

If you're strictly local, think of this as kale time. Kale with garlic and lemon over penne pasta makes a fast, nourishing and surprisingly rich dish. While you boil enough penne for 4, chop a small red onion, mince 3 garlic cloves and shred a bunch of any kind of kale. Sauté the onion and garlic in olive oil over med/low heat until the onion gets soft. Toss in the kale. (And optionally 1 tbsp pine nuts.) Season with freshly ground black pepper. When the kale softens, squeeze in the juice of a lemon and blend. Add the cooked, drained penne, season with salt and more olive oil, stir to blend everything and serve with freshly grated cheese.  Please keep in mind the more you cook kale the more of its nutrients you destroy. 

More ways to enjoy kale right now are to make a traditional kale, potato and linguiça sausage stew/soup or stuff a large winter squash with the kale stuffing recipe in How to Fix a Leek...and bake an hour at 350º until squash is soft enough to serve. Great beside grilled or braised meat. You can also make a very tasty side dish by adding some shredded kale and a handful of dried cranberries to wild rice halfway through its cooking.  Yum with roasted chicken.

Thanksgiving up next...

The End is Here. Get out the lentils.

It's been a good run into October without a killing frost but produce is getting scarcer at the farmers' markets. It's root time and squash time for sure but there's still plenty of time to enjoy those vegetables: a whole winter. If you want to enjoy the last gasp of other vegetables when winter comes, this is the moment to marry them to lentils in a tasty, nourishing and very healthy soup.

I do mean lentils, the tiny, thin dhal in French green, brown or black beluga, because these cook very quickly without tending. You can have soup in under 45 minutes if you insist.  All you need besides a cup of lentils are two carrots, two stalks of celery, a small onion, 2 garlic cloves, any leftover green or red pepper you may have--no problem if you don't, and flat leaf parsley. If you chop and saute all of them in olive oil until they're soft, all you have to do is add lentils and broth or water.  If you want to go one step further, in the final minutes you can throw in shredded spinach, arugula, even broccoli rabe. You can even toss in small pieces of diced potato.

Of course you're going to need spices, salt and pepper, so spice away to your taste. Mine includes clove, cinnamon, cumin, coriander, chili powder, ginger, oregano and turmeric. (Indians and Nepalis always put a pinch of turmeric in with their lentils and beans because it destroys the gas they can release.)  Your could be thyme, lots of sage, oregano, and a pinch of smoked paprika. Or just cloves, black pepper and orange zest. Once the lentils are soft, you have two choices: ladle yourself a big bowl or let the soup cool and freeze it in plastic containers for the future. It's going to be comfort food in February.

This is the best way to eat protein rich, wall flower ugly lentils.

Don't play Chicken with your life

Now is the time to only by chicken from your local farmer. The CDC has released its report on  that widespread September salmonella outbreak traced to three Fosters Farms processing plants in California. The stain is antibiotic resistant. Forty-two percent of the infected had to be hospitalized after the usual medicines failed. 

Again, this is a direct result of factory farms feeding antibiotics to their animals, giving us so much of them in our sandwiches and suppers, they have no more anti affect.  So you really are playing chicken if you don't buy local. Live safe.

Red Alert

This is the moment I get giddy foolish about all those red bell peppers piled up at farmers' markets and selling for pittance a pound. This is mostly because imported ones in the supermarkets all year long are ridiculously expensive and overgrown. They look much too picture perfect. It's also because red peppers are a terrifically tasty source of Vitamin C and with less and less sunlight, we need more and more vitamins from our food. I'm foolish for red peppers because they can so quickly be turned into so many seemingly gourmet dishes that are embarrassingly easy to make.

My favorite, because you can make a big batch and freeze it to enjoy all winter, is the red pepper coulis (that's sauce) in How to Fix a Leek.... Essentially red peppers sauteed in olive oil with spices until they're soft and smushy, at which point they get doused with vinegar, fresh herbs and salt, heated and pureed. I use this instead of ketchup because it takes steak and burgers off the charts. I use this instead of tomato sauce on pasta. I use it for omelets, on top of polenta and black bean chili. I slather it on baked potatoes and imagine it would perk tofu to the max.

Even easier and just perfect for right now are roasted peppers, indulging in lots of them while they're cheap. All you have to do is roast or grill the peppers until they soften. If you don't have a grill, you can put them on a gas burner set on low and turn them with tongs to get them lightly charred. You can put them in the oven or toaster oven at 450º if you don't have too many and not too big one for about 15 minutes. You can do a combination of gas stove grilling and oven roasting. It all works.

You pop the hot peppers into a brown paper bag, roll down the top to close and let them steam for 20 or so minutes. This step makes peeling their thin skin a cinch; the roasting and bagging will blister it so you can grab hold and pull it off.

Now all you have to do is cut the peppers into the size serving portion you want: half. quarter, strips--removing the stem and seeds (rinse) and arrange them on a serving plate. Lightly dress them with a splash of balsamic vinegar and a double splash of really fruity olive oil. Season with a pinch of dried oregano,  freshly ground black pepper and your best sea salt.

That's the basics. From there you can improvise away. I made two batches this week for two different dinner parties and threw capers on both. I minced a raw shallot and sprinkled it over one batch; I chopped a small amount of cilantro and strew it over the other. I used a little bit of fresh chopped flat leaf parsley to color the peppers with those shallots.

Finally, I rained down tiny bits of cheese on the platter: one time soft goat cheese, one time shredded Parmesan because that's what I had. It didn't seem to matter. Both times the plates were emptied lickety split.  I had been planning to put some of those peppers on an olive roll with fresh goat cheese for next day's lunch. They'd also have been sensational on that roll with salami and fontina cheese.

You can toss plain roasted peppers with cauliflower and pitted black olives for a great vegetable dish right now. You can serve strips of them with grilled sausages or chop them into lentil soup you can freeze for later.

There's just so much you can do in a snap, you should grab red bell peppers before it's too late and you have to wait another whole year.

The government shut down means only eat local farm food

Here courtesy of Buzzfeed, if you didn't see it, and Mark Bittman who referenced it, are food items the FDA is telling Americans to avoid, well, like the plague because they may very well be deadly. These are all coming from abroad, notably from countries that have yet to clean up their acts.

Large shrimp.  Go for the small cold water northern shrimp that can't be farmed.
Any tilapia or any unnamed fish in some fishstick or unidentified fish with chips.
Chilean farmed salmon. Go wild. Go local or go eat something else.
Shellfish. Most of it is coming from China. Enough said. Get it from your local New England fishmonger.

And finally, since the FDA is not inspecting imported vegetables either these days, they are advising people to be extremely cautious about eating these vegetables raw. They suggest soaking them in a vinegar/water solution before you dare. Here they are:
tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, avocados, melons, papaya and mangoes.

The best way to be extremely cautious is to get your tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers and melons from your local farmer. Or else realize this is October and buy yourself winter squash, Brussels sprouts, local potatoes and New England cranberries.

And by all means, now that all inspections are off and chicken is coming from China too, only eat chicken purchased at your local farmers' market or equivalent.  Winter markets do have them.

Mushrooming

Late September after all the rains can turn the taste buds toward mushrooms. They're sprouting all over the place, including farmers' markets where you can pick from a grand variety. And why not? Mushrooms are purveyors of nutritional benefits few other foods can manage, particularly hard to come by Vitamin D.

Mushrooms are also friendly with whatever ingredients you may have lurking in the fridge or pantry. Sauteed in a bit of butter with chives and leeks--all in season right now, they make a spectacular omelet if you use farm fresh eggs. Sauteed with shallots and radicchio--also in season, and kissed with a bit of cream, they really perk up pasta. Garnish heavily with chopped flat leaf parsley, freshly ground black pepper and grates of good Parmesan cheese. Put them on a goat cheese pizza with garlic and arugula.  Make a mushroom, celery, shallot and sage risotto using beef broth. Make mushroom soup from a miso or seaweed base, tossing in diced carrots, ginger and firm tofu. Sauté some with chopped broccoli and kiss with sesame oil. Possibilities are endless at this point in time.

Thanks to a major agricultural grant program, mushrooms have become a family farm cash crop in upstate New York and Vermont. Mostly shiitakes which are symbiotic with oak bark. A few downed logs and some spores, even in the short growing season, has yielded about $11,000 a year. And they sell out, trying to meet the demand of restaurants and gourmet markets. Here's hoping others take to the dirt and bring on the mushrooms.

How to Save the Day

The tsunami of fruits and vegetables flowing through our farmers' markets right now is overwhelming. What to do with all this magnificent food? Well, enjoy what you can and then start thinking about tomorrow, about preserving it for those dreary days of scarcity called winter. Now is the time. And it doesn't take much time to insure you will have a nutritiously rich treasure chest for the lean months.

Make the last jam: peach, plum, apricot. Make extra for holiday gifts.
Save these last fruits in crisps (See How to Fix a Leek... under peaches) that take a second to prepare and freeze beautifully--I always make them in those disposable pie plates, cover with foil and then slip into a large baggie-- and make a dazzling dessert for Thanksgiving when everyone expects apple pie. Save the plums in basic cake (see How to Fix a Leek...under plums). To serve, heat the oven to 350º, slip the frozen crisp or cake in (still covered in tin foil), and cook until it's defrosted--10-12 minutes.

Hang on to all the luscious tomatoes flooding the stalls by making a major vat of spaghetti sauce you can freeze in small containers. The preparation is seriously simple: just cut up stuff and throw it all in a pot, let the pot simmer for hours and that's it.  There's a recipe in the October section of How to Fix a Leek... You can add ground beef and pork, or sausage to make it extra hearty. Just think about slurping up all those fresh vitamins and antioxidants in February.

Even simpler is Provencal tomato soup. This recipe is in my other book, Veggiyana, the Dharma of Cooking, but it's wonderfully basic: butter up some onions, coat them with thyme, chop up tomatoes and throw them in with a pinch of red pepper flakes. Cover and cook over low heat for 20 minutes. Add salt and pepper to your taste, a bit of minced fresh parsley and voila! a goldmine of excellent nutrition that freezes fantastically. Serve it in January with a grilled cheese sandwich.

Use tomatoes to save the eggplants and peppers pouring in. Make ratatouille (recipe in Veggiyana, the Dharma of Cooking uses cilantro instead of basil but you choose). It freezes well and can be used later as a vegetable or better yet, when you're really harried, as perfect with penne pasta. Defrost it, reheat it on simmer with a tad of fresh olive oil and freshly ground black pepper and pour it over the penne.  Add grated cheese and go. To make this dish extra hearty, add sauteed pepperoni or hot sausage to the heating ratatouille. Or stir in some marinara sauce.

Those red peppers so cheap now that will be so expensive shipped in to the supermarket later? See the red pepper coulis in How to Fix a Leek...It freezes perfectly in small plastic containers and can be defrosted to serve as a steak or burger sauce, a pasta sauce, the base of a white bean hummus...it's uses are many and its vitamin contribution astronomical. So don't forget to save red peppers.

And then of course there's all that zucchini. Of course there's zucchini bread and stuffed zucchini boats that will freeze if cooked. The zucchini pie recipe in How to Fix a Leek... will also freeze if wrapped in tin foil and stored in an airtight freezer bag.  Slip it frozen into a warm oven to defrost and serve. If you're really drowning in zucchini right now, you can make a fabulous pasta sauce by sauteeing up a mess of onions and garlic plus a small red pepper minced, tossing in a handful of pine nuts, a healthy helping of oregano, chopped fresh basil leaves, chopped fresh flat leaf parsley, freshly ground pepper, coarse salt and a pinch of nutmeg. Cook it down to mush and then puree.  Serve over spinach pasta with or without chopped sausage and garnish heavily with grated cheese. Summer will taste mighty good in March.