All the storms and rains of September brought an extravagant crop of mushrooms this October, breaking records and making headlines. They popped up everywhere--even under my juniper bushes--and so did the revelations that several people I thought I knew well were actually avid mushroom hunters delighting in the moment. Mother Nature has tempted us to notice her.
Those of Polish and Russian heritage have been taking picnic baskets into parks and forests, staking a spot, and making a day of foraging and toasting their gains. Others are simply taking newly acquired books out to their back 40 and coming back to the kitchen with black trumpets, boletes, chanterelles and shiitakes, among other wild wonders prized by gourmets. Under my junipers according to a local expert mycologist were lowly slippery jacks, sullius americanus and granulatus.
So of course plenty of fungi have been on sale at farmers' markets lucky enough to have a mushroom vendor. And the variety is richer than ever, all of it already vetted as not poisonous. How easy is that? So now is the time, probably the last time until spring, to taste fresh, wild (i.e. organic as you can get) mushrooms.
What to do? If you're lucky enough to have chanterelles or black trumpets or real boletes (porcini), just saute them in a bit of butter to put slight crunch on them, sprinkle a pinch of good quality salt, and enjoy. Or share them with pasta and parsley.
Shiitake is Japanese for oak fungus, so this beloved edible is stellar in Japanese type preparations. Serve them with soba noodles, sesame oil, Tamari sauce and toasted sesame seeds. Or cook them with carrots, burdock root (gobo) in season now, and tofu in miso broth for a lovely soup. (You can even toss in a handful of chopped seaweed.)
For something more substantial, make a mushroom risotto using rice or farro or even pearl barley. Put diced celery, leek, fresh sage, a pinch of dried rosemary and thyme, and diced bell pepper of any color. (Hint: for a really rich dish use mushroom broth instead of water to cook the grain.) If you've got portobello mushrooms, the ones large as saucers, remove the stem and treat the underside of the cap as pizza dough: lightly oil the mushroom on both sides with olive oil, salt it, and pile on your favorite topping. Then bake at 450 for 15 minutes and serve a gluten free pizza.
To preserve mushrooms, you can dry them or pickle them or cook them into a soup or tart that will freeze.
And btw, since mushrooms push up out of the earth, they bring us minerals and vitamins we don't get from high flying plants.
Saturday, October 15, 2011
Sunday, October 9, 2011
Farmers Markets: the Future Present
Twice this week, in differing contexts, I heard the future will not be centralized. According to market guru Jeremy Rifkin, the energy future won't be behemoth companies dictating products and pricing to us, but rather each and every one of us with space to spare collecting and selling the excess of our own solar, wind or geothermal energy. According to political analyst Matt Bai of The New York Times, Steve Jobs' great genius was to understand that the hierarchical crony capitalism entrenched from the 20th century could be replaced in the 21st by truly democratic sharing as ideas and plans jumped from computer to computer or IPad, from one to one to one more via social networks. People will pop up, speak up and hear each other, exactly what the young ones did in the Arab world last spring. The process is already underway, undermining the current monopolistic big box business, top down bottom line political party model.
This future of individual independence makes the case for farmers' markets. And in this case, the future is here now. We can see and taste it. We can feel it in the joy we get from shopping at one--a joy never replicated in a big box store. Why is that?
Shopping at a so-called "supermarket" submits us to the self-serving machinations of the corporations who own the real estate and stock the shelves. What's on them for us to eat is what they want to be there. And what they want to be there was formulated and processed not for our benefit, but for their bottom line. How much free choice do we really get in that dictatorship? Think about it. Does grabbing your groceries there feel like duty, like jury duty? Or do you just love it, can't wait to go back?
Now think about going to a local farmers' market or two. You pick and choose among many lettuce offerings; you get the truth of provenance and other vital information about the food that's about to enter your body--is it genetically modified, irradiated, poisoned by pesticides?--so you decide. You even participate at times in the pricing. And you process the produce your way. Sometimes, if you make jam or pickles or preserves out of it, you spread it around on your own social network, just the way Rifkin figures energy will be transmitted and Jobs figured ideas would move. Crisscrossing power lines.
In other words, you are more in charge, more in the center of your own life. You are more part of a social network that starts with the face of the farmer who grew the food about to have a very intimate relationship with you, and ends with you serving up or giving away what you have made of it.
Even better, as Jeremy Rifkin pointed out in discussing the future of energy, we will get back in touch with the reality of Nature--and thus our own nature. Rifkin explained that collecting solar energy makes a person pay attention to where and how the sun is, just like wind energy makes one more cognizant of a calm day. So too does the very real seasonality of farm produce. It forcefully reminds us that autumn is not spring, that summertime is the moment of abundance and winter requires advance preparation to survive it. It reminds us that we are not supposed to be eating tomatoes during the snowstorms of January. If we are, they were flown in from who knows where and grown who knows how to trick us into thinking we can have it all all the time--no problem, no worries, no harm. True or false?
Farmers markets are truly places to practice vital feng shui for our body, to harmonize ourselves with Nature the way ancient religions teach us to. After all, like it or not we are a part of it, children of Mother Nature and Father Time. Shopping at farmers markets prompts us in spring to eat fresh greens--dandelion, fiddlehead, asparagus, spinach, chard--which are a tonic that cleans the sludge from sluggish winter blood. It reminds us to rev our body up for the exertion of outdoor summer fun with the extraordinarily nutritious cruciferous cold weather vegetables--cabbage, broccoli, radishes, kohlrabi; and the iron in newly sprouted mushrooms. Then when the heat of summer strikes, the available produce tells us to stuff ourselves with the juicy vitamins of berries, watery tomatoes and cucumbers and melons that will keep us hydrated when we sweat. It signals us to get our protein from corn and beans (in combo), fresh yogurt and cheeses. It teaches us to greet the shorter cooler days of fall with vibrantly colored root vegetables, thick stick-to-the-ribs winter squashes, and the crispness of an apple, the tang of that last berry, the cranberry. You can't mistake this and go wrong.
To feel yourself in time in place is to feel yourself truly alive. What beats that for a joyous high? Three cans of hearts of palm on sale at Piggly Wiggly or the not so Safeway?
This future of individual independence makes the case for farmers' markets. And in this case, the future is here now. We can see and taste it. We can feel it in the joy we get from shopping at one--a joy never replicated in a big box store. Why is that?
Shopping at a so-called "supermarket" submits us to the self-serving machinations of the corporations who own the real estate and stock the shelves. What's on them for us to eat is what they want to be there. And what they want to be there was formulated and processed not for our benefit, but for their bottom line. How much free choice do we really get in that dictatorship? Think about it. Does grabbing your groceries there feel like duty, like jury duty? Or do you just love it, can't wait to go back?
Now think about going to a local farmers' market or two. You pick and choose among many lettuce offerings; you get the truth of provenance and other vital information about the food that's about to enter your body--is it genetically modified, irradiated, poisoned by pesticides?--so you decide. You even participate at times in the pricing. And you process the produce your way. Sometimes, if you make jam or pickles or preserves out of it, you spread it around on your own social network, just the way Rifkin figures energy will be transmitted and Jobs figured ideas would move. Crisscrossing power lines.
In other words, you are more in charge, more in the center of your own life. You are more part of a social network that starts with the face of the farmer who grew the food about to have a very intimate relationship with you, and ends with you serving up or giving away what you have made of it.
Even better, as Jeremy Rifkin pointed out in discussing the future of energy, we will get back in touch with the reality of Nature--and thus our own nature. Rifkin explained that collecting solar energy makes a person pay attention to where and how the sun is, just like wind energy makes one more cognizant of a calm day. So too does the very real seasonality of farm produce. It forcefully reminds us that autumn is not spring, that summertime is the moment of abundance and winter requires advance preparation to survive it. It reminds us that we are not supposed to be eating tomatoes during the snowstorms of January. If we are, they were flown in from who knows where and grown who knows how to trick us into thinking we can have it all all the time--no problem, no worries, no harm. True or false?
Farmers markets are truly places to practice vital feng shui for our body, to harmonize ourselves with Nature the way ancient religions teach us to. After all, like it or not we are a part of it, children of Mother Nature and Father Time. Shopping at farmers markets prompts us in spring to eat fresh greens--dandelion, fiddlehead, asparagus, spinach, chard--which are a tonic that cleans the sludge from sluggish winter blood. It reminds us to rev our body up for the exertion of outdoor summer fun with the extraordinarily nutritious cruciferous cold weather vegetables--cabbage, broccoli, radishes, kohlrabi; and the iron in newly sprouted mushrooms. Then when the heat of summer strikes, the available produce tells us to stuff ourselves with the juicy vitamins of berries, watery tomatoes and cucumbers and melons that will keep us hydrated when we sweat. It signals us to get our protein from corn and beans (in combo), fresh yogurt and cheeses. It teaches us to greet the shorter cooler days of fall with vibrantly colored root vegetables, thick stick-to-the-ribs winter squashes, and the crispness of an apple, the tang of that last berry, the cranberry. You can't mistake this and go wrong.
To feel yourself in time in place is to feel yourself truly alive. What beats that for a joyous high? Three cans of hearts of palm on sale at Piggly Wiggly or the not so Safeway?
Saturday, October 1, 2011
Our Roots Are Showing
On October 13, I'm scheduled to do an autumn cooking demonstration of farmers' market produce, and I'm calling it Letting Our Roots Show, in honor of all that underground treasure farmers are digging up right now. Here's the list, and it's probably partial: beets (golden, variegated chiogga, red), burdock (sometimes known by its Japanese name gobo), carrots, celeriac (the bulb of a celery plant), coriander (the root of leafy cilantro, usually sold ground up), daikon, garlic, ginger, horseradish, Jerusalem artichokes (sometimes called "sunchokes"), leeks, onions (red, yellow, white, sweet, cipollini, pearl), parsnips, potatoes (myriad varieties), radishes (the small ones of multiple colors), rutabaga, salsify (sometimes called "oyster plant"), scallions, shallots, scorzonera (another name for black salsify popular in Spain), sweet potatoes, turmeric, turnips and yams.
The eye-popping color chart goes from black to magenta and purple through oranges to bright white. The nutrition is off the charts. Plants that actually grow down and dirty tend to absorb minerals in the surrounding soil as they swell, so many of these roots are rich in iron and have significant traces of hard to come-by potassium. They cover the whole vitamin alphabet from A to K, and are full of fiber. Salsify has protein. Bright orange roots--carrots, sweet potatoes, rutabaga, yams--are loaded with beta-carotene, a splendid anti-oxidant.
Almost all of them are magical medicinal chests. Burdock, taproot of the thistle plant, is traditionally eaten in China and Japan as a blood cleanser. Sweet potatoes and Jerusalem artichokes (root of the sunflower) are thought to regulate insulin in diabetics. All that smelly sulfur in onions and garlic becomes an antibiotic and decongestant for the lungs. Scallions are an anti-coagulant, turmeric an antibiotic, and ginger fights nausea.
Best of all, none of these roots are complicated to cook. Roast, boil or microwave yams until soft, and mash the flesh with a pinch of ground cardamom and a tbsp or two of coconut milk. Peel and chop a celeriac bulb, boil it in chicken or vegetable broth until soft and mash it with a tbsp or two of creme fraiche, sour cream or thick yogurt. Cook salsify until tender, then peel and mash with a tsp of vinegar. (Because this root has a lot of rubbery sap in it, it's easier to cook first and then peel.) Peel and chop burdock into a vegetable soup or a miso broth along with tofu and mushrooms.
Make a heart-warming Alpine gratin by slicing a large rutabaga, a red onion and a few red potatoes into thin disks. Lightly oil the bottom of a medium sized baking pan and lay the sliced vegetables out in two sets of alternating layers, seasoning each with salt and pepper and the rutabaga layers with a pinch of ground cloves. Sprinkle grated Gruyere cheese over each layer too. Then pour heavy cream lightly laced with nutmeg--maybe 1 1/2 -2 cups--all over, top with grated cheese and bake at 350 for about 35 minutes or until the vegetables are soft and the sauce is firm.
Make a slaw of carrots, celeriac and daikon. I make and store in the fridge the Himalayan multipurpose flavoring: 1 peeled head of garlic cloves mashed with 2" fresh, peeled ginger root in a small food processor. This is great seasoning for braised greens, especially broccoli rabe, all meats, and my favorite autumn offering: root vegetable stew. A little olive oil in the bottom of a heavy gauge casserole, a hit of that root flavoring, a hit of ground coriander and turmeric to boot, some ground cumin and ground chili powder, and in go chunks of onions, leeks, potatoes, carrots, parsnips, celeriac, turnips, rutabaga, daikon, Jerusalem artichokes and enough broth--vegetable, beef or chicken--to cover them. Cover the pot and stew for 20-30 minutes until the roots are tender to a fork. Stir in salt, pepper and a few tbsp of tomato paste to thicken the broth. Simmer a few minutes, garnish with freshly chopped cilantro and serve. For instance, fried chicken and yellow rice, or polenta and cheese, or roasted pork loin, with your roots showing by their side.
The eye-popping color chart goes from black to magenta and purple through oranges to bright white. The nutrition is off the charts. Plants that actually grow down and dirty tend to absorb minerals in the surrounding soil as they swell, so many of these roots are rich in iron and have significant traces of hard to come-by potassium. They cover the whole vitamin alphabet from A to K, and are full of fiber. Salsify has protein. Bright orange roots--carrots, sweet potatoes, rutabaga, yams--are loaded with beta-carotene, a splendid anti-oxidant.
Almost all of them are magical medicinal chests. Burdock, taproot of the thistle plant, is traditionally eaten in China and Japan as a blood cleanser. Sweet potatoes and Jerusalem artichokes (root of the sunflower) are thought to regulate insulin in diabetics. All that smelly sulfur in onions and garlic becomes an antibiotic and decongestant for the lungs. Scallions are an anti-coagulant, turmeric an antibiotic, and ginger fights nausea.
Best of all, none of these roots are complicated to cook. Roast, boil or microwave yams until soft, and mash the flesh with a pinch of ground cardamom and a tbsp or two of coconut milk. Peel and chop a celeriac bulb, boil it in chicken or vegetable broth until soft and mash it with a tbsp or two of creme fraiche, sour cream or thick yogurt. Cook salsify until tender, then peel and mash with a tsp of vinegar. (Because this root has a lot of rubbery sap in it, it's easier to cook first and then peel.) Peel and chop burdock into a vegetable soup or a miso broth along with tofu and mushrooms.
Make a heart-warming Alpine gratin by slicing a large rutabaga, a red onion and a few red potatoes into thin disks. Lightly oil the bottom of a medium sized baking pan and lay the sliced vegetables out in two sets of alternating layers, seasoning each with salt and pepper and the rutabaga layers with a pinch of ground cloves. Sprinkle grated Gruyere cheese over each layer too. Then pour heavy cream lightly laced with nutmeg--maybe 1 1/2 -2 cups--all over, top with grated cheese and bake at 350 for about 35 minutes or until the vegetables are soft and the sauce is firm.
Make a slaw of carrots, celeriac and daikon. I make and store in the fridge the Himalayan multipurpose flavoring: 1 peeled head of garlic cloves mashed with 2" fresh, peeled ginger root in a small food processor. This is great seasoning for braised greens, especially broccoli rabe, all meats, and my favorite autumn offering: root vegetable stew. A little olive oil in the bottom of a heavy gauge casserole, a hit of that root flavoring, a hit of ground coriander and turmeric to boot, some ground cumin and ground chili powder, and in go chunks of onions, leeks, potatoes, carrots, parsnips, celeriac, turnips, rutabaga, daikon, Jerusalem artichokes and enough broth--vegetable, beef or chicken--to cover them. Cover the pot and stew for 20-30 minutes until the roots are tender to a fork. Stir in salt, pepper and a few tbsp of tomato paste to thicken the broth. Simmer a few minutes, garnish with freshly chopped cilantro and serve. For instance, fried chicken and yellow rice, or polenta and cheese, or roasted pork loin, with your roots showing by their side.
Saturday, September 24, 2011
The Great Pumpkin
One of the sadder aftershocks of Hurricane Irene has been news that New England is short of pumpkins this year. Most of those in the Hudson and Connecticut River valleys drowned at the end of August. So it's seems fitting to salute the pumpkins that are making it to market, and now is the time those small, sweet sugar pies show up to liven stands with that intensely bright hunter's orange.
These volley ball sized pumpkins coming off the vine right now are actually squash, so you can cook them like a vegetable, if you don't want to bother making mousse or pie. You can chunk and braise the 'meat' with South Asian spices: cumin and fenugreek seeds, fresh ginger root, turmeric, cinnamon, coriander, and chili for a hearty side dish. You can grate the flesh and combine about 4 cups of it with a cup of soft ricotta, 2 eggs, a bunch of chopped dill, a diced onion, a cup of flour and a pinch of cayenne to make the most delicious pancakes. (If you're gluten averse, you can use chickpea or corn flour.)
Most easily, you can stick the whole pumpkin in the oven and bake/roast it at 350 until it collapses. Then you scoop out the flesh and puree it with a 2 or 3 tbsp coconut cream or creme fraiche or thick yogurt into mashed pumpkin you can spice up with nutmeg, allspice and a pinch of clove--or just cardamom, if you prefer. You can cook it any way you would cook a butternut squash.
You can clean out the seed cavity and stuff it with, say, the kale mushroom stuffing in How to Fix a Leek and Other Food from your Farmers' Market, baking the pumpkin until it's soft enough to slice. Or stuff it Thai style, with a coconut milk pudding that you steam by placing the filled pumpkin in the steamer and cooking until it softens and the pudding firms up. You can even pre-soften in in the microwave or oven, hollow it out and stuff the cavity with a butter, cheesy polenta and finish cooking in the oven until the pumpkin's soft enough to cut in wedges. This is really colorful, especially garnished with lots of chopped cilantro.
Best of all, you can clean and dry all those pumpkin seeds you took out of the cavity and turn them into a profoundly nutritious snack. Nothing could be easier--once they're cleaned and dried. Combine 2 cups of them with 1 tbsp corn oil, 1 tsp salt, 1 tsp arbol chili powder, 1 tsp chipotle chili powder, 1/4 tsp ground cumin, 1/8 tsp ground coriander, 1/8 tsp ground allspice and a pinch of nutmeg. Mix everything together really well and spread the seeds out on a cookie sheet. Bake them at 300 degrees about 30 minutes, until they start to turn color. They should snap and crackle as they cool. You can store these in tins and/or give as gifts. They're great scarfed up alone or lightly sprinkled on a green salad or an avocado, added to chicken salad, sprinkled on whipped cream atop your pumpkin pie, tossed into your oatmeal. Remember, seeds are where the source of life is stored, so they're very rich in vital nutrients. And they come free with the pumpkin.
These volley ball sized pumpkins coming off the vine right now are actually squash, so you can cook them like a vegetable, if you don't want to bother making mousse or pie. You can chunk and braise the 'meat' with South Asian spices: cumin and fenugreek seeds, fresh ginger root, turmeric, cinnamon, coriander, and chili for a hearty side dish. You can grate the flesh and combine about 4 cups of it with a cup of soft ricotta, 2 eggs, a bunch of chopped dill, a diced onion, a cup of flour and a pinch of cayenne to make the most delicious pancakes. (If you're gluten averse, you can use chickpea or corn flour.)
Most easily, you can stick the whole pumpkin in the oven and bake/roast it at 350 until it collapses. Then you scoop out the flesh and puree it with a 2 or 3 tbsp coconut cream or creme fraiche or thick yogurt into mashed pumpkin you can spice up with nutmeg, allspice and a pinch of clove--or just cardamom, if you prefer. You can cook it any way you would cook a butternut squash.
You can clean out the seed cavity and stuff it with, say, the kale mushroom stuffing in How to Fix a Leek and Other Food from your Farmers' Market, baking the pumpkin until it's soft enough to slice. Or stuff it Thai style, with a coconut milk pudding that you steam by placing the filled pumpkin in the steamer and cooking until it softens and the pudding firms up. You can even pre-soften in in the microwave or oven, hollow it out and stuff the cavity with a butter, cheesy polenta and finish cooking in the oven until the pumpkin's soft enough to cut in wedges. This is really colorful, especially garnished with lots of chopped cilantro.
Best of all, you can clean and dry all those pumpkin seeds you took out of the cavity and turn them into a profoundly nutritious snack. Nothing could be easier--once they're cleaned and dried. Combine 2 cups of them with 1 tbsp corn oil, 1 tsp salt, 1 tsp arbol chili powder, 1 tsp chipotle chili powder, 1/4 tsp ground cumin, 1/8 tsp ground coriander, 1/8 tsp ground allspice and a pinch of nutmeg. Mix everything together really well and spread the seeds out on a cookie sheet. Bake them at 300 degrees about 30 minutes, until they start to turn color. They should snap and crackle as they cool. You can store these in tins and/or give as gifts. They're great scarfed up alone or lightly sprinkled on a green salad or an avocado, added to chicken salad, sprinkled on whipped cream atop your pumpkin pie, tossed into your oatmeal. Remember, seeds are where the source of life is stored, so they're very rich in vital nutrients. And they come free with the pumpkin.
Sunday, September 18, 2011
Getting a fix on the leek
I just did another event, this one outdoors at a food and plant festival. Since the featured book was How to Fix a Leek and Other Food from Your Farmers Market, the organizers, owners of a new organic farm, thought they should garnish my table with fresh leeks. I cleaned the most beautiful of their gift and set it out as a bookmarker--although when kids came by, I must confess, I waved it and claimed it was my special wizard wand.
That, of course, stopped the kids in their tracks. But more unexpectedly, the sight of that leek stopped almost every passerby, and I was treated to a continual counterpoint of: "Oh, I love leeks!" and "I've never eaten one of those." As with the current political system, there was nobody in the middle. Nobody who maybe just a little bit liked leeks or had just tasted maybe a little once. I've never encountered that with any other vegetable but then, twenty years ago, as I was picking up a leek from the supermarket's grocery collection in Bath, Maine, an elderly woman stopped in her tracks, screwed up her nose and said bluntly: "My God, what is that nasty thing?"
Mellow is more the word I'd use. Leeks are cousins in the onion family, the ones without the pungent bite and with textural softness. They're too polite to overpower, say, expensive mushrooms so they're perfect to sauté in butter with that precious fungus, as I did last week when I found black trumpets and hen of the woods at the farmers' market. And they're very sweet with ham and eggs, in an omelet or frittata.
Now that they're plentiful, I use leeks to make risotto--with mushrooms, of course, or perhaps with those other autumn wonders, Brussels sprouts and Jerusalem artichokes, which are not from Jerusalem and not artichokes but the tuber from which our sunflower grows. I've also chopped them up and sautéed them in olive oil with celery, bits of smoked ham or bacon, and a pile of minced flat leaf parsley, stirred in some soft ricotta cheese to hold everything together and spread the mixture on the underside of a portabello mushroom to bake as a yummy no gluten/no bread pizza.
Venerable is another word for the leek. "Eat leeks in March and ramps in May, And all the year after the physicians may play," is an old English proverb. The stalk has always been prized for its medicinal magic. Hippocrates, the so called father of Western medicine, supposedly prescribed it for nosebleeds. During medieval times, it was thought to cure a sore throat, to be an antidote for certain poisons, and a diagnostic tool.
The hardscrabble people of the British Isles actually revered the leek. It's not only still the national symbol of Wales, key ingredient in the infamous Scottish cockaleekie soup. It's given names to many an English town. Leighton, Leyton, Laughton, Leckhampton, Loughrigg and Lawkland all mean something like "land of the leek." It's also endowed that far more pungent bulb with the name we English speakers recognize: garlic--as gar-leek.
Aristocratic is another good description, since the leek stands tall and elegantly straight above ground. Then too, it is not so coarse and smelly as the onion or garlic down under. The moneyed Romans ate leeks many ways while the hoi polloi had to make due with onions. Nowadays at fancy supermarkets, they cost three to four times more than onions. But right now while they're in the harvest spotlight, leeks are value priced.
And right now while the weather vacillates from chilly to sweaty is the perfect time to make the famed French vichyssoise: leek and potato soup with cream. You can serve either hot or cold. There really is a lot of magic in that wand.
P.S. If you want to read more about the leek in history, try the newly published Words to Eat By, written by Ina Lipkowitz.
That, of course, stopped the kids in their tracks. But more unexpectedly, the sight of that leek stopped almost every passerby, and I was treated to a continual counterpoint of: "Oh, I love leeks!" and "I've never eaten one of those." As with the current political system, there was nobody in the middle. Nobody who maybe just a little bit liked leeks or had just tasted maybe a little once. I've never encountered that with any other vegetable but then, twenty years ago, as I was picking up a leek from the supermarket's grocery collection in Bath, Maine, an elderly woman stopped in her tracks, screwed up her nose and said bluntly: "My God, what is that nasty thing?"
Mellow is more the word I'd use. Leeks are cousins in the onion family, the ones without the pungent bite and with textural softness. They're too polite to overpower, say, expensive mushrooms so they're perfect to sauté in butter with that precious fungus, as I did last week when I found black trumpets and hen of the woods at the farmers' market. And they're very sweet with ham and eggs, in an omelet or frittata.
Now that they're plentiful, I use leeks to make risotto--with mushrooms, of course, or perhaps with those other autumn wonders, Brussels sprouts and Jerusalem artichokes, which are not from Jerusalem and not artichokes but the tuber from which our sunflower grows. I've also chopped them up and sautéed them in olive oil with celery, bits of smoked ham or bacon, and a pile of minced flat leaf parsley, stirred in some soft ricotta cheese to hold everything together and spread the mixture on the underside of a portabello mushroom to bake as a yummy no gluten/no bread pizza.
Venerable is another word for the leek. "Eat leeks in March and ramps in May, And all the year after the physicians may play," is an old English proverb. The stalk has always been prized for its medicinal magic. Hippocrates, the so called father of Western medicine, supposedly prescribed it for nosebleeds. During medieval times, it was thought to cure a sore throat, to be an antidote for certain poisons, and a diagnostic tool.
The hardscrabble people of the British Isles actually revered the leek. It's not only still the national symbol of Wales, key ingredient in the infamous Scottish cockaleekie soup. It's given names to many an English town. Leighton, Leyton, Laughton, Leckhampton, Loughrigg and Lawkland all mean something like "land of the leek." It's also endowed that far more pungent bulb with the name we English speakers recognize: garlic--as gar-leek.
Aristocratic is another good description, since the leek stands tall and elegantly straight above ground. Then too, it is not so coarse and smelly as the onion or garlic down under. The moneyed Romans ate leeks many ways while the hoi polloi had to make due with onions. Nowadays at fancy supermarkets, they cost three to four times more than onions. But right now while they're in the harvest spotlight, leeks are value priced.
And right now while the weather vacillates from chilly to sweaty is the perfect time to make the famed French vichyssoise: leek and potato soup with cream. You can serve either hot or cold. There really is a lot of magic in that wand.
P.S. If you want to read more about the leek in history, try the newly published Words to Eat By, written by Ina Lipkowitz.
Sunday, September 11, 2011
Kale??
My other food book, Veggiyana, the Dharma of Cooking, was just released by Wisdom Publications in greater Boston, so I've been doing book events here and there for both books, which I am thrilled to report, have been very enthusiastically received. Interestingly, the food most questioned by buyers of both books continues to be kale. "What do I do with it?" "It's so tough I can't seem to cook it right." "What is it anyway?"
Kale is a gift to people in cold climates: a seriously nutritious green that thrives in chill. So it comes early to farmers' markets and stays late. For centuries, kale's been a mainstay of European diets from Ireland where it's the whole point of colcannan down through Germany and Portugal where it's commonly stewed into a soup with sausage and potatoes. Recently I've come upon farmers who've either sun or oven dried it into a crisp, profoundly healthy snack, one of them with chilies included for an unusual bite.
There are actually several kinds of kale: the curly leaf just called kale, the long, slender bluish green leaf sometimes known as Lacinto or Tuscan kale, and a slightly curly purplish split leaf sometimes called Russian kale. They are all sturdy greens whose toughness makes them ideal for deep frying. Wash, carefully dry (no water should be on them when they hit the hot oil) and drop in for a minute or two. The kale will come out black and crunchy and wholly in tact. You just have to be sure to get the excess oil off the curly leaves before serving them up with a pinch of salt.
No matter which type of kale you use, you'll probably have to remove the leaf from its stubbornly tough stalk. that's the part that doesn't soften so easily and becomes stringy and tough to the teeth. Its best uses are pickling, or mincing and throwing into long cooking soups/stews, or compost. You can however chop the leaves and the stems and saute the whole mess in olive oil, garlic and red onion. After five minutes you add a bit of broth, cover and braised until the kale is soft--maybe 5-7 minutes. Season with salt, pepper and a splash of balsamic vinegar to serve.
Lately, I've been cutting up the bluish Tuscan kale to add to yellow split peas flavored with cinnamon, ginger and cardamom--the recipe is in Veggiyana, the Dharma of Cooking. By first sautéeing it in oil and then finishing it in the soupy split peas, it gets tender yet keeps that gorgeous blue-green hue. With those golden peas all around it, this becomes a colorful eyeful that invites the stomach to dig in.
You can finely chop curly kale leaves into a raw kale salad right now with dried cranberries, toasted pine nuts and lemon peel--great beside grilled chicken or a bowl of polenta. If you feel lazy and want a quick, nourishing vegetarian supper, you can loosely chop and throw them into the pot with pasta you boil and then dress the combo with lots of fresh lemon juice, fruity olive oil, fresh black pepper, salt and grated cheese. It will be rich. If you feel more energetic, you can saute up some onions, garlic and pine nuts in olive oil, chop up the kale leaves and toss them in with fresh black pepper and the juice of half a lemon and braise until they're tender. Then put freshly cooked pasta into that, add cheese and enjoy.
Kale cooked with potatoes is a common German combination, and sausage can be added. A great autumn supper!
Kale is a gift to people in cold climates: a seriously nutritious green that thrives in chill. So it comes early to farmers' markets and stays late. For centuries, kale's been a mainstay of European diets from Ireland where it's the whole point of colcannan down through Germany and Portugal where it's commonly stewed into a soup with sausage and potatoes. Recently I've come upon farmers who've either sun or oven dried it into a crisp, profoundly healthy snack, one of them with chilies included for an unusual bite.
There are actually several kinds of kale: the curly leaf just called kale, the long, slender bluish green leaf sometimes known as Lacinto or Tuscan kale, and a slightly curly purplish split leaf sometimes called Russian kale. They are all sturdy greens whose toughness makes them ideal for deep frying. Wash, carefully dry (no water should be on them when they hit the hot oil) and drop in for a minute or two. The kale will come out black and crunchy and wholly in tact. You just have to be sure to get the excess oil off the curly leaves before serving them up with a pinch of salt.
No matter which type of kale you use, you'll probably have to remove the leaf from its stubbornly tough stalk. that's the part that doesn't soften so easily and becomes stringy and tough to the teeth. Its best uses are pickling, or mincing and throwing into long cooking soups/stews, or compost. You can however chop the leaves and the stems and saute the whole mess in olive oil, garlic and red onion. After five minutes you add a bit of broth, cover and braised until the kale is soft--maybe 5-7 minutes. Season with salt, pepper and a splash of balsamic vinegar to serve.
Lately, I've been cutting up the bluish Tuscan kale to add to yellow split peas flavored with cinnamon, ginger and cardamom--the recipe is in Veggiyana, the Dharma of Cooking. By first sautéeing it in oil and then finishing it in the soupy split peas, it gets tender yet keeps that gorgeous blue-green hue. With those golden peas all around it, this becomes a colorful eyeful that invites the stomach to dig in.
You can finely chop curly kale leaves into a raw kale salad right now with dried cranberries, toasted pine nuts and lemon peel--great beside grilled chicken or a bowl of polenta. If you feel lazy and want a quick, nourishing vegetarian supper, you can loosely chop and throw them into the pot with pasta you boil and then dress the combo with lots of fresh lemon juice, fruity olive oil, fresh black pepper, salt and grated cheese. It will be rich. If you feel more energetic, you can saute up some onions, garlic and pine nuts in olive oil, chop up the kale leaves and toss them in with fresh black pepper and the juice of half a lemon and braise until they're tender. Then put freshly cooked pasta into that, add cheese and enjoy.
Kale cooked with potatoes is a common German combination, and sausage can be added. A great autumn supper!
Sunday, September 4, 2011
Seeing Red
Now is the time for red bell peppers. Market stalls are piled so high, you can walk away with huge ones for $1 apiece. That's a mammoth savings over the always high supermarket price of $4.50 a lb because for, say, $3 you can get three very large peppers that weigh at least that. So now is the time to buy up red peppers and savor them.
I so badly lose control when I see them at $1 each, I grab at least six, sometimes even a dozen. I've been making that red pepper sauce recipe in How to Fix a Leek and Other Food From Your Farmers' Market for years now and know how perfectly it will freeze and later brighten a winter meal. Make it healthier too because this is just packed solid with vitamin C, something you can really use in wintertime.
And it has so many wonderful uses right now. I can put it on cavatelli or ditalini or any small pasta with fresh shell beans as a vibrant, vivid sauce. Nothing beats it on steaks including flank steak or hamburgers: forget ketchup. Forget the butter for your baked potato too and slather this on. Ditto corn on the cob. It's great with scrambled eggs and vegetable omelets, and is a perfect mate for cornmeal pancakes. And how it makes even tofu tasty!
The other joy of red peppers right now is that you can roast at high heat (475) or grill them about 15 minutes until they char and soften. Pop them in a brown paper bag, close it and wait another 10-15 minutes. This will help you peel off that colorless outer skin very easily. When the peppers are cool enough, you can cut them in halves or thirds or quarters, depending on their size, seed them, salt them and lay them out on a plate. If you like the daisy petal pattern, go for it. At this point, you can do whatever you want: put a dollop of soft cheese (fromage blanc, goat cheese, ricotta salada) on each one, smear a thin coat of black olive paste or just sprinkle a bit of olive oil over them and serve. Or you can smear on soft cheese, lay on a small thin strip of salami and roll them up to serve with a toothpick. You can also do the same with a thin coating of egg salad on them.
Another option is to just lay one on top of egg, tuna or chicken salad in your sandwich. Put it inside grilled cheese, or as I sometimes do, lay one on top of an open faced toasted cheese sandwich for a great breakfast.
But whatever you want to do for this healthy and picturesque vegetable, hurry up. Red peppers are the end of summer: frost will take them away and you'll be back to paying dearly for them in the supermarket.
I so badly lose control when I see them at $1 each, I grab at least six, sometimes even a dozen. I've been making that red pepper sauce recipe in How to Fix a Leek and Other Food From Your Farmers' Market for years now and know how perfectly it will freeze and later brighten a winter meal. Make it healthier too because this is just packed solid with vitamin C, something you can really use in wintertime.
And it has so many wonderful uses right now. I can put it on cavatelli or ditalini or any small pasta with fresh shell beans as a vibrant, vivid sauce. Nothing beats it on steaks including flank steak or hamburgers: forget ketchup. Forget the butter for your baked potato too and slather this on. Ditto corn on the cob. It's great with scrambled eggs and vegetable omelets, and is a perfect mate for cornmeal pancakes. And how it makes even tofu tasty!
The other joy of red peppers right now is that you can roast at high heat (475) or grill them about 15 minutes until they char and soften. Pop them in a brown paper bag, close it and wait another 10-15 minutes. This will help you peel off that colorless outer skin very easily. When the peppers are cool enough, you can cut them in halves or thirds or quarters, depending on their size, seed them, salt them and lay them out on a plate. If you like the daisy petal pattern, go for it. At this point, you can do whatever you want: put a dollop of soft cheese (fromage blanc, goat cheese, ricotta salada) on each one, smear a thin coat of black olive paste or just sprinkle a bit of olive oil over them and serve. Or you can smear on soft cheese, lay on a small thin strip of salami and roll them up to serve with a toothpick. You can also do the same with a thin coating of egg salad on them.
Another option is to just lay one on top of egg, tuna or chicken salad in your sandwich. Put it inside grilled cheese, or as I sometimes do, lay one on top of an open faced toasted cheese sandwich for a great breakfast.
But whatever you want to do for this healthy and picturesque vegetable, hurry up. Red peppers are the end of summer: frost will take them away and you'll be back to paying dearly for them in the supermarket.
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