More on blackberries

If you are feeling ambitious, here is a recipe for blackberry filled cookies, 4 dozen of them, adapted from an old "hippie" recipe that avoided the evils of butter, sugar and white flour. I love 'em all.

Blackberry Glaze filling
Bring 3/8 cup of honey with 3/8 cup of water to a boil, then simmer for 10 minutes.
Stir in 1 1/2 cups crushed blackberries. Cook i minute. Cool.

For the cookies:
1 egg
1/4 cup butter, softened and cut into pieces
1/3 cup sugar
1/2 tsp baking soda
2 tbsp buttermilk
pinch of salt
1/2 tsp vanilla
1 cup flour, cake flour if you have it.

In a food processor or mixer, beat the egg with the sugar. Add baking soda, flour, salt and butter. Beat to blend.
Add the buttermilk and vanilla. Mix thoroughly.

Chill this dough for several hours.

Butter or grease a large cookie sheet. Heat oven to 325º.
Using a normal spoon, drop the dough onto the baking sheet and flatten slightly. Do not let the cookies touch as they will spread a bit.

Using the back of the 1/4 tsp measure, make a small well in the center of each cookie and fill this with 1/4 tsp of the blackberry glaze.

Bake 12-15 minutes until the cookies are firm and crisp.
Store in an airtight tin or freeze in an airtight container.

Blackberries

Sorry to have been absent but part of whatever ails me has become total loss of appetite and 12 lbs in 3 weeks.
But I am back to cruising farmers markets, determined to go on. Mid August is of course the height of the season for those favorite all-American crops, corn and tomatoes, but it's also blackberry time and since their season is much shorter and they are much less beloved, let's start there. After all those little black thimbles are full of antioxidants and fiber with a bit of calcium thrown in.

Blackberries don't make great jam unless you are willing to strain the seeds out of the hot, cooked jam. They are the stuff of the famed French brandy, cassis, but let's not go there. They are fine in a pie or crisp but most people tend to turn them into cobblers which have more cake and less blackberry. A few of these fruits go a long way. My absolute favorite is a simple Provencal clafouti and the real French housewife recipe, so simple a 6-year-old can make it, is in the book, How to Fix a Leek... Now available for $2.99 as an eBook if you want to download it onto your tablet or smart phone and take it with you to the market.

I got my hands on a pile of blackberries this past week and after staring at them for days, yesterday I decided to play with them and try something new. Not a crisp or cobbler, not a pie. Or at least a plain blackberry pie. And because I so love blackberries in that pudding-like clafouti, I came up with a blackberry custard tart. I had six people for dinner last night and it vanished from the dish five minutes after it was served.

So, if you want to go a step beyond the ridiculously simple clafouti, here you go:
For the crust, I made a cookie dough, the easiest kind to create.

In a food processor--and mind you, I did this in a mini one, so know you don't need fancy expensive equipment-- combine 1 1/3 cups flour with 1 stick unsalted butter cut into pieces. Process just until coarsely blended. Add 2 tbsp brown sugar, a pinch of salt, 1 egg, 2 tbsp milk and 1/8 tsp nutmeg. (Optionally, if you are a ginger fan, add 1/2 inch piece of fresh ginger, chopped.) Process into lumps.

Preheat oven to 350º. Butter a 9-10" pie plate. If you have a metal one with holes in the bottom, this crust will be crisper. If you don't, you can try baking it empty for 10 minutes or not, as you see fit.

Press the dough into the pie plate all the way up the sides and a little over the top so you can crimp it between your thumb and first finger to make it look pretty. Be sure it is even all around. Now optionally you can bake it 10 minutes if you want to make it crisper in the end.

Otherwise pour in 3-4 cups of fresh, clean blackberries and distribute them evenly.

In a medium size bowl, combine 4 egg yolks, 1/3 cup white sugar, 1 tsp vanilla, 1/8 tsp ground cinnamon and 2 cups of any combination of the following that produces a thick liquid: heavy cream, yogurt, ricotta, mascarpone, creme fraiche. I used up 1 cup of heavy cream I had on hand, mixing it with 1 cup yogurt. (As it happened 1/2 of that was lemon yogurt and it added a delightful tang to the pie.) Mix all this together with a hand beater or whisk.

Pour into the pie shell.
Bake this at 350º about 40 minutes or until a cake tester comes out clean.
Serve warm or at room temperature just as it is or if you want to jazz it up and can take the calories, top it with whipped cream.

If you want to go even further, I found a recipe for blackberry cookies which I will post shortly.
Then onto what to do with corn when you can't face it on the cob one more time.

Uh Oh GMO where you least expect it

The latest list of the 10 most common GMOs (Genetically Modified Organisms) in the supermarket right now has tied in 9th and 10t place zucchini and yellow or crookneck squash. Yes those innocent looking cylinders in yellow and green. So if you are making ratatouille right now at the perfect time for it or planning to stuff squash for a light summer supper, if you are getting ready to grill zucchini or yellow squash with your other vegetables on skewers, get your squash from a trustworthy source like a local farmer or your next door neighbor. We all know the joke about trying to give zucchini away. ;-) It's so ridiculously prolific, the name we use for it is actually the plural. Zucchino is singular. So it's also ridiculous that big ag would play with zucchini genes to prevent viruses that lower harvesting and thus profitability.

How to Fix a Leek and Other Food From YOur Farmers Market, available now as an ebook on Ibooks, if you can't get the hard copy, has recipes for stuffed squash and zucchini pie so I won't repeat them here. I'll just throw out more easy, tasty options like zucchini sauce for spaghetti and zucchini mousse that really use up all that wretched excess.

Zucchini Mousse au Gratin

6 medium zucchini, coarsely chopped

3 tbs butter

6 scallions, minced

1/4 c parsley, minced

1/4 c fresh dill, minced

1 1/2 tsp salt

1/8 tsp black pepper, ground

2/3 c sourcream

4 tbs bread crumbs

2 tbs grated Parmesan cheese

Preheat oven to 350º.

Steam zucchini 20 minutes. Drain, shred and drain again.

Melt 1 tbs butter in a skillet and saute scallions until wilted.

Add zucchini, herbs, salt, pepper and sour cream, stirring to blend well.

Saute 4-5 minutes.

Oil a 1 1/2qt casserole.

Spoon skillet contents into casserole. Top with breadcrumbs, cheese and 2 tbs butter.

(YOu can wrap and freeze the casserole at this point to cook at a later date.)

Bake at 375º for 30 minutes.

Place under broiler for 3 minutes to brown the top.

Serve with a tomato, arugula salad and perhaps warm farro cooked with celery and carrots.

If you are not vegetarian, serve this with grilled chicken.

Zucchini Sauce for Pasta

1/2 c fruity olive oil

4 lg garlic cloves peeled

1 tbsp dried basil and 1/2 cup fresh basil, chopped

1 tbsp flat leaf parsley, chopped

1 lg onion, diced

3 medium zucchini, sliced into thin disks

1 red pepper, roasted (a jarred one will do just fine), chopped

1 tbsp pine nuts (if you can find ones NOT from China)

1/4 tsp salt

dash nutmeg

freshly ground black pepper to taste (probably 1/8-1/4 tsp

1/4 c parmesan or pecorino cheese, grated

In a heavy skillet, heat oil over medium heat. Add garlic, dried basil and parsley.

Saute 1 minute to flavor oil.

Add onion, zucchini, fresh basil, roasted pepper, pine nuts and salt.

Saute over medium low heat for 30-35 minutes or until zucchini is thoroughly wilted.

Cool 10 minutes.

Pour skillet contents into a food processor. Add nutmeg, black pepper and cheese.

Puree into a thick sauce.

Serve on pasta. A tomato or spinach pasta makes this more colorful because the sauce is whitish.

Catching Up to August

From early April to the end of June I was away doing cooking service first in Vancouver, Canada and then Ulan Baator, Mongolia. The result was extreme exhaustion. Also sadly, something mysterious but debilitating has prevented many activities, including at times going to the farmers' market. But I'm trying and my physical struggle, which may be the result of eating toxic garlic, onions and other produce sent to Mongolia from China--or may not be, makes me want to shout louder and louder: only buy the local food. Shake the hand that feeds you.

I don't care what the local farmers charge for garlic these days: sometimes $2 a head, sometimes $6 a pound. I also like it better if it has a purplish or even gray hue, for that means it's not been toyed with cosmetically. Since it is a bulb that grows in the ground, and is a heavy feeder from the soil around it, garlic is one of the most tainted foods coming out of China where the soils are contaminated with heavy metals, sewage and toxic pesticides. There have even been reports that the Chinese marinate their freshly pulled garlic in formaldehyde to turn it white. American supermarkets are full of garlic from China these days--read those bin labels-- because it's cheaper than what used to come from California where the growers have been decimated. Don't touch it! As my grandmother used to say: you get what you pay for. Garlic has remarkable health properties--all that smelly sulfur at work--but now an equally remarkable chance of destroying your health. That makes cheap garlic very costly.

Beware of anything that grows under the ground because whatever is in the soil it will absorb. That's why leeks, onions, carrots, etc and mushrooms which sprout from the soil all contain trace elements of minerals like iron. Trust your local farmers, even one not certified organic, because if they don't use pesticides--and most at markets these days don't--the soil will be clean.

Everything in the East was two weeks early this year so corn, tomatoes and blueberries are nothing new any more. Even the eggplant is here so you can make all the ratatouille you want: all ingredients from garlic and basil to zucchini and onions are on sale now. If you get tired of eating it plain hot or cold, throw it over penne or rigatoni. If you're not vegetarian, chop some spicy sausage or pepperoni in too.

One organic grower, Small Wonders Farm, introduced me to the heritage smoky Paul Robsons, which are blackish red with a bit of green peeking out around the stem. "I like them better than Brandywines," she said, referring to my and many peoples' favorite heirloom. She also had some very tasty almost lookalike Black Krims, but they didn't have the romantic smokiness of the Paul Robsons.

Cleaning out my fridge last week I came upon some languishing Hakuri or Tokyo turnips, sweet enough for salad, and a few baby carrots. So I grated them together into a refreshing slaw dressed with fresh chives, lemon juice and olive oil.

But my main activity, when I have strength, has been to recycle all the unwanted carrot tops, celery leaves, beet greens, pea shells and wilting chard into very useful vegetable broth. I don't have to pay $2.95 for a box any more. I just pile all that refuse into a pot, cover it with water, add salt, cover the pot and boil it on low heat for 30 minutes or so. Once it's cool, I pour it into jars or freezer containers. It's made my rice, farro and ditalini pasta exceptionally tasty. I've even cooked corn in it to give it flavor so I don't rush for butter. There is no need to measure and no way to mess this up, if you simply put in enough water to cover what's in the pot.

And last week, I recycled some raw milk from local farm into incredible yogurt, perfect for all the berries coming off the vines right now. More about that when I have strength again.

More than I can chew....

I will post shortly about eating in mud season. I've just been outrageously busy.
I've formatted How to Fix a Leek...as an e-book: it's currently available from Smashwords and will soon be available from ibooks and Amazon as well. I'm formatting a special California edition too.
I'm also working on a grant proposal for the Culinary Historians.

Right now I am in a Buddhist monastery preparing the kitchen garden and more importantly the kitchen to receive our precious teacher who is recovering from a stroke and needs lots of TLC.
And really right now, as in two minutes ago, I got word that my other book, Veggiyana, the Dharma of Cooking, just won a Silver medal in the food category of the independent book awards known as Nautilus.

When I am finished here, I will be heading to Ulan Baator, Mongolia, by invitation, to help revive a struggling vegetarian cafe.

But I will catch up to all the market news and don'ts.
For now think root toot toot: onions! Onion pizzas, onion soup, baked stuffed onions.

Thank you for your patience.

Killer Food

Reasons to buy your food from a familiar and friendly farmer in your area just keep on coming.

This week scientists confirmed what science already suspected: the cause of the honeybee holocaust is all those plants embedded with a powerful neocortinid pesticide that knocks out their nervous system. Yet this year 100% of America's industrial corn crop--including supermarket and Walmart corn sold on the cob, planted on enough land to fill 80% of California --will contain it. Without bees busy work, crops cannot pollinate and if they can't pollinate they can't fruit. Bees are crucial to our survival. To save them is to save ourselves and the best way to stop the supply of toxic corn is to stop demand for industrially raised corn. So think about only eating corn in its original summer season and only buying it from a local farmer who used heirloom or saved seeds.

This week methyl iodide, the toxic fumigant fast tracks the killing of insects, fungi and bacteria in the soil low growing strawberries are planted in, was abruptly withdrawn by its maker from the market. We owe this victory to ordinary people speaking up, smacking down corrupt regulators. But it could prove to be Pyrrhic, particularly if demand continues apace in all the off seasons for strawberries.

The lethal dangers of methyl iodide's widely sprayed predecessor, methyl bromide, were publicized a few years back, scaring those who bothered to read the news into only buying organic ones. Methyl bromide not only destroys the ozone layer, it's extremely toxic to the farm workers and those who just happen to live near fields sprayed with it. Then there is what it may do to the strawberry and the person who eats it. For these reasons, methyl bromide was banned in 1987 by the international Montreal Protocol. But US corporations found a way to keep on keeping on by consistently filing for annual "exceptions." Eventually, clinging as they do to lickety split convenience, they took up methyl iodide as the new magic bullet. Now they won't have that poison to play with.

Nobody knows for sure what next quick fix commercial growers will find. The old-fashioned ones used by small, local farmers are simple practices like crop rotation and black plastic. Their strawberries may not be picture perfect, but at least they will not poison you.

News is not much cheerier on the protein part of the food pyramid either. Fish farming is proving to be the same hazard to our health and the health of Mother Earth that industrial monoculture farming is. All those fish packed into pens become a toxic waste site that's killing everything else in the sea. And they're being pumped full of antibiotics whose effectiveness is eroding rapidly. Crowding is Nature's no-no. Say no to farmed fish and get what fresh seafood you can from your local marketeer.

People fighting the good fight against the wantonly indiscriminate use of antibiotics in industrial feedlots and the creation of even more resistant human killer super bugs finally got the Federal courts to force the FDA to stop its 40 years of waffling and ban this dangerous practice. But given the money of the meat industry, nobody is betting it will. So if you don't want to promote the creation of more killer bacteria immune to all that pharmacology has to offer, and are not vegetarian, eat locally pasture raised beef, lamb, pork and chicken. The way to change the world is to change yourself.

Tomorrow is April 1 and I wish this ghastly news was only an April Fool's joke. But it isn't. So don't be a fool. You are literally what you eat.

Whole Truth

If anybody still needs more reasons to actually shake the hand that feeds them, which is to say food shop at a local farmers' market, here are a scary trio that came this week. The first is that dogs are dying across this country because their owners loved them enough to feed them packaged chicken treats. Turns out the chicken used to make them came from China seriously embedded with poisonous chemicals.

The second is that our food supply has become increasingly international because we like to eat summer produce all winter and because we think food has to be dirt cheap like what comes from China. And with this increase in imported food, our death and poisoning from it has skyrocketed. Supplies are just too big to trail. The FDA/USDA can't even guarantee all the homegrown commercial stuff. They rely on the suppliers to police themselves.

As it happens, some watchdog groups can guarantee and have for years that pesticides banned in this country are sold to the ones below us and come back in on the fruits and vegetables. That alone should be reason enough to not eat in winter seasonal fruits coming from the summer time of South America. Stick to made in the USA: apples, pears, oranges, grapefruits, even Hawaiian papayas.

But here's the real clincher, reason 3: local Los Angeles ABC news exposed the big lie called Whole Foods. Frankly it isn't hard to see in its smaller stores like the one I visit in San Francisco that it's really just a gussied up sugar shack, putting very slick organic gloss on all the sweets it sells to drink, nosh and gobble. The sweets at least in that store so frustratingly outnumber the fruits and veggies and assortment of beans, I think of it as Unwholesome Foods.

But that's not the worst. ABC news found the biggest whopper in the company's relentless marketing spin is how Whole Foods tosses the word "organic" onto its own in-house label: 365, without actually knowing--or evidently caring-- whether or not the food inside really is. Almost all the bags of frozen "organic" 365 vegetables their investigator found at a local store said in small print on the back: Product of China. Even the special "California Vegetable Medley"! A Whole Foods spokesperson admitted no one in the organization had any way to know whether China monitored or even imposed American standards for organic on produce labeled as such. It just trusted its suppliers. The way shoppers blindly trust Whole Foods.

So those organic frozen vegetables might be just like that killer dog treat chicken. How's that for 21st Century style trust-busting?