Design/Living, General, Travel

Fall on Cape Cod

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A non-food post, but I have to share a few photos with you… Last weekend we joined Ben’s aunt/uncle/cousins/mom/brother/etc. on Cape Cod for the weekend, breathing in big lung-fulls of cool air and leaving just into time for the Nor’Easter on Sunday. I spent a very happy two hours bundled up on Saturday, tramping up and down the beach and gathering up the fantastic hunks of granite and quartz that had washed up in the recent storms.

I’ve never outgrown my beachcombing urge, and any time I’m on the Ocean I spend as much time as possible staring at the sand, looking for treasures. Every few minutes I stand up straight and gaze out at the ocean, get all dwarfed-feeling thinking about the vastness of it all, and then turn back to the stones and shell shards at my feet.

I have a project in mind, which prompted me to haul an embarrassing heap of big stones back with me. I left the many huge “dinosaur eggs” of granite behind, since I don’t have a yard in which to build a nest. More to come! (And more photos here, if you’re so inclined.)

Cooking, Cooking techniques, Farm Box, Food, Recipes

Slow cooker pulled pork

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Meat cuts like pork butt always call my name at the butcher counter because they are so darn cheap and so easy to prepare. Last week I had apples and pork on the brain, and it was also getting really chilly all of a sudden, so I hauled out (and scrubbed off) the slow cooker and got to work.


(A bum bottle, sadly. Worked fine as cooking liquid but wasn’t drinkable. Boo!)

I took the elastic waistband off the pork and trimmed off the bigger chunks of fat–this is a really fatty cut, so I also had to skim off fat from the cooking liquid at the end.

I patted the pork dry and seasoned it with salt and pepper, then seared it well on all sides and put it in the pot.

Along for the ride were a couple red and yellow onions.

I used a couple glugs of chicken broth and some of the cider for my liquid, and set the slow cooker on low for 7 hours. After six or so I came back and added in my apples, cut in quarters and cored.

At dinner time I pulled out the meat and apples and onions and drained the liquid into a gravy strainer to separate out some of the fat. I sort of messed up, mangling the cooked apples in with the onions, so instead of just mushing up the apples as sauce (which would have been great) I mixed the two together. That was fine but definitely diluted the apple flavor. I added a little cider vinegar to sharpen it up, and more salt and pepper.

I tried to get the extra fat off the meat, then I put it back in the pot with the liquid and pulled it apart with a couple forks.

We had the apple/onion sauce and chard on the side.

Three pounds of pork yielded a mountain of meat, and I have to admit it was sort of bland. I need to dissect how Chipotle makes their carnitas so flavorful. Ben took leftovers for two lunches, and we made flatbread pizzas with some more. I froze the rest for future use. For the flatbreads I drained the liquid off the meat and crisped it up in a pan, then topped garlic naan with the meat and some shredded cheese.

Once they were baked I put a little arugula salad on top.

—

I’m going to try cooking chicken legs–another extra-economical cut–tonight. Wish me luck! As long-time readers know, I loathe cooking chicken.

Cooking, Family, Food, General, Home

Why I write about food (my accidental manifesto)

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Ben and I had a long conversation a couple weeks ago, while we were in the car driving back to Cambridge from New Hampshire. We were talking about goals and dreams and we somehow got on the topic of the blog and what I want to do, career-wise, and eventually I found myself going on and on about why I care about food. As I spoke I started to make some connections to my childhood and the way we live now, and I thought it might be useful to lay those things out. Warning, this is long. Long long.

Dinner as bonding time
This isn’t rocket science. There have been tons of studies that link eating dinner as a family to better test scores, behavior, success in life, etc. I’m sure all of that is true, but the root is bonding time, I think.

When I was a kid, we ate dinner at the table every night. Sure, there were exceptions (my parents had a work event, one of us had a play or something at school), but 95% of weeknights we sat down at the table. As my mom finished dinner, Dad would turn off NPR and turn on Dave Brubeck or Miles Davis, light the candles, turn off the overhead lights, and we would set the table with cloth napkins. Everyone was expected to participate in the conversation (which was a major drag when I was 13 or 14), and we stayed at the table until everyone was finished eating. After the main course we’d have salad and wipe our plates with a bit of bread.

When I got married, my mom gave me napkin rings with our initials, along with cloth napkins, as a wedding gift. I don’t know why lighting the candles and using real napkins makes a difference to me, but it does. Maybe it’s that there is a distinct moment when it is truly Dinner Time. Sometimes we are eating a really simple salad and some bread with cheese toasted on it, but we sit across from each other at the table and we talk about our days and it is a really important part of our lives. We both feel off-kilter when we go a week or two without regular meals together at home.

Eating together means you are checking in every night, without the distraction of TV to let you get off the hook and avoid talking. It means eye contact and a glass of wine (or water!) and a respite from the blackberry. It’s not really about the food, but:

Food as social fodder
At some point I started thinking about food more seriously, and I chalk that up to my family, too. When I was in elementary school my mom started teaching cooking classes, as well as getting more and more serious about food herself. By the time I was in high school we were regulars at the farmers market and she had an in with a wholesale gourmet purveyor in Portland. Food had become the common language in my family, and we talked about it all the time.

Ben first visited us in Oregon the summer after we started dating, and at a certain point that week he turned to me and said “Um, do you guys ever stop talking about food?” No. If we’re not discussing what’s for dinner (say, because we’re currently eating dinner), we may be talking about things we plan to eat tomorrow, or things we ate recently that we want to replicate, or what’s due soon at the farmer’s market. Months before a trip to Eugene, my mom starts making a list of things we need to cook while I’m home. We’re a little obsessed.

The result is that I think about food all the time, sort of the way a sports fan thinks about his team of choice. I’m not into the whole “foodie” (gah) restaurant scorecard/chef-tracking thing, but I get really giddy about asparagus season.

What I don’t like is snobbishness and the idea that food needs to be fancy to be good. Food needs to be good to be good. Sure, I focus on trying to keep what I cook local and seasonal, but I won’t lie, we were at a small country fair this weekend and I found it crucially important to sample both the “giant donut” and the fried dough. And some cotton candy. (The giant donut won, and it was indeed the size of my face.) Which brings me to my last point (and about time, too):

Food should be fun and delicious, not scary
I was pleased that the movie version of Julie and Julia highlighted my favorite Julia Child advice, “be fearless.” (My other favorites, paraphrased: never apologize (this trips me up), always mix with your hands, and cover mistakes with whipped cream.) Cooking and eating should be fun, enriching experiences, not stressful ones. When we got married I had never cooked dinner regularly. Living in NYC with roommates and crappy kitchens meant that if I made anything at home, it was probably a fried egg or some Trader Joe’s dumplings. And yet I plunged into cooking that first year in Hanover, choosing Sunday Suppers at Lucques as my cookbook of choice and throwing one, maybe two dinner parties each week. Of course I overshot sometimes, and got stressed out trying to time the meals right, and I freaked out that time the plastic wrap melted into the short ribs, but it never occurred to me that I should start with simpler things, because for me the challenge made it fun.

Maybe it’s because I grew up sitting on the desk in the kitchen while my mom cooked dinner–I certainly didn’t cook much at home, aside from helping her with tedious tasks and going on occasional baking kicks. I did know how to do a lot of basic things, but let me tell you, my knife skills were pretty shoddy. The first time I made those triple pork burgers they took forever, and I swore it wasn’t worth the trouble. Funny; the most recent time I made them the prep took about 1/4 the time. Practice does, indeed, make something closer to perfect. (Though Ben and my mom swear that if I keep practicing one day I’ll be good at slicing bread, and so far that is a blatant lie. Stupid wonky slices.)

What I want to get across is that cooking doesn’t need to be intimidating. The worst that can happen is that you burn the hell out of something, or, um, explode the pyrex, or flood the kitchen with pizza dough. Kitchens are made to be cleaned up. You can always eat a scrambled egg or order takeout if things go truly awry.

I write about food because food makes me happy, and I want it to make other people happy, too.

In the interest of service journalism, How to enjoy food, my humble guide:
Geek out about the colors and shapes of vegetables and food. Use white plates, or vintage ones that make you happy. Try a complicated recipe when it won’t freak you out if it doesn’t work. When in doubt, make a braised stew. Buy dessert unless you really feel up to it. Eat fried dough at every fair you encounter. Eat more noodles. Use salt and butter and olive oil and sugar: In my experience, you’ll be ok if you’re also avoiding processed foods and eating lots of delicious vegetables and not eating pounds of any one thing. Visit farms. Visit farmer’s markets. Save up for one really astonishing meal every so often. Light the candles and sit down at the table for dinner. Brussels sprouts. Cabbage. Carrot salad. Beets. Garlic. Also wine. And, in the summer, gin.

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And now I’m going to go make a dutch baby for dinner, because who doesn’t love an oven pancake?

Cooking, Cooking techniques, Farm Box, Food

Roasted delicata with shallots and cipollini

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Here’s an easy one to try out when you’re feeling autumnal! When we worked at the farm a few weeks ago, Jarrett gave me a couple pounds of shallots, including some that were “seconds” missing too much skin to keep well and get distributed. I needed to use the seconds up sooner rather than later, and I also had a handful of little cipollini onions in the pantry, so I decided to try roasting them up with a couple delicata squash from the farm.

The joy of delicata (aside from the delicious, not-too-sweet flavor and great texture) is that you can eat the skin, which is thin and gets tender once it’s cooked. I cut two in half, seeded them, and then sliced them into little half moons to roast.

When I was scooping out the seeds I found THE weirdest thing: One seed had somehow SPROUTED inside the squash!! Crazy.

I peeled the skin (and sometimes the outer layer) off the cipollini, and peeled and halved the shallots.

Olive oil, salt, pepper.
(Meanwhile the oven was preheating to 375 or so.)

Ben was at a meeting and running late, so I hedged a bit on cooking–everything stayed in the oven a bit too long, but you probably need 45 minutes to an hour to get the onions really caramelized and delicious. After half an hour or so, I drizzled on some inexpensive balsamic vinegar, as an experiment. Tossed everything around and then put it back in the oven to finish cooking.

I made israeli couscous and dressed that with olive oil and more of the vinegar, and grilled sausages for a bit of protein. Great combo–sweet squash and onions, all with different textures, and a different sweetness/slight tang from the balsamic.

My really genius move was saving a handful of squash and shallots for pizza topping later in the week! It made an amazing white pie with fresh local ricotta and mozzarella.

Design/Living, General, Home

FYI, in case you planned to buy me a new dining room

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This photo from Eddie Ross‘s house tour in Lonny Magazine is everything I love in one place.


photo: Patrick Cline for Lonny. Click here to see the bigger version Eddie posted.

My house is too formal!

(PS: Lonny, the photos are stunning, the content is great, and I can’t get through the magazine on my computer because the interface is so frustrating! Please offer a PDF or something.)

City Life, Design/Living, Food, General, Good stuff, Home

Things I like today: October

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As we slip into Autumn, I’ve bought a few new things and am dreaming of a few others. It’s funny how universal that Back to School urge is; this is the one time of year when it’s incredibly hard to resist freshening up my wardrobe and the house. So far I’ve remained pretty restrained, but I thought I’d share a couple things.

1. An older acquisition: Bridge gave me this awesome hand-printed towel as a birthday present, with a quote from Pride & Prejudice. (Oh, Mr. Darcy.) I couldn’t bear to use it as a towel so I tacked it up above the sink and I love the result. (It’s from the shop Brookish on Etsy, though I don’t see any more towels at the moment. Lots of other P&P stuff though!)

2. I had a lingering credit at Simon Pearce, up in Vermont, and while we were in NH last weekend we made the trip over to the main store. I totally scored! I got a salt pig on sale, and found fantastic Dwell placemats on clearance.

Even the little sheep likes the salt cellar:

3. I checked out Laurie Colwin’s “Home Cooking” and “More Home Cooking” from the library ages ago and I can’t bear to return them until my copies arrive from Amazon. Must make gingerbread. Adore Laurie Colwin.

4. Oh god, a couple years ago I became fixated on dark brown shearling-lined Bean Boots, but I resisted because they seemed like they’d get quite a bit of snow in around the laces. The L.L. Bean gods heard my excuse and now they taunt me with these beauties:

I have perfectly good snow boots. I will love them from afar. (And I do still really love the laced-up ones, too.) But they also have nice-looking Hunter-style wellies, complete with fleece liners! I want those. My rain boots leak a little.

5. In honor of fall, I washed out an old spice jar and filled it with cinnamon-sugar. Happy breakfast days for me.

(BTW, I found a roll of 100 of those round blue labels on clearance at Papersource a month or two ago, and I recently labeled the tops of all my spice jars. They are in a container, so I used to have to lift them out one at a time to find a specific jar. I should have labeled them ages ago, duh!)

6. I found a ring at Forever 21 and fell in love with it, but of course it’s, like, gilded plastic and is already starting to peel. I need to find a real-metal version of it, but somehow hollow (light) and sturdy (non-denting). Love love love.

Misc.
This summer I gave in and bought American cheese to use on burgers. Because, I’m sorry, cheddar goes greasy and I don’t like blue cheese much and American melts best. Anyway, the other place American cheese sort of takes the prize is when you want a plain, non-fancy grilled cheese. And burger season is over so guess what I had for lunch yesterday?

You know you’re jealous.

Finally, in crafty news, I found these earrings marked down to $4 at Kohl’s (don’t ask) and thought they’d be pretty cool without all the extra loops. So I took them apart and put them back together.

Things I must do this month:
-Cook something amazing with the mound of shallots I scored from the farm.
-Re-do my desk chair, which is in sad shape with old foam crumbling out of the bottom and onto the floor. (Ew.) My solution has been a plastic bag taped to the bottom of the chair but that’s stopped working.
-Make gingerbread.
-Walk Lola, the darling dog who now lives downstairs!

Farm Box, Food, General, Good stuff

Farm days

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Regular readers are well aware of my adoration for Stone Soup Farm, the source of my wonderful CSA farm share for the last two years. The farm has kept us well fed with the most gorgeous vegetables (and eggs, this year!), continually reminding me of the value of eating local and supporting area farms. Stone Soup is owned and run by Jarrett Man, who only graduated from college a few years ago (with a bioengineering degree!) but has managed, despite weird weather and the myriad complications of running a small business, to organize a good-sized crew and grow an incredible range of crops.

Last summer we kept talking about driving out to Belchertown, Mass., (about 80 miles west of our house), but we never managed to make the trip. This year we were lucky enough to go twice, once in early August and once last weekend. I’d like to share a bunch of my photos of the farm from both trips. Jarrett always teases me for being weeks behind on my blog posts about he weekly share distributions, so hopefully this will placate him.

August:

The barn holds offices, a kitchen, and the farm stand.

(I have always loved barns!)

Farmstand:

Neat and tidy greenhouse:

Some of my favorite vegetables, growing happily in the fields…

…and in the background, the poor, blighted tomato plants (agh):

Then I found the chickens. They have a lovely roaming coop, which is rolled to a new piece of field every week. The chickens peck up whatever is left in the field and fertilize the patch (adding nitrogen to the soil), then roll on over to a new area. There are three breeds, though I can’t remember the names. Jarrett told me next year there will be three new breeds, including the Araucana (Easter Egg) chickens Martha Stewart made famous for their pastel eggs!

I love chickens; I find them hilarious and charming to watch and I would have stayed for hours if the guys (Tom and Ben were with me) had let me.

Some of the ladies head my way while the proud rooster looks on:

Tail-feathers fluttering in indecision:

Each evening all the chickens march into their house to be safely closed in for the night.

I must say, watching the chickens was a delight. They were nibbling clover, wandering around a large fenced enclosure, strolling in and out of their cozy rolling house… Very happy birds in a very happy place.

September:

Jarrett sent out an email inviting CSA members to share in the work of the farm, in addition to the bounty. There were 1000 pounds of onions (plus shallots and 5000 bulbs of garlic, though we didn’t get to those) that needed to be trimmed and cleaned before being handed out in the weekly shares. All those alliums were curing on the floor of the greenhouse, and we drove out for a “Smelly Potluck” to help get them all prepped.

Ben gets down and dirty:

More helpers, including Jarrett’s dad, on the left. (His mom sent along a big pot of soup!):

Freshly harvested onions are laid out to cure, pulling all the juices from the stems into the bulb:

Once they are ready to be used, the stems get trimmed off:

The loose outer layers of skin (often dirty) are rubbed off, leaving a clean, tidy onion:

We did our best but there was still quite a long way to go when we headed in for dinner around 6 (you can’t see the stacks of crates that had already been moved out of the greenhouse!):

Jarrett took us on a tour of the varied “root cellars” and storage spots around the barn–including a room downstairs and a refrigerated stand-alone unit. It was fun to see all the deliciousness we will get in the winter shares, and we also got to grab some squash and spare shallots to bring home.

We gathered at a picnic bench by the barn to enjoy the last of the sunlight and eat a potluck while watching the barn cat torment the visiting dog.

My back ached the next day. I am a soft-handed urban wimp!

Cooking, Farm Box, Food

Bits and pieces

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To be perfectly honest, I haven’t cooked a real meal in two weeks. We were out of town for Brooke’s amazing wedding, and Ben has been on the road for work or out at meetings, so I’ve been eating by myself a lot. I very occasionally go all out for myself, but generally I confine solitary dinners to leftovers, Indian takeout, or a fried-egg concoction. (Incidentally, anyone intrigued by what other people eat when they are alone should check out the compilation “Alone in the Kitchen with an Eggplant,” titled for the essay by the same name by the late, great, Laurie Colwin.)

Anyway, a couple things I never posted over the course of the summer:

“What’s This” Cabbage and Steak, with Hazelnuts:

It was a tiny and charming head of cabbage, ruffly and slightly Napa-esque, but round and little. The leaves acted like boats when I washed them:

I planned on slaw, but when I tasted a bit of a leaf I found that it was tough, and wouldn’t be pleasant to eat raw. So I sauteed it. The flavor made me think the slightly sweet nuttiness of toasted filberts (hazelnuts) would be a good match; I tossed some on at the end and served it over rice with marinated steak.

(Mmm, cabbage. I have a variety of greens sulking in the fridge right now; I think I will make tonight the exception and really cook something for myself. I always wish I got to eat all the garlicky greens, and tonight I won’t have to share a bite!)

Another night I made aioli. I didn’t consult any recipes, so it was a little nerve-wracking. I lucked out though (and moved slowly with the oil and fast with my whisk-arm!), and it came together just fine. We ate it with blanched beans. To my surprise and heartbreak, purple beans turn green when they’re cooked!

Before cooking the beans:

And now some non-cooking food items, for your amusement. Sooooo, you know how Ben and I got married three years ago? Well, the top tier of our wedding cake never got eaten. It was a modern cake, with a large top tier, and somehow we never seemed to have enough people around to eat it near our anniversary. Three years of taking up half the freezer was enough. Tom was visiting in early August and I just….did it. Out came the cake, off came the many layers of tinfoil and saran wrap, and from the depths emerged a terrifying, sticky mess of melty fondant. AGH.

I figured I’d see what was underneath (the cake was almond poundcake, which I figured would hold up pretty well, and there was chocolate ganache under the fondant–all very sturdy). With Tom laughing hysterically in the background, I wiped off the fondant, and the ganache underneath seemed ok. It did have an unappealing glazed look (leftover fondant), but what do you expect?

After a further wipedown, I covered it and let it thaw overnight. We cut a slice.

And it was fine! Tom, despite his mocking, definitely agreed.

We fed it to many people over the next couple days, and nearly all of them approved, as well. I wonder what the uber-talented April Reed, who made the cake, would think of my long-delayed consumption? (I’m still bummed that a faulty muffler melted much of the fondant on the cake before the wedding, and then the venue people threw away the exquisite sugar flowers April made, which I had planned to keep. Oh well. Working with April was the most relaxing part of wedding planning, and great fun.)

Incidentally, Tom came down from NH for that visit bearing hilariously NH-themed gifts:
-1 jug, 1 bottle of hard cider
-Half-gallon normal cider
-Moose tenderloin (currently frozen)
-2 pounds blueberries, labeled like so:

Hey, it kept the sharers of the common fridge from eating them!

Cooking, Disasters, Farm Box, Food

CSA week 13: Bruschetta, beets, and creative reuse

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-New potatoes
-Carrots
-Beets
-Edamame
-Zucchini/summer squash
-Kale
-Hot pepper
-Heirloom tomatoes from the garden of the woman, Judy, who runs my pick-up location!
-Eggs
-…..baby lemongrass?

Let’s address the last item first. I’m 99% sure this is young lemongrass. It sure smelled lemony. And grassy.

I chopped up the whole thing and made simple syrup (1-to-1 ratio of water to sugar, brought to a simmer and then cooled), but I kept the whole pot just below a simmer for a long time, trying to infuse the flavor into the syrup.

I’ve got kind of a lot of the strained results in the fridge in jars right now.

I used some to make really misguided cocktails and now Ben won’t touch the stuff. It wasn’t the syrup’s fault! It was me and my flat soda water! Drat. Maybe a citrus salad would benefit from it?

That night I roasted a whole tray of beets and spent ages cursing and peeling them once they were done. I can’t seem to get a grip on them if I wear gloves, so fuchsia fingers it was.

I sliced and dressed some for salad that night, then chunked up the rest and used them…for a while. In fact, we are still eating them. To go with the beets: Grilled sausage and salad made from most of the giant red heirloom tomato.

The next night I looked in the fridge and saw leftover sausage, beets, and feta cheese. My mom had recently been talking up bulgur wheat, which I loved as a kid, and I’d laid in a supply when she was here. But I forgot that what I bought with her was in a box, so I cooked…something similar looking. From an unmarked bulk-goods bag in the pantry. I also grilled up the pile of little zucchini and squash.

I followed the pilaf directions Mom had sent me, which I will post once I’ve actually used them properly. Here’s how my batch went:

SO GLUEY:

I forged ahead and mixed the mass of….whatever it was…with the other stuff, which of course turned pink from the beets, and called it a night.

Ben said something about Alpo when I handed him his plate, but then he liked it that night and in leftover form. (Of COURSE, whenever I cook something weird I end up with tons and tons of it.) I don’t think he’s ever had bulgur, so he wasn’t expecting the separate grains and drier texture I was looking for.

Ack!

You guys, do you think those were steel-cut oats? Did I try to make pilaf out of oatmeal? This is why bulk bags are dangerous. I really need to label things; I have a whole container full of tiny bags of bulk spices, and all the different cayennes/paprikas/etc. have gotten confused.

*shudder*

So yet another night, I wanted to use the rest of the red tomato, along with the yellow tomato, and I was feeling incredibly lazy. Bruschetta time! I chunked up the tomatoes, dressed them with sherry vinegar and oil, salt and pepper, and some basil, and then smashed them up really with with my hands (not shown).

But what about protein? I decided I’d also make a batch of the white bean spread I made for our Christmas party. I use rosemary and lemon zest plus lemon juice at the end to brighten it up. It’s explained over at the older post–if you haven’t tried that yet, do; it is SO simple and you can use it as a sandwich spread, bruschetta topping, dip… (Uuugh, revisiting that post reminded me that all my old posts are full of weirdly sized images. I fixed the ones there, but there are so many left to do!)

The key to tomato bruschetta, I think, is in the hand-smashing of the tomatoes and then further smashing as you put them on the bread (which I toasted, rubbed with garlic, and drizzled with olive oil). That helps them hold together and stay on the bread as you eat, instead of toppling off and rolling around, like you sometimes get in restaurants.

We ate more beets, too.

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