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Roundup: Updates, news…and still lagging

October 17th, 2008 · Books, Eating out, Roundup

I’m so behind in so many things, but here, nevertheless, are some updates as some items of interest. Of course, I haven’t read my RSS feeds in days, but I’m doing what I can.

Updates

Perhaps you remember the following items from a couple of weeks ago:

Meryl makes a good case for me to be extra sad I missed the Lawrence Originals. Kurt Michael Friese (at right) read a couple of essays from his book, A Cook’s Journey: Slow Food in the Heartland, and asserted that nations’ best food (including in the U.S.) comes from the grain belt. And, of course, the Kaw Valley Farm Tour was fun as always. (Lawrence Journal-World)

News

Food and culture. A Kansas City program puts refugee women and their traditional foods in the garden and at the market. (KC Star)

New York wheat field. Kansans among those helping grow wheat in New York. (GrainNet News)

Food safety consolidated. Don’t know if this is a good or bad move for food safety, but Kansas regulators are putting it all in the ag department. (Topeka Capitol-Journal)

Late night food. Just as reports surge of food pantries running short, KU’s annual basketball preview is likely to haul in the goods. (Lawrence J-W)

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Great green tomatoes! Bring out the canner and cake pan! (And the relish tips…)

October 15th, 2008 · Food preparation, Food selection, local food, recipes

When life gives you green tomatoes, you might as well make Green Tomato Cake and Green Tomato Chutney. Some people would also make Green Tomato Pickles. I probably should have. Here, in any case, is the story.

The setup

Sure, I told my sister. I’ll take some of your green tomatoes. Don’t just throw them out. Yea, I guess I could take about 5 pounds. The delivery (which arrived with the red ribbon) instead was one overflowing peck, a little more than double what I expected:

A bucket full of green tomatoes

A bucket full of green tomatoes

The ‘solution’

First up, Green Tomato Cake, using 4 cups (about 2 pounds) of minced green tomatoes. I made very few changes, but here’s what I did.

Green Tomato Cake

  • 4 cups (about 2 pounds) chopped green tomatoes (I used the food processor)
  • 1 tablespoon salt plus 1/4 teaspoon salt, divided
  • 1/2 cup butter, softened
  • 2 cups sugar
  • 2 eggs
  • 2 cups all-purpose flour
  • 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
  • 1 teaspoon ground nutmeg
  • 1 teaspoon baking soda
  • 1/4 cup raisins, chopped (see note)
  • 1/2 cup chopped walnuts

4 cups chopped green tomatoes

  1. Place chopped tomatoes in a bowl and sprinkle with 1 tablespoon salt. Let stand 10 minutes. Place in a colander, rinse with cold water and drain.
  2. Cream butter and sugar. Add eggs and beat until creamy.
  3. Add flour, cinnamon, nutmeg, soda and 1/4 teaspoon salt. Mix well.
  4. Add raisins, walnuts and drained tomatoes. Mix well.
  5. Transfer batter into greased and floured 10-inch tube pan or 9 x 13 inch pan.
  6. Bake 40 to 45 minutes in the 350-degree oven, or until toothpick inserted into cake comes out clean.
  7. If using tube pan, allow to cool 10-15 minutes in pan, then place plate over pan and invert cake onto plate. (Leave cake in 9 x 13 pan to cool.)
  8. When thoroughly cool, dust with powdered sugar or frost, if desired, with cream-cheese frosting and serve. Makes 20 servings.

Note: I chopped the raisins in expectation that my sister, the giver of the tomatoes and the to-be recipient of the cake, would turn her nose up at raisins. But I wanted them in for the flavor, so I chopped them. She hasn’t complained.

The verdict: Nice, moist spice cake, reminiscent of zucchini or carrot cake except for those pale green flecks. (You’ll notice I didn’t do a bang-up job unmolding (depanning?) the thing, but that doesn’t affect the taste!)

The other 8 pounds

Cake done, that left a mere 8 pounds of green tomatoes, which meant I didn’t have enough of some ingredients to make Green Tomato Chutney. I didn’t let that stop me. I’ll spare you the recipe of what I actually made, though, because to my taste buds I wound up with something akin to sweet pickle relish. Twelve pints of sweet pickle relish. Twelve pints of odd sweet pickle relish. (Hmm…is that, um, ginger in this relish?)

I have from now till Christmas to think of things to do this stuff, because everybody I know is getting it for a present. So that they don’t chuck it, I’ve got to come up with some uses. If you’ve got some ideas, LET ME KNOW!!

Meanwhile, I’m thinking this relish just may have cured me of my say-yes-to-free-food impulses, at least for the moment…

Yes, there are three pints more than the nine in this picture...

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Sign of the season: first soup and a quiz!

October 11th, 2008 · Tools, recipes

I broke out the soup pot the other day about the time I turned on the furnace for a little while. By the end of the day, the house was still fragrant from the chicken soup, my belly was warm with it, and I had excellent leftovers in the refrigerator, too. This is a wonderful thing to do on a chilly Sunday afternoon to warm the house and your mood.

Forthwith, the recipe followed by the two-question quiz! See if you can get both answers. Heck, I may even award a prize. (By the way I’ve decided I need to be more consistent about running recipes that you can actually cook from, although I reserve the right to make a crack here or there in the text.)

Chicken-rice soup

  • 1 meaty chicken carcass
  • 1 1/2–2 quarts water
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt or to taste
  • 1/8 teaspoon ground black pepper or to taste
  • 1 bay leaf
  • 2 or more sprigs each Italian parsley and thyme
  • 1/2 cup brown rice
  • 1/4 large onion, diced
  • 1 large carrot, peeled and diced
  • 1/2 pound tender young green beans, trimmed and cut into bite-sized lengths
  • Parsley for garnish (optional)
  1. Cut any remaining chunks of chicken meat off carcass. (They’ll be more tender than if simmered with broth.) Cover and refrigerate the trimmings for now. Place carcass in 5-quart pot. (Go ahead and include the skin and any herbs or vegetables that you may have left in the cavity. Also, if you roasted your chicken, as I did, remove fat from the drippings and definitely add the pan juices or gelatin.)
  2. Add water, salt, bay leaf, parsley and thyme. Cover, bring to a boil over medium-high heat, then reduce heat to low and simmer about an hour. If you have time, let the pot sit for 30-60 minutes more, which will make the next step easier.
  3. Lift carcass from broth. I use a skimmer (like one of these) for the task. By now, remaining meat should be readily identifiable. Remove using tools or fingers and set aside. Discard bones and skin. Meat on left was post-simmering, on the right was presimmer. Total was about 1 1/2 cups chicken.
  4. Pour broth through strainer to remove solid bits. Ideally, pour into a fat separator (I recommend a glass one; the plastic ones lose their structural integrity after you pour hot liquids in them many times) and then return broth to pan, minus the fat. Note: There was more broth than what’s in the photograph.
  5. Add rice and onions to pan; bring to a boil, reduce heat and simmer 35 minutes. Add carrots and chicken meat that you removed in steps 1 and 3. (Dice chicken if desired.) Simmer 10 minutes. Add green beans and simmer 10 minutes, or until rice, carrots and beans are tender.
  6. Garnish with parsley, if desired, and serve. Makes 4 generous servings.

Notes: If you don’t want vegetables in your soup, add the carrots and onions in bigger pieces while simmering the whole carcass. I highly recommend a fat separator as a great labor-saving device. I probably would have used peas if I’d had them instead of beans, but beans are good. If you have beens that are more mature, you might want to add them at the same time as the carrots.

And now, the quiz

OK, ready to answer the questions?

  1. Can you identify in step 2 the color of the pot?
  2. What’s wrong with the fat separator? (Hint: It has nothing to do with the fat-separating aspect of the thing.)

The quiz is just for fun, but I’d love to see how many of you can answer correctly!

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Ornamental quince create cooking puzzle

October 9th, 2008 · local food, recipes


Bring me your quince recipes. Please! My latest foraging score is my neighbor’s quince, which I’ve determined is not real quince but, rather, ornamental quince. (As an indication of my lack of quince sophistication, the ornamental variety is the only one I previously knew about.) I think it’s Pseudocydonia, however, rather than Chaenomeles (aka Japonica), but in either case known as flowering quince, a pretty shrub that my mother liked.

Quince, on the bush

In either case, also, the ornamental variety isn’t exactly known for its succulent qualities. From Cornell:

Most of these ornamentals produce fruits that are hard and nearly inedible, though they have a high pectin content and are occasionally mixed with other fruits in jellies and preserves.

And then there’s this from University of Arkansas (although it’s talking about Chaenomeles):

These tart fruit can be used in jelly making, but are usually produced erratically and in small numbers so few jelly makers ever get good at perfecting their art.

I’d be ready to give up altogether if it weren’t for the Cottage Smallholder, which has blogged about recipes for ornamental quince. The writer’s descriptions, however, are so contrary to the above two, it makes me wonder whether the fruit in (relatively) cool, moist England might be rather different from that on the frequently harsher weather side of the Atlantic.

So, if you have an opinion, or better yet knowledge, let us know. What would you do with my quince? I have about 1 1/4 pounds, and they do smell lovely. Should I attempt marmalade? Add them to an apple dish? C’mon, help me out here!

P.S. They range from about the size of a PingPong ball to the size of a handball or racquetball. Hence: I’m going for something using a food mill or such, not a recipe that involves peeling the things!

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Applooza loads me with apples, and I like it!

October 8th, 2008 · Farmers markets, local food

Applooza came to the Lawrence Farmers Market last weekend, and what a treat! Apples, apples and more apples burdened the vendors’ tables, and former market apple mainstay Laurie Walters answered questions under the market tent where 18 varieties of apple (by my count) were available for tasting.

Walters (in red sweater) talks apples.

I tried several new-to-me varieties but stupidly didn’t take anything to write on and, therefore, don’t remember which tastes went with what flavors. Nevertheless, based partly on the tasting and partly on Joanne’s recommendations, I bought a half-dozen or so of both Arkansas Black and Honeycrisp apples.

Then I came upon Floyd Ott’s table. Ott, another familiar face at the market, had apples upon apples, by the pound and by the bucket. (A Journal-World story in 1997 had him growing 60 varieties!) How could I resist a 5-gallon bucket of apples for $5? Well, I couldn’t. These are supposedly “seconds,” but whatever flaws they have are primarily cosmetic. I told him I wanted apples for pies, and Ott recommended a bucket with mostly Jonathan (I think) and Golden Delicious. As he transferred the apples to two one-peck bags (each totaling about 10 pounds), we talked about apples and chemicals.

Total price: $5

Ott said, yes, he sprays his apples, twice each season compared with three or four times for many area orchardists. But, no, he’s tested and there’s no residue come harvest. I’m probably odd, but I’m more concerned about residue in the environment than in my mouth, and I’m reasonably ignorant on these matters. Still, spraying twice sounds better than spraying four times, and no one around here grows apples organically. (I seem to recall hearing that the relatively high humidity compared with, say, Washington, makes organic apple growing more difficult here due to fungus potential.)

I’ve been eating more than my daily apple but haven’t gotten around to doing any of the prep that those 20 pounds of apples may require to cook. I’ll get to it one of these days. I’ll probably make pies and crisps and freeze some prepped slices. What do you like to do with my favorite fall fruit?

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Recipe mashup (and mixup) yields individual tartes Tatin

October 6th, 2008 · Food preparation, local food, recipes

After years of attraction to, but avoidance of, tarte Tatin recipes, I finally gave in the other day so as to use my latest free food—old-fashioned, gritty pears from my neighbors’ tree.

Angela & Michael have a prolific pear tree that had been heavy with fruit but was nearing the end of its production. I snagged an armful and invited Angela over for dessert to celebrate her stepdaughter’s birthday, since both Michael and the stepdaughter were out of town. For heaven knows what reason, I decided this was the day I’d do a tarte Tatin. A pear tarte Tatin, to be specific.

Getting ready

I started pulling cookbooks and scanning the recipes. Rustic! they said. Simple! they said. Hey! I’m a good cook, I said. How hard can it be (even if it did include one of my cooking fears, namely caramelizing sugar)?

At this stage, I probably should have reminded myself that the Tatin sisters who originated the dish were (a) French, (b) living in the 19th century and therefore had a different idea of what “simple” means and (c) professional cooks at their hotel.

However, I did not remind myself of that. Instead, I scanned the recipes in Bistro Cooking and in the Gourmet Cookbook and in Chez Panisse Menu Cookbook and Mastering the Art of French Cooking. Based on that exercise, I decided that, sure, I could make a small tarte Tatin in my small iron skillet, top it with pastry and bake it in my toaster oven. Simple! Rustic! [Read more →]

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