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Herb harvest signals beginning of season’s end

September 22nd, 2008 · Food preparation

In anticipation, perhaps, of today’s autumnal equinox, I went out yesterday and harvested herbs for drying. Based on my success with mint, I decided to cut and dry sage, rosemary (which had developed a couple of flowers), oregano and a teensy bit of thyme. I also decided to wait until I’m ready to bring in the bay laurel before I give it a trim.

Following the usual suggestions, I cut in the morning, and in short order my fingers were sticky with rosemary resin.

freshly cut herbs on table

From left, sage, thyme (top), oregano, rosemary

I washed the herbs, spun them in my salad spinner, rolled them in a towel and then set them in a breezy, shady spot outdoors in hopes of drying all surface moisture before hanging them to dry in a dark closet. I chose a different location for hanging this time due to the change in the season’s light. (Meaning: I now have to keep my window shades open at night in hopes that a little of the dim early morning sun will filter in and help wake me. Since that works only a little bit, I’m afraid I’d forget to close them during the day and thus leave the herbs in the sun.)

I’ll let you know how these come out. I’m a little worried about the possibility of mold, given the thickness of the sage leaves and the density of the rosemary. Also, this new hanging spot is less airy than my bedroom. If anyone has any tips, let me know!

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Roasted pears make simple work of local dessert

September 21st, 2008 · local food, potlucks, recipes

Lucky me. I found myself in possession of a selection of succulent local pears. Even though these are quite lovely eaten raw, I decided to use nearly all of them as the basis for my local-food contribution to yesterday’s local wine-local food dinner.

At first, I thought I’d make a pear tart of some kind, perhaps a pear tart tatin. Then I looked through a few cookbooks and discovered an unusual and simple recipe for Balsamic-Roasted Pears with Pepper and Honey in my Gourmet Cookbook. I made a few adjustments to suit my needs, and in return I got a delicious, time-saving recipe that was a little different and, despite my fears, not overly sweet. Here’s my version (with a shorter name). It probably isn’t as pretty as Gourmet’s, but it tasted lovely.

Balsamic–Goat Cheese Pears

  • 6 tablespoons butter
  • 6 firm-ripe local pears, peeled, cored and quartered
  • 1/2 cup balsamic vinegar
  • 5 ounces fresh local goat cheese, at room temperature (I used Goatsbeard Farm)
  • 2/3 cup local honey
  • Freshly ground black pepper
  1. Place butter in 9 x 13 (or so) baking dish, and melt 3-4 minutes in middle of oven as it preheats to 400 degrees.
  2. Arrange pears in single layer in butter. Bake in middle of 400-degree oven until tender, about 15 minutes.
  3. Pour vinegar over pears and bake 5 minutes more. Remove from oven and allow to cool slightly.
  4. Transfer pears to platter. Dot with portions of with cheese, and spoon some of juices from baking dish over pears. Drizzle honey over all, and sprinkle with pepper. Serve warm or at room temperature. Makes 10-12 servings.

In pictures


 From left (above): Peeled, cored pear half; raw pears in butter; pears fresh from oven; (below) pears dotted with cheese. Click any for larger view.

Tip: Use a serving dish with a significant lip, or add a lot less pan juices than I did. Despite what I thought were reasonable precautions, I managed to get sticky vinegar-honey-butter stuff all over my car. At least it smells good.

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Milk and beer come locally grown, too

September 19th, 2008 · local food

As long as I’m talking about local wine, I might as well mention some other locally grown beverages.

Milk

bottle of Iwig milk, one-quarter fullWe’ve had something of an embarrassment of riches in the local milk department here, what with Iwig and Green Hills Harvest available. Iwig is available at the supermarkets and the Community Mercantile; I’ve only seen GHH at the Merc. What a dilemma: Buy milk from Iwig, which is closer and 20 cents more expensive, or from GHH, which is organic and pastured. Both are in reusable glass and require deposits.

My dilemma was solved for a while this summer because the Green Hills Harvest milk went bad long before the sell-by date. Iwig wasn’t consistently keeping well, either, but it did better than GHH. I spoke with a cooler person at the Merc about it. He was nice and apologized and traded my stinky milk for a new jug, but I never got a clear sense of whether the problem developed at the Merc or at the farm. In any case, cooler temps are now prevailing, and I trust I can buy either and hope it will last.

In the meantime, the KC Star ran a raw-milk article this week, the first I’ve seen locally on the raw-milk subculture. In case you like to drive for your (raw) milk, I was surprised to see how many Kansas farms sell their milk on site. You can find yours at RealMilk.com. (And damn if the Kansas Department of Agriculture isn’t back at trying to keep dairies from labeling their milk as being from cows not subjected to rBGH. But that’s another story for another day.)

Beer

I guess everyone around here knows that locally brewed beer is available at the Free State Brewing Co., and some people know about the 23rd St. Brewery. But did you know about the Lawrence Brewers Guild? I didn’t, until the other day at Jensen Retail Liquor, my friendly neighborhood booze emporium. (It says something to that effect on its sign.)

I was in buying a bottle of wine and there, on the counter, was a plateful of hops, although I had to ask to confirm that that was what they were.

(They’re pretty, don’t you think?) Owner Jeff Jensen confirmed that they were indeed hops, and I told him that I’d seen identical items growing behind the fence of a neighbor. Turns out Jeff’s brewing partner lives there, and Jeff got the rhizomes for the vines. Thus began a discussion of hops—there’s a shortage, you know—and beer-brewing. (You’d think if you owned the store you wouldn’t need to brew your own, but who am I to say?)

Free drinks?

So far, I haven’t been able to snag free wine, milk or beer the way I’ve managed free tomatoes, cherries, plums, eggplant, apples, pears and whatnot this year. But that’s OK. At least I can buy local versions any time I want!

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Kansas wine tour leaves pleasant taste in mouth

September 16th, 2008 · local food

Norton grapes at BlueJacket Crossing winery

A friend and I went on a wine tour Sunday—yes, right here in Kansas, within 25 miles of home. I have to admit my expectations were low. I’d tried some Kansas wines before and hadn’t been impressed. Sunday was different, even though the winemakers were short on dry wines (my preference), due in part to last year’s terrible freeze. Several of the wines we tasted were quite complex, and most of the sweeter wines weren’t cloying, and that’s a good thing—to my taste, anyway.

This was a tour with a purpose. My friend Diane and I are cohosts in the near future of a dinner for a group of wine friends, and this dinner’s featured wines are the local ones. The food will be locally sourced, too. (The timing nicely coincides with The Merc’s Local Food Challenge.) I’ll write again later about what the group thought of the wines, but here’s a look at our tour on a blustery day and our tastings. Allow me to add I’m no wine expert, so don’t laugh at my descriptions!:

Holy-Field Vineyard & Winery

Holy-Field Vineyard & Winery, which is outside Basehor (directions), planted its first wines in 1986 and began selling to the public in 1994. The best-established of the wineries we visited, we came away with Seyval and Corky’s Barrel, a red which the winery describes as off-dry and dedicated to Corky, the vineyard’s mascot Landseer Newfoundland. That fact alone will delight one of our guests, which is good since I failed to note the kind of grape. (Maybe I’ll call later.) In fact, I failed to write anything down, so I’m just going to assume we liked it. The Seyval was “quaffable,” as I recall, relatively dry and tasty.

Holy-Field’s new plantings

Holy-Field’s wall of medals (detail)

Davenport Winery

Greg and Charlee Shipe operate the Davenport Winery on the site of the orchard that Greg’s grandparents established east of Lawrence. Greg, an old friend of Diane, had no dry wines to offer, but he served us some tasty off-dry and sweet wines that were better than I expected and a nice Port, too. We bought Charlemagne, probably our sweetest purchase of the day, and a bonus: Jonathan apples for 50 cents a pound. (You read that right.) This time, I lost my notes. And honestly, we sipped these wines, so I wasn’t inebriated, just more focused on tasting than reporting, I guess. I’ll do better on the followup post. Really.

Greg and Diane in the Davenport tasting room

BlueJacket Crossing Vineyard & Winery

Our third and last stop was at the newest vineyard (as far as I know) in the area, BlueJacket Crossing Vineyard & Winery, which started with planting in 2002. It opened its swank (by local standards, anyway) tasting room this year. We tasted several wines here served by co-owners Vasuki Selvan and Pep Solberg. (Diane, who knows everybody, knows Vasuki, too.) We even got sips of not-yet bottled Norton and Port-style wines. Our purchases: Wolf Red, an off-dry red made from Chambourcin and St. Vincent grapes and aged in American oak, and Vignoles, a sweet white with distinct grapefruit and other citrusy flavors.

A selection of BlueJacket Crossing wines

(I forgot to ask, but I’m assuming the vineyard was named for the nearby spot on the Wakarusa River where Shawnee Indian George Blue Jacket operated a hotel and charged a fee for crossing he river. You can read about Blue Jacket’s crossing at the Kansas State Historical Society site.)

We ran out of time and didn’t make it to the Kugler’s Vineyard, but their wines are the only ones we heard about that can be purchased at a local liquor store (Mass Beverage). I’ll report back later on how the wines were received by the wine friends, but I’m happy to say I’m looking forward to the evening rather than trying to figure out how to sneak in wine from somewhere else to fill the gaps. For more on Kansas wines, check out the Kansas Grape Growers and Winemakers Association.

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Roundup: Research, taxes, crops, wine

September 15th, 2008 · Eating out, Food in the news, Roundup, local food

Despite appearances, I haven’t fallen off the edge of the earth. Here are some Kansas food items to get me back on the blog program.

Defense and counter-defense. Kansas Bioscience Authority president Tom Thornton explains the authority’s support for the National Bio- and Agro-defense Facility (NBAF) in Kansas. (Cattle Network). Meanwhile, a group called No NBAF in Kansas has started a website, http://nonbaf.wordpress.com/.

Kansas food tax. Yep, we pay sales tax on food here in Kansas, unlike residents of many other states. A libertarian state Senate candidate would like to change that. (Lawrence Journal-World)

Kansas sesame. K-State researchers are looking at sesame seeds as a potential crop for the state’s drier regions. (K-State News)

Local bounty. Lawrence local-food experimenter recounts celebratory dinner. (Lawrence J-W)

Fruit of the vine. Eudora vineyard owners learn winemaking and patience. (Lawrence J-W).

Feeding the researchers. Agribiz giant Cargill donates $120,000 to Kansas State University to pay for three graduate assistants to study meat science, muscle development and food safety. (Wichita Business Journal)

Addendum

Hot off the blogosphere: Angler’s Seafood House restaurant now open in Lawrence and promising use of sustainable seafood. (Pitch’s Fat City blog)

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Season is turning, and so is the produce

September 9th, 2008 · Food selection, local food

The weather around here is strangely cool—Monday’s high was 65 degrees Fahrenheit at a time when 85 or 95 would be entirely unsurprising. Still, the produce in Monday’s bag from the Rolling Prairie Farmers Alliance reinforced the idea that the seasons, they are a-changing.

As you can see, we still have top o’ the summer crops—the tomatoes, peppers, beans and watermelons—but not so many as in past weeks, and the mesclun of spring has reappeared as the mesclun of fall. The RPFA’s raspberries continue their end-of-the-summer appearance, but we also had fall apples and pears to choose from this week.

I don’t envy these farmers. They got a late start due to the wet, wet spring. Now, with this apparent early start on fall, I’m wondering whether this could be one of the shorter seasons on record.

Meanwhile, I’ve heard a few grumbles from subscribers that the bounty has been, well, less bountiful this year. I reckon that it has been, but that’s what happens sometimes when farmers work with nature rather than against it. In the long run, though, I’ll bet my groceries on the adaptable local farmers. I just can’t see the “conventional” methods in California and Mexico, which rely on petrochemicals and scarce, piped-in water, being our long-term food solution. Besides, this stuff tastes a lot better.

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