Back in November we made Sorrell Soup.
Tom spotted the spikey greens in the sand alongside the drive to the house. Just where it was supposed to be. Wild sorrell is found on sandy roadsides in coastal areas on the east coast. Flowers from March to May -- Peterson's Guide.
Our neighbor with a southern facing slope planted the bigger leafed garden variety, and he gave us some. Outstanding in salads.
Sorrell Soup
Wash a handful of sorrell.
Make a roux, but don't brown.
Add chickn stock, don't brown
Add the sorrell, cook a few minutes, blend.
Add cream to taste.
Sunday, February 7, 2010
Saturday, February 6, 2010
Why Buy Local
It was supposed to snow today. Ten inches. But the big weather pattern stalled below Philadelphia. Washington D.C. is a playland of snow banks, cross country skiiers and site-seers. Very 19th c.
The Southold fishmarket had glistening, pinky white cod. Just right for fish 'n chips, Tom's favorite. And baked cod (in milk with potatoes) mine.
Why buy local?
So many reasons.
What it is NOT:
-on average picked 4-7 days before being placed on supermarket shelves.
-shipped an average of 1500 miles before being sold.
-had about 80 cents on the dollar taken out for packaging, shipping, marketing.
I like my money to stay local. I like to help keep the farms around. I like the taste of deliciously ripe in season. It's so worth the wait.
Helping keep another farm actually saves local taxes. Several studies in New England show that for every dollar paid in taxes on farmland the community saves about 30 cents in services. Unlike developed land, farmland and open space do not use services like police, school, hospital, etc. To compare, the tax dollar on home and business lots costs the community about 30 cents over that dollar. We could go bankrupt if we developed everything!
Another study. Guess what -- kids eating real food for breakfast, lunch and dinner raises their academic achievement. Food for thought.
Friday, November 13, 2009
Bay Scallops in Braiselles
November 4th. The opening of bay scallop season here on the east end.
And the harvest is big, beautiful, and meaty.
Our good friend (actually our dog Bryn's best friend) donned his wetsuit and returned with a king's ransom. They are so wonderful, and rare, we've been frequenting the fish market for more. (A word of thanks to the big scientific project underway by the Cornell Marine Program to "jump start" the scallop population by introducing 11 million year-olds into the bays.)
Darling Husband has, to my taste, pefected the most delicious way to cook those glistening white animal bodies: Scallops in Braiselles (or breadcrumbs, bruseln as his Austrian grandmother would say). The toasty buttery breadcrumbs added to the pan fried scallops at the end soak in all the concentrated juices. The taste is pure scallop. The best vegetables to accompany, complement, and not overpower -- crispy baked potatoes and fresh brussel sprouts (with braiselles of course.) Everything from the farmstand and the fishmarket. Very locavore.
After you put the potatoes in the oven, this dinner is prepared very quickly. Here's the order:
Baked Potato
The easiest thing in the world and so delicious! Buy Rusetts from your farmer. We like them cooked hot and fast -- 420 degree oven for 1 hour. They are very crispy, and open with a crack! I like to season mine with olive oil, DH slathers butter, of course.
Braiselles
Brown breadcrumbs in a small pan, about 1/2 c., in butter/olive oil. (For color and taste, add some sesame or poppy seeds.)
Brussell Spouts
Those glorious green brussel spout stalks are at every farmstand. We buy a stalk and keep it outdoors in the cool. A la Julia, wash (soak in cold water briefly), trim, and toss into boiling salted water. Remove / drain when still green and a little crunchy. Cover them with the finished braiselles.
Scallops
Add scallops to melted butter and a bay leaf. For a few minutes let them cook and emit their juices. The juice will concentrate as it bubbles and the scallops will reabsorb some. Then toss in the browned bread crumbs at the end, mix around to absorb the remaining juice.
Great with local chardonnay.
Cost
3/4 lb scallops ($15-$20 lb.)
2 bakers $1
brussel spouts ($2 a stalk-several meals worth)
Total: $15-$17
Guten Appetit!
And the harvest is big, beautiful, and meaty.
Our good friend (actually our dog Bryn's best friend) donned his wetsuit and returned with a king's ransom. They are so wonderful, and rare, we've been frequenting the fish market for more. (A word of thanks to the big scientific project underway by the Cornell Marine Program to "jump start" the scallop population by introducing 11 million year-olds into the bays.)
Darling Husband has, to my taste, pefected the most delicious way to cook those glistening white animal bodies: Scallops in Braiselles (or breadcrumbs, bruseln as his Austrian grandmother would say). The toasty buttery breadcrumbs added to the pan fried scallops at the end soak in all the concentrated juices. The taste is pure scallop. The best vegetables to accompany, complement, and not overpower -- crispy baked potatoes and fresh brussel sprouts (with braiselles of course.) Everything from the farmstand and the fishmarket. Very locavore.
After you put the potatoes in the oven, this dinner is prepared very quickly. Here's the order:
Baked Potato
The easiest thing in the world and so delicious! Buy Rusetts from your farmer. We like them cooked hot and fast -- 420 degree oven for 1 hour. They are very crispy, and open with a crack! I like to season mine with olive oil, DH slathers butter, of course.
Braiselles
Brown breadcrumbs in a small pan, about 1/2 c., in butter/olive oil. (For color and taste, add some sesame or poppy seeds.)
Brussell Spouts
Those glorious green brussel spout stalks are at every farmstand. We buy a stalk and keep it outdoors in the cool. A la Julia, wash (soak in cold water briefly), trim, and toss into boiling salted water. Remove / drain when still green and a little crunchy. Cover them with the finished braiselles.
Scallops
Add scallops to melted butter and a bay leaf. For a few minutes let them cook and emit their juices. The juice will concentrate as it bubbles and the scallops will reabsorb some. Then toss in the browned bread crumbs at the end, mix around to absorb the remaining juice.
Great with local chardonnay.
Cost
3/4 lb scallops ($15-$20 lb.)
2 bakers $1
brussel spouts ($2 a stalk-several meals worth)
Total: $15-$17
Guten Appetit!
Wednesday, September 2, 2009
Eggplant Pizza
Well not exactly completely eggplant.
One night a week we have pizza. Because we love it, and because I have convinced Darling Husband that "eating down the food chain" (i.e. less meat) is better for our health, and the health of the planet. Our toppings are local and fresh-- as much as is possible -- always different, and sooo delicious.
We buy the dough from the local "brick oven pizza" guys in Greenport. It's the best. When home DH puts it in a zip lock plastic bag and then in the 'fridge. When kids are over, we have fun asking them to "make the pizza" by spreading it out over an olive oiled pan with holes. (Wash your hands first!) Then they can be artistic with their own toppings.
Tonight, in order: garden herbs - basil, oregano, garlic flowers -- mozzarella and bits of a beautiful Gorgonzola Dulce, nickle and quarter sized thin slices of a skinny eggplant lightly tossed in olive oil, last night's yummy ham cut in strips. 450 oven, 20 minutes or so. The eggplant crisped slightly and was perfect. We plastered it all over the pizza, and it could have used more!
Yes, tasty tomatoes!
Sliced real-tomato-tasting tangy tomatoes, nearly as good as I remember as a kid, from Latham's farm became our appetizer. Odd, though, these were crunchy. We luxuriate in them all August and September, and toss any leftover --tomato, oil, basil -- in a zip lock in the freezer, to be a delightful summer remembrance on a January evening.
Dinner
Eggplant Pizza
Tomato basil salad
Cost
Dough $2
eggplant, tomato $ 2
mozarella, Gorgonzola - $4 (only used half, actually this is a guess, the Gorgonzola was a gift)
garden herbs, leftover ham
Total: $8 (because we reduce, recycle, reuse)
Buon appetito!
One night a week we have pizza. Because we love it, and because I have convinced Darling Husband that "eating down the food chain" (i.e. less meat) is better for our health, and the health of the planet. Our toppings are local and fresh-- as much as is possible -- always different, and sooo delicious.
We buy the dough from the local "brick oven pizza" guys in Greenport. It's the best. When home DH puts it in a zip lock plastic bag and then in the 'fridge. When kids are over, we have fun asking them to "make the pizza" by spreading it out over an olive oiled pan with holes. (Wash your hands first!) Then they can be artistic with their own toppings.
Tonight, in order: garden herbs - basil, oregano, garlic flowers -- mozzarella and bits of a beautiful Gorgonzola Dulce, nickle and quarter sized thin slices of a skinny eggplant lightly tossed in olive oil, last night's yummy ham cut in strips. 450 oven, 20 minutes or so. The eggplant crisped slightly and was perfect. We plastered it all over the pizza, and it could have used more!
Yes, tasty tomatoes!
Sliced real-tomato-tasting tangy tomatoes, nearly as good as I remember as a kid, from Latham's farm became our appetizer. Odd, though, these were crunchy. We luxuriate in them all August and September, and toss any leftover --tomato, oil, basil -- in a zip lock in the freezer, to be a delightful summer remembrance on a January evening.
Dinner
Eggplant Pizza
Tomato basil salad
Cost
Dough $2
eggplant, tomato $ 2
mozarella, Gorgonzola - $4 (only used half, actually this is a guess, the Gorgonzola was a gift)
garden herbs, leftover ham
Total: $8 (because we reduce, recycle, reuse)
Buon appetito!
Monday, August 31, 2009
Watermelon Tomato Salad, Corn & Shrimp Chowder
Dinner in the Vines
Sunday night we had "dinner in the vines" with chef Tom Schaudel and 40 others from Connecticut, Rockville Centre, Greenport.....
Candlelight in a vineyard. It was elegant, lovely, convivial, delicious. Loved the surprising tomato appetizer. Amazingly rich, almost sweet. Checking the menu this was "tomato watermelon salad". I had to ask Chef Schaudel what was his dressing? His own verjus and olive oil, 50/50. I'm not surprised. No sourness of vinegar. Verjus (green juice) is made from unripe green grapes, pressed when the acid level is high, and then either pasteurized to be stable, or refrigerated. It is picked at a high acid level but not allowed to become vinegar. It will ferment if allowed to, but it's kept cold.
To me this is pure Julia. Learn the classic, love the classic, and be innovative. Add a slice of watermelon to tomatoes, stay with the softer melon, and make a verjus dressing.
Another Riff on Tomatoes
Can't get enough of those sun-red-ripe August sliced tomatoes with basil, again tonight with a ham we cooked because my brother was coming for dinner (we usually only cook ham with guests, otherwise there is so much leftover). Leftover ham glaze from a previous ham we glazed with rum, sugar, peaches, orange peel, was pulled from the freezer, thawed and poured over the baking ham. Dinner was boiled farmstand potatoes with parsley (I insisted on potatoes), baked corn on the cob, tomatoes with basil and garlic flowers. We sprinkled some local goat cheese "white snow" over the tomatoes -- tangy.
Corn Chowder
Our dinner-in-the-vines companions were telling us about their corn chowder with shrimp: onions saute, add corn, saute, then milk and boil the shrimp separately and add at the last. Darling Husband said he would never make it. He'd rather make a bacon version, and add broth boiled from the corn cobs (something we learned from chef Todd Jacobs.)
Did I mention my brother baked a lovely apple tart a la Julia -- apples and apricot jam?
Our Dinner (for 3)
ham - $13- lots leftover
corn -$3
potatoes $2 part of our csa share
tomatoes $2
cheese $2
Cost
$21
Leftover ham for days. And sliced several meals for my brother.
Bon appetit!
Sunday night we had "dinner in the vines" with chef Tom Schaudel and 40 others from Connecticut, Rockville Centre, Greenport.....
Candlelight in a vineyard. It was elegant, lovely, convivial, delicious. Loved the surprising tomato appetizer. Amazingly rich, almost sweet. Checking the menu this was "tomato watermelon salad". I had to ask Chef Schaudel what was his dressing? His own verjus and olive oil, 50/50. I'm not surprised. No sourness of vinegar. Verjus (green juice) is made from unripe green grapes, pressed when the acid level is high, and then either pasteurized to be stable, or refrigerated. It is picked at a high acid level but not allowed to become vinegar. It will ferment if allowed to, but it's kept cold.
To me this is pure Julia. Learn the classic, love the classic, and be innovative. Add a slice of watermelon to tomatoes, stay with the softer melon, and make a verjus dressing.
Another Riff on Tomatoes
Can't get enough of those sun-red-ripe August sliced tomatoes with basil, again tonight with a ham we cooked because my brother was coming for dinner (we usually only cook ham with guests, otherwise there is so much leftover). Leftover ham glaze from a previous ham we glazed with rum, sugar, peaches, orange peel, was pulled from the freezer, thawed and poured over the baking ham. Dinner was boiled farmstand potatoes with parsley (I insisted on potatoes), baked corn on the cob, tomatoes with basil and garlic flowers. We sprinkled some local goat cheese "white snow" over the tomatoes -- tangy.
Corn Chowder
Our dinner-in-the-vines companions were telling us about their corn chowder with shrimp: onions saute, add corn, saute, then milk and boil the shrimp separately and add at the last. Darling Husband said he would never make it. He'd rather make a bacon version, and add broth boiled from the corn cobs (something we learned from chef Todd Jacobs.)
Did I mention my brother baked a lovely apple tart a la Julia -- apples and apricot jam?
Our Dinner (for 3)
ham - $13- lots leftover
corn -$3
potatoes $2 part of our csa share
tomatoes $2
cheese $2
Cost
$21
Leftover ham for days. And sliced several meals for my brother.
Bon appetit!
Sunday, August 30, 2009
Potage Parmentier now Magenta Pink
Well, I turned the potage Parmentier shocking magenta. Checking leftovers, we had some deliciously sweet beets from our CSA and a quart of duck stock (bones from an earlier duck dinner cooked down.) Rich in taste and color, served hot.
We took a container to the celebration dinner on Shelter Island for our neice's first day as a freshman at Wellesley tomorrow.
Recipe
Potato and fresh onion soup
cooked beets, grated
duck stock -- add to taste
Cost
extra beets $2
leftover soup and stock
As they say in Poland
We took a container to the celebration dinner on Shelter Island for our neice's first day as a freshman at Wellesley tomorrow.
Recipe
Potato and fresh onion soup
cooked beets, grated
duck stock -- add to taste
Cost
extra beets $2
leftover soup and stock
As they say in Poland
Na zdrowie!
Bon appetit!
Friday, August 28, 2009
Vichyssoise
With scallions and an onion languishing in the 'refrig, and a half filled basket of potatoes, remainders of our Sang Lee csa weekly veggie boxes, I thought to make Vichyssoise. With darling Husband refusing to barbecue the onions -- and he can't digest raw onions -- with the August temperature dipping to 65, possibly due to Hurricane Danny -- it just seemed right. Julia will tell you the famous one is chilled -- leek and potato simmered in lightly salted water. That's it. You can add cream at the end, or other additions such as watercress, spinach "and so forth" And of course you may substitute onions, but you will miss that "wonderful pervading and special flavor that is a trademark of the leek."
The classic French potato and leek soup, which the chef credited with creating the cold Vichyssoise version remembers from his childhood, was an invention of a scientist/nutritionist Antoine-Augustin Parmentier who championed the potato as a human food source and was also responsible for mandatory smallpox vaccinations under Napoleon, starting in 1805. As a farm boy in France, the inventive chef of the Ritz-Carlton in NY remembers he and his brother cooling the potage Parmentier with milk--delicious.
The history of food always interests me -- in 1805 what were my great grandparents eating from their East Hampton farm? Lt. Abraham Sherrill and his wife Anna Huntting had just added a kitchen wing with a "modern" fireplace in the most up-to-date style of open hearth cooking -- or so my mother researched. And the first of their three sons was born. So maybe they had a potato milk soup. Potatoes were not to become the big Long Island economy crop until 80 years later, with the loss of Brooklyn farms and rail trucking into NYC making single crop farming lucrative. Did Americans like Washington and Jefferson eat potatoes in 180o? I wonder.
According to a trivia website Thomas Jefferson served "french fries" in the White House. So says thegardenersrake.com.
I have the Thomas Jefferson Cook Book which I picked up with my mother when we visited Wintethur to see the Dominy Workshop and Collection. It lists a Potato Soup that includes butter, rice or tapioca, sorrel (or tomatoes!) and 3 egg yolks -- sieve and serve hot.
Tonight
Vichyssoise
Gardeners Bay Bluefish on the grill
Garden tomatoes with basil and garlic flowers
Corn on the cob
Darling Husband was saying our signature accent in cooking is the amazing white garlic flowers, and garlic greens, which we start adding to salads, soups, meats, fish, vegetables in the early spring when the greens pop up and now in August with those tangy flowers. We added them chopped to float on the Vichysoise, adding an aroma of garlic, and a zest.
Cost:
$5 fish (only half of it so $2.50)
$2 corn and tomato
$4.50
Bon Appetit!
The classic French potato and leek soup, which the chef credited with creating the cold Vichyssoise version remembers from his childhood, was an invention of a scientist/nutritionist Antoine-Augustin Parmentier who championed the potato as a human food source and was also responsible for mandatory smallpox vaccinations under Napoleon, starting in 1805. As a farm boy in France, the inventive chef of the Ritz-Carlton in NY remembers he and his brother cooling the potage Parmentier with milk--delicious.
The history of food always interests me -- in 1805 what were my great grandparents eating from their East Hampton farm? Lt. Abraham Sherrill and his wife Anna Huntting had just added a kitchen wing with a "modern" fireplace in the most up-to-date style of open hearth cooking -- or so my mother researched. And the first of their three sons was born. So maybe they had a potato milk soup. Potatoes were not to become the big Long Island economy crop until 80 years later, with the loss of Brooklyn farms and rail trucking into NYC making single crop farming lucrative. Did Americans like Washington and Jefferson eat potatoes in 180o? I wonder.
According to a trivia website Thomas Jefferson served "french fries" in the White House. So says thegardenersrake.com.
I have the Thomas Jefferson Cook Book which I picked up with my mother when we visited Wintethur to see the Dominy Workshop and Collection. It lists a Potato Soup that includes butter, rice or tapioca, sorrel (or tomatoes!) and 3 egg yolks -- sieve and serve hot.
Tonight
Vichyssoise
Gardeners Bay Bluefish on the grill
Garden tomatoes with basil and garlic flowers
Corn on the cob
Darling Husband was saying our signature accent in cooking is the amazing white garlic flowers, and garlic greens, which we start adding to salads, soups, meats, fish, vegetables in the early spring when the greens pop up and now in August with those tangy flowers. We added them chopped to float on the Vichysoise, adding an aroma of garlic, and a zest.
Cost:
$5 fish (only half of it so $2.50)
$2 corn and tomato
$4.50
Bon Appetit!
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