The new pasttime

For those not following on Twitter (where, yes, I'm still alive on the interwebs), I've taken up canning.

Yes, canning.

The impulse, I believe, is part aspirational hipster, part nostalgic Southerner, part sanctimonious yuppie farmer's market scavenger.

I love baking, but, well, the products  of my hot oven are both transient and oinky. So baking is out. Until Christmas, at least, when I try to convince my mom that people will enjoy jars of pickles as much as they've historically liked my cookies.

Thus far, I've made sweet curry pickled (meh--will try again), spicy rhubarb chutney (intensely stellar), heirloom tomato salsa (also kickass), and, tonight, I made up a jam recipe!  Which I found worth recording.

As anyone who's been around me for 10 seconds will tell you, I loathe winter. But I am prone to spontaneously throwing little parties-of-one in my kitchen come summertime. Sometimes, I look around the farmer's market and bring home stray fruit with pleading eyes. And sometimes, I read a bunch of recipes and make up my own. And sometimes I do not have all the necessary ingredients on hand and am wont to make do.  Hence, I bring you:

Cardamom-spiced Strawberry Rhubarb Jam

3 1/2 cups tiny, perfect, ruby-red local strawberries (The water-logged, flavorless, mutant-colossus California berries will not do here. They won't.)
6 cups brown sugar, divided (every recipe I looked at called for regular sugar, but I had nowhere near 6 cups, so I substituted with brown, and man, was that a good idea. Whole new level of rich molasses-y flavor.)
3 1/2 cups fresh rhubarb chopped into 1/2-inch pieces
1 tsp lime zest
3 tbsp lime juice
1 1/2 tbsp freshly ground cardamom pods
1 tsp ground ginger
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon

1. Sterilize jars and lids in a boiling water bath.  This recipe yields just shy of two quarts. I'm out of pint-jar lids, so I now have two BIG jars of jam, but that's fine.  Really.  I'm fine with big jars of jam.

2. Crush strawberries in the bottom of a Dutch oven with a potato masher. Stir in 4 cups of brown sugar. Add the rhubarb, lime zest and juice, cardamom, ginger and cinnamon. Mix together. Bring it all up to a rolling boil and cook for about 5 minutes.

3. Add the rest of the sugar, bring back up to a boil; cook for another 5 minutes or so.

4. Remove from the heat and skim off the foam. Ladle the hot jam into hot jars.

5. Put the lids on and process in the water bath for 10 minutes.

Apparently, home-canned stuff is supposed to be good for a year-plus, just hanging out on a shelf somewhere. I've yet to test this theory as I'm quickly consuming all the stuff I'm making.

Well, cooked-down, ecstatically fresh fruit and vegetables are good. You know it's true.

If I can't write, I can at least make up recipes

Lest you suspect I only publish recipes that I make up so that I don't forget them, well, um, yeah, that's exactly why I do it.

Regardless, I just made up some salsa with random recent farmers' market spoils and, really, it's better than any salsa I've ever bought in a store. Honest to tomatoes!

Here's the deal:

Luck of Spring Salsa

4 smallish red spring onions, coarsely chopped
8 or 9 small, firm tomatillos (mine were about the size of a half-dollar in circumference), peeled and coarsely chopped
2 cayenne peppers (if you're pussy, I mean, if you don't like hot stuff, stick to one pepper), chopped, seeds and all
2 cloves of garlic, chopped
2 tbsp fresh cilantro leaves
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp ground chipotle powder
1/2 tsp ground cumin
the juice of one lime
4 medium-sized tomatoes-- preferably good acidic ones--chopped

Dump all your ingredients except the tomatoes into your food processor and pulse until everything is fairly, you know, choppy. I was aiming for more of a coarse puree texture, but you can leave it chunkier if you like. Add the tomatoes last (they just can't take as much of a beating as the other ingredients) and pulse to desired texture.

All done!

Be forewarned, though: this is definitely a late spring/early summer recipe, when the tomatoes are overlapping the spring onions and tomatillos. It's kinda hard to time it right so as to have all these ingredients in season, but it's well worth it.

Cream of refrigerator soup: snowpocalypse edition

I don't know. Maybe you've heard that DC's gotten a little snow lately. And by a little, I mean:



Of course, another 4-6 inches fell on top of this insanity after I took this picture of the sidewalk outside my building. You know, I have a very distinct memory of my mom plopping me on top of a snowbank so I wouldn't get into trouble while she opened my stroller when I was maybe 2? 3? years old (yes, I have a freakishly clear recollection of my toddler years). I recall that snow as being enormous. But I was very short then. I'm not near so short now, but this snow is enormous. Not sure I've ever seen anything quite like it.

But, once again, I'm stuck inside with an odd assortment of ingredients. Tonight, however, I think I might have topped my last soup. Truly, this thing I just made? It could only be improved upon if you licked it off the body of your beloved. Oh, you only wish that was hyperbole.

So, um, let's see. What, exactly did I do?

Snowpocalypse Turnip, Leek and Mushroom Soup

8 or so decent-sized turnips (I had a bunch of different ones, red, gold and the usual white, that I'd picked up at the Farmer's Market last weekend.), cut into 1 1/2-inch cubes
4 leeks, chopped
12 oz cremini mushrooms, quartered
1 clove garlic
1 1/2 TBSP olive oil
1 TBSP butter
1 tsp dried thyme
1 cup dry white wine
1 qt chicken broth (I like the low-sodium organic because it taste more like actual chicken.)
1 1/2 tsp freshly grated nutmeg
1 TBSP dijon mustard
1/4 cup heavy cream
juice of 1/2 a meyer lemon (You could use regular lemons here too, but go skimpy because they're more sour.)
salt and pepper to taste

1. Boil the chopped turnips in 6 cups of water for about 6 minutes. Drain and set aside.

2. Heat olive oil and butter over medium high heat in the bottom of a Dutch oven. Add the chopped leeks and sauté for 5-8 minutes or until they begin to soften.

3. Add the mushrooms and garlic and sauté for another 3 or 4 minutes or until the mushrooms begin to release their liquid.

4. Add the white wine and bring to a boil. Then, add the turnips back into the pot. Mix the vegetables together and bring up to temperature. Add the quart of chicken broth and bring it to a boil. Reduce temperature to a simmer, cover and cook for about 30 minutes. Test to make sure the turnips are soft before you continue.

5. Mix in dijon, heavy cream, nutmeg and lemon juice. Salt and pepper the soup to taste.

6. Remove from heat and puree the soup. I used my favorite kitchen device ever, the immersion blender. But you can ladle the soup into a traditional blender (carefully--it's hot and blender lids can blow and spew boiling soup all over you if you're not vigilant) to puree the whole thing if that's all you have.


Enjoy!

cream of refrigerator soup: snow day edition

I haven't been to the grocery store or farmer's market it over two weeks. The weather reports at which I looked predicted flurries today and a little bit of accumulation in the afternoon. Instead, we got what looks to be about four inches of snow that fell in fat, fluffy clumps all day. Needless to say, I got hungry and had to make do with rations I'd reserved in my freezer. Because I'm a genius, however, my concoction turned out most delicious. And so, I give you my "recipe."

Chicken and Black-eyed Pea Chili

2 chicken breasts, poached and shredded (1 qt poaching liquid reserved)
2 tbsp EVOO
1 medium yellow onion, chopped
1 green bell pepper, chopped
1 sweet red pepper, chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 qt broth (I used vegetable because it's what I had, but I probably would have used chicken, were it available.)
1 28 oz. can of diced tomatoes
1 1/2 lbs pre-cooked black-eyed peas
3 tbsp chipotle in adobo, minced
2 tsp cumin
2 tsp Mexican oregano (Conventional oregano will NOT do. It's not the same thing.)
1 tsp chili powder
salt and (tellicherry, of course) pepper to taste
3 cups pre-cooked rice (I used basmati because it's what I had and it's my favorite, but any rice will do.)

1. In the bottom of your Dutch oven, sauté the onions and red and green peppers in olive oil until they begin to soften. Add garlic and sauté for a minute or two more.

2. Add can of tomatoes, broth and reserved poaching liquid and bring to a boil.

3. Add the shredded chicken, black-eyed peas, chipotle and other spices. Bring the whole shebang back up to a boil. Reduce heat to a pretty serious simmer and cook for 20-30 minutes until the flavors meld.

4. Spoon 1/2 cup or so of rice into the bottom of a bowl. Ladle soup/chili over the top.

5. Slurp hungrily.

If you have it, it would probably be pretty tasty if you garnished it with chopped cilantro, fresh minced jalapeños and a squeeze of lime juice, but, alas, I didn't have any of that stuff.

No joke. This turned out really well and I'm trés impressed with myself that I just made it up with random crap I had in the house. Not too shabby, considering my limited resources.

Bon Appétit!

Your soul resides in your stomach.

Last Sunday morning, I took my mom to the Dupont Circle farmer's market. Amid the splendiferous array greens like purslane and French sorrel and the tables full of locally-made saffron-scented sheepsmilk cheese, we found a table selling real, honest-to-god black raspberries. You see red raspberries all over the place. Every once in a while, even Trader Joe's carries golden raspberries. And I'm not talking about blackberries. Black raspberries are different -- something special.

Personally, I haven't seen any of those little purple guys since I was a very small kid. When I lived on the farm out in West Tennessee, we actually had all three varieties of raspberries in our garden. In truth, I had no idea that raspberries were a luxury until I noted that you pay $5 for a quarter-pint in most grocery stores. As a kid, I ate them by the fistful--such opulent gluttony!

So, when I put the first one in my mouth, the sense memory of the summers when I was 4, 5, 6... was so terribly intense that it pricked tears into my eyes. I'm not exaggerating. I was standing right there on 20th, willing tears away. Tears over a raspberry.

This is the kind of experience that, I'm pretty sure, is unique to the farmer's market milieu. Unique in an urban environment, anyway. My raspberry was organic, grown in neighboring state Pennsylvania and flawlessly mold-free. Probably, it had been picked yesterday--at the very earliest.

And then, feeling freshly virtuous from our locavore's shopping expedition, I took my mom to see the new documentary, Food, Inc. Now, since I began this blog, one of the recurring themes (besides my own narcissism and my desire to have a lot of sex, I mean) is my conviction that the American food supply has long since gone to hell, tipped out of its handbasket and danced around in its own fecal matter once it got there. How many eco-food films have I admonished you, fair readers, to go see? Milk in the Land, Flow, Fast-Food Nation ... I can't even remember all the others. It's not new news that my anxiety about what we all eat and how we choose our foods is ever ratcheting itself higher. And as a result, I feel as though it's not even possible for me to scream loud enough. Especially considering my readership is, you know, modest.

On a day-to-day basis, I am frustrated that I'm not making any headway with even my closest friends and family members. My own dad insists buying organic half-and-half is a waste of money. I had an argument just the other day with a friend who prioritizes saving money in the short term over the exorbitant costs to the planet, to underprivileged peoples, to conventionally raised animals and to our bodies that buying from mainstream corporate venues makes inevitable. And even the friends who I know buy the argument that sustainability, organics and locally grown foods are not just the best way to eat, but the only way to eat, will still swing over to the grungy local Safeway more often than they'll admit aloud to me.

I blame bottlenecks in the information flow. The information that is to be found in a movie like Food, Inc. is simply not available to those who don't pointedly seek it out. Most people haven't seen footage of a feedlot (and probably don't want to). Most people don't have the foggiest clue as to what the inside of a corn refinery looks like. Most people, in fact, hear of a salmonella outbreak caused by contaminated spinach and simply stop eating spinach. They don't understand that spinach should never be contaminated with an animal-borne bacteria, or that the only way spinach could possibly encounter salmonella would be for it to be grown in the path of run-off from a corporate chicken house.

Now, I could go into plenty of detail as to the ecological and dietary carnage that you'll see in this film. Feedlots look like Auschwitz for cows, people. Commericial chicken houses? Chickens, grown too fast and too fat to support their own body weights on their little chicken legs, teem in dusty clouds of dried fecal matter, squawking like banshees. The brevity of their miserable lives is almost a blessing. And corn. I can't even begin to address the giant clusterfuck that compose the corn-producing entities in this country. So, I'm not going to.

I will, however, take this moment to offer a plea: see this film. See all the other films I liked above. Read The Omnovore's Dilemma. Read Fast-Food Nation. Read anything Alice Waters ever wrote. Read Mark Bittman. Read Deborah Madison. And then learn how to eat anew. How to value quality, untainted food over cheap food. How to consider the longterm ramifications of every dollar you spend affect every other single solitary human with whom you currently share the planet -- and all those who'll come after you.

And consider this: in 1950, the average American spent 10% of his or her family's income on food. Today, the average American spends only 3% on food. And bitches constantly about the price of an anti-biotic-free, non-rBGH, organic jug of milk. If these statistics don't show us that our priorities are out of whack, I don't know what might.

So, in lieu of a full-on review (in hopes that my guilt trip and paucity of my characteristic spoilers will lead you to the theater), I offer three takeaways:

• Our mainstream food supply chain was designed by Heironymous Bosch. Everything we eat may as well be coated in petroleum, then shit, then money. That's not a metaphor. At least not the oil and shit parts.
• Michael Pollan and Eric Schlosser are the prophets of our age. If you're not listening to them, not reading them, not taking their wisdom to the bosom, you are tolling the death knell for middle class, comfortable American life as we know it. Clean the fucking cobwebs from your eyes. They know the light and are desperate to bring it to you.
• Activistic consumerism is the most viable, valuable, powerful tool for social change we've got. Engage your soul when you spend. If your money is going in the opposite direction of your personal code of ethics, you're either underinformed or a hypocrite. More than likely, you're the former. Fix that. Educate yourself about the companies from which you buy. Do they mistreat their work force? Do they raise sick animals that are bound to make your family sick as well? Are they contaminating the water tables with their putrid run-off? Will their practices make this planet uninhabitable in under two generations? If the answer to any of these question is yes, show them you don't believe in their practices by not buying their products. The demand for organic foodstuffs is growing by 20% every year. That's consumer, not corporate, power, folks. And 20% remarkably high number--one of which we should be proud. It's us--not the corporations--who control where we spend our money. We are in control of the food industry because if they aren't making products we'll buy, they'll start making ones we will. We're witnessing a sea change, my friends. On which side will you be when the tide comes in?

Because I mean to put my own efforts and money where my mouth is, I've renewed my commitment to the locavore life. Because it is my strongest of convictions that every person's individual sense of responsibility with regard to ethical consumerism is the very thing that need reach the proverbial critical mass in order to turn this heavy boat around, I mean to make a tangible adjustment in my own life. I'm putting it in print because I hope telling you, a handful of strangers I may never meet and a slightly bigger handful of friends and family members, of my resolution will help hold me accountable. And also... well, maybe because I secretly hope that I can motivate at least a handful of you into changing your buying habits alongside me. Ultimately, though, I can't, in good conscience, spend another dollar on food without considering the effect that dollar will have on the global community.

So here you go:

Every weekend, I'm gonna haul myself out of bed at a very early o'clock and buy as much of my weekly rations as I can at one farmer's market or another. DC is full of farmer's markets, with representatives mostly from farms all over Virginia, Maryland, North Carolina and Pennsylvania. The variety of products is certainly ample enough to support the most omnivorous diet. For any local readers, check out the DC Harvest blog (their tweets are plenty informative as well) for some great tips on what's good where. Everyone else? Your research is only a google away.

This morning, I went back to the Dupont Circle market. It was a glorious morning. Healthy farm boys handed out apricot samples. Pretty women pushed strollers or flicked ponytails. Everyone had on a maxi-dress. And I found grass-fed lamb summer sausage and beer-washed sheepsmilk cheese. I bought some pitch-perfect cucumber mint vodka gelato. The tomatoes--dear goddess, I would have sold my firstborn for those tomatoes. And apricots that boy handed me were flavorful like you just can't get, not even at Whole Foods. It's expensive to do this, no doubt. But I don't think I've ever felt so happy forking it over.

So, because all this puts me in a good mood, how about a recipe for a salad I just made up?

A Mid-Summer's Night's Salad

For the salad:
2 small fennel bulbs, chopped
1 bell pepper, chopped (I found purple ones--gorgeous--but any color will do.)
3 small new carrots, chopped into rounds
1 luscious summer tomato, chopped
5 or 6 radishes, sliced
2 tbsp chopped fresh tarragon leaves

For the dressing:
1 1/2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
Juice of 1/2 a lemon
1 clove garlic, minced
pinch of salt
1/2 tsp cumin
cayenne pepper to taste

Pour the dressing over the salad and toss. This would probably serve up to 3 people, but I just ate the whole thing for dinner. It was a lot of vegetables, but it felt so virtuous (after all the sheep cheese I ate earlier) that I couldn't stop.

Bon appetite!

When homesick...

When Michelle and I were together, I did most of the cooking. She'd basically eat whatever I put in front of her (truly, the mark of a good mate-- for me, anyway) and my own appetite itches for experimentation most of the time. However, when I wanted something that tasted like the South, I would beckon the lovely girl to the kitchen. Michelle's recipe repertoire, unlike mine, has little to do with cookbooks and a whole lot to do with habit. And when that girl has her way with greens, cabbage, pinto beans, pork butt, fried chicken, cornbread... Lord almighty, ain't nothing like it.

So, last week, I got a real hankering for cornbread. None of that sweet, cake-like Yankee shit you get in places that aren't the South. I wanted the steamy, salty, hard stuff-- with onions and jalapenos, like my girl used to make for me. So, I emailed her. I know she went home and had to make it in order to take notes to tell me how she did it, so second-nature is its composition for her. But send me the recipe, she did. There's something to be said for staying friendly with former lovers.

Here's my vegetarian, organic version:

Jalapeno Onion Cornbread

3-4 tbsp organic canola oil
1 cup fine-ground organic corn flour (yellow or white-- either is fine)
1 cup medium-ground organic corn meal
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 -1 tsp kosher salt
2 tbsp Healthy Balance soy spread (or organic butter), melted
1 large organic egg
1-1 1/2 cups organic lowfat buttermilk
1/2 a medium yellow onion, chopped
1 large jalapeno, diced

Preheat the oven to 450 degrees. Shortly before the oven comes to temperature, coat a 9-inch cast iron pan* with 2 tbsp of the canola oil. Preheat the pan in the heating oven for a few minutes-- but not too long, as it can catch fire.

Mix the remaining ingredients together in a large mixing bowl, adding the egg and buttermilk last. Add the buttermilk a 1/2-cup at a time. You want the mixture to be distinctly wet, but not runny or watery. (When I made it, it took a full cup and a half, but you never know how much water you'll get from your onion.

Bake for 20-25 minutes, until the top is firm and golden brown. Remove from oven and let stand for 5 minutes. Cut into wedges and serve. Ah, nostalgia.

*A note regarding cast iron skillets for the uninitiated: When Michelle and I broke up, her parting gift to me was a cast iron skillet she'd seasoned herself. At that point in our relationship, we weren't doing so well at the being-friends thing. There was so much hurt between us -- mostly because we loved each other so much we were both furious with each other and with ourselves that, after nearly 5 years, we couldn't pull it out any longer. But she knew I loved her cornbread. And she knew I couldn't make it myself without a proper skillet. So, the thing about cast iron is that it must be seasoned to be usable. That means, you put it in the oven with only some oil coating its inner surface and you bake it until it turns black. It usually takes a few coatings and cookings to become properly dark. And then, every time you use it, you clean it by swiping an oil-coated paper towel around it. Never-- I repeat, never-- put soap in your cast iron skillet. Unless you want to start the seasoning process all over again, that is. Over the years, the skillet should develop a good, thick, black crust of cookin' love all over it. That's when you know you'll have perfect cornbread or fried chicken or french fries or zucchini dill frittatas or whatever-- every time.

So, here's Michelle's non-vegetarian, non-organic version (yeah, the bacon-drippings really do make it better-- but I promise, my version's pretty good too):

Michelle's Fool-proof Cornbread

2 cups Martha White Self Rising Meal (Approx amount)
½ to 1 teaspoon salt (optional)
3 to 4 tablespoons Bacon Drippings (less if you have smaller than a 9 inch skillet)
1 Large Egg
2 tablespoons melted butter (optional)
1 to 1 ½ cups buttermilk or whole milk (just check your mix, not to dry and definitely not watery)
1 pinch of sugar (just a pinch!!)*
1/2 a yellow onion, chopped
1 large jalapeno, minced

Mix all the ingredients adding the milk and eggs last, mix well. (Do this while the skillet is preheating)

Use the bacon drippings to season the skillet before putting the mix in (Make sure to preheat the skillet with the drippings for a few minutes). Not too long-- you don’t want to start a fire!!! Heat oven to 450 degrees. Mix should sizzle when you put it in.

Cook for 20 to 25 minutes or until the top is firm and golden brown.


*I didn't put any sugar into my version because I like my cornbread good and salty. If you simply must do it the pussy way-- er, I mean, the Yankee way-- er, I mean, the way Michelle tells you to do it, feel free to sweeten it to your taste.

Every once in a while, Michelle would add a cup or so of shredded sharp cheddar to her cornbread mixture too. That's another delicious option if you happen to have some around, but be forewarned-- the stuff is a little tricky to get out of your skillet once it's melted onto it.

Bon appetite, and happy memories!

A figgy pudding to break all conventions

Here's my dessert for this year's Christmas dinner-- a poached fig gallette with a cinnamon sabayon. It is such a wonder of our modern world to find fresh figs at Christmastime. And what a pretty plate they make, no?

This sweet little thing followed my (quite tasty) creamy wild mushroom and leek soup and Mom's absolutely phenomenal pan-sauteed duck breast in a dried cherry sauce with some lovely, simple, and very fresh Swiss chard. A very festive meal, indeed. We can DO Christmas in the kitchen here at Casa Vino!

Thanks to my mom for the photography credit. And here's one more:

On the side

A couple of my friends have begun to request this salad I make from time to time. This is another thing that I kind of make up as I go, but it seems to be gaining a following, so I'll post the recipe for that, too. It was originally inspired by a salad in Deborah Madison's book Local Flavor. I love that book and pretty much all of Madison's recipes but this salad no longer bears much resemblance to its point of inspiration.

The Southwest-ish Salad

2 bags prewashed Spring mix or baby lettuce mix
2 avocados
1 yellow bell pepper
3/4 jicama

The dressing:

4 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
juice of 1 lime (2 if it's a dry lime-- you're just trying to get a 2:1 proportion between olive oil and lime juice)
1 minced shallot
3 tbsp chopped fresh cilantro
3 tbsp chopped fresh mint
1 tbsp ground cumin
1 1/2 tsp chili powder
1/2 tsp cayenne (there's your cayenne fix, Mom!)
1/2 tsp salt

Whisk dressing ingredients together and toss with lettuce and chopped vegetables.



KITCHEN SINK UPDATE: $306 later, a plumber tells me he'll let me know when he finds a goat in my pipes. I wonder what percentage of that $306 goes to cover the comedy.