Heiritage corn makes for good eating

I travelled a little bit this summer and all of it included good food. One trip found me heading north to visit my mom in Santa Rosa and meet her new friend Evie at Tierra Vegetable Farm Stand. TVFS is committed to growing sustainably and everything they sell at the stand they grow. I was impressed by the diversity of the foods available. They’re also local heroes. Recently a 90-year-old barn that was slated for demolition to make room for a new hospital was moved from the site to the Tierra Farm, an expensive project but a worthwhile one that has received a lot of support from local residents. A recent post on TVFS’s Facebook page noted that they’ve started moving the retail space into the lower half of the barn. Can’t wait for my next trip up to Santa Rosa to see the progress they’ve made.

Not only did I buy some of their fruits and veggies, I bought some of the heirloom corn they grow, dry and grind into cornmeal. There were several varieties to choose from but I bought two different kinds: Oaxacan Green cornmeal and Bloody Butcher cornmeal. Oaxacan green is an ancient variety grown for centuries by the Zapotec Indians of southern Mexico traditionally used in making green flour tamales. Bloody Butcher (love the name!) was developed in 1845 in Virginia. Chances are if I saw either of these corns in the market I would think “decorative” rather than “good eats”. So I was eager to experience these corns in a culinary way. Cornbread is a staple in our household so it was fun to see how the different cornmeals measured up to the everyday cornmeal I usually use. The Oaxacan green was very mild in flavor and didn’t produce a particularly yummy bread but all-in-all tasty. The Bloody Butcher, on the other hand, had a nutty malty flavor (reminded me of the Malt-o-Meal muffins my grandma used to make back in the day) that was absolutely deelish! It was great for dinner with a bowl of beans but even better the next morning toasted with jam.

Oaxacan Green Cornbread

Bloody Butcher Cornbread

More importantly than the yummy cornbread is the fact that using heritage corn promotes the preservation of our nation’s rich heritage of agricultural diversity. If Monsanto had their way (and believe you me, they are trying their darndest!) they would have a complete monopoly on all the seeds in America controlling all the food we eat. There are organizations who work to protect the diversity in agriculture. As a consumer, the more I educate myself on the varieties of foods that are available and use these foods in my daily life, I, in turn, support those organizations who are protecting our heritage. Check out Seed Savers Exchange to learn more. For a CA seed source check out Sustainable Seed Co. in Petaluma.

I’ll be heading up to Santa Rosa again the end of September and can get some more cornmeal. It’ll be fun to say “hey” to Evie again, now my new friend at Tierra Vegetable Farm Stand.

Kicking crumpets up a notch

The next time you’re in San Francisco and you’re looking for an epic breakfast go stand in line at Tartine. Yea, you have to stand in line for a bit but trust me it’ll be worth the wait. Here’s what we do. We get an almond or chocolate croissant (rivals the best in France), a cup of fruited bread pudding and a croque monsieur…an open face sandwich with béchamel, gruyere, thyme and ham. With a cappuccino in one hand and a fork in the other, the three of us make short work of our repast. It ain’t cheap and the opportunities to be in the city for breakfast are limited but such a breakfast isn’t very far from thought.

So it only seemed right when my daughter was home visiting that we do something epic for breakfast á la Tartine. No, couldn’t pull off a croissant and fruited bread pudding wasn’t in the cards. But croque monsieur was right up our alley…decided to up it one and made croque madame: same cheesy bread but a poached egg sits right on top.  I whipped out my crumpet rings and made the crumpets ridiculously tall. A few slices of emmentaler cheese melted on top, a piece of grilled ham and a poached egg made our croque madame completely satisfying.

If you want to learn more about bread making at Tartine, watch their video. You'll even see some shots of the bakery and someone eating a croque monsieur. Sorry, it isn't me. I'm sorry it isn't me!

Crumpets 101

Why make a crumpet? For starters, the result is mind-numbingly delicious. With lots of springy holes for butter to ooze and melt into, this quintessential British food is positively wonderful. Top it with some jam and you’ve gotten something to moan about. Now, consider the fact that crumpets are ridiculously easy to make, there isn’t really any excuse for anyone to NOT make them.  Think of how impressed everyone will be around the breakfast table when you bring in the plate from the kitchen piled high with yeasty, fragrant crumpets and amid the accolades you demurely admit that Yes, you made the heavenly delights.

There are two kitchen items you will need but don’t fear…they are very easy to procure and more than likely you’ve already got one of them in your cupboard. First you need a griddle to cook the crumpets. I’ve got a large one that fits across two burners but if you have a smaller one, no worries; it’ll just take you a bit longer to get them all made. The second thing you’ll need are crumpet rings. Back in the day, I took tuna tins and removed the tops and the bottom of the can (and the tuna!) and it made a perfect ring. But nowadays tuna cans have a rounded bottom and you can’t get a can opener to get the bottom off. (Maybe this was a deliberate attempt by tuna can manufactures to foil the ingenuity of the home cook and to increase sales of crumpet rings. I smell a conspiracy theory.) At one time you could get rings at kitchen stores or places like Cost Plus but I don’t know anymore. I bought a new set on Amazon.com…if you order $25 worth of stuff you get free shipping. 




Here's a half with olallieberry jam

 

I mix the batter up in the mixer but it is easy enough to mix by hand. The batter is left in the bowl for the first rise, and then a tablespoon of water with a little baking soda is beaten in and the batter rises a second time. Once it’s risen twice, you’ve got this yeasty, bubbly living sponge ready to cook. I’ve tried several recipes. The one from my 1977 Sunset cookbook of Breads is awful: nothing springy about the leaden, chalky disc that sat on my plate. The recipe I’ve had the most success with is from the James Beard cookbook on bread. According to British cooks, the batter should pour into the rings. Beard’s recipe doesn’t really pour as it is a bit thicker. But what I like is that it makes a very tall crumpet (well, I more than likely overfill the ring…the recipe makes 8-10 crumpets and I get 5. My bad!) Split in half and toasted, the eater then doesn’t have to decide which jam to eat…marmalade on one half, olallieberry jam on the other. 

My 9-year-old niece Sophia came for a visit and we learned (Lord love a duck!) that she had never had a crumpet before. I whipped out the griddle and rings and before long we had cobbled together a rather respectable tea. The verdict? Sophia loved the crumpets and more than likely, being the good young cook that she is, she will have soon mastered the art of crumpet making. I bet I know what Santa will put in her stocking this Christmas!!

Want to read more? Here’s a great website on the history of the crumpet along with a recipe and tips on how to make.

From the Beard on Bread cookbook by James Beard:

Crumpets

½ cup milk

½ cup boiling water

1 package active dry yeast

1 teaspoon granulated sugar

1 ½ teaspoons salt (I found this amount too salty; I only use 1 tsp.)

1 ¾ cups sifted all-purpose flour

¼ teaspoon baking soda, dissolved in 1 tablespoon hot water

Combine the milk and boiling water and cool to lukewarm. Add the yeast and sugar and allow to proof. Blend the salt and the sifted flour, combine the yeast mixture, and beat thoroughly for several minutes with a wooden spoon or with your hand. (I use the mixer on a lower speed.) Let the batter rise in a warm place until almost doubled in bulk and rather bubbly. Add the dissolved soda and beat into the batter. (I do this by hand.) Allow to rise again until doubled in bulk.

 Spoon the batter into buttered rings placed on a moderately hot griddle to a depth of about ½ inch. Cook until dry and bubbly on top. Remove the ring, turn the crumpets, and brown lightly on the other side. Let cool. To serve, toast and flood with butter.

Makes 8-10 crumpets (HA! Unless you make them really tall like I do and then you’ll only get 5)

A ton of goodness in one little pea

I have no desire to be vegan. I love eggs, cheese and a roasted chicken is a lovely thing. But you’ve got to admire anyone who manages to eat well and live healthy and not take advantage of those main ingredients that are the foundational building blocks for most all cooking that we know and love. Back in the day, I thought vegan cooking meant bland, boring and repetitive meals. I mean come on…just how many tofu scrambles can one person eat in a week?  (That being said, I must admit I have an egg every single morning for breakfast and will never, ever tire of it!) But over the last few years, I’ve discovered that vegan cooking can be pretty amazing. Vegan cooking more than likely will include some ingredients you’re not familiar with. No worries. Most are rather tame and easy to find and work with.

Picture from Sunset Magazine

I found a recipe in Sunset magazine that featured chickpea flour. I love chickpeas (or garbanzo beans) but really have only had them in a salad or when making hummus. Chickpea flour I’ve never used before.  (Apparently chickpea flour is high in protein and is gluten free.) The recipe is for chickpea cakes made by Chef Sean Baker at Gather Restaurant in Berkeley. He serves his cakes with an arugula salad tossed with a fennel dressing. I clipped the recipe and posted it on the fridge door. I assembled all the ingredients including the flour (Bob’s Red Mill’s is nice) and the nutritional yeast (bulk @ Whole Foods). I made a few substitutions: instead of vegetable broth I used chicken (yea, I know, it’s not vegan anymore but it’s what I had on hand), baby spinach for the fava leaves (I looked at the farmer’s market for fava leaves but they were nowhere to be found; be sure to note the additional flour needed if spinach is used), romaine lettuce and pea shoots for the arugula (it’s a little too bitter for my taste), added goat cheese to the salad because it sounded good, white wine vinegar for the Champagne vinegar (couldn’t justify spending money on yet another condiment in the cupboard), left out the cayenne and saffron in the dressing (too spicy and too expensive).  Oh, and I added some orange supremes to the salad.



Picture of my chickpea cakes



I followed the instructions faithfully (except for all of my changes!) and served up the most delicious cakes ever. Crusty sweet on the outside, creamy on the inside. It made enough for leftovers and I’m so glad about that!  I have no illusions of one day being vegan. But when a great recipe comes along, I’m all in favor of cooking it up no matter which school of thought it hails from!  

In a nutshell it's just good tasting frozen fermented milk

Like the rest of America, you can usually find Greek yogurt in my fridge. It has secured a place in the hearts of health conscious folks across this great land of ours. Thicker than traditional yogurt (due to the draining off of the whey), it pairs wonderfully with fresh fruit and honey…and a dusting of flax seed meal and walnuts makes it dessert…or breakfast.  Even Starbucks has a Greek yogurt cup in their cold case so you know it’s a universal food. But after awhile, day in and day out, it’s kinda hard to get excited about my bowlful of yogurt…Greek or otherwise.

I noticed that kefir kept popping up on those lists of superfoods. Oprah touts its advantages so you KNOW it’s got to be the real deal. My guess was that it was like a liquid yogurt. I bought a carton at Trader Joe’s…plain, low fat. And my hunch was correct. It is liquid yogurt with different nutritional properties than yogurt but apparently a powerhouse of goodness. But I was stymied as to what to do with it. It’s not like I’m going to chug it from the carton (though my mom does…but of course she politely uses a glass). I thought about making smoothies but with fresh fruit for smoothies not in abundance this time of year, I wasn’t excited about that idea. So there the carton sat on the top shelf of the fridge. I wasn’t about to be outdone by a dairy product, but I couldn’t think of how to use it.

Then inspiration tweaked my ear: what would it be like to make ice cream from the kefir? I pulled out my Cuisinart ice cream maker cook book. (Tangent here….if you don’t have a Cuisinart ice cream maker I HIGHLY recommend you get one. The bowl goes in the freezer. The ice cream mixture is assembled, and then chills in the fridge for a few hours. Only takes about 15 minutes to churn and voila! The most delicious ice cream!!) There were recipes for frozen yogurt in the book but they included straining the yogurt which I wasn't sure would work with the kefir. “What about”, inspiration said to me, “you just follow the regular recipe but substitute kefir for the whole milk and heavy cream?”  That’s just what I did. Organic strawberries are in at The Farm so strawberry frozen kefir seemed logical.

The result? Soft-serve so creamy you’d be hard pressed to find a difference between the kefir and the cream. Once it hardens in the freezer it has a more tangy flavor and isn’t as creamy. But soooooo good!  I’m off to Trader Joe’s to get some more kefir. And just wait until peaches are in season…blueberries…ooohh! mangoes! What would chocolate be like? Too bad Oprah is done with her show. They could have done a whole segment on the wonders of kefir. (Or maybe they did! HA!)  Guess I’ll have to find my 15 minutes of fame somewhere else.

(Post script: apparently there are a lot of uses for kefir. I did a google search and some good ideas came up…salad dressings, potato salad, cheese, veggie dip and a very traditional borscht!)

Fresh Strawberry Kefir Ice Cream

1 ½ cups fresh strawberries, hulled

2 ¼ cup plain unsweetened kefir

2/3 cup granulated sugar

Pinch salt

1 ½ tsp vanilla extract

Put the strawberries into the bowl of a food processor fitted with chopping blade. Pulse strawberries until finely chopped. Reserve in a bowl. (I use an immersion blending stick which makes it way easy to puree.) In a medium bowl combine the kefir, sugar and salt and whisk until the sugar is dissolved. Stir in the vanilla and the reserved strawberries with all their juices. Cover and refrigerate 1 to 2 hours or overnight. Use your favorite automatic ice cream maker to churn…soft serve takes about 15 to 20 minutes. If you want a firmer consistency, transfer to an airtight container and place in freezer for about 2 hours.

Quinoa Revisited

So let’s get back to the quinoa kerfuffle. Well not so much a kerfuffle but more like a foofaraw. Or really it was just me being ridiculous…

Who knew that not all quinoas are created equal? I didn’t. It doesn’t make any sense. The times I’ve made quinoa I’ve used Ancient Harvest brand (comes in a turquoise box). For my tabouleh quinoa I got some from Whole Foods in their bulk section. Both are organic. Both come from Boliva. But the pot I steamed up from WF was light, fluffy, very non-swamp like.  It had a nutty flavor and a tender texture more like rice. The tabouleh was great. I cooked up 1 cup of quinoa. Once cooked I tossed it in a large bowl with a peeled and seeded cucumber, a wodge of flat leaf parsley, a smaller wodge of curly parsley, big handful mint (all herbs coarsely chopped), some very thinly sliced green onions (I think it was about 3). I mixed together ¼ cup olive oil and ¼ lemon juice (some s&p) and tossed the dressing over the salad. Pretty easy and so fresh and deelish.

Even something as simple
as tabouleh makes a mess in
the kitchen

(“What?” you say. “No tomatoes?”  I took a pledge to not eat tomatoes until they are in season. When are they in season? When they start harvesting them at The Farm or when I harvest them from my garden. Barbara Kingsolver writes about eating in season in her book Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. At first it was hard but then I didn't even think about "missing out". Just think how awesome that first bite of summer tomato will be.)

My friend Manny suggested quinoa with currants, celery and a curry dressing. Stay tuned for “Quinoa Re-revisited!”

The Agony and the Ecstasy

In the beginning…

Sarah Samantha battling
grasshoppers

When I was a kid, there was this one book I checked out over and over from the library. The Middle Sister by Marion Mason was dear to my heart. It’s the story of Sarah Samantha, a middle sister who was 8 (I was a middle sister and I was 8!) She wishes she were brave. Her Uncle Romeo (who works at a circus) strikes a bargain: in exchange for an apple dumpling (made with an apple from Miss Appleseed, a gift from Uncle Romeo) he will give her a lion’s tooth, a charm that will help her feel brave. The family travels to a homestead in Minnesota by covered wagon and Sarah Samantha has many opportunities to be brave protecting her beloved apple tree: uppity neighbors, greedy pigs, swarms of grasshoppers. At long last with just one apple left from the tree, Sarah Samantha makes the apple dumpling for her uncle and soon wears the lion’s tooth around her neck, ultimately realizing that she was brave all along. I never really wanted a lion’s tooth but I always thought apple dumplings sounded like the most delicious thing a person could eat. Mom made all sorts of wonderful pastries but never apple dumplings. It wasn’t until I was an adult, I made a pan full and they didn’t disappoint: a flaky pastry and tart apple island in a lake of cinnamony syrup. Sheer poetry!

A tree grows in California…

When Steve and I moved into our house 20 years ago, I knew I wanted to plant an apple tree. Not that I wanted to have my very own Miss Appleseed, but it felt necessary to have a tree...to climb its branches and pick fruit for pies and cobblers. The allotted space for the tree was small so we planted a Garden Delicious, a dwarf apple tree perfect for small yards. The first few years the crops were satisfactory. Then our sweet little tree hit its stride. We picked and picked and picked and still the tree produced. The apples were yellow and sweet and made the most delicious applesauce, were excellent dried but best of all, sheer joy to munch. We gave bags of apples away…to neighbors, church friends, co-workers…even once gave a bag to the UPS guy when he came to the door with a delivery. We didn’t do much for the tree…a cursory pruning now and then. But that’s about all.

And then there were none…

Two years ago, the tree didn’t look happy. Aphids were everywhere, leaves curled and got sticky, apples were stunted and we barely got one bowlful to eat. Last year we weren’t able to harvest one apple. Not only did we have the aphids and leaf curl, but every apple was infested with coddling worms and on top of all that, fire blight hit the tree turning large bunches of leaves brown. I asked Hank, an old farmer from down in south county, to come by and tell me what to do. He told me about setting traps for the coddling moths in the spring and about putting corrugated cardboard around the trunk of the tree. He said to get rid of the blight I needed to trim every affected leaf and branch, dipping my pruners in bleach after every cut to ensure I wouldn’t contaminate other parts of the tree. I started the blight elimination early fall last year when it was easy to see the crispy brown leaves. But it occurred to me that pruning severely in the fall would be premature. So I waited until early spring. By then all the leaves were gone and it was hard to tell which parts were blighted and which parts weren’t. And it was hard work: cut and dip, cut and dip. Steve helped me out and as a team we were able to do the job with little aggravation.  I forgot about the cardboard but put out the coddling moth trap at the right time.  Leaves started sprouting, blossoms showed their delicate faces. Blossoms morphed into tiny apples and I was hopeful that we had triumphed over nature.

A moveable feast…

And then, last week I noticed the aphids. Not just a few but hundreds. They caked the new growth way at the top of the tree which made rinsing them off with the hose impossible. My sister told me of a remedy for aphids she sprays on her roses: 1 tsp. baking soda, 1 tsp. dish soap, 1 tsp. vegetable oil and 1 quart water. Put it all in a spray bottle and drench the leaves of the plant. While searching for remedies for aphids, I found almost the same recipe on a website from Australia (Small Farm Permaculture and Sustainable Living…name just rolls of the tongue doesn’t it?!)  Be careful though…my nurserywoman said that the soap can burn the leaves of a plant if applied in full sun.

Small Farm etc also suggests that it’d be a good idea to introduce aphid predators. First on the list are wasps and hover flies. Not too sure I want those critters in my garden. Ah, yes, they also suggest ladybugs. That I can do. After a quick trip to the nursery, I had container in hand. But how does one get the little sweethearts to go from the container into the tree? The directions say to release them in the evening since they don’t fly at night. Climbing up as high as I could on the ladder, I dumped handfuls of bugs into the tree, with most of them falling on me and on the ground. (I have to say I felt a bit like Sarah Samantha bravely trying to save her precious tree.) Steve rigged up a scaffolding to place the open container and I left it there hoping the aroma of juicy aphids would entice the ladybugs to scramble out of their protective home into the nirvana of my tree.  

Now we wait. Did the traps stop the coddling worms from laying eggs in the apples? Will the ladybugs devour the aphids? Time will tell….in the meantime I’ve got a whole lotta other plants that will require my vigilance.