Here are a few recipes that you can use for a delicious Thanksgiving spread. Enjoy!
November 2011 Archives
This recipe is loosely adapted from Jamie Oliver’s Jamie at Home, which describes this method for roasting carrots and beets in the oven.
For each small bunch of carrots, blanch them whole, trimmed and washed, in boiling salted water for about 10 minutes until just tender. Drain and place in a bowl with one or two smashed garlic cloves, a “glug” of very good extra-virgin olive oil, a few sprigs of chopped rosemary, the juice and grated peel of two tangerines and the juice of ½ lemon and a good grating of black pepper.
Place in a shallow baking pan and roast in a 425-degree oven for 30–40 minutes until tender and beginning to color.
With more carrots, just use more of the flavoring ingredients.
You will need a good grater for thin-skinned tangerines, but after 40 years in the kitchen I finally bought a really good one and highly recommend that every cook do so much sooner than I did. I use a Microplane.
Several of our farmers have indicated that customers are asking how to cook greens, and I am happy as always to answer that question. So I am first going to provide a basic cooking method that I have developed to cut the time it takes to cook greens and thereby preserve more of their intrinsic flavor and crispness.
The following describes a method for preparing and cooking greens; it is not a recipe. You may adapt this to any leafy green vegetable that is grown for its leaves, such as kale, collards, mustard and turnip greens. Beet greens and very young greens of all kinds can usually be sautéed without prior steaming. You should work with at least ½ to 1 pound of greens for two people; they do reduce considerably when cooked. You need to try it yourself to see how much you can eat after preparation.
Greens should be washed well, individually if they are large. Then stack four or five together and cut crosswise into ½-inch strips. Small baby greens can be sliced into slightly wider strips, as they will not be as thick. First place the greens in a deep sauté pan or skillet with a lid with just the water that clings to the leaves after rinsing. Over medium-low heat steam until they wilt, about 5–10 minutes. Then lift the greens from the pan and set aside.
At this point, you are going to prepare the flavoring. I use about 2 tablespoons of finely chopped country ham bits and pieces per each ½ lb of greens. Sauté the bits in the same pan you used to steam the greens, using a small amount of oil or bacon grease. You may add a little onion or garlic too, but as soon as the flavoring ingredients are beginning to color, return the greens to the pan and sauté them for an additional 3–4 minutes to absorb the flavors. You may sauté them longer if you want them to be softer, but I like a little crispness in mine and I like to stop the cooking before they lose too much of their own flavor and consistency.
You may chop and sauté lean bacon if country ham is not available. Wait until the bacon is almost crisp before adding back the greens. Add a little salt if necessary — country ham is very salty itself — and lots of freshly ground pepper and just keep tasting until they are the consistency you prefer.
As promised last week, I am going to write more over the winter about putting to good and healthful use the limited supply of winter vegetables that are available at this time at the local farmers’ markets. Today I’m back with another luscious local dinner recipe that was also healthy, filling and reasonably priced. Nothing like beating you over the head with a wet noodle to get the word out!
Last week at the Gainesville market I stocked up on Lothar Erbe’s expertly carved meats and authentic and original sausages — some of all three. One of the sausages was a German-style bratwurst infused with Dogfish Indian Brown Ale. While browning the sausages in a little bacon grease and oil, I thinly sliced 1/2 an onion, 1/2 a medium fennel bulb and 1/2 a small head of cabbage. I also diced about 1/4 cup of country ham from a package of “bits and pieces” — another one of those indispensable staples in my winter pantry.
When the sausages were done and set aside to drain after about 15 minutes over medium heat, I added the sliced onion and fennel and sauteed those over medium heat for about 10 minutes, then added the country ham and let that cook for about another five minutes and then added the cabbage. Here you will need to lower the heat a little and let the cabbage simmer until it wilts and softens, about 10-15 minutes. Once the cabbage had softened, I sprinkled about 3 tablespoons of flour over it, stirred it in well and cooked it for about 5 minutes, then added 1 1/2 cups of my own chicken stock made from the spare parts of local chickens. This thickened quickly over medium-low heat, so I stirred it constantly, lowered the heat further and let it simmer for about 5 more minutes to blend the flavors.
I seasoned the mixture to taste at this point with salt, lots of pepper and some caraway seed. While all of this was going on, I cooked up about 1/2 package of Cavanna Fettucine that I had broken into smaller pieces before dropping it into the water. Once cooked and drained, I added it to the mixture and tasted once more for seasoning, and it was done. From start to finish, it took me about 45 minutes and I used one package of sausage, 1/2 an onion, 1/2 a fennel bulb, 1/2 a head of cabbage and 1/2 a package of pasta. Total cost: less than $15, and I fed four for dinner. You cannot buy at any restaurant a meal that healthy, that hearty, that delicious or that cheap. Or that fast either.
See you at the market!
Jean
- 4 cups Corn Bread — crumbled (use a cornbread that is not too sweet)
- 4 cups Whole Wheat bread — cut into 1” pieces (you can use the ends of the loaves)
- 3–4 cups of broth (chicken, beef or vegetable)
- 1 cup chopped yellow onion
- 1/2 cup dried cranberries
- 1 cup toasted unsalted pecans
- 1 lb. ground pork, beef, turkey or soy sausage
- 1 t dried sage or 1 T fresh chopped sage
- 1 t dried basil or 1 T fresh chopped basil
- 1 t dried dill or 1 T fresh chopped dill
- 1/2 t paprika
- Salt & pepper to taste
Heat oven to 350 degrees. Sauté onions and sausage until beginning to brown; then add about 1 cup of broth until onions are tender and sausage is cooked. Add 2 more cups of broth and then add cranberries until plump. Add all herbs, spices and salt & pepper.
In the meantime, in a big bowl, mix the bread crumbs with 2/3 cup pecans. Add sausage, onion & broth mixture to bread crumbs & pecans. Mix until well-blended and moist all over; add more broth if needed. Transfer to a 9” x 12” casserole dish, place remaining pecans on top and bake for 20–25 minutes until golden brown on top.
As prepared, serves 10–12 as a side dish, or use it as a stuffing for meat, poultry or winter squash or pumpkin.
Dear Reader,
In spite of many market closings around the area, you still have local shopping opportunities available to you all winter long. We have three year-round markets in Oakton and Gainesville and at Fairfax Corner. And the City of Falls Church sponsors a year-round market also. You can check the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s listings for a full list of markets in your area.
In this area farmers can pick and store many winter vegetables and fall apples throughout the winter, and many of them have also ventured into what we call “value-added products” in the biz, which include pickles and relishes, applesauce and apple and other fruit butters, and even baked goods to extend their seasons and improve their cash flow.
These hearty souls come all winter in just about all weather conditions to bring you their personally grown or produced products. They know it is more convenient for you to buy everything in a nice warm store, but I urge you to consider that it would be even more convenient for them not to have to drive miles and miles to stand out in the cold to make a living. I believe that if we want them to be there with the tomatoes and peaches in the summer, we need also to recognize that they need us in the winter to get them through to the next planting season.
Over the coming cold winter months, when it is difficult to imagine that in this part of the country we can actually eat local when snow is on the ground and frost is on the windowpane, I am going to try to excite and engage your kitchen creativity by reminding you of just how easy it is. And, not coincidentally, to remind you to get out there in the cold and support your farmers and food purveyors who are standing in 10-degree weather to serve you.
Saturday night at my home, I managed to throw together a lovely local meal without really trying; in fact, two hours before we ate, I had no idea how to answer the daily inquiry, “What’s for dinner?” And boy, does it make certain people in my household nervous when I do not know the answer to that question!
I knew what I had on hand — some of which I had bought just that morning at our Oakton market, some of which I had bought days or even weeks before. I had two lovely local pork chops thawing in the refrigerator, and I had quite a variety of local produce available, too. I had freshly shelled red kidney beans from our Mennonite co-op, Heritage Farm and Kitchen, and local onions and carrots.
I had store-bought fennel, which I always have in the refrigerator and which I still have not convinced any of our farmers to grow for us, but I refuse to give up. And I had canned tomatoes — which were my favorite Cento brand, but I could have bought fresh tomatoes that morning and used them if I had been planning ahead.
So I went to work. I ended up making red beans and rice very much like this recipe, but this is a dish that may very well be different in construction and taste every time you make it — and that’s fine with me and my family. My husband grilled the two pork chops, and we sliced them thinly in order to serve the pork as an accompaniment to the beans and rice to all four of us at the table.
I did also use a non-local product that I have recently discovered that gave the “rice” part of the recipe an extra nutritional boost and I am happy to recommend it to you: Rice Select Whole Grain Royal Blend Texmati brown rice and wild rice with wheat and rye berries. This great product is certainly pricier than white or even plain brown rice, but it goes further because it is more complex and filling. And if you cook more than you need for one meal, it keeps long enough to end up as part of a quick stir-fry later in the week.
For dessert we had a heritage recipe apple cake made by Marty Fetters, wife of Dave Fetters, who brings fruit and fruit products to both our Oakton and Gainesville winter markets. I used just one huge slice for four of us and two small cups of Trickling Springs ice cream divided four ways to serve with it, and we were all feelin’ fat and happy after that.
The really great ending here is that I still have lots of good local meat and produce for tomorrow night — and you can be so lucky too.
See you at the market!
I never make red beans and rice the same way; I don’t even make the rice the same way twice in a row! This recipe can stand alone as a vegetarian dish without the country ham or can be expanded and enhanced with some great local sausage — preferably spicy.
These ingredient amounts are fluid; use what you have on hand or decide how much of a vegetable base you want for the beans and go with it! When I end up with more veggies than I want, I just save some to use the next time I make tomato sauce or soup.
Ingredients:
- ½ pound red beans — red kidney or Mexican red beans, soaked overnight or by the quick-soak method and cooked till nicely done. (I add about 2 teaspoons of salt to the pot about 15 minutes before they are done). Total cooking time can be anywhere from 45 minutes to an hour. If you are using fresh beans, they do not need to be soaked and will be cooked within 30 minutes. Whatever you use, start testing for doneness after about 25 minutes.
- 1 medium onion, chopped
- 1 small fennel bulb, chopped
- 1 medium carrot, chopped
- 3 garlic cloves, minced
- 2 ounces of country ham from a package of country ham pieces, chopped
- 28-ounce can of good-quality whole peeled tomatoes
- spices (see below)
Sauté the first three ingredients in about 2 tablespoons of good olive oil for 5-10 minutes until beginning to color, then add the garlic and country ham and sauté the mixture for another five minutes. Squish and add the tomatoes along with their juices and cook over medium heat for about 15 minutes.
At this point add the spices you wish to use. I add about 2 teaspoons of dried basil, 1 teaspoon of dried oregano, 1 tablespoon of a favorite chili powder (I included some smoked chili powder in mine) and about 2 teaspoons of cumin. I also like to add some chopped fresh Italian parsley. After 15 minutes, add the beans to the mix and cook for another 15 minutes. Taste for seasoning, add more to taste and cook another 5-10 minutes.
Serve with or without sausages over white or brown rice. Serves 4-6 as a main course.
Photo by WordRidden
Those of you who have been reading these newsletters for several years now know that I am an inveterate clipper of newspaper and magazine articles, which I eventually use to inform my writing or to give or send to others who might be interested in them. In order to make room for new files, I have been clearing out old ones, and this past weekend I went through a box of clippings from the late ’90s and early 2000s.
Boy is it amazing to see what was on our minds 10 years ago — especially since they were most often the same things that are on our minds now. The concerns seem to be the same; only the science has propelled the discussion in interesting directions, often leaving us only slightly ahead of where we were.
One article of interest that was not dated but quoted from a study done in 1999 was printed in the Wall Street Journal with the headline “Cafeteria Food Fight.” It reported that school districts were moving toward hosting fast-food vendors and bringing vending machines into their school cafeterias because of the money it brought in.
A companion article titled “Schools Teach Kids to Give Peas a Chance” focused on programs that were teaching cooking and nutrition in school to help students learn on their own how to eat healthier.
It advised that “Making lunch part of the schools’ educational mission, instead of an ancillary service, could help remove the economic pressures that drive lunch programs to serve pizza and french fries.” In East Harlem, students were even visiting local farms, and the parents were given half-shares in CSAs for their volunteer time with a program called Cook Shop.
Then there was the article from Modern Maturity, November 1996, about two “recent” scientific discoveries that linked nutrition and overall health. “One is that many chronic degenerative diseases are largely caused or influenced by free radicals that are produced by tobacco smoke and other pollutants, as well as by normal body processes. The other factor giving nutrition a boost is that scientists now better understand how DNA becomes damaged and subsequently creates cancer cells.”
The study posited that “nutritional deficiencies are to blame for much of the damage.” The article then ends with recommendations for healthier eating — all of which except one are supported by more modern research.
We certainly have moved away from fast food in our school cafeterias but have not made many inroads when it comes to education about nutrition in the classroom. It seems to have taken way too long in the face of incredibly increasing childhood obesity statistics to introduce nutrition into the classroom.
Just think of the money we would have saved already in 10 years on health care if we had worked harder then ever to stabilize the rate. Instead, in 2208, 18 percent of children ages six to 11 were overweight, up from 13 percent in 1999. And while the science is now instructing us to get our nutrition from food rather than supplements, we are less healthy than we were when that Modern Maturity article was written.
How hard can it be to change the lunches served in our cafeterias? And how expensive can it be to introduce some basic instruction in nutrition and eating healthy at home into our classroom curricula? Whatever the cost in your time and mine — and in our tax money — would surely be worth every dime. And what an investment it would be in the collective personal and public health of our population.
My mother always said that we live and learn — I’m beginning to wonder about that. Let me know what you think.
Photo by NS Newsflash
