Here are some photos from the last few weeks. Corn and tomatoes have arrived and the farmer's market has okra! I fried some up last weekend -no pictures of that event but it doesn't get any better then fresh fried okra with tomatoes and cucumber on the side.
Steak Fajitas with grilled corn and tomato radish salad
Grilled meat
Grilled corn
Produce truck and blue skies
Celan with a market taco
Pickling cucumbers
Okra
Vine Tomatoes
We walked over to the Alemany Farmer's Market on Saturday wanting to get some cucumbers. That's all I really wanted. One farmer has the sweetest Japanese cucumbers this time of year. I take one to work to eat with my lunch everyday despite it being slightly unwieldy to be carrying a cylindrical boomerang in my lunch bag. So I purchased a bag bursting full of beautiful cucumbers ,but I couldn't stop there. The mushroom vendor had morel mushrooms for $5… and shelling peas. I never saw them selling anything but mushrooms before but I'm not complaining.
Peas and Morels
Beautiful Morels
This
is the easiest thing to make and it takes no time at all. I don’t think it is
cooking. It is just applying a little heat to fresh produce. Satisfying on a
summer night with a little bread, butter, cheese and slices of cucumber and
tomato on the side.
Peas and
Morels
• shelling peas
• morel mushrooms
•
pancetta
•
salt and pepper
Shell your peas (I had a two pound bag)
and steam them. This doesn't take long at all with fresh peas. Don't let them
get mushy with overcooking. Clean and slice the morels. I used a little
pancetta because pork is where it's at and it was in the refrigerator. (The
peas and morels are so fresh that they would be fine on their own) Crisp the
pancetta, remove from the skillet and pour off excess fat. Add butter to the
hot skillet and sauté the morels until they begin to soften. Pour in the peas
and throw in the pancetta. Stir it around, add salt and pepper and it's done.
Tomato
Bread and Cheese
Spring Hill Butter
Lemon Quark and Strawberries
We bought
the above items from the Spring Hill Jersey Cheese vendor. We recently
discovered their butter, having previously only purchased cheese curds. BUY THE
BUTTER! And if you are smart you will also get a container of the Lemon Quark
and have it smeared on strawberries for dessert. Quark. Quark. Quark. Odd word
isn't it? I like it.
Boeuf Bourguignon- (I know about the flash problem- I was too lazy to search for the flash manual so this is what I was left with!)
This was another damn good, buttery, bacony, melt in your mouth delicious recipe from The French Chef Cookbook. If you have four hours to spend cooking and you have some beef stew meat, a few slabs of bacon and a bottle of red wine on hand, you should give this a whirl. I made this from the recipe on page 272 of the French Chef, mixed with the recipe on page 315 of Mastering the Art of French Cooking. (P. is paging through MAFC right now and had the brilliant and stunningly original idea that we should cook every recipe in the book in one year and call the blog "Marla and Priscilla and Julia"!) I cut the recipe in half, although I could have eaten leftovers a few more days, no problem. Jason cooked it the day after I did and the two of them ate the whole recipe in one or two meals. "Boys eat more than girls" is how he explained it when I was in awe at the amount they consumed. (No idea how to fix this font fuck up, if you are wondering why it is double spaced)
Vegetables
I woke up early on the Sunday I cooked this and decided to venture out to the Civic Center Farmer's Market, which I haven't been to in a very long time. I picked up the first asparagus of the season for $2 a bunch and that became the green vegetable side for the beef. This is the time of year where the farmer's markets are looking fairly barren, with apples, oranges, greens and not a whole lot else. This past weekend at the Alemany Market, I saw more asparagus, a few cucumbers and even strawberries! Spring is on it's way.
Bacon and Beef
I changed up the recipe somewhat in that I didn't drain any of the fat because I found that there wasn't that much to drain. It never looked greasy to me and it didn't taste it either. I did not cook the onions and mushrooms separately- I just cooked everything together in the one pot. When I make this again, I'll add more wine and beef broth because I lost a little too much of my gravy. I did not have to take out the meat and vegetables and cook the sauce down, although I guess if I would have followed the recipe properly, I might have needed to. I just added a hunk of butter at the end and swirled it all up.
For the potatoes- clean, scrub, boil in salted water until tender, drain, then add much butter and sea salt. I would have sprinkled parsley over them if I'd had some (or rather if I had found the parsley in the crisper drawer) so instead I used a bit of chopped rosemary.
The asparagus was just put in the hot oven with olive oil and sea salt until it started to sizzle.
In other news...
Had this Huarache from La Palma weekend before last, and my goodness was it good. Also had a pupusa, rice and beans and cracklings with a coca cola to wash it all down. And I wonder why nothing fits quite right anymore...
Seeds!
Started some seeds and bought a few plants for the back stairs. I've been spending my evenings happily poring over container gardening books. There is so much to learn! So far my seedlings are looking a bit leggy and I hope it's just an awkward stage they are going through. The hailstorm today cannot be good for the plants I have outside and I will have to keep my fingers crossed. I tried to scoop out all the hail from the containers the best I could. Crazy weather- two hailstorms, then sunshine and now rain. All within the last two hours.
And the end of this week is the start of vacation. Whoopee! More than ready to have a break!
We ate chicken and sausage rice and gravy (see above), steak rice and gravy, gumbo with rice, the one tomato soup my mom made was eaten with rice, smothered pork chops and cabbage over rice, any bbq had a side of rice dressing, boudin is made with rice, crawfish ettouffee over rice, catfish court bouillon over rice, jambalaya (you guessed it, made with rice)... a culture of rice, get the idea?
I think some of the best rice comes from Louisiana. I may have to smuggle some home next trip, which is in less than one month! For this recipe I used the organic enriched rice from Whole Foods... I know yupville, but the rice is pretty good. We were getting the rice from Casa Lucas for many years but the texture is wrong in that it tends to get extremely soft and the grains lose their integrity.
Ideally you want to use a whole cut up chicken for this recipe because the bones and the skin of the chicken give the dish flavor. I only had some skinless, boneless thighs in the freezer so that is what I used. I never had this red cabbage and carrot side growing up, we always had smothered pork chops with cabbage (see above list), but I had some red cabbage and carrots on hand, so a side dish they became.
Cabbage and Carrots
This is the easiest thing ever. Saute the onions in oil until they begin to brown. Stir in the carrots and mix about, stirring infrequently for 5 minutes. Add in the cabbage and thyme. Cook this over med/low heat until veggies are soft. The cabbage should give off a fair amount of water but if it doesn't and things look dry in the pot, add water to braise/smother the vegetables. Add seasonings to taste at the end of the cooking time. Remove thyme stems before serving.
Next, make some rice according to the directions on the bag!
Chicken, Sausage Rice and Gravy
Heat about a teaspoon of oil and a bit of bacon grease (for flavor!) in a heavy bottomed pan. Brown the chicken pieces. Be careful if the chicken is in anyway wet, there will be grease flying. Don't be too quick to turn the pieces, let them crisp a bit. You can sprinkle a light dusting of flour over the chicken at this point if you like. Do not over crowd the chicken, brown it in batches. When all the chicken is browned, season with salt and Tony's, throw in your onions and sausage and stir away, scraping up any yummy chicken bits from the bottom of the pan. At this point add about a half inch of water, stir and cover. Cook on a low to medium heat until chicken is cooked through, adding water when necessary and also stirring in flour towards the end of the cooking to make the gravy. Sprinkle with parsley and serve over rice.
This is some of the jalapeno vinegar I made awhile back. Feel free to put a little of this over everything.
And in other news... Mardi Gras, P.'s homemade King Cake, downhill skiing at Tahoe (first time ever-we rocked the baby slope), Erykah Badu concert in Oakland with Dave Chappelle as the MC! (resulting in one of those "I promise not to drink again" hangovers the next day), walking in McLaren park with wild flowers and shaggy mane mushrooms abounding, burger and beer at the Ramp on a sunny Saturday, buying seeds and making plans for a summer balcony garden.
Before I made this soup, I was not a fan of Borscht. You could almost say I had a distinctly unfavorable opinion of it, like the word borscht made me feel a belly ache. I had only eaten it once before and it was not a pleasurable experience. But... I had all the ingredients and a recipe so I figured I should give it a go. It is also dead simple to make. The fact that it is was a gorgeous, sunny, summer-like day didn't contribute to a borscht weather feeling, but that was fine, at least I had some natural light for the photos. And if you thought of borscht as a repugnant, innard-like mess of pink-tinged ingredients, toss those thoughts aside and open yourself up to the wonders of Borscht!
These are the basic raw ingredients you will need (I will actually give a recipe for this one). I did not use this much salt, pepper and paprika. I did use all of the above vegetables along with garlic and some tomato sauce.
Red Cabbage- ahh pretty. I'm not a huge fan of red cabbage but it is a beautiful vegetable.
This is what we ate with our soup. No worries, we did not consume this much butter.
I have been checking out cookbooks from the library like a madwoman. I have a few Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall books scattered about along with an Andrea Nguyen and The Whole Beast by Fergus Henderson. After paying a very big library fine, the guy behind the counter smiled and said about The River Cottage Cookbook, "other people want this one, so try to bring it back." On time, I suppose he meant, since I always bring them back- I'm just so damn late about it. I've also been watching No Reservations on Netflix with a passion that I haven't experienced since my marathons of Dexter viewing.
This recipe is adapted from The River Cottage Meat Book by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall.
Ingredients
Scrub and peel the vegetables. I decided to leave the skin on the potatoes because it would have been a hassle to peel them. Cut the onion in half, then into slices. Chop the garlic. I cut the beets and potatoes and cabbage into chunks and I cut the carrots into coins.
Since I have been storing pork fat in the refrigerator like nobody's business, I used a good spoonful in the soup pot and then threw in the onions and garlic and let them soften over low heat. Add four to six cups of water along with all the other ingredients except the spices and sour cream. Bring to a boil and cook for an hour to an hour and a half. You may want to add the cabbage later than all the other vegetables if you want it to maintain texture. Once the beets are soft, add in about 1 teaspoon of kosher salt, several pinches of pepper and 1/2 to 1 tablespoon of paprika, taste, adjust the seasoning and you are done. Serve it with a spoonful of sour cream on top, some bread on the side and enjoy!
Oh, and... WHO DAT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I decided it was time to cook some lima beans and there were collard greens calling to me and then fried chicken seemed to be the only thing that would work. The boss was off to France for the holidays so it was work work work for me- like on Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve and I was feeling run down with the end of the year. I think I cooked this a few days after Christmas. We purchased some Rancho Gordo www.RanchoGordo.com Christmas Limas from the market a few weekends ago and if you can't tell from the above picture they looked and tasted a lot more like red beans than limas once cooked.
Beautiful Beans
Once the beans were cooking I washed and cleaned the collards, de-spined them and chopped the leaves. I peeled and chopped onion and garlic and sauteed them in olive oil until they began to brown. Threw in the chopped collards and stirred while adding beer when necessary (any beer will do, I'm sure I was drinking Miller High Life) to prevent the greens from drying out. I cooked the greens down for a good while and tossed in a little brown sugar as well.
Chicken Wings
Next it was time to fry. Wash and pat dry the chicken. Dip first in a seasoned batter of egg then into seasoned flour. Fry until brown and crispy, which for chicken on the bone takes a remarkably long time. Salt after frying.
I did make black-eyed peas and greens on New Year's day. No pictures because the weather was gray outside and Peter was over for a visit. Hooray! P. and Peter ate Farolito and I had the good luck beans and greens. We had a good visit with Peter and he may have eaten a quesadilla everyday but I don't want to presume anything since I had to work some of the time.
And... we finally got to meet Desmond, Heidi and Tony's new little bundle of joy.
Another rainy day at the beginning of what I hope is not a completely rainy week. I had a bumpy start to last week with locking my keys in the car on Sunday. Monday my co-worker happened to look out the window and we saw a man walk up to my parked car and scratch it. Three of us have had our vehicles scratched and this was the fifth or sixth time mine was scratched. This gentleman lives in a yellow house behind our parking lot and thinks that where we park "blocks" his driveway, even though it clearly does not. I ran through the office like a madwoman yelling call the police. I flew down the stairs and out the back door and paused at my car to observe the fresh scratches with the paint flecks still visible. I spotted the man and screamed stop, stop, I saw what you did! He turned around with fright in his eyes when I rushed into his vision and promptly fell over. While I was talking to the police, a guy from a nearby restaurant came by and said his car had been scratched when it was parked by the yellow house and so had three of his co-workers. Long story short the DA will probably not press charges because of the man's age (he is way old enough to know better) and he suffered a dislocated shoulder from his fall. Then Tuesday I stupidly, yes very stupidly gave my credit card information to god knows who and had to cancel everything. It would take too long to explain why I fell for this particular scam at that particular moment, but I did. The week seemed to even out after that and I was happy when the weekend rolled around.
Yesterday I made a rainy day asian style soup with bok choy, ground pork and udon noodles. I had half a pound of the ground pork left and I've found that it starts to not look "right" after a few days in the refrigerator so I wanted to use it up. I also had a spaghetti squash that was getting spots so it was time to cook that as well. I bought a stalk of Brussel sprouts at the store this morning thought they would work as a side.
Brussels
I love these green nuggets. I didn't always cook them so well though. They are easy to f*ck up in a way. I think they need a good amount of olive oil, a hot pan and a heavy hand with the salt. Before I really knew how to cook them, I made them for my friend Peter when we were both living in New York. I was twenty one and Peter was about twenty three. He would have me over for supper many nights and it was always pasta with sauce and a bottle or two of wine. So I wanted to return the favor and I made him Brussel sprouts and who knows what else because I was a vegetarian at the time. Maybe some processed soy product. He took one bite of my Brussel sprouts and like the gentleman he is, kindly asked me to pass the salad dressing. He drowned those babies until there wasn't a hint of green left.
Trim the base of the sprouts and then cut in half, quarters for the very large one. Rinse well and then put into a hot cast iron skillet with olive oil. Stir them up in the oil and let them brown. I like mine dark and crispy. Add salt to taste.
Done
Spaghetti Squash
Sharpen your knife before you begin. I didn't and things almost didn't work out so well. Slice the squash in half and remove all seeds and pulp. Put in a pot of boiling water and cover for 20 to 30 minutes. I'm not sure how long I cooked this one, I just kept poking it with a fork until it felt tender enough. Once they are done, take a fork and pull and scrape the pulp out.
Pork
Frying bacon
Pork Ragout
Cut the bacon into small strips and fry until crisp. Remove from pan, pour out the fat leaving about a tablespoon. Put in the andouille and cook until well browned. Remove from heat and add in the onions. Cook several minutes, stirring frequently and add the garlic. Stir a few times and crumble in the pork. Let the pork get cooked through and starting to brown, then add the can of tomato sauce and salt, pepper and oregano. Let it cook for about 10 minutes on low, watching and stirring.
Make mound of spaghetti squash, top with the ragout, garnish with cheese of your choice and parsley.
This was a warming soup that I cooked up last Sunday. It was an unusually cold day that ended in a hailstorm easing off into a rain that has not let up all week. We went early to the Alameda Antique Faire http://www.antiquesbybay.com/ and what an adventure that was. Had to make two trips there and back for all the goodies we bought (like a glass front cabinet, a red leather rocker with footstool, a chest of drawers with side table, prints of birds, a frickin' moose lamp, two candlesticks, a red glass swag lamp and a "lovely" R-rated painting of a naked man that was a steal for 20 bucks). This is the first time I have spent money on furnishings for this apartment in the almost 10 years I have lived here. When I told my mom that I had broken down and bought furniture I could hear the emotion in her voice when she told me how proud of me she was.
When we came back to the city the first time, we stopped at the ATM because our money didn't last and there were many more items to purchase. It was about noon by this time and we had been at it since 6:30 a.m. so I may have been getting discombobulated by the excitement. P. got out of the car, I turned on the flashers, since I was double parked, kept the keys in the ignition, promptly locked the door and stepped out. Why I thought that I needed to lock the door when I was going 10 feet away I do not know. I didn't even notice until I had maxed out my ATM withdrawal limits for the day and then walked back to the car and tried to open it. What a jackass! Couldn't believe what I had done. I stared slack-jawed at the keys in the ignition and we both repeatedly yanked at the door handles- all of them- in the vain hope that one would miraculously open. No such luck. And my cell phone was in the car and P. didn't have a phone or keys.
She walked across the street to "Sammy's" the corner store run by a Mr. and Mrs. Sammy, neither of whom is named Sammy. P. has a special relationship with them as she is a near daily customer for beer and whiskey. Mrs. Sammy ignores me when I go in but she bursts into a huge smile when she sees P. and they have long conversations, mostly about cats. Customers in line will put down whatever item they had hoped to purchase and leave when those two get to chatting. Anyway, she used the phone only to find out that our AAA coverage had expired and it would take 48 hours to renew it, so that was no good. By this time I had gone over to see how things were working out and when P. hung up the phone (which from the looks of it must have had a rotary dial) she told Mr. Sammy the situation he pulled out from behind the counter a wire hanger that had been straightened with a small hook at the end. He said he keeps it for the customers. We raced to the car filled with hope and it was still running happily, blasting heat into it's empty interior. P. got busy and wedged that wire thing in the window and had the door unlocked in less than two minutes. I was in awe! She nonchalantly said it's because she's often given the job of adjusting the laparoscopic camera when she is on surgery so it was a similar skill. Perfect!
Several hours later we were struggling to get the red chair up the stairs when the landlord's boyfriend offered to help. I gave up my position and he hauled the chair over his shoulders and made a quick job of descending the stairs, as we all yelled that we were trying to get it into the house not out of it. All the while, a local man pushing a shopping cart stopped to call out advice on how to get the chair to fit through the door. We unloaded the last load and were dry inside when the hail started. It was perfect weather for a soup. The escarole had been languishing and my repertoire of cooking escarole is soup soup and soup. So soup it was.
Soup ingredients
Escarole
Cooking the veggies before adding stock
Escarole Soup Recipe
Don't be afraid- it is one of the mildest greens and has a silky texture when cooked
Scrub and chop all the veggies. Put the pancetta in the soup pot and let it brown and release the fat. Take it out and set aside. Add the onions on low to medium heat and cook until translucent. Add the carrots, potatoes, bay leaves, salt and pepper and stir around a bit so that everything shines. Next add in four cups of water and I threw a chicken bouillon cube because I am lazy like that. If you have homemade stock, go for it. I probably added several more cups of water during the cooking process. Turn up the heat and when the potatoes start to soften start putting in the escarole. This will have to been done in batches unless you have a gigantic pot. Cook for five to ten minutes and adjust the seasonings. I then tossed in a mound of chopped parsley, stirred it in and soup was ready.
I bought a baguette when I got the discount Romano so I cut a few pieces, slathered them with butter, sprinkled on some garlic powder, toasted it and instant garlic bread. Shred the cheese over the bowls of soup and top with pancetta.
What a beautiful weekend that was! Now it's sweater weather, finally. We were getting a glut of greens from the box and I thought Saturday morning when I woke up to rain it would be a perfect day for gumbo des herbes. But after getting back into bed and reading for a few hours, the sun was out and it was gorgeous. So no more gumbo weather and I had to go for a bike ride. A very long bike ride that went through Golden Gate park, along Ocean Beach (where there were so many lovely surfers it was unreal), over and around Lake Merced and back home. My knees still feel it. I didn't do any cooking after that, just a bowl of Cheerios and a hot bath.
So yesterday I still needed to use the greens and I decided on creamed greens. Already had the greens and some roasting vegetables and took a walk to Whole Foods to get two small sirloin petit cut steaks (because they were the cheapest)- then I was ready. All the veggies come from Terra Firma Farm.
Greens
Some of the greens I used up: Red Russian Kale, Dino Kale, Spinach and Beet Greens. They put off a bit of a stink when being blanched and you would have thought I was cooking mustard greens. My dad "loved" to cook the mustard greens he grew in the garden and my mom would grumble and light scented candles throughout the entire house as the greens cooked away. None of us ate them except him. They were pretty gnarly.
Root veggies- all the potatoes are big fingerlings except the larger one on the far left, which is the sweet potato.
I always get anxious about what to do with all the sweet potatoes we get. I'm picky about those things. Last year, we ate a few but the most exciting thing I did was put one in a large mason jar of water and watch it sprout leaves. They are easy and fun to grow this way, although I had to do battle with aphids, who adore the tender leaves. This year I am determined to get creative with them (the sweet potatoes, not the aphids) and that means I hope to learn to cook them instead of just sprouting them.
Beets and Watermelon Radishes for salad
Peeled Watermelon Radishes- see where they get their name!
Sirloin steak petit cut
I'll start in the order that things need to be done. First, I like to wash all the veggies and scrub and peel whatever needs it. The next thing would be the roasted vegetables and beets, which take the longest to cook.
Roasted beets for the salad: scrub all the dirt off of them, remove the greens if there are any, cuddle them up into a nice packet of foil, and bake at 450 degrees for about one hour.
For the roasting vegetables- in this case I had fingerling potatoes, several carrots and one sweet potato. You can adjust these, remove what you don't like or add more of what you do like. The carrot and sweet potato caramelize with roasting in a pretty nice way. Cut all vegetables into similarly sized chunks. Mix in a bowl with vegetable oil (olive oil is fine but doesn't crisp the vegetables in the same way), salt and I use Tony's. Spread on a baking tray and bake for about 40 minutes turning once.
While everything is roasting, wash the greens and put a large pot of salted water on to boil. At this point I peeled and cut the watermelon radishes I was using for the salad and also washed two heads of baby salad greens- one was red leaf lettuce and one red oak lettuce.
Creamed Greens
Cook the greens in the boiling water until they have wilted. I put the spinach in last because it is the most delicate. If you are only cooking with spinach it will take no longer than 5 minutes if that long. The hardier greens require a longer cooking time.
Once the greens are done, drain in a colander, press out all excess water and cut into ribbons. Put the heavy cream in a small pot to boil. Do not forget about it! It will quickly, almost magically, boil over and make a mess. Heat the butter in a heavy bottomed pot (I used one of my Magnalite pots, of course), add the shallots and garlic and saute until translucent. Next, add in the flour, mix and cook for about one minute.
Add the milk and whisk or stir it all together. Once it has thickened a bit, add the heavy cream, both cheeses, salt, pepper and a few pinches of nutmeg. I don't usually measure the salt and pepper I put into food, just put a generous sprinkling of salt and pepper and I added a little Tony's as well. Cook down briefly and then add all the greens and mix and continue cooking to the appropriate consistency, adding small amounts of milk if necessary.
Pan-Grilled Steaks
Rub the steaks with a good amount of salt and pepper and a bit of olive oil. Let them sit out for about 20 minutes. Then P. melted butter in the cast iron pan set on a very high heat and browned both sides of the steaks. Once cooked, she plated them and tented them with foil and let them sit for about 5 minutes.
By this time the roasted veggies and beets should be removed from the oven. Peel the beets and cut into chunks. Add salt, pepper and olive oil. Mix the beets in a large bowl with the salad greens and radishes. Serve with your dressing of choice.
Roasted beet and watermelon radish salad
Plated (with a half steak)
Yum- apple pie in a jar for dessert!
Pie in a jar [haiku]
by P.
Apples warmed by spice
Mom's love cradled in your hand
Joy nestled in glass
To make these cute packets of happiness...
If you want to know more about these, and to give credit where it is due...here's one of a few sites, but it's the one I saw first. http://www.notmartha.org/tomake/piesbakedintinyjars/
Thank you for reading about my pies. -P.
