The Up-Side of Cold, Grey Days

It was literally 70 degrees here yesterday, and sunny.  Today it's somewhere around 35 and dropping, uniformly grey and there's a dusting of snow that's falling but not sticking.  There are some very acceptable ways of dealing with the "Ithaca grays", and they'll last a person for just about, almost, not-quite-barely the whole winter.  That little extra left hanging out is what Mexico, Savannah and Miami are for.
For me, a wood stove is crucial.  Firstly, wood, as they say, warms thrice: the cutting, the stacking and the burning.  Secondly, I am good with layering up and sweaters, but I need a place to go in my house where I can get really hot.  Don't move cuz your jeans will burn your shins hot.  And it's so cozy, lending itself to occasional "i live in Finland, we watch the northern lights while enjoying ice cold after-sauna vodkas" fantasies.

And then there's the other source of heat, the oven.  I recently told GJ, (who attends to our appliances when the details are out of our league), that we use our oven daily, so hang the expense, let's fix everything that's on it's way out!  And it turns out, I was telling the truth (I wasn't quite sure if I was exaggerating at the time).  It warms up the kitchen,and makes everything smell good.  No shame in that game.

There are other things, like down comforters, ice skating, Friday Night Lights, and, you know, other stuff.  I plug ice skating because I've noticed that it's impossible not to start smiling and feeling cheery while doing it, and it can be done regardless of whether it snows.

Winter food is glorious for nearly the whole winter (again, what the sunny south is good for, a ripe tomato or two in February).  The wonderful construction crew I make lunch for weekly is a perfect crowd of sitting ducks on which to practice recipes.  Today's lunch was warm and wonderful to make, and watching them eat it was a pretty good time too.

Le Menu:
- Roasted Turnip Galette
- Hard-Cider Braised Hot Dogs from The Piggery
- Winter Greens w. Roasted Mushrooms and Fennel and Roasted Garlic vinaigrette

Roasted Turnip Galette

The galette was made using the Tartine galettle dough recipe and an adaptation of a turnip pie recipe from a website called Medieval Cookery.  The turnips were cut into thick slices, covered and baked until soft.  When cool, I sliced them thin, and tossed them with plenty of black pepper, salt and cinnamon, and a little maple syrup.  Galette dough is not as difficult to make as it makes itself out to be, and it's bakes into such a buttery, golden thing.  So satisfying.

I went to The Piggery this morning with sausages on my mind, but they weren't out for the day yet.  Instead I bought their hot dogs, put them in a baking pan with some hard cider, covered them and baked for awhile.  They are smoked, so really only need heating.  Delicious, required no attention, better to eat than boiled dogs, and no smoke from frying.  Win-win.

Hard-Cider Braised Pig Dogs

For the salad I used a bag of The Good Life Farm's winter greens, tossed in a roasted garlic vinaigrette.  Their greens mix has baby bok choy, tat soi, mizuna, spinach and mustards.  Over the top I put  roasted mushrooms and fennel, hot from the oven. Winter greens can take a little wilting, and I like asking them to do it.

Winter Greens w. roasted mushrooms and fennel and roasted garlic vinaigrette

Followed by an amazing espresso drink from The Shop, all was well with the cold and grey of Ithaca, N.Y., thanks to the producers and farmers, and coffee shop owners/roasters we are blessed to live near.  Oh, and I like my friends too.  They're fun.  Thanks guys.

Photo from The Shops facebook page.  (I drank mine ).

On Being A Grown-Up

Oh, I couldn't WAIT to be a grown-up.  My mom says I cried for the entire six months before I learned to crawl.  I'm a mom, I feel for her: a new mom, at home in a trailer with a screaming mad-as-hell baby (who was sooo cute when she was asleep) in Upstate New York - as in right next to Canada, not Poughkeepsie - for an entire winter.  Rough.  I' like to say I took it easy on her after that, and I did for a few elementary school years, but come 15, I was at it again.  I needed, NEEDED, to be in charge of my own experience.  I needed to have the say, the bottom line.  I think I was pretty good at accepting the fall-out, but I did get myself in pretty deep: I needed rescuing more than once.  Thankfully, my mom is of the Buddhist persuasion, and believes that she has as much to do with choosing me as I did in choosing her.

As all of us fortunate to have lived long enough to rack up traffic violations, student loans, and off-spring that rise at god forsaken hours not to go to bed again until waaay past the time any adult wants to talk to them know, you don't actually "get to do whatever you want" when you're a grown up.  

You DO get to make choices that decide for you what you have to do, though, and that's powerful.  I gave birth to this bundle of joy, felt more deeply about someone than ever, ever, before, and .. yes, I have to get up when the small boy gets up.  Goes to follow.  [Well, I could not get up.  But then maybe he'd climb on the kitchen counter and paint himself with banana and drink the bottle of wine I forgot to cork before going to bed, get drunk and fall off the counter and go unconscious and I might not wake up right away because it's so nice and quiet and when I do....this is what happens to your brain when you're a parent.  So your heart lurches, and you get up.  Because you love the little eff-er and you love your adult freedom, (no doubt someone would take it away if the above situation went down) and you have a certain idea of yourself as a certain sort of person.  Maybe more the 'watch Dora on the couch, with coffee and eyes half-closed person'. ]

I also get to make up rules for myself, and change them when I want.  I have a rule born out of a belief and personal challenge: we can happily eat from our very own food-shed here in the Finger Lakes.    Sadly, Barbara Kingsolver beat me to the book royalties - if you haven't read her book about her family eating totally locally for a year in North Carolina (?), then do.  It's great.  I know this isn't a NEW idea, but it isn't a very practiced one.  My family practices it - with exceptions, that are mine, and I make up the rules about it. It's great fun, and I get to do it because I'm an adult.

Stuffing the quartered lemon w. salt

We only eat local meat, except when we order chicken wings delivered.

We only eat local flour and grains, except for White Lily flour and white rice.
We only eat locally in season or preserved fruit, except lemons and limes all year long, and oranges when they're in season in Florida, and bananas in the winter.  Avocados if they're real good.  Not that the oranges we eat come from Florida.  See how it is being an adult?  The rules don't have to make sense even!
Only in season veg.  And that pretty much doesn't change.
Local milk.  Sometimes local yogurt.  The 'house cheese' is from who knows where (Cabot?).
Mussels...seaweed.  Olive oil.  Cheddar Bunnies.  Ooof.

Anywho, I' like to have a cafe someday soon where we serve only regionally grown/harvested/produced food.  I'm getting my practice with 42 North 76 West (http://www.facebook.com/42N76W?fref=ts).  It's fun.  I haven't even been preachy yet.  Just fun and yummy.

Preserved Lemons:
4 organic lemons, cut into 1/4's, but still attached at the stem end.
Pack w. kosher or coarse sea salt.
Put them in a quart jar and put the lid on.  Leave out for a day.
Juice 4 lemons, add juice to the jar, cover and put in a cool, dark place (not fridge).
Ready in about 2 weeks.
To use scrape out the meat of the lemon, rinse the peel and use.  Salads, rice dishes, pizzas, omelets...

Tools of the lemon-preserving trade. 

And while we're preserving, a venison back strap cured into Bresaola.  Recipe from Hugh Fearnley-Whitingstall.  Google him for all the deets.
Salt and air curing is perfect for tougher, leaner cuts.  We trimmed the back strap of all it's tendon-y gristle.  Then mixed the marinade (below) which is salt, herbs, garlic and then add a bottle of red wine.  The idea is to dry out the meat.

Coarse Seas salt, rosemary, chili flakes, garlic, cloves, bay leaves, black pepper.  Add red wine.  

We'll turn it in the marinade a couple of times a day for 4 days, and then hang it covered in muslin, in a cool, dry, airy place.  After 10 days it will be dry and hard.  We'll trim it and slice it real, real thin, and it'll be amazing.  Like prosciutto, but the beef/venison version.

Venison in marinade.

  

Cures What Ails You

It's quite important to have a few things filed under the 'cures what ails you' tab. A running list:
- Hot toddies (my moms recipe to come)
- Late night bike rides
- Night swims
- Candy and a good book in bed (starting at 7 p.m.)
- Thai food delivered
- Soup

Here's a soup that exactly fits the bill:
Start with a good strong beef stock:
 - beef bones, gristle, trimmings, anything that you trim off the other stuff, in a big pot of cold water.  Add onions,peeled and halved, leeks, whole cloves of garlic, including the stems (peels ok, )a golf-ball sized piece of ginger cut into slices, black pepper corns....
- Bring to a boil, skim off scum as it boils for just a few minutes, then turn it down.  A good stock should boil just below the surface, the bubbles never breaking, the steam just visibly rising.  After it boils and you turn it down, it will be very responsive (on a gas stove).  Play with it, you'll find the right temperature.
- Let it simmer for hours, at least three, up to seven.
- Strain through a colander lined with cheesecloth.  Put in the fridge once it's cooled.

To make the soup from here takes just a few minutes.  You can add what ever you'd like, really, but here's what I did most recently.
I had eye-of-round steaks, and sliced one as thinly as possible.

Heat the broth slowly, to just under a boil.  Add thinly sliced leeks and sliced fresh shiitakes.  The goal is for everything in the soup to be fresh as possible, not over cooked and mushy at all.  Add a splash of fish sauce and a splash of tamari to the broth.  

While the broth is heating, boil water for noodles.  I love the Chinese style wheat noodles for their silkiness.  Soba noodles work, as do others you might have around.  

When the noodles are cooked, drained and rinsed, put them in the bottom of the bowls, one for each serving of soup.  Add a pile of winter greens on top.  I used baby tat soi and torn leaves of komatsuna.  

Turn off the broth, add the finely sliced meat strips and let sit for just a minute, then ladle the broth over the noodles and greens.  Add a juice from a lime slice or two, a shot of sriracha and salt to taste.  

Eat with a spoon and chopsticks.  It'll do ya. 

Preserving Projects

The rush to preserve is on, and thankfully it's cool, damp and grey, so it's really the perfect thing to do.  My house is steamy and smells like grapes.  Among other projects this morning, we (my almost-three-year-old helper and I) are making Concord grape juice.  It's the easiest thing in the world and sooo yummy.  I got 7.5 lbs. of Concords this weekend, and am steaming the juice out using a Mehu Maija (look at the Lehmans catalog online to see one).  It looks like I'll get about a gallon and a half of juice.

It works like this: Water goes in the bottom, grapes, stems, leaves, seeds, busted grapes and all go in the colander part, and a little while later, ta-da, just like that, you open the hose clamp and out pours hot delicious grape juice, as healthy as ever a thing ever was.
I put it in clean half gallon mason jars.  It's so hot when it comes out, that if you put the lid on right away and leave it on the counter it'll seal itself.  Store it on a cool dark shelf for later.  Of course, we drink an insane amount of juice when we're making it.

   

I salted and packed in a crock 4 lbs. of six-inch tat soi.  It's the first time I've tried pickling them, so we'll see how it goes (my culinary luck often runs out just shy of a successful lacto-ferment).  I followed a recipe for Japanese salt-pickled cabbage from the Joy of Pickling (you must get this book, and quick).  I'll report back in a week or so.

I also set to pickle a gallon jar of small green Cortland apples, following a recipe from the Joy of Pickling again, for a Russian style pickled apple.  The recipe calls for them to be packed into a gallon jar layered with sour cherry leaves.  I used grape leaves from my back fence, because I had them, and figured it was tannins that were called for - I'm guessing to help keep the apples crisp.  The recipe suggests using some fresh tarragon as well, which I would have loved to use if I had it, but used a little dried lavender instead.  Hopefully it's either good, or too subtle to notice.

The brine is a mix of salt and honey, and they are left at room temp for 5 days, 'until fermentation slows', which means I'm going to get to watch them bubble, always a good time.  Then they are moved to a cool place for a few weeks.  They should be done by the end of the month, and I plan on using them in an appetizer with pate at 42north76west's first secret dinner if they turn out ok.

The recipe says they will be fizzy.  I am not sure I'll like that, but they sure do look pretty in the mean time.

Construction Site Lunch: Borscht and Corn Salad

I make lunch for a construction crew once a week.  They're a unique bunch in that though most of them  appreciate a good meatball sub, they totally welcome say, borscht w. fennel and sausage and corn salad (which is what I made them today).

I have complete free rein on what to make, and don't announce it to anyone until I set it before them.  They are renovating a mansion into an inn, and over the past year we've eaten where ever works for the job site and the weather.  We are currently eating on what will be the back patio, the only shady spot, sitting on a rock wall.

There are few food restrictions currently in the group - one person wheat intolerant.  In the past there was a vegetarian, a 'lact-tard' (allergic to dairy), someone who didn't eat pork...oh, and one person can't eat clams.

Occasionally I do a pasta dish, and either give everyone rice pasta, or cook a small amount on the side.
I use in-season local ingredients, for the most part. They appreciate meat, so I include meat, nearly every week.  I only do  desserts on birthdays.

This week I walked through our small downtown farmers market on Tuesday morning, and after walking back and forth a few times, settled on making a fennel beet borscht and corn salad.  I bought beets, fennel, sweet corn, thai basil, celery and onions.

The Borscht went like this:
for 18 people (15 ish on the crew, and I am bringing two servings to a friend who just had a baby dinner this evening too...)
Saute onions in oil until soft.  Add one large bulb of fennel, diced.  Add 4 bunches (12-16 medium) beets, sliced thinly, in sections that will fit in a soup spoon (halve, quarter, 1/8th, and then slice).  Stir and saute.

In the mean time I started a vegetable stock with fennel trimmings, onion trimmings, a few shiitake stems I had on hand, and some scallion trimmings.  (If you have some on hand, great, heat it slowly and add it to soup when beets have cooked alittle).

Add two quarts of water (or enough to cover) to the soup pot, put a lid on it and bring to a simmer.  Cook until beets are still a little crunchy - not over 1/2 hour with fresh, fresh beets.  Turn off heat.

Add hot stock when it's ready, and season lightly to start: ground cardamom, cinnamon, thyme, salt.
At this point I left it over night, but whatever suits your schedule is what you'll do (I assume).

In the morning I heated the soup gently, and tasted it.  More salt, a dash of white wine, and some white miso went in.
I sliced the other bulb of fennel I had thin and dry roasted it in a hot cast iron pan (in two batches) and threw that in too.
Oh, and 10 links of pre-cooked chicken and apple sausage, cut into coins, poached in the soup.

Cooled to room temperature, with a dollop of greek yogurt, it was really wonderful.

The Corn Salad:
again, 18 people....

Shuck 9 ears of corn, cut them on half, and then cut the kernels off them.
Leafy dark green tops of farmers market celery, chopped.
Handful of thai basil leaves and flowers, chopped fine.
5-6 scallions sliced into thin rounds.
dash of umeboshi vinegar, and stir.
I was thinking of adding some chopped Italian Prune plums, but didn't ....could be a gorgeous yellow, green and purple salad.

Well, one way to begin is to dive in.

My husband comes home for lunch, almost everyday, at twelve thirty.  Sometimes friends come for lunch, grandparents, or siblings.  Mostly it's him and I and our two and a half year old.

Today I made gazpacho.  No cook, dirtied only the blender and a cutting board and knife, and it took less than 15 min.

I hacked a few chunks of the end of a loaf of stale white batard and soaked them in water in a small bowl.
Into the blender I tossed half of a roughly chopped white onion, a clove of garlic, half of a cucumber, again roughly chopped, a large tomato, some salt (just a little, so that I could add more to taste later), the bread, gently squeezed of it's excess water, and a splash of olive oil.
I blended it all smooth, added a splash of ume vinegar and one of rice vinegar (I would've used sherry vinegar, but didn't have any), some more salt and a small handful of hazelnuts, and blended it again.
I peeled the other half of the cucumber, diced the other half of the tomato finely, diced a green pepper, and mixed them into the soup.
Ta-da!
We had left over white beans and some salad greens along with it, and all was well, two year old and adults alike.
Picture to come!
xxo

Food report from the Finger Lakes