Grow, Cook, Eat

For more on local eating, gardens, kitchens and farms around the world tune into my other blog, growcookandeat.blogspot.com.

I won't be updating this one til I return to my local eating home in Georgia in January, 2011.

Eat well, live well!

Two Salad Saturday Night

Tomato Basil and Fresh Mozzarella Salad with Arugula and Goat Feta Salad

**where noted, these ingredients came from local sources....read more about them at Athens Locally Grown (athens.locallygrown.net)

Ingredients:
Two medium sized fresh tomatoes, sliced thinly (Italian Goliath variety from The Veggie Patch)
Handful of sweet Genovese basil, chopped (Veribest Farm)
Two cloves of garlic, chopped with the basil (Backyard Harvest)
4 oz of fresh mozzarella, sliced thinly (Atlanta Creamery)
Olive oil
Sea salt and pepper to taste

Handful of fresh baby arugula (my own urban homestead)
Ends of the tomatoes from above, chopped
2-3 T Goat feta cheese (Split Creek Creamery)
Olive oil
No more than a tsp of balsamic vinegar
Sea salt and pepper to taste

Arrange the sliced tomatoes in a circle and scatter the arugula around the edge. Top each with their respective toppings, drizzle the whole thing with olive oil. Sprinkle the arugula with a with the vinegar. Top it all off with pinches of sea salt and a grind of fresh black pepper.

Serve with fresh bread (Luna Bakery)

Enjoy!

Urban Homesteading

It's official. I'm an urban homesteader.

You wanna know how I know...? It wasn't the blueberries, raspberries, blackberries, figs and peach trees I've planted. Or the bean teepee with four different kinds of lima beans. Or the 30+ tomato plants in the raised beds. No. It's official because I invested in some chicken wire today.

I can't give you any specifics, because, as Joel Salatin knows and has written a book by that name, Everything I Want To Do Is Illegal when it comes to local food. All I can say is that there is some chicken wire going up in my backyard. Not saying what's gonna go inside it, but I think you're smart enough to put the pieces together.

As in most urban places, Athens outlaws "livestock" in the metro area. Chickens are included in the ban, but there are lots of folks looking to change that. I'm going to start convincing my neighbors of the wisdom of legalizing poultry as soon as I get a spare dozen of bribery material. I encourage you all to try this grass-fed approach to politics.

According to Rebecca and Iain, who will be house sitting for me when I travel abroad this summer, now is an especially good time to adopt some overgrown Easter presents. These two will be bringing their small flock with them when they move in, and so if any feathers are ruffled, I can pretend I didn't know. Yeah, right.

Wish us all luck!

Two Breakfast Vignettes

1. A few weeks ago I bought, on impulse, some cereal at the grocery store. I know...I totally caved in to some kind of lightly sweetened, organic corn squares cereal just cuz it was sitting there looking yummy and I was feeling crummy as I walked by it. Well here's how those chickens came home to roost. I don't drink milk, cuz it doesn't agree with me, and Righteous Juice (a fresh squeezed juice company in Athens) wasn't selling almond milk. Soooo, back I went to the dumb grocery store and bought some organic soy milk so that I could eat my cereal. Next day, I cracked open a bag of frozen blueberries, loaded up a bowl with cereal and poured on some soy milk, thinking yum, what an indulgence! Turns out the soy milk was spoiled and ruined my whole breakfast right in front of my eyes. I dumped out the soy milk and the cereal and got out some of my homemade yogurt and ate it with my backyard blueberries like I shoulda/woulda/coulda done before I got seduced by Kashi (which is owned by Kellogg, by the way). Sigh. Sometimes even a die-hard locavore has to learn the hard way again that the illusion of quality and goodness in our food system is a lie.

2. This morning while cracking a couple local, free-range chicken eggs into a pan for a feta spinach scramble, I discovered an earring nestled underneath an egg. I love finding evidence of a human being on the other end of my food. A real person fed these chickens and picked, washed and packed these eggs for me. (My name is on the carton). The only evidence of humans that you'll find in a carton of conventional eggs is evidence of human greed, cuz it's likely to come in the form of salmonella poisoning due to the inhumane and unsanitary conditions conventional chickens must endure to produce eggs for us.

Buy local. Pick local. Make local. Eat local. Love local.

Paneer Makhani

I'm not Irish, so for St. Patrick's day, I ate paneer makhani. It was almost going to be a beer and popcorn night, but the raw m___ in the fridge needed to be made into something. It made lovely soft curds that soaked up the flavors beautifully. This was made entirely from local ingredients, aside from the spices, which ended up making it really HOT! I savored the fragrance, flavor and intensity of this meal while thinking about returning to India this summer. Richly colored saris, camels and cows on the road, cheerful temples, dust, sun and heat are beckoning.

Paneer Makhani

butter, ghee or oil
1/2 tsp each whole spices (cumin, fenugreek, mustard are my favorites)
chopped green chilis (1-3 depending on your heat tolerance)
chopped garlic (1-3 cloves)
1 T grated fresh ginger
coarsely chopped onions, red peppers or other vegetables, as per your taste
2 cups fresh paneer, cubed (see instructions below)
1/2-1 cup tomato paste (I food mill frozen tomatoes to make the paste)
1/2 cup cream, milk or yogurt
1/4 cup chopped cilantro
powdered spice mix for paneer makhani (see note)
salt and pepper to taste

Heat your fat of choice in a cast iron pan over medium high heat. Add the spices and heat in the oil/butter/ghee until they sizzle and are fragrant. Add the chili, garlic and ginger (avert your face!) and stir on high heat for about a minute. Add whatever additional vegetables you like and saute until soft. Add the paneer cubes and gently stir to coat with spices. Add the tomato paste and your dairy product of choice. Bring to a gentle simmer, cover and lower the heat. Simmer until it reaches the desired thickness (thin for over rice, thick for eating with paratha or chapati) and season with spices, salt and pepper. Sprinkle the top with cilantro right before serving. I ate this with fragrant basmati rice (a rare, not-local treat...), yogurt raita and sauted collard greens and swiss chard.

Paneer:
Heat 1/2 gallon milk in a large stainless pot until nearly boiling. Add 1-2 T of vinegar (more if the curd fails to break) as the milk rises, turn off the heat and stir with a slotted spoon until curds rise to the surface. Drain in a colander lined with cheesecloth (save the whey for ricotta if you like!) Toss the curds gently to shake out the whey and sprinkle lightly with salt. Gather the cheesecloth around the curds and form into a flattish ball. Press with a heavy-ish object (I used my full yogurt container) for a few minutes, or longer, depending on how hard you want your curds.

Note: I highly recommend checking out an Indian grocer for spices mixes. They are unbelievably flavorful and include things like ground green cardamom, mango powder, aesofetida, etc, that truly are the essence of deliciousness in Indian cooking. Failing access to an Indian grocer simply add powdered cumin, coriander, turmeric, salt and pepper to taste (and miss out on something special). You can also add microscopic amounts of nutmeg, cloves, mace and star anise, which would be in this spice mix. But don't overdo it!!! Do not, EVER, buy the generic "curry" powder in the grocery store. The spices will be bitter and old (like me someday!) and will not have any of the lovely "sour" and "sweet" notes of proper spice mixes.

Pro-Life Wheat-Free Ricotta Tart

So, I was just encouraging y'all to get wheat out of your diet, and here's a a little yummy something to help you do it. My mom has celiac sprue, which is an intolerance to wheat gluten, so I think about cooking wheat-free a lot for other reasons. As it turns out, celiac is an auto-immune disease, which seems to run in our family. Her sister also has celiac, and I'm Type 1 diabetic, which is also an auto-immune malfunction of the endocrine system. No doubt, our common flaky immune system was caused by exposure at critical times in our collective development to endocrine disrupting chemicals, which were just beginning to be sprayed liberally in Iowa at the time my mom and her sister were born, and continued to intensify all over the Midwest as was I conceived and born in North Dakota. Read more about pesticides as endocrine disruptors here: http://www.nrdc.org/health/effects/qendoc.asp. Also, see Sandra Steingraber's books: Living Downstream and Having Faith (http://steingraber.com/) for an explanation of the persistence of agricultural chemicals in the environment and their effects on fetuses. You can't be pro-life and pro-agricultural chemicals, folks. Pick one or the other, cuz the effect is pretty much the same. Or worse.

I digress.

So, my last local food adventure involved cheese making, and happily this one does too! I ripped this recipe off from Stonewall Kitchen Harvest (my favorite cookbook), but I added a few twists, like making my own ricotta. I have always wanted to make this recipe, but always loathed buying the dead ricotta in its plastic coffin in the grocery store. Thanks to cheese rebel R___, I have been inspired to make my own. So the basic recipe involves making a crust with thinly sliced high-starch potatoes. The highest starch potatoes are russets, but if you're a potato nerd like me, you can also use medium starch Kennebecs or my personal favorite, German Butterballs. I used Rose-Golds (low-med starch) because that's all I had, and it turned out great. Superlative, even. The filling of the tart is a mixture of garlic, greens, eggs and ricotta cheese. This recipe is great for making now when the winter potatoes are almost done and there are lots of spring greens in the garden and at the market (er, sorry folks, there are lots of spring greens in Georgia--the rest of yas will just have to wait. Or better yet, come visit.)

I made ricotta out of a certain illegal substance, that shockingly, was still fresh and sweet smelling in my fridge in spite of being a week away from the cow and horrors, not p______. The news coverage on TV in Atlanta regarding the raw m___ seizure in Athens highlighted the deleterious side effects of drinking said substance. Their bulleted list included "spontaneous abortion," which is bogus political speech alluding to the fact that some bacteria present in ALL milk can cause an infection, which, like all bacterial infections, might be bad for a fetus's chances of survival. I am pretty sure that the right-wing boneheads who put that segment together actually meant "miscarriage" but why waste a political opportunity? I certainly don't. I wish there was a warning label on conventionally produced foods that would give y'all a politically loaded headsup about what you were consuming and the consequences of that action.

The production of this food has been proven to cause spontaneous abortions in women all over the world, and has the potential to cause serious endocrine disruption, including sterility in men, cancer and birth defects.

I think we could just stop with causing sterility in men. That might get the attention of some of the overwhelmingly male decision-makers in our food system. Maybe. They make enough money to buy all organic food, and why should they care about whether the Colombian banana picker or Mexican migrant worker can have kids or not? Surely the poison pushers at Monsanto know what this does to our bodies? They pay the EPA and FDA to look the other way, in the form of fast-tracking approval of pesticides, after all.

I digress.

So I made ricotta using whole milk and vinegar--just like when I make paneer, and sadly it turned out a little bit more like paneer than ricotta. But, it was still tasty. I think the milk, being a little less than fresh, needed less "starter" than I used, and we all know how much raw m____ likes to be cheese! So, it was a little lumpy but fresh and delicious. See this site for more information than you'll probably ever need to know about making ricotta. http://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2010/02/how-to-make-fresh-ricotta-fast-easy-homemade-cheese-the-food-lab-recipe.html
Enjoy--this guy loves him some curd.

Instead of swiss chard, which Stonewall Kitchen calls for, I used spinach and arugula, cuz that's what I had. I should also mention that this took just under an hour to make, which included preparing the ricotta and picking and washing the greens while the milk heated. I also didn't have parmesan cheese, which the recipe called for but subbed some local feta instead. Cooking with what you have is sort of an important basic principle of eating locally. You can't always get russets, but that doesn't actually matter. What matters is that you didn't contribute to destroying someone's ability to have children or their ability to eat certain foods or their ability to carry a child to term. You do not have a right to eat whatever you want when that right interferes with someone else's basic human rights. In the over-privileged hemispheres of the world, we certainly do have the privilege of eating whatever we want, and we should never forget that it comes at the cost of human life everywhere, even and especially those that are yet to live.

So, do something pro-life. Make your own ricotta. Buy some local potatoes. Enjoy.

Pro-Life, Wheat-Free Ricotta Tart (makes 1 tart in a 7 X 9 inch-ish pan)

1 1/2 pounds greens (arugula, spinach, swiss chard)
1/4 + 2 T butter, melted (make your own...see earlier blog post)
1 large garlic clove, thinly sliced
2 large potatoes (high starch preferred, but will work with just about anything), unpeeled, and scrubbed
3 tsp chopped fresh thyme, oregano, rosemary (I also used dried thyme...use what you have)
1 cup feta cheese (or cheddar, or mozzarella or whatever you have)
2 large eggs
2 cups ricotta cheese (start this right before the rest, it takes about 10-15 minutes)
Salt and pepper to taste

Clean, trim and chop the greens. Heat 2 T of butter in a skillet over medium heat. Add half the garlic and half the greens. Add more garlic and greens as they cook down. Season with salt and pepper. Cook for about ten minutes, stirring occasionally. Drain off any excess liquid.

Slice the potatoes very thinly and of uniform thickness. Create a thin layer of potato slices on the bottom of your pan and overlap them slightly to make a crust. Slide a few up the sides to make an edge. Drizzle the remaining melted butter over the crust. Sprinkle salt, pepper, herbs of choice and cheese of choice over potatoes of choice and/or availability, as the case may be.

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.

Whisk the eggs in a large bowl, add the ricotta, more herbs and cheese of choice, salt and pepper. Gently add the greens and mix well. Spread the cheese-greens mixture over the potato slices and press lightly.

Bake for 20 minutes. Reduce the temperature to 350 and bake for another 10 minutes. The potato crust should be brown and crisp and the filling should be firm to the touch. Let cool about five minutes before cutting into wedges. Enjoy with a green salad or braised carrots. Add a frozen fruit-yogurt-honey dessert to finish it off!

Hot Salad

Today, I wanted a light lunch, but was feeling chilly. I took my favorite salad fixings (spinach, chard, feta, pecans and carrots) and sauteed them with garlic and salt. Turned out great!