Farmer's Market Haul, July 4th

The July 4th holiday is a big one. And like most holidays, it has its own food associations and traditions.  Strawberries, certainly, and cherries are two.  Both are patriotic colors and come into season around early July.  Pies, cakes and other pastries made with these red fruits or in combination with blue ones like blueberries are on the dessert menu.  Grills are fired up as summer is perfect grill season.  The problem is when these fruits come from conventional farms that use a lot of pesticides, when the meat on the grills comes from factory farms where the animals are fed an improper diet and kept in inhumane conditions.  The problem also manifests itself in the white bread hamburger and hot dog buns, the potato chips fried in vegetable oils, and all the rest of the processed foods that help fill out the picnic.

I celebrated my independence from the industrial food system by going to the farmer’s market bright and early and purchasing the bounty that you see in the photo above.  Going shopping is a pleasure rather than a chore if you have a farmer’s market or a farm that you can buy directly from.  I love talking with the people running the stalls – often times it is the very farmer him/herself!  And just seeing all of the wonderful food and thinking of all the possibilities with the ingredients fills me with optimism.  Cooking food isn’t so bad either.  In the summer you can rely heavily on salads which don’t require a hot stove or hours in the kitchen.  And even in the winter, roasts and soups provide delicious meals and many leftovers with very little effort involved.  And when I do rely on packaged foods or convenience foods, they can be purchased from ethical companies that source good ingredients and create the food in a way as to keep the nutrition in.

Want some examples?  Look no further than the rest of the posts on this blog, or read many of the food blogs linked on the right.  Or stay tuned as I blog over the next few weeks about some of these foods in more detail.  Below the jump you’ll see what I purchased on July 4th and a description based on what I know so far of these foods.

Heavy Cream – I got this from Ronnybrook Farm.  They are an organic dairy upstate.  They feed their cows grass and they pasteurize the milk at the lowest possible temperature allowed, as to retain more of the nutrition.  Heavy cream can be used to whip into whipped cream for desserts (especially fruit desserts!), it can be added to scrambled eggs instead of milk for a little extra richness, added to soups, or used about a hundred other ways.  I specially purchased it to pour it over berries for a simple sugar free dessert.  The cream is sweet enough that I don’t need to add any sugar.  It even overcomes the tartness of the berries.

Red Leaf Lettuce - This lettuce is especially beautiful in salads or on sandwiches, with its ends tinged of red.  Leaf lettuce may not last a long while in the fridge, but it can also be cooked and added to stocks, soups, or stir fries, giving you more uses for it.  Red leaf lettuce is particularly high in beta carotene and vitamin K.  I bought this for salads, but I’ll probably throw some into a stir fry as well.

Quark - yeah, I had never heard of this either!  Quark is a traditional cultured dairy food from Germany.  The easiest way to explain it would be yogurt or sour cream made out of buttermilk.  It is thick enough to spread on toast or crackers, but still creamy.  It can be used in baking, as a dip or a spread.  The taste is similar to sour cream.  A little sour, a little tangy.  But there was something about it, I loved it more than I love either of those two things!  It can go savory with the additions of herbs or sweet with fruit.  Quark will make a regular appearance in my diet.  Absolutely delicious.  And since it is made with probiotics and the milk from happy grass fed cows from Hawthorne Valley Farm, I know that it is at least as nutritious as it is delicious.

Apple and Black Currant Juice - from Red Jacket Orchards.  Their interesting fruit combination and from what I can tell, good farming and juice making practices make them a good place to buy juice from, if you are inclined to buy juice.  I don’t buy a lot since I’d rather eat the whole fruit instead, but they are a good way to help keep a smoothie drinkable, so I do buy every now and then.  This fruit combination is very good!

Broccoli - We all should know by now that broccoli is good for us.  There are so many great nutrients in abundance that I couldn’t list them all here or my post would get too long.  I got this for a stir fry, but I plan on using the entire broccoli, not just the tender heads we all love to eat.  The stems are very good for you too, and eating them helps stretch your food budget and prevent waste.  Chop them into smaller pieces to use in soups, fritattas, pastas, stir fries, or anything else you can think of.

Purslane – I love purslane!  It is one of the best vegetarian sources of omega 3s, and plus, it just tastes good!  A little tart and lemony, it goes well on salads or cooked in stir fry or soup.

Purple Cabbage - I got this for a stir fry (sense a theme?) and chose it over the green because of its pretty color.  Purple cabbage has more fiber and beta carotene than green cabbage.  All cabbage is a decent source of vitamin C which can be further increased by turning the cabbage into sauerkraut.

Zuccini – I made a yummy zucchini bread that made me hungry for more zucchini.  Aside from being put into baked goods, zucchinis are great stir fried, or battered with some egg and fried, which is how I ate a lot of them as a kid.

Green Beans – These just said “summer” to me!  I’ll probably just cook them with some butter.  Delicious and simple.  Green beans are high in vitamin K, vitamin C, and beta carotene.

Sweet Cherries – The pits annoy me (I need a good pitter, recommendations?) so I got the sweet kind that I can just eat out of hand.

Gooseberries – Gooseberries look like miniature watermelons.  They are the same size and shape as grapes and have the same feel in your mouth.  They taste wonderfully sour and can go sweet or savory.  I’ve put some in salads, but I want to try a dessert with them too.

Blueberries - They are packed with antioxidants, but is that why I eat them?  No.  I eat them because they are just so good.  I remember going blueberry picking in Michigan as a child, or hiking in Alaska, eating blueberries along the trail.  That these are so healthy for me is just a bonus.

Plumcots – A plumcot is a cross between a plum and an apricot.  It can occur naturally in areas where these trees are both grown from seed.  Plumcots have been known for some time.  They look similar to a regular plum, dark smooth skin.  The taste is sweet in the flesh, tart in the skin, a delightful combination.  And, like many fruits, high in vitamin C, fiber, potassium, and much more.

Black Raspberries – it struck me that the “blue raspberry” artificial flavor that you can sometimes find in slurpee style drinks and popcicles might actually have its inspiration from nature.  These are small, firm, dark raspberries.  They look black, but stained my fingers purple.  They didn’t spoil as quickly as regular raspberries.  The flavor is somewhere between a blackberry and a red raspberry, and I suppose their nutrition is similar as well.

Lamb’s Quarters – This is a green similar to spinach in taste and usage.  Cook it or eat it raw.  In many places it grows wild like a weed, so you might already have it in your garden!  Don’t weed it out!  It is at least as healthy as spinach, with high amounts of vitamin C, K, beta carotene, and calcium.

Middle Eastern Summer Squash - I can’t remember the exact variety of this summer squash, possibly Magda.  It is a middle eastern variety that holds up well to cooking.  I love trying out new varieties of vegetables, so I thought I’d give this one a try and compare it to zucchini.

And there you have it.  Celebrating my independence from the industrial food system with these great foods.  This will easily last me a week of breakfasts, lunches, and dinners with very few pantry items added in.  I won’t even want to make any desserts since the fruit and berries are plenty sweet to satisfy any dessert craving I might have.

zucchini bread

This post is part of Real Food Wednesdays.

Today I picked up a CSA share for someone on vacation.  I was not prepared for the bounty of berries I was to receive!  2 pints of raspberries and 2 quarts of strawberries, plus other assorted vegetables and herbs.  I had been prepared to make a currant quick bread, and had prepped some wheat the night before (soaked it in yogurt and left it out 24 hours), but when I realized I could now make a raspberry currant pie, I had to switch gears and figure out something else to do with my soaked wheat.  I froze the raspberries and currants  so I could make a pie with them later this week.  The raspberries would not have lasted more than a day in the fridge, which is always the pity with raspberries.  So delicate that they must be used or frozen right away.

Since I’m getting a delivery of meat in 2 days, I figured I should use something from my freezer to help free up space.  Well, I did happen to have a little less than a cup of grated zucchini so I thought I’d make zucchini bread.  Besides, here in the northeast, the zucchini have arrived at the farmer’s markets, and soon we will be up to our ears in it!

Now, this isn’t a recipe that uses heaps of zucchinis.  It only uses about a cup of grated raw zucchini, or about 1/2 – 2/3 cups grated, blanched zucchini.   So this is a good recipe for when you have an odd zucchini.  Not enough for a meal, but you don’t want it to go to waste.  Of course, you could make multiple loaves and freeze them for later…

Soaking the flour overnight in yogurt is an essential step.  This neutralized the phytic acid present in the wheat.  Phytic acid is an anti nutrient found in nuts, seeds, legumes, and grains that can cheleate minerals from your body.  It can be neutralized by properly preparing these foods, such as soaking flour in yogurt.  The other reason the yogurt step is important for this zucchini bread is that it really helped to leaven the bread.  I would have used all soaked wheat in the recipe, but it would have thrown off the liquid to dry ingredient ratio.  Since I couldn’t soak all of the flour without making the batter too runny, I used sprouted wheat.  Sprouting will also destroy phytic acid.

I hope you enjoy it as much as I did, fresh out of the oven.  Recipe below.

• 1/2 cup Whole Wheat Flour
• 1/2 cup Yogurt
• ~ 2/3 cup Shredded zucchini
• 2/3 cup Sucanat/Rapadura/Evaporated Cane Crystals
• 1/3 cup Melted coconut oil
• 1 teaspoon Vanilla extract
• 2 Eggs
• 1 1/2 Sprouted flour
• 1 teaspoon Baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon Salt
• 1/2 teaspoon Cinnamon
• 1/4 teaspoon Cloves
• 1/4 teaspoon Baking powder
• 1/4 cup chopped pecans
• 1/4 cup raisins

Combine 1/2 cup of whole wheat flour with the yogurt.  Mix well, cover with a towel, and set aside in a warm part of the room, away from drafts for 24 hours.

After the 24 hours have passed, in a separate bowl combine the zucchini, sugar, coconut oil, vanilla, and eggs.  Mix well.  Pour into the flour and yogurt mixture and add the sprouted flour, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, cloves, baking powder, pecans and raisins.  Mix and then let it sit for 3 minutes or so while you butter a bread pan.

Bake in a 400 degree preheated oven for about 35 minutes or until a knife inserted in the middle comes up dry.  Cool on a wire rack before slicing.

Sorrel Avocado Soup

One of my goals when going to the farmer’s market is to try new foods.  I always try to get something that I’ve never eaten before, never cooked with before, or I have limited experience with.  It broadens my palate and stretches my creativity in the kitchen.  Recently, my new ingredient was sorrel.

Sorrel is a really neat green leafy vegetable.  It looks quite similar to spinach, with its rich green color and broad smooth leaves.  The taste is tart and a bit lemony.  When cooked, sorrel falls about completely, which is why it is commonly used as a sauce or in soups.  It does not look very attractive cooked as it turns into a muddy green color – but at least the taste is good!  It can also be eaten raw, but because the flavor becomes more tart with age, younger leaves are best eaten raw. The flavor of the older leaves can add flavor to soups and sauces.

For my recipe, I also used ramps, nettles and fiddleheads since I’m still enamored with these wild vegetables.  The avocado lends a rich creamy texture to the soup without any dairy.  I used beef stock because that was all I had, but chicken stock would probably be preferable to give it a lighter taste.  To make this a truly vegan soup, the ghee could be replaced with coconut oil or even olive oil if you cooked at a lower temperature and the stock could be replaced with vegetable stock.

This post is part of Try it Tuesday.

Ingredients

• Large handful of fiddleheads
• 2 tablespoons ghee
• 2 ramps (leaves and bulb)
• 1/2 bunch nettles
• 1 cup white wine
• 2 1/2 cups beef stock
• 1/2 bunch sorrel
• 1 avocado, chopped
• Mint, for garnish

Boil the fiddleheads for 3 minutes, then rinse.  Melt the ghee in a pot over medium high heat and add the boiled fiddleheads and ramps.  Stir frequently.  After about 3 minutes, reduce the heat to low and add the nettles, freshly washed with the water still clinging to the leaves.  When they have steamed a few minutes and have wilted and deepend in color, add the wine and stock.  Let it simmer for about 10 minutes, then add the sorrel and cook until the sorrel has mostly disintergrated.  Chop up the avocado and add it to the soup.  Take care not to add the avocado too early as prolonged cooking can make it bitter.  Turn off the heat and let it cool slightly.  Use an immersion blender/stick blender to puree, then bring the heat back up until it is the right temperature to serve.  Garnish with a few mint leaves.

fiddlehead ferns

This post is submitted to Fight Back Fridays and the No GMO Food Challenge Blog Carnival.  Eating wild foods takes me out of the industrial food system, and I won’t be eating any GMO foods.  I like that!

Eating fresh sustainable produce and grass fed beef feels good.  I’m getting superior nutrition because of the way the food is grown, and I’m supporting farmers who are good stewards to this earth so that nutritious food may grow year after year.  One step further is wild food, so long as it is foraged in areas away from pollution (don’t forage along the roadside – car exhaust) and the food is harvested/hunted in a sustainable manner, so new generations can be gathered year after year.

I recently purchased a bunch of wild foods: morels, fiddlehead ferns, wild arugula, nettles, ramps and dandelions.  A lot of these were new foods to me.

Morels are a kind of wild mushroom.  As I discovered, they have a rich and powerful flavor that reminded me of a perfectly cooked steak.  I’ll be eating morels again for sure.

Fiddlehead ferns are the top portion of a young wild fern.  When they are young and growing, they are curled up and look like the end of a violin.  They taste fresh and green and woodsy.  People describe them as being similar to asparagus.

Wild arugula is just like cultivated arugula – good cooked or raw.  A little spicy and quite good.

Nettles, as I described in a previous post featuring them, are green leafy vegetables with a flavor not unlike spinach or kale or some mixture of green leafy vegetables.  They are a bit prickly, so you need to boil them before eating.

Ramps are a member of the Alliaceae family – the same family that gives us the onions, leeks, garlics and chives.  They grow wild in many places and are so popular in Quebec that there is a limit on how many you can collect, so as to prevent them from being over harvested.  They taste somewhere between a leek and a garlic, and are completely edible.

Dandelion greens can be eaten raw or cooked, but they begin to get bitter as they get older.  Best to eat these young and fresh.

I wasn’t quite sure what to do with all of these, it being my first time cooking many of them.  I decided to saute all but the nettles (nettles weren’t included at all in this dish) and toss them with some pasta and lemon and topped with Parmesan cheese and another drizzle of olive oil.  It was delicious, though I realized at once that I could have easily made the morels and fiddleheads the star of the show.  In fact, I wouldn’t have objected to a plate filled with sauteed morels and little else!  Being my first time cooking most of these, it was a lesson in preparation as well as taste.

If you decide to go for any of these wild foods I’ve mentioned, a few tips:

Morels should be the star of the dish they are included in.  They have such a wonderful flavor – don’t cover it up with too many other ingredients.  Keep your morel dishes simple.  One of my cookbooks suggests cream goes well with morels.  They have a lot of nooks and crannies, so care must be taken when washing them.  They will keep a few days in the fridge, but use them quickly.  Once you taste them, you won’t want to wait.

Fiddleheads can also play a primary role in the dish they are included in, but they will need a little more help from supporting ingredients.  I’m not sure I’d eat a plain plate of sauteed fiddleheads.  Toss them with pasta, other veggies, oils or other fats, etc.  They would probably be good in a soup or in a salad.  For these, I washed them once, then boiled at a good clip for 3 minutes.  After 3 minutes, I shocked them in an ice bath to stop the cooking.  Let them rest in the cold water and let any additional debris sink to the bottom.  Then slowly and without disturbing the water too much, take the fiddleheads out, leaving the debris on the bottom, and give them once more rinse.  At that point, you can saute them, stir fry them, bake them, or do whatever you wish.

Wild arugula can be used just the same way as cultivated arugula.  Use it raw on salads, toss with pasta, bake into a frittata.  I like arugula pesto, which I recently made and served over some steamed potatoes.

Nettles must be boiled before eating.  Once boiled, include them in a soup, or make my gratin recipe.  They can be dried and used in tea.  Most things you do with green leafy vegetables (kale, chard), you can probably do with nettles.

Ramps can be used anywhere you would use a leek, garlic or green onion in a one to one substitution.  Substituting for garlics will give you just a little bit extra leeky flavor, while when you are substituting for leeks, be prepared to get a bit of garlic flavored kick.  I put them in my arugula pesto in place of garlic.

Dandelion greens are best young otherwise they can get bitter.  They can be cooked or used in salads.

I definitely did ok in my first experimentation with these wild foods, but next time I’d like to do better.  What are your favorite recipes, preparation methods, and tips?

Wild Pesto

There is just something exotic about eating something that was harvested from the wild.    On top of that, we know that wild food by definition cannot be genetically modified, nor can it have pesticides on it.  However, when eating wild game, fish caught from the ocean, or plants harvested from the wild, one must be sure that everything is taken in a sustainable manner.  If we over harvest, over fish, or over hunt, there will be nothing left for future generations.  Of course, much like sustainable farming, if we harvest food from the wild in a sustainable way, we are ensuring that it will be around for years to come.

One of my recent Farmer’s Market finds was wild arugula.  Wild arugula seems to have a smaller leaf than the cultivated arugula I’ve had, but the overall taste seems pretty much the same.   It just has that wild mystique.

I also got some ramps, which I’ve been working my way through.  Ramps are like wild leeks or green onions.  I find their flavor to be somewhere between a leek and garlic, so I’ve been using them in place of just about anything that calls for garlics, leeks, or onions.  They are wonderful, and edible from the bulb to the leaves.

A great way to put these together is in an arugula pesto.  An arugula pesto is very similar to the regular basil pesto, just with the distinctive peppery arugula bite.  It is wonderful on pastas, salads, or as a way to dress up some baked chicken.  It is an incredibly versatile ingredient, and it should last a good week or two in the fridge, or several months in the freezer (freeze in individual serving sizes for ease of defrosting – I like using ice cube trays).  Make a couple batches and keep them handy in the freezer.  It makes for an incredibly easy meal when you don’t feel like cooking.

Though I couldn’t get the pine nuts or the olive oil locally, I did go with a local cheese from a local artisan cheese maker as opposed to the traditional Parmesan.  The cheese I selected was their most aged cheese.  It was hard, grated easily, and had a flavor not dissimilar to Parmesan, but there also seemed to be a slight cheddar-y flavor as well.

If you don’t have arugula, well, just about any green leafy herb or green could be substituted – the traditional basil, parsley, etc.  You can mix different greens together for your own unique blend.  And if you don’t have the traditional pine nuts, go for walnuts, though most any other nuts could probably be used in place.  If you don’t have ramps, use garlic instead.  I tend to go light on garlic compared to many other people I know, so feel free to make your own adjustment there, as needed.

This recipe makes about 1 cup of pesto.

• 1/2 cup toasted pine nuts
• 4 cups fresh arugula, loosely packed
• 1/2 cup finely grated hard cheese, like Parmesan or your local equivalent
• 1 ramp (bulb and leaves)
• coarse salt and fresh ground pepper to taste
• 1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil

Toast the pine nuts.  I do this stove top.  Put them in a pan on med high heat, stirring frequently about 3-4 minutes or until the nuts turn golden brown and become aromatic.  It can also be done in the oven – spread them on a baking sheet and put them in the oven at 350 for about 5 minutes or so.

Chop the ramps and grate the cheese.  Put pine nuts, arugula, cheese, ramps, and olive oil,  in a blender and blend until there are no lumps.  Since it is a lot of greens, you may need to pause the blender and stir it up a bit manually to make sure the greens on the top are pureed.  Add salt and pepper to taste.

It’s that simple.  Enjoy!  This post is submitted to Real Food Wednesdays.

Radishes at the farmer's market

What do you do with a chicken breast to make it more exciting?  I thought about this last night and decided to make a cream sauce.  The end result was fantastic.  This cream sauce would probably work with fish and vegetables as well.  It is a pretty free form recipe.  Once you’ve made the roux to your liking, everything else is just included in quantities your taste buds see fit.

The roasted radishes are wonderful and extremely easy.  I always thought I didn’t like radishes.  I don’t like their spicy bite.  Then my uncle taught me to roast them.  Roasting them takes the bite away and leaves a sweetness behind.

Finally, I hate kitchen waste, always wanting to stretch my dollar and prevent usable things from ending up in the garbage.  The radishes came with green tops, so they must be eaten as well.  Radish greens, like radishes, have a bit of a bite that is diminished with longer cooking.  If you don’t have radish greens, other spicy greens like mustard could be used in this recipe.

Recipes for all 3 dishes below.

This post is submitted to Real Food Wednesday.

Chicken with Cream Sauce

Ingredients:

• 4 small chicken breasts
• 2 tablespoons butter
• 2 tablespoons flour
• 1 1/2 to 2 cups milk
• Tarragon
• Sage
• Thyme
• Salt and pepper
• 1 or 2 tablespoons of lemon juice

In a large frying pan, sear the chicken breasts on both sides.  Reduce heat, cover, and cook on med-low heat, checking and flipping occasionally, as needed, until done.

For the sauce, Melt the butter over medium heat.  When melted, add the flour and stir.  Then add the milk and whisk.  You’ll need to whisk a lot.  The sauce should thicken quickly.  You really can’t take your eyes off this for more than a few minutes.  Don’t let it boil.  Keep whisking.  When you have your desired consistency, add the tarragon, sage and thyme.  Then add salt and pepper to taste.  Just before serving, add a little lemon juice.

To help you time your meal, the sauce will only take 5-10 minutes.  Spoon the sauce over the chicken breast right before serving.  I put a generous portion of sauce on my chicken.

Roasted Radishes

Ingredients:

• Radishes
• Olive oil
• Salt
• Sesame seeds

Cut the radishes into quarters.  Toss with olive oil until coated.  Sprinkle salt and sesame seeds, and place into a baking dish.  To save on cleanup, I usually put the radishes in the baking dish and use that dish to toss with the olive oil. Roast at 400 degrees for 30 minutes or until done.  Simple!

Braised Radish Greens

Ingredients:

• 1 bunch radish greens
• 1 tablespoon bacon grease
• A splash of water
• 3 tablespoons of reduced beef stock

Heat bacon grease in a good braising pot on medium heat until melted.  Add the greens and sautee.  Add a small spash of water and 3 tablespoons of reduced beef stock (glace).  Cover, reduce heat to low, and let it cook for 30 minutes (less for spicier greens, longer for milder greens).  When you have cooked it your desired length, take the lid off, raise the temperature to medium, and let the liquid cook off, while watching it and stiring often.