Parsley Garlic Bread

Using Legion, I made a batch of parsley garlic bread. As I mentioned in the previous post, the recipe calls for bread and rye flours, neither of which I had. Instead, I had all purpose flour, corn flour and white whole wheat flour, so I used a combination of those. The parsley is mixed in at the end of the kneading process and the garlic gets folded in before proofing. I made two loaves - one round and one more like a ciabatta. The proofing took far less time than anticipated so even though the fermentation step took all night, the proofing took about 90 minutes. I ended up baking them in the morning yesterday before I went to work.

For dinner last night I made cheese fondue and we used one of the loaves as the dipping bread. The garlic added a really great flavor to the meal. The rest of the cut up cubes will be frozen and saved to make stuffing when Thanksgiving rolls around. I have the round loaf yet to use but that will need to be used soon before it goes stale. Maybe for dinner tonight or tomorrow?

Fun with the Farm Share

The farm's cucumbers are still going strong so today I brought home just under 4 pounds and am making "Icicle Pickles." These are fermented for a week and then rinsed daily for a few days and then pickled. I'm not really sure. As I've never made them before, it'll be interesting to see how they come out. So far, I've made the brine and cut the cucumbers into spears and they are in two half-gallon jars to ferment.

I also started a batch of bread with parsley in it; when I go to make the dough into rolls (or loaves, I haven't decided yet) I will add minced garlic. The bread recipe called for bread flour and rye flour, I had neither so I used a combination of white whole wheat flour, all purpose flour, and corn flour. More experimentation, I guess.

Also in the farm share: lots of tiny little beets. I plan to make pickled beets using only these small ones. I like that better than chunks of bigger ones. Tonight for dinner we're having a big salad with blackberries, a cucumber, pepper and carrot from the share. Tomorrow I will cook and chill green beans and tiny little potatoes to dip into a cheese fondue. It's sometimes hard for me to be creative with vegetables in a way that the youngerchild might eat. I do have a large zucchini destined to become chocolate zucchini bread. That one is always a favorite.

Preserved Garlic

It would appear that I have made garlic candy.

I'd found a recipe for preserved garlic on one of the blogs I follow, and had thought it sounded really good so I wanted to try it.  Yesterday at the farm there was "hardneck" garlic, and lots of it.  I grabbed 14 heads as it was part of the mix and match so you could take as much as you wanted as long as it fit in 2 big bowls.  I should have gotten a few more, as I only ended up with 4 cups of cloves, not 5.  Silly me, thinking 14 heads of garlic was sufficient!

After laboriously peeling all the cloves, I sent my husband to 3 different grocery stores to find sherry vinegar while I cooked the cloves in the olive oil and salt and then caramelized them with the sugar.  The addition of the vinegar deglazed the pan and made everything smell so rich and complex.  After I put up 3 half-pints of the garlic I scraped some of the sugary residue off the pan.  Garlic candy indeed!

In addition to this project, I made some tabouli salad and started a basic sauerkraut using a recipe for "Wine Kraut" from The Joy of Pickling.  It's fermenting, I hope.  Tomorrow I add some wine.  And then I wait.  

Working Through the Greens

This morning for breakfast I made cilantro pesto again (cilantro, lime juice, pecans, parmesan cheese, and olive oil) and had it on a soft boiled egg.  That was pretty yummy!

I then put together another tabouli salad - cucumber, garlic scapes, flat parsley, tomato and bulgur wheat.  This time I have coarse bulgur rather than fine, and it's amazing to me how much it changes the whole salad.  It looks much more like store bought tabouli (although I think it tastes much much better...).

Still have a lot of greens to go...I might end up blanching and freezing them if I don't get to them all in a reasonable amount of time!

Chicken Stock Cordon Bleu

We've been taking some basic cooking classes at Le Cordon Bleu.  Last weekend was Braising and Roasting.  It's a little chaotic, as you might expect when 30 students are in one large kitchen trying to prepare the same 4 dishes:  beef stew, chicken fricassee, ballotines de poulet grandmere, and roast chicken with pan gravy.  They divided us up into groups of 7 or 8 and then we paired up to make the various recipes.  I decided I'd watch everyone do the braising recipes and I'd pair with my friend's mother to roast the chicken.  I learned:  how to truss a chicken, how to cut up a chicken into 8 servable pieces, that the combination of onion, celery, and carrot is called mirepoix and it's used in most French cooking, and that cooking the mirepoix before making soup releases more flavor than just dumping carrots, celery and onion into the boiling soup.  Oh, and that they use white pepper in France so we should, too.  At least if we're cooking French dishes.

We ran out of time, so we didn't eat the roast chicken.  In fact, I wasn't entirely convinced it was done enough, so I brought the whole thing home and figured I'd do something with it.  Today I had time for the "something" and made chicken stock, chicken noodle soup, and chicken salad.  I pulled the meat off the chicken, took off most of the skin, and used it thusly:

Stock:
I have been inspired by An Everlasting Meal to think about using the scraps of vegetables for stock rather than waste them.  So I took the scraps from the soup vegetables (onions, carrots, and celery, our mirepoix, see below) and tossed them in a pot with the chicken bones, 9 pints of water, kosher salt, pepper, parsley stems and a bay leaf.  This simmered for 2 hours and was strained, some of the fat was skimmed off (there wasn't much) and 9 pints of stock are now in the pressure canner - 20 minutes at 10 pounds.

Chicken salad:
I took the white meat from the chicken and chopped it.  I mixed this with chopped celery and dill pickles, Miracle Whip, salt and pepper.  This may be dinner tonight, depending on how late we get home from the 10-year-old's band concert.

Soup:
I made a mirepoix by chopping onion, celery and carrots and then frying them in canola oil.  ("No olive oil!  It smokes too much," says Chef.)  It seems that the vegetables should be cut brunoise, which is an 1/8-inch dice.  But for soup, I wanted the pieces chunkier so I left them bite sized.  See how many new terms I've learned?  To this I added diced chicken (everything which didn't go in the chicken salad), 5 pints of water, kosher salt, pepper, bay, thyme, and fresh parsley.  This simmered for about an hour then I added half a bag of egg noodles and let them cook.  I discovered, after reading this blog just this morning, that I have bittercress growing in my front yard - so I picked some and used it as a garnish.  I added the rest of the bittercress to the pot before putting the soup in the fridge.  No canning for this one, as the noodles will expand too much.  It is tasty!

Feeling Inadequate

Have any of you read An Everlasting Meal by Tamar Adler?

I haven't finished it yet, but I feel remarkably inadequate in the creative cooking department as I read about how economical she is with her food.  Not financially economical, although that's part of it, but waste-economical.  She saves every little bit trimmed off everything and uses it for something.  Croutons, bread crumbs, parsley stems for stock, other vegetable odds and ends.  It's inspiring and scary and all the more impressive in that she makes it seem so simple, really.

This week, in response to her book, I purchased a bunch of parsley.  And I've been using it - mainly on baked potatoes and broccoli (drizzled with olive oil, not melted butter, another suggestion straight from the book).  The 10 year old has gobbled up everything I have presented.  The 6 year old, not so much.  Although the lasagna I made yesterday was a hit for the first time.  Usually pasta needs to be plain, with butter and parmesan cheese only.  I was shocked to see the empty bowl when I got home!

Today I made a sausage-kale soup.  I browned 5 sweet Italian sausages, removed from the casings, with chopped onion and celery in a little olive oil.  I then added 2 pints of chicken stock, 2 cans of cannelloni beans with their liquid, 2 cans of water, and half a bunch of kale, chopped.  I even added some minced parsley stems.  I did not add any salt or pepper because the sausage was spiced enough.  This simmered for about a half an hour and then I added some ditalini pasta and let that cook.  It was nice and stew-like and we ate it with chunks of fresh bread.  And a bowl of blueberries.  Because I suspected (correctly) that the 6 year old wasn't going to eat a lot of the soup.  We just picked out the pasta bits....

Under Protection

Last night my husband went up to the garden to look for some tomatoes.  What he found was a formidable sentry keeping watch.

In the light of day it wasn't anywhere to be found, likely hiding in the tomatoes, but the web was something to behold!  I managed to squeeze under it enough to find the one tomato hiding behind a plant.  And I also grabbed a cucumber, likely the last.  The peppers are having a second crop and the beans are almost ready. It won't be long before I dump all the plants over the railing, lash down the pots and cages, and rake the dirt into the yard below.

I used the tomato and the cucumber, along with farm share parsley and cippolini onions, to make a tabouli salad.  The only difference is I'm using half the volume of lemon juice and oil.  The last time I made this it was too watery.

This is the time of year when the farm share gets overwhelming, even to me.  What I have left to work through (and I'm picking up another share tomorrow!) is:

3 acorn squash
2 spaghetti squash
1 blue ballet squash
1 delicata squash
2 pounds potatoes
broccoli
2 beets
carrots
peppers and hot peppers
6 leeks
onions, garlic, and shallots

Fortunately, with fewer greens, a lot of the vegetables, particularly the squashes, onions, and carrots, can be stored for a while.  This is good because we haven't been home for dinner much in the last week or so.  Last night we had steamed edamame and a pasta primavera with tomatoes, eggplant, onion and carrots.  Yum!

Another Trip to the Farm

Today's share (my half) consisted of: 1 head of lettuce, 4 Hakurei turnips, 1/2 pint snap peas, 12 fava bean pods, a HUGE bunch of parsley, 2 small bok choi heads, 1/4 pound of kale, and one purple kohlrabi.  Stephanie got a head of Napa cabbage instead of the kohlrabi.  Once I got my share home, I got to work!

First I marinated the fava beans - the beans were blanched and peeled, then put in a container with 1 tsp. red vinegar, 2 tsp. olive oil, salt and pepper,  and 1 tsp. chopped garlic scape.  This will be ready tomorrow.

After everything was washed I assembled a salad:  red lettuce, snap peas, turnips, cucumber (from my roof garden), blackberries and goat cheese with honey.  Then I made tabouli.  I only recently decided I like tabouli, particularly because my friend Lisa introduced me to pita chips which are excellent with it.  My mother had given me a bag of bulgur wheat so I had it in my head to try to make it.  Therefore, when the sign at the farm today said, "as much parsley as you want," I realized now was a perfect time to make some!

3/4 c. bulgur wheat, soaked in 3 c. cold water for half an hour, then drained

large amount of chopped parsley (for this I used my ulu)

4 scallions, chopped

1 cucumber (from my garden), chopped

1/2 c. lemon juice

salt and pepper

1/2 c. olive oil

I mixed all the ingredients except the oil and let it rest for 15-20 minutes, then added the oil and chilled it until dinnertime.  It was amazingly good - fresh and light.  I know tabouli usually has tomato but I didn't have any and I thought a cucumber might be a good addition (it was).