Potato Leek Explosion

Since we're obvious not cooking a lot right now, the potatoes, squash, and other fall vegetables from the farm share are patiently waiting to be consumed. I have been trying to figure out how to manage this and decided to see if I could make potato leek soup in an instant pot. Turns out, it is not hard.

I chopped up my 3 large leeks and sautéed them in the pot with butter and oil. I added 2 cloves of garlic and then some flour. Once this was all cooked, I added 2 pints of stock (I had Ducken on hand) plus a cup of water, salt, pepper, and about a pound of potatoes. This was pressure cooked for 7 minutes and then naturally vented for 10 minutes. After that, I put some in my blender (one of the few things I didn't pack up and put away) and tried to blend it. 

Hot liquids always take me by surprise, I guess. That's the only explanation. I was holding down the lid but I guess the pressure from the steam was stronger, and of course it went everywhere. Thick, viscous potato leek soup. I was reminded why I have an immersion blender. I don't exactly know where it is at the moment. It could be in the foyer. Or the guest bedroom. Maybe the living room? My stuff is spread out all over the place; some of it is even at a different house right now. Finding anything that I didn't see in the last 5 minutes is basically impossible. 

Now the "kitchen" in my dining room is cleaned up and the I'm pleased to say the soup was excellent.

The Finished Product

Here's our table from last night's feast!

The turkey, brined for two days, was perfect. There was stuffing. Mashed red potatoes. Creamed (well, sort of) broccoli, mashed squash. Pumpkin bread made by my sister-in-law and sent with my in-laws. The sweet potato casserole was made by my Mom, although we did the marshmallows on top here at the last minute. I got a little distracted and so they had a smokey je ne sais quois which, heh, augmented their flavor. Really, they were only burnt a little!

Plus, cranberry sauce, gravy, pickled beets and eggs, pumpkin pie, apple pie, and two different kinds of macarons brought from Zurich and London by a friend who joined us for dinner.

I am thankful for all the love and joy in my life and that I have time to sit back and savor it once in a while. Happy Thanksgiving!

Root Veggies

There is a drought going on here in Massachusetts and it's affected the farm. They're actually doing fairly OK, due to a drip irrigation system, but the produce is not at its usual crazy level. Gone, entirely, are the greens (except herbs). In their place, root veggies have started to appear.

Apparently they've suffered an infestation of a potato beetle and so the potatoes are being dug up early and distributed. "Enjoy them while you can," is the general sentiment. Today's share included two pounds of tiny little potatoes. Also beets, carrots, and onions. Above ground, there were zucchini, fennel, cucumbers, and a few hot and sweet peppers. Tonight's dinner used up all of the potatoes and one of the onions.

I took all the carrots and made two pints of dilled carrots. It's unusual that I get carrots and dill heads in the same week so I took advantage of the situation and made the recipe correctly, for once! I also took the cucumbers, one of my two onions in the share, and two Hungarian Hot Wax peppers and made a spicy bread and butter pickle batch. Three pints.

Tomorrow evening, hopefully, I'll make chocolate zucchini bread.

Icelandic Lamb Soup

Yesterday I had a full afternoon available to make soup. I had a fridge full of turnips, carrots and cabbage plus a bowl of potatoes on my table, all from the farm share. This Icelandic Lamb Soup uses it all.

Since I had A LOT of turnips I thought I'd make a triple batch of soup. I purchased 6 pounds of lamb and also dug out some frozen lamb bones from my freezer to toss in. This simmered for about an hour and then I added the vegetables. After we had some for dinner, the rest went into the fridge overnight.

Today I skimmed the chilled fat off the top and reheated the soup. I was able to fill the pressure canner with 14 pints of soup and I still have about 4 more servings in the fridge. Three batches is lots of soup.... Anyhow, the pints were canned at 10 pounds for 75 minutes and now I have no excuse not to take lunch to work!

Penultimate Farm Share

Yesterday's farm share pick up was heavier on the squashes and fall greens, lighter on the tomatoes and beans. Here's what I brought home: 1 head each of lettuce and escarole, some braising greens, as much kale as I could carry (the greens and kale are going to Mocha), 1 qt cherry tomatoes, 1/2 pint raspberries (which is impressive, considering how late in the season it is), 2 butternut squashes, 2 acorn squashes, 1 delicata squash, 2 heads of garlic, 3/4 pound carrots, 1 bunch Hakurei turnips, 1 bunch broccoli, 1/2 peck apples, and I didn't bring home the purple top turnips, herbs, Daikon radish and green beans. The beans and all the herbs, tomatoes, tomatillos and hot peppers are, at this point, whatever you can glean in the fields and, while it was a nice day to be out picking, I just didn't feel like I was going to get enough to make it worthwhile. I'm still working through last week's farm share too. I have 2 big bowls of squashes on my dining room table, along with a bowl of popcorn that is finishing its drying out time before we can pop it (January).

I plan to make some escarole soup on Thursday. Last night for dinner I served the raspberries and also used up the green beans and potatoes from last week. My younger child doesn't like potatoes in any form other than potato chips, so I made one potato into very thinly sliced chips and served the rest mashed. The chips were almost too thin, I used the 0.5 mm thickness on the mandolin, so maybe 1 mm would be better?

After I left the farm yesterday I went up to the fairground to pick up my entries and my ribbons. I was also picking up everything Roxanne had entered. It's a good thing I brought a bunch of boxes. I had to make 2 trips to the car with another person helping me! She entered a LOT of things. It is always so strange to see the fairground when it is empty and things are being broken down or boarded up until next year.

Pommes Frites au Canard

I know, I know, I could just say, "French fries in duck fat," but it sounds so much better in French!

First I cut 3.5 Russet potatoes into strips for french fries, about 1/3" to a side.  The other half a potato was sliced for potato chips, as the 9 year old doesn't eat french fries.  The potatoes were soaked in cold water with a little vinegar for a while and then dried.  I heated up 4 pints of duck fat to 325 degrees and fried the potato chips first, since they could be cold by dinnertime.  Some were crispy, some not.  I think I cut them too thickly with the mandolin.  I could use a thinner setting next time.

After that, I fried the french fries in batches, with the fat at 350 degrees.  I think my batches were too big, as the temperature dropped about 100 degrees and took a while to come back up closer to 350.  They took about 7 minutes or so to cook.  Once they were drained I salted them and kept them warm in the oven until dinner.  As with the chips, some were soggy.  Next time I will use smaller batches and cook them closer to dinnertime.  (They only had a few minutes to wait, but it seemed to be enough.)  They tasted awesome, however, so that part was totally worth it.

I was able to reclaim 3 pints of the duck fat which I can use again for frying.  Next time, I'll try chicken. 

Lamb Soup and Other Projects

This morning, after running out to the muffin store to get breakfast, I heated up the rest of the mixed foraged fruit juice, added 2 cups of sugar, and canned 3 quarts of juice.  Then we went outside to enjoy the beautiful day before coming back and doing more things around the house.

My husband spent the day preparing the walls of our 9 year old's room for painting.  It was a lot of work and they only got through part of the ceiling before they ran out of that paint and had to call it a day.  While they did that, I made a batch of chicken stock using the bones of a rotisserie chicken we had this week and canned 5 pints.

While the stock was in the canner, I brought out the Icelandic Lamb Soup I'd made yesterday and skimmed off all the fat.  Then I set it on the stove to warm up slowly and went outside to do some yard work.  You know that little strip of earth between the road and the sidewalk?  I've been trying for 11 years to plant things that grow.  Bulbs of various kinds, euonymus, daylilies, hostas.  Nothing really works out.  I have finally ceded control of that strip to the crabgrass that really wants to grow there.  So I moved the daylilies to other parts of my garden and cleaned it all up.  This way, I can mow it as often as needed and not have to dodge all the other plants.

After I finished up for the day, I went back inside and canned 2 quarts and 5 pints of the lamb soup.  This was happening around the time that my husband was running out of paint, so it seemed like a good time for everyone to stop and have dinner.  We had big bowls of soup with bread, sprinkled with some mushroom-infused Icelandic sea salt to round out the flavor.  

Soup, Pie, and More Soup

Today started out rainy and cold.  It felt like a good day for soup, and I had two soup projects waiting for just such a day!

First I made a batch of that escarole soup, using a head of escarole from the farm.  Saute a package of sweet Italian sausages with minced garlic (2-4 cloves), then add 2 pints of stock and the escarole.  Let that simmer for about 10 minutes or so and add a can of cannellini beans.  Flavor the broth with parmesan cheese and serve with good bread.  That was lunch.  For three of us.  The 9 year old asked for homemade chicken noodle soup instead.  I just happened to have a quart in the freezer so I heated that up as well.

After lunch, I made a triple batch of Icelandic Lamb Soup using up a lot of farm share vegetables:  all the turnips, 4 potatoes, 3 leeks and a head of cabbage.  After removing the bones and returning the lamb to the pot, it's sitting overnight in the fridge.  Tomorrow I'll skim off the fat and can some and the rest will be dinner.

Very tall pie. I also made a strawberry jam tart.

Lastly, I made an apple pie, finally, with some of the apples from when we went picking a few weeks ago.  The apples must have been much larger than usual because although I used the same number of apples (9) the pie is so tremendously tall.  It looks like one of the pies we used to get a restaurant called Gregg's in Rhode Island - they were at least a foot tall!

There's more to do:  I need to make a batch of chicken stock, and can the juice I made the other day (some of which went into this morning's smoothies, which were wild blueberries +/- banana, homemade yogurt, local honey, and foraged mixed juice (grape, autumn olive, elderberry, crabapple)).  And, someday, I'll do tomato sauce again.  I have 5.5 gallons of tomatoes taking up space in my freezer.

Fried Chicken

On the long drive home from North Carolina my friend and I got talking about food.  Well, we talked about food a lot the whole week but specifically we discussed fried chicken.  She raved about her mother's fried chicken; it was simple and good and better than any commercially available fried chicken.  I decided to try it.  Emails were sent to her mother to make sure we had the correct instructions and last night, I made wonderful fried chicken.

Chicken, flour, salt and pepper.  Deep fried in oil and butter, 10 minutes a side.  That's it.

I have to admit, I have not really deep fried much.  It's just not something my mother did so I never really learned to do it or to incorporate it into my repertoire of go-to meals.  This wasn't hard, but it did take a while.  I'd have to time it better in the future, I think.  After the chicken was done I tossed potatoes and sweet potatoes in the oil and made french fries.  I also used this recipe to make cole slaw but I added half a teaspoon of celery seed which made it really nice.  Yum!  The cabbage and all the potatoes were from the farm share; I have 2 heads of cabbage left, plus turnips, leeks, and various squashes and pumpkins.

Since I cut the breast meat off the bones and had the back bone of the chicken still in the package, I tossed them in a pot with some water and vegetable scraps, salt, pepper, and bay.  This yielded 9 quarts of chicken stock which I will likely can in the next few days.  Just not today!

What Else to do with Nettles?

This is the time of year when, as the weather cools, the nettles start growing again.  Yesterday I picked a bunch of the tops of the plants; after blanching them it was about a cup.  But, other than soup and risotto, what else could I do with them?

Potato-nettle gratin!  I used 2 pounds of potatoes from my farm share and layered them with the nettles, salt and pepper, gruyere cheese and some half-and-half.  The recipe for potato gratin, from Vegetables Every Day by Jack Bishop, calls for heavy cream, but I didn't have any.  Half-and-half never really does the right thing when it's heated, though, but I'm much more likely to have it on hand than cream.  Anyway, this was baked for about an hour at 375 degrees and it was terrific.  The nettles really worked with the nuttiness of the gruyere.  Served with a steak and an arugula and goat cheese salad, it was a perfect autumn side dish.  I will definitely make this again!

Potato Leekie Lambie Sheepie Soup

There I was, sitting on a rock at the stables, letting the horse I'd just showered dry and graze in the sun, and I looked down and found a HUGE patch of sheep sorrel!  Yum!

A quick search with my iPhone suggested that I could make a potato sorrel soup and, oh, look!  I have leeks and shallots and garlic from the farm and oh, hey, here's some lamb's quarters instead of spinach!  I can make this soup, from one of the White House chefs!  Only with all farm share or foraged ingredients!  (Well, except for the butter and the spices...)

I picked a big bunch of sheep sorrel and about a cup, maybe a little less, of lamb's quarters leaves.  I grabbed a sprig of what I thought was thyme but turned out to be oregano, so I ended up not using it.  I followed the recipe otherwise exactly and created a yummy soup which I will take in a thermos to work tonight.  

Under Pressure

Not in a bad way, but I do have to go to work in a few hours and wanted to get the leftovers processed into stock and soup.  I started around 8:30 today, it is now almost 1:30 and the soup will be in the canner for another hour.  But I did make 6 pints of turkey stock and 5 quarts of turkey soup.

Since the kale and brussels sprouts salad was not a success, I had a bag full of shredded kale and sprouts.  I decided to add those to the soup.  First I simmered the turkey bones with a lot of the leftover meat (there is still plenty for sandwiches for at least 3 days) and then I got the bones out, added an onion and some celery, some pepper and thyme and, at the last minute, the kale and sprouts.  This is being processed for 90 minutes since it is in quart jars.  I didn't add any salt because of the brining of the turkey, but there may be a need to add salt when we open the soup.  We'll see.

I also used up the mashed potato leftovers by making potato pancakes.  The 6 year old did not like them and had a bagel instead, but the rest of us ate them up.  They are better with cranberry sauce than with syrup.  Here's how I made them:  2 cups of mashed potatoes, 2 eggs, 1/4 c. flour, and some buttermilk, with a teaspoon of sugar.  I mixed this all together and fried them in a pan.  That made 10 pancakes.  It took a little figuring out to know when they were ready to be flipped, the first ones kinda broke apart.  Even though they weren't pretty, they tasted fine - a little bit like potato chips.

A Nettle Kind of Day

So, I headed back from my parents' house today, and went straight to the stables to pick up the kids after their lesson.  While I was there I showed off the Halloween costumes a little, and picked a large bunch of nettles.  I wanted to get more before it got too cold; I heard on the news that western Massachusetts might get some snow!

When we all got home, I opened the door to a very strange chirping sound.  Then came the electronic voice, "Warning!  Carbon monoxide detected!  Warning!"

Great.

I made the kids stand on the sidewalk and called 911.  The firefighters couldn't have been nicer.  As soon as they had a few normal CO readings, they let us in, and they checked everything.  They even had me crank the thermostat up to make sure the boiler was OK.  We decided the detector either needed new batteries or had gotten dust in it or something.

When that adventure was over, my husband came home and we all had to drive to Home Depot to get some supplies for a science project.  That meant we couldn't have the nettles for dinner because it would be way too late by the time we got home.  I had, however, blanched them by that point so I froze slightly more than half and, once we did get home, made a batch of the nettle potato soup for tomorrow.  We can just heat it up.  Tomorrow is the last farm share distribution, too.  That makes me sad, but we can look forward to next year, right?

Something to Crow About

"Why, is it," my husband asks, "that when you cook with the farm share you announce it to us at dinner?  You don't announce which grocery store the food came from, so why is the farm different?"

Good question.  I guess that even after three years I am still really excited to be getting my produce locally. It feels like a novelty.  And it's made me a little spoiled.  I frequently turn up my nose at produce in the store (even the much-lauded Whole Foods) because it isn't nearly as fresh as the veggies I bring home from the farm.  I also feel like I'm getting a tremendous bargain - all this organic food for not a whole lot of money!  What could be better?

Tonight I made a double batch of khoresh, a basic persian stew.  Once you have the base, you can add all sorts of things to it.  So, after skimming off 2 quarts for the pressure canner, I added turnip greens, beet greens and mustard greens to the rest of the stew and, 15 minutes before dinnertime, I added some fried eggplant.  This, plus the potato tadiq in the rice, used up a good chunk of farm share from this week.

I am, however, inundated with squash.  I have all the squash I had last week, plus another delicata, a kabocha, and a small pumpkin.  I will need to take Lisa up on her offer to make soup!

Foraging 101

These, my friends, are nettles.  Stinging nettles.  Urtica dioica, to be exact.  And tonight, I am having my first meal with them.  I have foraged.

My sister sent me two cookbooks about foraging.  One, entitled Hunt, Gather, Cook, by Hank Shaw, is amazing and hilarious.  This guy thinks a bit like me.  He looks at something and his first thought is, "Can I eat that?"  The only problem with the book is that it isn't really a field guide.  So I took a few of the greens he mentioned in the book and looked them up on the internet, just last night.  One was nettles.  And, lo and behold, while I was riding today I noticed something that looked a lot like the pictures I saw.  To be fair, I started my afternoon at the stables by looking around at the ground and thinking, "OK, dandelions I know, but are those lambs quarters?  Is that garlic mustard or geranium?"  But with the nettles, once I got over to them and took a look, I was quite sure of myself.

You might find this strange, but I keep gardening gloves in the trunk of my car.  I started that because sometimes when I hike I see trash and want to get rid of it, so I have the gloves with me and a plastic bag to gather trash.  Who could have foreseen that I would want to pick stinging nettles?

Once we got home, I blanched the nettles in boiling salt water and then shocked them in ice water.  This gets rid of the formic acid which makes them sting.  I made a potato-nettle soup:

1 cup nettle leaves, blanched

1 clove garlic

1 shallot

2 cups chicken stock

3 small potatoes, cubed

1/2 tsp. salt

1/2 tsp. parsley

The onion, garlic and nettles were pureed with 1/2 c. of the stock and then added to the rest of the ingredients in a pot.  This was simmered for about 30 minutes until the potato cubes were tender and then the immersion blender did its thing.  We now have a thick green fragrant soup and I almost cannot wait until dinnertime!

Turnips, Raw and Cooked

One thing our farm share has provided, in abundance, is turnips.  Hakurei turnips, to be specific.  We had a LOT.  Eating them all in salads wasn't an option.  I have used them all up and want to share the recipes here.

First, I made a Shirazi salad.  I chopped 4 tomatoes, 2 cucumbers, 1/3 of a red onion, and a few turnips (equivalent in volume to the cucumbers) in a very very fine dice.  To this I added 1/2 c. lemon juice, 1/2 c. olive oil, salt, pepper, and a handful of fresh mint leaves.  Ta da!  It was wonderful, and the mint didn't taste minty at all after mixing with the rest of the dressing.  Even better, the mint and the cucumbers came from my garden.

Then I used up the rest with some potatoes in a curry (the potatoes were also from the farm).  I quartered the potatoes (1/4 pound) and turnips (4 or 5, they're small) and cooked them in oil with some chopped onion.  To this I added 1 T. curry powder and a handful of pine nuts.  After cooking for a little while the turnips tasted sweet, almost caramelized.  This was really tasty and easy!

I've worked through more of the farm share but am left with the green and wax beans and a cabbage.  I'm planning on waiting until Thursday to see if I get a lot more beans and then make a bean salad to can, rather than eat them now.  I think it'll be a good amount.

Thanksgiving Soup

Did you have a good Thanksgiving? We did. Turkey and stuffing, mashed potatoes, sweet potato casserole, Brussels sprouts with pancetta, cranberry sauce (plain or with habaneros); squash soup, fig-pancetta rolls, and shrimp cocktail for appetizers; pumpkin and pear-plum pies for dessert! We hosted this year so had lots of leftovers to eat. I love turkey sandwiches with stuffing! We are almost done with them all, except for the mashed potatoes - we always make lots more than we need...

Anyway, I've been trying to get the time to make turkey soup and stock. This morning I had a few hours so got to it - the turkey bones with some meat, and 12 pints of water, with salt, pepper, thyme and a bay leaf. Usually I skim off the stock before I make the soup, but I wasn't sure I was going to can any stock so I made the soup first, and then when it became clear I had too much liquid, I skimmed off 2 pints of stock while I was canning the soup. Here's the soup recipe:

Bones of a 15 pound turkey, with some meat
2 medium onions, diced
1 c. diced carrots
2 small sweet potatoes, diced
3 potatoes, diced
6 celery ribs, chopped
12 pints water
kosher salt and pepper
thyme
1 bay leaf

I ended up with 3 quarts of soup and 2 pints of stock in the pressure canner. Clearly, 12 pints of water was too much to add! I suppose I could have added more vegetables.... The amount I canned was actually limited by the number of empty jars I had at the moment. Had I simply looked on the drying rack, I would have found 2 more. Oh, well.

I put all 5 jars in the pressure canner and processed for 90 minutes at 10 pounds of pressure. I had to leave at a very specific time, and managed to get the canner going with exactly the right amount of time. Which meant I turned it off and walked out the door. 4.5 hours later, I returned and opened the canner and everything was just fine. That was reassuring! One of the first times I used the canner I left it to cool overnight and had to use a screwdriver to pry the lid off because I waited too long.

Something New

Today it was my turn to pick up the farm share. We haven't finished last week's share, mind you, so that means we have EVEN MORE food to work through. I kept the lettuce, arugula, tat soi, carrots, garlic, potatoes, peppers, and onions. My sister-in-law got arugula, tat soi, 3 cherry tomatoes, 3 husk cherries, basil, garlic, carrots, potatoes, peppers and onions. We gave the flowers to my mom and dad. Leftover from last week: hot peppers, arugula, carrots, red potatoes, onions. I am really not sure what to do with all the arugula. I've made salads, tossed it with pasta, what else is there? (Suggestions welcome.)

On a whim, I decided to make potato chips. I found instructions here, and got to work slicing them with my mandolin. (Note to self: the plastic food guard is there for a reason. Use it. Your thumb will thank you.) We added vinegar to the soaking water as we were told that would make them more crispy.My 8 year old wanted to help, so together we dried them:Then I fried them:And look how good they look!
The 5 year old decreed they were yummy and couldn't stop eating them until they were all gone. I consider that a success. Plus this salad with goat cheese on top, and the entire meal was farm-share/home-grown/farmer's-market in origin. That's an achievement for us, certainly!

Now it's Time to Eat

During the past few months I have gradually canned so much food that the pantry is FULL. So full that I have started to stack flats of jars in the space next to the fridge, displacing all the random stuff that was stored there and eliminating the kids' favorite hiding spot. Time to start using all this food...

Last night we had a friend over for dinner whom we rarely see, as he lives in Europe and, well, we don't. I pondered what I could prepare which would be different, and hit upon a Persian-themed dinner. Truly, I spent all day in the kitchen, but it was worth it! Khoresh bademjan, polo with potato tadiq, boorani (spinach and yogurt) and toorshi as side dishes, plus roasted pumpkin (which isn't really Persian, but I've had it in an Afghani restaurant and thought it might go with the rest of the dishes). The toorshi was much spicier this time, certainly not overpowering, but the extra peppers were noticeable. For the khoresh bademjan, which is beef stew with eggplant, I peeled and sliced an eggplant, salted the slices and set them aside for 30 minutes. Then they were rinsed, dried, and fried in olive oil until soft. The eggplant was set aside until 15 minutes before it was time to eat. The stew itself was 2.5 lbs of sirloin tips, cut up and browned with 3 onions, chopped. To this I added 1 pint of the tomato sauce with Persian spices, 1 c. of water, and a handful of dried parsley. This simmered for several hours, and then the eggplant got added at the last minute. All of this was served over rice (polo).

For dessert, I made an apple pie. Now that I actually know how to make them successfully, it's become really fun and no longer stressful to make them. And this was the best one yet - it got baked for almost 90 minutes, and the apples were super soft.

This dinner also showcased the farm share, as the potatoes in the tadiq, the apples in the pie, and the pumpkin were all from the share.

And the leftovers are just as good!

"OK, Now You've Gone Too Far"

This is what my husband said when confronted with my next canning project: potatoes.
Really! The farm share this week was full of tiny little potatoes, so I got it in my head that I could can them whole. I didn't want to peel them, and I hope that isn't a fatal flaw or anything. But I did scrub them, boil them, and the processed them a little longer than recommended just in case. This was the first time that I got the heat adjusted for the pressure canner right away and didn't have to fiddle with it for 10 minutes, which is good which means the pressure never dipped during the processing time.
I ended up with 5 pints of little red and gold potatoes. Perfect for a quick side dish!