This morning I made fried potatoes for breakfast. The potatoes had been in the ground the day before, and I used hand- rendered beef tallow mixed with a little bacon grease for the cooking fat. I cooked the onions and garlic separately.
Category: Food
about cooking and eating
Curinary miscellany
After watching baristas make beautiful designs on my cappuccino, I decided to try it myself.
Larry said it looked like kindergarten cappuccino. With this particular cappuccino, I made Kenji Alt-Lopez’ BLT, which includes bread sautéed in bacon fat, and thick, salted slices of tomato. Yum!
The newest addition to my cooking
We have been following the advice of Dr. Cowan for almost 10 years now, ever since Larry came down with several mysterious and serious health issues in 2009. Dr. Cowan was the only one who came up with a coherent narrative as to the underlying cause and his prescription, which was diet change and supplements, was effective. Larry is in excellent health, and our diet focuses on fresh vegetables, grass fed and organic meat, fish, and fruit. Of course, we don’t exclude the occasional almond croissant!
Recently, Dr. Cowan came up with an easy way to add a variety of healthy vegetables to your food, a set of intense, organic vegetable powders.
A teaspoon or so in soups, stews, eggs, oatmeal, and you not only up your vegetable intake and variety without any prep time, they also add little bursts of flavor. They come in special jars that retain all the nutritional value of the powders over time.
Copy and paste this link and use the code DRCOWANSGARDEN at checkout to get 15% off your order:
Monday poem
I rarely do two poems by the same poet in a row, but I came across this poem from James Galvin’s latest book and really like it.
Wildlife Management I
All the trees kept their own counsel without any wind to speak of,
until one lone limber pine began gesticulating wildly, as if it
suffered from its own inner cyclone.
It was like a lunatic in the
courtroom of other trees.
We forgot about the sunset and the dark
coming on across the plain.
Then the reason appeared: a mother
antelope had twin newborns backed into the tree and fended off a
pair of coyotes who darted in and feinted out, knowing she
couldn’t defend them both.
The girl I was with shrieked, “Do
something!”
I thought of the rifle back at the house.
I thought of a
litter of coyote whelps in a den somewhere nearby.
I thought of the
three-hundred-yard sprint to the tree.
The mother antelope would
be first to bolt, and those coyotes would have the aplomb to make
off with both twins.
I said no.
The antelope struck out with her
forelegs, she butted the coyotes back, until one of them got the
chance they had orchestrated and caught a twin and trotted off,
dangling it by the nape as gently as if it were her own.
James Galvin, from Everything we Know Is True
A late summer recipe
Looking at a row of jars of freshly made jam is a summer pleasure. Especially when the jam is such a lovely golden color. Each year, with pears from my friend’s tree, I make this simple and delicious recipe. The whole thing can be made in a food processor. The citrus cuts the sugar, and the ginger adds spice. Don’t stir much, and don’t overcook, the jam is done just as the pears turn translucent.
Mother’s Ginger Pear
4 lbs pears
1 1/2 oranges
1 small lemon
1 2/3 lb sugar
1/4 lb ginger
2 cinnamon sticks
Summer recipe
This recipe makes a soup that is like a bowlful of summer.
I adapted it from one of my favorite cookbooks, Annie Somerville’s Field of Greens. She has you make a vegetarian stock with the corn cobs (adding a potato, some celery, garlic, salt and parsley), which I do if I’m having vegetarians for dinner. But I just cook the corn cobs in a light chicken broth if I’m making it for omnivores, and it works fine. Also, she runs the soup through a food mill. I’ve never had the patience to do that, and it tastes great without. But if you want a satin smooth base, you can do that.
This recipe makes enough for about eight people. It’s yummy and keeps well. But you can easily halve it and have plenty for four. It takes about an hour from start to finish, about half of it “active time” as they say in the world of cookbooks.
Summer Corn and Red Pepper Soup
5 C light chicken stock or water (see below)
1 1/2 T unsalted butter
1 T olive oil
12 medium or 10 large ears of corn (to make 7 Cups of kernels)
2 large or 3 medium red peppers (about 2 1/2 cups, chopped)
1 giant leek or a big white or onion (about 2 cups chopped)
4 large or 8 small garlic cloves
Salt and cayenne or other pepper, toasted ground cumin, green pepper powder
fresh basil Continue reading “Summer recipe”
Favas!
Fava beans are one of the most rewarding crops–giant beans, like the one’s from Jack and the Beanstalk–go into the ground in the fall or spring.
Soon they pop up tall and full of flowers. Then the many branched stems have many big seed pods. You have to pick them fast before they get too fat. Then comes the shucking, parboiling, peeling, and eating. Once you’ve parboiled and peeled them, they can go into almost any dish.
Like fried rice, for example. 
But now I’ve learned you can also roast them whole in the pod with a little olive oil, salt, and spice–they come out crispy and delicious. You can eat the whole thing!
Two quick chicken recipes
Once in awhile, it seems like I take whatever is in the fridge and create something tasty. The other night it was leftover rice, a few chicken thighs, some butternut squash, mushrooms, onions, fennel, and green beans. I sautéed the onions and fennel with a little garlic and some spices, added the mushrooms and then set them aside and browned the chicken in the same pan. I layered a pan with the sautéed vegetables and rice, put the chicken and chunks of squash on top and added a bit of chicken stock. I baked them for about twenty-five minutes. While they were baking I lightly sautéed the green beans in the same sauce pan, and then sprinkled them on top. A yummy dinner in less than an hour. Worth saving the idea to make again. Continue reading “Two quick chicken recipes”
Best Beans
Instead of a vision of sugarplums, how about a simple, inexpensive and wonderful meal that lasts for days. I set myself the challenge of making a pot of vegetarian beans that taste as good as ones cooked with a ham hock.
First I made a rich vegetable stock: two whole ears of corn (chopped), turnip, rutabaga, golden beet, red pepper, carrot, onion, celery, herbs, simmered about two hours and strained. I rinsed the beans (I used black beans), brought them to a boil, and drained them. (Someone told me this reduces their gas-producing quality.) Then I cooked the beans in the stock with chopped early girl tomatoes, shallots, onions, garlic, and a chipotle pepper for about 40 minutes in the pressure cooker. After they were soft, I added cumin, chiles, cilantro, lime, salt.
These may be the most flavorful beans I ever made. We ate them with rice and chile verde, with eggs, and by themselves. Yum!
Tomatoes, tomatoes
Romas, Early Girls, Heirlooms, they’re all at their peak. When I see them glistening in their red and orange and gold skins, I can’t resist them! I spent a whole day elbow deep in roasting, saucing, canning about 40 pounds of tomatoes, a lug of Romas, and about 8 pounds each of Early Girls and Heirlooms. I like to roast the Romas first with onion, garlic and basil. I spread the onion, garlic and basil on a cookie sheet, cover with Romas, and sprinkle with salt and olive oil.
Then into the oven at 425 degrees for about 45 minutes, till the tomatoes just start tot char. I roasted some Heirlooms, too, but sliced them into regular slices instead of halves, like the Romas. Once roasted, you can eat them on toast, blend them up up into sauce, or add other types to the mix for a more complex flavor.
One new wrinkle: I read on Serious Eats that you can peel some of your best, ripest tomatoes and dry and crush the skins to add to sauce in the winter, so I did a bunch of that, too.
Here are the results. Continue reading “Tomatoes, tomatoes”
Out in the world
Today I decided to try a new Vietnamese restaurant for lunch. It just happened to be on my route. I had one of the wonderful Vietnamese egg pancakes full of shrimp and bean sprouts on which you pile lettuce and basil and other wonderful things. My Thai Ice Tea came with a little umbrella and a maraschino cherry! Do you suppose that’s the French influence?
Thinking about stock
Yesterday, as I made stock out of my two newly butchered hens, I decided to read about stock in Serious Eats. My stock method is mostly just throw whatever scraps I have into the pot and simmer for hours. But these were special chickens–gorgeous, rich meat and fat–and I wanted to do right by them.
I’d tried J. Kenji López-Alt’s method of chopping chicken into tiny bits, but it made a total charnal house of my kitchen, so I wanted to explore what else they suggested. Daniel Gritzner had a comprehensive article, and the comments about using a pressure cooker or bringing the stock to a boil then setting it in a 225 degree oven overnight interested me. I’m also going to try adding an apple with the onions, carrots, etc. The most interesting idea to me was to use one stock as a base to make another stock, layering and enriching the flavor. I’m definitely going to try that. Continue reading “Thinking about stock”