Monday, September 22, 2008

Funny Sounding Food Night - Forfar Bridies and a Turk's Turban

We had one of those 'what the hell are we going to cook with this random mass of food in my fridge' nights. And we were saved by the culinary genius of my wife. She's wrapped the leftover sausage stuffing from last night's stuffed zucchini in pastry dough to make a kind of forfar bridie (think of it as the Scottish version of a samosa, but baked instead of fried and without the spices). And at the Silver Spring farmer's market we bought the coolest-looking squash I've ever seen, called a Turk's Turban. See image to the left. I thought it was a decorative gourd at first. Turns out you cook them just like acorn squash: cut em in half, bake em for 40-50 minutes, then throw on some butter and brown sugar or maple syrup or honey or whatever floats your boat. Not bad.

Was thinking on how much this whole 100-mile diet thing has opened our eyes to new foods. There are literally dozens of things we had never tried before that we've found we like, and especially winter vegetables since that seems to be creeping up on us. I never ate squash as a child, beyond the odd pumpkin pie. But summer squash and zucchini are household favorites now and we've experimented with all sorts of winter squash: acorn, spaghetti, butternut, hubbard, and now turk's turban. The next big leap is the winter vegetables that neither of us has really ever tried and liked: parsnips, turnips, rutabaga, etc. But I hold out hope. After all, Emily now has a number of cheeses she likes, something that I thought would only happen simultaneous with the apocalypse. So there's gotta be something good to make with rutabagas.

Sunday, September 21, 2008

Back to Work Blues, and Stuffed Summer Sqush with Endive and Tomato Salad and Soda Bread

It's been two months since either of us posted. Not surprising, since we went back to work about two months ago. Doing the locavore thing when you're off during the summer and you can spend a lot of time on it. In the end, it turned out to be a good thing, because we took care of most of the major research and the steep learning curve for things like preserving when we had the time. And now, we're settling into things a little more, trying to find time in our busy schedules to keep up with the work. We've put up some tomato sauce, more peaches, froze some raspberries, begun to bake bread pretty regularly, found a recipe for crackers to satisfy my junk food craving, and planted some winter greens in the yard to give us fresh salad for the next few months. The endive's the only thing that's thrived despite being ravaged by rabbits and bugs so far, but the colder weather is killing off the bugs and the rabbit is starting to avoid us more since I starting taking the dogs out every time he showed up.

Still lacking sources for local oats, peanuts, and beans, all of which were staples of our pre-locavore diet. Our last can of pre-locavore chickpeas went into a soup last week. But there are a couple places we haven't tried yet, like the Takoma Park and Bethesda Farmers Markets, both of which last all winter. We're almost out of pre-locavore cooking oil, which means we're relying almost completely on butter as a cooking fat now. But, on the up side, it's fall now, which means prime time for apples (which we love) and winter squash (which we eat a lot of, and which in the case of spaghetti squash provides an alternative to pasta without the hard work involved in making pasta from scratch).

Anyway, tonight's meal, using some of the last of the summer produce we'll see:

Endive and Tomato Salad - 5 minutes
Chop endive. Lay down as the bed for the salad. Slice a fresh tomato. Sprinkle with a good finishing salt and red wine vinegar. Shave slices of a good semi-soft cheese over the top (we used Cabra La Mancha from the Firefly Farms stand at the Silver Spring Farmer's Market).

Stuffed Summer Squash - 30 minutes
Chop off ends and halve four summer squash and/or zucchini lengthwise. Using a spoon, scoop out inside seeds. Leave out to dry a little in the air. Chop one onion and a few cloves of garlic, saute in butter. Once onions are translucent, add one pound ground turkey (Roots Market carries organic free range ground turkey from Eberly Farms in Stevens, PA). Saute until turkey is done. Season to taste with cumin, turmeric, cayenne, and salt. Meanwhile, grill squash on stove or on grill until cooked through - about 5 minutes per side on medium heat. Preheat oven to 250. Fill squash with turkey stuffing, and bake for 10 minutes.

Soda Bread - 15 minutes prep, 40 minutes cooking time
A variation on the soda bread recipe from the New Vegetarian Epicure, which is a great cookbook I highly recommend. Beat together 1.75 cups milk (the original recipe calls for buttermilk, but who the hell has buttermilk lying around?), 1 egg, 2 tbsp melted butter. Mix 1 tsp baking soda, 3 tsp baking powder, 2 tsp salt, 1.5 cups white flour, 1.5 cups wheat flour, 1 cup precious pre-locavore oats. Then add the wet ingredients to the dry. At this point, the dough was VERY wet, maybe because of the milk substitution, so I continued to beat in more flour until the dough had firmed up enough to knead a little. But it was still a little wet, so I kneaded it in the bowl, rather than getting my cutting board goopy. Divide in half, freeze half the dough for use later. Put dough in round shape onto buttered baking sheet. Use a knife to slice a cross in the top, which looks cool when it finishes baking. Bake 40 minutes at 375.