Homestead Eating: Dandelion Cookies!!

I suppose that for the most part, dandelion season is done.  most of the sunny-yellow-flowers-producing plants in my yard are now clouds of delicately ephemeral and amazingly tenacious parachuted seeds.

but its never too late to brag, right?

Dandelion cookies = delicious

they're even better with milk

Step 1: find dandelions that do not grow by exhaust-emitting-monsters frequented roadways nor are ever treated with pesticides and the like.  plant poison = people poison

Step 2: gather a bunch of dandelion flower heads.

Step 3: chop off the green bits, so that you have a half cup (or more!! I like more!) of fluffy yellow and white petals and petal-fuzz

Step 3: mix together the following:

really soft butter (and oil to make up the difference) - 1/2 cup

raw honey - 1/2 cup

2 eggs

1tspoon vanilla

1 cup flour (I used white)

1 cup rolled oats

your dandelion petals

Step 4: drop by spoonfulls onto a cookie sheet and cook in oven at 375 degrees for about 10 minutes

Step 5: Eat!

Homestead Eating: Beet Kvass ... and other ferments

So, about fermenting.  I found something that I can reliably ferment successfully.  Two things actually, if you count the lacto- pickles.  The key to it, for me is to drown the foodstuff in water and either kefir culture or salt, so that the brine far far far overwhelms the food.  One day I will be able to ferment in a crock, rather than only being able to ferment in a mason jar.  Oh the sweet sense of success!  But I digress.  Beet kvass is bad ass.

Chock full of pro-biotics,  and the fermenting makes the beety amazingness of vitamins and minerals and micro nutrients that much more accessible to the body.  It tastes good too, if you like the sour of real fermentation and the earthiness of beets.  Fortunately I love the latter and am falling in love with the former.

The 4th 2-quart jar of the stuff is currently fermenting on the counter, and I've got about a quart in the fridge.  a 1/4 cup twice a day is recommended as a tonic for the digestive system and the blood.

I use the recipe from Sally Fallon's "Nourishing Traditions," though Nourished Kitchen also has a recipe.  I haven't actually been using salt in mine.  I started the first batch with some whey from kefir (though you could use other whey, or even the clear juice - yes, that's whey - that collects in a container of good live yoghurt), and the subsequent batches with some of the previous batch :-)

In fact, my success with the kvass has been so heartening that the other night I cleaned out my moldy crock, and started a brand new batch of Kimchi (vaguely following Wild Fermentation's recipe) - being liberal with the brine, which I hope will keep the whole thing from imploding into green spores.  So far so good, this morning, the brine above the lid/plate was thickening and starting to smell ferment-y!!!!  I used one half of  (last week's) GINORMOUS head of Napa Cabbage from the CSA.  I have another one from this week, so am anticipating possibly plenty more of the same!

And I threw together a kohlrabi dill pickle ferment: pictures and instructions to come in a CSA Eating post later this week.

YUM.

CSA Cooking:Rhubarb Pie for the Fourth of July

"As American as apple pie" might as well be "as American as rhubarb pie," since both the apple and the rhubarb originated east of Europe and both were brought to America and then spread westward as pioneers pushed the frontier across the continent.  In fact, in The First Four Years Laura Ingalls Wilder refers to the rhubarb by the then-colloquial name of "pie-plant," which says much for the tart stalk's perception on the American frontier!  While the rhubarb never had the icon of Johnny Appleseed to grow its fame, it does have the distinction of being legislated into a fruit.  Though by a botanical definition the rhubarb classifies as a vegetable, in 1947 a New York State court declared the stalk a fruit on the basis of its common usage as fruit.  Today, for the purposes of food regulations and import/export duties and tariffs, rhubarb is a fruit.

Rhubarb pie is one of my very favorite pies in the world (and thats saying alot, coming from me!).  We've decided that the rhubarb bed will be along 2/3rds of the front of the house: I hope to get the baby plants in the ground before the end of the summer.  And next year, plant well-started strong sunflowers behind the row of rhubarb, right up against the house.

 There's been stalks of rhubarb in the last two CSA shares, so I figured I'd bring a pie to the extended-family 4th o'July gathering.  Cousins are in town from Minnesota!  Newly engaged cousins at that! (extra super bonus points for deciding to propose on a mountain in Alaska, cousin-in-law!)

.... and then between this and that, sleeping in, and cuddling huskies, I didn't make the pie.  Maybe I'll make it tonight, while the man is out of town, playing a concert gig?  Then I can eat the whole thing allll by myself....

So there's no picture of a scrumptious pie, but I've still got more information than you never knew you didn't want to know aout rhubarb!

rhubarb (n.)

late 14c., from Old French rubarbe, from Medieval Latin rheubarbarum, from Greek rha barbaron "foreign rhubarb," from rha "rhubarb" (associated with Rha, ancient Scythian name of the River Volga [along the banks of which rhubarb grew wild per wikipedia]) + barbaron, neuter of barbaros "foreign."

Grown in China and Tibet, it was imported into ancient Europe by way of Russia. Spelling altered in Medieval Latin by association with rheum. European native species so called from 1640s. (etymonline)

**Fascinating, is it not?

The import of Rhubarb into Europe began as early as the 1300's, but was used primarily medicinally until the widespread availability of sugar in the 1700's.   

"Rhubarb has been used for medical purposes by the Chinese for thousands of years,^[2] and appears in The Divine Farmer's Herb-Root Classic, which legend attributes to the mythical Shen Nung, the Yan Emperor, but is thought to have been compiled about 2700 years ago" (wiki!)

** The Divine Farmer's Herb-Root Classic.  The title alone holds so much promise, and the books legendary attribution only increases my desire to read it!  Just think what a cultural shift it would encompass if we modern westerners retained a sense of farming as an active engagement with the divine!

"The expense of transportation across Asia caused rhubarb to be highly expensive in medieval Europe, where it was several times the price of other valuable herbs and spices such as cinnamon, opium and saffron. The merchant explorer Marco Polo was therefore much interested to find the plant being grown and harvested in the mountains of Tangut province. A measure of the value set upon rhubarb can be gotten from Ruy Gonzáles de Clavijo's report of his embassy in 1403-05 to Timur in Samarkand: "The best of all merchandise coming to Samarkand was from China: especially silks, satins, musk, rubies, diamonds, pearls, and rhubarb...".^{" (thank you wikipedia for your information!)}

**I find this both fascinating and also slightly hilarious, since the seeds of the rhubarb plant have been a peasant survival food staple in Russia for centuries.

And Finally, the theatre geek in me wants you to know that "In British theatre and early radio drama, the words "rhubarb rhubarb" were repeated for the effect of unintelligible conversation on the background.  This usage lent its title to the 1969 film Rhubarb and its 1980 remake Rhubarb Rhubarb" (wiki!)

^SOURCES

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhubarb

www.etymonline.org

CSA Cooking: one bunch of fresh basil

I arrived at the CSA pickup today after work to the welcome realization that this week's share included fresh basil.  Also new baby turnips and a giant napa cabbage.  I took up my bunch of basil, rubber banded around the stem – the rubber band providing pressure to bruise the stem, breaking just enough cell walls to release the aromatics of basil without compromising its structure.  The lady behind me walked around me to continue down the line of vegetable offerings while I stood there with my nose buried in the basil like it was a bouquet offering from my beloved. 

The sense of smell is so powerful, scent carries sense beyond the smell itself.  Campfire smoke, the smell of rain on dry earth, cookies baking, the unique scent of a loved one.  Each carries with it and evokes its own matrix of memory.

A noseful of fresh basil is long summer afternoons, is summer time gloamings below a spreading maple.  It is the most richly velvety satisfying taste sense mouthfeel in the world.  It is the transcendence of a sunripe still warm heirloom tomato, eaten in careful bites, each bite slathered in pesto.  It is the promise of summer sun shining green on a winter plate.  It is fresh and pungent, bright and deep.  Dried basil is a beautiful underpinning for almost any sauté, stew or soup.  Cooked basil adds piquancy to thai and Italian dishes alike.  But fresh basil is simply sublime.

I stuck my nose in that bouquet of basil and I knew just what I was making for dinner.  I had to go by the grocery store anyway for milk and trashbags I'd neglected to replenish the last time, as well as (always!) for cereal.  And so I stalked the vegetable section, noticing myself first bypassing it joyfully.  In winter I spend most of my grocery shop in the vegetable section, but in summer my table overflows with so fresh so local greens I rarely buy anything except for a special occasion.  This qualified.  I found the tomatoes, and settled upon a plastic clamshell (I know! I know! The unsustainable plastic waste! But really, there are times when bruised tomoatoes or pink-pretending-to-be-red tomatoes just won't do) of on-the-vine beautiful little round red tomatoes.  I brought them home.

I boiled water, salted it, and added pasta.  I poured a bunch of olive oil into a cast iron skillet.  This is not the time for sparing use of olive oil, testing to see how little you can get away with to coat your greens.  This is a time for covering the bottom of a large pan in an eighth inch or more of oil.  So much that you pause for a moment, thinking you've poured too much, it’s a waste, it'll ruin the dish.  It isn't, it won't.  I chopped a large clove of garlic and set it to simmering in the oil.  Washed the tomatoes, finely chopped the basil (stems and all – I certainly was not going to was any of the aromatics) and set it aside.  Then I quartered the tomatoes, placing them in the oil, where they sizzled and threw drops of hot oil out of the pan when their inner juices came in contact.  As all the tomatoes found their way in the skillet, they settled down and began to mull in the oil.  The goal for the tomatoes is the point where they start to go soft, are warm through, the skin just beginning to peel off the edges of the slices. Salt and pepper. About half way there, I added a handful of pine nuts (the last of the bag that has been in my freezer and then in my fridge for probably a few years now, I use them sparingly, but adore them when I do).  As the tomatoes warm and sweat, the juices mix with the oil to creat a light, beautiful, flavor not-quite-sauce.  Fortuitously, my pasta and tomatoes were ready at the same moment.  This is the sort of confluence that I don't plan anymore, I just intuit.  Below my brains understanding of cooking time, in minutes or the distance from a simmer to a boil, my heart knows the rhythm of the kitchen and I find myself puttering around until just the moment when, like today, the tomatoes ought to begin for them to finish at the same moment as the pasta.  If you don't have this pulse yet, not to worry.  One or the other can always be taken off the heat.  I scooped the pasta into the skillet, letting each scoop drain of excess water as it hung in the hair above the pot.  Then turned off the heat and mixed the pasta with the tomatoes, pine nuts, and the lovely sauciness in the pan.  The last step is to mix in the chopped basil, letting the warmth of the pasta begin to wilt it, releasing its oils to our tastebuds, but retaining that fresh beautiful incomparable flavor. 

Served under a scattering of parmesean cheese with chianti on the porch in the rain clean air, there was no time to take a picture.

CSA Cooking: Spinaci e rucola penne con ouvo

I'm starting a new blog theme hereabouts...  you all know the "Homestead Eating,"  well the new one is CSA cooking.  Our first share came this week, and I think I'll enjoy documenting how we eat/use/preserve the seasonal bounty.  The Farm Notes newsletters that come with the shares generally include a recipe, and they're soliciting member contributions, so here's to that!  Picking up the share, which included a stalk of lovage, our farm lady was jovially telling everyone to let her know what how to cook with it, and I couldn't help mentioning the bake a chicken breast with honey and lovage from now two years ago....  and I started to smell a blog post.  A whole series of them.  Not to mention that for newbies to the eat-seasonally-from-the-garden gig, a bag of sometime unkown and sometimes random veggies can certainly be intimidating:  so here's my edu-drop-in-a-bucket to you who is sitting out there longing to plant a garden or get into the kitchen.

Starting with the oh so simple peasant food that sounds oh so glamorous when you give it an italian name: Spinaci e rucola penne con ouvo!   Otherwise known as pasta with spinach, arugula and an egg.

One of my dearest friends in the world went to college at the American University in Rome (Italy), then fell in love and married an italian, and now works as the staff journalist for the European Space Agency in a picturesque hill town with a view of Rome.  When I went to her wedding a few years ago, I met a number of her college friends from AUR, and it was from one of these fantastic ladies that I learned this quintessential italian peasant food:

Start with pasta.  Add any veggies and/or beans that you have on hand.  Top with an egg.  Add cheese if you have it.  Salt and pepper is good.

So simple.  And a complete meal nutritionally, assuming that you do HAVE veggies on hand :-)

For this meal, I took two of the small bunches of greens that came in the CSA share.  Neither was enough for a complete meal, barely enough for a side.  Growing up vegetarian has given me the expectation that a meal is a mound of good green or orange red yellow vegetables with some other things, and even the sustainable family garden farm and outreach educate the kids to grow good food and eat it too ethos that informs Calypso can't make early summer first harvest greens bunches the giant size I secretly expect.  So!  I combined two of them: arugula and spinach.  Yum.

While I watered the little garden, my darlin man chopped 3 cloves of garlic and set it in oil in a skillet, and boiled pasta.  Under my shouted-from-the-garden direction he roughly chopped the greens, and put them in the pan.  I came inside (having emptied 15 gallons of good spring water into thirsty thirsty soil) and sauteed the greens until the stems began to get tender.  These went onto plates and two eggs went in the pan.  Over easy is the key here, so that when placed on top of greens and pasta, the yolk breaks and makes a lovely sauce.  Garnish with parmesean (or other hard cheese of your choosing) and salt and pepper.  Total time (minus water coming to the boil): 10 minutes, maybe.

Homestead Eating: From The Freezer

I spend my summers trying to harvest (from garden or woods or seasonal grocery store offerings) and preserve more food than I did the year before.  But invariably I end up with only one quart of frozen purple cauliflower, or fewer blueberries than would be necessary to have a blueberry pie every week.  I so easily trip over into a scarcity based poverty mindset.  I get fixed into the idea that we can only have such things as pie from frozen wild blueberries or canned peaches on really really special occasions.  This then leads two thing: firstly, I end up with years-old bags of lingonberries in the freezer and secondly, I rarely eat local food in the winter.  These things together make me feel like a failure of a homesteader.  I get trapped in a mind swirl of "real homesteaders eat all winter long on food they preserved in the summer.  I never make a meal like that, therefore I'm still an imposter homesteader."

Well, I looked through the odds and ends of leftover CSA produce that I'd managed to preserve over the course of the summer and stash in the freezer.  Combined with the berries and the salmon and the caribou, there was actually a lot of food there! So in the last couple of weeks I've been making a conscious effort to allow myself to actually use and EAT this bounty! 

Last night, we had a ground caribou (from the freezer) and sweet potato saute over pasta.

The night before that, we had Chitina Salmon steaks (from the freezer) with Calypso CSA broccoli (from the freezer) and quinoa.  I also made a wild Blueberry (from the freezer) crisp that was the perfect balance between not-quite-tart intensity and sweet.

A couple of weeks ago I made a Peach-Raspberry pie with Peaches (from the pantry) and Raspberries (from the freezer).  I also made a Cranberry Cake - the recipe courtesy of "Sundays at Moosewood" which was very good, but next time needs to be baked with a tinfoil cover to keep from burning - with wild Lingonberries (from the freezer).  And I made Zucchini-Cornmeal skillet cakes with grated Calypso Zucchini (from the freezer)!  And before that we had a meal of Chitina Salmon fillet (from the freezer!) with sauteed Purple Cauliflower (from the freezer) and Snow Peas (from the freezer). 

Next up:  A quart of bok-choy, more salmon, more berries, more snow peas, moose and caribou.

Not only is it a cheaper way to eat - what with the miniscule grocery bills of the last couple of weeks, it is in alignment with my concept of our little homestead and the life we strive to live on it.  And it is my practice of moving into an abundance mindset.

How do you incorporate local or seasonal eating into your life in the late winter/early spring before anything is sprouting out of the cold cold ground?

Homestead Eating: Gourmet Cabbage Salad

This evening, I am meeting the ladies of HBB for a glass of wine and baked brie at our favorite classy local joint.  We will celebrate Faye's first official rejection letter for her novel from a publisher, talk about plans for April's Camp NaNoWriMo, giggle madly, gossip, and discuss the meaning of life.  We frequently go to Lavelle's after shows, or for an HBB heart to heart; sometimes we go on dates, and we went there to celebrate Maple and Me's elopement.  It is an expensive restaurant and the closest thing to a wine bar that Fairbanks has to offer.  It has good taste in wine, vinagrette and cheese.  I usually get salads or appetizers. 

I have taken to recreating one of their salads, a warm red cabbage with bacon in it.  I think I've had it as many times at home as at the restaurant, perhaps more.  I've made a couple of variations on it, depending on what is in the pantry, and it has been a while since I had the one that Lavelle's makes.  But the best I can remember, Lavelle's cooks dried cranberries (which soak up some juices), bacon and walnuts with the red cabbage and tops it with a dab of goat cheese.  It is super delicious. 

Tonight's version began with chopped up applewood smoked bacon cooking in the wok.  Then I added half a head of chopped red cabbage.  The bacon hadn't provided quite enough fat, so I added some olive oil with basil, thyme, salt and pepper.  A splash of merlot at the beginning of cooking and a glug of balsamic near the end added to the cabbage juices to stain the bacon purple-brown.  I didn't have any walnuts or dried berries today, so I added in a couple handfuls of frozen lingonberries.  I anticipated writing here about how the tiny ruby red berries exploded tart and sweet and wild in the mouth, a surprise among the cabbage.  But it turns out that the high heat of the cooking and the quick transition from frozen to cooked burst most of the berries in the pan, and the lingonberry juices mingled into the salad.  I liberally topped our plates with goat cheese, and we ate it with a glass of Merlot and the last episode of the first season of True Blood.  (I'm hooked.  It's kind of ridiculous.  We don't have TV, but we have a television and I occasionally watch TV shows on DVD.)  It was delicious.  And the deep purple of the salad with the crisp white of the goat cheese next to the deep red of the merlot was strangely appropriate for a vampire film. 

And one of the best parts is that – apart from the olive oil and herbs (some of them anyway), which I will import without compunction for as long as our shipping systems allow it – it all could have been produced locally.  Unfortunately, I got the cabbage, the goat cheese, and the bacon all at Fred Meyer's.  But cabbages grow beautifully up here, we intend to raise pigs, and I hear tell that over on another hillside Maple and Me will have goats before too long.  When I think about eating locally in a just barely subarctic climate, it is easy to slip into a poverty mindset: well I can't eat that or that or that or that because it doesn't grow up here.  So I find it rewarding (as it is in so many ventures in lfe) to frame my mind to abundance.  To celebrate the things are.  The foods that grow and the meals they make.  And, if that just happens to approximate, or even surpass, a gourmet restaurant meal?  Well, I'll take it with gratitude.

Homestead Eating: Honey and Caribou

Last week, I stopped by the local spirit-selling store to pick up a beer to drink with the Heart Stew.  Anyone reading that post the entire way through will know that I chose Stone's Arrogant Bastard.  Well, as I browsing the craft beer section, I found my self suddenly distracted by bottles of artisan hard ciders.  On a total whim I bought a 22 oz. bottle of each of the two varieties.  And decided I would cook a meal with which to drink each of them. 

Crispin ® Natural hard apple cider : Honey Crisp was this evening's beverage of choice.  (I have not in fact, received or been promised anything by Cripsin.  I just really liked the cider, and the meal I made, so I'm writing about it.)  The side of the bottle reads "Naturally fermented using a premium blend of unpasteurized fresh-pressed apple juice, not from concentrate, with no added malt, spirit or grape alcohols.  Experience an earthy, fruity bouquet with an authentic cidery aroma and hints of honey.  A yeasty, full-bodied flavor, creamy mouth-feel with a crisp finish and unusual complexity.  Honey Crisp Artisanal Reserve, unfiltered cloudy hard cider, uses racked apple-wine smoothed with pure organic honey, with no added sugar, colorants, sorbate or benzoate preservatives."  You can see why I was intrigued. 

As I was turning over in my mind what meal would do this cider justice, I happened to be talking about food with my sister.  This is a common subject of conversation between the two of us.  She suggested Honey-glazed caribou.  And my eyes went wide with the brilliance of the thought.  She amazes me from time to time, this sister of mine.  She is a devout vegetarian, but has worked in –and run – commercial kitchens where she not only cooked but also developed recipes for meat dishes.  She comes up with brilliant concepts like the proscuitto wrapped medjool dates of Thanksgiving fame, and makes them.  But she doesn't eat them.  And still the brilliance of what she does with flavors that she only smells constantly amazes me. 

And so dinner tonight was Honey-glazed Caribou with Honey Crisp Hard Cider.  And oh my word.  I'm not entirely sure how long it would have taken me to come up with the idea of cooking caribou with honey, but let me tell you, it would have been far too long.  I didn’t use any other spices or flavorings on the caribou, just cooked it with honey from my mother's bees this summer past (or perhaps the one before?).  And it was beyond words, mellow and savory, sweet and wholesome.  Eaten in the same bite with baked potato in salt and pepper and butter; the sweetness and the salt and the pepper bloomed on the tongue.  That delicious gaminess of the caribou was tempered by the flavor of the honey, and kept if from feeling like dessert.  I served it with cabbage sautéed in butter and baked potatoes.  It would have been an entirely Alaskan food meal if not for the sweet potatoes I also cooked to add color to our plates and diets.  The cider was lovely, dry and crisp.  The honey flavors picked up on each other and made glory on the tastebuds, but I think the caribou would have appreciated something a little deeper flavored, and perhaps not quite as dry.  The Darlin'Man says we ought to try it with mead next time.  I am sure there will be a next time.

THE RECIPE:

Take one frozen caribou roast.  It is frozen because you mistakenly thawed ground caribou earlier in the day.  You are determined to use a roast, however, so set aside the ground meat for use in a day or two.

In a cast iron skillet on low heat, whisk together about 2 tablespoons of really good honey, with a generous splash of olive oil and enough water to about 1/3 fill the skillet.

Set the frozen roast in the skillet and let it begin to thaw as the oven below bakes potaoes. 

Turn on the heat under the skillet far before the roast is fully thawed.  Put a large lid over roast.  Ocassionally check it with a fork and flip it over until it is thawed through, cooked on the outside and bleeds when you stick it.  Remove roast to a cutting board.  Pour pan drippings into dog bowl to mix with kibble.

Silce roast in an attempt at crossgrain into maybe ½ inch slices?  Pour some olive oil into the bottom of the same skillet and lay the caribou slices in the oil.  Put a small dollop of really good honey on the upper face of each slice of roast.  I don't know how much I used, perhaps ½ teaspoon each?  Perhaps a teaspoon. 

Turn on the heat to sear the bottoms of the slices as the honey begins to melt.  Turn the slices over.  In a moment or two, the honey and oil will have become a delicious goo mixing with the caribou juices in the bottom of the pan.  Turn the slices over a few times, shaking the skillet as though you are a chef on a cooking show to coat them in the glaze. 

Remove slices to plates, and replace skillet with glaze over high heat, to reduce.  Pour glaze over meat and serve with honey cider, potatoes, and greens.

Canadian Bacon

On Tuesday's "Talk of Alaska" radio programme on KUAC, there was a discussion of  eating wild game.  It is no surprise, in a state that has abundant salmon runs, caribou herds that number tens of thousands of individuals, moose walking down Main Street, halibut larger than a person that the consumption of wild game should be a topic of frequent conversation.  Or that in a state with so much frontier-style individualism, and a living Native heritage of subsistence, that it should be prevalent.

One caller gave a recipe for making ham out of black bear.  The following is my paraphrase of his commentary, recorded here as much for my own records as for anyone reading:  Unlike a cold cured ham such as proscuitto in the Italian tradition, where you have to have the skin left on – scalded and de-haired, he skins the bear and uses the pelt otherwise.  Then, taking each of the four legs from knee to shoulder or knee to ball-joint; brine the leg in a brine of one cup salt and one cup brown sugar per gallon of water for 10 days.  Then rinse the leg in clear water for 24 hours, changing the water for fresh every couple of hours.  This is to get all the excess salt out of the flesh.  You use the salt to cure the meat, but you don't want it staying in the finished product.  Then using a smoker, hot smoke the hams at 170 until the meat reaches a safe temperature.  Black bear carries trichamonis which is tranmissable to humans.  The bacterium dies at relatively low temperatures, but you want to be sure that the meat's internal temp raises to at least 150.  Then eat and enjoy!  He recommends thin slices bear ham on rye with mustard, or fried with eggs for breakfast. 

Take the belly fat and treat it just as you would bacon.  This is apparently where the term "Canadian bacon" comes from.  Originally, Canadian Bacon was made by frontiersfolk out of black bear, and it wasn't until civilized commercialism came along that it morphed into a different preparation of pork belly. 

Take the rest of the fat from the animal and render it down to lard, store in sealed jars to use in baking and pies.  The caller never eats pig products anymore really, only bear.  While I plan on raising pigs, at least for the next few years, and don't know if I will ever shoot a black bear; if I ever do, or if a hunter aquaintance doesn't want to eat his bear, I can guarantee that I'll be making ham!

In other news, I hear that lynx tastes like chicken.

Homestead Eating: Moose and Veggies

Saturday night for dinner, we had Rosemary and red wine moose with rice and veggies.  Early in the day, the Darlin'Man cut off a piece of moose meat from the hindquarter we have in the freezer.  I let it thaw on the counter in a marinade of olive oil, red wine, garlic, rosemary, and salt and pepper.  I sauteed it in cast iron, till the larger peice was rare in the center and smaller was medium rare.  If you ever get a chance to cook your own moose, try it rare even if you usually like your meat more well done.  It really serves the moose well!
I braised a mix of onions, carrots and turnips from Calypso's CSA in some chicken stock and served it over brown rice.  

Bear Creek Winery Black Currant Wine

We had it with a very nice bottle of Alaskan wine.  A few months ago, I bought this bottle to save for a nice meal (disclaimer* I did not receive any incentive from Bear Creek!).  I had planned on breaking it out the next time I got pork chops from Homegrown, and I do think this light red sweet wine would complement pork better than it did the heavier flavors of the moose.  But it was lovely!

Homestead Eating: Lox!

I made Lox last week!  After we got back from Chitina (post up-coming on that whole experience, I promise!) last week, I made the lox and then let it sit in the fridge and cure while we went down to Girdwood for one of my best friend's wedding.  When we got back, it was cured and ready to eat, so Tuesday night we had lox for dinner along with boiled new potatoes and cabbage cooked with butter (both from Calypso's CSA).  I served it with some sour cream and with chopped green onions from the front porch.  So the only part of this meal that wasn't local was the salt and pepper, the sugar used in curing, and the sour cream! 

Gravlax

To make the lox I followed the directions and recipes from Juniper Moon Farm, found here.  I'll let you look at their photos of the process, as their food photography is much more beautiful than mine generally yet manages to be.  I used both dill and fennel from the CSA. 

Darlin'Man cuts Lox

Next time I make lox, for there will be next time for sure!  I'm going to try curing it for only the three days that is recomended.  It wound up being a little on the salty side, and I have heard that the saltiness increases the longer you let it cure...

Dinner!

Serve, and then enjoy with dear ones, eaten mindfully in the presence of fire.

Dinner is served!

I got some cream cheese, so tomorrow I'll be bringing lox and bagels for lunch!

Homestead Eating: Woodland-made sauce

"Carrot Pancake" with lingonberry sauce,
 sour cream, and gruit ale.

I hope and intend that this is only the first of many versions of 'woodland-made' sauce that you will see and I will eat.  Lingonberries, though better known as a Scandinavian specialty, are as common in the woods on this this side of sub-artic circumpolar north as they are over there.  I hear tell you can find them in the northeast (Vermont and such places) though I've no personal knowledge of that.  Every autumn, I gather quarts and quarts of lingonberries.  I generally make a lingonberry sauce at Thanksgiving and look forward to when it entirely replaces ocean spray tm on the table. I am much more regular about, and invested in, this harvest than that of the blueberries that the typical Alaskan is known for.  (Living uphill now from great blueberry flats may see that personal trend change.)
Also growing in the woodlands I gather these ruby berries in are such plants as labrador tea and spruce and birch trees.  There are others of course, but these tend to be prolific and perhaps more importantly, to figure intimately into the profile of this 'woodland-made' sauce.  The last time I was heating up a lingonberry sauce (coincidentally for this same meal on a different day - its a fave), I was not as assiduous as usual in picking out the stray leaves of labrador tea and spruce needles that had wound up frozen with the berries.  The next day I was eating the left over berries (with a spoon, out of the pot; that's how much I adore these tart ruby baubles) - and I noticed little pockets of intense flavor where spruce or labrador tea had mingled with the berry flavor.  It was unexpected and took me aback, but on second thought I rather liked it.
So this time, in preparing the sauce, I intentionally left the leaves and needles in and let the sauce simmer for longer than usual in an attempt to infuse.  It sorta worked.  I'm looking forward to trying again and actually ADDING some of both flavorings, picked in the woods on purpose.  I mean, the flavor was a leeetle bit there, but certainly not enough to hold its own in the meal.  To further the whole woodland sauce concept, I sweetened the sauce with a splash of birch syrup instead of the spoonful of sugar I usually use.

As for the meal as a whole it is (mostly) out of "Sundays at Moosewood," Moosewood Restaurant's ethnic cookbook.  It is definately a favorite kitchen tool and inspiration of mine, as evidenced by the way it beginning to fall apart and the number of bookmarks and notes stuck into it.  It has sections on the ethnic/regional food of various areas : Morroco,  Northern Britain, India, Japan, Southeast US, Northeast US, Hebrew, Bulgarian or Yugoslav, etc etc.  One of my recent favorites is the section on Finland.  I don't know why the idea didn't strike me earlier in my life here in Alaska, but it makes so much sense to look to Scandinavian cultures for traditional food-ways that are compatible with life here in the far north: the climate, the growing season, some of the wild species, the need for winter storage, etc are all so very similar.  It only makes sense their food would resonate here too.  This is an adaptation of traditional carrot pancakes that I gather are usually prepared more like latkes.  Here they're baked in cast iron.  I don't follow the recipe anymore, I've made it so many times, and such things are relative... but I'll tell you how I do it.  For a precise recipe to follow, I cannot recommend "Sundays at Moosewood" enough!

Saute a diced onion in oil or fat (I like to use bacon grease when I have it) in a cast iron pan.
Shred about 5 carrots into a bowl.
Crumble a half cup or more of bread crumbs into the bowl.  If you don't have dried stale bread, dice a slice of whole wheat or sourdough bread.
In another bowl whisk together 5ish eggs and some milk.  Maybe almost a cup?
Whisk in thyme and nutmeg (1/2 -1 teaspoon ish?) and salt and pepper to taste.
Whisk in a half cup of flour.  I use whole wheat.  You could use rye or white or buckwheat.

Mix thoroughly the bread crumbs, carrots and onions in the first bowl.  Then add the egg mixture and toss or mix till thoroughly coated.  Scoop it all back into the cast iron pan (it should be all greasy from sauteing the onions), and bake at 350 ish for about half an hour.  When its done, it'll be a little puffy and golden on the top.  If you take it out too soon and its still goopy when you cut into it, just put it back in for a bit.  I sometimes overcook it, which just means there's a too-brown crust on the cast iron that is sometimes a pain to scrub out, but that the dog likes to eat.

Serve with lingonberry sauce and cultured sour cream (yoghurt would probably be good too).  The eggs and the sour cream are enough protein, but if you really want a winter-warmer style meal, it would be good with bacon, divine with sausage, and would hold up to left over roast or chicken. Wine, beer, and water are all good accompaniments.   Tea too, I'd imagine. Or apple juice.  I look forward to a lifetime of serving this meal to my family on a regular basis, I anticipate it being a weekly meal that my kids will know intimately.  Its healthy (and lingonberries are Vitamin C powerhouses!), easy, quick, AND best of all, can be made almost entirely from ingredients that I anticipate making or growing on this here homestead of ours.  Carrots and onions? Yessirree! They store well for winter too!  Bacon grease or butter? you bet!  Egss. Milk.  Bread.  Granted the wheat flour for both the pancake and the bread will likely be from off-homestead.   And there's always spices.  I will always import spices.

Homestead Eating : Salmon

Duck eggs make the smoothest, softest, silkiest quiche imaginable.  It is like holding melted velvet in your mouth. 

A year and a half ago, we traveled to Italy for a dear friend's wedding: in our travelling we ended up in Cinque Terre, in a restaurant above a cove.  It had tiny tables and kitschy wall art - but amazing local wine and fresh fresh fish.  Darlin'Man had a dish that was sliced potatoes under a filet of fish, drizzled in olive oil with tomatoes and capers and olives and herbs and things.  All wrapped in parchment paper and utterly delicious.  I've made a few versions of it since.  My latest plan was to take the mediteranean idea and run with it a bit, using salt preserved lemons.  I've run across a number of recipes using salt preserved lemons in greek and morrocan style fare recently as well; so I bought organic lemons (since you're eating the rind) and packed a quart jar with lemons and lemon juice and lots of salt.  They are supposed to ferment. When I opened the jar to use some - having waited many weeks - I was greeted with a thick colony of mold.  The fungal spores were happy.  My lactobicilli living in lemons?  Not so much.  It broke my heart a little, as it so closely mimicked the outcome of my post-harvest attempt at saurkraut, and an attempt at wine a few years ago.  So, I took out a head of red cabbage and made a new jewel-colored batch of saurkraut.  The brine looks good so far; hopefully this will be my fermented redemption...

Meanwhile,  I had a whole salmon (thawed) sitting on my counter and no brined lemons.  I filleted the salmon with my ulu - best knife ever - and did surprisingly credibly.  I usually have the Woodsman do my filleting.  I peeled the zest off of a(nother) lemon, and went with that instead.  Potatoes lining a baking dish, filets on it, zest and oregano and thyme and basil, all drizzeled over with garlic olive oil.  Baked.
Meanwhile, I simmered the freezer burnt bits of the salmon for the husky pup.  Keep in mind that this is salmon from the summer before last summer.  I'm really quite amazed at the overall lack of freezer burning.  And because I'm not that great of a filet-er (and I hate the thought of wasting wild salmon, however little), I cleaned the fish carcass, scraping bits of good meat off the ribs and spine with my fingers.  These I saved and set aside in a bowl... for quiche.

I mixed up a vinagrette.  I am out of balsamic vinegar - a staple on the shelf by my stove.  I had a moment of almost panicked disbelief.  When I say balsamic is a staple, I mean I use it damn near every day. But, as is the way of most crises, it led me to rely on my own resourcefulness.  I realized that I actually had a jar of nasturtium vinegar I made last summer, sitting nearly unused on the pantry shelf.  Let me tell you, olive oil and nasturtium vinegar vinegrette is delightful - a hint of spicy summer flavor from the flower infusion adds a quality entirely different from, and just as good as, a good balsamic.

Between the four of us, of course we ate all the salmon.  I had some kale and some carmelized onions in the fridge, so what else was I to do with the scraped off salmon bits the next night but make a quiche?  As the french might say "mais, naturallement!"  I had stopped by the local meat shop, Homegrown (which also sells a variety of other locally produced food and artisanal items), after yoga a few days before.  I was hoping to pick up some eggs, as I would rather support the local egg sellers - regardless of whether the feed they use is organic or not! - than pay the same price (food prices are ridiculous here in the interior) for 'organic free range' at the grocery store.  I felt like I'd hit the jack pot when I was able to snag the last carton of eggs.  It wasn't till I brought it up to the counter and noticed that the top of the commercial carton wasn't actually fitting over the eggs that I realized they were actually duck eggs.  Even better!  I've heard great things about duck eggs, especially for baking.  And I can now say that they live up to every expectation that every glowing blog post or book chapter ever created in my over-active gastronomic imagination.  They are really good.  Maybe not so good that I'll plan on introducing ducks to our land that lacks any open water...  but certainly so that I'll go out of my way to barter for or to buy them!

Homestead eating: Moose

Dinner was moose steaks pan fried with a honey mustard garlic basil thyme sauce/marinade.

Garnished with carmelized onions.

With french style-inspired baked "frites" - sliced potatoes tossed in olive oild, salt and pepper and baked.

and steamed spinach over leftover pasta in truffle butter.

SO. Good.

The moose had been sitting in the freezer for a couple of winters waiting for a "special time," but now that we have more moose, (and the potential for a regular supply of it! - future thanks to the mountain men); I decided to just make it.  And I was very pleased with how it had held up flavor wise to being frozen so long.  It was originally recieved as a barter gift for use of a sauna and some of our wood at the Haven cabin my breda was renting, and then was our studio for a while.