CSA Cooking: Tabouleh

Tabouleh is esssentially a peasant food from the middle east.  We got extra parsley in our share this week, and we have the addition of most of my mother's share (some was given to friends!) while she is out of town, and I chose oregano and a mint for our respective herb choices.  Plus a bunch of baby bunching onion scallions gave us this: 

I was going to dry the herbs for winter use.  I really really was.  I took them to the dehydrator and I just couldn't do it.  They smelled so good!

So instead I made a Tabouleh variation.

First, boil/cook bulghur (a form of cracked wheat, essentially).  Leaving it a little chewy is best.  I used twice the water to the dry bulghur, and it was too much water.  It basically cooks like rice, but quicker.

Chop all of your herbs and onions.  The 'real' recipes for this that I have seen call for a couple tablespoons of parsley and a teaspoon of mint with chopped onion and tomato.  Well, I didn't have tomato, but I did have baby onions with long scallions.  And really, this dish ought to be all about the herbs!  I love traditional peasant foods because they are so easy to make variations: they were born out of whatever happened to be available, and so they are very forgiving :-)

So I added oregano, and used up ALL the parsley!

Toss it together in bowl with the (cooled) cooked bulghur, and pour on generous amounts of good olive oil and lemon juice.  Stir it some more so that its all stirred together and coated in juices and yummy.  Salt and pepper if you wish (I do!).

Its good immediately or the next day.  Like tonight when I get home after teaching class...

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.