Susan's Oven Risotto

Grains sure are hard to come by here in New England. When we lived in California we ate rice from the Sacramento Valley, but otherwise we just bought grains in bulk - and that's what we're doing here, too. I have found Maine cornmeal and the lovely wheat from western Massachusetts, but we need our whole grains to stay trim and fit! So, I do buy rice, quinoa, and other things, and occasionally we get a bag of wheat or barley from the Enterprise Farm Share. If you, dear readers, have suggestions for where to find more local grains, please let me know.

Now that Susan and Tim are on their honeymoon in la bella Italia, I have been craving Italian goodness...pizza, ricotta, tomatoes and basil, olives...Risotto, a creamy Italian rice dish, is one of my favorite meals and is a great way to use up the veggies from the Waltham Fields Share, especially when one begins to grow tired of summer squash and zucchini. My sister Susan is an absolutely wonderful cook and she has several tried and true recipes (if you're lucky, I'll share some more). One of these is an oven risotto that takes less than half an hour from beginning to your bowl. This is not the traditional way to concoct an Italian risotto and may offend you die-hard risotto eaters, but it sure is quick and delicious.

I'm writing this as the smell of risotto fills the air - temperatures are finally cool enough for me to turn on the oven and we had an abundance of veggies in the fridge. Hopefully this will satisfy my Italian cravings!

Susan Foster's Oven Risotto:
1/4 c. onion, chopped
1-2 c. other veggies - leeks, summer squash, zucchini, fennel, or whatever hearty summer veg you might have on hand - cut into very thin slices. If you are using peas or other very delicate vegetables, cook these separately and add at the end!
Sautée the veggies in olive oil in a pan you can cover (a covered sautée pan or Le Creuset pot, for instance). Add salt and pepper.
When the veggies are soft, move them to one side of the pan and add 3/4 c. arborio rice - sautée until it begins to turn translucent (2 minutes, approximately).
Add 1/4 c. dry white wine and cook off alcohol.
Add 1/2 c. chicken stock and 1 1/2 c. boiling water.
Bring mixture to a boil, cover, and put into a 425-degree oven.
Check the rice after 5-10 minutes and stir.
After another 5-10 minutes, the mixture should be sticky and gooey, but not dry - at this point you can add 1/4-1/2 c. grated parmesan cheese.

...and the buzzer tells me my risotto is ready, so off I go, white wine in hand, to imagine I'm in an Italian villa overlooking the sea. Buon appetito!

Using my Barefoot Contessa cookbook as a guide, I made the leftover risotto into cakes - mix with a bit of yogurt or ricotta cheese, coat in bread crumbs, and sautée in olive oil.

BEST. SOUP. EVER.

No, this is not an exaggeration: I think I made the best soup ever. Now, if you don't like fava beans or tarragon, it's possible you might disagree, but I think one sip of this soup will change your taste buds forever. Waltham Fields grows fava beans each year, and I was thrilled to see them because we used to buy them by armloads at the Berkeley Farmer's Market. However, their tough, furry pods can be intimidating if you don't know what to do with them - they are quite easy to shell, and they have a lovely, summery flavor and bright green color. Beware: they are NOT good if they are old, so if they taste funny or the pods are browning/bursting, I'd throw them away (in the compost, of course).

I hoarded our share of these for two weeks to make The Best Soup Ever, and have recreated the recipe below. There are many other ways to cook fava beans, but this was easy and made a full, sumptuous meal.

The Best Soup Ever (or, Fava Bean-Tarragon Soup):
40 fava bean pods, shucked
5 scallions, chopped into 1" pieces
3-5 cloves garlic (or a head of fresh garlic, which I had on hand!), sliced or minced
~2 T tarragon leaves (if you don't know tarragon, it has a light licorice flavor - I hate black licorice, but this is a very pleasant herb)
salt and pepper to taste
water (or chicken stock, if you have it)

Sautée the scallions until they wilt, add the garlic, fava beans, salt, pepper, and tarragon. When this mixture has begun to brown and smell fragrant, cover with water and cook until all the veggies are very soft. Blend 'til smooth and serve with a dollop of plain yogurt, a garnish of chopped chives, and homemade croutons.

Strawberry-Rhubarb Jam

I am back in Massachusetts - for the time being, at least! To get here, my dear friend Stephanie helped me drive all my belongings from the Smithsonian to our little apartment in Somerville, and we had quite the adventure along the way...one stop we made was to see our graduate school friend Kris, who lives in Rhode Island with her husband and children (you have seen them featured in apple picking and farm visit posts previously). Now there is a new addition to the family - little Erik! During this visit, we discovered they have a large rhubarb plant flourishing in the back yard, and they donated their entire crop to us. From this wonderful bounty, I made strawberry-rhubarb jam, which I have frozen in small servings to enjoy as the winter comes...we can only imagine the wonderful, cool temperatures that will be coming as we endure a heat wave of more than 100 degrees!

To make this jam, I always do it by eye and estimate the amounts - but it's important to keep in mind that rhubarb is *extremely* sour and needs lots of sugar to be palatable. You can do this according to your taste, but I like mine tart. I cut the rhubarb into 1" pieces, the Waltham Fields strawberries into quarters, and added enough sugar to make the mixture sweet (3/4 cup or more, perhaps?). When this has boiled down, let it cool and enjoy on yogurt, on bread, in oatmeal, or store in the freezer for a later date.

News from Waltham Fields

This morning I received my weekly newsletter from Waltham Fields Community Farm, where we get our weekly veggie share. Usually I skim through it, it provides a list of what's available this week and some adventures from the fields. Today, though, it was a heart-felt essay from the farm manager who asks the question: "why farm?" I have copied her letter here to remind us all of the farmers who work so hard for us every day:

I was talking with the radiant Reverend Molly at the end of the CSA pickup on Saturday and she mentioned that the cycle of Biblical texts read at church services repeats itself every three years. She was preparing a sermon on a text that she had preached on three years earlier and was looking back through her notes from that time for reminders, inspiration, or words she could use as seeds for a new relationship with the text and her parishioners.

On the farm, our cycles repeat as well, though in ways that aren't always predictable -- while summer always follows spring, and fall summer, one growing season might carry echoes of another, or things might seem to repeat themselves from week to week or day to day. This week, for example, we had some flat tires, first on our "Mini-K" tractor, then on our big Massey-Ferguson. We had some finger injuries: Dan hurt his moving irrigation pipe, and I seem to have injected mine with a tiny cucumber spine that makes it swell up and difficult to bend. Everyone has Band-Aids on at least one finger at this time of year. And this week we had some potent reminders of 2009: the cool, rainy day on Friday when the weeds seemed to grow six inches between morning and noon, the warnings from UMass about late blight making its way up the coast to Connecticut, a group of amazing weeders who saved our sweet potatoes in memory of our dear work share Cary, who left us two years ago last week.

I've been thinking often, too, of longer cycles -- for example, the cycle of rest for the land and farmers that, in the Old Testament, is required every seventh year. Coincidentally, the "sabbaticals" that I have taken from farming because of the birth of my children were seven years apart, in 2003 and 2010. During that 2003 season, one of our most thoughtful and skilled colleagues here in the Boston area wrote an essay called "Why Farm?" I revisit it as a canonical text during the cycles when I am thinking about the big picture instead of the sore finger or the flat tires: why do we do what we do? Why even bother with this seemingly quixotic effort to grow food on land that is so high value that it is nearly impossible to make the enterprise cover its costs? Why continue to do a job that is backbreaking, heartbreaking, infinitely changeable and ultimately leaves us with very little in the way of equity for all the sweat we put in? When something as uncontrollable as late blight can wipe out the entirety of a beautiful, healthy tomato crop in under a week, why not throw in the organic and local towel and go back to eating predictable, processed food from the grocery store?

In his essay, Chris argues that the reasons to farm need to go beyond the personal rewards reaped by the farmer. He suggests that the economic, social and environmental good that is served by local agriculture as part of a larger movement towards justice in our society is what gives farmers their real staying power in the profession -- and is also what moves consumers to support them, even when the bok choy is full of holes or the tomatoes don't come in at all. It is, he says, "an understanding of the role this work plays in the great issues of our time that sustains us in the long run."

Depending on my place in the cycle of the growing season or my approach to farming, I have remarkably different responses to Chris's essay. This week, in the heart of this growing season, with all its echoes of seasons before and foreshadowing of seasons to come, I think he's got it backwards. Don't get me wrong -- I firmly believe in the connection of local organic farming, with all its contradictions and complexities, to the great issues of our time. This is what got me into the work in the first place, and what brought me to a farm that addresses many of those issues, both directly and indirectly, every day. But what sustains me, as privileged and personal as it might seem, is the fact that when I let go of the intellectual and physical challenges that we wrestle with both on a daily basis and in the big picture, farming is something that I can help do to bring a moment of beauty to the world. It is clear in a moment like Saturday morning, when the farm, full of healthy food and happy people and flowers and memories, was something a little greater than the sum of its social, economic and environmental parts.

There is nothing about a farm that will stand the test of time --the beauty of a farm in July is fleeting, giving way to the senescence of the fall and the beauty of those other cycles we were talking about earlier -- winter into spring, spring into summer, rest and renewal into mud and hard work again. Anything built of soil and water and light is both eternal and gone in the blink of an eye. And I'm no artist -- I can't capture this beauty in a painting or a song or a sculpture that both represents it and connects it to the great issues. All I can do is honor the cycles of plant, cultivate, harvest, sore finger, flat tire, late blight, and try to stay awake enough to hear the echoes of the larger cycles when they come around again.

Enjoy the harvest,

Amanda, for Andy, Erinn, Dan, Larisa and Lauren

Concord Grape Jelly

This morning as I sat down to breakfast, I decided to pop open a jar of grape jelly...what I think of as "exploding grape" jelly. Last summer, Susan and Tim found abundant Concord grape vines in their small back yard in Watertown, and Tim snuck out to pick them before the landlord or neighbors could get to the supply - and pick them he did! He gathered as many as he could, and they are just a beautiful, deep purple. They give off a sickly sweet grapey scent, which makes my mouth water. Anyway, back to the story of the exploding grapes...

After Tim picked and washed the grapes, we turned to the 1967 Joy of Cooking that belonged to our grandmother, Elizabeth Foster, because it has a recipe for making and preserving grape jelly. As you can see below, this recipe advises using slightly under-ripe grapes, which we had, and the grapes must be boiled and then strained. This is where the exploding grapes come in: *someone* among us had the bright idea to put the grapes through my food strainer. As you might recall from a previous post, this device is much like a food mill, which separates pulp from skin and seeds. It works wonderfully with apples...and not very well with grapes. It instantly became clogged, and then another *someone* had the equally bright idea to pull off the funnel, thereby releasing the grapes all over the table, floor, and us.

After we recovered from this explosion, we boiled down the pulp to exactly 220 degrees F and poured the jelly into sanitized jars. We made enough to share, learned several lessons about making grape jelly, and are all ready for next year's crop!


Grape Jelly Recipe: Joy of Cooking, 1967

Wash slightly underripe Concord or wild grapes
They are preferable to ripe or overripe grapes because of their tart flavor and higher pectin content. Remove stems. Mash them in a large pot and cook until soft and the grapes begin to lose color. Strain the juice, measure it. Bring juice to a rolling boil and remove from heat. For each cup of juice, add 3/4 to 1 c. sugar. Stir it over heat until dissolved and the liquid comes to 220 degrees F (or try the gel test on a spoon). You can add an apple to this mixture during the cooking to increase pectin content and guarantee jelling.

Thoughts from Sancerre

Typical scene: Frenchmen, livestock, and an ancient barnyard.

I have spent a lot of my life in France - and I don't mean quick visits to Paris to see the tourist attractions. I spent the first half of second grade in a French maternelle, we spent months each year in a tiny village, and I've had wine fresh from the barrel, cheese fresh from the goat, and baguettes warm from the oven. My sister and I started drinking aperitifs (*gasp*) at ages 9 and 12, respectively. When I reflect on this part of my life as an adult, I realize these experiences had a profound influence on my life. Not only are there times that I dream in French, but I yearn for the foods my mother created in her little French kitchen from the ingredients she got from friends, at the markets or little hidden farms, and those things we picked by the roadside. We were truly privileged to live this way!

My parents still spend time en France, where food is the focus of life. These are not the fancy sauces or gourmet dishes we see in French cookbooks, but simple foods created from produce that comes warm from a neighbor's garden plot or whatever can be procured from the boulangerie, marche, and fromagerie in town. This year, I asked my parents to photograph and keep a journal about their own experiences in local eating in the Berry, or the region of the Loire Valley where they live. I have adapted the journal here, for our reading pleasure. Mom writes from the village of Sancerre: "...the local foods have a rhythm, which we find fascinating and satisfying. We look forward to all the seasons and what the Sancerrois can produce for our table." As part of this adventure, they visit many small markets and local producers:

MYF purchasing local eggs.

"Today we visited the gardener's market on the banks of the Porte de Plaisance. There was a farming family there with melons, tomatoes, lettuce, herbs, cukes, squash, etc. I bought beets, basil, and a tiny melon. Also, from another vendor we bought a large boule of some heavy sour bread (4.50 Euro!), which was a bit serious for our tastes but is good in a toasted sandwich. Apparently someone is selling weekly "shares" because there were baskets all lined up with the same stuff in them waiting to be claimed. A far cry from Waltham, but a good start.

We also went to the St. Thibault market – very few people there. The lady in front of me was bargaining for a huge quantity of green tomatoes for making what she called the best confiture [jam]– better than any fruit. I doubt it to be true, but both vendor and buyer seemed happy with the deal and it was finally my turn. I bought three enormous beets at RCF's urging, tomatoes, and a bunch of small, pale carrots and, of course, lettuce – a big frilly head edged in red with remarkable flavor and crispness. RCF spent time ordering a jar of Provencal honey to be picked up next week.

Marche des Producteurs - selling traditional, regional cured meats.

The annual Marche des Producteurs [market featuring local producers] was in Neuvy deux Clochers this weekend. We ate frites and potato gallette, a specialty of the Berry region. MYF bought a pepper and a small eggplant from a vendor, who also had corn on the cob - a white variety, which looked to have been picked a bit young (corn on the cob is not traditional in France). She said the French were beginning to eat corn on the cob. We also bought pork liver pate, farm eggs, and a fresh cow's cheese rolled in shallot confit."

Pinot noir grapes from the Foster home garden.

Not only do Mom and Dad buy produce at the local markets, but they take full advantage of foods offered that can be gathered on public land ("pour tout le monde"). There is also a very communal feel in the neighborhood, where everybody shares food and trades garden goods. MYF writes:

"Collected mures (blackberries) in Vinon in our usual roadside spots. It was hot, but RCF persisted with the use of a metal pole for pulling the very thorny tendrils into reach. We got enough for MYF to make about a quart of tasty syrup. Went into our lower garden (where RCF, at great peril, cleared paths of weeds and dug up old stumps) to gather the ripened Pinot Noir grapes to make juice. The basketful produced two quarts of juice with some added sugar. The taste is somewhat different from the Concord juice we are used to. Many grapes still remain, which I will pick and give away because there will not be

time to drink the juice.

Albert dropped off tomatoes, St. Catherine plums, cukes, poirée, parsley, haricot beurre (wax beans), and parsley seeds to plant in the spring. RCF walked downtown to buy bread from the Rue des Juifs, where we have discovered a "crousti" – baguette with a particularly crispy crust, which we love. Upon passing Machecourt's house, he spotted M. with a large pannier [basket] of white peaches. M. said his wife was sick of peeling peaches and would we like them? So it was that MYF peeled and stewed 55 white peaches. We froze two containers and we are working on the rest, usually with yogurt and mure syrup.

It is time to be watching for the walnut trees to be dropping their nuts. We hope this will happen this weekend so we can put a quantity on the third floor to dry out over the winter. (P.S. collected walnuts Saturday and RCF stored them in the attic.) Because it is raining today we want to be alert for the first sunny warmer day to dawn. This means mushrooms."

...so their happy lives continue seasonally in France, where they have earned some lovely time to relax in their retirement. My parents continue to teach me about what it means to eat locally in a different part of the world, where they are part of a vital and productive community. I'm sure we will be hearing more from the Fosters in France!

Goodness from Enterprise

"Our CSA is making things happen!" This was the note that came from our winter CSA at Enterprise Farm recently. They weren't kidding - not only does our wonderful CSA in Western Massachusetts provide us with produce from small, organic farms all winter long, but they are also giving back to our community and providing broader access to local foods. Here is a chronicle of their good works and what our money goes to supporting:

-Low-income seniors in Dorchester and Mattapan received boxes of fresh vegetables all winter long (for those of you not from the Boston area, these are the more depressed areas of our city).

-Children at Whately Elementary will be eating salad grown by the kindergarteners.

-Our farm has purchased equipment for processing SNAP benefits (a nutrition assistance program).

-They travel every week to low-access neighborhoods in Somerville (yay!), Greenfield, Northampton, Holyoke, and Springfield.

-Incorporating Ag-Ed into their farm programming.

These farmers are so energetic and we are humbled by their hard work! We encourage all of you to take advantage of this wonderful resource. Now we're looking forward to getting back out to Waltham Fields Community Farm for our summer veggies.