Isn't he great?
Saturday, January 29, 2011
Monday, January 24, 2011
My Favorite Cookbooks
What do I do when presented with a farm vegetable share, a month's worth of meat, and funny, home-preserved ingredients in the pantry? I turn to my best skill, honed by years of being in a PhD program: research. I have a shelf full of wonderful cookbooks, which I almost never used B.L.E. ("before local eating"), but now that I am presented with a wide variety of ingredients, I turn to these books more and more. This got me thinking about those that are most useful to me and why.
I rarely look for a recipe first and then try to find the ingredients in our pantry. This wouldn't work with our current approach to grocery shopping (which means the farmers choose what to give us, rather than the other way around). Instead, I look through the week's supplies, pull the books from the shelf, plop down at the kitchen table with a glass of wine, and start surfing through the indices. My current favorites are: The Joy of Cooking, Moosewood Restaurant Daily Specials, and The Silver Palate Cook Book. The New Laurel's Kitchen is also a long-time favorite of mine, but one that I turn to for very specific recipes.
The Joy of Cooking - this is an old standard that never gets old. There are other, newer cookbooks that try to address "everything", but I am not swayed. I have Grandmother's copy from the 1960s and the copy Dad bought me in the 1990s, and I use them both because the recipes reflect the era when they were published. For instance, if I want to make jams, jellies, or pickles, I turn to the 1960s cookbook, which contains techniques for processing and canning...and who doesn't love the pictorial on how to skin a squirrel with a boot? The newer cookbook has lower fat recipes and a variety of international recipes that are missing from older versions. I sometimes use the actual recipes from these books, but often I will just tweak the existing recipes to accommodate the ingredients we have - the recipes are forgiving and generally straightforward. I am supported in this love by Julia Child, whose copies of The Joy of Cooking are now on display at the Smithsonian.
I took this picture when Susan and I visited Julia Child's kitchen at the Smithsonian. Her cook books look loved and well-used.
Moosewood Restaurant Daily Specials - Geri gave me this cookbook long ago and I love that it is vegetarian. Because we get *so* many vegetables all year round, I sometimes need inspiration for how to cook carrots yet again, or how to disguise parsnips this week. The Moosewood cookbooks are famous, of course, and sometimes I find their recipes have far too many ingredients - but because they have so many options for vegetables, I find it creative and useful. I am hoping to add to my vegetarian collection with a copy of Deborah Madison's Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone.
The Silver Palate Cook Book - this has been a staple in my Mom's kitchen for as long as I can remember. Its checkered cover is so familiar that when I saw it on a cart outside a book shop in DuPont circle, I grabbed it immediately. 2 dollars later, I have my own tattered copy, which I am just starting to use. This book has classic recipes, but also chapters for individual vegetables ("carrots", "asparagus", etc.), which gives the cook several recipes for a single vegetable. And, something I always appreciate: there are relatively few ingredients in these recipes.
So there you have it - these are the books I most often use, but I like to empty the shelf and peruse them all from time to time. Ina Garten makes a killer coq-au-vin and Martha Stewart has beautiful pictures; Alice Waters uses only the perfect ingredients and Rick Bayless has taught us to make fabulous Mexican food. I would love to hear what your favorites are, so please leave us some suggestions in the comments section!
I rarely look for a recipe first and then try to find the ingredients in our pantry. This wouldn't work with our current approach to grocery shopping (which means the farmers choose what to give us, rather than the other way around). Instead, I look through the week's supplies, pull the books from the shelf, plop down at the kitchen table with a glass of wine, and start surfing through the indices. My current favorites are: The Joy of Cooking, Moosewood Restaurant Daily Specials, and The Silver Palate Cook Book. The New Laurel's Kitchen is also a long-time favorite of mine, but one that I turn to for very specific recipes.
The Joy of Cooking - this is an old standard that never gets old. There are other, newer cookbooks that try to address "everything", but I am not swayed. I have Grandmother's copy from the 1960s and the copy Dad bought me in the 1990s, and I use them both because the recipes reflect the era when they were published. For instance, if I want to make jams, jellies, or pickles, I turn to the 1960s cookbook, which contains techniques for processing and canning...and who doesn't love the pictorial on how to skin a squirrel with a boot? The newer cookbook has lower fat recipes and a variety of international recipes that are missing from older versions. I sometimes use the actual recipes from these books, but often I will just tweak the existing recipes to accommodate the ingredients we have - the recipes are forgiving and generally straightforward. I am supported in this love by Julia Child, whose copies of The Joy of Cooking are now on display at the Smithsonian.
I took this picture when Susan and I visited Julia Child's kitchen at the Smithsonian. Her cook books look loved and well-used.Moosewood Restaurant Daily Specials - Geri gave me this cookbook long ago and I love that it is vegetarian. Because we get *so* many vegetables all year round, I sometimes need inspiration for how to cook carrots yet again, or how to disguise parsnips this week. The Moosewood cookbooks are famous, of course, and sometimes I find their recipes have far too many ingredients - but because they have so many options for vegetables, I find it creative and useful. I am hoping to add to my vegetarian collection with a copy of Deborah Madison's Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone.
The Silver Palate Cook Book - this has been a staple in my Mom's kitchen for as long as I can remember. Its checkered cover is so familiar that when I saw it on a cart outside a book shop in DuPont circle, I grabbed it immediately. 2 dollars later, I have my own tattered copy, which I am just starting to use. This book has classic recipes, but also chapters for individual vegetables ("carrots", "asparagus", etc.), which gives the cook several recipes for a single vegetable. And, something I always appreciate: there are relatively few ingredients in these recipes.
So there you have it - these are the books I most often use, but I like to empty the shelf and peruse them all from time to time. Ina Garten makes a killer coq-au-vin and Martha Stewart has beautiful pictures; Alice Waters uses only the perfect ingredients and Rick Bayless has taught us to make fabulous Mexican food. I would love to hear what your favorites are, so please leave us some suggestions in the comments section!
Monday, January 17, 2011
Weekend of Delights
As many of you know, I am living two lives at the moment: one in D.C. and one in Somerville. This also makes for two food lives: one in D.C. that values convenience and one in Somerville that values local eating. This past weekend, I reveled in our amazing Massachusetts resources to create a fantastically flavorful menu for dinner with Susan and Tim. We had two feet of snow last week, so we kept warm by mixing cocktails and making dinner together on a cold, wintery Friday night. The satisfaction of looking at the table and knowing exactly where everything came from does not wear off - if anything, it gets better.
Here is what we had and how to get the ingredients and recipes for this simple, yet elegant meal. There was silence around the table as we all took our first bites of perfectly cooked Chestnut Farm lamb...
Canapes: Andrew's step-mother Leslie brought us a beautiful can of smoked salmon from her visit to Alaska. Alaskan smoked salmon is quite different from what Northeasterners are generally used to: it is thickly cut, has a heavy, smoky flavor, and is moist and delicious. We put this delicacy on When Pigs Fly rye bread, which comes from Maine and is sold in the Somerville bakery, spread with Cabot butter from Vermont.
Roast Lamb: Thanks to Julia Child and Chestnut Farms for coming together to produce an incredible entree for our meal. I was terrified of destroying this beautiful piece of meat, which came as part of our meat share from Western Massachusetts, so I consulted the expert: Julia. She suggested treating the meat very simply, which means that I patted the shank dry, sprinkled with olive oil, salt, and pepper, and then seared the meat on both sides (~7 minutes per side) at 450 degrees. Then, I turned down the oven to 350 and cooked the meat to 140 degrees using our fantastic new digital meat thermometer. Meat cooking is definitely *not* my strong suit, but this was fool proof!
Gravy: I made a pan gravy by throwing some carrots and onion in the bottom of the pan while the lamb was roasting, then deglazed the pan with chicken stock and a bit of flour (King Arthur!) until the gravy was thick and could be strained.
Squash: We had some very large Waltham Fields butternut squash in the pantry, which have been ripening all fall. I find squash are generally under-ripe when they come from the farm or store, so I want the flesh to be bright orange after I have aged them in the pantry. I dry roasted one of these in the oven, then scraped it from the shell and, using a wooden spoon, I whipped it with a bit of New England maple syrup, Cabot butter, and two apples (which I had peeled, cored, chopped, and cooked until soft) from Waltham Fields Community Farm share. Even Andrew - who does not love squash - couldn't get enough.
New Potatoes: these are so good fresh that I didn't want to do anything to them, so I boiled them in their thin skins and served them hot with butter and salt. Mmmmmm, a perfect vehicle for our lovely pan gravy.
Wine: Sorry to disappoint, but we weren't pairing this spectacular lamb with wine from Massachusetts...still going to Italy for that one.
This menu came from what was available in our pantry and freezer, and was planned using only those things we had on hand. The result was a finger-lickin' good meal!
Here is what we had and how to get the ingredients and recipes for this simple, yet elegant meal. There was silence around the table as we all took our first bites of perfectly cooked Chestnut Farm lamb...Foster Friday Soiree Menu
Aperitifs:
"Old-fashioned" cocktails with Enterprise Farm citrus juice and Kentucky bourbon
When Pigs Fly rye bread spread with Cabot butter and Alaska smoked salmon
Dinner:
Chestnut Farms roast lamb with gravy
Whipped Waltham Fields butternut squash with Massachusetts apples and New England maple syrup
Boiled Enterprise Farm new potatoes with Cabot butter
Cocktails: Old-fashioneds are one of my favorite cocktails, and they are assembled this way - place a sugar cube in the bottom of a glass, sprinkle with bitters, then add a shot of whiskey. We used Kentucky bourbon, courtesy of Andrew's step-brother, who lives in Kentucky and visited the distillery himself. Then, fill the glass with citrus juice - I used a mixture of fresh squeezed orange and grapefruit juices from our Enterprise Farm winter produce share. I decorate the drinks with a twist of citrus peel."Old-fashioned" cocktails with Enterprise Farm citrus juice and Kentucky bourbon
When Pigs Fly rye bread spread with Cabot butter and Alaska smoked salmon
Dinner:
Chestnut Farms roast lamb with gravy
Whipped Waltham Fields butternut squash with Massachusetts apples and New England maple syrup
Boiled Enterprise Farm new potatoes with Cabot butter
Canapes: Andrew's step-mother Leslie brought us a beautiful can of smoked salmon from her visit to Alaska. Alaskan smoked salmon is quite different from what Northeasterners are generally used to: it is thickly cut, has a heavy, smoky flavor, and is moist and delicious. We put this delicacy on When Pigs Fly rye bread, which comes from Maine and is sold in the Somerville bakery, spread with Cabot butter from Vermont.
Roast Lamb: Thanks to Julia Child and Chestnut Farms for coming together to produce an incredible entree for our meal. I was terrified of destroying this beautiful piece of meat, which came as part of our meat share from Western Massachusetts, so I consulted the expert: Julia. She suggested treating the meat very simply, which means that I patted the shank dry, sprinkled with olive oil, salt, and pepper, and then seared the meat on both sides (~7 minutes per side) at 450 degrees. Then, I turned down the oven to 350 and cooked the meat to 140 degrees using our fantastic new digital meat thermometer. Meat cooking is definitely *not* my strong suit, but this was fool proof!
Gravy: I made a pan gravy by throwing some carrots and onion in the bottom of the pan while the lamb was roasting, then deglazed the pan with chicken stock and a bit of flour (King Arthur!) until the gravy was thick and could be strained.
Squash: We had some very large Waltham Fields butternut squash in the pantry, which have been ripening all fall. I find squash are generally under-ripe when they come from the farm or store, so I want the flesh to be bright orange after I have aged them in the pantry. I dry roasted one of these in the oven, then scraped it from the shell and, using a wooden spoon, I whipped it with a bit of New England maple syrup, Cabot butter, and two apples (which I had peeled, cored, chopped, and cooked until soft) from Waltham Fields Community Farm share. Even Andrew - who does not love squash - couldn't get enough.
New Potatoes: these are so good fresh that I didn't want to do anything to them, so I boiled them in their thin skins and served them hot with butter and salt. Mmmmmm, a perfect vehicle for our lovely pan gravy.
Wine: Sorry to disappoint, but we weren't pairing this spectacular lamb with wine from Massachusetts...still going to Italy for that one.
This menu came from what was available in our pantry and freezer, and was planned using only those things we had on hand. The result was a finger-lickin' good meal!
Sunday, January 16, 2011
Rhubarb in winter
During our holiday visit to California, Grammy gave me two bags of rhubarb! Thanks to the relatively temperate weather in Sebastopol, her rhubarb produces in the winter. What a special treat for us to take home. I cleaned and chopped the pinky-green stalks (they feel so acidic and rough on the fingers), then boiled them with sugar to make jam. It is fabulous on toast, muffins, in yogurt, or just eaten on its own, and it freezes well too.
Saturday, January 15, 2011
MOOSE BURGERS!
Moose burgers, you say? What could this be? It's exactly what it sounds like: hamburgers made from moose meat. When we were at home for Christmas - much to everyone's surprise - my Dad pulled a package of ground moose from his Cape Cod freezer. Susan thought "yuck," Andrew and Tim thought "coool!" and Catherine thought "last time I had that I was in Alaska." Turns out that Dad had some of this moose when he was visiting friends who had hunted the animal in Western Mass, and thought we'd all like to try it.
It was completely incongruous in our little home, but it was a huge, huge, huge hit - the meat was lean and delicious, and had no hint of gaminess. What a food adventure for the Foster-Jones-West family!
Saturday, January 8, 2011
Eating autumn pumpkins
As you will recall, Andrew, Audrey, and I went pumpkin picking in rural Maryland this fall. We came home with four lovely pumpkins, which we displayed on the front porch in a fetching autumn arrangement. One morning, we came outside to find that there were nibbles taken out of one pumpkin...until eventually the pumpkins were being demolished, one by one!
We suspected squirrels or maybe rabbits, but it was clear that we were either going to feed ourselves or the Bethesda wildlife - we won out. With the last remaining pumpkin, Audrey toasted pumpkin seeds for a crunchy snack and I made an enormous batch of pumpkin muffins.
These muffins are made with cinnamon and nutmeg, yogurt, and whole wheat flour for a hearty morning snack. We cleaned the pumpkin, cut it in wedges, and roasted it until it was very soft - then I scraped the flesh from the skin and blended the pumpkin into a smooth puree. The recipe came from epicurious.com and is from a 2001 issue of Bon Appetit:3 1/2 c. flour (I used half white, half whole wheat)
2 t. baking powder
2 t. baking soda
1 1/2 t. salt
1 1/2 t. ground cinnamon
3/4 t. ground nutmeg
3 c. pureed pumpkin
1/2 c. brown sugar (the original recipe calls for 2 c. sugar (1c. white, 1c.brown) - use as much as you like)
1 c. vegetable oil (I used 1/2 c.)
4 large eggs
1 t. minced peeled fresh ginger
3/4 c. buttermilk (I used yogurt)
Optional: 1/2 c. dried fruit (golden raisins are good!)
Combine dry ingredients. Beat together the pumpkin and sugar, then the oil and eggs. Add minced ginger and buttermilk/yogurt. Stir in the dry ingredients in ~4 additions. Cook in muffin tins or mini-bread tins until a toothpick inserted into center comes out clean - 45 min-1 hour (I did find muffins overcooked at an hour, so monitor them carefully).
"The Dirty Life"
"It was the first time in my life that my experience as a high school cheerleader helped me. The steer hit me just below the hips, and as he lifted his head and tossed me in the air, I tucked my chin and piked. I believe I pulled a half gainer, because I landed sitting, slightly stunned but completely unhurt. The other steers stopped, staring."
-Kristin Kimball, The Dirty Life
You can begin to picture the woman who wrote this - Kristin Kimball - in her new book, The Dirty Life. She grew up in the suburbs and is part cocktail-drinking city girl, part farmer's wife, with all of the confusion that comes from trying to balance these identities. It's this quality that makes her completely and utterly real...at least to me. Like Kimball, I love my city life: walking to our favorite, crowded bar for a drink, hopping on the creaky, smelly T to see friends, seeing the sun set over the beautiful city skyline. Despite my content in the city, there is still something in me that yearns for space, land, and a home (and maybe a big truck?) where we can extend this local life that we have started. Kimball, who opts to flee the city and bunk down with a farmer in upstate New York, shows us how this can be done - on a grand scale. Because her husband is an experienced farmer, they start a CSA that provides the full diet; not just vegetables, but meat, maple syrup, grains, beans, and more. This involves a tremendous amount of work, and their adventure is recorded in her lovely book. I escape into its pages when I'm on the Metro during rush hour, which is evidence enough for me of how engaging this story is. Put it on your list!
-Kristin Kimball, The Dirty Life
You can begin to picture the woman who wrote this - Kristin Kimball - in her new book, The Dirty Life. She grew up in the suburbs and is part cocktail-drinking city girl, part farmer's wife, with all of the confusion that comes from trying to balance these identities. It's this quality that makes her completely and utterly real...at least to me. Like Kimball, I love my city life: walking to our favorite, crowded bar for a drink, hopping on the creaky, smelly T to see friends, seeing the sun set over the beautiful city skyline. Despite my content in the city, there is still something in me that yearns for space, land, and a home (and maybe a big truck?) where we can extend this local life that we have started. Kimball, who opts to flee the city and bunk down with a farmer in upstate New York, shows us how this can be done - on a grand scale. Because her husband is an experienced farmer, they start a CSA that provides the full diet; not just vegetables, but meat, maple syrup, grains, beans, and more. This involves a tremendous amount of work, and their adventure is recorded in her lovely book. I escape into its pages when I'm on the Metro during rush hour, which is evidence enough for me of how engaging this story is. Put it on your list!
Monday, January 3, 2011
Please Follow!
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-Catherine and Andrew
-Catherine and Andrew
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