The Local Food Report: leeks

Sally and I were at the Orleans farmers' market the other day shopping for a leek. We needed one perfect leek for our butternut/shrimp bisque, and we noticed that every vendor had leeks with different amounts of white stem. Peter Fossel had a particularly nice-looking basket of leeks with long, white stems, so we decided to ask him: Peter, how do you get them?

It turns out we asked the right guy. Peter is something of an organic gardening guru: he's the author of Organic Farming: Everything You Need to Know and the former editor of Country Journal. Right now he's farming in Dennisport.

He says the secret to nice white leeks is a practice called hilling. Basically you plant seedlings indoors in the spring—Peter likes the King Richard variety—and when they're about 6 inches tall, good and sturdy, you transplant them out into the garden. You surround each one with a pile of straw and leaves, slowly adding more debris as the season wears on. You want enough mulch to really block the light, because the lack of sunshine is what makes the leek stalks turn white. You have to be careful, though, because too heavy or wet of a mulch will make the leeks rot to mush. This is why Peter uses straw or leaves instead of dirt.

Then you have to be patient. Leeks are long season plants—they take at least 75 days—and they can even over-winter if you mulch them generously. This winter, The Winter That Was Not, Peter let his leeks go til spring, and they did beautifully. That's them up there, the ones he was selling in Orleans the other day.

The green part is edible, but the white part is the sweetest. I used all of the white and a fair amount of the green for our soup, then threw the coarsest bits in the compost. Next week, I think I'll get enough for a pan of braised leeks. How do you eat yours? What variety are you growing? 

A warm hello

Hello from here, where the big news is lettuce. Big, beautiful lettuces in all shapes and sizes: we've got Blushed Butter Oaks and Italienischer and Red Sails and who knows what else from last year's seeds that volunteered.

I can't say we have been doing anything groundbreaking or revolutionary with them—we have been eating them tossed with olive oil and sea salt and cider vinegar—the normal way. But we have been eating them alongside some pretty great things, including a squash and seafood bisque I'd like to share. I wish I could spoon you out a bowl from the big orange pot sitting in the fridge. In lieu of that, here's the recipe, and a warm hello from Sally, from here.

BUTTERNUT SQUASH AND SHRIMP BISQUE

This is another recipe inspired by items from the freezer. I found Maine shrimp in there, pureed squash from our garden, and a whole lot of seafood stock, and I searched around online until I found a reasonable approximation of a squash and seafood bisque. I changed it up quite a bit and ended up with this: a thick, satisfying pot of slightly sweet, slightly savory shrimp bisque.

1 leek, thinly sliced (use just the white and light green tender parts)

1/4 cup butter

1 tablespoon tomato paste

1 medium-size butternut squash, peeled, seeded, and cut into 1-inch cubes

4 cups seafood stock, preferably homemade

1 teaspoon saffron threads

1/2 teaspoon garam masala

1 tablespoon chopped fresh fennel fronds

1 cup Maine shrimp

heavy cream to taste (I used about 1/4 cup)

salt and pepper to taste

Get out a large, heavy-bottomed soup pot and warm it up over medium-high heat. Add the leek and the butter and sauté, stirring often, for about 5-8 minutes, or until the leek softens up. Add the tomato paste and cook for another 2 minutes, stirring constantly. Add the squash, stock, saffron, garam masala, and fennel, and bring to a boil. Simmer until the squash is tender, about 15-20 minutes. Use an immersion blender to puree (or transfer to a food processor/blender). Add the shrimp* and the heavy cream and salt and pepper to taste and simmer for another 10 minutes, or until the flavors come together and the shrimp is cooked through. Serve hot—we had ours with salad and cornbread.

*Note: Alternatively, you could pan sear the shrimp and serve them on top. I was feeling lazy, but I think going this route would be delicious.

The Local Food Report: agricultural land

I am a big fan of facts. Recently, the Association to Preserve Cape Cod released a whole slew of them in their report on agricultural land use. Here are the highlights:

Acres in cultivation—

• in 1925, there were almost 36,000 acres of farmland in Barnstable County
• by 1969, that number had dropped to 5,324, a loss of nearly 85%
• today, the APCC estimates there are only 4,269 acres, including aquaculture

Farm size—

• Our farms are small! the smallest is .19 acres
• 29% of our farms are smaller than 5 acres
• 66% are smaller than 10 acres
• there are only 10 farms bigger than 75 acres
• surprisingly, there is one parcel of farmland that is 228 acres

Soil—

• the state has identified 12 types of "prime" loam on the Cape
• interestingly, we aren't farming much of it
• only 13% of our farms are on prime agricultural land!

Farmer demographics—

• 60% of our farmers are over 55
• most have no one to take over the farm when they move on

Prominent historical agricultural products, by town—

• Barnstable—cranberries
• Brewster—fiber, wood
• Chatham—shellfish
• Dennis—cranberries
• Eastham—asparagus, turnips, carrots, and cranberries
• Falmouth—strawberries, oysters, cranberries, and cattle
• Harwich—cranberries
• Mashpee—cranberries
• Orleans—ducks and cranberries
• Provincetown—fishing
• Sandwich—grain, dairy, and woodlands
• Truro—grain, fiber, and cattle
• Wellfleet—fisheries
• Yarmouth—cranberries and shellfish

It's worth reading through the whole report—you can find it right here. There's a lot of interesting history in there—for instance, did you know that Falmouth used to be the biggest producer of strawberries east of the Mississippi and north of Maryland?!

It's also worth taking the time to check out the maps. You can see where the prime agricultural land is in your area, and how much of it is being farmed. (Not much, in most cases). 

The APCC is doing a lot of work to preserve these prime areas as farmland in perpetuity. You can learn more about protection programs over here. Maybe your land qualifies!

Cranberry drop biscuits

We're sitting at breakfast, Sally and I. We're having crispy sage and runny eggs and refried pinto beans smashed up with the first cherry tomatoes of the season from Ed & Betty at the Orleans farmers' market. We're listening to a story about smuggled art in the middle east and Sally's figuring out that her hands open and close at will and smearing yolk all over her face. 

I mop the bean juice and egg off my plate with a warm whole wheat/spelt/cranberry biscuit, and Sally polishes off her last pinto. I get up to clear the dishes and get a rag to clean her face,  and I'm pretty sure her little silver water cup is out of reach. Except it's not, and when I come back, there she is, holding onto the handle with five chubby little fingers, drinking politely. Good job! I say. I am amazed. She has never done this before. She stops, beams, then slams the cup down and water sprays all over the place.

We both grin; it's going to be a good day.

WHOLE-GRAIN CRANBERRY DROP BISCUITS

Since Sally was born, I have redoubled my efforts to avoid baking with all-purpose flour.  She isn't eating baked goods yet, but I figure I'd better improve my repertoire by the time she's ready. These biscuits are soft, crumbly, and delightfully full-bodied, with a touch of nutty sweetness from the whole grains.

1 and 1/2 cups whole-grain spelt flour

1 and 1/2 cups whole wheat flour

4 teaspoons baking powder

1 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 and 1/2 sticks cold butter

1 and 1/3 cups whole milk or buttermilk

1/4 cup honey

2/3 cup fresh cranberries

Preheat the oven to 425 degrees F. 

Whisk together the flours, baking powder, baking soda, and salt in a mixing bowl. Cut in the butter and rub it into pea-sized bits with your fingers. Pour in the milk and honey and cranberries and stir until you have a wet dough. Add another splash of milk if needed. Use a spoon to drop 12-15 biscuits onto a baking sheet or two, and bake for about 15 minutes, or until golden brown on top.

The Local Food Report: weir fishing

It's weir fishing season again. I described the fishery here, last year, and two years ago, I wrote a piece about the Eldredge family and their weir for Edible Cape Cod. This spring I met Nick Muto, who fishes with the only other weir company on the Cape. 

He told me a lot of interesting things. Weir fishing is old, older than I realized. The tradition of setting up nets and poles in the spring to catch migratory species dates back thousands of years. Even fifty years ago, in April and May, there were weirs every hundred yards or so along the shore here—all along Nantucket Sound and Cape Cod Bay. Nick says he's heard all the roads leading from 6a to the beach are old trap roads where the horses dragged the poles down to the sea. He's seen nets filled with 30,000, 40,000 pounds, but he's heard stories of weirs backed up with hundreds of thousands of pounds of squid, panicking, shooting ink. Each time the net emptied it would refill again—stories from the glory days.

These days, there are only two weir companies operating on the Cape. There aren't nearly as many fish around—Nick thinks this is in part because of midwater trawlers and also because there are so many seals today—and so there isn't much money to be made. There's also a demand issue—we've forgotten how to eat all these migratory fish, the more unusual species like butterfish and tautog and mackerel and squid. The company Nick works with sells most of their product down south, to places that freeze and hold the fish. The other weir company recently started operating a CSF, or Community Supported Fishery, where they sell "shares" to families on the Cape. 

It would be nice to see a comeback for this fishery. Can you imagine—weirs up and down the shores of the Cape? Posts and nets lining the bay? It's a much more sustainable fishery than most—Nick estimates 80-90% of bycatch gets thrown back still alive, returned to the sea. And eating something besides cod and haddock would spread around the demand, help all the fisheries.

The next time you go to your local fishmarket, ask about the migratory species. In the spring do they sell local squid? Pogies? Scup? Herring? What about weir-caught bluefish and black sea bass? Butterfish? Mackerel? Tautog?

It's a tradition worth reviving.

P.S. If you are part of the Eldredge's CSF or able to get your hands on some of these migratory species through other local sources, check out these recipes for mackerel and squid. Happy eating!

I mean really?

The downstairs freezer is killing me. Sally and I visit it every morning while we do our errands around the house, and every morning I am amazed to find that there is still something in there. I mean really? We have been eating heart and liver and stewed rhubarb and crushed tomatoes and so on—something from down there—every day since January. How is it possible that there are still green beans in there from 2010? Sally is not impressed.

Thankfully, every once in a while, the icy depths dole out something we really need. I spent a long time the other day making hominy out of dried Oaxacan Green dent corn from our grain CSA. I soaked it, boiled it with lime, then kneaded the skins off and rinsed and rinsed and rinsed until finally the water came clean. Then I started looking for a dinner recipe, and I came across one for posole with pork and chipotle. (As far as I can tell, the word posole can be used to mean a stew made from pork and hominy or can just mean the cooked corn, hominy, itself.) I was sure we'd gone through all our pork and had finished the last of the frozen crushed tomatoes, but lo and behold, the freezer coughed up not only a pork shoulder but also a final quart of last summer's tomatoes from the garden. 

I was simultaneously disgusted and delighted. More delighted, I suppose, once I tasted the stew.

POSOLE WITH PORK SHOULDER AND CHIPOTLE

I've tweaked this recipe a fair amount from one I found in Whole Grains Every Day Every Way by Lorna Sass. It sounds odd, but it tastes like a tortilla in soup form. It's very hearty and delicious.

1 pound pork shoulder, on the bone

sea salt and freshly cracked pepper

2 tablespoons olive oil

1 large onion, diced

2 large cloves garlic, minced

1 tablespoon tomato paste

5 cups cooked hominy

2 tablespoons fresh minced oregano

2 large bay leaves

2 cups crushed tomatoes

1 cup red wine

4 cups water

1-2 tablespoons chipotle powder or rub

fresh cilantro, for garnish

yogurt or sour cream, for garnish

Get out a large, heavy-bottomed pot. Rinse the pork, pat it dry, and rub it with salt and pepper. Heat up the olive oil in the pot over high heat and brown the pork for 2-3 minutes on each side. Transfer it to a plate and set it aside.

Turn the heat down to medium-high. Add the onions and sauté, stirring frequently, for about 5 minutes, or until soft and golden brown. Add the garlic and tomato paste cook another minute, then stir in the hominy, oregano, bay leaves, crushed tomatoes, red wine, water, and chipotle powder. Stir well and season with salt and pepper.

Put the pork back in the pot and scoot it around so that it's covered with liquid. Bring everything to a boil, then turn the heat down to low and simmer for 2-3 hours, until the sauce starts to get thick and the pork is so tender it's falling off the bone. Serve hot with cilantro and yogurt.

We're singing

We're singing old camp songs and thinning arugula and I've got Sally all set up on a big yellow sheet my grandmother passed down to me with a whole truckload of toys. I'm bent over the rows; there's happy squealing; I'm thinking we're doing pretty well. Then things get quiet for a moment. I look over again, and Sally's giddily licking her fingers, which she's ceremoniously dipped in the dirt. She is not happy when I come over, rearrange the blanket, wipe the black off the chubby stubs.

We pick ourselves up and get back to thinning and studying the tag on our stuffed lion's bottom. I'm feeling like a bad mother—pay attention! constant attention—when I remember this sentence I read somewhere about how pigs suckled without access to dirt are anemic. Maybe Sally needs the iron in the soil? That's the theory we are operating under for now.

At any rate, fresh baby arugula for dinner with strong olive oil and lemon juice and feta. The first of spring's homegrown.

Comfort food

A lot of good things happened this week. Sally said ma-ma! I turned 27. My sister and my mom and Alex's parents and his grandmother all came down for the day, and our friend Tracy brought over the season's first lilac blooms. Two of my best friends moved home for the summer, and our garden grew one of the fattest spears of asparagus I've ever seen. 

Some not so good things happened too. Sally bit me; we both cried. All three of us got a terrible cold, and we found a bunny living under our shed. I've only seen him eating clover so far, but his hideout is right next to the garden, and I know it's only a matter of time. We're going tomorrow to borrow a Have-a-Heart from a friend.

In the kitchen, my mom and I made two rhubarb pies, and my sister and I made Arroz con Pollo twice. The recipe comes from a blog she reads, A Cozy Kitchen. The dish is supposed to be chicken with rice, but I made it once with oat groats and once with a grab bag of oat groats, farro, and brown rice–we've already used up two grains from our CSA!—and both times it came out tasting absolutely fabulous. I used a good amount of homemade crushed tomatoes in my version (the last ones! good thing those new plants are in the greenhouse), and the second time we added shrimp and seafood stock for a more paella-esque rendition. 

However you make it, it's comfort food at its best. How has your week been?

ARROZ (OAT GROATS) CON POLLO 

I have never really liked rice. This drives Alex nuts. It's helpful when it comes to eating locally, though, because there is no local rice and there are lots of other great New England-grown grains. I like this best with oat groats, but it's also great with farro, and now that we're out of both of those, I'm thinking rye berries might be nice. If you want to go in a paella direction, try adding some Maine shrimp for the last 15 minutes of cooking and using seafood stock instead of chicken stock. 

2 tablespoons olive oil

6 assorted chicken pieces

1 yellow onion, peeled and chopped

3 garlic cloves, minced

2 carrots, peeled and chopped

1 teaspoon ground cumin

1/2 teaspoon ground turmeric

1/4 teaspoon paprika

1 teaspoon saffron threads

a pinch of red pepper flakes

1 teaspoon sea salt, plus more to taste

1 pint crushed tomatoes

1 and 3/4 cups oat groats or farro

2 cups chicken stock

Warm up the oil over medium-high heat in a large, heavy-bottomed pot. Add the chicken, skin side down and brown for about 5 minutes. Flip it and brown the other side for about 3 minutes longer. Transfer the chicken to a plate and set aside.

Turn the heat down to medium and add the onion to the pot. Sauté for about 5 minutes, until soft and translucent, then add the garlic. Cook for another minute, until you just start to smell it, then add the carrots and the spices and and pour in the crushed tomatoes. Bring everything to a boil, add the grains, and stir until they're thoroughly coated. Arrange the chicken on top, pour in the stock, and cover the pot. Turn the heat down to low and simmer for about half an hour. 

Take the top off and check on the dish—if there's still a lot of liquid, uncover the pot, if not, leave it covered—and simmer for another 15-25 minutes. Taste for salt, season as needed, and serve hot. 

Dear friends,

I miss you. Between working and taking care of Miss Sally, the garden, the house, and the never-ending loads of laundry and diapers, it's been hard to get here. We've been spending plenty of time planting and cooking, but I haven't had time to tell you about it or snap a picture. Finally, here's an update on what's been going on in the dirt and the kitchen around here:

GROW—

We harvested the last of the greens planted in the hoophouse last summer. The big haul was 10 small heads of Savoy cabbage and several pounds of Rhubarb chard. Unfortunately, we lost a row of Chinese cabbage to spring temps and a cabbage moth infestation—the flowers and florets are edible, but not when they're covered in insect eggs. 

We cleaned out the hoophouse, turned over the soil, and added a layer of compost, and the rows are now housing 16 tiny tomato plants and 6 green pepper seedlings. Fingers crossed for early hot weather fruits!

Outside, arugula, lettuce, spinach, radishes, and carrots are up. The strawberries and peaches are in bloom, the asparagus is up, and I think we're getting very close to a rhubarb pie. 

COOK—

As you can imagine, we've been eating...cabbage! My mom turned me onto this Asian-inspired Martha Rose Shulman recipe for spicy stir-fried cabbage, and the other night, Alex added littlenecks and served it all over pasta—delicious. We've also made several batches of this Rustic Cabbage Soup for lunch, friends, and the freezer. I added ham to one batch—a nice variation.

We did manage to cook a few spears of our asparagus and use up some of the chard with this Balthazar Cookbook recipe for warm lentil salad with asparagus, greens, and grilled fish. I subbed halibut for trout and chard for spinach and we were in business! I think mackerel might make an even better fish switch.

I'm still trying to make all of our own bread in an effort to use up the grains from our grain and bean CSA. If anyone has a recipe for a good all-rye bread please share—this one was a total flop, although that could definitely be related to the fact that I subbed maple syrup for dark corn syrup, which I just couldn't bring myself to use. We've been eating a lot of Darina Allen's brown soda bread, and I've found that if I make it with whole wheat flour from our soft winter wheat as opposed to hard winter wheat (soft is supposed to be better for pastry baking, hard for yeast breads), I can use all whole-wheat flour and it's still very light. Last night I made a loaf of my mother's cornbread to go with a pot of chili inspired by a Melissa Clark recipe.

Sally pulled herself up to standing, and one of these days, I'm going to get her to do it for long enough to take a picture. (Update 4.25.12—success!)

    

And that, my friends, is the news from here. I'd love to hear what's going on in your neck of the woods if you're in the mood to share.

xo

Elspeth

TWO BEAN CHILI WITH BEEF & BEER

This recipe is adapted from Melissa Clark's recipe for beef, bean, and hominy chili from In the Kitchen with a Good Appetite. I've been meaning to try making hominy from the dent corn in our grain CSA, but I haven't gotten there yet. In the meantime, I just added more beans—if you try the original, I'd be curious to hear how it is with corn.

2/3 cup dried kidney beans* 

scant 2/3 cup dried black beans

3 tablespoons olive oil or beef fat

2 pounds ground beef

sea salt and freshly cracked pepper

1 large onion, peeled and chopped

4 garlic cloves, peeled and finely chopped

1/4 cup chili powder

1 quart crushed tomatoes

1 (12 ounce) bottle dark beer

2 tablespoons finely chopped fresh oregano

1 bay leaf

optional: sour cream & cilantro, for serving

Soak the beans for at least a few hours or overnight. Drain, rinse, and put in a medium pot with plenty of cold water. Bring to a boil, then simmer until tender—about 45 minutes. Set the pot aside—do not drain the cooking water.

Warm up 2 tablespoons of the olive oil or beef fat in a large, heavy-bottomed pot over high heat. Add the meat and brown, stirring often. It will take 5-10 minutes to cook through, then season it with salt and pepper and transfer it to a bowl with a slotted spoon.

Add the remaining olive oil of beef fat to the pot. Add the onions and sauté for about 5 minutes, until soft and translucent. Add the garlic and chili powder and cook for another 2 minutes. Add the tomatoes, beer, the beans and 2 cups of their cooking liquid, oregano, and bay leaf. Bring the mixture to a boil, turn the heat down, and simmer for about an hour, or until it reaches the thickness you like. Season with salt and pepper to taste, and serve hot. Sour cream and cilantro make a nice garnish.

*Note: If your beans are already cooked, you want two cups of kidney beans and two cups of black beans. Since you won't be able to use the cooking liquid, add 2 cups of chicken, beef, or vegetable stock to the recipe instead.

The Local Food Report: pork kidney

Welcome back to strange meats! Today we finish with pork kidney, fresh out of a Truro pig. The hunt for a local kidney aficionado was difficult, but I found one. Her name is Cammie Watson, and she buys her pork from the same place we do—the Mooney Farm in Truro. A few years back she and her brother decided to split a pig. Each family got a shoulder, some belly, some sausage, and so on. And of course, since there are two kidneys, they each got one.

Cammie is a New Englander. She was not going to let that kidney go to waste, so she called her friend Janet—the one who had raised the pig. Janet said to stew it up Portuguese-style with tomatoes and onions and potatoes, and Cammie did. To her surprise, she liked it! The next time she came across a kidney she sliced it thin and pan-seared it in butter and pepper, and she was hooked.

There is no getting around the fact that kidneys filter the animal's urine. A kidney from a very old animal or a kidney that is not fresh (or frozen immediately after slaughter) will not taste good. It will get an "ammonia tint," as Cammie put it, which I'm pretty sure is a polite way of saying it will taste like urine. So! If you're going to eat kidney, make sure it's from a young animal and very fresh, and be sure to soak it first. Most recipes I've read recommend soaking it overnight in either milk, buttermilk, or water. I think buttermilk would be good.

I've only cooked kidney once, a few weeks ago. The one I had on hand was a beef kidney, and I cut it into bits and mixed it with steak and scalloped potatoes. It cooked in the oven for several hours over low heat, and when it emerged, it was delicious. My parents were here, and my sister, and there were no upturned noses. In fact, several people asked for seconds. Success!

Cammie says she thinks the flavor of pork kidney is a little bit like chicken liver, which sounds delicious. The texture is similar to heart—firm and smooth, and not at all fibrous. And size-wise, a set of two pork kidneys weighs anywhere from three quarters of a pound to a pound. 

Cammie also told me that kidney fat is what you use to make leaf lard. I've been wanting to do this for a long time—I have packages of fat tucked away in the freezer waiting for a good day—and her description of perfect white fat for pie crust might just have tipped me toward action.

What do you think—have you ever cooked with kidney or kidney fat? 

SCALLOPED POTATOES WITH STEAK & KIDNEY

Thank you, Darina Allen, for another wonderful recipe. I wasn't entirely onboard with kidney, but you got me there. 

1 beef kidney, about 1 pound

salt and freshly cracked pepper

1 pound boneless beef chuck or round

3 pounds potatoes, scrubbed and thickly sliced

1 large onion, chopped

4 tablespoons butter

1 and 1/3 cups beef stock, preferably homemade

Preheat the oven to 300 degrees F. Trim the kidney—you want to remove the skin, or membrane, and cut out the white core. Cut the remaining flesh into 1/2-inch cubes and put them into a bowl of cold water with a pinch of salt to soak. 

Cut the beef into 1/4-inch cubes. 

Get out a large, heavy-bottomed pot—I used a big Le Creuset soup pot with a lid. Rub a little oil on the bottom, then cover it with a layer of potato slices. Drain the kidney cubes and mix them with the steak, then scatter on a layer of meat and chopped onion. Season with salt and pepper and dot with butter. Add another layer of potatoes, then another of meat and onions, and so on, seasoning each layer as you go. Finish with a layer of potato.

Pour the hot beef stock over top. Cover the pot, put it in the oven, and cook for 2-2 and 1/2 hours, or until the meat and potatoes are cooked. About 10 minutes before the dish is done, take off the top and turn on the broiler to brown the potatoes. Serve in deep bowls—biscuits make a nice accompaniment to mop up the juice.