Take note

I have a root vegetable recipe for you today. That seems sort of odd, I realize, given that it's currently 62 degrees outside, but let's keep in mind that it's the weather that isn't seasonal, not the recipe. (Not that I'm complaining! Weather gods take note!)

At any rate, I found the idea for the recipe in this month's Bon Appetit. It was one of those write-ins—someone from South Carolina had eaten at a restaurant in Atlanta and wanted the recipe for a roasted carrot and beet salad. I tucked it aside in my pile of To Make Soon clippings, but when I went to start cooking, I realized the page I ripped out had the ingredients, but not the directions. It didn't look like rocket science—there was a list of dressing like substances, then a pile that sounded more like salad fixings—but when I compared notes later online, it turned out we came to similar places, but via different methods.

I also decided that I wanted it to be more of a salad than just a pile of roasted vegetables, so I saved the beet greens, chopped them up, and added some arugula. I ate it with a piece of pan-seared pollock, and a few slices of grilled bread. And even though the sun was shining and I was wearing a t-shirt and feeling very far away from the root vegetable era, it really hit the spot.

I'm liking this November.

ROASTED BEET AND CARROT SALAD

Here's my version of the Bon Appetit version which in turn was an Empire State South version of a Spotted Pig original! Confusing! But so, so good.

1 teaspoon cumin seeds

juice of 1 lemon

2 teaspoons rice wine vinegar

1 teaspoon Dijon mustard

1/2 cup olive oil plus more for drizzling

salt and pepper to taste

1 pound carrots cut into "carrot stick size" pieces

1/2 pound beets peeled and cut into the same size pieces

1/2 cup lightly packed finely chopped parsley

1/4 cup finely chopped fresh mint leaves

a handful of washed and torn beet greens

a handful of washed and torn arugula

1/2 cup crumbled feta

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F. Toast the cumin seeds over medium heat in a small dry skillet, stirring often. When they start to get fragrant (3-4 minutes), they're done. Grind them up using a mortar and pestle.

Whisk together the ground cumin seeds, lemon juice, vinegar, Dijon mustard, and 1/2 cup of the olive oil in a small bowl. Season with salt and pepper and set aside.

Combine the carrots and beets in a Pyrex dish. Drizzle them with olive oil and roast them in the oven for 25-30 minutes, or until just tender. Transfer the roasted root vegetables to a salad bowl and toss them with the reserved dressing, parsley, mint, beet greens, and arugula. Crumble the feta over top and serve at once.

Note: I ate my salad with the vegetables hot, but they could also be roasted ahead of time and served either at room temperature or even straight from the fridge.

The Local Food Report: sorrel

Have you ever tried sorrel? I hadn't until recently. It's different than most greens—for starters, it's a perennial herb. Unlike spinach or Swiss chard, it comes back every year, and it produces tangy, thick leaves all season long.

According to my friend Lucas, who sells greens at the farmers market in Orleans, sorrel is popular in places like Europe and New Zealand and France. He thinks it's just starting to catch on in the states. It's not for everyone—it tastes pretty sour—but I think it's sort of refreshing in small quantities. Darina Allen, who wrote Forgotten Skills of Cooking, describes it as a sudden little electric shock in a salad. That pretty much captures it perfectly.

When it's cooked down, sorrel is good with cream. Pretty much every recipe I've found for either sorrel soup or a wilted sorrel fish sauce uses some sort of dairy, whether it's butter or whole milk yogurt or heavy cream. The best soup recipe, I think, comes from Julia Child—sorrel, after all, is a French thing. She calls it Potage Germiny.

Raw, I like it in salads. You can throw it into any old salad for a little kick and zing, but it's especially good paired with roasted beets. They're so sweet and the sorrel's so sour that they mesh perfectly.

Lucas says 2011 is going to be the year of sorrel, so sometime, if you have a chance, join in. The greens will be around all season long—from now through late fall—so there's plenty of time to experiment.

CREAM OF SORREL SOUP

This is Julia's recipe, just adapted a bit for simplicity. It makes six servings.

1/3 cup minced green or yellow onions

4 tablespoons butter, divided

3 to 4 cups packed fresh sorrel leaves, washed, dried, and cut into thin strips

1/2 teaspoon salt

3 tablespoons flour

5 and 1/2 cups boiling chicken stock

2 egg yolks

1/2 cup heavy whipping cream

Warm up 3 tablespoons of the butter in a large, heavy-bottomed saucepan over medium heat. Sauté the onions for 5-10 minutes, or until tender and translucent. Stir in all but a handful of the sorrel and the salt, cover the pot, and turn the heat down to low. Cook until the leaves are tender and wilted, about 5 minutes.

Now turn the heat back up to medium and sprinkle in the flour. Cook for three minutes, then pour in the boiling stock, stirring well. Simmer for 5 minutes.

Meanwhile, blend the yolks and cream in a large mixing bowl. Slowly, drop by drop, beat in a cupful of hot soup. Gradually beat in the rest, pouring it in a thin stream as you beat. Return the soup to the saucepan and cook, stirring constantly, for 1-2 minutes over medium heat. Do not bring the soup to a simmer—you just want to cook the eggs. Turn off the heat and stir in the remaining tablespoon of butter.

For hot soup, serve immediately, garnished with the remaining sorrel leaves. For cold soup, leave out the final tablespoon of butter and chill before serving.

SORREL & ROASTED BEET SALAD

Sorrel pairs well with beets because the green offers plenty of sour to the beets' sweet. I love the zing of sorrel in a salad—all citrusy and tang. This salad makes enough to serve 4.

2 slices thick, rustic bread

1/4 cup olive oil, plus extra for toasting the bread

2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar

salt and freshly cracked pepper

3 cups young sorrel leaves, washed and dried

2 pounds beets, roasted, peeled, and sliced (for a roasting tutorial, click here)

8 ounces goat cheese

1/2 cup toasted pistachios or pecans

Warm up a cast iron griddle over medium-high heat. Place the bread in the middle, and drizzle a little bit of olive oil on top. Toast for 2-3 minutes per side, or until the bread is sizzling and golden. Remove the bread from the heat and let it cool for a few minutes before cutting it into 1/2-inch cubes.

Whisk together the remaining olive oil and balsamic vinegar with a fork, and add salt and pepper to taste. Arrange the sorrel in a large salad bowl and layer the roasted beets, bread cubes, goat cheese, and toasted nuts on top. Drizzle with the oil and vinegar mixture and serve at once.

All sorts of keepers

You know where's a good place to find recipes? The Williams Sonoma catalog. Honestly. I find all sorts of keepers in there. The gadgets that go with them—banana slicers and salad dressing emulsifiers—get a little ridiculous, but the recipes are terrific.

Take, for instance, the roasted beet salad recipe I tried the other day. The base ingredients are pretty standard—watercress, roasted beets, toasted walnuts, goat cheese—but the dressing is something else altogether. Basically you take lemon juice and a little bit of crème fraîche and add oil and shallots and a big handful of dill. The dairy makes it creamy, the lemon juice gives it kick, and the shallots and dill make it feel big and zippy. When you pour it over the greens and beets, a sort of magic happens, and everything feels at the same time rich and fresh.

We've made it about three times this week, and today, I'm thinking of having it for lunch again. It's just the thing for a hot day—filling but not heavy, satisfying in a very summer sort of way. Enjoy the sunshine, friends.

ROASTED BEET SALAD

I made a few changes to the Williams Sonoma original of this recipe. For starters, I used arugula and spinach from our garden in place of the watercress. I also added homemade croutons (rustic bread seared in olive oil on our cast iron griddle) and swapped out the crème fraîche for whole milk plain yogurt and Cloumage cheese.

(Cloumage, for those of you who have never had it, is the newest cheese from the Shy Brothers. It tastes sort of like a cross between ricotta and crème fraîche, and they sell it at the Provincetown and Falmouth farmers markets.)

Finally, I upped the dill. I don't know about you, but I can't get enough of that green.

2 tablespoons lemon juice

2 and 1/2 tablespoons Cloumage

2 and 1/2 tablespoons whole milk plain yogurt

5 tablespoons olive oil

2 tablespoons chopped fresh dill

2 teaspoons minced shallot

salt and pepper

4 cups arugula or watercress

2 large beets, roasted, peeled, and cut into wedges (for a roasting tutorial, click here)

1/3 cup toasted walnuts

4 ounces crumbled goat cheese

2 slices good rustic bread, toasted in olive oil in a cast iron skillet or griddle and cut into croutons

Combine the lemon juice, Cloumage, yogurt, olive oil, dill, shallot, and salt and pepper in a Mason jar or salad dressing container. Shake vigorously to emulsify and set aside.

You can plate the salads either individually or on a large shallow platter. Arrange the greens on the bottom, then layer on the roasted beet wedges, toasted walnuts, crumbled goat cheese, and homemade croutons. Drizzle with dressing and toss just before serving.

I could lie

I could lie to you. I could tell you that we've been roasting Truro pork chops and using the bones to make big batches of broth for homemade Pho and lingering over fresh pumpkin muffins, or apple spice cake. But the truth is we have a leaky pipe and a flooded basement and no water, and since Saturday we've been relying on take-out and the generosity of friends.

Not that it's been bad, really. We had a nice lunch at Wellfleet Town Pizza on Saturday and our friend Gui grilled us prime rib from Northeast Family Farms that night, and we even contributed the box of just-picked Chinese cabbage you see up there, from the Mac's Shack garden. I could hardly believe the greens were still lingering, without any covering or attention.

Then yesterday we went over to Alex's brother's to sample cheeses from a new place called Robinson's Farm in Hardwick. The Robinsons started raising grass-fed cows in 2006, and this year, they just released a line of artisinal raw milk cheeses. Alex and Mac are thinking of selling them in the restaurants as part of a local cheese plate, and by the pound at the markets.

The Swiss was good with pickles and pepperoncinis, and a there was a buttery melting cheese that was top-notch over pan-fried potatoes. I'm hoping that Alex will pick up at least the melting one, so that I can make an all-local French onion soup.

In the meantime, of course, I'll take running water. When that happens, here's what's on my to-cook list:

1. this penne with garlic and kale
2. Stacey Glassman's squash with olive oil and garlic
3. cream of beet soup from James Peterson
4. buckwheat pancakes with the flour I ground down the other day from our grain CSA
5. deb's cranberry upside-down cake
6. more simple breakfasts like this
7. and maybe, just maybe, a batch of homemade pop tarts to use up our astounding supply of raspberry jam
   

Happy cooking, everyone.

I just wanted to say

That it might be cold, but with a pair of smart-wool tights and thick jeans, hiked up cashmere socks tucked into thinsulate boots, two cotton shirts, a wool sweater, a scarf, a hat, leather mittens, and a down vest on top, it's really not that bad out there. Even the Swiss chard—upright and perky despite a dip into the twenties in the greenhouse last night—seems to agree.

I was worried about it yesterday, so for dinner we made a spur-of-the-moment, balsamic-doused salad with Swiss chard, raw shaved beets, chunks of apple and crumbles of goat cheese, toasted pecans, grated Brussels sprouts, and dried cranberries.

I thought of you.

And it was lovely.

Inventory, of the fridge

Prompted by the eternal question: What is for dinner?

• 5 leeks
• 1 gallon raw, whole milk
• 1 pint yogurt, swirled with honey and pumpkin puree and peppered with nutmeg and cinnamon
• 1 cup leftover oatmeal, cold and lumpy
• 1/2 pound green beans, thawing, from our garden last year (overlooked?)
• beets—so many big, earthy, Chioggia beets

It took a while—a few cookbooks, a cup of tea, a brisk, sunny walk—but somehow, from there, we got to this. Happy chilly evening, everyone. I hope you're well fed, and warm.

ROASTED BEET, TOASTED WALNUT, & BLUE CHEESE SALAD

This recipe comes from the Balthazar Cookbook. I had it on my first visit to the restaurant on our trip last spring to Manhattan, and when I realized today I had all the ingredients, I had to have it again. I have swapped out a few of the fussier ingredients (i.e. sherry wine vinegar) for a slightly simpler salad, but be warned: as far as salads go, it's still on the fancy side. That said, if you prep out a big batch of the separate parts of this salad ahead of time, you can have it as an impromptu lunch or dinner all week.

1 cup walnuts
1 cup olive oil, divided
6 sprigs thyme, divided
4 medium beets
1/2 pound green beens (frozen are fine)
4 leeks, thinly sliced
1/4 cup minus 1 teaspoon red wine vinegar
1 teaspoon sherry (optional)
1 teaspoon Dijon mustard
1/4 cup walnut oil
1 teaspoon salt, or to taste
finely ground black pepper
3/4 pound mixed greens (I used young spinach and red and green lettuces from the garden)
1/4 pound Great Hill blue cheese, cut into 8 pieces

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F. Spread the walnuts on a baking sheet and toast for about 3 minutes, or until fragrant but not browned.

Pour 1/4 cup of the olive oil onto a plate. Rub the beets in the oil, then wrap each one individually in tinfoil with a sprig of thyme. Bake for an hour, or until tender when pierced with a fork. Cool, peel, dice, and set aside.

Bring a medium pot of water to a boil. Cook the green beans until al dente, about 5 minutes. Remove the beans from the water with a slotted spoon and transfer to an ice bath to cool. Meanwhile, cook the leeks in the reserved (still boiling) water for roughly 10 minutes, or until tender. Remove the beans from the ice bath and set aside, and remove the leeks from the pot with a slotted spoon and transfer to the ice bath to chill. Once cooled, add the leeks to the beets.

Make the salad dressing: whisk together the red wine vinegar, sherry (if using), remaining 3/4 cup olive oil, walnut oil, salt, pepper, and remaining thyme (picked from sprigs). Toss this dressing, to taste, with your mixed greens.

Get out four salad plates. Create a bed of the beet-leek mixture in the center of each and top with a handful of green beans. Layer a handful of the dressed mixed greens on top of that. Lean two wedges of blue cheese on each salad up against the beets. Sprinkle with toasted walnuts, and enjoy at once.

Roasted beet, corn & basil salad

Monday, July 26th: lunchtime, at home

Something—a robin, maybe? a ghost?—ate every last green plum in the middle of the night. They are gone from the tree out back without a trace—no flesh, no pits, not so much on the ground as a twig.

Inside, the fridge is full: corn in its husk, fresh bluefish, arugula, broccoli. I can't concentrate on cooking—where are those plums? who stole them from me?—but I turn on the oven without thinking, then decide to roast the basket of beets.

When they come out—steaming, piping hot—I trim them, skin them, slice them into half tears, orange and ruddy. I husk the corn and cut the kernels from the cob; it's so sticky, milky when it's this sweet. I tear a handful of basil and arugula and toss them in a salad bowl, then squeeze a lime in, and a bit of vinegar, and olive oil. The corn and the beets go on top, still hot enough to fog up my face. I toss everything and then add a pinch of salt—mourn the plums and sit down to eat.

ROASTED BEET, CORN, AND BASIL SALAD

This salad is as simple as it is good. If you prefer your corn cooked, go ahead, but at this time of year, I eat mine straight from the cob, raw and milky. With the addition of cheese and a good slice of toast, this easily makes a meal.

4 beets
olive oil
4 ears corn
1 cup packed basil leaves
1 cup packed arugula leaves, torn
juice of 1 lime
1-2 tablespoons white vinegar (optional)
salt and pepper to taste
Parmesan, for shaving

Preheat the oven to 425 degrees F. Place the beets—scrubbed but with about an inch of their top greens and their tails still on—on a baking sheet, drizzle with a bit of olive oil, and cover with tinfoil. Roast for 45 minutes to an hour, or until tender when pierced with a fork.

Husk the corn and cut the kernels from the cob. Put the kernels in a large bowl with the basil and arugula. When the beets have cooled down enough that you can handle them, cut off the tops and tails and peel off the skin. Then cut the beets in half, and then into thin half moon slices the way you would an apple. Add the beets to the bowl with the corn and greens.

Squeeze the lime juice over the vegetables and drizzle the salad with olive oil. Toss well, and taste for acid and oil. If you think it needs more acid, add the white vinegar one tablespoon at a time, tasting after each addition. If you think it needs more oil, drizzle with a bit more olive oil. (How much you add of both are really a matter of personal taste.) Season with salt and pepper to taste, and serve while the beets are still warm, with shaved Parmesan over top.

The Local Food Report: Seed Ordering

Today, finally, I placed my seed order. Ordering seeds always seems very daunting to me—like taking on the Impossible Project or maybe surviving a twenty-six-point-two-mile run.

I was thinking about this the other day while playing eeny-meeny-miny-moe with Crisp Mint and Rouge d'Hiver on the lettuce page of the Fedco catalog, and I decided it was time to get help. (For seed ordering. Just to be clear.) I called my friend Tracy (who helped me start a garden for the chefs at one of Alex's restaurants last spring), and she told me to talk to a friend of hers, Master Gardener Celeste Makely. I met Celeste in her sunroom, we talked for two hours about seeds and seedlings and garden planning and even baked tomatoes. She sent me home with a tiny fig tree, a homegrown Valencia orange, and all sorts of excellent recommendations. I am not very good at sharing oranges, or potential fig factories, but fortunately, I do much better with notes. So for those of you who aren't quite sure what you want to plant, here are Celeste's top seed picks for 2010:

1. Danvers (carrot)

Apparently, the reason carrots are so tricky to grow is because they need a very fluffy soil. If they don't get it, they tend to become distorted. Unless they're Danvers. Celeste says these carrots stand up particularly well to heavy soils, and are thin and long with a strong top. (For yanking.)

2. Spinach and lettuce of any kind

Spinaches and lettuces are, by definition, easy, Celeste says. Order what you think is tasty, or pretty, plant a bunch, and don't worry about it too much unless the weather gets outrageously sunny and hot. If that happens, give the plants some shade and some water, and they will soldier on. Depending on how you plan to plant your garden, it might be a good idea to buy some early and late varieties, and some that can stand the heat. This way you can be in greens all the time.

3. Chioggia (beet)

These are those pretty magenta and white swirled beets you see at the farmers' markets all the time. Celeste cooks sometimes at the soup kitchen in Provincetown, and last year, a local gardener donated a whole bunch of these. She says they were the hit of the season—wonderfully sweet just roasted with a little bit of oil and salt and pepper.

4. Early Spring Burpless (cucumber)

Celeste likes these for slicing, because they are early, and prolific, and inside their bright white flesh is oh-so-crisp. They also grow long, and don't have too many spines.

5. Bush Pickles (cucumber)

These are ideal for people who don't have much space, but want lots of cucumbers and lots of pickles. Celeste says they grow small (about four to five inches, a.k.a. ideal pickle length), and stay firm, even jarred.

6. Bright Lights (Swiss chard)

We grew Bright Lights Swiss chard in our garden last year, and I can attest to its fabulous-ness. We planted it twice, once in the early spring, and once at the end of August, and we have been in red-yellow-pink-and-orange chard from April through today. I know! Two plantings, a million cuttings, lots of salads, lots of stir-fries, a whole bunch of soups, one Swiss chard gratin, a whole lot of blanching and freezing, and several pounds of onions and garlic later, and we are still eating from a single pack of seeds. Celeste likes it because it's beautiful, and prolific, and easy, and as I just mentioned, about as versatile in the kitchen as one green can be. She found this recipe for goat cheese rolled up in chard leaves and grilled, which even without having tried it I feel I can heartily recommend.


7. Pointsetta (hot pepper)

Pointsetta wins purely on cuteness. It's a new pick for Celeste this year, but she likes the way that the peppers point up instead of down, and are very bright and tiny and generally adorable. She's doing a demo garden for the new Wellfleet Community garden plots, and she says that when she saw this she simply couldn't resist.

8. Jalapeño (hot pepper)

Believe it or not, Celeste recently had a Jalapeño plant that lived for five years. She says she simply planted it in a pot, and brought it inside in the fall and back out again every spring. Jalapeños are easy, and better yet, produce peppers that sliced in half, stuffed with cheese, and broiled, will bring you to your knees.

9. Herbs (not Rosemary, or Parsley)

At least not from seed. Rosemary and Parsley are both difficult to germinate, Celeste says, and not worth your trouble at all. Get them, but buy them already robust in little pots at the garden store. As for the rest, plant Oregano and Spearmint but watch out because they spread, and accumulate as many varieties of Thyme and basil as you can. Oh! and while we're on basil, Celeste thinks Genovese, the big, broad-leafed Italian variety is very nice, as are Thai basil and lemon basil.

10. Tropical fruits (huh?)

Celeste's last recommendation is just in case you decide that this year, you want to go big time. She has a sunroom on the south side of her house, and for a while now, she's been experimenting with tropical fruit trees. Based on my Valencia-orange-eating-in-February experience, I'd say it's been a wild success. In addition to the oranges, she's ordered and successfully nursed to maturity a Meyer lemon tree, a Ponderosa lemon tree (which produces fruit the size of baseballs!), and several varieties of Italian figs. (The seeds for which her grandfather brought over from Italy.) She thinks that if you have a sunny room, you should go for it.

There you have it—Celeste's top ten for 2010. Before I go, though, a few notes. You probably noticed there are no tomato varieties up there. That's because next week, I will be bringing you another of Celeste's seed-ordering lists, this time ONLY for tomatoes. Yipee!


And a note about seed ordering: Celeste orders most of her seeds from Totally Tomatoes, which carries both tomatoes and a few other plants, like hot peppers and cucumbers and basils. It's a great catalog for anyone, but maybe more so for a tomato zealot like Celeste than for the rest of us.

I order all of my seeds from Fedco, a Maine-based company that I like because it a) sells only seeds adapted to our cold New England climate, b) is very committed to sustainable growing and non-GMO seeds, and c) has in its catalogs sections like "How Not to Order" and seed descriptions like this. Reading it makes my eyes water and my sides hurt.

To request a Fedco catalog, all you have to do is click on over here, and then call and leave a message with your name and address. They say it might take a few weeks to get it, but mine only took a few days. Have fun!

The Local Food Report: the proof is in

Would you like to see something beautiful?

That is a salad I made on Saturday, January 23rd entirely from Massachusetts foods. The green curls are pea tendrils, from Allen Farms in Westport. The maroon slivers and chunks are pickled beets and onions leftover from a big batch our friend Tracy made for our wedding at the end of October, with veggies from her very own garden. She made the pickled carrots, too. The white blobs, believe it or not, are actually not marshmallows, but little Hannahbells. Oh! and I saved the best for last. Those little golden things? Real, live greenhouse-grown pear tomatoes. Debbie Barrett is very proud of those.

If anyone tells you it's impossible to eat locally in New England in the middle of January because you're going to contract scurvy or starve to death or accidentally stab your neighbor for his Florida orange, well, the proof is in the pudding, people. Or the salad. Or whatever. The point is, that rainbow dish up there should get them to pipe down.

Also, our area now officially has two—TWO!—winter farmers' markets. One in Marstons Mills slated to start next Saturday, February 6th at 10am sharp, and another already underway on the third Thursday of every month from 3:30 to 6pm at Plimoth Plantation. When I first heard about both of these, I did a little dance in my seat. The best part it, the Plimoth one even has an online ordering shop so that if you're going to drive all that way, you can make sure you get what you want.

When I first heard about the online store, I was actually a little bit wary to tell you the truth. I was at the annual Cape Cod Buy Fresh Buy Local meeting, sitting in the back drinking my friend Jessie's homemade cranberry syrup-seltzer infusion and trying not to make too much noise eating smoked bluefish, and these two very smart looking women from Plymouth pulled a computer and a laser pointer out. While they talked about the software, and how the farmers submitted what they had, and then got a report back after the customers had ordered about what to bring, I realized that the whole idea made me just the slightest bit nervous. The thing I like about farmers' markets, after all, is that they are by definition very low tech, and rather than involving computers and telephones and wireless internet and e-trading, they involve people and wicker baskets and carrots and dirt. I had this flash-forward nightmare vision of the local food movement going the way of Big Organics, and for a second my mouth got so dry I had to push away my plate.

I thought about their presentation a lot over the next few weeks.

Eventually, I decided that the only way to get over it would be to call them up and see if they might want to talk. And so I did—I got in touch with Barbara Anglin, the market organizer, and Sasha Purpura, one of the farmers—and last week I ended up walking around with my recording gear and my camera and a big bag of fresh carrots and Chinese cabbage and homemade granola in the Plimoth Plantation parking lot. Then I went inside, and the more we talked, the more I was convinced that online ordering was a good idea after all. Here's how they got me convinced.

For starters, they said that their main goal with the online store is to give more people better access to local food. That isn't really a mission statement I can argue with. Secondly, they pointed out that there are a lot of working parents—mostly mothers, so far as they've noticed, but fathers too—who work during market hours, and therefore can never, ever make it there to do the household shop for the week. Even if they have the money and are into it and are willing to pay the price, they either can't get there at all or get there so late that the eggs and the greens and the grapes and all the good stuff have completely disappeared. Also, Barbara and Sasha argued that the online store has the potential to eventually expand what the market has to offer, because Barbara gives all of the farmers a print out every week showing them who put what up and which items sold like hot potatoes and which ones didn't. The vendors will start to see holes or overlaps, Barbara very reasonably predicted, and then they'll start ramping up new varieties and scaling back in places where there's too much overlap. Ultimately, that could lead to a lot of new foods on our plates.


But the most convincing reason they offered is this: Even though the store is geared toward busy, working parents, and even though they estimate that ninety percent of the people using it are busy, working parents, after these busy people pick up their boxes, they still stick around to shop. They wander through the stalls, and say hello to the farmers they ordered from, and usually buy a few other things. In other words, it's the guarantee they're looking for, not a whole different experience. They have time to say hello, but not to arrive ready for a week's shop and find out nothing's there. That's a wonderfully reassuring thing.

As it turns out, a lot of other people think the online store is a good idea, too. There are a few other places using the exact same program, which was put together originally by a market in Plymouth New Hampshire. The New Hampshire folks were the first people to do it, back in 2006, when the Plymouth Area Renewable Energy Initiative decided to brainstorm ways to get people to buy more local food. The thought was that this, in turn, would decrease these households' overall energy use—and a group of local farmers suggested an online marketplace. That's how the first Local Foods Plymouth was born. Right now, there are about six or seven markets in Maine, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire, including the one in our Plymouth, using the software. There's also a different online ordering model—Massachusetts Local—at work in the western part of the state.

It's hard to say whether or not the idea will catch on out here. But based on how well it's doing up north, if I were you I'd take a peek.

The Local Food Report: where we're headed

Do you remember my friend Drew from last week? The one who wants to raise organic, grass-fed chickens in Truro and sell broilers for meat and use the layers for eggs? Well, today I'd like to introduce you to the man who inspired him.

His name is Joel Salatin and in the farming world, he's kind of a big deal. He's the farmer who Michael Pollan profiled in his book, The Omnivore's Dilemma, for the chapter about pastured meat, and also the farmer who refused to ship a broiler from where he raised it in the Shenendoah Valley of Virginia to where Pollan lived in Berkeley, California. Pollan wanted to taste the chicken for his book, and Salatin explained that the author was welcome to do so anywhere within a four hour radius of Polyface Farm. Salatin feels very strongly about selling the food he raises only within his local foodshed.

Actually, come to think of it, Salatin feels pretty strongly about most things. He thinks that we're awfully arrogant to think that we can treat the earth the way we do, and to think that it won't have any consequences down the road. There's an old Chinese proverb he likes to quote, something along the lines of if we don't change our direction, we're likely to end up where we're headed. It's as close as he'll come to prophesizing a collapse.

When I met him this fall at Cape Cod Community College, he talked mostly about this arrogance, and the problems he thinks it's caused. He thinks that trying to shortcut nature, particularly when it comes to what we farm and in turn what we eat, is the cause of a lot of our current health problems. He looks at the industrial food system, and the way it has manipulated things like potatoes and corn into chips and soft drinks, and sees a fairly direct link to type two diabetes and obesity. And he looks at recent outbreaks of e. coli and listeria and bovine spongiform encephalopathy and sees a fairly direct link between them and the way we let animals stand around in their own feces eating corn they aren't meant to digest on factory farms. He also sees a connection between our environmental worries—climate change and flooding and drought and all sorts of wacky weather patterns—and the fact that we now use 15 calories of energy to produce a single calorie of food. Food should be a net producer of calories, he says, not a net consumer. Finally, he takes a look at our landscapes and sees a link between suburban sprawl and the Peruvian apples on our tables. If we valued locally grown food, he says, there would be an economic incentive to preserve open space.

It all makes a good amount of sense, I think.

But his best point—and the one he uses to try and tip real skeptics over the edge—is that even if we have decided that we're okay with sucking up oil and getting a bad case of salmonella every once in a while, from a community standpoint, we still aren't safe. The idea of a global foodshed—one in which to feed itself our little town of Wellfleet has to rely on imports from five or ten or fifteen other countries, instead of just Barnstable county or maybe Massachusetts or even New England—isn't safe. What if there's a war, or maybe a transportation glitch? Suddenly, we have nothing to eat.

It's pretty scary, if you think about it. It makes me admire people like Salatin and Drew even more, people who are doing what they can—inspiring or learning or coming up with business plans—to try and change the way things work. I read this quote the other day, from Tolstoy. Everyone thinks of changing the world, he said, but no one thinks of changing himself. It's a good point, and a good reminder that sometimes, it's the small actions that count. Sometimes, even, when the pickled beets are homemade from your garden and the eggs come from down the street, actions as small as making up a plate of beet-pickled deviled eggs can make a difference.


BEET-PICKLED DEVILED EGGS

adapted from this recipe published in Gourmet, November 2009

If you don't have any pickled beets on hand, check out the original recipe (through that link up above). It gives a step by step for making the pickling juice. If you do have pickled beets on hand, though, the beets make an excellent double appetizer with the eggs.


12 eggs, hard-boiled and peeled
pickling juice from 1 quart pickled beets
1/3 cup mayonnaise, preferably homemade
1 tablespoon sweet, whole-grained mustard like Raye's Fall Harvest blend
2 scallions, minced (roughly 2 tablespoons)
1 teaspoon white pepper
salt to taste

Find a bowl or container that has a cover and will hold all 12 hard-boiled eggs. Put the eggs in the container, pour the pickling juice over top, and put the eggs in the refrigerator to chill for at least two hours. If the pickling juice doesn't quite cover the eggs, spin them every once in a while so that they turn a deep pink color all over.

Pull the container of eggs out of the fridge and pat them dry on a paper towel or old dishcloth. Cut the eggs in half lengthwise and, using a spoon and taking care not to rip the whites, scoop the yolks out into a small mixing bowl. Arrange the whites on a serving platter, face up. Beat the mayonnaise, mustard, scallions, and pepper into the egg yolks, and season with salt to taste. Using either a spoon or a cake piping kit, fill the wholes of the whites with the yolk mixture. Serve chilled.

Fully on board

You know what? It is a good feeling when you have been looking for a wedding caterer for a long, long time, to find one that you like.

It is a good feeling to find a caterer who doesn't flinch when you tell her you might not be able to finalize the menu until a few weeks before the event, as there's a farmer to work with and a potato blight in Maine in full swing. It is an even better feeling when not only does she not flinch, but she gets fully on board.

It will make you nearly ecstatic when she tells you that it's fine to put beets in every course because they are In Season and of course she'd like to peel nine dozen tiny local eggs because actually they give a better mouth feel and wouldn't your family like to help her pull the mozzarella one day?

Finding a caterer like this is a feeling very similar, come to think of it, as the one you get when you meet the man you want to spend the rest of your life with. Between Alex and Katy, I'm not sure things could get much better around here. Or at least, I didn't think so until Katy introduced The Cupcakes. Here, would you like to meet them too?

They are the product of a Ms. Alexandra Mudry, a student at the Culinary Institute of America. (Katy went there too, but I like to say she's from the CIA. It makes her seem a lot less Betty Crocker and a lot more James Bond, don't you think?) Anways, Alexandra came up with the cupcakes when the American Cancer Society decided to host a contest to remake the birthday cake. They were looking for a healthier, more old-fashioned version—one with real ingredients and no preservations and maybe a few less sprinkles and definitely no box mix. (Or maybe they were just looking for something to back up their newly assumed position as the Official Sponsor of Birthdays, but we'll pretend not to notice that.) Because really, I could overlook just about anything for The Cupcakes.

The Cupcakes are red velvet cupcakes, the old fashioned kind dyed with beets. They have half whole wheat flour and dark chocolate and even applesauce in the mix, and they are an absolutely stunning color. Sort of like mahogany, only with a bit more red. I've made them with cream cheese frosting, but they're also good with French icing or even a good vanilla buttercream.

As for how they are to make, there's a bit of cooking time involved in roasting the beets and a few odd ingredients to track down, but otherwise, they're a sinch. Plus, once you buy that tiny jar of instant coffee it will last you many, many birthdays. You only have to do the tough shopping once.

And on the presentation side of things, for the wedding we're planning to go to the flea market and stock up on all sizes of cakes stands so that we can stack the cupcakes in small, double-decker circles the way they are below. Not only will it be pretty, but pulling out a piping bag and making a few nice, billowy swirls of frosting on each cupcake will be a whole lot easier than spreading frosting on a crumbling, towering cake.


In fact these cupcakes are so good, so easy, and so pretty, I think they might just be the ones for the big day. What do you say?

RED VELVET CUPCAKES

adapted from the American Cancer Society's recipe by Ms. Alexandra Mudry

This recipe makes 24 cupcakes. For the wedding, of course, we'll be making a lot more, but for your next birthday party, this size batch should be just right. Also, you might notice that this recipe uses a lot more ingredients than I usually go for, but I think you'll find, as I did, that cupcakes this good are well worth a trip to the store.

8 medium-sized beets
1 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup canola oil
2 large eggs
2 large egg whites
3 ounces unsweetened chocolate, melted
1 teaspoon instant coffee
1/2 cup unsweetend cocoa powder
1/2 cup applesauce
1 cup all-purpose flour
3/4 cup whole wheat flour
1 and 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F. Peel the beets and trim off their tops and tails. Line a cookie sheet with tinfoil and place the beets on top. Drizzle them with olive oil and bake for about two hours, or until a fork goes into them easily. If you're going to make the cake batter immediately, you can go ahead and leave the oven on as the cake bakes at 375, too.

Puree the beets in a food processor with several tablespoons of water. (One or two should do the trick). Once they're smooth, they're done.

Line two 12-cup muffin tins with cupcake wrappers. In a small, heavy-bottomed pot, melt the chocolate. While it heats up, combine the oil, eggs, egg whites, and sugar in a mixing bowl and beat together until they turn smooth and lighten in color. Add the instant coffee to the melted chocolate and stir until the two are well-mixed. Slowly, beat the chocolate mixture into the eggs, oil, and sugar.

In another mixing bowl, combine the cocoa powder, applesauce, and beet puree. Stir well, and beat this mixture into the egg and chocolate mixture. In yet another bowl (I know, not only are there a lot of ingredients but there will also be a lot of dishes but I swear it will be worth it people, so soldier on!) whisk together the remaining dry ingredients. Fold these gently into the wet ingredients until just combined. (Be careful not to overmix or the cupcakes will get tough and dense.) Pour the batter into the cupcake liners and bake for twenty to twenty-five minutes, or until a piece of straw (my mother used to take hers from a new broom) comes out clean.

Let the cupcakes cool for a few minutes, and then take them out from the pan to cool on a rack. Ice with cream cheese frosting, below.

CREAM CHEESE FROSTING

24 ounces cream cheese, at room temperature
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 and 1/4 cups confectioners' sugar

Beat the cream cheese with the vanilla extract until they are light and smooth. Add the confectioners' sugar, bit by bit, until the whole mixture is creamy and smooth. Be careful not to overmix, or the frosting will be hard to spread. Spoon into a piping bag and ice the cupcakes in whatever decorative, lovely way you see fit.

P.S. If you're wondering why there's no Local Food Report today, it's because the station is doing a pledge drive this week. I went up to Woods Hole to help out yesterday, but they could use yours, too. You can head on over here if you're up for becoming a Cape & Islands NPR member.

There's time

Is is wrong to eat the same dish every night for a week straight?

If it is, well, we're doomed. We've been eating the same root vegetable and cilantro slaw with Thai fish cakes for dinner for six days now. (Okay, okay. Sometimes we have it for lunch too.) Six days!

In our defense, this meal is good. And the every day part isn't entirely unwarranted. When you boil three pounds of frozen flounder to make fish stock, you can't just throw all that white meat away. It may have lost a little flavor, but that's why fish cakes were invented. With red curry paste, cilantro, sugar, and a pinch of salt, you can make anything come to life. As for the slaw, well; it isn't quite farmers' market season yet. Those root vegetables are still kicking around, and slicing them up very thinly, sprinkling them with cilantro, and drizzling them with a light, lemon-mayo dressing makes them seem much, much more acceptable this time of year. In fact, between the curry-spiced fish cakes and the cilantro-spiked slaw, I've almost been able to imagine myself down to the fish taco street stand we visited on a trip to Sayulita. I'm not quite there, but then again, we're only halfway through the fish. There's time.


If you look very closely at the picture above, you will see the edge of a little white bowl with a peanut dipping sauce peeking out. This mixture of vinegar, sugar, and crushed nuts is essential. It makes the fish cakes just the slightest bit sweet, and it adds crunch. And, well, if you're going to eat something every day for a week, you ought to go all out.

THAI FISH CAKES

This recipe is a take-off on the traditional Thai fish cakes, Thod Mun Pla. A friend gave us a recipe for those, but since we lacked both string beans and kaffir lime leaves (the two key ingredients) we decided to go with cilantro instead. This turned out to be a very happy decision, as it led us to a recipe we like better yet.

1 pound boiled white fish
1/2 cup cilantro, chopped thin
1 tablespoon red curry paste
1 egg
1 teaspoon sugar
1 teaspoon salt
oil/fat for frying

Knead fish, cilantro, curry paste, egg, sugar, and salt by hand in a mixing bowl. Fill a deep, wide pan about an inch full with cooking oil or fat drippings. When the oil is hot, pat the fish mixture into cakes and drop as many will fit into the pan. Cook about 2 minutes each side, or until golden brown. Serve warm over some sort of crunchy slaw, with peanut dipping sauce.

PEANUT DIPPING SAUCE

1/2 cup white vinegar
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup peanuts, crushed

In a saucepan, heat up vinegar and sugar. Bring to a boil, and remove from heat. Add peanuts; mix well and serve.

From top to tail

I love it how at farm stands and farmers' markets, you get the whole vegetable. No one's stolen the squash seeds or the beet greens, and the carrot tops are still intact.

This week, after a trip to Crow Farm in Sandwich (which will be selling vegetables until Christmas, mind you), I made an all-beet salad. It was my version of top to tail cooking, if you will, minus the animal and the endless parade of parts.

It was easy enough to put together—I simply peeled and sliced thin the beets, chopped up the greens, and threw the whole lot into a pan hot with oil and garlic. The leaves began to wilt, the beets to soften, and at last I blew out the flame and declared them tender. With a bit of chevre on top, and a sprinkle of salt and pepper, I had a hearty fall salad.

It looked like Christmas with the colors—deep, maroon beets mixed with holly-hued greens and a sprinkling of white—just the thing to whip up for a holiday party or cold weather lunch. Even once the beet greens are gone, there'll still be spinach to gather, which with its deep forest green could easily step in.

But something about using the whole beet—every last bit of it, minus the well-intentioned skin—is so satisfying that I think I wouldn't dare. Usually I wait too long on the greens, letting them sit idle in the crisper until they are wilted beyond repair. It seems fitting that instead they leave together with the beets, hand in hand without hesitation for the next.

Try the salad if you can—before the holidays set in and the bustle becomes too much—because I'm sure once you do you'll decide you want it on the table. I'm willing to bet you like it so much, in fact, that you'll want to practice at least once or twice, to get it perfect just in time. Until then, if you need any help with the leftovers—well, you know I'm always here.

WARM BEET SALAD

Serves 4

Wash and cut the greens from 5 small beets. Dry and chop greens roughly. Boil beets for 10 to 20 minutes, or until they are slightly tender and you can slip the skins from them easily. Remove skins and slice into thin, 1/2-inch pieces. In a large, heavy-bottomed frying pan, heat up 2 tablespoons oil. Drop in 1 clove garlic, minced, and cook 30 seconds. Add beets and greens and stir well. Let cook, covered, for 5 to 10 minutes, stirring occasionally, until greens are wilted but have not lost their color. Transfer into a serving dish, season with salt and pepper to taste, and top with 1 to 2 ounces chevre. Serve warm as a light main course or side salad.

Sunday supper

The clocks skipped back today, shifting the season for good. Afternoon light faded as I worked my hands into the chilly cavity of a chicken, and we prepared the oven for a roast.

It was the perfect evening for the bird. We'd picked it up from Paskamansett Farms in Dartmouth several weeks before, frozen solid beside its two sister birds.

When a turkey arrived from the same fields this morning, there was squawking in the freezer. Packed solid, it showed something had to go. With Sunday evening looming and no dinner in sight, the carefully packed chicken got the first ticket out.

It didn't help the bird's cause that a rotisserie sat, unused, in our beloved new oven, just itching to be used. I left the meat to thaw and returned hours later to find it ready to dress. Rubbing the meat with olive oil, salt, pepper, and fresh cut rosemary, I allowed it to sit while I rummaged around for twine. Rope offered the next best option, and so around the bird it wound.

With the oven hot, we stuck the bird between the hungry jaws of the spit and watched it begin to spin. Slowly, with excruciating appeal, it began to turn. Dripping fat and sizzling skin filled the oven, and we settled in to wait.

An hour or so passed; potatoes were mashed, salad whipped up, a jar of beach plum-cranberry chutney pulled from the pantry. Red wine was poured, gravy made, and stuffing pulled from the oven. Finally, brilliantly, the bird emerged from the oven. It was mouthwatering in its perfection, perfectly cooked on all sides, and wonderfully browned. The smell filled the dining room and we dug in to enjoy an old-fashioned Sunday supper.

ROTISSERIE CHICKEN with ROOT VEGETABLE GRATIN

Serves 4-6

Wash a 5-8 pound chicken with cold water. Drizzle with olive oil, and rub with salt, pepper, and rosemary. Tie wings in close to body; spear onto rotisserie. In a large Pyrex pan (big enough to fit beneath the bird and catch drippings) toss 1 large beet, peeled and diced, 1 apple, diced, and 1 lb. winter squash, peeled and diced, and 1 cup torn bread with salt, pepper, rosemary, and olive oil to taste. Place pan beneath chicken on floor of oven, and turn on rotisserie. Let cook 1 to 2 hours, or until meat and vegetables are cooked through and tender and bird skin is brown. Remove meat from oven, place on serving platter, and allow to rest 15 minutes before serving. Enjoy alongside vegetables.

Garden finale salad

By yesterday evening, the garden was empty save for a dogged, heady patch of kale and a few struggling stalks of brussel sprouts.

The tomato plants were ripped up, spurned by their roots and left to compost near the wood pile.

Basil, thyme, and cilantro still sat guard in the brick row out front, but there was little left to watch, save for the stoic kale.

This will all change today, of course, as spinach and scallions replace peppers and tomatoes, and the showy, outrageous fruits of summer give way to a quieter sort of growth. But still, the upheaval from one season to the next required a celebration, of sorts, and so we decided to put together a last garden dish.

With the ripe cherry and heirloom tomatoes I'd picked, we put together a finale salad to bid the summer garden farewell. We sent it off in style; bright orange balls beside thick red slices with the cheer of a yellow plate. I threw our last beets in to boil, and, warm, they piled on. Their heat melted the Great Hill Blue into a thick cream, cut with a dash of vinegar and a good sprinkle of salt.

The colors were beautiful—as vibrant as the trees—but they were foreboding, too. Any winter plant, even the greens, would pale in comparison, save for the winter berry or perhaps a sprig of holly. But for now, this one last summer garden night, we reveled in the taste of the colorful season.

GARDEN FINALE SALAD

Serves 4

Slice 2 large heirloom tomatoes into thin rounds. Arrange on a plate in a circle; fill center with ripe cherry tomatoes. Top with 1-2 ounces crumbled Great Hill blue cheese and 3 warmed beets, sliced thin. Drizzle with 1 tablespoon white wine or cider vinegar and sprinkle with sea salt and fresh cracked pepper. Enjoy warm.

Basil, beets & cicadas

It isn't often I have an evening of uninterrupted solitude. Even tonight, I suppose, you could count the contented furry beast at my side as a companion or distraction. But let free from the restaurant, with a Sox fanatic at the game and a roommate fled to the city, I sped home in the twilight, seeped in freedom.

Equally unexpected was dinner. I'd expected a bowl of stolen staff food after closing, guzzled down with a glass of Peak's nut brown and still settling as I made my way to bed. It was a treat, this meal for one, but I was unprepared.

I tallied the troops:

1 pound dried, homemade pasta,
the entire beet harvest from my garden,
4 dirty, rumpled garden white onions,
several tablespoons bacon fat,
and 4 live, healthy basil plants.

Hardly Thanksgiving, but certainly enough to march on. I began with the fat and onions. As the cicadas whispered through the screens, their steady violins readying the night to fall, the smell of bacon wafted out into the air. I sliced basil and beets, and watched as a plan appeared beneath my hands.

Pasta water went on to boil, a pinch of salt sinking slowly as temperature rose. Then went the flat, crisp noodles themselves—the garlic pepper pasta of a post just passed. Bacon and onion formed a slow, translucent stew, while the sudden drop of beets added cubes and color. Next followed noodles and finally basil, and dinner was set. Alone on the deck, I settled in to enjoy.

BEET BASIL PASTA

Serves 2-3

Boil 3 medium red beets until tender, about 45 minutes. Slice into small cubes. Sauté 4 chopped medium sized white onions in 4 tablespoons bacon fat or olive oil until translucent. Meanwhile, boil 1/2 pound whole wheat pasta. When pasta is done, drain and add to onion pan. Add beet cubes, 1 cup fresh basil leaves, and salt and pepper to taste. Toss well and serve warm with hard, grated cheese.