Week Six: In A Pickle

Another great week at the farm. We got regular AND pickling (Kirby) cucumbers, onions, lettuce, beets, zucchini, carrots, and fennel. I still haven’t made it out to the self-pick field, but I know there’s some dill there, calling my name!

I made cupcakes with the beets (obviously) – I had been planning on making chocolate cupcakes (the beets were red), but I discovered that I’d gotten candy cane beets! They’re striped pink and white on the inside. Unfortunately they don’t retain their color when cooked, so after I pureed them for the batter it looked like a pile of pinkish-orange mush. Not particularly appetizing, but luckily, cocoa powder covers up a lot!

Surprise! We're stripey.

I’m planning to use the onion in fajitas tonight. I also made some pickles and pickled carrots, which are chilling in the fridge with some garlic getting all yummy.

We <3 vinegar and garlic!

Cute, isn't he?

Also on this week’s menu is the beet and potato hash that I made last season, topped with fried eggs. I’m going to try baking it in the oven instead of cooking it on the stovetop so I can avoid the hilarity that is “just slide the thing onto a plate, put another plate over top, flip, and slide back into the skillet to finish cooking”. Because anything that starts with “Just…” is never that easy. (Exhibit A)

I wasn’t over the moon about the fennel slaw I’d made a couple weeks ago, so I’m reevaluating what I want to do with my fennel. Maybe make it into a risotto again (I’ll use the whey left over from my homemade yogurt, cut with water or chicken stock to make it less sour). I did save a couple of chunks of the stalks for stock – hopefully it won’t be overwhelming once cooked! Google also tells me there are both roasted and lightly-fried options for fennel, which also sound good.

Week Five - Catching Up!

It’s been a busy couple weekends – our usual 4^th of July celebrations got rained out, which was a bummer since the rest of the weekend was beautiful! Last weekend I was in Knoxville, TN with my family – what a drive! We passed a Wal-Mart distribution center that was at least a mile long (below), drove the long way through Virginia, and at really good food in downtown Market Square (think Faneuil Hall/Quincy market area without the market buildings in the center).

Allll those trucks are Wal-Mart branded.

This is about the longest direct route you can take through Virginia.
I-81 all the way, through the beautiful Appalachians.

We had a good harvest last week – Matt & Aly dropped off cucumbers, golden beets (you know what that means – cupcakes! Yay!), summer squash, and green and gold zucchini for us. I made some yummy fridge pickles – I can’t wait for my dill to get a little bigger so I can use it for extra flavor. I may also try spears, too. They take a little longer but I'm sure they're worth it!

Mmmm pickles

Easy Fridge Pickles

inspired by Smitten Kitchen

As I was re-reading the ingredients to list here, I noticed that I had accidentally doubled the vinegar and halved the cucumbers. I don't know if I mind, but that would explain how incredibly pickly and spicy they turned out... Her recipe uses 8-10 Kirby cukes and 1/2 cup of vinegar. My version is below.

4 small to medium cucumbers, washed and sliced thin (she recommends Kirby or pickling cucumbers)

1 cup white vinegar 

5 teaspoons salt (coarse, pickling, or kosher)

Optional tasty things:

  1 to 2 tablespoons fresh dill, chopped

  1 or 2 cloves of garlic, peeled and lightly crushed

  1/2 teaspoon or so red pepper flakes

  freshly ground black pepper

Slice up the cucumbers super thin with a mandoline if you have one, or carefully on a cutting board. Put them in a large bowl with a leakproof lid, then add the salt, vinegar, and your choice of optional tasty additions. Close the lid and shake everything up. Chill in the fridge, shaking occasionally, until ready to eat (wait at least an hour - they'll supposedly last 3 weeks).

The fun part about using a mandoline is that the slices just stack up all on their own!

I roasted up the summer squash to have alongside some chicken. I did a quick marinade with olive oil, garlic, and salt & pepper, tossed the chicken and then the squash in that, and cooked everything at 400* for about 20 minutes. Delish! (Tip: preheat the baking sheet in the oven while you prep everything!)

And a quick garden update: We have pumpkins! No pictures yet, but there are at least three that are fist-sized or bigger and growing every day. The vines are reaching out to the radishes and broccoli, and will probably be at the driveway soon. My radishes went a little wild when I was gone, so I'm not sure if any are now too big to be tasty - some of them have flowered, so I need to clear those out and give everything else some space to breathe.

Another update soon!

Week Ten: Holy Tomatoes + Bonus Fruit

My friend recently tweeted a complaint that I’ve never been able to articulate very well myself, wondering if it was a “New England thing to only enjoy the beginning of summer and spend the rest dreading the coming of winter.” I’ve also wondered the same thing – we still have beautiful long evenings, after all, and oh right, six more weeks of summer, according to the calendar! Even the farm newsletter referenced the dreaded onset of autumn – so the weather’s been a little chilly (75º instead of 95º), fine, but jeez, people! It’s bad enough we’re putting out fall scents at the store... I'm even drinking a pumpkin beer as I write this.

Carrots, white peppers, and dill, cilantro, and jalapenos.

Anyway. Despite the farm’s concerns over tomato blight lately, we were allowed to take five pounds (!) of tomatoes this week – in addition to 2 pints of cherry tomatoes from the picking fields. Matt, Aly, and Dan are in heaven – me, I’m indifferent. I tried my first cherry tomato last night, after admitting that “I don’t like tomatoes” actually meant “I’ve never really eaten a tomato”… not sure I’m impressed. But now I know!

Tomato-y glory. I think there are only three pounds left.

In addition to tomatoes, Aly got some cucumbers (none for me – I've still got three in the fridge!), lettuce, onions, and corn (which was grilled to have with dinner). I got more carrots and potatoes for our rescheduled fancy dinner party, and some celery and white peppers. I’m excited to try the celery – the newsletter hinted that it’s really different from the grocery store stuff, so hopefully it’ll make a good stock addition! I’ve been saving vegetable peelings for a while (carrots, onion skins, etc.) with a master plan of making vegetable stock sometime in the future… yum.

Lettuce and onions

Skinny celery

We also got a “bonus melon”. Jury’s out on whether it’s a cantaloupe or honeydew.

Yeah bonus!

We had to reschedule dinner with our parents for this week, but since I’d prepped a bunch of the food earlier in the week, we had some friends over instead… and I’m glad I had a test run! Turns out that you need to keep an eye on cheeses while they’re baking in the oven, otherwise their containers might lose the ability to contain the melty goodness, and then you have melted Camembert all over the floor of your oven. It missed the electric heating coil… Barely.

I tried a recipe for an onion jam to have with the cheese, which turned out pretty well – although I wasn’t really thinking about the recipe’s intended purpose/volume versus mine when I was shopping… so I ended up with way more than we could eat on Friday. Noted for this week! I did have a chance to bake those beet cupcakes as well, which I brought to a party on Saturday night. They were a hit, happily, and it’s always fun to let people in on the secret ingredient!

Onion Jam (from Weber) (This week I will likely halve this recipe)

2 tablespoons unsalted butter

2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil

2 large sweet yellow onions, thinly sliced

½ teaspoon kosher salt

½ cup balsamic vinegar (not aged)

½ cup packed golden brown sugar

¼ cup dried currants or raisins

Warm the butter and oil over medium-high heat in a big (really big) skillet. I used my mandoline slicer with the "thin" blade option to slice the onions - add these and the salt to the skillet.

Lots of onions!

Cook about ten minutes until the onions are tender and they've reduced in volume by about half. I always have to guess at what that might look like, so I generally go by time here. Stir frequently so they don't burn. 

A half cup of sugar makes the vinegar and onions go down...

Add the vinegar, sugar, and raisins to the pan. Reduce the heat to medium-low and cook for about 35 minutes until the onions become "jam-like" (again, not positive what that means!) and most of the liquid has evaporated. Remove from heat; serve at room temperature. I reheated it for dinner on Friday:

Fairly certain I made gillyweed?

I'm going to change up with way I pre-cut the onions before I mandoline-d them; I found the slices of onion halves ended up being too big and stringy. I think I'll quarter along the stem next time.

Golden Beet Cupcakes (from The Ivory Pomegranate)

I doubled this recipe and got exactly 18 cupcakes, so I think a safe assumption is that the amounts in this list makes nine cupcakes.

1 medium-sized golden beet

2 eggs

1 cup and 2 tablespoons flour

1/2 cup brown sugar

2 teaspoons baking powder

1/4 teaspoon kosher salt

6 tablespoons unsalted butter, room temperature 

Wrap the beet in foil and roast at 350º for about an hour until tender. When it's cool enough to handle, peel and chop. (Mom and I steamed our beets.)

They're striped! How pretty?

Blend the beet pieces and eggs in a food process or blender until smooth. Whisk together dry ingredients, then use an electric (handheld or stand) mixer to incorporate the butter. Fold in the beet/eggs mixture until just combined - don't overdo this, otherwise the cupcakes will get tough. Line cupcake pans with papers and spoon batter in. Bake at 350º 18-22 minutes, rotating back to front and switching racks if needed halfway through. Let cool before frosting.

I have to admit, I was a little wary of these instructions while I was putting everything together, but they seem to have turned out ok. Next time I think I'll try the standard "cream butter and sugar, add eggs, then add dry stuff" method and see if that turns out any different.

Buttercream Frosting (roughly adapted from FoodNetwork.com)

Head over to the site if you need lots of frosting - theirs makes enough to fill and frost a  9"x13" sheet cake or two 9" layers. I didn't need nearly that much, so I used roughly the following amounts:

12 ounces powdered sugar 

1/2 stick ish of room-temperature butter

1/4 cup milk, barely

1 capful vanilla extract (you could also use mint or almond flavoring, whatever floats your boat)

Food coloring if desired

Combine everything in a big mixing bowl and combine at low speed until well incorporated and no butter lumps remain. Add food coloring, if using, and frost away. If it's too runny, add more sugar/too thick, add milk a spoonful at a time. 

Week Three: Healthy Stuff

I'm way late on updating this week - sorry! Between work, being sick, and the 4:30pm-on-a-Friday "The client says they still don't have this thing you sent two weeks ago" phone call... I've been distracted. But - the Whitecaps won again to become the Eastern Conference Champs, and off to Philly they go!

This week we picked up more garlic scapes, cabbage, lettuce, radishes, beets, collard greens, and chard. We had a cooking party, and Aly whipped up this recommended collard greens 'n' onions dish, I made a chard and feta pasta dish, and over the weekend I got in some baking. I made another Caesar salad since I was so happy with how the first one came out, but haven't had a chance to eat much of it yet.

We also discovered just how crazy good for you this stuff is. Did you know that 1 cup of collard greens has 288% of your daily recommended Vitamin A? And 57% of your daily recommended Vitamin C? And a cup of Swiss Chard has 44% of your daily recommended Vitamin A? Wikipedia tells me that Vitamin A is good for the immune system (so why am I getting sick, I ask?!) and "for the maintenance of good vision." Aly told me some time ago me that Vitamin C is good for building and maintaining connective tissue, which was good knowledge when we both injured ourselves with sharp objects - she just before telling me this, and my a week or so after.

So, on to cooking. I made some yummy cupcakes last weekend, and made more this weekend since I had more of my secret ingredient. It's a Martha Stewart recipe, because who else would add beets to chocolate cake? It's a very stealth-healthy recipe, so if you were looking for an excuse to eat chocolate cake, you're welcome.

Chocolate Beet Cake (adapted from Martha Stewart)

4 medium beets, trimmed, peeled, and cut into 2-inch chunks (I used 2 medium-ish beets, since that's what I had, and ended up with about 3/4 - 1 cup of puree)
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/2 cups sugar
1/2 cup unsweetened Dutch-process cocoa powder (I used Hershey's Special Dark)
1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
Salt (about 3/4 teaspoon)
2 large eggs
3/4 cup warm water
1/4 cup safflower oil (I used vegetable oil)
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

1. Put beets in a small pot and cover with 2" of water. Bring to a boil and then simmer for ~30 minutes, until beets are very tender. Process in a food processor until smooth.
2. Combine dry ingredients in a bowl, then mix in beet puree, eggs, water, and oil.
3a. To make cake (which I haven't done yet): line a 9-inch round cake pan with parchment paper, and spray pan with cooking spray. Pour in batter and bake about 45 minutes in 350-degree oven. Let cool on a rack about 20 minutes, pop out of pan and allow to finish cooling right-side up.
3b. To make cupcakes: Line muffin tins with paper liners, and fill about 2/3 to 3/4 of the way*. My first batch yielded 15 cupcakes, my second 18. Bake about 20-22 minutes in 350-degree oven, rotating racks top to bottom and back to front so they cook evenly.

*Don't overfill the tins! The cupcakes dome like crazy. In my first batch, I was seriously considering redistributing the extra 3 cupcakes' batter back into the full pan of 12, and I'm glad I didn't. I'd have had a brick.