Tantre farm share, week 9

I say I want to make sauerkraut and the cabbage gods respond! Two small heads of cabbage appeared in this week's Tantre Farm Share:

Vaguely left to right: parsley, carrots, beets, two heads of garlic, yellow zucchini, leeks, 4 cucumbers, basil, 2 quarts of green beans, bag of broccoli, curly kale, 2 quarts of new potatoes, 2 small cabbages and 2 bunches of mixed Asian greens

I also picked up a dozen eggs and two quarts of Flaming Fury peaches (love the name). Michigan peaches are still in their early days -- not as amazing as the Redhaven's that will come in later this season -- but I plan to cook with these.

Menu plan:

• As mentioned, the cabbage is going to be transformed into sauerkraut (I'll probably head down to the Saturday market and get more).
• Roasted chicken thighs with peaches, ginger and basil served with rice and braised leeks
• Cucumbers will go into a jumbo batch of cucumber feta salad with toasted pita chips--it's more like a dip than a salad exactly and incredibly addictive.
• The carrots are amazing and I'll only eat them raw--anything else masks their delicate, almost minty flavor.
• Turkish zucchini pancakes with yogurt garlic sauce
• The broccoli, parsley and some garlic will go into this warm chickpea and broccoli salad.
• Thanks to last week's suggestion from Librarymama, some of the green beans and potatoes will go into a salade Nicoise.
• Blanched green beans and tofu will get mixed up with a SE Asian style dressing--lime, fish sauce, sugar, garlic, peanuts and copious quantities of basil, mint and cilantro.
• The beets will be roasted (see below) and probably gobbled straight from the pan.
• Brian is taking the kids to some train fest thingy this weekend so, I'll probably eat some of the vegetables he is less fond of while they are gone: the Asian greens in miso soup with tofu and the kale and beet tops in the basic garlic/hot pepper/lemon juice saute; I think the latter makes a terrific dinner with a hunk of crusty bread and some sort of strong cheese.
• An upside down peach cake--the cake base will probably be a yogurt cake. Not sure what recipe I'll use yet.

Now, back to those beets. I've roasted beets many times, but always roasted them whole. Then Sarah directed me to the method described in this recipe in which the beets are treated like potatoes--peeled and cut up before roasting and tossed with a little olive oil and vinegar. This results in a much less slippery texture--they get caramelized and chewy around the edges and are so good that I ate them like popcorn and had to use all my self control to save some for Brian.

Yeah, that's all I left him, poor guy...

Roasted Cubed Beets
based on Melissa Clark's recipe

about 2 lbs of beets, peeled and cut into uniform-ish sized cubes
a good glug of olive oil
1/2 t kosher salt
1/2 t black pepper
1-2 T red wine vinegar

Preheat oven to 375.
Get out a sheet pan with sides, cover it in foil. Dump all your ingredients on it and toss until beets are nicely coated. Cover the pan with foil and roast 15-20 minutes, then remove the foil and continue to roast until tender inside and getting a little crusty on the edges (about another 15-20 minutes, depending on the size of your beet cubes.)

From behind the veil

I have a friend who has gone behind the veil. It is a meaty veil. And tasty too.

I have a confession: I love sausage. I know that it is horrible for you. I know that it contains more salt and fat than you should eat in a month much less in one go, but I still love the stuff. I can't think of a type of sausage I don't like: dried, smoked, blood, pork, lamb, beef, chicken, turkey, high-end charcuterie or low-end hot dog (OK, I prefer the better type of hot dog, like a Koegel's Vienna, but have been known to enjoy an Oscar Meyer too).

You can blame my love of this incredibly unhealthy meat on rebellion: my parents never allowed me to eat hot dogs when I was a kid--my dad would start quoting Upton Sinclair and talking about ground up fingers. They eat red meat only a couple of times a year, and usually only when I cook for them. So some part of me is still a kicking, screaming teenager inside and gets an extra thrill when my teeth snap through that casing and the hot sausage juice floods my mouth. I try to tell myself that I make up for this nutritional weakness with the abundant vegetal nature of the rest of my diet (yeah, yeah, I see you rolling your eyes...).

Anyway, back to the veil. Tonight I was lucky enough to eat this for dinner:
Focus on the tubes of beauty in the foreground and on the left side of the plate: I present to you Brian Pinkelman's first batch of homemade smoked sausage. Brian is a brave man! He screwed his courage (and stomach) to the sticking place and plunged behind that veil! He didn't just intellectually accept that this product is made of vast quantities of fat but he tracked down fatty-enough meat (which apparently is hard to come by and requires a special order), manhandled it, mixed it, stuffed it and smoked it. And then, bless him, he shared it!

I am much too scared to go behind the veil. There is a big difference between knowing that sausage is bad for you and being elbow deep in the fat that you intend eventually to ingest. I fear that I would be overwhelmed with the visceral sight of the ingredients and would be unable to enjoy sausage ever again. And that is just not a risk I'm able to take.

God it was good. So good that after I finished mine I got on the phone and offered to babysit for his (albeit cute and infinitely better behaved than my own) kids if he paid me in sausage.

Or maybe I can come up with a trade--I was thinking as I ate the blissful thing that I wished I had some sauerkraut to go with it. Some homemade sauerkraut, something I have wanted to make but never took the plunge. What with the possibility of more Brian-creations on my plate in the future, I feel like destiny is telling me to ferment my first cabbage!

And speaking of fermentation, I got to enjoy the marvelous tube of meat with my first taste of my Brian's new beer--a toasty, tasty Grand Cru.

For those of you who brew, here is what went into it:
5 lbs 2-row pale barley
3 lbs wheat
1 lb caravienne (toasted barley)
2 lbs Michigan wildflower honey
1 oz hallertauer (hops--flavoring)
1 oz strisselspalt (hops--aromatic)
Belgian Abbey Ale Yeast

How that becomes beer is a bit of a mystery to me, but I know it involves a weekend day's worth of hanging out on the deck with friends, a full cooler of the last batch of beer (you know, to keep the inspiration up) and a big cauldron of stuff simmering away on the turkey-fryer/propane thingy and fiddling around with digital thermometer and lots of buckets and tubing. As Brian quotes frequently from The Joy of Homebrewing essential to the process is the phrase "Relax! Have a homebrew!"

Crafty Question

I need some help here people. I discovered an amazing sausage throw rug on the internet that I can't afford and want to try and reproduce before October 7th, the date of Brian's birthday. Or if it was a really labor intensive process, it could be pushed back to Christmas.

Actually there are 4 different rugs. The Ham Sausage is pretty, but since I've never eaten Ham Sausage (Biershinken), it doesn't appeal quite so much as the others.
Aesthetically the Blood Sausage appeals to me most. (I've eaten British blood pudding sausage with big fried English breakfasts and liked it well enough, but I've never tried the German version):
Culinarily, I'm a Soprassata girl through and through (and I also think it is quite attractive):
I don't mind a taste of real Mortadella now and then but it doesn't strike me as "meaty" enough, though I do think this one is mighty pretty with its little floating bits of green pistachio and peppercorns:
So help me out, people. Is there anyway I could make one of these? I remember doing a rug-hook kit when I was about 9 years old (a hideous picture of an orange and brown mushroom on a lime green and yellow background--ah the colors of the 70s!), but I think that might look too fuzzy and fuzzy meat is not a good thing, I think. Maybe I could knit and felt something like this then sew it to a canvas backing? Actually what I think would probably work best is felted crochet (at which I suck, but hey this would be an inspiring way to get over my hangups). I saw this amazing crochet portrait in Craftzine and the technique looks adaptable to meat products.

I think I'll have to face down my crochet fears sooner or later because I'd really like to make Monster Crochet's awesome bacon scarf. You can knit it using intarsia, but the good thing about the crochet version is the back looks as good as the front, which cannot be said for a knit version.

In a more general note, crafty goodness has not been hovering around this household. In fact, I'm in a crafty funk. My knitting projects are not keeping my attention--I'm part way through two different items and have been ignoring both because I'm tempted to rip them out. I haven't started the Gathered Pullover even though I bought the pattern because of the color of my yarn--knitting with dark purple seems like it would be pleasant in, say, November. But the color turns me off in the middle of summer. About all I've done on the crafty front is a couple of lame beading projects with the girl critter. So I'm hoping some meaty craft project will get me going again.

Revenge of the spurned appliance

I guess I swore at it one too many times.

I thought that with the banishment of the-fridge-that-I-hate to the basement--

This is what banishment looks like.

--I would be done bitching about this particular appliance. But no. The damn thing took revenge upon me.

I stashed some of this week's farm share in its dinky, rickety produce drawers until I was ready to use it. But when I went down yesterday to get it I found that the-fridge-that-I-hate took out its wrath on my beet greens and some of my rainbow chard by FREEZING THEM. And this is when it is on its warmest setting! Sigh.

It seems to be doing ok at its main job which is keeping one particular batch of Brian's home brew from exploding all over the basement. He made a dark beer that somehow over fermented so that it has a tendency to blast its way out of the bottle; we dubbed it "Dark Angry Father." It's really tasty, but dangerous stuff. We gave a bottle to my dad and did not emphasize strongly enough that he should immediately refrigerate it with the result that--Whoops!--he had to clean beer off the kitchen ceiling...Even the properly refrigerated stuff has to be opened over the sink and into a wide pitcher because of the exuberance of the foam.

So, you might be wondering what is upstairs now that the appliance banishment has occurred. Allow me to introduce you to:

The Fridge That I Love

Yes, the Elephant Shrews have made their home in the top left corner and the boy critter wrote a poem about himself on the right side.

I've already noticed at least 4 times in the last week that when I looked for a particular condiment in the-fridge-that-I-love, what do you know, I found it! All without kneeling on the floor, knocking other condiments off shelves, or swearing!

I bet the-fridge-that-I-hate heard me making kissy noises at the new fridge. As I will still be availing myself of the extra freezer space in the banished fridge and the occasional use of the refrigerator compartment, I will tread warily around the thing. Who know what it has planned next...

Tantre farm share, week 8

Bottom row: yellow zucchini, cucumber, basil, mint, garlic, arugula, kohlrabi
Top row: onions, snap peas, new potatoes, green beans, beets, carrots, broccoli, red oak lettuce, red leaf lettuce, rainbow chard

Whew! Love the variety but because of Art Fair, I had to park kind of far from the market and my arms were sore by the time I lugged the packed share box and the two additional bags back to the car.

Menu plan for the week:

• Breadcrumb crusted (yellow) zucchini with chard
• More calabacitas with the rest of the yellow zucchini--can't get enough of this.
• Two weeks ago we had a snap pea revelation. I've always eaten snap peas raw; the only time I'd cooked them was as a steamed side for a salmon dish and they were just ok, nothing to write home about. But we've had so many peas the last couple of weeks that I had to try something else and was motivated to try a simple saute: snap peas, unsalted butter, chopped spearmint, black pepper and fleur de sel. Super simple but the combination is amazing! I made them as a side with grilled lamb chops and the peas were what Brian and were raving about. So this week not a single pea will escape my saute pan.
• Tonight I'm using some of the garlic to make a batch of spicy peanut sauce, some brown rice, tofu and whatever vegetables I can lay my hands on (definitely some broccoli, carrots, green beans, yellow zucchini).
• Vietnamese-style steak salad: lettuce, mint, basil, onion tops and shredded carrots with grilled steak, rice noodles, chopped peanuts and nuoc cham
• Anyone have a recipe for kohlrabi pickle or slaw? I'm thinking of something sort of Asian with rice vinegar, maybe a little sugar...
• The lettuce with roasted beets, walnuts and orange vinaigrette with an onion, chard or beet tops, broccoli, basil and feta quiche.
• New potatoes will be boiled and then topped with a little dill
• I bought a couple of extra cucumbers so that we could have my favorite beer snack this week.

Exquisite

I think that writing about poetry is hard because my prose feels so clumsy, so heavy and earth-bound, after reading poetry. But I'll have to give it a go.

Exquisite: that's the word that comes to mind when I think of the book I finished recently, Rita Dove's Sonata Mulattica.* I tried to cobble together my own summary of the book, but let's face it, The New Yorker already crafted a fine summary:

Dove’s verse sequence re-creates the life of the biracial violinist George Bridgetower, best remembered for being the first performer, and the initial dedicatee, of Beethoven’s “Kreutzer” Sonata. ....The book remains highly accessible, reading much like a historical novel. Dove is fascinated by Bridgetower’s life as a black musician...[but] she is concerned equally with the status of musicians in a world of precarious patronage—even Haydn, at the Esterhazy estate, has “no more leave / to step outside the gates / than a prize egg-laying hen”—and with “the radiant web” of music itself.

Dove's book reminds me of another of my other favorite books of all time (still a part of my top ten list!), Michael Ondaatje's The Collected Works of Billy the Kid. Both use poetry rather than prose as a means of creating a portrait of a historical figure. The shifting gaze and varied rhythms of the poems makes the portraits more vivid to me than a linear prose biography or novelization. The lives of interesting people are messy and don't always make sense and a series of poems is the perfect medium with which to express this. This is particularly true in the case of Dove's subject about whom the historical record is fragmented at best. While I understand the value of communicating facts in clear narrative prose, these two books make you feel the history rather than just intellectualize it.

Both books are painfully beautiful--I found myself forgetting to breathe while reading some of Dove's poems and only realized that I'd been holding my breath at the end of the poem when I had to gulp for air. Dove's book keeps from putting the reader into lyrical overload by also being funny and playful, sarcastic and sad. She creates such a kaleidoscopic portrait of George Bridgetower that, like Ondaatje's Billy, I find him haunting my thoughts. Of course there are poems about race and I noticed that the book was shelved in the Black Studies section of the library. I would also like the library to buy three more copies and to file them in the poetry, biography and fiction sections. The themes of the book are so layered that it defies simple categorization: it's about relationships, about why people compose and why people play music, the tensions of patronage and fickleness of society. It is about admiration and jealousy, grandeur and pettiness.

To get the most out of this book I would recommend two courses of action. First, get some music. The playlist should include plenty of the two composers who are featured in the book: Haydn (that's "Papa" Haydn to George) and Beethoven, particularly the Violin Sonata No.9 in A Major, Opus 47. But it also might be good to add in a little Bach, Mozart and Handel. I found listening to them helped me appreciate how radical Beethoven must have sounded to his contemporaries. Second, read the chronology located at the back of the book. This will set out the time line and help to clarify the voices of some of the minor characters--people who witnessed Bridgetower or Beethoven. Their poems provide refreshing perspective on the main characters but could be confusing if you can't place the voice.

Of course, the most intense poems were the ones where Bridgetower contemplates Beethoven and vice versa because they lay bare the particular intimacy between the musician and the composer. Here is Bridgetower commenting on Beethoven as he sight reads the Violin Sonata No.9:

He frightens me. I've never heard music
like this man's, this sobbing
in the midst of triumphal chords,
such ambrosial anguish,
jigs danced on simmering coals.
Oh, I can play it well enough--hell,
I've been destined to travel these impossible
switchbacks, but it's as if I'm skating
on his heart, blood tracks
looping everywhere, incarnadine
dips and curves...

Beethoven's view of Bridgetower is also shot through with the anguish he feels at going deaf. His experience of watching Bridgetower play his compositions almost transcends sound itself:

I was careless then, I squandered the world's utterance.
And when my muddy conspirator swayed and quaked
like the tallest poplar tossed by the lightest wind

so that I could read his playing, see my score
transcribed on the air, on the breeze--I breathed
his soul through my own fingers and gave up

trying to listen; I watched him and felt
the music--it was better than listening,
it was the last pure sound...

At the end of Dove's interview with Diane Rehm, she mentioned hoping to record an audio version of the book. The only thing I would like more than re-reading this book, is listening to Dove read the poems to me.
_________________
*I heard Dove on the Diane Rehm Show (you can hear the interview here) and immediately requested the book from the library.

Tantre farm share, week 7

From left to right: Onions, parsley, dill, arugula, English shelling peas, new potatoes, two heads of red oak lettuce, basil, sugar snap peas, fava beans, garlic, beets, yellow summer squash, two bunches of red Russian kale, kohlrabi

I'm still working on the damn kitchen, though at least it is moderately functional. So I'm going to limit the rhapsodizing about how beautiful these vegetables are and move right on to what I'm going to do with them.

Menu plan:

• Tonight: grilled lamb chops, sauteed snap peas with mint, red oak lettuce and arugula salad and new potatoes with dill.
• Shelling peas with the first basil pesto of the year and pasta (homemade or dried, depending on the energy level...)
• Calabacitas with the yellow squash and some of the onions served with grilled steak and green rice.
• Main course salad using more of the lettuce, parsley, beets, and onions supplemented with cucumbers from the market, grilled or canned tuna, feta and olives and served with arugula and fava bean crostini.
• Roasted kohlrabi, sauteed kale and some form of protein. I'm hankering for tofu but can't quite figure out a compatible flavor profile. Ideas anyone?
• More kale chips for snacking.
• Not sure what to do with the beet greens this week, other than basic saute with garlic....

Triple Beet Overload

Whenever we go to Washtenaw Dairy, the boy critter chooses a massive scoop of Triple Chocolate Overload. Yesterday, inspired by that name, I made a meal I call Triple Beet Overload.

Beet pasta,
filled with beet greens, walnuts and ricotta,
accompanied by a salad with sliced beets:
For a beet lover like myself, this was more delicious than Triple Chocolate Overload. The pasta had a simple browned butter, crispy sage leaf and poppy seed sauce and the salad was romaine, arugula, beets and cucumber (all from the farm share or farmer's market) in a shallot vinaigrette. I used one generous bunch of beets from the Tantre farm share to make this meal (plus plenty more ravioli for another day): the roots were split between the salad and the puree in the pasta dough and the greens went in the filling.

I made some beet linguine for the critters and the boy critter happily gobbled it down. The girl critter was more reluctant and then I screwed up royally and suggested she pretend the noodles were earthworms, forgetting that this is the child who goes on worm rescue patrol after it rains to save worms. She looked horrified at the mere thought that someone would find eating (pretend) earthworms amusing and that was that; not another noodle passed her lips.

Beet Overload

beet pasta recipe adapted from Martha Stewart
beet green filling recipe adapted from LA Times

Serve with a salad with sliced beets to put it over the top in beety-goodness.

Beet Pasta
about 1/3-1/2 C cooked peeled beets--you can roast or boil them, whichever you prefer
2 eggs
1 egg yolk
1 t salt
2 C flour, plus more for kneading and rolling

Process the cooked beets in a food processor, scraping down the sides a few times. Add the eggs, yolk and salt and process again, until you don't see any individual beet bits. Add flour and pulse until the dough comes together in a big lump.

Turn dough out onto a well-floured surface, flour the top and knead for about 5 minutes. Then wrap in plastic and let rest for an hour (in the fridge if you plan on longer than an hour).

While the dough rests, make the filling:

Beet Green Filling
2 T olive oil
1 garlic clove, pressed or minced
1 generous bunch of beet greens, washed, stems removed and chopped
1/2 C walnuts
1 egg white
1 C whole milk ricotta
1/3 C microplane grated Parmesan (less if you are using coarser grated)
1/4 t fresh ground nutmeg
salt and pepper

Saute the garlic in the olive oil until fragrant, then add the beet greens and cook until thoroughly wilted, at least 5 minutes.

Put the greens in the food processor (yes, you have to wash the darn thing after making the pasta....) add the walnuts and pulse until chopped fine. Transfer greens to a bowl and add the egg white, ricotta, Parmesan and nutmeg. Mix well and season with salt and plenty of black pepper.

Now assemble the ravioli:

Cut off a blob of dough that is about 1/5th of the whole and press into a vaguely rectangular shape and lightly flour it. Then run through your pasta roller, dialing down the setting each time. I have a pastry brush dipped in flour that I use to dust it between runs. I run it through twice on the biggest setting and once on all the following settings and I stop at 2 (not the absolute thinnest setting because that makes for very delicate ravioli and I tend to tear them). Repeat until you have used all your dough, or until you have made sufficient ravioli. You can wrap up the rest of the dough in plastic and refrigerate it for a day or two until you have the energy to make some more.

Lay out your looooong rectangle of pasta on a lightly floured surface. Then put 1/2 teaspoons of filling spaced evenly down half the sheet (I usually do it in two rows, but it depends on the size of your ravioli. If you prefer big ones then use a full teaspoon of filling and space them out a bit more). Use a brush dipped lightly in water to moisten the edges of the ravioli then fold the other half of the sheet over the top. Gently press around the lumps of filling to seal it in and then use a knife or pasta cutter to cut the ravioli's apart. Place on a lightly floured board or cookie sheet and dust lightly with a little more flour. Freeze if you don't intend to use immediately or else the pasta will start to absorb the filling and deteriorate. When you are ready to cook, put on a big pot of salted water, have it come to a boil and then toss in the ravioli and cook until they float to the top. Drain and toss with the sauce.

Sauce:
3/4 of a stick of butter
1 T poppy seeds
a good handful of fresh sage leaves

Melt the butter in a small sauce pan then toss in the poppy seeds and sage leaves. Cook until the butter gets slightly nutty colored and then pour the whole shebang over the pasta and serve. Make sure that everyone gets a few sage leaves. If you like, you can shred Parmesan over the top of each serving.

Why I love A.Word.A.Day

There are plenty of "word a day" offerings out there (I think my screen saver even has one) but most of them assume you have a pretty basic vocabulary and they are formatted like basic dictionary entries: dry, dry, dry.

A while ago I subscribed to Wordsmith.org's A.Word.A.Day e-mail and it has been such a pleasure--each week the words are grouped around a theme: sometimes it is the connection to a particular language, sometimes the words are derived from birds, sometimes the words are esoteric insults (always good to have some of these tucked away so I can swear in front of the critters without major repercussions). This week's theme is "words with three letters in alphabetic sequence." (You can browse the theme list here.)

Today's entry was simply perfect: defenestrate*. The former-French-speaker in me could figure out what it meant by the connection to the word window: "fenetre". The basic pronunciation, definition and etymology are covered, but the notes section, in which the word is explicated and commented upon, is what makes A.Word.A.Day special. In defenestrate's note there is a reference to the Defenestration of Prague which took place May 23, 1618 and led up to the 30 years war, but then, even better, there is a link to a Lego sculpture gallery of this particular historical moment! If I was a kid studying for the SATs you can bet I would remember defenestrate after looking at the Lego pics.

I love obsessive dweebitude things like this. Do you have a favorite to share?
____
*Incidentally, Blogger's spell checker does not know the word defenestrate. Ha!

Slowly...

...we're making progress on the kitchen:
I proudly present my stretch of ceiling. I've said it before and will say it again, I'm not a perfectionist, but this stretch of mudding and taping would satisfy a pickier person than I am.

Then the ceiling was primed and painted, the walls got 3 coats of red, and you can see the wood trim has all been stripped. As I'm typing this, Brian is finishing up staining it. We still have crown moulding, oak trim around the counter tops, and the subway tile backsplashes to install, but those three are far less messy and won't require crazy tarping, just moving stuff around as the work is done. The stove may be out of commission for a day or so when I'm tiling right behind it, but hopefully we won't have to eat as much take-out as we did this week. I'm itching to get back to cooking with the great produce that is available right now.