April Foodie Pen Pal

Let’s just place this right here:

Looks nice, doesn’t it?

This is a little program i found online in which you are paired with another food blogger, and you send them a small package of interesting local food. Minos and i decided to give it a go in the month of April.

We received a package from Tara at Fresh Food For My Family, and we posted a blog entry there about what we received.

We sent to Andrea, who doesn’t have a blog (yet), so we are posting her thoughts on what we sent. Take it away, Andrea:

I’m not a Southerner by birth, nor do I live there now, but I once made my home in Baton Rouge for six years, long enough to learn to love many wonderful, sometimes paradoxical, elements of Southern living and cooking. The contrast of elegance against homeliness is deep-rooted there—think weathered barns behind antebellum houses, or New Orleans shotguns, skinnied up next to each other on an old tree-lined street, painted up like Mardi Gras. Once while in grad school, when I entertained probably more than I have before or since, I was so pleased with myself and the huge tray of polenta crostini—rich with fresh parmesan cheese—that I laid out for my guests. Later on, from across the room, my foodie self was mortified when she heard someone call out, “Hey, who made the cheese grits?!” Horrors! My elegant hors d’oeuvres had been relegated to Plain Southern Cooking.

It took not just living, but leaving there to show me how much I actually do appreciate my adopted home. I may never again live south of the Mason-Dixon—I’m currently near Pittsburgh, PA—but I don’t think I’ll ever be free of the culture that food represents. I miss fried things and smoked things and rémoulade. I miss catfish and gumbo. I barely learned to cook a mirliton when I had them close to home, but I don’t see them up here at all; I miss them, too, whatever they are.

So I was more than delighted when I opened my April Foodie Penpal box of goodies, sent by PostLibyan and Minos. This was my second month as a Foodie Penpal, and it’s a whole lot of fun. My package, though, surpassed my expectations. They had decided, without knowing much about me at all, to send me homegrown, homemade things that speak of the South, specifically of Georgia. They sent me not just food, but family, the two of which can be hard to separate, especially in the South.

From my handwritten packing list to the recipe for Green Tomato Pickles—a family recipe accompanied by an old photo of Minos’ great-grandmother—this box was personal, purposeful. And I’ll be enjoying it for weeks to come.

The Green Tomato Pickles are out of this world. “Pickle” can mean a lot of things, and I opened the jar with a little trepidation. But the sweet taste and perfect texture made me very glad that I already had the recipe—I won’t have to beg for it.

They also sent a jar of Daikon-Apple Pickles, which I won’t have to beg for, either, since I see the recipe listed a few posts down on this blog page. Make them! I had never thought about radish pickles, but these are nice, and the briney sourness mixed with sweet apple makes me happy.

Theoretically, I am probably able to can things like pickles, since I learned in 10th-grade cooking class all the rules about sterilization, but I have never canned, jarred, or otherwise stored anything that I’ve cooked. My life happens too quickly; things not eaten within a week get thrown out. So having a stockpile of preserved food that people actually made and put time and thought into—that’s a lovely thing. Along with the pickles, I also received a jar of mulberry preserves from berries “harvested wild in Decatur, GA.” In the two weeks since my package arrived, I have managed to eat about half the jar. Mostly on toast.

The box of foodie goodness was rounded out by a bag of fresh pecans and three Vidalia onions. If I get motivated, I might use the onions to make some new pickles, but they’ll probably end up in pasta or a chickpea stew that I haven’t made in awhile. These remind me of roadside freshmarkets that dot the roads in Louisiana. It’s barely spring here in PA, and so I’m biding my time, waiting for when I can start shopping local food again and buying fresh. I think that one thing I miss most about Southern living is the long, long growing season that’s hard to understand until you move north.

Oh, and my penpals sent me one more thing: a bag of speckled grits. When I make them, I’ll be sure to add some cheese.

[Andrea Adolph is a native Californian who credits twelve years in the restaurant industry with her longtime obsession with food. Check out bite to eat place: an anthology of contemporary food poetry and poetic prose (Redwood Coast Press, 1995) and Food and Femininity in Twentieth-Century British Women’s Fiction (Ashgate, 2009) for two very different ways that she’s showcased food in literature.]

——-
So there you go. Glad to know she liked the pickles.

One comment i would like to add. There is the cliche that it is better to give than to receive. In this case, it was true for both of us. Not to say that Minos and i did not appreciate the stuff we got from Tara, but rather that we really enjoyed thinking about what to put in our package to send out. Minos even dragged a five-year old with rapidly dwindling Nintendo DS battery to three different locations to find those Vidalias… We really enjoyed putting that package together.

So the whole thing was fun.

Torshi Left

When I went to graduate school, there were numerous and excellent places to get falafel.  They invariably came with little sour pink pickles, which I later discovered were turnips.  Because I have never seen them for sale, I eventually found a recipe to make them.  I used to make them in the spring.  One night as I was up working on a batch, some tornadoes ripped through the city.  Ever since, I have thought of these as tornado pickles!

These pickles are brined and fermented.  They will need to sit for about a week out on a shelf.  If you see bubbles when you move the jar, then the fermentation is working.  I once tried to process these in a hot water bath, and the fermentation process was killed and the turnips turned to mush.  Ew.  After a week of fermentation, try one.  If they are sour enough, put them in the fridge.  They should be crisp but not raw tasting.  If not, leave them  out for a while, but keep checking on them.

Ingredients
3 small white turnips (This probably amounted to a cup and a half of turnip.  This recipe made one pint jar, so if you use a large turnip, you may only need one)
1/2 of a beet (about 1/2 cup sliced beet)
2 cloves of garlic, sliced
1 cup of water
1 tbsp of salt

Directions
1.  Heat the water in a shallow pan and dissolve the salt.  I simmered the water, but it is not really necessary to get it hot.

2.  While you are doing that, cut the veggies.  Chop the turnips into bite-sized pieces.  Slice the beet thin, and sliver the garlic.

3.  Stuff the veggies in a pint jar.  You can layer then, or just mix them up.  The end result is the same, but the layered veggies look pretty while they brine.

4. Pour the hot salt water over the veggies, covering them in the jar, and put the lid on the jar.  Hot water may seal the jar, but it’s not important.  As the fermentation process starts, you’ll get little bubbles rising to the surface, and they would disturb a seal anyway.  But bubbles are what you want.

5.  Let the pickle sit at room temperature, say on a shelf, out of the way, for a week.

Torshi left are eaten with falafel and with other middle eastern mezze like hummus, labneh, chopped vegetable salads, and stuffed grape leaves.  The beets and garlic can be eaten too.  Postlibyan likes these in particular, so I added a little more than I otherwise might.  The whole thing will turn a deep pink hue.

Apple Daikon Pickle

David Lebovitz’s pickled radish inspired this variation.  When I read his post, I had nothing but daikon radishes around, and there were some apples that needed to be used.  Then I thought that shallots would be a nice addition.  The tarragon I added with cornichons in mind, as my favorites are made with that herb.  It also seemed very French to me, and Lebovitz blogs in Paris.  In the end, the shallots tie all the flavors together and make the pickle decidedly savory, despite the apple.

Ingredients for the brine:
2 cups of vinegar
2 cups of water
1 tablespoon sugar
1 tablespoon salt

Ingredients for the pickle:
3 shallots
2 apples
3 medium daikon
4 sprigs of tarragon
1 tsp of peppercorns

Directions
1.  Prepare the brine.  Add everything to a pan and bring to a boil.  Stir until all of the sugar and salt are dissolved.

2.  Slice the veggies pretty thin.

3.  Layer the veggies in 4 jars, placing one sprig of tarragon and 1/4 tsp of peppercorns in each jar.

4. Pour the hot brine into the jars, covering the layers of pickle.  Add the lid and screw on tight, to seal.

NOTE:  Using hot brine usually seals the jars as the brine cools, but you could also process the jars as you would anything you had canned.  Since the pickle needs to sit for a week, you want the jars sealed.

5.  Let the pickle sit at room temperature for 1 week.

Enjoy!

These are yummy on sandwiches and with cheese plates.  I’ve had them on buttered bread and with mock chopped liver.  They would be good along with a pot au feu or chopped and added to potato salad.  Mostly, though, I just like them plain out of jar!

Decatur Style Gumbo

Okra.

You heard me: okra.  It is a southern staple that i had never had before, oh, high school.  When my family immigrated to this region from the Midwest, a lot of the indigenous cuisine was mysterious to us, so we avoided it.  However, in high schools in the metro Atlanta area they serve okra, battered and deep-fried, as a side dish with school lunches.  I decided it wasn’t that scary, and it is very versatile.

For example, okra is one of the primary ingredients in gumbo.  Usually, when you hear gumbo, you imagine Cajun people with thick accents boiling up a stew with okra, beans, and shellfish.  Well, i am allergic to shellfish, so here is a vegetarian variant.

Well, it is vaguely gumbo, as i made no attempt to try and use cajun spices.  And really, with all the flavors in the ingredients, you don’t need it.

Now, a few things to keep in mind.  First is that okra is, well, slimy.  If you just boil it, it turns into a thick goo.  This goo is good for thickening stews, but the sliminess of okra is something of an acquired taste.  However, frying minimizes the sliminess.

You want fresh okra, which is abundant and cheap in The South for the next several months.  Notice the okra in the picture above.  It is nicely green, and firm but not rigid.  What, you can’t tell that from the picture?  Well, trust me.  Okra should bend, just slightly.

For this recipe i sliced it up into discs about 1/2 to 3/4 of inch thick.

Throw out the stemmy top part.  You can either toss the pointy bottom ends, or use them. In this recipe i used them.  If you were battering and deep-frying, you wouldn’t use the pointy part.

Ingredients
1 pound of fresh okra, rinsed and chopped
1/2 an onion
1/2 a jalapeno
2 cloves of garlic
2 fresh roma tomatoes (although you could use any kind of tomato, really)
one can of beans (dark kidney)
half a can (about 4 ounces) of tomato sauce
1/3 cup of cider vinegar
about 2 cups of cooked rice
olive oil
salt and pepper to taste
parsley or cilantro or green onion to granish

Steps

1. Fry okra in perhaps 3 tablespoons of olive oil.  Okra is very wet and sticky, so it will bubble and hiss like crazy.  After about 5 minutes, the okra will start to brown. Cook about 15 minutes, stirring often.
   
2. Make a hole in the center of the wok and add a little olive oil, maybe 1/3 tablespoon.  add the minced garlic, jalapeno, and onion.  Hit it with a pinch of salt, and let those fry for a minute or so, stirring gently.
   
3. When the onions start to turn transluscent, stir them up with the okra and make a hole in the center, pushing the mixture back onto the sides of the wok or frying pan.  Add a little olive oil and the chopped tomatoes, topped with a pinch of salt and a twist or two of pepper.  Cook for 5 minutes, or until the juice starts seeping out…
   
4. Stir it all up together, then dump in the can of beans.  I leave the bean liquid, but it you want to drain them that is fine too.  Add in the tomato sauce, the vinegar, and about half a bean can full of water.  You want to just barely cover everything.
   
5. Let that simmer until most of the liquid is gone, about 20 minutes.  The sauce will thicken as it cooks, as the natural viscosity of the okra thickens the sauce without making the dish slimy.
   
6. Add in the rice, if you are using leftover rice as i was.  If you are making fresh rice, you can just spoon the okra mixture over the rice.  If you are adding old rice, stir it up, remove from heat, and cover.  Let sit for 5 minutes as the rice warms and absorbs some of that yummy broth.  If you are not mixing the rice directly in, remove from heat and cover, allowing it to sit for about 5 minutes.  This lets the sauce thicken a bit.
   
7. Sprinkle a bit of fresh chopped parsley, cilantro, and/or spring onion on top, and enjoy.
   
   

Verdict
This is a variant on something i cook a lot.  The ingredients differ — different beans, maybe add in some greens or other vegetable, depending on what is on hand.  It is a good, simple dinner to make during a weeknight, after a long work day slaving over a mouse.

Apple, goat cheese, and caramelized onion birthday tart

Our friend Kurt loves pie. No, that’s not quite right, it is more like he is obsessed with it, perhaps unhealthily so. So in April, when his birthday rolls around, he invites everyone to come over to his house and share pie.

Minos and i came up with a plan for a pie with apple and goat cheese. She suggested adding caramelized onions to it, and i suggested adding fresh rosemary. So this was a group effort, really. I ended up baking it in a shallow pan, which made it more of a tart pan really. And as an added bonus, it was very simple.

Ingedients – crust
1 1/3 cups of flour
1 1/4 stick of butter
2 tablespoons of shortening (i used Crisco)
1 teaspoons of salt
1/3 cups of water

Steps – Crust
1. Dump everything into the food processor.
2. Pulse until everything forms coarse crumbles.
3. At that point, pulse slowly while watching closely. As soon as the crumbles form into a big crust ball, stop immediately.
4. Wrap the ball in plastic wrap and place in the fridge.

NOTE: This crust recipe is located all over the internet as Julia Child’s Pie Crust. We did not make this up. Also, this recipe makes a full crust — top and bottom of a standard pie pan. Since we used a shallower tart pan and did not put a top on it, there was crust left over. Enough, in fact, for a second tart. Hmmm…

Ingredients – Filling
1 cup of soft goat cheese
1/2 large sweet onion — about 1 cup before cooking
2 – 3 tablespoons of olive oil
dash of coarse sea salt
2 large Granny Smith apples, washed
1 tablespoon of fresh Rosemary (see notes)

Steps – filling
1. First, slice the onion very very thin. I slied it with a mandolin to get nice, thin pieces.
2. Heat the olive oil in a skillet over medium high heat. When hot, add the onions.

3. Sautee the onions until the just start to turn brown, which takes about 20 minutes or so.

4. When the onions are brown, remove them from the heat and allow them to cool. At that point, preheat the oven to 375 F.

5. Take the pie crust out of the fridge, where it has rested for the half hour you cooked the onions.

6. Dust a work space and a rolling pin with flour and roll the crust out thin. I got mine about 1/4 of an inch thick, but go with a thickness that works for you.

7. Place it in your pan however you want — if you want to have a top as well, go for it. These instructions are for an open faced tart, but i think it could work with a top crust as well. I layered my crust in the bottom of the pan and use a pastry cutter to remove any excess.

8. Smear goat cheese on top of the crust, but do this carefully as the crust is still rather soft. I sliced the goat cheese and pressed it flat on top of the crust.

9. Sprinkle 1/2 tbsp of fresh rosemary on top of the cheese.

10. Now take the washed Granny Smith apples,. If you want to peel them, go for it. I left the skins on. Either way, slice them very thinly. Again, i used the mandolin, after cutting each apple in half. But do whatever you like.

11. Lay the apple slices on top of the cheese, trying to layer them so that the layers are even. What i mean is, spread slices around to form one layer, then add another layer, etc. I ended up with about an inch thick of apple slices from the 2 Granny Smiths i used. As i reached the end, i stacked them so that there was a little indention in the middle, like i was making a small volcano of apple slices, with a crater in the middle.

12. Fill the crater with the cooled carmelized onions. I made sure the scrape as much of the cooking olive oil as i could into the pie.

13. Top with the rest of the rosemary.

14. Place in hot oven, on a rack at the lower third of the oven space. Bake for 35 to 45 minutes. You will know it is done with the little bits of crust you can see aroudn the edges have turned brown, and the apples look dry.

15. Let it cool.

NOTES:
1. I used a sweet onion because i live in Georgia and sweet onions are everywhere here. If you can’t find them, a regular onion should be okay. Since you are going to caramelize it, most of the bite will be neutralized by the cooking process. Then again, a little bit of oniony bite might be a good thing.

2. The only thing i was disappointed with here is the rosemary — unless you happened to get a mouthful with a rosemary leaf, you couldn’t really taste it. I think that i should have added the rosemary to the onion as it cooked, thereby infusing the onion with a good rosemary flavor. If you like the taste of rosemary, try that and let me know how it turns out.

Overall, this was a success. People at the party at 75% of the tart, and Kurt himself liked it, despite the surprised expression in this photo. (I think the flash is what surprised him.)

I enjoyed it too, with the one caveat that i would have liked a hint more rosemary taste.

Shan Chana Dal Curry

So after my adventures making chana dal dumplings for Minos, i was left with a giant bag of the dal.  It was 4 pounds for about $5 at The Patel Brothers, and that recipe did not use anywhere near 4 pounds.  So i needed more dal recipes

One of our friends from college is now a Hindu and lives over near the big temple in Riverdale.  On the first night of Diwali he posted that he had made a chana dal curry before heading over to see the fireworks.  So i asked for a recipe.

His answer: go buy a box of Shan brand Chana Dal Curry Mix.

He claimed that this type of curry mix is a staple of Indian cooking.  Well, fortunately i had picked up a box when i was buying the dal, so i was set.

I followed the recipe on the box, sort of.

Ingredients
ghee
1 cup of chana dal
1/2 cup of urad dal preserved in oil
1 onion, finely chopped
2 cloves of garlic, finely diced
2 cups of Better Than Bouillon chicken stock
10 fresh curry leaves
1 tablespoon nigella
1 teaspoon cumin seeds
1 teaspoon black mustard seeds
1 teaspon fennel seeds
1/2 teaspoon black peppercorns
powedered cumin to taste
2 tablespoons of Shan Dal Curry spice mix

Steps
1.  Soak the 2 types of dal in water for 12 hours.  I set them up to soak in the morning before leaving for work.

2.  Drain the dal and set aside.

3.  Heat ghee in a pan.

4.  Add the finely chopped onion to the hot ghee and stir fry until they start to turn translucent.

5.  Add the curry leaves, all of the spices, and the dal curry mix and stir to distribute.  Cook for a few minutes until the seeds start to pop.

6.  Add the drained dal and stir fry to coat.

7.  Add the stock, and enough water to cover.

8.  Reduce heat to medium and simmer until most of the liquid has been absorbed, which takes about an hour, depending on how hot your stove it.  You want a long slow simmer, so that the dal have plenty of time to absorb a lot of water and start to disintigrate.

9.  Serve over basmati, with naan bread and your choice of beverage.

Verdict
This was a delicious curry.  It wasn’t too hot, but there was a lot of flavor to it.  And it was pretty easy, really.

The only thing is, now in addition to having a lot of dal, i have most of a box of Shan Dal Curry mix.  Guess i will be making this again.

Winter Squash and Orange Roots

I love starchy things.  We have friends who do that whole high-protein diet thing, but that makes me queasy just thinking about it.  Who really wants to eat all that meat and stuff, without the added benefit of comforting, tasty starches.  Yum, carbohydrates!

At this time of year there are all sort of interesting starches readily available, particularly in the form of squashes.  I make it a point to track down and try different ways of cooking winter squashes.

The recipe that follows is an adaptation of one from the Meet the Shannons blog. I made some changes to reflect what i had on hand, and the fact that i dislike the taste of “smoke” (yuk).

Ingredients
1small butternut squash, cubed
1 cup diced carrots
1 cup diced sweet potato
1/2 red bell pepper, chopped,  but reserve a little bit for garnish (maybe the top 1/8th, sliced thinly)
2.5 tsp better than bullion chicken stock dissolved in 5 cups of water
3 scallions, the bottoms and tops separated
1 tsp lemon juice
1 tsp thyme vinegar
1 spring fresh time
1/2 tsp dried crushed sage
1/2 tsp cumin seeds
1/2 tsp cumin
1/2 tsp smoked paprika
1 tsp olive oil

Notes
small butternut squash: What does “small” mean?  There are a wide range of butternut squash availble at my local farmer’s market, and the smallest of them really depends on the day that you go.  The one i used was about 9 inches long and maybe 6 inches around at the widest point.  However, i have seen butternuts much smaller, as well as much larger.

thyme vinegar:  Recently i built some additional shelving out in my kitchen, and when i did so i had to clean up and move a bunch of stuff to make room to work.  Well, i found an old flip-top beer bottle (that brown thing to next to the lemon juice in the picture above) that i had stuffed full of thyme and then filled the rest of the way with apple cider vinegar.  I did this in August of 2008, when i had a healthy thyme plant growing like mad on my porch.  (It later died in the Atlanta Snowmageddon…)  The thing is, i had totally forgotten about this bottle, and it sat there, the flavors blending for 5 years, until i found it again.  And, to be honest, it tastes amazing.  The bite of the apple cider vinegar has mellowed with the years, and the thyme flavor is potent, but not overwhelming.

Now, chances are that the readers of this recipe do not have access to a 5 year old bottle of vinegar that they had forgotten about.  You could double the amount of thyme listed and add in 1 tsp of vinegar to get the same effect in this dish.  Or you could leave it out.  I think that the vinegar added just a hint of tang to this soup, which really helped bring it together.

Directions
1.  Head a pan to medium / medium low heat and then add the olive oil.

2.  Add the cumin seeds and cook them briefly, perhaps a minute, until the wonderful aroma of cumin starts to fill your kitchen.

3.  Add in the squash, carrot, sweet potato, and scallion bottoms and stir fry for a few minutes.  You just want everything to get a little warm, not to caramelize.

4. Add the fresh thyme, the sage, powdered cumin, and paprika and sitr fry it all together, then cook until you can really smell the spices.

5.  Add the chicken stock, vinegar (if using), and lemon juice and bring it to a boil.  Boil for about 15 to 20 minutes, or until the vegetables start to feel tender.

6.  Blend the mixture.  The recipe recommends “until smooth”, but i like a bit of texture, so i always blend only halfway to smooth, so there are still some chunks. Blend to you are satisfied with the smoothness, is my advice. Now, i have an immersion blender which does this wonderfully, but if you don’t have one you could use a potato masher and stir the mash into the broth, or pour it into a blender or food processor.

7.  Ladle into bowls and garnish with garnish with thin sliced red pepper, scallion tops thin sliced, and salt and pepper to taste.  Serve with toast, croutons, fresh bread, or something to sop up the delicious soupiness.

Verdict
This was a yummy soup.  The sweet potato and carrot really helped make it not be too squashy, if you know what i mean. The smoked paprika really made the flavors pop.