Harvesting in the 'Hood

My Cambodian-Chinese neighbors just gave me hot chili and crab apples from their front yard garden. The husband told me to chop the crab apples and chilies together and add salt and enjoy with beer.

Sounds like a plan!

Won't you be My Neighbor?

Do you know a good soul who wants to live here. The Victorian house on our street--217 Rathbun Street is very pretty inside and its for sale. It's a two family but could easily become a one family as it was originally...in 1900.
Our fabulous realtor Marilyn Salzberg Bennett of Salzberg is carrying it.
It has a Woonsocket porch!!
photos here

I Love Oatmeal

I love oatmeal with raisins and a dash of cream and salt for breakfast. I cook it in my little cast iron pot. We buy it in the 100 pound bag every six years and store it in our chest-freezer.read.

Obesity Prevention

Humans.

Pets.

Gardening

I have a love hate with gardening since I am usually indoors baking all summer rather than playing in the dirt. Now that the weather has broken and the neighborhood is quiet and the sun is not so hot, I am ready to tend my garden. Yesterday I dumped four ten gallon buckets of fresh (and free) cow manure on my garden. If nothing else my maple tree will smile in gratitude. I harvested sage basil and onions. The apples are so delicious I eat three a day!

Eat, Sleep and be Merry

Eat.
Sleep.

An Ecological Kitchen

I am having a lot of fun making multi-grain breads using wheat, oats, cornmeal, soy meal, and a variety of seeds. I have also been culturing local low fat milk from Wright's Dairy farm and making yogurt. I strain the cultured yogurt through a coffee filter making yogurt cheese and I use the leftover whey in my bread. I season the yogurt cheese with all kinds of things: fresh black pepper, raw garlic, red onions, mint, basil, dill, scallions, and green olives. You can make the cheese sweet too, by adding raisins honey or apples and peaches. Play around, have fun!

Dawn Lerman

Read here.

and here.

Mae Wests' Breasts or Spherical Toast

Normally I only bake bread - 4 standard-sized loaves - twice a week but I have baked round breads every day since the weather broke. Today's breads are mixed grain combo of dry Fleishmann's instant yeast and my wet sourdough starter, kosher salt, and whole wheat flour, rolled oats, cornmeal, and dark molasses. These are smaller breads so I can share them without frightening people. After the first rising I roll the dough to blobs which will grow to the size of Mae Wests' breasts. I bake them hot in a preheated (400 degree Fahrenheit) oven. When they are cool I slice them sideways so my bread and toast is spherical!

Jan Brown's Buttermilk Salad Dressing

This is delicious!

When I asked Jan for her amazing salad dressing recipe I tasted at our friends wedding party she said:

I am happy to share the salad dressing directions. I seldom use recipes, so this is approximations:


1/2 cup oil (I used canola for last night's, but olive also delicious)
3 smallish cloves garlic (or 2 large ones)
fresh dill to taste (in Winter I use dry, and that is fine--- sometimes I let is sit in the oil for an hour or so)
2 cups of buttermilk
8 oz (or more, to taste) of feta cheese

It comes out creamier if one emulsifies the oil a bit before adding the other ingredients, but not necessary.
I like to make at least a few hours before serving so that the flavor can settle.
-Jan Brown

She Bathes in Buttermilk

Loved this photo and article on buttermilk.
Read.

Diner's Journal

Read.

David Byrne's Shrimp Tacos!

I am reposting this from David Byrne's Journal

08.13.2012: Shrimp Tacos!

I made shrimp tacos the other night for dinner—mostly from scratch—and they were good.

With this meal, there are a lot of pans going all at once. One has to pay close attention, but it all comes together really quickly. Once everything is prepped, it only takes about 15 minutes to cook and assemble—there’s nothing tricky to it.

This recipe serves 3 people.

Here are the ingredients:

1 lb. of shrimp, peeled and deveined, chopped into ¾ inch chunks

A couple of poblano chilies, seeds removed and sliced into strips. (poblano chilies are a little bit spicy, but not much. When cooked, they have more flavor than a bell pepper.)

½ of a large onion, sliced—but not too thin

A few cloves of garlic, sliced

Fresh cilantro*

Store bought white-corn tortillas (I bought the Tortilla Factory brand—they’re corn, but flexible like wheat tortillas.)

Store bought fresh mango, pineapple and jicama salsa*

Queso fresco (a type of fresh, Mexican cheese—white and crumbly.)*

*Note: The salsa, cilantro and queso fresco are quite perishable. They’ll keep for a few days in the fridge—but once they are opened, they don’t last long.

Here’s how I prepared them:

First, I sautéed the poblano pepper strips, onion and some garlic in oil, with a little salt and pepper. I cooked this over a low-medium heat for about 10 minutes—I learned that peppers burn if cooked too quickly.

While the pepper/onion mix was cooking, I tossed the shrimp in a separate pan with the rest of the garlic. I let this cook for about 4 minutes.

Then, I got the third burner going and tossed the tortillas one by one in a dry frying pan, flipping each after about a minute—just enough to warm them up.

I put some shrimp and the pepper/onion mix on each tortilla, added the salsa, some crumbled queso fresco and a sprinkle of cilantro on top. I had some other salsas available as well, but the mango salsa was the most fun.

That’s it. I will take a picture next time.

DB
NYC

Charles Simic

A “truth” detached and purified of pleasures of ordinary life is not worth a damn in my view. Every grand theory and noble sentiment ought to be first tested in the kitchen — and then in bed, of course.

-Charles Simic, Paris Review interview

Watermelons by Charles Simic

Green Buddhas
On the fruit stand.
We eat the smile
And spit out the teeth.

-Charles Simic

Jane Brody

I walk three miles daily, or bike ten miles and swim three-quarters of a mile. If you ask me why, weight control may be my first answer, followed by a desire to live long and well. But that’s not what gets me out of bed before dawn to join friends on a morning walk and then bike to the Y for my swim.

It’s how these activities make me feel: more energized, less stressed, more productive, more engaged and, yes, happier — better able to smell the roses and cope with the inevitable frustrations of daily life.

-Jane Brody, NYT

Wholesale Flour

When our food coop closed we didn't want to stop buying our favorite items in bulk. We now buy our flour in 50-pound bags from JAR Bakers Supply in Lincoln RI. They sell many other useful ingredients for the professional and home baker.
Link here.

They sell an amazing whole-wheat flour that is from North Dakota Mill. We love their medium-grind whole-wheat flour.
Link here to see the mill.

The North Dakota Mill’s high protein whole-wheat flours are milled from the best hard red spring wheat. They are ideal for use in whole wheat breads and rolls or, when blended, for variety breads. Our whole-wheat flours are available in fine, medium, and coarse granulations, in 50 pound and 100 pound bags.

Fleischmann's Instant Yeast

I met a lovely lady recently while walking Lily. We started chatting about our dogs and ended up chatting about baking bread. She gave me a one-pound package of Fleischmann's instant yeast (no proofing necessary and guaranteed to rise twice). She said they come as a pair of one-pound foil packages at BJ's wholesale club. Thought I'd pass this along. King Arthur Flour sells them too.

The Big Apple

We've been feasting on a half-bushel of ripe tomatoes (making tomato mayo horseradish sandwiches on my toasted bread) and enjoying the half-bushel of apples and half-bushel of ripe peaches we bought at The Big Apple orchard in Wrentham Massachusetts. It's a great place to visit.

Sharing the Bounty

Last night on our walk with Lily we dropped off one of my breads at a neighbor's house. She was thrilled and gave us fresh eggs from her chickens and her home-grown summer squash. Then she ran back into her house and came out with an Italian specialty her husband had made the night before. He came out and explained how he made it - a thin layer of dough with slices of Provolone cheese and Genoa salami layered on top. Everything was rolled up tightly into a small loaf brushed with an egg wash and bread crumbs and baked at 425 for twenty minutes. We thanked them and when we got home we ate warmed slices of the Italian loaf with red ripe local tomatoes. We steamed the summer squash with broccoli and ate it with olive oil, kosher salt and freshly ground pepper. It was a colorful supper topped off with a ripe peach for dessert.

Neighborhood Coffee

Lately I am making my coffee 4 parts Folger's and one part Goya espresso. A blend just like my neighborhood.

Molly Wizenberg

Orangette view here.
and here.

King Arthur's English Digestive Biscuits

These biscuits were developed during the latter part of the 19th century to increase fiber in Victorian diets, something that might be appealing to you at the beginning of the New Year. Digestive Biscuits are really just sophisticated graham crackers and are very simple to make. They are delicious with tea and fruit.

1/2 cup (2 ounces) King Arthur Unbleached All-Purpose Flour
1 1/2 cups (6 ounces) King Arthur Traditional Whole Wheat Flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 cup (1 stick, 4 ounces) unsalted butter at room temperature
3/4 cup (3 ounces) confectioners' sugar
1/4 cup (2 ounces) cold milk

Preheat your oven to 350°F.

Measure the flour and baking powder into a mixing bowl. With a pastry blender, two knives, or your fingertips, rub the butter into the flour mixture. Toss in the sugar and enough milk to make a stiff dough.

Knead this mixture on a floured surface until smooth. (All this can be done almost instantly in a food processor.) Roll the dough out to a bit more than 1/8 inch thick and cut into any desired shape. Traditionally, digestive biscuits are round and about 2 1/2 inches in diameter. Place on greased cookie sheets, prick evenly with a fork, and bake until pale gold, between 15 and 20 minutes.

This recipe reprinted from The Baking Sheet Newsletter, Vol. III, No. 2, December 1991 issue.

Loaves of Love

Visit.

One Pot Meal

Recently I bought 6 Italian sausages on sale at my local butcher shop. I had decided to make a tomato sauce with them, but ended up making a delicious one-pot meal. I am recounting it here to share and also so I can do it again next time on purpose.

I put two large cans of crushed tomatoes in my crock pot and then added the sausages. Since I didn't have a third can of tomatoes I decided to chop three large onions and add them. I added a bunch of fresh whole peeled cloves of garlic knowing they would break up as they cook. I opened a can of pitted black olives and chopped them all and added them. I let everything simmer for hours. Then spontaneously I decided to add the jar of vegetable stock (broccoli water) I had kicking around in the fridge. Was it going to become a soup? No. I decided to add a pound of whole-wheat elbow macaroni and let it cook for twelve minutes. Then I turned off the crock pot so the macaroni wouldn't overcook and become mushy. What I had was a delicious one-pot meal that tasted like lasagna. It was even better the next day.