The Raw Stuff: Mid-Summer Harvest
We’re working hard. The weather’s hot. It’s all worth it for the produce.
If nothing else, we’re eating well. Yes those are pimientos de padrón.
Giant in the Kitchen: Strawberries, Two Ways
So Arianna is out of town this weekend singing some jazz gigs in Denver. I’m beginning to realize that her absence has had an odd effect on my meals. It’s not necessarily for the negative, but is certainly a change from the norm. When she’s around I cook like a fiend. I’m always roasting garlic and making butterscotch sauce and getting up in the middle of the night to bake bread for our breakfast toast. In other words, I do my best to make sure we eat like royalty.
I’m not particularly eloquent when I speak, so I find that I do a better job of expressing myself through my actions. I put effort into my cooking because I see it as a physical manifestation of my affection for her.
I’ll give you a for instance; I woke up early last Monday and made up this meal for breakfast:
I call it Strawberry Grits Arianna, but that’s not a particularly specific description because I tend to name everything I make that tastes good after her (i.e. Arianna Pizza, Arianna Alfredo, Pasta Primarianna, Fresh River Trout Arianna with a Roasted Garlic and Sage Brown Arianna Butter sauce… you get the drift).
What I really made were strawberry grits. We have an abundance of strawberries in at Fair Shares, and I have been taking full advantage of their deliciousness.
The thing is, now that Arianna is out of town, I don’t feel compelled to cook to quite the same extent. I’ll give you another for instance – this was my dinner Friday night:
That’s right, I ate an entire quart of strawberries for dinner. The only reason they’re in the bowl is because I couldn’t wash them in the cardboard pint container. This is a healthy, seasonal meal, but it’s certainly a bit more rustic than my usual Friday night repast. Let’s call it, for consistency sake, Strawberries Kevin.
I don’t want to give the impression that I have a low sense of self worth; that I don’t think I am worthy of Strawberry Grits Arianna and have relegated myself to a life filled with Strawberries Kevin whilst humbly awaiting her return. I just have a harder time pulling together a full meal when I’m cooking alone.
Both meals were quite tasty and are worth trying.
Strawberry Grits Arianna
Grits are one of those down home delicacies of which non-southerners seem to be blissfully unaware. If the runny white stuff served at Waffle House is the extent of your gritty knowledge, you should give them another chance. Good grits are buttery and peppery and all kinds of delicious. I usually eat them as a side with eggs, fruit and coffee, but they also work well as a breakfast cereal.
I always use stone-ground cornmeal for my grits, Hodgson Mill and Bob’s Red Mill both have good stuff, but use what you’ve got as long as it’s coarsely ground. I greatly prefer yellow cornmeal – I think it is considerably more flavorful.
The basic proportions for making grits are 4 parts liquid to 1 part cornmeal with a good knob of butter thrown in at the end. I use half water and half whole milk for my liquid. I find that this gives it a good creamy consistency which is still greatly improved with a bit of butter. For Strawberry Grits Arianna, I used 1 and 1/2 cups of water, 1 and 1/2 cups of milk, and 3/4 cup of cornmeal.
Heat the liquid to a simmer in a medium saucepan over medium heat. Whisk in the grits gradually to avoid clumps. Mix in a large dash of cinnamon. Cover and turn down to low heat stirring about every four minutes.
While the grits are slowly cooking, hull and slice fifteen to twenty strawberries, maybe about half a quart.
Stir two thirds of the sliced strawberries into the grits and reserve the rest for topping your bowl at the table. Continue to cook, stirring regularly.
When the strawberries have broken down and your grits are getting a nice rosy tint to them, add a splash of vanilla and stir in honey to taste. The grits only need to cook for about 25 minutes. You’re good to go once they have an even, smooth, consistency. Turn off the heat and stir in a knob of butter.
Serve and enjoy.
Strawberries Kevin
Take one quart of strawberries. Wash thoroughly in that old metal colander that your mother gave you with the big holes that make for an easy clean up later. You know the one.
Serve and enjoy.
The Raw Stuff: Three Weeks in May
I woke up 3 hours before my alarm this morning. I don’t understand why, but I’m suddenly wide awake and happy. I’m going to go with it ‘cause I’ve got an 11-hour-day of hustle ahead of me bookended on both sides by a two mile walk.
We’ve been getting some really beautiful produce in at Fair Shares. I can’t get over how good looking it all is – significantly better than what you get at the grocery. It’s so much fresher than the stuff trucked in from California, and it tastes better to boot! There’s just something special about veggies and fruit ‘picked yesterday’ or ‘this morning’. It makes you want to cook.
The greatest thing about eating seasonally is that you’re actually excited to see the stuff come back after having gone 10 months without it. I’m eating close to a pint of strawberries a day in an attempt to burn out on them for the next year. (I’ve infused a quart of them in a quart of vodka in an effort to preserve some of their flavor for later in the summer, but I’m not yet sure what I’m going to do with it). The Girods, one of the Amish families that grow for us, sent along an extra quart of strawberries for each of us at Fair Shares. This is a special treat because we got to visit their farm a few months back and can really associate the food with a specific family and a specific farm. Here’s a picture of their place from during our visit: (You should click on the full size to get a sense of how beautiful a day it was!)
The first bok choi of the year came in from Biver Farms yesterday. They’re one of only a couple certified organic farms that grow for us (the rest choose not to get certified). Their stuff is always exceedingly beautiful and totally covered in dirt. Like seriously muddy. I’ve told members at Fair Shares that as long as you’re paying for their dirt to be certified organic you might as well take some of it home with you.
Even more exciting for me than the bok choi is the year’s first cabbage! (no, seriously) We got a big batch of it in from Carl Saunders at Yellow Dog Farms. These things still have the big outer leaves on them, which isn’t usually the case when you by cabbage at the store. I love to eat cabbage for breakfast with a fried free-range egg. Sort of like Molly does it here. I tend to add garlic or garlic chili paste and other good stuff. I also stopped using the Huy Fong hot sauces and chili pastes because they have a ton of preservatives and I’m, you know, a discerning consumer (read: food snob). I’ve been using some Lee Kum Kee brand chili paste because it doesn’t have all the additives, but it doesn’t taste as good. Kind of a conundrum, no? Anywhoo, the cabbage!:
Now, off to fry some eggs!
The Raw Stuff: Ameraucana Eggs
So the new season started at Fair Shares (the CSA where I work) this week. We’ve added ninety new shares, which takes us up to 315 total. It was super busy getting everybody new into the system and explaining how it all works, but everyone seemed to be patient and generally happy to be getting their food.
We were lucky to have a bunch of volunteers involved this week, so the divvying up of food wasn’t totally overwhelming the way it can be at the height of produce season (I’m looking at you tomatoes!).
With the start of the new season, I’ve been thinking about how we get all this amazing food on a weekly basis, and I fear that I might take it somewhat for granted, being around it all of the time. In the interest of slowing down my life, smelling the daisies if you will, I’m going to try to document some of the more interesting and unusual stuff as it comes in during the course of the season.
Colored eggs make me all kinds of excited when we get them in at work. I’m not sure how best to describe it, but it closely resembles the glee of youth – youth given a shot of espresso. If I had a soundtrack following my day, there’d be a swelling of strings and I would burst into hearty song.
The greenish eggs in the picture above come from Ameraucana chickens. I don’t really notice a difference in the cooked green egg versus the brown, but they make for a killer looking dozen. I know which ones I want to eat.