Try this at home – preserving fall crops

Brrr…..in case there was any doubt the weather confirms – autumn is really here! Hope you are all still enjoying the Michigan harvest. At the Locavorious kitchen we are still enjoying preserving fall’s bounty! What? What’s that you say? Is there still Michigan farm fresh food around to preserve? Yes, there is, and yes you can do this at home! Now is still a great time to buy fresh veggies in season and put some up for winter.

Here are some of the vegetables that are still available at the Ann Arbor Farmers market that freeze well: spinach, broccoli, cauliflower, kale, collards, squash, pumpkin, green beans, cabbage, Brussels sprouts, and even a few tomatoes for sauce.

Greens like kale, collards and swiss chard are simply awesome right now and will be available well into next month from the local farms. To freeze them for use in hearty winter meals – wash the leaves, remove the thick woody stems, and chop. An easy way to quickly chop them is to roll a handful of leaves loosely together and then cut strips. Green vegetables need to be blanched before freezing – either in boiling water or steaming. I recommend steaming for 3 minutes and then quenching the kale in a bowl of ice water. Drain, pack and freeze. At Locavorious we pack kale and swiss chard into 16 oz heavy weight deli-type containers, but you can use any sort of freezer bag, freezer-ready jar or plastic container. It’s now recipe-ready for you in your freezer.

This week we preserved a blend of 3 types of kale from Frog Holler Organic Farm – curly, Red Russian, and Lacinato (also known as cavolo nero, black kale or dinosaur kale). This winter one could add such a lovely organic kale medley to stews, or make braised greens or southern style greens (cooked in a pot forever with a ham hock or chunk of smoked meat.) Kale pairs well with strong flavors like smoked meats, tamari, hot peppers, garlic, peanuts, and sweet peppers. Last week I made Debra Madison’s White Beans with Black Kale and Savoy Cabbage recipe with our kale medley, and it was just the thing for cool autumn evening.

Crops from the brassica genus freeze really well too – especially cauliflower, broccoli, and Romanesco , that funky fractal-Christmas tree-like vegetable you know you want to try. For these veggies, wash, chop or break into florets, and blanch in steam for 5 minutes. Alternatively, you can blanch in boiling water for 2 – 3 minutes before cooling in the ice water bath.

This year Locavorious put up some brilliant orange cauliflower as well as the traditional white. All of our cauliflower came from Wilczewski’s in Howell. Kurt and Karen Wilczewski grow the biggest and the most colorful cauliflower I’ve ever seen. Kurt says he cannot taste the difference between the colors, but he’s heard people say orange cauliflower has a more “buttery” flavor. In the kitchen we thought the orange had more of a buttery smell after blanching, but I too thought they tasted the same – both delicious. Frozen cauliflower works well in casseroles, soups and curries, and pairs well with many flavors – cheeses, garlic, curry, ginger, soy sauce, lemon, and butter, just to name a few. If someone has a good recipe for Aloo Gobi, please share it!

For more information on how to preserve food at home via freezing, check out the National Center for Home Food Preservation website – http://www.uga.edu/nchfp/how/freeze.html, or some of my favorite books: Preserving the Harvest, So Easy to Preserve or Preserving Summer’s Bounty.

Some pix: Tantre Farm’s market table on Wednesday, October 14.

Swiss chard, lacinato and curly kale waiting for you at Tantre’s table.

A lovely organic kale medley from Frog Holler Organic Farm about to get blanched.

Karen Wilczewski and her big, colorful cauliflower at the Ann Arbor Market.

Dawn, a strong member of the Locavorious kitchen crew, lifts a Wilczewski cauliflower.

Announcing the Long Winter Kitchen

Brrr here arrives autumn.  When I picked up produce from Tantre Farm’s market stand on Wednesday, Richard Andres just smiled and quoted Percy Shelley’s Ode to the West Wind

O WILD West Wind, thou breath of Autumn’s being

Fortunately the rock stars in our Locavorious kitchen crew have preserved an amazing amount of food this year…so not only are we enjoying the wild west wind of autumn….we are ready for winter!   And speaking of the long winter in front of us…..I wanted to share with everyone yet another great local food business designed around helping people eat locally in these coming cold winter months. 

An all new prepared meals winter CSA called the Long Winter Kitchen has launched in Ann Arbor. The Long Winter Kitchen is a four month CSA that prepares your meals from virtually all local ingredients, primarily local produce preserved by us in the Locavorious community freezer and local meat from Old Pine Farm.   Talk about high quality ingredients!   

Each month The Long Winter Kitchen chefs (including Mary Wessel Walker of Community Farm Kitchen fame) will transform humanely raised organic beef, chicken, pork, eggs and bison from Old Pine Farm and local produce harvested at peak flavor and preserved by Locavorious, into healthy and hearty winter meals.  The menus they’ve planned include dishes such as pork roast stuffed with apples and cranberries, Beef Wellington, chicken chili and a special quiche of the month.   Whole shares are $1200 for the four months.  This equates to less than $10 per person, per meal for delicious, local home-style food. For information please contact Mary Wessel Walker @ 734-395-7782 or email info@communityfarmkitchen.com

Go Blueberries!

For the past couple weeks, whenever I’m at the market, it’s hard to resist the urge to dance around yelling, “The blueberries are here! The blueberries are here!” They are more than just here, they are perfect right now. I love fresh picked Michigan blueberries. The smell alone differentiates our Michigan farmers’ blueberries from those poor, plastic-clam-shelled, shipped, chilled, blue Florida or Jersey marbles at the grocery stores. So – go – quick – to the farmers market or to a u-pick. Enjoy as many as you can….and then, of course, freeze some! Rinse, pick off stems and leaves, spread out on a cookie sheet and stick it in your freezer. The next morning, bag those berries up really quickly, and back into the freezer they go. Ready when you need them 6 months from now.

Blueberries are very popular in our house – fresh and frozen. One small, cute person who lives with us will eat a whole pint before we leave the market. Said small person also eats them frozen right out of the freezer bag, but she has to plead with Chef Jeff to give some up. He monitors the frozen berry inventory fastidiously to be sure the supply allows year-round blueberry pancakes. Chef Jeff’s blueberry pancake recipe works equally well with fresh and frozen berries.

This time of the year, though, blueberries are not just for breakfast. When the carnivorous mood strikes – try some local ground meat with, yes, blueberries! I found this recipe for Blueberry Burgers on Kate’s irreverent blog 4obsessions. Blueburgers work well with either fresh or frozen berries – so save some of the frozen ones and freak out your football fanatics this fall.

Now I must admit that as an occasional meat eater I didn’t appreciate what all the fuss was about grass-fed, free-range beef….until I tasted some burgers prepared with ground beef from Old Pine Farm. All I can say is – TASTE! That is what the fuss is about. As Kate points out, though, lean grass-fed beef can dry out during cooking, so this blueberry addition boosts the juiciness. My guess is this recipe would work well with ground buffalo, too.

 

For a dinner prepared earlier this spring we used some ground beef from TMZ Farm; the blueburgers were topped with a sauté of Michigan Mushrooms and spring onion from Goetz Farm. And that’s a side of roasted Locavorious cauliflower grown by the Wilczewskis and a salad of greens from Brines Farm.

 

 

Corn and goat cheese quesadillas

Frozen corn meets spring onions for a delicious dish. I loved these things! The ingredients are simple, local and the prep is fast. What is not to like?

1 bag Locavorious frozen corn kernels, lightly thawed

~ 5 oz goat cheese

tortillas (4 large wheat or 8 small corn)

~ ½ cup chopped green onions

Tomatillo salsa or salsa verde

Cooking spray

 

Heat a large nonstick skillet over med-high heat. (Next, I had to thaw the corn kernels for about 30 seconds in the microwave to get them loosened up.) Add corn to the hot skillet and sauté for 2 or 3 minutes, or just until the corn is starting to brown and stick to the pan. Transfer the corn to a bowl, and add the goat cheese, stirring until blended. (At this point, I quickly rinsed the skillet and got it back on the stove to warm up again.)

Divide the corn mixture evenly among 2 large (or 4 small) tortillas, and spread it out. Sprinkle the corn with green onions, then drizzle with the tomatillo salsa; I probably used about 1-2 tablespoons per tortilla. Top with the remaining tortillas.

Get that skillet hot again over med-high. Spray with cooking spray. Cook quesadillas about 1-2 minutes per side. For the next round, you might have to wipe out the skillet with a paper towel & re-spray with cooking spray. Cut quesadillas into wedges and serve with more salsa. I also tossed on a little chopped cilantro.

How local can you go with this recipe?? The Locavorious corn mostly came from Gardening Angel Organic farm (near Hartland). How about some tortillas from the Ann Arbor Tortilla Company, made right in town, with The City Goat cheese from Zingerman’s Creamery? The spring onions are in at the farmers market! Who made a good tomatillo salsa and put it up for their pantry? (OK, not me….but this summer…I’ll put it on the list.) Otherwise check out these Michigan made salsas – Garden Fresh Gourmet, Little Diablo, American Spoon (actually has a tomatillo salsa), Chuck & Dave’s, and Cherry Republic.

Michigan Lady Food Bloggers – Mastering the Art of French Cooking

Or some semblance thereof.  A loose group of food-loving, Michigan lady cooks and bloggers got together this weekend for a themed luncheon – cook something from Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French cooking Volume 1…. or just cook something from a French cookbook, or something remotely French sounding…or head down to the creamery and buy some really stinky cheese. In all cases, the food was yummy!

Now, as a local foodie, the proposal to cook French at first made me feel slightly dizzy. But I got over it. Seasonal and local vegetables are often highlighted by French chefs. And I was very pleased to note Julia Child’s lengthy discussion in Mastering the Art of French Cooking Vol 1 of the proper way to blanch green beans and cauliflower for maximum flavor (lots of boiling water, not too long, plunge into cold water.) As your typical busy-working-mom-still-trying-to-cook-at-home person, French cooking also sounded like it would be way too time consuming. But I got over it.

Check out this recipe from Fast Food My Way by Jacques Pepin – Chicken Bouillabaisse – served with a spicy rouille. Other than lemon, olive oil & saffron, this dish can be made from many local Michigan ingredients, and it came together in pretty quickly and had wonderful flavor.

Bouillabaisse ingredients:

1 T good olive oil
1 T coarsely chopped garlic
½ teas saffron threads
1 teas grated lemon zest
¼ teas salt
½ teas freshly ground black pepper
¼ teas fennel seeds
¼ teas herbes de Provence
½ cup coarsely chopped onion
¼ cup coarsely chopped celery
¼ cup coarsely chopped carrot
4 chicken thighs or about 1 ¾ lbs chicken parts, skin and fat removed
About 1 cup or ½ a can diced tomatoes – or 1 package Locavorious frozen tomatoes
½ cup dry white wine
¾ cup water
5 red or Yukon gold potatoes, about ¾ lb, halved or quartered
1 ~ 10 oz piece of kielbasa sausage, cut into 4 pieces
1 T chopped fresh tarragon, chives or parsley
2 teas Pernod or Ricard (optional)

Mix the olive oil, garlic, saffron, lemon zest, salt, pepper, fennel seeds, herbes de Provence, onion, celery and carrot in a large bowl. Add the chicken and turn to coat. Cover and refrigerate until you are ready to cook. (I actually let the chicken marinate overnight.)

Transfer the contents of the bowl to a stainless steel pot and add the tomatoes, wine, water and potatoes. Cover, bring to a boil over high heat, then reduce the heat to low and boil gently for 25 minutes. (If using the frozen tomatoes, after 15 minutes, gently break them apart with a spoon; you can also if desired fish out the tomato skins.) Add the sausage and cook for 5 minutes longer. If adding Pernod, stir it in now with the fresh herbs.

For the rouille: Remove ½ of a cooked potato and ¼ cup liquid from the pot and place in a food processor with 2 large garlic cloves, 1/8 teas cayenne pepper and ¼ teas paprika. Process for about 10 seconds. Add 1 large egg yolk. Then with the processor running, slowly pour in ½ cup extra-virgin olive oil and process for a few seconds, or until incorporated. Taste for salt and add a dash if needed.

Serve the bouillabaisse in warmed soup plates with a spoonful of the rouille drizzled on top.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And for a truly sensational meal, invite a bunch of Michigan Lady Food Bloggers over and have each bring a dish!

Blueberry Matzah Brei

Chef Jeff is one of those guys that can eat matzah brei (aka fried matzah) year round.  Chef Jeff is one of those guys that not only eat matzah brei year round but also really loves it.  I am not one of those guys.  Once a year at Passover is quite enough for me.  However, when the master of blueberry pancakes invented this sweet Passover breakfast treat, matzah brei lovers from all over (the family) heaped praises upon his head….so here it is.  Fortunately, even though spring is upon us, we’ve still got frozen Dexter Blueberry Farm berries galore. This makes one large breakfast serving for a fried matzah lover.

Put ~ 1 qt of water on to boil. Beat 3 eggs, 1/4 teas salt and a pinch of pepper together in a medium size bowl and set aside.  Break 3 pieces of matzah into a large colander.  Chef Jeff says break each piece into 16ths. Slowly pour the boiling water over the matzah in the colander; let drain just a little. Transfer the wet matzah into the egg bowl and let it sit ~ 15 minutes while you go take a shower or shave or something.

Melt ~ 1 T of butter in a medium sized non-stick skillet over medium heat. Put the matzah-egg mixture into the skillet. Sprinkle the top with 1/4 – 1/2 cup of frozen blueberries.  Cook without disturbing until the bottom of the matzah brei gets golden brown; about 8 minutes. Now it’s time to flip it over. Easiest way is to use a spatula to break the matzah brei into quarters and flip each piece separately. Now you can break up the matzah brei into smaller pieces or leave it in large pancake-like sections. Cook another couple minutes.

Serve hot with maple syrup, or jam or even honey.

Corn Maque Choux

Jambalaya and a crawfish pie and filé gumbo
‘Cause tonight I’m gonna see my ma cher amio
Pick guitar, fill fruit jar and be gay-o
Son of a gun, we’ll have big fun on the bayou.

Some friends invited us to a Cajun dinner party last weekend, and it was big fun, although no bayous were anywhere nearby. They cooked up awesome classics – etouffe, shrimp and ocra bisque, chicken and dumplings a la Paul Prudhomme, and bananas foster. Nothing on fire here, guys, go back to watching the game. We sent all the kids off to the basement and got to really savor the company, food and drink. My husband, a long time devotee of New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festivals, declared everything tasted just perfect. (Chef Valerie – you rock, thank you again!)

Of course I had to bring something from the freezer…finally a good use for that corn on the cob.  Cut it off the cob and make corn maque choux, or for us Michiganders – Corn Mock Shoe!  This recipe comes from Cajun Cooking – Succulent Recipes from Louisiana by Marjie Lambert, a cookbook my husband got as a birthday present back in 1991. It came out really well, reheated fine, and made a great side dish.  Check it out:

1 T butter
2 T vegetable oil
2 cups frozen corn kernels – or kernels removed from 4-6 ears – I used 4 Locavorious frozen corn cobs
½ onion, chopped
1 garlic clove, minced
¼ cup chopped green onions
½ cup coarsely chopped green or red bell pepper – frozen red pepper strips would work just fine too
1 T sugar
¼ tsp black pepper
½ tsp salt
¼ tsp cayenne
½ cup poultry stock or canned broth
1 T butter
1 egg, lightly beaten
½ cup milk

Thaw the corn cobs (most of the way) and remove the kernels with a knife; set aside in a bowl, being sure to keep the milky sweet juice with the kernels.

In a large skillet over medium heat, melt 1 T butter with the oil. Saute the corn, onion, garlic and red or green pepper, stirring often, until the onion is limp and transparent, about 5 minutes. Add the seasonings and green onions, and stir until combined. Add the stock and reduce heat to very low and simmer until liquid has almost evaporated, stirring often. (This took ~ 20 minutes for me.) Stir in 1 T butter until melted and mixed in.

In a small bowl, mix together the egg and milk, whisking until frothy. Add to the corn, stirring well, until the mixture is heated through.

Dress in style and go hog wild, me oh my oh
Son of a gun, we’ll have big fun on the bayou

Smoked turkey and swiss chard

Knowing I had a smoked turkey drumstick waiting at home in the freezer, I envisioned making a smoked turkey, kale and navy bean soup on one of those cold days last week.   Then I got home from work and discovered that we had no more frozen kale, nor any navy beans.  Hmmm.  Soooooo….here’s what happened: smoked turkey, swiss chard and spinach and miscellaneous veggie soup.  Maybe it should be called freezer sale soup.   Whatever we want call it, this soup hit the spot!

1 onion, chopped

2 carrots and 2 celery stalks, chopped

6 garlic cloves, chopped

1 teas dried thyme

1 teas garam masala

4 cups water

4 cups chicken broth

1 smoked turkey drumstick

1/2 teas cayenne pepper

~ 2 cups cooked pinto beans (I used that weeknight-time-saving luxury canned beans, rinsed off.  )

handful of chopped frozen red pepper strips (~ 1/2 bag of Locavorious frozen red peppers)

~ 1 cup of frozen peas or shelled edamame

12 oz Locavorious frozen swiss chard (since I only had about 1/2 a container of frozen chard left, I added enough frozen garden spinach to get to 12 oz.  This resulted in a lot of greens in the soup, but this keeps hubby happy.)

In a large pot or Dutch oven, heat a little olive oil and saute the onion, garlic, carrots and celery for a few minutes.  Add the thyme and garam masala and saute a minute or two more.  Put the turkey drumstick in the pot and cover with the water and broth.  Bring to a brief boil and then simmer for ~ 45 minutes.  Remove the turkey drumstick, let cool a bit.  Cut or pull the meat off of the drum stick and chop it up; discard the skin and bone and return the meat to the soup pot.  Add 1/2 teas cayenne, pinto beans, red pepper strips, peas and the swiss chard.   Cook until the last added veggies are heated through.

Strawberry Bread

This recipe comes from Mary Wessel-Walker of the Community Farm Kitchen and CFK Bakery. Here’s shout out to a terrific local food business – check out Mary’s website to learn more. www.communityfarmkitchen.com

 

In order to stay busy this winter, Mary has also started a bakery CSA. We had a loaf of Mary’s wonderful strawberry bread last week. The whole loaf was gobbled up in a few hours.

Mary says, “[This recipe] comes from Simply in Season, a truly excellent cookbook brought to you by the same folks who did More with Less. I reduced the sugar a bit because the first time I made it, it was very sweet. I let the strawberries thaw in a bowl while getting everything else ready. Some nice variations would be to replace the strawberries with peeled finely chopped peaches, blueberries or a combination.”

1 c flour
1/2 c whole wheat flour
1 1/4 c frozen strawberries (thawed and mashed)
1/2 c sugar
2/3 c oil
2 eggs
2 t cinnamon
1/2 t salt
1/2 t baking soda

Mix together in a large bowl, stirring until just combined. Pour into greased 8-inch loaf pan and bake in preheated oven at 350F until toothpick inserted in center comes out clean, 1 hour.
Yields one loaf.

Some helpers at Rowe's u-pick

Peach custard pie / happy birthday to me

Welcome our 1st Guest Chef! Chef Brandon Johns, Executive Chef/Partner of Vinology at 110 S. Main St in Ann Arbor.

Back in September, Chef Brandon did a “100 Mile Dinner” night….and except for the olive oil and spices, the food he prepared was all sourced from farms within ~ 25 miles of Ann Arbor. Brandon sources for the restaurant from farms and producers many folks know and love in this area: Tantre Farm, Garden Works, Back Forty Acres, Prochaska Farms, Ernst Farm, Four Corners Creamery, Calder Dairy, Wasem Fruit Farm, Kapnick Orchards, Almar Orchards, Jennings Brothers Stone Ground Grains, Snows Maple Syrup, and Turk Farms. Now I will fess up that I didn’t make it to that local dinner event, but ever since hearing about it, and trying Vinology’s food, I had hoped to talk to Brandon about local food. Then he stopped by during our distribution at the Corner Brewery / Downtown Ypsi Holiday Farmers Market. Score! Brandon agreed to share with us what he would cook from the Locavorious January share. To start things off, he recommended a peach custard pie. You can make this pie a truly Michivore pie – everything except the vanilla extract.

I baked this pie for myself for my birthday last weekend, for the finale of what turned out to be quite the tasty local meal. Friends showed up bearing Zingerman’s creamery cheeses, bread and wine. My husband pulled off a spicy lamb, dried fruit and parsnip stew with lamb from Old Pine Farm. With couscous and a side of Locavorious frozen broccoli from Tantre Farm sautéed in garlic and olive oil, we were good to go. After polishing off all that good food, the four of us ate the peach custard pie. I mean we ate the whole pie. Hey, shouldn’t birthday girls get to have another piece of their pie the next day?? That’s OK because I’m going to make another one of these, maybe when no one is coming over for dinner, ….and I’m home alone.

Brandon’s Peach Custard Pie

Ingredients for Pie Crust:
1 1/3 cups flour
¼ pound plus 2 Tablespoons cold butter, chipped
1 tbsp sugar
¼ cup ice water, or as needed
Method:
In a food processor equipped with a metal blade, combine flour, butter and sugar. Pulse 1 minute or until texture of mixture resembles coarse meal. Continuing to pulse, slowly add a little water at a time, until dough forms into a ball. Remove and place on a floured surface. Roll dough out. Firmly press into a 9-inch pie or tart pan. Chill and set aside.

Ingredients for Filling:
12 oz Locavorious frozen peaches
¼ cup heavy whipping cream
2 eggs
½ cup sugar
¼ tsp pure vanilla extract
pinch of cinnamon
pinch of nutmeg
~ 1/8 cup powdered sugar

Method:
Preheat oven to 375°F. Cut peaches into ¼-inch slices. Arrange slices neatly around dough until all have been used. Place pie on bottom oven rack and bake approximately 20 minutes to render juices from fruit. While pie is baking, combine all remaining ingredients, except powdered sugar, in a mixing bowl. Whisk until well blended. Remove pie from oven, spoon off excess water, and then pour egg mixture evenly over baked peaches. Return pie to oven and bake 20 minutes or until custard is set. Remove from oven and dust generously with powdered sugar.