WNYC's Last Chance Foods

Last Chance Foods: What's In Your Bibimbap?

WNYC, New York Public Radio — Fri, 14 Jun 2013 15:19:44 -0400

Bibimbap is a Korean dish of rice and vegetables familiar to many. But what’s in that delicious melange? Two important ingredients, according to Christine Colligan, are kosari, also known in English as fernbrake, and doraji, which is bellflower root.

Colligan works as a parent coordinator in the New York City school systems and promotes Korean food culture in her free time. She noted with a laugh that, as a Korean woman with an Irish last name, people tend to remember her. The outgoing former shoe designer recently teamed up with journalist Anne Noyes Saini for the first edition of The Mother-in-Law Cooking Chronicles, a podcast about food from different cultures debuting on Narratively in July.

Colligan noted kosari is an ingredient that was used even before refrigeration became common. “What they did was they cut all the fernbrake and dried it in a nice sunny [patch] and keep it all year round,” she said. These days, kosari comes dried in packages.

Kosari doesn’t have a very strong flavor, but the texture is firm and slightly chewy. “This is called meat from the mountain,” said Colligan. When using the dried version, she advised soaking it overnight, seeing the water out of it, and then sauteing it with garlic and minced onion. Colligan said to season it with soy sauce and a little sugar, and cautioned to only add the soy sauce toward the end of the cooking process so that the vegetable doesn’t become too salty.

Doraji, the white root of bellflower, has a more distinctive taste. “It’s kind of fibrous,” says Noyes Saini. “It’s kind of an interesting alternative vegetable to use. It soaks up the flavor but it has kind of its own... maybe slightly bitter flavor.”

She’d purchased packages of kosari and doraji at a Korean grocery store in midtown, and added that she was excited to return home and make good use of both. Noyes Saini grew up in North Dakota and was relatively unfamiliar with Korean cooking. Colligan has helped make both Noyes Saini and her in-laws fans of Korean food.

(Photo: Christine Colligan/Mark Rinaldi)

“My Italian in-laws, whenever they came [over], when I first got married, I cooked Korean food,” she said. “Then about five years later, I feel like, am I so selfish? I always cook [Korean food] without even ask them. So one day I just cook all Italian that I learned from my mother-in-law. Then everybody was upset! They said, Christine, what are you doing? I said, Uncle Michael, what are you talking about?”

Colligan’s family explained that they ate Italian food all the time. What they wanted to eat at her house was kimchi and bulgogi.

Noyes Saini explained that her husband also hails from a different culture and getting to know his mother helped inspire the Mother-in-Law Cooking Chronicles.

“I learned almost from day one how to cook Indian food with my mother-in-law,” she said. “It sort of made me wonder how awesome it would be to have a mother-in-law from Korean, or Serbia, or any country... and learn... real family recipes, authentic recipes. So we’re trying to capture those recipes but at the same time also tell stories about immigration, how food changes when you come to a new place, how you preserve your traditions, or how you change them."

Below, try Colligan’s recipe for a traditional Korean side dish that uses both kosari and doraji.

Samsek Namul (Three-Colored Vegetables)
serves 4

Ingredients:

½ lb. soaked or pickled kosari, rinsed and sliced lengthwise into 2-inch pieces
1 bunch spinach, washed and drained
½ cup dried doraji (rehydrating instructions), sliced lengthwise into thin strips
1 clove garlic, minced
2 tsp. soy sauce
2 tsp. sesame oil
½ tbsp. white sugar
1 tsp. vegetable oil
Salt (to taste)

Put a small pot of water over high heat to boil. When boiling, add spinach and cook for 1 minute.

Drain and rinse in cold water. Allow spinach to drain again, then squeeze gently to remove excess water.

Place in a bowl and combine with 1 tsp. soy sauce, 1 tsp. sesame oil, minced garlic and a pinch of salt. Set aside.

Heat vegetable oil in a sauté pan and add the sliced kosari and doraji.

Add sugar and 1 tsp. soy sauce and cook for 2 minutes, stirring often.

Remove from heat, add 1 tsp. sesame oil and stir to combine.

Serve as accompaniment to main dishes or rice.

Glossary of Korean ingredients:
Kosari: fernbrake: Bracken fiddlehead, which has a chewy texture and vegetal flavor
Doraji: Bellflower root, known for its firm, fibrous texture and distinctive bitter taste

Last Chance Foods: Something in the Water

WNYC, New York Public Radio — Fri, 07 Jun 2013 04:00:00 -0400

Summer is right around the corner, which means many of us will head out to Long Island for clams bakes and time on the beach. But there’s a problem lurking in the waters around the Great South Bay. According to studies from The Nature Conservancy, excessive nitrogen is polluting the waterways.

“We have these symptoms in many places, either harmful algal blooms, some of which are actually toxic to fish and wildlife, some of which are toxic to people,” said Carl LoBue, The Nature Conservancy’s senior marine scientist on Long Island. “So that actually has a big impact on which fish enter our bays, which fish are healthy to eat. And then in some places, like Western Long Island Sound where the water is deep, we get hypoxic dead zones, like you might hear about in the Gulf of Mexico.”

Scientists at The Nature Conservancy became particularly focused on this problem in the Great South Bay through a shellfish restoration project that began 10 years ago. At that time, the organization came into possession of 21 square miles of bay bottom. Previously owned by an oyster company and then a bank, the underwater land had been strip-mined of shellfish, so scientists decided to repopulate the area with clams.

“Half the clams eaten in this country came from Great South Bay at one point,” said Nancy Kelley, Long Island chapter director of The Nature Conservancy. “Annual harvests in the 1970s were upwards of 700,000 bushels a year. That’s [a] 99 percent decline, down to about 10,000 bushels [now].”

After a few years, though, evidence showed that the reintroduced clams weren’t doing as well as they’d expected. “Some years, when we tested how many clams were actually growing, we saw some positive results, other years, not so much,” said Kelley. “And clearly there was a problem with our water quality because these systems just weren’t sustaining healthy populations of shellfish.”

Scientists knew nitrogen pollution was a problem in many places throughout the world, but 65 percent of nitrogen leaking into the Great South Bay came from a particularly local source. “The big surprise was that the main culprit, the main source of this excessive nitrogen was from residential home septic systems,” said Kelley, pictured right.

Now the organization is working on getting residents in problem areas to replace old septic systems with new ones that are designed to prevent excessive nitrogen leakage. That’s not a small feat given the individual investment required by homeowners.

“Recent polling indicates that 85 percent of Long Island voters strongly support tougher water quality standards if it means that less nitrogen will enter our waters,” said Kelley. “So they’re willing to be a part of the solution. They’re also willing and understand that it’s going to cost some money.”

According to Kelley, the problem is one that simply can’t be ignored any longer. “Last year, 13,000 acres of shellfishing grounds were closed because of these toxic algal blooms,” she says, adding that there were 1,100 beach closures last year, and that number is growing. “We realize that the solution lies in the folks who live on Long Island.”

Last Chance Foods: Spring Farm Report

WNYC, New York Public Radio — Fri, 31 May 2013 14:00:00 -0400

Hot, sunny weather seems to finally be here to stay. That means zucchini and tomatoes should be here, too, right? Well, not quite. This spring has been long and cool, particularly compared to last year, according to area farmers.

“Edible, right now? Today? Nothing yet,” said Long Island farmer Joe Barszczewski. “We didn’t have a spring. It looks like we’ve gone from winter now leaning toward summer. And everything is a little bit behind, probably two weeks.”

Barszczewski grows 20 acres of vegetables on the East End. That’s just enough to supply his farm stand on Albertson Lane in Greenport. Right now, the stand is mostly stocked with seedlings. That’ll change soon.

“With this warm weather, you can catch up quick,” he said. While New York City residents seemed to get rain nearly every other day this spring, Barszczewski said his fields got just enough to avoid having to irrigate.

Barszczewski said the cooler weather helps prevent farmers planting too soon. Gail Hepworth of Hepworth Farms in Milton, New York, agreed. She grows 182 varieties of vegetables and supplies the Park Slope Food Co-Op. She said cooler weather helps enforce the guideline of only planting after May 15 in this growing zone.

“A lot of times when it’s warm weather like last year, we were biting at the bit to get out there because it just seemed like everything was ready for us,” Hepworth said. “And that’s very dangerous because before May 15 there can be a frost.” An unexpected frost can have farmers starting all over.

One way to help ensure crops are available regardless of weather conditions is to rely on greenhouses, which is what Sang Lee Farms in Peconic, Long Island, have been doing. Will Lee said that they’re currently harvesting raspberries, blueberries, and strawberries, as well as asparagus, lettuces, sugar snap peas, and radishes. Soon, they’ll start planting in the fields.

Nevia No of Bodhitree Farm is harvesting strawberries from her fields at Bodhitree Farm in the Pemberton Township of New Jersey. She says her strawberry season is nearly over, but that farmers further north will take over where her stock leaves off.

Unlike the Eastern End of Long Island, No said that the southern part of New Jersey got just enough rain. “We did get a sufficient amount of water,” she said. “We didn’t really have a very long dry spell... which was a good benefit for all the greens.”

No brings her produce to the Union Square farmers market on Wednesdays and Fridays. On Saturdays, Bodhitree Farm has stands at the Abingdon and Greenpoint McCarren Park markets. Right now, she is harvesting English shell peas, leafy greens, and summer radishes. The Italian leafy green spigarello, which tastes like broccoli, did particularly well this year, and No said to look forward to fava beans showing up in the next few weeks, too.

Last Chance Foods: Food In Danger

WNYC, New York Public Radio — Fri, 24 May 2013 14:57:07 -0400

Seeing heaps of ramps at farmers markets can be a little alarming for anyone who has read about the possibility that the tender spring onion is being over-harvested in the woods. The New York Times took up the issue two years ago. Nonetheless, the desire for ramps continues to gain momentum.

“Ramps right now, in most locations, are not in peril, but they are in decline,” said Dr. Robert Naczi, the Arthur J. Cronquist Curator of North American Botany at the New York Botanical Garden.

A expert studying North American plants, he explained that many native plants have very slow reproductive cycles. “They live in an environment that is very stable and they don’t need to replace themselves very often, so they generate few seeds,” Naczi said. “So be careful about things like ramps, like dwarf ginseng, like American ginseng.”

The over-harvesting of medicinal herbs like native ginseng, as well as goldenseal, serve as cautionary tales. “Those have been in serious decline and their numbers have not recovered from over-harvesting during the past... century,” he said.

That’s not to say that Naczi is anti-foraging. He just recommends foragers keep both the environment and others in mind. That means practicing sustainable and responsible gathering techniques.

“First of all, when foraging make sure that the population is large enough to support that,” he said. “So what I mean by that is make sure there are a lot of the plants out there. My rule [of] thumb is that, when foraging, gather less than 10 percent of what is present.”

As a botanist, Naczi follows similar rules when gathering specimens. He will take one sample if there are 12 individual plants, or two if he sees 25.

There are some exceptions, though. Garlic mustard, for instance, is an invasive that Naczi says can be gathered without restriction. He said it can be used in salads and serves as a “wonderful spring tonic.”

Dandelions, with their copious and easily dispersed seeds, are also plentiful and edible.

“If [foragers] are going after weeds, especially invasive plants, actually it would help,” Naczi said. “But if they’re going after certain native plants whose populations are already in relatively low supply, it could actually imperil those plants.”

Last Chance Foods: The Flax of Life

WNYC, New York Public Radio — Fri, 17 May 2013 16:39:45 -0400

Before açaí and goji berries became the “it” health foods, there was flax. The whole grain has been cultivated since 3000 B.C., when even the ancient Babylonians had an inkling that flax was nutritious, according to registered dietitian Samantha Heller.

Thanks to modern science, we now know that flax possesses healthy omega-3 fatty acids and antioxidants. In particular, Heller explains that flax has alpha-linolenic acid, “a kind of omega-3 fatty acid that’s really healthy.” She adds that research has show that “it reduces internal inflammation, and it may help lower cholesterol. It’s good for your body, it’s heart healthy.”

While all forms of flax — oil, seeds and ground flax meal — have the omega-3 fat, only the seeds have lignans, which are powerful antioxidents that researchers are finding may actually help reduce the risk of certain cancers. “[It’s] certainly good for digestive health, high in fiber, as well,” said Heller.

Not all omega-3 fatty acids are created equal, though, and she said that the ones found in fish have gotten a bit more attention from researchers.

“It’s like you have motorcycles and there’s all different kinds of motorcycles—you’ve got Kawasakis, and you’ve got BMWs, and you have Harleys,” Heller said. “It’s the same thing with omega-3 fats, there’s many different kinds. And in fish, there’s two kinds, EPA and DHA, and these are the ones we really look at in terms of lowering triglycerides, and we’ve done a lot of research on those.”

The different forms of flax also vary slightly in digestibility. Heller, the clinical nutrition coordinator for the Center for Cancer Care at Griffin Hospital in Connecticut, particularly recommends ground flax seeds, or flax meal, because it’s easier for the body to digest. “It [tastes] sort of wheat germ-like,” she said. “I put those in smoothies, in salads, in yogurt.”

Flax oil also boasts healthful properties, but can’t be substituted for cooking oil because its a highly unsaturated fat. That means, it can turn rancid and should be kept in the refrigerator. “You can drizzle it on salads, you can even drizzle it on foods that are already cooked, you just won’t cook it in the pan like you would olive oil,” Heller noted.

As for being on trend, flax does has the added benefit of being gluten-free. “Perhaps since people tend to be shying some of the wheat products, maybe that’s one of the reasons flax is becoming more popular,” she said.

Below, try a recipe Heller recommends for muffins with flaxseed.

Zucchini, Banana, and Flaxseed Muffins
Adapted from Martha Stewart, Everyday Food, September 2011

Yield:  Makes 12

Nonstick cooking spray
1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour (spooned and leveled)
1/2 cup ground flaxseed
1/2 cup lightly packed light-brown sugar
2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon coarse salt
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 1/2 cups coarsely grated zucchini (from 1 large zucchini)
1/3 cup mashed ripe banana (from 1 large banana)
3/4 cup 1% milk or unsweetened soy milk
1 large egg, lightly beaten or flax*
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Lightly coat 12 standard muffin cups with cooking spray. In a large bowl, whisk together flour, flaxseed, brown sugar, baking soda, baking powder, salt, and cinnamon. Add zucchini and banana and stir to combine. In a small bowl, whisk together milk, egg, and vanilla. Add milk mixture to flour mixture and stir until combined (do not overmix).

2. Divide batter among muffin cups. Bake until a toothpick inserted in center comes out clean, 20 to 25 minutes. Let muffins cool completely in pan on a wire rack, about 30 minutes.

*Egg Substitution Instructions: For every egg being replaced, mix 1 tablespoon milled flax with 3 tablespoons water in a small bowl and let sit for one or two minutes. The mixture will become gel-like. Add to your recipe as you would an egg.

1 tablespoon milled flax + 3 tablespoons water = 1 egg

*from Flax Council of Canada

Last Chance Foods: Fishing for Spring

WNYC, New York Public Radio — Fri, 10 May 2013 14:12:38 -0400

Stephanie Villani and Alex Villani of Blue Moon Fish are a little like the fish they bring to the city’s greenmarkets. They spend the winter season in warmer climates (in their case, the Florida Keys), before returning to the northeast in the spring. They’re back this year—and so are fluke, porgies and other fish.

“This fish are migrating and moving around, and we’re starting to get some of the spring fish, like weakfish, porgies and fluke,” Stephanie Villani said. Fluke, a type of flounder, is a springtime catch, she says. Alex, who fishes off Long Island, will continue to catch more of it as the weather gets warmer.

Villani likes to recommend fluke to customers who are less familiar with fish because of its mild, sweet taste.

“Kids like it,” she said. “The fluke is very thick and firm. It will hold together well, and it’s mild.” For those reasons, some people also eat the fluke raw, as sashimi.

Another fish that Blue Moon is currently bringing into market are porgies, a good choice for anyone concerned about sustainability issues. “There are lots of porgies, it’s very plentiful,” Villani said.

Porgies are relatively small at 1 to 2 pounds each. Villani says they’re sweet, but there’s one downside. “They are very boney. A lot of people don’t like them because of that reason,” she admitted.

(Photo: Fluke from Blue Moon Fish/Sally Mara Sturman)

While Villani says there’s no way to avoid eating around all those bones, she did offer one shortcut in preparing porgy: a salt crust. “That way you don’t have to scale the fish. It makes it very tender and it’s also fun,” she explained. “You mix some salt and flour into a paste and cover the fish.”

While some can tell if a fish is done cooking by touch, Villani concedes she hasn’t yet acquired that skill. Instead, she goes by conventional wisdom. “The basic rule is 10 minutes per inch of thickness of the filet,” Villani said. And when in doubt, “I just under do it.... Sometimes I have to check it a few times, but I think that’s better than overcooking it.”

Below, try Villani’s quick and easy recipe for preparing porgy fillets.

Basic Porgy Recipe
by Blue Moon Fish

1 lb. porgy fillets
1 cup flour
1 tsp cajun spice
1/4 cup olive oil
salt to taste
half a lemon, cut in quarters

Cut out the thin line of bones that runs down each porgy fillet, leaving you with two small strips of meat.

Combine the flour and the cajun spice on a plate or a shallow dish and mix with a fork. Dip the fillets in the flour mixture and shake off the excess.

Heat the olive oil in a nonstick pan over medium to medium-high heat. When the oil is hot place the fillets in the pan. Cook 2-3 minutes per side.

Remove from pan and drain on paper towels. Season with salt and a squeeze of lemon.

Last Chance Foods: Studying Mold and Mites at Murray's Cheese

WNYC, New York Public Radio — Fri, 03 May 2013 15:03:02 -0400

Few foods can seem as “last chance” as a piece of moldy cheese. While some of us contemplate the age-old question of whether to cut off the fuzzy bits and eat the rest, Brian Ralph is carefully cultivating mold at Murray’s Cheese Shop in Greenwich Village. He’s the cave master at the store and oversees the ripening of various cheeses in Murray’s five cheese caves.

Ralph currently works in consultation with Dr. Benjamin Wolfe, a microbiologist researching mold at Harvard University. He calls Wolfe up with questions about how to cultivate and maintain various cheese molds, each of which serves an important purpose.

“Depending on the species or subspecies of that mold, it’ll create different flavor profiles,” Ralph explained. “Like this one tastes grassy or this one tastes yeasty. But does it taste like beer yeast or champagne yeast?”

This week’s Last Chance Foods segment took place in Murray’s cheese cave number four. It’s a vaulted, air-conditioned room, permeated with a strong, sharp smell. Wooden and metal shelves lined the walls and were filled with neat rows of domestic and imported natural-rind cheeses.

“We’re putting [cheeses] in here so they can breathe,” Ralph said. “And what you’re smelling is the cheeses breathing and they’re letting off ammonia, they’re letting off other by products as they’re ripening the cheeses. Essentially, we’re letting them express themselves so that it doesn’t go back into the cheese and create off flavors.”

Located in the basement of Murray’s, cheese cave number four is the most nose-tingling and pungent. Walking inside, Wolfe admitted he loves the smell.

“These are molds that we’ve grown on cheese, we’ve grown to make miso, we’ve grown to make a lot of different products over thousands of years,” he said. “We’ve essentially domesticated these molds.” Wolfe works with Dr. Rachel Dutton at Harvard’s FAS Center for Systems Biology in educating food makers and other scientists about helpful, harmless molds.

In particular, Ralph works with Wolfe on sporendonema casei, a bright orange mold specific to Hudson Flower, the cave master’s signature cheese. On a recent visit from Cambridge, Mass., Wolfe brought petri dishes of lab-grown mold to use as comparison against what was growing on Murray’s cheese.

“We like to think of [the cheese cave] as a frat house or something where you get like all these different people coming and expressing themselves in different ways,” Ralph said with a chuckle. “And we kind of treat it like a day spa where we come in, we pat them, we flip them over. If there’s cheese mites, we brush them off or suck them up with vacuum and make sure they’re not burrowing too far into the product itself.”

That’s right: some varieties of cheese host microscopic mites that are invisible to the human eye. Ralph can tell they’re present by the dust the mites create on and around the cheeses.

There’s no cause to be alarmed by the tiny creatures, though, says Wolfe.

“I like to think of cheese mites as the gophers of cheese rinds or the groundhogs of cheese rinds,” he explained. “So they’re running around this moldy landscape, which could be like a lawn, and they’re eating the grass, but in this case the grass is mold. So they’re munching on various parts of the rind.”

Wolfe pointed to a brown spot visible under a portable microscope. It was a mold called scopulariopsis. “We think of scopulariopsis as the cheese mite bar,” he said. “They love this particular mold. It’s one of the most delicious molds for them. So anytime you have scopulariopsis on a cheese like this, you have a mite party.”

Wolfe was careful to add that, like mold, the mites were simply a natural part of the cheese’s ecosystem. “They’re not doing anything bad, necessarily, to the cheese unless they go out of control,” he said. “So that’s where Brian comes in and makes sure their numbers don’t go too crazy high.”

Photo: Brian Ralph, Amy Eddings, and Benjamin Wolfe outside a cheese cave at Murray's Cheese Shop/Jennifer Hsu (WNYC)

Last Chance Foods: From Chicken to Egg

WNYC, New York Public Radio — Fri, 26 Apr 2013 15:30:00 -0400

Eggs traditionally symbolize spring and rebirth. There’s a reason for that: As the days get longer, hens tend to produce more eggs. Annemarie Gero, a farmer with Queens County Farm Museum in Floral Park, said that each hen can produce as much as one egg a day during peak season.

Gero cares for nearly 250 hens at the historic farm, which has been around since 1697. The seven different breeds she oversees includes Rhode Island Reds, which are the farm’s most productive egg layers, and Araucanas, which lay blue-green hued eggs.

The colorful eggs are a novelty, but Gero said the color doesn’t affect the taste of the egg at all. “What changes the taste is more what they’re eating,” she explained. “So the chickens that get first to the greens or get first to... the healthy stuff, you’ll have the most nutritious eggs from them.” Gero also notes that while the hens eat garden scraps, as well as munch on grasses and bugs, the hens are not fed strong-tasting greens, like garlic or onion grass, because that can affect the taste of the egg.

Since the hens do scavenge, though, it’s wise to test the area where they roam for lead, which can be a particular problem for backyard hens in New York City. “You don’t want the chance of that transferring to your eggs,” said Gero.

Certain breeds are tamer and more suited for backyards “because they’re not as frisky,” she said. ”One thing is to look for a less adventurous bird. For example, we have blue Andalusians on the farm, which are the first ones to jump the fence. They’re real mischievous.”

Buff Orpingtons are her favorite because they are calm and happy to just walk around.

(Photo: Annemarie Gero/Sarah Meyer)

Just as each breed has a different personality, Gero added, chickens also vary from individual to individual.

“They talk all the time,” she said. “If you go into a chicken coop, you’re hearing probably about 20 conversations going on.... I don’t know how to speak chicken that well, but some people, I think, they say they do.”

As for the eggs themselves, fresh eggs don’t need to be refrigerated because they possess a protective membrane. “Once you wash the egg and remove a type of membrane that’s around it, you do want to refrigerate it,” Gero explained. “Hopefully, the eggs you get in the store are washed.” That’s because the “some of the stuff on the eggs, you wouldn’t want to buy,” she added.

The eggs sold by the museum at the farmers market are washed. Washed eggs will stay good in the refrigerator for as long as two months.

“Oftentimes, the ones you buy in the grocery store are already a few weeks old,” Gero noted. “One test is to drop them into a glass of water and, if it floats, the egg is bad.”

Gero shared an egg recipe for one of her favorite comfort foods: her grandmother’s rakott krumpli, which is a Hungarian casserole of eggs and potatoes.

Rakott Krumpli (Hungarian Layered Potatoes & Eggs)
By Margaret Magyar Meisels

Serves: 4

1kg (2.2 lb.) potatoes, boiled unpeeled
6 hard-boiled eggs; sliced
8 tablespoons butter (100g, 3 oz.)
2 cups sour cream
1 teaspoon salt

Butter a casserole dish using half of the butter (approximately 4 tablespoons).

Peel the potatoes and slice them thinly to medium. Peel and slice the hard-boiled eggs.

Put a layer of sliced potatoes in the dish and sprinkle a little salt over it. Add a layer of sliced eggs, followed by a layer of sour cream. Then cover the sour cream with another layer of sliced potatoes, followed by a layer of eggs and a layer of sour cream.

Continue alternating layers of potatoes, eggs and sour cream until you run out of potatoes and eggs. Pour whatever sour cream is left over the last layer of eggs and then spread the remaining butter over the top.

Put the dish in a moderate 180°C (350°F) oven and bake until golden brown (approximately 1 hour).

Poster's Notes:

Butter can definitely be substituted with margarine.

The sour cream can also be replaced by leben (Israeli buttermilk with 3% fat) and/or eshel (Israeli buttermilk, unsour, with 4% fat).

The original non-kosher Hungarian dish also has sausages. Those of you in the U.S. who have access to (and can digest) pareve smoked "meats" can try adding them.

Last Chance Foods: Maple Syrup

WNYC, New York Public Radio — Thu, 11 Apr 2013 18:51:52 -0400

Harvesting time for maple syrup is drawing to an end, and you can be sure New York producers are out tapping their trees when the weather’s right. Helen Thomas, executive director of the New York State Maple Producer’s Association, said this season ran slightly longer than usual, due to a cold March.

“We need to have days that are above freezing, but an optimum temperature is around 40 degrees during the daytime,” Thomas explains. “The tree recognizes that it’s warm enough and time to get going when those daytime temperatures reach 40 degrees. At night the tree will keep running if it’s above freezing.” She said 25 degrees is optimal temperature at night, to stop the flowing overnight.

Once the sap’s collected, its sugar content is boosted. “Sap is about 2 percent sugar concentration, as it comes out of the tree,” Thomas said. “We have to take out enough water to turn it to 67 percent sugar concentration.” That’s done through a process called reverse osmosis, and by evaporating the water.

You may be surprised to learn Thomas doesn’t use syrup for pancakes or waffles all that much. She more commonly uses it as a glaze for her vegetables. She also has a handy converter that allows her to substitute maple syrup for other sweeteners, like sugar, in most recipes.

Try out Thomas’ converter, and some of her recipes, below.

(Photo Courtesy New York State Maple Producer's Association)

Maple Conversion Guidelines
Courtesy New York State Maple Producer's Association

Pure Maple Syrup is a natural sugar made by the evaporation of the sap of several species of maple trees. The combination of sugar, black, soft or red maples and a climate unique to eastern North American allows for the early spring harvest of this all-natural delicious sweetener.

For 1 cup white granulated sugar, use 1 cup maple granulated sugar or use 1 cup maple syrup and reduce other liquids by 3.7 ounces (just under 1/2 cup)
For 1 cup packed brown sugar, use 1 cup plus 1 tablespoon maple syrup and reduce other liquids by 1/2 cup
100 grams of maple syrup equal 67 grams granulated sugar plus 23 grams of water

The influence of the maple flavor on the recipe is most closely related to the color of the syrup used. The maple flavor is more pronounced and robust in darker syrups. The flavor of granulated maple sugar is influenced greatly by the grade (light through extra dark) of syrup used it its production.

Maple Fruit Dip
By Helen Thomas

8 oz. cream cheese, room temperature
½ cup sour cream
¼ cup granulated maple sugar
2 tablespoons extra dark maple syrup

Directions: Soften cream cheese at room temperature. Fold in other ingredients. Enjoy on fruit slices, graham cracker pieces, etc.

Maple Soy Glaze
Courtesy New York State Maple Producer’s Association

For chicken, pork tenderloin or chops, scallops, salmon

2 cups pure New York State Maple Syrup
¼ cup light soy sauce
1 cup water
2 inch piece fresh ginger, sliced
3 whole cloves garlic
4 stars star anise
2 tablespoons whole coriander

Directions: Add all ingredients to sauce pan and simmer 20 minutes. Strain through a fine mesh sieve. In the meantime, pan sear the meat. Transfer the meat to an uncovered roasting pan, drizzle with glaze, and roast at appropriate temperature until done, glazing every 5 minutes or so.

60-Second Stir Fry: Dale Talde

WNYC, New York Public Radio — Fri, 05 Apr 2013 14:00:00 -0400

Dale Talde latched onto raw bar seafood culture like a barnacle to a pier when he came to New York City in 2005. He likes them raw, but I prefer them fried, like my guests in the lightning round of questions that is the Stir Fry.

Talde put on a game face as the questions came his way, but I detected some flinching when I asked him about his vacation plans this year.

He had to repeat the question. "Vacation plans?"

This is clearly someone for whom a vacation is a foreign concept, like weekends are to the landed gentry in the hit PBS series, "Downton Abbey." The Dowager Countess can't imagine working Monday through Friday. Talde, whose own empire includes Talde, Pork Slope and Thistle Hill Tavern, can't imagine leisure time.

With the Stir Fry timer ticking, Talde finally said Italy was his vacation destination this year, but somehow, I don't believe he'll get past Coney Island this summer.

I do believe him when he says his favorite kitchen chore is ordering someone else to do it. How Downton of him.

What's your vacation destination this summer? And will it include adventure eating? Post your comments below.

Last Chance Foods: Graze on This

WNYC, New York Public Radio — Thu, 28 Mar 2013 15:50:28 -0400

There’s a warehouse space near the Gowanus Canal in Brooklyn where pallets of wheatgrass are carefully grown in a temperature controlled environment and gently misted every three hours. Sounds like a pretty sweet life, right?

Stewart Borowsky, also known as the Union Square Grassman, has been growing wheatgrass and selling it at the Union Square farmers market since 1994. He said that spring is when his wheatgrass thrives.

“Wheatgrass is really a young wheat plant [that] is grown for about seven days until it’s in initial grass stage,” Borowsky said. Wheatgrass, which is from the same plant that produces wheat for bread, has a reputation for being a super health food favored by hippies, and he says that hasn’t really changed much in the last two decades.

There’s some science behind that reputation. “[Wheatgrass] is a microgreen and microgreens generally will have the nutrients that are associated with green vegetables, as well as some of the original nutrition that comes from the seed itself,” Borowsky explained.

The difference between wheatgrass and something you’d put in your salad is primarily taste and texture. “The truth is that the wheatgrass has a lot of fiber,” Borowsky said. “I always try and compare it to sugarcane in that you would chew the sugar cane or you would juice it but you wouldn’t really chop it up and put it in fruit salad. And that would be kind of the same example I would give for wheatgrass.”

Human teeth would have to put in an onerous amount of work to break down those fibers. “If you’ve ever seen a cow having a good time, that’s what’s going on,” Borowsky said.

(Photo: Stewart Borowsky/Courtesy of Union Square Grassman)

That’s also why a traditional juicer or blender won’t do the trick in liquefying wheatgrass. Instead, it needs to be processed with machines that are better designed to crush and press the greens.

The bright green color helps attract New Yorkers and tourists alike to his stand, said Borowsky. He notes that many people find the sharp and, at times, startling flavor of wheatgrass to be familiar. “I think a lot of people, when they drink the wheatgrass, no matter where they’re from, they will recall having had it in their youth,” he said, adding that a lot of older generations from the Caribbean, Asia, and Eastern Europe also consume wheatgrass.

Of course, animals are also drawn to the greenery, which is why wheatgrass is also known as “cat grass.” The greens helps animals’ digestive systems. Even domesticated pets who have little access to the outdoors have a natural inclination to graze on it, according to Borowsky.

The added bonus is that, even if you don’t have the infrastructure in place to gently mist wheatgrass every three hours, it’s still makes for a lively house plant. “The truth is that wheatgrass is one of the easiest things for people to grow at home,” said Borowsky. “It really requires only a clean, well-lit area that’s not too hot.”

Below, try Borowsky’s suggestions for juices that use wheatgrass.

Fruit Mix

1 or 2 oz. of wheatgrass juice per 12 oz. of fruit juice or coconut water

Vegetable Mix

1/4 lb (two handfuls) clipped wheatgrass
3 large carrots
1/2 medium beet
1/2 oz (1" cube) of ginger

60-Second Stir Fry: Stewart Borowsky, Wheatgrass Grower

WNYC, New York Public Radio — Fri, 22 Mar 2013 17:00:00 -0400

He's known as "The Grassman" at the Union Square Greenmarket in Manhattan, but don't get any crazy ideas about the type of plant he's pushing.

Stewart Borowsky grows wheatgrass in a building in the Gowanus section of Brooklyn, right across Third Avenue from a low-slung brick building that used to be the manufacturing hub of the South Brooklyn Casket Company.

Come to think of it, that in itself is a crazy idea. But the sight of all those caskets, ready for shipping, was not Borowsky's answer to my Stir-Fry lightning round question, "best thing about living near the Gowanus Canal." He said it's his very-much-among-the-living neighbors.

Borowsky could have used a jolt of wheatgrass prior to sitting on the Stir Fry's hot seat. I almost stumped him on his pantry must-have and thoroughly fried his brain circuits with "a food trend he'd like to see run its course." How about wheatgrass? Or juicing?

Do you do shots of wheatgrass? How'd you learn to appreciate its stringent taste?

Last Chance Foods: A New Life for Old Potatoes

WNYC, New York Public Radio — Fri, 22 Mar 2013 15:40:48 -0400

They might not be the most glamorous vegetable rolling around in the vegetable drawer, but potatoes are the stuff of life. “If there was any vegetable you could survive on totally, it would be potatoes,” said Barbara Damrosch, an organic farmer and author with Eliot Coleman of The Four Season Farm Gardener’s Cookbook. “Of all of the great world survival crops like rice or wheat or potatoes, this is the one that a home gardener can grow easily without an enormous amount of space.”

Early spring is also an interesting transition period when storage potatoes begin to give way to new spring tubers. At the moment, Damrosch is starting the season off by chitting, which is letting her seed potatoes sprout in a warm, dry, dim spot. Once the potatoes sprout, she’ll plant the potato and sprout in the garden to get an earlier harvest.

Eventually, the potatoes will form a hearty, leafy plant that produces pink, white or lavender flowers (depending on the variety of potato). “When you see those flowers, that is the signal that there actually potatoes underground,” Damrosch said. “You can cheat, even if it’s just your one crop, you can get baby new potatoes when you start to see your flowers.”

She says the process of harvesting new potatoes is called grabbling. “It means that you take your hand and you just sort of claw away at the outside of the plant and get closer and closer until you feel a few little potatoes,” Damrosch explained. “Those potatoes taste so fresh in comparison to the maybe storage potatoes that you’ve been eating all winter that it’s like a completely different vegetable.”

While potatoes are inexpensive and easy to find, growing the vegetable is also comparatively easy and can be done in a deep bucket or barrel. The deeper the soil, the greater quantity of potatoes. Damrosch notes that she once even accidentally planted potatoes in her compost pile.

(Photo: Barbara Damrosch/Courtesy of Workman Publishing)

“I just threw my kitchen waste on my compost pile with some potatoes, potato peelings, potato discards along with it,” she said. “I was turning my compost pile one day and I kept finding potatoes, and I thought, I must have throw out a lot of potatoes. Then I realized that, no, these are ones that grew.” She ended up with about a bushel of potatoes from the happy accident.

For more discerning gardening, Damrosch recommends varieties like red bliss for new potatoes. At Four Season Farm in Maine, she grows rose gold as an early variety but notes that she wasn’t able to to find those for seed this year and had to rely on the seed potatoes she saved instead. As for larger, storage potatoes, Damrosch recommends the Charlotte variety.

The term “new potato” is not limited to just one variety, though. “It just refers to freshly harvested young potatoes, although there are certain varieties that are particularly good for that purpose,” she explained, adding that size alone isn’t enough of an indicator for new potatoes. “Now there’s some cheating that goes on in supermarkets. Sometimes you’ll see a little bag of new potatoes and by tasting them you realize that you’ve been duped because these are last year’s potatoes. They’re just the little ones.”

In order to be sure new potatoes are on offer, Damrosch recommends a straightforward approach: Just ask a farmer at the greenmarket.

Below, Damrosch shared her recipe for Peruvian Potatoes, which is one that she’s particularly looking forward to making with the soon to be had new crop of tubers.

Peruvian Potatoes
from The Four Season Farm Gardener’s Cookbook by Barbara Damrosch and Eliot Coleman
Serves 4 to 6

4 small yellow-fleshed potatoes such as Yukon Gold (about 1 pound total), scrubbed but not peeled, cut in half or in 2-inch chunks 2 large eggs, at room temperature
¼ cup heavy (whipping) cream
1 teaspoon mildly hot pepper flakes, such as Aleppo (or a hotter type if desired)
1 teaspoon ground turmeric (for color; optional)
6 ounces mild, slightly tangy cheese such as queso fresco or Monterey Jack, cut into ½-inch cubes
Salt
½ head butterhead lettuce
1 small onion, peeled and thinly sliced
10 strongly flavored black olives, such as Alfonso or Kalamata, pitted
2 tablespoons finely minced fresh pepper, either a red, yellow, or orange bell type or a mildly hot type such as ancho

Even in Peru there are many ways to make papa a la huancaina, a traditional dish named for the city of Huancayo, high in the Andes. I make a somewhat Americanized version. It is very colorful to look at, and can be enjoyed at room temperature. Make it mild or spicy, according to your taste. Because it requires some artful arrangement, this is a not for a picnic far afield, but it is still good to eat outdoors, matched with barbecued chicken.

1. Bring a large saucepan of salted water to a boil. Add the potatoes, reduce the heat, and simmer, uncovered, until they are fork-tender but still hold their shape well, about 15 minutes. Remove the potatoes with a slotted spoon, keeping the water at a simmer, and set them aside in a bowl.

2. Drop the eggs into the simmering water and cook for 10 minutes. Remove them with a large spoon and hold them under cold running water for a minute until they are cool enough to handle. Then peel the eggs and cut them lengthwise into quarters. The yolks should be slightly soft and well colored. Carefully set the egg quarters on a plate, keeping them yolk side up.

3. Bring water to a simmer in the bottom of a double boiler. Combine the cream, pepper flakes, and turmeric in the top of the double boiler, and heat the mixture until you see steam rising. Then gradually drop in the cheese cubes and stir them as they melt, 10 to 15 minutes. (This can also be done in a saucepan directly on the burner, but keep the heat very low and stir constantly with a wooden spoon.) Taste, and add a dash of salt unless the cheese is very salty.

4. Rinse and dry the lettuce leaves, and arrange them around the edge of a platter or on individual salad plates.

5. Cut the potatoes into 1/2-inch-thick slices and arrange them in the center of the platter or plates. Pour the cheese sauce over them. Distribute the onion slices, egg quarters, and olives around the edge, on top of the lettuce. Sprinkle the minced fresh pepper over everything, and serve.

60-Second Stir Fry: Barbara Damrosch of Four Season Farm

WNYC, New York Public Radio — Fri, 22 Mar 2013 12:31:08 -0400

Barbara Damrosch of Four Season Farm grows food in Maine, where she's got to be prepared foraverage minimum temperatures between -10 and -15 degrees Fahrenheit. Imagine my surprise, then, when the cookbook and gardening author proved she was equally ready for the searing heat of the Stir-Fry.

She was not unnerved by the prospect of a lightning round at all, staring right into the unblinking lens of my trusty iPhone. Bring it, WNYC.

Damrosch paid no attention to the countdown clock, elaborating at length about the qualities of her favorite type of potato, our topic this week on Last Chance Foods. Her detailed description of her favorite way to prepare potatoes got me hungry.

Her response to the question, "favorite kitchen tool," has me thinking of getting a fish spatula. She's the second Stir Fry guest to mention it. I've got to see what all the fuss is about.

I'll also have to do some, um, research into Wise's® Cheez Waffies. They're the source of Barbara's food shame.

"They're very hard to find, fortunately," she confided. "It's the only junk food I like, and I'm powerless before it!"

She'd better stay away from the computer, because the crunchy little temptress is just a mouse click away. The current snack has roots in a treat from the 1970s that Old London® used to make. The Vermont Country Store carries a version.

Perhaps I can write off a case as a "business expense." I love my job....

Have you had Cheez Waffies©? Where do you get them in the New York area?

Last Chance Foods: Frisée From Florida

WNYC, New York Public Radio — Fri, 15 Mar 2013 15:10:24 -0400

When Eberhard Müller and Paulette Satur first bought a farm on Long Island in 1997, the idea was for Satur Farms to be a place where the couple could grow vegetables for Lutèce. Müller was the chef of the famed restaurant at the time, and they thought the farm would simply be a weekend destination.

Now, three decades later, Müller and Satur are full-time farmers with two farms — one on the North Fork and a second in South Florida. During the winter months, when fields in the Northeast are barren, specialty salad greens like frisée are still in season in Florida. Müller explained that having the location in the South allows the farm to supply restaurants and retailers with greens year-round, but there’s also a second and, possibly more important, reason for the bifurcation.

“Our crew, the people who work for us, are really very well trained because it is specialty produce that we grow,” he said. “They also need to make a living. You know, it’s not that easy to be off for six months, and there [are] no jobs out on the North Fork in the wintertime so we decided we need to do something and we founded that farm in Florida.”

Currently, the cool but temperate weather in Florida is ideal for growing the frizzy-looking lettuce frisée. Müller grew up eating frisée in Germany, but he had trouble finding the green when he moved to New York City three decades ago. It was one of the items he was most excited to start growing at Satur Farms.

“It’s an endive and there [are] different variations of endives,” said Müller, who also used to be the chef of Le Bernardin. “There’s the flat-leaf endives that we typically call escarole, and then there is... the curly endive that’s a coarser grained frisée and then there’s a fine leaf frisée, which is the one that we’re particularly fond of growing. It’s the most challenging.”

Müller describes the fine-leaf frisée as tasting sweet with a subtle hint of bitterness and said that balance of flavors is particularly appealing for chefs. Growing techniques can have a major impact on that taste, he added.

At Satur Farms, they place blanching caps on the heads of frisée four or five days before harvesting. That goes back to the traditional way the lettuce was overwintered in Europe.

(Photo: Paulette Satur and Eberhard Müller/Shonna Valeska)

“In olden times, they used to pack [the frisée heads] in straw,” Müller explained. “As you needed the frisée or the endives, you take the straw out and what happens, because you had this all covered up, you have no sunlight going to it. And so all the leaves turn yellow and tender.”

Now, instead of straw, Satur Farms uses the caps particularly created for this purpose. “They look like Kaiser Wilhem’s hat,” he said. This process is important because the lighter colored parts of the leaves are the sweetest, most tender sections.

The freshness of the frisée also affects sweetness. “Like with everything else, sugar is the culprit for sweetness, obviously, in plants,” Müller said. “As soon as you start harvesting it, sugar converts into starch and that happens in the frisée, as well.”

That’s why, during this time of the year, Satur Farms harvests, trucks, and delivers produce on a tight schedule. Müller estimates it takes 36 to 42 hours to get frisée from the fields in Florida to the kitchens of New York City. “It takes 22 hours to drive from our location in Florida,” he said. “[Then] it takes us four to six hours to process everything and put it back on our trucks and send it back into New York City or to the restaurants on Long Island.”

On the return trip, the trucks carry seedlings, plants and equipment needed at the farm in Florida. The two locations also means that Müller and Satur fly back and forth several times during the winter. That leaves little time for the chef to spend in the kitchen, but when he does cook, here’s one recipe for frisée that he often uses.

Frisée salad with apples and blue cheese, walnut-cider vinaigrette
by Satur Farms

Serves 4 people

2 heads of large frisée or 3-4 smaller ones
2 apples such as Granny Smith, Mutsu, Fuji or Braeburn, depending on time of year
¾ cup crumbled blue cheese (Maytag or similar)
½ cup walnut halves toasted and coarsely chopped
3 tbs. cider vinegar
1 lemon
½ tbs. Dijon mustard
1 ½ tbs. walnut oil
2 tbs. vegetable oil
3-4 tbs. water
2 tsp. sugar or honey
Salt and pepper to taste

Clean and trim the outer green leafs of the frisée and discard. Cut the inner yellow, creamy part into 1” pieces. You should obtain 3-4 cups of cleaned frisée. Thoroughly wash and spin dry several times and reserve.

On a food mandolin, slice the apples into 1/8 inch julienne. Sprinkle with the juice of half of the lemon to prevent them from oxidizing. Reserve, as well.

To prepare the vinaigrette dressing squeeze the remaining half of the lemon into a mixing bowl, add the cider vinegar, Dijon mustard, sugar or honey, water, salt and pepper and mix well to dissolve the ingredients. Slowly whisk in the vegetable and walnut oil. When you have obtained a homogenous dressing, add the crumbled blue-cheese and adjust the seasoning with salt and pepper. Dress the reserved frisée with this vinaigrette-dressing, add the apple julienne. Sprinkle with the toasted walnuts and serve immediately.

60-Second Stir-Fry: Eberhard Müller

WNYC, New York Public Radio — Thu, 14 Mar 2013 18:48:26 -0400

Eberhard Müller no longer cooks, but he was sizzling in this week's 60-Second Stir-Fry.

The former chef of the classic French restaurants Le Bernardin, Lutèce, and Bayard long ago set aside his toque for a pair of overalls, overseeing Satur Farms' North Fork and Florida operations with his wife, Paulette Satur.

So, I forgive him for not answering a question about food trends he'd like to see end. "I don't know of any anymore!" he exclaimed.

He made quick work of the other Stir-Fry questions I tossed onto the cutting board, slicing through them with ease. He didn't even flinch when I asked him to name his favorite restaurant, a question that got last week's hot seat guest, Dovetail chef John Fraser, squirming.

I won't list them here. You'll have to watch!

What's your favorite Long Island restaurant? Drop us a line.

Last Chance Foods: Forget Ramps, Try Cardoons Instead

WNYC, New York Public Radio — Fri, 08 Mar 2013 16:02:01 -0500

Chef John Fraser admits that cardoons look like “celery with armor.” Beneath that bristly exterior, though, there hides a delicious spring vegetable. Just be sure to snap on a pair of gloves before you start preparing them.

“You have to be careful of the thorns because they are pretty... sticky,” says Fraser, who heads the award-winning restaurant Dovetail on West 77th Street. “The only way to cook cardoons without peeling them first is to make soup out of them. They must be washed first. But otherwise you need to get those thorns off.”

Cardoons also need to be introduced to an acid soon after being prepared or, like artichokes or other basic vegetables, they will turn brown when exposed to air. “It doesn’t necessarily change the flavor, but it’s not as pretty,” Fraser said. When shopping for them at the farmers market, go with stalks that are still firm and seem crunchy, he added.

Cardoons, which are invasive in some parts of California, are now in season there, and Fraser receives regular supplies from the Santa Monica farmers market. “I would put them somewhere between celery and artichoke,” he says of their flavor.

Fraser previously trained with Thomas Keller at The French Laundry in California, and started working with cardoons while living on the West Coast. He realized that many people might not be familiar with the thistle-like plant so his first step was to create an informal marketing strategy for explaining its appeal. “You know, a lot of people believe that sort of ramps are the first sign of spring,” Fraser said. “I actually would make the argument that cardoons are.”

(Photo: John Fraser/Nathan Rawlinson)

Currently, he serves poached cardoons with lamb in a homage to the coming season. “They are the sort of ‘here comes spring’ ingredient,” he says. “If you’ve ever seen a plant, I mean, they look like weeds. They have this... overgrown celery look. If you didn’t know any better, you’d say someone should have cut that, you know, last year.”

Because of that relatively toughness, Fraser recommends long and slow cooking methods like braising. At Dovetail, he uses vegetable stock with salt, lemon juice, white wine, thyme, garlic and bay leaf as a poaching liquid.

“They really have this sort of Mediterranean feel,” Fraser said. “Anything that goes with an artichoke goes with a cardoon.”

Below, try Fraser’s recipe for cardoon gratin, which is a classic Mediterranean method of preparing the vegetable.

Cardoon Gratin with Pine Nuts, Parmesan, Winter Truffle
by John Fraser, Dovetail
(Photo: Cardoons at the Union Square Farmers Market/Howard Walfish)

For cardoons: roughly 2 bunches
Acidulated water to prevent oxidization
1 lemon per quart of cold water (about 3 qts total)

Peeling the cardoons:
Peel the cardoons and place immediately into acidulated bath. After peeling, cut the cardoons into 2 inch lengths.

Parmesan Mornay

1 qt milk
2 oz butter
2 oz flour
4 oz grated Parmesan
1 tbs winter truffle oil
salt, pepper, nutmeg, cayenne to taste

Prepare a roux by melting the butter on the stovetop and mixing in the flour. Cook on medium heat stirring constantly with a wooden spoon for 2 minutes total. Cool. Bring the milk to a simmer. Whisk in roux and cook at a light simmer for 15 minutes. Whisk in seasoning, cheese, and truffle oil.

Pine Nut Breadcrumb

2 cups stale, day old breadcrumbs
1 cup pine nuts
1 cup grated parmesan
1 tbs fresh thyme leaves
Toss ingredients together.

To prepare gratin:

Mix cardoons with the mornay and pour into a large buttered casserole dish. Top with Pine Nut Breadcrumb, cover with foil, and bake for 40 minutes at 350 degrees. Remove foil and bake for an additional 15 minutes or until top is evenly browned.

Finish with Extra Virgin Olive Oil and Shaved Winter Truffle

Optional additions: caramelized onion, raisins, sage, etc.

60-Second Stir Fry: John Fraser of Dovetail

WNYC, New York Public Radio — Fri, 08 Mar 2013 14:44:34 -0500

John Fraser, creative kitchen mastermind behind the Upper West Side restaurant, Dovetail, sizzled and sputtered right off the mark in his time under the heat lamp of Stir-Fry scrutiny.

"Oh, don't do that!" he pleaded, when I asked him what restaurant he eats at when he's not at his own.

"Too many friends in the business," he told me later.

Even though he's 3,000 miles away from California, where he got his culinary training, he skirted the Dreaded Question. He says his "mom's house" is his favorite place to eat while on the West Coast. This chicken is turning rubbery in the wok, the Stir Fry heat is so high, I thought.

Biggest surprise? Fraser doesn't have an iPhone, and the most recent meal he whipped up for himself was a humble grilled cheese sandwich.

What's the last meal you made for yourself? Better yet... what's the last one you'd make for your final meal on Earth? Leave a comment below.

Last Chance Foods: On a Mission to Save Kubbeh

WNYC, New York Public Radio — Fri, 01 Mar 2013 16:10:01 -0500

Cookbook author Claudia Roden made a grim prediction in her 1996 tome The Book of Jewish Food. She wrote that kubbeh, a traditional Jewish-Iraqi dish of semolina dumplings in soup, might soon disappear because restaurants and home cooks were abandoning the time and labor-intensive recipe.

“I hope Jerusalem keeps up her reputation as the capital and that some food producer will decide to make them commercially, so that this whole little world of our culinary culture does not disappear,” wrote Roden.

When culinary curator Naama Shefi read those words, she considered it a call to arms and created The Kubbeh Project, a three-week pop-up restaurant that opens at Zucker Bakery in the East Village today. She partnered with chef Itamar Lewensohn to help preserve the culinary traditions surrounding kubbeh.

Shefi said that she found it difficult to even track down accurate recipes for making kubbeh. Oftentimes the home cooks and grandmothers most adept at making the dish merely rely on experience and feel, rather than exact measurements.

For The Kubbeh Project, which will be open until March 21, Lewensohn and Shefi will make large pots of kubbeh and serve customers until they run out. In the process of opening the restaurant, Shefi has become comparatively expert at making the dumplings. She explained that the shell is made from a combination of semolina, water, oil, and bulgar wheat.

“You have this dough — it’s not really a dough, but this mixture,” Shefi said. “You let it sit, and then you take, like, [a] pingpong ball shape and with your hands, you do like a little circle. Then you put the meat mixture into it and close it very, very carefully and quick[ly].”

The dumplings need to be sealed quickly so they don’t fall apart, and the shell should not be very thick. Instead, the wrapper has to balance and blend with the filling of seasoned meat or vegetables.

(Photo: Naama Shefi/Katherine Needles)

The hurdles don’t stop there. Another important component of the dish is the soup in which the dumplings are simmered. The soup and fillings vary, and beet and pumpkin are just two traditional flavors.

“You really need to have an amazing soup,” said Shefi. “What makes it so interesting, I think, is that the shell absorbs the flavors of the soup. It’s like really [about] the relationship between the kubbeh and the soup.” The dumplings also derive their color from the liquid.

While many other cultures in the Middle East have versions of kubbeh, Shefi says that this variation stands out because of how labor intensive it is to make and because it’s simmered in soup.

“I don’t think [this type of kubbeh] is particularly Jewish, but because it’s super time- and labor-intensive, Jews used to make it for Shabbat and other special occasions,” she said. Shefi added that since it can be cooked in soup for a long time, kubbeh can be served without breaking Shabbat.

In this video, chef Yotam Ottolenghi visited a restaurant in Jerusalem to learn how to make kubbeh. Even he admitted having difficulty reproducing the dish at home. Fortunately for New Yorkers, The Kubbeh Project will be serving up ready made dishes of the Jewish-Iraqi comfort food for a few more weeks.

While The Kubbeh Project is keeping their kubbeh recipes under wraps for the moment, they did share a less intimidating recipe for chef Lewensohn’s savory hand-pies. (See below.)

Also, here’s a recipe from Food52 for Marak Kubbeh Adom.

Sambusak
by Chef Itamar Lewensohn
(Photo: Katherine Needles)

Makes about 10 sambusak

For the dough:

3.5 cups white flour
4 oz butter
1 tb salt
1 cup+ 3 tb of water

For the filling:

2 tb canola oil
2 tb olive oil
1.5 cup fine diced white onion
1 cup fine diced celery
1.5 cup fine diced Swiss chard stems
3 fine diced garlic cloves
4 cups roughly chopped Swiss chard leaves
Salt/pepper
Feta 8 oz
8 oz feta
4 oz soft goat cheese
3 tb of ricotta cheese

Soft goat cheese 4 oz

3 TB of ricotta cheese

1. In an attachable mixing bowl, incorporate the flour and butter by hand.

2. Using the paddle of a stand mixer to start mixing the flour and butter mixture ,and add the salt and the water in increments.

Let the mixture mix for a few minutes until you get a soft dough. Put a towel on the dough and let it rest for an hour. In the meanwhile, make the filling.

For the filling:

1. Add 2 kinds of oil to a pot, and put on low heat.

2 . Add the onion,celery and Swiss chard stems and cook for 7 minutes until they are soft but not browned.

3. Bring the heat to medium and add the garlic and Swiss chard for 3 minutes. Add some salt and pepper and mix. (Make sure not to add too much salt because the feta cheese is salty)

4. Transfer the mixture to a bowl, and let it cool.

5. When the mixture is cold, mix in cheeses and taste for seasoning.

Make the sambusak:

1. Roll the dough to a quarter of an inch thick and cut to a 6 inch circle.

2. Brush an egg wash on each circle and put a tablespoon of the cheese mixture in the middle.

3. Fold the circle in half. Using your fingers, take out all the air and seal the edges.

4. Brush egg wash on th top of each sambusak and bake in a pre-heated oven of 350 degrees for 30 min.

Tip: if you like spicy flavors, you can just add some chili into the cheese mixture in step 3.

60-Second Stir Fry: Ted Lee

WNYC, New York Public Radio — Fri, 22 Feb 2013 18:06:28 -0500

Maybe it's because I'm tired of living in 50 shades of gray February weather, but I decided to stage native South Carolinian and cookbook author Ted Lee's Stir Fry in front of the bright backdrop of WNYC's lobby.

Not only did I luck out with a background that harmonized with Ted's luscious creamsicle-orange V-neck sweater, I also got a soundtrack courtesy of sister station WQXR.

Tchaikovsky's "Swan Lake" seemed synced with the tension Ted felt in the Stir Fry's hot seat... or, to be precise, hot bench.

Lee says oysters are the best reason to be from the South. Roasting them on the beach is considered a rite of passage. It sure beats my rite of passage in the sleepy suburbs of Cleveland, Ohio, where we spent idle summer evenings tossing rolls of toilet paper into the trees of people's front yards. I blame this juvenile delinquency on not having oyster roasts on the sour, industrial beaches of Lake Erie.

I asked Lee where the South starts. To me, the South has more of a metaphysical boundary, one that begins with the first time somebody addresses me as "ma'am." Ted Lee gives it a hard, geographical boundary, and places the South alluringly close to New York City. Under Stir Fry duress, he says it starts south of Atlantic City, New Jersey. Why, that's less than a three hour drive away from the Holland Tunnel! (Okay, longer if you get stuck in weekend tunnel traffic and Parkway volume.)

I'll head there this weekend, and start looking for a beachside oyster roast to crash.

Last Chance Foods: True Grits

WNYC, New York Public Radio — Fri, 22 Feb 2013 16:10:56 -0500

Matt Lee and Ted Lee exhibit a Southern politeness that speaks to their background growing up in genteel Charleston, South Carolina. Ask the brothers about instant grits, though, and they pull no punches. The pair once described the supermarket variety as “cream-wheat bland, a cultural embarrassment” and recently declared that the white stuff is better suited for spackling walls than for consumption.

The Lee brothers, who have a new cookbook, The Lee Bros. Charleston Kitchen, out on Tuesday, have built their careers as food writers thanks in part to grits. When they first moved to the northeast for college years ago, they missed the food of their childhood so much they started The Lee Bros. Boiled Peanuts Catalogue, which specializes in Southern pantry staples. In addition to boil peanuts, one of the first products they offered was stone-ground grits.

Now, more than a decade later, stone-ground grits are commonplace in many New York City restaurants, said Ted Lee, who lives in Brooklyn.

“What’s been so exciting in the last 15 years is to see mills that had been out of production — you know, stone-driven, water-powered mills — being brought back into production,” he said. “It’s similar, when I think about it, to... the coffee culture that’s grown up so much in the last 15 years with people really appreciating what kind of corn, where it’s milled, how it’s milled.”

Ted Lee added that he uses a Mexican-style hand-crank table-clamp mill and grinds grits with the same ease as he would grind fresh coffee.

Matt Lee lives in Charleston. He notes that grist mills, like Tuthill House in upstate New York, have found a second life as part of the grits resurgence. At mills like Tuthill, dried corn is subject to an age-old process of being ground between millstones.

“Grits are simply corn,” Matt Lee said. “For the most part, it’s not that variety of corn designed for fresh eating. It’s another one, flintier, a little more like field corn.”

Traditionally, the corn is cracked and then the hull and flour are filtered out.

The flour is “ideal for your corn bread and less so for your grits,” he added. “[Then] what you’re left with is mostly the protein, sort of rice-like granules ideally the size of a large grain of sand that are softened up in milk or water to be delicious corn-flavored grits.”

(Photo: Ted Lee and Matt Lee/The Lee Bros. Charleston Kitchen)

As for the cooking liquid, the Lee brothers use a combination of water and whole milk, but preferences can run the spectrum from all water to all dairy.

“Usually, if you go to a restaurant, they’re boiling it up with, like, full-on heavy cream,” said Ted Lee. “They’re basically making a cheese out of it. You can add a lot of dairy product.”

While instant grits have a near-immortal shelf life, stone-ground grits maintain that oily germ, so they’re best stored in refrigerator or freezer. “Since they’re so powdery and absorptive to be sure to double bag them before you put them in there, or otherwise they’ll acquire whatever flavors are going on in your freezer,” cautioned Matt Lee.

As for how that contrasts with coffee storage, which baristas say not to put in the freezer, Matt Lee is a little less circumspect. “I guess grits connoisseurship hasn’t reached that über level just yet,” he said with a laugh. “We’re happy to have fresh grits, we’ll leave it at that.”

Below, try a recipe for Shrimp and Grits from The Lee Bros. Charleston Kitchen.

Shrimp and Grits
from The Lee Bros. Charleston Kitchen

Serves: 4

Time: 1 hour

1¼ pounds headless large (21 to 25 count) shell-on shrimp
1 bay leaf
Kosher salt
¾ teaspoon sugar
1 pinch of cayenne
1 pound vine-ripened tomatoes, cored and quartered
1 teaspoon red wine vinegar, plus more to taste
4 ounces slab bacon, cut into large dice
1 lemon, halved
1 tablespoon all-purpose flour
2 garlic cloves, minced
Freshly ground black pepper
Charleston Hominy (recipe follows)

1. Peel and devein the shrimp, reserving the shrimp in a bowl and the shells in a small saucepan. Add 2 cups of water, the bay leaf, ½ teaspoon kosher salt, ¼ teaspoon of the sugar, and the cayenne to the saucepan with the shells. With a spoon, tamp the shells down beneath the surface of the water, cover, and bring to a simmer over high heat. Uncover, turn the heat to medium low, and let the shrimp stock simmer until reduced by half, about 10 minutes.

2. Meanwhile, with a sharp knife, slice the shrimp in half lengthwise.

3. Put the tomatoes in a blender or food processor and add the vinegar, ½ teaspoon salt, and the remaining ½ teaspoon sugar. Process to a smooth purée, then strain through a fine sieve, pressing the skin and seeds to extract as much juice as possible. Discard the skin and seeds. You should have 1½ cups of tomato purée.

4. Scatter the bacon in a large sauté pan over medium-high heat and cook, stirring occasionally, until the bacon is alluringly browned and has rendered its fat, about 8 minutes. Using a slotted spoon, transfer the bacon to a small paper-towel-lined plate and cook the shrimp in the bacon fat in batches, taking care not to crowd the pan, and stirring occasionally, just until they’ve curled into corkscrews and turned pink, about 2 minutes; reserve on a plate. Squeeze half the lemon over the shrimp and sprinkle with 2 pinches of salt.

5. Strain the shrimp stock into the sauté pan, discarding the solids, and stir with a wooden spoon to pick up the tasty browned bits from the bottom of the pan. When the stock simmers, spoon off 2 tablespoons and then whisk them into the flour with a fork in a small bowl to make a paste. Add the tomato purée and the garlic to the pan, stir to combine, and then whisk the flour paste into the sauce. Cook until the mixture thickly coats the back of a spoon.

6. Cut the heat, and fold the shrimp in just to warm through. Season to taste with salt, black pepper, and red wine vinegar. Cut the remaining lemon half into 4 wedges. Serve the shrimp over hot Charleston Hominy, and garnish with the reserved bacon and the lemon wedges.

Charleston Hominy
Makes: 3 cups
Time: 45 minutes

Charlestonians of a certain age tend to call cooked grits “hominy.” This causes confusion, because hominy everyplace else means nixtamalized—hulled by soaking in a lye solution corn, which is delicious, but a different food and flavor altogether, more evocative of Chihuahua than Charleston. Whether or not you call cooked grits “hominy,” everyone seems to agree that the uncooked raw material is “grits.” After several decades of post-WWII decline, real stoneground grits (dried corn cracked in a mill and cooked with water to a silky softness) have come back in the South—and well beyond, thanks to the valiant efforts of hard-working millers, along with the crusading flavor-centrism of restaurant chefs in Charleston and beyond, who have encouraged neophytes to experience good grits. What everyone enjoys about corn grits is their mildly earthy grain flavor and their texture, which resembles sticky rice and performs the same task of grounding a plate with a bright, malleable, and still toothsome starch. “Hominy” is employed almost interchangeably with rice, and is near-essential in Charleston with savory breakfasts of fried fish, eggs, and smokehouse bacon, but also appears at lunch and dinner, especially beneath a buttery slab of fish, or with shrimp.

Charleston breakfast hominy, like Charleston Rice (page 133), is an exercise in simplicity; the dish isn’t intended to dazzle, but to be honed to a fine polish by years of intensive use—hominy grits, as some call it, is as familiar as water and salt, but rarely taken for granted.

2 cups whole milk
1 cup stone-ground coarse grits
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper

1. Pour the milk and 2 cups of water into a 2-quart saucepan, cover, and turn the heat to medium high. When the liquid simmers, add the grits, butter, and ½ teaspoon salt, and reduce the heat to medium. Stir every couple of minutes until the grits have become fragrant, and are the consistency of thick soup, about 8 minutes.

2. Reduce the heat to low and simmer, stirring often and ever more frequently, for about 20 minutes, by which time the bubbles will emerge infrequently as the grits have stiffened and fall lazily from the end of a spoon. Add ½ teaspoon black pepper and cook for about 10 minutes more, stirring constantly to prevent the thickened grits from scorching on the bottom of the pan (appoint someone to the stirring task if you have to step away—a scorched pot of grits is bitter and a total loss). If your grits thicken too quickly, or if they are too gritty for your taste, add water by the half cup, stirring to incorporate, and continue cooking until tender.

3. When the grits are stiff and stick well to the spoon, turn off the heat and stir. Season with salt and black pepper to taste and serve immediately.

Last Chance Foods: Go Ahead, Make Ricotta at Home

WNYC, New York Public Radio — Fri, 15 Feb 2013 16:06:59 -0500

Making cheese at home may seem like an endeavor for hardcore homesteaders, but chef Peter Berley said that making ricotta is simple. It only takes a few basic ingredients and fairly little time.

“It’s quicker than going to the store to get it — let’s put it that way,” said Berley, author of Fresh Food Fast and a private chef who teaches cooking classes at his home on the North Fork of Long Island. “Fresh ricotta is one of those foods that pays to make yourself because it’s so quick and the results are so rewarding.”

The creamy, fluffy cheese provides a fresh addition to midwinter cooking and only requires four basic ingredients: milk, cream, vinegar and salt.

While traditional Italian ricotta is made with whey, which is a byproduct left over making cheese, Berley recommends making using whole milk for the homemade version. “It’s much easier, you’ll get a much greater yield,” said Berley. “It’ll be creamier. It’s very similar to paneer.”

Be careful when purchasing whole milk for the ricotta making, however. “You want to get a milk that isn’t ultra-pasteurized,” said Berley.

Ultra-pasteurized milk has been heated at a higher temperature for longer shelf-life. It doesn’t produce enough curd when used for cheesemaking, though. “Best off to make it from pasteurized, or if you’re really lucky like I happen to be, there’s a farm two miles from me that has nine cows. It’s called Ty Llwyd, and they milk twice a day and I get fresh raw milk from them,” explained Berley, who added that it’s legal to purchase raw milk on the farm.

From there, it’s just a matter of combining everything in a big, clean pot and heating it up slowly over medium heat. For half a gallon of milk, that can take about 15 minutes.

(Photo: Straining ricotta curd from whey/Peter Berley)

Berley has two points of caution. First, “you don’t want to bring it to a boil,” he says. “You want to bring to where it just begins to sputter... as soon as it heaves, it’s done. And the curd will form by that time.”

Another important tip is to leave the milk alone while it heats. “You don’t want to stir the milk while it’s heating,” he said. “You’ll break up the curd. You’ll end up with a very low yield.”

So heat the milk, leave it alone, and you’re nearly done. “Strain off the milk and you have whey and you have curd,” said Berley. “And let the curd drain but for maybe three or four minutes — that’s it, because you want it to be pretty wet. Transfer the curd to a bowl and refrigerate it. It’s going to firm up quite a bit in the cooling process.”

Berley also likes to skim the cream off of the whey and stir it back into the ricotta for maximum creaminess.

As for the whey that’s left over, he says to let it cool and save it. It’s full of nutrients and can be used as soup stock or for watering plants.

The ricotta, of course, has an even happier destination: Spread it on bread and garnish with olive oil, drizzle it with honey, fold it into a crepe, or mix it with roast vegetables. “I love it with stewed dried fruits right now,” says Berley. “With crushed, toasted hazelnuts. It’s fabulous. There’s a million uses.”

Get Berley’s no-fuss recipe for ricotta below.

Ricotta Cheese
by Peter Berley

Makes 2-3 cups curd

½ gallon whole milk
1 cup cream
7 tablespoons lemon juice or white wine vinegar
1 teaspoon salt

Combine all ingredients in a large pot. Cook over medium heat stirring occasionally until the mixture begins to simmer and curds form. Simmer very gently for 10 minutes. Turn off the heat and let rest for 15 minutes.

Strain the curds and refrigerate. Refrigerate the whey. When both are well chilled, stir the cream that has risen to the top of the whey back into the curds.

The whey can be used in soups or fed to your plants or pet.

60-Second Stir Fry: Peter Berley

WNYC, New York Public Radio — Fri, 15 Feb 2013 12:37:39 -0500

I almost get into a meditative state watching chef, cooking instructor and cookbook author Peter Berley undergo his time in the Stir Fry hot seat.

Unlike last week's garrulous guests, Berley is quiet, serious and brief. He'd be a great newscaster.

Then there was the spartan, Zen temple-like background. We were in WNYC's Studio 2 for a change. Leonard Lopate, who uses Studio 2 for his daily show from noon until 2:00, isn't a nester like The Takeaway's John Hockenberry, the resident of our usual Studio 4 stomping grounds. There were no boxes of tea, no piles of books, no Japanese tea accessories scattered among the microphones and computers. No skulls, mechanical cats or plastic Army soldiers decorating the control room, either.

The soothing beige walls and lack of clutter make me want to pull out the meditation cushion and chant.

Before you join me, though, learn about Berley's sweet tooth and his favorite kitchen tool, which has a special place in his Long Island home. Namaste.

Last Chance Foods: Make Hummus Like a Pro

WNYC, New York Public Radio — Fri, 08 Feb 2013 16:06:37 -0500

As a snowstorm comes barreling down on the Northeast, many New Yorkers will be spending some quality time indoors this weekend. For those with a can or bag of chickpeas languishing in the pantry, here’s a good task to while away some time: Peel those chickpeas and make hummus.

That’s what New York Times writer Melissa Clark and The Smitten Kitchen’s Deb Perelman recommend for making the creamiest hummus.

“My quibble with most of the homemade hummus I was making was the texture — it just was not creamy and fluffy enough,” said Perelman, author of The Smitten Kitchen Cookbook. “For me, the transformation didn’t come until I started peeling my chickpeas.”

Perelman noted that it took her a mere 9 minutes to peel one 15-ounce can of chickpeas. Melissa Clark took issue with the last part of that statement and insists that using dried and home-soaked chickpeas is the way to go for the best hummus.

“I mean, the canned ones are fine and I’ll use them when I add a ton of garlic, and a ton of lemon, and a ton of tahini, so the chickpeas are kind of just pulling everything together,” said Clark, author of Cook This Now. “For me, if I really want to taste the chickpeas, I stand by the homemade ones.”

While both agreed that peeling the beans made a noticeable difference, they diverged whether on whether soaking or the shucking made the most difference. “I’d rather not peel [them] and use dried chickpeas that I cook myself than peel the canned,” asserted Clark.

Perelman, on the other hand, said that she doesn’t mind using canned beans as long as she can find good ones.

(Photo: Melissa Clark's Small-Batch Hummus/Melissa Clark)

“So I love soaking my own beans, I think that there is a flavor improvement,” she said. “However I also feel that if you’ve got a source of canned beans that are really great... So many times I buy what I think is going to be a good brand and it’s mealy and falling apart and really gross. I have found actually one of the least expensive brands, Goya, to have one of the most reliable beans. And so it’s really about what you’re buying. And I find them to be quite close to home-soaked.”

Both agree that the actual task of peeling the chickpeas is not particularly arduous, and can even be a little meditative. “It feels good. It’s like a little sauna bath for your hands,” said Clark, who says the process is easier if the beans are warm.

Perelman also noted that it was worthwhile to her to spend the time peeling. “I find it therapeutic, too,” she said. “I mean, I spend 9 minutes on Facebook probably more than once a day, so the idea of spending 9 minutes, like, popping [isn’t so bad].”

Ultimately, though, peeling one pound of dried chickpeas that have been soaked will take a significantly longer time. Clark said the process took her and a friend about 30 minutes.

Having companionship is key to making the task less tedious. “Traditional societies have been peeling chickpeas for millennia,” she said. “I mean, this is a traditional method of preparation because it’s done in a group.”

And in the realm of tedious kitchen tasks, peeling chickpeas is comparatively manageable.

“I knew a chef who only served peeled peas,” Clark said. “He would peel each green pea, and he even said to me once, ‘People are not nice people if they don’t peel peas.’ And I’m thinking I’m never peeling a green pea.”

What’s the most tedious culinary prep work you’ve undertaken? What will you never do again? Tell us in the comments below. Also, try Melissa Clark and Deb Perelman’s recipes for hummus, both of which are below.

Small-Batch Hummus
by Melissa Clark

Makes about 2 cups

1 cup dry chickpeas, soaked overnight
1 bay leaf
1 teaspoon kosher salt, more as needed
1/3 cup extra-virgin olive oil, more as needed
3 tablespoons tahini
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1 garlic clove, finely chopped
1/8 teaspoon ground cumin, more as needed
Coarse sea salt, as needed
Cayenne, optional
Radishes, fennel, cucumbers, crisp pita bread, for dipping

1. Drain the chickpeas. Combine chickpeas, 6 cups water, bay leaf, and a very large pinch of salt. Simmer chickpeas, skimming off any foam from the surface, until they are very tender, about 1 hour. Drain, reserving cooking liquid. If you feel like peeling the chickpeas while they are still warm and feel good pressed in between your fingers, go ahead. Or skip it and don't bother. It's great either way.

2. In a food processor, combine chickpeas (try to do this while they are still warm, they will be grind into a smoother hummus if you do, or reheat before pureeing), 1/2 cup cooking liquid (also warm is good here), 1/3 cup oil, tahini, lemon juice, salt, garlic, and cumin until smooth. Add more cooking liquid if you like a thinner hummus.

3. Spread hummus on a plate. Drizzle liberally with oil and season with coarse salt, cumin, and cayenne, if desired. Serve with veggies or pita bread.

Ethereally Smooth Hummus
by Deb Perelman

Recipe adapted from Ottolenghi’s stunning new dream of a book; technique is my own madness

This is probably where you expect me to give you a soapbox speech about why it is so important that you soak your own chickpeas. And you know, think they taste wonderful, especially if you treat yourself to some of the best. But, I also make it with canned chickpeas quite often (Goya is my favorite, for perfectly cooked, intact canned beans, each time) and it’s perfectly excellent. Below, I’ve included instructions for both.

Makes 1 3/4 cups hummus

1 3/4 cups cooked, drained chickpeas (from a 15-ounce can) or a little shy of 2/3 cup dried chickpeas (for same yield)
1/2 teaspoon baking soda (for dried chickpeas only)
1/2 cup tahini paste
2 tablespoons freshly squeezed lemon juice, or more to taste
2 small cloves garlic, roughly chopped
3/4 teaspoon table salt, or more to taste
Approximately 1/4 cup water or reserved chickpea cooking water
Olive oil, paprika or sumac, pita wedges (brushed with olive oil and sprinkled with za’atar, or a combination of sesame seeds and sea salt), and/or carrot sticks [optional] to serve

If using dried chickpeas: There are multiple methods to cooking them, and you can use whichever is your favorite, or Ottolenghi’s, or mine. Ottolenghi’s is to put the chickpeas in a large bowl and cover them with at least twice their volume of cold water, leaving them to soak overnight. The next day, drain them, and saute them in a medium saucepan with the baking soda (which many find reduces the gassy effects of fresh beans) for about three minutes. Add 3 1/4 cups water and bring it to a boil. Skim any foam that floats to the surface. They’ll need to cook for 20 to 40 minutes, sometimes even longer, depending on freshness, to become tender. When tender, one will break up easily between your thumb and forefinger. My method is similar, but I often put mine in a slow-cooker on high with the baking soda for approximately three hours, so I don’t have to monitor them as much.

Drain the chickpeas (saving the chickpea broth for soups or to thin the hummus, if desired) and cool enough that you can pick one up without burning your fingers.

Whether fresh or canned chickpeas: Peel your chickpeas. I find this is easiest when you take a chickpea between your thumb and next two fingers, arranging the pointy end in towards your palm, and “pop!” the naked chickpea out. Discard the skin. I get into a rhythm and rather enjoy this, but it’s also already established that I’m a weirdo.

In a food processor, blend the chickpeas until powdery clumps form, a full minute, scraping down the sides. Add the tahini, lemon juice, garlic and salt and blend until pureed. With the machine running, drizzle in water or reserved chickpea cooking water, 1 tablespoon at a time, until you get very smooth, light and creamy mixture. I find I need about 4 tablespoons for this volume, but you may need slightly more or less.

Taste and adjust seasonings, adding more salt or lemon if needed. I do recommend that you hold off on adding more garlic just yet, however. I find that it “blooms” as it settles in the fridge overnight, becoming much more garlicky after a rest, so that even if it doesn’t seem like enough at first, it likely will be in the long run.

Transfer the hummus to a bowl and rest it in the fridge for at least 30 minutes, longer if you can. To serve, drizzle it with a little olive oil, and sprinkle it with paprika. Serve it with pita wedges or carrot sticks.

Last Chance Foods: Essential Snow Day Snacking

WNYC, New York Public Radio — Thu, 07 Feb 2013 12:53:27 -0500

Two essential keys for storm-prep: A stocked pantry and a wealth of activities. In fact, a little mandatory confinement might be just the opportunity to try out some of those recipes that came across our radar in the past year.

Here are a few recipes from past Last Chance Foods that will help keep us warm, entertained and well fed. Consider this a pre-storm shopping list of sorts.

TO DRINK

Seasonal Cocktails to Ring in a New Year

For adults who partake, there's nothing like a carefully crafted cocktail to while away the hours. While January 1 may be fading fast in the review mirror, the ingredients for these cocktails should still be easy to procure. Anyway, Chinese New Year is this weekend, so that counts, right?

Coffee Klatsch

Perhaps now is the time to start perfecting that cup of Joe. Nationally recognized, award-winning barista Katie Carguilo muses on what goes into a brewing an ideal cup of coffee. Part of the secret? Make sure that water is hot enough. That'll not only distill the maximum flavor from the beans, it'll also ensure your drink is piping hot.

TO EAT

The Health History of Granola

Turning on the oven and making granola has benefits on multiple fronts: it provides an alternate source of heat, the resulting toasty smell acts as a room freshener, and you get a homemade snack that keeps well. Win, win, and win.

Keep Your Eye on the Pie

Same reasoning for making granola applies for making a pie. Take some time and make the crust even. The real point of all this lies in these four words: Bourbon Chocolate Pecan Pie. Enough said.

A Whole Latke Love

No snow-day snack list would be complete without a savory entry. Hanukkah might be past, but a blizzard named Nemo is as good of a reason as any to indulge in some fried potato pancakes. Come on, historic snowstorms count as a special occasion.

ALSO, Lucky Foods for Chinese New Year

Sunday is Chinese New Year, so start celebrating the year of the snack. Er, snake. Year of the snake. Here's a previous breakdown of lucky foods to ensure an auspicious new year.

Last Chance Foods: One Rad Radish

WNYC, New York Public Radio — Fri, 01 Feb 2013 15:51:17 -0500

It’s now, around January and February, that daikon radishes begin to really sell, said Tamarack Hollow Farm’s farmer Amanda Andrews. She drives down from Burlington, Vermont, every week to sell produce at the Union Square Farmers Market on Wednesdays, and says that only diehard daikon fans really buy them when they’re first harvested in September. At that point in the year, the long, white radishes are often overshadowed by spotlight-stealing fall produce like tomatoes, squash and berries.

Food writer Cathy Erway is one of Tamarack Hollow Farm’s customers, and she’s a fan of daikon because of its versatility. “It has a very mild taste, and it’s very pleasant because it takes on any broth or flavoring that you want to give it, and it just really absorbs it all,” she said. “It doesn’t lend too much of a funky or spicy... radish taste that we associate with the vegetable. So, in a way, it’s kind of a blank slate.”

Erway, who is the author of the book The Art of Eating In and the blog Not Eating Out in New York, says that daikon can even replace some of those fall vegetables that are no longer available locally. “You can saute it, slice it up, and stir-fry it maybe with garlic, just like you would with a zucchini or summer squash,” she said. She suggested cooking it until it’s just crisp-tender, when “the inside is just a little bit whitish and the rest of it is softer and more translucent.”

Daikon is also an ideal winter vegetable because it holds up well when braised or slowly cooked in stews and soups. “It has an amazing ability to stay in big chunks,” Erway explained.

Farmers are also have a special use for the easily grown vegetable: Some use it as a cover crop. Andrews said that a farmer friend got a new field ready for planting by first seeding it with daikon. Once the vegetable was mature, the farmer set the cows into the field to munch. The resulting fertilizer from the cows, decomposing daikon remnants, and divots left by the long vegetable meant the farmer didn’t have till the now-fertilized field. Not only was it labor saved, Andrews explains it was also better for the soil.

“There’s a living strata in your soil and different bacteria thrive in different areas of the soil, different oxygen levels, different moisture levels, and if you turn all of that over, it means that it’s upending that whole life cycle,” she said. “You certainly do sometimes need to turn a field over, but if you can do it not too frequently, it’s better for the soil.”

Part of the reason daikon serves as such a good cover crop is because of its sometimes gigantic proportions. Erway said that’s fine for culinary purposes because the vegetables saves well in the crisper drawer. “Look for ones that are firm and not too blemished on the surface,” she advised. “You usually peel it anyway.”

It’s a bonus if there are still greens attached to the radish. “Radish greens are really healthy for you and you can just saute them like you would most any other greens,” Erway said, adding that the greens can also be added to soup or stew. Or, if you’re feeling particularly inspired, Erway suggested using the greens to make a spinach-like fresh pasta. Her recipe for that, along with seared daikon with chilies, garlic, and lemon, is below.

Daikon Radish Greens Pasta with Seared Daikon Radishes
by Cathy Erway
(makes 4 servings)

2 medium-sized daikon radishes with their leafy greens still attached
1 large egg
1 cup all-purpose flour
2 cloves garlic, minced
pinch of red pepper flakes
juice of about half of a lemon
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 tablespoon butter
salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste

Separate the radishes from their tops and strip the leaves from the stems. Bring a small pot of water to a boil and submerge the leaves. Remove after 30-45 seconds and transfer immediately to an ice bath to cool. Squeeze the leaves out and transfer to a food processor or blender. (Alternately, you can just chop them finely with a knife instead.) Add an egg to the food processor/blender to puree, stopping to scrape down the sides as necessary.

Place the flour in a bowl and make a well in the center. Pour the greens/egg mixture into the center and begin stirring it to let the flour gradually fall in from the sides. Continue doing this until all the flour has been incorporated. Dust a surface with flour and knead the dough for 8 minutes, until smooth. Cover with plastic and let sit for 15 minutes.

Peel the daikon radishes and halve lengthwise. Cut into about 1″ long pieces on a bias along the length of the radishes. Heat a large, wide pan with the olive oil and add the garlic and chile flakes over medium-high. Once hot, add the daikon pieces and don’t stir for the first minute or so to let them sear a little. Season with a pinch of salt and pepper. Reduce heat to medium (so garlic doesn’t burn) and cook, stirring occasionally, for another 2 minutes, or until pieces are more translucent but still crisp. Turn heat off until pasta is ready to add (see below).

Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil. Crank the pasta into thin sheets (I used the 6 level for thickness on my pasta crank) and then into pasta noodles of your choice (I chose fettuccine). When water is boiling, drop in the pasta at once and stir. Fresh pasta noodles need only cook about 2 minutes. Transfer the noodles immediately to the pan with radishes. Add the butter and lemon juice and toss to coat evenly. Taste for seasoning, adding salt and pepper as desired, and serve immediately.

Restaurants Say, 'Hold the Photos'

WNYC, New York Public Radio — Fri, 25 Jan 2013 18:00:00 -0500

Remember when smoking in restaurants was allowed, and a cigarette with your coffee seemed like a perfect way to end a meal?

That trend flicked its last ash into the ashtray of history, as the dangers of second-hand smoke became more apparent and places like New York City and San Francisco instituted bans on smoking in restaurants and bars.

The smartphone-enabled trend of photographing your food and posting it to Yelp, Twitter or Facebook may be following suit. But instead of a fine, you may be in danger of being publicly humiliated by a restaurant owner or an annoyed diner.

The New York Times reported this week that there's a growing backlash against amateur food photography. Some restaurants, including Momofuku Ko, Per Se, Le Bernardin, Fat Duck and Chef's Table at Brooklyn Fare, discourage it. They think it's rude, especially when enthusiastic photographers stand on dining room chairs to get their shot.

The article revealed that, at some level, food gawkers understand their mid-meal actions to be in bad taste. They've got personal bottom lines: only in casual joints, only without a flash, only if the dish is famous and you want to show the world you're actually about to eat something epic.

After taking such photos myself, I’ve got a new bottom line: Don't do it. Enjoy the meal, don't document it.

I was thinking of food spotting last week, when I came up with a 60-Second Stir Fry question for The Sporkful's Dan Pashman on the "most odious food trend." (He thought I asked him about oats). Pashman thinks "the war on lard" is worse. He's enough of a food Tweeter-eater to remember his latest post: "Pulled pork on a potato latke that I called 'The Heretic.'"

That's his picture at the top of your screen.

Unlike me, he has developed no qualms about food spotting. But, like other unrepentant practitioners, he has rules.

"If your photo may help to transmit some information that will make the world a more delicious place, then by all means, snap away and share," he e-mailed me. But the impulse has to come from a pure and humble heart. That rules out gloating over the famous shaved foie gras by star chef David Chang, or my pizza post from the Bedford-Stuyvesant hotspot, Speedy Romeo. ("I've been there two times, and the place was packed," I wrote. Aren't I the coolest?)

"If you're taking a picture of something amazing you're eating just so you can rub it in your friends' faces, I recommend you keep it to yourself," said Pashman. "The key is that there must be some benefit for the viewer of the photo. And jealousy is not a benefit."

This issue is shaping up to be a question for "The Ethicist."

When is it okay to take a picture of your food? Is it ever okay, or is it inconsiderate, like texting or talking on your cell phone while dining with friends? Do you have rules for when you whip out the iPhone for that snapshot of a memorable meal? Share you thoughts below.

Last Chance Foods: A Family Tradition Built on Horseradish

WNYC, New York Public Radio — Fri, 25 Jan 2013 15:55:56 -0500

Making horseradish runs in Carolyn Sherman’s family. Her father, Lawrence, started tinkering with the recipe more than three decades ago.

“My dad couldn't find a horseradish that he was satisfied with,” she said. “He thought [store-bought prepared horseradish] was bitter. The texture was like sawdust; it was pulpy.”

The goal was to make a prepared horseradish that would do justice to his mother-in-law’s gefilte fish. And for a man devoted to the family vegetable garden, farm stands, and Chicago’s Randolph Street Market (the equivalent to New York City’s Hunts Point market), there was only one solution: Go straight to the source.

“He knew that when you start with a fresh fruit or vegetable, it tastes so much better,” Sherman said.

He eventually built up such a following that he was delivering 200 jars of horseradish to friends and family. When daughter couldn’t convince dad to start a business selling the stuff, she took it upon herself to do so.

Part of that process was getting to the root of the horseradish, so to speak. Sherman says her dad tried to grow his own horseradish root in said garden. “It’s very pervasive, though, so after a year or two of that, he realized this is not good, I don’t need to grow my own,” Sherman explained. Fortunately, for the Chicago-based Shermans, Collinsville, Illinois, also known as the horseradish capital of the world, was close by. Now, she sources fresh horseradish root for her product, ISH Premium Horseradish, from Collinsville, as well as from Tulelake, California. Both locations have soil that is naturally high in potassium, the best growing environment for horseradish.

(Photo: Larry and Carolyn Sherman/Courtesy of Carolyn Sherman)

ISH comes in four flavors — beet, citrus, ginger, and garlic — that are derived from the original recipe Sherman’s father created for beet horseradish.

Sherman knew that working with fresh horseradish root wouldn’t be an easy task, though.

“The minute you break the skin on horseradish, it emits just crazy heat, much worse to me than jalapenos or onions,” she said. “It just goes straight to your eyes. And it’s also... somewhat toxic. When I’m working with it for a while, my hands are red, my skin turns red for a day or two. I have to cover my eyes, and I wear ski goggles. My dad used to wear a gas mask. I kid you not.”

That bite from fresh horseradish mellows when it’s used in cooking, though, says Sherman. She created the different flavors to encourage people to use it as an ingredient, instead of only as a topping. The added bonus is that horseradish contains more Vitamin C than oranges.

“I always tell people... if you’re afraid of the heat, then mix it into different things and cook with it because when you cook with it, the heat goes away but the flavor is infused,” explained Sherman. “So for instance, when I make my ISH mashed potatoes, it’s wonderful with the citrus. The citrus flavor is infused in there, and it’s so nice and kind of delicate, but you don’t get that heat.”

She also advocates trying it with cheese and crackers, mixing it into tuna salad, or even using it as a topping for vanilla ice cream.

“It’s so easy,” Sherman said. “I want people to understand that when you’re working with something that’s good and fresh and healthy, that you can add it just about anything.”

Below, try her recipe for Sauteed Whitefish With Citrus or Ginger ISH.

Sauteed Whitefish With Citrus or Ginger ISH

Another delicious way to prepare fish.This will have you wISHing for more… Sautee 1 tablespoon butter, 1 tablespoon of olive oil, and 1 scallion (diced) in a pan until scallion is soft. Dust pan with kosher salt and place 2 fish filets (basa/swai) in pan; sautee on medium heat, sprinkle with kosher salt and black pepper; cook for 7 minutes and then add 1-2 teaspoons of Citrus or Ginger ISH on the top of each filet; spread evenly. Cook 5 minutes longer and then gently flip; spoon the butter/scallion mixture (and any extra ISH) over the fish. Cook for another 5-7 minutes and remove from pan. Spoon the remaining butter-scallion-ISH mixture onto the filet and serve.

Last Chance Foods: The Health History of Granola

WNYC, New York Public Radio — Fri, 18 Jan 2013 16:09:05 -0500

Granola is an “invalid food” that is “thoroughly cooked and partially digested,” according to a 1893 ad for the trademarked product. That ad language may not hold up well as the slogans of today, but the winter-storage friendly ingredients of rolled oats, nuts and dried fruit still packs a hefty dose of what the 19th century ad labeled as “nutriment.”

More than a century after the ad was first published, granola continues to grow in popularity. It no longer holds much sway as a health food, however.

“There is a lot of sugar [in granola now], although it was not always that way,” said Dan Pashman, the creator and host of The Sporkful. “In fact, the sort of precursor to granola sounds like it was something to the effect of graham cracker crumbs that were re-baked until crunchy.”

Pashman explained that granola got its start with some of the 19th century’s most well-known pioneers in health food.

“Throughout its evolution, it’s sort of like the Forrest Gump of the 19th century—wherever great food inventions were taking place, it seems granola was nearby,” he explained. “It started with Sylvester Graham, inventor of the graham cracker, and later continued with John Harvey Kellogg, inventor of Corn Flakes and co-founder of Kellogg’s. But Kellogg served granola at his sanitarium, which is what we would today call a spa, where it helped inspire C.W. Post to create Grape Nuts. So, it’s been around for a long time.”

Unlike the products created by Graham, Kellogg and Post, granola is easily made at home and customizable. Popularized in the 1960s by hippies, it is an easy do-it-yourself project, but Pashman cautions it may not be much cheaper than buying it at the store.

“In terms of the ingredients, I think it will be less expensive, but not substantially so because nuts are expensive even in the store,” he said. “But I think that it’s fun because you can make it exactly the way you want and it does offer opportunities for experimentation.”

For him, the defining characteristic of granola is that it features clusters, unlike, say trail mix, which is a conglomeration of different ingredients. “Muesli is roughly described as granola without a binding agent. Once you add the oil, and usually honey and/or maple syrup, to bind the ingredients together, it forms a cohesive whole that I would call granola,” he continued.

The baking process for granola is fairly simple, but Pashman says the real challenge sometimes lies in the decision making process for what ingredients to include and what to leave out. Last year, he judged the Slate Culture Gabfest granola competition and had the chance to mull over what makes up an award-winning granola recipe.

“What I learned from that experience is that you can put almost anything into granola, but that does not mean that you should,” Pashman said. As an aid to that decision-making process, he suggested using a flow-chart approach to choosing ingredients. The primary considerations should be what ingredients will deliver the crunch and what will provide sweetness.

Check out a roughly rendered version of his chart to the right.

Slate assistant editor L.V. Anderson won the competition, and you can try out her award-winning recipe below.

Maple Granola
by L.V. Anderson

Makes: About 12 cups

Time: 1 hour, largely unattended

One 16- to 18-ounce container rolled oats
1½ cups shredded unsweetened coconut
1½ cups whole or chopped cashews
1½ cups whole or sliced almonds
1 cup walnut pieces or halves
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon salt
1 cup maple syrup
¾ cup extra-virgin olive oil or peanut oil
½ cup raisins (optional)
½ cup sweetened dried cranberries (optional)
Milk or yogurt for serving (optional)

1. Heat the oven to 350°. Put the oats, coconut, cashews, almonds, walnuts, cinnamon, and salt in a large bowl and stir to combine. Drizzle with the maple syrup and oil and stir until they’re evenly incorporated. Transfer the mixture to a 13- by 18-inch rimmed baking sheet and spread into a relatively even layer.

2. Bake, stirring every 15 minutes or so, until the granola has begun to turn crisp and brown, about 45 minutes. (It will continue to crisp up as it cools.) Let cool for at least 15 minutes, then stir in the raisins and cranberries, if you’re using them. Serve with milk or yogurt if you like. (Store unused granola in an airtight container at room temperature for up to a month.)

Last Chance Foods: Satisfying Salsify

WNYC, New York Public Radio — Fri, 11 Jan 2013 15:42:10 -0500

The first time farmers Jeff Bialas and Adina Bialas tried salsify, it was wrapped in prosciutto, dipped in sesame seeds, and deep fried. Adina explained that they could still taste the “earthy but mild” flavor of the root vegetable, and the two became such immediate fans of salsify that they decided then and there to try and grow it.

“We’d never had it before,” admitted Adina. “It was just very unique and different and delicious. And we thought, oh, let’s try that.” She added that the ability to experiment is one of their favorite aspects of farming.

The inspiration paid off and, this year, the Bialases harvested a small but substantial crop of salsify at J&A Farm in Goshen, New York, where they grow 12 acres of mixed vegetables. (The farm even has its own theme song, which was created by a singer-songwriter Allyson Johnson and pianist Lafayetter Harris, Jr.)

Jeff described salsify as “parsnip’s ugly cousin,” but said that it adds an important element of variety to his later-fall offerings at the farmers market. The root vegetable tastes like an artichoke or sunchoke, which is an easy selling point for some of J&A Farm’s customers. Jeff said that he made small bunches of the roots, so more people would be willing to try cooking with it. Once they had, many quickly became converts.

“We ended up selling out of the entire crop by a little after Thanksgiving...which was unexpected,” said Jeff, who planted two 500-feet long rows of the vegetables this past year. He planted the salsify with carrots and parsnips since they are all long-season crops. “We plant it end of April, early May, and we don’t harvest ‘til after Labor Day, ‘til around the first frost, almost October,” he added.

(Photo: Adina and Jeff Bialas in warmer times/J&A Farm)

All that growing time pays off, though. The vegetable is easy to prepare and Jeff said that the skin can just be scrapped off with the back of a knife. After being cut, it does need to be dropped into acidified water to keep it from oxidizing and darkening.

The Bialases generally prefer simple preparation methods for the homely-looking root. “We tend to prefer a moist preparation, so…the first time we made it we boiled it in salted water,” Adina said. “I think it took about 10 minutes, cut it up and just tossed it with a little bit of butter and it was delicious like that.”

Below, try J&A Farm’s simple recipe for salsify with pasta and lemon parsley sauce.

Simple Salsify with Pasta and Lemon Parsley Sauce
courtesy of J&A Farm, Goshen NY

1 pound salsify
1/4 cup chopped shallots
2 Tbsp olive oil
1 Tbsp butter
Juice and zest of 1 large lemon
1/4 - 1/2 cup chopped parsley (depending on your taste)
1 pound bow tie pasta (or any type you prefer)
Salt and pepper to taste

Peel and thinly slice salsify. Simmer salsify in water or stock until barely tender. Drain salsify and add to hot saute pan with butter and shallots. Saute over medium/high heat until shallots and salsify are fully tender. Wisk together olive oil, lemon juice and zest, parsley, salt and pepper. Cook pasta to al dente, drain when done, reserving approximately 1 cup pasta water. Toss dressing and salsify mixture with hot pasta, and some of the reserved hot pasta cooking water to finish the dish. Serve warm, enjoy.

Last Chance Foods: About Those Rabbits on the Rooftop...

WNYC, New York Public Radio — Fri, 04 Jan 2013 15:38:42 -0500

For most of the year, the rooftop at the restaurant Palo Santo in Park Slope, Brooklyn, is green with thriving plants and vegetables. During the winter, though, there’s still activity, but of a different sort. Palo Santo chef and owner Jacques Gautier decided to raise rabbits to make the rooftop garden productive year-round. He also raises them as a way to better understand and value the meat he uses.

The rabbits, which fare well in the cold weather, produce fertilizer that’s composted and used for the plants. They also serve as food for Gautier, his family, friends and the restaurant’s staff. New York City health code dictates that meat served in restaurants must be processed by USDA-certified slaughterhouse, so Gautier can not serve his roof-raised rabbits at Palo Santo. He serves commercially sourced rabbit — rubbed with adobo, grilled and then served in tacos (recipe below). Gautier, who also recently opened the Park Slope restaurant Fort Reno, also recommends braising rabbit in a French style with cream and mustard.

The chef admitted that seeing his rabbits as a source of food was initially difficult. “That was one reason why I took this on as a challenge,” he said. “All of my kitchen staff, restaurant staff are involved in the process of raising them, some of them in the process of slaughtering. And it was very difficult, but it gives us a much deeper appreciation for meat and for the agricultural products that we’re using.”

(Photo: Rabbits in the roof garden of Palo Santo/Jacques Gautier)

While raising chickens is more common in the city, poultry tends to evoke less warm-fuzzies than rabbits. But Gautier had a very clear reason for choosing one over the other. “The reason why I chose rabbits as opposed to chickens is that rabbits I could actually breed legally in New York City, according to health code, for my own consumption,” he said. “Chickens: you can raise them, but you’re not allowed to have roosters. You’re only allowed to have the hens because of the noise that roosters make.”

The rabbits at Palo Santo are a mixed breed that Gautier described as “mutts,” and he separates them so they have about three to four litters a year. Gautier explained that the animals and their offspring tend to be healthier that way. “From what I’ve read, rabbits can have a litter almost every month,” he explained. “So the gestation period is 28 days, and that’s exactly the... minimal amount of time it takes a rabbit to be weaned. Also rabbits can get pregnant within half an hour after giving birth.”

During the summer, Gautier had about 40 animals, though the numbers have since dwindled to approximately 20. The rabbits generally graze on weeds and herbs, which means the meat tends to reflect that grassy taste.

Gautier confessed that he dreads the day he has to tell his 1-year-old son of the rabbits’ fate, but he believes animals raised for meat are better off when people demand transparency. “I think it’s very important for people to be in touch with where their food is coming from,” Gautier said, adding that his restaurant makes it a point to use humane-certified pork, grass-fed beef, free-range chickens, and eggs from a local farm. “I have a genuine concern for animal welfare, and I believe that an increased awareness demands increased transparency.”

While the statements about animal welfare may seem perverse in the context of raising animals for meat, Gautier says that, as a chef, his most effective role is in encouraging awareness. “The majority of the people in this country and in this city and the majority of my potential customers are not vegetarians,” said Gautier, who added that he was previously vegetarian and attended vegetarian cooking school. “I don’t want to make it my goal to change what people eat, but I do want to make it my goal to change how the animals are raised that are eaten.”

Below is Gautier’s recipe for rabbit tacos.

Rabbit Tacos
by Jacques Gautier

makes 6 servings of 3 tacos each

1 ½ lbs clean rabbit loins

Spice Rub:

1 tsp. Annatto Seed
1 tsp. Cumin Seed
1 tsp. Coriander Seed
1 Chile Guajillo
1 Chile Ancho
6 Chile de Arbol
1 Cinnamon Stick (or 1 tsp ground cinnamon)
2 Tbs. Kosher Salt

Toast all ingredients on a sheet pan in a 350f oven for 15 min. Remove seeds and stems from all chilies. Grind all spices with a mortar and pestle or in a coffee grinder. Rub the rabbit meat with the salt and spices and let it marinate overnight.

Prepare garnishes:

½ lb Radishes Sliced
2 Limes cut into Wedges
¼ lb Fresh Herbs (Cilantro, Pepicha, Papalo)
2 Avocados, peeled and chopped

Cook the rabbit:

On a hot grill for about ten minutes or until it is at desired doneness. Let the meat rest and then chop it.

To serve:

18 Corn Tortillas (can be store bought or homemade following the directions on a bag of instant corn masa)
1 Tbs Corn Oil

Arrange the garnishes on a serving tray. Heat the tortillas on a skillet with a little corn oil. Reheat the rabbit on the skillet and fill each tortilla with a little chopped rabbit meat to make the tacos. Put three tacos on each plate and serve with the tray of garnishes.

Last Chance Foods: Seasonal Cocktails to Ring in a New Year

WNYC, New York Public Radio — Fri, 28 Dec 2012 14:40:52 -0500

New Year’s Eve generally means ringing in the new year with champagne toasts. More than a glass or two of bubbly usually has me grasping blearily for the aspirin bottle the next day, though. For those looking to entertain at home, there are plenty of seasonal cocktail options that can serve as an alternative to champagne. Four area bartenders shared their recipes for festive cocktails that are easy to reproduce with a few basic ingredients.

While eggnog, like champagne, may be best enjoyed in moderation, Jason Shurte, a bartender at Henry Public in Brooklyn Heights, says the homemade version is tastier than the viscous store-bought stuff. It’s worth noting, of course, that there’s raw egg in the mix, so if you are making it at home, use caution and the freshest eggs possible.

Shurte said it’s entirely possible to make up a large batch of the drink. It just involves combining dark rum, brandy, sugar, heavy cream and eggs in a shaker, and then shaking “the hell out of it” to get the egg frothy, he explained. Henry Public usually uses one egg per drink, since it’s mixed to order.

“I might, like, make a larger batch of it,” said Shurte. “You know, like put it in a bigger quart container and shake it up or something, or even a larger container and shake it up, just for efficiency sake.” After the initial “dry shake” without ice, he shakes it again with ice and serves it topped with a dash of allspice liqueur and a sprinkle of freshly grated nutmeg (recipe below).

While the drink might separate a little while sitting out, Shurte said it wasn’t anything a little stirring wouldn’t fix. “It’s not a hard thing to make at all,” he said. “Anybody can do it, and it is very tasty.”

Tom Macy at the Clover Club swears by incorporating baking spices into his cocktails. A fan of using ingredients typically found in the kitchen when mixing drinks, he created a menu of pie-inspired cocktails. “None of which, I should mention, is too sweet,” he quickly insisted before listing off pecan, pumpkin, and apple pie flavored cocktails.

But for New Year’s Eve, he suggests combining gin, lemon juice, cranberry preserves and cinnamon syrup in a cocktail named “The Port of Call.” He said cinnamon syrup is one ingredient that’s super easy to make and readily impresses people. Just let cinnamon soak in simple syrup (equal parts water and sugar). The longer it soaks, the stronger the flavor.

“It works so well in cocktails, it’s amazing,” said Macy. “And people haven’t had it, so it’s really something that’s extremely delicious and accessible, but also feels totally new to a lot of people because they’ve never had cinnamon in a cocktail before.”

He admitted that he’s such a fan of cinnamon syrup, he has to be careful that not every cocktail at the Clover Club includes it. Macy often replaces sugar in traditionally summer cocktails with the cinnamon syrup to give the drinks a winter spin.

“If you just switch out the sugar in the French 75 for cinnamon syrup: Do gin, lemon, cinnamon syrup, top it with champagne, you know, people will be wowed and it’s extremely easy to do,” he advised.

Jan Warren, the head bartender at Dutch Kills in Long Island City, Queens, is not always one for moderation (see the first episode of his video series Animals Eating Animals for an example), but he does suggest caution when using spices in cocktails. “I’d say the number one general rule if you’re using spices is don’t over do it,” said Warren.

When it comes to seasonal cocktails, Warren is a fan of using maple syrup and apple brandy or apple jack. He recommended the New Brunswick (scotch, lemon juice, maple syrup, and orange bitters, recipe below) as a cocktail that can be made in large batches for parties.

Krissy Harris, an owner of The Wren, thinks ahead and preserves fruit when it’s in season and uses it now. “It’s hard to get fruit in wintertime, so what I like to do instead of using fresh fruit is I’ll use, like, a compote,” she said. For instance, in her Black and Blue cocktail, she uses gin, unsweetened black mulberry juice, unsweetened blueberry juice, and a blackberry and blueberry compote.

Harris also came across walnut bitters and walnut liqueur at a specialty store and was inspired to concoct a drink called The Great Jones. She based the recipe on the smells and tastes associated with memories of her great-grandfather’s walnut trees in California.

“It’s basically how I would imagine walking through, like, a walnut orchard in late fall, early winter,” she said. “You kind of want a little smoke and imagine there’s like a fire burning, you know, and they’re burning the old wood or something. So it’s this kind of smoky, cool walnut-y, and you get a little sweetness from the maple syrup.”

Whatever cocktail you choose for ringing in the new year, Clover Club’s Macy said to make sure it’s one that won't make it hard for everyone to stay up past midnight.

“You don’t want to serve Manhattans at your party because everyone will be gone by 9:30,” he said with a chuckle. “I’ve been there, I’ve made that mistake before.”

Below, try recipes for homemade eggnog and the New Brunswick. Cheers to a happy new year!

Homemade Eggnog
by Henry Public

1 ounce dark rum (Shurte uses Cruzan or Mount Gay)
1 ounce brandy
3 spoonfuls of white sugar
2 ounces heavy cream
1 whole egg

Put all the ingredients into a shaker and then “shake the hell out of it,” says Henry Public bartender Jason Shurte. “With an egg, you want to shake the hell out of it, basically, to get it really frothy. You want it to get as thick and frothy as possible."

You shake it first without ice, which is known as a “dry shake.”

Then add ice, and shake again to chill.

Strain into a glass with no ice. Then top with a splash of allspice liqueur and grated nutmeg. “And there you have it,” says Shurte.

New Brunswick
by Jan Warren, Dutch Kills

2 ounces of scotch
½ ounce of lemon juice
½ ounce of maple syrup
orange bitters

Shake or stir with ice, strain, serve over ice.

Last Chance Foods: A Whole Latke Love

WNYC, New York Public Radio — Fri, 14 Dec 2012 17:54:43 -0500

Hanukkah celebrations wrap up this Sunday, which means that there’s still time this weekend to celebrate the Festival of Lights with fried food. Einat Admony, the chef of Balaboosta and Taïm, says now is not the time to quibble over the healthiness of fried food.

Instead of worrying about baking latkes or donuts, she recommends focusing on providing healthful sides and compliments. “I think you should balance it with other things, with fresh salad or fresh something else,” said Admony. “Yes, you eat fried falafel for example, but you have whole wheat pita, if you like the pita. And then you have a beautiful vegetable salad. I think it’s all about the balance.”

Admony explained that basic latkes are made with grated potatoes, grated onions, flour, eggs, and seasoning. “Some people actually grate the potato into a bowl of water, and I think that’s in order [for the potato] not to get darker,” she explained. Admony prefers not to do that, however, because she says the water dilutes the starch, and more flour and eggs have to be added to make everything stick together.

To avoid having the potatoes oxidize and change in color, Admony relies on speed. “You need to do it fast,” she said. “So the minute you grate the potato, you will put [in] like eggs right away, and the onion and the flour. So you mix it. and then you need to fry it right there.”

That’s particularly the case when making latkes with sunchokes. “It’s one of my favorite vegetables,” she said, adding that the results taste like artichoke latkes. “The problem with sunchoke is that is oxidizes pretty fast. So you need to work it even faster than you work with potatoes, but the taste is great.” She also cautioned that peeling sunchokes can be a laborious task, so it’s not the best for larger parties.

Admony has also made latkes using vegetables like carrots and beets. For this year’s Latke Festival at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, she made potato, yam, and carrot latkes and served them with honey, preserved lemons, and yogurt sauce (recipe below). “There is a little bit sweetness but there is a lot of intensity from the preserved lemon that give all the flavor,” she said.

(Photo: Einat Admony/Courtesy of Einat Admony)

Admony generally prefers a savory latke, though, and says that the tradition of serving applesauce as a topping is not common in her native Israel. “Latkes, for me, with applesauce is always a little bit weird,” she admitted.

That’s not to say she’s not willing to compromise to appease the masses, however. “This year, I actually grated Granny Smith [apples] into the latkes,” said Admony. “I said I’m not going to serve it with applesauce but I’m going to put the apple inside the latke recipe.”

When it comes to making latkes, though, there are certain processes Admony does not recommend modifying. For instance, latke makers should just anticipate spending much of the celebration standing next to the stove making freshly-fried pancakes. “You can do some ahead and then heat it up in a very high temperature to get the crisp back but I don’t think it will ever be the same,” she said. In the past, even for private events, Admony has simply had guests gather around her while she fries the latkes. “I think it’s the only way,” she said with conviction.

Here's the recipe Admony used for this year's Latke Fest.

Potato, Yam & Carrot Latke with Honey, Preserved Lemons & Yogurt Sauce
by Einat Admony, chef and owner of Balaboosta and Taïm

1 cup grated potato
1 cup grated yams
1 cup grated carrot
1 1/2 cup grated onion (after having the liquid squeezed out)
1/2 cup grated peeled granny smith apple
1 egg
1tbs chopped thyme
4 tbs AP flour
1 tbs salt
Pinch black pepper
Pinch sugar
Canola oil

Method:

Mix all in a mixing bowl.

Heat up sauté pan with 1/2" oil.

When the oil is hot, around 370 degrees, create a 2-inch patties and fried them on both sides until they are golden brown.

For the yogurt sauce:

Simply mix chopped preserved lemons with enough honey to balance out the bitterness. Gently fold in plain yogurt until you have a homogeneous mixture. You can add turmeric for color if you wish. Season with salt and pepper. Dollop on your lovely little latkes and let the holiday feasting begin!

For the yogurt sauce:

Simply mix chopped preserved lemons with enough honey to balance out the bitterness. Gently folk in plain yogurt until you have a homogenous mixture. You can add tumeric for color if you wish. Season with salt and pepper. Dollop on your lovely little latkes and let the holiday feasting begin!

Last Chance Foods: Fennel From Top to Bottom

WNYC, New York Public Radio — Fri, 07 Dec 2012 15:48:05 -0500

Crunchy, fresh and licorice-flavored, fennel offers a welcome change of pace during the winter months, when starchy tubers tend to dominate. Whitney Wright, a senior editor and photographer for Gilt Taste, points out that the vegetable is versatile both in taste and in texture.

“It is one of the easiest ingredients to use,” she said “The entire plant can be used in cooking, which is great. And you can eat it — everything — from raw to super braised cooked really soft. So it’s pretty hard to screw up fennel.”

Wright, who also writes the blog Feeding Mr. Wright, explained that fennel can be used in all of its various forms. When preparing it, she provided an easy rule as to what keep and what to discard: Keep all of it. She said that, at the most, she’ll just slice off and toss the bottom part of the bulb if it’s a little dirty.

“You can use the stems the same way you’d use the bulb,” Wright said. “The bulb is super crunchy, it’s crisp, so it’s wonderful raw, especially when it’s sliced very thin.” The licorice flavor also pairs particularly well with other winter ingredients like citrus and parmesan.

As for the stems, Wright operates on instinct and uses the celery-like stalks just like, well, celery. She said that the cooked stems are just as tender as the bulb and can be braised, used in soups and grilled.

There’s a notable advantage to fennel’s subtle licorice flavor: It can be used in both savory or sweet applications without overpowering other flavors. For instance, while the bulbs can be used as the base for a creamy gratin (see Wright’s recipe below), its fronds can also be chopped finely and mixed with ice cream.

(Photo: Whitney Wright/Whitney Wright)

While Florence fennel is usually what is found at supermarkets, less well known is a type that’s grown just for its seeds. “The seeds have a variety of uses, you can use them in baking, you can use them in teas,” explained Wright. “I have an Italian friend and I know her grandmother chews on them after dinner to kind of act as a digestif. And also people use it to freshen their breath.” She says she’s purchased the seeds online, but suspects they’d be found in the spice aisle of the grocery store.

With so many forms and such a subtle yet complex taste, fennel provides a surprising variety to current seasonal offerings. One convenient way to serve it up during the holidays is in gratin form.

Try Wright’s recipe for that, below.

Easy Fennel Gratin
by Whitney Wright

Serves 4-6 (as a side dish)

1 whole fennel bulb, stems and fronds
(1 to 1.5 lbs)
1.5 cups heavy cream
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 garlic clove, finely minced or grated on a microplane
2 ounces Parmesan cheese, divided
Freshly cracked pepper
2 tablespoons of butter
3/4 cup of breadcrumbs
3 springs of thyme, leaves stripped from the stems

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees.

Pluck the bright green feathery fronds from the fennel bulb. Roughly chop and set aside. Cut the stems from the bulb, and roughly julienne. Cut the bulb in half, and then each half into eight wedges. Whisk together the heavy cream, salt, garlic and 1/2 of the Parmesean cheese. Toss the fennel wedges and cut stems into the mixture. Pour into a 9x9 baking dish (or similar). Crack fresh paper evenly over the top of the gratin.

Bake the fennel for 20 minutes at 375 degrees. While the fennel is baking, melt the butter in a small saucepan. When the butter is melted, add the thyme leaves and let cook for 30 seconds. Add the bread crumbs and mix well.

Turn the oven down to 350 degrees after 20 minutes. Pull out the baking gratin and top with the breadcrumb mixture. Bake for 20 minutes more.

Let cool for a few minutes before serving and garnish with the chopped fennel fronds.

Last Chance Foods: Twinkie Confessional

WNYC, New York Public Radio — Fri, 30 Nov 2012 15:48:44 -0500

Zingers, Devil Dogs, Sno Balls, or classic Twinkies? Ever since Hostess Brands announced a few weeks ago that it’s going out of business, everyone seems to be declaring their snack-cake allegiances. Since it’s uncertain how much longer the everlasting creme-filled yellow cakes will be available, Last Chance Foods dubbed it a worthy topic and, this week, strayed from the produce section to check out the snack aisle.

Steve Ettlinger, author of Twinkie, Deconstructed, said he has unexpectedly been on the receiving end of countless junk-food confessions. “Some [people] started out by saying, ‘You know, I was really more of a Ding Dong man,’” Ettlinger explained. “I’ve had so many confession from journalists, from people on the street, from friends of whether they eat them or not. Everybody relates to them somehow. These little cakes have a powerful hold on our national psyche.”

Ettlinger, who said his tastes tend to run more toward Sno Balls, wrote the book with the mission of tracking down the origins of ingredients in processed foods. He wanted to see if they exhibited terroir, the concept that the growing environment of an ingredient affects its taste.

Twinkies provide a convenient organizing principle to his investigations.

“I wondered, perhaps perversely, is there a terroir for polysorbate-60 or red number 40?” Ettlinger explained. “Is there, like, the best red number 40 source?” The answer, it turns out, is yes. He explained that the tree in Malaysia from which the oil in polysorbate is harvested, as well as the corn and other elements that go into its formulation, do have bearing on the final product.

Back to Twinkies, though. Ettlinger admitted that he’s not a huge fan of the snack, despite having a book based on it. But he has made his own Twinkies from organic cake mix and heavy cream. (His recipe is below.) Those, Ettlinger said, disappeared rapidly.

He started with a Twinkie mold. “You can make a Twinkie mold yourself, by wrapping foil around... a spice jar, or maybe an aspirin jar or something like that,” Ettlinger said. “But you definitely want a mold, otherwise they’re not Twinkies, it’s just cake.”

The heavy cream that he grabbed at the grocery store also included polysorbate-80, which lent an unexpected touch of authenticity to his homemade Twinkie. Before applying “two-and-a-half to three minutes of wildly manic elbow grease” to the whipping cream, he added confectioners sugar and vanilla.

As for the possible disappearance of pre-packaged Hostess Brand Twinkies, Ettlinger is certain that it doesn’t signal a future where store shelves are stocked only with kale chips. “We always need snacks, and we should have them,” Ettlinger said. He added with a chuckle that he’s also been known to sneak in an eclair or two on occasion.

Steve Ettlinger’s Homemade Twinkies
I like to keep it simple, as befits a simple snack cake — to use the fewest possible artificial ingredients and generate the most refreshing snack. Prices are from my local grocery store. —SE

Ingredients:

Dr. Oetker Organics Vanilla cake mix ($4.59) or King Arthur Golden Vanilla Cake mix ($8.99)
heavy cream (1 pint)
confectioner's sugar
vanilla flavoring
lots of elbow grease, if beating by hand (the best way)

Equipment:
large mixing bowl

sturdy whisk or electric beater
sheet cake pan or Twinkie mold pan (Norpro 3964 Cream Canoe Pan or homemade Twinkie molds)

1. Cake: Make cake according to directions on package; baking time might be shorter in Twinkie molds or large sheet pans! (Fill molds only part way or else they will over flow).

2. "Creamy filling" substitute, which in this case is actually a CREAM filling: Depending on your experience, do what you like with the whipped cream. For beginners, take about half a pint of cream, about a tablespoon of vanilla, possibly a pinch of salt, and about a half cup of sugar (all to taste). Beat VIGOROUSLY by hand for 2.5 to 3 minutes–really whip it up (you are incorporating air; sing "BEAT IT!" at the top of your lungs if need be, and watch out for splatter which must be licked up immediately), until cream suddenly stiffens and peaks form when you remove the whisk. Lick whisk repeatedly to taste (and add more sugar and/or vanilla as needed) and to satisfy increasing volume of chef and helpers' urges and needs. Reserve second half of pint purchased for do-overs and seconds.

3. If using sheets, simply spread a thick layer of cream on top of one and place another sheet on top, cut into rectangles or other small shapes. Prepare for criticism that they are not shaped like what we might now call "traditional" Twinkies.

If using molds, insert chopstick in three places in tops of each cake and wiggle around to create a cavity (wiggle the chopstick, not the chef, although that is always encouraged, too). Inject cream filling with pastry injector (included in Norpro item listed above) or pastry bag; mere amateurs can cut out a small slot, remove a small slot of cake in the absolute center, paste cream into void with spatula but without filling it to the surface, and replace the small surface slot. However, this probably will ooze cream when bitten into and is not recommended, even it if would be a fun mess to deal with. Note that the top, as baked, becomes the bottom when served. See philosophical note, below.

Note that whipped cream is fairly stable and excess can be stored in the refrigerator in a sealed container for other creative uses or emergencies.

Final, philosophical notes:

1. Some people might try to replicate the taste and feel of the "real" Twinkie, in which case the cake should be dripping extra oil and the filling should not be made with cream but rather with partially hydrogenated vegetable shortening, cellulose gum, polysorbate 60, high-fructose corn syrup, mono and diglycerides, and probably other things. This is not that.This is an informal, simple attempt to create what Twinkies only imitated — fresh pastry with fresh ingredients.

2. You cannot say which is the top and which is the bottom of molded Twinkies. They are interchangable. Deal with it.

Last Chance Foods: How WNYC Celebrates Thanksgiving

WNYC, New York Public Radio — Wed, 21 Nov 2012 16:00:00 -0500

Thanksgiving traditionally brings to mind images of turkey, cranberry sauce and pumpkin pie. In reality, though, the dishes that appear on our tables are as diverse as the friends and families gathered around them.

At my house, for instance, my parents — who moved to Tennessee from Taiwan more than 30 years ago — have never roasted a turkey at all. Instead, we almost always opt to make hot pot, which is like a Chinese version of fondue. A boiling pot of broth is set over a gas burner on the table. Then thinly sliced raw meat, seafood, greens, tofu and various other items are dropped in and cooked on the spot. Everyone then dips the cooked food in a soy-sauced based mixture customized in their own bowl.

While the food may not seem typical for Thanksgiving, the sentiment of being grateful for a bountiful meal and the warmth of loved ones is the same. At Amy Eddings' house sometimes a little extra warmth was provided by the annual tradition of her mother accidentally setting on fire the marshmallow topping for the sweet potato pie.

In light of that, I spoke with WNYC host Brian Lehrer, WQXR host Terrance McKnight, and On the Media co-host Brooke Gladstone to find out how they celebrate Thanksgiving. I also asked about some of dishes that best represent their spin on the holiday.

Brian Lehrer explained that he usually celebrates the holiday at his one of his cousins' house in New Jersey. He checked in with his cousin Craig, who told him the story of how one particular dish started appearing on their table.

Craig’s wife is Irish Catholic, and during their first Thanksgiving celebration 25 years ago, they wanted to include a Jewish dish that would represent Craig’s side of the family.

"So he asked his friend Bea to recommend a recipe, and she came up with this noodle pudding that her mother used to make as a Jewish immigrant from Cuba,” Brian said. “And the joke between them is that Bea's mother pronounced it 'nooodle poooding,' which I guess what pudding sounds like with a Yiddish-Spanish accent.”

As a result, noodle pooooding has now become a running joke in their household. Brian made the point that it also carries an important message, as well: “It reminds people that not all the immigrants came on the Mayflower."

Terrance McKnight generally travels a little further for his holiday. He told me recently that his family gathers in Cleveland for a traditional turkey meal. Still, not every dressing is mom’s dressing, though. "There is a particular way that my mother's turkey and dressing tastes, as opposed to some of my aunt's. So you can always tell who made the dressing."

Terrance said that his mother’s dressing tends to be a little more crisp than his aunt’s. His sister has started making it, as well, so she’ll preserve the recipe and put her spin on it.

In general, though, Terrance admitted that he’s unlikely to be found spending much time in the kitchen during the holidays at all. Instead, the television is usually turned down low or put on mute, and he’s tasked with providing the evening’s entertainment.

"As they're preparing dinner, I'm sitting at the piano and sometimes somebody will come sing very informally, but, you know, they'll just 'Oh, why don't you play this, why don't you play that?' so that's kind of my role."

Brooke Gladstone's gatherings tend on the large side. She's used to having anywhere between 17 to 20 people at her home for the holiday. She claims that’s simply because she’s has the largest dining room in her immediate family. One year, though, Brooke shied away from hosting duties and convinced her family to make a trip to Pennsylvania Dutch country. During that trip, she tried a dish called “cracker pudding,” which now makes a regular appearance at her Thanksgiving table.

Cracker pudding is made from saltines, dried coconut, egg yolks, egg whites, sugar, vanilla and milk. "I think that whenever I make it, it is without question the whitest thing either on or at the table,” said Brooke with a laugh.

Like noodle pudding, Brooke’s pudding shares the same dangerous-delicious quality of being salty and sweet. There was a year or two she didn’t make it, and the absence of cracker pudding was definitely noted and rectified in the following Thanksgivings, she added.

"This stuff is just forever useful in making you feel good at least at the moment that you're consuming it, however profoundly you may regret it later."

That’s a statement that likely characterizes many of the delicious and diverse dishes making an appearance this Thanksgiving.

Here’s a recipe that Brooke recommended for cracker pudding.

Terrance? Well, it’s likely his recipe would call for sheet music and a piano, so we’ll leave that to him.

Below, try Brian’s cousin Craig’s friend’s mother’s recipe for "Noooodle Pooooding."

Sweet Pudding

1 lb package cooked and drained Goodmans Noodles
6 eggs beaten
8 oz package cream cheese
1 1/2 lbs cottage cheese
16 oz jar of applesauce
1 cup white raisins
1 1/2 cup sugar
Nutmeg
cinnamon
1 stick (1/2 cup) cup butter, melted

Mix drained noodles with eggs, cream cheese, cottage cheese, applesauce, raisins, sugar, spices

Melt butter in 9x13 inch baking pan.

Add noodle mixture.

Cover with aluminum foil and bake at 350 degrees for 1 hour.

Uncover and bake 30 minutes longer.

"And then you have Noooodle Pooooding" — yes, this is written on the original recipe.

Last Chance Foods: Use Kabocha for Pumpkin Pie and Kick the Canned Stuff

WNYC, New York Public Radio — Fri, 16 Nov 2012 13:55:13 -0500

The crank of a can opener and the wet sound of suction — there’s a distinctly “semi-homemade” quality to many pumpkin pie recipes. With Thanksgiving less than a week away, cookbook author Hiroko Shimbo recommends avoiding canned filling and using kabocha squash in pie instead.

“Kabocha has very dense pulp and the flavor is very, very sweet,” said Shimbo about the squash, which has thin green skin and deep orange flesh. “So from that point of view, you can make very creamy, sweet pie filling.” She added that the flavor of kabocha squash also includes echos of chestnut.

“Butternut squash is not as sweet and [it’s] watery for use in pie or soup,” said Shimbo. She explained that for soup she cooks the kabocha two hours in the oven at 400 degrees Fahrenheit. "Cooking preserves, or strengthens, the richness of the squash,” she said.

Shimbo shared that recipe for kabocha squash soup (below) from her recently published cookbook, Hiroko’s American Kitchen. Roasting the squash whole in the oven also makes the rock hard winter squash much easier to cut into pieces. Shimbo admitted that before she learned that trick, she often did dangerous battle with the tough kabocha and sharp knives.

Another advantage kabocha has over other winter squash is that its skin is edible. While Shimbo removes the green skin to preserve the orange color of pie filling and soup, she also often braises it skin-on, in homestyle Japanese dishes like adzuki beans and kabocha stew.

The common belief is that vitamin- and nutrient-rich kabocha helps ward off winter colds. In particular, it provides a valuable source of vitamin A, which can often be hard to find in seasonal winter vegetables.

(Photo: Hiroko Shimbo/Courtesy of Hiroko Shimbo)

We simmer [it until] tender just using the very Japanese dashi, or stock, and a little bit of sugar, and a little bit of soy sauce,” said Shimbo.

That may be the traditional Japanese method of preparing kabocha, but the reality is that the Japanese squash is not native to the country at all. “Actually, the Portuguese brought the kabocha squash from Central America,” said Shimbo.

Here’s what Shimbo said to look for when picking out a kabocha: “It should weigh heavy, which means [the] pulp is just dense, very good condition. And also, the skin should not be fresh, green. It should be slightly dried because... storing the kabocha improves the sweetness.”

Below, try her recipe for spiced kabocha soup.

Spiced Kabocha Squash Soup
by Hiroko Shimbo
from Hiroko's American Kitchen

This spicy, slightly sweet, and richly textured soup is a wonderful addition to a Thanksgiving meal, but its warming satisfaction can be enjoyed throughout the fall and winter. Kabocha squash is loaded with nutrients, so much so that in Japan there is a saying: "Eating kabocha on the first day of winter keeps you from catching a cold." Because uncooked kabocha squash can be difficult to cut, I bake the whole squash, wrapped in aluminum foil, in the oven for about 1 1/2 hours, until very tender.

Makes 4 servings

1 medium kabocha squash (2 to 3 pounds); substitute butternut squash
1 medium carrot (4 ounces), peeled and cut into 1-inch pieces
1 small leek, white part only (2 ounces), cut into 1-inch pieces (2/3 cup)
4 cups kelp stock or low-sodium vegetable stock
2 tablespoons ginger juice, from grated 2 thumb-size piece of ginger
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1 1/2 tablespoons medium-aged light brown miso
1/2 teaspoon sea salt, plus more for finishing soup
1/4 cup olive oil
2 tablespoons pumpkin seeds, toasted

Preheat the oven to 400°F.

Rinse the kabocha squash and wrap it in aluminum foil. Put the squash in the oven and bake for 1 1/2 hours. Remove the squash from the oven and carefully remove the foil. Cut the squash in half and remove the seeds with a spoon, removing as little pulp as possible. Scoop out the pulp into a large bowl and measure out 2 1/3 cups of cooked squash. Freeze any extra pulp for later use. Reserve 1/4 cup of the green skin, julienned, for garnish.

Place the carrot, leek, and stock in a medium pot, cover, and place over medium-high heat. Bring to a boil, decrease the heat to medium-low, and simmer for 25 minutes or until the vegetables are tender.

Working in 3 to 4 batches, transfer the broth and cooked vegetables along with the pulp of the squash to a blender or food processor, and puree until smooth. Transfer the first pureed batch to a clean pot and repeat the process. In the last batch, add the ginger juice, cinnamon, nutmeg, miso, salt and olive oil and process.

Before serving gently reheat the soup and divide it into soup bowls. Sprinkle a tiny pinch of salt into each bowl, garnish each bowl with the julienned green squash skin and pumpkin seeds, and serve.

Last Chance Foods: Post-Sandy Farm Report

WNYC, New York Public Radio — Thu, 08 Nov 2012 17:30:05 -0500

Farmers are a tough bunch, and when it comes to Superstorm Sandy, many are counting themselves as lucky, too.

While Sandy brought damage to greenhouses in New Jersey and flooding to fields in Long Island, many farmers are reporting that the damage is minor in comparison to what was wrought last year by Tropical Storm Irene.

Michael Hurwitz, director of New York City’s green markets, is in touch with about 240 food purveyors who supply the city’s farmers markets. He said among the organization’s farmers, it sounds like Bodhitree Farm in Jobstown, New Jersey, was hit the hardest. Most of the farm’s greenhouses were damaged or destroyed. There was a similar story at Norwich Meadows Farm in Norwich, New York. They lost seven greenhouses.

But Hurwitz said that most farmers are making repairs, cleaning up, and trying to get back to business.

“You know, you gotta love these farmers,” Hurwitz said. “I walk up to Bill Maxwell (of Maxwell’s Farm in Changewater, N.J.) and say, 'How’d you make out?' And he said, ‘We’re doing good. We just lost the roof of our barn and had some damage to one of our greenhouses, but other than that, we’re pretty fine.’”

It’s the fish purveyors who are not yet back at the farmers market, said Hurwitz. "Unfortunately, they're all based in Long Island, where there is limited power, limited gas, limited supplies, so there's no processing facilities open to them if they were able to go out and fish."

Farms on Long Island are also starting the recovery process. Tom Wickham of Wickham’s Fruit Farm in Cutchogue said that the high tide brought by Superstorm Sandy caused the salt water to breach the dykes surrounding his land. A tree growing on top of the dyke fell and ripped a large hole in the fortification.

“Not since the 1940s, since we put up those dykes, have I seen a tide this high," said Wickham. “And I suspect that this is a thing that we’re going to have to look at in the future. I doubt if this is going to be the last time that we see those kinds of historic tides.”

Saltwater flooded about 20 acres of Wickham’s Fruit Farm, killing plants and trees, and raising the salinity of the soil. Wickham explained that rain will help bring that salinity down, but that he’d also continue irrigating through the winter to speed up the process.

“We lost acres and acres of strawberries, thousands of peach and apple trees, and the list just goes on and on,” he said. “And we’re not alone. All farms on Eastern Long Island that approach the bay, the Sound, and the creeks, the inlets have had some degree or another of salt water flooding.”

He cited Latham’s Fruit Farm in Orient, Long Island, and said that the majority of their land was flooded.

Widow’s Hole Oyster Co. in Greenport, Long Island, fared better simply because of the nature of their product. Mike Osinski said he moved most of his oyster stock out to deeper water before the storm, but did experience some equipment damage and downed trees.

At Stokes Farm in Old Tappan, New Jersey, Ron Binaghi Jr. said that they began preparing for the storm four days in advance. Everything was put away or tied down. In the end, he counted himself lucky — the farm only lost power for about 20 minutes. Unfortunately, the majority of his town experience a power outage that lasted about a week.

Stokes Farm wasn’t flooded as it’s further inland, but storm winds blew the roofs off of two greenhouses. It’s not the end of the world, Binaghi said, just $4,000 or $5,000 worth of plastic. And while four large trees also toppled over, they didn’t hit anything. Nothing they can’t handle, he added.

“As far as North Jersey goes, in my opinion, yes, it was a very big inconvenience and a real pain in the neck, but I think, when I watch TV, I realize we don’t have any problems,” said Binaghi.

Even snow delivered by last night's Nor’easter was manageable. “Anything underneath snow is never lower than 32 degrees, so snow is a great insulator,” explained Binaghi. “If it gets really, really cold — like in the low 20s right now — the thyme and sage and rosemary will be protected by the snow.”

All that means that Stokes Farm was back at the Lincoln Center green market by noon Thursday. As for other area green markets, for the most part it’s business as usual. The biggest change is that Union Square green market has been relocated to accommodate the utility workers currently using the park as a staging site. For the moment, the Union Square market — which accounts for about 40 percent of the city’s income from green markets — is located at Madison Square Park.

Check here for an updated schedule of the city’s green markets and to learn more about GrowNYC’s “Donate-a-Bag” relief effort.

Last Chance Foods: Chard Decisions

WNYC, New York Public Radio — Fri, 26 Oct 2012 15:08:30 -0400

There are lots of pigeons on the 4,000-square-foot roof of the Metro Baptist Church in Hell’s Kitchen. On its own, that’s not particularly surprising, but what is unexpected is that those birds are there with the intent of feasting on swiss chard. Even more unusual is that the leafy greens are growing in converted kiddie pools. To quote a venerable society columnist, “Only in New York, kids.”

Pigeons are a particular nuisance to swiss chard at the Hell’s Kitchen Farm Project, which is the collective name for the 52 kiddie pools on the roof of the church at West 40th Street. It’s a collaboration between the church, the food pantry, Clinton Housing Development Company and Metropolitan Community Church of New York. Each organization contributed resources with the intent of creating a community space that would educate and provide fresh produce to the neighborhood.

Farm coordinator Lauren Baccus said that the pigeons wrecked havoc on the plants last year, when they would dive bomb to munch on the leaves. It’s hard to blame the birds for being drawn to chard’s grassy flavor and high amounts of vitamins A, C, and K. This year, however, the creatures were thwarted after the farm’s workers installed fences and netting over the plants.

“The kiddie pool idea was very much in the tradition of our work: it was the most we could do with the limited resources we had,” Sherouse said. “And it seemed like the perfect fit given our weight constraints and our budget constraints.”

Nonetheless, there were still logistical hurdles. For instance, getting 7 metric tons of soil and materials up five flights of stairs onto the roof was also no small feat. The endeavor took place last summer and involved a fleet of volunteers who created bucket brigades and pulley systems up the front and back staircases of Metro Baptist Church. In addition to swiss chard, Hell’s Kitchen Farm Project also grows peas, zucchini, blueberries, tiny carrots, and more.

Baccus, who also works for the Clinton Housing Development Company, says this year’s chard harvest was particularly robust.

“It was first planted in the beginning of April actually, when we first had our big volunteer push,” she said. “Throughout the summer, we were able to harvest and actually got 65 pounds of swiss chard this year, and that exceeds the total harvest from last year.”

(Photo, left to right: Lauren Baccus, Halloween-ready Amy Eddings, and Alan Sherouse/Joy Y. Wang)

The continuous harvest was good news for Rauschenbush Metro Ministries, which is the food pantry run by Metro Baptist Church. “Everything that’s grown [on the roof] goes to the food pantry every Saturday in the same building,” explained Baccus.

Metro Baptist Church’s pastor Alan Sherouse said that the number of people served by the food pantry continues to grow. “We’ve seen an increase from around 400 people a month served, in terms of all those within particular families, to now over 600 within just the last few months,” he said. “And that represents some steady increase even over the last couple of years.”

Baccus hopes to draw neighborhood crowds again soon with Hell’s Kitchen Farm Project’s fall harvest celebration and benefit on November 13.

The event, as well as others on the roof, may help those in the area learn more about growing and eating fresh produce. Sherouse volunteered himself as evidence of the farm’s educational potential. “In me you have encountered someone who is not so familiar with [chard],” he confessed. “And I think in some ways, I’m an example of what happens when someone who has a pretty steady, at times unhealthy, at times meat and potatoes, kind of diet has that interrupted by the opportunities that a farm or a CSA provide.”

Baccus was initially drawn to the vibrant colors of rainbow chard and soon discovered that that it is also delicious. She offered her recipe for black bean chili with butternut squash and swiss chard as one way of enjoying it.

Black Bean Chili With Butternut Squash and Swiss Chard
"Perfect for fall, one of those meals made up of kitchen staples, remixed." —Lauren Baccus

2 tablespoons olive oil
1 1/2 cups chopped onions
3 garlic cloves, chopped
2 1/2 cups butternut squash, peeled and cut into 1/2 inch pieces
2 tablespoons chili powder
1 -2 teaspoon cinnamon
2 teaspoons ground cumin
3 (15 ounce) cans black beans, rinsed and drained
2 1/2 cups vegetable broth
1 (14 1/2 ounce) can diced tomatoes with juice
3 cups coarsely chopped swiss chard leaves

Heat oil in heavy large pot over medium-high heat. Add onions and garlic; saute until tender and golden, about 9 minutes.

Add squash; stir 2 minutes. Stir in chili powder, cinnamon, and cumin. Stir in beans, broth, and tomatoes with juices. Bring to boil.

Reduce heat and simmer, uncovered, until squash is tender, about 15 minutes.

Stir in chard; simmer until chard is tender but still bright green, about 4 minutes longer.

Season to taste with salt and pepper.

Ladle chili into bowls and serve. Sprinkle with chopped cilantro or red onion if desired.

Last Chance Foods: A Tropical Transplant in East New York

WNYC, New York Public Radio — Thu, 18 Oct 2012 18:42:57 -0400

Dora Hinds grew up as a city girl in her native Guyana, but that didn’t stop her from creating her own agricultural oasis when she moved to the Nehemiah houses in East New York, Brooklyn, several years ago. Her new home came with a large, sunny backyard, and Hinds quickly got to planting.

“I said, ‘well, God didn’t give me this backyard just to grow...a lawn,’” said Hinds, who eventually decided grass was more trouble than it was worth. “I said, ‘no, I’m not able [mow the lawn], I’m going to grow something that I can use.’” Because of that decision, she now has Malabar spinach thriving right by her back steps.

Malabar spinach is a tropical plant that thrives in hot, humid climates. She grew up eating the leafy green in Guyana, where it’s also known as “thick-leaf callaloo.” These days, Hinds brings any surplus harvest to East New York Farms, where she’s been a longtime member.

“Whatever I grow in my backyard I share with my neighbors, my friends at the church and if there’s an excess I take it to what we call the ‘share table’ in the farm itself,” Hinds said.

David Vigil, East New York Farms manager, grows Malabar spinach at the farm, too. He says it’s a favorite with the neighborhood’s Caribbean residents. “We grow produce from all over the Caribbean and all over the world according to what our customers are looking for,” he said, adding that Malabar spinach and other vegetables have been grown for decades in the neighborhood.

East New York Farms was started in 1998 as a way to bring fresh produce to the area and to serve as a community gathering space. Vigil said the weekly markets highlight some of the wide range of produce being grown in the neighborhood. “At different times of the year, we’ll see grapes, figs, beautiful pumpkins, malabar spinach, different kinds of peppers, eggplants, tomatoes,” he explained.

(Photo, from left: David Vigil, Amy Eddings, Dora Hinds/Joy Y. Wang)

Malabar spinach has the advantage of being both easy to grow and heat-resistant. When many leafy greens like spinach begin to bolt during the heat of summer, the tropical plant continues to thrive. It tastes much like thicker version of spinach, though it's not related to the plant. “We usually start it from seed in our greenhouse around late May and then plant it out into the garden sometime in June,” Vigil said. “And then we can be harvesting off those same plants up ‘til now, into October, and sometimes into November if the weather cooperates."

A trellis can help the plant grow because it likes to climb, but at East New York Farms the plants never quite get big enough to need the support — Vigil just snips off entire vines to sell at the market.

The plant itself can also be easily shared. Vigil said that many people give clippings to neighbors. The stems can just be placed in a glass of water and transplanted once roots develop.

(Photo: Malabar spinach cuttings from East New York Farms/Joy Y. Wang)

From that point, it can continue to produce a bounty for fresh, tasty green leaves. “We either steam it and eat it as a side dish, or we use it [in] a stew,” Hinds said, “but you have to be careful [of] how you’re using it in the stew.” That’s because Malabar spinach has mucilaginous properties. She said only add the leaves and tender shoots in shortly before the dish is done cooking. Hinds also advised not covering the dish, since Malabar spinach will release water during the cooking process.

If you come across some, try a recipe for Malabar Spinach Dal (Bachali Kura Pappu), Spinach Salad with Bacon and Roasted Mushrooms, or Tomato-Malabar Spinach Quiche. Let us know how it turns out!

Last Chance Foods: In the Cornfield

WNYC, New York Public Radio — Fri, 12 Oct 2012 15:30:07 -0400

A little dry weather can go a long way, according to Kurt Alstede of Alstede Farms in Chester, N.J. While crops in the Midwest were blasted with severe drought conditions this year, farms like Alstede’s fared much better in the Northeast’s moderately dry summer.

“Dry weather makes for much better quality crops,” Alstede explained. "There’s less disease pressure, sugar content is higher and less diluted, so people enjoy a much more flavorful fruit or vegetable during a dry weather period."

That applies to sweet corn, too, which is wrapping up its season right now. Alstede, who grows more than 500 acres of organic fruits and vegetables about an hour outside of New York City, has about 45 acres of corn, and he allows customers to pick their own. His crop also serves as a corn maze designed as a tribute to Lou Gehrig, who Alstede says continues to be a great role model.

Harvest time for sweet corn is particularly important, he added. Corn is only at its peak of sweetness for about five days before the kernels become bloated with water. Because of that, Alstede plants different varieties at various times to ensure a steady supply. He also explained that each stalk usually only produces one marketable ear of corn.

Some ears don’t even make it to the market table because they are first snatched for a rigorous (if not altogether scientific) test for sweetness. “Our tests are very simple: we eat it,” he said. “And we eat it raw, interestingly. People think, ‘oh, you can’t eat sweet corn raw.’ Well, of course you can. In fact, it’s very good.

(Photo: Kurt Alstede with Alstede Farm CSA shares./Courtesy of Alstede Farms)

It’s important that those ears aren’t harboring big fat worms, of course. To avoid that, Alstede Farms use an integrated pest management system that closely monitors insect population, and apply organic pesticides only when necessary.

The biggest challenge to growing organically is the application of nutrients to the soil, Alstede added. His corn fields are alternately covered with manure, leaf mulch and cover crops of red clover. Organic fertilizer is significantly more expensive than conventional fertilizer, and that’s why organic fruits and vegetables tend to be more expensive, he explained.

Alstede’s staff harvests corn as early as possible in the morning, when temperatures are at their lowest. “A lot of our staff will eat an entire ear raw in the morning just as a little pick me up when they’re done harvesting,” he said. “If you’ve never tried it, I would encourage you to do it.”

For the ears that aren’t immediately eaten, Alstede recommended refrigerating corn to preserve freshness. While he admits that the corn will keep best if you leave the husk on, he is not as adamant as food writer Betty Fussell about discouraging his customers from peeling the husks back to check for worms.

(Photo: Pick-your-own corn at Alstede Farms/Courtesy of Alstede Farms)

He’s got a very pragmatic reasons for that. “If people want to peel back their ears of corn, my feeling is, let me them peel back their ears of corn,” he said. “If the cost of doing that is three or four ears per bushel, a bushel is 50 ears, then so be it. I’ll price the crop appropriately, knowing that I’m going to lose four ears out of 50 each day, and everyone’s going to be happy.”

While fresh, raw corn makes for a good snack, you can also try Alstede Farms’ recipe for Basil Tomato Creamed Corn, below.

Basil Tomato Creamed Corn

3-4 ears corn
3/4 cup heavy cream
6-8 slices pancetta, diced
3/4 cup peeled and seeded chopped tomato
3 minced shallots
1/2 cup finely sliced chopped green onions
1 clove of garlic minced
1/3 cup dry vermouth
2 T Parmesan cheese, grated
1 T minced basil
Salt and pepper to taste

Cut the corn off the corncob, set aside. Cut each corncob in half.

In a small sauce pan, bring the corn cob and the cream to a gentle simmer. Reduce heat and simmer for about ten minutes.

In a large sauté pan, brown the pancetta, drain set aside

Drain all but one Tablespoon of the bacon fat.

Add tomatoes, shallot, onions and garlic, cook over medium heat for about five minutes.

Strain the cream-cob mixture, set aside. Discard the corn cobs.

Add the corn to the green onion and cook for another five minutes.

Add the vermouth and cook for another two to three minutes.

Add the cream mixture and stir until thick. Do not allow the mixture to boil. Lower the heat and add cheese and pancetta. Season with salt and pepper. Sprinkle with chopped fresh basil and serve.

Last Chance Foods: Eggplants of All Stripes and Colors

WNYC, New York Public Radio — Fri, 28 Sep 2012 15:09:09 -0400

Europeans used to believe that eating so-called “mad apples” caused insanity, leprosy and bad breath. Fortunately, these days, we know that eggplant is a healthy, delicious vegetable used in everything from eggplant parmesan to Thai curries.

Gail Hepworth, the production manager of Hepworth Farms in Milton, N.Y., is a particular fan of the vegetable. Her farm grows more than 15 types of eggplant for community supported agriculture groups and the Park Slope Food Co-op.

Hepworth thinks that eggplant’s negative association might have been caused by its mild toxicity. Like tomatoes, peppers, potatoes and other nightshade vegetables, eggplant contains solanin, an alkaloid that can be toxic in large quantities. Younger eggplants tend to have more solanin, but unless you’re particularly sensitive to it, you’d have to eat about 36 raw eggplants for solanin levels to be dangerous.

The vegetable is particularly good right now in early fall, when it’s at the peak of its season.

The large, oblong, deep purple, Italian type is most well-known to Americans, but eggplants come in a wide variety of colors — from white and yellow to red and purple — and as many sizes and shapes.

“I keep hearing that eggplant was white traditionally and historically, and it evolved to have color,” said Hepworth, adding that white eggplants bruise easily and that might have been one reason dark-colored eggplants became more popular.

“In fact, maybe that name eggplant came from little round, white eggplants,” Hepworth surmised, adding that the white eggplants have an advantage when it comes to taste, as well. “It’s has no [bitterness]. It’s mild, sweet, creamy.”

While some may dislike the bitter quality of some eggplants, Hepworth admits that it’s a taste she doesn’t mind. “I have never salted an eggplant to take the bitterness out... or pounded,” she said. “But I know that a lot of Italians do that.”

(Photo: Gail Hepworth, Amy Hepworth, and Gerry Greco of Hepworth Farms/Courtesy of Hepworth Farms)

That’s one step that’s easy to skip. For those looking for an even easier way to cook eggplant, Hepworth recommended the small, purple- and white-striped fairy tale eggplants that are about one- to three-inches long.

“They’re so quick to cook,” she said. “If you put them under the grill or you just put them in the oven, they would be ready in a couple of minutes.”

Eggplant is also easy farmers and gardeners.

“It’s not really that hard to grow,” said Hepworth. “We actually kind of ignore the eggplant and it just keeps coming.”

Hepworth said that she’s a fan of roasting eggplant with tomatoes, but that she doesn’t get much time to cook during the harvest season. Instead, she shared two recipes for eggplant caponata from her favorite restaurants in the Hudson Valley.

Check those out below, and let us know which one you like better. Also, do you salt or pound your eggplant to eliminate bitterness? Tell us in the comments section.

Global Palate’s Eggplant Caponata
by Jessica Winchell, Chef-Owner of The Global Palate Restaurant

1 medium eggplant, diced
1 yellow squash, diced
1 zucchini, diced
1 medium onion, diced

Sautee in 1/4 c. olive oil until soft.

Add:

1 tablespoon diced garlic
1 cup puree peeled fresh tomatoes,
1/2 cup cider vinegar
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup raisons
2 tbsp. diced basil

Cook for 15 minutes

To be served over fish, as a cold dip, or on pasta or polenta.

The Artist’s Palate Eggplant Caponata
by Megan and Charles Fells Jr., chef-owners of The Artist’s Palate
serves 6-8

3 cups olive oil
2 lbs. eggplant, cut into 1″ cubes
2 red bell peppers diced
1 large yellow onion, chopped
1 rib celery, roughly chopped
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste
3 tbsp. tomato paste, thinned with 1/4 cup water
1 cup crushed canned tomatoes
6 oz. green olives, pitted and roughly chopped
1/2 cup white wine vinegar
1/2 cup golden raisins
1/4 cup salt-packed capers, rinsed and drained
3 tbsp. sugar
2 tbsp. finely grated unsweetened chocolate
1/2 cup finely shredded basil
2 tbsp. pine nuts

Heat oil in a 12 inch skillet over medium-high heat. Working in batches, add eggplant and fry, tossing occasionally, until browned, 3–4 minutes. Using a slotted spoon, transfer eggplant to a large bowl; set aside. Pour off all but 1/4 cup oil, and reserve for another use. Return skillet to heat, add onions and celery, and season with salt and pepper; cook, stirring often, until beginning to brown, 10 minutes. Reduce heat to medium, and add tomato paste and cook, stirring, until caramelized and almost evaporated, 1–2 minutes. Add crushed tomatoes and continue cooking for 10 minutes. Stir in olives, vinegar, raisins, capers, sugar, and chocolate, and cook, stirring occasionally, until thickened, about 15 minutes. Transfer to bowl with eggplant, along with basil and pine nuts, and mix together. Season with salt and pepper, and let cool to room temperature before serving.

Last Chance Foods: Forget the Gingham, This is How to Put Up Tomatoes for Winter

WNYC, New York Public Radio — Fri, 21 Sep 2012 15:58:00 -0400

Francis Lam has a confession: He doesn’t like to can. The Gilt Taste editor may spend his days touting the glories of caramelized watermelon salad and chatting about food and culture with chef Eddie Huang, but a home canner he is not.

“I can’t tell if I should admit to not doing it because … it’s kind of like, ‘Oh, you’re a food person, you’re supposed to be canning and preserving,’” said Lam, who added that he probably only goes through the old timey process once every three years.

That’s not to say Lam isn’t willing to put in a significant amount of work in order to squirrel away tomatoes in some form for the winter. He just prefers to spend his hours slaving over a hot stove to make tomato paste. But his aversion to canning may stem from more sartorial origins.

“I think that [canning] is great, absolutely,” Lam said. “But the whole standing over the stove with the sweat and the steam and, like, I don’t own gingham, like it’s not really my speed.”

Wardrobe concerns aside, though, why spend the same amount of effort to make tomato paste? Lam recently wrote that his girlfriend’s reaction to his endeavor was, “Congratulations! You just made tomato paste. It’s cheap and comes in cans.”

Lam said it all comes down to taste. Forget the sad, sour flavor of canned tomato paste. In fact, he doesn’t even consider the end result to be tomato paste at all. Instead, he refers to it as “tomato concentrate.” The difference begins in the technique, which was drawn from Lam’s experience making sofrito in culinary school.

“The chef [in culinary school] said, ‘you know, really take the time to cook this down, and what you want to do is make it almost like a jam,’” he recalled. “The idea of turning it into a jam really stuck in my head, like that level of concentration.”

(Photo: Francis Lam/Molly Wizenberg)

That means cooking the tomatoes with olive oil, which adds to the flavor of the final product. “I started [using oil] to help it along, get a little more heat, and help it start cooking,” Lam explained. “But what that does, too, is it emulsifies back into the tomato, and it gives it this real round richness in the flavor, and it kind of tames the edges if it’s a little sour.”

As they slowly cook, Lam said to expect the concoction to start to look like a slippery, bubbly mess. But eventually the sugar in the tomatoes will caramelize and the color will begin to darken.

“[There is] not just this sort of one-note sweetness but it gets more complex and it gets darker,” he said. “And I think those two things really make this taste so much different than tomato paste you would just buy.”

For those who shy away from three hours slaving over the stove for any reason, Lam does offer an alternative: Dried tomatoes. “The really nice thing about making it yourself is that it takes basically no work, and you can really control how dry you want it,” he said. “I think that makes a huge difference.”

Similar to how he insists his tomato concentrate is a world apart from canned tomato paste, Lam maintains that homemade oven-dried tomatoes are a far cry from the chewy, oily sun-dried tomatoes found in so many supermarkets.

In fact, Lam hates sundried tomatoes so much that he referred to their popularity in the ‘80s as “Red Dawn: The Sundried Tomato Invasion.” While he allows that there may be some acceptable specimens out there, for the most part, “they’re kind of nasty, like often they’re really chewy and, again, really sour.”

So it’s important to make the distinction that what he makes at home is not that.

The process just involved slicing up tomatoes, arranging them on a sheet tray or silicone baking mat, and then letting them shrivel away in an oven on very low heat — “really low, 200 or 250,” said Lam.

The resulting dried tomatoes make for a snack in and of themselves, or can be a flavorful addition to sandwiches.

“I do actually like to do something, like mix it in with eggplant,” Lam said. “[I] cook eggplant down for a long time until it almost basically melts and throw bits of these dried tomatoes in there to give a real spark of a different flavor, of a little acidity to like this really rich eggplant.”

For those looking for a gingham-free, fun way of spending three hours, find Lam’s directions for making “The Bomb Tomato Concentrate” below. You’ll also find his instructions for the more “set it and forget it” process of making dried tomatoes.

The Bomb Tomato Concentrate
by Francis Lam

Makes about 1 cup

½ head garlic (optional)
1 medium onion (optional)
3 pounds super ripe, juicy tomatoes
¼ cup extra virgin olive oil
2 pinches salt

Cut, chop, puree: If using, mince garlic and onion in a food processor and reserve. Roughly chop tomatoes, and puree them to liquid in the food processor. (If you don’t have a food processor, no sweat. Just finely chop everything, and save as much of the tomato juice as you can.)

Warm oil: In a wide, heavy pot, warm the oil over medium-low heat. You want the pot to be wide so that the water evaporates more quickly. And you want it to be heavy, to cook evenly without scorching (which will really ruin the paste, and your day). If using, add the garlic and onion and cook, stirring, until very soft, 15 minutes or so. Add a pinch of salt. If you want to go full-caramelize on the onions, hey, it’s your world.

Strain tomatoes (optional): If you’re unhappy with tomato skins and seeds, pass the pureed tomato through a fine-mesh strainer. (I won’t judge if you don’t bother.)

Cook tomatoes: Pour the tomato into the pot, turn heat up to high, and bring to a boil. Add a couple light pinches of salt. Reduce heat to a simmer, give it a stir, and wait. You’ll cook it for a long time, but it’s hard to say how long since tomatoes differ in water content. Bank on 90 minutes or more.

Wait: Wait.

Wait some more: Wait. And stir, too, more frequently as the tomato loses its juice and thickens. I use a heat-proof rubber spatula, since it clears the pot more thoroughly. Keep cooking and stirring. It’ll get thick and annoyingly splattery for a while, as it gets to a pizza-sauce thickness. You can partially cover the pot when that happens, then uncover it again when enough water’s boiled off so that it no longer splatters.

You’re almost there: When it starts to look pasty, you’ll notice that it’ll get stickier. Keep stirring, clearing the pot, mixing back in the thin, darkening layer at the bottom, and spreading the paste out. At some point, it may look like the oil wants to weep out; this is good. When the paste suddenly sticks together like dough and slides around the pot, you’re done. Congratulations!

Store: Turn paste into a dish or bowl and let cool. Pack into containers, press a layer of plastic wrap directly on to the surface, and store in the fridge for weeks, or in the freezer for months. Stir into anything.

Oven-dried tomatoes
by Francis Lam (Photo by Whitney Chen)

Makes about 1 cup of dried tomato slices

2 pounds fresh ripe tomatoes (any variety)
2 teaspoons olive oil, plus more to store, if desired
2 pinches salt

Preheat and slice: Preheat oven to 200⁰ F, or thereabouts. Cut tomatoes into ¼” slices and lay them on a tray or two without any overlap. (A silicone mat, parchment, or nonstick baking sheet work nicely, but aren’t necessary.) Very lightly salt them and dab a finger in the oil and lightly rub it onto the tomatoes, just enough to moisten them. Ew, that sounded grody.

Let the oven do its thing: Put the tomatoes in the oven for about 2½ hours. Halfway or so into it, rotate the trays. Or forget to do it; it’ll probably be fine. They’re ready when they’re like fruit leather: dried, chewy, no visible juice but still a little pliable. If 2½ hours doesn’t do it, keep checking on them every 15 minutes. If you want to speed it up, you can flip the tomato slices at some point.

Store: When they’re done, take them out and let the tomatoes cool on the tray. Store them in an airtight container. Chop and scatter them on anything your heart desires. It’s probably not necessary to keep them in the fridge, but I do, just in case there’s still some residual moisture left in them. You can cover them in olive oil, if you’d like, which will flavor the oil. They keep for months.

Last Chance Foods: A Plethora of Peppers

WNYC, New York Public Radio — Fri, 14 Sep 2012 14:49:19 -0400

Take a stalled construction site next to a restaurant, add 7,400 repurposed milk crates, throw in a couple of innovative restaurateurs and farmers and the result is Riverpark, a restaurant with a temporary farm on East 29th Street in Kips Bay.

Riverpark Farm got its start last year on 15,000 square feet that was originally designated to be the site of the Alexandria Center’s west tower. Construction on the office building was put on hold indefinitely after the 2008 financial crisis and, soon enough, a temporary urban farm was born.

Now the farm grows more than 180 plants in stacked milk crates, providing Riverpark chef Sisha Ortúzar with a rotating bounty of fresh, seasonal produce. As to the crates, well he explained the inspiration forusing that specific container: “Milk crates are just really great containers because they stack, they’re easy to carry.”

That means when tropical storm Irene struck last fall, the plants were easily transported indoors for safekeeping. Also, when construction on the farm’s site resumes, the farm can simply be moved elsewhere.

This year, Riverpark Farm’s pepper plants really took to the crates and were particularly abundant. Farmer Zach Pickens said that plant grows particularly well in the cubic-foot crates.

“Mainly I’ve grown [peppers] in containers,” he said. “I’ve grown peppers, especially small pepper plants, in as small as a two-gallon bucket.”

The site has also helped the pepper pants thrive. Pickens explained that the farm’s site experiences a “heat island” effect. That means, it’s always a few degrees warmer there than at other farms outside of the city. The relatively dry season this summer has also aided the boon.

“The hot or sweet aspects of peppers is genetic,” explained Pickens. “So hot peppers are genetically, you know, predisposed to being hot. Now it’s a matter of degree [of spiciness], and typically when pepper plants are overwatered, they aren’t quite as hot. So it’s good to kind of shade toward underwatering.”

(Photo: Zach Pickens and Sisha Ortúzar at Riverpark Farm/Ari Nuzzo)

When faced with a mountain of spicy peppers from the farm, Ortúzar doesn’t quail. He uses some fresh, and then preserves the rest. “You don’t have to dehydrate or make hot sauce,” he said. “I mean, it can be a lot simpler. You can just slice them, cover them in vinegar, put them in a little jar in the refrigerator. And then, like, three months from now when you can’t get your fresh peppers you might go in there and be like ‘I’m glad to have that.’”

Ortúzar said that he’ll often also drain the vinegar and cover the pickled peppers in oil, which he will also keep in the refrigerator.

But some peppers, like the long, red Cheyenne, he prefers to use in hot sauce.

Ortúzar’s favorite pepper, though, is the Aji Verde, a thin-walled, bright green pepper often grown in his native Chile. Since it’s not too spicy, he just slices it up and eats it with tomatoes. ”It’s not something that’s traditionally grown here,” Ortúzar said. “For me, it always just reminds me of summer.”

Another deceptively less spicy pepper is the cachucha pepper. It’s considered a seasoning pepper and often used in Caribbean dishes, according to Ortúzar. “It looks like a habanero or a scotch bonnet, and it has that same aroma,” he said. While cachuchas have the unique flavor qualities of habaneros, there is one very important difference: “They have all that flavor without the heat,” he said.

That makes for good material for a friendly prank, Ortúzar added with a chuckle. “They look like habaneros,” he said, “so you can look really tough in front of your friends, just chewing on them.”

For those with a variety of sweet and spicy peppers on hand, try Ortúzar’s recipe for chilled spicy farm pepper soup, below.

Chilled Spicy Farm Pepper Soup
by Sisha Ortúzar

Olive oil
1 small red onion, medium dice
3 red bell peppers, seeded with ribs removed, medium dice
1 Padron pepper, minced (if Padron peppers are not available, Serrano peppers are a fine substitute)
1 clove garlic, sliced
Kosher salt
5 sprigs of thyme, picked
1 bay leaf
Sherry vinegar (to taste, about 1 tablespoon)
Extra-virgin olive oil (to taste, about ¼ cup)
About 4 cups water

To garnish:

1 small cucumber, small dice
¼ cup cilantro leaves
Charred Chile Sauce*

Over a low flame, heat enough olive oil to coat the bottom of a large soup pot until it moves easily across the bottom. Add the onion, peppers and garlic to the pot, season with salt and continue to cook slowly. When the onion starts to become translucent, add the thyme and bay leaf and continue to cook until their aromas bloom. Then, add the water and continue cooking until the peppers are fully cooked and soft, adding more water if needed.

Remove the bay leaf and transfer the remaining contents of the pot into a blender. Blend on a high setting until the soup is smooth.

Taste, then add extra-virgin olive oil and sherry vinegar to adjust the texture and acidity to your taste. Transfer the soup into a container and refrigerate until fully chilled.

To serve, pour the soup into a bowl, drizzle with about ½ tablespoon of Charred Chile Sauce and garnish with cucumber and cilantro.

*Charred Chile Sauce

8 dried chipotle chiles
2 dried ancho chiles
¾ cup grapeseed oil
2 tablespoons white wine vinegar
2 tablespoons sugar
1 tablespoon minced garlic
1 tablespoon kosher salt
Juice from ½ a lime

NOTE: Don’t underestimate the need for proper ventilation when charring chiles. The fumes from the chiles can be very powerful.

Place an oven or cooling rack on top of a gas burner. Place the chiles on the rack and char over an open flame. Using tongs, turn the chiles as they char. Once the chiles puff up and turn completely black, remove from the heat and cool.

Discard the stems from all the chiles as well as the seeds from the anchos. Add the chiles and all the remaining ingredients into a food processor or blender and mix until fully incorporated. (Makes about 1 ¼ cups and any remaining sauce can be kept in a container and refrigerated for 2 to 4 weeks.)

Last Chance Foods: Cantaloupe Concerns

WNYC, New York Public Radio — Thu, 06 Sep 2012 16:45:29 -0400

A few weeks ago, cantaloupe from a farm in southwestern Indiana was linked to an outbreak of salmonella that sickened 178 people across the nation. Between this recent incident, and a similar problem with listeria -contaminated cantaloupe from Colorado reported last year, the fruit is causing a great deal of concern for consumers and farmers alike.

Thomas Wickham of Wickham’s Fruit Farm in Cutchogue, Long Island, sells cantaloupe at his farm stand and says he’s been fielding questions from many of his customers. “We think that most of the disease problems come from big packing houses where they actually submerge the melons in different kinds of solutions, and sometimes that solution gets contaminated and covers them all,” explained Wickham, who added that his cantaloupe sales have remained steady. "We just brush them off, get the sand and dirt off them and sell them fresh, just they way they are.”

Food safety expert Marion Nestle expounded that, when the melon is cut, bacteria on the outside of the melon contaminates the flesh inside when it travels on the blade of the knife. “You can try washing,” she said. “You can drop it in boiling water for a minute, and that’ll take care of everything that’s on the outside, but otherwise I guess there’s a risk involved in it, especially if you’re buying it from a big commercial grower.”

If the prospect of slightly boiled melon is not particularly appealing, Nestle believes that avoiding mass-grown cantaloupe is a good way to lessen the risk of getting contaminated fruit. “If they’re coming from a farmers market, the probability of contamination is much, much less,” she said. That reason for that, she added, is because oftentimes the contamination occurs during the washing and packing process, as Wickham noted. Smaller operations generally don't include those steps before sending the melons to market.

Wickham also had some advice on picking out a sweet, ripe melon, though he said it can be hard even for farmers to tell. First off, he discounted the method of pressing on the stem point of the melon.

(Photo: Thomas Wickham at Wickham's Fruit Farm/Courtesy of Thomas Wickham)

“If you press very hard, you go right through it — you got to be careful — and, really, it’s not about pressing,” he said. “There are two indices that we think are really important and one of them is, it has to have a lot of netting. That white netting on the outside — the more netting there is the sweeter and the better quality the melon.”

The netting, or pattern on the exterior of the melon, should be consistent. “Uniformity is important,” Wickham said. “It would be good to have that netting all the way around it, more or less uniform. That makes a better quality melon.”

When it comes to locally grown melon, though, the farmer did explain that it’s challenging to grow melons on Long Island, given the rain and humidity of the area. Cantaloupes are a desert crop that thrive in hot, dry conditions. “It’s just very difficult to prevent mildew and those kinds of diseases of the plant,” Wickham explained. “That’s what fungicides and what spraying is for. And I don’t think that any of us who grow melons, or scarcely any of us who grow melons, on Long Island try to do it organically. It’s just too risky.”

Organic methods of fungus control, like using sulphur, are not effective, Wickham said. Without the fungicides he applied once every 10 days, he said, the plants simply wouldn’t survive.

Once the crop is safely harvested, Wickham has a simple method of enjoying the fruit. “For myself, just to cut it, remove the seeds and have ice cream on it,” he said. “That’s just perfect in the summer time.”

For those looking for more innovative uses of cantaloupe, try the recipe Wickham provided for cantaloupe granita, which is below.

Cantaloupe Granita
Yield 4-8 servings

1 ¼ cups superfine sugar
½ cup water
¼ cup lightly packed fresh mint leaves
2 medium cantaloupes (about 4 lbs each), peeled and seeded, cut into 1-inch wedges
Pinch of salt

Combine the sugar and water over low heat until the sugar has dissolved. Add the mint. Remove the pan from heat and let cool.

Puree the fruit in a food processor until liquefied. Pour the fruit into a medium bowl and add the salt. Remove the mint leaves from the syrup. Add the syrup to the pureed fruit and mix well.

Pour the cantaloupe mixture into a pre-chilled 7 by 12 inch glass baking dish.* Place it uncovered into the freezer. Stir with a fork every 30 minutes until almost completely frozen but still grainy, about 3 to 4 hours.

*This works best in two glass loaf pans or one 7 by 12 baking dish. The only critical point is not to stir it past the almost frozen state or the ice crystals will become too fine and hard to scrape.

Last Chance Foods: A Farm Grows in Red Hook

WNYC, New York Public Radio — Fri, 31 Aug 2012 15:06:53 -0400

A tree grows in Brooklyn — a pear tree, to be specific, and it’s currently flourishing in 18 inches of soil piled on top of asphalt at the Red Hook Community Farm. A few weeks ago, the tree offered its first ever harvest of pears, and, as part of the farm’s Added Value youth empowerment program, Brooklyn teens helped clip off the ripe fruit. The pears served as both a snack for the kids and as part of the farm’s community supported agriculture shares.

Ian Marvey, the co-founder of the Red Hook Community Farm, explained that the tree is a Red Bartlett and, like many fruit trees, grows for several years before bearing fruit. “It’s a tree planted about seven years ago, and for whatever reason this year, the harvest has been fecund,” he said. “It’s beautiful."

Selena Gonzalez, a senior youth leader at the farm, added that the farm grew and sold melons for the first time this year, and also recent harvests included collard greens, kale, chard and corn. “Corn isn’t one of the easiest things to grow on our farm,” said Gonzalez, who explained that the crop is susceptible to bugs. It also has to contend with growing in the relatively thin layer of soil on the farm.

The geographic context of the farm is nearly as remarkable as the asphalt that lays under its plants. “It took me awhile to get used to the fact that there was a farm, like, right across the street from the projects,” admitted Gonzalez, who lives a few blocks away.

The teenager added that the experience has been invaluable, in particular, because it taught her to enjoy vegetables — a lesson she now helps pass on to her peers through work on the farm.

“I’m not even going to lie, I didn’t like the words ‘You gotta eat your greens’ at all,” Gonzalez said. “Before I started working there I wasn’t a greens person …I would literally just eat carrots and lettuce. Like, I wasn’t a tomato person. You would not catch me eating collard greens.”

(Photo: Red Hook Community Farm/CP Thornton)

Planting, growing and harvesting fresh produce on the farm provided her more exposure to different vegetables, but it was really the farm’s weekly community meal that changed her mind. “We take about an hour out of time to prepare a meal with food grown from the farm, and that really expanded my horizons,” Gonzalez said. “I really started eating a lot of different thing, like beets, collard greens, kale — I didn’t even know what kale was until we had this little workshop about it about two [or] three years ago.”

Marvey explains that convincing kids to eat healthfully is hard work. “Behavior change ... is very difficult,” he said. “The commercial food industry is several billion dollars in advertising, and so we’re coming up against constant community saturation of images, ideas and marketing of unhealthy food.”

One introductory vegetable that Marvey uses to warm kids up to leafy greens is lemon sorrel. He has the kids munch the tart, tangy green and likens the taste to sourpatch kids.

The hope is that teens like Gonzalez will serve as catalysts and encourage their peers and families to eat fresh produce. For instance, she now encourages her mom to buy kale when they go food shopping together. “I’m trying to get her to come to the market on a Saturday, you know, when she can use her food stamps there,” Gonzalez said.

Marvey added that part of convincing kids to enjoy vegetables is to give them room to have their own opinion about what they do — and don’t — like. “We have a policy on the farm that’s ‘Don’t yuck my yum,’ so people are allowed to not like food, which also super important,” he said.

That policy stems, in part, from Marvey’s own tastes. “You know, there’s lots of vegetables that I just don’t like, but I got turned on to kohlrabi this year," he said. Marvey’s change of heart with regards to the vegetable is a symbolic success for the Red Hook Community Farm: He decided he liked it after sampling a kohlrabi and apple salad made by the kids on the farm. “I think it really is that exposure [that makes a difference],” Marvey said.

Last Chance Foods: Cool Cukes

WNYC, New York Public Radio — Fri, 24 Aug 2012 14:38:23 -0400

With farmers markets currently offering everything from lemon cucumbers to Asian cucumbers, author Mindy Fox said now is the time to try the different varieties. Cucumbers are at the peak of their season, and many types provide a welcome contrast to their conventional watery and waxy brethren.

“It’s one of the most exciting veggies at the market,” said Fox, the editor of La Cucina Italiana magazine and the author of Salads: Beyond the Bowl. “Even though we have corn and beets and all the summer peaches and everything, I go nuts for cucumbers.”

That’s in part because cucumbers are so versatile, thanks to their subtle, grassy flavor, she explained. While the fruit (that’s right, cucumbers are considered a fruit) can be a star player in any salad or cold dish, “they also are great equalizers for other ingredients,” Fox said. “For example, if you make a cucumber and pineapple pico de gallo, they kind of counterbalance the sweetness of the pineapple, or you can use them with beets and they counterbalance the earthiness.”

Cutting cucumbers in different shapes also changes the texture and quality of the fruit. Fox particularly likes to use her mandolin to thinly slice cucumbers to make a vegetable-based carpaccio. Though cucumbers may not pack the same nutritional punch as other late summer fruits and vegetables, they do have a high water content that makes them refreshing on warm summer days.

A fan of the popping crispness of cucumber seeds, Fox pointed out that lemon cucumbers have a particularly large seed pod. “When you cut open that one,” she said, “you’ll see and understand the relationship of cucumbers to melons, which they’re actually in the same family.”

(Photo: Mindy Fox)

Some people may prefer “burpless” cucumbers, like long, thin Asian cucumbers because they are nearly seedless. “[There are called burpless] because some people, as they digest a cucumber, they end up having a burping reaction, and that is because they’re not digesting the seeds well,” Fox explained.

Asian cucumbers are about an inch in diameter and slightly curved. They are similar to the straight and uniform European cucumbers, also known as English cucumbers, which often come wrapped in cellophane at grocery stores. “Though they’re not the same, they share that [burpless] property, too,” Fox said.

Fox recommended making the most of this season’s cucumbers with a salad recipe (below) that pairs them with heirloom tomatoes and fresh herbs. “[This recipe is] one of my favorites,” she said. “It’s really easy to do and it’s super duper refreshing.”

For those looking to add a little zing to their cukes, Fox also offered a recipe for Spicy Sesame Cucumbers.

Cucumber and Summer Tomato Salad with Fresh Herb Leaves and Barely Pickled Red Onion
By Mindy Fox

When summer tomatoes finally arrive, I keep a bowl of mixed varieties at the ready; they seem to make their way into nearly every meal of the day. Any type of good fresh tomato works well in this salad, and the same goes for the cuke, but when you can, use a mix of heirloom tomatoes—like teardrop, cherry, grape, or cocktail—and try an unusual cucumber—like the crunchy Armenian, the pale green, mild-tasting Persian or sweet, yellow lemon varieties—any of which might be found at a farmers’ market or large supermarket. —MF

Serves 4 to 6

1 small red onion, halved and very thinly sliced
1 tablespoon red wine vinegar
Fine sea salt
2 1/2 pounds mixed tomatoes, cut into 1/4-inch wedges
1 medium cucumber, or 2 to 3 Persian or lemon cucumbers, very thinly sliced crosswise
1 cup loosely packed combination of mint, basil and tarragon leaves, large leaves torn
2 tablespoons snipped chives
Flaky coarse sea salt
Very good extra-virgin olive oil for drizzling

In a small bowl, toss together the onion, vinegar and 1/4 teaspoon salt. Let stand for 10 minutes, then drain, discarding the vinegar.

In a large serving bowl, arrange the tomatoes and cucumber. Scatter the marinated onion, herb leaves and chives over the salad. Crush several generous pinches of flaky coarse sea salt over the top then drizzle generously with oil.

Spicy Sesame Cucumbers
by Mindy Fox

Serves 3 to 4 as a side dish

These piquant cukes make a great accompaniment to any Asian meal; I serve them with Tea-Brined Five-Spice Roast Chicken from my cookbook, A Bird in the Oven and Then Some. They’re also great with BBQ. Conventional, European or Middle Eastern (aka Persian) cucumbers all work well here.—MF

1 tablespoon sesame seeds
1 medium to large cucumber, preferably a skinny one, or 4 or 5 small Persian cucumbers
1/4 cup toasted sesame oil
1/4 teaspoon red pepper flakes plus more for serving
1/4 teaspoon fine sea salt plus more for serving
Pinch sugar

Heat the sesame seeds in a small skillet over low heat, shaking the pan back and forth occasionally, until the seeds turn a light golden brown, about 4 minutes. Remove the pan from the heat and let sit for a minute (the seeds will take on more color), then transfer the seeds to a plate to cool.

Trim the cucumber at each end, then peel lengthwise, leaving on thin strips of peel to create stripes. Cut the cucumber crosswise into 1/4-inch-thick rounds.

In a large bowl, whisk together the oil, red pepper flakes, salt, and sugar. Add the cucumber and toss evenly to coat. Use your hands to gently press each cucumber round into the pool of oil and spices in the bottom of the bowl so that each can pick up some of the salt. Transfer to a serving dish and use a spatula to drizzle all of the oil mixture over the cucumbers.

Using a mortar and pestle (or a spare spice or pepper grinder), finely grind the sesame seeds (seeds can be left whole, but have more flavor when ground). Sprinkle the seeds over the cucumbers, then sprinkle with additional salt and more red pepper flakes, if desired.

Last Chance Foods: Growing a Community Garden

WNYC, New York Public Radio — Fri, 17 Aug 2012 15:42:11 -0400

Author Robin Shulman still remembers shoveling syringes into plastic bags while cleaning up East 4th Street in the early 1990s. A new resident of the block between avenues C and D at the time, she explained that drugs on the street were common and violence a regular occurrence.

Despite the dangers of the neighborhood, residents soon began to transform 12 adjacent lots into El Jardin Del Paraiso, the community garden that would, in part, inspire Shulman to write the book Eat the City: A Tale of the Fishers, Foragers, Butchers, Farmers, Poultry Minders, Sugar Refiners, Cane Cutters, Beekeepers, Winemakers, and Brewers Who Built New York.

“It very slowly began to dawn on me that the reason people were interested in producing this beautiful space, and other spaces like it in the neighborhood, was not just to create a pretty place but actually because people were interested in producing food,” Shulman said. “So that was something that brought people together and really transformed the neighborhood."

Annalee Sinclair, who has been the garden coordinator for El Jardin Del Paraiso for more than a decade, still remembers when she first started planting in El Jardin Del Paraiso. Part of the garden was still rundown and strewn with buttons from an old button factory nearby. Now a days, her 4 by 8 foot plot is overflowing with cucumbers and beans.

“What made me most interested was getting the chance to get my hands dirty and grow food,” said Sinclair, who also grows tomatoes, arugula and radishes.

(Photo: Robin Shulman/Beowulf Sheehan)

She explained that vegetables do so well in the small raised beds that some of her neighbors have found a shortcut to planting beans. “I’ve seen people grow beans out of a Goya bag — buy a ninety-nine cent bag of Goya lima beans, open it up, and just sow them into the ground,” Sinclair said.

The community garden, however, still faces its share of urban-centric challenges. In addition to battling the birds, like many suburban and rural gardeners, Sinclair explained that El Jardin Del Paraiso often struggles with a rat problem. Three years ago, the garden even held a rat workshop to learn methods to curb the rodent population.

While the rats don’t eat the vegetables (they prefer trash and junk food), they create problems when they burrow under the garden plots.

“We have these 4 by 8 sized raised beds because it’s the safest way to grow because there’s a lot of lead in the soil,” Sinclair explained. “So to avoid any lead content in your food, you plant up and you grow up. So with the rats running around and burrowing through... what they do is create these holes, and then your plot starts to sink.”

Since rats are creatures of habit and prefer to stay along established routes, they are trying to impede their progress by blocking their holes with bricks.

Despite urban pests, Shulmlan thinks New Yorkers have long shown their ingenuity by finding creative ways to grow food in the city.

(Photo: Annalee Sinclair/Joy Y. Wang)

“People like Annalee, and even long before Annalee, have been producing food in the city all through the city’s history,” she said. “There have been immigrants coming to this city who have known how to produce food from the places where they’re from and have grown things on their fire escapes and on their roofs... [They have] been able to create a taste of another place and kind of insist on their own vision of what urban living means — even in an inhospitable environment like New York City.”

Below, try Sinclair’s recipe for Country Green Beans with New Potatoes.

Country Green Beans with New Potatoes
by Annalee Sinclair

2 lbs fresh green beans
1 ½ lb ham hocks
4 strips bacon
4 cups chicken broth
12 small red potatoes
1 large onion, diced
½ stick salted butter
Ground black pepper
2 tsps garlic powder
1 teaspoon salt

Snap ends of green beans and wash in colander. Set aside to drain.

In a large pot (cast iron if available), cook bacon. Cut bacon into 1-inch pieces.

Put green beans in pot with chicken stock, bacon, ham hocks, onions, garlic powder, and salt.

Cook over a medium-low heat for an hour or until ham hock meat falls off of the bone.

Peel stripes from the middle of the potatoes, leaving some peal behind. Add the potatoes and ½ more broth to the pot. Cover tightly and cook until potatoes are tender, approximately 15 to 30 minutes. Check periodically to make sure a small amount of liquid remains. If liquid, boils away, add broth in ½ cup amounts. When potatoes are tender, place lid slightly ajar, leaving a gap so steam can escape, and continue to cook until beans are wilted, approximately 15 minutes. When done, add butter and season with pepper. Salt to taste.

Last Chance Foods: Clues to Finding a Sweet Blueberry

WNYC, New York Public Radio — Wed, 08 Aug 2012 17:03:02 -0400

Blueberries were providing Americans with their antioxidant fix long before acai berries became popular as a superfood. Native Americans relied on the berries for a number of different purposes, said Jennifer Divello of Patty’s Berries and Bunches in Mattituck on Long Island.

“They would actually use blueberries for many illnesses,” says Divello, whose mother Patty converted the family’s potato fields into a 'you-pick' berry farm in the '80s. “They would grind the leaves and the roots together to cure a lot of sickness, but they would use the juice from the blueberry to cure the common cough.”

She added that the uses also went beyond the nutritional and medicinal. “[Settlers] would boil blueberries with milk to get gray paint, and then they would also boil blueberries with sage and indigo to get blue paint,” Divello said. “And that’s the color they would all traditionally paint their houses.”

While the berries are no longer used as a primary ingredient in paint, they are the second most popularly consumed berry in the United States. (Strawberries are the most popular.)

The season for blueberries is nearly over, so now is the time to appreciate the locally grown fruit before it’s gone from farmers markets. Divello shared her tips for picking out the sweetest berry.

“I like to tell our customers the darker the blue, the better,” she said. On the bush, berries start as white before turning pink, red, purple and, finally, a ripe blue. “That is when you want to pick them.”

As for the size of the berry, Divello explained that is dependent on variety. “[Jersey] is the type that many bakers prefer for muffins,” she said. “ It’s smaller, but it’s sweet. You can’t really relate size to sweetness as much as color and type.”

The biggest pest when it comes to growing blueberries are birds. “The catbird and the red-winged blackbird will clear out an entire crop overnight,” said Divello. Farmers in the area tried a number of methods in their fields to deter the birds. One attempt, which involved a propane tank, worked to keep the birds away, but was far less popular with the farm’s neighbors.

(Photo: Blueberry bushes under the net at Patty's Berries and Bunches/Jennifer Divello)

“Every five minutes it would make this big boom and all the birds would go flying away, but as annoying as it was for the birds, it was [also annoying] for the people that lived around the area,” admitted Divello.

Instead, the age-old method of netting the bushes proved most effective, and Patty’s Berries and Bunches installed one that covers all the bushes. “It’s one of the biggest [nets] I’ve ever seen,” she said. “Occasionally there are a couple of birds that’ll get caught, but we do let them out at the end of the day. They love being in there.”

While blueberries are vulnerable to birds, Divello explained that they are more mold resistant than raspberries and blackberries because they are less porous. “And another thing that I really like about blueberries is that they don’t get as much bugs,” she said.

As for her favorite method of eating blueberries, Divello in true farmer-style opts to keep things simple — she likes to freeze them and eat them by the handful. “I call them nature’s ice cream capsules,” she said.

For another take, try Amy Eddings' recipe below for blueberry cobbler.

Blueberry Cobbler
by Amy Eddings
Adapted from Cooks Illustrated

FILLING

1/2 cup sugar
1 tbl cornstarch
1/8 teas salt, or to taste
1/8 teas cinnamon
6 cups fresh blueberries
1 1/2 teas grated lemon zest plus 1 Tbl juice from 1 lemon

BISCUIT:

1 cup all purpose flour
2 Tbl stone ground cornmeal
1/4 cup sugar
2 teas baking powder
1/4 teas baking soda
1/4 teas salt
1/2 stick unsalted butter, melted
1/3 cup buttermilk
1/2 teas vanilla extract
1/8 teas ground cinnamon

Preheat oven to 375

MAKE THE FILLING: Stir sugar, cornstarch, cinnamon and salt together in large bowl. Add blueberries. Toss them gently with a rubber spatula or large fork until they are coated. Add the lemon zest and the lemon juice and toss, distributing the zest thoroughly. Pour the berries into a 9-inch glass pie pan. Place the pie pan on a baking sheet to catch any spills, and bake until the filling bubbles, 25 minutes.

MAKE THE TOPPING: Whisk flour, cornmeal, sugar, baking powder, baking soda and salt in a large bowl. In a separate bowl, whisk together the wet ingredients — the melted butter, buttermilk and vanilla. Just before the berries come out of the oven, add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients, stirring with a fork or rubber spatula until they are just combined. Remove berries from the oven, increase the oven temperature to 425 degrees. Plop 6 or 7 equal-sized dollops of dough on top of the hot, bubbling berries. Space them about an inch apart. Sprinkle the tops of the biscuits with 2 teaspoons of sugar mixed with 1 teaspoon of cinnamon. Bake 15-18 minutes until the filling is bubbling and the biscuits are brown.

Let cool for about 20 minutes before serving with vanilla ice cream or whipped cream.

Last Chance Foods: Loving the Humble Hybrid Tomato

WNYC, New York Public Radio — Fri, 03 Aug 2012 15:42:40 -0400

Heirloom tomatoes are just about to start showing up at farmers markets this year. But before the spotlight turns on heirlooms, let’s take a moment to appreciate the humble, greenhouse-grown hybrid tomatoes.

“I’m sure a lot of people are saying, you know, ‘I hate greenhouse tomatoes; they’re terrible,’ but I think what most people are used to is getting the greenhouse tomatoes in the wintertime, like at Christmas and New Year’s,” explained Ron Binaghi III, a sixth generation farmer for Stokes Farm in Old Tappan, N.J. “They’re getting these greenhouse tomatoes that are shipped green and who knows what they’re doing to them.”

Local greenhouse tomatoes, on the other hand, don’t have nearly as far to travel. Instead, they head to the market after ripening on the vine. “We pick them [and the] next day they go to market,” Binaghi said. “If you need them to sit a day, they can sit a day on your counter.”

When picking out a tomato, look and touch is enough to determine ripeness. If you’re not going to use it right away, the shoulder (or top, near the stem) of the tomato can be a little orange or even slightly greenSmell will get you nowhere. Binaghi said, “I think it’s a myth with tomatoes because [what] most people don’t know is that the tomato plant itself has a scent to it.“ So it’s not the fruit itself that smells, but the stem.

He added that all the manhandling of the tomatoes — especially if tomatoes are pressed to noses — often makes for spoiled vegetables. Farmers market etiquette suggests handling sparingly, gently, and with some degree of reverence.

That even goes for workhorse hybrid tomatoes, which also play an important role in providing variety at the farmers market.

(Photo: Ron Binaghi III/Stokes Farm)

“[A greenhouse tomato] allows us to extend our season, especially in the springtime,” said Binaghi. “So we are able to have a crop earlier than when the heirloom tomatoes come out.”

Stokes Farm only grows heirlooms in the field, though they can be raised in greenhouses, because of space issues. “We have a big greenhouse, but not big enough to be doing high-production heirloom tomatoes, because heirloom tomatoes don’t produce... as much as a hybrid tomato would,” Binaghi explained.

This year’s tomato crop is faring well with little signs of blight, he reported. Of course the other advantage of greenhouse-grown tomatoes is that they exist in a relatively climate-controlled environment. But that doesn’t make the large, ventilated space immune to bugs, unfortunately. Binaghi admits that the indoor tomatoes also become inundated with that dreaded gardener’s nightmare: the tomato hornworm.

“You get the gloves on and you start picking them off and you think you got them all,” he said. “And then the next day you go in and pick off a hundred more. They’re nasty.”

Perhaps the knowledge that farmers are also laboriously picking worms off of the plants will add a little more sheen of glamour to the humble hybrid tomato.

As for enjoying the fruit of that labor, Binaghi says his family like to keep things simple: “My dad just likes a big slice, big slice, one slice on a good piece of bread with a slab of mayo. And if it’s juicing on your hands, you did it the right way.”

He also offered a recipe for Baked Parmesan Tomatoes. That’s below.

Baked Parmesan Tomatoes
(from EatingWell.com)
Makes 4 servings

4 tomatoes, halved horizontally
¼ cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese
1 teaspoon chopped fresh oregano
¼ teaspoon salt
Freshly ground pepper to taste
4 teaspoons extra-virgin olive oil

1. Preheat oven to 450° F.

2. Place tomatoes cut-side up on a baking sheet. Top with Parmesan, oregano, salt and pepper. Drizzle with oil. Bake until the tomatoes are tender, about 15 minutes.

Above: Could Ron Binaghi IV be a seventh-generation farmer in the making?