Kitchen reform tip 16: Grow Some

So yesterday, on the hottest day of the year thus far, I visited the sun-scorched organic gardens at Airlie conference center, and talked to their creator.

Pablo Elliot (who majored in African Studies at Vassar) walked me through the organic garden project, which was started 10 years ago to provide food for the center.

"All the veggies we grow are sissies," he declared, after confiding his plan to build 5 raised beds a day for the next week, for a total of 30. "Tomatoes have to be held up and staked, lettuce hopes for a cooler breeze -- the clay soils here can get very compact, but the raised bed aerates it. It's luxury living for vegetables."

Elliot's breezy demeanor serves him well as he imparts information to local farmers, amateurs and guests to the sustainable center interested in organic gardening. The garden supplies about 8 percent of the center's food -- he works closely with chefs to grow what they need -- and the rest they source, preferably from other local growers.

The premise of organic gardening is to create a chemical free environment that is biodiverse enough to keep pests at bay by making the soil as fertile as possible with compost, and planting crops that will complement each other, cutting down on loss. Bugs are encouraged; garden supply chains even sell them.

To that end, Elliot recommends 3' x 30' beds, small enough to walk around and commune with your plants. "The best fertilizer is the footprint of the farmer," he says. His favorite tool is the broadfork, which pushes about a foot into the soil, then lifts up without turning to aerate the bottom, while leaving the best soil on top. Compost, at a rate of a wheelbarrow full per 100 square feet of bed, is added each season.

"Nothing we do here is rocket science," says Elliot. "I am into simple methods. A farmer once told me, 'Tickle the soil and it laughs with a harvest.' It stimulates soil in a way that microbes feed the plants. Keeping the habitat diverse encourages beneficial insects and birds and pollinators. That's how organic gardening works. You feed the soil, and the soil feeds the plants."

He does test the soil about once a year; Virginia's clay soils have a low pH and often have to be amended with calcidic lime. But the end result is a thriving garden, full of lettuces, which he staggers in small plantings so the chefs have a constant supply, herbs, potatoes, tomatoes, the summer crops of eggplants, squash and melons, not to mention a fall corn maze. They have a hoop house that allows starting seeds sooner, and extends the growing season for fall greens into cold weather months.

"We try to transplant as much as possible -- they aren't as delicate as when you start from seeds. The chefs like the little greens but it is a lot of work," he says. One hurdle for organic farmers, he says is getting chefs to recognize that organic produce might have a hole here, a blemish here, that they have to make pretty on the plate."They are into the challenge."

Mesclun salad with chevre dressing

4 - 6 cups mesclun or any salad greens
any vegetables, nuts or dried fruits

1/2 cup chevre or cottage cheese
1/2 cup dill
2 T skim milk
salt and pepper to taste

Clean greens and shred into bowl. Whiz cheese and dill in small food chopper. Add milk to thin, salt and pepper to taste.

Enjoy!

Tip Nine: Try Something New

We have been on Spring Break, which is laughable. Spring my eye. It's Almost Spring, a condition akin to unbearable. Bones are still cold, though days are not so much. It is supposed to snow tomorrow. One more dreary day, you think, and I'll lose it.

Don't.

This week, do something different. Try a new cuisine, a new ingredient, go a different way home from work. Stop at that exotic shop you've been wanting to check out, but always find an excuse not to. If your brain says "I've got to get home, to feed the kids, to go to the grocery" -- well, take them with you.

Let them eat sushi.

For the next few weeks, I'll be offering up a few out-of-the-ordinary tidbits, like this raw veggie Pad Thai that really gives a taste of spring. I had this in London, at Daylesford Organic in Notting Hill, a temple for real foodies if ever there was (more on the British Farm-to-Fork movement in future). They would not share the recipe so I've devised this one, and I think it's pretty good. I did, however, make it a night when my husband was away, lest it bombed, but now I am glad, for I ate most of the bowl.

Please let me know what you discover.

Vegetable Pad Thai

Inspired by Daylesford Organic

Noodles
2 zucchini
3 carrots, peeled

Sauce
1 knob ginger
1 tablespoon tamari
1 tablespoon chili garlic
1 teaspoon fish sauce
1 tablespoon tahini
juice of half lime

To assemble
1 bunch green onions, sliced
1/2 cup fresh chopped cilantro
1/4 cup fresh chopped mint
1 Tablespoon sesame seeds
optional: red pepper, roasted cashews

Using a carrot peeler or a grater or a mandoline, make the zucchini into "noodles."

In a small chopper, mince ginger, add rest of ingredients and whiz. Pour over "noodles," add minced herbs and sesame seeds. Refrigerate until ready to serve; a few hours will meld the flavors and wilt the "noodles" so they are more noodly, but you can only do what you can do.

Garnish with cashews and slivered red pepper, plus additional cilantro and sesame seeds, if you wish, to serve.

Enjoy!

Have your cake and eat it too

So tonight, we are invited to a loser's party. This is not a small event. Our community has a tennis tournament in the winter months, to blast away the doldrums. Anyone can play -- but here's the rub: the better you are, the less skilled your assigned partner will be. This makes for interesting tennis (think, Roger Federer teamed with Phyllis Diller), and as we get towards the finals, big crowds at the tennis court, drinking, betting, cheering.

The invite to this party reads as follows: "Calling all losers! All losers welcome! All potential losers welcome! All winners married to losers welcome!" (For the record, I am not a loser. My partner pulled her calf muscle during our second round match and we had to forfeit. In fact, though we were down a set, we were coming back. That will always be the legend.)

But as I am married to a loser, we will go.

Our hostess delineates potluck responsibilities as follows: If your name starts with A-M, bring an appetizer and cheer. We, with our R and our S, fall into dessert and cheer. My husband requested a replay of a cake that I made last week to send to my step-daughter at college. It is not a "real" cake, so I didn't post it here, but it certainly was something to see, with several tons of glittery sprinkles dumped on it by two enthusiastic 5-year-olds. I am sorry I do not have a picture. Suffice to say, that it didn't last long at all. Even my foodie pals scarfed it down in the car on the way home.

To be frank, for a loser's party sugar seems just the ticket. Plus, I was thinking about some interesting factoids that a friend sent me yesterday, courtesy of Foodlinks America. On January 14, the top trends  for 2010, predicted by chefs surveyed by the National Restaurant Association, were leaked. Demand for local produce was number one, followed by locally sourced meats and local beer and wine,  respectively. Bite-size mini dishes and half-portions followed, along with healthy kid's plates. Sustainability was up there too.

Sounds perfect. My work here is done.

Except the same newsletter from December 14, just a month ago, details top-selling grocery items of 2009. Soda tops the list, with $12 billion in sales in 2009. Milk is second, then bread and rolls, beer, potato chips, cheese, frozen dinners, cold cereal, wine and cigarettes.

So what's going on? We're going out and demanding raw cheese on our arugula, then coming home to light up, crack a brew and nuke dinner? Is the intersection of consumers and chefs only in the local beer aisle?

Because that makes us all losers. Or maybe we just haven't won yet. What if we could have our cake and eat it too: what happens if I try to make this cake "real?" Or at least, "natural?"

Let's be clear, this cake starts with a stick of butter and a cake mix, and ends with an entire bag of powdered sugar. Just typing that makes my teeth hurt. (The pre-school class went to the dentist this week, and sang him this song: "Brush, brush, brush your teeth, every time you eat. Visit your dentist twice a year for a smile that can't be beat." It even has hand motions which they do with real toothbrushes. I am sure he would have flunked the field trip if they knew about this cake.) Now I don't think I can make it any less sweet -- nor would I want to -- but I set out to see what would happen if I substituted all these ingredients with organic, whole ingredients. And made it gluten free.

(You can check out the original cake recipe, which I got from my Aunt Alice but is also online in detail like crazy at http://2sistersandme.blogspot.com/2007/12/sugar-cream-cake-another-cozy-comfort.html. This is a blog written by sisters in Winchester, Indiana, just miles south of the small town both my parents grew up in, and where my Aunt Alice still lives.) 

So I got a gluten free cake mix, and organic butter and cream cheese, and am using Mary Dunbar's eggs. I can't find a sub for the powdered sugar, so that will remain conventional. Here's what happened: it was beautiful. High and light, with a crackly spun sugar top like creme brulee. Okay, sort of. It's not too real. But it sure is good. More sophisticated, more complex, less sugary sweet than the first. A cakier base, with the cream cheese topping oozing gooey beneath the sugar crackle. Of course it didn't have three tons of sugar decorations on it but I think it's more than that. It's still the Midwest, but it's dressed for dinner.

Yum.

Loser Cake
Adapted from Alice Strohl

Preheat oven to 375 degrees

1 yellow cake mix ( I used gluten-free pantry)
3 eggs
1 stick melted butter

1 box powdered sugar
1 package cream cheese

Beat 2 eggs with a fork in 9 x 13 pan. Add cake mix and butter and stir to combine. Spread to evenly coat pan. In a separate bowl, beat sugar cream cheese and remaining egg for 5 minutes with mixer on medium. Do not use a stand mixer as the sugar will not combine. Spread over cake dough. Bake 30 minutes.

The losers will love it.

Enjoy.

Why did the chicken cross the road? Would you believe he was in a curry?

The chicken is a versatile, humble creature, able to be both the best and the worst of culinaria. Let's skip the worst, and just admit: There is something about a roast chicken that not only welcomes you home but pulls up a chair and says 'Bon Appetit.' It is unremarkable on the highway to divine.


There are many ways to roast a chicken. I happen to like Mark Bittman's quick method most: put a metal roasting pan in the oven, turn it to 450 degrees. When the oven is hot, put the chicken in the pan. This sears it and cuts the roasting time, though I have never met his record of 45 minutes. I also like the versions (Ina Garten has one) that stuff it fuller than a skinny man at a hot dog eating contest with garlic.

These are Sunday, lazy afternoon roast chickens, that slowly fill the house with smells of comfort and joy, that, when pricked, ooze pure gold juices to mix with heavy cream into a heavenly gravy. But I often do not have time for these roast chickens, however much I might idolize them. That is why, for me, the advent of rotisserie ovens in many local groceries is up there with the great events of the 21st century. (The 20th century, I am pretty sure, was the ATM card.)

There they are, right when you walk in the store, with their rich, lazy Sunday afternoon attitudes, even on a Tuesday at 7 p.m. when you haven't an idea about dinner. Their smell assails you as you enter the supermarket, changing dinner from a scary prospect to a delightful one in a whiff. I have been known to drive 15 miles out of my way for a rotisserie chicken. Once, when I got there and none were left, I was so bereft that the frightened manager gave me 'I owe you's' for three chickens.

But what really rocks about a rotisserie chicken is the day after. Because you have all this plump, moist chicken waiting patiently for something special to happen to it. You can chop it, grind it, puree it, sautee it, stir fry it -- it cares not. It's date night for this chicken, and it's ready to go. Especially somewhere exotic, somewhere it can put on rouge and a silk scarf. That, you'll agree, means curry.

Now, there are even more recipes for curry than there are for roast chicken, and like the chicken, I have tried my fair share. But what really puts the ease in easy for me has two ingredients. Making this a three ingredient dinner. See, I told you it could be simple.


Three Ingredient Chicken Curry

1 1/2 cups coconut milk (You can use lite, if you are concerned about fat, or even coconut milk beverage, which is deceivingly creamy -- So Delicious makes one that posts only 50 calories a cup.)
1/4 cup curry paste (Patak's Mild Curry Paste is a good choice, I have another I like as well, or better, it's more subtle, but harder to come by.)
Diced rotisserie chicken, about 4 cups

Heat the coconut milk, add the curry paste and whisk to combine. Bring to a simmer and add the chicken. Let simmer 20 minutes or so more to really saturate the chicken. Or eat it immediately.
I crumbled some curry leaves in it last time which I had in the freezer from the Indian shop in Chantilly. Or you can use chopped fresh cilantro. That totally makes it necessary to change the name.

I think it's worth it if you do.

PS -- To kick this up a notch 'real food' wise, I like to get the chicken from one of two shops in our town that roast organic chickens (Home Farm, and Market Salamander, both on Main Street in Middleburg, Virginia, see links), rubbed with spices or just sea salt. Because I really do think that organic can make a difference in how healthy the chicken is. With real food, what it's been fed is a barometer of how well it, in turn, can feed you. (It's also important where it lived, for chickens that rove around are tastier than caged birds. No one I've read can explain this well. Most agree that they just taste more chicken-y. They are right. Try it.) And the other bonus is, I have an organic carcass for making broth. (More, much more on making broth later.)



I served this with a sweet potato puree, (boil two sweet potatos, a cup of baby carrots until tender. Drain, reserving small amount of liquid. Process until smooth, using either reserved liquid or cider, season with salt and pepper) which was a good counterpoint. But the spinach, now that was a joy, kicked out of being comfortable by studs of coriander.

Sauteed Spinach with Coriander

1 T olive oil
1 T coriander seeds (hint: buying spices in bulk in the Hispanic section of our supermarket makes them completely cheap -- you get a whole boatload for just a couple of bucks.)
1 t coarse sea salt
3 T slivered and peeled garlic
1 clamshell fresh baby spinach

Heat oil, add salt and coriander seeds. Add the garlic and turn until just browning. Add spinach and cover, letting it wilt. Off the heat and stir together.


I have found that roasting salt like this with spices heightens and emulsifies it, so it coats the food with a subtle picante, as a jewel tone scarf intensifies ocean blue eyes.

Enjoy.