As we walked to the entrance, my sister seemed more than a little amused. "What's so funny?" I asked. "We're going to a seed expo," she snorted. I get it; we aren't exactly a farming family. But if you cook or garden then save the date for next year and drive up to Santa Rosa for the seed expo. Until I went for myself, I couldn't understand why anyone would want to go for the whole three days. Three days of heirloom seeds-gawking and Monsanto-slamming sounded excessive, but next year I might do just that. Their website will tell you everything they offered, but I decided to include just a few pictures below. Wednesday was an educational day, so mothers and children had free early entrance. Kids had a chance to learn how to save seeds, dig for treasure in the dirt, glue a bean mosaic, and watch a sheep get a haircut. Next to the children's area was a huge barn with heritage breeds of chickens, ducks, and turkeys. That may not sound thrilling here, but it was amazing to see. My new goal is to be ready to bring home two Nigerian Dwarf Goats by this time next year. The food vendors were varied and from what I could tell, they all looked good. Above is a picture of a grilled cheese sandwich, all from local ingredients. Many of the food vendors listed not only what they were selling but where they sourced their ingredients. We ate chocolate hemp ice cream, Indian food, two kinds of pie, and of course the grilled cheese. It was all good, but be forewarned that it is not the kind of place you can find cotton candy or a corn dog. Everything there will be much better. The exhibits themselves were beautiful and educational. I had the chance to learn a little about biodynamic gardening, aquaponics, and beekeeping. That was all we could do with two small children in ninety-five degree heat, but next year I'll be back.
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I once made tiramisu so heavenly that I seriously considered making it for my own wedding. Though twenty years have passed and the tiramisu fad has come and gone, I still believe I might pull out a repeat performance one of these days when I have an entire day to devote to the project. But until then, here is a quick version that my kids were able to help with.
The key to this is the chilling time. Don't eat it the day you make it; it will be foul. But the next day it miraculously transforms to perfection. Ingredients: 6 egg yolks 3/4 cup sugar 2/3 cup milk 1 cup cream 1/2 teaspoon vanilla 1 pound mascarpone cheese 1/2-1 cup of strong coffee 4 tablespoons of rum or kahlua or anisette 1 7-oz. package of ladyfingers (this might include a few extra for snacking) cocoa powder for dusting Method: 1. Whisk the egg yolks and sugar together. 2. Add the milk, continue to whisk, and bring the whole mixture to a boil for one minute. Chill the yolk mixture for one hour. 3. Beat the cream and vanilla together. 4. Whisk the mascarpone into the yolk mixture. 5. Combine the rum and coffee and dip the ladyfingers in. They will absorb like sponges, so you might have to pull them out pretty quickly. 6. In a pie dish or an 8x8 baking dish, layer half the lady fingers, half the mascarpone mixture, and half the whipped cream. Repeat the layers and sprinkle with cocoa powder through a sifter or a sieve. 7. Chill overnight. I grew up blocks away from Indian markets and halal butcher shops in Berkeley and I was thrilled to find something similar close by in Richmond. I may not need halal meat specifically, but I do shop for lamb and goat regularly. If you are local, here is the link to the address and some pictures of the store. The picture above shows a sampling of things I bought recently. You can buy spices, meats, Turkish coffee, and Middle Eastern desserts at much better prices than you'd find elsewhere. This is where I bought the spices, rice, and lamb for maqloubeh. Whether you check out this market or a similar one in your neighborhood, here are some things you shouldn't miss.
Turkish Coffee
Maqloubeh is an Arabic biryani that even most kids and spice-aphobes will like. It is flavorful and meltingly tender, and clearly an expression of love, because why else would you go to that much effort? The original recipe I used is from the article on Palestinian food in the December 2013 issue of Saveur magazine. I serve it with Israeli chopped salad not in an attempt to be political but because they taste great together. This makes enough to either serve a crowd or have dinner with a week's worth of leftovers. Don't be intimidated by the list of ingredients. Really it's just spices, meat, rice, cauliflower, and eggplant. Not too bad. Next time I make this I'm going to double or triple the spices so I have extra for next time. I can be made with chicken as well and garnished with cilantro or fried pine nuts. "Maqloubeh" is also the name of a short film in which five men in Ramallah are confined to the house and make, you guessed it, maqloubeh. In the movie it is described not as a labor of love, but as the simplest meal you could throw together. I guess my standard of simple is different from theirs. I can't wait to try making this the way they did in the movie. Ingredients: 3/4 tablespoon whole black peppercorns 1 tablespoon coriander seeds 1 tablespoon cumin seeds 1 tablespoon green cardamom pods 1 tablespoon whole allspice 1 stick cinnamon 1 teaspoon curry powder 1/2 teaspoon grated nutmeg 3 pounds boneless lamb, cut into 1 inch pieces salt and pepper to taste 1 cup of olive oil 1 large eggplant, peeled and cut into 1 inch pieces 1 head of cauliflower, cut into florets 2 cups of basmati rice 2 tablespoons melted unsalted butter 2 cloves of minced garlic 1 large white onion, minced 2 medium-ripe tomatoes, cored and sliced into 1/4 inch circles Greek yogurt for serving on the side Instructions:
Now toss the 2 cups of basmati rice with the melted butter and set it aside. If you are using the same pot that you used to make stock, wipe it out now. It should be an 8 quart saucepan or dutch oven. Once the vegetables are all done you are ready for the next step.
Take the lid off and invert it onto a platter. Tap the bottom of the pot to help release the tomatoes, and set the pot aside. Serve it with thick yogurt and a chopped salad.
If you spent any time with me as a kid then you remember my mother's amazing tomato sandwiches. Fresh baked white bread topped with homemade aioli, tomatoes, salt and pepper. Simple and beautiful. Juicy. A deterrent to vampires.
It is that last quality that must have stopped me. I spent ten years doing people's makeup, and after a particularly harrowing experience with unforeseen quantities of raw garlic, I gave up garlic. That also meant giving up aioli, my mother's signature garlic mayonnaise, but I thought now would be the time to bring it back for the sake of ripe tomatoes. Unfortunately, after years of whipping up batch after flawless batch of aioli, my run of luck has ended. Now all I produce is olive oil/raw egg soup. It's disgusting, and an expensive waste. I have checked every blog and cookbook to figure out the reason for the failures, but I'm done. Done! I've brought all the ingredients to room temperature, warmed the bowl, added extra egg yolks, and the only difference I can find from what I did before is that I use olive oil. However, the whole point for me is to do this with a heart-healthy oil, and if I can't do that, I might as well use whatever horrible GMO soybean oil-based mayo I can get. I checked The Classic Italian Cookbook and found that Marcella Hazan, at least, made mayonnaise with olive oil. So that can't be the problem either. She opens her section on mayonnaise by saying that she "can't imagine anyone with a serious interest in food using anything but homemade mayonnaise". As if I wasn't feeling bad enough already, she goes on to say that this is "one of the easiest and quickest sauces you can make" and that it can "make or break any recipe of which it is a part". Well, well. That's disappointing news for me. So while I really believe everyone should be able to make healthy delicious fresh mayonnaise at home, I no longer recommend it. Too risky, and who needs all the disappointment? However, I am going to include my mother's original recipe here for posterity because it was amazing and it worked for years. And who knows, maybe you are having a lucky streak. If you are, you should try this! Lucky or not, everyone should celebrate summer's passing the way it was meant to be celebrated, with a tomato sandwich slathered in mayo. Mom's Aioli Ingredients: 1 tsp. salt 1 tsp. dry mustard 1/4 tsp. pepper 2-3 peeled garlic cloves 1 egg 2 Tb. lemon juice 1 cup corn or canola or safflower oil Into the processor work bowl, fitted with a steel knife, dump the salt, pepper, and dry mustard. Put on the lid and start the motor. Dump the garlic cloves in and chop them well, pausing once in the process to turn off the motor and scrape down the sides of the work bowl. Break the egg into the work bowl and pour in the lemon juice and about 1/8 cup of oil. Process, allowing the mixture to blend for about 10-15 seconds. Then take the remainder of the oil in a measuring cup and pour in a small steady stream into the work bowl through the feed tube. This should take no more than 10 seconds. Allow the aioli to process for another 45-60 seconds to permit full emulsification. Maybe I am the last person to know this, but there is an apple orchard in El Sobrante!! The Old Apple Orchard is right by the library at 4165 Garden Lane, within shouting distance of where I lived for six years. The orchard is nestled in against the creek on a 1/2 acre lot. They do school tours there, and on weekends you can come by and pick your own organic apples for $1/pound. They accept cash only. Most of the trees date back from the '60s. The owner described the varieties as "vintage". I don't know if that is a synonym for "heirloom" or something else entirely, but all the apples are crisp and sweet. The trees all came from Stark Bro's Nurseries, a company that has sold plants since 1816. Apparently this is a good time to plant fruit trees. I love picking fruit, and now thanks to my enthusiastic children I have 29 pounds of apples. You can bet I'll be writing about apples a lot for the next month. Apple pie, apple jam, caramelized apples, brandied apple rings, baked apples, apple crisps, and applesauce. I'll be trying it all! With so many apples, I was thinking about either buying an apple peeler for $20 or trying a method I saw on youtube using a vegetable peeler and a battery operated drill. I'll let you know what works. This post is to honor my former nemesis, Sasquatch. Sasquatch belongs to my father next door, and he is not the yeti you are thinking of, just a really big chicken. He started life like all the other chicks, cute and fuzzy and with an 80% likelihood of being a hen, just a hen with really big feet. A Jersey Giant, he (she?) was expected to be large. Unfortunately, a few months in we heard the gravelly, tentative crowing of a rooster. Once it began, it never ended. At 5 AM he started, but it was cute and rustic. We were willing to look the other way since he was willing to protect his flock, and in a neighborhood brimming with unsavory animals like raccoons, skunks, and the occasional coyote, none of us could begrudge what safety he provided. Until he got bigger. And bigger. And attacked my son, six at the time. My son came away physically unscathed, but more than a little traumatized. He began carrying brooms over his head on the way across the driveway to my parents' house, and I admit I made fun of him for it. "Come on, it's just a bird!" Until Sasquatch got bolder. And bolder. And attacked me while I was trying to unload groceries from the back of my car. I did what every strong independent woman does in the face of danger and screamed for dear life. After that I too carried a push broom to go next door. I am ashamed to acknowledge that my son was sympathetic and caring like I should have been with him. He nodded with understanding. "Did he do his false peck on the cement? Yeah, that's what he does. Right before he comes for you." Soon after I developed a fear of the driveway and even black featherdusters. That bird could move like a bat out of hell. He waited for me in the bushes. He crowed after me when I left the house. He put holes in my mother's hosiery. He kept a grown man on house arrest for a few days. This was some bird, and my father couldn't help but be proud. The final straw was the hens. Sasquatch had his favorites, and they developed enormous featherless patches and a nervous tic. Egg production began to plummet. Dad tried to find a nice farm somewhere, but not too many people are interested in roosters this size who terrorize, rape and plunder. Sasquatch finally met his match in a nice family who will eat him for dinner. It's hard to think about his last moments. We'll all miss him. Rest in peace, big bird. But just in case you need it, here is a simple recipe for roast chicken.
Ingredients: One bird, cleaned and gutted and feathered and cut into 8 pieces, rest his soul melted butter salt and pepper Directions: Put the chicken pieces skin-side up in a pyrex baking dish. Brush them with melted butter and season to taste with salt and pepper. Bake in a 350 degree oven until the skin looks brown and delectable. Save the bones, the feet, and the head for chicken stock. |
AuthorI love trying new foods, cooking, and gardening. I hope to share these experiences on this site. Thanks for taking a look! Categories
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