Vegetables | The Roving Locavore

Archive for the ‘Vegetables’ Category

a good supper

Posted in Cheese, Vegetables, tagged Italian pasta recipe, organic peas, organic ricotta, peas ricotta, ricotta pasta on July 7, 2009| Leave a Comment »

peas ricotta

Organic ricotta, fresh peas, local applewood smoked bacon, pasta, parmigiano-reggiano.

Sigh…

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Garlic Scape Mashed Potatoes

Posted in Vegetables, tagged Amy Campion, eat local Vermont, eating locally, garlic mashed potatoes recipe, garlic scapes, locavore, roving locavore, Vermont locavore on June 29, 2009| 1 Comment »

scapes bin at the Norwich Farmers' Market

I love garlic mashed potatoes. Possibly even more delicious are mashed potatoes made with garlic scapes. Last night, I boiled about a pound of new red and gold potatoes (skin on). I tossed four curlicues of garlic scapes (1 per person) into the boiling water for a minute, just to soften them up a bit. Then I roughly diced and minced them. When the potatoes were fork tender, I used a hand-masher to blend in the scapes, milk, 2 tbs. of butter, salt and pepper. The result was delicious, and as pretty as a pile of potatoes can be: creamy white flecked with green and pink, and tasting of the freshest garlic. I love whole roasted bulbs of garlic, with that deep nutty caramelized flavor, mashed into potatoes. This was different. Garlicky, but greener, grassier, springy.

The only problem was that I made too few. Everyone wanted more potatoes.

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Peas and Potatoes

Posted in Vegetables, tagged Amy Campion, Amy Campion food, eat locally, eat locally Vermont, Hurricane Flats Farm, local food, locavore, new potato salad, Norwich farmers' market, organic potatoes, potato recipe, roving locavore, Vermont local food, Vermont locavore, Your Farm Fairlee Vermont on June 27, 2009| Leave a Comment »

Saturday morning, Norwich Farmers’ Market. We got there too late for the golden beets: I saw the last bunch go at 10:15. Maybe next week….

peas

But oh, the potatoes and peas! The Fairlee, Vermont farm, coyly called “Your Farm,” had baskets upon baskets of sugar snap peas–the kind you can eat right off the vine, pod and all. Jack was working it like a boiled, salted edamame pod, but was happy finally to eat the whole thing.

eating pea

These peas taste so good raw, they may not last until later, when I’ll make a salad of new potatoes, scapes, herbs and peas. New potatoes are here in abundance: they are so tender and waxy it’s almost tempting to eat them raw, but lightly boiled will agree with tummies much better. I bought a couple of pounds at the Hurricane Flats farm stand. (This farm is located on the banks of the beautiful White River, a tributary of the Connecticut, in South Royalton, VT.)

potatoes

New Potato Salad

Potatoes are a blank slate, upon which a thousand personalities can be written. Bacon is always a good friend to potatoes, as are peas, corn, green beans, and fresh herbs like dill, tarragon, thyme, and parsley. Caraway seeds are interesting additions to a potato salad dressed generously with a dijon-based vinaigrette. Here’s what I’ll do with my potatoes, scapes, and maybe peas, today.

Boil potatoes until fork-tender. Quarter them, and toss with a spoonful of vinegar (red wine, champagne, or cider are good) and two spoonfuls of extra virgin olive oil, salt and pepper. (The quantities depend on how many potatoes you have; they should be dressed but not dripping.)

Then, add some crisped bacon/pancetta/prosciutto bits, and any combination of the above suggested veggies and herbs. Today, I’m also going to add some lightly sauteed, then smashed, garlic scapes.

Let the salad sit and steep for awhile, and serve warm or chilled.

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Scapes are here!

Posted in Vegetables, tagged Amy Campion, Amy Campion food, eat locally, eat locally Vermont, garlic scapes, garlic scapes recipe, local food, roving locavore, soba noodles recipe, Vermont locavore on June 26, 2009| Leave a Comment »

Gorgeous green curlicues, Watteauesque arabesques…

scapes
Not to be confused with green garlic (long spring stalks with the bulbs attached) or ramps (wild leeks, whose season is earlier), scapes are the seed pod portion of the garlic plant that must be culled before they harden and pale from green to beige. Snipping them helps the garlic bulb below fatten up. Scapes’ season is fleeting, their flavor mere essence, evanescence.

Unlike the stronger-tasting bulbs, mild scapes can stand alone: blanched and tossed on a salad or ground into a pesto; sautéed with baby bok choy and thrown together with noodles; mixed in sneakily with green beans for an added dimension of flavor.

At the Hanover farmers’ market on Wednesday afternoon, I bought a small bunch. Last night, my mom diced scapes and added them to her summery corn and edamame salad. The night before, I sautéed them with local greens in a dish I make frequently, which is based on yaki-soba. Here’s the recipe:

Garlicky Noodles and Greens
Serves 4

1 package soba (buckwheat) noodles
1 lb. fresh spinach, washed and torn up
2 heads baby bok choy, roughly chopped
5 garlic scapes, chopped
1 lb. flank steak or chicken breast, sliced
2 tbs. sesame oil
2 tbs. mirin
2 tbs. soy sauce
Thai hot sauce
Lime slices

In a small bowl, combine oil, mirin, and soy sauce; set aside. Sauté the meat until mid-rare, and set aside. In the same pan, with a bit more oil, cook the greens and scapes, covered, over moderate heat. After a few minutes, remove the lid, to let the water evaporate. Meanwhile, bring a large pot of water to a boil, add the soba noodles, and cook for 5 minutes. Drain, and pour into a warmed serving bowl. Just before serving, put the meat back in the pan with the greens to re-warm. Combine greens & meat with noodles, pour the sauce over, and toss to coat. Add hot sauce and lime juice individually to taste.

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More Farmers’ Market Follow-Up: Radishes

Posted in Vegetables, tagged Amy Campion, Amy Campion food, eat locally, local food, radish salad, roving locavore, Vermont farmers' markets, Vermont locavore on June 18, 2009| 2 Comments »

We have fresh local radishes and those salmon colored carrots, as well as about an ounce of fresh goat cheese. The combination of these flavors–peppery, sweet, and earthy-tangy, will make a delicious salad to go with our pasta tonight.

radish salad

I sliced the carrot and radish into thin discs, tossed them with a spoonful each of red wine vinegar and evoo, and sprinkled them with salt and pepper. I remembered that there was a huge chive patch out front, so I went out into the drizzle with my scissors and snipped a small bunch. I snipped these right into the bowl, and then dropped in the goat cheese, and mashed it around a bit. Yum!

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Kale

Posted in Vegetables, tagged Amy Campion, Amy Campion food, eat locally, eating locally, kale, kale recipes, leafy greens recipe, locavore, roving locavore, Vermont locavore on June 18, 2009| Leave a Comment »

How to cook kale? There are many theories which involve long cooking and lots of water, but I prefer to saute it fairly quickly in a hot pan with a bit of olive oil.

Last night, I cooked purple kale. I pulled large bite-sized pieces off of the stalk, and washed them in cold water. Sometimes, as with spinach, I’ll grease the pan by cooking some small pieces of bacon or pancetta, then throw the kale in just before the pork gets crunchy. I always use garlic, and have found that the kale gets most garlicky when several crushed cloves of garlic have been simmered in the oil for a few minutes, so that its skin is slightly caramelized. After putting in the kale, you can put the lid on for a few minutes to steam it a bit, and when it gets wilty, leave the lid off and toss it with tongs. I strongly recommend tongs, so that you can squeeze out the excess water before plating it.

Kale is also delicious when it’s tossed together in the pan with mustard greens and spinach. Red pepper flakes are a nice addition at the end.

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Asparagus

Posted in Vegetables, tagged Amy Campion, Amy Campion food, asparagus recipes, eat locally Vermont, organic asparagus, roving locavore, Vermont asparagus, Vermont farmers' market, Vermont locavore on June 18, 2009| Leave a Comment »

My favorite way to cook asparagus is to roast it. The caramelization that happens in the oven brings out the natural sweetness of this grassy green, and the dry heat softens the stalks without turning them to mush.

Preheat oven to 425. Roll asparagus on a cookie sheet in olive oil, salt, and pepper. Roast for about 10 minutes, until lightly browned but not shriveled.

Asparagus goes particularly well with the breakfasty flavors of eggs and bacon. For a substantial side or light meal, you could roast the asparagus with bacon, pancetta, or proscuitto pieces sprinkled around, then dress it with a chopped eight-minute egg.

Asparagus is also great with a bit of lemon zest.

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First Farmers’ Market in the Northeast

Posted in Cheese, Meat, Vegetables, tagged eat locally New Hampshire, eat locally Vermont, New Hampshire locavore, New Hampshire Vermont farmers' markets, organic asparagus, roving locavore, Vermont asparagus, Vermont cheese, Vermont farmers’ market, Vermont locavore on June 18, 2009| Leave a Comment »

radishes
After a stop at the Norwich Bookstore and Nana’s apartment, we went to the Hanover farmers’ market, on the Dartmouth green. I’d had some pent-up desire for this kind of variety and plenty, and I went a little wild. Jack and I ate half of the bunch of salmon colored carrots right away.
carrot

Then, after craning my neck to assess the competition, I settled on Fable Farm for my armfuls of kale, lettuce, and motley radishes.

fable farm

Then there was raw-milk cheese from Piermont, New Hampshire to sample. I bought some of the manchego style “Manch-vegas.” (Did it have that name because it was so over-the-top-flashy-flavorful? It had to be followed by a full-bodied red.)

cheese

Strawberries! Next weekend Cedar Circle Farm will have their annual strawberry festival, but we had to stock up before then.

cedar strawberries
There were sausages, pasture-raised chickens, eggs, breads and baked things of all sorts, fresh-squeezed lemonade, popcorn popped in an aluminum vat the size of a bathtub:

lemondae

beef pork

And asparagus.

asparagus I got a big bunch. The vendor suggested grilling them, which we did later. I usually roast them, and I have to say, I’m going to stick with roasting. They were fine grilled, but they got a bit black. It’s easier to control the cooking when they’re on a pan in the oven, rolling around in olive oil rather than errant flames.

Around here, it almost goes without saying that the produce, poultry, meat, fruit, and fungi are raised without the help of synthetic chemicals. Here is a fiercely proud bastion of organics where the suggestion of doubt would be taken as an affront to the dignity of the farmer and her land. The collective identity of this community, which is scattered across mountains and back roads, is strong in spite of, or because of, the old New England ethos of pioneering individualism and eccentricity that is summed up on New Hampshire’s license plates: “Live Free or Die.”

Jack, exercising his right to sit down wherever he wants to.

Later on, for dinner, we grilled sausages and the asparagus, sautéed the kale with some crushed garlic, sliced the walnut ficelle, and ate outside while the sun went down.

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Goodbye, good friends!

Posted in Beer, Dairy, Fruit, Meat, Vegetables, Wine, tagged Alabama locavore, Amy Campion, Amy Campion food, Auburn Alabama local food, Auburn Meats Lab, Auburn pork, grilled rabbit, locavore, roving locavore on June 17, 2009| 1 Comment »

Whew—I can finally relax. I’m sitting on the deck in Vermont. The sun is shining, the Bloody Brook is rushing, Jack is loading a dump truck in the sand box, and a hummingbird is buzzing by. This is nice. Yesterday, Tuesday, was spent in buses, planes, cars, and waiting areas. Monday, the moving van came, the house was emptied and then scrubbed from baseboards to ceiling vents. I’ve never cleaned so hard!

But the real event I’ve been itching to address was Sunday night: the great picnic party at Matt and Christina’s which included a power outage, ice cream churned by hand, newborn rabbits, homebrew, a tree climb, and two antique MGs, to name just a few of the highlights.
tree

J & P

This was a real homegrown meal. To begin with, there were simmered shell-on peanuts, along with a plateful of carrots and radishes from Red Root Farm for dipping in hummus. We were standing around the table talking, eating these small bits, and sampling Matt’s dark, hoppy ale, when he brought in a bowl full of sliced, spice-rubbed local pork that he’d just grilled over a heap of smoking hickory coals.
Matt

And that wasn’t the only hunk of pork or the only grill. There were two other steel buckets serving for grills, on which Matt was cooking long skewers of zucchini and summer squash slathered with olive oil and herbs, and rabbit—the most local of the items in this dinner, since it came from the back yard, where its kin still lolled in their cages, and where one of them had just given birth to her first litter. He mentioned something about venison sausage too, but I don’t think I saw that….
Emma

rabbit This was a great dinner not just for the company and its easy, rolling-along tempo, but also for the simplicity and bounty of the food that Matt and Christina spread on the table. While he manned the grills, she was in the kitchen (where there was no electricity, Auburn having just been whipped up in an hysterical thunderstorm) stuffing poblano peppers with chipotle-spiced ground beef and its alternative for the poco picante palates, cheesy black beans. She also mixed a quick peanut sauce so that one rabbit option was satay. Others brought cornbread, salad, and the always idiosyncratic no-knead bread. I brought wine from Spain. It can’t all be local!
food

The kids started churning the lemon-almond ice cream as the sun went down.

round and round

getting sweaty

Daddy's taking over

Eventually, after some serious help from the grown-ups, we could spoon big, soft dollops on top of Emma’s blueberry tart. It went too fast for me to take a representative picture…
i c

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The Market Is There

Posted in Eggs, Philosophical, Trends, Vegetables, tagged Alabama locavore, Amy Campion, Amy Campion food, Auburn Alabama farmers' market, conventionally grown peaches, eat locally, local food, local peaches, locavore, organic peaches, pesticides peaches, roving locavore, Southern peaches, Vermont locavore on May 22, 2009| 1 Comment »

We went to the first farmers’ market of the year at “Ag Heritage Park” today in the drizzle. I and everyone else there seemed to be wondering the same thing: why aren’t there more farmers around here? The line for the most varied vegetable selection was almost thirty minutes long. The berry farm stand ran out of strawberries at ten past the opening hour. Peaches were gone by the time Jack and I made it out of the veggie line. Hundreds of people arrived in the first hour and stood around in the rain, beaming at each other as they hefted canvas bags full of local lettuce, peaches, cucumbers, honey, cheese, and eggs—if they were lucky enough to get some before it all sold out. There’s so much pent up demand for fresh local food, and too few CSAs and small farmers to meet it with their supply. This may be because the market is young in relation to the agricultural history of the state, in which commodity crops like cotton and lumber dominated.

The exciting thing, though, is that small farms are popping up or remaking themselves to meet this demand. And if you ask around enough you find out about other producers who have been in the area, quietly serving up their grass fed beef or organic greens for decades. (For example, the Ritches of Goose Pond Farm, one of whose scrumptious chickens we enjoyed with friends the other night.)
fm haul
Jack and I took home a small haul: red leaf and butter lettuces, an armful of baby summer squashes, veggie goat cheese from Bulger Creek Farm in Notasulga, and some honey.

Eggs were available, but we already had a dozen of the local “Frank’s Famous Eggs” in the fridge. (Their yolks are molten orange! And if you happen to eat a supermarket egg when you’re used to the density and flavor of these, you’ll say: what’s this tasteless rubber?)
frank's The lettuces made a crisp bed for some eight-minute eggs.

salad

I roasted the summer squash in a skillet with olive oil, salt and pepper, and a sprig of backyard rosemary. Jack insisted he didn’t like “fwash” but he ate every sweet and salty morsel.

squash