Post written by andrew | Leave Comment »
the side garden has been planted. my wife saw asparagus roots on sale the local home improvement store and bought them. we have a trench planted with twenty four 1-2 year old asparagus roots, i thought it was going to be 3 asparagus crowns, more is better. i moved the rhubarb plant to this side as well. i put in mesclun under the dome in the front yard. peas will go into this space as well.
the first batch of compost for this year has cooled and will need to be sifted/screened before i can use it as a side dressing. there are more than a few sticks and a few corncobs that need to be reprocessed in the next pile. composting proceeds through a ‘hot stage’ at the beginning of the process, this is due to the action of beneficial microbes. the heat also is purported to kill the weed seeds. when i first dug into the pile after a week , i was impressed by the color change and the heat. the color change was due to the rapid growth of fungi. i continued turning the pile every 3 -7 days until it cooled, six weeks is good time frame for an active pile with plenty of aeration. it’s not a completely broken down pile, but there are no discernible ‘kitchen scraps’ evident and it looks a lot like dirt and smells earthy not rancid.
enjoy your spring, the planting of warm weather crops is still a few weeks off in Minnesota. see ya in the garden.
Post written by kristin | Leave Comment »
I’ll start by saying this recipe is a bit different from other Hungarian goulashes I’ve had. Like some other dishes, I think goulash is one of those things made by lots of people and in lots of different ways. And thus it falls perfectly into the “comfort food” heading. Let’s see how others define comfort food: Wikipedia is the easiest start (and goulash is there!) but I see that Merriam-Webster, the iconic American dictionary, added it in 1977 already as “food prepared in a traditional style having a usually nostalgic or sentimental appeal.” I think of comfort food as something that reminds you of home or childhood or another comfortable place or time and is generally satisfying in taste and satiety. Read the rest of this entry »
Post written by kristin | 3 Comments »
I made a batch of yogurt tonight and I wish to share it with you. Well, actually, I started a batch of yogurt tonight and the healthy bacteria will be hard at work all night long finishing the job. While I sleep. I like it.
Homemade yogurt in a jar
When my firstborn was a baby, there was much discussion about when to start solids and what foods were good and that is when I began in earnest to put lots of thought into our food at home. A good friend, whose child is a year and a half older, taught me how easy it is to make homemade yogurt. And Super Baby Food fed right into that. Read the rest of this entry »
Post written by andrew | 5 Comments »
photo courtesy of anthony bourdain; food porn 2 slideshow
1 lb cooked pasta, dakota growers
1 tbsp olive oil
red onion, julienne
prosciutto, 1/3 cup, julienne
optional: 1 roasted chicken breast, leftover from last nights dinner, 1 inch dice
1/2 cup peas, frozen or fresh
heavy cream, 42% butterfat cedar summit
parmesan cheese, freshly grated, saravecchio(antigo, WI)
1 egg yolk
heat ten inch skillet until smoking
saute red onion in olive oil, untill wilted and slightly caramelized
add prosciutto and chicken saute longer
add peas
add cream and reduce slightly
add parmesan and turn off heat [gas stovetop, turn off flame/ electric stovetop remove from burner]
when parmesan is melted and blended
add egg yolk and stir to thicken
add pasta
Post written by kristin | Leave Comment »
I have some buttermilk in the fridge that needs to get used up. We already had pancakes, not in the mood to make waffles nor oven-fried chicken though all are tasty ways to use up the buttermilk. Then I remembered, I haven’t made an Irish soda bread in quite a while. And since I’m getting the recipe out I can share it with you.
We got this recipe from our friend Renee, who emigrated from Ireland as a young lass circa 1960s. Irish soda bread is a type of “quick” bread – no yeast, rises from the action of baking soda. Read the rest of this entry »
Post written by andrew | Leave Comment »
I enjoy tea, I know a little. The plant that produces the product known a tea is camellia sinensis. It is harvested mostly in China and India from a plant and processed differently to make such products as green tea, white tea, oolong tea, black tea and pu-erh tea. Differing regions and climactic condition produce some of the subtleties of the differing ‘varieties’, processing provides another distinction.
A few generalities; green tea is unfermented, oolong is half fermented, and black tea is fully fermented. initially the tea is wilted then aged or fermented to it’s finally state and the steamed or baked or ‘cooked’ to dry the leaves. White tea is one step above green tea and has a delicate flavor, pu-erh is actually aged further after processing.
A little detail about the tea i had this morning and how i brewed it. i made a few cups of ‘jasmine downy pearls’. The tea is picked or plucked as two leaves and a bud, it is then wilted with jasmine blossoms and rolled into pea sized balls. this is then dried or set under heat. there are other teas produced by this type of manipulation, smaller balls are known as gunpowder tea and larger are called plums. I brewed it gong fu or with a larger amount of tea and several extractions; it is not normally recommended for green tea or scented teas, i guess I’m just a rebel. The first extraction was made using 4 times the amount normally used in western method methods, i used 4tbsps to 1 cup of water, heated to just below the boiling point. This extraction was only a 60 seconds, i then drank the tea. After that i used the same tea leaves and extracted it a second time for about the same result. The third extraction was the best, the pearls had fully unrolled and most of the jasmine flavor had dissipated, so i extracted it for three minutes. The flavor was the richest , not bitter and quite delicious.
Post written by kristin | Leave Comment »
I finally made chocolate ganache. Chocolate cream glaze ganache, to be more exact. I tasted some really good stuff of this nature about eight years ago at a friend’s baby shower and have been wanting to make some ever since. Other things always got in the way until a rainy, cool Easter afternoon in 2010. We made a bunny cake in a stand up mold. The cake is pretty plain and needed some help – chocolate ganache to the rescue.
Bunny cake – before
One of my favorite cake books is The Cake Bible by Rose Levy Berenbaum. It has everything from very basics (pancakes) to the science (why does your melting chocolate get ruined by a drop of water? it’s called seizing) to the fanciest of fancy celebration cakes. So I looked up chocolate ganache and this is what I found: Read the rest of this entry »
Post written by kristin | 2 Comments »
I just stumbled upon this very yummy sounding recipe for lamb. I have not tasted it but am so sure it will be good, I’m puttin’ it out there in time for Easter dinner. It comes from the folks at Baron’s Meat and Poultry, a lovely local butcher with good stuff, like Soul Food Farm, Marin Sun Farms and Mary’s Chicken products. David sent out his recipe for Roast Leg of Lamb or Top Round with pomegranate marinade.
I have already told you how I love the pomegranate. Read the rest of this entry »
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