Showing posts with label farmers market. Show all posts
Showing posts with label farmers market. Show all posts

Wednesday, September 15, 2010

Comcast Update and Okra

While Jason was dealing with Comcast’s shenanigans* on Saturday I was off at our local farmers’ market reveling in the bounty of late summer and early fall. In addition to the eggplant, tomatoes, and garlic I used to make Sunday Dinner, my shopping list also included apples for my lunch. As I was pursuing the rest of the market, my interest was sparked by the abundance of okra I saw at many of the stands.

True to my Southern roots, I am a fan of this odd little vegetable (well, actually it is a fruit), but I generally like it fried or in soups and stews. Although I’ve never tried cooking it myself, I decided to take some home and give it a try. I generally don’t fry things at home (too messy and I hate the way it makes the apartment smell) so I looked for other types of okra recipes. I ended up settling on one for Okra, Corn, and Tomatoes from Serious Eats (another Dinner Tonight recipe—surprise, surprise!). In addition to the titular ingredients, this recipe also included onions, curry and a little brown sugar. The resulting flavor was sweet and smoky—the perfect accompaniment for pan-roasted fish.  I’d highly recommend this dish—you could even serve it over rice for a hearty and delicious vegetarian dish.

One note about cooking okra—it has a bad reputation for becoming slimy. The key is to avoiding this is to try not to wash it if at all possible (or if you do make sure that you dry each individual piece very carefully). I was able to avoid washing because my farmers’ market okra came with a “no pesticides” guarantee.

*Comcast update: We never did get the call from the supervisor as promised (shocker!) so Jason ended up calling back later that day. The person he spoke to this time was somewhat more helpful and was able to lower our rates. We’re staying for now but are seriously considering trying something new so.... stay tuned!



Okra, Corn, and Tomatoes
Adapted slightly from Serious Eats

Ingredients:
2 TBL butter
½ cups onion, finely chopped
1 pound okra, stems removed and chopped
2 ½ cups tomatoes, chopped
1 cob of corn, kernels removed
¼ teaspoon curry powder
2 teaspoon brown sugar
Salt and pepper

1.Melt butter over medium heat. Add onions and cook until translucent.
2.Add okra and cook for 5 minutes. Add all the ingredients except the corn. Cover the pan and simmer until okra is crisp-tender, about 5 minutes.
3.Toss in the corn and cook for another minute or two. Salt and pepper to taste.

Monday, June 14, 2010

The Jason Seal of Approval

Last week was very meat heavy what with the southwestern brisket (which we ate several times given the large quantity it made) and our first foray into Korean BBQ Saturday night with our friends Matt and Stephanie. Given that, we decided that we needed to balance things out with more veggie-focused meals this week.

Last night we did just that, enjoying my first attempt at making a summer (and vegetarian) favorite—Gazpacho.  This could not be a better (or easier) meal—chop up some veggies, throw them in the blender, add seasonings to taste, and chill in the fridge for a few hours until ready to eat. It’s even better when you have farm fresh produce to put into it (like the tomatoes we bought during Saturday’s trip to the farmers market). Serve with some toasted, garlicky bread and you’ve got yourself a real crowd pleaser.

My aforementioned friend Stephanie recommended Everyday Food’s recipe so I used that as a base although I made some significant changes to the amounts (given the recipe was part of its “Cooking for One” column) as well as added a few ingredients to make it more our speed.  I think it turned out pretty well. I wasn’t sure how Jason would like it (he had never had gazpacho before) but the first words out of his mouth upon tasting were “I really like it. You’ll have to make this again.” Consider this recipe to be Jason-approved!



Gazpacho with Toasted Garlicky Bread
Adapted generously from Everyday Food

Ingredients:
3 medium tomatoes, cut into chunks
1 medium cucumber, peeled and diced
½ large red pepper, diced
½ medium red onion, diced
2 garlic cloves, minced
1 ½ teaspoons red wine vinegar
1 TBL olive oil, plus more for serving
2 generous shots of hot sauce
Salt and pepper
French baguette, sliced
1 garlic clove, sliced in half

1.Place 2-3 TBL each of the cucumber, red pepper, and red onion in a container and set aside for serving.
2.Place tomatoes into a blender or food processor and puree until almost smooth. Add remaining cucumber, red pepper, red onion, garlic, vinegar, 1 TBL olive oil, hot sauce, and generous amounts of salt and pepper. Puree until you reach the desired consistency.
3.Chill in the refrigerator for at least 30 minutes (I left ours in for about 3 hours).
4.Right before serving, drizzle olive oil on each side of the sliced bread. Toast under the broiler until golden brown, about 1-2 minutes per side. Rub each side of toasted bread with garlic clove.
5.Check gazpacho for seasonings. Divide into two bowls. Top with reserved diced vegetables and drizzle with olive oil. Serve with garlicky bread.

Sunday, June 13, 2010

Summer Berry Pie

The first thing that I thought off when we got home from the farmers market yesterday (and I realized that we bought more berries than we could realistically eat in the few days before some of the more delicate ones—ahem, raspberries—would start to go bad) was pie. One of the best things about summer is the ability to make wonderful, fresh fruit pies.  While a lot of you might associate the holidays, and especially Thanksgiving, with pie to me nothing says summer like homemade pie. Maybe that is because I like fruit pies more than pumpkin and pecan (the traditional fall pies) or maybe because I make blueberry pie every June as part of my Father’s Day gift to my dad. Regardless, my thoughts were consumed with pie as soon as we walked in the door.
 Look at how gorgeous these berries are!
I’ve made many pies before but never my own pie dough. Shocking, I know. Usually I opt for the Pillsbury dough that you find in the refrigerated section of the grocery store—the one that you just unroll and drop in a pie plate. Pie dough has always seemed a bit intimidating to me for some reason—maybe it’s the need for cutting the butter into the flour or the fact that I have limited counter space on which to roll out the dough. But using the premade stuff with those glorious berries seemed wrong somehow. Like I’d being doing them a great disservice by using it. So I decided to suck it up and try my hand at homemade crust.

Fortunately, my old friend Smitten Kitchen had a number of great step-by-step tutorials on making pie crust that made it all seem a bit more doable.  Since I followed her instructions to a “t” I won’t go into the step-by-step here. You can find her all-butter pie dough recipe here and her tips for rolling and crimping here. I will, however, offer a few suggestions/things I learned in my initial attempt at making pie crust from scratch:
  1. Make sure you don’t leave your butter in too big of pieces. I thought I had achieved “tiny peas” as SK recommended but as I was rolling it out it looked like some pieces were a little big. As a result, when I pulled the pie out of the oven it seemed like some of the butter had melted/oozed out of the crust more than it probably should have. (Still tasted and looked good though—but the pie plate was a bit greasy feeling).
  2. It is really important that you shape the dough into real discs before chilling it. It is much more difficult to get a true round during the rolling process if you are starting with an oblong.
  3. SK’s rolling tips of “roll, lift, turn, repeat” really do make it so much easier to get a good, even circle (assuming you did number 2 correctly)
  4. Definitely flour the heck out of your rolling surface and your rolling pin. Make sure to re-flour the rolling pin every so often.
 Don't those look like "tiny peas" to you??

Notice how not round these discs are.

In terms of the pie filling, I ended up using another one of SK’s recipes as a general guide for my Summer Berry Pie.  All in all the pie (crust and filling) turned out phenomenally. Given the juiciness of the berries I probably could have added a bit more cornstarch to the filling but even though it ran a bit, it still tasted incredibly good. Really. Words cannot accurately describe how good this pie is—all thanks to some exceptional fresh and local berries.





Summer Berry Pie
Adapted from Smitten Kitchen

Ingredients:
1 recipe of SK’s All Butter, Really Flaky Pie Dough
1 ½ cups fresh raspberries, rinsed
1 ½ cups fresh blackberries, rinsed
1 ½ cups fresh strawberries, rinsed and quartered
4 TBL cornstarch
2/3 cup sugar
1/8 teaspoon salt
Juice of half a lemon
Vanilla ice cream or whipped cream (optional)

1.Gently combine berries, cornstarch, sugar, salt, and lemon juice in a large bowl. Set aside.
2.Roll out half of chilled dough (use the larger one if you divided them unevenly)on a well-floured work surface so that you have a 12-13 inch round. Gently transfer rolled out dough into a 9 inch pie plate. Trim so you have a ½ inch overhang.
3.Using a slotted spoon, transfer berry mixture into the pie shell-try to leave as much of the liquid that has collected as possible (otherwise your crust will be soggy).
4.Roll out remaining chilled dough so that you have a 12 inch round. Gently drape over top of pie. Trim so that you have a 1 inch overhang. Fold the overhang (from both top and bottom crust) under to seal the crust. Crimp decoratively.
5.Cut slits in the top of the pie to allow steam to escape.
6.Bake on a cookie/baking sheet at 400 for 20-25 minutes (the baking sheet is key so you don’t end up with boiled over fruit juice/melted butter burning on the bottom of your oven). Make sure the oven rack is positioned in the center of the oven so you don’t brown the top too fast. Lower heat to 350 and continue to bake for another  25-30 minutes until fruit is bubbly and crust is golden brown. If the edges start to get too brown before the pie is done, you can cover them with aluminum foil to prevent burning. Cool on a wire rack. Serve warm or at room temperature with vanilla ice cream or whipped cream if you’d like.

Saturday, June 12, 2010

What a Way to Start the Day!

What do you get when you combine a bagel sandwich and iced coffee with the fruit-filled bounty of a June farmers market (all of which is only a 5 minute walk away)?

This week's farmers market haul--strawberries, tomatoes, blackberries, raspberries, vidalia onion, blueberries, yellow squash, cherries, and pickling cucumbers. Yes, we got a little carried away with the fruit. There were also peaches and apricots but I resisted getting one of everything.

The perfect way to start the day!


Fruit pie and pickle recipes coming soon :)