Hello again! We’ve finally emerged from our early spring slump. Our CSA ends in March and our farmers’ market closes for the season in mid-April, so we enter this confusing 6-week period where we have to shop at the regular grocery store to supplement what we can get at our neighborhood’s small local foods market. It’s very uninspiring.

We still aren’t quite into the summer harvest season, but Erik picked up some delicious . . . → Read More: Quick Asparagus and Hazelnut Pasta]]>

Hello again! We’ve finally emerged from our early spring slump. Our CSA ends in March and our farmers’ market closes for the season in mid-April, so we enter this confusing 6-week period where we have to shop at the regular grocery store to supplement what we can get at our neighborhood’s small local foods market. It’s very uninspiring.

We still aren’t quite into the summer harvest season, but Erik picked up some delicious local greens and asparagus this week that motivated me to get moving in the kitchen again. It was also 80 degrees yesterday! Crazy! The combo of perky veggies and a warm breeze have shaken me out of my funk enough to dig up an old favorite recipe. I’ve got a file folder full of recipe clippings, so I’m not sure where this one came from, but it was probably Real Simple or Whole Living. On a side note, it’s weird how you get to know a magazine’s font and layout after a while, isn’t it? Useless knowledge, but it sticks in my brain somehow. Anyway…I changed up the recipe to serve two and use more veggies and a leeeetle bit less pasta. The pasta adjustment is mostly because we have a FANTASTIC Italian grocery store nearby that sells dirt cheap, high quality, super delicious fresh pasta and I feel silly asking for 9 ounces of pasta, so I just get half a pound (which is 8). We’ve stopped making our own pasta, because this place is so great!

Besides being yummy, this is a very quick meal. If you start the water heating and the hazelnuts toasting before you slice the asparagus, you can have dinner ready in just about the time it takes to boil a pot of water. If, like me, you forget to start the water until you’re done prepping the asparagus, it’s still pretty fast.

Pasta with Asparagus and Hazelnuts

Makes 2 hearty or 3 smaller servings

Directions

1. Start heating a large pot of water on high heat. Give it a good pinch of kosher salt, if you’d like.
2. Heat the oven to 350. Put the hazelnuts on a small baking sheet and toast them for 10-15 minutes or until fragrant and the skins are starting to darken. Once they’re toasted, give them a rough chop and set aside.
3. While the water is heating and the hazelnuts are toasting, slice the asparagus as thinly as you can stand, lengthwise. You can use a vegetable peeler for this, if you want. I usually cut each spear in half lengthwise, then, placing the cut edge flat on the cutting board, cut each half into 3-5 long strips. The texture is best with thinner strips, but it’ll still be tasty if you lose patience.
4. Once the water comes to a strong boil, add the asparagus and set a timer for 2 1/2 minutes.
5. After the asparagus has cooked for a minute (1 1/2 minutes left on the timer), add the pasta to the same pot. Give the whole thing a stir so that the pasta doesn’t clump up.
6. Once the pasta and asparagus are done, drain them and put back in the pot. Add the chopped hazelnuts, oil, salt, and pepper. Stir gently to distribute evenly. I normally use tongs, because they help to integrate the asparagus into the pasta.
7. Put the pasta on two or three plates and grate or crumble the cheese on top. I like to use a vegetable peeler to carve nice long ribbons of Parmesan. Eat up!

Our CSA switched over from fall to winter this week, which means that, in addition to produce and eggs from Red Fire Farm, we get some fun extras from other local producers. This week’s pick-up included sauerkraut from Real Pickles and cheddar from Chase Hill Farm. Now, I know that I may be in the minority, but I love sauerkraut. I’ve got some fermenting on the floor of the kitchen right now, but it’s . . . → Read More: Dark Days Challenge Week 8: Pasta with Sauerkraut and Bacon]]>

Our CSA switched over from fall to winter this week, which means that, in addition to produce and eggs from Red Fire Farm, we get some fun extras from other local producers. This week’s pick-up included sauerkraut from Real Pickles and cheddar from Chase Hill Farm. Now, I know that I may be in the minority, but I love sauerkraut. I’ve got some fermenting on the floor of the kitchen right now, but it’s not quite ready, so I was thrilled to get a jar from the CSA. I could seriously just eat it straight (and sometimes do), but that’s not a very fun post for the Dark Days Challenge this week. Instead, we dug through the freezer and found some pasta dough and bacon. That sounds like a meal to me!

The recipe comes from Eugenia Bone‘s excellent small-batch preserving book, Well-Preserved. Unlike other books, which have tons of recipes for preserves, but no help on what to do with them, Well-Preserved has only a dozen or so preserving recipes, but then 3 or 4 ways to use each. The fish and pickled asparagus dinner we made a few weeks ago was a riff on a recipe in that book. It might not be the first book on the subject you buy, but I’d definitely recommend adding it to your library eventually.

Pasta with Sauerkraut and Bacon

Makes 3-4 servings

Directions

1. You can make or use any pasta that you like. We used leftover pasta dough that we had in the freezer. We let it thaw and then rolled it out into a sheet. Lucky for us for Dark Days, this pasta was made using only local ingredients, including the flour. We’ll save the pasta recipe for another time, but here is a picture of the rolling process:

   

2. We tried to shape it like penne by cutting it into diagonal pieces and shaping it around a chopstick. However, in the end, this all completely fell apart in the water. We actually really liked the end results, though. So much so that we’d actually recommend making or using wide noodles. It worked really well with the sauerkraut. Anyway, here are some photos of the attempt:

   

3. While the water is boiling for your pasta, fry up some bacon, very crispy. It works best (especially for this recipe) in a cast iron skillet. When it’s done, place it between two paper towels to drain. Pour off almost all the fat from the pan.

   

4. Add the sauerkraut to the skillet and cook it over medium-low in the remaining bacon fat for five minutes. Add the pasta, salt, and pepper. Crumble in the bacon, and add the cheese and parsley. Toss to mix, and serve.

   

   ]]> http://eatlocal365.com/2012/01/19/dark-days-challenge-week-8-pasta-with-sauerkraut-and-bacon/feed/ 0 http://eatlocal365.com/2011/12/06/dark-days-challenge-week-1-how-to-make-potato-gnocchi/ http://eatlocal365.com/2011/12/06/dark-days-challenge-week-1-how-to-make-potato-gnocchi/#comments Tue, 06 Dec 2011 14:25:06 +0000 Erik http://eatlocal365.com/?p=4660

   To motivate ourselves through the winter, we have joined the Dark Days Challenge, which asks that we cook one meal a week focused on SOLE ingredients (sustainable, organic, local, and ethical). Right up our alley! Each blogger gets to set their own parameters within these guidelines. We’ll be sticking to the following rules for our Dark Days recipes:

   Our primary sources for ingredients will be our CSA through Red Fire Farm, the Somerville Winter . . . → Read More: Dark Days Challenge Week 1: How to Make Potato Gnocchi]]>

   To motivate ourselves through the winter, we have joined the Dark Days Challenge, which asks that we cook one meal a week focused on SOLE ingredients (sustainable, organic, local, and ethical). Right up our alley! Each blogger gets to set their own parameters within these guidelines. We’ll be sticking to the following rules for our Dark Days recipes:

   • Our primary sources for ingredients will be our CSA through Red Fire Farm, the Somerville Winter Farmers Market, and our canned/dried/frozen stores from the summer.
   • If we need to supplement, we’ll use ingredients from within 150 miles of home or those that we get from the NYC Greenmarket system while visiting friends and family there.
   • Salt, dried herbs and spices, baking soda/powder, and vinegar are fair game, but we’ll try to find local sources.

   I sort of feel like relying on the Greenmarket is cheating, but we’re still figuring things out here and will be spending a time in NYC for holidays, so I’m giving us a pass. On to the recipe!

   This is actually two recipes, one for the gnocchi and another for the sauce. Both are variations on recipes from Lidia’s Family Table, which is a phenomenal resource.
   
   
   Potato Gnocchi

   Makes 4 servings

   Amount	Ingredient	Preparation	Where we bought it
   1.5 lbs	Potatoes		Red Fire Farm CSA
   1	Egg	Beaten	Red Fire Farm CSA
   2 cups	All purpose flour		Cayuga Pure Organics (NYC Greenmarket)
   0.75 TBsp	Salt

   Directions

   1. Clean the whole potatoes and place them in a large pot. Fill with enough water to cover the potatoes plus a little headroom. Place on high heat, cover, and allow to boil for about 45 minutes, or until they are tender when poked with a fork but not yet falling apart. Drain the potatoes and let them cool enough to handle.
   2. Rice the potatoes. This can be done either by peeling them and using a potato ricer, or by using a food mill (which will automatically remove and separate the skins). We used the attachment to our Kitchenaid stand mixer, which is actually two attachments, both the food mill attachmentand parts from the meat grinder attachment. It’s kind of complicated to put together, but it’s a real labor and time-saver. I wish we had taken pictures of the milling process (and construction), but we had just gotten back from Thanksgiving and were cooking for company coming over, so we were in a bit of a time pinch. Next time!
   3. Rice / mill the potatoes on a sheet pan. Using a rubber spatula, mush and spread them out over the pan. Sprinkle the salt over the layer of potato. Let it cool and dry for lat least 20 minutes (up to however long you feel like it!).
   4. Pour the beaten egg over the potato and then layer on the flour. [At this point in our timeline I finished the unpacking and cleaning up and made it to the kitchen to help, with the camera!] Start with about 1 cup of flour.

      

   5. Using the rubber spatula, fold the bottom layer of the potato over the top around the edges. Repeat (gently) a few times until it begins to resemble a loose dough. Gradually add more flour until you have a kneadable dough. If you don’t add enough flough, the gnocchi will fall apart when cooked…but they’ll still be tasty!

      

   6. Using your hands, finish the kneading process by making the dough slightly more consistent. Sprinkle on more flour if necessary and knead it in. It should feel more like a dough than mashed potatoes. Shape it into a ball and cut it into quarters.

      

   7. Clean and lightly flour a work surface. (Up until now you could do it all on the sheet pan.) Roll out each quarter of the dough in an 18 inch rope. Cut each rope in half to make them easier to work with.

      

   8. Cut each portion into pieces between 2/3 of an inch to 1 inch. Have a floury sheet pan nearby to start collecting the shaped gnocchi.

      

   9. To give the gnocchi its classic shape, hold a fork so that the tines are facing downwards and push each piece onto the fork near where the tines join. The tines will make an impression on the one side and your finger will create a slight indentation on the other side. Then, roll the gnocchi off the end of the fork to make it more cylindrical and to create the tine impressions all around. Rumor is that eventually you can do this in one motion. I’m not there yet.

      

   10. Once all of the gnocchi are shaped and on the sheet pan, toss lightly in the flour to avoid sticking and cover them with a towel. They should be boiled immediately at this point or frozen. They don’t sit around well in this form. Bring a large pot of water to boil (get this started in advance if you remember).
   11. Using a kitchen skimmer / spider or slotted spoon, drop 5 or 6 gnocchi in the boiling water at a time. This is important because the water needs to be at the boiling temperature to form the “skin” that will hold the gnocchi together. The more gnocchi pieces are added to the water at one time, the more the temperature will drop and the longer it will take to recover. Limiting the number of pieces is annoying but in the end it will be easier and you will get better results.
   12. Leave each batch in the water for 2 – 3 minutes, until they plump up a bit a float to the surface. Fish them out with your skimmer, but be gentle with them! Cooking for too long will lead to mush, so don’t be afraid to pull them out a few at a time as they float.

   
   
   Simple Tomato Sauce

   Makes a lot

   Amount	Ingredient	Preparation	Where we bought it
   2 quarts	San Marzano / plum tomatoes	Previously canned (2 quart jars)	Cherry Lane Farms
   1	Large onion	Diced (about 1.5 – 2 cups)	Red Fire Farm CSA
   1	Medium celeriac	Diced (about 1.5 – 2 cups)	Enterprise Farm (Somerville Winter Farmers Market)
   3 TBsp	Olive oil
   2 cups	Water
   2	Dried bay leaves
   1	Dried chile	Crumbled (substitute 1-2 tsp red pepper flakes)	Northshire Farm chiles dried last summer
   1 tsp	Kosher salt

   Directions

   1. Place the oil in a Dutch oven or large pot over medium-high heat. Once it’s heated, add the diced onion and celeriac (or you can substitute carrot, celery, etc.). Cook, stirring frequently, for 3-4 mintes. You want them to soften but not brown. [Note: we made this sauce using our own canned tomotoes. You can use store-bought canned San Marzanos, if you must.]

      

   2. Add the tomatoes, salt, bay leaves, and red pepper flakes. Swish the water around the tomato jar or can to get out the last bits and dump it into the pot. Turn up the heat, cover, and bring the sauce to a boil. Check on it and stir frequently.
   3. Once it boils, turn the heat down to medium / medium-high to maintain a bubbling simmer. Cover and cook for 45 minutes, stirring occasionally. At this point you can continue simmering and cooking down for as long as you like, up to an hour. When the sauce is as thick as you want, remove the bay leaves, blend with a hand mixer to your desired consistency, and add salt to taste

   We served our gnocchi and sauce with another round of our arugula, beet, and peach salad. We quenched our thirst with some delicious cider from Eve’s Cidery and capped it off with little parfaits of home-canned cherries in wine and whipped cream. Yum! Nothing better than an impromptu Sunday dinner with good friends.

   

   

   ]]> http://eatlocal365.com/2011/12/06/dark-days-challenge-week-1-how-to-make-potato-gnocchi/feed/ 5 http://eatlocal365.com/2011/04/30/how-to-make-pasta-and-spinach-with-onion-and-goat-cheese-sauce/ http://eatlocal365.com/2011/04/30/how-to-make-pasta-and-spinach-with-onion-and-goat-cheese-sauce/#comments Sat, 30 Apr 2011 21:56:05 +0000 Erik http://eatlocal365.com/?p=3369

   Because of work, Lindsay has been out of the country for four weeks. I haven’t mentioned it because I was afraid that once we posted about it, it would give me an easy excuse to let things go in the kitchen (and on the blog). In the end, I kept cooking. Very few of my meals were eaten out or ordered in. I’m confident that I can keep it up for one last week, . . . → Read More: How to Make Pasta and Spinach with Onion and Goat Cheese “Sauce”]]>

   Because of work, Lindsay has been out of the country for four weeks. I haven’t mentioned it because I was afraid that once we posted about it, it would give me an easy excuse to let things go in the kitchen (and on the blog). In the end, I kept cooking. Very few of my meals were eaten out or ordered in. I’m confident that I can keep it up for one last week, so now the cat’s out of the bag.

   As for the blog, I did have the dual problems of needing to cook half as often (leftovers!), and the fact that, when left to my own devices, I tend to cook recipes that I have made before (and that we have posted already). We also changed seasons. While I got good at making dark days dishes, we’ve already posted our best and easiest dark days recipes. Then, after about two weeks, leafy greens came back into season. It’s taken some time for me to remember what to do with them. I’ve eaten a lot of boring salads and straight up sautes, but nothing that I even thought to take pictures of. We were so good with greens last summer, so stay tuned!

   Lindsay is the menu planner. I don’t flip through cookbooks and dog-ear them. I pick recipes that I know work and where I already have an expectation of the results. When I wing it, it tends not to be anything worth writing about. Part of the reason I enjoy writing this blog is because it pushes my comfort zone. That’s what we hope to do for others. If we can help you pick your menu, and visual the results AND then we’ve done a service.

   This recipe is an example of my improved on-the-fly cooking. I pieced it together from what was in the cupboard. It was fast, easy, and delicious. Give it a try, or make up a version for yourself. Sorry for the vagueness in the measurement amounts. Like I said, I pieced it together from what was on hand and used things up rather than measuring all of them. And I didn’t have the extra hands to take as many pictures as I normally do, which means fewer, and blurrier pictures.
   
   
   Whole Wheat Pasta and Spinach with Onion and Goat Cheese “Sauce”

   Makes 2-3 servings

   Ingredients:

   Amount	Ingredient	Preparation	Where we bought it (* Union Sq. Greenmarket)
   1 bunch	Spinach		Norwich Meadows *
   1 – 2 cups	Whole wheat penne (dried)	This recipe actually works better with dried than fresh pasta
   2	Yellow onions	Thinly sliced (I used 1 large, 1 small)	Paffenroth Gardens *
   2	Shallots	Sliced into rings	Paffenroth Gardens *
   4 – 8 cloves	Garlic	Minced	Keith’s Farm *
   1 handful	Dried porcini mushrooms	Optional, or you can substitute fresh
   1 – 2 TBsp	Goat cheese	I used plain Chevre	Patches of Star Dairy *
   1 – 2 TBsp	Olive oil
   0.25 – 0.5 cups	Reserved pasta water	Remember to save some of the water that you cook the pasta in!

    

   Directions:

   The key to this recipe is the “sauce.” I put that in quotation marks because it isn’t really a sauce, it just a mix of heavily caramelized aromatics (the onions and stuff) with melted goat cheese and a dash of pasta water and oil. The “sauce” lightly coats the pasta and makes it tasty without being too heavy or unhealthy. It helps to use whole wheat pasta, because it gives the dish more flavor.

   1. The one ingredient that I had to buy when I thought of this recipe was the cheese. You want to use very soft, spreadable cheese that will have a liquid texture when melted that will blend into the sauce. A lot of other cheeses would glob up. I went with plain goat’s milk Chevre.

      Start by soaking the mushrooms (if using dried). If you put them in water when you start, that should be enough time. The mushrooms are optional, and you could use fresh mushrooms, but in the recipe I think dried porcinis work best, plus we always have some in the fridge because they store so well.

      

   2. Chop the aromatics. I used a leftover bulb of garlic that had a lot of tiny cloves, and I used the only two onions I had. I added the shallots to make up for the tiny onion. You can’t have too many aromatics in this recipe; they are what make it work.

      For the onions, cut them into shards. The best way to visualize this is to picture cutting a globe in half from the North to South pole. Then turn the globe a few degrees and do it again. Repeat until you’ve done it all the way around. Don’t actually cut it this way because it would be unsafe. Cut it in half first at the equator and work flat on the cutting board. You’ll get shorter shards, but you’ll still have all your fingers. When you’re done, all the internal layers of the onion should fall apart, leaving you with many shards. If not, give it a little muscle.

      Mince the garlic. If you use shallots, put a few slices through them to cut them into rings.

      

   3. Once the onions are prepped, start the pasta. I used 2 cups of dry whole whole wheat penne, but in retrospect, given the amount of spinach I had on hand, I would only use 1 cup. Or, use more spinach than I did.

      Bring a small pot of water to a boil. Then add the pasta and let it boil fiercely for about 8 minutes. You want to take it off the heat when it’s still a little firm (al dente) because it’s going to continue to cook more later. Drain the pasta but bet sure to save at least 0.5 cup of the water.

      

   4. Add 1 – 2 TBsp of olive oil to a cast iron skillet and add the aromatics. Cook them while the pasta cooks and the mushrooms soak, until they are nicely browned and caramelized.

      

   5. Once both the pasta and the aromatics are done, keep the heat on and add the spinach to the skillet, plus a dash of salt and pepper. Cook the spinach only just until wilted, as in the picture below. Like I said, I added too much pasta for this amount of spinach. Stir everything together to spread the oil and the aromatics.

      

   6. Add about 0.25 cups of the reserved pasta water. Give it all a good stir. Add 1 – 2 TBsp of the goat cheese and stir everything around. The cheese will start to melt and incorporate. Add some more pasta water, a little at a time, until there is just enough “sauce” to coat the pasta with a light film. You don’t want it watery, so be sparing with the water.

      

   Enjoy!

   

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