back home

I got home to NY this afternoon. good ole muggy smoggy cloudy crowded NY. After being away for a week in Nashville, I found myself so relieved to be back. As much as I appreciate the friendliness and spaciousness (and cheapness) of the rest of America, I'm so happy to be coastal again.

Anyway I am pooped. Was feeling super groggy but then came home to a bounty of veggies from our CSA this week. Hooray tomatoes!

I'm thinking ratatouille, via this great recipe from Bon Appetit last month. Is that weird? Ratatouille in the middle of a sweltering hot summer?

CSA! CSA!

I know I always talk about how great it is being a part of our local CSA. I am just SO into it, veggies are my favorite things in the world! (Next to cheese. And pork. And dim sum. Okay, fine, maybe I have a few faves)

My roommate and I are splitting a half share of just vegetables- half share meaning we pick up every other week. Here is this week's pickup list:

1 head bok choi

1 bunch kale

1 bunch swiss chard

1 head broccoli

1 head green lettuce

1 head red lettuce

.5 pint sugar snap peas

5 garlic scapes

.3 lb braising mix

1.5 lb zucchini

And here's a lil snapshot of dinner! I used the garlic scapes, sauteed in olive oil, and drizzled them over some things I already had in the fridge- Trader Joe's beluga lentils and chicken jalapeno sausages topped with cooked spinach and ricotta salata. Then a small side salad with the CSA lettuce and snap peas, dressed with lemon, olive oil, and parm. So simple, so yum.

Garlic scapes are really becoming something of a hero to me- It adds such a sweet garlic flavor when tossed in a dish, but it's so much more subtle than regular garlic. Plus it's green and looks so purty!

Early morning intro to Eggs

I know everyone likes eggs, but I never have. Particularly hard boiled or scrambled, blechhhh. What turns me off is not only the distinct taste that overwhelms your entire mouth and coats your throat, but also the textures of the cooked whites as well as the yolks, and that gassy, stinky smell. Don't get me wrong - eggs can be an amazing addition to things like lemon meringue pie, brushed over pastries as a glaze, and dunked under breadcrumbs for fried chicken. But somewhere in my life I developed a massive aversion to most forms of plainly cooked eggs, which as you can imagine, has left me with many (limited) eggless breakfast mornings.

Then last week rolled along. One of those mornings I was awake by 5am, unable to fall back asleep. Not only could my brain turn itself off, but my stomach sounded like the Industrial Revolution had made a comeback inside of me. Bleary eyed and barely conscious, I made my way to the fridge, a path so familiar I didn't even need to turn on any lights. Sad. Even sadder was that I didn't have any groceries to make even a decent lunch. I've become very inventive in my days of unemployment, and have used up most of the cans, jars, bags, and tupperware full of food that I had stored away God-knows-how-long ago. I took a look at what was left, the substantial ingredient being two eggs out of a 1/2 dozen that I used in a cake some time before. Big sigh. Hunger conquers all, even distaste. Must use eggs.

Fortunately I had just enough of a few other ingredients leftover from other cooking endeavors to make what in my head seemed like a marvelous concoction. And you know what? It wasn't too bad in my mouth, either. NOT bad at all. In fact, it was pretty much exactly what I was craving, made me full, satisfied, and licking my plate. It even woke me up a little bit. This sandwich has definitely made me re-think The Egg as a decent foodstuff, and even made me start to conceive inventive ways I could include them in sandwiches. I'm not yet ready to have a whole hard-boiled egg, or scrambled (because I think that's the absolute WORST tasting way to cook them), but I don't think I will ever just throw away leftover eggs again.

INGREDIENTS for the EggSandwich for EggHaters:

2 eggs

chopped garlic scape

sliced parmesan cheese - a LOT of it!

pea shoot pesto

mustard (I used wasabi mustard, yum)

toasted bread - english muffin, whole wheat, wonderbread, bagel - whatever suits your tastes

Crack the two eggs onto an oiled skillet, and sprinkle garlic scapes to cover the eggs. Flip the eggs over and layer parmesan cheese on top. If the cheese can withstand, flip over one more time to "fry" the cheese too.

Toast bread, spread with pesto on one side and mustard on the other.

Sandwich egg, garlic scape, and cheese concoction onto the now-seasoned bread. VOILA! Isn't she a beaute?

Serves one very hungry, barely-awake person.

Pea Shoot Pesto

Last Wednesday marked our first CSA pickup, from the Garden of Eve farms. My roommate and I are doing a bi-weekly vegetable pick up, which seems to work out perfectly for our little budgets and big stomachs.

There are so many wonderful things about being part of a CSA, the least of which is getting the opportunity to try new produce that one would never pick out at the supermarket. For example, garlic scapes. I've seen them all over the place and always observed them at the farmers market, but never once had the guts to get a bunch. Another example, pea shoots. These are just a couple examples of veggies that veer slightly off of a common grocery list.

Pea shoots tend to wilt fairly quickly, mine seemed to keep five days in a ziploc bag in our produce compartment fairly well. The basil, on the other hand, didn't fare so well. RIP sweet basil.

I decided that these fresh delicate pea shoots should be eaten raw, as sautee'ing them (as traditionally done in Chinese cuisine) seemed to be such a waste of something so fresh. After doing a quick google search for ways to use pesto, maybe in salads, I came across a bounty of pesto recipes for pea shoots. Brilliant! Though pesto is traditionally a combination of basil, pinenuts, parmesean, olive oil and garlic, chefs and home cooks have modified the recipe to include walnuts, mint, cilantro...the list goes on.

The pesto, because pea shoots are far softer in flavor than basil, turned out to be a sweet, nutty, and fresh sauce. It's not an oily liquidy pesto like the ones you may buy at the store, but rather a thick, chunky, smooth paste. I don't eat a lot of pasta at home, so I am inclined to use this "sauce" on sandwiches, chicken, tofu, with pretzels, on salmon, and as a salad dressing (with an extra squirt of lemon, of course). I can't wait!!!!

PEA SHOOT PESTO

prep time: approx. 15 - 20 min

2 handfuls pea shoots (about 1 lb??)

3/4 cup parmesan cheese

1 cup olive oil

1 cup pinenuts

5 cloves roasted garlic

1 lemon

salt and pepper, to taste

Wash and prep the pea shoots by snapping off all the thick stems. Spin in a salad spinner to dry completely

Pea shoots and roasted garlic, delightful!!!

Combine 1/2 of all ingredients in a food processor or blender, begin to blend on a lower speed. You may need to stop the blender every so often to mix around the ingredients. Once the pesto starts to farm, start adding in the remainder of the ingredients while the blender is still running. Add more (or less) olive oil to determine a consistency that you like. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

giving the pesto a final whirl in our blender.

Blend on high speed until thoroughly pureed. You can also leave your pesto chunkier, if you wish.

Store in an airtight jar or container. Should keep for about a week or slightly more.

**To roast garlic, cut off the top of a garlic bulb and place on a sheet of foil. drizzle a tiny amount of olive oil and wrap foil to cover the entire bulb. Roast in a 400degree oven for up to an hour, or until soft. This is also great on toast, in pastas, or just about anything, really.

Slow Down

Campbell, CA, c.1987 I wasn't allowed near a stove but that certainly didn't stop me from cooking up a storm.

As most people who read this blog (does anyone read this blog?) know, I am quite enthralled by the world of food. Making it, eating it, reading about it, I love it all. My mom would always tell me that as an infant, I would refuse canned and jarred baby food, only eating homemade meals that my dear mother so painstakingly cooked each day. Why she didn't just threaten I starve or shove a jar of Gerber's puree down my throat I have no idea. I guess somewhere between birth and learning how to eat I also honed a very sophisticated palate, and my mother decided to appease this.

In retrospect it's easy to see how my early love of food was further encouraged as I grew older by the accessibility to develop my tastes and awarenesses. I grew up not on Captain Crunch and Fruity Pebbles, but "healthy" cereals such as Kix, Basic 4, or Bran Flakes. The Chinese culture taught me to love trotters (pigs feet), whole fish, dried squid, chicken feet, seaweed, and pork belly- wayyy before New York over-popularized the poor cut of meat. I never knew avocados didn't really exist in some parts of the nation, have gone apple/cherry/blackberry picking as a weekend sport, and thanks to mom was frequenting Farmers Markets and eating locally and seasonally at a very early age.

When I started working in restaurants in high school I really saw how different people were in their tastes. You can really separate those who eat for just consumption purposes, and those who eat for enjoyment- just by watching them for ten minutes while they dine. In my opinion, the latter is always more fun as a customer. As I moved on to different restaurants, I became more aware of the dynamics between food and culture, how people were able to use food as a source of discussion and debate, how it could become art....pleasure. I even took a class in college that focused on Food in Modern Culture, watching Tampopo for the first time and realizing that Food and Surrealist movement probably weren't so different after all. At the ripe age of 21 (okay, maybe a little beforehand) I became aware that wine wasn't some nasty grape juice, and likewise with beer, port, whiskeys, grappas, ohh the list goes on. I know I am completely romanticizing food and wine right now and frankly probably sound quite ridiculous, but I'm dead serious.

Anyway this mini-rant leads me to my current food infatuation: Slow Food. Or, more generalized, the slow food movement. Starting in the hippie-infested slums of Berkeley, I'd like to describe very succinctly that it's the movement to bring local, sustainable, and Old World ideals back to our every day eating. It's about providing a food system that is clean, fair, and healthy for both producers and consumers alike. If it's anything that will save the world, it's the slow food movement. That, and abolishing my credit card debt. But save that for another time...

I think my early infatuation and experiences with food, with eating, with eating WELL has led me to the place that I'm currently at in my young adulthood. Which is in New York, broke, and trying to eat as well as I can. Eating sustainably doesn't mean you HAVE to grow your own garden and become a vegetarian and convert to buddhism and spend loads of yuppie cash at the Farmer's Market. It just means putting that extra little care to know where your food comes from, making sure that you're eating according to the season and that you're not stuffing your face with HFCS (High Fructose Corn Syrup) and a bunch of other chemicals I can't even begin to spell let along pronounce. And yes, I do care about the environment, but I'm mainly doing it because frankly, it tastes and feels so much damn better. Ok, example: gross Entenmann's coffee cake that is loaded with bad fats and processed sugars and has been sitting on a shelf for years and was probably made in a factory in Venezuela, or my fresh homemade seasonal Rhubarb Coffee Cake that I baked this morning, laden with pure butter, brown sugars, and fresh eggs? (slightly exaggerating about the Entenmann's cake for comparison purposes, please don't sue me) Which one do you think will taste better? Huh? That's what I thought.

I am so zealous about this ideal that I would likely call it the closest thing to my religion. Though I wish I had enough energy, time, and money to carry this through in all aspects of my lifestyle and habits, I'm unfortunately sometimes too lazy, sometimes too short-of-time, and sometimes too broke to eat live and breathe Green all day. But I do what I can, which I think is more than some can say, right?

Anyway, I will close out the post by plugging my version of a PSA and tell you to please check out Slow Food USA for tons of useful information and volunteer opportunities and fun events in your hood. I'm a member of Slow Food NYC, and though I can't describe what exactly I do as a member (nothing, really) it helps when you want to do fun foodie things with fun foodie people. I'm going to a wine tasting tonight at the Astor Center featuring the wines of the Finger Lakes (in central NY). Fun Foodie drinking, most excellent!

Craig's Kitchen

Good karma, I'm all about that. What better way to earn some good karma than to cook for others? I've been looking into ways to involve myself more with the community in general, so when I heard about Craig's Kitchen I immediately became intrigued.

Without going into TOO much detail, Craig's Kitchen is an organization of volunteers who organizes a more sustainable, seasonal, nutritious, and home-cooked program for the Greenpoint Soup Kitchen. They work with local CSAs to ensure the soup kitchen receives as much good produce as possible, and I'm hoping they are able to do similar things with the meat they serve (though I'm a tad skeptical). I'm volunteering to bake as a part of their Dessert Corps. Baking! For a cause! Woooooo!!

Each Wednesday a handful of volunteers bake within the category that is given to them, with a reminder of the dessert and sample recipes sent out the weekend prior. The desserts also try to be as seasonal as possible, but let's be real- Sometimes you just gotta have a brownie.

Next Wednesday's dessert du jour is chocolate cake. There isn't a strict recipe you must follow, but you do have to bake some cake thing made out of chocolate. I'm thinking a two-layer moist devil's food cake with some sort of salted caramel icing. mmmmm. Will let you know how it goes.