A Well-Stocked Pantry

I've found that, with these lovely little boxes of produce arriving each week, my trips to the grocery store become more about keeping a well-stocked pantry than anything else.  The following are items I make sure I always have on hand:

CousCous (from the bulk section, usually both fine-grain and Israeli)
Pasta (my husband prefers a vermicelli, I prefer a corkscrew - we usually have both on hand)
Arborio Rice
Flour
Sugar
Brown Sugar
Good Quality Olive Oil
White Wine
Red Wine
Chicken Stock (I buy the cans, though every now and then I'll get a whole chicken or turkey and make a big batch that lasts FOREVER)
Beef Stock  (I just buy the cans)
Red Wine Vinegar
Balsamic Vinegar
Canned Beans - Black Beans, Chickpeas and Refried
Large can crushed tomatoes
Baking Powder
Baking Soda

Spice Rack:
Salt
Pepper
Dill
Paprika
Tarragon
Oregano
Basil
Rosemary
Cumin
Curry Powder
Cinnamin
Clove
Whole Nutmeg
Cream of Tartar (for baking)
Something I'm Unfamiliar With

Ages ago, I picked up some spice jars for about $10.  Since then, I've been refilling them from the bulk department and saving fistfuls of money while keeping our garbage low - the little bags we now get our spices in are re-used when I get fresh herbs in my Greenling box - chop them just before they start to look sad and put them into the little bags and toss them in the freezer.  They're not lovely when they thaw, but they're great in soups and other hot preparations.

Chicken, Chickpeas and Tomatoes

The very first time I dined at Lambert's Barbeque, I was clever enough to order their Anchiote Seared Chickpeas and Goat Cheese appetizer, which is one unbelievable bite after another.  Since then I've poked at that flavor profile - creamy tang of goat cheese, warm earthiness of the chickpea, brightness of the tomato.

In our box this week, I ordered some heirloom tomatoes and I had one vine-ripened fella doing time on my kitchen sink.  I decided to play up those flavors on a salad, thanks to a bounty of romaine and radicchio from the basket.

I had some (mostly) thawed chicken breast, so I rubbed it with smoked paprika, salt, pepper, and some herbs de provance and popped it into a 350 oven for about 30 minutes.

In a hot pan, I added one well-drained and rinsed can of chickpeas, some diced spring onions, and some giant chunks of the freakishly large garlic cloves we got in the box along with a little olive oil, salt, pepper and paprika.  I chopped the lettuces and put them on the plate, and then chopped the tomatoes to toss in with the chickpeas, which at this point had started toasting up all pretty-like.

It timed out pretty well, as I was just tossing the chickpeas and tomatoes onto the salad bed when the chicken finished, which I chopped into strips and added to the salad, along with a sprinkle of goat cheese.  This salad needed no dressing.  Between the goat cheese, the multi-faced flavors of three different tomatoes, the giant chunks of roasted garlic and extremely juicy chicken, every bite was full of win.

Roasted Root Veggies

I had some pretty spectacular root vegetables hanging out in my pantry, including some pretty gorgeous beets, baby carrots and a giant kohlrabi from my Greenling local basket.  Along with the couple of lonely potatoes and a red onion I had, I figured it was time to roast some root veg.

Some friends came over last night, so separately I was roasting a turkey breast that turned out fairly well.  I used my tried-and-true trick of cramming as much butter and magic under the skin as it would fit before roasting.  Last night was no exception:  a combination of a half stick of butter at room temperature, a few tablespoons of mustard, some horseradish sauce, and a bunch of herbs de provance I've been glaring at for nearly a week.  The whole thing did some time in a 325 oven for about two hours.

Pretty much as soon as the bird when in the oven, I started chopping the veggies.  I used:

Four medium beets, chopped into wedges
Two white potatoes
One sweet potato
One red onion
One giant kohlrabi (trim the hard skin off)
About nine baby carrots, shaved and sliced in half.

Personally, I put the beets in a separate bowl for both tossing and roasting to avoid turning my veggies pink.  It's not really a huge deal, but I have a hard enough time getting my beefcake of a husband to eat things that are green, I imagine it would be nearly impossible to entreat him into eating pink.

I tossed the veggies with about 4 tablespoons (1 for the beets) of Canola Oil, 3 tablespoons of honey (1/2 for the beets), a fistful of fresh parsley (picked), salt, pepper, and the juice of one lemon.  I always use my hands to ensure each little piece is totally lubed.

They went in the oven with the turkey for about forty minutes.

Hey, here's a tip so you don't make the same bone-head mistake I did.  Beets have an extremely high sugar content.  In fact, they make sugar out of them.  When you roast them, line your roasting dish with either parchment or tin foil or whomever does your dishes will give you an earful.

Tomato and Citrus

Anyone who's spent any time with me and food knows that I've always had a soft spot in my heart for tomatoes. The brightness of their flavor, combined with their versatility make them easily my favorite thing on the planet, after my kids.

In high school, my boyfriend's mom kept a garden filled with tomatoes. One afternoon I left for a road trip to visit my grandparents, and she packed me off with a gallon zip-lock filled with cherry tomatoes picked fresh from her garden. Yes, I finished them all in two hours. No, I didn't feel bad about that.

The windowbox over my kitchen sink has had a couple of really gorgeous tomatoes ripening for a week now, and last night I just couldn't take it anymore. Ready or not, they were going to get in my belly.

We've also got a ton of citrus hanging around - it's citrus season here, and the grocery stores are peddling them off for dimes a piece.

To me, a tomato has always registered as a more savory citrus type flavor. The combination of tomato and citrus seemed a natural one, and plays beautifully together in this killer relish that smothered some chicken breast at our house last night:



Tomato Grapefruit Relish

3 or 4 medium tomatoes, diced
2 large grapefruits, supremed and diced
1 small onion
2 cloves garlic, minced
fresh parsley, finely chopped

Toss all together in a medium bowl. Add a pinch of salt and some freshly ground pepper. Best after hanging out in the fridge for a half an hour or so.

For a less bitter flavor, oranges can be substituted. For a sweeter flavor, use tangerines or clementines.

Bacon, Chicken and Wild Rice Soup

A dear friend of mine has had one hell of a bad week. When she called me and asked if I could lend an ear, it seemed like a little soul-snuggling chicken soup was in order.

We gobbled our way through most of our local box, but I had a bunch of frozen veggies killing time in the freezer.

I come from the Irish school of soup-making. If it's not some sort of thick creamy soup, the stuff-to-broth ratio needs to strongly favor the stuff.

I used:
8 strips of bacon, cut into 1/2 pieces
4 chicken breasts, cubed
1 box chicken stock
8 cups of water
3 carrots, chopped
1 red onion, chopped
1 1/2 cups frozen peas
1 cup wild rice
1 can black eyed peas, drained
2 teaspoons smoked paprika
1 tablespoon dried thyme
1 tablespoon dried basil
salt and pepper to taste

Fry up the bacon in the bottom of a stock pot over medium heat. When it's starting to think about being crispy, add the chicken. When the bacon gets crispy, add the carrots and onion and let them sweat it out, about 5 - 6 minutes. Add paprika and dried herbs, salt and pepper and toss the contents of the pot. Add the chicken stock and water and allow the water to come to a simmer, stirring occasionally. Once a good simmer is achieved, add the rice, peas and black eyed peas. Allow to simmer for about 20 minutes. Serve with cornbread.

Lately I've been digging on the Pepperwood Grove label, in particular their Pinot Noir. It's surprisingly smooth and well-rounded, and winds up being a pretty light, drinkable red. And at $6 a bottle at HEB, it's certainly easy to keep around.

Ginger Mojitos

It's Mothers' Day, and I've been gifted the opportunity to snuggle up with a pitcher of homemade Ginger Mojitos and a hammock. This is the only item on my to-do list today.

For some reason, Mojitos, Mothers' Day and this weather remind me of John Steinbeck's short, The Chrysanthemums. I doubt Steinbeck ever sipped a Mojito, ginger or no, but there it is.

I've always had a soft spot in my heart for ginger. Like fresh nutmeg, it's a product I keep in my arsenal (both will keep for ages) to grate into dishes for a little je nes sais quoi. It seemed like an apt addition to the pitcher of mommy juice I cooked up today.

Ingredients:

Six limes, 1/2 cup of brown sugar, one packet of fresh mint, one liter of club soda, rum (not spiced), three ounces of cointreau, one inch of fresh ginger root.

In a small sauce pan, I dissolved the brown sugar in a cup of water into which I grated the ginger root. I set it to boiling/dissolving. Meanwhile, I sliced the limes in half and squeezed them with my old-school juicer, putting the juice into a big pitcher. I muddled the whole packet of mint and tossed that into the juice, adding the hot sugar water as soon as the sugar dissolved to allow the mint to sort of steep in it. I added the Cointreau and all of the club soda.

I like to serve mine over ice and add my rum as I go. It looks like last week's Boston tap water, but the brown sugar (which muddies the color) and ginger give it a fantastic depth of flavor.

Urban Chickens

There are very few communities that disallow urban chickens. Austin is no exception. I've been keeping chickens for three years, and we've absolutely loved it.

There are really only two chicken-related restrictions in the City of Austin. The first deals with noise. A crowing rooster is a valid noise complaint, but keeping only females mitigates that issue. It also means you won't be getting chicks, so if you intend to eat your yard birds, you'll need to figure something out. If you intend to just collect their eggs, the lack of a rooster is no big issue.

The second issue is proximity. Austin ordinances require that any permanent chicken structure be 30 feet from a neighboring residential structure. Having a chicken tractor or some other portable coop mitigates this issue - in some neighborhoods it's virtually impossible to get 30' from an adjacent residence, thanks to the McMansioning of our neighborhoods.

Legalities aside, here's what I've learned about keeping chickens in Austin over the last few years:

1. We got our chickens from Callahans at 4 months old. They were $8 each, and they began laying about a month after we got them. At the time, we got four chickens, all barred rocks, and they've been fairly industrious layers.

2. We get our chicken feed in giant 30 lb bags from Callahans. They're about $10 per bag, and they last about 3 or 4 months for four chickens.

3. Chickens are excellent composters - any of your kitchen scraps can go to them, though I'd avoid giving them meat. Potato skins are also not very good for them, by my girls don't touch them anyway. All of my veggie scraps go to the chickens, and they are VERY happy about it. Since we've been doing the local box from Greenling, they've been going through significantly less feed and feasting on cuttings.

4. Chickens eat bugs. We let ours free-range about 75% of the time, and they scratch all over the yard gobbling up pests. We've noticed that the more they free-range, the more orange their yolks are, which apparently is indicative of protein levels in the yolks.

5. Before they're sold, vendors are legally required to test their chickens for salmonella. This means that, if you maintain a clean coop and don't feed your chickens meat products from outside areas (and don't cross-contaminate when chopping your veggies in the kitchen), your chickens will not have salmonella. This gives me piece of mind when baking for my family - my kids can ALWAYS lick the batter, as long as the eggs are from my chickens.

6. Chickens will think of creative ways to kill themselves. In the last three years, I've had one chicken hang itself in our cedar privacy fence in a misguided attempt to fly, one decapitated by a dog in a playful dog-pecking game gone awry, and another eaten by some sort of neighborhood critter before our dogs could chase it off. That said, if you hope to salvage the meat from these inevitable deaths, you need to begin with that process immediately - if you didn't see the death, don't start warming up the soup pot.

7. Every now and then, chickens go through a biological process called "broodiness." This does not mean they'll start wearing black and listening to Morrissey. It's basically a biological change that occurs in chickens when they begin to incubate eggs. Their metabolism slows way down, their body temperature rises, and they basically sit all day, only getting up to eat and drink once. It will last about 21 days for most chickens, but you can kick your chickens out of it by removing their access to their laying spot and encouraging them to free range. (The picture above is of my now-broody chicken Delilah).

8. Eggs don't need to be refrigerated. We mark the date of gathering with a crayon on each one and leave them in the pantry cupboard, and they usually last about a month or two that way. Here's a handy universal tip: A bad egg floats in a cup of water. An egg that sits on its end when it sinks is a very fresh egg, but will be a huge pain to peel if hardboiled (because the membrane just under the shell hasn't hardened enough, so the egg will fall apart as you peel it). Eggs that sink but lay on their sides are best for hardboiling - they usually do this a week to a week and a half after laying.

How many chickens will you need? Most of the time, your chickens will be laying one egg per day (less during colder months or periods of excessively high temperature), so if you have four chickens, you'll get a dozen eggs every three days. We've got two now, and that's plenty for us - when we had more we established a pretty good system with our friends of swapping empty egg cartons for full ones.

Crabs

Our farmer's box showed up while we were all sprawled on our front sidewalk, playing with side walk chalk that had some sort of flint in the middle of it (yep - it SPARKS when you draw with it). I was happy to see some fresh strawberries in the box - the house I grew up in had wild strawberries growing in the yard, and during summer vacation, my brother and I would hunt them in the yard, our bowls of cereal in tow each morning.

My little ladybug is ever a berry fan. Before I could finish sorting through everything, she had gobbled up two or three of the strawberries and was trying to figure out what to do with the tops (something I usually cut off and give to our chickens before giving to her), face smeared with gory looking juices.

I merrily set to chopping some of the bounty - I had a bit of crab meat stashed away in the fridge, and between these veggies, pesto and some cavatapi noodles, I had a plan.

Step one, of course, is to ensure the proper lubrication. Since the temperature is climbing, our beer fridge (yes, we have a beer fridge) feels naked without Magic Hat's #9 - it's their "not quite pale ale," which reminds me of apricots and Cheerios. I digress.


There's really nothing like a pile of fresh veggies. This particular pile included baby carrots, the butt of a kohlrabi, some radish, leeks, summer squash and kale.

I put a bit of chicken stock (about a half cup) into the bottom of a wok and added the kohlrabi, carrots and radish, then put it on medium and added the rest of the veggies as I chopped them (kale, leeks, summer squash). Then I added two big heaping tablespoons of some killer locally-made walnut pesto and about two cloves of minced garlic, you know, just to be safe. I added a bit more chicken stock (maybe another half cup) and stirred it up, then tossed in the crab and let it all marry while the pasta finished. After draining the noodles, I tossed them together with the veggies and stock. As they all snuggled up together, I chopped up some campari tomatoes (you know, those cherry-red golf ball sized beauties that have been hanging out at the grocery store) - they're so full of flavor, you can get away with only using a few of them, so four of the little guys pulled super-duty.

I finished it with some parmesan cheese.

The best part is that the kohlrabi, which is apparently related to both the turnip and the cabbage, but tastes like broccoli, absorbed a lot of the crab flavor so it seemed like there was twice as much crab as there actually was.

For the love of Scallops

Yesterday, the hubby and I piled the kids in the car and headed over to Central Market for a little lunch and pantry shopping.

We spent most of our trip in the bulk department, stocking the pantry with wild rice, pasta, and spices - I've decided to start picking up a bit of bulk spice that I'm unfamiliar with to expand the fun in the kitchen. This week was Herbs de Provance with lavender, not because they're entirely exotic. Three years ago I attempted to make a lavender short bread for my husband using lavender oil. It turned out terrible, and my husband is so fond of recalling its soap-tasting nastiness I'm fairly sure it'll be conversation fodder on my death bed. I intend to best this whole lavender thing and figure out how to use it in food. (Incidentally, I've also got a whole packet of food-grade dried lavender in the pantry. Sigh.)

We got our list of goodies to expect in this week's basket on Friday, so Friday night was spent contemplating what to do with our bounty. Central Market's fish monger helped me select some really amazing bay scallops, and was nice enough to split one of the giant containers of lump crab meat to put the tasty stuff in my price range.

A previous trip to the store yielded heaps of grapefruits - they were 10 for a dollar, so I filled the cart - and citrus and scallops has always been a favorite flavor combo.

Grapefruit and Seared Scallop Salad
The trick to searing scallops is to pat the little buggers nice and dry - a soggy scallop will not sear. (Yes. I worship at the altar of Alton Brown. What?) I dusted these boys with some smoked paprika and kosher salt after giving them a towel dry.

Step two was cutting some grapefruit supremes. I used two grapefruits for our three big salads. Then I chopped up an onion and a few mushrooms, baptized them in some white wine vinegar, tarragon, butter and paprika and set them to sauteing.

The scallops went into a (very hot) pan with a touch of melted butter - resisting the urge to poke at them as they sizzle is the tough part. Since these were bay scallops, they really only take a couple of minutes to cook. Now is not the time to go check the laundry. It is, however, an excellent time to pour yourself a glass of that nice little Crios Torrentes you've got hanging out in your fridge.

Heap your field greens on your plates - I've been addicted to the Herb Garden Spring Mix at HEB - it's got fresh herbs mixed in, and it's like a surprise scavenger hunt to find little bites of dill or cilantro in your salad. I also added some chopped green onions from our Greenling box, and threw the onion and mushroom saute on top. I remembered we still had a bunch of lentil sprouts from the box, so tossed those in what was left of the butter/tarragon/vinegar the onions and mushrooms had recently cohabitated and toasted those off a little bit. Meanwhile, I tossed the scallops and grapefruits onto the plate. Lentil sprout sprinkles, and we had ourselves a meal.

Lately, we've been addicted to Brianne's dressings. I gave the fam a choice of the Chipotle Cheddar dressing (which I used, and LOVED) or the Blush Wine Vinaigrette. Served with a little asiago cheese or rosemary bread, it's killer.

The Making of Cheese

It has just come to my attention that it's not very hard to make your own cheese. So I tried it.

The experience was similar to the first time I learned how to crochet: I have taken this string, and I have made cloth. In a society where we don't make things with our hands anymore, things like that are IMPORTANT.

I made ricotta. It was so ridiculously easy, I don't know why we buy it off the shelf, and the flavor is endlessly better.

The ingredients are as follows:

1 gallon of milk
4 cups buttermilk (half of a half-gallon)
a pinch of salt

Step one is the set up.


I used a colander, draped in cheesecloth in a large mixing bowl, though if you have a really fine-mesh strainer you can probably skip the cheese cloth, and if you're not interested in the whey, you can skip the bowl and just do it in the sink (see, easier and easier, right?).

Over medium heat in a big old pot, pour your milk and your buttermilk. Keep an eye on it, but in about ten minutes, the milk will separate into small curds (approximately 170-175 degrees). Pour this into your prepared colander/cheesecloth set up. Add the salt. Allow to sit for approximately 10 minutes (to allow all the whey to drain).


That stuff in the cheese cloth? That's ricotta. If you were to wrap the cheese cloth a little tighter, put some sort of weight on it, and put the whole contraption into the fridge for a couple of days, you'd have farmer's cheese.

This makes enough ricotta for a lasagna in a 9 x 13 pan.

First Box

Included are:

Beets, Kohlrabi (which looks like some sort of alien), swiss chard, fresh parsley, grapefruit, sprouted lentils, and a handful of other bits and bobs (green onions, carrots). I'm not sure what to do with 100% of them.

Step 1: Join a CSA

I've poked at the idea of joining a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) for about a year. Each time it seemed too expensive, especially if you add it to your existing food budget of boxed crap.

Don't get me wrong - the food we were eating wasn't a never-ending stream of fried pizza stuffed in pork rinds, followed by butter-dipped donuts. The three dudes that regularly gather around my table are meat and potatoes kinds of guys - the guys that can eat a whole chicken breast, two cups of mashed potatoes and a shovel full of frozen peas and only then leave the table sated. But none of us are in our 20s anymore, and middle age is turning out to be just as physically awkward as adolescence. My goal is to change our habits - to shift the focus of each plate from heavy proteins and carbs to veggies (and not miss them).

We shopped around and settled on Greenling - it seems like the most mainstream of all the options out there, plus you can add on to your basket with various other goodies - meats, cheeses, baked goods, etc.