What's local at the Moscow Food Co-op?

It's early in the growing season but there is some delicious produce available right now. Try fresh radishes sliced very thinly, served on a sliced baguette with a generous smear of butter and a sprinkle of salt. Yum! And see my previous post on bok choy for a recipe idea.

In the bulk department there are a few options; lentils and split peas! We are on the Palouse after all. But there is also wild rice from St. Maries. And don't forget the big selection of mixes from MaryJanesFarm, right here in Moscow! I'll do some recipes in the coming days that use lentils and split peas.

In the meat department there is lamb, beef, and yak, local and regional, and don't forget about our local Eaton beef, located in the freezer case.

We have local eggs in the fridge case, and a selection of cheeses from the region. Nothing like an omelette, a salad, and a glass of local wine for an easy summer dinner!

What to do with bok choy?

How to make bok choy - abundantly available in Moscow, Idaho right now - into a meal for the family?

I looked at a few recipes that use cabbage and here is what I came up with.

Ingredients: lamb sausage, onion, bok choy, dried cranberries, salt and pepper, log of herbed goat cheese

Two lamb sausage links (from Eastern Oregon) cut into small chunks, sauteed with 1/2 a diced onion (Washington) and finely diced bok choy ribs (Moscow, ID). I used the whole, large bok choy head. When sausage, onion, and bok choy ribs are done, add a sprinkle of dried cranberries (not local), the finely sliced bok choy leaves, and salt and pepper to taste (not local). Put immediately onto plates or shallow bowls, and top with a generous chunk of herbed goat cheese (from Idaho). Stir the melted goat cheese into the mixture and eat while it's hot!

This served 3 of us with no leftovers; we accompanied it with lots of crusty bread to soak up the juice in the bottom of the bowl.

Rhubarb for my birthday

My rhubarb grows in a sheltered spot on the east side of my house, where it gets morning sun and afternoon shade and no wind. On my birthday last week I decided to spend the morning doing whatever I wanted instead of going to work and what I felt like doing the most was harvesting something from my yard and baking something with it. Time was limited so I made rhubarb-strawberry crisp.

I gave up using recipes for crisp once I realized that for the topping you really only need oats and butter and sugar, and for the fruit you just need sugar and/or a jar of homemade jam. I just measure a few cups of oats and rub in a stick of butter and about a half cup of brown sugar with a bit of whatever spice I'm in the mood for; last week it was cinnamon. In the buttered baking dish I put the rhubarb and strawberries, cut into bite sized pieces, and then dusted sugar over the whole thing, and then poured over it a couple cups of plum jam left from last year. The oat topping goes all over the top and into the oven it goes at 350 degrees, until the topping is all brown and the fruit is bubbling and tender. MMM!

This week the rhubarb will be made into a pie, since my family loves it even more than crisp. The principle is the same: fruit mixed with some sugar and jam. But for the crust, well, I make pie crust with flour, butter, an egg, and some vinegar or lemon juice. I found this recipe in one of my mom's old cookbooks and it works for me better than anything I've ever tried. For a single crust, it works out to about a cup of flour with 6 tablespoons of butter, 1 egg, and a tablespoon of vinegar, mixed up in the food processor and then dumped onto a sheet of wax paper to roll out. I usually use a bit of flour under and over the pie dough to keep it from sticking to the paper or the rolling pin, and I use the wax paper so that I can lift the whole shebang and flip it over into the pie pan before filling it with fruit and then again on the top of the pie.

I think the appearance of rhubarb satisfies some deep inner need for tart, crisp, fresh food, that signals the end of our starchy and boring potatoes and carrot winter diet and the beginning of summer's wonderful juiciness. Every house ought to have its own little rhubarb patch.

Once I get over the need for crisp and pie I'll start using it for other things, like as a substitute for apples with cooked pork, or as an ingredient in cake. Rhubarb salsa or relish might be another possibility; I'll keep you posted.

BTW the chicken coop is almost done and our chickens will arrive in a few weeks! And the beehives are literally humming with activity. More on that next time.

Moscow Sourdough

After learning recently about the yeasts that live all around us and how that makes sourdough bread from one place different than sourdough from another place, I decided it was finally time to make my own sourdough starter. That is, flour and water with a little pineapple juice, left at room temperature to ferment. I did cheat somewhat by adding a single grain of commercial mono-culture yeast, but that was only because it has been so cold here I worried that nothing would happen and I would end up with a horrible mess. Well, I started with equal amounts of rye flour and water and a splash of pineapple juice, which is acidic but also sweet, perfect for creating the right fermenting environment. I stirred it every day and added fresh flour sometimes and fresh water sometimes, and finally last Sunday I took half of the fabulously beery-smelling concoction and turned it into bread by adding fresh flour and water, salt, and some oil, and kneading it as usual. It rose quite slowly but baked well and tastes wonderful.

In France this would be called "levain" and it is the way our WWOOF hosts, Renee-Jo and Andre, made their country bread every week for market. Who knows how old their starter was? I'll find out and let you know.

I wanted to see if I could make bread without following a recipe and in this sense the experiment was very successful. I just happened to learn what I would have learned from my grandmother who would have learned it from her grandmother from a group of people on a food-related listserv, the Association for the Study of Food and Society, who love to talk about this kind of stuff. And I've been assured, good naturedly, that there is a special prison reserved just for yeast-cheaters like me. Thanks everyone! Here's a photo of the bread.

Grass into Garden

I recently read Joan Dye Gussow's book This Organic Life, a wonderful book that gave us the push and the info we needed to finally turn our grassy front yard into garden space. The problem has been how to kill the grass without spraying it to death, and then turn it into lovely garden dirt without renting a rototiller? The answer came from Joan: cover up the lawn with something that will kill the grass and top it off with piles of compost. This preserves the structure of the soil and enriches it to boot. We decided that instead of using old carpet - Joan's method - we'd just use corrugated cardboard which wouldn't need to be removed later.

So yesterday I reminded Walt he could get some cardboard from the recycling bins at Moscow Recycling, and so he did, feeling unaccountably guilty for taking cardboard for reuse that was meant for recycling, and then realized hey, it's a great day to do this project. So he went home, spread the cardboard out over the front lawn, called the building supply for a truckload of compost, and then gathered all our neighbor's maple leaves and spread them over the cardboard just in time for the huge pile of steaming compost to be delivered.

By nightfall Walt and Reed had gotten the entire pile spread out, so the whole right side of our lawn looked like a garden just waiting to be planted. I love imagining the weedy grass underneath slowly dying and being turned into soil by the hordes of worms that we know are there. And now I get to spend the winter figuring out what to plant and where. Maybe we can do the other side of the lawn next weekend...

Zucchini Bread

What could be more satisfying than turning a vegetable that you're not particularly fond of in any cooked form into a delicious snack or dessert? Making zucchini bread always gives me such a charge cause none of us really eat it otherwise, but hey, in a cinnamony bread we eat great quantities of the stuff. Not as healthy of course, but I figure that eating it in any form is better than none at all. As desserts go it's a pretty good alternative to cake. And it is a great way to use up zucchinis that have grown too huge to use for any other purpose.

Zucchini won't keep for very long after you've picked it. But you can grate it and put it in containers or bags in the freezer, premeasured for your favorite zucchini bread recipe, and make bread all winter long. When you thaw the grated zucchini out, it will be very watery. Don't dump away all the water or your bread will be too dry. On the other hand, if you use it all, it might be too wet. When you make it regularly, you'll learn what consistency of batter to shoot for, and you can adjust accordingly.

Here's a recipe to try, but don't be afraid to experiment. I like to cut back on the sugar and I always use raw sugar instead of white. Or try Sucanat instead. Try a teaspoon of walnut extract along with a teaspoon of vanilla. Also feel free to substitute some whole wheat flour for some of the white flour. Or even try subbing in some unsweetened cocoa for some of the flour! Or sub chocolate chips for the walnuts...Another nice touch is to sprinkle sesame seeds on top of the batter just before you put the filled pans in the oven to bake.

3 eggs
1 cup vegetable oil
2 cups white sugar
2 cups grated zucchini
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
3 cups all-purpose flour
3 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup chopped walnuts

DIRECTIONS
Preheat oven to 325 degrees F ( 165 degrees C). Grease and flour two 8x4 inch loaf pans.
In a large bowl, beat eggs until light and frothy. Mix in oil and sugar. Stir in zucchini and vanilla. Combine flour, cinnamon, soda, baking powder, salt and nuts; stir into the egg mixture. Divide batter into prepared pans.
Bake for 60 to 70 minutes, or until done.

We know beans...

I just read an entire book about beans and was inspired to cook split pea soup this weekend, since these lovely little green babies hail from here on the Palouse. For some reason in our house we refer to this by its color – “green soup” – probably because when Reed was little he was in an anti-pea phase and I thought the words split pea would put him off– and it is generally a favorite, probably due to the generous amount of bacon in which I saute’ the diced onion and carrots before adding the water and the dried split peas and bay leaves. The only other ingredients are salt and pepper, although I have been known to make this with chicken stock in the past. This time I didn’t yet have chicken stock so used plain water, without using a bouillon cube or anything, and surprisingly I found I liked the lighter, less salty flavor of it; it was cleaner and fresher on my tongue. So I might stick with water for green soup in the future.

The other legumes we grow here are chickpeas/garbanzos and lentils. This next weekend our church (Community Congregational United Church of Christ) in Pullman is doing a Habitat for Humanity fundraiser. I’m planning the food and using chickpeas as my starting point I’ve planned a Mediterranean-style menu: pitas, hummus, couscous, tabbouleh, vegetable and lamb stew, cucumber salad, etc. Lots of tomatoes, eggplant, onions, olive oil, and lemon juice. Of course, lemons and olives don’t grow here, but being strictly local is not the point of this fundraiser – thinking about the rest of humanity is the point, and I think olive oil is a great place to start doing that.