Pining for a coast?

I've been eating less seafood in Chicago than I might have eaten back in Massachusetts — I know that much food travels way too far either way — but some fish (sardines, mackerel) really don't travel. And then I realized that we can get decent mussels.

I made a basic egg pasta recipe ⅓ all purpose flour, ⅔ semolina.
 

I sautéed onions, whole chiles de árbol, and celery in butter with olive oil. To this I added garlic and cherry tomatoes, and then a splash of white wine and the mussels: it cooks in a couple of minutes, just the right time for fresh pasta to cook.

Garnished with salt, pepper, and parsley, it's simple, quick, easy, and delicious.

summertime

I am quite thankful that I have been able to find great tomatoes, such as these cherokee purples, in Chicago. It makes a composed salad all the more glorious: with potato salad (à la Julia Child, basically a vinaigrette-based dressing), blanched green beans, red lettuce, and a delicously bright local egg.

gazpacho for the heat wave

Another heat wave is on its way to Chicago, so I'm stocking up on Gazpacho. My last recipe came out of things I had from the market, and this is only slightly modified: 4 large tomatoes, an orange and a red bell pepper, a cucumber, a head of garlic, a red onion, a splash of vinegar, a half bunch of cilantro, salt, freshly ground cumin and pimentón de la Vera dulce, a smoked Spanish paprika. Lastly I added a dose of very good olive oil (maybe a third or quarter cup?), which really rounds it out and makes a difference since it isn't cooked. (This had to be done in two batches in a standard 14c food processor). Makes about two liters.

chicken, stewed with tomatoes and capers

Finally setting into a new apartment (a studio with a decent kitchen and dining area) in Chicago. Here's one of my first real meals made, which is chicken legs (leftover from a whole bird bought for the breasts) stewed with "fire-roasted" tomatoes, onions, capers and an anchovy. I started by sautéing an onion, then adding a whole anchovy and two whole garlic cloves (the break up during cooking and won't burn this way). The legs were added, whole, and then the tomatoes with jalapenos were added and this was covered and cooked on low for about two hours. Then the meat and skin was pulled off the bone and coarsely shredded. I ate this with a whole boiled golden potato that soaked up the broth. So delicious.

Stock made with the rest of the carcass, leeks, onions, etc...

soup and cheese

I have proved, once again (to myself at least), that grilled cheese and tomato soup are the ultimate food pairing. And maybe not just an ultimate comfort food, but an ultimate food. Period.

Soup:

• one onion, sliced
• eight smallish carrots, likewise
  
• a few stalks celery, chopped
  
• two leeks, sliced thin
• four or five large orange tomatoes (I used the ones with red near the top, shaped like beefsteaks), chopped into big chunks
• four cloves garlic
  

Sauté the first four ingredients in olive oil and a nob of butter. Season with salt. Cook until onion starts to get some color (twenty minutes on medium-low?). Add the tomatoes and garlic. Add enough water to cover the tomatoes. Cook for half an hour or so until very soft. Pass through a food mill. Add some olive oil into the pan and cook 2tbs flour for a few minutes. Add puréed soup back to the pot and reheat. Add pepper.

Make that grilled cheese while it reheats. This is great with emmenthaler on sourdough. Nasturtiums add a nice green and peppery touch. With these tomatoes there's no need for the baking soda trick: these are a little lower in acidity as it is. So you just get pure tomato goodness. And cheese and bread, fried, make it heaven.

pickle project 2008

(I sprinkled salt on the sides to help keep it from inviting the wrong flora)

I haven't had pickles since finishing of last year's this winter. The CSA had a good deal of pickles this week so I chose some pickles in lieu of eggplant or extra carrots (you get a ½ bag of vegetables, a full of greens, etc.). Using Sandor Katz's recipe from Wild Fermentation as a guide, I started my first of the season with dill, yellow and brown mustard seeds, garlic and peppercorns. I almost added a hot pepper, but I'll wait. Maybe I'll pickle peppers next week?

And finally, tomatoes are in season. These orange-fleshed tomatoes were incredible with olive oil and fleur de sel. First fresh tomatoes I've had in 2008, I think!

bread

I made a Vollkornbrot -- a 100% whole rye bread with sunflower seeds. It's mainly a sourdough with a teeny bit of yeast (which I'll probably omit next time as it was probably not necessary). I used coarse whole rye (70%) and rye chops (30%). It made this one heavy loaf that was baked for about 80 minutes (470ºF for a quarter of an hour, 380º for the rest -- the initial heat helps it get lift since there's so little gluten). I let it rest for 48 hours, and then I cut into it:


It's been a week since I first cut into it and it's now as good as that first slice -- it may even be better. With time the rye gets a full flavor, almost spicy, and the sourdough element keeps its tang.

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On a very different note, the ultimate winter comfort lunch:



It's a grilled cheese of cheddar and sourdough semolina bread (this and the last from Hamelman's Bread) with an cream of tomato soup from Deborah Madison's Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone. It leaves me with just a few jars of tomatoes from last year's canning madness, but was well worth it.

tomato season

It's that time of the year when there's so much food that's fresh and local that it's overwhelming. Part of this is that you know that in a month it could be snowing.

Between this week and last I've bought and used forty pounds of plum tomatoes, twelve pounds of cabbage and all sorts of other wonderful things. The tomatoes ended up as a tomato tarte tatin (no photo! and it was the best I've made!), twenty-two pints of canned tomatoes and probably twelve or thirteen pints of sauce (we had a housewarming that involved the tatin and lots of sauce with fresh pasta and olives). Best of all, forty pounds of fresh local tomatoes for a total of $25.

Sauerkraut is fermenting in the back room in what was the best birthday present ever: a two gallon "bluebird" crock. All twelve pounds of cabbage made it in there and it's now covered in it's own brine. (I only added salt, juniper berries and caraway seeds). It doesn't taste like it's there yet, but it's only been a week.

And that delicious savoy cabbage in the photo made it into a great Deborah Madison creation: savoy cabbage sautéed with lacinato kale and white beans. Very very satisfying.

day 10

A hardboiled egg, a tomato and a pickle for dinner.

It's day 10, and last night the pickles were half-sour dills, and quite good. I'm going to keep on going for a few more days and see how they continue as we go along.



Sorrel + ricotta + pine nuts + paramsean = this.

Throw it in the food processor, add it to fresh pasta, top it with parsley, and that's it.

(And there's wild purslane growing in the garden!)

green tomatoes

Last weekend I made tomato pickles as the CSA has tons ofgreen tomatoes that have been rotting before going red somehow. Jonathan and I picked 30 pounds or so of green tomatoes, from roma to green zebra... Washed them, cored and sliced them and layerd them with salt an onions. They brined overnight, and in the morning I simmered them with yellow and black mustard seeds, peppercorns and a few cloves for thirty minutes before canning them.

Julie and I had some last night. Sweet, tart and very mustardy. I need to try again with some hot peppers.