Weekend Update Mar 14, 2009

Just a few random shots that I took over the weekend with comments:



I have always struggled to get carrots, but this sucker is just one of many monsters growing in my plot.  I ate this guy right after taking its picture.  Very sweet.  I am really excited.  I will probably make a carrot soup out of this.



This was a poppy plant that grew from last years planting.  It has very reddish-orange flowers.  CA poppies are a great harbinger of spring around here.  The reddish orange color just glows!



Something (probably pill bugs) is serious going after my potato plants.  We'll just see how they do on their own.  Good luck guys.  I have too much Spring planting right now.



This is "rustic arugula" and is supposed to be similar to "wild arugula".  The leaves are way different than standard arugula, much thinner and more "toothed".  A tasting will be in short order and I am quite hopeful.

a really good tomato soup - an antidote to Alice Waters

I want to say, "THE BEST TOMATO SOUP EVAH!!", but it's probably not.  It's not my recipe, but another recipe that I found on the tubes.  This came via internetfoodassociation.com (great blog) which in turn came from ourkitchensinkrecipes.com.  As I have said, I like things that are simple, and really flavorful.  This one certainly is that.  I think that the kicker is the spiciness in there.  From start to finish, it took me thirty five minutes and that was with many interruptions due to kids, etc.  Since this is the year of leeks, it is appropriate that this soup depends heavily on leeks for its flavor.  I cannot wait to redo this recipe with fresh tomatoes instead of canned.  Also, cheap is a major bonus of this recipe.  Between the leeks, cream and canned tomatoes, it probably cost $7.50, and served a total of 5 meals.

from my kitchen:


Note: it is not that creamy looking after blending it up.  Also, I skipped the caramelized leeks for time and simplicity sake, but that is awfully good when you do it too!

Note again: I actually doubled the recipe, and froze half of it in 16 oz batches so that I made 3 lunches out of it.

So there you have it.  This was really healthy, really simple, pretty quick, essentially organic, and quite cheap.  I think that other than getting the recipe via a blog  it also avoids the pretention factor as well.

Creamy Tomato-Leek Soup
Adapted from Food & Wine



1 tablespoon unsalted butter
1 tablespoon, plus 2 teaspoons extra-virgin olive oil (divided)
3 leeks, divided (2 thinly sliced in half moons and 1 thinly sliced lengthwise)
3 garlic cloves, smashed
3 14-ounce cans whole tomatoes
1 cup water
1/2 cup heavy cream
1 tablespoon sugar
1/4 teaspoon crushed red pepper
1/4 teaspoon celery seed
1/4 teaspoon dried oregano
salt & pepper, to taste

In a large saucepan, melt the butter in the olive oil. Add the sliced half moons of leeks and smashed garlic and cook over moderate heat, stirring occasionally, until softened, about 5 minutes. Add the tomatoes and their juice, the water, heavy cream, sugar, crushed red pepper, celery seed and oregano and season with salt and pepper. Bring the soup to a boil over high heat, breaking up the tomatoes with the back of a spoon. Reduce the heat to moderate and simmer for 10 minutes.

Working in batches, transfer the tomato soup to a blender and puree until smooth.* Return the soup to a clean pot and rewarm the soup if necessary. Season the soup with salt and pepper.

In a small saucepan, heat the remaining two teaspoons of oil over moderate heat. Add the remaining sliced the leeks (the lengthwise ones) and cook, stirring every so often, until browned and crispy.

Divide the soup among six bowls and garnish with the crispy leeks.

Yield: 6 bowls

* As I said in the post, I used an immersion blender here. I think a food processor would work well too.

Alice Waters is Frustrating!!

Alice Waters, the founder of Chez Panisse, which is by most measures the most influential restaurant in terms of defining the fresh food cooking movement in our country, is so frustrating as a movement leader.  Others have made this point here and here, but this video from CBS news interview with her is a PERFECT example.  She is so right on that healthy food can be relatively inexpensive and quick to cook.



But she tries to demonstrate the point by going on National Television, cooking a "simple breakfast" for the reporter, and (at about 8:15 minutes into the webcast) cooks an egg in a HAND HAMMERED COPPER COOKING SPOON OVER A FIRE IN A HEARTH BUILT INTO HER KITCHEN.  It couldn't look more absurd. IT COULDN'T LOOK MORE ABSURD!!!!!

Perhaps, dialing back her fantasy/obsession with rustic preparation, she could have simply fried that egg up with a little olive oil in a $10 pan over a stove.  The meal would have tasted 97% as good, and would have been acessible to 99.9% more people who don't have fireplaces built into their kitchens and hand hammered copper cooking spoons.

changing policy on food will require both a cultural shift as well as policy shifts, that in turn rely on lots of people changing their minds about how we do things.  Alice Waters has done an amazing job at pointing the way to better eating.  She really needs to step back and not let herself become the face of the new food movement.

on my bedside table...

and bathroom floor, and living room tables, and kitchen table.  I think you get the point.  At least of how my wife feels about the books that I take a shine to.  The follow me around the house in no discernible order or timing, leaving the "impression" of messiness...



Anyway, I wanted to review four books that I received as Christmas presents.  Thanks Mom!  They are all good, but two of these stand out as somewhat essential for the home gardener/cook, those of us that fashion ourselves as cooking from a potager and like food with fresh taste.

On Food and Cooking

Chez Panisse Cooking - This was/is my favorite of the bunch.  Kitchen gardeners will immediately be taken with this one, I think.  It is a romantic yet (mostly) practical guide to cooking with ingredients that are as fresh as the ones we have to work with out of our garden.  This book could have been written today and been well-regarded.  That it was written 20 years ago is simply incredible and is a testament to how forward-looking Chez Panisse is.  Paul Bertolli has a very accessible appreciation for simple, rustic flavors and a sophisticated understanding of the origins of ingredients.  While many recipes would require too much work for most of us, there are many that are simple, but with the right ingredients are fantastic.  I will be spending a lot of time this summer working my way through this one.

I want to write much more about this one, but suffice it to say, I will have more to say as I try out a number of recipes.  I may be able to start soon with spinach soup as I have some spinach in the garden that tastes great, but does not look so presentable.  Or possibly a double soup, spinach soup and carrot soup, paired in a bowl.



double soup

Chez Panisse Vegetables

Chez Panisse Cafe Cookbook

UPDATE:  ARRRRGGH!!! just lost a lot of edits here.  will update tomorrow.  this is way undone!!!  OOHHHH, I am MADDDDDDD!!!!  I was Brilliant!!

Year of Leeks

This year, I am determined to get something going with leeks.  I was inspired last year when I was helping my mother-in-law in Oregon plant her garden, and at her local nursery had these amazing flats of leeks with probably 100 little leeks in there for like $4.  I have never seen anything like that in So. Cal. So I decided to start a flat myself.



You can just barely see the leeks emerging in this pick and they are getting bigger now.  We'll see how things go.  But leeks are really good and really underutilized in American cooking, so I am setting about to change that.  One Front Yard Garden at a time.

Fortunately, I just came across this post by David Lebovitz about the glories of leeks.  with better pictures than mine.  He does a great job describing why leeks are so good in cooking.  i.e. more mellow onion flavor.



So, have at it.  I am going for it with leeks this year, let me know if you have any good sources that I don't know about.

front yard right now

I want to wait until I get the perfect picture, but when does that happen?  In the interest of not letting the perfect be the enemy of the good here is fyg, march 2009:



note the pile of old snap peas and bucket of bone meal in preparation for the tomato plants that just went in.

you think people are interested in this stuff, maybe?

interesting post by michael pollan at the NY Times "Well Blog", asking for "eating rules" that people have grown up with or come up with on their own.  It's for his next project.  But what is interesting is how many responses/comments he got on the post.  1,593!!!  On one blog post.  So I ask again, "you think people are a little bit interested in this stuff?"

greatest herb mix ever

Thanks to David Liebowitz, I discovered the great use of meat rubs, that can be prepared, saved and used any time to provide a robust flavor to a variety of meats.  I rarely get to save it because I usually make it right before preparing some large turkey which uses most of it up.  I will discuss the preparation and use.

First, the preparation.  As you can see in the picture above, you use a healthy amount of the following: rosemary, garlic, marjoram (or originally sage), and salt.  I am being pretty vague, because frankly, as long as you are using lots of fresh herbs, the precise proportions are not too important.  I will include David's instructions below.  Chop all of these together and it looks like this:

at this point if you don't use it, spread it on a cookie sheet to let it dry.  it will be dry in 24-48 hours.  The smell is amazing!

As for use, it is pretty straightforward.  Rub it on the meat.  Cook the meat.

Ok, but if you really want to know why I love this rub so much, I will tell you how I use it on turkey, for which I have received some pretty rave reviews...

Blueberries Blossoms

This year will be the first year that we have three blueberry bushes in full effect. They are currently loaded with blossoms that are turning into baby blueberries. I was amazed last year at how many blueberries a bush produces. I didn't measure it, but I expected a couple handfuls because my bushes were small. But each bush kept on producing handful after handful, which made me very, very happy. And they were good!

If you want to get inspired, this article is a good place to start. It is what inspired me. I am seeing blueberry bushes everywhere these days, so give them a try. If you live in Pasadena, there is a guy that sells great bushes at excellent prices at the Saturday Farmers Market.

Interesting Food for Thought

I, like many, have wrestled with thoughts about how to take a really big agricultural system that produces tremendous amounts of cheap food and relies on lots of artificial inputs, and turn that into a sustainable, organic system that can produce the same goods at roughly the same cost, but without all the nasty inputs.

This article in Mother Jones is provocative and written by a strong critic of our industrialized system. The short version is that what if instead of having such a black and white divide between conventional/organic agriculture, we could have a system that gave incentives to farmers to reduce nasty inputs by 80%. Wouldn't that also be a more sustainable path. Also, perhaps 100% organic is not sustainable.

I think that he sells some organic solutions short, but it is an important topic.