Posted by Anita on 06.30.08 8:23 AM
One day last week, the temperature hit a high of 87° — the kind of heat-wave that sends San Franciscans screaming from our un-air-conditioned homes straight to the nearest mall or cinema. Just two days later, the overnight low was 49°; close the windows, crank up the furnace.
Combine the wacky weather with the unsettling haze from dozens of wildfires, and you’ve got a recipe for doldrums. We cooked at home 4 nights last week, but it felt like work every time. The meal we’d planned as our One Local Summer supper — glazed lamb spareribs — turned out odd and ugly, completely unworthy of photographs, much less a post.
Luckily, we had an ace in the hole planned for mid-week. Our meat CSA has given us a surplus of ground beef. Throw it in a skillet with a hunk of Fatted Calf chorizo, a couple of the season’s first peppers from Happy Quail, a jar of homemade tomato sauce, and some local onions and garlic: Voilá, instant Sloppy Joes. Paired with a side of bacon-lashed coleslaw, we had ourselves a perfectly fabulous — and 100%-local — quick summer meal. Not glamorous, but definitely delicious.
San Francisco Sloppy Joes
1 pound Mexican-style chorizo
1 pound lean ground beef
1 onion, diced
3 cloves garlic, minced
2 whole Anaheim chiles, fresh or canned (or other mild green chiles)
2 cups tomato sauce
1 T ground red chile, or more to taste
salt and pepper
hamburger buns
shredded cheddar cheese and diced raw onion for garnish, if desired
If using fresh chiles, roast over an open flame or under the broiler, turning to cook all sides until black and blistered. Place charred chiles in a paper bag and roll the top tightly to steam; set aside. If using canned chiles, drain and rinse two large whole chiles and set aside.
Saute the chorizo in a large skillet over medium heat until browned. Remove the meat from the pan to a large bowl with a slotted spoon, leaving the rendered fat in the skillet. Saute the beef in the chorizo fat, breaking up large chunks. When mostly cooked, add the onion and garlic and cook a minute or two until translucent. Return the beef to the pan, and add the tomato sauce and red chile. Reduce heat to medium-low and simmer.
If using fresh chiles, peel the charred skins off the steamed chiles; do not rinse. Cut the chiles (canned or roasted) into 1/2-inch pieces, and stir into the simmering meat mixture. Cook, stirring occasionally, until sauce is reduced to a spoonable thickness.
Serve over toasted hamburger buns, garnished with shredded cheese and/or raw onions.
cooking, locavore, meat, One Local Summer
17 Comments »
Posted by Anita on 06.22.08 4:30 PM
One day last week, I looked up from my work and was stunned to see it was nearly 2:30 in the afternoon. The day had screamed away from me, and — not surprisingly — I was ravenous.
Local food choices near my office are pretty bleak, so I try to eat pescitarian when I can’t determine the source of my lunchtime chow. It’s an easy choice to make, since the mall near my office is home to one of the Bay Area’s only outposts of Rubio’s, a SoCal chain of Baja-style joints. Their #1 combo plate — two fish tacos and a side of frijoles — makes a reliable lunch in a pinch.
Usually, that is.
Unfortunately, the tacos I got that afternoon were pretty bad: The tortillas were falling apart, and the fish was smelly and dark. I pulled the offending meat out and ate my tacos veggie style, resolving to remember to bring my lunch the next day.
Rather than put me off, the whole experience just made me crave fish tacos — real ones, good ones — all the more. So come Saturday, we stopped by Shogun Fish at the Ferry Plaza farmers market and picked up a nice fillet of black rockfish caught off the Mendocino coast. I figured we’d be out of luck for local cabbage, but we found a gorgeous head over at Tierra‘s stand, where we also picked up a bag of super-smoky chipotles. Add in a pack of Rancho Gordo tortillas and a tub of Primavera salsa, and we were good to go.
Even if you think you don’t like seafood, a Baja-style fish taco is pretty easy to love. There’s not really anything mysterious about them: Batter-fried fish, wrapped in a corn tortilla, topped with shredded cabbage, salsa, and creamy white sauce.
To drink? Well, there isn’t a much better local alternative that good old Anchor Steam, brewed about 2 miles from our house. We used it in the fish batter, too, along with Guisto‘s flour, Stonehouse olive oil, and a Marin Sun Farms egg white. The traditional salsa blanca combines equal parts Clover Organic sour cream and home-made mayonnaise (from the same local eggs and oil), spiced up with the Tierra chipotles.
The result: My favorite kind of summertime food — good ingredients, simply prepared.
Baja-Style Crispy Fish Tacos
adapted from The River Cottage Cookbook
– fish:
1 large fillet of firm, white fish (about 12 ounces)
scant 2/3 cups all-purpose flour
1T olive oil
up to 6oz beer, as needed
1 egg white
oil, for frying
– white sauce:
1/3 cup mayonnaise
1/3 cup sour cream
1 or 2 chipotle chiles (canned or dry)
– to serve:
corn tortillas
1/4 head of cabbage, shredded fine
prepared salsa or taco sauce
cilantro sprigs, if desired
Mix the flour with oil, then thin it with beer to the consistency of thick paint. Season with salt and pepper, and leave at room temperature for at least an hour while you prep your other ingredients.
Cut your fish into 1-1/2-inch strips, against the grain of the fillet. Season with salt and pepper on both sides, and set aside.
For the white sauce, combine the mayo and the sour cream. If using dry chipotles, soak them in hot water for 15-20 minutes until soft, then chop to a fine paste with kosher salt. For canned chipotles, a simple mashing will do. Add the chipotle paste, to taste, to the sour cream-mayo mixture; season with salt as needed.
Heat oil in a deep-sided kettle or dutch oven to 350°.
Whip the egg white until frothy, then fold into the rested fish batter. Dip the fish pieces in the batter, shaking off any excess, and gently lower them into the hot oil. (You may need to work in multiple batches to avoid crowding the pan; be careful not to allow the oil temperature to drop.) When golden brown, remove from the oil with a spider or slotted spoon. Place the fish on a wire rack over old newspaper while you fry the remaining pieces.
To serve, place a piece of fish in the center of a tortilla; top with white sauce, salsa, cilantro, and shredded cabbage as desired.
farmers markets, locavore, Mexican, One Local Summer
15 Comments »
Posted by Anita on 06.16.08 6:30 PM
I had a funny conversation last week with a co-worker about the definition of summer. She contended — not entirely without justification — that summer starts on the solstice (June 20) and ends on the equinox (September 22).
With all due respect to the astronomically inclined, the gap between Memorial Day and Labor Day is the time that seems most summery to me. Spring’s icons — asparagus, artichokes, peas — are on their way out with the end of the school-year, and tomatoes, peaches, and blackberries are bursting into full swing. By the end of the month, we’ll have local corn at the market… a taste of deep summer if there ever was one.
Our One Local Summer meal this week included some old local favorites: a roast Hoffman Farms chicken with herb butter rubbed under the skin, a bottle of Le Printemps rose. We said goodbye to this year’s baby artichokes with a simple Tuscan-style preparation from Molto Italiano, and we tossed together a simple orzo-and-garbanzo side, studded with Laura Chenel chevre. Everything but the salt and pepper came from within our local foodshed, and a few bits — the herbs and the citrus — came from our own garden.
While the chicken roasted, we staved off our hunger with this riff on a recipe we’d seen in Food & Wine a few months back. Truthfully, this recipe isn’t the most summery combination — you could make it all year ’round, and we loved it so much that I’m sure we will. But being able to pop a few slices of well-oiled artisan bread on the grill at a moment’s notice is another sure sign of summer at our house.
Bruschetta with Ricotta and Salami
– adapted from Food & Wine, April 2008
1 cup fresh ricotta cheese
3T extra-virgin olive oil, plus more for brushing
6 thick slices of peasant-style bread (about 1/2-inch thick)
1 clove garlic, whole
1 clove garlic, minced
1/4 small red onion, sliced thin
2T balsamic vinegar
3oz spicy salami (hot sopressata, Spanish chorizo, etc.), sliced thin
1T chopped parsley
2 cups of frisee, tender white and light-green leaves only
Put the ricotta in a fine sieve or a cheesecloth-lined colander, and set the strainer over a bowl. Cover the whole setup with a towel or parchment, and place in the fridge overnight.
The next day, discard the liquid in the bowl. Wipe out the bowl, and combine the ricotta and 1T olive oil; season with salt and pepper to taste.
Toss the red onion slices with the vinegar and set aside.
Preheat a grill or broiler. Brush both sides of each bread slice with olive oil and grill until toasted. Rub the grilled toasts with the whole garlic clove, and set aside. Drain the vinegar from the onions.
Heat the remaining 2T oil in a medium skillet over low heat. Add the sausage, minced garlic, and parsley, and cook until warmed through, about 5 minutes.
Spread the seasoned ricotta on the toasts, then top with the warm sausage mixture. Garnish with the frisee and pickled onions.
locavore, One Local Summer, recipes
11 Comments »
Posted by Anita on 06.07.08 7:18 PM
The weekend before last, I noticed a sign hanging from our favorite asparagus stand: “Last week at the market!” Stunned, I quickly grabbed a bunch of fat spears, as though somehow I could prolong the inevitable if I only moved fast enough. I laughed at myself as I paid the farmer, then sighed every time I opened the bag to put something else in: the… last… asparagus. It’s just impossible to believe that this quintessential spring vegetable is already done.
Truthfully, I’ve eaten my fair share of asparagus this spring: Baptized in butter and lemon juice, wrapped in pancetta and roasted, kissed by the smoky love of the grill, shaved raw and stacked with Parmesan shards, pureed into an ethereal chilled soup, topped with a poached egg and sprinkled with buttery breadcrumbs. Truly, my love of sparrow grass knows no bounds; I think nothing of eating it every time I see it on a menu.
But no matter how often I indulge, I’m never ready to see asparagus go. Given my obsession, you’d think — any reasonable person would — that I’d have run home from the market and enjoyed my haul before the dew was dried from its tips. But no, I’m a miser: I squirreled it away, wanting to prolong my personal asparagus season as long as possible.
Maybe I was in denial that the end was near. What other plausible explanation can there be for the fate of that prized bunch of the season’s last spears? Dear readers, forgive me: I left them in the produce drawer all week. Completely and utterly forgot about them, until the weekly fridge-cleanout exposed my error.
All’s well that ends well, though. Less-than-perfect asparagus gets a new lease on life when whizzed into a savory spring pesto, which in turn makes a more-than-perfect dinner for the inaugural week of One Local Summer. This summertime locavore challenge asks participants to cook a weekly meal from 100% local sources. A stunning 136 participants representing 30 states are joining the festivities, hosted by Farm to Philly with West Coast recaps from a familiar face: Laura at Urban Hennery.
Even between challenges, we’ve still been eating locally as much as we can — nearly every meal we cook at home is made from 85-95% locally grown or locally produced foods. But since One Local Summer only asks us to document one meal a week, we’re going to be stricter on ourselves than we have been in the past. We’ll source everything (even proteins) from within 100 miles, and our only exceptions will be salt and spices. Herbs, oils, sweeteners, even beverages will all come from our immediate foodshed.
—–
But back to the pesto: You might think that a meal made from over-exposed produce and a few pantry staples might taste like a thrown-together mess, but in all honesty nothing could be further from the truth. A judicious removal of all fibrous or discolored bits, followed by a brightening blanch in well-salted water cures a lot of ills when it comes to green veggies. It was our favorite meal of the week, and then some: Cameron and I fought over the leftovers, a sure sign of a recipe that’s bound for heavy rotation — I only wish we’d discovered it sooner.
Along with the neglected Zuckerman asparagus, our pesto contained a good lashing of Bariani’s sumptuous olive oil, a blizzard of Vella dry Jack cheese, sweet blanched almonds from Alfieri Farms, and beautiful young garlic — not quite green, but with still-supple skins and a glorious round flavor — from Green Gulch Farm. Served over Eduardo’s locally made penne, these bright flavors balanced perfectly with the earthy, smoldering notes of Fatted Calf‘s coiled Basque sausage and a fruity bottle of Souverain sauvignon blanc.
A fitting farewell to spring if I do say so myself.
Penne with Asparagus Pesto
1 bunch asparagus (about 1/2 pound before trimming)
8 oz dry penne pasta
1/4 cup blanched almond slivers
2 medium garlic cloves
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil
1 ounce freshly grated Dry Jack (about 1/3 cup), plus more for garnish
Fill a Dutch oven or other large pot with water. Salt well, and bring to a boil. Meanwhile, prepare an ice-water bath in a medium bowl.
Snap the woody ends from the asparagus. Cut the stalks into 2-inch lengths, keeping the tips separate. When the water comes to a boil, blanch the stem pieces until they turn bright green and tender, then remove them to the ice bath using a slotted spoon. Repeat with the tips, which should take about half as long. Keep the pot boiling for the pasta while you drain the chilled asparagus well and blot it dry.
In a food processor, pulse the almonds, garlic, and salt until minced, scraping down the sides of the bowl as needed. Add the asparagus and oil, pulsing until the mixture is coarsely chopped — you’re not going for a smooth purée here. Remove the blade from the work bowl, and add the grated cheese. Stir until combined, and season to taste with salt and pepper.
In the same pot of boiling water, cook the penne until al dente. Reserve about 1/3 cup of the pasta water, then drain the pasta. Return the empty pot to the stove over low heat, add the pesto to the pot, then add the drained penne and enough pasta water to create a sauce. Toss well to coat. Taste and season again with salt and pepper as needed.
Serve in shallow bowls, with more grated cheese sprinkled on top.
farmers markets, Italian, locavore, One Local Summer, other blogs, recipes
11 Comments »
