This Week from the Farm (November 10)

This week our full share from Cherry Grove Farm consisted of:

1/2 pound arugula
1/2 pound tatsoi
2 heads lettuce
1 bunch radishes
1 bunch scallions
1 bunch mustard greens
1 bunch carrots
2 pounds mixed mini-cauliflowers and broccoli stalks
1 bulb garlic
some bell peppers and potatoes (Matt bagged these, so not sure how much)

As usual, it was quite late when we returned home, so I made one of our standards: Orzo and Mustard Greens, for Tuesday dinner.

I also made another loaf of basic no-knead bread. Again, it didn't rise very well. Then I remembered the state of the yeast when I opened the little packet: it was inflated, the way an over-fermenting bottle of apple cider is inflated, and I knew there was a chance that it would be problematic. And then I promptly forgot all about it. Despite its imperfections, the bread was as wonderful as always, with a thick, brown, crackly crust that sent me into a fit of self-satisfaction. From the look on his face, I knew Matt was getting bored and irritated when, as I chewed each bite, I declared repeatedly, "Mmm. This is really good bread."

Weekly roundup (November 10)

So I guess I missed a lot of posting on our adventures in farm share consumption. It always hits me on the day we are going to pick up our share, that I've been neglectful in my cataloging. I hardly did any cooking this past week. Matt picked up most of it, though we did have several tag-team collaborative dinners. I can't even remember what any of them were, except last night:

Monday dinner:
Vegetable soup, with mustard greens, potatoes, baby carrots, jalapeno, and porcini. With my first "basic" no-knead bread from the Lahey book. The house was very cool despite the warm weather, and I didn't allow my dough enough fermentation time, and thus did not acheive a perfect rise. The result, however, was moist and chewy, if a bit more dense than intended. And the crust was all that it was promised to be. Professional-like. My new clay baker did its work, and I was well-pleased and satisfied.

This Week from the Farm (October 6) and I Just Ate the Best Sandwich

This week:

1/2 pound tatsoi
1/2 pound arugula
2 heads lettuce
2 eggplant
6 bell peppers, purple and green
2 acorn squash
1 large bunch lacinato kale
1 large bunch red russian kale
2 pounds beets
2 pounds sweet potatoes
3 pounds potatoes
1 head garlic
I think I have forgotten something... I will update when I remember
PYO: 10 habaneros, 10 jalapenos, flowers, parsley, sage

When I got home and had to stuff everything into the fridge, I realized just how much I had leftover from last week. There are a lot of hot peppers. I went searching through all the various bags to find any that needed to be eliminated, but very few were bad. So many good ones. I immediately put a quart-sized bag of habaneros into the freezer. And there are still so many. Then I packed a bag of jalapenos to put up, but I hesitated. There are a lot of gorgeous tomatoes at the market right now, so I am thinking of making a massive amount of salsa to freeze instead. Honestly, I could probably do both -- there are so many. And then there are quite a few long cayenne peppers, red and green, and I was thinking I should batter and fry them Indian-style. Now I am thinking I should give them to my mom so she can fry them.

That was Tuesday. We had leftover soup and pasta for dinner.

Wednesday lunch:
I was home with sick children, and I made an easy, popular lunch of orzo with lots of kale (the lacinato), lemon zest, olive oil, black pepper, and a bit of grated pecorino.

While I was trying to sort out my connectivity to work, I roasted the 2 eggplants that we picked up on Tuesday and added them to the others I had roasted on Monday. In a shallow dish I layered eggplant, minced garlic, generous amounts of crushed red pepper, cilantro, and a drizzle of red wine vinegar. After 2 layers, I doused the whole thing with olive oil. The recipe, from Jim Lahey, actually asks for 2 cups of olive oil (!), but I definitely used less than a cup. Then it went into the fridge to marinate for 12 hours to 5 days.

Wednesday dinner:
Matt used all the tatsoi and made an asian-style marinated tofu and greens over rice. It was very good, and I was very pleased to have knocked out all the tatsoi from our share.

Thursday lunch:
I made sandwiches with some of the eggplant (marinated about 16 hours), roasted red peppers (from Monday), pecorino, and arugula on a baguette. Based on a sandwich in the Lahey book; this guy knows his stuff. I couldn't wait for lunch. Ate mine for breakfast.

Stecca, Sandwiches, Soup

Sunday was quite warm, so my stecca dough got off to a good start and had a noticeably improved rise. I baked it off on Monday morning, using a bit less oil and much less salt for the top. I felt, the last time, that some bites were much too salty and wondered if so much oil was affecting my results, yielding the flatter loaves. The answer is no (wait, were those questions?). No the bread was not too salty, even if I thought it was (in fact, it was perfect for sandwiches, where the salt has room to spread out), and No the oil did not hinder the oven rise. So my result on Monday: fuller loaves, adequate oil, not enough salt. I failed to notice that, unlike the standard bread recipes in my new Jim Lahey book, the stecca dough contains very little salt on its own, and thus relies on those generous sprinklings for flavor. Lessons learned: warmer environment helps a lot; don't skimp on the salt. I am still working on my shaping technique as well.

Monday lunch:
Matt had another beet-arugula-goat cheese sandwich on stecca (it needed a bit of salt). The rest of us had leftover stew.

After lunch I roasted a few eggplants, red peppers and poblanos to save for later. I meant to marinate the eggplant with some garlic, cilantro, vinegar, and oil (Lahey recipe), but we were out of garlic so I will try to marinate today.

Monday dinner:
Matt made a double batch of one of our favorite, easy cold-weather soups: Coconut Milk Soup with Sweet Potato and Collard Greens, from Fresh Food Fast by Peter Berley. We used sweet potatoes and jalapenos from Cherry Grove for this. Note: Sometimes you get a jalapeno that is just not that spicy, but it is crucial to get this soup spicy enough because the coconut milk and sweet potato can make it too sweet. And then it becomes a huge disappointment. But the Cherry Grove jalapenos did not disappoint. The cilantro and drizzle of lime juice take it over the top. And we have leftovers!

Taking stock:
We did pretty well this week. We do still have 2 small watermelons hanging around the fridge, though. And a couple of tiny winter squashes, 2 scallions, and quite a few hot peppers.

Completed: No-Knead Stecca; Enjoyed: Beet-Arugula-Goat Cheese Sandwich on Homemade Bread

Thursday dinner:
Butternut squash soup and fresh bread. I used water instead of stock for the soup and I think that is why it tasted a bit bland to me. I'm not sure because my taste buds were deadened by all the salt on the bread.

The no-knead stecca was completed around 6pm yesterday evening. Everyone gathered around to gaze at it before we tore into one (of four). The crust was oil-saturated, having had a good dousing before baking, and salty. Almost too salty in places. And crisp. It was very good, but perfect? Perfectly delicious, but I may not have stretched the dough as carefully as I should have, because three of my four stick-loaves were quite flat in the middle. Or did it not rise enough? Did the oil prevent it? -- who knows, but I will happily carry on with this tasty experiment. Those flattened sticks were not ideal for sandwich bread, but we ate them and saved the fullest for
Friday lunch:
From the Lahey book, a sandwich of marinated beets and onions, with arugula and fresh goat cheese, on stecca. It was a truly great sandwich.

I will be starting my next batch of stecca forthwith. For the purposes of evaluating the no-knead process, I would have preferred to start with the basic bread-in-a-pot boule, but I'm still sorting out the pot. The stecca only requires a baking sheet.

Started: No-knead Stecca

Started at 10pm last night. Left to ferment for 12-18 hours. I hope 18 hours will be enough because I don't think our house is warm enough. Exciting.

Tuesday's haul

We will be picking up a full share for the next few weeks. Considering the amount of leftover produce we had from the last week(s), we knew we'd have trouble fitting it all into the refrigerator. We gave a bit away yesterday, and I'm not quite sure what's left, but the list for this week's haul follows.

1/2 pound arugula
1/2 pound tatsoi
2 heads butter lettuce
2 pounds pattypan squash
2 eggplant
2 red bell peppers
3 pounds (I think) potatoes
2 pounds sweet potatoes
2 pounds beets
1 head garlic
3 small winter squash -- I think we have a butternut, acorn, and sweet dumpling
1 large bunch scallions
1 large bunch swiss chard
1 large bunch basil -- this may be the last of it; I know my container plants are going all twiggy
PYO: 10 jalapeno, 10 habanero, small bunch parsley, 30 stems flowers. We didn't take any other herbs because we still have some from last week.

While I ran around with the kids, Matt made Tuesday dinner:
Baked penne with roasted peppers, fresh basil and goat cheese. He made use of a jar of sauce I brought home from Trader Joe's the other day.

Matt also roasted some beets last night and is marinating them today with some sliced onion. He's using a recipe from our newest cookbook, Jim Lahey's my bread, and if I can get it together we may have fresh bread to make our beet-arugula-goat cheese sandwiches.

Also, via Chocolate and Zucchini, I discovered that there is a group that has organized The Bread Baker's Apprentice challenge and are baking their way through Peter Reinhart's book, week by week. The group started in May 2009 and is already up to the focaccia. That was the recipe I was lusting over the last time I picked up the book -- it involves pouring a half-cup of olive oil, sea salt, and herbs over the top. Imagine the crust. I'm a bit sorry I didn't know about this sooner; joining may have given me the incentive I need to get a regular bread-baking practice started. Although it is still possible to participate, anyone joining now and starting from the beginning would be many weeks behind, so there doesn't seem much point (to me). One nice thing is that the challenge has produced a plethora of blog posts with excellent photos of the various stages of the preparations. Useful. For the near-term (like this week) I am interested in the no-knead method that Lahey presents. Truly, I think that the difference between knead and no-knead is minimal. Most of the bread recipes I have seen only ask for 5 to 7 minutes of kneading. Not bad. It just seems like a lot of work. I think the biggest challenge will be finding a place for the dough to rest for 12 to 18 hours in our crowded space.