Tennessee Locavore

Gunshots & Making the Perfect Pizza

My husband and I have lived in our neighborhood for the last thirteen years.  I can't say enough wonderful things about it.  I love the old homes and how none of them look alike.  I love having a difficult time getting a good walk for exercise in because there are always too many neighbors to stop and talk to.  I love how everyone looks out for their neighbors.  Heck - I even love our Fellini Kroger!

Seven years ago, Marcus and I decided we wanted to buy a house here.  We wanted to stay in Old North but thought we were priced out.  So we looked in surrounding neighborhoods.  One gorgeous spring day, we ventured to another neighborhood in the area - one with gorgeous older homes but a little rougher around the edges.  

As we drove up to the house we planned on viewing, we noticed a couple of men arguing loudly.  As we walked up the steps, we heard gunshots from a couple blocks away, exactly where those two men had been yelling.  I distinctly remember watching the realtor's hands tremble as we tried to get the lockbox open - fumbling in his haste to get inside.  All three of us burst through the door, slammed it shut and proceeded to move out of the way of any windows.  The realtor quickly called 911 and reported the gunshots.

It was at the moment that the complete absurdity of the moment hit us.  All three of us looked at each other and all three of us busted out laughing at the same time.  We laughed and laughed so hard that I had to wipe tears from my face.  I turned to Steve and gasped out "Steve - quick question.  Is this the crappiest condition under which you've ever had to show a house? Do you win the office pool for this one?"  After we had calmed down, I remember Marcus turning to me and saying "We might as well check out the house" which set all of us off again.  The realtor asked "what the heck do we do now because I really think we should wait a bit before leaving" so I made the suggestion that we order pizza but of course we would need to have it delivered.  We all died laughing again and the concept of getting pizza delivered has been an inside joke in our family ever since.

Fridays are Pizza Fridays in our home.  We have some wonderful options for pizza in the area but my cheapskate nature keeps us from partaking of it too much.  For $1.06, I can make two pizza crusts and our pizza can have any toppings we want on it.  We've been making this pizza crust recipe for the last eight years but it's only been in the last two years that we've made it a tradition to have pizza on Friday nights.

I'm not going to get into a debate over what makes the perfect pizza.  Friends have been won and lost over battles such as those.  Instead, I'm going to tell you what I like in a pizza and you can make adjustments based on what you like.

Crust - I like a thin, crisp crust with lots of air bubbles.  Here's what we do to ensure that:

• Make sure to heat your oven and baking stone for at least 45-60 minutes before you bake your pizza.
• "Age" your dough for at least a couple of days in the fridge.
• Don't glop on too many toppings.

Sauce - If we're using a red sauce on our pizza, we usually use one of two different sauces.  If we're in a hurry, we often will top it with Roasted Tomato Sauce which we've thinned with a little bit of water.  If we have a bit more time, we make a quick tomato sauce in the blender using canned tomatoes, garlic and dried herbs. 

You can use any kinds of topping or cheeses you want - over the next few months, I'm going to feature some of the different combination of toppings we use.  We love trying new combinations but we have several that have made it into our regular rotation.

McPhelps Standard Pizza Crust Recipe
 makes  2 crusts

3 cups flour
1 tsp kosher salt
1 tsp yeast
1 cup water
2 tablespoon olive oil

I make this recipe using my Kitchenaid mixer using the dough hook but you can also make this recipe using a food processor or by hand.  If you're mixing by hand, you'll have to knead a while longer - usually around 8-10 minutes.

Add flour, salt & yeast to the mixing bowl. 

Turn mixer on low and slowly add water. Once water has been incorporated, slowly add 2 tablespoons olive oil.  

Let mix for 3-4 minutes until dough is smooth and elastic. 

Cover bowl  with saran wrap and let it rise for 1-2 hours in a warm place.  Punch it down and separate into two pieces.  

Roll out on parchment paper until crust is your desired thickness - crust will approximately double in thickness once it's cooked.

To bake, turn oven to 500 degrees and put baking stone in oven.  Heat oven for one hour before baking pizza.  

Add desired toppings to pizza.  For this pizza, we didn't use a sauce - just thin slices of tomato.  We also added 3 ounces of mozzarella cheese, 1 ounce of feta, slices of hot and sweet peppers from our garden and plenty of oregano.

Slide parchment paper onto a thin cookie sheet and use this sheet to slide the pizza on the parchment paper directly onto the pizza stone.  Let bake 5-7 minutes depending on how brown you want the crust and the topping to be.  Use the cookie sheet to remove the pizza from the baking stone.

Leftover dough can be stored in the fridge for up to a week or in the freezer for 2 months.  I actually prefer the crust when it's aged a couple of days in the fridge.  This dough also makes a really yummy skillet bread.  Heat a pan over medium heat with 1-3 tsp of olive oil in it.  Pat the dough out into thin rounds that fit into skillet and cook 4-5 minutes on each side until brown.

Please click here for a printable recipe!

Quick pizza sauce:

1 14 oz can diced tomatoes (I love Muir Glen diced tomatoes)
2 cloves garlic
Herbs to taste (I use a mixture of dried oregano, basil & rosemary)

Drain tomatoes.  Add to blender or food processor.  Add 2 peeled cloves of garlic and herbs.  Blend until smooth.  I usually drain it again using a fine sieve or a coffee filter for 30-45 minutes.

Please click here for a printable recipe!

How the hell do you cook barley?!!

I've been lucky enough to grow up in a family where a lot of emphasis was put on eating healthy food.  My mom is a retired nurse and we were drinking 2% milk before most people had heard of it.  Granted, some of the nutritional advice of the 80s and 90s has turned out to be wrong (margarine anyone?) but fresh fruits and vegetables were always emphasized.  We had a garden and I grew up thinking vegetables were pretty tasty and could never understand why some of my friends thought they were disgusting.

I'm also very lucky that I know how to cook.  My parents strongly encouraged that by praising me for making some of the most disgusting dreck I can think of.  Remind me some day to tell you about the weevil pudding.  They bought me cookbooks and helped me clean up the disaster of a kitchen I always seemed to create.  I grew up watching my mom cook.  Baking cookies for us, making us a batch of homemade playdo to squeeze through the garlic press, stirring the huge pot of spaghetti sauce that she made every summer to freeze - cooking was an act of love and this attitude transferred over to me.  Sure - my mom got busy between working the night shift and taking care of us but she had a repertoire of quick, easy meals that she pulled out when the need arose.

Because I loved to cook and was strongly encouraged to experiment in the kitchen, I learned how to cook a lot of stuff - quite a bit of it by messing it up a few times.  My parents either paid the cost for those messed up meals or I was able to absorb the cost of those meals when I was living on my own.  A lot of people don't have that luxury. When you have a limited amount of money to cook with, you can't take chances that it won't turn out.

I also have access to blogs, TV shows, magazines and cookbooks where I can learn how to cook things.  I took several nutrition courses in college and have subscribed to several magazines that discuss health issues like this.  What seems like perfectly common knowledge to me is not to a lot of people.  I think assuming that our knowledge is known by everyone else is an issue that's at the root of so many of our problems in this country.

I think the food blogging world is a fantastic place and full of some of the most wonderful, helpful people in the world.  But I also think it's easy to get caught up in the belief that what we know is known by everyone.  There are so many people who don't have any idea how to cook or any idea what kind of food is healthy.  I was at the Fellini Krogers one day and I saw a woman buying breaded fried okra.  I overheard her telling her daughters that vegetables are healthy.  Far too many people would rather mock her for being stupid, rather than try to understand that with the knowledge she had, she really was trying to do the best she could to put healthy food on the table.

Another example - lamb shanks.  One of the cheapest cuts of lamb and one lamb shank will flavor a whole pot of beans.  But I know how to soak dried beans.  I know that lamb is tasty because I've had it before.  I know what to do with that strange knobby piece of meat to make it taste good.  I know these things because someone taught me how.  That's so easy to take for granted!

My husband grew up in a very country family.  I'll admit that I was shocked the first time I went to a family dinner.  I remember asking him where the vegetables were and he laughed and laughed at me.  "Honey - there were tons of vegetables there!" And when he explained them all to me, I got it.  There WERE tons of vegetables there.  They were just all fried, drowned in bacon fat and covered in processed cheese.  But they were healthy because they were vegetables!  He had never eaten a green green bean.  When I mentioned that I loved peas, he readily agreed.  His favorite dish was canned green peas, mixed with velveeta, cream of mushroom soup and covered with buttered Ritz cracker crumbs.  Now he plants peas with me every spring and when we harvest them, we eat the first crop straight from the vine.  But he had to learn that snap peas from a vine were completely different than peas from a can.  

There are several groups out there that are doing their best to teach low income families how to cook with whole foods and how to eat nutritiously.  In a perfect world, every state would have these programs.  But until then, a lot of people are just getting by the best they can.

Thoughts on the food I ate yesterday:
I love No Knead bread.  So cheap and makes better bread than I can buy most places.

Barley is a wunderfood! $1.19 a pound for organic barley.  It's cheap - bulks up readily, tastes great. 

Turkey feet look pretty gross bobbing up and down in a stockpot but I love what bird feet do to a pot of stock.

Thoughts on the Eat on $30 Challenge so far:
It's amazing how much I can crave something that I can't have.  I usually keep a small bag of jelly beans from Earthfare in my office.  They have no artificial colors in them so they're ridiculously pricey, so they're out for this week.  Naturally, they're all I can think about.  I want a damn jelly bean and I want it now!!!

I almost killed my husband when he changed the end cost of the turkey stock THREE TIMES!  Eat on $30 - you were almost responsible for the death of man!

Breakdown of costs:

I made a huge pot of turkey stock on Saturday.  I'm going to count it as I use it in recipes.

I also cut off a tablespoon of butter to use as spread for bread or other minimal uses.  I'm going to just count the cost of the whole tablespoon here and when it's gone, I'll count another one.

Breakfast: Chorizo scrambled free-range eggs, bread, fair trade coffee and local organic milk
Lunch: Hamburger patty and leftover veggies from yesterday + 2 oz cabbage
Dinner: Mushroom Barley Soup with bread
Dessert: Snickerdoodle Blondie

Turkey Stock:
8.5 lbs of turkey carcass: $4.72
1 lb turkey feet: $2.50
8 oz onion: 40¢
1 lb organic carrots - $1.04
TOTAL: $8.66

Mushroom Barley Soup(see below!)
2 tbsp butter: 24¢
10 cups turkey stock: $3.60
2 containers Bella mushrooms: $3.34
10.5 oz organic carrots: 68¢
5 oz organic celery: 95¢
12 oz onions: 60¢
6 oz organic barley: 45¢
TOTAL: $9.86 or 76¢ a cup

Breakfast:
3 Eggs: 57¢
1/2 oz Chorizo: 44¢
6 tbsp milk: 18¢
3 tbsp coffee: 33¢
Bread: n/a
1 organic local apple: 70¢
TOTAL: $2.22

Lunch:
1/2 lb hamburger: $1.73
2 oz sautéed cabbage: 11¢
TOTAL: $1.84

Dinner:
4 cups Barley Mushroom Soup: $3.04
1 tbsp butter: 12¢
bread: n/a
TOTAL: $3.16

Dessert:
Snickerdoodle Blondie: 19¢
Sweet precious wine: 72¢
TOTAL: 91¢

GRAND TOTAL FOR THE DAY: $8.13
TOTAL SPENT SO FAR: $17.92

Mushroom Barley Soup

This freezes well and tastes even better the next day.

2 tbsp butter, divided
2 1/2 cups onions, chopped
1 cup celery, chopped
1 1/2 cups thinly sliced carrot
2 8-oz packages mushrooms, sliced
1 cup pearl barley
10 cups chicken stock
3/4 tsp salt (this depends on how salty your stock is)
1/2 tsp dried thyme

Heat 1 1/2 tbsp butter in a large skillet over medium-high heat until it bubbles.  Add the carrots, celery and onion to the pan and saute 5-6 minutes until they start to lightly brown on the edges.  Add mushrooms and saute until they soften, about 5-6 minutes.  Set aside.  In a large saucepan, melt the remaining 1/2 tbsp butter over medium-high heat until bubbly.  Add barley and stir constantly until it brown a little, between 6-8 minutes.  Add stock to barley and add vegetables to pan.  Add salt and thyme.  Simmer 20 minutes and taste.  Add more salt if necessary.  

Makes about 13 cups

Please click here for a printable recipe!

Here are a list of the other wonderful bloggers participating in this project! If you decide to follow along on Twitter the hashtag is #EatOn30:

• Tami of Running with Tweezers - Twitter @runwithtweezers
• Betty Joan of Trouble With Toast - Twitter @bettyjoan
• Carrie Neal of carrienealland - Twitter @carrienealland
• Paula of Bell'alimento - Twitter @bellalimento
• The Broke Socialite - Twitter @brokesocialite
• Jimmy of Eat It Atlanta - Twitter @EatItAtlanta
• Robert of WhizKid Sound - Twitter @rdyson
• Jen of Use Real Butter - Twitter @userealbutter
• Mike's $30 Project Blog - Twitter @boutte
• Zach of Mise en Face - Twitter @drzachary
• Hailey of Hail’s Kitchen - Twitter @hailskitchen
• Susan of Doughmesstic - Twitter @doughmesstic
• Frugal Hostess - Twitter @frugalhostess
• Diana of Spain in Iowa Twitter @dianabauman

Facing the cruelty behind my cooking

The Clinch River is one of my favorite places in Tennessee. Sure - It's a creation of TVA and that in itself is a strike against it. But it's such a beautiful place that I find even that can't diminish my love for it.

TVA or the Tennessee Valley Authority has a very mixed heritage in our area. During the 1930s, the Tennessee Valley was a very poor area, even by Depression Era standards. TVA projects displaced over 15,000 people, covering over towns, native burial grounds and land that had been in families for years. On the other hand, TVA provided jobs to an area that was surrounded by poverty. Marcus's grandfather was an electrician at Norris Dam and a few other TVA projects. TVA reduced the devastating floods in this area but they also destroyed pristine areas when they built projects like the Tellico Dam. The creation of the Tellico Dam ruined one on of the best trout fisheries in the area when they dammed the Little Tennessee, and land that TVA acquired through eminent domain at a very low cost is now being sold for hundreds of thousands of dollars per acre to developers.

No matter what my feelings towards TVA are, Norris Lake is here to stay. The Clinch River starts in Southwest Virgina, near Tazwell. The Clinch and Powell River meet up at Norris Lake, formed when Norris Dam was built in 1936. Norris Dam is the first dam built by TVA and at the time was constructed in a modernist style - considered quite advanced and controversial at the time. It really is an impressive sight, especially at dusk.

Because the dam is 285 feet high, it impounds a large quantity of very cold water. This cold water is the perfect temperature for trout. In the 80s, TVA constructed a weir dam that speeds the river back up about two miles from the dam - this adds oxygen to the water and makes it even more habitable for trout.

On a hot summer's night, not many things are more refreshing then walking alongside the tailwaters. Not only is it beautiful but the rushing, cold water kicks up a cool breeze, even on a hot night. During the summer, there's usually fog that begins to form as sunset approaches.

Norris State Park, Cove Creek Wildlife Management Area and Chuck Swan State Forest all preserve areas around the lake. We've seen groundhogs, hawks, osprey, deer, skunks and foxes around here. 

On Friday, Marcus and I went blueberry picking at a farm nearby and stopped by the river so Marcus could fish for a bit. It was one of those days when the fishing alchemy was perfect and in the hour we were there, Marcus quickly caught several brown trout. Two were too small to keep and one was too big so they were quickly let go. Marcus asked me if we should keep the other ones to eat and I told him he could make that decision. It was a cop-out. If he decided to keep them, I wasn't responsible for their death. But even doing that made me feel bad - I could have asked him to let them go and he would have.

I'm a bit of a hypocrite when it comes to facing the cruelty of my cooking head on. Sure, we buy the majority of our meat from local, humane producers and we eat a lot less meat than the average consumer. But I don't feel guilty when I eat that meat. I don't feel like I personally caused that animal to die and it's because I'm so insulated from the process.

I think there's a lot of truth to the saying that if slaughterhouses all had glass walls, we'd be vegetarians. Most of us have insulated ourselves from the cruelty of our choices. We buy pork or beef at our grocery store, sanitized and packed in a neat little package. We don't have to see the horrific conditions those animals were raised under. We don't even have the courage to call it by it's animal name - cow meat or pig meat.

I've had people throw a fit when Marcus has mentioned that he sometimes hunts and fishes quite a bit. These people stand there in their leather shoes, holding a burger from McDonalds and tell us that hunting is cruel and have no idea of the irony of their statements. We've created a world where we don't have to see the consequences of our actions, at least when it comes to the meal on the kitchen table.

There's no getting away from the fact that creatures on this planet will die to produce the food that keeps you alive. You can be a vegan and animals will still have died to produce your food. Even humans will be harmed and possibly die to produce the food you eat. All kinds of animals die during the harvesting process. Merely using the land for the growing of food, rather than animal habitat, causes death. If you don't eat organic produce, farm workers will contract cancer because of the chemicals that are used in the farming of your food. Even if you eat organic foods, farm workers in foreign country will go hungry when the organic peaches they grow to provide for their families are turned down for not being up to standard. Even if you buy local, organic produce, you're still not blameless. An organic farmer I know lost 600 tomato plants in one night to deer. His losses were so great that he had to get a depredation permit in order to get any kind of harvest at all and to control his losses for next year.

I grow a lot of our produce in my suburban garden. Every year we fight off the birds and possums so we can harvest our tomatoes. They don't usually take enough to cause severe losses but I know the frustration of going out to the garden and finding nibbles and pecks in almost all of the not-quite-ripe tomatoes. A few weeks ago, we had a difficult choice to make. The biggest groundhog I had ever seen was in our back yard. They may be cute animals but anyone who's gardened knows that devastation they can cause in a garden in a single night. It disappeared, never to be seen again but what would we have done if it had decided to make its home nearby?

We need to strip off the marketing gloss of our dining choices and come face to face with the cruelty that comes as a result of our choices. That doesn't mean we need to go out and shoot a deer or kill a chicken ourselves, although I greatly admire people who are willing to do that. It does mean that we need to be aware that our food comes with a cost. We need to treat our food with the reverence that it deserves - we need to use it wisely. We need to appreciate the farmers that grew it and the lives that were lost in the production of it.

This life can be an amazing gift - full of beauty and wonder. But none of us can escape the fact that it can be cruel as well. In the gorgeous surroundings of the Clinch River valley, I was responsible for the death of three living creatures. The best thing I could do is to be grateful for the loss of those lives so that I could live.

Trout with Brown Butter-Caper Sauce

1/4 teaspoon olive oil
2 trout fillets - about 4 oz each
Salt and Pepper
2 tablespoons shallots (We used Egyptian Walking Onions from our garden)
1 heaping tablespoon of drained capers
1/2 teaspoon lemon juice
1 tablespoon butter

First off, if you caught your own fish, you need to clean them and fillet them. 

Chop your shallots and get your capers and lemon ready. Add oil to a non-stick skillet and put over medium heat. Heat for 2 minutes. Salt and pepper both sides of fillets and add to pan. 

When the edges of the fillet start to turn white, flip. This will take 1 to 1 1/2 minutes. After flipping, cook for another 1 1/2 or until fish flakes easily with a fork. 

Remove fillets from pan, put on a plate and tent with foil to keep warm.

Add butter to skillet. Watch carefully because in a non-stick skillet it's hard to see when it begins to brown. It usually takes about 2 to 2 1/2 minutes for us. 

When it's beginning to turn brown, add shallots and sautee for two minutes until they begin to soften.

Then add lemon juice and capers, cook for another minute.  

Pour sauce over fish and serve.

For a printable recipe, click here!

This meal is part of my One Local Summer meal for this week.  Admittedly, capers aren't local but I'm hoping that next year, I'll have pickled nasturtium buds to use as a substitute.  The butter was made from Cruze Farm milk and we used some of the caper juice to sub in for the lemon.  Instead of shallots, we used Egyptian Walking Onions from our garden.  We served this fish with roasted Dragon Langerie, Masai and Purple Trionfo Violetto beans from our garden.  Dessert was a blueberry cornmeal cake made with local blueberries and local cornmeal.

The Best Cornbread

In the family I married into, cooking is done only by the matriarchs.  They are the best cooks and they are the only cooks.  The kitchen is their domain and woe to anyone who thinks they can keep up on that battleground.  I very rarely cook for my husband's family - I usually let my husband do that.  Better for them to think that I've whipped the man into submission into the kitchen than to give the appearance that I think I can compete in the cooking Olympics.  Sure I can compete - I think I'm a damn good cook and I know many that agree.  But I'm perfectly willing to yield that reputation at their door.  Anything I would make would be too weird, too spicy, too healthy, not what they're used to.  Too different is what it boils down to and to be honest, I'm really at peace with that.  Every once in a while, I'll make something non-confrontational - tomato salad, bread, cookies.  But I never make fried chicken.  I never make biscuits.  And the last thing I would ever do is make cornbread.

Cornbread is the heart, soul and community bread for breaking in the South.  We're as passionate about it as we are about religion and football.  Family recipes are guarded carefully and the cornbread you make is never as good as the cornbread their mommas make.  It's as simple as that.  You're either using the wrong type of cornmeal, desecrating it with sugar, adding too many eggs or not using the right kind of fat in your skillet.  It's a tradition here and many feel like you should never mess with a tradition.

Although I grew up in the South, my parents weren't Southerners so I don't have any tried and true rules when it comes to cornbread.  I have no pre-conceived notions about what cornbread should taste like.  I just know what tastes good to me.  To me, a lot of the cornbreads served up north aren't the cornbreads that make up a daily part of life.  While I don't share the disdain for them that many in the South have, they do seem more like cake than bread.  Tasty, but with their copious amounts of sugar, not cornbread.  I've had cornbreads that have more flour than cornmeal but, in my opinion, that's getting rid of the essence of the cornbread.  It might be very tasty but it's a bread with cornmeal, not cornbread.  Stone ground cornmeal is heads and shoulders above any other kind of cornmeal - it hasn't had the corniness milled out.  Buttermilk does magical things in cornbread and should never be omitted.  And while my Mom always baked cornbread in a baking pan, I am a complete and utter convert to the use of a cast iron skillet in the making of a proper cornbread.  The buttery crust that shatters in your mouth, right before your teeth sink into the creamy corniness of the inside is, to me, the soul of the cornbread.

My husband on the other hand has been indoctrinated from a young age about what a proper cornbread should consist of.  Getting him to branch out and try something different was about as easy as herding cats.  But my husband is nothing but competitive - by instilling the mere thought that there might be better cornbreads out there, I was able to lead him down the path of the underground cornbread resistance.

So we went on a quest for the "perfect" cornbread.  I can't tell you how many recipes we tried - they blurred together in a cornmealed frenzy.  I checked out book after book from the library on Southern cooking and cooking in East Tennessee.  During the course of this marathon, I made some of the densest, driest cornbreads imaginable.  It was very frustrating.  And then I thought of something that I was quite ashamed hadn't occurred to me before - why hadn't I looked in my tried and true cookbooks - the one with splatters and rips in the pages.  No - they weren't "Southern" cookbooks but if they had served me well in other areas, why not check them for this?  And that's when I found our cornbread "Holy Grail".

One my favorite cookbooks is Passionate Vegetarian by Crescent Dragonwagon. And it's definitely the cookbook I use most judging by the sorry shape it's in.  In it, she has a recipe for Dairy Hollow House Skillet-Sizzled Cornbread.  It had all the basic requirements and nothing I've ever made from her cookbook has been less than very tasty - most recipes become repeats here in our house.  And no one can say that this woman doesn't have passion for cornbread - she's written an entire book about it.

This cornbread has become the very definition of cornbread to me.  It's light as can be but still packs real substance.  I can eat a slice of it by itself and be a very happy girl but it's the perfect accompaniment to chili, soup beans and greens.

Some of you from the South are already fussin' up a storm because you saw sugar in this recipe and good, true, REAL cornbread doesn't have sugar in it.  I say, hooey.  I'll take any tried and true Southerner and give him/her two cornbreads made exactly the same, one with a little bit of sugar, one without.  Sure as spit, they'll always choose the one with a touch of sugar.  I've brought this cornbread to plenty of functions and every single time, this cornbread gets eaten up while the other "authentic" cornbreads look lonely.  Adding just a touch of sugar makes this taste like you're biting into a piece of bread made with buttered sweet corn.  It does not taste like cake in any way.

Another complaint I'm sure I'll hear is that this has flour in it.  Well, so does the basic cornbread recipe at the holy shrine of all things cornbread, Lodge Cast Iron Cookware Company.  So do many of the cornbread mixes sold to Southerners here in East Tennessee.  I know that using flour in cornbread is an anathema to many here in East Tennessee and some of you may not even try this because of it.  You're really missing out.  When you use really good cornmeal (stone ground and preferably local), the flour merely accentuates the corniness of the cornbread.  It lightens the texture, giving it lift and keeping it from being as heavy as many cornbreads I've tried.  It also creates a cornbread that keeps well and reheats beautifully - important in this household of two.  We've even frozen wedges and let me tell you, on a cold, hectic winter night, there's nothing quite so life affirming to pull out of the freezer for a quick meal than a slice of this cornbread.

We still love to experiment with cornbread but this is the one we always come back to.  When my husband and I talk about cornbread, this is the cornbread we picture in our minds.  It's the cornbread we make for our friends and my family.  It's the cornbread we bring to potlucks and parties.  Quite simply, it's the perfect cornbread.  A bold claim - indeed.

Edited to add - My friend Laura just did a post about this cornbread as well.  Check it out - it's a great post.

Dairy Hollow House Skillet-Sizzled Cornbread
(Adapted from Passionate Vegetarian by Crescent Dragonwagon)

Note: There are all kinds of variations that you can make with this cornbread.  Over the next few months, I'll show you some of them.

1 cup stone ground yellow cornmeal
1 cup unbleached white flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1- 3 tablespoons sugar (the fresher the cornmeal, the less sugar you'll need. I use 1 tbsp)
1 1/4 cup buttermilk (please use good buttermilk if you can get it, like Cruze Farm)
1 large egg

1/4 cup mild vegetable oil, such as corn, canola, or peanut

Preheat your oven to 375.  You need to make sure your oven is good and hot if you want to get that crunchy crust that turns cornbread into a little slice of heaven.  This page has a good description on how to calibrate your oven temperature - at the very least, make sure you know how much your oven is off so you know how to adjust the heat or timing of your baked dishes.

In a large bowl, combine all the dry ingredients (cornmeal through sugar) and stir well to combine them.  If your baking soda or baking powder have any lumps, sift them (or break them up well with a spoon) before you measure them into the bowl. 

In a smaller bowl, whisk together the buttermilk, egg and vegetable oil.  

Put your 10 1/4 inch cast iron skillet on the stove over medium heat and let it heat up for 2-3 minutes (or as long as it takes to get nice and hot).  Add butter to the skillet and once it's melted and bubbly, tilt it around to make sure the butter has spread all over the bottom of the pan and up onto the sides a bit.  

Mix the bowl of wet ingredients into the bowl of dry ingredients.  Please make sure not to over-stir this - you only need to mix it until everything is wet.  There will still be small lumps in it - you just want to mix it until there are no big pockets of dry ingredients. 

Pour mixture into the skillet.  You should hear it sizzle a little.  Put this into the oven right away and bake 25-30 minutes or until the top is golden brown.

Cut cornbread into wedges and serve warm.

For a printable recipe, click here!

Barbecued Raspberry-Hoisin Chicken - Finger licking good!

Raspberries are my favorite fruit in the whole world.  As a girl growing up in Wisconsin, we had a patch of wild ones in the back yard and come raspberry season, I stuffed myself with abandon.  My love affair with the fruit has not abated.  I was almost reduced to tears this year when my fall bearing raspberry order got cancelled.  There are no places close by where you can pick them and raspberries have such a short shelf life that it's best to buy them locally and use them up in the next day or two.  I was able to pick up some raspberries from a farmer's market but I can't wait until we have our own to pick.  I'll be able to go out to the backyard and graze for breakfast.  If you have a lot of berries, they do freeze well.  In fact, if you want to get the most juice out of them, freezing them helps you out.

There are thousands of delectable sounding recipes out there for raspberries, but the majority of them seem to be focused on baking.  Baking is an admirable end for a raspberry but there's only so many miles I can face on my rowing machine in an effort to fit into my clothes so I wanted to find another way to use them. 

It's been gorgeous here - in the low 80s which is unheard of in July.  It should be at least 90 with the humidity high enough to make my hair resemble a bad junior high perm.  We're taking advantage of the cool temps while we can and grilling seems so right when the evening are as lovely as they are.  I've always loved Eating Well magazine.  It seems to really place an emphasis on using seasonal produce and the recipes usually don't contain too many processed ingredients.  I glanced through some old issues and found a recipe for an asian-style marinade.

The recipe suggests that you use boneless chicken thighs and after making it, I'd have to agree.  The level of sugar in the sauce (from the raspberries and hoisin sauce) is too high to allow for long periods of grilling.  We're trying to eat down the contents of our freezer so I used a whole chicken instead and cut up one of the breasts to make chicken tenders.  It was still very tasty but very finicky on the grill because of the length of time it took.  It was prone to getting too brown.  The chicken tenders were done quickly but I think using the thighs would be a better option because the chicken would cook quickly enough not to burn but stay juicy.

If berry seeds drive you to distraction, make sure to use frozen berries and put them through a sieve to strain the seeds out.  I'd probably use a little more than a cup as well.  

Make sure to check the ingredients in your hoisin sauce.  I'm trying to cut out all artificial colors and what do you know, there it was lurking in our hoisin sauce.  Next time I buy it, I'll be on the lookout for a different brand.

Barbecued Raspberry-Hoisin Chicken
Adapted from Eating Well

1 cup fresh or frozen raspberries
3/4 cup hoisin sauce3 tablespoons rice vinegar
2 cloves garlic
1/2 teaspoon orange zest
1 tablespoon chopped fresh ginger
1/8 teaspoon freshly ground pepper
Pinch of crushed red pepper
1 1/2 pounds boneless, skinless chicken thighs, trimmed, each cut into 3 crosswise strips

Place the raspberries in the blender.

If they're frozen, let them defrost a bit in there.  Add your hoisin sauce.  If you like, you can call it hoser sauce like we do.  Because we're twelve.

Get your choppables ready.

Chop your garlic, orange zest and ginger.  Try to ignore your husband offering you tips on how to improve your chopping techniques.  It's all going to end up in the blender anyway.

Add the rice vinegar, garlic, orange zest, ginger, pepper and red pepper to the raspberries and hoisin sauce in a blender or food processor. 

 

Blend until smooth.  Set 1/4 cup aside to use as a dipping sauce. Transfer the rest of the sauce to a ziploc bag and add chicken.  Make sure the chicken is coated.  Lick the spatula.

 

Let that marinate in the refrigerator for at least 2 hours and up to 24 hours.  We marinated ours for six hours.

Heat your grill up to a medium heat.  Remove the chicken from marinade and thread onto four skewers(if you're using boneless thighs), distributing as evenly as possible.  Put the skewers on the grill.  You need to keep a close eye on these on the grill to make sure they don't burn.  

If you notice them getting too brown, pull them over to a cooler part of the grill.  They should take about 4-5 minutes a side.  You can always cut into one to see if it's done.  We use a thermometer, especially when we grill chicken that isn't boneless but you can also grill until you notice the chicken is firm to the touch.  This is something that takes a little practice.

Serve chicken with dipping sauce on the side.  Try not to gross out your loved ones by licking your fingers too enthusiastically.

We really enjoyed this chicken.  The ginger gives it a nice kick and the fruitiness is perfect for a summer evening.  I served it with some leftover rice I tried to jazz up (and I failed miserably at this) and sauteed some grated summer squash and onion with tamari.  The leftovers re-heated beautifully for lunch today. 

I think this is a great way to use raspberries, although there was also a delectable raspberry tart in the same issue that's calling my name.  I think my rowing machine is going to get a work out this summer.

For a printable recipe, click here

Really Inauthentic Okonomiyaki

When you've spent several hours in the garden in ninety degree weather, the last thing you're going to worry about is whether or not the recipe you're making is "true" to a particular cuisine.  You want something quick to make, something that uses up a decent amount of produce, something reasonably healthy and something that tastes great.

Heidi Swanson's Japanese Pizza recipe fits the bill perfectly.  No - it's not a traditional recipe for okonomiyaki but it's quick and really tasty.  It's also perfect for using up odds and ends of vegetables from the garden.  I've subbed in kohlrabi, turnip, beets and zucchini and it's all been tasty.  We've gotten in the habit of eating this at least once a week and we've yet to get tired of it.

Japanese Pizza (Inspired by 101Cookbooks recipe)

Serves 1-2

2 cups shredded vegetables, (I used 1 3/4 cup cabbage and 1/4 cup grated carrot)

1 cup leeks, chopped (wash these suckers well)

2 cloves garlic, minced

2/3 cup white whole wheat flour

1/4 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon tamari

2 eggs, beaten

1 tablespoon olive oil

Dipping Sauce - mix together:

1 tablespoon siracha (this makes a very spice sauce so add to taste)

2 tablespoons mayonnaise

 

Combine the vegetables in a bowl. Toss the vegetables with the flour until they're all covered with a dusting of flour.  Add salt and tamari to the egg and stir the egg mixture into the vegetables.  Mix until everything is evenly coated.  

Heat a nonstick skillet over medium heat and add olive oil.  Spoon the cabbage mixture into the pan and using a spatula, press it into a round pancake shape, making it as flat as you can.  Cook 5 to 7 minutes - you want it to turn a nice brown color.  To flip, slide out onto a plate.  Put another plate on top of that plate and flip over.  Add a little more oil to pan, let heat for 20-30 seconds and slide the pancake back into the skillet.  Let cook another 5-7 minutes.  Cut into wedges and serve hot with dipping sauce.

The only non-local ingredients in the above meal is the tamari, the siracha, the flour and olive oil.  The mayo was actually made with olive oil and local eggs.  This week has once again been full of local eating.  Last night, we had a group of friends over and we all shared pizza made with local tomatoes and vegetables, heirloom tomato salad and brown sugar peach ice cream made with local milk and eggs and local peaches.  Breakfasts are usually local eggs made some way and a bowl of local fruit, usually peaches.  Lunches are either leftovers or salads made from leftover bread, tomatoes and whatever local produce needs to be used.  To be honest, I can't imagine not using local ingredients this time of year.  Not only do you get to support your neighbors, but it's just good food. 

Summer in a bowl

 You know it's summer when you've done both of the following things.  The first is picking a tomato off the vine and biting into it while the juice runs down your arm and drips off your elbow.  The second is having to go get the floss after dinner because you've got bits of corn from corn on the cob stuck between your teeth.  Only then are you in the full flow of summer!

Sweet corn is an ephemeral thing.  Of course you can get it only in summer, but good sweet corn is still somewhat difficult to find.  If you grow it yourself, you can quickly find out how fast raccoons and groundhogs can find it.  If you buy it from a farmer, it often isn't the best it can be.  Good old fashioned sweet corn is best cooked this way.  One - start a pot of water boiling.  Two - pick the corn and eat.  When you're dealing with sweet corn brought to market, you can't do that so you need to go by taste.  A lot of times the corn will either be super sweet but rather insipid without a lot of good corn taste.  This is the result of newer varieties of corn that have been developed to appeal to our country's infatuation with sugar.  I like my corn sweet but I also want it to taste like corn.  Or if the farmer's grown a really old fashioned variety, it sometimes isn't sweet enough.  Whenever I hit the farmer's market, I buy an ear and walk around the corner from the farmer, open that husk up and try it out.  If it's got a good corn taste and it's sweet, I go back and buy a couple of dozen of ears.  As soon as I get home, I start a pot of water boiling or fire up the grill.  Cooked corn will hold beautifully in the fridge for several days and you can actually freeze cooked corn on the cob and you'd be surprised at how fresh it tastes a few months later.  

Tonight, I wanted to make a corn chowder that focused on the corn but also had a little smokiness and body to it.  I love Sungold cherry tomatoes in this soup because they are so sweet and tropical tasting.  This is an easy soup to mess around with.  I think it would be great with basil added and grilled corn would be fantastic in it, especially if you served it with toast topped with smoked mozzarella. 

Summer in a Bowl Sweet Corn Chowder:

6 ears steamed corn on the cob

3 strips bacon (cook another strip or two if you're like me and sneak bits out while cooking)

1 large onion, diced into 1/4 inch pieces

2 medium potatoes, peeled and sliced into 1/4 inch cubes

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/4 teaspoon pepper

10-12 SunGold or SunSugar cherry tomatoes, quartered (you can use other tomatoes, stick with the sweeter, golden kinds)

1 cup whole milk

Cut each corncob in half cross-ways and stand each half on the flat end and using a knife, cut the corn away from the cob.  I usually run the blunt end of the knife down the cob to get as much of the juices and corn out as possible.  Save all of this in a bowl and put the corncobs in a 1.5 quart pot and fill with cold water.  Bring to a boil and let boil for 2-3 minutes.  Reduce the heat and simmer while you prepare the rest of the soup.  

Cut the bacon into small pieces and cook over medium heat in a non-stick skillet.  After the bacon begins to brown a bit and some of the fat is rendered, add the potato and onion.  Sprinkle with salt and pepper.  Cook for about seven minutes, until the onion begins to soften a bit.

Strain the water the corncobs have been cooking in into a larger saucepan.  Add the onions, bacon and potatoes to this liquid.  Bring to a boil and the reduce the heat so the soup is simmering.  Cook for about 15 minutes until the potatoes are tender.

Add tomatoes to soup and cook for two minutes.  Add milk and corn to soup and heat through.  Taste and add salt to your liking.  Serve.

This was my official One Local Summer meal for this week.  Everything except for the salt and pepper was local.  We've had a lot of local meals this week.  The blackberries and the peaches are in full swing around here and the first, really good heirloom tomatoes are getting ripe.  We've been grilling out a lot and whenever we do that, we grill extra summer squash for meals later in the week.  We made another pizza with homemade sourdough and topped it with leftover grilled zucchini, homemade mozzarella and basil from the garden.  We made an americanized version of Okonomiyaki which quickly used up a head of local cabbage and local leeks that were getting a little old. And we've made several local meals of homemade bread, tomatoes and basil from the backyard and homemade mozzarella made from local milk.  Local eating is anything but a hardship this time of year.

Ridiculously easy way to slay the zucchini monsters

There are many inexplicable mysteries in gardening.  Why is that one year your potatoes do so poorly even though you've done everything "right" and the next year when you plant them too late, they flourish?  Why is that the birds ignore the delightful array of seeds and various birdbaths you put out for them yet pick at every tomato you have before it's ripe?  Why is that you can spend what seems like an inordinate amount of time picking every single zucchini on your plant, yet go out the next day and find a boat of a zucchini waiting for you?

You can't win against the zucchini monsters and there's only so much zucchini bread one person can eat.  And it's not like most zucchini breads are very healthy to begin with and who wants to bake when it's 90 degrees out?  I also rarely have time to cook anything complicated when I've got 20 pounds of squash to put up for winter.  This is where the following recipe will help you out.  It seems so simple that it must be boring but it's one of my favorite summer meals.  More importantly, it gets rid of monster zucchinis fast.  You can even grate zucchini, throw it in a freezer bag and make this dish in the winter when the scary monster zucchinis are but a haunting summer memory.

Killer Zucchini Orzo

1 cup cooked orzo

2 cups grated zucchini(half of a monster zucchini)

1/2 medium onion

1/2 to 1 tablespoon olive oil

2 tablespoons Pecorino Romano

Kosher salt

1/2 teaspoon combination of herbs to suit you - see note below.

Heat oil in nonstick pan over medium heat. Add zucchini and onion and saute until it begins to brown.  Mix in herbs with a pinch of salt.  Stir in cheese and add cooked orzo.  Stir until heated through and serve.  You can more grated cheese when serving if you like.  You can serve this hot or at room temperature.

Note:  My favorite combination of herbs is a blend from Penzeys called Italian Herb Mix or a mixture of thyme and oregano or marjoram.

This is a very flexible meal.  I've added chopped tomatoes or quartered cherry tomatoes to it and that's a nice variation.  Sometimes I add garlic with the onion and zucchini.  I plan on experimenting with other vegetable this year.  I think grated winter squash sauteed with butter and sage would be fantastic.