Recent farm meals
Posted by Lauren on 13 Dec 2008 at 11:12 pm | Tagged as: eating, local food, recipes
We had sort of a lull in the meals around here in general, after Thanksgiving. We had a lot of sandwiches and the like. But recently, we have had a few meals that were wonderfully farm-based!
Bean & veggie soup, to counteract the over-meatiness of Thanksgiving
- homegrown Scarlet Emperor beans
- homegrown kale
- homegrown chard
- homegrown carrots
- jar of homegrown tomatoes! first use of a tomato jar
- farmers’ market onion
- farmers’ market garlic
- turkey stock from our farmers’ market Thanksgiving turkey, market onions, homegrown carrot.
Last night, for a dinner party:
Farro risotto with scarlet runner beans
From Lorna Sass’ runner beans with farro risotto and saffron.
- homegrown Scarlet Emperor beans (a variety of scarlet runner bean)
- another farmers’ market onion
- stock made from homegrown pea shells (yes, it worked)
- homegrown rosemary
- Bluebird Grains farro (emmer)
- organic walnuts from the bulk bin
- saffron! which was brought to us as a gift!
The olive oil, wine, parmesan, salt, and pepper were, as always, imported.
It was accompanied by salmon baked on salt and a green bean and almond dish, and then a delicious homemade ricotta cheesecake for dessert. Yes, I mean the ricotta was homemade, not just the cheesecake. No, not by me.
Tonight:
Semi-traditional cassoulet
- homegrown carrots
- homegrown rosemary & thyme
- homegrown leeks
- homegrown chard
- a pint jar of homegrown tomatoes
- yet more farmers’ market onions
- farmers’ market garlic
- dried white beans from the bulk bin
- Beef short ribs from our cow, separated (from each other! not from the fat and other deliciousness! keep all of that.)
- Andouille sausage from Skagit River Ranch
- Bacon from the Bacon of the Month, Garth’s last-year Xmas present
We didn’t so much use a recipe, but here are the steps we did:
- Soak your beans overnight, or use the quick-soak method, or use canned beans. Drain before using.
- Preheat oven to ~325-350°.
- Chop and fry 1-2 slices of bacon in the bottom of your 6-quart cast iron dutch oven. (Did I forget to put that on the ingredient list? Well, you need one.)
- Remove bacon with a slotted spoon, and plop in your short ribs, flat-side down, to brown. If you have too many for your pot, do it in shifts. Brown both sides. Remove when done.
- Add your sliced sausage and brown both sides of each slice. Remove.
- Add chopped onion and leeks. Soften.
- Add chopped chard stems (use them like celery), carrot medallions, and minced garlic. Cook until chard is soft-ish.
- Add chopped chard leaves, and make them sort of wilty. Also add the herbs at this stage.
- In whatever order you want, add all the meats, the drained beans, the jar of tomatoes, 0 to 1 cup of wine, and water to cover. You don’t really need to use stock, as there are plenty of bones and other deliciousnesses in here. Don’t worry if they look to be layered; it will all mix in as you stir and as it boils.
- Stick it in the oven and cook it until it is done. We left ours at 325° for ~2 hours, and then moved it to the stove top to continue simmering for a few minutes while we heated up some bread in the oven.
- Don’t over-serve yourself. It is very rich. We only ate half a bowl each (but Garth wants me to note that as I read this to him, he is becoming hungry again!).
Your meals sound great, especially having so much home-grown veg in there in addition to the farmers market. How are you storing? And recipe for the pea shells stock??? I am trying to figure out my garden for next year, and something I’ve been wanting to do is beans intended for dried beans, since they are so hard to get locally around here. The pea shells sound like they fit into that general idea too, thoughts? Do you grow beans for drying?
Hmm. We don’t really have a recipe for stock. I believe our recipe was something like:
All the pea shells on the counter
An onion or two
maybe some carrot scraps from the freezer?
Then we boiled it until it looked like stock. Stock is such a delightful thing to make because it’s so forgiving.
Lauren is working on a post about beans that should answer your questions and then some.
MangoChild: regarding storage, in our (usually) temperate climate, we can (usually) store things outside. All the greens — chard, kale, etc. — are still in the ground and we go pick when needed. Same with carrots and leeks. The hardy-ish herbs are still in the ground too. The rosemary bush is old and came with the house when we bought it; the thyme is new this year but seems to be pretty established.
In addition to the ingredients in these recipes, we also have some lettuces, beets, cabbage, broccoli, and brussels sprouts in the ground still. And garlic and onions of course, though those aren’t for continual winter harvest.
The past ~2 weeks, however, we have had several inches of snow on the ground and sub-freezing temperatures, so I have no idea what we will find when it thaws over the next few days.