Dropstone Farms

Local food friends Anne & Ryan hosted a potluck for the Olympics opening ceremony this week, and the assignment was to bring an international dish (because it’s the Olympics, you know). I have an affinity with Belgium, having spent a year there on exchange in high school, so I violated the rules of going to parties and chose to make something I’d never made before: Gentse waterzooi. Waterzooi is a recipe from Gent (Ghent), a beautiful and ancient town in Flanders, the Flemish-speaking part of Belgium. Belgium’s climate is very similar to the Pacific Northwest, and the food tends to be rustic and homey, not as fancy as French cuisine, but hearty and delicious. So part of the appeal of this recipe is that it’s extremely easy to make with local ingredients.

I found Julia Child’s recipe (login probably required, sorry) from a 1987 issue of the New York Times, and since Julia has never steered me wrong, I went with it, with some modifications, as noted below.

Julia’s ingredient list

2 large carrots
2 medium onions
2 tender ribs of celery (I omitted this as I do not have any growing currently)
2 medium-sized leeks, white and tender green parts only (I used several small ones)
.5 teaspoon dried tarragon
Salt and freshly ground white pepper to taste
2.5 pounds cut-up frying chicken, legs or thighs or breasts (with bone), or a mixture of these (I deboned and chopped up the chicken into bite-size pieces — I didn’t want partygoers to have to try to remove meat from bones in plates balanced on their laps, and I didn’t want to deal with the degreasing required if using skin-on chicken parts. Also, because I use homemade chicken stock that has plenty of gelatin and flavor, I was not worried about losing that benefit of boiling the bones in the soup.)
1.5 cups dry white French vermouth (I omitted this because of a pregnant partygoer. I substituted about a third of a cup of lemon juice, for the acid, and more stock.)
1.5 to 2 cups chicken broth (I used the aforementioned homemade chicken stock, which we reduce down quite a lot and then freeze in ice cube trays.)
.5 cup heavy cream
1.5 teaspoons cornstarch
6 egg yolks
3 tablespoons minced fresh parsley. (I omitted this, because I forgot to bring the stems I’d just picked.)

The steps are simple, up until the end. Julienne the vegetables — I used a mandoline slicer for the carrots, but did the rest by hand, and actually just sliced the onion thinly rather than julienning it. Toss all veggie sticks in a bowl with some salt and pepper and the tarragon, and in your big dutch oven or stock pot, layer a third of the veggies, half the chicken, half of the remaining veggies, the other half of the chicken, and the rest of the veggies. Add your vermouth (lemon juice) and stock just to cover.

Julia says you can stop here and refrigerate for several hours to finish up later, so we packed up and took everything with us to finish at the party.

Simmer for 25-30 minutes or until chicken is done. At this point Julia says to strain it, degrease the broth, and season. I just poured most of it through a strainer into a bowl, and didn’t worry too much about the dregs left in the pot. (I could do this because I used skinned meat. If using skin-on meat, you’ll definitely want to degrease.)

While the chicken simmers, you whisk the cornstarch and cream together, and in a large bowl whisk the egg yolks. Add the cream mixture to the large bowl and stir. Gradually add the hot broth to the egg & cream mixture, whisking the whole time. I used a ladleful at a time, or if you have a helper or a container that’s easy to pour, you could just pour in a slow steady stream. Be careful not to dump it all in at once, lest you accidentally cook the eggs suddenly. When it’s all mixed, return it all to the pot with the chicken and veggies, and bring it up to heat, but do not let it simmer, or the eggs will curdle. Not that it’s a big deal if they do — but it spoils the perfection of the beautiful creamy rich broth (which is really more like a sauce at this point).

Serve with crusty bread, or over noodles or boiled potatoes. Garnish with the chopped parsley.

I wish I’d gotten pictures, as it was quite pretty as soups go. I will definitely be making it again, though, so I’ll try to remember to update then. It seemed to be a success overall, which is always a relief when cooking a recipe for the first time, for others.

Homegrown: chicken, chicken stock, leeks, carrots, forgotten parsley, eggs
Bainbridge Island: onions (Laughing Crow Farm)
Washington: Fresh Breeze cream as usual
Unknown: salt, pepper, tarragon, lemon juice, cornstarch (but it’s advertised as non-genetically modified!).

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We’ve been reviewing our successes and not-so-much-successes from last year, and our resources for this year (including personal levels of energy and time available, as well as space), and making some decisions about when and what and how.

One thing we know: we’re not going to grow produce for sale this year. We’ll grow to feed ourselves, as usual, but not worry about selling. This turns out to be very liberating! We can choose the varieties we want, rather than trying to make decisions based on what might be interesting and do well at market.

One thing we are pretty sure about (dependent on some decisions about pastures): we’ll be raising several batches of chickens and one batch of turkeys for sale. Keep an eye out here to hear more when we are ready to take orders.

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So, as previously mentioned, we are aiming to do the 3rd Annual Dark Days of Winter Eat Local Challenge (!) aka Dark Days. The challenge is to eat one meal per week that’s as Sustainable, Organic, Local, and Ethical as possible — for the whole winter pretty much! November 15 to March 31.

One of the things I feel compelled to do to start with is to 1) rearrange the criteria and 2) define “local” and our exceptions.

Because we tried (and mostly failed) to grow commercially this year as well as for ourselves, my first stop on this project would be to have the meal be as homegrown as possible. This year was our first year raising poultry for meat so it’s exciting to be able to have a complete meal grown by hand (since I can’t grow enough soy to make tofu, yet if ever, so local vegetarianism is still out). But, on account of how we mostly failed, I also need to learn to be easy enough on myself to move on to my next criterion — Local. We are fortunate to have lots of farmers within a 20-mile radius at the Bainbridge Island Farmers’ Market and winter market, and even more within a 100-mile radius if we make it over to Seattle for the U-District or Ballard markets. And we are even more fortunate to know many of our favorite farmers personally, and even when we don’t, to have enough visibility into their methods to be completely confident in the ethics and the sustainability of their products, even if they aren’t certified Organic (now a USDA-owned term that doesn’t mean too much to me at all, really).

So — I’m going with Homegrown, Local, Ethical (re: animal welfare, labor practices, and land use) and Sustainable (re: labor practices, land use, and economic viability), Organic. (HLESO isn’t as nice as SOLE though.)

The other question is — what does local mean? What are our exceptions?

Laura says:

What does local mean?
Traditionally, local food challenges call for a 100 mile radius. Winter time is more difficult in many climates, especially if you’re new to eating locally, so my default definition is 150 miles. You can choose to make your radius smaller or slightly larger as you need. Typical exceptions are oils, coffee, chocolate and spices. If you’re making fewer or more exceptions, please note that on your first post.

Our 100-mile radius

We’re in a bit of a strange but sweet spot as we are in the middle of Puget Sound — our 100 miles includes a good deal of water (yay seafood) but also quite a lot of very good farmland, including our most excellent dairy, Fresh Breeze Organic from Lynden, WA. Of course we get all our local B.I. farms as well as Skagit River Ranch, Nash’s Organic Produce, and Bluebird Grains (yay farro!!). We don’t get quite to Wenatchee or to Okanagan, where a lot of good summer fruits come from, but that’s OK as it’s not summer. I wish we reached Alvarez Farms, where we could get beans and peanuts. I guess if we did 150 miles we could …

So — I’m aiming for 100 as ideal, 150 as a fantastic compromise … we’ll see.

Our regular exceptions shall be:

• olive oil; other oils (butter will be within 100 miles)
• salt & pepper — still looking for ways to make these
• wine will often be from close to home, but not always — assume it’s not; we’ll note when it is
• vinegar, until we learn to make our own
• citrus, as needed for taste that is not vinegar-y (I had lemon trees but they died, and the turkeys ate the lime tree)
• baking goods
  • our organic flour comes from Utah
  • our organic sugar comes from Hawaii
  • our various other ingredients and flavorings are organic, and their origins will be described as appropriate (but most come from Bob’s Red Mill)

I am sure there are more additions and refinements to come, but for now … to bed.

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So we had dinner last weekend at the eminently awesome and equally crowded Carta de Oaxaca restaurant in Ballard. It was, as ever, *really, really* good. And we sat at the bar and watched a woman spend the entire hour or so we were there doing nothing but crank out tortillas. By the end of the meal, we’d determined that we needed a tortilla press and some masa flour.

And then I found a new blog and ran across the following post about growing your own corn and turning it into tortillas. Man, I’m jealous of that climate. Where we live, corn is pretty hit or miss so growing our own isn’t a reliable option.

But in the meantime, I’ve got some beans and a beanpot waiting for that tortilla press to arrive. I love my beanpot. Also tortilla. And beans.

Pot O' Beans.

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In honor of yesterday’s equinox, I hurried home from work and Garth and I cooked dinner together, with a bit of prep done by him while I was still at work.

I had previously purchased some lamb chops from Skagit River Ranch with a spring celebration meal in mind, so Garth thawed them and rubbed with fresh rosemary and thyme from the garden, and some basil from a pesto cube that I had put in the freezer in September or so. When I got home I took out some bread dough from my new bible, Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day. I started cooking some of our homegrown Scarlet Emperor beans for the delicious scarlet runner beans with farro risotto and saffron.
We went outside and picked a few leaves from each of our lettuces that overwintered. We also got a nice tall leek that was a fall planting that survived the winter well, and some Merida overwintering carrots (but none as nice as this one). I sliced up the leek plus some farmers’ market garlic for the risotto, and while it was pressure-cooking (I even mostly followed the recipe!) we assembled a lovely salad of lettuce from our garden as well as that from another Kitsap farmer, with our carrots, plus a homemade dressing of olive oil hand-imported from California with vinegar and farmers’ market garlic.

Equinox salad closeup, apparently, originally uploaded by laurenipsum.

The lamb chops rested while we ate salad, and then we had the farro & homegrown beans in a bowl with chops on top.

Glossy, unfocused lamb chops with beans & farro risotto, originally uploaded by laurenipsum.

Welcome, spring! We missed you.

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Probably because late February is like the dead zone, where the overwintering and stored veggies are almost gone, but it’s just barely too early to plant anything new, we have been feeling stalled in terms of meal creativity and production. But we have pulled through somehow — I thank our still-well-stocked freezer! and our surplus of potatoes that are starting to sprout — and here are some things we have been eating lately.

• Monday: Home from a Nevada trip with enough day left to put Skip-recipe pizza dough on to rise … pizza topped with homegrown pesto from the freezer, and storebought fresh mozzarella and storebought fontina.
• Tuesday: Burgers from our cow, on local buns, with oven fries made from home-grown potatoes and local market garlic.
• Wednesday: Sausages from Skagit River Ranch and Lopez Island Farm, on buns we got leftover from the Tilth Producers conference, with more oven fries.
• Thursday: The most beautiful and delicious roasted chicken I think I have ever seen in my life, spatchcocked (etymology!), from Olympic Pastured Poultry. Homegrown smashed potatoes, and grocery store organic salad.
• Friday, today, I took a day off work to work on our greenhouse, so, lunch: chicken salad made from last night’s chicken with homegrown peas from the freezer, plus mayo, lemon juice, cumin, on homemade pitas from last July. The rest of the last few of days’ oven fries. Dinner: Steak from our cow, the rest of the homegrown peas from lunch, and the rest of the smashed potatoes from last night.

The greenhouse is almost done — we just have to staple on the plastic and then make the doors.

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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:

1. Soak your beans overnight, or use the quick-soak method, or use canned beans. Drain before using.
2. Preheat oven to ~325-350°.
3. 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.)
4. 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.
5. Add your sliced sausage and brown both sides of each slice. Remove.
6. Add chopped onion and leeks. Soften.
7. Add chopped chard stems (use them like celery), carrot medallions, and minced garlic. Cook until chard is soft-ish.
8. Add chopped chard leaves, and make them sort of wilty. Also add the herbs at this stage.
9. 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.
10. 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.
11. 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!).

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Lately we have been making a lot of dishes that will last a long time, because we have also been canning, and the prospect of cooking anew each evening is too daunting. So it’s been soups that last for days, for convenience’s sake.

Recent eatin’:

• Eggs! omg eggs.
• Frittata with green and white things (zucchini, leeks, fall peas, mozzarella)
• broccoli and cauliflower cheese soup (veggies from the market; secret to success of a cheese soup is to make a mornay sauce first and then thin it)
• Potatoes in various ways
• Tortilla soup featuring zucchini, potatoes, tomatoes, corn
• Corn on the cob!

Upcoming very shortly:

• Eggplant — probably miso-marinated and then roasted
• Artichokes — steamed as usual, unless I can learn how to grill them
• More corn on the cob

Coming sooner than I am really ready for: greens, greens, and more greens, thanks to winter.

Things we have canned: that’s another post for another day.

Projects we are currently in the middle of:

• Expanding the chicken coop, as Garth mentioned
• Making a makeshift above-ground straw bale root cellar, as Garth also mentioned
• Getting some cards printed up to hand out at the Tilth Producers conference
• Getting some mushrooms going (will be getting spores from Fungi Perfecti)
• Figuring out if we will actually build a greenhouse this winter

… and so much more I am sure I am forgetting about five things. And that doesn’t even include the basic things like “make sure I have clean clothes” or “do not let the bathroom be overtaken by mildew”! But those are overrated, right? Right?

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Harvest moon dinner, originally uploaded by laurenipsum.

Corn: garden.
Artichokes: garden.
Cabbage for coleslaw: garden.
Bread: homemade.
Burger: from our cow.
Ripe Green Zebra tomato on the burger: garden.

The Harvest Moon is full tonight.

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I was sure it was just going to rain all through August (which it did) and into September and then for the rest of the winter, with no breaks. But it has warmed up and cleared up, and we have some tomatoes coming in after all. In fact, we harvested enough on Thursday to make two delicious pizzas.

We had a tomato taste test, originally uploaded by laurenipsum.

Unfortunately, I don’t know all their names, but, left to right, #2 is Black Prince — VERY delicious!; yellow (#4, let’s say) is Limmony, also tasty; #6, a favorite for 3 years now, is Green Zebra. One of the red bumpy ones (either #1 or #3) is a Brandywine and delicious as always. #7 is, I think, an Ananas Noire (”black pineapple”).

Delicious awesome pizza, originally uploaded by laurenipsum.

Background pizza: Red Tomato Pizza, cooked.
Foreground pizza: Funny-Colored Tomato Pizza, yet uncooked. Yellow, green, and black/purple/brown tomatoes.

Both have fresh mozzarella from the grocery store, and for sauce they have chopped basil and garlic, mixed with olive oil and some grated parmigiano — a sort of loose pesto.

There has been much more preserving around here. But most of it was today and I am too tired to post more, so, further updates … in the future!

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Unfortunately, our zucchini and other summer squash plants are neither as prolific nor as numerous as those of Barbara Kingsolver, whose chapter on squash in Animal, Vegetable, Miracle I just finished. We appear to be further hampered by the wet spring and summer we’ve had here, unless I am doing something else wrong that would lead to what appears to be blossom-end rot on a significant portion of the little (and even the big!) fruits.

Zucchini with blossom-end rot? (That’s my six-inch santoku knife for comparison), originally uploaded by laurenipsum.

In any case, though it’s somewhat disappointing, of course, it might be OK, given Kingsolver’s struggles to eat it all, and the fact that last night I harvested a 2+ pound zucchini as well as a monster pattypan. If all the blossoms and fruits that rotted had survived and were this big, I think I would lose my mind. But these two monsters made a delicious dinner and two lunches’ worth of baked squash with breadcrumbs (I added garlic, of course).

Zucchini, pattypans, delicious malbec., originally uploaded by laurenipsum.

Wine for comparison and also for deliciousness.

Zucchini: 2 lbs, 4.6 oz.
Big pattypan: 12.1 oz.
Small pattypan: 3.3 oz.
Malbec: 2006 Alberti 154, Mendoza, Argentina.

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Here are some things we have harvested, and some meals we have made from them!

• Peas: omelettes. frittata. In a bag in the freezer. Also attempting to dry some, and some pods became stock.
• Chard: Grilled chard salad (which we modified when I couldn’t find edamame I thought I had in the freezer — used white beans instead). Chard and orzo soup for new parents. Black rice with chard and an egg on top (this was awesome).
  
  Many different varieties of stir fry or hash, which is what we call it when you cut up a pile of veggies and fry them in a pan — its ancestor was corned beef hash. More things I can’t think of — we have gotten a lot of mileage out of the chard.
• Kale: mostly stir fry and hash.
• Onions, green: topping on everything.
• Onions, spring: grilled!
• Potatoes: hash. Boiled potatoes with butter and rosemary. Potato and fava bean salad (twice). Tiny baby potatoes made a frittata.
• Fava beans: 100% of them went to potato-fava salad.
• Carrots: mostly we have just pulled a few to check on how they are growing, and eaten them as soon as we get them inside. I did make a quick lunch salad in a jar.
  
• Cucumber: lunch salad in a jar (as above).
• Green beans: Grilled! drizzled with a little bit of garlicky olive oil when done
• Broccoli, Cauliflower: Hash. Steamed with garlic. Wrapped in foil pouches with olive oil, garlic cloves, red pepper flakes, cumin, and grilled.
• OMG SO MUCH LETTUCE: Lots of salads.
• Mustard greens: sauteed with garlic. A weird sort of calzone thing with ground beef. Fed to the neighbors’ goats when we became overwhelmed.

Coming up soon is … more of the above, plus summer squashes (zucchini, pattypan); more beans, both green and drying-style; a 2nd round of peas; cabbages.

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