Corn, or at least industrially produced corn, has been getting lots of bad press lately and rightly so. Michael Pollan dissed it in “Omnivores Dilemma”. The documentaries “King Corn” and “Food, Inc.” pointed out that we humans are starting to be composed of corn; it’s so predominant in our diet.
It’s fed to feedlot cattle, much to the detriment of the cows and the nutritional value of the beef. It’s made into high fructose corn syrup (which has recently been linked to the obesity epidemic) and about 50 other ingredients that are found in packaged food.
It’s been genetically modified to withstand massive amounts of pesticides without much research into the ramification of those changes. The pesticides and herbicides needed to grow mass amounts of the stuff are poisoning ground water in Iowa and causing dead zones in the Gulf of Mexico. The huge swaths of monoculture corn farms cause erosion of farmland. Best of all, we taxpayers help fund all of this with subsidies to the giant corporate corn growers. It deserves to be vilified.
But not all corn is industrially produced and not all corn should be avoided. After all, it was responsible for sustaining Mesoamerica for millennium; it can’t be all bad. In its natural state (i.e. not high fructose corn syrup) it is a whole grain, high in fiber and low in fat, sodium and sugar. Fresh corn on the cob is one of the greatest pleasures the summer has to offer.
But the kind of corn that gives me the most pleasure all year long is popcorn. In fact, these articles might never get written without popcorn (I’ve got a bowl full of the hot tender nuggets on my lap right now, and yes it does tend to make the keyboard messy). There’s something about popcorn that helps me think and write clearly.
Of course, all that thinking got me wondering about the popcorn itself. I knew that popcorn is a special variety of corn but that’s about all. How long has it been around? What’s the physics behind the transformation from hard, tooth-breaking seed to fluffy goodness? And what other fascinating things about popcorn could I find in my research? I had to find out.
It turns out that popcorn might have been the first variety of corn developed in Mexico, or at least the first method of cooking it. Corn, or maize as it’s known in most of the world, was domesticated about 10,000 years ago from a grass. There may be no other crop that humans have changed more in their domestication. It’s hard to reconcile a fat ear of corn with a grass, but a grass it is.
Ears of popped corn have been found in archeological sites and I can only imagine the surprise on the first person’s face when the “garbage” she threw into the fire started exploding. Maybe at first she thought the gods were angry but I’m sure she changed her mind after she tasted it.
Of the five general kinds of corn, three of them will explode when heated. Dent and flint corn will form a crisp puff but come nowhere close to the expansiveness of popcorn. What makes popcorn do its thing is the composition of the hull (yes, the bits that get caught in your teeth and gums). The popcorn hull conducts heat much faster than other types of corn while at the same time being quite a bit stronger. When you cook popcorn, the heat is quickly transferred to the inside of the kernel (the endosperm). The starch and proteins in the endosperm rapidly reach the boiling point. They soften and give off moisture that turns to steam. All that steam builds up pressure against the hull until it reaches seven times the external pressure and then, POP, the kernel explodes and all that soften endosperm expands with the loss of pressure. The endosperm quickly cools and solidifies into white crunchy goodness.
If you suddenly have an urge for some, please feel free to stop reading for a moment and go make yourself a bowl. Pretend like its intermission at the theater.
Popcorn is a bit picky about the conditions under which it will pop to perfection (and there is some controversy about what constitutes a perfectly popped kernel but I’ll get to that in a moment). The kernels should be heated to right around 380 F. Anything cooler and the moisture inside the kernel that forms the steam that causes it to pop will evaporate before it gets hot enough. The kernel won’t pop and you’ll end up with “old maids” (a technical but slightly offensive term for completely unpopped kernels). Anything hotter and the starch and protein closest to the hull will get too hot and rupture the hull too soon, causing incomplete popping. The result is those barely opened kernels at the bottom of the bowl that my dentist would call teeth breakers and I consider a delicacy (maybe we should call them old geezers just to even the score).
Moisture content is just as important as temperature. Too dry and you’ll end up with all old maids. Too moist and the corn will pop but not very much and will be really chewy. To insure your popcorn stays at the right moisture content (14%), keep it in an airtight container in a cool dark place but not the refrigerator. If you do happen to come across a batch of kernels that have dried out and won’t pop, you can actually reconstitute them by adding a few drops of water to the jar and waiting a few days to see if they pop. If not, add a few more drops and repeat until they do.
Do you have any of that popcorn left that you made at intermission? If you don’t go make another batch, I’ll wait. If you do, take a look at the popped kernels, called flakes in the popcorn industry. There are two general shapes the flakes take. One is more rounded with most of the hull intact on the bottom. The other has lots of wings and the hull is spread out over all the wings in little pieces. There are probably combinations of the two shapes as well. Now bite into one of the round pieces, called mushroom flakes and then into one with wings, called butterfly flakes. The butterflies are noticeably more tender while the mushrooms are chewier.
Here’s where the controversy over what is a perfectly popped kernel of corn comes in. The mushrooms are much sturdier kernels and can hold up to packaging and forming into other confections like caramel corn but they are a bit tougher. The butterflies are fragile but take up more volume and have a better mouth feel. While the popcorn industry is trying hard to decide which is best and breeding popcorn to yield one or the other, I’ve decided I like them both (actually, until I wrote this article, I never noticed a difference).
Now I need some floss.
Vicki Reich lives and pops popcorn in Sagle. She eats at least one bowl of stove popped corn for each article she writes for the Reader. She had to have two for this one. She can be contacted at wordomouth@yahoo.com
Sarah’s Popcorn
My friend Sarah makes the best popcorn. I’ve never been able to reproduce it but here’s what she told me she does.
Olive Oil
Popcorn
Tamari
Brewer’s Yeast
In an old, heavy bottomed 4 quart pot used exclusively for making popcorn with a loose fitting lid (or if you don’t have one of those at least a heavy bottomed pot with a loose fitting lid) pour in some olive oil. Use approximately 1/3 cup oil for 1 cup popcorn. Turn heat to medium high. Place 4-5 kernels in the oil and close the lid. When those kernels pop, add the rest of the corn, put the top back on and gently shake the pot. When those kernels begin to pop, start shaking the pot again and keep shaking until the popping slows to one or two every 10 seconds. Remove from heat and pour into a bowl. Sprinkle with tamari and brewers yeast to taste. Dive in.
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
Monday, August 17, 2009
Kitchen Experimental
I knit. A lot. Sometimes until it hurts. Most of the things I knit are my own creation in some way, not just because I knit them with my own two hands but because I make some change to an existing pattern or make up the pattern out of my head. I almost never follow the directions exactly. Even if the change is subtle, like using a different yarn or a different gauge, I somehow manage to make it my own.
Lately, I’ve been taking the easy way out; I’ve been following the pattern exactly and I’ve been rather disappointed. Maybe in order to make something that you want to wear and feel good in, you have to do those little things to make it your own. Or maybe the satisfaction you get when you know you’ve figured out how to tweak things just so, or that the idea in you head really does work, is what the process is all about. Maybe having the courage to try something different gives you the impetus to push your skills further the next time. I am constantly amazed by knitters who have been knitting for years but have not yet tried to break away from the “recipe” in front of them. To me, that’s when the fun starts.
It’s the same thing with cooking. Being experimental in the kitchen is just as rewarding. There’s nothing like looking in the fridge at a strange variety of ingredients and sitting down a short while later with a delicious dinner.
There’s been a lot of media lately on getting back to cooking, spurred on by the new movie “Julie and Julia” and Michael Pollan’s New York Times Magazine article about why we should stop watching cooking on TV and actually start cooking in our kitchens. This is an encouraging tread.
Pollan contends that Julia Child gave women in the 50s and 60s the courage to try new things in the kitchen and to not be afraid to fail. I believe that courage is needed again today. It’s too easy to buy pre-made foods plus the fear of not getting it right keeps people out of the kitchen and away from all the rewards of making food from scratch. Like knitting, the final outcome, when you use your own creativity to cook, is always more satisfying.
But how do you overcome the inertia of relying on packaged food, or take out, or just your regular set of recipes? It’s not easy, but then the easy way out is not always the most rewarding. It’s one of the things I keep in mind when I want to just blindly follow a knitting pattern. Pushing myself to think a little harder for just a little longer almost always yields better results (almost always, there are the occasional failures from which I always learn something important).
To succeed with kitchen experimentation, it helps to know some basics like what flavors typically combine well and how to sauté, roast, and bake. These are easily found in many basic cookbooks. I’m not advocating not using cookbooks, I’m just saying don’t actually follow the recipes in them. Use cookbooks for inspiration or for the stuff you don’t want to keep in your head, like cooking times or temperatures. Find three or four recipes for the ingredients you have on hand, read through them then put the books away and just have fun.
Summer seems like the best time of year to work up the courage to experiment in the kitchen. There is such an abundance of fresh, local produce; it calls out for a little experimentation. What’s the worst thing that could happen if you played with a few zucchini or tomatoes? Right now there’s more than enough to go around. Why not make some fresh tomato sauce or a zucchini tomato salad?
Let’s take the tomato sauce as an example. Opening up one of my cookbooks, there are recipes for fresh tomato sauce with mint, or basil, or zucchini flowers and red peppers, or mozzarella, or eggplant and walnuts. There’s even a sauce recipe using just zucchini. Reading through them, I notice some require a quick cooking of all the ingredients at once while others require a few more steps.
Since I have lots of zucchini, zucchini blossoms, and basil on hand, I settle on something that uses all of those ingredients. Most of the recipes call for starting the sauce by sautéing garlic and/or onions in some olive oil and/or butter then adding the chopped veggies then the chopped blossoms and basil at the end along with some salt and pepper while at the same time getting the pasta cooked. If I’m going to use the zucchini I know I’m going to have to cook that a bit longer than the tomatoes so there’s no way I can just quickly sauté everything at once. Instead, I might decide to save time by not peeling and seeding the tomatoes because I don’t mind having peels and seeds in my sauce (if I was making it for company, I would probably take the extra step).
While I’m cooking, I might decide that the fresh oregano in my garden would go well with what I have so far and even add a few flakes of red pepper, just for fun. The whole meal might take 20 minutes to make and with a bit of parmesan cheese on top will far exceed any jarred tomato sauce for flavor, freshness, nutrition, and eye appeal.
After a few tries at experimenting, the rewards will so far outweigh the fear of failure, you’ll wonder why you ever followed a recipe in the first place. And then you may even want to learn to knit.
Fresh Tomato Sauce with _______
A “recipe”
Fresh locally grown tomatoes, any many as you need to feed who you’re feeding, peeled, seeded and chopped or just chopped
Onions and/or garlic and/or shallots, minced or chopped, to taste
Olive oil and or butter, enough to sauté all the other ingredients
Zucchini or eggplant or mushrooms or peppers or none of these things
Fresh basil and/or oregano and/or thyme, chopped or sliced or whole
Walnuts (toasted) or squash blossoms or pine nuts(toasted)
Salt and pepper, to taste
Pasta, enough to hold all the sauce, cooked while making the sauce
Parmesan or ricotta or goat cheese, optional
Sauté the onions/garlic/shallots in the olive oil/butter. Add the zucchini/eggplant/mushrooms/peppers. Saute 3-5 min until whatever you use is slightly softened. Add the tomato. Sauté for a few more minutes until the sauce starts to thicken. Add herbs and nuts or blossoms and salt and pepper. Serve sauce on pasta and top with cheese.
Lately, I’ve been taking the easy way out; I’ve been following the pattern exactly and I’ve been rather disappointed. Maybe in order to make something that you want to wear and feel good in, you have to do those little things to make it your own. Or maybe the satisfaction you get when you know you’ve figured out how to tweak things just so, or that the idea in you head really does work, is what the process is all about. Maybe having the courage to try something different gives you the impetus to push your skills further the next time. I am constantly amazed by knitters who have been knitting for years but have not yet tried to break away from the “recipe” in front of them. To me, that’s when the fun starts.
It’s the same thing with cooking. Being experimental in the kitchen is just as rewarding. There’s nothing like looking in the fridge at a strange variety of ingredients and sitting down a short while later with a delicious dinner.
There’s been a lot of media lately on getting back to cooking, spurred on by the new movie “Julie and Julia” and Michael Pollan’s New York Times Magazine article about why we should stop watching cooking on TV and actually start cooking in our kitchens. This is an encouraging tread.
Pollan contends that Julia Child gave women in the 50s and 60s the courage to try new things in the kitchen and to not be afraid to fail. I believe that courage is needed again today. It’s too easy to buy pre-made foods plus the fear of not getting it right keeps people out of the kitchen and away from all the rewards of making food from scratch. Like knitting, the final outcome, when you use your own creativity to cook, is always more satisfying.
But how do you overcome the inertia of relying on packaged food, or take out, or just your regular set of recipes? It’s not easy, but then the easy way out is not always the most rewarding. It’s one of the things I keep in mind when I want to just blindly follow a knitting pattern. Pushing myself to think a little harder for just a little longer almost always yields better results (almost always, there are the occasional failures from which I always learn something important).
To succeed with kitchen experimentation, it helps to know some basics like what flavors typically combine well and how to sauté, roast, and bake. These are easily found in many basic cookbooks. I’m not advocating not using cookbooks, I’m just saying don’t actually follow the recipes in them. Use cookbooks for inspiration or for the stuff you don’t want to keep in your head, like cooking times or temperatures. Find three or four recipes for the ingredients you have on hand, read through them then put the books away and just have fun.
Summer seems like the best time of year to work up the courage to experiment in the kitchen. There is such an abundance of fresh, local produce; it calls out for a little experimentation. What’s the worst thing that could happen if you played with a few zucchini or tomatoes? Right now there’s more than enough to go around. Why not make some fresh tomato sauce or a zucchini tomato salad?
Let’s take the tomato sauce as an example. Opening up one of my cookbooks, there are recipes for fresh tomato sauce with mint, or basil, or zucchini flowers and red peppers, or mozzarella, or eggplant and walnuts. There’s even a sauce recipe using just zucchini. Reading through them, I notice some require a quick cooking of all the ingredients at once while others require a few more steps.
Since I have lots of zucchini, zucchini blossoms, and basil on hand, I settle on something that uses all of those ingredients. Most of the recipes call for starting the sauce by sautéing garlic and/or onions in some olive oil and/or butter then adding the chopped veggies then the chopped blossoms and basil at the end along with some salt and pepper while at the same time getting the pasta cooked. If I’m going to use the zucchini I know I’m going to have to cook that a bit longer than the tomatoes so there’s no way I can just quickly sauté everything at once. Instead, I might decide to save time by not peeling and seeding the tomatoes because I don’t mind having peels and seeds in my sauce (if I was making it for company, I would probably take the extra step).
While I’m cooking, I might decide that the fresh oregano in my garden would go well with what I have so far and even add a few flakes of red pepper, just for fun. The whole meal might take 20 minutes to make and with a bit of parmesan cheese on top will far exceed any jarred tomato sauce for flavor, freshness, nutrition, and eye appeal.
After a few tries at experimenting, the rewards will so far outweigh the fear of failure, you’ll wonder why you ever followed a recipe in the first place. And then you may even want to learn to knit.
Fresh Tomato Sauce with _______
A “recipe”
Fresh locally grown tomatoes, any many as you need to feed who you’re feeding, peeled, seeded and chopped or just chopped
Onions and/or garlic and/or shallots, minced or chopped, to taste
Olive oil and or butter, enough to sauté all the other ingredients
Zucchini or eggplant or mushrooms or peppers or none of these things
Fresh basil and/or oregano and/or thyme, chopped or sliced or whole
Walnuts (toasted) or squash blossoms or pine nuts(toasted)
Salt and pepper, to taste
Pasta, enough to hold all the sauce, cooked while making the sauce
Parmesan or ricotta or goat cheese, optional
Sauté the onions/garlic/shallots in the olive oil/butter. Add the zucchini/eggplant/mushrooms/peppers. Saute 3-5 min until whatever you use is slightly softened. Add the tomato. Sauté for a few more minutes until the sauce starts to thicken. Add herbs and nuts or blossoms and salt and pepper. Serve sauce on pasta and top with cheese.
Friday, July 24, 2009
Who knew Drinking Good Beer could Save the World
I know I’ve said this before but it bears repeating: I love the Sandpoint library. I have yet to walk in its doors and not come away with some gem of a book having nothing to do with what I came in for.
Case in point: Several weeks ago I was cruising the cookbook section, looking for inspiration for my column, when I stumbled upon a book entitled “Fermenting Revolution: How to Drink Beer and Save the World” by Christopher Mark O’Brien. I flipped through the pages and thought my husband, Jon, would love to read it (He is a lover of craft beers and is always looking for ways to save the world). I continued on my search for writing inspiration and, finding none in that aisle, went home and wrote about salad.
When Jon got home that night, I presented him with my find and read him a bit of the introduction. He was intrigued and promised to read it. Unfortunately for him, I was intrigued as well and whisked the book away before he had a chance to start it. I’ve been enjoying it ever since.
The book, like its title suggests, is all about how drinking craft beer can save our planet. O’Brien likens the degradation of our environment and the globalization of our society to what happened to the once diverse and thriving beer culture. He insists that the takeover of beer by large multinational corporations after prohibition caused some of these problems and by drinking craft beer we can fix them.
Beer was once a local product, made with the ingredients of the region and brewed in ways past down by generations of brewsters (the first beer brewers were women and they continued to have control of this vital household product until the Middle Ages). It required very few resources to produce, it didn’t need to be transported across the world (and before refrigeration, it really couldn’t be transported very far), and it created a sense of community and place.
Beer was deeply entrenched in the culture and religion of almost every region of the world until men with money and power realized they could make more money and garner more power if they regulated beer-making. In the 1500s, purity laws made the homebrews of women illegal while promoting standardized mass-production. After 10,000 years of homebrewing, it only took a few hundred years of regulation and the advent of prohibition for the world to go from thousands of different types of beer to one predominant style, light lager. That’s what the watered down, insipid product made by all the multi-national beer corporations now-a-days is called (I like to call it yellow beer when I’m being kind, and piss water when I’m not).
O’Brien laments the passing of what he calls “beerodiversity” when the “beerocracy” of AnheuserBuschCoorsMiller etc. “globeerized” beer production and redefined beer as light lager. He argues that not only was taste compromised but the social and community aspects of beer drinking were undermined by these big corporations. He effectively makes the point that if we want to improve our communities and our environment, we need to stop drinking bad beer shipped halfway around the country and start drinking local brew.
This is where his point hit home with me. I’ve written lots of column inches about how great it is to eat local but I’d never thought to apply the same logic to my beer drinking. And lucky for us, unlike Mississippi, which O’Brien likens to a “beerological dead zone” (since they have only two craft breweries in the entire state), Sandpoint has great beerodiversity. We have two craft breweries right here plus Eichart’s which features beers of nearby regional breweries. There’s also a small but active homebrewing club.
Drinking local brew can help save the world in many ways. Local brews help create a sense of community and place. They promote creativity and diversity. They conserve resources and often promote sustainability and environmental responsibility.
I started to wonder how many of these ideas were a part of the thinking behind MickDuff’s and Laughing Dog Breweries so I called them up and asked.
Fred from Laughing Dog and Duffy from MickDuff’s were both happy to talk about the philosophies behind their breweries but neither of them had heard of O’Brien’s book. Nevertheless, both had incorporated many of the ideas O’Brien feels are going to save the world.
Both MickDuff’s and Laughing Dog source their malt from a regional malt house (Gabrinus Malting Corporation is itself a small scale, locally oriented business, getting most of their raw ingredients from BC and Alberta) and try to procure their hops from this region (mostly from Yakima, but sometimes even from neighbors’ gardens). Laughing Dog gets their huckleberries from local pickers and both breweries give their spent grain to local pig farmers.
MickDuff’s focuses on the fact that they are both a brewery and a pub, thereby creating a local gathering place for people to meet and talk over a refreshing glass of great beer. Their 140 member mug club is a testament to their following.
They strive to serve food that is natural or organic and they send their used fryer oil off to make biodiesel. They began making at least one organic beer in 2007 as an experiment. It was so successful, they’ve been making it ever since and would probably make all their beers organic if it wasn’t so hard to get their hands on organic malt.
Laughing Dog has made local part of their motto “Think Local, Drink Local” and they’re walking their talk. They use a local craftsman to make their tap handles. They use local businesses for their printing and artwork and promote them in their tap room. They’ve even specified in their contract for their new (recycled) building that local contractors should be used as much as possible.
Laughing Dog is doing its part to save the environment as well. They use about half the amount of water to make their beer as the average brewery and they use only biodegradable cleaners and sanitizers to clean their equipment.
Fred has also been very generous in sharing his knowledge about brewing with the local homebrewers association and often hosts homebrewing events at the brewery.
Both breweries help customers do their part to save valuable resources by allowing us to avoid wasteful packaging and refill our growlers (basically a big glass jug for transporting beer) right from the taps, thereby avoiding the need for six pack holders, bottles and bottle caps. Of course, sipping a cold glass right at the bar avoids all that packaging as well.
While you’re bellied up to the bar, don’t be surprised if you find yourself talking to your neighbor on the next stool about the weather or maybe even how we can all do our part to help save the world one beer at a time. Cheers!
Beer Bread
Makes 1 loaf
1 ½ c. Beer , at room temperature (this is a great way to use up the last of your growler that you didn’t finish before it went flat)
2 T. molassas
1 t. salt
1 T. active yeast
2 c. unbleached white flour
1 c. rye flour
½ c. oatmeal
1 ½ T. caraway seeds
Using an electric mixer, place first 6 ingredients in the bowl and mix for 4-5 minutes on medium speed. Add oatmeal and caraway and mix until well blended. Cover the bowl and set in a warm place until doubled in bulk, about 30 min.
Grease and flour and 9x5” loaf pan. Stir down the mixture and pour it into the prepared pan. Place the pan in a cool oven and allow the mixture to double in bulk.
Turn the oven to 325 F and bake for 45 to 50 minutes. Remove from pan and bake on the oven rack for 5 more minutes.
Case in point: Several weeks ago I was cruising the cookbook section, looking for inspiration for my column, when I stumbled upon a book entitled “Fermenting Revolution: How to Drink Beer and Save the World” by Christopher Mark O’Brien. I flipped through the pages and thought my husband, Jon, would love to read it (He is a lover of craft beers and is always looking for ways to save the world). I continued on my search for writing inspiration and, finding none in that aisle, went home and wrote about salad.
When Jon got home that night, I presented him with my find and read him a bit of the introduction. He was intrigued and promised to read it. Unfortunately for him, I was intrigued as well and whisked the book away before he had a chance to start it. I’ve been enjoying it ever since.
The book, like its title suggests, is all about how drinking craft beer can save our planet. O’Brien likens the degradation of our environment and the globalization of our society to what happened to the once diverse and thriving beer culture. He insists that the takeover of beer by large multinational corporations after prohibition caused some of these problems and by drinking craft beer we can fix them.
Beer was once a local product, made with the ingredients of the region and brewed in ways past down by generations of brewsters (the first beer brewers were women and they continued to have control of this vital household product until the Middle Ages). It required very few resources to produce, it didn’t need to be transported across the world (and before refrigeration, it really couldn’t be transported very far), and it created a sense of community and place.
Beer was deeply entrenched in the culture and religion of almost every region of the world until men with money and power realized they could make more money and garner more power if they regulated beer-making. In the 1500s, purity laws made the homebrews of women illegal while promoting standardized mass-production. After 10,000 years of homebrewing, it only took a few hundred years of regulation and the advent of prohibition for the world to go from thousands of different types of beer to one predominant style, light lager. That’s what the watered down, insipid product made by all the multi-national beer corporations now-a-days is called (I like to call it yellow beer when I’m being kind, and piss water when I’m not).
O’Brien laments the passing of what he calls “beerodiversity” when the “beerocracy” of AnheuserBuschCoorsMiller etc. “globeerized” beer production and redefined beer as light lager. He argues that not only was taste compromised but the social and community aspects of beer drinking were undermined by these big corporations. He effectively makes the point that if we want to improve our communities and our environment, we need to stop drinking bad beer shipped halfway around the country and start drinking local brew.
This is where his point hit home with me. I’ve written lots of column inches about how great it is to eat local but I’d never thought to apply the same logic to my beer drinking. And lucky for us, unlike Mississippi, which O’Brien likens to a “beerological dead zone” (since they have only two craft breweries in the entire state), Sandpoint has great beerodiversity. We have two craft breweries right here plus Eichart’s which features beers of nearby regional breweries. There’s also a small but active homebrewing club.
Drinking local brew can help save the world in many ways. Local brews help create a sense of community and place. They promote creativity and diversity. They conserve resources and often promote sustainability and environmental responsibility.
I started to wonder how many of these ideas were a part of the thinking behind MickDuff’s and Laughing Dog Breweries so I called them up and asked.
Fred from Laughing Dog and Duffy from MickDuff’s were both happy to talk about the philosophies behind their breweries but neither of them had heard of O’Brien’s book. Nevertheless, both had incorporated many of the ideas O’Brien feels are going to save the world.
Both MickDuff’s and Laughing Dog source their malt from a regional malt house (Gabrinus Malting Corporation is itself a small scale, locally oriented business, getting most of their raw ingredients from BC and Alberta) and try to procure their hops from this region (mostly from Yakima, but sometimes even from neighbors’ gardens). Laughing Dog gets their huckleberries from local pickers and both breweries give their spent grain to local pig farmers.
MickDuff’s focuses on the fact that they are both a brewery and a pub, thereby creating a local gathering place for people to meet and talk over a refreshing glass of great beer. Their 140 member mug club is a testament to their following.
They strive to serve food that is natural or organic and they send their used fryer oil off to make biodiesel. They began making at least one organic beer in 2007 as an experiment. It was so successful, they’ve been making it ever since and would probably make all their beers organic if it wasn’t so hard to get their hands on organic malt.
Laughing Dog has made local part of their motto “Think Local, Drink Local” and they’re walking their talk. They use a local craftsman to make their tap handles. They use local businesses for their printing and artwork and promote them in their tap room. They’ve even specified in their contract for their new (recycled) building that local contractors should be used as much as possible.
Laughing Dog is doing its part to save the environment as well. They use about half the amount of water to make their beer as the average brewery and they use only biodegradable cleaners and sanitizers to clean their equipment.
Fred has also been very generous in sharing his knowledge about brewing with the local homebrewers association and often hosts homebrewing events at the brewery.
Both breweries help customers do their part to save valuable resources by allowing us to avoid wasteful packaging and refill our growlers (basically a big glass jug for transporting beer) right from the taps, thereby avoiding the need for six pack holders, bottles and bottle caps. Of course, sipping a cold glass right at the bar avoids all that packaging as well.
While you’re bellied up to the bar, don’t be surprised if you find yourself talking to your neighbor on the next stool about the weather or maybe even how we can all do our part to help save the world one beer at a time. Cheers!
Beer Bread
Makes 1 loaf
1 ½ c. Beer , at room temperature (this is a great way to use up the last of your growler that you didn’t finish before it went flat)
2 T. molassas
1 t. salt
1 T. active yeast
2 c. unbleached white flour
1 c. rye flour
½ c. oatmeal
1 ½ T. caraway seeds
Using an electric mixer, place first 6 ingredients in the bowl and mix for 4-5 minutes on medium speed. Add oatmeal and caraway and mix until well blended. Cover the bowl and set in a warm place until doubled in bulk, about 30 min.
Grease and flour and 9x5” loaf pan. Stir down the mixture and pour it into the prepared pan. Place the pan in a cool oven and allow the mixture to double in bulk.
Turn the oven to 325 F and bake for 45 to 50 minutes. Remove from pan and bake on the oven rack for 5 more minutes.
Monday, July 6, 2009
The Truffle Biting Ceremony
Jon and I got married last weekend. The weather was fabulous, the setting was beautiful, the guests and beverages were plentiful. It was a perfect day.
To the outside observer, it may have seemed effortless, but I’m here to tell you that planning a wedding requires lots of lists and months of planning (and, hopefully, only a couple of arguments with your fiancé).
Each of us had been married previously and neither of us had had much of a hand in planning those first weddings. This time we both wanted to make the day our own ( I must admit that deep into the planning I wouldn’t have minded a little help from Mom). We wanted to do things our way even if those ways garnered blank stares or outright astonishment from friends and family.
I wore a mostly black dress and we kayaked in instead of walking down the aisle but this is a food column not a wedding advice column so I’ll get to the most important part of the day both from this column’s point of view and our own: the food (and the beer, says Jon).
And the food really was our biggest concern. We are both serious foodies so it had to be just so. My first thought was to cater it myself. I’ve catered more than my share of parties and even catered a wedding and a wedding rehearsal dinner once. I knew I could do it but once rational thought returned I realized my own wedding was not the best place to show off my culinary skills.
Plan 2 required a caterer. We wanted to use as much local food as possible. We needed a caterer who wouldn’t shy away from the extra work it sometimes takes to source local products. We also wanted a great grill master on hand to make sure those local grass fed burgers from Cascade Creek and lovingly raised lamb kabobs from Good Shepard Lamb Company were cooked to perfection.
It didn’t take long to decide that Di Luna’s would be our choice. Karen Forsythe was happy to use not only the local meat I ordered from Six Rivers Market producers but also incorporate Wheyward Goat Cheese at the very last moment (the chevre just got licenced that week and we were Susanne Wimberly’s first ever customers!). We knew Justin Otis would grill everything to perfection.
The drinks were easy. We are lucky to have a local winery and two local breweries in town and all three offer great products. We ordered kegs from both Laughing Dog and MickDuffs and got an assortment of red, white and rose wine from Pend d’Oreille Winery. There was plenty to quench everyone’s thirst.
Once the main part of the food and the drinks were under control, we needed to come up with dessert. Neither Jon nor I are big fans of wedding cake. Sure, it’s traditional to have a big white tiered cake at a wedding but we were trying to escape tradition in much of our planning. What we do share is a love of chocolate. Even since we started dating, Jon has bought boxes of truffles to celebrate almost any occasion. We always share them. I choose one, take a bite and share the other half with him. Then it’s his turn to choose a flavor and get the first bite.
It seemed like the perfect solution and once again my first impulse was to make all the truffles myself. But then a friend asked if there was anything she could do to help with the wedding, and then another friend asked. It dawned on me that I could kill two birds with one stone if everyone who asked to help was given the task of making a couple of dozen truffles. We were on our way to eschewing the cake cutting ceremony and substitute our own truffle biting tradition.
The truffles came in every flavor you could want including coconut rum and Grande Marnier with candied orange peel. Danielle, my new daughter-in-law, collected the offerings as they came in and she swears she could tell a great deal about the maker just from the shape of their truffles (I didn’t ask for details).
I’m not really sure how many truffles arrived on the day of the wedding. It was well over 400. There were plenty to go around and even a few left over (although not for long). What I do know is they were delicious and a big hit. There were chocolate stains on the mouths of both kids and adults and on a few shirts, too.
Incorporating local food and flowers (from Beehaven Farm in Bonners Ferry) and enlisting the help of friends really made our special day even more special. As we begin the task of writing thank you notes, I’d like to use my bully pulpit to say thanks to all the local business and producers who made our day special and an extra big thank you to all my friends who undertook the hazardous job of making truffles.
To the outside observer, it may have seemed effortless, but I’m here to tell you that planning a wedding requires lots of lists and months of planning (and, hopefully, only a couple of arguments with your fiancé).
Each of us had been married previously and neither of us had had much of a hand in planning those first weddings. This time we both wanted to make the day our own ( I must admit that deep into the planning I wouldn’t have minded a little help from Mom). We wanted to do things our way even if those ways garnered blank stares or outright astonishment from friends and family.
I wore a mostly black dress and we kayaked in instead of walking down the aisle but this is a food column not a wedding advice column so I’ll get to the most important part of the day both from this column’s point of view and our own: the food (and the beer, says Jon).
And the food really was our biggest concern. We are both serious foodies so it had to be just so. My first thought was to cater it myself. I’ve catered more than my share of parties and even catered a wedding and a wedding rehearsal dinner once. I knew I could do it but once rational thought returned I realized my own wedding was not the best place to show off my culinary skills.
Plan 2 required a caterer. We wanted to use as much local food as possible. We needed a caterer who wouldn’t shy away from the extra work it sometimes takes to source local products. We also wanted a great grill master on hand to make sure those local grass fed burgers from Cascade Creek and lovingly raised lamb kabobs from Good Shepard Lamb Company were cooked to perfection.
It didn’t take long to decide that Di Luna’s would be our choice. Karen Forsythe was happy to use not only the local meat I ordered from Six Rivers Market producers but also incorporate Wheyward Goat Cheese at the very last moment (the chevre just got licenced that week and we were Susanne Wimberly’s first ever customers!). We knew Justin Otis would grill everything to perfection.
The drinks were easy. We are lucky to have a local winery and two local breweries in town and all three offer great products. We ordered kegs from both Laughing Dog and MickDuffs and got an assortment of red, white and rose wine from Pend d’Oreille Winery. There was plenty to quench everyone’s thirst.
Once the main part of the food and the drinks were under control, we needed to come up with dessert. Neither Jon nor I are big fans of wedding cake. Sure, it’s traditional to have a big white tiered cake at a wedding but we were trying to escape tradition in much of our planning. What we do share is a love of chocolate. Even since we started dating, Jon has bought boxes of truffles to celebrate almost any occasion. We always share them. I choose one, take a bite and share the other half with him. Then it’s his turn to choose a flavor and get the first bite.
It seemed like the perfect solution and once again my first impulse was to make all the truffles myself. But then a friend asked if there was anything she could do to help with the wedding, and then another friend asked. It dawned on me that I could kill two birds with one stone if everyone who asked to help was given the task of making a couple of dozen truffles. We were on our way to eschewing the cake cutting ceremony and substitute our own truffle biting tradition.
The truffles came in every flavor you could want including coconut rum and Grande Marnier with candied orange peel. Danielle, my new daughter-in-law, collected the offerings as they came in and she swears she could tell a great deal about the maker just from the shape of their truffles (I didn’t ask for details).
I’m not really sure how many truffles arrived on the day of the wedding. It was well over 400. There were plenty to go around and even a few left over (although not for long). What I do know is they were delicious and a big hit. There were chocolate stains on the mouths of both kids and adults and on a few shirts, too.
Incorporating local food and flowers (from Beehaven Farm in Bonners Ferry) and enlisting the help of friends really made our special day even more special. As we begin the task of writing thank you notes, I’d like to use my bully pulpit to say thanks to all the local business and producers who made our day special and an extra big thank you to all my friends who undertook the hazardous job of making truffles.
Monday, May 25, 2009
Nanny Rose Salad
When I was growing up, my grandparents on my dad’s side had a house on the Jersey Shore. The family would gather there every summer, sometimes for a week but mostly just on the weekends. My grandfather, Joe, would bring out the grill and cook up heaping plates of burgers and steaks. For appetizers we’d have kosher hot dogs on a slice of Jewish rye fresh from the bakery down the street (the only way to eat a hot dog, in my opinion). He made his own barbeque sauce and it went on everything. It was all so good and we still refer to any outrageous barbeque as a Poppy Joe meal.
We did eat some veggies at those carnivorous feasts. There would be fresh corn on the cob (Jersey corn and tomatoes are by far the best, I know it’s hard to believe, but there is a reason it’s called the Garden State) and my grandmother, Rose, who wasn’t much of a cook, would always make a salad. This was no ordinary salad. Sure there’d be some lettuce in there, but mostly it was other stuff like cucumbers and carrots and tomatoes and celery. Lots of crunchy stuff. Then she’d dress it with, I’m guessing, bottled Italian dressing. The small amount of lettuce would get kind of soggy and you wouldn’t even really notice it was there. This came to be known affectionately as a Nanny Rose Salad. It wasn’t very good, but it was very memorable, and to this day, when I make a salad with not very much lettuce but lots of other stuff, it’s a Nanny Rose salad.
I’ve had salad on the brain lately now that fresh local greens are here and we’ve been eating salad at least once a day. Of course, the word salad can be used to describe all sorts of dishes including those made with pasta, or potato, or fruit, or (scarily) Jell-O.
My American Heritage dictionary defines salad as “a dish consisting of green, leafy, raw vegetables, often with radish, cucumber, or tomato, served with a dressing”. Using that definition, I guess you could consider anything cold that is served with a dressing (even if the dressing consists solely of Cool-Whip) a salad.
But right now, all I care about are green salads. They define spring for me and I live on them for as long as the fresh lettuce is available. This has probably been the case since ancient times when people realized they could eat dandelions, watercress, and chicory and were pretty excited to do so after a winter of eating stored grains and little else.
Those greens were much bitterer than they are today. We’ve been working on breeding the bitter out ever since and probably had our greatest success with iceberg lettuce (that flavorless, but easily transportable lettuce which may be responsible for Americans thinking we can eat salad all year long). Interestingly, the tide is turning back to bitter and salad mixes often include bitter greens like radicchio, endive, mizuna, and escarole.
Not every culture embraced these first delicious signs of spring. Some cultures took their time in deciding that green salad was a good thing to eat. The English wouldn’t touch the stuff until the early 1700s. And even then, it took an entire book (Acetaria: A Discourse of Sallets by John Evelyn) to convince them that lettuce wasn’t just for their farm animals and wouldn’t kill them if they ate it.
The Greeks and Romans were big salad eaters. The word itself comes from ancient Latin and is derived from the word for salt. I’m not sure why salt, which was a key ingredient in the dressing of ancient salads, should come to be the definitive ingredient from which the word stems. Maybe it’s because those ancient bitter salads were made more palatable by the addition of salt, since salt balances and even suppresses our taste of bitterness.
Today, we have what seems like unlimited possibilities of greens to put in our salad. The salad mix I bought from Solstice Farms last week has red and green leaf lettuce, spinach, kale, tatsoi, mizuna, and edible flowers in it. It is has so many flavors and textures all by itself that you don’t need to add anything else except a light dressing (since without the dressing it wouldn’t truly be a salad).
Whatever type of greens you build your salad with, always wait until you are going to serve it to add any oil-based dressings (instructions my Nanny Rose never followed). Oil can easily penetrate the leaves of your salad and turn them dark and soggy. If you must dress your salad early, use a water-based cream dressing, like Jon’s Favorite Blue Cheese dressing.
As the season progresses, those leafy greens will be overtaken by fresh cucumbers, peas, carrots, tomatoes and who knows what else until the creation in my bowl is a true Nanny Rose salad. Right now, I’m happy with just eating leaves.
Vicki Reich eats, writes, and gardens in Sagle. She is also the Market Manager for Six Rivers Market. You can contact her at wordomouth@yahoo.com.
Vicki’s Vinaigrette
Makes 1 cup
½ c Balsamic vinegar
½ c good quality extra virgin olive oil
½ t dried oregano
¼ t. dried thyme
¼ t. dried basil
1 t. Dijon mustard
½ t. salt
Fresh ground pepper to taste
Place all ingredients in a jar with a tight fitting lid. Shake vigorously. Serve.
This is vinegary vinaigrette. If you want a milder dressing reduce vinegar to ¼ c and increase oil to ¾ c.
Jon’s Favorite Blue Cheese Dressing
Makes 2 ½ cups
1 c. sour cream
8 oz. Blue Cheese, crumbled (start with a block of cheese and crumble it yourself rather than buying crumbles, the flavor is much better)
3 cloves garlic, minced
½ c. mayonnaise
¼ c. plain yogurt
1 T. chives, finely chopped
½ t. salt
2 T. apple cider vinegar
Mix all ingredients together in a bowl. Add more vinegar if dressing is too thick. Spoon into a jar and refrigerate. If possible, wait one day before using, but it’s hard to resist.
We did eat some veggies at those carnivorous feasts. There would be fresh corn on the cob (Jersey corn and tomatoes are by far the best, I know it’s hard to believe, but there is a reason it’s called the Garden State) and my grandmother, Rose, who wasn’t much of a cook, would always make a salad. This was no ordinary salad. Sure there’d be some lettuce in there, but mostly it was other stuff like cucumbers and carrots and tomatoes and celery. Lots of crunchy stuff. Then she’d dress it with, I’m guessing, bottled Italian dressing. The small amount of lettuce would get kind of soggy and you wouldn’t even really notice it was there. This came to be known affectionately as a Nanny Rose Salad. It wasn’t very good, but it was very memorable, and to this day, when I make a salad with not very much lettuce but lots of other stuff, it’s a Nanny Rose salad.
I’ve had salad on the brain lately now that fresh local greens are here and we’ve been eating salad at least once a day. Of course, the word salad can be used to describe all sorts of dishes including those made with pasta, or potato, or fruit, or (scarily) Jell-O.
My American Heritage dictionary defines salad as “a dish consisting of green, leafy, raw vegetables, often with radish, cucumber, or tomato, served with a dressing”. Using that definition, I guess you could consider anything cold that is served with a dressing (even if the dressing consists solely of Cool-Whip) a salad.
But right now, all I care about are green salads. They define spring for me and I live on them for as long as the fresh lettuce is available. This has probably been the case since ancient times when people realized they could eat dandelions, watercress, and chicory and were pretty excited to do so after a winter of eating stored grains and little else.
Those greens were much bitterer than they are today. We’ve been working on breeding the bitter out ever since and probably had our greatest success with iceberg lettuce (that flavorless, but easily transportable lettuce which may be responsible for Americans thinking we can eat salad all year long). Interestingly, the tide is turning back to bitter and salad mixes often include bitter greens like radicchio, endive, mizuna, and escarole.
Not every culture embraced these first delicious signs of spring. Some cultures took their time in deciding that green salad was a good thing to eat. The English wouldn’t touch the stuff until the early 1700s. And even then, it took an entire book (Acetaria: A Discourse of Sallets by John Evelyn) to convince them that lettuce wasn’t just for their farm animals and wouldn’t kill them if they ate it.
The Greeks and Romans were big salad eaters. The word itself comes from ancient Latin and is derived from the word for salt. I’m not sure why salt, which was a key ingredient in the dressing of ancient salads, should come to be the definitive ingredient from which the word stems. Maybe it’s because those ancient bitter salads were made more palatable by the addition of salt, since salt balances and even suppresses our taste of bitterness.
Today, we have what seems like unlimited possibilities of greens to put in our salad. The salad mix I bought from Solstice Farms last week has red and green leaf lettuce, spinach, kale, tatsoi, mizuna, and edible flowers in it. It is has so many flavors and textures all by itself that you don’t need to add anything else except a light dressing (since without the dressing it wouldn’t truly be a salad).
Whatever type of greens you build your salad with, always wait until you are going to serve it to add any oil-based dressings (instructions my Nanny Rose never followed). Oil can easily penetrate the leaves of your salad and turn them dark and soggy. If you must dress your salad early, use a water-based cream dressing, like Jon’s Favorite Blue Cheese dressing.
As the season progresses, those leafy greens will be overtaken by fresh cucumbers, peas, carrots, tomatoes and who knows what else until the creation in my bowl is a true Nanny Rose salad. Right now, I’m happy with just eating leaves.
Vicki Reich eats, writes, and gardens in Sagle. She is also the Market Manager for Six Rivers Market. You can contact her at wordomouth@yahoo.com.
Vicki’s Vinaigrette
Makes 1 cup
½ c Balsamic vinegar
½ c good quality extra virgin olive oil
½ t dried oregano
¼ t. dried thyme
¼ t. dried basil
1 t. Dijon mustard
½ t. salt
Fresh ground pepper to taste
Place all ingredients in a jar with a tight fitting lid. Shake vigorously. Serve.
This is vinegary vinaigrette. If you want a milder dressing reduce vinegar to ¼ c and increase oil to ¾ c.
Jon’s Favorite Blue Cheese Dressing
Makes 2 ½ cups
1 c. sour cream
8 oz. Blue Cheese, crumbled (start with a block of cheese and crumble it yourself rather than buying crumbles, the flavor is much better)
3 cloves garlic, minced
½ c. mayonnaise
¼ c. plain yogurt
1 T. chives, finely chopped
½ t. salt
2 T. apple cider vinegar
Mix all ingredients together in a bowl. Add more vinegar if dressing is too thick. Spoon into a jar and refrigerate. If possible, wait one day before using, but it’s hard to resist.
Monday, May 11, 2009
What's in a Name
If you ask some people where their food comes from, they might tell you the grocery store. They might have no idea what a potato plant looks like and might be completely surprised by the large green leafy thing growing over their tubers. They would never believe you if you told them the four foot tall billowing fern-like plants they see in the fall were once the asparagus they prized in spring.
I like to think I know all about the food I eat. However, my confidence was recently shaken. I just learned that growing over those gnarly, misshapen, but deliciously versatile Jerusalem artichokes that I relish in the spring are 6 foot tall stalks with bright yellow flowers (that are rumored to smell like milk chocolate, I must find out if it’s true) and they’re relatives of the sunflower. I don’t like being in the dark about my food. I needed to know more.
To start with, I had to know about the name. Why in the world was a New World plant named for an ancient Old World city? And why was it named for another vegetable that it wasn’t related to?
It turns out at least the Jerusalem part of the name derives from a failed game of Telephone. When explorers first brought Jerusalem artichokes to Italy, the Italians called them girasole, which is Italian for sunflower. Over time girasole was misunderstood to be Jerusalem (I guess I can see how that could happen) leading to the first half of the confusing name we have today.
The artichoke part of the name comes from the fact that when cooked, Jerusalem artichokes do taste a bit like artichoke hearts (and it turns out they are very distantly related).
Jersusalem artichokes (or sunchokes, as they are sometimes called to avoid all the above mentioned confusion) were cultivated by Native Americans for so long before Europeans arrived that scientists haven’t been able to figure out where they originated. What we do know is they were brought to Europe around 1600 and became a staple food there. The French, in particular, love them.
And what’s not to love? These ugly little tubers are good and good for you. You can just slice them up and throw them on a salad for some extra crunch or you can get really creative. Sunchokes can be boiled, baked, fried, or roasted (I even found a recipe for Jerusalem artichoke chiffon pie in Stalking the Wild Aparagus by Euell Gibbons. I plan on trying it soon; it’s too intriguing to pass up.) They are low in calories and high in potassium, iron, fiber, and vitamin C.
Jerusalem artichokes remind me a lot of potatoes in terms of versatility in the kitchen. There is one key difference that you should be aware of when you are creating new dishes with them. Potatoes store energy as starch and that gives sticking power and body to foods made with them. Jerusalem artichokes store energy as inulin. Inulin is a polymer of fructose sugars that’s not digestible by our bodies. It’s actually digested by good bacteria in the gut and helps promote those good bacteria while keeping out the bad guys (it may also promote gas if you are not used to eating it; start off with small servings to avoid embarrassment). The lack of starch makes it difficult to substitute Jerusalem artichokes straight across for potatoes. Mash them and you’ll end up with a soupier mixture than you would expect. Fry them and they won’t be as crisp. But what they lack in starch, they make up for in flavor. I’ll take a gratin of Jerusalem artichokes over potatoes any day and since I developed a recipe for sunchoke pancakes (see accompanying recipe), I might never use potatoes again. They are way more tasty.
They are also easy to grow (maybe too easy). Like sunflowers they will self-seed but they will also grow new plants from the tubers. That means if you leave any tubers in the ground after harvest, you’ll have a fresh batch popping up soon. Amy Spencer (of Vern’s Veggies) warned me that they can take over if you’re not careful. They are planted in spring and harvested early the next year making them one of the first fresh veggies to look forward to. If you don’t want to grown them, you can pick some up at the farmer’s market. I know Vern has some.
Jerusalem Artichoke Pancakes
Serves 4 as a side dish
1 lb Jerusalem artichokes, scrubbed
½ large yellow onion
1 t. salt
2 T whole wheat flour
1 T corn starch
2 eggs, slightly beaten
Salt and pepper to taste
2 T canola oil
2 T butter
Coarsely grate the Jerusalem artichokes and onions. I use a food processor which make a quick and tear-free job of it. Place grated mixture in a colander and sprinkle with salt. Toss and let stand for about 20 minutes. Squeeze as much liquid from the vegetables as possible and place in a large bowl. Add the flour and corn starch. Toss well. Add the eggs and salt and pepper. Mix well and let stand for 15 minutes.
Meanwhile heat 1 T oil and 1 T butter in a large frying pan to medium high. Place 4-5 ¼ cup blobs of the artichoke mixture in the pan and flatten into pancakes with the back of a spoon. These will not hold together the way potatoes do so be gentle. Turn carefully when brown on one side. Cook until brown on both sides. Place in a warm oven and cook the second batch with the remaining oil and butter. Serve immediately.
I like to think I know all about the food I eat. However, my confidence was recently shaken. I just learned that growing over those gnarly, misshapen, but deliciously versatile Jerusalem artichokes that I relish in the spring are 6 foot tall stalks with bright yellow flowers (that are rumored to smell like milk chocolate, I must find out if it’s true) and they’re relatives of the sunflower. I don’t like being in the dark about my food. I needed to know more.
To start with, I had to know about the name. Why in the world was a New World plant named for an ancient Old World city? And why was it named for another vegetable that it wasn’t related to?
It turns out at least the Jerusalem part of the name derives from a failed game of Telephone. When explorers first brought Jerusalem artichokes to Italy, the Italians called them girasole, which is Italian for sunflower. Over time girasole was misunderstood to be Jerusalem (I guess I can see how that could happen) leading to the first half of the confusing name we have today.
The artichoke part of the name comes from the fact that when cooked, Jerusalem artichokes do taste a bit like artichoke hearts (and it turns out they are very distantly related).
Jersusalem artichokes (or sunchokes, as they are sometimes called to avoid all the above mentioned confusion) were cultivated by Native Americans for so long before Europeans arrived that scientists haven’t been able to figure out where they originated. What we do know is they were brought to Europe around 1600 and became a staple food there. The French, in particular, love them.
And what’s not to love? These ugly little tubers are good and good for you. You can just slice them up and throw them on a salad for some extra crunch or you can get really creative. Sunchokes can be boiled, baked, fried, or roasted (I even found a recipe for Jerusalem artichoke chiffon pie in Stalking the Wild Aparagus by Euell Gibbons. I plan on trying it soon; it’s too intriguing to pass up.) They are low in calories and high in potassium, iron, fiber, and vitamin C.
Jerusalem artichokes remind me a lot of potatoes in terms of versatility in the kitchen. There is one key difference that you should be aware of when you are creating new dishes with them. Potatoes store energy as starch and that gives sticking power and body to foods made with them. Jerusalem artichokes store energy as inulin. Inulin is a polymer of fructose sugars that’s not digestible by our bodies. It’s actually digested by good bacteria in the gut and helps promote those good bacteria while keeping out the bad guys (it may also promote gas if you are not used to eating it; start off with small servings to avoid embarrassment). The lack of starch makes it difficult to substitute Jerusalem artichokes straight across for potatoes. Mash them and you’ll end up with a soupier mixture than you would expect. Fry them and they won’t be as crisp. But what they lack in starch, they make up for in flavor. I’ll take a gratin of Jerusalem artichokes over potatoes any day and since I developed a recipe for sunchoke pancakes (see accompanying recipe), I might never use potatoes again. They are way more tasty.
They are also easy to grow (maybe too easy). Like sunflowers they will self-seed but they will also grow new plants from the tubers. That means if you leave any tubers in the ground after harvest, you’ll have a fresh batch popping up soon. Amy Spencer (of Vern’s Veggies) warned me that they can take over if you’re not careful. They are planted in spring and harvested early the next year making them one of the first fresh veggies to look forward to. If you don’t want to grown them, you can pick some up at the farmer’s market. I know Vern has some.
Jerusalem Artichoke Pancakes
Serves 4 as a side dish
1 lb Jerusalem artichokes, scrubbed
½ large yellow onion
1 t. salt
2 T whole wheat flour
1 T corn starch
2 eggs, slightly beaten
Salt and pepper to taste
2 T canola oil
2 T butter
Coarsely grate the Jerusalem artichokes and onions. I use a food processor which make a quick and tear-free job of it. Place grated mixture in a colander and sprinkle with salt. Toss and let stand for about 20 minutes. Squeeze as much liquid from the vegetables as possible and place in a large bowl. Add the flour and corn starch. Toss well. Add the eggs and salt and pepper. Mix well and let stand for 15 minutes.
Meanwhile heat 1 T oil and 1 T butter in a large frying pan to medium high. Place 4-5 ¼ cup blobs of the artichoke mixture in the pan and flatten into pancakes with the back of a spoon. These will not hold together the way potatoes do so be gentle. Turn carefully when brown on one side. Cook until brown on both sides. Place in a warm oven and cook the second batch with the remaining oil and butter. Serve immediately.
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
Beer Can Hats or How I Waste My Time
I'm not sure there's much to say for myself about my latest project, except that I giggled a lot while I was making it. And it looks cute on in a cheesy retro kind of way.
It's for my physical therapist, who's face totally lit up when I said I'd make one for him (I made him drink the Pabst, however, I will only stoop so low).
Now that it's done, I might need one for myself (but out of cans from a decent beer). If anyone wants the pattern, I'm happy to share.
It's for my physical therapist, who's face totally lit up when I said I'd make one for him (I made him drink the Pabst, however, I will only stoop so low). Now that it's done, I might need one for myself (but out of cans from a decent beer). If anyone wants the pattern, I'm happy to share.
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