Greens Fatigue

Since greens are one of the first crops you can harvest, the first weeks of most CSAs involve lots of them. In addition to the nettles, we’ve had lambsquarter (another “weed”), collards, chard, a variety of chois, and 1-2 bunches of kale every week.

I usually just sauté them with some garlic (and sometimes ginger or onion or a hot pepper) until they’re wilted and then I dress them with something acidic (lemon, white wine vinegar, rice vinegar) and something umami (tamari, crumbled bacon, grated parmesan). Salt and pepper to taste. That varies from great to mediocre. Sometimes the mild bitterness of the greens marries perfectly with the salty, rich, bright, savory accompaniments and it seems like exactly the kind of fresh, simple, delicious, nutrient-rich food that I joined a CSA to enjoy. Other times, it doesn’t matter if the greens are cooked in rendered bacon fat and topped with msg, it just tastes virtuous, and I mean that in the pejorative sense.

So this week, faced with two bunches of chard—one we didn’t manage to eat last week and another from the new box, I decided to try a classic preparation I’d heard of but never tasted.

Nothing Garlic, Butter and Cheese can’t fix

A gratin is just a casserole. It usually involves vegetables, pasta or meat tossed in a classic béchamel or flour-thickened milk sauce and topped with breadcrumbs and grated cheese. According to Wikipedia, the name comes from the French verb “gratter” meaning “to scrape,” which refers to the scrapings or gratings of bread or cheese that form the upper crust. Fun food idiom trivia: le gratin has the same metaphorical significance as “upper crust” in English. 

Baked mac & cheese is a gratin. So is the classic green bean casserole people make for Thanksgiving, even though most people let Campbell’s make the white sauce (which is basically what any flour-thickened cream soup is). But ironically, potatoes au gratin isn’t—or at least not the ones I’ve had, which are basically just potato slices in white sauce, or like a gratin without le gratin.

Chard gratin is about what you’d expect if you substituted the pasta in baked macaroni and cheese or the green beans in green bean casserole with cooked leafy greens—it’s creamy and savory and rich. It seems like a winter dish, especially because it requires that you turn on the oven, which I admit is sort of a drag in July, but it turned out to be exactly the sort of thing I was looking for to mix up my summer greens routine.

You could use any cooking green you like (epicurious has a nice visual guide to some of the more common ones). I can’t tell much of a difference between them after they’ve been wilted. Sure, some of them are a little more or less bitter and some stay chewier after cooking, but I wouldn’t want to have to identify them in a blind taste test. I assume the reason chard gratin is so much more common than spinach gratin (798000 google results compared to 164000) even though the latter is the more popular green by far is because casseroles are a handy way to use the stems as well as the leaves, and that’s just not an issue for spinach. Sadly, the stems don’t retain much of their spectacular color after cooking, but they are tender and mildly-flavored so it’s a shame to throw them away. They melt right into the casserole along with the softened onion and leaves.

I scanned a few recipes and then basically improvised based on what I had on hand. Precise instructions available below the jump, but here’s the short version you should feel free to adapt/improvise on at will: Blanche 2-3 bunches of chopped greens in boiling water, stems first for 2 minutes if using and leaves for another 1-3 depending on how hearty they are (spinach only needs a minute, kale or chard will take 3 to soften fully). Drain well. Then, sauté a fistful of chopped onions and/or garlic in some kind of fat, stir in a couple of tablespoons of flour and then gradually whisk in about a cup of milk. Season with salt and pepper and a little grated nutmeg, stir in some grated cheese if you want it, and add the well-drained greens. Spoon the mixture into a buttered baking dish, top with buttered breadcrumbs mixed with some herbs and grated parmesan, and bake (350-400F) until golden and bubbling (about 20 minutes).

To make it more like a main than a side, add some cooked pasta or a protein like leftover cooked meat, diced seitan, reconstituted tvp, or canned crab or tuna along with the cooked greens. You could also throw in some other vegetables, steamed or blanched unless they’re tender enough to eat raw. Following from the Thanksgiving classic, you could make a semi-homemade version by using a can or two of cream soup (probably onion and/or mushroom) instead of making a white sauce. Actually, with the green bean casserole in mind, I might try adding some crispy fried shallots to the topping the next time I make this. Which, if the CSA keeps up the current pace of the greens, will probably be very soon.  Read more

Jell-O shots are often prepared in individual molds, which is handy for portion control and ease of consumption, but (obviously) requires that you have individual molds. You can, of course, make alcoholic Jell-O in one big sheet just like people generally do with non-alcoholic Jell-O, but the alcohol interferes with how the gelatin sets, which can make un-molded Jell-O shots a real mess to serve. If you really want to make alcoholic Jell-O that you can cut into pieces and serve as finger-food (or finger-drinks?), you need to add more gelatin.

I worked out ratios of Jell-O mix, plain gelatin, liquor, and liqueur last year for a 4th of July party, and now I don’t remember all the sources I consulted or factors I weighed. But I did record the recipe I settled on: 1 package of plain gelatin per 3 oz. Jell-O mix (a small box) combined with 1 cup boiling water, 1/2 cup liquor (80 proof) and 1/2 cup liqueur (40 proof). That yields a significantly higher-proof Jell-O shot than the traditional recipe, which calls for 5 oz. liquor per 3 oz. package, but it still sets up firmly enough to cut cleanly and eat with your hands.

Flavor and design-wise, the possibilities are virtually endless. You can create the patriotic “stained glass” effect pictured above by making red and blue Jell-O in separate pans, chilling them well, cutting them into cubes and then pouring a mixture of sweetened condensed milk, gelatin, water, and alcohol over them (recipe below). That obviously also lends itself well to things like team colors or other holiday combinations.

You can create a layered effect by making small batches and letting each one set before you add the next one—a technique that lends itself well to rainbow pride shots. The Michigan-themed cubes on the right that look vaguely like expensive MOMA paperweights (ht: Ryan Hennessey) were created by alternating small batches of berry and lemon Jell-O with the sweetened condensed gelatin shot recipe in a 9x13 pan in 30 min. intervals. Other potentially-helpful tips: I made the mixture for each layer right after putting the previous one in the refrigerator so it could cool to room temp before I poured it on top, and I poured the new layers over the back of a spoon to soften their impact on the “set” layers.

If you had the time and inclination, you could make layers within “stained glass” pieces or cover “stained glass” pieces with different colored layers. But if that all seems like too much fuss, you can also just make single colors. And if you like, you can cut them into whimsical shapes. I’m going to make them again for a 4th of July picnic this year, although I haven’t decided what colors or styles, except that it will have to involve the seasonally-inappropriate box of lime that’s been in the cupboard for ages and the bottle of Raspberry Pucker we’ll never use for anything else. I may put pictures up after they’re done, but thought for once I’d try to post a holiday-appropriate recipe before the holiday in case any one else’s 4th of July might be enhanced by alcoholic gel-food.

Happy 4th of July to all who celebrate it. I wish you exactly as much grilled tube meat, sparkly exploding stuff, and patriotic kitsch as you desire (even if that’s none).Read more

CSA 2010: Needle Lane Farms

For the uninitiated, Community Supported Agriculture programs (CSAs) are like subscription plans for local food—usually vegetables, but in some regions, you can get CSAs for meat, seafood, dairy, frozen produce, or even prepared foods. Generally, you pay for the whole year or growing season before it begins and then every week, you pick up a pre-packed box that contains a selection of whatever’s in season. After an extraordinarily helpful consultation with Kim Bayer of The Farmer’s Marketer (which I highly recommended to anyone in the Ann Arbor area who’s interested in exploring their options for buying locally-produced food; for $25, she will distill her vast knowledge about the dizzying number of options and all their idiosyncrasies into an hour-long “matchmaking” session tailored to your wants and needs—it probably saved me 15+ hours of research), I decided to get a “single” share from Needle Lane Farms for the 2010 growing season.

The evidence about the environmental impact and health benefits of local, organic agriculture vs. industrial-scale conventional is mixed, so I’m not subscribing to a CSA because it’s morally or nutritionally superior. And I’m not convinced the stuff tastes better either—I’m still learning how to get all the grit out of the lettuce and acclimate myself to the occasional worms and bugs that are inevitable in unsprayed produce. My main motives are 1) to try things I can’t get from a normal grocery store and 2) to be forced to eat a lot of fresh vegetables while they’re in season, which improves my well-being whether or not the veggies are healthier than their conventional analogs. Kim recommended Needle Lane because they grow a lot of novel things, unlike farms that focus more on producing mostly familiar, popular crops. True to form, the first box of the season included the package of stinging nettles and handy warning/info sheet pictured above. 

Plant Bigotry

Nettles are often considered a “weed,” but that’s a troublesome term. Like “dirt,'” it refers less to any inherent properties of the object than to the context where it appears. If dirt is “matter out of place,” meaning what might be dirt in one context (sand in your clothes) is totally appropriate in another (sand on the beach), weeds are essentially plants out of place—e.g. grass may be the only thing many people want growing in their lawns, but when it shows up in their flower beds, it’s a weed, and often an especially tricky one to remove. But there are also things—like soil—that count as “dirt”  no matter where they are, and nettles are that kind of weed, along with plants like thistles and dandelions. Even when the New York Botanical Garden deliberately grew dandelions for their recent tribute to Emily Dickinson, NPR reported that they had to “keep the staff gardeners from uprooting the tiny yellow flowering weeds.”

It’s not an issue of the usefulness or prettiness of the plant—many “weeds” are edible and beautiful, like the flowering “invasive species” that park services staff and volunteers do battle with. And it can’t just be an issue of thorniness, because obviously: roses. The main thing that seems to make something inherently weedy rather than contingently weedy seems to be whether it’s cultivated. Not the specific plant—many people welcome volunteer plants in their yards or gardens as long as they’re a species someone cultivates somewhere, but if the plan qua plant—i.e. not a nettle, but Nettle—isn’t deliberately grown anywhere, it seems to be a “weed” even if you eat it or sell it just like a “crop.” Nettles have been harvested for human consumption for centuries, but as far as I can tell, it’s almost always foraged instead of farmed. People don’t plant it or encourage it, it just grows… well, “like a weed.”

According to an article in the Telegraph about last year’s Stinging Nettle Eating competition in Dorset, where people eat the leaves raw, even people who consider the plants edible tend think of them as an “infestation”:

The contest began more than 20 years ago when two customers at Marshwood's 16th century Bottle Inn argued over who had the worst infestation of stinging nettles. "One of them said, 'I'll eat any nettle of yours that's longer than mine"' said Rory Macleod, 34, the pub landlord. "And so they had a competition. They're both dead now.”

Making Them EdibleRead more

These crepes were the perfect example of how simple, humble elements can come together to make something way more impressive and tasty than the sum of its parts. The three elements, from top to bottom:

Thing 1: Cinnamon Apples

If you’ve been following for a while, you may remember the neglected apple crumble I made about a month ago, when I had so many mealy, wrinkled apples that after I’d peeled and diced them all, I realized I had more than I could possibly fit in my baking dish. I threw the extras (about a pound after coring and peeling) in a pot with a cinnamon stick, about a tablespoon of brown sugar, and about an inch of water and let them simmer while I prepped and baked the crumble. I had to add more water a few times—I think I’ve actually destroyed two pots by further neglecting already-neglected apples in my attempt to salvage them. (What did I say about my fruit-neglecting superpowers?) After 20 or 30 minutes, they were soft enough to mash with the back of a spoon.

But I didn’t mash them. The apples were too sweet and mild to make a very good applesauce, although I suspect it would have been better if I’d added some lemon juice like I did in the crumble. I'm not much of a plain applesauce eater anyway, and the more I read about the health effects of sugar vs. fat, the less likely I am to substitute applesauce for fat in baked goods (I’m not actually to the point of avoiding sugar or starch, I just don’t choose them over fat). Instead, I left them chunky with the vague notion that I might use them to fill or top a breakfast or brunch-type object.

Perhaps because the apples were so lackluster, or perhaps because apples always seem more delicious when there’s cheese involved, or perhaps because an episode of Chopped inspired me to try making my own cheese (proof positive that despite what Michael Pollan claims, cooking shows do actually teach people useful skills and demonstrate recipes and techniques they can and do recreate at home), I decided that what my apple crepes needed was fresh ricotta.

Thing 2: Fresh “Ricotta”

Most cheese is made from milk curdled with rennet, acids, salt, and/or heat and aged. Rennet is found in mammals’ stomachs and contains protease enzymes like chymosin, which helps them digest their mothers’ milk.

Ricotta, on the other hand, is traditionally made from whey, which is what you get when you strain the curds out of the milk. I always assumed that making true ricotta must be more difficult, because all the “homemade ricotta” recipes I’d seen call for milk instead, but according to Instructables, it’s an almost-identical process (if you don’t feel like clicking on each of the steps, they’re : 1. heat the whey to 200 F, 2. let it cool to <140 F, 3. strain through a coffee filter).

I imagine the real reason most homemade “ricotta” recipes call for milk, which makes them closer to a traditional paneer or queso fresco, is that most people don’t tend to have whey lying around—at least not before making “ricotta.” Also, what you get when you heat milk with acid and strain it is so similar to ricotta it works for basically all the same applications.

In February, Serious Eats tested most of the primary variables—temperature, acids, and straining time. For temperature, they concluded that heating the mixture to anywhere between 165-180 F works. For acids, they report that vinegar is the most reliable, buttermilk a little fussy, and lemon juice more citrusy. And unsurprisingly, the longer you strain it, the less moist it gets. I decided to go with lemon because “citrusy” sounded just right for my insufficiently-acidic apples and let it drain for nearly 30 minutes while I was making the crepes.

It was drier than it would have been if I’d scooped it out of the paper towel earlier, but still creamy and salty and a lovely foil for the cinnamon apples. Sweetened and flavored with a vanilla bean and/or some cardamom, it would have also made a nice base for a creamy dessert, perhaps topped with fruit. Of course, it would also work as a filling for pasta or lasagna or any of the other standard ricotta applications.

The whey that’s left over can be substituted for the water in a bread recipe, consumed as is—usually chilled and sometimes sweetened, or apparently, used to make more ricotta.

I’m curious enough about the differences between milk “ricotta” and whey ricotta that the next time I go to the store I’ll probably pick up a gallon and make a big batch of “ricotta” and use the leftover whey to make non-scare-quoted ricotta and report back.

The Cat in the Hat: Buckwheat Crepes

I thought crepes were supposed to be difficult. As it turns out, buckwheat crepes—which are confusingly sometimes called galettes, just like free-form tarts—are exceptionally easy (regular ones might be too, I haven’t tried them). Mine didn’t all turn out perfectly round, but the batter was really easy to spread around the pan with an off-set spatula, and basically no matter how thin or evenly I spread it, it cooked into tender, flavorful crepes that made a perfect vehicle for Thing 1 and Thing 2.

Also, since the batter isn’t sweet, they were equally delicious filled with a little sharp cheddar, soft-scrambled eggs, and chives. So that’s all there is to it. Some bad apples and curdled milk and transformed into a beautiful weekend brunch by some flimsy pancakes:

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