Straight from the Farm

Shame on me.  I should have told you about this recipe before the Easter holiday, not the day after, as it would have been the perfect springy side dish to accompany the ham and hyacinths.  I’m also a bit irked with myself to be giving you two rutabaga recipes back-to-back since I like to mix things up around here.  But, keeping with the reverberating theme of my spring so far this year, you go with what you have right now and worry about tomorrow when it gets here.  So, today we have a delicately flavored Herbed Rutabaga Couscous Salad.  And tomorrow? Perhaps an exotic ice cream… 

I’m sure I’m not alone.  I come home from work, open the fridge door, and blankly stare at its contents for a good five minutes with disinterest, knowing all the while that it’s up to me and my weary brain to yet again come up with something good for dinner.  Sometimes I do a belly flop and settle for a veggie burger (hey, at least I cook it in a pan and not in the microwave).  Other times, like last Wednesday evening, I am inspired and end up making an elegant swan dive from the fridge to the table.  Now, the challenge remains to be get what was a “little of this and a little of  that” invention into a repeatable recipe for you to try. 

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I’m pretty sure we’re all in the same boat here.  A boat, that is, which requires a person to steer, hoist the sails, scrub the deck, cook the chow, climb the crow’s nest, and maintain some semblance of order all at the same time!  And if I’m the only one in this boat, someone please send help! 

Thanks to this juggling act, I’ve had more than a few casualties in the kitchen.   By casualties, I mean two things.  First, there are the vegetable casualties that go rotten or dry out into unrecognizable lumps because I couldn’t get around to using them in time.  The first acorn squash I had earlier this fall met with such a fate, much to my dismay as I had a lovely soup in mind for it.  The other causalty is my nutrition.  Despite what this blog might lead you to believe, there are many evenings when I either eat nothing or eat way too much of the wrong thing because I’m just too pressed for time to make myself the correctly proportioned and balanced plate. 

Last night was shaping up to be a one-two punch.  My second acorn squash was about to head the way of the first. I had planned to stuff it with two of my favorite foods, Israeli couscous and soy bacon.  But I was late getting out of work and there were errands to run, not to mention the most bitterly cold headwind to slow me down on my bike ride home.  Tired and hungry, I just about threw in the towel by eating popcorn for dinner (it wouldn’t have been the first time, I assure you).  Still, I didn’t want to waste another gorgeous acorn squash and didn’t know if I’d be able to get another locally grown one if I did. 

Here’s where the light bulb would go off in the cartoon scene where Elmer Fudd thinks he’s finally got a way to outsmart Buggsy.  I’ve always baked my squash, which takes quite awhile.  Surely the microwave would cut down on that time, right?  Boy, does it!  Instead of an hour, the squash got zapped for just under five minutes and was ready to be stuffed and then baked off in the oven for a few minutes to bring all the flavors together.  Cooking the couscous took longer than the squash.  If you have some couscous cooked beforehand, this meal could be ready in about 20 minutes.  Rachel Ray would be so proud…

While shortcuts in the kitchen can sometimes compromise taste, I didn’t notice any difference at all in my microwaved acorn squash, perhaps because the couscous stuffing is so flavorful.  All I know for sure is that by the time I finished eating, I was happily stuffed myself and glad to have avoided two more kitchen casualties. 

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Here I am at 8:30 in the morning, drinking a double strength cup of tea and wondering what happened to Christmas. This year’s festive family time turned out to be a real comedy of errors that blurred the usual sleepy chats over the breakfast table and raucous dinner gatherings.  

Let’s recap — D got lost on back country roads for more than an hour, trying to find the turnoff for my parents’ house.  I ruined a batch of dulce de leche, to my great disappointment since I’d planned to use it as family gifts and shouldn’t have put making this second batch off until the last minute. Then there was the mysterious (and rather violent) stomach bug that took down first one and then later two more family members right when we were all ready to dig into the feast of holiday dishes.  Not to mention my mom couldn’t eat anything for reasons of her own.  On top of that, there was a broken furnace and a not so pleasant plumbing problem that required a hurried drive to get parts an hour away.  And on top of that, a car battery died and another car got sideswiped!  There was a funeral (old friend of the family) and a trip to the emergency room to boot.  As a result, some people left ahead of schedule while others got drastically delayed, and all of us felt a little turned on our heads.   Looking back on it now, it’s a tad bit humorous and certainly memorable.

I think I need a vacation from my vacation!!

One thing that did go right was my first attempt at using the sweet corn I’d dried back in September.  Hopefully you gave drying your own corn a shot since this dish met with rave reviews and shouldn’t be missed.  If you didn’t, there’s still hope.  I’ve recently learned that some specialty and bulk food stores do carry dried corn, although it can be a bit pricey. 

I was eager to serve this old-fashioned creamy corn at the Christmas table because both my grandmother and aunt would be there to offer their feedback.  It was my grandmother that instructed me on how to dry corn and provided some guidance as to how to then prepare this dish.  And it was my aunt who reportedly loved eating my grandmother’s dried corn casseroles as a kid.  Their stamps of approval were definitely to be sought.  

I have to admit I was at a bit of a loss on how to get started with this dish until I found a basic recipe through a link on Foodbuzz, which I then heavily adapted.  But that recipe really wasn’t much help when it came to deciding when the corn was “done”.  I had questions aplenty.  Should there be some liquid left?  Or should I cook it until everything was completely absorbed?   What texture was I aiming to get?  Soft like regular cooked corn?  Crunchy like dried?  Should I season it heavily with salt?  Or should it have more of a sweet flavor?  Does it need to be piping hot to be good?  Or can it sit around with all the other covered dishes until everyone’s ready to eat? 

You get the idea.

 

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This past Saturday and Sunday were whirlwind days, not that my weekends aren’t usually pretty jammed packed.  The “jam” more routinely consists of doing work for the farm and cooking for the blog, along with the occasional friendly (though ego-stoked) poker game with the farm gang.  In all of those cases, there’s undoubtedly an abundance of food on hand, if you can categorize carrots pulled out of the ground, brushed off and chomped on right then and there as “food” (in my book it counts).  

With a close friend’s wedding and the company holiday party to attend, not to mention a meeting with the realtor and several other errands to run, I was only home for a few hours between Friday and Sunday nights.  It was thanks to these dire circumstances (perhaps it wasn’t all that bad) that I stumbled upon what might be my favorite sandwich combination to date. 

I’ve had a love/hate affair with sandwiches over the past few years.  I wasn’t so fond of them as a kid.  My mom was a great cook and rarely fell back on sandwiches except for fast lunches in the busy summer season or when we had to scurry out of the diary barn in the evening to take lick-itty split showers and eat on the drive to some school function.  I guess because sandwiches were always just purely functional and never an “art” during my rearing, they only consisted of two thin slices of white bread, a piece of highly processed lunchmeat and another of plain American cheese (or maybe Swiss on a good day).  

Even though I was in a hurry, I took time to snap a pretty picture
just for you guys before grabbing this and running out the door. 

Fast forward to my first wide-eyed (I kid you not) country mouse in the big city encounter with an eggplant parmesan sandwich at Mama Palma’s.  I was smitten.  My love of sandwiches thrived for a few years until sometime last winter.  I did a silly thing.  I wanted to beat the after-holidays bulge and decided I’d do so by eating nothing but two veggie burgers on whole wheat toast with mustard every day (plus yogurt and granola for breakfast).  After nearly two months of this routine, I could hardly look another veggie burger in the face without an involuntary turn of my stomach.  Blech.  I’ve had very few sandwiches since.

All of this brings us to this past weekend.  I was starving.  S-T-A-R-V-I-N-G!  I was also on the run.  I eyed the contents of my fridge and the loaf of fresh local baguette that I’d just gotten from my quick visit to the Headhouse Market (sadly much diminished from the farm’s last day there a few weeks ago).  A sandwich it would be, made with the sharp local cheddar from HillAcres Pride, a few slices of soy bacon, and a very generous slather of the pear butter I’d put up with my gal pals earlier this fall. 

Oh my.  Goodness me.  I think I might be back on the sandwich bandwagon.   It’s not groundbreaking, this sandwich making.  But it is a reminder that even in these dark cold days, delicious fresh local eating can still be had, even if it is on the go. 

Here we are at the end of the autumn season (in my book, winter officially starts December 1st).   In case you weren’t around back at the start of the autumn season, I’d like to revisit the value of roasting vegetables in the grander scheme of a recipe.  Yes, roasting is more time consuming than the boiling usually called for in recipes such as the one for this tasty mash.  But it intensifies the natural flavors of the vegetables and also infuses them with the flavors of whatever herbs and seasonings you may be using.  In this case, instead of just watered down sweet potato and cauliflower flavors, you get sweeter notes from the roasted potatoes, caramelized hints from the roasted garlic, and a much more robust whiff of mellowed garlic and delicate marjoram. 

Gosh, I shouldn’t write these things over my lunch hour.  I’m wishing I hadn’t eaten all of this mash for dinner last night so right about now I’d have had some for leftovers.

The best thing about this dish was that besides the roasting, which you can walk away from to go take a shower or clean the cats’ litter box or finally root through your crisper drawer and toss out the stuff that’s gotten shriveled, it was fast and left only one dirty bowl in the sink.

Wait.  I lied.  The very best thing about this dish is how “good for you” it is.  You’ve got the beta carotene of the sweet potatoes, which is your starch for the meal.  You’ve got the vitamin C of the cauliflower, which is your veggie for the meal.  And since these two ingredients were roasted, there was no water to leech away the majority of these vitamins.  Then you’ve got your bacon for protein and the sour cream for calcium/dairy.  If you use the soy bacon and the fat free sour cream I suggest, the fat content is minimal and only the healthy kind to boot. 

Wait.  Sorry, I lied again.  The very very best thing about this dish is how it tastes and looks!  You would never guess this is one of the healthiest dishes I’ve put up on the blog (and there are a bunch to compete for that title). You’ll be charmed by how colorful and aromatic it is. 

And that’s no lie!

ROASTED SWEET POTATO AND CAULIFLOWER MASH
Adapted from Food Cures: Treat Common Health Concerns, Look Younger & Live Longer

1 large sweet potato, peeled and cubed
1/2 a head of cauliflower, cut into florets
2 T. extra virgin olive oil
3 cloves of garlic, minced
pinch of freshly grated nutmeg
1/2 t. dried marjoram
salt and freshly grated black pepper
1/2 c. vegetable broth, heated
3 T. fat-free sour cream
8 strips of soy or regular bacon, cooked and crumbled
1 scallion, thinly sliced into rounds

Pre-heat oven to 350 F and line a baking sheet with foil.  Place potato cubes and cauliflower florets on baking sheet and drizzle with oil.  Toss to coat and sprinkle with garlic, nutmeg, marjoram, salt and pepper.  Toss again, cover with foil and bake in oven for 20-30 minutes until vegetables are soft.  Remove foil and roast for another 3-5 minutes to allow vegetables to brown just a bit.

When vegetables are done roasting, place in a medium bowl and mash with a fork or potato masher.  Stir in heated vegetable broth and mash vegetables some more.  Stir in sour cream and taste.  Adjust seasoning as needed.  Fold in bacon crumbles.  Top with scallion and serve immediately.

(serves 2)