Starry Wisdom

This weekend my CSA, Eatwell Farm, had a tomato sauce party. They invited members over to the farm (in Dixon, CA) to make and can tomato sauce from tomatoes that were too ripe to send down the road to SF, and to camp out. Mackenzie and I had been to the farm in May for Strawberry picking, but we had never spent the night before (this was the second campout of the year, the first, a garlic party, was on her birthday weekend), so we didn’t know exactly what to expect. Still, it seemed like fun, so I signed us up for it.

Armed with pots, pans, knives, and a borrowed propane stove, we drove out to the farm, arriving fashionably late. Some people, who got there when the event began at 11am, were nearly finished for the day by the time we showed up at 2PM! No matter, it was a race and not a sprint for us, as we were spending the night. We cooked up an initial sauce, which ended up only filling one of my jars, but when that couldn’t fill up all of the canning jars I brought, we used the leftover to create the starting point of a second sauce. We ended up having to make a third, smaller batch, to eat with dinner that night. It was certainly a learning experience as I only ever made sauce from fresh tomatoes once before, when I roasted the heck out of some romas and then ground them in a Moulinex (note to self, bring that next time!).

After we finished up the sauce and got in line for canning (they had several pressure canners set up, but as some people made entire flats of mason jars of sauce, there was quite a wait to actually get on the stove, we ate some pasta and sauce for dinner. Bread would have been nice, as you use the same ingredients to make buschetta as tomato sauce, and there was bountiful garlic, tomatoes and basil. And after dinner we were given a tour of their amazing earthen roofed farmhouse, which is under construction. We even got to climb to the top of the roof!

After the tour, when we were packing the cooking utensils back in the car, a woman came up to us and asked if we lived on Lily St, which happens to be the street I live on. I said I did, and looked at her quizzically, and she told us that she too lives on Lily. She had noticed us packing the car this morning (and I guess I sort of noticed them too, but didn’t make a big memory of it) and Mackenzie’s neon sneakers keyed her in to the fact that we were the same people. So strangely, I drove 100 miles and managed to meet some neighbors! And even crazier, my jars and theirs were combined into one batch for the pressure canner through somewhat random chance!

After a remarkably good nights sleep for lying on the ground, we were treated to a breakfast of the best flour tortillas I’ve ever eaten, and the farm’s delicious, FRESH, eggs from their pastured chickens. These eggs are super delicious, and I highly recommend them (they have them at Rainbow sometimes, for the SF locals). When breakfast was over we went on a farm tour, and were given free reign to pick strawberries, eggplants and zucchini blossom from some over abundant (or soon to be shredded for chicken feed) fields. We snagged some strawberries and eggplants, and head out to Davis to see Mackenzie’s Sister and her family for lunch.

All in all it was a pretty great adventure, and I didn’t even mention the kitchen cart trial that was the reason that we showed up late until the end.

While in the process of moving, and while I had no reliable internet at home, I used my shell at dreamhost, which you know, I pay for, to use IRC. Evidently they are of the belief that only hackers use IRC, so they disabled my web sites thinking they were hacked, and because I had old installs of wordpress around (not active, not reachable via web…).

Anyway, I tarred up the old stuff to make it even less intrusive, updated my gallery to the current version (which really was a ‘problem’ on my end, I guess), and set it back up. So welcome back to me!

A fruit tart has 4 basic parts:

1) Crust
2) Custard
3) Fruit
4) Glaze

My girlfriend Mackenzie recently made a fantastic, no, *#$%ing awesome fruit tart, using a mixture of various recipes for 3 of the 4 parts above. The fruit, of course, was baked by nature.

The impetus for this was a birthday dinner for a friend of ours, and Mackenzie volunteered to bring a dessert. The original plan was a chocolate based dessert on a graham cracker crust that she had made previously, but research showed that our friend preferred fruit based desserts. This, coupled with a fantastic recipe for a coconut pudding that we found to use up the rest of a can of coconut milk that we used in a curry recipe, lead to the recipe transcribed below.

For the Crust:

From Giada De Laurentis

1. Preheat oven to 350° F.
2. Butter the bottom and sides of a 9 inch springform or tart pan
3. Place the graham crackers and coconut in the bowl of a food processor. Process until the mixture forms fine crumbs, 15 to 20 seconds. Add the butter and pulse until incorporated. Press the crumb mixture into the bottom of the prepared pan.
4. Bake for 12 minutes. Cool to room temperature, about 20 minutes

For the Custard:

From America’s Test Kitchen Cooking for Two 2010

Note – this can refrigerated in an air tight container for up to 2 days.

1. Whisk the sugar, cornstarch and salt together in a small saucepan. Slowly whisk in the coconut milk and then the egg.
2. Bring the mixture to a simmer over medium-high heat, whisking gently but constantly and scraping the bottom and sides of the pan. Reduce the heat to medium and continue to cook, stirring constantly, until the pudding is thick and coats the back of a spoon – 1 or 2 minutes longer.
3. Strain the pudding through a fine mesh strainer into a bowl, scraping the inside of the strainer with a rubber spatula to pass the pudding through. Serve warm or cover with plastic wrap, pressing the wrap onto the surface of the pudding, and refrigerate until cool, about 3 hours. Stir genly before serving.

For the Fruit:

The fruit is kiwi, raspberries, peaches, strawberries and blueberries. You’re going to have to estimate this yourself, there are no exact measurements. This image will serve as a template, however:

For the Glaze:

The glaze is a tricky bit. I will detail here the glaze that Mackenzie actually used, but I will also provide a recipe for one that we feel might be more appropriate as it would have a thinner consistency and be easier to apply.

The glaze used, from cooks.com:

1. In a heavy saucepan, boil down the syrup until thick. Let cool for 5 mins so it is warm, but not hot to the touch.

Alternate recipe from joyofbaking.com:

1. Heat the apricot jam or preserves and water (if using) in a small saucepan over medium heat until liquid (melted).
2. Remove from heat and strain the jam through a fine strainer to remove any fruit lumps. (If using, add the liqueur at this point.)
3. Let cool until it is only slightly warm.

To assemble the tart:

1. Prepare the crust and custard detailed above. Wash and slice the fruit as appropriate. Make the glaze as detailed above.
2. Spread the custard on the crust in an even layer.
3. Lay out the fruit as desired on top of the custard.
4. If using the first glaze recipe: spoon over tart, being careful not to create deep wells of glaze. Do not try to brush or spread as it will be quite sticky and will disrupt the fruit. The glaze can also be used to glue some fruit pieces (such as the peaches) down.
5. If using the alternate glaze recipe: gently brush the glaze onto the fruit with a pastry brush.
6. Refrigerate until well chilled

I’ve been meaning to post for a couple of weeks about strawberries. Really, I have. But I’ve been too busy (more on that in a later date), and also, I had to go on my first work trip in over 7 years this past weekend, on something like 7 hours notice.

The nice part about the trip was that it was to Chicago, so I was able to see some family and friends. This, of course, included my nephew Milo, who is super great, and I can’t wait to see again next month for his first birthday!

And, even though I had to extend my stay by an extra night, I was able to accomplish what we needed to accomplish on the customer visit.

I hope to have the time to post something more interesting (well, at least less useless, but probably also less cute) soon, as I have a couple of things backlogged.

Yesterday I went on a picnic excursion to the Marin Headlands (which is just north of the Golden Gate Bridge) with Mackenzie. We ate on Rodeo beach, which was a nice little beach, and afterwards while using the facilities, I read about the coastal defense batteries in the area, and saw that there were a couple you could drive to nearby, so we went that way.

I had known something about the Golden Gate coastal defense batteries from various sources, and I had seen some of the remnants on the San Francisco side which I guess are part of Fort Winfield Scott – which is the famous Fort Point from Vertigo, but I didn’t really know much about what was in place on the other side of the Golden Gate.

It turns out that there are too main forts, Fort Cronkhite, which is hard to spell, and Fort Barry. Fort Cronkhite is behind Rodeo Beach and required a bit of a hike, which we weren’t in a mood for, to visit it’s main battery. Fort Barry, on the other hand, is easy to do some park and walk site-seeing, and has some really cool things. One of which is a Nike launch site SF-88L, which is restored as a ‘museum’ but was not open (and evidently barely is). I should have probably had us pull over and taken some picture, but alas.

The two man things we looked at were Battery Mendell, which is a pre World War I battery which housed disappearing guns. Evidently this was awesome for defense against ships, but pretty weak against air power. You can scramble all over the gun emplacements, which is pretty neat.

Here is the whole thing, which I shot from Battery Wallace, on another ridge:

Battery Wallace seems to have originally been a similar sort of battery to Mendell, but was casemated to protect against air attack in 1942:

You can see the gist of what this in this photo shot from Battery Mendell:

And here you can see it up close (probably too upclose):

I only had my point and shoot with me, as I wasn’t expecting to be doing much site seeing of note, but here is a link to the related flickr gallery.

Fava beans are pretty silly. Did you know that?

To prepare them, first you get the pale green beans out of the big fuzzy pods – you get relatively few from a big bunch of pods:

So you look at that and think “well, maybe that’s not so bad. But it turns out that those pale green beans are really tasty bright green beans in a pretty much inedible pale shell. And to get them out you need to boil the beans for about 5 minutes, then cool them in cold water, and then peal them. And next you get an even smaller amount of food:

Well, now you can start making your recipe. Here is one I like a lot:

Fava Bean Spread
(From Vegetables Everyday by Jack Bishop)

• 1 lb of fava beans, unshelled
• 1 small spring onion, minced
• 1/8 cup olive oil
• 1/8 cup water

1) Prepare the beans as secribed above
2) Heat a skillet over medium heat. Add the oil and saute the onion until browned, about 5 minutes
3) Add the beans and salt to taste. Toss the beans to coat with oil. Add water, and simmer uncovered for 3-5 minutes until the beans are tender.
4) Add the cooked mixture to a food processor and pulse until it forms a coarse paste, adding additional olive oil as needed

Spread over bread or crostini.

Friday night I had originally planned to go to a happy hour, but the general crappy weather made me decide to stay in. I tried my hand at making salted caramels, but I screwed it up, and they never set properly. Part of the problem was that I couldn’t get the sugar syrup hot enough without burning it using my crappy pan. I need a new sauce pan! I ended up with a decent tasting, very thick, caramel sauce, that would have been good on ice cream, but instead most of it went in the trash. I shall try again.

Saturday I spent the morning doing my Spanish homework at one of my favorite cafes, and I got home just in time to see the new Doctor Who. Yes, I know it’s not BBC America for another two weeks, but trust me, I watched, it and it was good.

Steven Moffat was always my favorite writer of the resurrected series, and this episode was as good as one could hope for. Of course it remains to be seen how the rest of the season pans out, particularly the episodes that he didn’t write, but I feel like the show is in good hands. And to quote my friend Steve – “Who would have thought 10 years ago that the Coupling guy would become god’s gift to doctor who after taking over from the Queer as Folk dude?” Indeed, indeed.

Sunday’s awesomeness started out with Brunch at Home, which features a ‘create your own Bloody Mary” bar. Good stuff. And from there it continued to me watching the 10th Annual Bring Your Own Big Wheel event, which conveniently took place about a block from my apartment. It was raining quite viscously, so I have to commend the crazies who risked life and limb going down the tight curves down steep Vermont St. Click though the image below for my entire gallery.

White socks are boring, but if you wear sneakers 90% of the time, it’s a good bet you’ll be wearing a lot of white socks. I wear sneakers at least 90% of the time, so most of my socks are white. And, over the past 3-4 years, my ‘collection’ migrated from calf length to ankle length. This was all well and fine until my left ankle decided it had taken enough abuse over the years and it started hurting me pretty much all the time.

My primary care doctor was baffled by my ankle, since I could support weight on it, hop on it, do whatever I wanted, it just hurt. So he sent me to get an Xray and to see a specialist, who told me that the tendons were inflamed, and that I should wear a brace for 6 weeks. I did this, and my ankle was feeling much better, but he said that really, I should get an MRI to see what’s really going on. The MRI showed a ‘loose body’ near the joint, as well as some damage to the ligament, and these were the primary problems – the inflamed tendons were a side effect of this other damage – and these problems are most likely a side effect of me breaking that ankle when I was 14.

The upshot to all of this is that since the end of January I’ve been wearing the ankle brace pretty much all of the time. The brace is fairly comfortable, that’s not a big deal, but you really need to wear a calf length sock with it. Luckily I still had a few of those left over from the old days (as well as my fancier and heavier hiking socks), so I could get by, but socks became my laundry limiter, instead of underwear, and since I don’t have laundry facilities in my building, doing laundry is sort of a pain in the ass. While the brace was going to be a short term solution, I figured I would just deal with it…

However now that I know what the real problem is, and that it requires surgery to fix (thankfully pretty routine surgery), and that I don’t want to be hobbling around in the summer, I am going to need to wear the brace for quite a while longer. I’m planning on surgery in November (so as to be after my birthday – I guess I can see if I can do very late october too), which is 6 more months of brace wearing prior to surgery, and then there will be months of wearing afterwards.

All of this is a long way of saying that I bought 20 pairs of calf length crew socks at target the other day, and my ankle length socks are going to be taken out of the drawer and put into a box under my bed for the time being. Also, congratulations if you read this far!

Yesterday I tried my hands at hot wings. This was in preparation for an event later this month where I intend to bring some of the wings, but I figured I should try them out myself first! I based the recipe on the one from Good Eats, but I changed the sauce a bit to use Sriracha as the heat component. I did this mostly because I like the taste, but it had the added bonus of creating a sauce that was thicker than the standard buffalo sauce and therefore more of it adhered to the wings.

Sriracha Hot Wings:

12 entire chicken wings
3 ounces (6 tbsp) unsalted butter
2 cloves garlic, finely minced
~1/4 cup Sriracha – more or less depending on how spicy and/or thick you want the sauce to be

1) Cut the tips off the wings, and then seperate into and drumettes and wingettes.
2) Heat 1 inch of water to a boil in a large pot. Spread the wings out in a steamer basket (or make the multi stacked one Alton Brown made in the episode “The Wing and I”. Place the basket into the pot, cover and let steam for 10 minutes. This step renders out a lot of the fat.
3) Pat the wings dry, carefully, with paper towel, and spread out on a cooling rack on top of a paper towel lines half sheet pan. Place the wings into the refrigerator for not less than one hour and up to 24 hours.
4) Preheat the oven to 425 degrees F. Replace the paper towel lining with parchment paper, and roast the wings for 20 minutes. Flip the wings over and roast 20 minutes more.
5) Melt the butter in the microwave along with the garlic. Put the melted butter and garlic mixture into a large bowl and then stir in the Sriracha.
6) Immediately after taking them from the oven, place the wings in the bowl and toss to coat. Serve warm.

That’s it, simple as can be. I will admit that I did a partial recipe for the test run, but it’s pretty easy to scale the sauce as you see fit for the amount of wings you are serving.

After a fairly long hiatus, I’ve rejoined the CSA (well, I’m splitting it with Mackenzie – and we’ve changed the pickup to the place near her apartment since it has much better hours than the one 2 blocks from me – but which is inaccessible to someone who works normal business hours). I’ve been eating a lot more vegetables since rejoining, which is good, and I’ve also been cooking a bit more.

It being winter, turnips are in season, so we’ve been getting them in every box. Until recently they were small salad turnips, which are nice because you can eat them raw OR cooked, but those are now grown up to bigger cooking turnips. But this begs the question – how do you cook a turnip? I’d like to provide a simple, delicious recipe:

Maple Braised Turnips
Serves 2-4 as a side dish
(Adapted from Vegetables Everyday by Jack Bishop)

note: the original recipe was half carrots and half turnips – feel free to substitute carrots back in, or replace the turnips with them completely – however the carrots do not need to be browned before the simmering)

1/2 tablespoon unsalted butter
3/4 lb turnips peeled and cut into 3/4 inch cubes
1/3 cup chicken or vegetable stock
1 tablespoon maple syrup
Salt
Freshly ground pepper

1. Melt the butter in a large saute pan. Add the turnips and cook, turning occasionally until lightly browned (about 8 minutes).
2. Add the carrots, stock, maple syrup, and salt and pepper to taste. Cover the pan, reduce the heat, and simmer until soft, about 20 minutes
3. Remove the cover, raise the heat to high, and cook until the liquid in the pan reduces to a thick glaze, about 2 minutes.

I thought I had a picture of this, but alas, my camera says NO.