Calling All Locavores

Please share with us your highlights of local, seasonal food in 2008--the products, producers, farmers' markets and CSAs; ways of growing, preparing, or preserving food; chefs and restaurants, cookbooks, and the like. You can leave your remarks in the "Comments" section below, or email me at brettlaidlaw@eckmeier.com , and I'll put your comments in digest form. Let me know if it's okay to use your name, and tell me where you're from. Doesn't matter where you're from, by the way. We're eager to hear from local, seasonal food fanatics from across the country and around the world.

I'll be putting together my list, which will probably take a few installments to do it justice. One of my favorite cookbooks of the year is shown above, Beyond Nose to Tail, by Fergus Henderson , who runs the acclaimed St John restaurant in London. The book is a treat to page through, beautifully designed and illustrated with wonderful photographs. The recipes are straightforward, allowing plenty of leeway for individual expression in their realization.

And though Henderson is famous for putting all parts of the pig into play in the kitchen, this book goes, well, beyond the trotters and snouts and ears and tails, beyond the abattoir entirely. In fact, of the three recipes I've prepared from it so far, two have been vegetarian--Welsh rarebit, a dish I've always wanted to try, and a salad of shredded raw beets, red cabbage, and red onions with creme fraiche. I'll post a fuller book report in future.

Meantime, please do tell us about your favorite local food experiences of 2008. We wish you many more, and all the best, in the year to come.

p.s.~In the upper left corner of the photo is one of my favorite breakfasts of the year, a remnant of Mary's Breton butter cake, kouign amann, made with our best local butter from the Hope Creamery in Hope, Minnesota.


Text and photos copyright 2008 by Brett Laidlaw

We Have a Bowl of Kale Called "Sideshow Bob"...

...and a bucket of leeks we think of as...well, I imagine you can guess. To me, the resemblance to another distinctively coifed TV show character is uncanny.

I was embarrassed to admit, in a previous post, that our "root cellar" actually consisted of various boxes, baskets, and bins haphazardly strewn around our basement. But now I'm happy to report that I've since revved up my resolve, charged into the vegetable chaos, and put things in order.

We have a great spot for a root cellar, a closet space that opens into a half crawl space, half dirt-floored cellar area that we call "the dungeon." I had originally thought to put the storage shelf right in the dungeon, but it was way too scary in there--dank, cobwebby. I settled for the adjacent closet, where the temperature hovers around 50 degrees.

That should be fine for the potatoes, onions, garlic, and squash. I should have bought more onions, I realize. There's no way we're getting through the winter on what we have.

The other part of the root cellaring operation is the second fridge we have in the basement. We got it to hold extra baking supplies--case of butter, a few dozen eggs, extra bottles of buttermilk, etc. For the late fall and winter it's where we keep carrots, parsnips, apples, cabbage, 'kraut. (That's a jar of fermented baby eggplants in the gallon jar, back right; a very spur-of-the-moment attempt to save some produce that was a couple days away from the compost pile. I haven't gotten up the nerve to try them yet.)

To extend the harvest here in the frozen north, we've used root cellaring, freezing, drying, fermenting, pickling, and cold frames. One method we had not considered was hydroponic gardening, but we seem to have stumbled into that this year.

The "Sideshow Bob" kale pictured above is the tops of several lacinato kale plants we had in our community garden plot. They'd been sitting in plastic bags in the cool garage, and when I pulled them out they were looking a bit wilted. I put them in water in the big stainless bowl, and they perked right up.

That was some weeks ago. They stayed right perky in their bowl by the kitchen sink, and we've just been pulling off a few leaves as we need them. When I was changing the water in the bowl one day, I noticed that those snapped-off kale tops were actually starting to take root, and new growth was sprouting from the center.

This is not a great picture, but I think you can see the tiny white roots at the bottom, and the new, light green leaves. I suppose I could try potting them, see if I can get them through the winter.

That's where we stand for local produce as we approach the winter solstice, 2008. January, February, and March are the toughest months for keeping local, of course. Your resources become pretty limited, but that can lead to some really creative cooking. You'll see the results right here.

p.s.~ All you Simpsons-heads out there saw the resemblance immediately, I'm sure. For the rest of you, here he is, in all his diabolical glory, Mr Robert Underdunk Terwilliger, aka, "Sideshow Bob":

Text and photos copyright 2008 by Brett Laidlaw; Sideshow Bob image copyright Fox Broadcasting Company

Bide-A-Wee Hot Pot

When the cold weather arrives and the dark comes down early, there's lots of time for cooking, and much pleasure to be taken from an evening spent in a warm kitchen. But often the simplest preparations are best, and such is the case with this sausage hot pot, which we simmered up this past weekend at our tiny Wisconsin cabin, which, in that precious manner of city folks affecting rustic ways, we have dubbed "Bide-A-Wee."

Thanks to the growers who attended our Thanksgiving market, we were able to top off the "root cellar" (really, we just have stuff sort of strewn all around the basement, and heaped up in the crisper drawers or wherever else things will fit). The leeks in this dish came from our garden; everything else was from the market.

I do like a nice bit of sausage, but you could substitute chicken for the sausage if you prefer, and cooking times will be about the same, a few minutes longer, perhaps. If I were making it with chicken, I would likely use skinless thighs, on the bone. That would give you a quick version of the classic poule au pot. Other meats would be a bit trickier in this abbreviated hot pot--a piece of beef sirloin or flank steak, or a slice of lamb leg could work, but you'd want to simmer that till just medium rare--or be prepared to cook it much longer, to get it tender again. That beef version sounds really good; I'm going to try that next time.

A vegetarian version, obviously, is an option, too. The heart of it really is the vegetables, and you could put anything you like in this dish, adjusting the cooking times as needed. Everything should be well cooked, but not mushy. Turnips, kale, kohlrabi or rutabagas, sweet potatoes, mushrooms fresh or dried, precooked dried beans--this really is adaptable to anything you have on hand.

We had lots of leftovers from this, which provided another dinner for us, back in Saint Paul. We added the classic pot-au-feu garnishes of a garlic-mustard vinaigrette and some chopped cornichons (those little sour pickles), and it really didn't seem like leftovers, at all.

Bide-A-Wee Sausage Hot Pot

serves two, with leftovers

(Our sausage was a Polish krakowska from Kramarczuk's deli, an institution in northeast Minneapolis; the hot pot cooked at a perfect simmer atop our new Four Dog woodstove, handcrafted by Don Kevilus in Saint Francis, MN.)

2 cups chicken stock

2 cups water

2 small parsnips

2 small carrots

2 small leeks

1/2 a large onion

3 cloves garlic, peeled

4 to 6 small new potatoes

2 wedges cabbage, about 1 1/2 inches at the wide end

1 pound smoked sausage--Polish, keilbasa, smoked brats

salt and pepper

grain mustard

Clean up all the vegetables; peel the parsnips and carrots, if you like. Leave the potatoes in their skin. In a large pot bring the water and stock up to a simmer. Add the parsnips, carrots, leeks, onion, and garlic, and a good pinch of salt. Simmer gently, partly covered, for 15 minutes. Add the cabbage, potatoes, and sausage (sometimes I brown the sausage first in a skillet with a little oil; nice but not necessary). Simmer for 20 minutes. Check the vegetables for doneness. Continue cooking until everything is tender; if anything is getting overdone, you can take it out and just put it back for a couple of minutes at the end to re-warm. Taste for salt and add a few grinds of fresh pepper.

Serve with grain mustard, crusty bread, a glass of red wine or good beer.

Text and photos copyright 2008 by Brett Laidlaw

Very Fine Fowl

This is the bird that changed my mind about turkey. It's an 11 1/2 pound Bourbon Red "heritage breed" from Hilltop Pastures Family Farm. That's Tom and Sara Austin, who brought turkeys and other grass-fed meats to our Thanksgiving market.

I had just about given up on the traditional Thanksgiving bird after too many anxiety-inducing turkey day experiences. There was the year we tried to grill-smoke the bird and, following a friend's stern admonitions not to even think about lifting the lid for an hour, went inside for a glass of wine. When we came back expecting to see good progress on creating a bronzed and smoky bird, we found the grill and turkey stone cold, the skin glazed with a gray film. I had forgotten to open the vents to keep a low fire going. As we stood there grimly contemplating the frigid, sooty fowl, a chunk of ice broke off from the dormer downspout, bounced off the deck overhang and hit me smack in the forehead. Ouch, I said. That's going to leave a mark. Or words to that effect.

I tried brining one year, the method du jour among turkey gurus. It did create a juicy bird--juicy with salty tap water. When I sliced the breast I was appalled by the saline flood that poured forth. Meat is not supposed to look like that. And, that salty liquid ruined the drippings for gravy, the best part of the Thanksgiving meal (well, next to the stuffing!).

And who doesn't feel a general fatigue with the annual barrage of tortured strategies to keep the breast from drying out until the legs are done, the perennial kitchen song-and-dance of Is it done yet? Is it overdone? Are those juices clear? Or are they pink? Will it be delicious? Or will we die?

But, while I don't really relish the idea of turkey dinner, others in the family do; and I like a challenge, and did relish the chance to try a pasture-raised heritage breed (that's sort of like heirloom vegetables--less standardized, old-time varieties that have been gradually phased out by commercial operations, which are now being rediscovered by small-scale producers).

Long story short, that Bourbon Red was wonderful. Seasoned with only salt and pepper, a few herbs and aromatics stuffed into the cavity (thyme, sage, celery leaves; leek, onion, carrot and garlic), it went in a 350 oven for about a half hour; it was getting nicely brown by then so I turned it down to 325 for another 45 minutes. I basted it just a couple of times with some butter melted into chicken stock. It really did cook in just an hour and fifteen minutes, and because we expected it to take considerably longer, it sat around for quite a while before we ate. Just before serving I separated the legs and breast (on the bone) from the carcass and put them in a low oven to warm a bit.

Even with that not very gentle treatment, it was great. The white meat (of which there was plenty, contrary to what some people think about heritage birds) was dense and moist and...turkey-flavored; except much more flavorful than a grocery store bird. The dark meat, off the big, meaty thighs, was something else again. Like the breast meat, it was denser and moister than is typical, with a wonderful slight gaminess that made me think of duck breast, or venison. Truly delicious, and revelatory.

I can't really say how much of that bird's qualities were the breed, and how much was due to the pasture-raising. As with all great local foods, the specifics are all-important. It's about the terroir, the place-specific taste of a thing, as well as about the skill and care of the people who produce it. Tom and Sara also brought traditional broad-breasted white turkeys to the market, and I've heard that those were unusually flavorful birds, too.

The movement in local-seasonal-sustainable foods is toward pasture-raised animals. The Austins are fans of Shannon Hayes , the author of several well received books, including The Grassfed Gourmet. Her pastured turkey cooking tips are well worth consulting next time you plan to prepare a large fowl--or just want a good laugh.

To find producers of grass-fed meats in your area, try your local farmers' market, or consult Slow Food USA's website to find a chapter near you. Here's another resource that the Austins link on their website: EatWild .


Text and photos copyright 2008 by Brett Laidlaw

Thanks

The sun shone on our Lake Street parking lot for the Midtown Thanksgiving market, yesterday afternoon. Ever cheerful Julie doled out squashes and smiles, and from three o'clock until after dark at five-thirty there was a line for the turkeys that Tom and Sara brought up from their Hilltop Pastures Family Farm . We brought home one of their Bourbon Reds which, while I have to admit I'm not the world's biggest turkey fan, I'm looking forward to trying. I will report back (though I still don't see why steaks and shrimp are any less American than over-sized poultry...).


Jerry had lots of pickles and home-canned goods for the turkey day relish tray and sides. Sylvia, just behind him, was popular with her crocheted hats, for it was a cool sunshine. Denny Havlicek, below, was showing me his back-up heating system--a snowmobile suit.


The Vangs came with beets, parsnips, carrots, potatoes, beautiful red cabbages. I feel the need to stress this point: This is a farmers' market in Minnesota, folks, outdoors, at the end of November, and we were shopping for fresh vegetables!



We're thankful for that, and for all our market colleagues; for Laura and Alicia, our market staff who did such a great job putting it together and promoting it. Thanks to Naomi for bringing us Tom and Sara and their birds, for what's a Thanksgiving market without turkeys? And to Tom and Sara, of course; they worked really hard to make their first visit to Midtown a success, and we hope they'll be back.


Another market debut: our friend Fred and letterpress greeting cards from Vandalia Street Press . (That's Fred in a hat Mary knitted; Mary's in the background there, in a sweater and scarf she also made, watching over a dwindling supply of Real Bread.)




Thanks to everyone who came out and made it such a great day, and to everyone who embraces the joys of local, seasonal food, in every season. That's it for the Midtown Farmers' Market for this year.




See you at the market, come spring~

Brett & Mary

p.s.~ Mala, thanks for the coffee and the boozy cherries; but the booze is all gone--can I get a refill...?

Text and photos copyright 2008 by Brett Laidlaw

A Baker's Stuffing

This is what our breadboard often looks like. It's kind of gross, I know. Sorry. There's a piece of our cornmeal bread, some currant-stout, honey whole grain, even some brioche that I pulled out of the freezer. Much of it was well past sandwich quality, or even toast. But with a little help from the garden, market, and larder...

...all that dead bread can be transformed into something rather edible:

We served this with a piece of lamb leg pan-roasted over carrots and leeks. It was a trial run for turkey day. It hardly matters how dry the bread is. As long as you can still cut it up, it will be fine (we had a piece of French batard that was well beyond saving--absolutely petrified). Use good bread in your stuffing, dressing, whatever you like to call it. It makes all the difference in the world. Only problem is, stuffing this good might upstage the bird.

Simple Bread Stuffing with Bacon and Root Vegetables

serves four to six

12 ounces dry bread, in 3/4-inch cubes, 7 or 8 cups (an assortment adds interest)

3 1/2 ounces thick-cut bacon--2 or 3 slices--diced

half a small celery root, in 1/4-inch dice (use some of the green stalks, too--mince these--and some chopped leaves if they're not too bitter)

2 small carrots, in 1/4-inch dice

1 small leek, chopped

1/2 a medium onion, chopped

2 large cloves garlic, chopped

1 Tbsp each fresh chopped thyme and sage

salt and pepper

1 cup chicken stock

1 Tbsp butter

1/4 tsp piment d'espelette or hot paprika, or 1/8 tsp cayenne pepper

Preheat your oven to 375. In a large skillet slowly cook the bacon over medium heat until most of the fat has rendered and the bacon is lightly brown. Remove the bacon from the pan. Leave one tablespoon of bacon fat in the pan, and add the one tablespoon of butter. Add the celery root and minced tops, carrots, leek, onion, and sauté until the vegetables are lightly browned, about 10 minutes. Add the garlic and cook for one minute more.

In a large mixing bowl combine the bread with the sautéed vegetables, the bacon, the herbs, the piment or paprika, a good dash of salt and several grinds of pepper, and the chicken stock. Mix well, cover with a lid or a plate and let stand for ten minutes. Check to see that the bread is nicely softened. If it seems too dry add another 1/4 cup of stock or water. Mix well once more, and spoon the mixture into a casserole or gratin dish.

Bake for 30 minutes, or until the stuffing is well browned on top and hot throughout. Those Stovetop Stuffing people have one thing right: There's no reason to serve this only once or twice a year. It's a wonderful, simple dish that's great throughout the colder months...in which we are now firmly ensconced.

Happy Thanksgiving.

Text and photos copyright 2008 by Brett Laidlaw

Autumn Leaves

Autumn leaves...and winter barges right in:

That was not the double entendre I had in mind when I originally considered this post. I was working on a mild little pun involving leaves on the trees turning color, and those garden leaves that are the last fresh vegetables of the season. But then, when I first thought of this topic, autumn hadn't left, and winter hadn't arrived.

That transition occured over the course of three days this past week. Last Monday we had a record high of 74 degrees here in the Twin Cities. Tuesday, November 4 (election day!) I took the sun-dappled photos you see here, on a calm, mellow, misty morning (...until they think warm days will never cease...). On Friday it snowed, and since then (today is Wednesday the twelfth) the mercury has barely struggled to the freezing mark.

Theater of the seasons, you bet. If you'll forgive just one more pun, it looks like this is winter thyme.

We might be granted another spell of indian summer; we might just as easily not. We've had some winters in recent years that hardly deserved the name, by old-time Minnesota standards. I've left carrots and leeks in the garden into December; taken a walk at a local park preserve on New Year's Day on dry grass, with no coat, just a sweater; picked oyster mushrooms from a local woods in January, all within the last ten years.

We've been lulled into a false sense of living in a more benign climate, where you plan to finish the house painting over Halloween weekend, reglaze those windows in November; where there's plenty of time to put the garden to bed, turn the compost, mulch the herbs. Then you get a rude awakening, as we have this year. October, indeed, was unseasonably mild; November started out that way, but for the last week, not so much.

And yet, autumn leaves--the noun sort of leaves, the edible sort of leaves--are still out there. The leaves are wilted in 20-degree cold, but when a little warmth returns, they'll perk back up. Many hardy greens, like kale and turnip greens, are better after a few frosts, sweeter, more tender. I've gone out in cold near zero and picked frozen kale leaves, and dropped them into soup, where they do just fine. They're freeze-dried on the plant, I reckon.

Root vegetables also do well in moderate cold. I plan to dig out my last leeks and carrots just before the ground really freezes. I've come to look at leeks as one of the most versatile vegetables there is. The tough green tops and outer peelings I use in stocks and sauces. The

tender parts, both white and light green, I saute at

the start of nearly every soup, stew, or braise. We have them roasted with other root vegetables, or on their own in a baked gratin of leeks, or the classic French bistro dish, leeks vinaigrette.

They fit the topic here, for what is a leek but a particularly tidy organization of leaves?

The same can be said of fennel. In that mild October weather I mentioned, these young shoots came up from bulbs I'd cut much earlier in the year. That brilliant infant green was incredibly cheering to see, this late in the year. It was, of course, but a tease.

Autumn garden leaves are not just about the hardy, good-for-you, long-braised or -simmered kales and collards and mustards. One type of greens that I've found does extremely well as a late-summer-into-fall crop is frisée, also known as curly endive or sometimes curly escarole. It's a lettuce, a firm-textured, often slightly bitter one. In France, gardeners gather the outer leaves at the top to blanch the inner leaves. The darker green the leaves, the tougher and more bitter they're likely to be. Bear this in mind when buying supermarket frisée; I often wind up discarding the outer couple layers of leaves, and trimming the darkest tops of the remainder.

With garden frisée like this, you needn't go to that sort of trouble. I planted this in late August, just quickly turned a spot where peas had been growing, scattered the seeds by the handful and covered lightly with soil.

A month or so later we were ready for lovely autumn salads like this one:

That's smoked brown trout--the last stream trout of the season--with wonderful fingerling potatoes "steam-sautéed" with sweet market onions, topped with a poached egg. To make the potatoes we put the washed but not peeled potatoes into a fry pan with a little butter and oil, rolled the potatoes around till they just started to brown, then added a half-cup or so of water, put the lid on and cooked over medium heat for eight to ten minutes. By then most of the water should be gone, and the potatoes are starting to brown again. Now add some fairly thickly sliced onion and cook until the potatoes are tender and the onions nicely browned.

The dressing for this salad was based on some horseradish creme fraiche we had leftover (this is not a standard ingredient in our house--just happens I had made it for another smoked trout preparation). If you've got creme fraiche in the house, great; if not, substitute cream or sour cream or a mixture of the two.

Working from memory, this is pretty close to what I did

Horseradish Creme Fraiche Dressing for Frisée with Smoked Trout

serves two

2 Tbsp creme fraiche (or sour cream or cream or a mixture)

2 tsp prepared horseradish, or to taste

1 small clove garlic, finely minced

2 Tbsp canola, grapeseed or other oil

1 Tbsp white wine vinegar

squeeze of lemon juice, optional

good pinch salt

a few grinds of pepper

Mix everything together well, and toss with the rinsed, spun frisée ten to fifteen minutes before serving--let it sit that little while for the frisée to soften a bit.

Any good vinaigrette can be substituted for this dressing. The horseradish cream I think of as essentially Nordic, making this salad a sort of scando-franco bistro combo. I think I'd better trademark that phrase--it's sure to catch on in a big way! Other smoked fish may be subbed for the trout--whitefish, lake trout, herring, hot-smoked salmon. The potatoes are optional, but they really make it a meal.

The very most classic bistro salad, of course, is frisée aux lardons, in which the greens are tossed with a garlicky, mustardy vinaigrette and fried batons of bacon, topped with a poached egg. There are loads of other variations, using duck confit, dried sausage, paté, foie gras if you're posh and flush. Use your imagination and whatever you have on hand; it's basically a chef's salad...and you're the chef.

text and photos copyright 2008 by Brett Laidlaw