A Few Tastes of Maple

I got a chance today to talk maple syrup cookery with Rob Ferrett on the Food Friday segement of Wisconsin Public Radio's Central Time and have compiled here a few of the recipes I mentioned on the show.  I've made this dish a lot lately, while testing the recipe out for the cook-off, at the cook-off, and then as the featured dish I prepared at Kate's Occasional Cafe at the Dairyland Cafe in Ridgeland this past week.  I'm still not tired of it.

Sichuan-Spiced Maple Chicken Wings (This recipe was inspired by Teresa Marrone’s Two-Pepper Maple Chicken Wings from Modern Maple.)

Serves 2 as a main course, 4 to 6 as an appetizer

Serve these spicy-sweet wings over a bowl of rice, accompanied by a stir-fried vegetable, for a main course; or as a zingy appetizer—keep a cold beer close at hand.

2 pounds chicken wings (about 10 wings), tips removed, separated in 2 pieces

¼ teaspoon salt

2 tablespoons soy sauce

1 tablespoon oil (sunflower, canola, or the like)

2 teaspoons sambal chile paste (or to taste)

¼ cup maple syrup

3 cloves garlic, coarsely chopped

2 tablespoons coarsely chopped ginger

1/2 teaspoon ground roasted Sichuan pepper

1 teaspoon coarsely ground black pepper

4 scallions, trimmed and cut into 1-inch pieces

Preheat your oven to 425.  Combine all the ingredients except the scallions in a large bowl and toss to coat the wings with the seasonings.  Place the wings and seasonings in a heavy roasting pan, and bake, stirring every 15 minutes or so, for 45 minutes.  Add the scallions and continue baking, stirring occasionally, until the wings are well browned and the seasonings have become a glaze that coats the wings.  This will probably take another 15 to 25 minutes.

Options:  For really dark and glazy wings, turn on the broiler for the last few minutes of cooking, and turn the wings a couple of times so they brown evenly, being careful that they don’t burn.

            If you have a convection feature on your oven, you can produce excellent results without resorting to the broiler.  Bake at 400 convection and check every 10 minutes, adding the scallions after 30 minutes.  Total cooking time with convection should be 40-45 minutes.

These wings can be made ahead and reheated before serving.  

Maple Spice Grilled Sirloin (original post here)

serves 4--next time I make this I'm going to try it with venison

1 1/2-2 pounds sirloin steak 

Marinade:

½ teaspoon ground cumin

2 teaspoons sunflower or canola oil

1 teaspoon sambal oelek chile paste

1 tablespoon maple syrup

2 teaspoons soy sauce

Pinch salt

Lots of freshly ground black pepper

1 large clove garlic minced

Combine all marinade ingredients and pour over the steak, coating well.  Marinate the steak for a couple of hours at room temp.  Prior to grilling remove the steak to a separate plate, saving the marinade.  Add hte marinade to 1/3 cup chicken stock in a small saucepan and bring to a simmer. 

Grill the steak over hot natural wood coals to desired doneness--about 3 minutes per side for rare, 4 for medium rare.  Let the steak rest on a platter for at least 5 minutes; add the juices that the resting steak produces to the stock and marinade mixture.  Serve with grilled vegetables and salad. 

The Thighs Have It

In terms of underappreciated, tasty bargain meats, chicken thighs are right there with pork shoulder steaks, in my opinion.  The thigh is my preferred part of the bird, though I fully appreciate the wing thing, too.  Chicken wings prepared in a Sichuan dry-fried manner are an exquisite treat.  The thighs, though, are more accommodating in a knife-and-fork meal context, and when they are boneless, why, they make positively civilized eating--cooking them over nice smoky hardwood coals keeps them on the rustic side.

Ramps season is starting as the maple season ends, and I often wind up putting the two together, frequently on chicken.  This is a flavorful, simple dish to celebrate the return of grilling weather (well, comfortable grilling weather; we cook over the coals year-round).

A paillard is a flattened out piece of meat.  I wail away at my thighs with the side of a heavy cleaver--a meat mallet, or even a small sauté pan will get the job done.

Maple-Ramp Marinated Chicken Paillards
Serves two to three

4 boneless chicken thighs, skin on
½ cup chopped ramps, whites and greens
Juice of ¼ lemon, and some zest, if you like
2 tablespoons maple syrup
½ teaspoon sambal oelek chili paste (or more, to taste)
¼ teaspoon salt
Freshly ground black pepper

Purchase boneless skin-on chicken thighs, or bone them yourself. Place one thigh at a time on a cutting board, and with a meat mallet, the side of a heavy cleaver, or a small, clean saucepan, pound each thigh vigorously until the meat is about ½ inch thick—the surface area of the thighs should nearly double.

Combine the rest of the ingredients in a mixing bowl and add the chicken, coating it well on all sides. Let the chicken marinate for at least 60 minutes at room temp, or longer in the fridge. When you’re ready to cook, prepare a fire of natural wood coals, and grill the chicken over medium-hot coals, turning often, for 12 to 15 minutes total. The chicken should be very well browned on both sides.

If you have extra ramps, toss a few in what remains of the marinade, and grill them along with the chicken.

 


Sweet & Sour (Tree Crop) Chard (original post)
serves two generously
5-6 good-sized chard leaves (2 cups chopped)
1/2 medium onion, sliced
2 Tbsp olive oil
1 cup chicken stock (or 1/2 cup stock, 1/2 cup water)
2 good pinches salt
a few grinds black pepper
2 to 3 tsp maple syrup
1 to 2 Tbsp apple cider vinegar
options: a bit of thyme, a small knob of butter stirred in at the end

Cut the thick ribs out of the chard leaves, and slice these diagonally into 1/2-inch pieces. Tear or cut each leaf into four or five pieces. Heat a 10-inch skillet or the like, and add the olive oil, then the onion and the chard rib pieces. Add a couple of pinches of salt, the stock (or stock and water, or water). Cover and cook over medium heat for 6 to 8 minutes, until the chard is starting to soften. Then add the chard leaves, and as soon as they wilt into the liquid add the vinegar and maple syrup. Cook uncovered for another three to four minutes, until the chard is tender to taste and the liquid is somewhat reduced. Taste for salt, sweet, and sour. Serve in a dish

 

Roast Baby Carrots with Maple-Mustard Glaze (original post)
2 cups baby carrots, scrubbed (mine weighed 9 ounces)
1 1/2 Tbsp maple syrup
1 tsp canola or grapeseed oil
pinch of salt, grind of pepper

Combine all the above in a gratin dish or small baking dish. Roast, uncovered, at 375 for 45 minutes, until they become a little brown and glazy. Stir them every 15 minutes during this time.

Remove from the oven and add:

1 rounded tsp grain mustard
1/8 tsp piment d'espelette, or a good pinch of cayenne (optional)
1 tsp red wine vinegar

Add another grind of pepper, taste for salt. Serve warm or at room temp. 

Maple Spice Grilled Sirloin

Submitted for your approval, my idea of the perfect summer supper:  Grilled Hill & Vale sirloin marinated in maple syrup, cumin, sambal, and garlic, and a catch-all salad of market and garden produce.

What could be more appropriate for solstice eve?  We've been lighting a fire to cook dinner more often than we've been turning on the oven of late.  There are these cottonwood trees looming over the house, and we had a lot of the dead wood cut back late last winter, so there's an abundant supply of firewood lying in the yard.

 I get my exercise knocking these rounds into manageable pieces, and we have no need to buy charcoal for our cook-outs.  Cottonwood produces a clean, hot fire; the coals don't last terribly long, but that's fine for quickly grilling a piece of meat and some vegetables.

My trick for grilling vegetables is to set a wire cooling rack with about a 1/2-inch grid atop the regular grill grate.  This way we can grill things as small as green beans and snap peas without having them slip through the grate.

The only problem with this kind of cooking is that I come in to dinner smelling like I've been out fighting a forest fire.  Oh, well; there are worse problems in life..

While I tended the grill, Mary put the salad together:  lovely leaf lettuce from the Menomonie farmers market, radishes from our garden, some cubes of very non-local avocados.  Grilled snap pea and the season's first green beans from the market went on top.  Into her dressing strong with mustard and garlic she added fresh herbs including chives, thyme, parsley, and mint.  The mint went beautifully with the cumin in the steak marinade, a very North African flavor combo.

It was the cumin, in fact, that inspired the whole dinner--a fresh little baggie from the co-op sat on the counter perfuming the kitchen powerfully in this warm, humid weather.  Here's the marinade:

½ teaspoon ground cumin

2 teaspoons sunflower or canola oil

1 teaspoon sambal oelek chile paste

1 tablespoon maple syrup

2 teaspoons soy sauce

Pinch salt

Lots of freshly ground black pepper

1 large clove garlic minced

I marinated the steak for a couple of hours at room temp.  While the steak grilled, I put the platter with the remaining marinade and a couple of cubes of frozen chicken stock into a warm oven.  When the steak was done I put it back on the platter to rest, and the juices combined with the now melted stock and marinade to make the simplest of sauces.

Things could get a little repetitive around here from the cooking perspective.  While the thought of doing more elaborate preparations might tempt me from time to time, I imagine that for the next few weeks I'll probably brush those notions aside, and go out to light a fire.

Happy Solstice.

Text and photos copyright 2012 by Brett Laidlaw

A Dinner Too Far / The Sirloin Strikes Back

Today's double feature showcases the struggles, hardships, and eventual heart-swelling triumph of a much-anticipated Bide-A-Wee supper in the first act; and in the second part of the double bill, the thrilling tale of how a modest piece of beef overcame an overly conceptualized side dish to win the admiration of hungry diners.

To put it another way:

In a world where overwrought home cooks obsess over the local and seasonal, and go to torturous extremes to distill gold from the dross of roots and grains, how can a humble piece of sirloin rise above the fray and stake its claim on the lawless frontier of dinner...on a plate...on, uh, the table?

Well, let's start with the wheatberries.  I've had this notion, a long time brewing, of a rich and satisfying risotto-like dish, based not on rice (which doesn't grow around here) but on wheatberries, which do--the wheatberries (wheat seeds, in reality) in my Bide-A-Wee cupboard come from just a few miles down the road in Connorsville, grown on the Bartz farm .  An earlier attempt at such a dish foundered on the shoals of underdone wheatberries.  I learned from that attempt that the wheatberries must either be cooked a very long time, or sprouted for a couple of days prior to cooking. 

I'm against the idea of a "risotto" that cooks for hours, and I like the idea of sprouting, which sort of precooks the berry, sans heat, and creates a natural sweetness in the grain.  Sprouting grains is the first step in malting, a process used in the production of whisky, beer, and, of course, malted milk balls.  As the seeds sprout, the starches therein are converted to sugars.  The soaking process also allows the hard seed to absorb water, so that after being kept nice and moist for two or three days the sprouted seed is quite edible--just like beans sprouts or alfalfa sprouts, though a good deal more al dente.

So: my idea was to sprout wheatberries for a couple of days, then combine them with some sautéed onion, a fine dice of celery root, chicken stock, herbs, a suitable amount of butter, and finally, some hen of the woods mushrooms.  This was to occur on Saturday night at Bide-A-Wee.  We would serve it with a piece of grilled sirloin we'd picked up at Seward Co-op .  Seemed eminently do-able.

But you know how things that seem eminently do-able in the encouraging light of morning can come to seem, by the end of that day, in the fading evening light, not so do-able anymore, and as delicious as that anticipated meal sounds, it would sound way better if someone else were making it?  That was where I was on Saturday evening, after a morning radio interview, family luncheon get-together, packing-up-driving-out-unpacking, fire lighting organizing, pour a drink and--hey, can we call out for pizza?

Well, at Bide-A-Wee, no, we cannot.  You just have to down that martini, buck up, and get on with it.  The first thing that went out of the picture was the grilling.  It was after seven, it was dark, and I had no desire to be going in and out of the cabin to tend a fire.  The woodstove was blazing away.  We would sear the steak in a cast iron skillet atop it.  I got going on the "risotto" of wheatberries.  I chopped a small onion and made a very small dice of half a small celery root--about 2/3 cup once diced.  In a saucepan atop the Haggis I melted a tablespoon or so of butter, added the onion, and as it began to wilt, the celery root.  As that took on a little color I dumped in the sprouted wheatberries.  That was half a cup to begin with, now swelled to a generous cup, so it appeared.  Stir that a bit, add salt and pepper, then around a cup of chicken stock.  When that got to a simmer I covered it and let it cook very slowly.  I figured that it wouldn't need to be stirred as often as a proper risotto.  I checked back in five minutes.  Didn't look like the wheatberries had taken up any stock.  Gave it another five. Same deal.  Ten more.  No real change, though the berries did taste like they were softening.

What I eventually learned from this round of wheatberry risotto experimentation was:

1) I should stop trying to make risotto out of things other than rice, and
2) When wheatberries sprout, converting starch to sugar, then the starch is no longer there to thicken the dish.

What I wound up with, in the end, was a sort of a brothy pilaf, and I let that cook uncovered while the steak cooked, to reduce the stock and intensify the flavor.  (A side note:  Originally I had planned to add some frozen sweet corn--also from Connorsville!--to the "risotto," but the wheatberries themselves had a crisp vegetable sweetness quite like corn, so I left it out--it went into the next night's lamb stew, instead.)

And so we turned to the steak.  I put the cast iron skillet on the stove, added wood and worked the bellows to get it really hot.  I salted and peppered the steak and brushed it with a little oil.  It was a Hill & Vale bone-in sirloin from the butcher's case at Seward.  You don't see bone-in sirloin that often.  It has always been one of my favorite cuts of beef.  It doesn't get the kind of press that a marbled ribeye or strip steak does, but the flavor can be extraordinary.  So I had high hopes, though I also knew that a simply cooked piece of meat can often be overshadowed by a meticulously planned side dish like the one that was...currently failing to materialize on the woodstove.

The skillet wasn't as hot as I would have liked when the steak went in.  On the turnover the sizzle was largely gone.  We added wood, we bellowed.  I figured this was going to be one that we would write off to experience.  Planning simple meals for the first night at the cabin was supposed to have been a cardinal rule by now, but, you know, you get cocky....

About this time I remembered the hen of the woods mushrooms that I was going to put in with the wheatberries.  They were precooked--in fact, they'd been roasted off in some pork fat rendered from a piece of belly I'd braised earlier in the fall--and they were--well, they were hen of the woods roasted in fresh pork fat, what more do I need to say?  As the sirloin rested (preparing to strike back!) I deglazed the pan with a little red wine, added some more chicken stock and the mushrooms.  That reduced quickly and wonderfully.  We served it up.

For a meal that bore little relation to what I had originally had in mind--no, strike that:  Without qualification, it was superb.  Let's start with the steak:  chewy-tender, deeply beefy, with a compelling tang and savor to it--the best piece of beef I've eaten in a long time, and not diminished at all for not having been grilled.  The mushrooms with their porky undertones provided a complementary meatiness and texture.

And then the wheatberries and celery root:  the wheat was sweet and slightly crunchy, the celery soft and savory.  Neither risotto nor pilaf, but a beautiful autumnal dish that I'll make again, and I'll just call it:  sprouted wheatberries simmered with celery root.

This is a lot of verbiage expended on one Saturday supper, I realize.  But in doing interviews to promote the cookbook, I've been asked about my approach to cooking, this expanded sense of "foraging" that I'm trying to shove down the public gullet(!), and what it means for cooking to be "ingredient-driven."  Well, I think this sort of goes to all those topics.  For what it's worth.

Text and photos copyright 2011 by Brett Laidlaw

Burgeriffic

A really great hamburger seems to be a sort of Holy Grail in these days of American burger-mania. Every other restaurant that opens lately seems to be a beer & burger joint, ground-beef-centric gastro-pubs of sorts. Many of them tout their "signature blends" of beef, and some use sirloin, or short rib, or brisket. Home cooks who try to replicate the creations of their favorite burger chefs are often frustrated. Other people effortlessly turn out world-class patties in their own frying pans or grills with a Zen-like calm and assurance.

I'm not going to make any exalted claims for my own version of the Great American Sandwich. I'll only say that I've been making burgers this way for years, that we consider a hamburger dinner a treat of the highest order, and that there is never...any...nitpicking...criticism once we are done. We just sigh and lick our fingers, consider briefly that we'd maybe like another few bites, conclude that no, that was just right. Sip the rest of our beers and settle into deep contentment with life as we know it.



Let's assume you've got a good bun. I said all I care to say about the wondrous "Le Bun" in the previous post, and I'll leave you to your own counsel as to how to proceed regarding the bread component. The next thing, truly the main thing, is the meat. I use ground chuck. I grind it myself. This makes a lot of difference. I don't experiment with blends of beef because,

1) Come on, it's a hamburger, and
2) Fresh ground chuck is delicious. Deepy beefy, fatty enough to make a really juicy burger.



For two burgers, I grind 11 to 12 ounces of chuck. I grind it twice through the coarse blade of my KitchenAid meat grinder attachment. This grind is definitely coarser than a supermarket grind, and I think that makes an important difference in the texture. It's loose, almost fluffy if you can use that word for ground meat.

If you don't have a meat grinder, or just don't want to bother grinding your own, you may do all right getting regular or, if you insist, lean ground beef from a butcher you trust. One thing I firmly believe is that you won't get a great burger out of ordinary grocery store ground beef. For one thing, I'd be scared to eat that stuff medium rare, the way I like it.

To the ground meat, I add: a couple pinches of salt, a few grinds of pepper, maybe three, maybe four shakes of Worcestershire sauce, and about a half teaspoon of soy sauce. The soy and Worcestershire both give extra umami to the flavor, and help the patties brown up beautifully in the pan. Mix the seasonings in with your hands, be quick and light, and form the patties with a quick, deft touch, too--too much handling will compact the meat and wreck the texture.


Then chill them until you are ready to cook. Cooking: I always used to favor the grill, and in the balmy months we definitely enjoy a char-grilled burger from time to time, but more often now we do them in a heavy skillet on the stove. Mary has gradually convinced me that this is the superior method. The direct contact between meat and metal assures an excellent char, we have control over the heat, flames do not erupt to carbonize our burgers, and juices remain in the pan to nap over the burgers as we serve.



Very hot skillet, a thin coat of oil, three minutes a side should do it. Start the heat out very high but turn it down to slightly off maximum once the patties go in (if you don't have a good vent hood, station someone near the smoke alarms to wave a magazine/disconnect if required...).

Remove the burgers from the pan when cooked to desired doneness, and let them rest while you condimentize your bun. Toast the buns if you like, though if they are very fresh they'll just need a little warming. We always fry some onions in the pan drippings. This night I added some slivers of aged gouda, sliced cornichons (I would use sour dills but I didn't have any), grain mustard on the bottom, a little apple ketchup on the top. I don't really like raw vegetables on my burger, the classic lettuce and tomato, since I feel they dilute the flavor too much. Chacun a son gout.



Oven frites, some pickled ramp mayo, a little carrot-sambal slaw, and a fine Wisconsin brew rounds it out.

That's my burger. I'd love to hear about others' burger preferences, secrets, peeves, etc.

Here concludes the Trout Caviar (Not So) Fast Food Extravaganza.


______________________________________________



That chuck roast, Hill & Vale from the Seward Co-op, was about two pounds, and I took it apart like this, basically following the muscle groups. The solid, marbled piece at lower right, that I cut in half the long way to make a couple of "bistro steaks," as we call them, a sort of faux hanger steak--beautifully flavorful and quite tender. The chunk on the left was ground for the burgers, and the pile at top right and other trimmings I ground also, and that went to the dogs, literally. Not a scrap was wasted.





Text and photos copyright 2011 by Brett Laidlaw

Raw Food, My Way

I have a bit of a problem with the whole raw food diet concept. Now, I'm a firm believer in to each his own and chacun à son gout and all that, and it's not that I don't enjoy a nice cold faux pizza made with faux cheese and dehydrated tomato purée on a pappy crust of compressed sprouts and seeds washed down with a refreshing glass of kale juice....

Okay, it is that. It's that exactly. I do not enjoy that sort of raw food. Not that I can say I've explored every corner of that realm of eating, because, well, I don't like that kind of food, so why punish myself? Beyond the fact that the application of heat does wonderful things for the flavor of food, the whole idea behind the raw food approach goes right over my head. I don't get the idea that people were meant to be pure herbivores, any more than I do to the absurd notion of "caveman cuisine" that has also popped up recently, a regimen centered around large portions of bloody meat and nothing else that has graced the human table since the dawn of civilization. I like civilization. Well, parts of it....

The raw food approach would be more appealing if one were allowed oysters on the half shell, sashimi, or well-seasoned raw chopped steak, but you always run into that whole "vegan" thing, if you know what I mean.

This is all just a snarky, roundabout way of saying: Is there anything better than a plate of good steak tartare, frites, levain toast, and a glass of red wine? The sort of steak tartare I like is a French invention, and I try not to think of its supposed origin in the barbarian practice of tenderizing a piece of meat by keeping it between horse and saddle over the course of a long day's ride. I think I would rather eat hemp and seaweed than that "authentic" sort of tartare.



I had my first steak tartare in Paris, at a chain wine bar called L'Ecluse, off the Champs Elysées--you can actually see a picture of the dish at that link. What I remember most about it is that the portion was huge. I ate and ate and ate, and Mary had a few bites, too, and still the ginormous mound of meat did not recede. When I could eat no more and abandoned the plate in defeat, the manager came over and regarded my failure with a look of deep disappointment and hurt. He asked me if I hadn't enjoyed my dinner, and I tried to summon enough French to respond, yes, indeed I had, it was very good, but, Monsieur Dude, that was one honking hill of raw beef, n'est-ce pas?

I recall that we ended that meal with an astoundingly good, runny, salty, smelly round of st. marcellin cheese.

I've had steak tartare in France several times since then, and the sum of those experiences leads me to conclude: 1) The French really like steak tartare, as it still shows up on many, many menus, and 2) The French like very large portions of steak tartare. We're often told, and I find it generally true, that the French diet is not focused on large servings of protein, being comprised rather of a balanced approach, several courses, salad, bread, cheese, wine, and vegetables. When the meat is not cooked, though, all bets are off--chop it, mix it, pile it high. Bring on the toast, and let's eat raw beef. And what, I ask, is wrong with that?

Occasionally I've had steak tartare as a first course, but now I prefer to make a meal of it, indeed, an event, Bistro Night! Cue up the Serge Gainsbourg, the Aznavour, the Amélie soundtrack, bring up a bordeaux or a cru beaujolais, and sail across the sea on a dreary Minnesota March night to Les Bacchantes on the rue Caumartin near the opera--STEAK TARTARE HACHE A LA COMMANDE 14.50.

But I'm getting carried away, and am yearning for Paris and all that it implies, so back to the topic of homemade steak tartare. The question of health issues will invariably arise, and all I can say is that that is something one must decide for oneself, and you should know the source of your beef, and it should be very fresh. I will also say that I have never been made ill by steak tartare, or, for that matter, by the many dozens of raw egg mayonnaises that I've made over the decades. Most bacteria on a piece of meat inhabit the outside surfaces, so if you want to be fastidious you could carefully cut away the outside and use the middle only. And, needless to say, I would never, ever eat raw beef ground by someone else. I want to choose it, see it, smell it, chop it, eat it.

Those are the caveats; on to the recipe.

The meat: sirloin is a good choice, or top round. The most recent version I made with a chuck-eye steak from the Seward Co-op. Pricier cuts like a strip or ribeye would be fine, as well, but you don't need to spend the big bucks to have excellent tartare. I certainly would not use tenderloin, which costs an arm and a leg and has no flavor, but that's what a lot of tartare recipes call for, so, whatever.


My seasoning is a bit idiosyncratic, and I like my tartare very well seasoned. I don't use the traditional raw egg, but I do add some mayonnaise, Hellmann's. This may cause outrage among purists, but I stand by it. It gives lot of savory depth and unctuousness to the tartare.

Finally I feel the steak must be chopped, not ground. I'll usually slice my beef into strips and put it on a plate in the freezer for 15 or 20 minutes to make it easier to chop. Then I go through it with a very sharp knife just as if I'm mincing an onion or such, and when I've got it chopped quite fine I'll spread the meat out on the cutting board, and get another sharp knife, so a knife in each hand and I go chop-chop-chop-chop-chop until I'm tired of chopping, and taste a bit for texture, season, let meld, enjoy.

Steak Tartare Maison
pour deux personnes

10 ounces beef--sirloin or top round
1 small shallot finely chopped, about a tablespoon
1 1/2 Tbsp extra virgin olive oil
2 to 3 shakes Worchestershire sauce, or to taste
1/4 tsp sambal oelek chili paste--or a few shakes Tabasco
1 heaping Tbsp Hellmann's mayonnaise
juice of 1/4 lemon, or to taste
2 good pinches salt
1 tsp capers, chopped fine
2 tsp dijon mustard
a few grinds of black pepper

Mix all together well and let sit at room temp for at least 30 minutes. Serve with good buttered toast, oven fries, cornichons if you have some, and a green salad. Drizzle a little extra olive oil over the meat on the plate, if you like. You can also bring some of the condiments to the table for individual adjustments.

Our salad this night was our first harvest from the potted greens shown in the previous post. The potatoes came from our root cellar stash, from the market (things are getting pretty sprouty down there; I guess spring is on the way). I baked the bread, of course, made with Minnesota and North Dakota flours. The cornichons, grew 'em, pickled 'em--and this year I'll be able to use my own vinegar. The steak was either Hill & Vale or Grass Run Farm, I forget which--purchased at the Seward Co-op. The nice thing about shopping at co-ops is that you often wind up eating local foods without having to think about it.

But don't assume that because a store has a "green" reputation that they're actually walking the talk. I read something in a blog recently about Whole Foods 365 frozen "organic" vegetables which I found hard to believe, but I checked it last time I was there, and it's true: Many of those vegetables are grown and packaged in China. Talk about your food miles....

These greens traveled about 25 feet from "farm" to table:



Text and photos copyright 2010 by Brett Laidlaw