30 October 2010

Weekend Wreckage, Part VII

Locally (sort of):

[Photo by Corey Templeton]

Civil Eats, in an article about misuse of the term farmers' market nationally, features a shot of Gallit Sammon and Chris Cavendish of Fishbowl Farm.

Everywhere Else:
The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders lists seven criteria, any three of which makes a substance addictive. Salt has four of them: withdrawal symptoms, the development of tolerance, inability to control level of usage, and difficulty quitting or restricting (even with full knowledge of health hazards).
"What's Inside: Doritos Late Night All Nighter Cheeseburger Chips," The Ecology of Food (October 27, 2010).



That's a grill crafted by an Estonian artist from a deep sea mine made in Russia in 1942. [Via Make.]




Check out Daisy she’s a proper cow /A pedigree Friesian with know how /Her and her girls they have their own name / We treat them good / They give us the cream
Yeo Boyz (Featuring Lil' Massey).

… a judge in Brazil has ordered McDonald's to pay a former manager $17,500 based on his allegations that he gained 65 pounds during his years with the company, due to such dastardly corporate practices as offering employees free lunches.

In addition to forcing this free food down his gullet, the company also went so far as to hire inspectors who would show up randomly and send back reports on food, cleanliness and service. As a result of these invasions by what he called "mystery clients," the man alleged he was effectively required to sample his restaurant's food every day to make sure it was up to par, also adding to his girth.
"McDonald's Ordered to Pay Fat Manager," Lowering the Bar (posted October 29, 2010).

I think the best way that everyone could eat is to be at home and cook and eat with your friends and family. Ideally—again, how ideal is this world?—there wouldn’t be a need for a restaurant.
Leslie MeEachern of Angelica Kitchen in New York (quoted in "Community Supported Restaurant: In Conversation With Angelica Kitchen’s Leslie McEachern," Civil Eats (posted on October 12, 2010)). The Angelica Home Kitchen Cookbook is a favorite of mine, unfortunately the recipe for Oden at the end of the interview is, in my opinion, the weakest in the book.


27 October 2010

Tempeh and Root "Crumble"; Also, A Cornucopasetic TV Show Review: River Cottage [Anything].

[Ok, I realize it's not a particularly appetizing photo, but it tasted wonderful.]

That's my new favorite tempeh preparation for Lalibela's tempeh. The tempeh is marinated and cooked in the manner described in Heidi Swenson's TLT Sandwich recipe. And then it's a matter of roasting a bunch of mushrooms in the oven until they brown and look yummy. I also roasted some cherry tomatoes I bought from Mary Ellen at Green Spark Farm with garlic and olive oil. All that combines really well.


The root crumble was an idea from Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's current show River Cottage Everyday. I wasn't really keen to try it after seeing it on the show, but our CSA had given us a big surplus of rutabaga, celeriac and potatoes so we gave a vegan version of it a go and it was quite good. This is an excellent vegan replacement for a dairy rich gratin.

Hugh's Root Crumble, Vegan Version
Adapted from Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, River Cottage Every Day (Episode 3, October 7, 2010)
  • Equivalent amounts of rutabaga, potatoes, parsnips and celeriac, peeled and cut into a bite-sized cubes. You want to pay some attention to cooking time when cutting them, obviously. So make your rutabaga bites a bit smaller than your potato bites, for example. You should have enough to file a large roasting pan.
  • 1 – 2 yellow onions, sliced.
Those are the veggies; go ahead and put them in the roasting pan. Now make a sauce for them by whisking together the following:
  • 3 Tbs. of Dijon mustard;
  • 1 – 2 Tbs. of honey;
  • 4 Tbs. of some kind of vegetable oil; and
  • plenty of salt and pepper.
Pour the sauce over the roots and mix them up. Cover the roasting pan with foil and put them in an oven at 375 for 45 minutes or so. The roots will give up their moisture and everything will steam in the pan under the foil.

Now make a rosemary cashew cream from:
  • 1 Cu. water;
  • 1 Cu. raw, unsalted cashews;
  • 1 – 2 Tbs. of chopped fresh rosemary;
  • some lemon juice; and
  • some salt.
Whiz these ingredients in a food processor. You'll have to do some experimentation here to achieve the consistency of a thick cream and get a pleasant creamy flavor. Note that it takes a long time in the processor to fully break down the cashews so they become creamy. Don't be tempted to add more cashews in order to thicken it until you have really given the initial amount hell.

Take the roots out of the oven and remove the foil. Then put them back in for twenty minutes or so. The water in the bottom of the pan will boil off in the oven and the roots should be tender by the end of this, but be watchful and don't let them dry out.

Now make a crumble topping from some whole wheat bread crumbs and any combination of nuts you think would work: hazelnuts, walnuts, almonds, pecans would all be good. Chop the nuts with a knife rather then in a food processor. Mix some olive oil into the topping, enough so the bread crumbs will brown rather than burn. Season the topping also.

When the veggies are ready to come out again, drizzle the cream over the top, then add the crumble topping and put the whole thing back in the oven until the top browns.

You can take the leftovers from this and mash them up and add an egg and some herbs and make little cakes to fry up.

TV Show Review: Anything By Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall

I see Hugh's Meat book has been getting some mention on the local blogs and that's great. Are you watching his TV shows too? Maybe everyone is already into these shows, but I'll mention them anyway because if you haven't seen them you really ought to.

After getting the boot from the River Cafe in London, Hugh made a TV show called A Cook on the Wild Side. That was in 1995, but watching it now, the show only seems in dated in rare moments (that are ridiculously funny).

In Wildside, Hugh drove around in a beat up old Land Cruiser (the "Gastrowagon") that was converted into a sort of roving kitchen and foraged and gleaned food from London to Glasgow. In the second season, he swapped the Gastrowagon for a canal barge (the "Bain-Marie").

Some years later he followed up the show by trying his hand at a bit of semi-homesteading. That effort led to a series of River Cottage TV shows that have been produced regularly since the late 90s. At this point he seems almost a bit overblown, with his "River Cottage" idea having turned into what appears to be a big company with branding, cantinas, classes, multiple sites and a torrent of handbooks and cookbooks. None of that has affected my enjoyment of the shows, however.


Watching these shows is a bit tricky; they aren't exactly on Netflix if you know what I mean. I'll leave you to your own devices, but I'm sure you'll easily find them.

[Several weeks worth of:] Weekend Wreckage, Part VI

Locally:

A sort of carrot revue was apparently held at the Little Ridge Farm. I wanted to join this CSA but it was just too far to drive. Looks like they had fun though and the farmers' website had excellent recipes each week. I wonder if they held a rude carrot contest too and just didn't post about it.

Globally:

[Image from PPK.]

It's World Vegan Week this week, but you'll just have to take my word for it because official website is not responding. Obviously, it has been hacked by aggressive, carnivorous plants.

According to the chart below [via BoingBoing], "whole wheat anything" is the lowest form of candy (although it is equivalent to a hug and some acetaminophen, which is just about what I need this morning) …

… but Melissa Clark has nonetheless bothered to compare brands of store bought whole wheat pasta. She came to exactly the right conclusion about which brand is best in my opinion.

I looked everywhere for a picture of this, but apparently none of the gadget obsessed locals bothered to whip out their phone cams: a MAYONNAISE SPILL on a highway in Tokyo caused a multi car pile up. What are they calling this, the Kewpie Crash?

This one is old, but I enjoyed the coverage of cops busting raw milk dealers in California. I dream about getting a defense case like that.


[Also old:] Proof that there's a blog for everything, here's one devoted to doing magnetic resonance imaging of food:


Also, Paleovegan discusses taxonomy, specifically the removal of the sub-Order Omnivora.

The paleolithic diet wasn't, new evidence suggests, just about meat. Apparently there were some "potatoes" involved after all (except not potatoes at all, but starchy cattails). [Was this really news to anyone? Seems like this comes up every once in a while. The article led to interesting discussion on the Forage Ahead Yahoo group in any event.]