What do you do with green tomatoes other than make fried green tomatoes?

I know there are good things to do with them and I suspect I might get some more from the CSA this week. Any ideas?

And for what it's worth, this seems to be the best concoction I've hit on yet for flavoring the the coating:

• about 2:1 Corn meal to besan (chickpea flour),
• ground mustard,
• salt, pepper,
• paprika,
• garlic powder, and
  
• a bit of cayenne.

Corn Fritters

If you have some left over ears of corn you steamed up for dinner last night and you want some ideas for what to do with them, I humbly suggest these wonderful …

… Corn Fritters

The dry ingredients are:

• 1/2 Cu. besan (chickpea flour)
• 1/2 tsp. baking powder
• some salt
• some pepper

The wet ingredients are:

• 1 egg
• 2 Tbs. coconut milk
• 1 tsp grated ginger
• a little bit of Sriracha
• 1/4 Cu. chopped red bell pepper
• 1/4 Cu. chopped red onion
• A handful of cilantro, chopped
• 1 to 1-1/2 Cu. corn kernels (sliced off a few left over ears of corn your steamed for dinner the night before)

That should make about six fritters of the size in the photograph.

The Farmer's Cart at the Portland Farmer's Market

Simon at Thirty Acre Farm now has the Farmer's Cart offering breakfast sausages and pulled pork sandwiches for lunch at the market on Wednesdays.

(That's not Simon.)

A Kitchen Knife Recommendation

Posts about kitchen knives are generally reserved for the die-hard, pocket protector wearing, forum troll geek, but I'm going there anyway.

Years ago, when I worked in restaurants in Portland, I was always saddled with some ugly plastic handled thing from a kitchen supply store and, let's face it, that's really good enough for just about anyone. Later in life, when I could afford one, I bought a German made santoku and I thought I would never look back. The least you will pay for knife like that is over a hundred clams, which is already just plain self-indulgent even if it's the most important thing in the kitchen. But from there people will go on to spend hundreds or even thousands of dollars for hand forged samurai swords blessed by tengu in enchanted, ancestral forests and hammered in precise, cosmic musical rhythms by dancing wu li masters. Here's an acceptable lower middle ground for people like me:



Tojiro-DP Gyutou ($56.50 at Korin).

I love this knife more than any fancy German made knife I've ever owned that cost twice as much if not more. It's a pleasure to handle and sharp enough to cut things (including me, unfortunately) just by brandishing it in their mere vicinity. The one flaw is that it scratches easily and needs to be handled with somewhat more care than its distant bomb proof, drive-a-Panzer-tank-over-it German cousins. Using a Japanese water stone, I've been able to keep this knife as sharp or sharper than the day I pulled out of the box.

And while I'm being needlessly geeky and judgmental, I'll add that the answer to the question of where to take your knives for sharpening if you in live in the greater Portland area is to not take them anywhere, but to buy a proper stone and learn to do it yourself. Freeport Knife Company has yielded very poor results for me. LeRoux doesn't even sharpen knives. If you really just can't bring yourself to do the deed, Now You're Cooking is a good choice, but otherwiswe tune in to youtube for some "classes."

Random Food Geekery on the Web

s.andwi.ch compiles your sandwich into QR Code and allows you to publish it to various social bookmarking sites.


And I offer you: Thyme Cube! [ N.B.: For those who don't catch the reference, see the original Time Cube.]

The BBQ Tempeh Smackdown, Laughing Stock Farm and a Micro Book Review

Our CSA this year is Laughing Stock Farm in Freeport. Hi Lisa and Ralph Turner! So many local farms offering CSAs have had a rough go of it due to the endless rain earlier this season. One nearby farm had to go so far as to refund a portion of its members' share cost. We've really appreciated Laughing Stock pulling through in spite of it all. The picture is of a dinner we made from our week's share a while back: baby carrots, chard, peas, romaine and some sungold tomatoes.

And now for the BBQ tempeh smackdown.

BBQ Tempeh from Angelica
The BBQ sauce from the Angelica Home Cookbook is a mix of sundried tomatoes, cider, maple syrup, tamari and other intense stuff: this is the winning vegan BBQ.

BBQ-ish Tempeh from 101Cookbooks
Heidi Swanson's suggestion for baking tempeh for her "TLT sandwiches" with adobo sauce and balsamic vinegar is a close second in the smackdown.

BBQ Tempeh from the Vegan Soul Kitchen
Grilling tempeh is always a bit iffy, but we tried the BBQ tempeh recipe in self-profesed "eco chef" (but like me, not actually vegan) Bryant Terry's Vegan Soul Kitchen and it was pretty good. You might try adding less tamari than suggested and substitute maple syrup for the agave.

As for Vegan Soul Kitchen, I haven't decided how I feel about the book. A lot of it feels like a gimmick—the suggested songs to listen to for each meal, for example—and a lot of it feels pretty run of the mill if you've done the least bit of vegan cooking recently; but it still has a few interesting ideas in it that make it worthwhile—the seemingly endless watermelon ideas for one. For more complete thoughts on the book, Avery gave him a mention on Commune Tested and there's a good review at The Root.

How (Not) To Cook an Eel.

On June 13, 1976, Merrill, then nine years of age, entered CMP's property in South Berwick to fish in the Salmon Falls River. After catching an eel in the river, Merrill walked to the nearby CMP electrical sub-station, climbed the surrounding fence, and attempted to cook the eel by leaning over the top of the fence and placing the eel on a live electrical wire. Merrill received an electric shock and suffered severe burns.

Merrill v. Central Maine Power Company, 628 A.2d 1062, 1063 (Me.1993).

Portland's Farmer's Market Needs A Witch

On the off chance you didn't read it at BoingBoing, I have to mention the lede of the day:

Marin farmers market asks witch to leave

If only she'd hop on her broom and fly to Deering Oaks now. My daughter would love that. I'm trying to think of a way to construe tarot cards as "farm and food products," but it's a stretch.

What to do with garlic scapes

Now that they are almost all gone, I ask: "What's your favorite thing to do with garlic scapes other than making a pesto?"

Including the usual garlic scape pesto, I've tried:

• Garlic scape tempura (ok, but be sure only to use just only the flower tips, not the stems);
• Grilling (not so great);
• Chopped finely and mixed in with burgers of ground turkey, chopped gherkins, herbs, mustard, bread crumbs and Worcestershire sauce (really good);
• Garlic scape bread (the bulbs are better for this); and
• Mixing garlic scape pesto into leftover steamed red new potatoes and mashing them into a cake that is fried in a skillet (wow, that's good).

How about you?

Fancy Fast Food

You can file Fancy Fast Food under "Someone has a nice camera and way too much time on their hands."