The Return of the Farm Share

Surprise! After a year long hiatus we have started back up with a farm share! That's right, folks. This year's farm share is brought to you by Stoneledge Farm in Leeds, New York which is about two hours from us.



The first week's haul, predictably, consisted of mostly lettuce but it was great to be back in the game! This week we got a bunch of rhubarb, a bunch of radishes, red sail lettuce, buttercrunch lettuce, mizuna, suehlihung mustard greens, garlic scapes, and flowering sage.



I started off by slicing up the radishes, and serving them over some slices of fresh bread with butter, salt, and pepper. I also fried up some of the sage leaves for the top. Usually I'd go with a raw herb but the fried sage worked out quite nicely.



With so much lettuce available I opted to make these lettuce wraps. I toasted some of the garlic scapes and ginger in sesame oil then tossed in some sesame seeds, red onion, red and yellow peppers, jalapeno, celery, carrot, bean sprouts, and tofu. I used a little soy sauce, rice wine vinegar, lime juice, and mirin. For the lettuce I used some of the buttercrunch and the red sail lettuce.



For beer I found this soba ale from Iron Chef Morimoto and Rogue Ales. I thought this might be a good accompaniment since it was made from soba. This beer was stranger than I would have imagined and had a wealth of information on the back. It listed how the beer performed on a number of scales: 12º PLATO, 30 IBU, 75 AA, 14º Lovibond. So, clearly, most of those are made up.

Also it listed the ingredients that the beer was made from including "free range coastal waters" which sounds like a bunch of made up crap to me. Also listed was the ingredient "Harrington Metcalf" which sounds like a preppie trust fund baby who calls everyone "Lovie."



For dessert Jen made two crisps: one was a peach crisp made in the traditional style. The other was a strawberry rhubarb crisp which was vegan. This served two purposes. Firstly it satisfied Lisa's vegan requirement. Secondly, it served Lauren's somewhat stranger requirement than now orange-yellow fruit are present.

Everyone wins.

Japanese Home Cooking

One of my favorite Iron Chef episodes of all time comes from the 1994 season and features Katsuyo Kobayashi (the Julia Child of Japan) in battle against Iron Chef Chen Kenichi. In the episode she prances around the kitchen, sings, taunts Chen and eventually wins the battle making a nearly unprecedented seven dishes in the allotted hour.

If you haven't already seen it then I highly recommend watching the first Iron Chef Potato Battle.

One of the dishes she made was Nikujaga which is a Japanese beef and potato stew. For some reason this really struck my fancy and I spent the last few days wishing to make it. Unlike most of the dishes made on Iron Chef this one doesn't contain shark fin so it wasn't immediately outside the realm of possibility to make this.

In the episodes Kobayashi accidentally dumps a tremendous amount of sesame oil into the dish thinking it was something else. When she realizes what she's done she just shrugs and says it'll just make the dish taste better anyway. I tried to keep my recipe a little lighter than that but followed what I saw her do on the show as best I could.



My obaachan also used to make this dish (of course) but since she has passed on I had only what I observed Kobayashi do to guide me.

I was so excited to make this that I even broke out our wok which I haven't used in years. This past month has been so much like the 90's I could swear I have somehow been temporally transported back to to 1997. All I'd need to make this complete would be to work 125 hours a week and the feeling would be complete. Tomorrow night I think I'll put on some Ben Folds Five to set the mood.

I heated up a little safflower oil and sesame oil in the wok, tossed in about a pound of ground beef, browned it, tossed in two peeled and sliced russet potatoes, and two small chopped onions and tossed it all around. After a few minutes I added some soy sauce, brown sugar, a little water, and some mirin and let it stew on the stove for about twenty-five minutes.

Kobayashi (or at least what I observed her do) did not steer me wrong. It was a pretty tasty stew. A little research shows that this is an extremely popular dish in Japan. What's new to me is undoubtedly boring to anyone who grew up in that country. However, I may be able to excite a native of Japan with my American equivalent: macaroni and cheese!



Just to be a complete hambone I decided to pick up a can of Sapporo to accompany the stew. I'm pretty sure I haven't had a Sapporo since the 90's either. I guess moving to Westchester, amidst the sea of Asian-fusion restaurants has really rubbed off on me.

I can't wait to get a job cooking in a restaurant making $6.50 an hour. Then the circle will be complete!

Cabbage Battle, Round 2

Last night I made Iron Chef Chen's fried rice and tonight I felt the need to expand on the Chinese Cabbage Battle episode by making some stuffed cabbage.



I sauteed up some chopped garlic, ginger, and red chilies that we got from the farmer's market last week. Then I added some ground pork, Sichuan pepper, tamari, and a little rice wine vinegar. I cooled it slightly before adding some egg to the mixture along with a little of the turkey stock remaining from last week's Coq au Vin.

After boiling some nappa cabbage leaves I cooled them, wrapped the mixture, and finished by steaming them. I topped them with chopped ginger, scallion, and sliced carrot. I also served some sweet chili sauce on the side even though it wasn't really necessary. I thought it better created the feel of an Iron Chef dish which are usually served with separate bowls for dipping sauces.



I also made a salad with kale, rice vinegar, sesame oil, lime slices, shredded carrot, Sichuan pepper, and pickled ginger.



For a beverage I poured some Lagunitas Sumpin' Sumpin' Ale. At first sip I did not like this and by the end I really enjoyed it. I hate to be that guy to say that it has "notes of this or that" but it tasted shockingly like grapefruit. The aftertaste in particular made me feel as though I'd just taken a giant bite of the citrus fruit. This paired far better with the cabbage rolls than I thought it would.

There is still a tremendous amount of nappa cabbage in the fridge. I really should have taken a photograph of the size of this head of nappa before I started using it. I've lost count but I must have used it in a half dozen dishes so far over the course of several weeks. My new technique of watching the appropriate Iron Chef episode to come up with ideas for how to use leftovers seems to be paying off well. In addition to reawakening my interest in Japanese (and more so Chinese) cooking it has helped me push a tremendous amount of food out of the fridge before it spoils.

Not to mention that it's quite likely the greatest show that's ever been on television in any language, time, or country.

I ♥ Chen Kenichi.

Marathon of Cooking (But Mostly Running)

After a long day in the cold in New York City watching tens of thousands of runners struggle through the 26.2 miles while standing comfortably on the sidelines we returned home for dinner.

My obsession with Iron Chef has only gained steam over the past few weeks. Re-watching all the episodes (and discovering many we'd never seen) has definitely had an influence on my cooking recently.



After watching many Iron Chef episodes we watched a great battle with the theme ingredient of Chinese Cabbage. I became quite fond of Chen Kenichi's technique for making fried rice and decided to emulate it.

It's very simple: a little sesame oil, shredded cabbage, cooked rice, egg, and soy sauce. I used very little soy sauce (much like Iron Chef Chinese) but also added some thinly sliced carrots, mostly because there were some extras in the fridge. I had leftover coconut rice from my boring stir fry so that was a little nonstandard but it worked out pretty well.



It was a great dinner after all day in the cold but we capped it off with some Aztec cocoa from McTwigan Spices which was seasoned with cinnamon and chilies. I hadn't actually realized the seasoning before I added a little Amaretto to Jen's and a little Frangelico to mine. I topped them both with some whipped cream which had held up in the fridge admirably since Canadian Thanksgiving. Combined with the spices I wound up sweating by the end of my cup.

It was thick enough to be eaten with a fork so I may ignore the directions next time and add twice as much milk.

Like so many people I'd love to blame going to bed at 9:15 PM as having to do with Daylight Savings Time. But who am I kidding? I'd totally go to bed at 9:15 PM at any day of the year.

Any day of the year that was awesome!