How Wet American Fall

The ideal first cooking event of the fall would feature a visit to a pumpkin patch picking our some fresh produce while wearing a cable knit sweaters, the rustling brown and orange leaves tumbling past our feet and the nearby hay bales.

Instead, today featured a sweaty walk to the farmer's market and selecting some items while wearing shorts and sandals to combat the 80 degree temperature and estimated 4,000% humidity.

Life is usually a lot less like a Norman Rockwell painting than expected.



Still, I did go to the farmer's market in town and it was a pretty nice spread they had. I got celery root, French fingerlings, assorted heirloom tomatoes, and nice beets from Fishkill Farms; a piece of "Tewksbury" cheese (resembles a Beaufort) from Valley Shepherd Creamery; cider and donuts from Migliorelli Farm; red onion linguine from Flour City Pasta; a loaf of cheesy garlic bread from Our Daily Bread, and a small chicken from Feather Ridge Farm.



When I got back I made myself a lovely lunch of bagels from Jen's recent trip to Montreal, cream cheese, smoked salmon, sliced shallots, and cornichons. This is my ideal lunch. Given the choice I think I would have this every day until there were no more salmon left in the sea.



We started off with the cheesy garlic bread. Since Jen was cheated out of a delicious cheesy bread the other night, I felt this was only right to make it up to her.



Before continuing with the Belgian beers bought for me by kind friends, or the other assorted beers in the much conflicted lower cupboards region of the kitchen, or brewing my own beer, it's time to continue with the Oktoberfest beers for this season. Tonight I started with the Oktoberfest from Brooklyn Brewery.



I'm not good enough to be able to tell the difference between the 2011 batch and the 2010 bath but I can spot the difference in the labels. My eagle eye caught a few minor differences in the label. It was like one of those puzzles in Highlights magazine. If you look closely you can even see a rhinocerous hiding in the circular "B" logo.



I started off by making this salad with sliced beets, heirloom tomtoes, and some of the leftover Fourme d'Ambert along with a little olive oil, salt, and pepper.



As a second course I boiled the fingerlings and topped them with a little olive oil, salt, and pepper. I then crumbled a little leftover Cambozola on them while they were hot. It was a good night for blue cheeses.



For the next course I chopped up some shallot, carrot, and celeriac, seasoned it, and stuffed the chicken cavity with it before roasting it whole in the oven. I'm normally leery of purchasing meat out of a cooler from a relative stranger but that's only because I was raised in America.



I also stuffed the fronds from the celery root into the chicken for two reasons. Firstly, I thought it would lend an added celeriac flavor and, second, I like to say, "Fronds."

"Fronds."



For the fifth course I served up the cider donuts with a scoop of vanilla ice cream, sliced Seckel pears, and a caramel sauce I made with the cider from Migliorelli Farm. The sauce was made from cider, brown sugar, a dash of vanilla, and a touch of butter.



Sixth, and finally, I put out the Tewksbury cheese. Sadly the cheese is from New Jersey and not the gritty northern Massachusetts town with which I am familiar. This is a delicious cheese which is similar in style to Beaufort. If that means anything to you then you know more about cheese than I do. All I know is that it was very good.



To accompany the cheese and dessert I opened the first pumpkin-themed beer of the season, this Post Road Pumpkin Ale, also by Brooklyn Brewery. This, as expected, had a bit more of a caramel flavor and paired nicely, particularly with the cheese. It's hard to find an appropriate beer that pairs both with donuts and cheese but if you are looking for one, I'd recommend the Post Road Pumpkin Ale.

We don't usually have another course after dessert but since Jen loves this more than anything else I figured it was a suitable welcome home treat. Generally she ends up raiding the pickle jars in the fridge after dinner so this also serves a dual purpose of saving her the trouble. It also helps that I don't have to put away pickles that have been left on the counter.

Coming this fall: everyone wins.

Balsamic Glazed

This week the farm share was back on, just in a hobbled form. Hurricane Irene with her 12 mile per hour winds managed to destroy most of our lives. The last casualty being our weekly farm share.

Last week they announced that we'd be getting a bi-weekly share of just fruit. Evidently the tree fruit had been high enough to withstand the flood waters and we'd be getting a share of fruit every other week.



An immense share of fruit!

This week we got: Bartlett pears, Seckle pears, and Red Clapp pears. We aso got a bag of nectarines and peaches as well as some Fortune plums.

Thankfully Jen had gone to the greenmarket over the weekend to get some vegetables or else this week's dinners would more closely resemble Carmen Miranda's headgear than an actual dinner.



As I prepared dinner I enjoyed this American Pale Ale from Thomas Hooker Brewing Company. I wasn't really looking forward to it after reading the reviews on BeerAdvocate. Most people seemed to think it had an unappealing taste and postulated that the beer had maybe gone bad. I actually happened to like it even though I don't generally care for pale ales.

This may be more proof that I know nothing about beer. And you know what? I love it.



I started off by boiling these tiny beets Jen picked up at the market. I only knew they were beets because Jen told me they were beets. I would have just assumed they were radishes. After boiling them they got even a little more pale and didn't color the water at all.

I served the peeled beats with some feta, homemade balsamic glaze, chopped walnuts, and yellow heirloom tomato slices over a bed of mixed baby greens.

We're bringing salad back. (Ye-ah!)



For the main dish I grilled up some bone in chicken breast along with some peaches and mini Fairy Tale eggplant that Jen got at the farmer's market. I grilled the peaches along with the chicken mostly because I thought I'd better get a jump on all this fruit before it conquers us.

I also roasted some of the purple, yellow, and orange carrots that Jen got at the farmer's market. Apparently Jen went into a store with them (the greens still attached) and the cashier eyed them as if Jen were transporting a baby alien around with her in a canvas bag. When Jen removed the carrots to show her and the cashier saw that they were yellow this blew her mind! Oddly, when Jen showed her the purple carrots she was not moved at all.

The unfortunate part about the purple carrots is that once peeled they are just some orange carrots. Delicious orange carrots, but orange carrots nonetheless.



For dessert I grilled up some peaches and served them over Longford's Tahitian Vanilla ice cream. The balsamic glaze I made earlier was very simple. It was one part balsamic vinegar, one part water, and one part cane sugar reduced over a low heat by one third. When it had cooled slightly I drizzled a little of this glaze over the top with the grilled peaches.

This was the best dessert we've had in a while. I get the feeling we're going to have to go a little heavy ont he fruit desserts if we want to work our way through this week's share before fruit flies take over our home.

Ah, it's nice to feel opressed by produce once again. The farm share is not dead after all!

Nate's Fish Camp

I've never been a fan of summer. Generally I prefer fall and winter. Colder temperatures mean less humidity which means me being far less cranky, and our home being much more suitable towards cooking the things I like to cook. This means running the stovetop and oven for hours on end. Today, after a long bout of rain, clouds, and flood water, the sun came out and a strange thing happened.

I was happy about it.



Jen went down to the Union Square farmer's market and picked up these black and watermelon radishes that she sliced up with salt, pepper, and olive oil. We enjoyed them with some sliced baguette and butter.



Since we won't be getting any more vegetables from the farm we took a drive down to Tarry Market and picked up some heirloom tomatoes to make this salad. With a little lemon, olive oil, salt, and pepper it was maybe one of our only truly summery salads this year.



For the main dish I picked up a couple of branzinos (branzinis?), stuffed them with lemon and parsley, seasoned them with salt, pepper and olive oil, and grilled them until they were crispy.



We took a break from Jen's Quebecois beers to focus on this summery weizen from Kiuchi Brewery's Hitachino Nest line of beers. This beer is pretty pricey at about $4.99 a bottle most places but I can't really figure out why. It's very good but I am just not sure what commands such a hefty price tag.

That being said, it's about $3.00 less than what you'd pay for a Coors Lite at a baseball game so on that scale it's an amazing bargain. Plus it's got a cartoon owl on the label.

I'd pay $4.99 just for a picture of a cartoon owl.

Late Night Grilled Swordfish

I don't really like swordfish. At least that's what I think. After a quick Google search it appears I've only made swordfish once in the past three years. I was surprised I even made it once. All I can think about when I think of swordfish we used to make at the first restaurant I worked at. We would grill it until it was completely dried out then put butter on it. It wasn't very good.

That's why tonight I decided to make some grilled swordfish!

Jen wan't going to be home until quite late again so I had plenty of time to grill up the items for tonight's dinner which I did not intend to serve piping hot. But first I made another salad cleaning yet another type of grain out of our cupboard.



This time I used the leftover forbidden rice from the pantry to make this salad with last week's normal cucumber, some crushed coriander seed, lemon juice, lemon zest, olive oil, scallion, tomato, salt, and pepper. I put the whole marinated salad over some kale to serve.



Oh, and I made a separate cucumber-free version for me so that none of the cucumber nastiness touched my salad.



The next course came entirely from the grill. First I grilled some thinly sliced strips of squash which I'd marinated in lemon, olive oil, salt, pepper, and red pepper flakes. I also grilled some corn on the cob and tossed it all together with some additional lemon juice and chopped mint. I also grilled some ciabatta bread to serve along with the salad.



My original idea was to have this grilled summer squash be a bed for the swordfish. However, I decided that would just be a waste of some beautiful squash so I served the swordfish simply with some grilled corn, chopped tomato, butter, and basil. Swordfish is a favorite of neither of us but this swordfish was delicious. It almost makes me want to have it more often except for the fact that it's generally quite expensive.



Jen ended up coming home about two hours earlier than I'd expected (because I'm bad at remembering her schedule). This was fortunate because she had the great idea to have this sauvignon blanc with dinner. Left to my own devices I would have simply poured a beer, as I often do.

"Indaba" is the Zulu word for "a meeting of the minds," or a traditional gathering of tribal leaders for sharing ideas. If I'd read the label before dinner I would have invited the mayor over so we could discuss some important things going on in our community, like that guy who dresses up like a walking turd to disrupt city council meetings.

It was nice to be done dinner earlier than normal. Well, 9:30 PM. This left us plenty of time for a second glass of wine and a little Tour de France action.

And by action I mean slow moving discussion about sixteenth century French chateaus.

We Have a Lot of Vegetables

Wow. We have a lot of vegetables.

We didn't really use as much last week as we could have, that much I admit. After work today, before I picked up the share, I bought some odds and ends at the grocery store. When I came home I discovered that Jen must have gone shopping yesterday because now we have a lot of produce. Now that Jen has a car I need to take better stock before doing my own shopping. Along with last week's stragglers we need to use up a fresh batch of produce from the farm share and the excess that we've both purchased.

Also, if anyone has a recipe that uses fifteen limes please send it my way.



This week in the share we got: three pounds of squash, Pooa Kheera cucumbers (whatever the hell that is), red scallions (like regular scallions but the part that you don't eat is red instead of white), romaine lettuce, dill, radicchio, green beans, eggplant, peaches, and blueberries.



Last week I'd purchased some corn that we never used. It was the first real corn of the season from this farm in Connecticut so I foolishly bought it thinking I'd make it into something. Tonight, to avoid having to throw it away, I did just that by turning it into a salad with kale, onion, garlic, sweet potato, red and yellow pepper, tomato, black beans, scallion, lime juice, hot sauce, chili powder, cumin, pepper, salt, and celery salt. I'm not sure why I added the celery salt but after tasting it I thought that celery salt was what it was missing. It's odd because other than hot dogs (and maybe potato salad) I can't ever remember that happening before.



I had intended to grill some zucchini tonight but as I drove home -- for an hour and a half in the sticky 90 degree heat, pouring rain, unable to open by car windows, during a traffic jam, for an hour-and-a-half -- I decided that I didn't want to stand in the rain and grill.

I cooked up some garlic, onion, and ground beef from the freezer along with a mixture of squash from last week and this week, tomato, salt, and pepper. To accompany the stew I did the unthinkable and cooked the remainder of some brown rice and white rice together in a pot to get them out of the cupboard. We have a lot of assorted grains in the pantry that need to be used up in the coming weeks so this was a solid start.

It was a good stew but I think it could have done without the ground beef. Mostly because the ground beef had been frozen and I'm starting to thing that frozen ground beef is kind of nasty. This only hit me recently but I feel that going forward I'm going to only use fresh ground beef. There's just something about the texture and flavor of frozen ground beef that is unpleasant from me. I guess I'm just becoming even more of a jerk with every passing day.

Fantastic.



For beer I had a Liberator Dopplebock from Thomas Hooker. I bought it because it was $18.99 for a four pack so I figured it must be good. Besides, it was from Thomas Hooker whose beers generally always impress me.



As a dessert I used the rest of the quark which I served with fresh blueberries, lemon zest, lemon juice, and a drizzle of honey. I enjoyed this dessert quite a bit but Jen was not exactly sold on it. After dessert I felt satisfied enough to sit back and watch the Tour de France in peace. Jen, on the other hand, I think was rummaging around in our candy stash trying to find a bag of chocolate chips satisfy her dessert craving.

If we're ever on some sort of marriage-based game show and I'm asked what Jen's least favorite type of German fresh cheese curd is I'm going to clean up.

Clean up!

Reuben and the Jets

Tonight was finally the night to utilize our corned beef leftovers to make perhaps the greatest leftover dish: Corned Beef Reubens.



I used the leftover seeded carraway rye bread with a little butter and olive oil in the pan. I topped the corned beef with a little thinly sliced Emmentaler and some sauerkraut. I made the sauce a little differently than I had in the past. I just used mayonnaise, ketchup, dijon mustard, chili, Worchestershire, and a little sweet pickle relish.



There were so many leftover root vegetables that I decided to use them to make a salad. I chopped up potatoes, turnip, rutabaga, golden beet, and carrots and made a dressing very similar to the one I used for the Reubens. I also chopped up some scallions and tossed in some peppadew for good measure.



I believe this year's Reubens were even more triumphant than last year's. A factor in that may have been that Jen was not recovering from knee surgery and had full mobility. That will make any dinner taste better.



As a final touch I served the sandwiches with Grillo's Pickles, a pickle company from Boston, Massachusetts. some would suggest Rick's Picks as they are a bit more local but Grillo's are fairly new in this area and I wanted to give them support. If you are into pickles you should definitely check them out. You can find out where to buy Grill's Pickles here. Or follow them on Twitter.

You know, if you're the type of person who wants to follow a pickle company on Twitter.

Mack(erel) The Knife (Because "Wholly Mackerel" was Too Obvious!)

This morning Jen went to get some milk for her coffee. When she opened the fridge she was greeted with a horrible surprise!



Jen complained about this incident in great details. She even insisted that the fish was "flopping around" in the fridge. I believe that this is an outright lie. Nonetheless she felt threatened by the presence of the fish. While I'd hoped to just leave it in the fridge indefinitely as a sort of pet/mascot, I decided I would have to take action and defend her from the fish's overt oppression.



I took action by zesting an orange and a lemon and then coating the inside and outside of the fish with the zest, salt, pepper, garlic, and olive oil. I stuffed the cavity with citrus slices, red onion, and parsley then roasted it in the oven. As an accompaniment: more potatoes from Kent, Connecticut.

After vanquishing the evil fish from the fridge it was me time. That meant celebrating with a victory Lion Bar. To the vitory go the spoils.

And the Lion Bars.

Have a ‘Gansett!

I got a few delightful items tonight for another meal ready in 20 minutes. Take that Rachael Ray!



I got these tasty little guys for a song -- a song called $3.99 a pound! Boo ya! They're pink shrimp from the Gulf of Maine. I cooked them up with olive oil, garlic, salt, pepper, a squeeze of lemon, and a little parsley for garnish. The best $2.95 I've ever spent on a food item in my life. They're only in season for a few weeks a year so I had to make hay while the sun was shining. Shrimp hay! Yoink!



For the main course: I roasted a cod loin along with some organic red thumb potatoes from Kent, Connecticut. They were tasty. The outside resembles a red thumb. Go figure! The inside resembles the interior of a purple and white-speckled alien thumb. That I was not expecting.

I also quickly threw together a relish with grape tomatoes, kalamata olives, capers, parsley, olive oil, and cracked pepper.



To accompany this fine feast I enjoyed a Narragansett Beer. (Warning: You must be 21 to visit their website. No matter how many times I randomly go to a website for some form of alcohol I am always amazed by how crazy this is!)

Narragansett is something my father would occasionally have around in tall silver (or was it gold?) cans in the fridge that was in the garage. My father-in-law romanticized this beer which was advertised on the Red Sox games he was miraculously able to pick up on the radio while in Canada as a youth. As the latter of the two fathers once put it: it's best served as cold as possible. My estimation is that 33 degrees is the warmest this beer should be allowed to reach before being consumed.

The beer is pictured here with a glass of water. In a blind taste test you would stand a 50% chance of guess which one was which.

It's a beer from my home state, and for that I am grateful. Rhode Island has not exactly exploded onto the scene with many alternatives in the past 120 years. It may not match your hoity-toity-hoppy-unfiltered-microbrews in the New England area but 'Gansett's got it where it counts.

It's made on honor and sold on merit. It says it right on the bottle!

That's the 'Gansett promise.

Jen and Nate's Rockin' New Year's Eve

While the Black-Eyed Peas sung their ridiculous song about how they are "so 3008" and I am, apparently, "so 2,000 late" I sat in traffic on a snowy route 95, trying to make my way home to have a 2,000 late dinner with Jen. I was a little 2,000-hungry and dealing with the Connecticut drivers made me a little 2,000-pissed as well.



Jen started off dinner with this delightful apple and beet salad with capricho de cabra, pecans, and grapefruit vinaigrette. It was hard to tell if I was more proud of the deliciousness or the skillful use of multiple items that we needed to work out of our fridge before leaving town.



To accompany dinner we enjoyed the 2007 Lemberger from Tabor Hill which we acquired in Michigan this summer.



I was supposed to bring home a loaf of crusty bread but since I am terrible and forgot we thawed out some of Jen's rolls from the freezer. While untraditional they made a nice accompaniment to the rouille.



Jen made an exceptional bouillabaisse which, as it turns out, is far easier to make than it is to spell.



We got a tiny piece of tenderloin from a farm in Vermont (well, distributed by a farm in Vermont to a local market here). Jen made some frites and aioli to accompany the tenderloin. The tenderloin was quite tasty and much less painful than last year's beef disaster.



The only "champagne" I could muster up was this tiny bottle of super-cheap, overpriced, lousy sparkling wine. It was sufficient to ring in the new year but insufficient in making either of us comment: "Hmmm, that was reasonably tasty."

Watching the horrifically bad "Dick Clark's Rockin'ly Bad New Year's Eve Travesty" was the perfect cap to the evening. While I'm going to have nightmares about J. Lo's performance, I will sleep soundly knowing that terrible New Year's Eve "specials" haven't changed a bit in the past 30 years or so.

Happy New Year, everyone! Let's hope that 2010 brings some sort of community supported agriculture back to this site!

It's All About The Brussel Sprouts

I'm short on time so here it goes . . .

Last week:



Roast Chicken with Cayenne-Roasted Pumpkin.

Tonight:



Mozzarella and Pine Nut Salad.



Pan Roasted Cod Loin with Roasted Brussel Sprouts and Spaghetti Squash. The sprouts were from Harvest Farm in Whately, Massachusetts.



The wine was Dr. Konstantin Frank Rkatsiteli. This is a wine from the Finger Lakes. I can only assume from the name that Dr. Konstantin Frank Rkatsiteli is the name of an evil scientist who is trying to help Soviet Russia develop its nuclear program by stealing secrets from American scientists.

And in his spare time he makes wine.