Jen and Nate got married. The next week, they started their first-ever farm share. This is the nerdy story of their marriage and their vegetables. With a focus mostly on the vegetables.
On my way to meet Jen last night I had an unfortunate incident with a pothole which ended up blowing out my tire and causing me to take a slow detour to a garage and getting it removed so I could put on my donut. There isn't a lot of space on the roads of Manhattan for changing a tire. Let me rephrase that: there's not a lot of space on the roads of Manhattan for changing a tire and not getting your legs run over.
Dinner plans, therefore, had to be slightly altered.
I took a nice piece of skirt steak, pan seared it, and served it with some mashed potatoes. I figured this was about as basic as you could get. Since there was some ricotta in the fridge I added that to the potatoes. I'm not sure that was necessary but it did use up some leftover ricotta. Also, I made a salad of Boston lettuce, red onion, and tomato with olive oil, salt, and pepper.
For a drink I had this unique beer called Old Engine Oil from Harviestoun Brewery in Scotland. I figured this was very fitting considering my car troubles. It was nice that it also happened to be a delicious chocolatey beer that was quite unique in taste and appearance. I'm glad that it tasted better than actual engine oil.
Unfortunately, at a mere 6.0% ABV, it was not nearly enough to make me forget the pain of having to take our new car to the garage already.
I was always taught two things about dreams: 1.) If you die in your dream you die in real life, and 2.) Your dreams are just your mind trying to make sense of the things that happened to you over the course of the day. Or something like that.
I think that both of these things are bunk.
If the second statement is true then how do you explain the fact that I had a dream about the final episode of The Wonder Years last night after not having seen it since 1993? I haven't even thought about it at all since then. I've thought about the show in general, sure, but the final episode has been out of my mind for a while.
The dream moved me so much that I spent much of today thinking about that episode, and the show in general. In fact, I woke up at 5:00 AM and couldn't get back to sleep. Did it just take 18 years for the gravity of that episode to sink in? I was tempted to watch the episode all day but I thought that would be cheating. The right thing to do would be to start watching the show again from episode one and allow the episodes to sink in one-by-one until I reach the final episode.
After about eleven hours I started to shake the Wonder Years haze I was in and went to pick up the bi-weekly fruit share. This week we got Golden Delicious Apples, Fuji Apples, Bosc Pears, Cameo Apples, and a jug of cider.
There was one problem . . .
. . . this is how much apples we still had left from two weeks ago.
I quickly got to work making a giant pot of apple sauce. Now there was another problem . . .
. . . there was still this many apples left.
Perhaps, along with the pears, Jen can make some huge array of apple and pear desserts over the weekend to use them up. I'm running out of ideas.
The other day we were bored so we drove to the local farmer's market just to see what they had where we picked up these cool-looking Jiló (Brazilian Eggplant). At first Jen selected some that were green which I quickly rejected and replaced with red ones after lecturing her about how the red ones were the best ones.
I got into a bit of trouble for that.
We also picked up some little pumpkins so I roasted them in the oven along with the eggplant and filled them both with a farro risotto I made with butter, garlic, onion, bacon, and roasted brussel sprouts.
I call it a "risotto" just to drive purists crazy with rage.
For beer I cracked open this Bière Du Boucanier Dark Brouwerij Van Steenberge in East Flanders, Belgium. I figured the pirate went well with the theme of this meal since pirates love pumpkins so much.
Oh, and Winnie Cooper loved pirates! I just love it when a theme comes together!
As dessert I served up some of the warm apple sauce with a scoop of leftover Greek yogurt, some melted down caramel sauce from the apples, and a drizzle of chocolate sauce.
I also managed to convince Jen to watch the first episode of The Wonder Years which was quite a feat considering her hatred for watching pilot episodes. Jen's payment in return was that I review both our companies' medical plans for 2012 so we could make an informed decision for our future.
I challenge you to watch that opening credits sequence and tell me you aren't moved more than the last time you are when you compared deductibles.
Tonight we both arrived home at the same exact time. As we were both starving we didn't have time to make anything too elaborate so that's why we turned to my old standby: the Italian Sandwich.
We started off with this Cacio de Roma from Italy. This is a sheep's milk cheese that is bathed in salt water for 24 hours. The cheese that is. Or maybe it's the sheep that bathes in the salt water. I'm just not sure what that does to the wool.
I'll need to do a little more research.
For the main course I took all of last night's leftovers and made them into these pitas stuffed with some of the venison kebabs, quinoa, arugula, red onion, tomato, and yogurt. I was going to serve them cold but since Jen had spent all day in the cold watching marathoners do their marathoning I agreed to heat it up which worked surprisingly well.
For a drink I poured this Estrella Damm Inedit. This beer is from Italy and claims to be the perfect beer for pairing with food. Unlike last night I missed the opportunity to serve this in wine glasses. That's really not like me. I'm generally very good at taking every opportunity to be a jerk when it comes to unnecessarily elaborate ways of serving beer.
This beer features a little booklet that hangs around the neck and goes on for pages and pages about how great it is, what the tasting notes are, etc. It doesn't, however, list its ABV percentage or IBUs. If beer comes with a book that book should at least have the decency to give you the vital stats of the beer.
There you have it. Tonight was like an Italian Sandwich. That is if you like to name your sandwiches after the bread they're in. For example: a rye sandwich is a sandwich with corned beef, sauerkraut, Swiss cheese, and Russian dressing.
When I learned to cook, from thick-headed Frenchmen in culinary school, the focus was on all manner of exotic ingredients. In fact, there was a class where they just laid out a bunch of different ingredients on a table and you had to write down what everything was. I did poorly. Mostly because the only bean I could remember was a calypso bean because it kind of looks like a killer whale and Jacques Cousteau's ship was called The Calypso.
All other beans looked the same to me.
Nowadays local is the theme. I would imagine that most of those thick-headed Frenchman would be recoiling at this new trend if I thought any of them were still alive. They were chain-smoking elderly men with not a shred of humor and I imagine that if the smoking hasn't killed them by now the stress from being so uptight surely must have.
For tonight's dinner I wanted to return to those days of unnecessary excess and see if I could use as many ingredients from as many different countries and continents as possible.
For the first course I made this new world salad. This features roasted New Jersey sweet potatoes (North America) with quinoa from Peru (South America) and some sliced grape tomatoes. I imagine this is what explorers brought back to Europe to serve to their kings and queens. They too would have used exotic tropical lemon juice and olive oil from Italy. Then their kings and queens told them not to bring back any of this "hippie food" any more and had them executed.
For the second course I cooked up some shrimp from Thailand (Asia). I tossed in some coconut milk from Thailand along with some roasted red chili paste, and tamari and cooked it down. I served the curried shrimp with some grilled slices of baguette.
This dish was reminiscent of something we had on one of our first dates in Providence, RI back in 2002. The restaurant, Neath's, is now closed but the coconut crostini came back to life (sort of) with this attempted recreation.
For the main course I made these venison kebabs with ground venison from New Zealand (Oceana), with chili powder, cumin, lemon zest, thyme, and crushed pistachios.
After grilling them I served them on some grilled naan with salad greens, sliced red onion, and a little yogurt from Greece (Europe). On the naan I smeared a little harissa from Tunisia (Africa) to make sure all old world continents were covered.
And what drink would I pair with this?
Well, Pangaea, of course, from Dogfish Head. Pangaea is beer made with ingredients from all seven continents including crystallized ginger from Australia, water from Antarctica, basmati rice from Asia, muscavado sugar from Africa, South American quinoa, European yeast, and North American maize.
Here's my favorite bro-master talking about this beer. When I'm bummed I also like to watch movies about dinosaurs so I know how he feels.
For dessert we had a return to basics. Jen made these caramel apples with apples from our fruit share. It all returned back home to New York.
This was a noble experiment. My only regret is that I could not get any reverse-osmosis glacier water from Antarctica to boil some pasta in or something. At any rate, it's nice to know that my meal featured ingredients from every continent in some small degree.
The French chefs who instructed me would be proud. While this dinner didn't feature any traditional French recipes or unnecessarily precise vegetable cuts it did, at least, exhibit excess in its sourcing of ingredients.
That's right, Everybody, it's time for everyone's favorite home-freezer-based gameshow: Name! That! Leftover!
Tonight's contestant is Nate. Nate lives in New York and was recently challenged by his wife, Jen, by saying that they both needed to do a better job of going through their leftovers. Well, folks, can Nate take up Jen's challenge? Let's find out!
Tonight Nate rummaged through the freezer where he found two unmakred plastic bags with some sort of frozen ingredient in each. After carefully weighing his options he took a bold move by opening both bags and heating them up in the pot! What will he do with this? Will the two mystery ingredients be compatible? Will Jen be regretting her challenge to Nate on the previous evening?
Let's find out!
It was a bold choice to combine both bags but once they began defrost in the pan Nate found out that they both appeared to be sausage dishes of some sort. One appeared to be some sort of sausage and pepper dish while the other looked like a sausage and sauerkraut concoction!
How would they go together?
Daring use of two mystery ingredients together: 25 points!
Not so bad, it turns out! Nate heated them both up in the same pot with a little leftover braising liquid from the osso bucco the other night. He toasted some challah rolls and served the sausage mixture along with some tarragon mustard, melted cheddar cheese and pickles!
Sneaking ingredient Jen does not like (challah) without her noticing: 50 points!
As an accompaniment Nate elected to served this 60 minute IPA from Dogfish Head.
Rare IPA that both Jen and Nate like despite an overall dislike for IPAs: 15 points!
For dessert Nate returned to the freezer to get a slice of an ice cream cake that he and Jen had slowly been eating for the past month.
Return tot he freezer: 10 points!
Nate's total for this evening comes to 105 points! That's a solid showing and makes Nate eligible for our Week's End Showdown! Tune in on Friday night to see Nate battle against his fellow contestants to battle for the using-all-the-parts-of-the buffalo trophy!
