It's Prime Time For Swine Time

After a busy weekend it's nice to return home and find your wife hard at work on the family plot, her hands permanently stained with the dirt of a good day's work on the farm, and the table filled with delicious baked goods.



While I was away at work Jen took the liberty of harvesting our garden AeroGarden. I guess the three tiny human-hair-sized strands of chive were not worth keeping. However, we do have a quarter teaspoon's worth of thyme that may make a lovely addition to a tiny pot roast some day.



Jen started our next batch in the garden with some mint, parsley, and oregano. By September we're gonna have another few pinky-sized strands of herbs, enough to make a bouquet garni for some Smurfs.



For dinner: pork! I've been on a bit of a pork kick lately. Perhaps it is because I feel bad for pork farmers who are struggling because of all the morons who refuse to buy pork because they think they're going to get swine flu. Perhaps it is because it is delicious. Perhaps it is a little of both. My initial idea was to wrap the pork chop in bacon. I didn't abandon this idea because I thought it was over the top but rather because the frozen bacon snapped when I took it out of the freezer so instead I tossed in the strips to roast in the pan with some baby zucchini. I made a glaze with maple syrup and dijon and poured that over the roasted pork chop.

Oh, also, I cooked it all in one pan. Only amateurs need two pans.



While I was away Jen also made a lovely lemon cake (I should be away more often).



We had the lemon cake along with some vanilla yogurt and fresh blackberries. The cake was arguably her best, mixed to perfection -- light, flaky, and delicious.

I can't believe it's only 8:00PM as we wind down with some hot Boston sports action: Bruins vs. Hurricanes; Red Sox vs. Yankees. If I had the offer from some magical genie to replace the lemon cake with some hundred dollar bills and the Bruins game with a luxury yacht I think I would stick with what I've got.

Unless the yacht had some lemon cake in the fridge.

A Rare Bean

So tonight was the big night, the night that I would prepare the mystery vegetable that I have been alluding to all week. So here it is . . .



Hmm. Don't recognize that? How about this . . .



Still nothing? Well, those are garbanzo beans (or chickpeas depending on your preferred nomenclature). I've never actually seen them fresh before and perhaps it has something to do with the fact that each pea is sealed in a little pod and must be removed individually. It was kind of a pain and yielded a very small amount of chickpeas after an a bit of labor this morning before heading off to work. The main question I had was why they were green when any chickpea I've ever encountered is tan or beige in color.



I also made some fresh pasta this morning which I rolled out and cut this evening. I made a quick pasta with fiddlehead ferns, fresh garbanzo beans, bacon, olive oil, and a little butter. It used up the remaining bacon from last night's dinner and made a very tasty pasta. I was leery of using the fiddleheads at first but I was very glad I did in the end. I think I've really come around to fiddleheads in the last year. Previously I thought them to be overrated and bitter. Now I find them to be overrated and less bitter. My hope is that by next year I will find them to be overrated and tasty.



This wine cork took Jen ten minutes and me ten to fifteen minutes of work to remove. After I finally removed it from the bottle I was sweating and breathless. Luckily it was one of those rubber corks which I was able to pry out with my waiter's friend and a pair of pliers though I ended up breaking the pair of pliers.



The wine itself was pretty tasty. However, by my calculations for the amount of effort expended this should have been the best wine I've ever tasted. This was not the case. In the future I may avoid this particular bottle unless they change the packaging so that they replace the label with a $100 dollar bill.

It's All Local But The Swine . . . And Maybe The Beef

I must admit that while I like to keep it local I was a little nervous about having these local clams. After all, New York and New Jersey doesn't often get mentioned in the same sentence as the words "fresh", "clean", or "water". However, I decided to put my prejudices aside and give these fresh New Jersey littlenecks a try.



If New Jersey shellfish wasn't enough of a risk I decided to put some bacon on top of them and turn them into clams casino. Pork isn't exactly the American meat of choice this past week but I was willing to take my chances. I know where my meat comes from so I'm not terribly concerned. Jen is often talking about clams casino so I thought she might enjoy this as a first course for tonight's dinner.



For a second course I took some delicious New Jersey asparagus from Cedarville, New Jersey, and steamed it, drizzling a little melted butter, olive oil, salt and pepper over it. Then I poached some of those local eggs from Old Partridge Farm and poached them. I served the asparagus with a little drizzle of fresh lemon juice, salt, pepper, and shaved Parmigiano Reggiano.



For a main course, quite simply, a delicious porterhouse steak (which I'd acquired at $9.99 a pound) and "grilled" in a pan. I'll call it "New York City Grilled Porterhouse" since the pilot light is, sadly, the closest anything I eat at home will get to an open flame.

To accompany it all we finished the Sauvignon Blanc. Wine pairing experts would tell you that the Sauvignon Blanc was better suited to the first two courses. However, $7.99 a bottle wine experts would tell you that it went fine even with the beef.

Tomorrow, for real this time, I will prepare something with an object of produce that you rarely find fresh. I know the suspense is killing you so I will give you a hint: it has two very different and distinct names.

See you tomorrow!

Ramping Up

Normally people are eager for spring to finally arrive so that it can get warmer and they can enjoy the nice weather. Tonight I am eager for spring to arrive so that it will cool down and I can enjoy the weather. As Jen zips across the lousy, crane-ridden lovely, scenic coast of Connecticut on a train, I am here at home, making dinner and watching another night of fantastic playoff hockey, trying to use as little heat as possible to keep the apartment livable.

While our farm share doesn't start back up for another month or so I have been fortunate enough to find a large supply of fantastic local, seasonal produce lately. Our regular farm is in upstate New York but much of the produce I've accumulated for my days off comes from New Jersey farms.



I began my evening with some leftover matzoh crackers and port salut cheese. I decided that I would dress the crackers up much the way you would see in a "serving suggestion" on the side of the box. I didn't really feel like I needed the tomato and green onion but I thought it might kinda be neat to be the first person who ever took their suggestion. End result: not bad.



It's been 90 degrees for the past few days so I figured a light white wine would be nice. I went with Bohemian Highway mainly because of its light crisp taste and it's acidic citrus overtones.

And the $7.99 price tag.



I caramelized some shallots in a pan then added in some delicious air chilled chicken breast which I pan roasted. Right at the very end I tossed in the local New Jersey ramps with a tiny pat of butter and let them wilt for about 45 seconds before turning the pan off.

It's a shame that ramps are only in season for like five days out of the year because they're delicious. You really don't need anything to make them delicious other than a pinch of salt and a little heat. On the downside a pound of ramps cooks down to about one tablespoon so there really isn't a lot of eating on a ramp.

Hopefully Jen is not reading this on the train so she can be surprised with delicious ramps for dinner. However, if she does read it on the train she'll probably be even more excited to come home and have dinner.

But tonight was just the tip of the iceberg! Just wait to see what tomorrow will bring with the local lineup. ** SPOILER ALERT ** It involves a vegetable that you hardly ever see fresh! It's gonna be awesome!

Dinner With Carl Sagan

While Jen eats dinner with friends in Boston, I stay home in New York and dine with my good friend, Carl Sagan. Watching the fifth episode of "The Cosmos" goes wonderfully with a wide variety of Pan-Asian cuisine. I also find Carl Sagan's enunciation to be particularly soothing while you dine.



Tonight I started with a salad of greens, wasabi peas, sesame seeds, sesame oil, rice wine vinegar, and Bragg's amino acids.



Several years ago I went out to dinner with some friends. We were at an Asian restaurant and I ordered the miso soup. The waiter didn't bring me a spoon so when he came back I kindly requested one. He then looked at me and said, "Oh, you're a spoon eater?" He said the words "spoon eater" with the vitriol generally reserved for the words "child molester."

That man was an asshole. An asshole who, thankfully, was not around tonight to see me once again deal with miso soup in such a crazy manner.

I made miso with some more of the soy-ginger marinated chicken, some green chili paste, and spinach over some more cooked noodles. It was delicious and with enough leftover for tomorrow's lunch.

And tomorrow I'm going to drop some local foods on you so hard it's gonna feel like a ton of bricks. Look out!