Cabbage and Beet Borscht

I know I've posted before about how I don't like cucumbers, and now I have to rag on another vegetable:  beets.  They taste like dirt.  There, I said it.  Their sweetness just makes the dirt-flavor more pronounced.  They're what I imagine a mud pie would taste like.  Yuck.

But, a lot of people like beets.  They're beautiful.  We get them quite frequently in our CSA share.  And I'm not one to give up--there has to be a way to prepare these that will be better than palatable.  Something I'll think is good.

And I may have found that recipe.  Cabbage and beet borscht.  My mother-in-law likes borscht, and she was coming over for dinner so I figured I'd use up my dreaded beets on a meal I knew at least one person would enjoy.  I scanned around the internet looking for a recipe, and ultimately settled on this one since I also had a head of red cabbage sitting in the fridge from the CSA.

I followed the linked recipe from Allrecipes pretty closely (except I omitted the optional caraway seeds, and vegetable quantities were approximate based on how much I had on hand).  It appears to be a near-clone of the Borscht recipe from The Moosewood Cookbook, a cookbook that is sadly lacking from my bookshelf.  Perhaps this will be the impetus I need to finally add The Moosewood Cookbook to my collection!

End result was a soup where the beet flavor was tamed from "dirty" to "earthy".  I can live with earthy.  I mean, I wouldn't want to eat this borscht every day, but for the times when we get beets in our CSA share, well, this isn't such a bad way to use them up!

Back to the Basics

Belonging to a CSA doesn't always mean searching for new recipes in which to incorporate unfamiliar ingredients. Sometimes it's a simple as recreating old favorites with local, very fresh ingredients. Try it sometime; I guarantee you'll be pleasantly surprised by the end result! We recently made shepherd's pie with local corn, potatoes and ground pork from Holiday Brook Farm. It was outstanding (and I assure you, it didn't look like this for long).

More recently, I purchased a pork butt roast from Holiday Brook Farm. We've been grilling pork butt steaks throughout the summer and are quite addicted to the wonderful flavor of pastured pork (as well as the health benefits of all that omega 3 and conjugated linoleic acid). This little beauty spent some quality time in my crock pot before landing on a roll in the form of pulled pork. It was outstanding (and that's an understatement). This is the recipe I used, Adapted from Williams-Sonoma's "Food Made Fast: Slow Cooker".

Ingredients:

3 T EVOO
3-4 pound pork butt roast (they call for a boneless pork shoulder)
1 yellow onion, finely chopped
1 cup cider vinegar
3/4 cup ketchup
1/2 cup dark molasses
1/3 cup firmly packed brown sugar
2 tsp. red pepper flakes
1 T Worcestershire sauce
1 tsp. each dry mustard, salt and pepper (I used white pepper)
1/2 tsp. paprika
Sandwich rolls, toasted

Heat the oil in a large skillet and brown pork roast evenly on all sides (about 10 minutes); then transfer to crock pot.

Pour off all but 1 T oil in the skillet (I skipped this part); add onion and cook until golden brown (about 5 minutes). Add vinegar; cook stirring to scrape up the browned bits, 2 minutes. Stir in ketchup, molasses, brown sugar and red pepper flakes, Worcestershire sauce, dry mustard, salt, pepper and paprika. Cook, stirring occasionally, until mixture starts to bubble, 1 minute. Pour over pork.

Cover crock pot and cook on high for 4-5 hours (may be cooked on low for 8-10). Transfer pork to cutting board and using forks (or your fingers) shred, discarding fat. Return pork to crock pot and stir to mix in sauce (I let it cook another 30-45 minutes). Serve on toasted buns!

I'm a little bit lost without our vegetable CSA. I've got a serious stash of winter squash, some brussel sprouts in the freezer, potatoes and onions in the pantry and carrots in the crisper, but I miss my fresh weekly greens and the camaraderie! Our farm has decided to offer a meat CSA throughout the winter. We have already enrolled and will be picking up our 10-pound share of pork on the first Saturday of each month, so we won't be losing touch with our farm and farmers completely throughout the winter months. I'll also continue to get farm fresh eggs and local yogurt from them.

I have some thoughts on what we'll do for produce in the coming months - I'll share that information with you in a separate post in the coming week as I'd love to hear what you are doing now that CSA and farmers' market season is coming to an end. Until then.....Bon Appetit!

Harvest Soup

As I commented on Lisa's post below, the cool, crisp days of autumn move me to cook. Okay, okay, before someone points out to me that the official start of autumn is still a week away, let me go on record as saying I know it's not here yet, but it feels like it is and that's the only excuse I need.

Last weekend I found our fridge/pantry loaded with kale, sweet link sausage, garlic, tender young leeks, fresh potatoes and free range chicken stock. If you've never had free range chicken, I have to say - "what ever are you waiting for?" Once you discover what chicken is really supposed to taste like, you will be hard pressed to buy chicken from your local grocer, but I digress.

I decided these ingredients were begging (yes, the food in our household often speaks to me) to be combined into a soup for the soul that would be greater than the sum of it's parts. Who was I to begrudge them their final wish? And so I began....

I tossed a few cloves (3-4) of chopped garlic, 4 tender, young leeks (again, chopped) and sliced sausage (casing removed) into a stock pot. In the meantime, I quickly chopped a few potatoes (probably 1 1/2 cups worth) into bite-size chunks and tossed them into the pot. The sausage (from pastured pork raised at Holiday Brook Farm alongside the veggies in this soup) was pretty lean so I actually had to add a bit of butter to the mixture to get the potatoes to brown. Then I added a healthy dose of kale (probably 3-4 cups loosely packed) torn into bite-sized pieces with stems removed, along with a cup or so of chicken stock. Once the kale began to wilt, I added another 3 cups or so of chicken stock. I let this simmer for a while...maybe 30 minutes or so, then tossed in a can of white beans. I really debated on whether to do that, since everything else was sourced locally, but it just needed the beans.

This honestly was one of THE best soups I've ever made. Much of that was, I'm sure, due to fabulous, fresh ingredients. But I'm also going to take a little credit for the recipe. The photo below doesn't even begin to do it justice, but here it is. This one's for you, Meg!















Bon Appetit!

Potato Pancakes, Apple Compote, and Zucchini Brownies

While summer's bounty is at an end, I completely love the flavors of fall. Here are a couple of recipes to keep you cooking local through October:




Potato Pancakes

This recipe is based on the recipe for potato pancakes in The Joy of Cooking. I've made some slight changes.

Ingredients:

5 medium potatoes, peeled, washed, and coarsely grated (about 2.5 cups coarsely grated)
2 large eggs, lightly beaten (may need 3 eggs)
1 tablespoon finely grated onion (I almost always use about 1/2 teaspoon onion powder instead. A cheat, I know.)
2 tablespoons flour
3/4 teaspoon salt
Vegetable oil for frying

Directions:

Peel, wash, and coarsely grate the potatoes. Then place handfuls into a dish towel and wring out excess water. Place the potatoes into a large bowl. Mix with the remaining ingredients (except the vegetable oil).

The resulting mixture should be kind of liquid-y: mostly potatoes, but definitely some liquid that settles to the bottom of the bowl. If the mixture seems dry, add a third egg. This is a very forgiving recipe. Sometimes I only use 2 cups of potatoes, sometimes I use more like 3 cups. Sometimes it's pretty liquidy, sometimes it's more dry. It always turns out yummy, though!

Cover the bottom of a large skillet with approx 1/4 inch of vegetable oil. Heat over medium high heat until hot. (As a tip, you can use a wooden chopstick to test the oil. When the oil is hot enough, bubbles should form around the tip of the wooden chopstick when you dip it in the oil. You can then use the chopstick along with a spatula to help flip the pancakes).

Drop spoonfuls of potato mixture into the hot oil. Use the back of the spoon to spread the mixture out thinly. The thinner your pancakes, the crispier they will become so flatten them according to your preference (very thin if you like crispy pancakes, thicker if you like them less crispy). Stir the potato mixture in the bowl between each spoonful you add to the pan so that the liquid doesn't just settle to the bottom of the bowl.

Fry until browned on the bottom, flip, and fry until the other side is browned. Remove to paper towels to drain.

These are delicious served with sour cream, applesauce, or the apple "compote" I'll include below.

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Apple Compote

This isn't really a compote, but I'm not sure what to call it. Maybe a warm, extremely chunky applesauce?

Ingredients:

5-8 apples
2 tablespoons brown sugar
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
3 tablespoons water (or more)

Directions:

Peel the apples, and then shave chunks off directly into a large saucepan. Add a couple tablespoons of water, and place over medium low heat. Add the cinnamon and sugar and heat until warm and softened, about 15 minutes. This is another forgiving recipe. Cook it longer over a lower heat, though you will probably have to add more water if it starts to dry out. Cook it a really long time, and it'll keep getting more and more like applesauce.

The flavor and consistency of this is dependent on the apples used. I like to use a variety of apples. In the picture above, I used Macs, Jonagolds, and Mutsus, the varieties I picked earlier this week.

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Okay, and dessert is really a summer dessert, that I've been meaning to post for a few months. But keep it in mind for next summer when those zucchinis are once again overflowing the crisper drawers!

Chocolate Zucchini Brownie Cake

I follow the linked recipe exactly and it turns out so amazingly. One of my friends has also make it subbing applesauce for the oil, and said it was still very good. My only complaint about the recipe is that they call it brownies. It's really more like a cake in my opinion. Whatever it is, it's delightful!

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Last note: I made this meal for my Pass the Plate meal. You can see the part of the plate, which I put the potato pancakes on. KitchenAid is selling platters to raise money for breast cancer research. The idea is that you buy a plate, register it online, then cook something for a friend or family member. Then they cook something and pass it along to someone else, who passes it to someone else, etc. Everyone registers the plate online as they pass it, and every time it gets passed, KitchenAid donates $5.

It was really fun to do, and such an easy way to help raise money for breast cancer research!