We have bought new potatoes three weeks in a row at the Festhalle, our local Farmer’s market, and they really don’t resemble supermarket potatoes in taste, even expensive organic ones. So don’t cook them like supermarket potatoes. Those in the picture are regular Red and Yukon golds.
My favorite cooking method for these: frying. Shocking to hear that from a Southerner. Cut into small cubes is best. These are especially good in the classic Farmer’s Omelet.
Next in line is the classic boiled new potatoes, served in a giant pool of butter and salt. For god’s sake don’t peel these–cook them as is.
In another week or two, I may turn into Mr. Potato Head.
We have wild blueberries in the woods, and fresh strawberries at the Festhalle, our local farmer’s market. How about a spring dessert?
Just cut up the strawberries, and add some sugar. The blueberries don’t need anything but their own fine selves. Whip up some heavy cream and steam a sponge cake.
Ingredients for the Sponge Cake
2 organic Eggs
1/2 cup organic Sugar
Vanilla
Meyer Lemon Juice
1/2 cup Flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
Separate the eggs, and turn the whites into a meringue with the sugar. I used our thirty year old Kitchen Aid, but a whisk will do as well. Add the yolks, vanilla, and lemon juice, beat for a minute or so, and then slowly fold in the flour and baking powder. Butter a baking dish, and get to steaming.
San Fran Wok with a Homemade Lid
I bought a USA made wok from the Wok Shop in San Fran, but made my own lid out of an old mixing bowl. The knob is dogwood that I turned on my lathe. The lid is exactly the right size. It accommodates a steaming rack and a cake pan.
Cake passing the Toothpick Test
The steamed cake has a wonderful texture and taste. It better, as it has all that juice to soak up. The last bite, which is nothing but cake mush and berry juice, is the best.
The first wild blueberries are ripe here, which is the cause for some serious noshing (see the next post). These tiny buckshot sized berries have a mind blowing sharpness of taste.
Every other year I will spend an hour or so picking enough of these little devils to make one of my favorite sauces. Here it is: Wild Blueberry Sauce. Serve it on crepes or any pastry.
Ingredients
1 tablespoon Butter
1 cup of Wild Blueberries
2 tablespoons of Honey
Juice of 1 Key Lime
2 drinks of Brandy (One for the dish, one for the cook)
Cook the blueberries in the butter, and then add the other ingredients. More or less honey may be needed depending on the tartness of the berries. Lemon juice can be substituted for the limes, but I always use what I have (my wife grows Key Limes and Meyer Lemons). A crepe is really just a thin pancake, but once again, everything sounds better in French. You could use cognac instead of brandy, but they’re just different priced versions of the same thing.
The Red Wheelbarrow William Carlos Williams, 1883 – 1963 so much depends upon a red wheel barrow glazed with rain water beside the white chickens
Inspired by one of my all time favorite television shows, Shaun the Sheep, I put my very own mini-junkyard in my new chicken fortress (the sheep flock in the show spend hours jimmying with the discards in their junkyard) . It’s only an old wheelbarrow, but the chicks can run for cover under it whenever they get buzzed by a hawk. Just today, the entire flock was snoozing under it.
The old fellow lost its wheel while getting dragged up there to the fortress. I hand mixed tons of concrete in this thing, and the dents prove it. No worries, however–I have a new red wheelbarrow.
Having scored a pillow sized bag of greens and some fresh pasture-raised eggs from our local farmer’s market, at the Festhalle, we decided it was quiche time again. We had our own fresh herbs to add to the mix. This is my old recipe, with a fresh local twist.
One handful of Greens, shredded (We bought Collards)
4 organic Eggs
Heavy Cream (Enough to fill the Crust)
Fresh Herbs, chopped (We had Chervil and Parsley)
Salt and Pepper
Nutmeg
Again, crank your oven up to 400 degrees F, as this pie crust goes in uncooked. Add the chopped pieces of the cheese into the uncooked pie shell, and then the ham. Saute the greens in butter until soft (my wife prefers collards to be boiled, but I was cooking). Mix the cream and egg mixture together, with the sauteed greens and chopped herbs, and season. Pour that over the filling in the pie shell, season with nutmeg, and bake. Ours cooked for 65 minutes. The result is as close to edible green eggs and ham as you will ever get, and will even make you feel good about eating all that cheese and cream.
Dutch oven and “Camp” Dutch oven in the Outdoor Hearth Hybrid
This mammoth version of a fire pit actually doubles as an outside hearth, which can be used like a similar arrangement in many colonial kitchens. The key to the set up is the crane from which that dutch oven is hanging.
A Multi-tasking Fire Pit
The crane, like those in colonial kitchen open hearth fireplaces, makes all the difference. The cook can’t immediately control the temperature of a wood fire, but they can control the amount of heat that reaches a pot, by swinging it from side to side, or raising and lowering it up and down via an s-hook. Additionally, the rebar grid at the bottom allows the cook to sit a dutch oven directly over the fire, as in the first photo.
The Holes Drilled in the Bottom are Not Visible
So there are at least three ways to cook here–on the fire, close to the fire, or swinging in the air. And if you just want to use it as a fire pit, the crane is on a hinge, and can swing completely behind the pit.
This was made from an old industrial grade propane tank, so it is recycled as well. An oak fell on it once, and I mean a big one, and it knocked the pit into the ground up to the top of the legs. The only damage was to bend the crane support slightly. We pulled it out of the ground, moved it, and I twisted the support slightly around, and put it back to work. Now that’s rustic.
We scored some local beef Chuck Eye Steaks yesterday, and decided it was steak and salad time. Our token veg was Crowder peas, unfortunately made from dried ones, as we have eaten our way almost completely though our freezer. Good thing the official opening of the Festhalle Farmer’s Market is next weekend.
But we had homegrown fresh greens for the salad. As Neil Young rightly said. “Homegrown is the way it should be.” We topped the salad with my Half A Remoulade sauce, a go to around here. Half A means half a**ed.
Ingredients
Mayonnaise
Ketchup
Lemon Juice (we use Meyer Lemon Juice)
Salt
Dill Pickle, finely chopped
Capers, finely chopped
1 Scallion
Tabasco Sauce
We use this on everything from Salads to Po-Boys. Add some extra hot sauce for the Po-boys. Proportions for this sauce are between you and your conscience.
And now for some gratuitous spring blooming shrub pictures.
This cabinet is attached to the back of my brick oven, as there is never enough room to store the gear that accumulates over the years. It’s actually only an old greenhouse bench which I clad in old PT boards into which I cut tongue and groove joints. I also made the paint, which I will discuss later, as some people actually cook this paint, and the top is–drumroll–fireproof! That’s cement board topped with un-gauged slate. The next project is a “Tuscan” grill to be built next to it.
A homemade pie crust is so superior to bought ones that I am almost ashamed to even make the comparison. With a couple of small exceptions and adaptations, this is the same crust that has been made in the South for decades, if not centuries. This recipe makes one crust.
Basic Pie Crust
Ingredients:
One cup All Purpose Flour
One stick Organic Butter (4 oz.)
1/4 cup Ice Water
Optional: Salt, Sugar
The all butter pie crust is a tradition that makes perfect sense. The Picayune Creole Cookbook even trash talks about other fats in a pie crust.
Some persons use lard for pie crust. This is to be deprecated. The crust will never have the same flavor or be as flaky as when made with butter. Others, again, mix the butter and the lard. This, too, is to be condemned, if you wish for the best results.
There you have it. Unless you want to have your pie crust condemned to Creole pastry hell, use all butter.
Now, back to the crust. Step one is to separate the butter into small, pea to rice size chunks. I use a bench scraper/pastry scraper for this step.
Add ice water, a few drops at a time.
Make a well in the center of the dough and add the ice water in small amounts. Work the dough with one hand (preferably fingertips only) until it sticks together without crumbling. Use the heel of your hand (now we go to the “fraisage” step) to make certain that the butter is well incorporated into the flour. You can accomplish this by folding the dough over a few times.
Dough ready to refrigerate
Scrap the work surface clean and roll the dough into a ball. Wrap in plastic wrap, and refrigerate for an hour or so. Then you can take out your frustrations on the dough.
Dough ready to be whacked
Spread an ample amount of flour on the work surface and give the dough a couple of good whacks. Oh, go ahead and make it as many as you like. My homemade super bad rolling pin is made of dogwood, and it’s brutalitarian. Roll out the dough as thin as you like. A thick pie crust is no good.
Crust ready to be transferred to a pie plate or form
Roll up the crust onto the rolling pin and transfer to your pie plate. Trim around the edges, and you’re done. It’s pie time.
A crust with added sugar is technically know as a pâte brisée sucrée, which strangely enough translates to pie crust with sugar. The Picayune Creole Cookbook recommends taking leftover dough scraps, cooking them as small squares, and serving with jams or preserves. A good pie crust is a terrible thing to waste.
Southern Fusion Cooking 