Browsing Category

foodie

Apple Tart with Honey-Cayenne Roasted Squash Seeds

I seriously love this apple dessert recipe because I get to nom honey-cayenne roasted squash seeds while waiting for the tart to bake. The combo of sweet honey and tart apple blends with the heat of cayenne gloriously, especially right out of the oven with a scoop of high quality vanilla ice cream melting on top.
The tart crust is foolproof. I experiment a lot in the kitchen and with that activity comes So. Many. Failures. But this crust has never let me down. A note about the squash seeds: they’re dangerous. Best make a double batch.

Foolproof Tart Crust

Ingredients

Tart Crust

  • 1 1/2 cup flour
  • 1 cup sugar
  • 1 egg yolk
  • 2 tablespoons cold water
  • 1 cup cold butter (cubed)
  • 1 pinch salt

Directions

Tart Crust
Step 1
In a mixer with the paddle attachment, combine flour, sugar, butter, and salt.
Step 2
Add in cold water a few drops at a time. Add just enough to form a dense dough.

Honey-Cayenne Roasted Squash Seeds

Ingredients

Seed Prep

  • 1 wedge Pumpkin or squash
  • 2 cups water
  • 1 tablespoon salt

Baking Prep

  • 1 teaspoon cayenne powder
  • 1 shot olive oil (a nice glug)
  • 1 shot honey (a nice glug of Linck Apiaries, Inc)

Directions

Step 1
Preheat oven to 300 degrees F.
Step 2
Dump the seeds into a sauce pan with 2 cups of water and a tablespoon of salt. Bring to a boil.
Step 3
Reduce heat and low boil for 10 minutes.
Step 4
Pour seeds into a medium mixing bowl. Add cayenne, honey, oil, and salt. Combine thoroughly with a spoon.

Apple Tart

Ingredients

Tart Filling

  • 2 Large apples
  • 1/2 + cup brown sugar (1/2 cup for apple slices + a bit more for the topping)
  • 1/2 cup white sugar
  • 1/4 cup flour (all purpose)
  • 1 pinch salt

Tart Topping

  • 4 knobs butter (a little pad to finish the top before baking)

Note

If you baked the honey-cayanne pumpkin seeds in advance of putting this tart filling together, reset the oven temperature to 425 degrees. The tart will bake at that temperate for 25 minutes. Enjoy the pumpkin seeds while the tarts bake, but try and leave a few for the topping.

Directions

Step 1
Peel, core, and thin slice apples.
Step 2
Repeat with remaining dough and apple slices. Recipe makes 4 tarts.
Step 3
Allow to rest for 10 minutes before topping with squash seeds (and a scoop of high quality vanilla ice cream if desired). Serve warm.

Acorn Squash Soup

Ever sat at a Thanksgiving Day table and daydreamed about the potential for glorious leftover recipes? Yeah, me neither. So on a completely unrelated note, here is a beautifully simple leftover recipe that upcycles a classic squash dish.

Thyme Infused Dinner Rolls (with homemade cultured butter)

 
These herbed pull-apart dinner rolls, with their rustic crust and fluffy sweet interior, possess exactly the right density and flavor for sopping up pan drippings and gravies at Thanksgiving. The dough comes together like a velvet symphony when ingredients are allowed to reach room temperature and the mixing bowls warmed before combining. The secret to the light and fluffy interior is to add only as much flour as necessary and not a pinch more.

Ugly Fruit

RoundTart
I watched two incongruent, yet weirdly related, videos this month that have incessantly occupied my thoughts. The first was a Netflix special featuring a well-known stand-up comedian who performed a sketch about God being annoyed with humans for digging up fossil fuel to mass-produce food rather than eating the stuff He’d left for them all over the ground. Human’s excuse for this behavior? The food on the ground doesn’t come fast enough, and it arrives cold.

Yummy Grub

An October Rose broiler.

“Is that all you get to eat now?” a colleague asked me the other day as I munched on my customary jar salad lunch in the break room. I don’t volunteer updates about our 10-mile challenge outside this blog on account of people’s circumspect reaction, like they’re afraid I might share an un-flattering opinion about their food choices or worry I’m on the cusp of selling them Amway. But as my own eating habits have changed conspicuously and food is something people are oddly inclined to notice and inquire about, word has gotten out. “I couldn’t do it,” she added. “Bland food just isn’t my thing.”

Bland food isn’t my thing, either.  I think the biggest shortcoming in the buy-local-and-fresh movement is that its evangelists often fail to give flavor equal billing with the health and economic benefits, especially when flavor — more than any other value — will ultimately win over the masses. Me, I ignore these overplayed topics. Nobody likes being told what to eat or where to shop so I focus instead on what truly matters: yummy grub. Simply put, eating local and in-season is very delicious.
Byrne Angus beef plus green bean 
salad and cornmeal squash croquettes.  
But there are hazards.
Take last Saturday for example. I arrived late to the Skaneateles Farmers Market to discover all that was left were summer squash, green beans and radishes. That’s it. In season, sure, except I’ve hated summer squash and green beans since childhood and I don’t even know what radishes are good for except to be carved into little veggie tray roses that everyone thinks are cute and nobody actually eats. But the market is where I acquire most of my food so in desperation I bought all one vendor’s remaining summer squash and a quart of green beans from another; I passed on the radishes because a girl’s got to draw the line somewhere.
Meadowood Farms lamb kobobs
As I drove home it dawned on me that maybe this eat local idea was crap and dinner was definitely going to suck.
I should have anticipated The Husband’s unflinching acceptance of my paltry offering. He pulled a couple Byrne Angus steaks out of the freezer, consulted the Internet, and whipped up a summer green bean salad and a batch of cornmeal squash croquettes. Delicious. Saving the day. Reminding me not to judge food by past mutilations.
The Husband’s lamb, spinach and
homemade pasta dish made with
Meadowood Farms lamb sausage.
So yeah, my colleague was right: my family is eating lots of salad this summer. Lots. But tons of other stuff, too. Turns out this experiment has nothing to do with depravation or returning to some romantic time of old. It’s about luxury – making fresh, delicious food in good company; working together in a space that now serves a greater purpose than propping up the night’s pizza box.
I’m convinced no girl in the history of humankind has ever had food so good.

Evenings in the kitchen with The Girl have been plain awful.

10-Mile Meals

Our bounty from Saturday’s Farmer’s Market run.

A few years ago The Husband read The Omnivore’s Dilemma and it got us thinking about the seriously weird stuff we humans now pass off as food. It also got us thinking about the politics of food and life back when people were self-regulating, counting on their own — and the local community’s — enterprise to fill basic needs. Food wasn’t convenient or fast but people could pronounce the ingredients; and hardly anyone was compulsively hoarding useless chachkies from a local megamart.
Signs of Summer.
About that time The Husband and I also started noticing other things: the bunches and bunches of local food farms, farmer’s markets and little road-side veggie stands surrounding us; the fact that we felt better after eating fresh food rather than crispy chicken strips out of a cardboard box; that our food choices appeared to be damaging our health. We started talking about raising chickens and planting a garden and several times even toyed with the idea of making local farms our primary food source for a summer. Just for the fun of it.
It took a couple years of gradual toe dipping into the proverbial sustainability water but when spring rolled around this year The Husband and I felt ready to revisit the local food idea. In May we issued ourselves this challenge: make farmer’s markets, local farms and our own garden our family’s primary source for food this summer. We decided to try and ‘make do’ with Thursday/Saturday trips to the Skaneateles Farmer’s Market, visits to Wake Robin Farm’s store and an occasional trek to the Regional Market.
The Husband’s Lamb, Spinach and home-made Pasta dish
from Farmer’s Market sources.
This game of Make-Do has unexpectedly turned into something fun and delicious. We’re making friends, learning how to cook with fresh ingredients, and discovering a rich food culture in our region.
Now that we’re about a month into this thing I figured I’d share what I/we’ve learned so far:
Scape and asparagus.
We Don’t Know Much: There are a whole bunch of edible plants growing in the region that I’ve never heard of. What the heck is a scape? Or a rabe? Or rocket? And how do you prepare these things? Turns out the people who grow and sell food are also very willing to share family recipes. We’re trying new foods constantly.
Variety Abounds:We get our whole milk, cheeses, and yogurt at Wake Robin Farms; at the Skaneateles farmer’s market we get fresh local lamb, beef, chicken, goat cheese, canned goods, breads, herbs, and all manner of vegetables, both known and unknown. The flavor is worlds, worlds better than the processed stuff. No comparison.
Eating Local Makes You Loco: I thought this challenge was going to be too difficulty to stick with but the opposite is true: we’re energized, maybe because of the better food choices we’re making, and motivated to permanently cut out as much imported and processed food as we can. We’re looking into canning and charcuterie, pickling and salting, smoking and drying, to preserve our food for the winter.  
These Andy’s turnips are delicious
blanched or candied.
A New Kind of Saturday: Saturdays have become a new kind of day – one of food preparation for the upcoming week. Delicate, leafy produce spoils quickly unless thoroughly washed, dried and wrapped; meats and veg bought in bulk have to be separated and frozen or canned; we’ve learned to cook en mass and to anticipate future need. Saturdays have become the food-prep and preserve day for the upcoming week.
You Just Never Know: We’re dependent on what is in season, and weather, and temperature, the health of the farmer — all things we never gave a thought to before. We just never know exactly what will be on our plates in any given week, and we’ve learned not to freak out about it. We’ll figure it out. This is a diabolic shift in our food consumption and our attitude about food in general. It requires us to succumb to the process of cooking what we have on hand, even if those ingredients are the same ones we made our meals out of yesterday. Developing a robust recipe collection has been key to keeping us on track.
Beans from Ethiopia. El Salvador and Guatemala
roasted in The Husband’s  Behmor 1600.
Buying Local is Socially Gratifying: Building relationships with the people who grow and raise our food has been the single most enjoyable aspect of this challenge. These people are passionate. They are knowledgeable. And, frankly, in an apocalypse these are the folks you want to know.
Exceptions: There are certain things we cook with and consume that are not and never will be produced locally:  olive oil; coffee (The Husband is a home roaster and buys his green beans from Sweet Marias. He roasts in-house with his Behmor 1600 – this isn’t going to change); bananas (I love them – don’t judge).
So where do we get our food these days?
Good Karma Garlic
Susanville
Navarino Orchard– Sweet onions and potatoes, apples, strawberries, peaches, canned goods, fruit pies. (they also make barley and peanut butter doggie treats that our mutt loves.)
Byrne Black Angus
Byrne Black Angus– These guys do one thing: natural, grass-feed black angus beef.
Wake Robin Farm – Yogurt, artisan cheeses, and milk. Visitors usually get to see the cows just outback in the pasture.
Meadowood Farms Lamb sausage and a sheep’s milk brebis.
Susanville Good Karma Garlic – A large variety of garlic and tomatoes, and seasonal vegetables. The Good Karma Garlic keeps the fresh veg coming well into the cold season.
An October Rose broiler smoked on
The Husband’s grill.
October Rose Farm– Free range and antibiotic free eggs, chicken and turkey. 
Other Seeds of Change that got this Fat American thinking:
Food, Inc. documentary
Fresh documentary
The Future of Food documentary

Lune Chocolat

I know what you did.
You filled your beloved’s Easter basket with waxy confect from the nearby mega-mart. Some mass-produced mess in a golden box, perhaps? How original. Not that I can blame you – that’s how you were raised.  But it’s a wonder you haven’t been walked out on.
Fear not, artless lover, there is time to make amends.

Meet Lune Chocolat. Their tagline urges you to “Fill Your Soul With Chocolate” and, my word, you only have to gaze upon their wares to feel so inclined. Imagine a treat cart on Hogwarts Express filled with confectionary rapture for grown-ups. We’re talking jouir, people, a stratum of flavors that demand to be savored. You’ll find no brittle molded bunnies here, no rubber laboratory chocolate injected with pop tart filling. These sophisticated gems are infused by hand with the likes of fresh rosemary, divine Absinthe, habanero and, for goodness sakes, sweet potato ganache.

I visited the shop yesterday; once inside it was all I could do not to throw myself against the glass in wonderment and proclaim, “I’ll take the lot!” Restraint. Deep breath. I chose 6 pieces. Plus a floppy eared solid chocolate bunny. And a last-second bag of malted milk balls just before the credit card was run.  I can only assume the reason you, too, have not succumbed to the delights of Lune Chocolat is because you’re cheap and utterly lacking a spirit of adventure concerned that exquisite confections may be outside your budget. We’re friends, you and me, so I’ll give it to you straight: my entire tab came to $24.30.

These are my selections:
Name: Vanilla Latte
Price: $1.75
Flavor & Impressions: Oh my. Somebody get me another one now. One of my favorite things about shopping locally are the backstories (have you ever had a cashier at Wal-Mart look over your selections and exclaim, ‘Hey, let me tell you how we got the idea to make some of this stuff!’ I think not.). According to Emily, Lune Chocolat’s co-owner, the business came into possession of a mug-shaped mold that initially nobody knew what to do with. It was the brainchild of a brilliant young intern to fill each chocolate cup with melt-in-your-mouth vanilla latte ganache. Viola! Just like that my favorite tasty confection came into being. Get one. Better yet, get me one.
Name: Chai Buddha
Price: $2
Flavor & Impressions: This guy is so cute at first I felt guilty about taking a bite. Then I remembered guilt just clogs up my chakra so I relished the little fella with gusto. He’s a dark chocolate exterior with smooth, unmistakably spicy chai ganache inside, a.k.a. a fat and sassy saint of deliciousness.


Name: Guinness & Pretzels
Price: $2
Flavor & Impressions: Turning on its ear the notion that delectable confections are only for ladies and fussy French men, meet a salty-sweet treat with a hint of the Irish staple. The truffle is filled with Guinness ganache and topped with locally produced Terrell Pretzels. Makes me think ‘Super Bowl!’ Fun. Yum.
Name: Espresso
Price: $1.50
Flavor & Impressions: Coffee-lovers rejoice! This one doesn’t pretend: it is intense, sharp, smooth and dark. The Husband, who roasts his own coffee and holds snobbish opinions on coffee-related matters, put it best, “It’s like diving deeper and deeper into a rich ocean of black.”
Name: Cotton Tails
Price: $2
Flavor & Impressions: This was the first treat we pulled out of our little box. We bit into it and looked at each other with a ‘wow!’ – and it isn’t even made of chocolate! This coconut truffle has a sweet, buttery interior surrounded in slightly bitter shavings.


Name: Raspberry Drop
Price: $2.25
Flavor & Impressions: I judged this book entirely by its cover and I was so right for doing it. Colorful stripes outside, bright, fresh raspberry reduction ganache within, this lovely little gem pops with flavor. Backstory: when the season permits, Lune Chocolat uses local, organically grown raspberries.
 Purchased but not eaten (for The Girl’s Easter Basket):
Name: Floppy Eared Solid Chocolate Bunny
Price: $5.00

Incidentally, for the Earth conscious among us (hoping that’s pretty much everyone) Lune Chotolat uses biodegradable and 100% compostable packaging. 



Name: Serbet Malted Milk Balls (below)
Price: $6.00

So hurry now, my dears, and make amends for the thing of shame you bestowed upon your Other this morning. Chocolate is for lovers, and once your darling discovers you’ve gifted soul-soothing Lune Chocolat, they will know they are adored.