Category Archives: 100% local

Goat Cheese & Herb Gougeres

1 September 2009 by local kitchen

“Real” cooking: [reel kook-ing] adj., verb; techniques and skills used in preparing food that should have been learned, at culinary school, at your grandmother’s knee, from a dedicated chef-type friend or a really detailed cookbook, before you tried to wing it, in your usual slapdash fashion, without having a clue what you were doing. So, do you know what a gougere is? I didn’t. Not until some determined Googling informed me that a gougere is a savory puff pastry, made […]

Categories: 100% local, appetizer, baking, breads, cheese, parsley, pastry, year round • Tags: baking, cooking, food, local, recipes

Preserving Herbs

30 August 2009 by local kitchen

Don’t let those overflowing garden herbs go to waste – with some easy preserving ideas, you can enjoy flavorful herbs all winter long. ————————————————————- Preserving Herbs FREEZE Basics: Follow the instructions for freezing vegetables, namely a quick blanche in boiling water followed by a ice-water bath. Dry thoroughly, then freeze, either on the stem, loose leaves, or chopped, spooned into ice cube trays, and covered with filtered water or olive oil. Also see a recipe for Chile Verde Base, which […]

Categories: 100% local, canning, drying, fall, freezing, herbs, preserving, summer • Tags: cooking, food, homesteading, local, preserving, recipes

Peach Salsa

24 August 2009 by local kitchen

Note: Make sure to check out the updated version of this recipe, with tasting notes on the effects of shelf storage and mellowing. ————————————– I went out to Fishkill Farms the other day, to pick blackberries, and came home not only with 11 pounds of berries, but a big bag of peaches and some early Paula Red apples. Since the berries freeze well, while peaches do not, I decided to freeze most of the berries (the ones we didn’t eat!) […]

Categories: 100% local, canning, peaches, preserving, salsa • Tags: canning, cooking, food, local, recipes, vegetarian

Tai’s Grilled Corn on the Cob

23 August 2009 by local kitchen

Last night, ignoring the threatening rumbles of thunder and the soggy deck furniture, we grilled. Bone-in chicken breasts with a teriyaki glaze, boneless chicken tenders in one of my classic “clean out the fridge” marinades (this one using up the dregs of various jars of apple raspberry jam, ginger rhubarb jam, strawberry rhubarb jam and curried apple chutney, all mixed together with a little orange juice, champagne vinegar and local chile powder), and spicy red banana peppers and corn on the […]

Categories: 100% local, corn, grill, side dish, summer • Tags: cooking, food, grilling, local, recipes, summer

Canning Carrots

22 August 2009 by local kitchen

For the past week or two, I’ve noticed in the “search engine terms” section, where I get to see the sometimes wacky ways that people surf their way to my blog, multiple searches for “canning carrots hot water bath.” This concerns me, because, if people wanted to pickle carrots, I would think they would search for “pickled carrots” and other than pickling (and other high-acid jams/chutneys/preserves), there is no safe way to can carrots in a boiling water bath. Carrots, […]

Categories: 100% local, canning, carrot, dill, fall, preserving, summer • Tags: canning, cooking, food, homesteading, local, preserving, recipes

Classic Bruschetta

19 August 2009 by local kitchen

Bruschetta is one of those dishes: it has as many variations as cooks who make it. I’ve seen recipes with bell peppers, capers, anchovies, olives, sage & thyme, cilantro and chives. In the end, I prefer a classic combination: fresh off the vine, sun-ripened tomatoes, garlic, shallot and basil. Since there are so few ingredients it’s imperative that each of them be at the peak of quality: I like this dish best with my own garden tomatoes, harvested in the afternoon when […]

Categories: 100% local, appetizer, basil, sauces, summer, tomatoes, vegetarian • Tags: appetizers, cooking, food, Italian, local, recipes, sides, tomatoes

Fire Roasted Tomatoes

17 August 2009 by local kitchen

Although farm-fresh tomatoes are pretty scarce in the Northeast this summer, there are still some out there and they are as delicious as ever. While inexpensive, local, heirloom tomatoes are probably a pipe dream this year, now more than ever it is important to support your local farmers as they battle with the devastation of tomato, and possibly potato, crops ruined by late blight. With that in mind, I’ve bought a couple of 10-lb batches of tomatoes, in addition to what we […]

Categories: 100% local, canning, preserving, roasting, summer, tomatoes • Tags: canning, cooking, food, local, preserving, recipes, summer, tomatoes

Fresh Cantaloupe Salsa

10 August 2009 by local kitchen

After a cool, damp weekend, with honking geese flying overhead each evening, it felt like an early winter was knocking at the door. Lo and behold my surprise to wake up this morning to sticky humidity and a forecast of 88 degrees! I guess summer is not completely done with us yet. This fresh salsa is exactly what the doctor ordered for a sticky, hot August summer day: cool, crisp, tasty and takes about 10 minutes to prepare, with not […]

Categories: 100% local, cilantro, hot chile peppers, melon, quick & easy, side dish, summer • Tags: cooking, food, local, quick & easy, recipes, salad

Spicy Plum Sauce

4 August 2009 by local kitchen

I went over my friend Nadine’s last week; in addition to her birthday celebration, it was her turn to volunteer at her weekly CSA pick-up, and I had a play-date with her daughter Kami. When she returned from finishing up the CSA, she was nice enough to bring me lots of leftovers; chard, basil, scallions, anise, plums and peaches. I made a version of this plum sauce two years ago, using Damson plums from Jenkins-Luekens Orchards in New Paltz, NY. It […]

Categories: 100% local, canning, condiments, fruit, peaches, plums, preserving, sauces, summer • Tags: canning, cooking, food, local, preserving, recipes

Locavirgin: Currant Sour Cherry Compote

21 July 2009 by local kitchen

My friend Nadine has been in Newfoundland for a few weeks and she kindly offered to let me pick up her CSA last week. She gets a fruit share in addtion to her weekly veggies, so I got sour cherries, red currants and black currants. This is one of the things that I love about getting a CSA: none of these fruits are something that I will typically buy; I like the taste, but not the texture of sour cherries, red currants, […]

Categories: 100% local, cherries, condiments, currants, Locavirgin, preserving, sauces, summer • Tags: cherries, condiments, cooking, food, local, recipes

Bone-in Chicken Breasts on the Grill

15 July 2009 by local kitchen

Let’s face it: there are few things more convenient than boneless, skinless chicken breasts. They even come in packages of chicken tenders: no slicing required! So easy. Yet, for me, that’s the basic definition of fast food: what you gain in convenience you sacrifice in flavor, not to mention all of the other good reasons to eat locally; supporting your farming neighbors, keeping open land from development, promoting sustainability. Most small farmers cannot afford to sell boneless, skinless chicken breasts: the extra processing […]

Categories: 100% local, chicken, grill, main course, summer • Tags: BBQ, bone-in, chicken, cooking, dinner, food, grilled, grilling, local, recipes, summer

Wild Black Raspberries

11 July 2009 by local kitchen

We have wild black raspberries growing in our yard (yes, we are very lucky). There is one good-sized patch near the front door and another one buried in the hillside that leads down to the driveway with a few canes scattered here and there in the woods. None of these areas produce large amounts of berries, as they are not managed by us at all; they are overgrown, must compete with weeds, opportunistic vines, other brambly-type bushes (that’s the technical term), […]

Categories: 100% local, foraging, wild foods • Tags: berries, food, foraging, local, wild foods

Chicken Joi Choi Stir Fry

7 July 2009 by local kitchen

We interrupt the stream of berry-cherry preserving recipes for something completely different: dinner! Because, even during berry season, a girl’s gotta eat, and man (or woman) cannot live on jam alone. And because death, taxes and the CSA wait for no man (or woman); Wednesday is coming, ready or not. Tonight’s dinner was inspired by my friend Kim, who pointed out that stir frying bok choi is a good thing. Joi choi, pac choi and bok choi are all related plants that fall into the Asian cabbage category; […]

Categories: 100% local

Preserving Cherries

5 July 2009 by local kitchen

At last, the overdue post on preserving cherries; hopefully, here in time before the end of cherry season! After having picked 40 pounds of sweet black cherries, and then Googling about and looking in my many cookbooks for things to do with 40 lbs of cherries, I am convinced that sweet cherries get a bad rap. Everywhere you look it’s sour cherry-this and sour cherry-that; a few recipes call for “tart” cherries; other than clafouti, it seems that the world […]

Categories: 100% local, cherries, drying, fruit, summer • Tags: canning, cherries, cooking, food, local, preserving, recipes

Pork Tenderloin on the Grill

30 June 2009 by local kitchen

It’s amazing what a few days of sun can do; my tomato plants and nasturtiums have burst into bloom, wild black raspberries are ripening in the backyard, and I am feeling motivated and productive. Could it be that summer is here at last? In celebration of summer-like temperatures and the complete lack of any sort of precipitation, Tai fired up the grill last night and we cooked some tiny little pork tenderloins from New England Farms. Although I often put […]

Categories: 100% local, grill, main course, pork, sauces, summer • Tags: cooking, food, grilling, local, pork, recipes