| Local cooking and eating in New York's Hudson Valley.

Thanksgiving Ideas

17 November 2011 by local kitchen

Can you believe it’s only a week away? Where has the year gone? It’s been too quiet in my kitchen (not to mention my blog) of late: I took a rather spectacular tumble while hiking across the street last week and proceeded to limp home 3 miles with a throbbing ankle and a healthy dose of humility. Since then I’ve been thumping around the house with my baseball-bat-turned-cane and spending much quality time with late 90’s TV via Netflix. Ah, […]

Categories: fall, holiday • Tags: cooking, fall, food, holiday, local, recipes, thanksgiving

Freeform Rye Muffins with Red Onion & Farmstead Cheese

9 November 2011 by local kitchen

I feel like it’s been all-carbs, all-the-time around here lately, but I realize that I do this every year around this time: after a summer of free-flowing vegetables from the CSA and farmer’s market, not to mention eating & preserving of all of the season’s fabulous fruits, my body gets to October and suddenly wants meat. And bread. Hearty pastas with cheese and sausage, spicy beans and roasted vegetables. It’s finally cool enough to make keeping the oven on for an […]

Categories: 100% local, breakfast, cheese, thyme, whole wheat flour, winter, year round • Tags: baking, breakfast, cooking, food, local, quick & easy, recipes, vegetarian

Stovetop Mac and Cheese

6 November 2011 by local kitchen

One of the great things about writing a food blog is that you have a handy, online, personal cookbook: it travels with you wherever you go; it’s searchable by ingredient, recipe type, season; your personal recipe notes are preserved so that you don’t make the same mistakes twice. It’s brilliant really, except…. during a power outage. In the classic human condition of wanting-what-we-can’t-have, I often find myself, when the power is out, craving baked things: chocolate chip cookies, freshly baked bread, buttermilk […]

Categories: 100% local, cheese, fall, main course, pasta, vegetarian, winter, year round • Tags: cooking, dinner, food, local, pasta, recipes, vegetarian

Chunky Black Bean Soup

2 November 2011 by local kitchen

How many black bean soup recipes does one blog need? Apparently at least one more. I made this soup on Sunday afternoon, in the midst of a (another) 3-day power outage from the latest freak storm, this one an October snow storm that dumped more than a foot of wet, heavy snow in our neighborhood. Tree branches cracked like gunshots, telephone poles snapped like toothpicks: our neighborhood is a mess. Most of Connecticut and our little swathe of New York […]

Categories: 100% local, beans, carrot, celery, garlic, green beans, scallions, soup, winter, year round • Tags: beans, cooking, food, local, main course, recipes, soup, vegetarian

Baked Gobetti with Cauliflower, Grape Tomatoes & Chorizo

26 October 2011 by local kitchen

This is one of those recipes that I had no intention of posting here: I mean, tossing leftovers with pasta and baking it all together is quick, convenient, often delicious, but hardly revolutionary. You don’t really need me to tell you that some meat, vegetables and cheese, tossed with pasta and baking until bubbly, is almost sure to be a crowd pleaser. But this dish was so surprisingly good I decided that I had to share. I didn’t really have high […]

Categories: 100% local, cauliflower, cheese, fall, main course, pasta, pork, sausage, thyme, tomatoes • Tags: cooking, food, local, main course, pasta, quick & easy, recipes

Homemade Sriracha

23 October 2011 by local kitchen

UPDATE 2: Good news, everyone! I’m not going to kill you with my hot sauce! Well, at least not with botulism; I can’t make any guarantees about the capsaicin. I popped open a jar this afternoon and tested it with my new pH meter: it ranged from 3.3 (when calibrated with the pH 4.0 solution) to 3.5 (when calibrated with the pH 7.0 solution) well below the safe water bath canning pH of 4.6. Now, I’m not sure why this […]

Categories: bell pepper, canning, fall, garlic, hot chile peppers, preserving, sauces, summer • Tags: canning, chiles, condiments, cooking, food, local, preserving, recipes

Ayocote Beans with Chile Sauce & Roasted Cauliflower

19 October 2011 by local kitchen

It’s cold, grey, windy & rainy in New York: an excellent day for a warm & spicy bowl of beans! Despite very liberal applications of chicken soup, I still have a cold and I know I’m cranky, but doesn’t it seem that September and October have been very November-y this year? Cold, damp, grey. It’s getting dark by 4:30pm and we haven’t even hit the end of Daylight Savings time yet. I’m really hoping that November takes an “Indian Summer or […]

Categories: cauliflower, fall, heirloom beans, side dish, vegetarian • Tags: beans, cauliflower, cooking, food, heirloom, local, recipes, vegetarian

Fiery Apple Chile Syrup

16 October 2011 by local kitchen

Back in the heat of August, I was talking chile pepper love with Kat, of Food, Literature, Philosophy, on Twitter. We were talking about our love of the spice and the various ways in which I incorporate chiles into fruit preserves: jam and jelly, syrup and preserves. Kat mentioned that she had been working lately with Jim, the farmer at Rushy Springs Farm near Knoxville, TN, who grows several different varieties of chile peppers, including his own open-pollinated version of a Tennessee Cherry […]

Categories: apples, canning, condiments, fall, hot chile peppers, preserving, winter • Tags: apples, canning, condiments, cooking, fall, food, local, preserving, recipes

Link With Love

14 October 2011 by local kitchen

This post is long overdue: link with love established themselves this summer, and I wanted to tell you all about it, but I got swept up in the craziness of the preserving season. Now that it’s mid-October (can you believe it?) and things in my kitchen have calmed down somewhat, I want to talk just a bit about blogging, sharing, and playing nice in this big jungle gym we call the Interwebs. ‘Round about the time that I stumbled across link with love this summer, I had just been having […]

Categories: community • Tags: attribution, blogging, internet, link with love, writing

Roasted Butternut Squash, Red Pepper & Rosemary

12 October 2011 by local kitchen

I’ve been making this dish for about a million years. Maybe a million and one. Even in the days when I didn’t really cook, living in Manhattan or in my teeny-tiny, 350-square-foot apartment in Boston’s North End, I would whip this up when Fall arrived, as a potluck dinner contribution or for a family Thanksgiving. I’m not quite sure why it’s never made it to these (hallowed) pages: maybe because I’ve been making it so long, it has ceased to […]

Categories: 100% local, bell pepper, cheese, fall, parsley, rosemary, side dish, winter, winter squash • Tags: cooking, food, holiday, local, pumpkin, recipes, sides, squash, strawberries, vegetarian

Pear & Pumpkin Ale Preserves

9 October 2011 by local kitchen

At long last, the infamous pear & pumpkin ale preserves experiment! Pear & pumpkin seem to go together naturally (and not just because of the awesome alliteration): their growing seasons overlap by at least a month; they are both sweet, yet with their own distinct notes, pears more floral and delicate, pumpkins an earthy, rich, root-vegetable sweetness; the classic autumnal spices, cinnamon, allspice, nutmeg & cloves, go nicely with both; even the colors work well together (if my wedding had any kind […]

Categories: canning, fall, pears, preserves, preserving, wine, beer & liquor • Tags: beer, booze, canning, cooking, fall, food, local, pears, preserving, pumpkin, recipes

Apple Bourbon Butter

5 October 2011 by local kitchen

I love apple butter. It’s tasty, of course, but it’s not so much that I love to eat it, as I love to cook with it: I toss it into various muffins & quickbreads, Tai’s granola, the occasional meat glaze or braising sauce. In addition to its usefulness in the kitchen, butter is the easiest way to preserve a whole bunch of apples without a lot of effort: no peeling, no coring, no prep of added ingredients. It’s perfect for […]

Categories: apples, canning, fall, preserving, spreads, wine, beer & liquor, winter • Tags: apples, booze, canning, cooking, fall, food, local, preserving, recipes

Classic Tomato Ketchup

1 October 2011 by local kitchen

Yes, even on the first day of October, tomatoes are still out there: I came home from the farmer’s market today with another five pounds. This is a great time of year to find late-season deals on organic or sustainably-farmed tomatoes, which are especially important when you are cooking them down, down, down (and concentrating any pesticides or toxins present in the fruit) into homemade ketchup. Tomatoes are a fruit, after all, and ketchup is basically a fruit butter. So choose your […]

Categories: canning, condiments, preserving, spreads, tomatoes • Tags: canning, cooking, food, ketchup, local, preserving, recipes, tomatoes

Nectarine Ginger Pie Filling

27 September 2011 by local kitchen

It’s almost October: the leaves are turning, candy corns are crowding the store shelves and pumpkin spiced lattes are all over the Internets. So why am I talking about nectarines? Peaches and nectarines are classically August: shouldn’t I be telling you about the butternut squash risotto I made last week? (Oh, and it was good.) But September is wacky that way: it truly straddles two seasons. You look around the farmer’s market and are spoiled for choice: tomatoes, eggplant and […]

Categories: canning, dessert, peaches, pie, preserving, summer • Tags: canning, cooking, food, local, nectarine, peach, preserving, recipes, summer

Chicken & Sausage Gumbo

24 September 2011 by local kitchen

Hands up, who likes okra? <cricket, cricket> I thought so. Me either. I mean, it looks like something the Star Trek crew would have spray-painted orange and pretended was exotic, alien fruit; it’s skin is hairy and kind of spiky; fresh okra seems to get limp and slimy after 10 minutes in the fridge; and let’s not even talk about the snot that oozes out once we slice it, hmm? Yet, despite my lack of love for the spiky green […]

Categories: bell pepper, celery, fall, main course, parsley, rice, sausage, stew, year round • Tags: cooking, food, gumbo, local, main course, new orleans, recipes