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

Tomato Sauce with Fresh Basil

9 September 2009 by local kitchen

Tomatoes have been scarce this year in the Northeast, so cheap, local tomatoes have been a bit of a pipe dream. But after a long holiday weekend of climbing with friends at the Gunks, Tai & I moseyed our way home on backroads to beat the traffic. In addition to a much more pleasant ride home, we got to stop at Dressel Farms in New Paltz and pick up some of their tomatoes, peaches, nectarines, Bartlett pears, Honeycrisp apples, and […]

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

Pickled Peppers

4 September 2009 by local kitchen

Peppers seem to take forever to appear: like dreaming of strawberries in March, I start thinking of peppers when the first hot day comes around in June; then I wait, and wait and wait. My pepper plants were started way back in February. I’ve been harvesting jalapenos for a while now, but the red chile peppers are only just turning red, and the red bell peppers are still smaller than a tennis ball and dark green. All I can say […]

Categories: canning, condiments, hot chile peppers, preserving, summer • Tags: cooking, food, local, preserving, recipes

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

Flaming Wing Sauce

28 August 2009 by local kitchen

Yet another great way to preserve tomatoes, especially when you are not in the mood for the usual suspects. This recipe has the benefit of limited prep time; no peeling or food milling of the tomatoes required, not nearly as much chopping as a pasta sauce or salsa, and can be easily doubled or tripled if you have a lot of tomatoes on hand. There is a long list of ingredients, but most of them are spices and the measuring […]

Categories: canning, hot chile peppers, preserving, sauces, summer, tomatoes • Tags: canning, cooking, food, local, preserving, recipes, tomatoes

Summer Tomato Risotto with Mint

26 August 2009 by local kitchen

I had a bunch of tomatoes, from the weekend’s farmer’s market, from the CSA, and a few stragglers from my garden that escaped the blight, but I just couldn’t get inspired by the thought of making a big batch of pasta sauce. So I did the next best thing, a light, delicious, summery risotto with fresh tomatoes and the zing of garden mint. This one’s a keeper! Adapted from Fresh Tomato Risotto in The New Basics by J. Rosso and […]

Categories: appetizer, basil, main course, mint, rice, summer, tomatoes • Tags: cooking, food, local, recipes, tomatoes

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

Cantaloupe-Wineberry Granita

18 August 2009 by local kitchen

It’s hot. Really hot. Summer has come, at long last, obviously determined to make up for lost time. And although I’m happy for those who’ve been missing summer’s hot temps, and happy to get the sunshine to my sad looking garden, my Irish-Scottish-Finnish background just does not agree with 90 degrees and 90% humidity, especially in a house without air conditioning. Normally, in weather like this, I live on popsicles. In fact, I’ve been known to have nothing but popsicles […]

Categories: berries, dessert, freezing, fruit, melon, summer • Tags: berries, cooking, dessert, food, local, recipes

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

Sausage Bread Redux

14 August 2009 by local kitchen

OK, seriously, I know it’s hard to believe, but this bread tastes better than it looks. Scout’s honor. Spicy Italian sausages, sauteed onions & garlic, sun-dried tomatoes and fresh mozzarella, all wrapped inside herb-filled whole wheat bread. I’m drooling, but I can’t have any yet, because this bread is destined for a Very Special Occasion: my bachelorette party up in the Catskills this weekend. A dozen girls, (at least) a dozen bottles of champagne, a hot tub and sausage bread. And […]

Categories: baking, basil, breads, cheese, herbs, pork, sausage, tarragon, thyme, tomatoes, year round • Tags: baking, bread, cooking, food, local, recipes

Wild Blackberries

12 August 2009 by local kitchen

How cool is my yard? I’ll tell you how cool; I went out today and not only picked the last of the season’s wineberries, from a few canes that I discovered wrapped around a tree in the side yard, but the first of the season’s blackberries, from several fat canes that grow underneath our picture window. According to my trusty Wildman Steve Brill foraging guide, there are several species of blackberry that grow throughout North American. It appears that the […]

Categories: foraging, wild foods • Tags: cooking, food, foraging, local, wild foods

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