Tag: local

How to Roast Garlic

23 March 2009 by local kitchen

Garlic is a wonderous thing. Spicy & flavorful, when roasted garlic becomes sweet & smoky, like candy that’s good for you. Mashed on bread, tossed in pasta, as a pizza topping or tossed into any number of soups or stews, I can always think of a way to use roasted garlic. Since there are only two of us eating in this house (well, outside of the friends who visit often), I don’t often want to roast 6 or 8 heads […]

Categories: 100% local, garlic, roasting, year round • Tags: cooking, food, garlic, local, recipes

Rosemary Lemon Drop Biscuits

22 March 2009 by local kitchen

A truly quick-n-easy biscuit recipe that produces light and fluffy free-form biscuits that are crunchy on the outside, melting and tender on the inside. Fresh lemon zest and rosemary make them sing, especially in the heart of winter. In the snowy Northeast, rosemary over-winters quite well in a sunny window indoors. It doesn’t thrive, but holds a sort of status quo until you can put it back outside in the spring. Worth it to have access to fresh herbs at […]

Categories: baking, breads, citrus, rosemary, vegetarian, whole wheat flour, winter, year round • Tags: baking, cooking, food, local, recipes, whole grain breads

Jacob’s Cattle Beans with Bacon & Sage

21 March 2009 by local kitchen

12 April 2013: The perfect lunch on a grey & rainy April afternoon, this simple pot of beans is elevated by plenty of aromatics, crumbled dried sage, and good-quality local bacon. Always a pleasure to have some in the fridge! Why, yes, the Great Dried Bean Experiment 2009 is still ongoing, thank you very much! This week’s beans are Jacob’s Cattle, a lovely, variegated bean, originally cultivated by the Passamaquoddy Indians in Maine, and the old standard for classic New England […]

Categories: 100% local, beans, heirloom beans, pork, winter, year round • Tags: beans, cooking, food, local, pork, recipes

Seedling Update: 21 March 2009

21 March 2009 by local kitchen

It’s been two weeks since I sowed the first seeds of the season. I planted: rosemary chives lemon basil jalapeno pepper red bell pepper mixed cayenne pepper Roma tomato San Marzano tomato Matt’s Wild Cherry tomato Stupice tomato Silvery Fir tomato Thessaloniki tomato The tomato seeds germinated in under a week (on top of the refrigerator for a few days, and then on top of a warming mat that I ordered from Amazon) and have gotten a bit leggy because they […]

Categories: gardening • Tags: gardening, local

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Winter Vegetable Soup

20 March 2009 by local kitchen

I know, I know – it’s supposed to be the first day of Spring, and I mention the “W” word. But while the calendar may be telling us that Spring is finally here, the snow flurries and mid-30 degree temps are agreeing with my anemic crisper drawer: we are still in the grips of winter for a few more weeks at least. While my brain and tastebuds are lusting after sugar snap peas, baby lettuce, asparagus and rhubarb, my larder is telling a […]

Categories: 100% local, herbs, kale & leafy greens, leek, main course, parsley, potato, scallions, soup, vegetarian, winter • Tags: cooking, food, local, recipes, soup, vegetarian, winter

Sausage & Leek Frittata

16 March 2009 by local kitchen

We had a Chiquita’s Weekend at my house this weekend, which mainly consists of lots of eating, drinking and staying up ’till 4:00 am. While there is nearly always lots of good food, and I like to try out new recipes, tradition dictates that I make a frittata at some point during the weekend. I make frittata often, as they make for a quick & easy breakfast or lunch and are a good way to use up leftovers or excess veggies; this being the […]

Categories: 100% local, cheese, eggs, fall, herbs, leek, main course, parsley, pork, sausage, spring, winter, year round • Tags: cooking, food, local, pork, recipes

Raspberry Chiffon

16 March 2009 by local kitchen

What to do when your thawed red raspberries have turned to mush. This intensely flavored chiffon was paired with a deluxe pastry pie crust and glazed blackberry topping; the resulting pie earned rave reviews. Adapted from Strawberry Lover’s Chiffon Pie in The Pie & Pastry Bible by Rose Levy Beranbaum. ————————————————————– Raspberry Chiffon INGREDIENTS 1 lb frozen, unsweeted red raspberries 2 tsp lemon juice 3 tbsp filtered or spring water 2 tsp gelatin 1/2 cup heavy cream 6 tbsp sugar, divided 1 […]

Categories: baking, berries, pastry, pie, vegetarian, year round • Tags: cooking, dessert, food, local, recipes

Pumpkin Seed Trifecta: Salty, Spicy & Sweet

16 March 2009 by local kitchen

Well, the Last Fresh Pumpkin finally fell under my knife, and I’d say an October-harvested pumpkin lasting until mid-March (stowed away in my liquor cabinet) is pretty impressive. The flesh with still plump and orange, yet the middle had dried out enough to make harvesting the seeds a snap. I made an heirloom bean mole’, froze some pumpkin chunks for later and whipped up some pumpkin seed love. Pumpkin seeds are pretty easy; basically you just roast ’em. You can rinse them […]

Categories: 100% local, winter squash • Tags: cooking, food, local, recipes, vegetarian

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Heirloom Bean Mole with Pumpkin & Kale

13 March 2009 by local kitchen

I originally published this recipe way back in the beginning of the blog, when cooking with dried beans was still a novelty (and finding fresh pod beans virtually unheard of in my neck of the woods). I’m proud to say that cooking with dried heirloom beans has become old hat, and more & more frequently I see fresh beans, in the pod, at my local farmer’s markets in season. While I’d love to try this dish with fresh borlotti beans someday, it’s […]

Categories: beans, fall, heirloom beans, hot chile peppers, kale & leafy greens, main course, stew, tomatoes, vegetarian, winter, winter squash • Tags: beans, cooking, food, local, Mexican, recipes, vegan, vegetarian

Glazed Blackberry Tart

11 March 2009 by local kitchen

It’s March and I’ve been cleaning out the freezer of last season’s bounty, preparing for the new season’s bounty that is right around the corner. One of the recipes I’ve been experimenting with is a glazed berry tart, using local berries from my freezer. The first version was a strawberry-black raspberry-wild blueberry pie with concentrated juices from each of these thawed berries; the berries were delicious, and the pastry stayed perfectly crisp, but the glaze was too thin (not enough cornstarch […]

Categories: 100% local, baking, berries, pastry, pie, spring, vegetarian, winter, year round • Tags: cooking, dessert, food, local, recipes

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Pink Grapefruit Curd (And Friends)

11 March 2009 by local kitchen

Firstly, let me start by saying that “curd” is a horrible word. Like “moist” and “slacks,” it makes me cringe just to think about it. It’s like someone combined “curse” and “turd” and decided that was a perfect name for a delectable dessert. For such a delicious concoction of eggs, butter, sugar and citrus, there should definitely be a better word: “deevine”, perhaps? (as opposed to “divine,” which might offend some). Pink grapefruit deevine? Sun custard, maybe? Or perhaps we […]

Categories: baking, citrus, dessert, eggs, vegetarian, winter, year round • Tags: cooking, dessert, food, local, quick & easy, recipes

Simple Vinaigrette

10 March 2009 by local kitchen

My one my favorite little cookbooks is Julia’s Kitchen Wisdom, a compendium of useful tips & techniques from one of my cooking heroes, Julia Childs. After all, once you’ve been cooking for a while, you basically know what your favorite flavors are and how they go together; we rely on recipes for inspiration or information on how to cook a new ingredient. But Julia’s Kitchen Wisdom contains all those little tidbits that we tend to forget if we didn’t go […]

Categories: herbs, parsley, spring, vegetarian, vinegar, winter, year round • Tags: cooking, food, local, recipes

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Homemade Vinegar

10 March 2009 by local kitchen

Vinegar translates from the French as “sour wine” and in fact, if you leave a decent bottle of red wine open for a couple of days, it does start to turn to vinegar. Don’t throw it out! All you need to do to make red wine vinegar is to literally let the wine sit around – preferably in a larger, more open container than the wine bottle, but given enough time, it will turn to vinegar in the bottle as […]

Categories: 100% local, canning, preserving, vinegar, wine, beer & liquor • Tags: cooking, local, recipes

Justice Tastes Better

9 March 2009 by local kitchen

Yet another good reason to know where your food comes from: The Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) exposes the harsh working conditions of immigrant farmers who harvest most of the nation’s winter-grown tomatoes in Immokalee, Florida. From CIW’s website: “For several months now, Burger King and the Florida tomato growers’ lobby have joined forces to “debunk the myth” of farmworker poverty, in their effort to fight back against workers demanding a raise in the picking piece rate. The piece rate […]

Categories: tomatoes • Tags: cooking, farms, food, food activism, local

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How Does Your Garden Grow?

8 March 2009 by local kitchen

Spring has stuck a tentative toe in the pool called the Northeast; she may well pull it back out again, shivering, and leave us with a few more weeks of winter temps, but her effort garnered us two beautifully warm days. Yesterday was in the low 60’s here; I put the top down on my little VW Bug and we tooled around to every farmer’s market and little local food shop we could think of, just to enjoy the fresh air. […]

Categories: gardening • Tags: food, gardening, local

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