Category: food

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save slow food for retirement?

I’ve blogged a LOT about my forays into the slow food movement.  From giving up most of the meat I had been eating to  joining a CSA and all the adventures that entailed to starting to bake my own bread, the way I eat has changed a lot in the past year.  Apparently, according to a DoubleX writer, I’ve been wasting my time.  Margaret Wheeler Johnson writes, responding to the New York Times’ recent followups to their hugely successful No Knead Bread recipe:

The truth is that unless you are a chef by profession or truly love cooking, spending a minimum of seven hours a week in the kitchen—and that’s just making dinner—is not the best use of an ambitious youngish person’s time. Wouldn’t the energy we expend making the meatloaf our mothers never did, or feeling guilty that we don’t, be better spent connecting with peers, putting in extra hours at work, or pursuing personal projects? If you want an Amy’s loaf, get it from Amy’s. Otherwise buy a sleeve of Nature’s Own, and leave the no-need bread for retirement.

Continue reading “save slow food for retirement?”

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puddin’ head

Image via Flickr user Navin75 under a Creative Commons license.

The last time my mother was in town, we took her to The Hominy Grill, one of our favorite Charleston restaurants, and a media favorite too– I know Anthony Bourdain and Alton Brown are big fans.  We told her she absolutely had to try the chocolate pudding, as it was the best we’d ever had.  So thick it’s practically ganache, so rich it’s practically deadly, and so dark it bears almost no relation to the milk chocolate pudding cups most of us carried in our school lunchboxes, it’s one of the best desserts I’ve ever had.  It’s also one of Alton Brown’s picks for “Best Thing I Ever Ate,” as our waitress told us when we were there with my mother.  Alton knows his stuff.  This is pudding so good, Jon got a little embarrassing mmmmm-ing and ahhhh-ing in what was basically a chocolate pudding-gasm at the table, right there with my mother in the middle of the most polite city in America.

Today, I got a hankerin’ for some Hominy Grill chocolate pudding and thought I’d use Google to find something similar.  But it turns out it’s not a closely guarded secret, and I found a .pdf of the Hominy Grill chocolate pudding recipe from local food writer Holly Herrick (I just got her Charleston Chef’s Table cookbook and her Southern Farmers Market Cookbook, so check those out!).  It came out absolutely delicious, and a chocolate pudding-gasm definitely ensued.  Because I couldn’t find the recipe in easily linkable form, I thought I’d reproduce it here.  It seems to have been originally published Jan. 5, 2008 in the Charleston Post and Courier.

Hominy Grill Chocolate Pudding
chef Robert Stehling

  • 8 ounces dark, Belgian bittersweet chocolate, chopped
  • 1/2 cup sugar
  • 6 egg yolks
  • 4 cups heavy cream
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt

Reserve chocolate in a large bowl.  Separately, whisk 1/4 cup sugar into egg yolks.  Mix remaining sugar with cream and vanilla in medium saucepan and bring to a boil.  Pour a little hot cream into the bowl with the egg yolks and whisk, then pour the remainder of the cream over the chopped chocolate, stirring with a spatula until smooth.  Add the egg yolk mixture and salt, and then strain into a pitcher.  Refrigerate to cool.

Pour into 2/3 cup ramekins (I have no idea how much my ramekins hold, but it ended up being 8 ramekins full), place ramekins in a shallow pan half filled with water (water bath) and cook at 300 degrees for about an hour.  Chill for at least 3 hours before serving (we ate ours after only an hour and it was still delicious), and serve with a fat dollop of fresh whipped cream.

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a holiday gift for you

Garnishing the Russian Tea with cinnamon sticks and orange slices would be a good idea! Image via Flickr user thedabble under a Creative Commons license.

In my “nightmares before Christmas” post, I mentioned Russian Tea, which is a holiday tradition in my family.   I served it at last year’s Thanksgiving Potluck, and our friends all demanded the recipe.  When I announced this year’s Thanksgiving Potluck, people wanted to know if I’d be serving the Russian Tea again, pretty please please please.  I should say first off that Russian Tea is not, as far as I know, actually Russian.  My family is not Russian, and the roots of this recipe as far as I know them, are to vaguely English/Irish folk in rural Arkansas.  My Memaw made this tea every Thanksgiving and Christmas that I remember, serving it from a big commercial-type percolator that always kept it a little too hot– I’ve scalded my tongue almost every holiday, because I can never wait for it to cool.  It was only later, as an adult, that I emailed my mother for the Russian Tea recipe and learned that it was originally supposed to be spiked with booze.  Which may be the real reason it goes over so well at our potlucks.

So, my holiday gift to my readers, thanks to a comment from reader bluebears, is the recipe for this yummy beverage.  Think of it as a spiced, citrusy cider alternative, and spike it with either dark rum or bourbon.

Russian Tea

Boil 4 cups water and steep 4 regular-sized tea bags.  Add to that mixture in a large stock pot 1½ cups sugar, 2½ cups pineapple juice, 1½ cups orange juice (frozen concentrate, not diluted), 6 Tsp. fresh lemon juice, 8 whole cloves, 2 cinnamon sticks, and 8 cups water.  Bring to a boil, serve warm, add dark rum or bourbon as desired.

Easy double batch:
Boil 8 cups water with 8 tea bags, add 1 large can pineapple juice, 1 family size frozen OJ, and 12 Tsp. lemon juice, 2 cups sugar, 16 whole cloves, 4 cinnamon sticks, and 16 cups water.

I made mine in crock pots for my potluck, which worked fine and kept it warm, but this recipe usually works best in a really large stock pot.  I like to keep leftover tea in pitchers in the fridge to make individually microwaved cups throughout the holiday.  Oh, and you might want to add the alcohol to each cup at time of serving to keep the uh, buzz-inducing-part, from getting cooked out.

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CSA: Charleston– the season ends

Almost two weeks ago, we got our final Pinckney’s Produce CSA box of the fall season.  It has taken me this long to get a post up about it because without another box’s arrival to give us a deadline, we had the opportunity to eat the last shipment of veggies at our leisure, which, though I did freeze a little bit of it, proved my theory that each box was at least two weeks’ food for us.  Here’s what we got:

  • 5 sweet potatoes
  • 2 heads broccoli
  • 2 bell peppers
  • 1 bunch collards
  • 3 bunches spinach
  • 1 bunch kale
  • 1 head cabbage
  • 1 eggplant
  • lots of green beans
  • lots of tomatoes

The first night I made a variation on one of our favorite dishes, Rachael Ray’s Italian Tuna Casserole (I have the cook book this recipe is from, but someone recreated it here).  Tuna casserole is one of my comfort foods, and I’m a big fan of this recipe.  Jon suggested adding in one of the heads of broccoli, and so this recipe used up one of those as well as two of the bunches of spinach.  This recipe fed us for a couple of days, plus at least one lunch for me.

The kale was used up another night in this pasta with sausage and kale, which was almost as good as the bacon and collard linguine we’ve loved this season. Continue reading “CSA: Charleston– the season ends”

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CSA Charleston: Post Programming Note

The weekly CSA post, the last one of the season, will be a few days later than usual.  I realized I could take my time using up the veggies, as there was no new box coming to give me a deadline. Also, my freezer really can’t hold much more food. So, we’re trying to eat most of the veggies, and I’ll have a post about the last box and about the CSA experience as a whole when we finish.  I guess this gives me some time to really “digest” the whole experience before sharing my final thoughts of the season.

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CSA Charleston: sometimes even i get overwhelmed

Another delicious week with our Pinckney’s Produce CSA!

DSC05663Another great haul this week! Here’s the breakdown:

  • 5 sweet potatoes
  • 1 large head cabbage
  • 1 bunch kale
  • 1 bunch collards
  • 4 small heads broccoli
  • 2 heads cauliflower
  • lots of various tomatoes

This was our next to last CSA box! I’m already getting sad about the season ending, and will do more of a retrospective on the experience next week.  I’ll also post a picture of the stock of food we’ve now accumulated in our freezer– at least one friend seems to be unable to believe everything I’ve said is in there fits! Continue reading “CSA Charleston: sometimes even i get overwhelmed”

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CSA Charleston: think it’s possible to eat too much soup?

Another week, another CSA post about our Pinckney’s Produce CSA share! Now that we’re into November, I’m actually pretty sad that we’ve only got two more boxes left, one we receive today and one we receive next week!

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Food styling by Jon this week. I came home from work and he had everything all laid out on the table, ready to be photographed.

This is what we got:

  • 1 head cabbage
  • 1 bunch mustard greens
  • 1 bunch collards
  • 1 head cauliflower
  • 4 small heads broccoli
  • 5 sweet potatoes
  • 2 bell peppers
  • lots of tomatoes
  • 1 eggplant
  • 2 rutabagas
  • green beans

The first night (Tuesday) Jon and I made two batches of soup AND dinner (and I managed to write a presentation for class the next day AND watch So You Think You Can Dance, because I am just that awesome, or, more honestly, because I can get a lot more done more quickly in the kitchen when Jon is helping). With the sweet potatoes and rutabagas we made another batch of the curried soup we so enjoyed last week, and we froze about 4 quarts of it. We also made broccoli cheddar soup (loosely following this recipe, except I just put the cheddar IN the soup– didn’t melt too well but it was delicious) with the broccoli and cauliflower.  We froze most of the soup, saving two servings to have for dinner the next night.  And for dinner, with half the mustard greens and half the collards, we made a batch of smoky beans and greens, which I also enjoyed for lunch at work the next couple of days. Continue reading “CSA Charleston: think it’s possible to eat too much soup?”

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CSA Charleston: attack of the killer sweet potatoes

Another week, another post about what we got and what we did with our CSA box from Pinckney’s Produce! DSC05657This week’s haul:

  • 4 sweet potatoes, one of which was the size of a football
  • 2 heads broccoli
  • 2 bunches collards
  • 2 turnips with greens
  • 1 bunch mustard greens
  • 1 bag field peas/black eyed peas/bean-type things
  • 4 rutabagas
  • 4 slicing tomatoes
  • 6 small tomatoes
  • 4 peppers

When I went to pick up this week’s bounty, I was most impressed by one item in particular.  A sweet potato the size of a football. I held it up in astonishment and showed it off to the folks at the Glass Onion, one of my favorite local restaurants right by our house which happens to be our CSA pick up point. No one could believe the size of the monster sweet potato. In case you think I’m kidding, this is the beast both in my hand and on a dinner plate:DSC05658

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Insane, right? Continue reading “CSA Charleston: attack of the killer sweet potatoes”

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CSA Charleston: we used it all this week!

Another delicious week with our Pinckney’s Produce CSA!

DSC05656This week our box included:

  • 2 heads lettuce
  • 1 bunch kale
  • 1 bunch collards
  • 5 gigantic carrots
  • 1 bag field peas
  • 2 heads broccoli
  • 5 radishes
  • 5 ears corn
  • 2 acorn squash
  • 4 bell peppers
  • 6 tomatoes
  • 1 pie pumpkin
  • 3 ears decorative corn

Click on through to see what we did with it all! Continue reading “CSA Charleston: we used it all this week!”

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CSA Charleston: BEETSFAIL and collards FTW

another bounteous harvest
another bounteous harvest

Yet another gorgeous week’s worth of deliciousness from our Pinckney’s Produce CSA!  Here’s the breakdown:

  • 1 bunch kale
  • 1 bunch collards
  • 1 bunch lettuce
  • 5 ears corn
  • 5 large carrots
  • 4 bell peppers
  • 3 turnips
  • 3 tomatoes
  • 5 radishes
  • 2 winter squash
  • 3 ears decorative red corn

The first night I used the tomatoes and bell peppers to make a variation on shakshuka (which involved some canned tomatoes, an onion, and garlic which I had on had), which was served with a salad made from the lettuce, some of the radishes, and a carrot, and some Shorter No Knead Bread.  Jon has now taken to calling shakshuka his “favorite.”  We had the leftovers the next day. SO GOOD. Continue reading “CSA Charleston: BEETSFAIL and collards FTW”