Coming Soon! To a Dinner Table Near Me!
Roast Leg of Lamp! er…Leg of Ramb? Bone-in leg of lamb from Moutoux Orchard in Purcellville, Virginia. Rubbed with a spice mixture (smoked tea salt, pepper, tarragon, coriander, oregano, fenugreek), and studded with sliced wild-collected ramps.
Grilled cheese sandwiches
Homemade Rye bread (this is picture from July – before the 12-pound loaf came into our life) with Woodcock Farm (Vermont) blue cheese.
We visited Woodcock on our cheese tour in ’03 and ’05 and met owners and cheesemakers Mark and Gari Fischer. At the time they were not, as far as I remember, making any blue cheeses or using cow’s milk, so we were excited to spot this cheese at the Brattleboro Co-Op. We were not able to make a visit to Woodcock again, but were glad we could keep up with what Mark and Gari have been doing. The CurdNerds have an excellent post about Woodcock Farm here: www.curdnerd.com/node/168
[tags]artisan cheese, cheese, lunch, rye[/tags]
rnrnBlue Cornmeal pancakes made with homemade buttermilk; Chicken Apple Spice Sausage; and Broccoli Hache.rnrnInitially served with a sparkling Pinot Noir, but that did not work at all. I should have trusted my original instinct and had the Blue Dawg Wild Blue Blueberry Lager we had in the refrigerator.rnrnThe inspiration for the meal was the desire to use the buttermilk left over from Carly’s recent butter making experiment.rnrn[tags] cooking, pancakes, buttermilk, brinner[/tags]
I have been an ice cream making fiend this weekend. Art works hard to grow all this great stuff, it’s my job to turn it into yummy ice cream!
Most of my friends are asking about the Rose Petal ice cream, which I’ve made 3 batches of so far.
My favorite is the mint chocolate chip. It’s hard to imagine how good mint infusing in cream smells. I guess if you eat some of the ice cream, you can get the idea.
The total ice cream count so far is:
Phew! I need more freezer space.
Here’s last year’s ice cream report, in case you missed it.
[tags]ice cream, herbal ice cream, cooking, spring, flowers[/tags]
Making Half-sour tomatoes!!!! Not quite ready yet.
Just call me Ruth! It was gleaning day at our CSA farm, so I was out in the fields picking away. We came home with quite a haul. Art snapped this shot of me with my bag full of parsley. Thank goodness we have a pet rabbit, or all the parsley might have gone to waste! Needless to say it was not on the top of any one else’s list of things to get bunches and bunches of.
We also came home with tons of pumpkins, string beans, and green tomatoes. I’m off to try my hand at pickling half-sour green tomatoes!
x-posted from www.peelapom.com
[tags]csa, community supported agriculture, gleaning, farms, parsley[/tags]
Everyone has a different way of enjoying the bounty of the spring and summer. Some people have cookouts. Some people make jams and can vegetables and berries, like Art does.
Me? I make ice cream.
When spring rolls around and the herbs in the garden start to flower, I’m thinking about all the delicious ice cream I can make. It started with a recipe for rose petal ice cream about six years ago. Once I realized how easy it was to infuse the rose petals in cream, I started wondering what would happen with other garden goodies. Now, every spring, I gather up the bounty from Art’s garden and make pint after pint of ice cream.
Here’s the tally so far this spring:
The red clover ice cream was a new one this year, and it was quite a hit. The crimson clovers smell kind of sweet and melony, and created a really nice flavored ice cream. I was sad that the color didn’t transfer over at all — which happens with the mint. I looked at red clover tea recipes, not realizing I was using a slightly different type of clover, and many recommended adding a little mint to the tea. So for two cups of crimson clover heads, I added twelve mint leaves, which equaled about 4 clovers for each mint leaf.
The locust blossom ice cream was the other experiment this spring. Art and I had noticed how sweet the locust blossom flowers scent was, so we did some research and found that they are indeed edible. Some people equate the scent with a sweet vanilla. We have a small locust tree in the yard, but there is a really big one in the traffic divider across the street from our house. The city hasn’t sprayed for mosquitos this year, so we knew we’d be able to use them for ice cream. The flavor of the ice cream turned out to be a rich flowery honey.
We have a big patch of chocolate mint, so I was able to make a couple of batches of that. And, yes, you read that right. The herb actually has a chocolate mint flavor. The chocolate is subtle, but it’s definitely there. I use chunks of bittersweet chocolate for the chips, and the process of infusing the herbs in the cream usually transfers some of the green color too.
The strawberry ice cream is actually in the ice cream maker, as I type this. I opted for Philly-style strawberry, which means it’s just cream, sugar, and strawberries. I generally make the custard-based ice creams, but I wanted to see if the really simple Philly-style would bring out the berries without the extras.
Since I have two ice cream cookbooks, I don’t think I’ll ever run out of recipes to try. Mainly, I love to take whatever is fresh and use that — but that nougat ice cream recipe is still calling me. hmmm….
And for those wondering about the effect of all this ice cream on our waist lines — I should say that I brought 3 quarts to a party and this is why Art drags me hiking all summer.
[tags]ice cream, herbs, herbal ice cream, recipes, crimson clover, chocolate mint, locust blossom, gardens, simple pleasures[/tags]
It’s spring and that means ramp hunting time.
The Ramp Patch
Prepped Trout
Two farm-raised trout stuffed with ramps which we foraged for that afternoon. I threw in some herbed ricotta that Carly had whipped up a few days prior.
Grilled Trout
I have had trouble keeping fish from sticking to the grill, so I laid them on a bed of ramp leaves. The ramp leaves burned away and the fish came right off.
Smokin!
After getting the (hardwood) fire good and hot, adding a piece of dripping wet cherry really got the smoke going.
Done!
Dinner – April 22, 2007
Grilled Trout stuffed with Wild Ramps and Herbed Ricotta.
Served on a bed of Ramp greens.
Bread: Seeded Pumpkin Bread from Firehook
Beer: Bell’s Lager of the Lakes.
It was pretty much a perfect meal. Just enough food. The beer matched well. The fish was smoky but still moist because of the ricotta. The bread had enough sweetness to complement the ramps.
[tags]dinner, trout, ramps, cooking, local, seasonal, foraging[/tags]
Proudly powered by WordPress
Theme: Esquire by Matthew Buchanan.
