The beans in my pantry need eating!

I have to admit—there’s a bunch of things in my pantry that need to be eaten.

I’ve got a variety of soba noodles, a pack of rice papers, myriad lentils and beans, a few different kinds of flours, and some canned goods; my freezer contains some CSA vegetables, nuts, stock, and meats (especially salmon). I went through a lot of the pantry goods last year and threw out the things that had expired, (I had one can that expired in 2012! Yeesh.) but there’s still a lot that remains—and all that deserves to be consumed.

I really don’t want to throw anything else out, since it’s just so wasteful. Food waste is a topic of great concern these days—the waste is upwards of 60 million metric tons of food in the US. It’s time for me to do my part and limit as much food waste as I can.

Enter #FromThePantryFebruary, a project spearheaded by cook and blogger Alexa Weiztman at Sustainable Pantry. It’s pretty much self-explanatory—eat through what you have, in your pantry! Alexa, like me, noticed she had a lot of stuff in her pantry (and freezer) to be eaten, and decided she wanted to do something about it, so she put together this challenge. Here’s her concept:

Cooking from the pantry is a great way to save money, reduce food waste and get out of your kitchen habits. The dividends of cooking from your pantry are clearing out all those nooks and crannies in your kitchen and creating more space.

This project/challenge is a great opportunity for creativity and a chance to do more with less. Alexa remarks, “I find the most creative things I cook is when I have ‘nothing’ in the house.” I totally agree—I’m definitely looking forward to improvising with what’s in my own pantry.

There aren’t really any strict rules to abide by next month—apart from using your pantry items—and mixing fresh ingredients with pantry items is totally acceptable, and in some cases will be necessary. She says, “People often think you can’t cook unless you have every little thing listed on the ingredient list of a recipe, but it’s not true!”

She encourages everyone to join her for this challenge, whether it’s for just a day or the whole month. If you blog or post about your creations on social media, be sure to use the hashtag #fromthepantryfebruary. For more about the project, you can head to her post about the project.

Personally, 2016 has been good so far. However, it’s been hard to see artists I grew up with pass on—Pierre Boulez, David Bowie, Alan Rickman, and Glenn Frey. Such heartbreak with all of them—it’s hard to see the big dogs of your youth slip away like this (mostly to stupid cancer). May they rest in peace.

For the blog, 2015 again was a light year of posting. But I ventured into cheesemaking, more fermentation projects, some foraging, discovered the magical White Moustache yogurt (sour cherry is the best), and met my love of Scandinavian food. I also did a lot better with my CSA shares this year; there was a lot less food waste, overall.

This year, I’d like to write more here, and will make an effort to meet that goal; I’d also like to read more food blogs. And on that topic, here are some things that have caught my eye lately.

The food of Tunisia will be highlighted during the Summer 2016 Fancy Food Show in NYC.

I’d like to try these Chewy Chocolate Chip Bars.

This Sweet Potato and Chickpea Salad is excellent.

Buttermilk Panna Cotta I want to eat.

A wonderful video on making Shakshouka.

I plan to make this Lemongrass Turmeric Curry Paste soon.

Not a bad list of kitchen resolutions for this year.

These Buckwheat Thumbprint Cookies with Cherry Preserves from the inimitable Alice Medrich sounds fantastic.

Some of the things I’d like to do this year in the food realm:

• Learn more about Scandinavian food, including cooking more regional dishes, enjoying fika more often, and researching how spices (e.g. cinnamon, cardamom, saffron) beloved in that region found their way there
• More fermentation projects and eat more lacto-fermented foods—cheese, krauts, and beverages, in particular
• Work some of these syrups into interesting and delicious cocktails
• Eat more legumes and beans #IYP2016
• Cook out of the cookbooks I already own

Here’s to a 2016 filled with food, fun, adventure, and less stress!

This year I had my act together and registered in time to participate in The Great Food Blogger Cookie Swap. I joined in the fun several years ago and had a good experience then, and I’m really glad I played again this year. In the years that passed the cookie swap has grown and grown and there’s a nice fundraising aspect to it, too—each participant donates a small sum to Cookies for Kids’ Cancer, a nonprofit involved with funding research and development in the area of pediatric cancer.

Plus, it’s a chance to connect with other food bloggers and enjoy some delicious cookies. Only two of the three folks sent me cookies, but that’s ok—I loved baking mine and sending them out in pretty boxes more than anything.

This year I chose to bake muskotsnittar, a buttery Swedish cookie redolent with cinnamon, nutmeg, and ginger that develops and intensifies in flavor each day. They happen to travel well, too, and I’m pleased to have learned that my cookies arrived without much, if any, breakage. This recipe for muskotsnittar is from the book Fika: The Art of the Swedish Coffee Break by Anna Brones and Johanna Kindvall—you can buy it here via Powell’s or find it at your local bookstore (here’s mine, Astoria Bookshop—indie beats behemoth Amazon IMO). I have a great affinity for cooking and baking traditional foods from the Scandinavian and Nordic countries, and these cookies made me really happy. Bonus: each batch makes a lot, and they freeze better, so in my book these cookies have it all.

You can find the recipe, here. I made one little adjustment of adding a bit of salt to the dough. Here’s the list of ingredients:

Muskotsnittar
From Fika: The Art of the Swedish Coffee Break by Anna Brones and Johanna Kindvall

2/3 cup firmly packed brown sugar (I used dark brown sugar)
1 tablespoon ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg
1 teaspoon ground ginger
1 cup plus 1 tablespoon unsalted butter, room temperature (Kerrygold is my fave)
2 cups all-purpose flour
1/4 teaspoon fine sea salt

The recipe works a lot like a lot of shortbread cookies, where you mix the ingredients together and refrigerate the dough. The recipe specified “at least 30 minutes” so I left it in for about an hour.

I split up the ball of dough into four quadrants and rolled each out into a log. I lifted it up and put it on the baking sheet (lined with a silicone mat from Dixie Crystals, a gift sent to many of the food bloggers participating in the cookie swap—thanks, Dixie Crystals!) and pressed the log into a flat piece about 1/4 inch thick.

Then I dragged a fork across the dough along the short width.

I baked the cookies for about 18-20 minutes, let them cool, then cut them on the bias. That angle, along with the marks the fork made, yielded a very pretty cookie!

I let them cool completely and then boxed them up. Thankfully I had some left over, which I enjoyed for a few days with coffee and tea.

I’m so happy to have been a part of The Great Food Blogger Cookie Swap this year. Big thanks to OXO for sending us a set of measuring cups, Dixie Crystals for the silicone baking mat, not to mention Lindsay (Love and Olive Oil) and Julie (The Little Kitchen) for working so hard to organize the cookie swap.

Each year I get concord grapes in my CSA share, and I never know what to do with them aside from just eating them fresh (I once tried pickling grapes—never again). This year I decided to expand my solo repertoire with these intensely flavored and deeply purple fruit bombs and try making a lacto-fermented whey soda with them. I am happy to say, it was seriously tasty.

For my culture, I used the whey I collected from making yogurt cheese—this kind of cheese is basically the result of hanging plain yogurt (full fat without stabilizers, pectin, or gelatin) in butter muslin for a day or so. They whey drips out and what remains is a thick and tangy spreadable cheese. The whey contains cultures that usher along the lacto-fermentation process. Here’s a shot of the delicious cheese hanging with the whey at the bottom of the container.

To start, I washed and picked all the grapes off their stems, discarding any that were overripe, damaged, or in generally bad shape; firm, ripe, and unblemished grapes were what I was looking for. In the end, I had 6 cups of grapes. I added 2 cups of water and 1/2 cup organic sugar to the grapes and brought it all to a boil, and let that simmer for about 30 minutes. I cooled the mix and then put it through a sieve, discarding pits and skins; what was left was a thick juicy liquid. 

I mixed that liquid with 3/4 cup whey and poured it into a large mason jar with an airlock lid on it, and let it sit undisturbed for two and a half days. By then, the juice was bubbly on the surface, meaning it had successfully fermented.

I poured the juice into a swing top bottle, and by end of day there was a lot of natural carbonation—almost too much, truth be told. But it was awesome.

The soda had a bright clean grape flavor that was not overly sweet, and I loved how sparkly it was. However, I wasn’t thrilled with the texture—it was too thick for my taste, so in actuality it was like a sort of grape “nectar” soda. It was so delicious, I drank it despite my apprehension with the texture. Next time I make it, I will not press the cooked grape mixture so forcefully through the sieve; instead, I’ll remove the pits, remaining grape flesh, and skin first, and just let what remains drain through with gravity. This should result in a thinner juice.

As it goes with fermentation, ambient temperature has an effect. My kitchen was particularly warm when I made this soda, so the process was speedier. There’s a part of me that really loves that variable in fermentation.

I’d like to try making this soda with different fruit, as well as cider. I’ve actually tried this with cider before, but didn’t put in enough culture, and I got some unpleasant mold develop on the surface. Live and learn. But this grape soda is a real winner. I hope you get a chance to try it—please drop me a note and let me know how it goes!

Yogurt cheese, perfect for a beginner like me.

A few weeks ago, I had the pleasure of attending a day of cheesemaking workshops with David Asher, a cheesemaker who runs the Black Sheep School of Cheesemaking, a “traveling cheese school” with origins in the Gulf Islands region of British Columbia. The folks from Slow Food organized these workshops and a reception the Friday evening before. After having had a look at Asher’s remarkable book, The Art of Natural Cheesemaking, they were so impressed with the knowledge within, they felt compelled to invite David Asher to come to NYC and teach classes on his unique style of cheesemaking.

A big part of this book asserts that you do not need to buy freeze dried cultures to make cheese, and that it can all be done with kefir, which contains most bacteria needed to culture milk for cheese; using raw milk is encouraged for the most part, too. Rennet is also employed in making many of the cheeses, while a simple acid—lemon juice, vinegar, or kefir—is used in a small number of cheeses to separate out curds and whey. Bottom line—industrial practices and ingredients are unnecessary to make delicious, flavorful cheeses.

The building that houses Crown Finish Caves. The light was beautiful that evening.

I chose to attend the reception and take the first day of workshops. The reception was quite nice, and took place in one of the tunnels at Crown Finish Caves, a cheese aging facility located three stories below street level; originally the space was a brewery. Because it is so far below ground and the walls are so thick, it keeps a relatively constant temperature, perfect for affinage, or, aging cheese. A number of farms create their cheeses and age them here.

The tunnel in which we attended the reception and heard David Asher talk about kefir and cheese.

At the reception, which took place in one of the tunnels, David talked a lot about kefir, his love for it, and its usefulness in making cheese. Before the talk there was traditional music played by a small band, a little local food and drink, and lots of cheese afterwards. David even passed out kefir grains to anyone who wanted one (they were quite large). I put mine in dead (UHT) milk and it fermented it! The magic of kefir.

The next morning I returned to Brooklyn for a day of making simple cheeses—yogurt cheese (and yogurt), paneer, and chevre. Each of these is created differently—to make yogurt cheese, you hang full fat yogurt in butter muslin (or a du-rag) until the whey drips away; for paneer, you boil milk and add acid, which creates curds and whey; and with chevre, you add kefir and rennet, and hang the cheese like yogurt cheese, or you can ladle it into forms. 

We also talked a little bit about aged/bloomy rind goat cheeses, which require the formation of geotrichum candidum, a beautiful velvety white fungus that forms on the outside of goat cheese when encouraged.

Here are some photos from the day. It certainly lit a fire under my cheesemaking curiosity.

Freshly made yogurt cheese with bread.

Curds congealing for paneer.

Pressed paneer—it was lightly sweet.

A gigantic kefir grain from one of David Asher’s friends who make large amounts of kefir at once (grains grow to match the volume of product being made).

Goat cheese curd after 24 hours of fermentation. The curds have sunk below the whey, which is a good sign.

David Asher salting chevre.

A beautiful ball of chèvre.

Chèvre curd in forms, waiting to drain and be salted later.

I’ll be sure to share my cheesemaking escapades here on the blog. Big thanks to David Asher, Slow Food, and Crown Finish Caves for a deeply enriching and creative day of traditional food!

Larb, one of my very favorite ground meat dishes, and something I cooked early on here on the blog.

When I started eating meat after 13 years of being a vegetarian, I began with fish (ironically, it was raw fish—sushi—that enticed me off the wagon), moved to chicken (skinless, boneless breasts), and about three years into my omnivore status, I decided it was time to try “the hard stuff”—beef and pork. I found early on in that phase that I gravitated toward ground, minced, or shredded meats, something that still appeals to me to this day. Perhaps it was how those muscle cuts were so obviously animal flesh, with all their explicit fat, bones, muscle fibers and tendons, something I was still apprehensive about, and the grinding and shredding of meat helped mask that reality.

It was also easier to eat, not to mention that when I cooked it, ground meat was, and is, usually much more forgiving, especially when it’s loose; it takes a certain set of skills to cook a steak, a leg of lamb, or a pork chop and not have it turn out tough to inedible. That said, nowadays I do feel comfortable roasting whole chickens, cooking strips of bacon, and cooking an entire filet of salmon in parchment. But I still prefer to cook ground meat, even after 17 years of omnivorous living.

During the quiet months of this blog, I tried a number of ground/minced/shredded meat dishes and found some pretty delicious recipes from fellow bloggers and food sites. When I tried them out, I posted pictures of some of the outcomes to my Instagram account, but it’s worth collecting them here in one place. Here are four that I really enjoyed.

Spicy Garlic Pork and Ground Pork via Two Red Bowls

This is the most recent ground meat dish I made and is the one I’m the most excited about. It combines the classic pairing of eggplant and pork, surrounded by a well-balanced mix of savory, spicy, and sweet notes, creating something that is pretty addictive. Ever since I made it my mind keeps wandering back to it. I suspect that its uniquely memorable flavor has to do with the time the pork sat marinating in soy sauce, sesame oil, as well as the high-quality pastured pork I used. It also has what I consider to be a lot of garlic cloves but in the end the garlic was not overpowering and was just right. I also loved the inclusion of ginger. 

I decided to make it spicier than the original recipe by adding a half teaspoon of red pepper flakes, which really works for someone who likes their food on the spicier side; I tasted it before I added the flakes and it was really good at that point, too. It would definitely be great with noodles, but I liked eating it all by itself; I could see enjoying it with rice, too.

I’m eager to make this again, especially since we’re in the hottest, most eggplantiest time of the year. This is a total winner of a dish.

Loobia Polo—Beef and Green Bean Rice via Honest and Tasty

Summer also brings us green beans in abundance. A few weeks ago I had both a pound of beans and a bunch of ground beef on my hands, so I searched the internet for a recipe that contained both, and out popped Loobia Polo, a Persian dish. This is not showy food, and to me seems very practical, what with a small ingredient list and what I believe is a classic way to extend protein—by adding grains. The dominant flavors are beef, green beans, cinnamon, and saffron; the combination is very gentle and delightfully comforting.

A new-to-me technique in the recipe was placing a clean kitchen towel between the steaming rice mixture and the lid. This is apparently a common way to cook rice for Persian dishes, and what happens is that the towel catches and absorbs the steam instead of letting it fall back onto the rice mixture, encouraging the formation of tahdig, a crispy layer of rice on the bottom of the pan. It’s seriously good stuff, slightly caramelized and adds a wonderful crunchy texture to the whole dish.

This recipe made a lot of food, but the good news is that it freezes well—when I was tired one evening and realized I had a bunch of frozen Loobia Polo just waiting to be heated up, it was a wonderful feeling.

Thai Pork Meatballs & Sweet Chili Sauce via Foodess

I love Thai-centric flavors, so these meatballs sounded really good when I first read the recipe… and they were! Even without the lemongrass—I couldn’t find any in my neighborhood, so I replaced it with lemon zest—they were delicious. Another thing I liked about them was that they are baked, not fried. Not that fried is a problem, but baking a sheet of meatballs is less mess and easier than frying them, and the meatballs didn’t fall apart, either. The flavors were really on point, and I loved all the cilantro, ginger, and onions in them, not to mention the bits of carrot. This is a pretty healthy dish.

I ended up eating the meatballs without the lettuce wraps, and that worked fine; the lettuce I had from my CSA was a little unwieldy and I bet the cups of Boston lettuce would be a better choice. I wonder if they would be good in a Thai soup broth or paired with rice noodles. The chili sauce that goes with the meatballs is excellent, and would be a fine accompaniment to neutral noodles; I’ll have to give that a try sometime. I’m looking forward to making these again.

Chile-Cumin Lamb Meatballs with Yogurt and Cucumber via Bon Appetit

This was probably the most time-consuming of the four recipes, I think because the instructions included toasting and grounding spices, something I’m new at, and thus takes more time. The sauce was a bit oily for my taste (it unappealingly pooled at the bottom of my bowl), so I’d probably halve the amount of oil next time. That said, these meatballs tasted good. Even without the sauce—and perhaps next time I’ll just omit the sauce—they were fabulous. Lamb and cumin is a magical combination and did very well here together.

The addition of the cucumbers and yogurt was also spot on. Overall, the meatballs had this wonderful combination of spices and fresh herbs along with some lovely ground lamb. My mouth is watering just thinking about them.

Next up: I’m going to be spending time with this article on meatloaf and giving the classic American ground meat dish a try.

Summer perfection—peach and cucumber salad

Welcome back to Eat the Web, the intermittent collection of links that have caught my eye. I often post them piecemeal to twitter, but it’s nice to have them in one place. Here are some choice links from this summer:

My, how you’ve changed, watermelon [Vox]

Delicious grilled cheese sandwiches in SF at B. on the Go [SF Chronicle]

Spicy food might help you live longer [SciAm]

Quick ricotta gnocchi that look fabulous, and easy to make [Serious Eats]

Astoria’s “cathedral to smoked meats”—Muncan Food Corp—gets some love (good, traditional cured meats are here in abundance) [VV]

Easy summer ceviche [Latina]

Warming water in the Columbia river are causing sockeye salmon to die in large numbers [Digital Journal]

NYC Honey Week returns this September [NYC Honey Week]

One of NYC’s oldest German butchers, Schaller & Weber, opens a little sausage bar [DNAinfo]

This Peruvian gazpacho looks wonderful! The half avocado is particularly appealing. [Eating Free]

I recently came back from a lovely vacation in sunny San Diego. I ate a lot of tasty food, saw the sights, and spent time with family celebrating the wedding of my cousin. Here’s a shot from the beach out into the Pacific Ocean. It was perfect.

A photo posted by Meg Cotner (@megcotner) on Jul 31, 2015 at 3:44pm PDT

If you went on a foraging tour with me last month in #NYC, you know where the juneberries are. Go. Now. They are… http://t.co/khDFDNs0C9

— Leda Meredith (@ledameredith) June 9, 2015

I followed the link to her blog post, where she talked more about juneberries. She mentioned that they were also called serviceberries, which triggered a memory of hearing about serviceberry trees not far from my apartment, and since it was still early enough in the morning, I headed out to find them.

When I arrived in the area I thought would be home to the serviceberry trees, I didn’t see them at first, and was a little bummed out… until I looked further down the hill and saw a tree full of berries—and there were a lot of them. [bctt tweet=”Juneberry jackpot!”]

As you can see, the berries were at various levels of ripeness—the dark purple berries are the sweetest, with the red ones being a little more tart, but still ripe. I harvested about a half pint of berries, and there are still more, so I expect to be able to harvest many more if I like. There’s actually a second tree even further down the hill, but the berries are not close to being ripe. I’ll keep checking on them.

Here’s my harvest from this morning:

The berries have a sort of meaty texture; they are not watery at all. The seeds have a taste reminiscent of almonds. All together, they are a delight to eat raw; sounds like they also cook down well for pies and tarts, too.

I also knew that there was a mulberry tree not far from the serviceberry trees, so I decided to harvest some. I took this photo last Thursday, and the tree ripened up really fast; the sidewalk is covered in mulberry fruit pulp, and the tree has fruit at varying points of ripeness.

I picked about a pint of mulberries.

A woman walked by and asked what I was doing, and it was fun to tell her about the mulberries. She was astonished that you could eat the ripe fruits on the tree.

On the way home, I came upon a while mulberry tree—total surprise.

These berries taste different from the conventional purple mulberries I’m used to—they are a sweet and slightly spicy, though not very “fruity” tasting. The fruit clusters were less packed and it was easier to pick the fruit, too.

I also passed an apple tree not far from the white mulberries. It has fruited but it has a long way to go.

Over the years I’ve passed by this apple tree when most of the fruit has fallen—the fruit is pretty small and has a blush to it, along with a shiny exterior. I’ll keep an eye on them and get a better idea further into summer.

Overall, I spent about 2 hours walking around and picking wild berries, and had a total blast. It was so much fun! I want to learn more about wild foods and local foraging. I’d especially like to get my hands on some beach plums.

Our first share of the 2015 Hellgate CSA season, in a rad new space.

This week marks my tenth season with the Hellgate CSA, a community supported agriculture organization that I helped establish up in northwestern Queens. A little history: it was originally called the Ravenswood CSA, based in the Ravenswood Houses senior center, and as CSAs work in NYC it was passed on the following year from the Americorps member who staffed it, to an all-volunteer team. The members interested in forming the core group all lived above the GCP, so we brought it north.

I was a core member for eight seasons (2006-2013) and am happy to see the CSA still going, well-managed by the current core group. I left the core group for a variety of reasons, one being my desire to move on and make room for new experiences. But I wanted to remain a member, so here I am.

(The other day I realized I’ve been a member of a CSA on and off for about 24 years; my first CSA experience was with Full Belly Farm in CA, which started my love of CSAs and eating seasonally.)

We’re also in a nice new space, away from the elements, and with a lot more room than we’ve had in the past.

Wishing it was truly globe artichokes, but what we actually got were jerusalem artichokes.

Speaking of seasonally, one of my most anticipated items each year is strawberries! [bctt tweet=”There’s nothing like local, organic strawberries in season, perhaps only second to those you grow your own.”]I remember many years ago picking strawberries with my grandfather during hot Southern California summers, and they were simply divine. I love those memories I had with him.

Here’s what we got in this week’s share—the aformentioned strawberries, kale, oregano, lettuce, leeks, and jerusalem artichokes. I took these photos while helping with setup, so these are the boxes from the farmer; each share, including mine, is a fraction of what you see. Believe me, if I could take all those strawberries, I would!

We consumed these strawberries that same night (Tuesday). I washed and trimmed them, set them in a bowl with a little maple sugar and water to slightly soften and sweeten up a little more. We ate them with pound cake and maple sweetened organic whipped cream.

I still haven’t used my kale yet, but will likely chop it up and saute it with garlic and lemon.

Part of this oregano went into the cumin lamb meatballs I made Tuesday. I will also put some of it into this savory chopped salad. I’ll dry the rest. BTW, this box of oregano smelled amazing!

I used some of this to wrap leftover meatballs in. Worked like a charm!

I think I will make some melted leeks to add to lentils and coconut milk.

Not pictured: a bag of jerusalem artichokes, a vegetable I both love for its interesting flavor and North American heritage, and hate for its gaseous properties. I’d love to find a way to cook them that helps limit the effects of inulin on the human body.

I look forward to a beautiful CSA season and eating all sorts of delicious seasonal vegetables and fruit for the next six months!

For a little while now, I’ve seen this fancy-looking yogurt in specialty shops in NYC—White Moustache brand. It comes in glass containers, has a hip look (moustaches are big in NYC these days), and is made Persian-style, which is a thick, strained-type yogurt (think FAGE). While shopping at Murray’s Cheese on Bleecker Street, I came across it and decided to take the plunge—and boy, am I glad I did.

This is the best yogurt I’ve ever tasted—even better than the strained raw yogurt I make at home. It has a wonderful texture—smooth and creamy, yet light, and was perfectly balanced in the sweet/tang department. You’d that that even with sweetened sour cherries, the yogurt would taste more sour than most, but this did not have any harshness to it whatsoever. The natural sweetness of the milk is clear in the taste of the yogurt.

The yogurt itself takes three days to make, and is truly handcrafted. They fill each container by hand and make all the fruit/veg elements. A jar at Murray’s was priced at $5.99, and I think with all things taken into consideration, it’s worth it. 

The milk they use is local to our area—more about that from their FAQ:

All our yogurt products begin with whole milk from Hudson Valley Fresh, a dairy farmer partnership dedicated to sustainable agriculture and to preserving the dairy farming tradition of New York’s Hudson River Valley. We only use whole milk [from 100% grass-fed cows] and probiotic cultures to make our yogurt — that’s it! We do not add any cream or starches. There is about 10-12oz of milk that goes into making one jar of yogurt.

Here’s a great video about them from Food.Curated.

It also has a gorgeous color when you mix the yogurt and the fruit.

I also love how I can use the glass container to store little leftovers—I’ve been moving away from plastic as much as I can and using glass jars for storing things (like leftovers).

Overall, this yogurt is beyond excellent—highly recommended. I can’t wait to try other flavors!