"Acorns were good until bread was found." -Francis Bacon

The secret to good bread - like so many other things - is listening.  

Acorns are alright for foraging pigs, but with an oven, or hearth, or access to fire in general, we must heed our obligation to bake our ground flours.

Lucy and Ethel, or Guanciale, Tesa, Salame, and Proscuitto

 

I've mentioned that we are raising pigs, but have not prior to now written about them exclusively.  Well, meet Lucy and Ethel - they're cute, but a little on the rude side so beware if you decide to pay them a visit. 

Traditionally pigs are raised through the spring and summer and butchered and preserved in the fall.  This makes sense for two principle reasons: First, pigs are cheaper to feed during the growing season due to the abundance of garden scraps, and secondly, the colder months provide ideal conditions for preserving their meat.  With the modern convenience of refrigeration, the latter is more or less a non-problem.  The first problem is simple to eradicate as well if you can cut a deal with a local restaurant.  

Working at a restaurant affords us the ability to keep pigs through the winter.  While we still have to purchase some pig feed for Lucy and Ethel, we are able to supplement that grainy diet with a diverse blend of pasta, bread, vegetables, and so on.  If I were a little more pursuant, and I intend on being just that, we could easily feed them on kitchen scraps from restaurants around town.  For the time being however, the pigs are still on a grain subsidized diet.  But, Lucy and Ethel know when its time for the good stuff  - just look at them beaming with appreciation. 

In the spring, I will be the ecstatic one.  Just as the girls snort and hop around in anticipation of their daily slop, I will jump around like a kiddie on Christmas as I turn their bellies into an unfurled pancetta known as Tesa, their cheeks and jowls into Guanciale, and, if our pigs get large enough and our butcher is capable and willing to remove those large legs properly, the granddaddy of cured meats, Proscuitto.  Needing nearly 400 days to mature and skills I don't yet possess to do so without welcoming unwanted bacteria, the Proscuitto will certainly test my patience and culinary aptitude.  Fortunately, we will have plenty to enjoy while we wait.

Until that fateful day, I will haul water and food scraps the hundred yards through knee deep snow to make sure our girls are as happy as pigs in shit - which of course, they are!  Stay tuned for more porcine news and eventually tales of my experiments in charcuterie. 

Ethel digs pasta, old spinach and pizza dough!

Introducing, Bill McKerchie: Freelance Baker

I have officially joined the fringe economy!  You know, bottle collectors, scrap metal collectors, ebay sellers, donors of sperm, freelance bakers – contemporary members of that strange informal economy, descendants of night soil men and rag collectors, surviving on the periphery of society somewhere between legitimate and its antonym?

I've been selling pies and baked goods out of my kitchen for a couple of years while baking for a coffee shop, but now I'm straight out on my own.  Thanks to Tamara's brother, Eli, I'm doing it with a brand new, super-radical business card.  Check out his design manufactory.

Armed with my new card and some new tartlet pans, I baked up some goodies for my first gig this weekend.  It is a poor substitute for tasting them, but eyeball these pictures to get an idea.  And, if you have any bread, pie, cookie, pastry - or any other baking needs (and are local to Skaneateles/Syracuse) - shoot me an email.  Otherwise, feast your eyes.

Skaneateles' finest eggs

Homemade fig and whiskey jam ready to be rolled into my Rustic Fig Bars

Chocolate Hazelnut Tart Dough, Sweet Tart Dough, and Chocolate and Vanilla Shortbread Doughs

Chocolate Hazelnut Ganache Tartlets topped with sea salt

Rustic Fig Bars

Pumpkin-Buttermilk Tartlets (made with our own Pumpkin)

Chocolate Tartlets with Chocolate Nut Dough and Chocolate topped Shortbreads with a cookie crumble

Shortbreads: Chocolate and Vanilla Chessboards and Vanilla just

Wrapped up and ready to go

Thanksgiving of Us - a photographic rendering

Rosen Thanksgiving is potluck style - with all participants sharing the kitchen, the cooking duties, and the eating.  Once again it was a delicious celebration of the harvest.

Parsnips await being chopped for Seth's mash

Celeriac, fried

Kale for Eli's Ribolitta - a Tuscan Bean Soup

Carrots, onion, and - below - leeks for the Ribolitta

Golden, chioggia and bull's blood beets with goat cheese and walnuts top Tamara's mesclun mix salad

Romanesco cauliflower and carrots for my heavy harvest pizza.  Below, the same, now pan-fried

Jo and Anna's butternut squash with asiago and cream

Mark's Brussels sprouts and shallots

A look at Eli's ribolitta before it actualizes its' potential - of being the most delicious soup in my stomach

Pumpkin Pie ... with pumpkin from our great pumpkin processing project

My harvest pizza pie with pumpkin sauce, beets, fried celeriac, turnip chips, romanesco, carrots, parsnips, kale ...

Anna's chocolate pecan pie

Etta's cranberry-tequila cream cheese tart

Heirloom Pumpkins and the Processing Project

 

Just after Halloween, Tamara had the good fortune to inherit about a dozen heirloom pumpkins.  This of course left us with the tasks of cutting, scooping, roasting, freezing, and lastly devising enough recipes to use all that pumpkin flesh.  Slowly, we packed all the pumpkins away in the basement freezer and began some creative efforts.  In the ensuing weeks we've made cookies, a cream cheese tart, and a loaf of bread, all with varying success.  More recently however, chipotle pumpkin soup and a pumpkin and venison sausage lasagna have stolen the show.

The soup was pretty straight forward and a few different recipes can be found with a simple google search.  Just don't make the one supposedly created - minimally endorsed by - Rachel Ray, she's a talentless hack, a tumor on culinary creativity, and annoying to boot.  I almost decided against making this soup altogether when I discovered her recipe, but opted to take it upon myself to right the injustice suffered by pumpkins, chipotle peppers, and diary everywhere at the hands of Ms. Ray and her numb, senseless followers who complacently insist on following her down the rabbit-hole of disrespecting the culinary arts and eating in general (sorry, for that ad hominem diatribe).

Alas, when the time came to eat the soup, I was glad to have pushed my pride aside and forged ahead making a soup, similar in name alone, to one advocated by Rachel Ray?  At least it wasn't a Sandra Lee recipe, right?

So, for our soup, I pureed two medium sized dry chilies with two or three cloves of roasted garlic, making a smoky, red paste.  Meanwhile I sauteed a good sized storage onion with olive oil and a sizable pinch of dried sage leaves in a heavy caste-iron pot.  The chipotle-garlic paste went in next with half a stick of butter, some fresh ground pepper and a good pinch of salt.     

For the pumpkin we used a Jarrahdale - a slate-gray skinned, cantaloupe-orange fleshed, ancient Native American variety, great for soups and baking alike.   I combined the entire flesh of our roasted pumpkin to the pot and mixed it in adding about a cup of water - just until it looked like it wouldn't stick to the pot.  

A bit of brown sugar, a decent amount of cumin, a dash of coriander and cinnamon, and nice sprinkle of our accidentally combined garlic and ginger powders - easy mistake - and I turned the range down and let the flavors cook together for a half-hour or so, stirring occasionally to avoid any sticking.

When everything had cooked together nicely I added a couple cups of heavy cream and simmered another 10 minutes, finishing it up with some salt and pepper to taste.  The pumpkin cooked down well enough for our tastes, but an immersion blender or trip to the food processor might be called for if you want a more homogeneous texture - which, had I been cooking for others, or a paying customer, I certainly would have gone for.

We topped our soup with some Wake Robin yogurt and a swirl of balsamic reduction.  We usually have a loaf of bread in the oven or freshly out, so some impromptu croutons made an appearance as well.

tasted better than it looks ...

The lasagna was - as it should be - pretty simple as well.  We made the lasagna noodles with the pasta roller, but that was by far the most labor intensive aspect of the preparation.  Everything was done in stages.  First the ricotta.  Ricotta is extremely simple to make, easier to buy obviously, but let's allow that scratch cooking has some certain intrinsic value that trumps ease.  

Simply heat a gallon milk - or an appropriate fraction - slowly to a very gentle boil, stirring constantly to avoid scalding.  When it reaches a boil curdle the milk with 1/3 cup of white vinegar (I've used our accidental hard cider turned apple cider vinegar and that worked great too) and let drip through some cheesecloth or a muslin bag.  A few healthy pinches of salt will help draw out the whey, but use more or less depending on what you are going to use it for.  It is best to give it a night to drip, but a half hour will do in a pinch.  This is perhaps better called farmer's cheese but for our intents and purposes it makes little difference.  I've also seen it done with a cup of yogurt in the milk, which makes for a great texture.  You can even put everything right in the pot in the beginning and bring it to a boil together - either way you get the idea, lot's of alternatives.  Again, if you are going to make your own, and you should, just google up some recipes.  

While the cheese drained, I cooked up 1 and 1/2 pounds of hot venison sausage with a small onion.  I set it aside in a bowl and moved on to the pumpkin which I pureed in the food processor with a little butter and brown sugar - that's all.

For the sauce I got a little wonky.  In a small pot I warmed two cups of milk slowly.  Meanwhile, in another pan, I melted a half stick of butter, plus a little extra and tossed in a hand-full of coarsely chopped dates and a 3-4 tablespoons of flour and whisked it together into a date-butter paste.  Still whisking I added the milk a little at a time, creating a thick bechamel-date sauce.  I hit it with salt and a few very liberal grinds of pepper, tossed in a half cup of assorted Italian cheeses - asiago, parmesan, provolone, romano, you know the blend - and took it off the heat.

The final pre-assembly step was to mix the ricotta in with the sausage, leaving me with four dishes to work out of: one with the sausage and ricotta, another with pumpkin, one with a bunch of shredded mozzarella, and the pan with my delicious white sauce.

I rolled out about a pound worth of pasta (2 and 1/2 cups of flour, 3 eggs, dash of salt, tablespoon or two of olive oil, kneaded and allowed to rest for 10 minutes) and began assembling the lasagna.  

I won't bore you with this part, you know the drill - pasta, pumpkin, sausage, sauce, little cheese, pasta, again ... until the top layer where I finished with the remaining sauce and good amount of cheese.  Bake hot until it browns up.  

Oh yeah, I sporadically threw in some greens from the garden - kale, arugula, mizuna, etc.

 

Brussels Sprouts!

For those not in the know, Tamara and I are both fanatical about Brussels sprouts.  The reputation of these beautiful, tasty little cabbages suffers for a number of reasons.  How many television shows have used Brussels sprouts as 'the dreaded vegetable' that children refuse to eat at dinner?  I'm not going to go into it too much, but the fact is most people have not eaten  frost-sweetened Brussels sprouts - and no, the freezer doesn't count.  Most the sprouts people encounter are in fact frozen, but more crucial to the taste is that they are grown and harvested without their flavor being allowed to mature.  California simply cannot grow Brussels sprouts like we can in upstate New York - they need the cold, particularly the frost.  But, they also need an astronomically long time to grow.

With that in mind, the patience exhibited in our waiting to eat our only surviving stalk should be a point of admiration.  When it was finally time to harvest the excitement was palpable.   We both posed for pictures with our gigantic stalk of sprouts before chopping them off and deciding how to prepare them.    

She's got that maniacal look on her face again

A real beauty

 Fortunately there were enough for a couple of meals.  The first night we decided to pan-fry them in a bit of olive oil and serve them over some kale, arugula, mizuna, and mustard greens from the garden.  We accompanied the greenery with some Lebanese couscous and drizzling of brown sugar-balsamic reduction.  The result, a delicious warm salad.

mmm mmm mmmm mmmm

again, mmm mmm mmm mmm

The Relocation: a depth-lacking overview

When Tamara and I decided to relocate back to my hometown in the Finger Lakes, the decision hinged mainly on two potentials.  The first being that my parents own about 4 acres just outside of town, 1or 2 of which we could plant in vegetables.  A good chunk of the rest could easily be put to use without taking over my parents lives.  In short, we both have agricultural ambitions.  We both enjoy the labor involved with farming and believe strongly in growing our local food economy.  The sense of importance we feel in regards to eating locally results in a near inability to eat supermarket produce.  I would never admit so much to a dinner host and I am constantly aware of how pretentious such convictions can seem - regardless, that our caloric intake come primarily from our own food-shed is a core value of ours.  That said, it is a dream of ours to grow enough food for ourselves and have enough left over for a humble income through farmer's markets, restaurant sales, what have you.  While this might not be immediately in reach, we are determined to give it a go.  

The other reason for choosing our westward migration was the 100 year old barn dying for restoration.  While we briefly considered renting somewhere in town, the idea of converting the barn quickly became a more desirable choice. The space has a great deal of potential and the everyday small gains are encouraging.  We can't wait to get the siding up so we can really get to work on the inside. 

So, we've been preparing beds for next spring and slowly plugging along on the barn.  We built a nice compost bin and have inoculated logs with shitake and oyster mushroom spawn.  We also have a couple of pigs in the barn slowly transforming into bacon.   

That's enough for now, I'll let the pictures fill in the blanks.

Sod-busters

Sod-busting (next time I'll let the pigs do it)

Inoculating logs with mushroom spawn

Stacking the logs in the woods behind the barn.  They will sit here until next Spring, get soaked for 24 hours to force fruiting, then, hopefully start growing mushrooms - hopefully.

Our last tomatoes - we had a long lasting crop this year

Taking a break to attend Tamara's cousin's wedding in New York.

Why Local? Revised.

Like most people, Tamara and I first got involved with the local food movement as consumers.  In Boston I frequented the store at Allandale Farm and shopped for my household of four guys - for whom I handled the bulk of the cooking - at a co-op featuring a decent amount of locally-sourced goods.  Tamara's sister started an urban farm in West Philadelphia, and she spent some time working on farms as a kid, so the importance and benefits of eating local have been on her radar a bit longer than mine.  

When we moved to Saratoga over two years ago, we started shopping at the farmer's market and things started to come into focus for us.  We became CSA members, supporting the Kilpatrick Family Farm's year round efforts and soon I began working for them at market.  I also began baking pies using local ingredients for a cafe in the area.  We spent the next two years eating food grown primarily within our food-shed.  Eventually, both Tamara and I were working on some of the farms we relied on for our food - New Minglewood Farm and the Kilpatrick's respectively. Through these opportunities and commitment to what we view as a cause, if not a way of life (certainly not a fad), we experienced first hand how the local food movement brings farmers together with their community and how each benefit from the reconnection of this dying relationship. 

We owe the majority of the friends we made in Saratoga to our various commitments at the market.  Now that we are moving on to pursue our own agricultural dreams, we are hopeful to find a community in the Finger Lakes like the one we are leaving behind.  By working for local farms in various capacities and by shopping at the farmer's market our goal was to help shift the current food economy to one that is sustainable from an environmental, health and economic perspective.  Now we are attempting to contribute even more by starting our own farming venture.  While in its infancy we have a great deal of decisions to make - and even more work to do,  but we feel up to the challenges because we believe so strongly in furthering the development of Central New York's local food economy.

For far too many people food remains a mere commodity, available regardless of season and the environmental impact and nutritional depletion undergone in order to ensure its magical arrival in the produce aisle.  In Saratoga we were fortunate enough to have a farmer's market year round.  Now we have to drive a little ways but have options.  Ithaca and Cazenovia both have winter markets as does the CNY Regional Market in Syracuse. The availability of fresh and local foods offers a great opportunity on numerous fronts.  For one thing, the food is healthier.  While studies have disputed the health advantages of organic verses conventional produce, locally grown food is certainly more nutritious than its well-traveled counterparts. The nutritional content of our food is depleted with each minute that elapses between harvest and consumption. Being both grown and sold locally, the food is not being shipped from afar - so it is generally speaking, healthier for you.  
 

Shopping at the supermarket for vegetables from California, Mexico, or Chile, are not options for Tamara and I any longer.  Eating local - even in winter - is important to us for our own health, but also the environment's - this is were the organic/conventional debate is more clear.  Organically grown food is better for our environment, that is certain.  By purchasing from local farmers who use sustainable and organic growing practices we can further lessen the petroleum input.  More obvious is the fact that locally-sourced food does not require the use of exorbitant amounts of fuel for shipping and packaging. Beyond the environmental consequences, the amount of fuel needed to spray, package and ship our food puts us in position to make poor foreign policy decisions and consistently undermine our national security.

But the advantages go beyond the environmental and personal health.  When you shop at the farmer's market  you are keeping your money local, supporting your neighboring farmers, and building community relationships that have been increasingly endangered by fast food, department stores, and industrial agriculture.  You help to build stronger local economies, which can both create jobs and stimulate other local businesses.  Slow Money Alliance is a great resource to learn more about this benefit specifically.  

Perhaps the best thing - the most enjoyable anyways - is all the great food you will eat.  The diversity of produce at the farmer's market is often overlooked - although limited by season (a good thing considering  the fuel inputs and nutritional value) the variety of vegetables and meats for that matter are far superior to your average grocery store.  Most supermarkets don't carry foods like: celeriac, fiddleheads, green garlic, squash blossoms, romanesco cauliflower, snow leopard melons, or heirloom tomatoes and pumpkins- heirloom anything for that matter.  To eat frost sweetened kale and Brussels' sprouts in November, or storage sweetened beets and turnips in February is an unappreciated and certainly under-experienced joy.  

With the advent of industrial agriculture we lost literally thousands of varietals.  We are able to feed more people on less land, but at what cost?  And what are we eating?  In all likelihood a whole lot of chemically or mechanically separated derivatives of corn or soy.  Whole foods have become a mystery to people - in fact the very term is more likely to conjure thoughts of the supermarket chain than an actual 'whole food.' Instead of regionally diverse produce dictated by season, we are offered whatever crops grow most uniformily

It is important for me to at least state that this isn't a matter of some new-age pastoral idealism or something.  Tamara and I hope that by joining the growing ranks of new farmer's around the country we are in fact part of a pragmatic solution to at least some of the world's ills.  Internationally, we are draining aquifers, depleting and eroding soils, and genetically engineering seeds to feed an exponentially growing population.  The reality is that sustainable agriculture must nurture more people for the sake of the environment's and our own declining health.   

Simply put, eating locally-grown foods is significantly more sustainable than eating food from Price Chopper, and yes even Wegman's.   But all parties need to come to the table to solve our problems. Buying in bulk, directly from the farmer is a great option.  Harvestation is an online market connecting Finger Lake area farmers with bulk buyers.  Tamara and I have tracked down bulk garlic and potatoes this past month using the simple search, order, and pick up resource.  It is a great tool connecting farmers with their community - and it will only get better as it becomes more widely utilized.  Clearly supermarkets must continue to play a large role in our acquisition of food.  Using our purchasing power to promote local products and our voices to encourage their sale is an important step as well.  

Up until now a good deal of the local food movement's progress to the consumers and the grassroots work of farmers and communities to make the availability of good food more pervasive.  The popularity of books like, Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals and In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life (P.S.) by Barbara Kingsolver, Coming Home to Eat: The Pleasures and Politics of Local Food by Gary Paul Nabhan, Fruitless Fall by Rowan Jacobsen, Edible: A Celebration of Local Foods from the great folks who publish all the Edible magazines, and the success of movies like Food, Inc. have done a great deal of work to spread food consciousness.  

The reach and impact of these books, while fairly pervasive, is still limited demographically.  Not oft-quoted in agricultural circles, Bertolt Brecht famously said, "first comes fodder then comes morality."  Achieving food justice is not only a crucial step in addressing some of our other significant problems, it has to be the first step.  Community gardens and urban farms have done a good job addressing this in a lot of cities.  But, dramatically extending the availability of and access to nutritious, locally-sourced food is a labor-intensive task.  

 Achieving more dynamic local food economies, ones that provided equal access, will require more people farming, and farming specifically for consumption at the local level. It will also require dedicated consumers and well-informed policy decisions that incentivize small, diverse farms that use sustainable practices. It isn't the only solution, but it is certainly an integral part of any practical one.  By creating incentives on the policy level our legislatures can help strengthen the bedrock for a sustainable and healthy food economy.  It is only contentious because too many of our elected officials give priority to the corporations like Cargill and Monsanto that largely fund their campaigns instead of the constituents who rely on them to make the right decisions at the right times.  

By eating local we can begin to subvert the dangerous paradigm of industrial food in favor of a more sustainable food system.  A blog can't change the world -  but one person supporting local farms and encouraging the growth of backyard, roof-top and community gardens, imagining a venerable patchwork quilt of food production destined for local consumption, many small parts assembling a nurturing whole - that could inspire people to change the world.  Making this vision a reality, I believe, could be the enduring accomplishment of our generation. 

That's, "why local?"  And not too sanctimoniously presented I hope.