Steak and Ale Pie
Bison Sirloin – Backyard Bison
Crimini Mushrooms – Oley Valley Mushrooms
Eggs – Mountain View Organics
Flour – Mill at Anselma
Onion – Hoagland Farms
Garlic – Jack’s Farm
Sage – Jack’s Farm
Milk – Camphill Village – Kimberton Hills Dairy
Smoked Sea Salt – Pureblend Teas
Non Local – Pepper, Olive Oil, Maple Porter Beer
And I think I’m all caught up and to date finally with blog posts! This week, marking one half year of local meals, was a Pumpkin Galette using a Long Island Cheese pumpkin I brought home from the farmer’s market. I somehow managed to forget to grab some onions, so no onions, but I did end up using mushrooms simmered in some homebrew beer with garlic. Also substituted Chevre for the Fontina that the recipe calls for, and threw in some saffron that I grew this year (still incredibly excited about that discovery). And can I tell you? THIS WAS AMAZING. And filling. I could even see this done up in a casserole dish with some bison or even ham. Maybe I’ll throw a little bacon on next time. So many possibilities, but I’m definitely going to make this again!
Pumpkin Galette:
Long Island Cheese Pumpkin – Smith’s Produce
Saffron – My Garden
Sage – My Garden
Whole Wheat Pastry Flour – Mill at Anselma
Bread Flour – Mill at Anselma
Trumpet Mushrooms – Oley Valley Mushroom
Garlic – Maysie’s Farm
Chevre – Yellow Springs Farm (This was their Holiday spice cheese, flavored with maple syrup and pumpkin pie spices)
Non-local – Butter, salt, Olive Oil
A friend pointed out, after the last post, that it’s definitely not summer anymore and perhaps I should change my title. I realized, at week 25, that we’re nearing a half year’s worth of local meals. I’ve clearly somewhat lost my mind, but there are still new and incredible local vegetables out there and I’m determined to see if I can make it a whole year. The title is going to stand, because it started with a summer, and so long as there are vegetables growing, it’ll still be summer in my kitchen. I’m just going to not pay attention to those hard frosts we’ve already had. 
This week! Dear friend Abbie was out for a visit and I subjected her again to a local meal. We made a chicken pot pie from scratch, and while the broth inside didn’t come out quite as thick as I would’ve wanted, the very vegetable-heavy chicken pot pie had us both coming back for seconds.
Chicken Pot Pie:
Daikon – Maysie’s Farm
Bread Flour – Mill at Anselma
Whole Wheat Flour – Mill at Anselma
Broccoli – Smith’s Produce
Onion – Maysie’s Farm. One red, one white.
Garlic – Maysie’s Farm
Carrots - Maysie’s Farm
Trumpet Mushrooms – Oley Valey Mushrooms
Chicken – Mountain View Organics
Non-local – Butter, salt, sugar
Pumpkin, again. Yeah when I get on a kick, I get on a kick, but at least here there are plenty of other ingredients involved. The recipe took a lot of searching – I wanted to use both bison and this little Long Island Cheese Pumpkin I brought home last week. Finally, I came across a recipe for Potato Topped Beef and Pumpkin Casserole which ended up being the perfect recipe to use for my new little casserole dish. Naturally, there were a few modifications. I didn’t have any carrots, so I used turnips instead. Left out the beef stock cube, and used three types of potatoes. The pumpkin makes for a great base, but the sweet pumpkiny flavor is mostly lost in the recipe – I suppose this works out okay, since the flavors all run together well, but I was expecting more smack-you-in-the-face pumpkin. Still, it’s delicious, and VERY much edible.
Oh and if you’re curious, the dish comes from Karin Lorenc on etsy.
Potato Topped Beef and Pumpkin Casserole:
Bison – Backyard Bison. Sirloin
Flour – Mill at Anselma. Bread Flour
Onion – North Star Orchard
Turnip – Maysie’s Farm
Long Island Cheese Pumpkin – Smith’s Produce
Red Wine – Paradocx. Barn Red
Sweet Potatoes – Brogue Hydroponics
Purple Potatoes – Unknown Vendor at Anselma
White Potatoes – Brogue Hydroponics
Non-local – Olive Oil, spices
Pizza.. AGAIN?! Oh yes, pizza again. It never gets old with the wide variety of toppings and ways to make the crust. This week we have a flatbread grilled pizza topped with Chevre, Red Onion, Asian Pears, and bacon. Bacon always makes everything better and again, no exception to that rule here. Asian Pears are FINALLY in season and I’ve been gathering them up from the market like the world is going to end, so they’ve ended up in everything I’ve made recently. Gotta love a pear you can eat like an apple. I’ll admit that the pizza was an experiment in combining flavors, but I liked how it came out – a little sweet, bacony, savory, pizza. The recipe is Bobby Flay’s for the flatbread and I’ve used this one a number of times, mixing half whole wheat pastry flour and half bread flour for the dough. Just make sure you’ve got the dough coated VERY WELL with olive oil before throwing it on the grill and it’ll work perfectly.
Grilled Flatbread Pizza:
Whole Wheat Pastry Flour – Mill at Anselma
Bread Flour – Mill at Anslema
Asian Pear – North Star Orchard
Onion – North Star Orchard
Chevre – Shellbark Hollow Farm
Bacon – Countrytime Farm
Non-local – Yeast, salt, olive oil.
Sister-in-law Brenda was in town this week and was flipping through the Cook’s Country compilation book for 2008. The husband had bought the book on super-sale at Amazon.com and we haven’t really made any of the recipes so far. So, when Brenda stumbled upon a recipe for Thin-Crust Skillet Pizza (August/September 2008, pg 18), I was more than happy to pull out the cast iron skillet and get cooking! The recipe calls for beer as the liquid in the dough, and we happened to have a homebrewed Hefeweizen on tap in the kegerator. It proved to be a good choice! The dough came out nice and crispy, and we had plenty of vegetables available for the topping. For me, this was easier and quicker than heating up the pizza stone, we didn’t have to wait for the dough to rise (no yeast – just beer and baking powder), and it was a delicious lunch to enjoy out on the patio.
Thin-Crust Skillet Pizza:
Whole Wheat Pastry Flour – Mill at Anselma
Bread Flour – Mill at Anselma
Zucchini – Smith’s Produce
Mushrooms – Oley Valley Mushrooms. Crimini
Tomatoes – My Garden. These are Super Italian Paste Tomatoes
Cheese – Birchrun Hills Farm. Clipper variety.
Sharp I Chevre – Shellbark Hollow Farm
Basil – My Garden
Onion – North Star Orchard
Non-local – Baking powder, sugar, salt, beer, olive oil
Hooooboy did I knock this one out of the park this week. It’s more of a dessert, or sweet, light lunch meal, but I could not resist giving this recipe from ChocolateandZucchini.com a go. The only big non-local item used here was the butter – pretty necessary to get the crust just right. I used honey chevre for the ‘sauce’ underneath the squash which gave it this sweet flavor without being too sweet. Left out the mint since I’m just not a fan of mint when it’s not in gum or toothpaste, and it was perfectly fine without it.
Yellow Squash Tarte:
Flour – Mill at Anselma. Whole Wheat Pastry Flour
Yogurt – Shellbark Hollow Farm. Goat’s milk yogurt
Cheese – Shellbark Hollow Farm. Honey Chevre!
Squash – Smith’s Produce. Generic yellow squash
Non-local – Butter, Sesame Seeds, salt
I came home from the Market at the Anselma Mill with a Spaghetti Squash. I’d never had spaghetti squash and I’ve been trying to broaden my vegetable horizons and try new things. Searching online, I found this recipe for spaghetti squash pancakes. Interesting, different, and easy! I didn’t quite follow the recipe as written. I baked the squash in the oven for an hour as the site instructs, let it cool and then scraped the contents into a bowl. Instead of adding all the ingredients, I just sprinkled flour in until I got a consistency that would stick together, slapped the little pancakes down on a pan with a little olive oil and put some toppings on. Clockwise, the front is just topped with cheese, next is tomato, cheese, and basil, then we have a cucumber, and finally the bacon, lettuce, and tomato spaghetti squash pancake. Bacon always makes things better and this was absolutely no exception. Ingredients list below, and this was a fantastic light lunch with PLENTY of leftovers!
Spaghetti Squash Pancakes:
Spaghetti Squash – Smith’s Produce
Tomato – Smith’s Produce
Bacon – Countrytime Farm
Basil – My own deck planters
Flour – Mill at Anselma
Lettuce – Brogue Hydroponics
Cheese – Farmstead Fresh. This is their cheddar cheese.
Another week is on the books. Or Blog. I’ve always been a big fan of Greek food and gyros in particular. So, this week, with dill running amok in the planter on the deck, I decided to prune it back a little, make some tzatziki and work up some chicken gyros. This was also the first meal we had on our brand new patio, and what a way to start many summers of relaxing dinners! MANY thanks to Ryan Steckel of Steckel Building for his amazing work on the patio. We’re positively thrilled with the results. Onto the ingredients!
Chicken Gyro:
Pretty basic, when you get down to it. Pitas were homemade using this recipe and really were more time consuming to make than difficult – I did substitute one cup of flour for whole wheat pastry flour and used plain old bread flour for the other two. I decided to throw them on the super-hot pizza stone on the grill since it was just so incredibly hot this past week and I wasn’t going to heat up the house with any baking. Turns out, it worked out perfectly, once I got the hang of it. The thinner the dough is and the hotter the stone is, the better the pitas puff up and shrink back down. The chicken was marinated, skewered, and grilled while the pitas cooled a little, and the vegetables were in the grill wok on the next burner.
Bread Flour – Anselma Mill
Whole Wheat Pastry Flour – Anselma Mill
Chicken – Mountain View Organics
Oregano – Back deck planters (used in marinade for chicken with Olive Oil, Vinegar, and Lemon Juice)
Tomatoes – Brogue Hydroponics
Onions – Smith’s Produce
Sharp II Chevre – Shellbark Hollow Farm
Goat’s Milk Yogurt – Shellbark Hollow Farm. Used this as the base for the Tzatziki
Cucumbers – Smith’s Produce
Dill – Back deck planters
Non-Local: Salt, Sugar, Olive Oil, Yeast, Pepper, Lemon Juice
Vegetables:
These cooked up and were so tasty. The first zucchini of the year are always my favorite.
Zucchini – Smith’s Produce
Yellow Squash – Smith’s Produce
Carrots - Jack’s Farm
Non-Local – Salad Dressing as a marinade
I finally made it out to the Anselma Mill Farmer’s market this past week to get flour and a few other things. I don’t think all the flour is grown locally, but it’s definitely ground at the mill using the centuries old equipment. It’s really pretty awesome to think that this mill has been around for so long and is still useful today. Here’s a link with more information about the flour, if you’re interested. I also met the woman who runs Pure Blend Tea and came home with the Fruit Boost tea which made one heck of a batch of iced tea. Anyway, onto the ingredients in the meal, starting in the back.
Salad:
Lettuce – Charlestown Farm. Nice and crispy!
Cucumber – Smith’s Produce. I was so psyched to see cucumbers already, I had to bring some home.
Goat’s Milk Yogurt – Shellbark Hollow Farm. It actually made a really great dressing for a simple salad.
Ravioli:
For the ravioi pasta, I used a basic recipe I had found ages ago on the web and have modified a bit. It’s one cup flour (here, there’s 3/4 cup whole wheat pastry flour and 1/4 cup buckwheat flour), one egg, one teaspoon olive oil, and water to make consistency. I roll it out using the good old KitchenAid pasta roller set which makes the process SO much easier. To form the individual ravioli, I found a form that pasta sheets are laid over, filled, then sealed with a rolling pin. First batch using this was a little off, but the second batch came out perfectly.
Hot Bison Sausage – Backyard Bison. Just the right amount of spice!
Cheese – Birchrun Hills. Used the Equinox cheese inside the ravioli with the sausage.
Flour – Anselma Mill. Used Whole Wheat Pastry Flour
Buckwheat Flour – Anselma Mill. They said this was a new one for them and I heard that adding buckwheat flour into the pasta dough mixture made it different, and it did, in a very good way.
Egg – Mountain View Organics.
Sauce – Homemade. We found a few bags in the freezer left over from our 2008 amazing tomato year.
Spinach – Charlestown Farm. Put a bunch of leaves in the steamer for just a minute.
Non-Local – Spices, Salt, Pepper, Olive Oil.
As a bonus this week, there was also Jam! Two types.
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Yellow Cherry Jam A friend and I went to Walnut Springs Farm to pick cherries. I LOVE yellow cherries and when the folks running the booth let me know there were two types available to pick, my eyes must have lit up like I had won the lottery. I immediately knew that they were destined for a batch of jam, and sure enough, three pounds turned into 5 jars of sunny yellow jam. I sort of want to go pick some more, add in a few blueberries, and see if I can make green slime jam because that sounds like fun. |
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Black Forest Preserves I did actually pick some red cherries too. Three pounds of those (I came home with about 10 lbs, but did a lot of taste testing while we were there too) became Black Forest Preserves. It’s a recipe out of the Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving and involves cherries and cocoa powder. I have to admit that the chocolate doesn’t really come out in the recipe – the jam just tastes RICH – but it’s destined to be a part of thumbprint cookies when cookie baking season kicks into full gear. |