That’s right friends, this month marks three years on Main St in Amherst!  We have the most amazing customers, and we’re so proud to be part of this thriving, beautiful community.  To celebrate, we’ve had free birthday cake in past years, but this time we’re doing something even better (in our humble opinion)!  To celebrate our birthday and harvest time, for this Saturday, Sunday, and Monday, all of our breads will be the regular price and flavors, but they’ll be made with 100 % locally grown grains!  Ben’s become quite the milling master, and we’re both excited to share this incredibly delicious, nourishing, alive grain with you!

Seriously now, it’s crazy good.  I’m just telling you because I love you, and I don’t want you to miss it.

At home, we’re trying to soak up the abundance and not go crazy trying to capture it all.  Here we are in our Three Sisters Field – last year the crows ate our corn planting twice, but this year, it’s thriving.  The Bloody Butcher corn is now a foot taller than me, and the squash is like a jungle!  (Three Sisters are a traditional Native American planting of beans, squash, and corn.  The beans fix nitrogen into the soil for the corn, which is a heavy feeder, and the squash makes a great ground cover, keeping down the weeds.  Apparently the raccoons don’t like to walk on the prickly squash leaves, either, protecting your harvest!  Pretty incredible.)  Our other garden is, um, weedier than I’d like to admit, but this field is heaven.

Oh, and while you’re at it, hop over and read Broadturn Farm’s post “Put Your Big Girl Panties On, Get Out There and Farm.” Amen.

With a broken camera (oh that fateful final “click!”), family visiting, and no internet at home, the time is ripe for a blog summer break!  Only for a week or so, and then we’ll be back.  In the meantime, pop over to www.localgrain.org to see a video of Ben and Seth cultivating the bean field with our horse Cole.  Also, sign-ups for the 2010 Pioneer Valley Heritage Grain CSA are now open, and you can print out the form!

We had a fabulous Field Day with Alan and got to see the spelt field just days before it will be harvested.  We’ll have photos and video up very soon from that Field Day.  Have I mentioned that we got a wonderful Sustainable Community Grant from New England Sustainable Agriculture Research & Education (NESARE)?  That’s part of what is making this whole year possible, especially this space here and our Field Days.   So thank you NESARE!

This week, Ella and I will be continuing a pilgrimage through Julia Child’s Art of French Cooking, a wonderfully spattered copy handed down from Ben’s mom.  I’m reading (and loving) Julia’s memoir My Life in France, so it’s only natural that I would cook from her.  Did you know she couldn’t cook a lick until she was in her thirties?

Why haven’t I used her recipes more before?  A mystery.  Last Sunday, with cherries from our Kitchen Garden CSA share, we made Cherry Clafoutis.  I’ve always wanted to like clafoutis, but it’s always seemed soggy and weird.  Not so when you make it at home!

Super easy – Clafoutis is basically a pancake batter without leavening, spread half in your buttered hot pan, dump on fruit (any fruit, not just cherries!), then top with remaining batter.  Put in oven.  Devour.

So until next week, folks.  We’ll be out in the fields, in the kitchen, in the lake, and knitting away as furiously as a squirrel gathering nuts.  (Seriously, I’ve got this shawl, this fall hat, this sweater, and more on the needles!  Apparently June tells my brain: prepare for the winter!)  Have a great week everyone!

Meet Gertrude and Elisabeth.

In other news, we’ve got beet ginger kvass in the fridge (recipe here , but I used homemade yogurt as my “starter”), wheatberry salad on the dinner table,

and beautiful (but very thirsty) plants in the garden.

(garden photos by Ben Lester)

Have a great weekend everyone!  We’ve turned off our internet at home, so if I’m not at the bakery, I won’t be here, either.  For Gratitude Friday, well, I think you can guess some of what I’m grateful for this week.  And you?

(photos by Ben Lester)

And have I mentioned that our two ewes are hugely pregnant?  Oh yes, there is that . . .

For now, we’re feeding our girls kale and red raspberry leaves fresh from the garden, and keeping a close eye. I’ve got my Herbal Handbook for Farm & Stable close by, plus Practical Sheep Dairying and Living With Sheep.  (They all have different advice, of course!)  East Friesans are known to twin, triplet, or even quadruplet (usually not their first time!), so we might have a whole lot of sheep really soon.

We’ve got our lambing basket ready, and I’m ordering a cheese press right now – getting ready for all that milk!

This week, we’ve closed down Wheatberry, to train some awesome new staff, and to prep and plant beans for the CSA.  In case you were worried we were sitting around, here’s our morning in photos:

Meet Kara – new Wheatberry staff, and PVHG intern extraordinaire.  She can now add “rock picker” and “wheat trial manager” to her resume!

Have a great week, friends.

First – my favorite moment this week, for which I am so grateful, amidst turmoil and our whole family being really sick:

Standing in the twilight drizzle, feeding the chickens with Ella, watching her gather weeds for them, and “read” them a story about bunnies.

I hope you’ll forgive me for mish-mashing a bunch of things together here – we’ve been very busy training new staff, planting, and then we all got really sick!  So, these would have been several posts, but I’m just going to put them all together here.

***

Grain Cleaning 101:

For those of you who got grain shares with us in 2009, or anyone who grows their own grain, or gets it from a local farm, you have probably encountered some grains that still have hulls, and some weed seeds.  We had particular trouble getting our oats clean last year, despite a lot of effort (remember Ben cleaning on Christmas Day?).  We tried to explain to everyone how to use water to clean off the hulls and weed seeds, but in case we didn’t get you, here we go!

You can do a small or large batch of grains at a time – at home, I usually clean about 1/2 cup of oats at a time, to cook for breakfast, but at the bakery Ben has cleaned several quarts at a time.  Just make sure you size your containers appropriately.  In the photo, you see about 2 cups of oats in a quart mason jar, filled most of the way with water.  Pour in your grain first, then fill with water.  Right away you will see hulled grains and weed seeds floating at the top – pour them off, or skim them with a spoon or ladle.  Then take a spoon (or your hand, if you’re working with larger quantities in a big bucket), and stir up the grains and water.  Let them settle, and you’ll have more hulled grain and weed seeds on top.  Pour or skim them off, and repeat at least three or four times, until there’s nothing more floating to the top when you stir.  Voila – clean grain!  If you’re going to cook it whole, go right ahead.  If you’re going to mill it, or aren’t going to cook it right away, spread it out on a cookie sheet to dry (this takes 6-12 hours).  Enjoy.

***

And now, something I’m really excited about – Nixtamal.  Nixtamalization is the process of adding lime (alkaline, not the citrus fruit) to dent corn, to soften the skin and make it more digestible.  Nixtamalization turns dent corn into hominy (also known as posole).  I’ve been meaning to try and find a recipe for this, and then a CSA member mentioned that he had been making it from Wild Fermentation, which I had on my bookshelf at home!  Sandor Ellis Katz  rocks, as always.  (Katz notes that whole nixtamalization is not a fermentation process, he includes it in his book because it’s a necessary first step in order to make a traditional fermented corn drink.)  So, below is his recipe, straight from Wild Fermentation:

Homemade Posole:

(to make about 4 cups of posole)

2 cups dent corn (whole, dried corn – not popcorn or sweet corn)

water

1/2 cup wood ash OR 2 tablespoons hydrated lime (also called calcium hydroxide – you can get it from pickling/canning suppliers or agricultural suppliers, just be sure it’s food grade!  I used wood ashes from our woodstove – be sure if you use ashes that they aren’t from pressure-treated wood or plywood, and sift them first to remove large chunks.)

Soak the corn in double its volume of water for 12-24 hours.

Strain off the water, and transfer the soaked corn to a pressure cooker or other large cooking pot (Katz doesn’t mention Crock-Pots, but I think they would work well).

Add 8 cups of water to the pot, add lime or sifted wood ash.  Bring to a boil, and pressure cook for 1 hour or boil for about 3 hours, stirring periodically.  (Note to our CSA members: I found that our corn cooked in about 2 hours instead of 3.)

To test for doneness, rub a kernel of corn between your fingers to see if the skin is loose.  If so, remove from heat; if not, continue cooking.

Rinse the corn, kneading and rubbing it to loosen and remove the skins.  Rinse until the water is clear. You’ve made posole!

Now, you can cook with the posole, adding it to soups, stews, or chili, grind it into a dough for tortillas and tamales, or make some fun fermented things, like Katz does.  We ate ours on the side with black beans and it was super delicious!

***

Ok, I’m off to bed for some rest and recovery – wishing you all blessings on your weekend, and a day of rest.

Last week we made the Rye Grits recipe from Lorna Sass’s Whole Grains Every Day Every Way (yes, I mention this book all the time.  That’s because she’s amazing, and one of the only resources that really talks about how to cook with whole grains, not just whole grain flour).  Anyhow, we made a lot of changes, enough that I feel confident calling the recipe below our own, adapted from hers.  I especially like this recipe, because eating rye berries whole or cracked is pretty unusual, but really delicious.  Enjoy!

(whole, uncooked rye berries – aren’t they beautiful?)

Savory Rye Grits

1/4 lb sausage or 1/4 lb bacon or 1/4 lb mushrooms (crimini, button, portabello . . .)

1 cup cracked rye (if you’re a member of our CSA, just pulse your rye in a blender or cuisinart a few times.  If you’re not a member, you may be able to find cracked rye at your local coop or health food store)

1 large onion, sliced

2 cloves chopped garlic

1/2 lb potatoes, grated (no peeling necessary!  Yukon Gold is a great choice)

1/2 tsp salt

2 tbsp finely chopped fresh parsley (optional)

1/2 cup grated cheddar cheese

Put a kettle of 3 cups water on to boil.

In a heavy-bottomed pot, brown your meat or mushrooms over medium-high heat.  If you’re using bacon, you don’t need any additional fat in the pan.  If you’ve chosen the sausage or mushrooms, add 2 tbsp butter or olive oil.  Brown for about 5 minutes, until meat is browned, or the mushrooms have softened.  Move the meat/mushrooms aside to a plate.

In the same pan (with the meat/mushroom drippings still inside), cook the onions until golden brown (10-15 minutes).  Set the onions aside with your meat/mushrooms.  Add the cracked rye to the pan and toast over medium heat, stirring, for 1 minute (it will become aromatic).  Stir in the garlic and cook another thirty seconds.

Turn off the heat and protect your hand from any potential spattering.  Pour 2 cups of boiling water into the cracked rye while stirring, being sure to scrape up anything stuck to the bottom of the pan.  Stir in the potatoes and salt.  Bring to a boil, cover, and reduce the heat to a simmer.  Cook, stirring occasionally, until the potatoes and rye grits are tender, 10-15 minutes, and the water is absorbed.  (If the water is absorbed but they aren’t tender, add a few tbsp more water, but try not to stir too much – it will build gluten and make your grits gummy.)

Taste for seasoning, and add more salt or pepper if desired.  Turn off the heat, cover, and steam for 10 minutes.  Just before serving, stir in the onion, and meat/mushrooms.  Sprinkle with the fresh parsley (this really makes the flavor sparkle), and cheese if desired.  Delicious as a main course, or a side dish with eggs.

Bon Appetit!

]]> http://www.localgrain.org/fieldsandfire/2010/04/20/rye-grits-recipe/feed/ 2 http://www.localgrain.org/fieldsandfire/2010/03/22/monday-night-menu-the-ad-hoc-week/ http://www.localgrain.org/fieldsandfire/2010/03/22/monday-night-menu-the-ad-hoc-week/#comments Tue, 23 Mar 2010 03:01:34 +0000 adrie http://www.localgrain.org/fieldsandfire/?p=1497 Before we get started on the menu – we’re featured in a lovely article in The Atlantic about the revival of grain growing in New England – check it out here.

* * *

Well, apparently you, dear Readers, weren’t the only ones excited by me talking about Keller last week, because this mysteriously appeared at our house . . .

Ad Hoc is Thomas Keller’s latest book (a year or two old now), which we had been restraining ourselves from buying.  I guess Ben couldn’t take it any more – and bless him for that.  Because seriously now, have I mentioned that Keller is a genius?  In all honesty, we have never been to one of Keller’s restaurants.  I don’t have to go to know that he is, indeed, America’s finest chef.  Ben and I read (nay, studied) The French Laundry when we were first learning to really cook, and it was probably the best $50 we ever spent.  If you think you’d like to be in the food business, don’t go to culinary school yet – just study Keller.

So, after a lot of drooling over Ad Hoc, I’m going to do a week’s menu from it.  Some of these dishes are super simple – this is, after all, Keller’s family-style cookbook.  Some of the recipes are only “family style” by fine dining standards, though – I don’t consider duck confit or pomegranate-glazed quail to be standard dinner-table fare.

The real gem of Keller is his total respect for ingredients – we made his collard greens tonight, and they blew my mind.  I told Ben, “I want to eat these over and over and over again.”  They were just collards, wilted in butter, and cooked slowly in the oven.  I grew up in the South, I thought I knew how to cook collards.  I was wrong.  Ad Hoc does a nice job of teaching technique, too (see the illustration below of how to cut up a chicken).

So there you have it.  I swear I’m not a Keller salesperson, or his sister, or anything.  Just a baker and chef who owes a lot of my own technique and understanding to this man.  Brilliant, funny, and totally OCD, as you’ll see if you read his books.  So here we go – a week of cooking Ad Hoc.

(Notes from last week’s menu:  the Spring Nettle Tonic Soup (from Full Moon Feast) was super yummy and we couldn’t stop eating it (I used dried nettles, since the new ones aren’t up yet).  We also loved the Wild Polenta (from Petit Appetit), and the Roasted Beet Salad with Roasted Walnuts [above]- both very simple and very good).

Ad Hoc Menu:

* Poached Salmon (yes, we do eat fish a few times a year) and Braised Collards

* Roasted Chicken on a Bed of Root Vegetables

* Chicken Pot Pie (I’ll use the leftover chicken meat)

* Roasted Beet & Potato Salad

* Meatballs with Pappardelle and Roasted Tomato Sauce (the meatballs have balls of mozzerella in the middle – oh my!)

* Celery Root with Melted Onions

* Grits Cakes with Roasted Tomato Sauce

* Pickled Red Onions

* Buttered Farro (Emmer)

* Duck Confit

* Butter Poached Marble Potatoes

* Blueberry Cobbler (using frozen blueberries from last summer.  Keller does a cake-like cobbler topping instead of biscuits, to absorb more of the fruit juices.  Genius, I tell you.)

Bon Appetit everyone!