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Archive for January, 2011

I might be getting punchy because of the weather but this little salad really perked me up.  It was pure serendipity, a chance encounter of leftovers, with colors, textures and flavors that worked together and made me smile. The colors reminded me of the magenta and chrome yellow cosmos that my daughter likes to pick [...]

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Chicken Pot Pie

With so much snow on the ground, and more to come, we crave warm and comforting foods. Chicken pot pie is one of our family faves, adaptable season by season. It’s typically the end of the line for a roast chicken, when all of the meat has been taken off and the carcass turned into [...]

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Endlessly seasonal, the frittata makes a great meal. It is basically an open-faced omelet, eggs mixed with cooked vegetables and sometimes cheese, cooked very slowly in an open pan, then finished under a broiler, or not (since we don’t have one). This is a great asset during the Dark Days.  I made a lovely local [...]

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Our  “cellar” (freezer, fridge and cold basement) and pantry are still full of fresh local organic produce and preserved foodstuffs. Around here, very few fresh ingredients will emerge during the dark days of winter so we need to be mindful of what we have in store and manage the supply. No matter when harvested, whole [...]

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When I make fish chowder, serious “soup,” I typically start with a strong fish stock sweated down from the bones (or in the case of shellfish, the shells), doused with white wine, tossed with aromatic vegetables, hydrated with water and cooked gently. Our local sustainable-minded fishmonger is generous with his scraps, which he gives us [...]

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The piney pungency of rosemary is a terrific counterpoint to foods that I often find too rich or too sweet.  Combined with garlic and salt, and other woody herbs like thyme and savory, rosemary perks up a medley of rich roasted root vegetables, or just potatoes, or sparks a salt and garlic mash for marinating [...]

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Kedgeree

Kedgeree was invented somewhere along an axis between colonial India and Scotland. It combines curried rice with either finnan haddie or salmon.  Finnan haddie is a smoked fish whose name is a warp of Findon haddock, Findon being a town in Scotland near Aberdeen. Kedgeree is a warp on the name for an Indian dish [...]

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I find the Dark Days challenge to be no challenge at all when it comes to meat and poultry, and to some degree seafood. I didn’t realize until now how many sources we have within even a dozen miles to get ethically and organically raised poultry, lamb, pork and beef.  Prepared slowly and simply, these [...]

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When I was growing up, we always had pickled herring around for the New Year, as well smoked fish. I always thought it was a cultural superstition but later figured that it was a cure for a hangover since those were the days of big New Year’s Eve bashes held at people’s houses. By happenstance, [...]

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Variety, balance. Colors, textures, flavors. Seasonality, locality, sustainability. This meal had it all, simply by layering. Each component was prepared individually and then layered with the others to produce a simple and yet complex dish that was fresh, clean and flavorful. Even without going “down the shore” (Jersey parlance), we can purchase fine local seafood [...]

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