Greatest Hits of 2011

So what clicked the most with my readers this year? A few conspicuous trends, heavy on the cannin’ and jammin’ as you would expect from a blog with the word “pantry” in the title. It was definitely a good year for the pantry, with over 250 jars added, not counting the ones I already gave away. Drum roll…here are this year’s winners:

How to Eat Your Lawn

This mini-series topped the charts, especially the violet jelly and dandelion jelly from flowers that grow in our so-called lawn (otherwise known as the prairie).  The violets went viral, with over 800 clicks in one day alone.  The jellies were delicious and went fast. Continuing the flower theme later in the season, I made Queen Anne’s Lace jelly, which was pretty special, and another jelly with electric blue borage blossoms.  Mint and rosemary jellies were right up there in the ranks, 5^th place this year. More herb jellies (like lemon basil and rose geranium) were part of my “Preserving Herbs” series.

Mo’ Marmalade Momma

Yup, once again on top of the charts are the three versions of Meyer lemon marmalade that I made for the inaugural month of the Tigress Can Jam of 2010. The lemons were a gift hand-carried from California and were made memorable by the addition of rosemary and ginger. This holds the all-time record as my most popular post.

Sweet ‘n’ Hot

Another all-time winner, again one of my entries in the 2010 Tigress Can Jam, is Sweet ‘n’ Hot Red Pepper Jam. I made a couple of cases of 4-ounce jars again this year to rave reviews. No one seems to have a favorite among the three versions: a plain one spiced with ginger, ditto but with a dab of adobo sauce (smokin’ good), and a third with star anise and cardamom (in the holiday spirit).  Tomato Salsa with Ancho Chili also made it onto a favorites list, probably since it’s been featured on other blogs like Punk Domestics.

Pickle Projects

A couple of pickle projects made the top ten, stealing votes from each other. One is a sweet ‘n’ hot bread and butter pickle and the other a group of three in one post: pickled garlic scapes, dill pickles, and more bread and butter pickles. Luckily I made a lot more of these this year than last so no one should complain.  A certain person I know eats them straight from the jar. For dinner.

Party Fare

Just when you thought that I cook only for the pantry, along comes a beautiful salmon terrine wrapped in leeks and stuffed with mushroom vodka cream, pretty enough for a party. This is the second most clicked-on post in the past two years and fourth this year. It was my entry in the monthly Paper Chef international challenge, which sadly has now folded. It had been the long running blog contest (over five years) before it faded away. I miss you guys.

Waste Not Want Not

Not a new concept for me, but called out explicitly in a series of posts about frugal cooking. On the theme of “use the whole plant,” I made a very popular Celeriac Soup in a post called “Roots, Stalks and Leaves” and a version in my new Waste Not Want Not series. While many people know this vegetable only by its knobby root, which is how it most often found in the supermarket, it actually has a useful stalk (substitute for Pascal celery if you want to eat locally) and leaves when you can get them from your CSA or the farmers’ market. As part of my Preserving Herbs series, I made celery salt from the leaves (for the pantry of course).

Auld Lang Syne

Much to my delight, Sour Cream Blueberry Bread made the cut. I used to be known for the volume and variety of quick breads that I made, a sucker volunteer for every bake sale and charity event involving food. I literally cooked my way through graduate school with recipes like this, producing wares sold at a weekly departmental lunch.

Happy New Year everyone!

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Spinach and Ginger Soup

Cleansing, comforting, there’s nothing like ginger to ease you from last year to next. Restorative and regenerative as opposed to simply sustainable, one of my goals for all things related to the earth. This delicious soup adapted from At Home with Madhur Jaffrey is very simple, assembled and cooked in under half an hour.  It gets a bit of a kick from the ginger and chili pepper, which is smoothed out by the spinach and a touch of cream. I normally would have left the cream in the fridge but it actually helped pull the flavors of the soup together. I thought that the dark color green of the soup was really perked up by the bright carrot garnish. I didn’t puree all of the carrots, preferring instead to let some float in the soup.

Spinach and Ginger Soup adapted from Madhur Jaffrey

3 c chicken broth

1 lb bunch of spinach, de-stemmed and well washed

1 medium carrot, peeled and sliced

1 medium onion, coarsely chopped

1 large potato, peeled and coarsely chopped

¼ jalapeno pepper, chopped

1-inch piece of ginger, peeled and finely chopped

2 whole cloves

10 black peppercorns

Salt (1 tsp to start)

2-3 tbsp heavy cream

2 tsp lemon juice (optional)

Place all ingredients except the cream and lemon juice in a large saucepan. Bring to a boil, and stir to wilt the spinach. Reduce the heat, cover the pan and simmer until the carrots and potatoes are tender, about 20 minutes.  Puree the soup and return it to the pan. Adjust for salt. Add the cream and lemon juice, if using, and serve hot, garnished with grated carrots.

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Wild Rice “Salad”

Feed a few, feed a lot. After a small family dinner of roast chicken and a medley of multi-colored and wild rice, I was inspired to make a wild rice salad for a family luncheon for 18 a few days later. Our local health food store sells beautiful wild rice – which is not rice at all but a grain – hand harvested by the White Indian tribe and sold to benefit their community. It is mixed with long grain white rice and is my rice medley of choice. However, they were sold out and I reverted to another good option from Lundberg. I rarely find that there’s enough wild rice in those mixes so I separately cooked a batch of plain wild rice. 

Combined with toasted almonds, dried currants and cherries and tossed with red wine vinaigrette, the salad was tasty but a little flat. So I added a little sherry vinegar for spark, walnut oil to complement the nuttiness of the wild rice, a few shakes of Tabasco sauce, and chopped pickled hot peppers.  Perfect. This salad keeps well and travels well, so is a welcome addition to a holiday buffet a few hundred miles away.

Wild Rice Salad (for 6)

1 c wild rice and whole grain rice medley (e.g., Lundberg)

1/3 c wild rice

Water

2 tbsp slivered almonds, toasted

2 tbsp dried sweet cherries, halved

1 tbsp dried currants

1 tbsp chopped pickled hot peppers

2 tbsp olive oil

1 tsp walnut oil

2 tsp red wine vinegar

1 tsp sherry vinegar

A few drops of Tabasco sauce or other red hot sauce

Salt

Place the rice medley and 3 times the amount of water in a saucepan and bring to a boil. Stir, turn the heat to low, cover the pan and let the rice simmer for about 50 minutes or until the water has been absorbed and the rice is cooked. Meanwhile, cook the wild rice the same way. (You could probably combine them but I didn’t.) When the rice mix and wild rice are cooked, remove to a wide bowl to cool, sprinkling them immediately with a little olive oil, salt and a few splashes of red wine vinegar. This keeps the rice from sticking together and allows flavors to be absorbed. You should be liberal with the salt since the salad will be served at room temperature. You can make this ahead to this point.

When ready to serve, add the almonds, dried fruit and hot peppers. Combine the oils and vinegars and dress the salad lightly. Adjust the seasonings, adding a little Tabasco sauce and a little more sherry vinegar if needed.

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Two Marmalades: Tangelo and Lemon-Rosemary

Crates of citrus are eager opportunities for marmalade. Christmas gifts shipped straight from the grove are transformed into gold and sent back out in sparkling jars that should last the year but never do.

My first post in a yearlong (2010) blog fest called the Tigress Can Jam was Meyer Lemon Marmalade with variations using ginger and rosemary. The lemons were a Christmas gift from a peripatetic family member who returned from a San Francisco sojourn with arms full of fruit that she had picked from a tree in her yard. The resulting recipe has been one of the most sought-after on my website and I am thus frequently reminded of that memorable marmalade.

This year, I was given a load of lemons leftover from a holiday party and promptly set about turning them into marmalade stewed with rosemary from my garden. The typical proportion of sugar to fruit is 3:4 (in other words add 3/4 cup of sugar for each cup of fruit. I cut down a little on this for the lemon marmalade since I wanted it to be robust but not puckery.  Next up this year was somewhat delicate tangelo marmalade, made with fruit that was thin in skin and ample in flesh. Because of that, I added a few extra peels from tangelos that we were eating raw. Since the fruit was very sweet, I once again cut down on the sugar and added a couple of organic Meyer lemons.

There are three important tricks to successful marmalade, two particularly useful if you want to diminish the sugar. First is to select fruit with no or minimal processing, meaning gassing and waxing the skin. That’s possible if you order them from a farm or know someone with a tree. If not, make sure to wash them well (I use warm water, sometimes with a little soap), rinse them well and dry them well before proceeding with the recipe. It’s best to let them sit out on the counter for a couple of hours before proceeding.

The second tip is to cook the flesh and peel mixture (without sugar) for five minutes and let the mixture sit overnight. The third, to go along with the second, is to collect the seeds and place them in a little muslin sack that is cooked with the flesh and peel, left in the container overnight and then squeezed gently to extract the gooey pectin. By doing this, the marmalade will gel in nearly half the time during its final cooking, keeping the flavors fresh and sprightly.

Tangelo Marmalade

6 preferably organic, unblemished and relatively thin-skinned tangelos, scrubbed

Peels from 2 additional tangelos, scrubbed before peeling

2 organic lemons, scrubbed (I used Meyer lemons)

6 c water (to cover by a little less than an inch)

Sugar (amount to be determined, probably 4-6 c)

Peel four of the tangelos by lightly slicing through the skin to divide the fruit in sixths. Cut half of these and the reserved peels into thin strips, 1½ inches long and just under 1/16 inch wide. Cut the remainder into ¼ to 1/3-inch pieces and place in a large, wide saucepan. Slice the tangelo flesh into ½ inch chunks, removing the tough core and the seeds. Reserve the seeds. Add the flesh to the pan. Slice the remaining two tangelos and the lemons into sixths vertically, again removing the core and the seeds. Slice them thinly crosswise into little fan shapes and add them to the pan. (The lemons can be quartered depending on their size.) Place the reserved seeds in a muslin bag or cheesecloth, tie it securely and add it to the citrus mixture. Add the water to the pan and bring to a boil. Cook for five minutes, cover the pan and set aside to cool, refrigerating overnight. (I put mine outside in this weather.) The purpose of this exercise – the overnight soak and the addition of seeds – is to develop the natural pectin that makes the marmalade gel.

The next day (or about 8 hours later), prepare jars for water bath canning. Remove the seed bag. Bring the mixture back to a boil and cook until the peels are just tender, typically 10 minutes or so for oranges (up to 15 for lemons) but less here since tangelo peels are delicate to start with. Measure the citrus mixture and add ¾ of that amount in sugar. (In other words, for 6 c of citrus mixture, add 4 c sugar, for 8 c, add 6.)  You can use a little less as I did. Bring the mixture back to a boil and cook, stirring occasionally so the mixture doesn’t stick to the pan, until the marmalade reaches the gel point. This is either when the temperature, measured on a candy thermometer, reaches 221 degrees, or more reliably (since you can overcook this), when a small drop placed on a plate cooled in the freezer wrinkles to the touch.

Place the hot marmalade into the prepared jars (which should also be hot), wipe the jar rims clean, insert a thin knife to remove the air bubbles, and top them with prepared canning lids (prepared by placing them in boiled water for a few seconds to remove germs). Process in a water bath canner for 10 minutes (for 4- or 8-ounce jars) after the water returns to a boil. Remove the lid, let stand for 5 minutes, and then remove the jars to a cool spot to sit undisturbed until cooled.

Makes 8 half pint jars and double that in 4-ounce jars.

Lemon Rosemary Marmalade

Follow the recipe above for Tangelo Marmalade, substituting lemons.  Cook the mixture with a large sprig of rosemary and let it steep with the lemons overnight. You can also leave the rosemary in the pan when you’re initially cooking the peel but remove it before adding sugar. Insert a sprig of rosemary into each jar before processing, making sure that it is submerged and that all air bubbles have released by plunging a thin knife into each jar.

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Pear and Walnut Bread Pudding

I’m happy when I convert humble scraps into gut-lovin’ glory.  And happier when it pleases someone else. A perfect balance of frugality and craving. That’s bread pudding in our household. I’ve cleaned out the pantry and my mate thinks I have made a genius dessert. Way cool, as the kids say.

I’ve already posted a bunch of sweet and savory versions of bread pudding, but here’s another, made of a de-crusted baguette combined with local Asian pears (with the consistency of apples, which helps) and walnuts.  I would have preferred pecans but that’s what the pantry offered. I used turbinado sugar but you could combine conventional white and brown sugar.  Ground mace added a complementary spice. Lately I’ve been favoring a more custard-like texture over the bread but since I wing it every time (within range), it always seems to work.

Pear and Walnut Bread Pudding

4 c cubed stale bread (3/4-inch pieces, without crust)

2 large or 3 small Asian pears, cubed

¼ c walnuts or pecans

Dab of butter

3 eggs

1½ c milk

½ c brown turbinado sugar (or a combination of white and brown sugar)

¼ tsp ground mace (or substitute cinnamon or nutmeg)

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Combine the bread, fruit and nuts and place them in a buttered baking dish. Lightly beat the eggs and add the milk and sugar and spice, stirring to dissolve the sugar. Pour over the bread mixture, pressing down lightly to make sure the top bread cubes are moistened.  Bake for 45-50 minutes or until the custard is set. Serve warm.

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Dark Days 5: Sea Bass Stuffed with Tarragon-Braised Leeks

A continuing series on weekly meals that use sustainable, organic, local and ethical food during the challenging winter months. For more information, go here to the DDC section of Not Dabbling in Normal’s website: Dark Days Challenge

What a catch! When my husband came back from the shore with a couple of just-caught fish, I decided once again to make fish the centerpiece of my weekly meal for the Dark Days challenge to eat locally. One of the fish was a small, whole sea bass, which we filleted for this meal, reserving the head and frame for fish stock that will become the basis of a future chowder. Even though we can purchase great fish from faraway places, I am enjoying the discovery of what we can get from more local sources. The filets were small, so I folded them end to end around braised local sustainably raised leeks (which I luckily stockpiled before Thanksgiving). Tied with twine, the little bundles cooked gently on top of the stove in no time flat. 

 Braised leeks are very versatile and offer a clean and complementary taste that did not overwhelm the delicate fish. I added a couple of leftover fennel fronds and the leaves of a small sprig of tarragon from my garden that I preserved in vinegar last summer. The vinegar that had infused the leaves offered a special spark to the leeks.  I served the fish on top of mashed local organic potatoes with chard that added so much moisture and flavor that I didn’t need any cream or other seasonings.

Braised Leeks

After slicing the white and light green section of the leeks vertically and washing them to remove any sand, slice them crosswise into half-moons. Heat a small amount of butter or oil or a combination (I used my new favorite butternut squash seed oil) in a pan over low heat. Add the leeks and stir to coat and slightly tenderize them. Add a little water (or chicken stock if you’re serving the leeks with a chicken dish) and cook, covered, over low heat until they are very tender but still holding their shape. Season to taste with salt, pepper and/or herbs.

Sea Bass Filets Stuffed with Leeks

To serve two, take two small bass filets and place them skin-side down on a plate.  Spoon 2-3 tbsp of braised leeks on one end, fold the other end over and tie with kitchen twine. (If using a larger filet, one will suffice. Just quarter it into pieces that can stack on top of each other.)   Heat a little butter or oil or a combination of the two in a skillet over medium heat. Place the filets in the pan and cook for a few minutes, until the lower portion of the fish starts to turn opaque. Carefully turn the fish and cook until both sides of the filet are cooked through.

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Tuna Confit

When I found locally fished albacore tuna at the market, which is only an occasional occurrence, I picked up an extra piece to put away for another time. The first instinct in today’s refrigerator age is to pop it in the freezer (but at this time of year my freezer is so overstuffed that I can’t even freeze the bowl of my ice cream maker).  So I decided to preserve the tuna the old fashioned way, slowly poached in olive oil. This technique produced what it typically referred to as confit, a traditional way of preserving duck and goose in Southwestern France and other places. It’s of medieval origin and was a method used to preserve fruit as well, as I know so well from the jars of pickled cherries and currants and apricots and plums that line my pantry shelves.  Here, as an experiment, I salted the tuna and let it sit for half an hour. I then poached it in olive oil, without letting the liquid bubble, for 30 minutes. After it was cool, I stored it in a crock with a tight fitting lid in the refrigerator. It’s delicious as is, but I can imagine creating another version with garlic, pepper and herbs like rosemary and thyme. It will keep for a month, that is, if not consumed before then. The oil can be re-used. 

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Dark Days 4: Tuna and a Fennel Fest

A continuing series on weekly meals that use sustainable, organic, local and ethical food during the challenging winter months. For more information, go here to the DDC section of Not Dabbling in Normal’s website: Dark Days Challenge .

For the 4^th week of the Dark Days Challenge, I served locally fished albacore tuna baked in fennel fronds on a bed of oven-roasted slices of fennel bulb. This was topped with a slaw of fennel stems and carrots in a dressing of local apple cider, maple syrup and butternut squash seed oil. As a bonus, I made a tomato-fennel-carrot soup using fennel scraps and an organic Amish Paste tomato and shallot sauce that I canned during last summer’s CSA season.

I have been looking into obtaining “local” fish and came across never-frozen albacore tuna in the market, which came from fisherman based at the Jersey Shore. I didn’t realize that a good proportion of fresh albacore tuna – which I always associate with the Pacific Northwest – is fished off the mid-Atlantic coast.  I decided to cook half of what I bought for dinner and preserved the rest in olive oil to use over the next month. Of course, right after I did this, my husband happened to travel to the shore for some other purpose and I convinced him to bring back some local catch, which I’ll discuss in a later post.

I notice that there’s a tendency to parse out menus into meat, starch, vegetable, salad. People even tend to isolate them on their plates. I actually don’t see things that way. I don’t mind a skewed menu, so long as it doesn’t skew too much toward meat. I also like to layer things, which makes for tricky photographic problems.

The Dark Days Challenge cleans out the refrigerator and finds fennel. Whoo hoo! I had a slightly shriveled but still really flavorful bulb of organic fennel from our CSA and another, with a few fronds attached, that I picked up at the farmers’ market a few weeks ago. It was from a local farm that doesn’t certify itself as organic but probably uses sustainable principles.  (I would like to do more homework on that topic.)

We like our vegetables and I like to experiment with multiple ways of cooking a single category to make a meal that seems that it has a lot of variety. This is a perfect case in point.  I roasted slices of the bulb as a base for roasted tuna that had been flavored with fennel fronds. I grated the stalks and scraps of the bulbs along with carrots to make a raw slaw to serve on top of the tuna, dressed with local apple cider and maple syrup and my new favorite butternut squash seed oil. The fennel took on different tastes and textures throughout the dish. You’d never have guessed it was a Johnny-one-note meal.

Finally, I gathered all of the scraps of fennel and cooked them with leftover Dark Days turkey stock to make a base for tomato-fennel soup. The tomatoes came from a lovely tomato-shallot sauce that I canned last summer from shallots and heirloom Amish Paste tomatoes from our CSA.  In addition to canning peeled tomatoes and tomato puree, I have been making flavored sauces that are great bases for other dishes or useful on their own. This works well for Dark Days when you might not have access to local organic green peppers, shallots, celery, herbs and other ingredients that are plentiful in season. Obviously, I’m a pantry person.

Oven-roasted Fennel

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Slice the fennel blub vertically into ¼-inch slices. Sprinkle with vegetable oil (I used butternut squash seed oil but olive oil would be more typical) and salt.  Roast, turning once, until tender and brown, about 15-20 minutes.

Oven-roasted Tuna in Fennel Fronds

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Sprinkle the tuna with vegetable oil (I used butternut squash seed oil but olive oil would be more typical) and salt. Toss with chopped fennel fronds. Roast until barely cooked through (it will continue to cook as it cools). Let it sit for a few minutes to firm up, then slice for serving. This keeps the fish from overcooking. It can be served lukewarm.

Fennel and Carrot Slaw with Apple Cider and Maple Syrup Dressing

Thinly slice or grate raw fennel stalks and any spare sections of the bulbous base. I used the large-holed side of a box grater, which took the green parts of the stalks and left the fibrous portions to be discarded (or used to make broth). Peel and grate a carrot and combine with the fennel.  Make salad dressing of 2 parts apple cider, 1 part maple syrup and 1 part vegetable oil such as butternut squash. (I used teaspoons of each.)

Tomato Fennel and Carrot Soup

1-2 c of fennel pieces, brown or damaged parts removed

1 c homemade turkey or chicken stock (or vegetable broth)

1 carrot, grated

1 pint home-canned tomato sauce with shallots (or add a leek to the mixture and use good quality canned tomatoes, pureed, and cook the soup longer)

Simmer the fennel pieces in the broth until tender. Puree in a food processor, leaving the mixture slightly chunky, and return to the pan. Add the grated carrot and the tomato sauce.  Simmer for about 20 minutes. Garnish with fennel fronds if you have them and roasted carrots.

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Cauliflower Soup with Bacon and Hazelnuts

I’m a great fan of Nigel Slater so whenever he comes up with an unexpected combination, I know it will be a winner. Despite the poor growing season for most vegetables, cauliflower has been abundant and flavorful this year. Though the markets were full of the big blowsy ones, labeled “Jersey Fresh,” I tend to prefer the smaller ones from our CSA and the farmers’ markets. A local organic farm is still delivering beautiful specimens to our local all-organic produce store. They sit there among the turnips, on ice, pretty and perfect. Cauliflower can be tame, insipid even, so you need to obtain a small, flavorful head and cook it to bring out the cabbage-like essence.  It is, after all, a member of the Brassica family. 

For my previous cauliflower soup, I roasted the vegetables (cauliflower and leeks) to deepen the flavor. Here, I bring it in from the outside, from rendered bacon, onion and garlic and, finally, from toasted hazelnuts.  Slater, writing in The Guardian, claims this is a Polish recipe, but if he had said it was Austrian, I would have said “sure.” I pureed the hazelnuts with the soup instead of adding them afterward, since I wanted them to contribute to the texture. I omitted the bay leaf he called for during the braising stage since I didn’t have one on hand. That was probably a good thing. I tried a few herb combinations (dried rubbed sage, and then a dried rosemary-sage-garlic rub that I made from my garden) and found any would overwhelm the soup, which was great by itself as a showcase for cauliflower. I opted for crusty little croutons with the mixed herb rub; their crispy texture played well against the toasted nuts.

Cauliflower Soup with Bacon and Hazelnuts adapted from Nigel Slater

1 medium large or 2 small heads cauliflower

3 slices high quality smoked bacon (I used one referred to as Black Forest)

1 medium onion, chopped

1 large or 2 small garlic cloves, sliced

4 c chicken stock, preferably homemade

2 tbsp peeled hazelnuts, (see below for peeling instructions)

Vegetable oil

Salt

Cut the cauliflower into florets, coarsely chopping the stems and tender parts of the core.

Cut the bacon into 1-inch pieces and render it in a large saucepan over medium heat until crispy. (You can remove the bacon now and add it back later as I did, or leave it in the pan.)

Add the onion and cook slowly, not letting it brown. Add the garlic and the chopped cauliflower stems and let them cook slowly for a few minutes. Add a little stock and braise the stems until nearly tender. Add the remaining stock and the cauliflower florets and simmer until the entire mixture is tender, about 20 minutes.

Meanwhile, prepare the hazelnuts. If they are not peeled, place them in pan in a 300-degree oven for about 5 minutes, remove them and rub them in a tea towel to loosen the skins. Place them in a small sauté pan over medium heat and toss them until light brown. Sprinkle with a little oil and salt, and set aside.  Chop them if you’re pureeing the soup using an immersion blender.

When the soup is cooked, reserve a few florets and puree the rest, along with the nuts and bacon, in a food processor. Serve hot.

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Dark Days 3: Vegetarian “Shepherd’s Pie”

A continuing series on weekly meals that use sustainable, organic, local and ethical food during the challenging winter months. See more here: http://notdabblinginnormal.wordpress.com/dark-days-challenge/

Now that title’s an oxymoron for you. Shepherd’s Pie is so called because it was originally made with meat from the herd — lamb or mutton to be exact — minced and topped with mashed potatoes. That would be a natural and easily accomplished dark days meal. The filling for this vegetarian version (preserving nothing but the potatoes) was a delicious combination of organic cabbage from our CSA, shredded Brussels sprouts and tarragon from my garden, and organic leeks and local mushrooms from the farmers’ market. Comfort food for one of the first really cold days we’ve had.  I served it with a salad of local organic mizuna and arugula from my garden.

 I think cabbage and mushrooms have a natural affinity, and I combine them lots of ways, from Chinese moo shu to this. Normally I would have used only cabbage in this pie. However, with an impending deep freeze, I sent the rescue squad into my garden to harvest big stalks of Brussels sprouts and then had to figure out what to do with them. This is one of the semi-failed crops of our local growing year and I’m lucky to have any at all. Normally, our CSA and farmers markets feature sturdy stalks ringed with plump green spheres, but not this year. The best we got were stunted, and ranged from the size of grapes to the size of peas, with those at the base blossoming.  

 So I shredded the largest ones to sauté with the cabbage, oven-roasted the pea-sized ones to sprinkle on top or the finished pie, and steamed the crown of the plant as a green vegetable side dish. The sprouts may not have looked like much but they were delicious.  I also rescued some pitiful looking but aromatic and tasty tarragon to flavor the mix, a great counterpoint

Still on the search for locally produced oil, I came across organic sunflower oil from western New York State, again slightly outside my zone but reasonably within range. It has a really short shelf life and is best kept refrigerated after opening. It was quite neutral in flavor and has a low smoke point, so I combined it with my local organic ghee for sautéing the veggies.

The potato topping was made with organic Green Mountain potatoes from a local farm, local cheese from another farm, and local organic cream that comes in picturesque glass bottles and sold at our grocery store. I do find that there’s a lot of running around to gather local ingredients. I can always buy fully organic products within walking distance but my emphasis has also been on what I can find from sustainable and ethical local sources. So far so good. Besides, I love visiting the farms and enjoying the countryside, a welcome escape from in-town living.

Vegetarian “Shepherd’s Pie”

4 medium brown mushrooms, chopped coarsely

1 leek, white and light green parts, split lengthwise, washed well and sliced (about ¾ c)

2 tsp ghee and 2 tsp vegetable oil (or all butter or all olive oil), separated into two portions

½ very small cabbage, or ¼ medium cabbage, shredded (yielding about 1½ cups)

Brussels sprouts, separated into individual leaves or chopped

1 large sprig tarragon, leaves removed

Salt and pepper

4 medium potatoes, peeled

2-3 tbsp or more milk or cream, warmed

3 tbsp grated hard cheese

Garnish: roasted baby Brussels sprouts, steamed tender tops of a Brussels sprouts stalk

Sauté the mushrooms over medium high heat in half of the ghee and oil. Set aside, and clean out the pan. Saute the leeks in the remaining ghee and oil very slowly over low heat until wilted. Raise the heat to medium and add the cabbage and Brussels sprouts.  Saute until the vegetables are crisp-tender, and slightly browned at the edges. Season with salt and pepper to taste, add the mushrooms and tarragon and turn into a pie plate or baking dish.

Meanwhile, cover the potatoes with cold water in a saucepan and bring to a boil, cooking until the potatoes are tender but not falling apart. Drain them, add the warmed milk or cream and mash them. Season with salt to taste.

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Spread the potatoes on top of the vegetables. There should be a layer of about ½-inch thick. Sprinkle with the cheese. Bake for about 30 minutes or until the potatoes are lightly browned on top. (Run them under a broiler at the end if you want.)  Let cool for 5-10 minutes before serving.

Serves 4 generously.

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