Glass Noodles & Mini Meat or Sweet Potato Loaves

• The Food Nanny
  November 17 & 18

Meal 1: Glass Noodles with Bok Choi and Egg, Tofu-Wakame Miso Soup, Fresh Kimchi Salad
Heat the soup on the stove top but do not allow it to boil.

Serve the kimchi cold.

Serve the noodles at room temperature or warm them gently in a saute pan with a splash of water, or try the microwave. Only just to warm them.

Meal 2: Mini Meat or Sweet Potato Loaves, Roasted Fall Vegetable Melange, Pumkin Custard
Heat loaves and veggies in the oven at 350 until hot and just sizzling- about 15 minutes or use a microwave.

Serve the custard chilled or warm very gently in the oven for 5-10 minutes. Spoil yourself with a dollop of whipped cream on top.

Local Notes:

Bok Choi is just a gorgeous, supple, sexy, food. All curves and succulence. Hunnerwasser said that the straight line is death and the choi certainly epitomized nature's propensity to avoid the straight line. I apologise for not using more of it this autumn. Bok choi and other brassicas can be grown in the spring, but they really come into their own during the fall months. They are best cooked quickly as they were cultured to fit into the fuel deficient wok cuisines of their native lands.

The pumpkin custard was made from a variety call Jarredale and I think it is a new favorite. It is wider at the top than bottom, has a blue smooth skin, and thick, bright yellow/orange flesh that roasts down sweet and very fine in texture. It purees into silk making it ideal for pie use. Their yield is good in relation to their size unlike blue hubbards which are hazardous to butcher ( yes I would describe cutting and cleaning squash as butchering) because otheir density size and shape, ungainly in the roasting dish, and relatively thin walled with a large seed cavity.

To make your own own pumpkin pie this holiday season just split, seed, and roast a pie type pumpkin or even a butternut squash. Roast it by placing it cut face down on a sheet tray with a little water in it and placing in a +400 degree oven until the squash meat is tender ( poke the skin with your finger, its Ok to get burned a little as this will make you a tougher cook.) The skin and flesh undeneath should yield easily to the touch. This takes 1-2 hours.

Cool the squash a little and then scrape the meat out and puree it. 1.5 c squash puree + 1c half and half + 3 eggs & 1 yolk =one 9"pumpkin pie. Season the pumpkin puree as you like before adding the custard ingredients. I use just enough sugar to bring the pumpkin flavor out, plus a little nutmeg, cinnamon, white pepper, and some booze like vanilla bean infused bourbon. Do this all to taste but be sparing. Taste the pumpkin, not the addatives. Taste often and adjust as you make this. Yur pie will taste just like your final version of the custard mix.

The Food Nanny
November 10&11, 2009

Meal 1: Split Pea Soup, Pumpkin and Sunflower Seed Whole Wheat Roll, Spinach-Potato Quiche

Heat the soup on the stove top and add a little water to thin it.
Warm the quiches gently in the oven at 350° for 10-15 minutes.
Or enjoy at room temperature.
Warm the roll along with the quiche.

Meal 2: Cauliflower in Yoghurt Curry, Dal Makhani, Vegetable Biryani

• Heat the curry and the dal on the stove top or in a microwave.
• Heat the rice by quickly sauteeing it in a little bit of oil, add a splash of water to steam through.
• Serve the two main dishes atop the rice.

How thankful we all should be for this foodshed that supports us.
For example, I began a recipe for salt and air curing of a whole ham. In the recipe it reads:" If you have access to unique or organically raised hogs, we highly recommend you try this." Well Hell's Bells! How fortunate I am to be able to readily tke them up on their recommendation. Or you for that matter. Anyone started a guanciale yet?
More interesting however, the authors of Charcuterie note that provided with a little care, the quality of this product rests entirely in the initial quality of the meat and fat. Moreover, that quality is directly derived from the care affored the animal by way of its environment, diet, and age.
How fortunte we all are here.
I have grown accustomed to the availability of the extraordinary produce that we all so enjoy in our community. And, shame on me. It doesn't happen by fortune, or entitlement, or even providence, thought that has its role. It happens through damn hard work and sacrifice. It happens though support. And it happens though dilligence. That these factors are at play, and that we can actively participate in them is something for which to be thankful too because it allows us access to something we desperetly need in America: a healthy and viable food culture.
I am grateful for the work I have and for the support of our members. I feel privledged to spend my efforts procuring and preparing meals from the very best of each season for you. It is a position of trust and care. It is a relationship. I feel proud to know that this community supported kitchen is the first and only one of its kind in the country, so far. I believe we are doing something good. And you, members and supporters, are part of it and should be proud of that too. Our little CSK spends a good bit each week within our local economy, and we all know what positivity that has. Right, Dr. Enshayan ?
So, thank you growers. Thank you members. Thank you Urbana-Champaign, our place.

Sweet Potato & Plantain Soup, Adobo Black Beans, Cuban Pork or Vegetable Fried Rice

• Heat the soup up stovetop and add a little water to thin it.
• Heat the beans on the stove top too, or in the microwave.
• Heat the rice by quickly sauteing it in a little oil. Add a slpash of water to steam it through.

Tri-Color Spirals With Spinach, Roasted Reds & Roasted Garlic Cloves, Whole Wheat Baguette, & Blue Moon Mixed Greens.

• Warm the bread in the oven.
• Heat several T of olive oil gently in a pan. Don't be stingy! When medium hot but not smoking add the noodlesand stir to coat and warm them.Next add the vegetables and stir all to combine and heat through. Do all this on no more than medium high heat.
• Dress the salad and serve.

Deep Dish Pizza & Root Vegetable Pan Roast

The Food Nanny
October27 &28, 2009
Meal 1: Deep Dish Pizza with Spinach and Sun Dried Tomato, Lentil Soup, Apple & Fennel Salad
· Heat the soup on the stove top and add a little water to thin it if necessary.
· Heat the pizza at 350° until hot and the cheese on top has melted.
· Serve the salad chilled.

Meal 2: Baby Lima Bean and Root Vegetable Pan Roast with Kale, Portuguese Broa, Mixed Greens
· Warm the pan roast on the stove top. You will need to thin it to the consistency of a stew. Adjust the seasoning.
· Warm the broa ( Portuguese corn bread) in the oven.
· Dress the salad and serve.

What the hell is a Pan Roast?

So, this week's menu. Comfort food anyone? I'm telling you, 20 weeks of damp or freezing overcast days makes our university one productive research institution. Still, even if you do pass all day comfortably cloisterd in well insulated and flourescently illuminated confines, you can still feel the weathertone of the day. And it makes you want soup.

With bread too please.

Pan roasting is just a quick stove-top stew and it is an indespensible technique for whipping up hearty fare fast. The key lies in preparation and improvisation. Pan roasting best utilizes ingredients that are ready to use or cook through fast-ish. For example, one of me favorite ingredients for this purpose, as Meal Two implies is a large bean like a lima, or butter bean, or what have you. If you have some cooked off ( a great habit to get into on Sunday afternoons), or a can at the ready, or perhaps some leftover 15 bean soup, this can be the anchor around which you frame your pan roast.

On the contrary, avoid lamb shank for example, unless you happen to have some already cooked off, in which case, lucky you. Please call me over for dinner.

In any case, good anchor ingredient is a rich protien with its own hearty broth.

Next grab what ever you have for mire poix: carrots, potato, leek, turnip, celery root, kohlrabi, etc. and prepare it into sizes that will cook relatively quickly. Saute them in a hot pan, in stir-fry sized batches to quickly carmelize them nicely - this is the roasting part- Then recombine the pan roasted vegetables in the pan( if necessary) and add the feature ingredient and some brothy liquid to quickly simmmer the dish together. Add some garnish like fresh kale and there you go.

But again, the key is to prepare ahead and to improvise. Don't think on Sunday afternoon "Today I will make beans for 6 portions of Thursday's pan roast dinner..."

think instead:"I'll make a pot of black beans today because I love 'em and you can use 'em 100 ways, however you feel this week, and whatever comes up!" Then, on dreary Thursday evening, before your comittee meeting, and after picking up the kids from gympastics and play practice respectively, make some black bean and sweet corn pan roast with diced leftover chicken.

For the record the best f=ing panroast is: bacon (suprise), then onion and garlic, then, diced potato, then sweet corn, then cockles or cherrystone clams or mussels, and then heavy cream. Garnish with fresh herbs, chives if you have them. Eat it and weep.

Guanciale

This is one of the few recipes I will ever post. Not because I am a jerk, but because I believe most home cooking should be based on what you have and a technique that works, not upon a recipe from a book that looks great but requires running three errands to complete. Guanciale is in itself a great recipe replacer. If you have some on hand - an easy enough thing to do- then you can always start there when you get home from work and have hungry birds to feed. Just gently fry it in some olive oil, add onions and garlic and whatever else you have on hand for a great meal. With tomato product it becomes pasta or pizza sauce. With carrots, celery root and leftover Lima beans it becomes stew. With potatoes, kale, and eggs it becomes a great frittata. Guanciale, and pork fat in general is the great bridge between 'good' and totally satiating. Ok enough talk already.
SPICE RUB
1 pigs jowl - rinsed and patted dry.
2.5g juniper berries
5g fennel seed
2 bay leaves
5g black peppercorns
3-6 dried sage leaves
1/2 star anise
VERY gently toast the above except the sage. Cool, add the sage and grind. Contrary to popular belief spices should NOT SMOKE when toasting. Smoke is disappearing flavor compounds!
GARLIC PASTE
10g red chili or flakes
4 garlic cloves Crush the garlic.
Mix in the chili flakes or crush in the garlic, we love the mortar and pestle for this.
Now, rub the spices into the jowl, then smear the garlic paste over it smoothly. Layer a bed of sea or kosher salt in a non-reactive dish (stainless or glass is good) and place the seasoned jowl into it. Cover with more salt. It should look like it is buried in a good 3"-4" snow fall (not literally 3-4" of salt). Cover with plastic with a few vent holes and refrigerate for 20 days. Mark the finish date on the container so you know when to pull it from the salt. This, aside from the salt, is the only really critical direction I've given you so far. After 20 days, exhume and brush and/or lightly rinse off the excess salt, gently pat dry preserving as much of the spice coating as possible. Now you can either hang the jowl for a month in a cool dark place with a light parchment paper or cheesecloth shroud or transfer to a wire rack over a pan, lightly draped with vented parchment or plastic and back into the fridge for 30 days. An auxiliary fridge that runs at about 50 degrees F is great for this. Give it a try, there is so much salt involved that the process is fairly foolproof and jowls are small so if you do mess up your losses are minimal. It could be a whole ham right! To use just cut off a strip like bacon, dice or chop the strip into pieces, fry gently in a little oil and off you go.

Stir Fried Broccoli & Pumpkin Enchiladas

The Food Nanny
October21 &22, 2009
Meal 1: Pan Fried Noodles with Stirfried Broccoli and Tofu or Pork, Sesame Green Beans
· Serve the green beans at room temp, or sauté them quickly to warm.
· Rinse the noodles in a colander and drain VERY well. Heat some oil in a sauté pan. Non-stick is ok. When hot, carefully add the noodles. They will spatter and attempt to misbehave but don’t show them your fear. Stir for a minute or two. Add the vegetables and toss. Cook 2 more minutes and serve.

Meal 2: Pumpkin Enchiladas with Anaheim Chile Salsa Verde, Black Bean Soup, and Cumin Cole Slaw.
· Heat the enchiladas in the oven at 350 for 15-20 minutes.
· Heat the soup on the stove top and serve the slaw chilled. Please salt the slaw as we omitted this to prevent wateriness.

El Calabasa - that is my bandito name. I just love to roast pumpkin and squash for use in Mexican cuisine. My trick is to carefully pan roast the pieces in batches to give them some carmelization and to then transfer them to a baking sheet and finishing them in the oven.

The sauce was a simple mixture or onions, garlic, herbs, and some green anaheims sauteed and then simmered with some water to soften and then pureed in batches. Really very good. To avoid too much heat simply cut the flesh away from the seeds and seed membrane. If you desire the fire, include it.