Pickled Beets
Well, I don’ t know about where you are, but here it’s proving to be the perfect weekend to tuck in and get some things done around the house because, well, there’s really no other choice. In my humble opinion, a couple dozen inches of snow are a wonderful excuse to be a little lazy and perhaps a little bit productive too as your mood suits you throughout the day. Cups of tea and bowls of soup are also necessary amenities for snow days, and I’ve had plenty of both.
But while the rest of the city was running rabid to the store last night, desperately nabbing food to get them through the weekend of snow drifts, I was able to just walk down the steps to my basement and look over my shelves of preserved goodies that have been such a treat over this entire winter: pears, peaches, beans, jams, and pickled beets. That’s right…pickled beets. Ever had such a thing?
I suspect pickled beets are a culinary colloquialism, part of my Pennsylvania Dutch heritage, but I could be wrong. All I really know is that I love them, though that wasn’t always the case. When I was a girl, my mom would make large batches of jars full of bright pink chunks of pickled beets, and it was my job to cart them down the narrow stairs to our root cellar to fill the cupboards there. I’m not sure if it was resentment for all the lugging or just the underdeveloped tastes of a kid, but pickled beets equaled “yuck!” in my young mind. Oddly enough, I don’t think we ever ate fresh beets, roasted or otherwise, when I was growing up.
Somewhere along the way, I got over my foolish hang-up about pickled beets and grew to appreciate them for what they are: a delicious sweet and savory treat that, when eaten in a snow storm, reminds me of the sunny autumn days when I plucked those very same beets out of the warm fragrant earth. In a few months, all this snow will have been melted away and it will be time to plant more beets again. They make a perfect spring crop to put in your garden as soon as you can get out there and start scratching out some rows. Be sure to buy plenty of seed so you’ll have enough for a second crop in the fall to make jars full of jewel-toned pickles of your own for next winter.
2 comments February 6, 2010
Cranberry Kumquat Cornbread
Alright, after all the recent pumpkin recipes (and, yes, there is still more to come…hopefully there are no collective groans to be heard out there, unless they are hungry bellies voicing anticipation), it’s perhaps time for a palette cleanser. I had hoped to actually pull off a savory dish of some sorts for you, but as it turns out, my mind is consumed with baking these days. I attribute this constant craving for sugar and butter to the dull gray of winter and a fundamental instinct to put on pounds and hibernate. Damn you, Mother Nature!
But really, I should keep my curses to a minimum as being obsessed with the oven and flour in a season of limited local ingredients leads to wonderful concoctions that I might not otherwise try. Case and point: Cranberry Kumquat Cornbread. I have to confess, I didn’t dream this one up on my own for a change. I had dear reliable Martha’s help and the scrumptious pictures in one of the fall issues of her magazine to get the mental cogs turning.
Time for a word about the star ingredients of this loaf: the cranberries are still from the stash in my freezer that I horded away when cranberries were easily had from the local bogs in New Jersey back in the autumn. The kumquats are a different story. Rarely are kumquats local fare when you come from a climate that experiences deep freeze winters. Jewels of the sub-tropics and tropics, kumquats are one of my favorite citrus treats. Fortunately for me, my present position at a large public garden with a greenhouse dedicated to fruit production allows me a chance to indulge my kumquat cravings with local sensibility. The fragrance of both the blossoms and the fruit on the trees is intoxicating; I make a point to pass by them every day.
For those unfamiliar with kumquats, they look like very small oranges and come into season usually around Christmas and last for a couple months. Sometimes there is a second flush of fruit later in the year if you’re lucky. In any case, there are many different cultivars and each has a varying ratio of sweet and sour. You see, to eat a kumquat, you must eat the whole fruit, rind/peel and all! The rind is actually the sweet part of a kumquat and is very tender compared to other citrus. The flesh and juice of the kumquat is typically very sour. I equate it to the fruit version of a piece of “sour patch kid” candy. You need to be careful of seeds though when swallowing a kumquat whole (though some varieties don’t have any). Eat one carefully before you eat a whole handful in a hurry.
The wonderful thing about kumquats is that they are relatively compact plants/trees and they make for good house plants if you have a sunny south-facing window and some patience when it comes to hand-pollinating. I think it’s worth the effort as I absolutely adore cooking with kumquats; they’re so distinctive. Adding them to this recipe for the cornbread further accentuates the juxtaposition between the sweet buttery dense texture of the bread and the powerful burst of tart juicy flavor from the fruit on top. Really, it’s just lovely. The one sad part though is that the carnberries stain the kumquat red so you can’t tell what is what once it’s all said and done. I had hoped for a speckling of orange and red flecks.
I liked the bread very well as it was. But I thought after eating a few slices that it could be improved upon by layering the fruit a bit more in the loaf. So, I’ve adapted the recipe below to indicate this, and I wanted to be sure to mention it here because the photos obviously only show the fruit on top (per the original recipe I was following). Don’t be confused if yours looks different after using the recipe below.
9 comments January 28, 2010
Perfect Pumpkin Risotto
Well, hello there! Great news…SFTF is featured on Design*Sponge today! Welcome, all D*S readers! If you’re an SFTF reader (not to drive home any ideas of “camps” here among you all) who has yet to stumble upon D*S, it is a site full of amazing inspirational posts from some of the most creative minds in the world. The topics and projects featured there never cease to amaze me! And I’m addicted, checking in on the D*S divas at least twice a day.
My recipe on D*S for Perfect Pumpkin Risotto is one that I conjured up many months ago, and I’ve been biting my nails ever since, anxious to share this heavenly and comforting winter dish with you. Unfortunately, the season for buying local pumpkins is likely passed in most parts at this point. But perhaps you’ve been holding on to one or two in your cellar, hoping to carry memories of glowing autumn days just a little deeper into the pale dimness of winter. Or, as you all are probably well-aware of by now (am I driving this point home too much?), pumpkin puree is a miracle ingredient and if you’ve got a stash, this risotto is well worth a cup or two. To replicate the “chunks” without any fresh pumpkin on hand here in the depths of winter, you could cube and roast sweet potatoes instead.
Please be sure to click over to Design Sponge to see the post there and perhaps leave some SFTF love for me? M’wah!
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12 comments January 22, 2010
…Pumpkin French Toast
So, you all made the pumpkin bread from the last post right? The ingredients are at least on your shopping list for your next trip to the store, right? At the very least, you’ve put it on your to-do list for the upcoming weekend, right? If you haven’t done any of those things, I’d venture to guess you will as soon as you see what I’ve done here with that very same loaf of pumpkin bread.
You’ll no doubt need to make a double batch of the bread, by the way. One loaf will quickly disappear right out of the oven. It can’t be helped. The second loaf is the one you cut into thick slices and coat with a batter of farm fresh egg, milk, cinnamon, nutmeg, and cloves to cook up in a heavy skillet to make THE MOST DECADENT French toast you’ll ever have!
Nothing could be lovelier for a brunch with friends and family. Or, Valentine’s Day is heading our way once again and this would be a wonderful wake-up for the one you love. And I tell you, if you happen to own a B&B, I can only imagine how your guests will stampede the dining room when you put this on the menu. This is a very special dish great for grand occasions. But bake a bunch of loaves and stash several in you freezer (double wrapped with cling wrap and foil and in a ziplock bag) and you’ll be all set to make it any old day of the week.
This Pumpkin French Toast is especially good comfort food for a snowy day. My friend Anne {of Eat Feed Autumn Winter fame} over at the Eat Feed blog, is doing a creative and useful series of posts on winter dishes. So often winter is a lonesome time for those striving to eat as local as possible. Inspirational moments and ingredients are few and far between. Anne’s set out to put a little love back into winter eating by pooling together readers’, guest bloggers’ and her own ideas for heating up the cold months. Please stop by and let her know what some of your best winter dishes are. In the case against winter cooking blahs, I’m submitting Exhibit A: Pumpkin French Toast. Many more Exhibits to follow.
12 comments January 20, 2010
Pumpkin Bread…
I’m having a perfectly lazy weekend, one about which I’m determined to not feel guilty. Too often these days I find myself driven nearly to the point of distraction by my “to do” lists and a need to reach some continually elusive goal. As such, I’m a manic list keeper. I’d type one out here for you, but I fear it’d be a bit too embarrassing.
It is a blessing and a curse, as you well know if you too are a compulsive list complier. On one hand, I am very organized and, in theory, more efficient as I rarely find myself scratching my head and wondering what to do next. On the other hand, I am by times paralyzed by the magnitude of my self-assigned tasks. Since I feel a tremendous sense of satisfaction when crossing off completed items on the list, I think I tend to add more and more to my lists to keep the good times rolling. But then I realize that my list for just one day fills an entire notebook page and I experience instant exhaustion. Does this happen to anyone else? Is there a twelve step program for my kind?
Long list, err, story short, I’ve decided I need to reign in my urge to constantly be “on task” and focus more on savoring the things I love simply because I want to, not because they fulfill some item on my to-do list. So, at least for the remainder of the winter, weekends are finally going to be the way they were meant to be: time with D, watching movies, taking walks, sleeping late, knitting, reading, eating a hot breakfast instead of a granola bar, snuggling with my cats… all those good things.
One of those things that I love is making bread. I really find my stride in the kitchen when working with both quick and yeast breads. I particularly enjoy kneading yeast doughs; so therapeutic. But this time, I decided to make a quick bread as I still haven’t completely satisfied my craving for all things pumpkin. And to add to the indulgence, both in flavor and in just enjoying myself on a lazy weekend, I actually then turned this delicious loaf into a breakfast/brunch favorite that you’ll just have to wait to discover in my next post. Trust me, it is a wonderful way to spend some relaxing time in the kitchen and making a delicious dish for those you love and want to indulge!
Meanwhile, this bread is super moist with a perfect crumb and hints of the warm spices that compliment pumpkin so very well. It’s a lovely little loaf for breakfast just the way it is, served warm and heavily buttered. But like I said, I have an extra special way to put it to good use that I’ll tell you about in the next post… stay tuned (and relaxed).
19 comments January 16, 2010
