Archive for March, 2010
Parsnip Leek Potato Bread Pudding
It almost seems silly to slide this dish, as delicious as it is, across the table to you right now when it would seem spring has officially come to visit my neck of the woods (as I write, there’s a thunderstorm rolling through!). You see, this rustic savory bread pudding is full of winter delights – parsnips, sweet potato, farm fresh eggs, and leeks – when you might very well be able to snag some fresh greens already from your progressive local farmer who’s been putting his or her hoop house to good use. But let’s face it, crisp tender green things are still few and far between and with the cool rainy days sure to come yet, a hearty helping of this bread pudding will do you a world of good.
When you sit and contemplate the ingredients in this recipe, it’s hard to think of a dish that would provide a more balanced meal. I say this to possibly justify the fact that I ate the entire casserole dish of it myself over the course of last week; it was such a wonderful microwaved lunch! In any case, it has loads of protein from the eggs, lots and lots of vitamins from the vegetables (including much needed vitamin C with the wave of sniffles going around), and ample carbs to rev you up. And, if you can be a real optimist, there’s a good bit calcium from the heavy cream.
Individual ingredients and their notable merits aside, it’s the entirety of this dish that makes it worthy of your dinner table of lunchtime Tupperware. The flavor is rich and the texture comfortingly soft and filling. And the aroma while it’s in the oven is sure to draw a hungry crowd, eager to dig in. It’s worth noting though that I actually enjoyed this bread pudding more after it had spent a night ruminating in the fridge, its flavors playing leapfrog and tumbling together.
Oh, before I let you scurry off to gather ingredients or go back to your busy work day, just remember that now is the time to sign up for a CSA share for the coming season so you can get a box of delicious produce every week without fail. Don’t put it off as the CSAs around here at least fill up fast. Here’s a link to a national directory of farms that provide a CSA option. You can also check for others at www.localharvest.org. And if you live in Philadelphia, last I heard, Henry Got Crops (a part of the Weavers Way Farm sites) still had shares available. Soon there’ll be asparagus and rhubarb and tender greens aplenty. Yum!
P.S. – The amazing pottery pieces in the photos today are handmade by the talented guys at Ripple Pottery out of New Hampshire. Aren’t they beautifully organic in their colors and shapes?
10 Steps to Gardening from Scratch
A Post from the Archives: Spring has sprung once again, with crocus, winter aconite, hellebores, and leucojum in full bloom. With this advent of warm weather, I am super busy trying to get all my seeds sown and garden beds prepped for my business. So it seemed like a timely opportunity to pull this post from the archives that I wrote last March. There will be a new food post shortly, one with a delicious preparation of parsnips, sweet potatoes, and leeks. In the meantime, how about you tell me what you’re planting in your garden or what you can’t wait to get at the farmers market now that fresh food (for those of us in the northern hemisphere at least) is coming back into season?
One last gardening post and then I swear we’ll be back to food full time, at least for a few months until my garden starts doing very cool things that I’d be remiss in not sharing them with you. I have been hearing from friends and readers (who really are friends too) alike that they are thinking of starting a garden for the first time this year due to either the economy or a desire to be more involved with their food or both. Since I’m a horticulturist by trade, I wanted to take the piecemeal advice I give them and compile it into a post so anyone interested in starting a garden for the first time could have a look. These 10 steps are best applied to a garden being created from scratch. However, a few of them are good to repeat with an established garden once in awhile.
It’s only fair to add a bit of a disclaimer here too: these steps are a tad idealistic and presume you all have plenty of time and resources on your hands. Reality may not allow you to take all of these steps. Don’t let that discourage you. These steps are just what I’d do if I were starting over from scratch. Use the ones that make sense for you and learn what you can from the others.
Pumpkin Cream Cheese Muffins
Spring is here! Or so it seems with three days in a row in the upper 50s. I’m wearing flip flops again, my friends! And with the warm kiss of spring sunshine, I find myself distracted by thoughts of getting into the garden and going to shop for plants and seeds. While it’s a good excuse, you fine folks still deserve a new delicious post so I apologize for the delay in putting up this last week’s post. These Pumpkin Cream Cheese Muffins are worth the wait though.
I have this amazing local bakery just up the street from me. Driving or walking by it and the unabashed aroma that flows from its doors is like scratching that last patch of dry winter skin…it smells sooo good, but it is also torture in a way. I buy my dinner rolls there and love how they come in an old-fashioned brown paper sack that crinkles as I take it from the baker’s hand. On my last visit, I spied a gorgeous muffin in their sweets case and my instincts told me, correctly, that it was pumpkin in flavor. What intrigued me was that there was a dollop of cream cheese that had been baked into the top of the muffin. I had to try it so I naturally had it added to my paper sack. As I expected, it was incredibly moist and delicious.
While I loved the muffin from the bakery, I found myself thinking about how I might play with the recipe if I had it at my disposal. Unfortunately, though I can’t say I blame them as what they make is pure gold, the bakery doesn’t give out their recipes. So, left to my own devices with a concept floating around my head for a few days, I determined that I would make my own but increase the ratio of cream cheese per muffin as I really loved that element in the bakery’s version. I realized in the end that what I was really envisioning was a pumpkiny-remake of the traditional black bottom cupcake.
I felt sheepish taking what was probably a fairly healthy muffin concept and turning it into a rich decadent cupcake. So, I worked hard to find ways to dial down the fat and calorie content without sacrificing that gooey cream cheese indulgence that has always made black bottom cupcakes one of my favorite desserts. Initially I wasn’t all that wowed by the muffins (it really is much more of a muffin than a cupcake, though sweet and cakey still) when they came out of the oven and I had my first bite after breaking one open and letting the steam escape. But then the next day, after having sat in the fridge, the flavors and richness were much more apparent.
I suppose with spring in the air, I’ll have to give up my pumpkin-pushing ways for awhile in favor of fresh spring flavors. But I still have some puree in the freezer so there might be one last pumpkin recipe on SFTF before we all jump into the joys of fresh straight-from-the-farm vegetables again!
Kumquat Coconut Cupcakes
The first day of March truly harkens of spring around here. The mounds of snow we’ve been buried under for a month are beginning to drip hypnotically as they melt in the fantastically warm sunshine. Oh that we would have seen the last of the white stuff for this year, but I haven’t let myself entertain such hopes seriously. After all, March has come in like a lamb, and you know what they say about its exit in such a case. I’m nearly frantic with the need to get into my garden to start preparing seed beds and fretting anxiously over my spring bulbs that would normally burst forth with blooms in just a few weeks.
So in acknowledgement that spring may have come or it may equally be far away, I’ve got yet one more winter treat for you. Kumquats hang heavy from the indoor trees here at the moment. They’ve reached the end of their season and need to be picked and used up. I was happy to oblige.
The tropical combination of coconut and kumquats seemed fitting for a creating a recipe that bridges the winter and spring seasons. It was awfully fun to create mounds of snowy coconut and roll sunny kumquats down them for this photo shoot. Sometimes it’s good to play with your food.
I should warn you that I’m still tinkering with this recipe. The cupcakes were rich and moist, but a bit too dense for my liking. Cake, cup-shaped or otherwise, should be fluffy, should it not? I suspect that it was the extra juice of the kumquats that I didn’t account for that weighed down the crumb so I’ve tweaked the amounts of liquid below but haven’t actually had a chance to test it again to be sure. Don’t mind my Miss Perfectionist attitude; those cupcakes from the first batch were gobbled down with rave reviews between greedy bites so there’s nothing to fear. I wanted to be sure to share this recipe with you before fresh kumquats sadly disappeared from your local market for another year, if they haven’t already.
If coconut’s not your thing but you’ve still got a pint of kumquats to use up, don’t forget about the delectable Cranberry Kumquat Cornbread recipe from a few weeks back. Or, if you really aren’t that fond of eating kumquats at all, D has found that they make very good eyeballs for snowmen.
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