Green Eats

As much as I hate the heat, I love summer’s bounty. Over the past month I have been gorging on peaches, tomatoes, corn, and blueberries. In North Carolina we are lucky enough to have all four grown locally, and they all are available at the same time of year! I thought I would take a moment and share four of my favorite recipes for making the most of these delicious summer staples.

• Tomato Tarte Tatin – Bon Appétit
• Grilled Corn on the Cob with Chipotle Butter – Bon Appétit
• White Peach Sangria – Bobby Flay’s “Boy Gets Grill”
• Blueberry-Ginger Pie – Martha Stewart

Cecelia Thompson of Mod Meals on Mendenhall, photo by Bert VanderVeen

Tomorrow is the one year blogiversary of my friend (and fellow Elon alum) Cecelia’s great food blog, Mod Meals on Mendenhall. Based out of her gorgeous home in Greensboro, Cecelia whips up food that never fails to get me salivating. Surf on over to her blog, check out her recipes and photos, and tell her Matt sent you!

Grilled Asparagus and Smoked Mozzarella Pizza, from MMoM

One of the benefits of working for a small local cheese company is that I get first dibs on some delicious stuff, including yogurt. The yogurt we make is more in the style of Greek yogurt than the Yoplait you might be used to, and we have two flavors – plain, and sweetened. The sweetened yogurt has brown sugar, vanilla, and honey in it, and when I took a few tubs home the other day my eye immediately went to the strawberry jam I recently made. Behold, strawberry-honey-vanilla yogurt. I ended up mixing close to a quart, and it was devoured within two days.

Last week Leland and I hopped in the car and drove up to Cedar Grove, NC to pick strawberries at Whitted Bowers. Ever since Rob Bowers came to talk to my class last fall about the biodynamic fruit farm he and has wife run I’ve been waiting to try to their strawberries. The drive up to Cedar Grove was very relaxing, and in no time we were out in the fields, basket in hand.

Leland picking strawberries at Whitted Bowers

I talked to Cheri Whitted, Rob’s wife, for a bit and she told me that it had been a rough year for strawberries here in North Carolina. With the crazy weather we had in April (HOT, then cold) and the lack of rain she expects that they’ll only have one more week of good picking left in their fields. Normally they’re able to get fruit through the end of May.

Regardless of the tough growing conditions this year, the strawberries themselves were GORGEOUS, not to mention delicious. It was all we could do to not eat one strawberry for every one we put in the basket! We started off slow at first, but eventually we picked up the pace and ended up with 13.5 pounds of strawberries.

Strawberries from Whitted Bowers

The picking was only half the fun, though. After we got home, hulled all the strawberries (it took 40 minutes…), and had carefully packed them away in the freezer, I spent the next couple of days collecting everything I would need to do some serious jam-making. Read the rest of this entry »

I bought a bunch of radishes from Fickle Creek Farm at the South Estes Farmers Market this morning and received a great tip from Ben Bergmann, one of the co-owners of Fickle Creek. The radishes are great, of course, but I never know what to do with the greens other than cooking them in a bit of butter or olive oil. Ben says that he puts them in his scrambled eggs and tosses in a bit of feta as well – the saltiness and creaminess of the feta helps cut the bitterness of the radish greens.

I know what I’m making for breakfast!

Andrew Scrivani for The New York Times

Melissa Clark has a great article in the NYTimes Food & Dining section about a new way to cook asparagus. Seeing as we are knee-deep in asparagus season (however short it may be), I figured this post might serve as timely inspiration for your Saturday morning farmers’ market forays.

Slow Cooking Asparagus in Paper Packets – NYTimes

My goal for the summer is to become proficient in making various soft cheeses, and the first rung on the ladder is ricotta. I got some goat milk from friends and put this recipe, from Fias Co Farm, to the test this afternoon.

Homemade goat ricotta, draining in a colander lined with cheesecloth

Read the rest of this entry »

Coon Rock Farm breakfast sausage links

This morning I fired up my favorite piece of kitchen equipment – my cast iron skillet. Within a few minutes it was roaring hot and I had some breakfast sausages from Coon Rock Farm sizzling away on the stovetop. I paired them with some fresh biscuits I made this morning (using local pork lard!) and the result was a delicious, filling, and local breakfast. I can’t think of a better way to start my day!

Poulet rôti à la Normande

This past Sunday I made Poulet rôti à la Normande from the epic Julia Child tome Mastering the Art of French Cooking (with credit to Mmes. Beck and Bertholle, of course). Unfortunately due to poor planning my chicken was not local (I just plain forgot to buy one at market on Saturday) but the livers for the stuffing came from Fickle Creek Farm and the spinach for the side dish came from Ever Laughter Farm. The meal was delicious and the FCF’s livers were the perfect match for the recipe! I even have some left over that I plan on using to make some appetizers later this week.

Poulet rôti à la Normande – recipe from Mastering the Art of French Cooking, posted to foodgeeks.com

(Side dish was mushrooms and shallots in a Madeira-cream reduction on top of a bed of local spinach)

One of my favorite food blogs, Working Class Foodies, teamed up with one of my OTHER favorite food bloggers, Adam from Amateur Gourmet, to tackle dumplings. Recent readers of Green Eats are justified in thinking that I have a somewhat unhealthy obsession with biscuits, but before biscuits there were dumplings. It all started when I moved to New York City in 2007 and found Dumpling Man. Now if I see dumplings on any menu, anywhere, I have to order them. Veggie dumplings, chicken dumplings, pork dumplings, spicy dumplings, sweet dumplings; no dumpling is too crazy for me to try. That is one reason why I love this video – not only do you get a free tour of some of the best places to find dumplings in NYC, but you also get a free cooking lesson! Take a moment to watch the video, then wipe the drool off your face and get cracking on making your own delicious (and local) dumplings!

(If you live in the Triangle, making local dumplings is easy! Check out one of our many farmers markets for ingredients like pork, flour, scallions, and more!)