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Dark Days : beef stew and (more) roasted potatoes

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For Week 2 of the Dark Days Challenge, I decided to make beef stew. This was a big step for a former vegetarian of 15 years: I had never before cooked beef of any kind, nor allowed it to be cooked in my house or my pans. It was really the last frontier meat-wise, as we’ve cooked pork, venison, chicken, turkey, and fish since I started eating meat again. While the chickens were sometimes roasted or baked, almost everything else was ground and made into sausages, stews, or pies; this was the first time I’d handled chunks of meat. Given all this weighty history, I wanted to use a recipe I knew would yield a good result, and the New York Times one fit the bill: how could you go wrong with 5 1/2 cups of wine and cognac?


Day 1: beef, wine, and cognac.


Day 1: vegetables.


Day 1: the whole shebang, combined and heading into the fridge for 24 hours.

Since I was using a fairly authentic French-style stew recipe, meal construction required two days. On day one, everything went into a bowl in the fridge and sat there for 24 hours. In this case, “everything” meant the (thankfully pre-chunked) stew beef from Smith Meadows, the chopped vegetables, and the spices. I was even required to make one of those little bags out of cheesecloth to hold cloves and peppercorns! Almost all of the vegetables were in our fridge from our CSA: onions, carrots, garlic, and mushrooms (which don’t come into play until day two). We had to buy celery and an orange; I considered leaving out the orange, as it really didn’t fit the requirements of the challenge at all (definitely not local, sustainable, or ethical, and I am quite sure it was also not organic since my partner picked it up from the Giant on the way home from the metro), but after all of the effort involved in assembling the stew I was pretty invested in seeing how the recipe came out. For the alcohol, I foraged in our house, which I consider to be a very local and sustainable way of obtaining ingredients. The wine was a Mondavi Pinot Noir that my mother-in-law brought down on a previous visit; the double bottle was just enough for the recipe with one glass left over for my partner to have with dinner, and the pinot seemed to meet the “like a cotes de Provence” guideline of the recipe. The cognac was one of those teeny bottles of Courvoisier that I had received in my stocking a couple of years ago, which was all I was able to turn up and also exactly the right amount (1/4 cup, in case you ever wondered how big those little bottles are). I did make a note that we are sadly lacking in the cognac department, although brandy, port, and scotch make fine after-dinner alternatives. So, on day one I combined the meat, wine, cognac, vegetables (except mushrooms), and spices in my biggest bowl and put it all in the fridge; this happened fairly slowly over the course of the morning, as I was working with the baby strapped to my front and during a brief nap time.


Day 2: meat and vegetables separated again.


Day 2: the rest of the ingredients.


Day 2: final batch of browning meat.


Day 2: cremini and shitake mushrooms.

On day two (today) all of the actual cooking took place. Again with a baby strapped to my front, I separated the meat from the vegetables from the liquid, boiled the liquid with a couple more cups of wine, and browned all the meat in rounds before adding it to the pot. The vegetables were then sautéed over high heat and went into the pot; the mushrooms were sliced, similarly cooked, and set aside. The stew then simmered for the rest of the day, filling the house with a delicious winey meaty smell. The recipe called for the stew to simmer for 3 1/2 to 4 hours, but the meat didn’t really get tender until five hours had passed. And then, for reasons beyond our control, we didn’t eat it for another hour, by which point the meat had flaked apart and created a nice thick stewy mush. We both liked it that way, and if I repeat the recipe I will definitely plan to allow for the extra time. To go with the stew, we roasted the last of the yellow potatoes from our CSA (following last week’s successful meal, we proceeded to roast enormous amounts of potatoes and eat them with a number dinners, so we ran through the stash at a prodigious rate). Not only was the stew delicious, it allowed me to use up a number of things that were hanging around the house, notably the two types of mushrooms we received from the CSA (cremini and shitake) and the enormous bottle of pinot noir. The only thing lacking was crusty bread, and I’m going to pick some up at the farmers’ market for when we have stew again tomorrow night. If this stew is anything like every other stew, it will be even more delicious then!


The final pot of (delicious) stew.


Dinner: beef stew and roasted potatoes.

Dark Days : beef stew and (more) roasted potatoes

food : sweet potato pie

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Three varieties of sweet potatoes.

Sweet potatoes are one thing we never have a shortage of around here. They are one of the reliable foods grown by our winter farmer, and this year we received them in the autumn months of our summer CSA as well. Because they store so well, we gladly swap greens for them whenever we can. Swapping requires commitment and being the first to pick up your box on delivery mornings; I find it worth it to get to have some choice about what you take home. In our case, we have five straight months of oodles of greens in the winter, and I’ll take almost anything else during the summer season. In any event, we have three varieties of sweet potatoes piling up around here: Beauregard orange, O’Henry white, and Japanese (Satsuma-imo) purple. With more than usual on hand this year, I’m going to be trying all kinds of different recipes.


Prep: crust and filling.


Sweet potato pie.

First up: sweet potato pie. I had never made a gingersnap crust before, but it’s the time of year when there are always some Sweetzels in the cupboard (which are apparently not just local but seasonal; I never realized you could only buy them in the fall and winter!). Besides those, the sweet potato, and the eggs, not much else can claim to be local. The ingredients are organic and ethically sourced, though, with the exception of the rum. I could pretend this pie is going toward some common good, like the town holiday potluck dinner on Saturday or the women’s club holiday potluck lunch on Monday, but that would be a lie. We’re just going to eat it as we pretend that the protein in the sweet potatoes, eggs, and soy milk make it a healthy dish and not a dessert. Maybe I’ll make another one for one of those events; more likely, I’ll bring an apple crisp or pie from the freezer.

To get back to this pie, it was good. It was not the dreamy delectable delight that I thought it would be, but it wasn’t half bad. It was a little soft (maybe too much filling, maybe the soy milk substituting for whole milk, maybe a bit undercooked) and the crust was more chewy than crispy (maybe also a bit undercooked). It also has a distinctly rummy taste, and is not overly sweet. I know the not overly sweet aspect is a feature of this pie, as it’s meant to highlight the natural flavorful goodness of the sweet potatoes. Which it does, that’s all true. I’ll have to see how I like it after a night in the fridge before I commit to making another. It was a hit with my partner, but then again: it’s pie.


Mmm, pie.

food : sweet potato pie

Dark Days : season of peppers

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Peppers! The last vestiges of summer, Italian sweet peppers and Cubanelles.


Italian sweet peppers, sautéed and covered in oil (for the fridge).

With both our winter and summer CSAs, I have been most challenged by the abundance of peppers. Bell peppers are manageable, as we generally just slice and eat them raw or include them in ratatouille. It’s the hot peppers and the less common sweet peppers that pose a challenge. Some of them we sauté and pack in oil to be used in making pepper rice; sadly, most of last year’s batch languished in the fridge and had to be thrown out after we just didn’t cook as consistently through the winter. Others, like jalepeños, we struggle to use in even small quantities let alone in the volume that we receive in from the farmers; most years they go into the chutney and not much else.

This year we worked hard to use what we got, which required us to add to our recipe roster. To use up the jalepeños, I made two large batches of corn salad (which also used up a couple dozen ears of corn as well as onions and tomatoes) and one batch of tomatillo salsa (which was tasty, but more than we could handle in the time period before the fresh salsa went off; it did mark the first time we successfully used our tomatillos, though). The corn salad was delicious, and we’ll definitely make that in any future years when the corn is flooding in. In the end, we had more jalepeños than we could use and I donated some back into the CSA swap box. The green chilies were a big hit, though: we received Anaheim peppers for the first time, and learned that they are the green chili beloved by those who love green chili sauce. A little online research provided us with the preferred skinning method (place in a plastic bag to cool after roasting; the steam will loosen the skin) and we were able to make use of them. We made chicken in a tomatillo sauce twice, channa masala once, and I made my first batch ever of green chili cornbread. The cornbread was probably quite a bit hotter than it was meant to be since I used both rice milk and tofu sour cream: the fat from the dairy products was therefore only present in the cheese. I loved it, though, and we shared a pan for dinner one night.

Kicking off the Dark Days Challenge this week, I still had peppers in the fridge. We were looking at a large bag of Italian sweet peppers and about a half dozen Cubanelles. For the Italian sweets, I fell back on last year’s plan (sauté and pack in oil in the fridge) with a resolution to actually use them this year. I incorporated the Cubanelles into the meal for Week 1 of the challenge: scrambled eggs with roasted Cubanelle purée and roasted potatoes. Yes, it’s a breakfast meal, but we had it for lunch. We sourced the food as follows: organic eggs from a Pennsylvania farm via our local organic market; Cubanelle peppers from our summer CSA and Thanksgiving Farm via the Greenbelt farmers’ market; red potatoes from our summer CSA; seasoned salt from last year’s winter CSA; and last year’s home-canned applesauce with apples from Larriland Farm. Roast peppers, peel and chop coarsely (I didn’t actually bother to purée them); dice potatoes, toss in olive oil and seasoned salt, roast at 425F for 40 minutes, stirring halfway through; and scramble the eggs. Serve and eat!


Roasted peppers.


Roasted potatoes.


Lunch: scrambled eggs, roasted Cubanelles, roasted potatoes, and applesauce.

Dark Days : season of peppers

food : Dark Days Challenge

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What better way to kick off the month of December than join in a local food challenge! It’s dark, it’s cold, the growing season is over, right? Wrong! At least, not completely so. Thanks to Even’Star Farm‘s commitment to year-round farming, we receive a CSA through the winter. It consists of cooking greens, salad greens, and root vegetables (turnips, rutabaga, sweet potatoes, and radishes). As a result, we are cooking with local foods all through the winter; historically, the challenge has not been finding the food but rather finding new recipes to make that take us beyond our beans-and-greens rut.

For the purposes of the Dark Days Challenge, I am going to work on minimizing the non-local ingredients used in my cooking. The challenge is not only to use local food, it’s to keep as many ingredients as what the originator refers to as SOLE: sustainable, organic, local, and ethical. In this framework, the staples I buy that can’t be (easily) sourced locally fit the bill. Our organic oils are from Spectrum; I am particularly committed to their canola oil, in an effort to push back against the GMO-rapeseed that has become dominant in the United States. Sugar is certified fair-trade and organic, supplied by Wholesome Sweeteners; cocoa and coffee are also certified fair-trade and organic, from Equal Exchange. Organic spices are from Frontier, a member cooperative; butter is from Organic Valley, a regional farmers’ cooperative (milk, eggs, and cheese are from specific local farmers). Organic flour is from King Arthur, a regional company if you count Vermont as at all local to DC (I don’t necessarily, but still value East Coast products over West Coast ones); Bob’s Red Mill is another option for a (now) worker-owned company.

To supplement the vegetables in our CSA, I’ll visit the year-round farmers market in Takoma Park and shop the local items at My Organic Market (typically from Pennsylvania, from many of the same farms who supply our summer CSA). Already I know that I want to make a sweet potato pie, and am hoping that my favorite made-in-Philadelphia gingersnaps qualify as “local” for the purposes of the crust. Truly, with a new little person in the house, I don’t have the time or energy to go searching out more local sources for flour and grains and the like. For me, this challenge is about making the most of what we have readily available to us in the winter and instituting some regularity in blogging about it. For inspiration, I can always turn to recipes tried out by those who’ve done this before.

To start us off, I’ve compiled a list of the produce we already have on hand in the house:

  • sweet potatoes (orange, cream, and Japanese purple)
  • shallot, garlic, and onions
  • green tomatoes
  • Italian sweet peppers and Cubanelle peppers
  • potatoes (red and white)
  • squash (butternut and acorn)
  • greens (arugula, Chinese thick-stem mustard, salad mix, stir-fry mix, and parsley [more of them were destined for the composter than I realized])
  • turnips, carrots, and radishes
  • apples (Pink Lady, Gala, and Stayman)
  • mushrooms (cremini and shitake)
  • cranberries
  • lemons (organic, but not local)
  • pumpkin and squash puree [frozen]
  • persimmon puree [frozen]
  • tomato puree and juice [frozen]
  • chopped kale [frozen]
  • blueberries, cherries, rhubarb, and peaches [frozen]

There are probably things I’m forgetting, and we’re getting more tomorrow (our last summer delivery) and Thursday (our regular winter delivery). But that will do to get started.

food : Dark Days Challenge

food : apple time is here again

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As in previous years, I could not resist the allure of apples in season. In deference to my dramatically diminished ability to process and can, we only picked sixty pounds of apples rather than the hundred-plus pounds that we typically bring home from Larriland Farm. Sadly, this was not a good year for local apples, and we weren’t able to get any Granny Smiths. Truthfully, we were only able to pick Pink Ladies and ended up buying some Stayman from the stand to complement the flavors (in order to follow the rule of always using at least two kinds of apples in any recipe). We still ended up with a fair number of apples, as we receive a bag of assorted eating varieties each week from the fruit share portion of our CSA.

What I usually do with all these apples is can a couple of batches each of sauce and chutney. This year, though, we don’t need sauce as we’re still working our way through a half dozen quarts from last autumn, and I don’t have the time to make chutney, what with all the chopping and stirring that entails. Instead, I’m making pies and muffins for the freezer and crisps for us to eat. We probably don’t need such a steady infusion of baked sugary goodness in our sleep-deprived state…oh, wait, of course we do! I plan to make a cake or two, possibly also for the freezer, but the big addition to the apple roster this year was apple butter. I used my crock pot for only the third time in ten years to slow cook the apple butter, which made it super easy to deal with. The canning is not onerous, now that we have all the supplies and have been through the routine dozens of times. With the slow cooker it’s not necessary to stir the pot constantly to keep it from scorching, and we set it up to cook overnight. I did end up letting it cook with the top off for an additional two hours, as it was still pretty runny in the morning. It’s delicious; I’ve been having it on toast and will probably make another batch this week. Once that’s done, the rest of the apples will be for eating; the beauty of the Pink Ladies is that they keep in the fridge forever and provide something fresh for my partner’s bag lunches for most of the winter.

As an aside, the chutney recipe I use is from one of my favorite cookbooks, Simply In Season. When I went looking for it online, I came across a person who spent last year cooking all the recipes in the book. She blogged about it , and it’s fun to read through and see how recipes I’ve made or thought of making turned out for her. I have to say, it’s also nice to see one of these make-everything-in-a-cookbook-in-a-year blogs that uses a regular cookbook rather than a coffee table book from a gourmet restaurant. Not that there’s anything wrong with those, they’re just not ever going to be what I use in my kitchen.

food : apple time is here again