BLACK HILLS REPRIEVE

We took a six day/night trip to the Black Hills, just returning on Monday.  We went for the fishing, hiking, biking and touring.  The fishing wasn't the best, like the mid-west, the drought has wrecked havoc with the streams, leaving little water, and dying fish.  Still, Freddie prevailed and spent two days fly fishing, while I either biked, hiked, or read.  (My shoulder prevented me from casting.)

Sweet little cabin we rented via the internet.  It was built in the late 1800's, and has been refurbished.  It was a nice place to stay, EXCEPT that to get there we had to traverse about 6 miles of washboard gravel roads, the worst I have ever been on, and we could travel little over 5-10 miles per hour.  In addition it was really quite close to the owners home, like within mere feet.  This did not prove to be a problem, however we would have liked something a bit more isolated.  Still it was only $80 per night!

View of Deerfield Lake, about 4 miles from the cabin.  We hiked around this lake one day, it was lovely.

We were surrounded with lovely prairie like this, Freddie especially loved it and hiked it each morning.

Another view of the lake.

The Hills are covered with these dying pine trees, in some places it is really devastating.  The Mountain Pine Beetle is the culprit, and it is moving fast, it seems.

A pause in hiking.

Stunning rock formations everywhere.

Another pause in the hike.

Everywhere I looked was glistening, shining, bits of Mica, (?Fool's Gold?).  Anyway, I was a fool for it, and picked up piece after piece for my granddaughters, knowing they would love to put it on their Season's Table, or in their Fairy Gardens.

Getting ready to ride part of the 100 mile Mickelson Trail, a converted rail bed.

The Needles Highway has to be one of the most stunning drives in America!

...and again...

Three years ago we came to the Black Hills and stayed just outside of Hill City.  We were not far from Hill City this time either, which for me was a real plus.

The food in SD is nothing to speak of, unless one is speaking negatively, however this tiny place in Hill City, The Alpine Inn does serve really good food.  Three years ago we stopped by one evening for dessert (and another day for lunch.)  When I walked in the chef happened to be nearby and recommended that I try the Roasted Apple Napoleon.  Not being overly fond of apple desserts I hesitated, but in fact ordered it.  I must say that it was simply the best dessert I had ever eaten, and for the past three years I have been trying to duplicate that dessert, coming close but not quite.  So on this trip I decided to take photos of it....

Puff pastry triangles with caramelized cinnamon crust, roasted Fuji apples, vanilla ice cream, whipped cream, all covered with a caramel sauce.  When I ordered it I thought I would be disappointed after drooling over it for three years, but I surely was not.  It still stands as the best dessert I have ever had.  Honestly, it is almost worth the drive to Hill City itself!!

Refreshed, but per usual, overwhelmed with catching up on fall gardening.

It was a Great Party

On Thursday evening, August 30, an art reception was held at Organic Valley headquarters for my friend Monica Jagel, colored pencil artist, and me.  Monica has drawn what she calls A Rural Alphabet, where each letter of the alphabet is symbolized by something rural.  When she had nearly completed the set, she asked me if I would be interested in writing a poem for each of the letters.

I was excited by the offer, and jumped at the opportunity.  The entire alphabet and accompanying poems are complete.  They first hung at The Blue Spoon Cafe in Prairie du Sac, and since the beginning of July have been hanging at Organic Valley headquarters.  

They are visible there on the wall behind us,

and here is a sample...

 J is for Jam

The smell wafted from the windows 

of the old farm house

saturating the senses

as she stirred the roiling pot

of just picked berries...

awaiting the precise moment

of jell.

Quickly she ladles it into glinting jars

which, when set,

catches the light

like a summer jewel. 

(A Rural Alphabet is available as note cards and can be ordered via Monica's link below.)

Monica is a superb colored pencil artist, and her drawings are truly something to see.  You can see them at her blog, http://colored-pencil-girl.blogspot.com. 

A great spread of food...

...a gathering of friends and OV employees...

Good food, good wine, good friends and great art.

And a good time was had by all!

Monica and I are grateful to Organic Valley for displaying our work.  We took the show down after the reception and it is going to be hung at The Portage Center for the Arts, this coming Wednesday and will hang there until October 2nd.

After that it will hang at the Driftless Cafe in Viroqua, WI, and then at the main library in La Crosse.

We have been asked countless times "when is the book coming out", and we are seriously considering this option.  We are excited and thankful for the wonderful reception that our collaboration has received.

THE ART OF EATING

"There is a communion of more than our bodies when bread is broken and wine is drunk."

 M. F. K. FISHER

I am sure few of you reading this blog have ever heard of M. F. K. Fisher, but I have before me a tome of about 750 pages entitled, The Art of Eating, which is a compilation of the many food related books she wrote during her lifetime.  Fisher was born in 1908 and grew up in California, and she died in 1992.  I discovered this book several years ago, and it felt like a 'coming home' to me.

This book is a testament to the vital relationship between food, culture, people and the earth.  It is an articulation of all I find that I cannot say about my deep and passionate love for food.  In reading this book I feel as though I have found someone who knows in her most profound self, the interconnectedness , of the earth, food, people, love and hunger in all its forms, and how the sharing of the table is a blessing beyond all blessings.  How the sharing of the table, with real love and attention and a lack of indifference, is among the deepest and most fundamental relationships one can form.

With that said, another venture to my table.

 
The continuance of the zucchini harvest has not let up.  It pushes me to peruse my cookbooks and expand my food horizons.  Thus the latest, and perhaps close to one of the best recipes for zucchini I have ever had.

ITALIAN ZUCCHINI PIE

Unlike most vegetable pies, the crust for this one is really a bread dough, flecked with torn bits of fresh basil, mmmm.  (This recipe makes two pies, I cut it in half.)

1/4 c. warm water

1 tbs. active yeast ( I use instant yeast and less than this)

Mix until yeast dissolves and set aside.

1/4 c. milk

1 tbs. olive oil

1 beaten egg 

Combine in a bowl add dissolved yeast and stir.

1/4 c. w.w. flour

1/4 c. Parmesan cheese

1 tsp. salt

1-2 tsp. fresh chopped basil

Blend this in.

2 c. bread flour

Adds 1/2 c. at a time to make a smooth but slightly sticky dough.  Place in a greased bowl and cover with a damp cloth until filling is ready. 

 

Just before placing in a bowl.

Ingredients for the filling:

1/4 c. butter

8 c. thinly sliced zucchini

1-2 c. chopped onions

1 clove garlic minced

1 tbs. each fresh basil and oregano chopped

1 tsp. each fresh thyme, rosemary, sage, parsley and marjoram chopped

1 tsp. salt 

1/2 tsp. pepper

...the herbs straight out of my kitchen garden...

Saute the zucchini and onions in the melted butter for about ten minutes before stirring in the chopped fresh herbs.  Saute briefly.  
 

Combine in a separate bowl, 5 beaten large eggs and 4 c. of shredded cheese, mozzarella or raw milk Jack Style then stir into the zucchini mixture.

In the mean time roll out the dough (divided in half) into about a 12" circle. Place in a lightly greased 10" pie dish.

Spread each 'crust' with 2 tsp. prepared mustard.
 

Divide the zucchini mixture in half, and place each half on the crust.  Sprinkle the top with Parmesan cheese.  Bake in preheated 375 degree oven for about 40-45 minutes.

Watch the outer crust and cover with aluminum foil if browning too much.  
Let stand ten minutes before serving.  

(This recipe is  adapted from Simply in Season, by Mary Beth Lind and Cathleen Hockman-Wert)

I made a tomato cucumber salad to accompany it. 

...cut open...

and served with a slice of corn bread.

I would have loved to have M. F. K. Fisher share our table and meal that night.

ROASTING TOMAOTES

Tomatoes are coming on pretty strong, basil is bushy, beautiful and oh so aromatic, garlic is dry in the old milk house, and my onions unfortunately  have suffered the heat/drought of the summer, and I find them quite small.  Still I am using them and supplementing with Amish grown.

I know I have posted a recipe for my roasted tomato sauce and roasted pizza sauce in the past, but I have had so many requests for these recipes this summer that I thought I would post it once again.  

I have been roasting tomatoes about every other day for a while now, and anticipate this continuing for several weeks.  Perhaps my favorite part of doing this, is the smell that permeates my kitchen while the sauces are roasting.  Honestly, I wish I could capture that aroma in a photo and post it here for all to enjoy!  Still I love the entire procedure, the gathering from my organic garden, handling and cleaning the produce, preparing it for the oven, and either canning or freezing the results.  There seems little that can top this, as it so readily connects me in some deep fashion to the land, to the old ones and the old ways, and to the future as well.

Begin by assembling the tomatoes, the basil, garlic, olive oil, salt and pepper.

Cleaned and ready for the pan.  I use a 9"x13" glass pan for the tomato sauce and as I don't have two, a smaller one for the pizza sauce.

The steps are entirely the same for both the tomato sauce and the pizza sauce except for one, pizza sauce gets a good helping of dried oregano.  I use the dried instead of fresh because it is far more pungent.  Heavily olive oil the pans, brushing the oil up on the sides and being sure that there is plenty of oil in the bottom of the pan.  It should look more than oiled, with a little extra oil in pan.

Cut up tomatoes (do not peel), onions, garlic, basil...

this is about how much basil I use per pan.  The other ingredients are not measured.  I fill the pan nearly to the top with cut up tomatoes, add one large or two small, or more cut up onions, one very large or two/three small garlic cloves chopped, lots and lots of basil, salt and pepper and a small amount of sugar.  If you are also doing pizza sauce it is at this point you would add the oregano to that pan.  Stir it all with a large spoon, and set in a 375 degree preheated oven.  You should watch this not too closely, but every half hour or so give it a good stir.  The basil that sits at the top can get dark, but in my opinion, that doesn't hurt a thing.  (You should start enjoying the aroma within the first half hour.)

Just out of the oven...

Roast until it reaches your desired thickness, for me it is generally two to three hours.  I also have roasted an hour, shut oven off, gone biking, come back it has continued to thicken, turn oven on and roast another hour or so, etc.  It certainly isn't a precise 'science'.

Once out of the oven, let it cool.  At this point you can do one of two things;  fill containers and freeze, or you can can it.  If you are going to can it you need to add 2 tbs lemon juice or 1/2 tsp. citric acid to each quart before processing for 45 minutes in a hot water bath. (I find that the addition of the acid does not alter the taste when used.)  Prior to doing either of these things, if you do not like chunky sauce, once cooled you can buzz it in a blender.  This pulverizes all the skins and seeds, and becomes a smooth sauce.

My grandmother and mother did not do this with the sauce, but a few years ago with an overabundance of tomatoes and little time, I wondered if there were a faster, easier way.  I played around with roasting, and this recipe emerged.  I love it, and this is mostly what I do now.

Well, not only are the tomatoes abundant, but of course the zucchini are as well.  I have made multiple loaves of zucchini bread, and lots of muffins.  But here is one of our favorite ways to eat zucchini.

Zucchini Patties

Shredded zucchini, chopped onion and garlic, seasoned (Italian) bread crumbs, an egg, fresh parsley chopped, salt and pepper...mix together as for meatballs, and press into patties.  I then press each patty into Panko bread crumbs.  Heat olive oil or canola oil in a fry pan, fry until crisp, turn fry until crisp.

As they fry, I press down on them gently.

These are smelling pretty good at this point, and if you so desire

Add a little cheese and let melt.

When serving at the table I top each patty with a mixture of

chopped tomatoes, cucumbers, onions, garlic, basil and wine vinegar and olive oil...salt and pepper.  (This mixture is hard to resist on its own, and I greedily scarfed down the remaining mixture.)

I served this with fresh corn on the cob, and bread just out of the oven, and fresh muskmelon.  A great meal.

Eggplant Manifestations

For some reason the eggplants I planted this year got stunted and look like very miniature eggplants.  I attribute this to the severe drought we have been under.  As I have to carry water to my very large garden, I watered the 'essential' plants:  tomatoes, cucumbers, lettuce and onions.  The other plants I left to fend for themselves.  Most of them have done very well, despite little water.

I purchased an eggplant from an Amish neighbor's stand, a very firm, large eggplant for only a $1.

One half of the eggplant got sliced into fat, longish 'sticks', brushed with olive oil, sprinkled with salt/pepper, a bit of cumin and chili power and covered with garlic, and let stand for a couple of hours prior to

putting on the grill, along with one red pepper from my garden.

I sliced the pepper and mixed it in with the eggplant for a Mexican take...

laid some on a wheat tortilla

covered that with homemade salsa, shredded cucumber (in the absence of any garden lettuce) shredded cheese, olive slices and fresh tomatoes...

along with fresh corn and melon from my garden, and salsa/chips, this made for a very tasty, quick supper.

The other half of the eggplant went into a Sicilian version of Caponata (growing up we pronounced it 'Capinadina')

...cubed eggplant, cut up onions, lots of garlic, chunks of celery (also from the garden) along with the leaves, fresh tomatoes washed and cut up, and a bit of sugar, salt/pepper...(sometimes with the addition of brined green olives) sauteed in olive oil until soft

...this is delicious in and of itself.  My grandmother used to can this every fall, and in the winter we enjoyed this flavorful dish along with fresh, crusty Italian bread.

As I had dough slow-rising in the refrigerator I thought I would make Calzones stuffed with Caponata....

roll out a piece of dough in  a circle, spread some basil pesto on half,

cover that with some cooled caponato and a sprinkling of Romano cheese, (one could also add shredded raw-milk Jack style cheese, but  I opted for less cheese)

fold over the other half of the dough, pinch the edges as you would for pie dough, brush with beaten egg, and place in a hot oven, 450 degrees, and bake for about 15 minutes.  Watch at the end, it should be firm, and golden

and look like these!

Served with a Sicilian green bean salad this was a meal to be remembered.

The Calzone cut open to reveal the stuffing. 

I only regret that we do not eat meals more times per day, as there are so many wonderful things to do with fresh garden produce. 

EASY AS ....

When I started this blog a couple of years ago, I never intended it to be so very much about food, but that seems to be the direction it is taking.  In the summer, with such a bountiful garden, it is really quite easy to blog about nothing but food, in fact, I could probably update this 'food' blog on a daily basis if I were so inclined.

Easy as...pie...

I have never been one to call pizza, 'pizza pie', to me, a pie is peach or blueberry or apple or custard, etc.  I imagine that pizza got its 'pie' because of the round shape.  I was brought up on pizza.  Every single Saturday my grandmother made bread and when she made bread, she always made pizza.  Never, not even once, did she make a round pizza.  I have only known pizzas in rectangular form, always the size of a cookie sheet.

I know I have blogged about my pizza many times, and here is another pizza entry.  A thought simply popped into my head on Saturday..."what if I grilled the tomatoes, onions and garlic for fresh pizza sauce?"  I couldn't rid myself of this thought, and so

on the grill went lots and lots of fresh from the garden tomatoes washed, de-stemmed, but otherwise intact.  An onion cut in half, and four cloves of garlic in olive oil, wrapped in tinfoil.  

These were grilled until the tomatoes split and charred, and the garlic inside the foil was like cream.

Once that stage was reached, the onion was cut up, the tomatoes smashed and and lots of fresh basil and fresh oregano was added along with some olive oil, salt and pepper and a pinch or two of sugar.

On to the pizza making...

 

The dough just out of the bowl with lots of nice air holes.

Stretched and rolled out to a rectangle

Topped with the 'grilled tomato sauce', Organic Valley's raw milk jack-style cheese, and a grating of Romano cheese.  Put into a 500 degree oven (it was quite cool last night.)

...and here it is...

...along with a cucumber/tomato salad...

I must say that grilling the sauce ingredients made for the best pizza I have ever made.  (Now I know I have said that before, but that was before I grilled the ingredients...)

And now for pie, real pie.  During the terribly hot spell I purchased a lug of peaches, but never did any baking with them as it was too hot to operate the oven.  I froze them all.  Today I took a package of those frozen peaches out...

butter about to be cut into the flour...

peaches slightly defrosted

mixed with 1 c. sugar, 1/2 c. flour, a sprinkling of nutmeg on top and a few bits of butter as well.  (Measurements are a guess, as I don't measure, and in fact this pie, before it went into the oven, weighed 6 1/2 pounds, so no relying on exact measurements.)

ready for the oven

'tarts ready for the oven'

 

When I was a child my mother made pies often.  She always seemed to have extra pie dough which she rolled out, sprinkled with sugar and cinnamon and baked these (we called them tarts) along with the pie. 

tarts just out of the oven, just prior to going into my mouth!

...and the pie just out of the oven...

Peach pie tastes of summer and its golden orange color is stunning, to say nothing of the absolutely delightful mouth-watering aroma.  

I also purchased at the same time a lug of blueberries and one of cherries, they are still waiting in the freezer for their turn.

Tonight an old Sicilian zucchini dish. More on that later.