Kitchen Garden Journal

Last Sunday night we hosted our first ever dinner at the farm. It was a great success, and as we bask in the glow of this experience, we have to ask ourselves, “What took us so long?”

Cooking the food we grow at the farm is something we do every day. Each day, one member of the crew cooks lunch for everyone using the vegetables that we’re harvesting in season. It’s a great way to take a break and enjoy the fruits of our collective labors together. In summer, we’re serving lunch for 8 most days of the week.

We were inspired to create the farm lunch by our experiences working in Italy, where sharing a midday meal with coworkers is an essential part of the culture. This way of experiencing the food that we grow is a big part of why we farm. And conversely, the farm exists to promote this way of eating and sharing food.  

We have talked for years about bringing this experience to the general public. This fall, inspired by an increasingly fruitful culinary collaboration with our friends Neftali and Rose, we decided to go for it. Caroline and I planned the menu and did the promotion. Neftali set up the space, got the linens and the tableware. Rose and I were in the kitchen putting out the food while Neftali and Caroline greeted and served the diners. Caroline made the incredible dessert. And we got some great last minute help from our friends Carmela, Alice and Jess.

We served 40 people a five-course family-style Italian meal in our new greenhouse. It was everything that eating in a restaurant isn’t. Seating was communal. The food was simple: few ingredients, mainly vegetables, just handmade home cooking. There was no ordering. Everyone ate his or her fill of everything that we served. Wines were simply there on the tables for taking. There was no waste. The diners served themselves out of communal dishes. What was left over was eaten by the workers and their friends.

Hopefully this simplicity of format allowed people to experience the flavors of the food and to enjoy more fully the company of friends, old and new alike. Everyone seemed to be having a blast. Maybe it was the wine.

We are excited about making this kind of event more a part of what we do as a farm. We really are food people at heart, so it seems like an obvious fit. We are still a little wary of taking on a whole new business (just what we need, right?), but we are encouraged by the reactions we have gotten from people who were there.

Our mission as a farm is about providing great ingredients and inspiring people to cook at home. Several people who were there told us how they were encouraged to go home and cook some of the things that they tasted at the dinner. How often does that happen in a restaurant?

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We are collaborating on this special event with our friends Neftali Duran of El Jardin Bakery in Deerfield and Rose Weiss, who trained at Chez Albert in Amherst and the French Culinary Institute (Caroline's alma mater) in NYC. 

This event is about celebrating good friends, good food and good wine--essential components of the good life.

We're still planning the menu but it promises to be amazing! The service will be family style with several dishes for each course for you to try.

If you can't make it to the dinner - don't worry - you can join us for the after party.

If this goes well stay tuned for more cooking adventures in the future...

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Why is it that the moment for canning and preserving always falls on really really hot days? Everyone with childhood memories of canning remembers two things: the smell and the heat. For many, sadly, the trauma of the heat curtails nostalgic longing for the intoxicating aromas of jam and tomatoes.

Lately, the humidity has been awful and, of course, I seized my opportunity for canning on a particularly disgusting evening. I set out to repeat the most delicious product of last year’s repeated bouts of sweaty, tomato-vapored kitchen delirium: sugo.

Sugo means “sauce” in Italian. Jars of pre-made tomato sauce like Prego are called sugo pronto, ready sauce. My sugo isn’t really a heat-and-serve thing that you just dump on boiled spaghetti, but it does save a lot of time later when making richly flavored sauces.

Sugo is basically tomato puree that also includes onions, carrots, red peppers, celery and herbs.  It’s like tomato puree and vegetable stock all rolled into one. I usually add it to meat sauces for pasta, but it’s great for other things like vegetable soups, dried beans, beef stew, and Spanish rice. It has a distinct sweetness from the onions and peppers and aromatic depth from the carrots and celery. You can feel all the warmth of summer on those cold winter nights.

And, most importantly perhaps, it’s a great way to use up some of the piles of partially rotting but perfectly usable tomatoes, onions and peppers that inevitably accumulate around the farm this time of year.

The method is very similar to my recipe for tomato puree. Basically, what you do is coarsely chunk up all the tomatoes and toss them in a big pot and bring it to a boil. Then, toss in coarsely chopped pieces of all the other vegetables and stew them in the tomato liquid until they’re soft. I also threw in a big bundle of basil and celery leaves that I took out before pureeing . (I also removed the celery so it wouldn’t make the sauce a yucky color: never puree red and green together, it looks like puke. If you have very light colored celery hearts, go ahead and puree them, too.)

So, for Christmas I asked for a mechanized solution to making this and here’s the verdict: the Kitchen Aid food mill attachment is really messy. I have never made such a mess of my clothes while canning; it even shot hot tomato water in my eye. (WTF!) Will I go back to the hand crank method? Hard to say. It was quicker and less physically exhausting, but not by much.

Anyway, if you want to make this—and I encourage you to do so—you can follow the procedure for tomato puree. You’ll find all the little tips and tricks I’ve learned in that post from last year. 

So happy canning, and please, take a shower.

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Last week the New York Times printed a recipe in their food section for a spring vegetable-inspired version of puttanesca. While the recipe sounded pretty good to me, the fresh, seasonal ingredients seemed an insult to the character of puttanesca. 

Puttanesca, named for the Neapolitan prostitutes who supposedly made pasta this way, is traditionally spaghetti with a sauce of tomatoes, chilies, anchovies, capers and olives. Its beauty lies in the fact that it can be made from what you already have in the pantry. Apparently, the prostitutes worked at night and slept too late to get to the market before the produce stalls had been packed up. But that didn’t stop their creativity in the kitchen.

So why put all those fresh flavors of spring in there, straight from the farmers’ market? 

Why not put them into a carbonara? After all, carbonara (named for charcoal makers who work in the winter and early spring in the forests) is an egg emulsion. And egg emulsions are classically employed to dress up springtime delicacies. 

Asparagus and hollandaise anyone? How about some spinach on those Eggs Benedict? So why not spring garlic (or spinach or asparagus, for that matter) in your carbonara? I love spring garlic with eggs! 

And it seems to me that if those Apennine wood cutters found a way to keep some pigs and chickens around, they most certainly would have planted themselves a little patch of garlic, too. 

A quick perusal of the internet turned up this recipe for a garlic scape-based carbonara from the very nice Italian cooking blog Sarah’s Cucina Bella:

Garlic Scape Carbonara

• 1/2 lb campanella pasta, or shape of your choosing
• 4 slices bacon (about 3 1/4 ounces), chopped
• 1/4 cup chopped garlic scapes (or spring garlic)
• 2 large eggs
• 1/4 tsp kosher salt
• 1/4 tsp red pepper flakes
• 1/2 cup freshly grated Romano cheese

Set a pot of water to boiling on the stove and cook the campanella pasta (or desired shape).

While it’s cooking, cook the bacon over medium heat until browned. Remove the bacon pieces with a slotted spoon and add the garlic scapes. Cook until soft (2-3 minutes). Remove from the pan with a slotted spoon. (Drain both the bacon and the garlic scapes on a paper towel).

Whisk together the eggs, salt and red pepper flakes.

When the pasta is done, quickly remove it from the stove and set a different burner to low heat. Drain the pasta and add it back to the pot, on the burner set to low. Stir in the garlic scapes and bacon. Add the egg mixture and stir feverishly for 3-4 minutes until sauce is thick and creamy. Don’t let it overcook or it will be gloppy. Sprinkle the romano cheese in, a little at a time, and stir to combine. Don’t add it all at once or it won’t mix throughout the pasta as well (since it will clump).

Serve immediately.

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La pasta fatta in casa. Mmmm.... Fresh, homemade pasta. I couldn't think of a better way to use the hearty whole grains from our local-grain share than by making pasta. And with a little preparation and a little practice, it can become a fairly quick and easy way to get a decadent yet healthy dinner on the table. (The kids will love it, too!)

This post will show you step-by-step how to get from raw whole spelt berries to a finished, sauced pasta. The first thing you want to do is wash and dry your grain by rinsing it in a large bowl of water and pouring off any dust and impurities that float. Next, spread the grain in a single layer on a baking sheet and dry it in a low oven, 200 degrees for 30 minutes, stirring it around from time to time.

Once your grain is ready to grind, bring it to your local communal mill, or, failing that, grind it with a hand grinder. The folks at Wheatberry Bakery and Cafe in Amherst (who organize the grain CSA) have installed for public use a little electric-powered stone mill that makes quick business of grinding your own high-quality fresh flour. (They also sell locally grown whole grains for grinding on site.) On a recent morning I spent about half an hour there and left with several large sacks of flour (wheat, rye and spelt) and a delicious cup of fair-trade organic coffee. 

Spelt Fettucine with Alfredo Sauce

• 2 1/2 cups whole spelt flour 

• 3 eggs

• salt

• 1 cup heavy cream

• 3 Tbsp salted butter

• 2/3 cup freshly grated parmigiano cheese 

• the slightest hint of freshly grated nutmeg

Now, if you read Mark Bittman, he recently suggested that making homemade pasta was intimidating with all the boards covered with flour and wells for eggs and all that (and offers an alternate way of making the dough). But I think he does us a disservice because once you practice the traditional method it becomes clear why people have done it this way for centuries: there's no way to mess it up. And after a few times, it becomes second hand.

1. Mix the dough. Pour the flour on to a clean surface and make a little hole in the center. Crack the eggs into the hole and begin to beat them with a fork. Scoop up flour from the edges with your other hand and sprinkle it into the center as you stir. Two tips: always mix in the same direction (clockwise, usually) and do not put down the fork until your dough comes together. The photo above shows the proper consistency for switching between fork-stirring and hand-kneading.

2. Knead the dough, incorporating as much of the remaining flour as possible. (Sometimes it helps to scrape up the stuck bits of eggy flakes along with the rest of the flour and sift it all through a fine sieve, so that you're left with only pure flour and no crusty bits.) Knead flour into the dough until it becomes a smooth ball and is no longer sticky, but before there is too much flour that the dough no longer absorbs it. Like so:

3. Rest the dough.Wrap the dough in plastic wrap and rest it for at least 30 minutes at room temperature. Failure to rest the dough will result in lots of problems when rolling it into sheets. 

4.Roll out the dough. Lily and Oliver demonstrate how to use the pasta rolling machine. Cut off a chunk of dough about the size of a golf ball and coat liberally with flour (I used AP flour for this step). Run the dough through the machine on the widest setting (1) a couple of times, dusting with flour and folding it over itself before running it through again. This is a kind of final kneading to make sure the dough is dry enough to run through the thinner settings without getting sticky. Then dust with flour again and roll the dough to the desired thinness. (My machine has thickness settings 1-6, I roll the dough using 1, 3 & 5. I find 6 to be far too thin for most applications and the 5 thickness gives the pasta a nice chewy texture.)   

5. Cut the dough into fettucine pasta. Most pasta rollers come with a cutting attachment that is pretty straightforward to use. Cut each sheet as soon as it you roll it out, as it's easier to leave the cut pasta lying around than it is to leave the sheets. Spread out the finished pasta on a floured board and finish rolling and cutting the rest of the dough. 

(Note: in a dry house in the wintertime you can take certain liberties with fresh pasta. If you are making pasta in the summer, extreme care must be taken to prevent the cut pasta from absorbing moisture from the air and sticking together. An old-fashioned dowel clothes dryer works well.) 

6. Boil the pasta. Bring 5 quarts of water to a rolling boil. Add 2 Tbsp salt. (I use the kind of sea salt that looks like you could spread it on your driveway.) Add the noodles and cook until "al dente," or about 3-5 minutes. Do not overcook them, especially with spelt, or they will disintegrate. 

7. Drain the pasta into a sieve and plunge it into a large bowl of cold water to stop the cooking. This will both prevent the pasta from getting mushy and wash away the excess starch from the noodles that might cause your sauce to do weird things. Once cool, drain again and toss with a little bit of vegetable oil to prevent them from sticking together. (This also gives you greater flexibility in serving; if you are making fresh pasta for company, all this can be done well in advance. Refrigerate the pasta until ready to serve.) 

8. Make the sauce. Add the cream, butter, cheese and nutmeg to a pot or pan large enough to hold the pasta. Heat gently and simmer until the cream reduces and thickens slightly, about 5 minutes, stirring often. (This sauce couldn't be easier or more basic, which begs the question why alfredo sauce usually comes from a packet. It's one of those head-scratchers.)

9. Mix and serve with additional cheese and fresh pepper. (I use this photo to show that Caroline really did have a hand in the cooking. ;) Buon'appetito!

"Papa, this is the best thing I have ever eaten."

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Savoy cabbage is the best type for cooking. It is very tender due to its tightly packed thin leaves. When cooked until melting, it is divine.

Across northern Italy, it is a winter staple. Le verze, as it is called, is beloved. It heralds the season of hearty soups and stews; when other vegetables are scarce, it becomes the main event. It is a vegetable per eccellenza to eat with meats. Especially pork.

In the traditional Italian agricultural calendar, this time of year—October, November, December—is the time to kill the family pig. Like Thanksgiving, it is a time of year when the harvests are done and the family gathers together. But unlike Thanksgiving, the killing of the animal, rather than the eating, is the central theme.  (The eating is supposed to last all winter). It’s a lot of work, and requires a lot of hands. There’s a whole lot of meat to deal with.

If you’ve never dealt with a freshly killed pig, one of the first things to know is that there are certain cuts of meat that aren’t really worth saving. They’re not much good for making sausages or hams or bacon. These are the head, the feet, the bony ribs, the skin, the organs. But they’re too good to waste, so making things out of them to eat right away becomes job number one. These dishes sustain the family as they perform the work of making the sausages and curing the bacon.

And, in Northern Italy, first on the list of accompaniments to these parts is…? You guessed it, the only fresh vegetable that’s still in season, le verze. So, the Italian peasant version of Thanksgiving dinner is essentially a bubbling pot of cabbage and pork.

So in celebration of pig killing season, here’s a recipe for a traditional pork and cabbage stew from Lombardy, called la cassoeula.

1.5 kg Savoy cabbage
800g spare ribs
250g fresh pork rind
300g sausages
2 pig feet
1 pig ear
1 snout (optional)
1 tail (optional)
200g carrots
200g celery
200g onion
50g butter
glass of white wine (optional)
meat broth
salt & pepper

Boil the feet (cut in half), the skin, and the ear in water for an hour. This removes some of the fat. Boil more or less time depending on how much fat you want to remove.

In a large stew pot, heat the butter over a low flame and saute the onion, sliced. Add the ribs, feet, and the ear and skin cut in thin strips. Brown the meat nicely over a lively flame. Add celery & carrot, the glass of wine, and let evaporate. Add a ladle of broth and salt & pepper and stir well. Cover and leave on a slow simmer for at least 1 hour, making sure it doesn't stick. Add more broth if necessary.

Clean the cabbages and wilt with a little water over a low flame in a covered pot 5-10 minutes. Drain and add to the pot of meat along with the sausages, cut in pieces or left whole. Cover and cook another 30-45 minutes over a moderate flame, checking that it doesn't stick and skimming the fat from time to time.

Serve piping hot with polenta and a good red wine.

See the original recipe, in Italian, here.

You can also check out about.com’s Italian food section. There is a section totally devoted to Savoy cabbage with links to many fine recipes, including risi e verze (Venetian cabbage and rice) and Pizzoccheri (buckwheat pasta with cabbage, cheese, and sage butter).

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• 1 lb penne pasta
• 5-6 brightly colored sweet peppers
• Olive oil
• 2 cloves garlic
• 8 oz sweet Italian sausage meat
• 1 pint tomato puree
• Salt & pepper ½ cup heavy cream
• Freshly torn basil leaves

Heat the oven to 400 degrees. Remove stems and seeds from peppers and cut into bite sized pieces. Toss with a liberal amount of olive oil. Roast peppers for 1 hour on a large baking sheet, stirring from time to time, until limp and blistered. Set aside. Heat the pasta water. Brown the sausage meat in a little olive oil in a wide heavy skillet. (We like to use Pekarski’s sausage from their family smokehouse in S. Deerfield. They use plenty of fat and a nice amount of fennel seed in their mix.) If you have links, squeeze the filling out of the casings. When the meat is nice and brown, add the finely minced garlic and sauté for another 2-3 minutes. Add the tomato puree and roasted peppers. Cook the sauce for 10 minutes or so to meld the flavors (just long enough for your pasta to cook).  Remove sauce from the heat and stir in the cream and basil leaves. Season with salt and pepper to taste. (For a spicy version, add a few shakes of pepper flakes when you add the garlic.) Combine with the pasta and serve with freshly grated parmesan cheese. Even better the next day.

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Red or white?  This is our version, a nice compromise.

• 1 lb. spaghetti, linguine, or cappellini
• 2 lbs. steamer clams, or 24 littlenecks
• 1-2 pints cherry tomatoes, halved
• 1 head garlic
• 1/2 glass white wine
• 1/4 cup olive oil
• fresh basil and/or parsley, chopped
• salt & pepper

Scrub the clams and soak them in cold water for an hour or so to reduce the sandiness. Put up some water for the pasta.  Meanwhile slice or chop the garlic as desired and sauté gently in the olive oil in a large pan with a tight fitting lid. When the garlic is not yet brown but starting to get sticky, toss in the clams, tomatoes, and herbs. Put on the lid and cook over high just until the clams open, shaking everything around from time to time. Remove from heat and discard any unopened clams.  Sprinkle with pepper and taste for salt.  Now, at this point you have two options*: you can fish out the clams and scrape their bodies back into the sauce (makes it less messy and time consuming to eat) or you can simply toss your al dente pasta right in the pan and serve it up, steaming, brothy, shells and all.  Almost as good as being at the Cape! (Better yet, take your veggies with you and make it out there!)
*If using steamers, you’ll need to shell and de-”sock” them before returning them to the sauce.

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This recipe has been a favorite of ours for years, adapted from Jack Bishop's The Complete Italian Vegetarian Cookbook.

• For the Basil-Garlic Crust
• 1/3 cup fresh basil leaves
• 1 medium garlic clove
• 1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/2 tsp kosher salt
• 8 Tbsp unsalted butter, chilled and cut in 8 pieces
• 4-5 Tbsp cold water

Place basil and garlic in the bowl of the Cuisinart fitted with the normal blade. Process until finely chopped, occasionally scraping the sides of the bowl with a spatula. Add flour and salt and pulse to incorporate. Add the butter and pulse a few times until the mixture is the size of peas. Drizzle in the water and pulse until the dough comes together into a ball. Remove and flatten into a disc wrapped in plastic wrap. Chill at least 1 hour.

• For the Tart
• 8 oz fresh mozzarella, sliced thin
• 2 large, ripe tomatoes (about 1 lb), sliced thin
• salt and pepper
• 1 Tbsp extra-virgin olive oil

Fit the dough into a 10-inch tart pan with a removable bottom. Preheat the oven to 375. Line the bottom of the tart shell with mozzarella slices covering it completely. Arrange tomato slices over the cheese in an overlapping ring starting along the outside edge and another on the inside to cover the entire shell. Sprinkle with salt and pepper and drizzle with the oil. Bake until the crust is golden brown and the cheese has golden blisters, about 35-40 minutes. Cool at least 5 minutes before slicing, or serve at room temperature.

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