Even though I have plenty of vegetables in the garden, I’m in need a little more diversity in my diet. A trip to Russo’s rectified the situation and gave me inspiration for another meal.
Of course, I picked up corn – at peak sweetness, who could resist! And as I scanned the mushrooms, I noticed beautiful coral colored chanterelles: plump and dry, I knew they were fresh. I snatched a half a pound of those too.
When I got home, I opted for a variation on succotash, using the meaty mushrooms in place of the more traditional squash. It makes a lovely accompaniment to roast chicken or burgers.
Chanterelle Corn Succotash 1 – 2 tbs. butter ½ pound chanterelle mushrooms, cut in half or quarters (depending on how large they are) 1 large shallot, peeled and diced 2 – 3 garlic cloves, peeled and minced 2 ears corn, kernels cut off the cob 1 large tomato, diced ¼ cup dry sherry 5 – 6 leaves basil, chiffonade Salt, pepper and lemon juice to taste
1. Heat a large skillet over high heat. Add half the butter. Let it melt and then add the mushrooms, sprinkling the shallots and garlic on top. Season with salt and pepper. Cook without stirring for 3 minutes, or until mushrooms start to brown. Stir and continue cooking for 1 minute more. Add the sherry. Remove mushrooms from pan and set aside.
2. To the mushroom pan, add the remaining butter. Melt over high heat. Add the corn. Season with salt and pepper and cook without stirring for 4 minutes, or until the corn starts to brown and become aromatic. It’s okay if it sticks a little.
3. Add the mushrooms and tomatoes back to the corn pan. Cook for 1 minute more, just to heat through.
4. Remove from heat and put succotash in a serving dish. Season with lemon juice and garnish with basil.
At Restaurant Nora (my first job out of culinary school 17 years ago), I worked the grill station. I was responsible for cooking and plating any entrée that was grilled as well as the vegetables that garnished the entrees from the sauté station. On a usual night I was responsible for 5 of the 10 entrees. By my rough calculation, I cooked 65% of the 200 main dishes that went out of the kitchen. Oh, and I was also cooked the staff meal. I would serve 10 – 12 plates of left-over chicken, steak or fish from the previous night. The waiters swooped into the kitchen to grab their meals. I had no time to eat as I was busy setting up my station.
On one night, Nora decided to test my muster, and assigned to my station nine of the ten entrees. Effie, the sauté cook, had far more experience than me, but could only watch as I spun in circles trying to keep up with all the orders. He helped when he could, but unfortunately, there just wasn’t enough room behind the grill for both of us.
As the orders began to wind down, I fixed myself a little snack: one of my favorite meal — creamy polenta with steamed carrots and demi-glace on top. It was satisfying without being heavy.
I still love creamy polenta, even though it reminds me of the abuse at Nora’s. I guess it’s that good! With the bumper crop of tomatoes from the garden, I’m using them as a sauce, taking a departure from the Nora days.
Creamy Polenta with Fresh Tomatoes Most recipes for polenta suggest a ratio of 4 parts liquid to 1 part polenta. For my taste, the polenta gets too firm. I prefer a 6:1 ratio. And given the continued abundance of kale in my garden, I could help but sauté a bunch with garlic for a garnish.
3 cups liquid: any combination of chicken stock, water, or milk. I prefer 1 cup of each ½ cup coarse corn meal (grits or polenta, do not use instant) 1 tsp. salt ½ tsp. pepper ½ cup freshly grated parmesan or asiago cheese
1-2 tbs. butter 1 large garlic clove, minced 1 small shallot, minced 4 tomatoes, cut in half, seeds removed and diced ¼ cup white wine Salt and pepper to taste
1. Combine the liquid in a pot with salt and pepper. Bring to a boil. Reduce heat to a simmer and whisk in polenta.
2. Continue whisking polenta until it starts to thicken. Then switch to a wooden spoon or rubber spatula. Stir frequently, being sure to scrape the bottom. Continue cooking for 20 minutes.
3. Meanwhile, start the tomato sauce: Heat a large skillet over medium high heat. Add the butter. When it’s melted, add the garlic and shallots and cook for 1 – 2 minutes… just until soft. Add the wine and tomatoes. Continue cooking for about 10 minutes, or until tomatoes start to thicken. The timing depends on how watery your tomatoes are. Season to taste with salt and pepper.
4. When polenta is tender, stir in the cheese. Serve with tomato sauce. Garnsih with basil if available
Perhaps a sign of a recovering economy, entrepreneurs are opening new businesses. Lydia Shire and Jasper White’s new restaurant, Towne Stove and Spirit opened this summer at the Hynes Convention Center. Farmers Juan Mendez and Andrew Rebula, broke ground at their new farm: The Hammock Farmers in Western, MA. You can find them selling produce at the Central Square Farmers’ Market on Mondays. More businesses are slated to open this fall, including Akimenko Meats Butcher Shop and Back Deck Restaurant.
As varied as these new ventures are, the one thing they have in common is that they are all seeking funding. Money is needed to secure a lease with a deposit, purchase equipment and cover operating expenses until the revenues grow to a sustainable level. And money is available. The entrepreneur has several options for funding ranging from traditional to unconventional.
Traditional funding can come from a bank loan or individual investors.
Farmers like Juan and Rebula can seek grants from the MA Department of Agriculture or loans from The Carrot Project. For more established farms looking to grow their business Farm Credit Bureau has a variety of funding options.
Restaurateurs like Towne and Back Deck seek funding from individual investors and banks.
And sustainable food ventures can seek funding from individual investors or bank loans. Slow Money can help connect entrepreneurs with funders.
CSA’s – community supported agriculture – is a way for farmers to fund their business by getting the customer to pay upfront for a season’s worth of produce. In a similar vein, some crafty entrepreneurs have requested funding in the form of donations. The future business owner may offer some sort of in-kind return to the investor.
More so than ever, investors and lenders will want to know that the entrepreneur will be a good steward of their money. And a good business plan is crucial. This will include not only information about the business venture and operating plan, but also an assessment of risks and revenue and expense projections.
You can find business plan templates on the SCORE website.
If you need further assistance evaluating your financing needs or writing your business plan, we’re happy to help. Just send us an email.
I ran into the convenience store the other day to use the ATM. I noticed one of my neighbors picking up a gallon of milk and a dozen eggs. I was baffled to see anyone buy milk there when the Whole Foods Market was just a block away. I had always believed that groceries at the convenience store are more expensive than the supermarket.
As surprised as I was to see this in my neighborhood – with a Whole Foods and Shaw’s Supermarket less than a ½ mile from affordable housing complexes, it got me thinking of the economics of living below the poverty line, when a large grocery store nearby is not an option. Life is more expensive when you have less money. Let me give you a few examples.
If you do not own a car (because you cannot afford it), then you likely rely on public transportation to get to work. The commute can be doubled… cutting into the time that someone might otherwise get a second job, work longer hours at the first job, or even take a course to get a higher paying job. In essence, your earning potential is reduced because of the time spent commuting.
If you have limited income with children, childcare becomes a huge issue. My longtime assistant has a son with sickle-cell anemia. She could not maintain a regular job because she had no one to care for her son when he got sick, which was unfortunately too frequent.
If your income is below a certain level, it’s harder and more expensive to borrow money. When financing a car purchase, for example, (as many people at all income levels do), you will get a higher interest rate, and therefore higher payments. The less you can afford, the more you have to pay. Ironic, isn’t it?
And given the financial and time challenges, going back to school to get skills that would enable you to get a higher paying job is even more difficult.
For many low income, urban dwellers, the corner market is a primary source for groceries. Though reputed to be more expensive than the big chain supermarkets, if you don’t have a car to drive to a larger store, it can be the only option.
Where I live in Cambridge, there are plenty of larger grocery stores within walking distance to all levels of housing. Given the proximity of these larger grocery stores to the low-income housing, I wonder the efficacy of this theory.
To give you a sense of my neighborhood… Prospect Street separates the “high rent” neighborhoods from the “low rent”. I live one block into the low rent side. Just a few blocks away, on the high rent side of Prospect Street is the Whole Foods… One half mile down the road is a Shaw’s – the “conventional” supermarket chain of New England. In between are two public/affordable housing communities and several convenience stores (like Tedeschi where I used the ATM) and also a few small ethnic grocers.
I wanted to know… are the markets closer to affordable housing more expensive than the supermarkets several blocks farther away? On a rainy Monday afternoon, I criss-crossed my neighborhood to check prices on a sample market basket of eggs, milk, tomatoes and spaghetti.
Prices are based on the least expensive option in that category. With the tomatoes, packaging varied, so I converted all into a per pound price.
Whole Foods Distance to Affordable Housing #1: less than 1/10 of a mile
Distance to Affordable Housing #2: ½ mile.
Haitian Grocer Distance to Affordable Housing #1: 3/10 mile
Distance to Affordable Housing #2: 2/10 mile.
Unlike Tedeschi, or other convenience stores, this really had a broad selection of fresh produce and dried goods for a small space – including spices, condiments, paper products and cleaning supplies. They even carried frozen fish. It seemed like someone could do a full grocery shopping here, unlike the Tedeschi’s which carried a very limited selection
Newtowne Market: Distance to Affordable Housing #1: 4/10 mile
Distance to Affordable Housing #2: across the street
This resembled more of a convenience store than a small grocer, with a very limited selection of produce – only tomatoes, peppers, iceberg lettuce and celery. There were no prices on any of the produce or dairy products. Only the butter had a price label at $.99/stick or $3.96/pound.
Shaw’s Distance to Affordable Housing #1: .6 miles
Distance to Affordable Housing #2: less than ½ mile
Eggs: $1.99/dozen (as a side note, if you want to compare the price of cage-free eggs, they were 3.69/dozen – one dollar more than Whole Foods)
Tomatoes: $1.99/pound
Whole Milk: $4.69/gallon
Spaghetti: $1.57/pound
Total Market-basket: $10.24
I’m not surprised to see that the Tedeschi’s was significantly more expensive (though I wonder why anyone would shop there). But I was surprised to see how similar the prices were at Whole Foods to the other local options. And I’m pleased to see that the small Haitian Grocer with no more than 400 square feet of retail space (maybe smaller) was the most economical. And better still, they had a broad selection and were exceedingly close to affordable housing.
What have you noticed in your city and neighborhoods?
Despite all the diversity I’ve had in the garden throughout the season – starting with radishes and beets, then lettuces, strawberries and garlic, I never have a big bang. After a small hit of broccoli and eggplant, I’m just harvesting cucumbers, kale and tomatoes.
I’m eating kale at just about every meal, and I don’t tire of it. But it gets boring when trying to keep my blog content fresh. Even so, kale will continue to be a staple in my garden. With just $2 worth of seeds, I harvest about 2 gallons of leaves a week for 12 weeks. That’s enough to sate me in vegetables and freeze many quart bags to get me through winter. Talk about bang for your buck! Better still, kale is a nutritional powerhouse – there is no food that has more nutritional value per calorie than kale. Win-win if you ask me.
So I will continue to offer you recipes for kale as I figure out new ways to serve it.
This recipe was inspired by the Southern France street-food – socca. A chick pea crepe baked in a cast-iron skillet.
Instead of serving it like a quesadilla, cut into pie-shaped wedges, I rolled the crepe around a filling of wilted kale, pine nuts and currants, and served it with roast chicken and tomatoes.
Crepes
½ cups chick pea flour
¼ cup all purpose flour
1 egg yolk
3/4 cup water (or a mix of cream and water)
1 tbs. extra virgin olive oil, plus extra for cooking
1 bunch kale, washed and coarsely chopped
2 cloves garlic
2 tbs. pine nuts
2 tbs. currants or raisins
¼ tsp. curry powder
1. Sift flours with salt and pepper. Make a well in the center. Add the egg and water. Whisk to incorporate. Add the olive oil. The batter should be the consistency of heavy cream. Let rest for 30 minutes
2. Meanwhile, heat a large skillet over medium heat. Add olive oil, raisins and garlic. When garlic starts to brown add the curry powder and pine nuts. Cook for 1 minute more and add the greens. Cook until just wilted. Coarsely chop the greens. Season with salt and pepper.
3. Heat a non-stick skillet over medium heat. Brush the bottom of the pan with olive oil. Pour in a thin layer of batter, and cook until set. Flip over and cook for 30 seconds more. Remove from pan and repeat process until all the crepes are made.
4. Roll each crepe like a cigar with about 1/2 cup of filling. Reheat just before serving. And slice in half.
The cucumbers and tomatoes are in full production – I’ m harvesting about 5 tomatoes and 3 cucumbers each morning… more than I can consume on my own. So I’ve been having garden parties.
I slow roasted tomato wedges with olive oil, salt, pepper and thyme. By cooking them slowly, the excess water evaporates and the flavors intensify. The drier tomato paired beautifully with fresh ricotta that was seasoned with basil and lemon. I served them with crackers, though a cucumber base would work well too.
And speaking of cucumber bases, I sliced several cucumbers and served them with lobster salad.
Lobster Salad
1 cup chopped lobster meat (about 1/2 pound) 1 – 2 tbs. mayonnaise 1 tbs. fresh tarragon 2 tbs. chopped celery 1 tbs. chopped scallions 1 – 2 tsp. lemon juice salt to taste
Mix everything together. Serve with buttered rolls or cucumber slices.
In the height of summer, my cooking simplifies. I avoid strong flavors as to savor the natural sweetness of the tomatoes and corn, the crunch of the cucumbers and the licorice flavor of the basil and tarragon. Even New England summer seafood dishes are minimally adorned… lobster salad has little more seasoning that lemon and mayonnaise. Fried clams may be the most complex with the pickle-spiked remoulade sauce.
But after weeks of “simple cooking”, I’m craving Chinese… specifically, my new favorite dish – Cantonese Lobster. As I was preparing my shopping list, I realized that I had all the produce ingredients in the garden – cucumbers, scallions, garlic and ginger (and I even had some eggs from the farm in the fridge).
In the Chinese style of entertaining, I decided to prepare a second dish – Beef and Eggplant. Again, I had all the ingredients from the garden except the beef.
It was wholly gratifying to shop at the market only for the meats necessary.
1. In a large boil, combine the beef, 1 tsp. of ginger, gin, 1/4 tsp. salt, 1 tsp. oil and corn starch. Let beef marinate for at least 30 minutes.
2. Cut eggplant into 1/2 inch slices. toss with 1 tsp. salt. Let sit for 5 minutes. Rinse of salt and pat dry eggplant.
3. Mix together ingredients for sauce and set aside.
4. In a large skillet, add 1/4 inch of canola oil. Heat to 350F. Add eggplant slices and cook until deep golden brown, about 10 minutes. Drain the eggplant and set aside. Drain oil from the pan except, one tablespoon. Return pan to heat. Add the garlic and the ginger and cook for 1 minute or until aromatic. Add the beef and stir-fry until the meat loses it's pink edges, about 3 minutes. Add the sauce and cook until it thickens. Stir in the eggplant to coat with sauce.
5. Garnish with scallions.
From the garden: garlic, ginger, scallions, cucumbers, eggplant.
We all have biases about food, how it should look and how it should taste. Some people will see the green, cracked shoulders of a Pineapple Tomato and think it’s bad. Or wait for a beautiful Aunt Ruby’s Green Tomato to turn red, only to see it rot on the windowsill.
Heirloom tomatoes weren’t bred for shelf-life, uniformity or color. Many are oddly shaped with unusual colors ranging from brownish purple to florescent green. The larger tomatoes crack if the balance of rain and sun slips out of alignment. Sometimes, they have bug wholes that need to be cut away. But the flavor is unparalleled.
Even though I labeled the tomatoes in my garden this year, the rains washed away the writing on the little signs. The only variety I recognize with certainty is the pineapple, with its yellowish streaks and reddish hue. In a side by side taste test with other tomatoes, I decided I like this best for its sweet, juicy flavor and lower acidity. The tomatoes are so large that a single tomato will make a generous salad for two people.
After eating the first two in a simple salad, I made a grilled cheese sandwich with the next ripe one. Interestingly, the low acidity I treasured so much straight, made the grilled cheese sandwich too rich. A more acidic tomato would have better balanced the cheese and buttered bread.
I requested a piece of salmon from the thick end. The owner of the store assured me the salmon was sushi grade – a good thing to know when you might consider serving fish rare or raw.
When I got home, I noticed the thin belly-flap. Some fish-mongers may trim this section away because it’s fattier than the center portion. And it has the added challenge of cooking properly – it cooks through so quickly that it would be grossly overcooked before the rest of the fillet is even medium rare.
Knowing that the grade of fish was suitable for eating raw, I opted to slice it off and turn it into a small appetizer. With thin slices of cucumber from the garden, I seasoned it with kaffir lime, chilies and scallions. I drizzled a sweet and sour glaze on top and garnished it with fried shallots.
This turned out to be a refreshingly light way to start off a summer meal.
Salmon and Cucumber Carpaccio
½ cup white vinegar
¼ cup sugar
1 tsp. fish sauce
1 salmon belly
1 cucumber
1 kaffir lime, thinly sliced
1 small red chili, thinly sliced
1 scallion thinly sliced
Sea salt
1 tbs. fried shallots
1. In a small stainless steel pot, combine the vinegar and sugar. Cook over high heat, stirring constantly until the sugar dissolves. Add the chili and fish sauce and cook for 1 minute more. Remove from heat.
2. With a sharp knife, thinly slice the salmon across the grain. Lay the slices on a serving plate. Thinly slice the cucumber and layer it along the salmon.
3. Season the salmon with the kaffir, scallions and sea salt. Drizzle the vinegar reduction on top. Garnish with fried shallots.
