Harvesting Wild Nettles

This is the time of year for nettles. They grow abundantly in the Pacific Northwest and are one of the earliest available wild greens in the spring.  Pick plants with gloves when they are young and harvest only the tops. Nettles are safe to eat after they have been blanched for several minutes.  They're practical to make with pasta because you can use the boiling water for both.

Nettle Pesto & Marinara

Wild harveseted nettles make a great pesto. This batch had a pound of blanched nettles, garlic, salt, toasted walnuts, extra virgin olive oil, and a slice of provolone cheese.  Pouring a thin layer of olive oil on top has preservative effects.



You can also make a great marinara with nettles.  Sautee an onion with garlic, pepper, and herbs.    In a blender puree 1 or 2 large cans of tomatoes with chopped blanched nettles and add back to the onion garlic sautee.

Nettles are very practical to make with pasta because you can reuse the boiling water for blanching the nettles for the pasta.

Nettle Soup

I made this wonderful nettle soup with several pounds of blanched nettles, two sautéed onions with garlic, and some veggie stock.  All then pureed in the blender.

pick your own berrries on Sauvie Island

My boyfriend and I picked berries this weekend at Kruger's Farm on Sauvie island.  They have the best strawberries I've ever eaten (the small "Hood" variety).  We got 7 lbs of strawberries, blueberries, and raspberries for $13.   Pick-your-own fruit is awesome because it's inexpensive, and you can get enough to make a batch of preserves or freeze some so you can eat them all year long.  A dehydrator is a nice thing to have too.  You can add dried berries to trail mixes or granola.  

During the hot months I trade out my usual oatmeal for cold cereal.  I made granola from this recipe on the Kitchen Sink Recipes blog that was fantastic with yogurt and fresh berries.  It's funny how granola is marketed as a health food, but you realize when you make it yourself how much sugar and oil it has.  I guess it depends on recipe.  Regardless, I'm totally sold on the idea of making my own breakfast cereals.  They're really cost effective to make and have so much more nutritional value than their store-bought counterparts.  I want to make muesli next time.  This recipe on the Etsy blog looks great. 

Red Lentil Soup with Lime

I made this very delicious curry soup from Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone by Deborah Madison.  It takes only half an hour to make. 

Red Lentil Soup with Lime

2 C split red lentils, rinsed several times
1 T turmeric
4 T butter
salt
1 large onion
2 t ground cumin
1.5 t mustard seeds
1 bunch chopped cilantro, about 1 C
juice of 3 limes
1 bunch large spinach leaves, chopped into small pieces
1 C cooked rice
4 to 6 T yogurt

Simmer lentils covered with 2.5 quarts water, turmeric, and 1T of the butter for about 20 min until soft.  While simmering cook the onion in 2 T butter with cumin and mustard, when soft after about 15 minutes add the cilantro and cook for 1 min.  Add to soup and add lime juice.

I doubled the recipe, and the leftovers froze very well.  I garnished with rice, parsley, plain yogurt, and nettles instead of spinach.  I used whole cumin and mustard seeds and ground them myself in my molcajete.  I might try adding only a half tablespoon salt next time.  The turmeric seems to enhance the saltiness.

baking Tartine bread









I've been baking from the Tartine Bread cookbook.  It's an involved process, but the bread is the best I've ever made.  I've always wondered how artisan bread has the blistery, shiny crust and airy, holey interior, and this book has demystified that.  It explains creating your own starter (yeast culture), and fermenting and rising the dough, giving it "turns" every half an hour.  No kneading involved.  Baking is done in a cast iron dutch oven with a lid for the first half of the bake, which seals in the moisture.

My main difficulty is getting my loaf to rise high.  It usually deflates quite a bit when I drop it in the dutch over after the final rise.  It stuck to the towel the first time, which flattened it significantly as I pulled it off.  Since then I've made sure to heavily flour the towel.  The recipe makes two loaves, and I usually just leave then other other half of the dough in the frig for pizza crust or to bake a more sour loaf days later.  I also condensed the long master recipe onto a small sheet of paper that was much less annoying to reference during the process.   

Check out my friend Andrew's blog: Secret Restaurant Portland, who first showed me this book.


my most recent and best attempt!   making the two loves at once was interesting, as you can really get a sense of how the shaping and scoring affects the final loaf.  these two had the airiest texture of any i've made.







attempt #3-  this dough sat in the refrigorator for several days and was wetter and more sour





molcajete

This is a molcajete, the traditional mortar and pestle tool of Mexico and Central America.  They've also been found at archaeological sites in the Southwest.  These have been used since ancient times for making salsa and grinding spices.  It is made of hard, porous volcanic rock.  My boyfriend's mom gave this to me.  It belonged to her grandmother and is around 100 years old.  If taken care of they can last for many generations and improve with age.  I love possessions like this.  The molcajete gives a texture to salsas that is far superior to the blender and also makes a beautiful bowl for presentation.  I only recently tried grinding spices in it.   (I didn't for a long time because I was afraid the flavor would linger.  It didn't though.)  Toasted cumin seeds for chili or cardamom pods for chai tea grind up easily and quickly from the rough surface (much faster than the common ceramic mortar and pestles.)  Grinding food between two stones is also just really fun- though I'm sure my boyfriend's great gradmother would have been grateful for the blender.

cardmom pods for chai tea grind up easily

squash risotto in a slow cooker

I made squash risotto in a slow cooker with my homegrown squashes.  I've never really used Crockpots, but I was inspired to try one out after seeing in the awesome recipes in the The Slow Cook Book.  This is the easiest method for making risotto I've tried.  You add all the ingredients and let it sit 3 hours, eliminating the time spent over the stove stirring and adding water.  The recipie I used was based on the one on pg 318, I just omitted the meat.

Squash Risotto in a slow cooker

serves 4

2T butter

2T olive oil

1 large onion, finely chopped

salt and fresh ground black pepper

3 cloves garlic, minced

2-3 springs thyme (I used a T or so of fresh parsley, rosemary, oregano, and sage.)

1 C white wine ( I used a dash of port.)

1 butternut squash, peeled, seeded, and chopped into 1/2" cubes ( I used a small butternut and acorn.)

1C arborio rice or carnaroli rice

2C hot vegetable stock (I ended up needing 3 or 4.)

1.5C grated pecorino cheese (I used parmesan).

Preheat slow cooker.  Saute onion in olive oil and butter until soft.  add salt, pepper, garlic, squash, and herbs and saute another 5 min.  stir in arborio rice to mixture and combine until everything is coated. transfer to slow cooker and add stock.  cook on low heat for 1.5-2 hours.  you might need to stir halfway through cooking time or add stock.  (I left mine cooking for 3.5-4)  Add the cheese, stir in, and serve.  This recipe would have been better doubled. (I like to have lots of leftovers).

overripe, underripe tomatoes

I'm always sad to see the summer go in Oregon.  It never lasts long enough for my tomatoes either.  I pulled up all the vines last week when the weather got chilly, and I have around 20 lbs of green ones!  It's a bummer. . .  probably more than half my harvest.  They are now in paper bags with bananas in my kitchen, and I hope they will ripen.

 

On the other end of the spectrum, I had several pounds of overripe tomatoes, and I made the best pasta sauce I've ever had with them with onion, olive oil, garlic, red wine, parsley, sage, and rosemary.  They were pretty skunky when I put them in the sauce pan, and I was happily surprised with the transformation.  Homegrown tomatoes have so much flavor you barely have to boil them at all.  Maybe overripe tomatoes are the best for marinara sauce.

These are the seeds mentioned in my previous post.  I left them in the water a bit too long, and they started to germinate.  If you try this don't let them sit longer than 3 or 4 days before you strain and dry them.

gluten free cornbread recipe

My grandmother makes really awesome cornbread.   I was inspired to make it more often after visiting her in Memphis last Christmas.   There were several issues with the recipes I tried that kept that from happening until I came up with this one.  I wanted a recipe for an 8" skillet.  I like the smaller size because cornbread is best hot from the oven, and you don't end up with lots of leftovers.  A lot of the appeal for me in cornbread is in instant gratification.   You don't have to knead or rise dough, and it takes about 5 minutes to mix up the batter and put it in the oven, so baking a fresh one every night is easy.  The other consideration I had is that my boyfriend has wheat allergy.  Surprisingly most cornbread is not gluten free- usually recipes are half wheat and half cornmeal.  Since you’re already halfway there with the cornmeal, cornbread lends itself well to gluten free baking.  In general, I find that a 50/50 substitution of rice and tapioca flour for wheat works well for gluten free baking, and it did here too. 

It turned out to be perfect the first time!  (How often does that happen with improvised baking?!) 
I've made this a bunch of times since last week, and it’s been wonderful to have hot bread so often with dinner.   The texture is really fluffy and light, unlike how gluten free breads can often be, and it has a beautiful brown crunchy crust with cracks all over the top.   We eat it with butter during dinner and with jam or honey for dessert.

Gluten Free Cornbread

1 C cornmeal

1/2 C rice flour
1/2 C tapoica flour
2 T brown sugar
1/2 t baking powder
1/2 t baking soda
1/2 t salt
1 egg
1 C milk

2  T butter or oil  (enough to coat the bottom of your skillet well)

8" skillet

Preheat oven to 425.  Mix dry ingredients. My Grandmother's trick is heating the oil in the pan really hot (till almost smoking) before adding the batter.   Mix egg and milk with dry ingredients and immediately pour into hot skillet (careful not to burn yourself with oil splatters).  Bake for 23 min.  

Also for everyone in Portland or the NW, the bulk section at Winco is a great and affordable place to get the rice and tapioca flour and the other dry ingredients.

If anyone else tries it, I'd like to hear how yours comes out.