Blueberry Pancakes

The end result, served for breakfast at my parents' house in Ohio.

Blueberries ripe for the picking

Last week after work a co-worker, Lori, and I headed out to The Blueberry Patch, an organic blueberry farm in Grass Lake. I have driven past this establishment countless times in the past but never stopped. It was time! Time for ripe, luscious, sweet Michigan blueberries! I had never really thought about where blueberries came from before. I had an incorrect idea that they grew on vines or in watery bogs a la cranberries. Imagine my surprise when they turned out to grow on upright shrubs. I took these blueberries down to my parents' in Ohio last weekend where my dad turned them into fantastic blueberry pancakes. I collected almost three pounds of blueberries and have been eating them all week in my regular morning yogurt. I highly recommend the Blueberry Patch as a berry-picking destination for anyone in the Ann Arbor area.

Entrance to the blueberry bush area.

Ready for picking

Lori elbow-deep in ripe blueberries

Sampling the merchandise

Steve Toth, owner of the Blueberry Patch

Fresh Michigan blueberries, washed and ready to use

Blueberry pancakes on the griddle

Getting closer...

Ahhhh...perfection! Blueberry pancakes with a side of bacon and good strong coffee. Maple syrup courtesy of a neighbor who tapped the street's sugar maples and made her own syrup.

Sichuan Dry-Fried Green Beans

The summer's bounty of fresh green beans is upon us. What to do with the flood of beans! Thanks to a generous friend I acquired the book A Canon of Vegetables: 101 Classic Recipes by Raymond Sokolov and in it I found this recipe (page 28). It was just meant to be.

• 6 tbsp canola oil
• 1 lb green beans, ends snipped and cut into 2-inch pieces
• 1/4 lb ground pork
• 1 tbsp rice wine (mirin)
  
• 1 tbsp soy sauce
• 1 1/2 tsp sesame oil

Heat 3 tbsp of the canola oil in a wok or large skillet until the oil smokes. Lower the heat to medium. Add the beans all at once and stir-fry until tender, 6 to 10 minutes. Drain and discard any remaining oil. Set the beans aside.


Heat the remaining 3 tbsp canola oil in the pan until it just begins to smoke. Add the pork and stir-fry for about 30 seconds. Add the rice wine and soy sauce and stir. Return the beans to the pan and stir. Add the sesame oil and stir. Distribute among plates and enjoy!

I had this mystery vegetable in the crisper drawer and decided to shred it to add to this dish. I used my trusty mandoline slicer and julienned the crap out of this thing and added it to the pan with the beans. It browned up nicely and was a pleasant, if slightly bland, addition to the dish. I only found out later that it was kohlrabi. It worked, and that's all I wanted.

I made a batch of brown rice to accompany the bean dish. Everything is better when mixed with brown rice and eaten (clumsily!) with chopsticks. The miracle of the evening was that John ate the green beans without complaining. People. you have no idea how momentous that was!

I'm Stale Like Last Week's Bread...

I know, I haven't been posting. I even have stuff on the camera card that I really need to upload to the 'puter. It was momentous: John ate green beans! And didn't complain!

Things You Never Want To Hear In A Kitchen:

CHOP CHOP CHOP CHOP CHOP CHOP CHOP CHOP CHOP CHOP CHOP CHOP CHOP CHOP CHOP CHOP CHOP CHOP CHOP CHOP CHOP CHOP CHOP CHOP CHOP CHOP CHOP CHOP CHOP CHOP CHUNK

"Uh-oh."'

Quickly inspect thumb.

Whew. Disaster avoided, though my fingernail suffered a fatal wound. I had to put it out of its misery. It's now the shortest of all of my fingernails. I guess good thing for strong fingernails, eh?

Lobster Dinner: A Meal in Pictures

I recently spent a week on vacation in Cape Cod, Massachusetts, with my family. While there, I cooked a couple of meals, my mom and dad cooked a couple, we went out to dinner once, and we had the meal that everyone visiting the New England coast should have: a boiled lobster dinner. We ordered lobster from a fresh seafood place not even a mile away from our beach house in the morning and picked it up that evening, hot and steaming. Here, then, is that meal, told in pictures.

Beer Can Chicken

Whoa.

We just demolished almost an entire whole chicken (Back Forty Acres, of course) which I prepared in the time-honored way of chicken a la redneck, in other words, a chicken with an aluminum beer can shoved up its...! In this case the vintage brew of choice was Budweiser, the grill was Weber, and the dry rub was fragrant.

That bird came off the grill smelling of heaven. I couldn't even wait the dictated 10 minutes before performing the can extraction procedure. The chicken was sliced, diced, and parsed between the three of us (accompanied by roasted red potatoes with olive oil and fresh rosemary and a salad of mixed greens from Tantré Farm) and we set to devouring, and devour we did. The skin was perfectly crisped, the meat juicy, tender, and full of flavor. Ever the model of decorum, I pried the meat from the bone with knife and fork until my baser instincts took over and I cast them aside to take hold of the leg with my bare hands and tear the shreds with my teeth in a savage display of carnivorousness (is that even a word?). I didn't care; no one was watching and this was some of the best damn chicken I've ever eaten. Once dinner was finished we clustered around what was left of the chicken to pick it clean, digging around the skeleton to extract every last shred of flesh. I still have paprika under my fingernails.

Beer Can Chicken (from Weber's Big Book of Grilling):

• 1 tsp dry mustard
• 1 tsp granulated onion
• 1 tsp paprika
• 1 tsp kosher salt
• 1/2 tsp granulated garlic
• 1/2 tsp ground coriander
• 1/2 tsp ground cumin
• 1/2 tsp ground black pepper
  

• 1 whole chicken, 4 to 5 pounds ( the one I used tonight was 3.6 lbs)
• Vegetable oil
• 1 16-ounce can of beer (we used a standard 12-oz can because our chicken was smaller)
  

In a small bowl combine the dry rub ingredients. Remove and discard the neck, giblets, and any excess fat (if present) from the chicken. Rinse the chicken, inside and out, under cold water and pat dry with paper towels. Rub all over with a small amount of vegetable oil and season inside and out with the dry rub.

Open the beer can and pour off (or drink!) half the beer. Set the half-full can on a flat surface and slide the chicken over the top so the can fits inside the body cavity. Transfer the bird to the grill, keeping the can upright, and carefully balance it on its two legs and the can. Grill over indirect medium heat until the juices run clear and the internal temperature reaches 170 deg F in the breast and 180 deg F in the thigh, about 1 1/4 to 1 1/2 hours (depending on bird size). Carefully remove the chicken and can from the grill (don't spill the beer). Let the chicken rest for 10 minutes before lifting it from the can. Discard the hot beer. Cut the chicken into pieces and serve.

Bounty of the Earth

The contents of my Week 4 share box. Usually I post about each share after I've made some things from the vegetables within, but this week it was all too pretty to just divide into bags and stick in the fridge.

I think...I'm going to make myself a gin smash with some of that fragrant spearmint and contemplate what I can make for dinner tonight.

Just Beet It (Tantré Farm Week 4)

Beets, beets, the musical root, the more you eat, the more you...wait a minute...wrong plant.

Yes, this was the first week beets were included in my farm share box. Having never once eaten beets in my entire life (as far as I know), I had no preconceived prejudice against their taste; indeed, the only things I knew of beets were 1) the pickled and canned ones look kind of gross and 2) their juice will stain everything. More on that in a bit.

I saw, somewhere, a recipe for a roasted beet and goat cheese salad. I can get behind anything that involves goat cheese. I couldn't remember where I had seen said recipe, but a search of the food blogs in my Google Reader lineup yielded this recipe from 64 Square Ft Kitchen. It wasn't the exact one I had my vague memory of, but looked even better. How can you go wrong with roasted shallots, toasted almonds and a honey-lemon juice dressing? I also decided to whip up a quick side dish of wilted beet greens with sesame seeds. Might as well eat the whole beet, right?

Beets and shallots and olive oil, oh my! (And don't forget the salt and pepper!)

Trying to stay loyal to the local!

Can this really be called a salad? I could have eaten this delicious dish as my entire meal.

As for the beet greens:

Washed

Chopped

And sautéed.

Sesame Beet Greens (recipe from the Tantré Farm Week 3 Newsletter or Learning to Eat Locally):

• Greens from 4 to 6 beets, cut off 1 inch from root
• 1 tbsp sesame oil
• 3 cloves garlic, crushed
• 1/4 cup sesame seeds
• 1 tbsp soy sauce
  

Rinse and dry beet greens. Slice them across the stem into 1-inch strips. Heat sesame oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat. Add garlic, sesame seeds, and about half of the greens. Add soy sauce and the rest of the greens. Cook, stirring, until greens have wilted and stems are tender, about 3 to 4 minutes.

Now, back to my observation that beet juice will stain everything. And I do mean everything. I managed to avoid getting beet juice on me (a miracle) or anything else on Monday night, the night I made the salad. However...this morning after my run...when I used the bathroom...well, let's just say if I didn't know I had eaten beets recently, I would have thought I was undergoing a catastrophic internal hemorrhage.

You learn something new every day!