Posts under ‘recipes’

Sport Hill Farm has escarole!
Escarole (that’s ’scarole, in Bronx Italian) is a favorite of mine from childhood. Escarole is a broad, curly-leaf endive, high in vitamin A, iron, and potassium.
For the past few years, I’ve been getting mine over the border since escarole is not as popular a vegetable here in CT as it is [...]

When it comes to comfort foods, hot cereal tops the list for me—year round. My absolute favorite is farina (cream of wheat for the non-Italians) but there isn’t a local source. A close second is oatmeal. Happily, there is a local source for oatmeal (my second favorite hot cereal): Lightning Tree Farm in Millbrook, NY [...]

This week’s Dark Days Eat Local Challenge meal was Red Wine Braised Short Ribs and the recipe was locally sourced as well as the food! (The recipe is from Fine Cooking, which is published by Taunton Press, a local business.)

I was faithful to the recipe, substituting ingredients only to favor local, seasonal fare.

beef short ribs [...]

Here’s another dish inspired by my great Puerto Rican vaycay: pumpkin fritters, also called Barriguitas De Viejas. I adapted my recipe from this one and this one.

1-3/4 cups cooked, mashed pumpkin. I used the remaining half of the Long Island Cheese Pumpkin squash I used for the Habichuelas. I suspect you can use nearly [...]

Happy Thanksgiving to all!

I love this holiday—the connection and celebration between the farmers, eaters, and Providence.
Doing a local Thanksgiving in New England should be like fishing in a barrel since Thanksgiving was invented in New England as a way of celebrating the bounty. This year, I was only slightly tempted to send the men-folk out [...]

This week’s One Local Summer Challenge meal is escarole and bean soup.
To make proper escarole and bean soup, you need cannellini beans (also called white kidney beans). You could use Navy beans or some other white bean, but it really isn’t the same.
I’ve been looking to locally source cannelloni beans (or any bean for that [...]

A number of people have told me that they’d buy more greens from the farmers markets, but just don’t know how to prepare them. While there are lots of exceptional recipes out there, I generally default to my default method of cooking greens: sauté garlic in olive oil, add broth or water, add cleaned, cut [...]

I had a fabulously local Thanksgiving! The meal was the culmination of a years’ worth of locavoring with several dishes from the freezer, jars, and vacuum-sealed packages, where they’d been since they were picked and preserved in season. I enjoyed collecting and preparing the various menu items as much as I did eating them!  I [...]

Saturday’s local dinner (not part of any challenge) was:

Homemade corn chips with salsa verde (recipes below)
Pan sauteéd chicken breasts (from Ox Hollow) with cumin (not local)
Steamed broccoli (from Waldingfield)

Salsa Verde Recipe

1 lb tomatillos (from Rose’s)
1 cilantro ice cube (from our freezer, most likely from Missy’s of Goshen, NY)
2 cloves of garlic (from our pantry, local [...]

Macoun season is coming to a close so it’s time to gather up as many of these delectable apples and save them for the cold dark days to come.
We core and section the apples and simmer them in about one inch of cider. When the sections are fork tender, we crank them through the food [...]