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New Year’s Dinner 2021 – Lucky and Local

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2020 was so bad, even people who don’t believe in “lucky foods” made them this year. I’m not one of those people—I have a fair amount of Sicilian in me and so I respect the superstitions. Plus, I can’t resist an opportunity to do a local version of a holiday-appropriate meal. So this is my lucky local 2021 meal.

I made yellow-eyed peas (mostly) following this recipe from My Clean Kitchen.
The site says, “yellow eyed peas are thought to bring not just luck, but luck in the form of GOLD.” Additionally, pork is supposed to inspire progress in the new year.

I  scored the beans at Stone Gardens Farm. They sell them at their farm stand for a neighboring farmer they know. I used an onion from Wild Carrot Farm, carrots from The Farm, Woodbury, garlic from Maple Bank Farm, kale from Waldingfield Farm, and a smoked ham hock from Stuarts Family Farm.

I made cornbread muffins (following this recipe) using
Patti Popp’s renowned corn meal from Sport Hill Farm, flour from Farmer Ground, NY, and buttermilk from Hawthorne Valley.

The three foods are meant to be eaten together: black-eyed peas (or their heirloom yellow-eyed cousins) bring coins, greens (the kale) bring folding money (dollars), and the yellow-hued cornbread promises gold.

I made southern biscuits (following this recipe) with AP flour from Farmer Ground, NY, Arethusa butter, and Hawthorne Valley buttermilk. I also used Red Fife wheat from Anson Mills. They’re not local, but they’re deliberate about their grains and their growing practices and Red Fife wheat is delicious.

There are no promises of luck for eating the southern biscuits—I made them to use up the rest of the buttermilk! (They were delicious.)

So this is it 2021. You don’t have to be the bestest year evah. You just have to be better than 2020. That shouldn’t be too difficult.

Did I mention, I love my farmers!

locavore, putting by, recipes

Hot pepper sandwich spread

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I love a good hot pepper relish to spread on my sandwiches. Not too hot. It needs to have flavor but also just enough zing to make a sandwich more interesting. Last year, I got some green tomatoes and hot peppers from a friend and thought that would make a flavorful relish, and yes, it was flavorful, but it turned out to be too mild. It was pretty hot when I taste-tested it but once it had to compete with the rest of the sandwich, it lost its zing.

This year, I got some hot Thai peppers from Daffodil Hill Growers and thought I’d use them in my next attempt. There are many kinds of Thai chili peppers and these are not the super hot ones you’d get in a Thai restaurant. Due to a series of unfortunate events, Daffodil is unable to determine the exact name of this pepper. Maple Bank Farm has a very similar looking (and by similar I mean identical) hot chili pepper that they said is Ring of Fire. Their Ring of Fire pepper is similar in heat to their hot red cherry pepper.

I’m finding conflicting Scoville heat ratings on both the Ring of Fire peppers and the hot cherry peppers.  For example, this place says Ring of Fire is 70,000-85,000 Scoville units while this place says 20,000. I wonder if this device is a real thing? Certainly, it would settle a lot of ambiguity.

All this is to say, I can’t give you a definitive name nor the actual Scoville rating of either pepper. Practically speaking, both of these hot peppers are in the jalapeño neighborhood of heat, give or take.

Speaking of Maple Bank and hot red cherry peppers, these are the other peppers I used in my mix.

I made a small batch of the relish I mostly following this recipe.  I used:

  • 9 oz Daffodil’s green Thai chili peppers (including the seeds)
  • 10 oz Maple Bank’s hot red cherry peppers (including the seeds)
  • 10 oz of red onions from Fort Hill Farm
  • 3 garlic cloves from Mountain View Farm
  • 4 tsp sea salt
  • 3/4 cup apple cider vinegar
  • 6 Tbsp of Woodbury Sugar Shed‘s honey

Chopped ingredientsChop the peppers, onions, and garlic in the food processor. Bring the vinegar, honey, and salt to a boil, add the chopped veggies, and simmer for 10 minutes. Let it cool, then put it in jars and into the refrigerator. I give it about a week for the flavors to develop before diving in.

It was a huge hit at my company’s picnic, which consisted predominantly of engineers, so there’s that.

One pint of hot pepper relish

Realizing I was going to need a lot more peppers to make enough to last the year, I quickly engaged my farmers at Daffodil and Maple Bank and over the next few weeks, they scrounged up enough peppers for me to make 5 more pints. Thanks!!

If you’re curious about how the Scoville scale works, see this article.

 

locavore, recipes

Cod Cakes and Sauce

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I made some cod cakes for Christmas Eve and used a sauce from a different fish cake recipe. It was a hit with the family, particularly since the cod cakes had no bread inside. Here are the recipes.

The Cod Fish Cakes are from a user named DRAGON11 at Allrecipes.com.

2 large potatoes, peeled and halved
1 lb cod fillets, cubed
1 tbsp butter
1 tbsp grated onion
1 tbsp chopped fresh parsley
1 egg
3 tbsp oil for frying

  1. Place the potatoes in a large pot of water, bring the water to a boil. Let the potatoes cook until they are almost tender.
  2. Add the fish to the pot and let the fish and potatoes cook until they are both soft. Drain well and transfer the potatoes and fish to a large mixing bowl.
  3. Add butter, onion, parsley, and egg to the bowl; mash the mixture together. Mold the mixture into patties.
  4. Heat oil in a large skillet over a medium-high heat. Fry the patties on both sides until golden brown. Drain on paper towels before serving.

The sauce is a Dijon Tartar Sauce from a user named chia2160 at Food.com. Mix the following ingredients together and refrigerate.

1/2 cup mayonnaise
3 tbsp chopped onions
3 tbsp pickle relish
2 tbsp lemon juice
2 tbsp Dijon mustard

I used a homemade green tomato relish and homemade country Dijon mustard.

locavore, recipes

Best Biscuits Evah

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biscuits02

I’d made some pulled pork and love to have it on southern-style biscuits. I went in search of an Alton Brown recipe, since he’s my go-to guy when there’s science involved (that is to say, when proportions, timing, and ingredient reactions matter). I found this recipe for southern buttermilk biscuits.

I made a few substitutions to keep it as local as possible, as indicated:

Since yogurt is an acidified dairy product, the chemical reaction we’d get with the buttermilk and the baking soda is the same and the biscuits will rise like we expect. Since shortening is a substitute for lard, I just went back to the original ingredient. (Major thanks to the folks at Saugatuck Craft for making lard!)

I did everything else just the way Alton wrote it:

Preheat oven to 450 degrees (F).

In a large mixing bowl, combine flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt. Using your fingertips, rub butter and shortening into dry ingredients until mixture looks like crumbs. (The faster the better, you don’t want the fats to melt.) Make a well in the center and pour in the chilled buttermilk. Stir just until the dough comes together. The dough will be very sticky.

Turn dough onto floured surface, dust top with flour and gently fold dough over on itself 5 or 6 times. Press into a 1-inch thick round. Cut out biscuits with a 2-inch cutter, being sure to push straight down through the dough. Place biscuits on baking sheet so that they just touch. Reform scrap dough, working it as little as possible and continue cutting. (Biscuits from the second pass will not be quite as light as those from the first, but hey, that’s life.)

Bake until biscuits are tall and light gold on top, 15 to 20 minutes.

Pulled pork on biscuits (pork from Rowland Farm in Oxford, CT
Pulled pork on biscuits (pork from Rowland Farm in Oxford, CT)

I could not believe the exceptional taste in these biscuits! I mean they were sooo good. I’m giving the credit to the lard. And now that Bittman said it was okay to eat animal fat again…I’m happy to say that you too can get in on the new animal fat craze.

Never mind that CheeseSlave, Kimberly Hartke, Kelly the Kitchen Kop and Sally Fallon, and others have been saying all along that animal fats are not only okay to consume, but good for you and even necessary. No, they’re not saying to go hog wild and they are also saying to watch out what else you consume. They are simply saying that saturated animal fats are not the demons the canola and margarine people would have us believe.

If you have the time, this is an informative talk by Sally Fallon Morell on the Oiling of America.