Morels!

I forgot to tell you about my morels!  A few weekends ago we went mushroom hunting with the WI Mycological Society.  We had looked for morels before, but never had success.  We wanted to go on this foray just to see someone find a morel so we could look at it in place and figure out exactly what they looked like in situ.  We actually ended up finding some ourselves!  Hooray!

We were so excited!  We are probably going to spend every morel season for the rest of our lives looking for morels.  Beginners luck, I am sure, but so exciting!

Anyway, we took them home and fried them up with some butter.  Absolutely wonderful!!!  I looked through a whole bunch of recipes first, but decided to go with simple for our first time.

The top mushroom is a Pheasant Back.  It is edible, but not supposed to be that great.  We didn't end up eating it.  The morels were too wonderful to compete with.  Always make SURE that you know what you are eating.  That is one of the reasons that I joined the mycological society.  I have some great guidebooks, but that is no replacement for someone who actually KNOWS.  I can hardly wait for morel season next year!

Venison Round

Once again, I didn't take a picture of the first night's meal.  But here is what I did:  I thawed out a venison round roast and cut it into pieces about 1 1/2 inches thick.  I trimmed off all of the silverskin and excess fat and then put them between two sheets of plastic wrap.  Then I pounded the crap out of them with a meat mallet, dredged them in flour and put them in a frying pan with a little olive oil.  I cooked a few minutes per side until medium-well done.  I had never tried this with venison before and I think that I would do things a little differently next time.  I think that I would dredge the meat in a beaten egg first and then in cracker crumbs instead of flour - just to give it a bit more texture.  Then I think that I would only cook them to medium-rare.  I served them with salad and bread.  They were pretty good, but like I said - I will do things differently next time. 

Next night - I cut up the venison and stir-fried it with garlic and veggies.  I started the rice first, and then chopped up all of the vegetables.  I used kale, beet greens and winter onions.  I chopped the garlic very fine and kept it separate.  Then I heated about 2 tsp of olive oil in my wok (you could use a frying pan instead) and added just the garlic. 

I stir-fried the garlic for about 30 seconds before adding the vegetables.  After these had wilted I added the meat - I added it last because I didn't want it to overcook.  When it was heated though I served it on a bed of rice, with roasted asparagus and popovers.

Yum.

This is one of many recipes that I have used for popovers.  This is the one that I grew up with and it is always a hit.

Popovers

1 cup bread flour - this is one recipe that I haven't gotten to work with wheat flour yet - but I will keep trying.
1 cup milk
2 TBL salad oil - I use a bit more than this.
2 TBL sugar
1/4 tsp salt
2 large eggs

Mix everything and beat really well with an electric mixer (very, very well - you want to get air in there!).  Pour into a very well greased popover pan (I used a muffin pan for years - it works fine - but only use eight of the cups).  Bake at 400 degrees for 30-35 minutes.

I like to put butter and jam on mine, but they are great plain too!

Tis the season - for Rhubarb and Asparagus!

So, once again this post is late.  I wrote it on the 12th and took a picture of the rhubarb streusel, but I didn't get a picture of roasted asparagus until the 18th (even though we ate it almost every night), didn't post it until now, and now asparagus season is over.  Although, if you cut back your stalks later in the year, they will produce some new delicious shoots for you - don't overtax the plant though.  


We were recently visiting family and Jake's aunt had made this great rhubarb streusel.  I just had to have the recipe.  Now that the rhubarb in my garden is finally big enough to pick I am going to give it a try!

Rhubarb Streusel     (double for 9x13 pan)

2 eggs
1 cup sugar
3 cups rhubarb (cut-up) - I added a bit more rhubarb - I had picked too much from the garden.

Beat eggs and sugar, add rhubarb.  Mix and put in greased 8x8 pan ( I must confess that I didn't grease the pan and it turned out fine).

Mix like pie crust and sprinkle over rhubarb
1 cup whole wheat flour
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup butter

Bake at 350 for 45 minutes.

I think that next time I am going to reduce the sugar a little.  I added more rhubarb, and since I didn't have much experience with the recipe I added the amount of sugar recommended, but it was still a bit sweet - I thought.  I will keep you posted.


The other thing which is coming up in my garden, which I have mentioned before, is asparagus.  Please, please, please buy your asparagus fresh.  The stuff from the store is almost totally worthless.  I am not just saying that because I grew up on a produce farm and we grew asparagus.  I crave it in the spring and since I haven't been able to find it around here and my garden cannot keep up with the demand I recently caved and bought some from the store.  Yuck.  Ick, and Phooey.  It was tough, starting to fern out and generally awful.  Find a farmer near you who grows it.  Granted, not all farmers are equal, but I bet it will be better than store bought!  Since I neglected to post a photo of roasted asparagus in my previous post, I will do so now.  Happy eating!

System Cooking with Salmon

I forgot to take a picture of the whole salmon fillet that we cooked for the first meal.  Use your imagination.  :o)   I had a sockeye salmon fillet that was about 1.75 lbs.  We seasoned it fairly lightly with my version of the Potlatch Seasoning that you can buy at Williams-Sonoma.  We bought it once and I liked it so I just read the ingredients on the back and mixed up my own.  Here are the ingredients.  I have no idea how much of each spice I put in, but I added them in decreasing amounts:

Kosher salt, paprika, crushed red pepper, chili pepper, oregano, basil, coriander

It also says that they add safflower oil, but I don't.  Anyway, place fish on some aluminum foil,  and sprinkle lightly with the seasoning.  Grill over medium heat until the fish flakes easily with a fork.  Don't overcook!   Serve with rice and roasted asparagus and fiddleheads (if in season).   Don't eat too much - you will want plenty of leftovers (and besides, salmon isn't exactly cheap!) 

The next night I made omelets.  I took the leftover asparagus, fiddleheads, and some of the rice and salmon and added some chopped winter onions from the garden (you could use a couple of scallions instead - basically the same thing).   I sauteed everything together until the onions were cooked through and then set to the side.

I love omelets and I usually make them with milk, but I recently saw a Jamie Oliver video where he fixed them without milk.  If you have never made omelets before or even if you have, watch the video.  It isn't very long and he does a great job of explaining how to make them.  I made them exactly the way he does in the video.  Three eggs, pinch of salt, a little freshly ground pepper, whisk well, pour into a hot pan, tilt and cook, add the salmon mixture, sprinkle with some cheese, fold it over and serve.  Mine didn't fold over as nicely as his, as I am sure you can see, but omelets are a great way to use up leftovers.  Jake has informed me that soup season is over.  I am not so sure, but over the summer I usually use up my leftovers in different ways other than soup.   

The third night we had a salmon pilaf.  I didn't have much asparagus left, but I had a bit, so I chopped it up fairly small and put it into the pan first with a bit of olive oil.  While that was cooking I chopped up three stalks of celery, three winter onions (scallions) and a couple of handfuls of kale and flaked the remainder of the salmon.  When the asparagus was cooked through I added the rest of the rice, vegetables and salmon.  I would have added some garlic, but I am currently out (gasp!).  I cooked together for a few minutes and then stuck it in the oven at 350 degrees for about 20 minutes.  You could skip this step and just saute it until the vegetables are cooked through.  I just felt like an oven baked pilaf that night.
 

Blackened Catfish and Fiddleheads

Some friends of ours gave us some catfish, so I decided to try a blackened catfish recipe.  I pretty much left this recipe alone, except for cutting the cayenne pepper in half.  I served it with rice, but it was still a little too spicy for my kids.  Jake and I liked it, but I ended up scraping off most of the seasoning so that they would eat it.  Oh well. 

It is asparagus and fiddlehead season around here.  Yea!  I have a ton of ostrich ferns growing in my yard, and I always knew that you could eat the tightly rolled fern heads (fiddleheads), but I hadn't tried it until last year.  I always meant to, and then I would forget about it until the ferns were too big.  Last year, I forgot, but then I just snapped off the ferns, and new fiddleheads formed.  I tried boiling them like asparagus, but they absorb a lot of water and kind of taste mushy.  Ick.  This year, I tried roasting them with olive oil and some coarse salt.  Yummy!  Isabela loves them and Maya thinks they are OK.  It is kind of funny because Maya loves roasted asparagus and Isabela think it is OK.  It works out well because this time of year I am usually roasting both together.

To roast asparagus or fiddleheads:  Preheat oven to 450 degrees.  Place fiddleheads and/or asparagus in a single layer on a cookie sheet.  Drizzle with olive oil  and sprinkle with some coarse sea salt.  Roast for about 8-10 minutes, until tender but still with some firmness.  Sprinkle with some Parmesan when they come out of the oven. 

Venison Loin

Alright.  So once again, I decided to combine a couple of recipes.  Hugh Fearnley-Whittenstall is one of my favorite sources, so I owe him for most of this recipe.  Then I also came up on this video which showed another way of making venison which I hadn't tried before, so I had to jazz it up a bit with that too, although not nearly as fancy as his.  The result was phenomenal, and definitely something that I will try again!  Here is what I did:

First, I cut my venison loin into noisettes about 3/4 of an inch thick.  Then I sprinkled a little salt and some freshly ground pepper on each side.  I put them into a hot(!) pan in which I had melted a bit of butter and added some olive oil.  I seared them for about a minute on each side (I like my venison pretty rare).  Then I added a small glass of whiskey (I would have added brandy, but I didn't have any) and set fire to it with a match.  After the flames died down I transfered the meat to a warmed dish.

Using the same pan that I cooked the venison in, I added a few TBL of red wine (I had some raspberry wine leftover) and deglazed the pan over medium heat.  Then I added about 3 TBL of red currant jelly and reduced for a few minutes.  Then I added 1 TBL of cream, reduced a bit more and poured over the venison.  You could obviously do this with a beef loin as well.


Potatoes

I used some small Russet potatoes and boiled them until easily pierced with a fork.  Then I crushed them with a glass and put them into a frying pan with three cloves of crushed garlic and some butter (enough to keep the potatoes from sticking to the pan).  I had some kale that had overwintered in my garden and was starting to put out new leaves, so I stole those, chopped them coarsely and added them to the potatoes - probably a couple of handfuls.  I cooked until the kale had wilted and you could smell the cooked garlic.  Serve with the venison.  Yum!
 

The next night I cut up the venison, added some more kale and (after boiling until easily pierced with a fork) some fingerling potatoes.  I had bought many pounds of them at the farmer's market last fall and as you can see I either need to use them up or plant them.  By the way NEVER eat potato sprouts or any green part of potatoes.  Potatoes belong to the deadly nightshade family and the green parts are poisonous. 

ljnob

Then I just cooked it all together in a pan for a little while and we had a wonderful hash.  Don't forget to add all of the leftover sauce too.

The third night I took the leftover hash and incorporated it into an egg dish.  This is one I made up completely and I don't remember how I did it.  I forgot to write it down, but I imagine that it was something like this:

I think that I had about a cup or maybe two of hash leftover.  Add three beaten eggs and mix together.  Add 1 cup of warm whole milk.  Stir and sprinkle the top with chopped kale and 1/4 cup Parmesan.  Cover and bake in a 325 degree oven for 30 minutes.  Remove cover and bake for another 10 minutes or until set in the middle and slightly browned on top.  

That is my best guess as to what I did.  I will try and make something like it again soon.  Good luck!   

 

Apple Crisp

My parents were here over the weekend, and I made apple crisp. This is one of my absolute favorite desserts. I got the recipe from a friend many years ago and have tweaked it just a bit. I meant to take a picture when it got out of the oven, but Jake and I were bringing supper to some friends, then I forgot, and now it is gone (inhaled would be more accurate). I needed to use up some apples anyway (they are starting to look a little wrinkly aren't they?) These are windfall apples, so they are great for baking, but they shouldn't be eaten raw because of E. coli concerns. Here is the recipe:

Fill a 9x9 pan with sliced apples almost to the top. Sprinkle with:

1/2 cup sugar
1/2 tsp cinnamon

In a medium bowl cut 1 stick butter into:

1 cup brown sugar
1 cup whole wheat flour

with a pastry knife until it forms coarse crumbs. You could use a food processor too, it would probably be easier. Mix in 1 cup regular oatmeal. Sprinkle on top of apples. Bake at 325 for one hour.

Eat and Enjoy!

NOTE:  I messed up once and forgot to sprinkle the 1/2 cup of sugar over the apples, and it was still very tasty, so skip that 1/2 cup of sugar! 

Love Your Freezer

I love that I live in an age where I can freeze stuff....all kinds of stuff. Did you know that you can freeze lemons? (and then have fresh lemon juice or zest in winter....in Wisconsin..... without paying exorbitant prices!?!) Yep, I freeze lemons, extra chopped onions, all kinds of herbs, vegetable peelings for vegetable stock, ham bones, bread, cookies (!) as well as the more usual things that normal people freeze....like meats that go on sale, vegetables and an occasional pizza. Judicious use of your freezer is unbelievably convenient. You can take advantage of sale items and freeze some for later use, thus saving cash and your time. You can make extra black or pinto beans for chili, an extra pot of soup, an extra lasagne (if you are making one, why not two?) or a sauce base like a curry or a creole to freeze now and pull out later for a fast dinner. If you have a garden, you can preserve home grown vegetables (you know if chemicals have been put on it and how fresh it was when you froze it). There ARE a few items that do not freeze well....noodles being one but for the most part, anything you freeze can be an ingredient to a cooked dish. You may want to keep an inventory of sorts so you don't find interesting food-like substances in bags lurking in the far recesses of your freezer. I still find an occasional surprise, but......... I love my freezer!!!!!

Laura's Laws of Thrifty Cooking #6

BUY IN BULK - GET SOME FRIENDS!

This is important. I hear people say all the time - well, I just don't use that much flour, beef, pork, whatever. Get some friends then! We split a pig with my in-laws every year which is much cheaper than us each buying a half. It is also much, much cheaper than buying all of those cuts in the grocery store. I have also learned to cook a lot of cuts of meat that I wouldn't have otherwise and not only have these become some of our favorite meals - they are often some of the cheapest cuts of meat! I never knew what a Boston butt cut of pork was before, but now I love it. Of course, the pork chops, hams and bacon are absolutely fabulous, but my cooking repertoire has increased dramatically and I like it that we only have a certain amount of everything. We honestly enjoy our ham roasts so much more because we know that we only have a few. We look forward to eating them and spread them out more. Of course, I could buy more bacon, or hams, and sometimes I do, but I have found that limiting ourselves this way helps us discover even more favorites.

I use a lot of flour. A lot. But I still don't use enough to get wholesale prices. - Hello friends. - I was able to organize a bunch of my friends so that we were able to get wholesale prices on local, organic flour. Honestly, I would have never have been able to afford this flour otherwise - their retail prices make me swoon. You can do this on a number of things, and it doesn't even have to be something that you use a lot of. Maybe you know someone who does. Maybe you can't eat even a quarter of a beef - split it with someone, split it with a couple of people! Save some money! Get some friends! :o)

Laura's Laws of Thrifty Cooking #5

USE WHAT YOU'VE GOT!

This applies not only to leftovers, or food that you have that will not be good if you don't use it, but also to the area you live in. Local food availability. I live in Wisconsin. I am grateful for that in many ways: milk, awesome cheese, butter, yogurt, sour cream etc as well as some of the fantastic livestock and produce farmers that we have around. However, we don't live near the ocean and we have long cold winters. I love shrimp, and most other seafood, but it just isn't as fresh or as good around here, and I have been making a conscious effort to eat closer to home. I do a lot of canning, drying, juicing and freezing in the summer and fall so that I have some of those great vegetables during the winter, but I also eat more 'winter vegetables' during the winter. I have a closet in my house that is always cold and I keep potatoes, turnips, carrots, onions and so on in there. In some other places in my house I keep squash and apples - all from Wisconsin. I bought several pounds of onions at the farmer's market last fall and they should hopefully last me until my spring onions are ready. I do have to buy other vegetables during the year, but they are much more expensive than you can get them for when they are in season, so every year I end up storing more food when it is plentiful and using it throughout the year. Now, not everyone will have a place to keep food cool in their house or have the equipment, time or interest to can, but you can even take advantage of seasonal items in the grocery stores, in Wisconsin, in the winter. All of the 'storage vegetables' are cheaper here during the winter, but zucchini is outrageous. Look around and see what kind of great foods your area has.

Take advantage of other opportunities in your area too. This fall I was able to pick, pears, apples and plums just by asking. If you don't belong to freecycle, join. I just posted that I was looking for these kinds of fruits when I knew that they were in season and people were grateful to get rid of their surpluses. It is hard to imagine how much food goes to waste just because someone has a fruit tree in their yard that they have no interest in picking. I picked and picked and then shared the surplus with friends (more on that soon). Someone didn't have to pick up near as much fallen fruit off their yard and a bunch of people got free fruit, what could be better? You could always ask at your local farmer's market too. They may have a bunch of vegetables or fruits that aren't nice enough to sell, but you may be able to get them at a discount. You never know until you ask. Eating local is far from the elitist activity that it is sometimes portrayed as. It is very thrifty and once you get to know your area, very fun!

-French Toast - Bread made from a Wisconsin flour, local eggs and local maple syrup (another great reason to live in Wisconsin!). Very local and very thrifty!

PS - Powdered sugar - not so local- but pretty!