Dark Days #I'mSoBehindI'veLostCount- French Onion Soup

I am really behind on writing an cooking. I am sure you are sick of hearing me belly ache about it. I think I am not alone, however. It seems that everyone is having a hard time getting it in gear right now. February will be better. I will be so inspired that the posts will practically write themselves.

French Onion Soup
3 tbsp olive oil-exempt
3 tbsp salted butter-exempt
5 onions, sliced thin- from my garden
1 tsp of salt- exempt
2 tbsp red wine-North GA
1/4 tsp dried thyme- from my garden
2 cloves of garlic, minced- from my garden
6 cups of venison stock (of course, beef stock is usually used)-made from local deer (vegetarian option is to use vegetable stock)
1 cup shredded Calamata Sunshine Cheese from Greendale Farm
Homemade bran bread sliced and toasted

Melt butter in bottom of large pot, add olive oil, heat on medium. Add sliced onions and minced garlic, cook on medium heat for 20 minutes or until onions caramelize. Add salt, red wine, and thyme, mix t combine. Pour in stock, simmer on medium low to low for 1 hour. Serve with toasted bread floating in soup and cover with shredded cheese. Put under broiler for about 30 seconds to melt cheese.

**Helpful Hint- my friend who is a chef in Miami told me that if you add the salt before the onions are caramelized that they won't caramelize.

Dark Days #3- The Cop Out

This post should be titled "The Lame Ass Cook That Made a Really Great Meal Only Because The Ingredients Were Fabulous."

Like I have said previously, apologetically, my culinary creativity is in the dumps this week. I have no idea what is wrong with me. Maybe all of my energy is going into my resolutions or whatever or maybe I'm just off this week. Whatever it is, I made a really good dinner with 3 simple yet wonderful, local ingredients.

•  Duck Eggs from Broad River Pastures in Elberton, GA- broadriverpastures@gmail.com
• Calamata Sunshine Cheese, artisinal gouda with calamata olives from Greendale Farms in Madison, GA- www.greendalefarm.com
• Buttermilk from Johnston Family Farm in Newborn, GA (their milk rocks)

Dark Days #2: Portuguese Sausage and Kale Soup (my take on it, anyway)

For my second Dark Days Challenge meal (make on meal a week 12/01/2010- 4/15/2011 that is sustainable, organic, local, ethical) I made my take on Portuguese Sausage and Kale Soup. I have a feeling there will be many soups made in this challenge. It is just so easy for me to use my frozen garden vegetables in this way.

All summer I save the trimmings from all of my fresh vegetable in the freezer. A few weeks ago I made vegetable stoth (technically not a stock but a lot more body than a broth) and froze it. So this was the base for my Kale soup.

Portuguese Sausage Kale Soup
1 lb homemade bulk Italian sausage
8 cups vegetable stoth
2 cups water
4 cups fresh kale, cut into small pieces
4 carrots chopped small
2 onions
1 potato chopped into 1/2 inch cubes
2 tbsp olive oil
1 tsp kosher salt
2 bay leaves
2 garlic cloves, minced
1 tsp dried thyme
1/2 tsp cracked pepper

Heat oil in bottom of large pot, add onions, carrots and salt, cook until onions are translucent. Brown sausage, add stoth, water and potato. Add all seasonings, let simmer for 20 minutes, add kale, simmer another 20 minutes.

Dark Days #1- Cilantro Pecan Pesto

Do you remember my elation last week over my serendipitous garden meeting with my neighbor? I made the pesto for our first Dark Days Challenge meal and it was wonderful. I am still wrestling with the flour thing though. As I mentioned before, no wheat is grown near me(click here to see where wheat is grown in the US). And here I am with this fabulous pesto that is begging for bread or pasta. So after discussing it with my husband we decided that making our own pasta would be acceptable. The wheat is from far away in North America but the pasta comes from my kitchen.

As you know pesto usually includes Parmesan cheese. I had recently read Michael Chiarello's recipe for Walnut Ricotta pesto and decided that ricotta would take the place of parmesan in my recipe. I bought local buttermilk and whole milk and made my own ricotta. This is a very easy process.

The pasta- I am just not a roll it out, flour it up, be patient kind of girl. Pie crusts just irritate me. My husband is great in these situations. He is the official bread baker in our house. So I mixed up the pasta dough and he rolled it out and cut it with surgical precision.

I decided that the pasta would need a little acid. I have been letting some of my last green tomatoes ripen in a paper bag so I chopped 2 red(reddish) ones and threw them in the pan. Then I put half of the pesto, 1 cup of ricotta, and 1/2 cup of the pasta water in the pan heated it up until creamy tossed the cooked pasta and finished the pasta in the sauce.

Dinner was delicious. The kids even loved it. The pesto was bright and sunny and the ricotta gave it a warm, comfort food feel.

Cilantro Pecan Pesto:

Approx 6 cups of cilantro leaves
1 1/2 cups whole pecans
1 tsp kosher salt
1 garlic clove
1/2 cup olive oil
juice of half a lemon

Load all ingredients except oil into bowl of food processor or blender and chop. Drizzle in olive oil. Occasionally use a spatula to clean sides of bowl and mix again until desired consistency. Cover with plastic wrap touching pesto to deter oxidization.

Locavore Challenge

Today kicks off Urban Hennery's Dark Days Challenge. The challenge is to make one meal per week using SOLE-Sustainable, Organic, Local, Ethical- ingredients from December 1, 2010 until April 15, 2011. With my fall garden in mind I signed up with confidence as soon as the announcement was made. However, now that it is here and I need to start thinking about what resources I have I am feeling the challenge. A few exceptions can be made such as coffee, chocolate, oils and spices. My exceptions (as of today) will be oils, spices, salt and pepper. I may have to add flour to the list later. Flour and corn meal are milled locally but at this time are hard for me to find being grown locally. I am thinking that I may make an exception for flour as long as I am making my own bread and pasta and try to use flour that is milled locally. This part I will work out as it happens.


After a visit to the garden today I am getting very excited about my first dark days meal. In Georgia we have had a very mild (to say the least- in the 70s) fall this year. My cilantro sprouted all over the garden from last spring's plantings. So as I was picking the cilantro I was imagining making a cilantro pesto with it. Then the best thing happened- my neighbor (that I have never spoken to) walked up to me in my garden and asked if I wanted some pecans he just harvested from his little pecan trees. Of course I wanted them- this was serendipity. Now my cilantro pesto could be included in the Dark Days challenge because I will use my neighbor's pecans instead of pine nuts. Yippee. I literally jumped up and down when I made this realization.

I plan to make the pesto today or tomorrow but will save it for a later meal when I have figured out how I am going to handle the flour issue, I am thinking either pasta or pizza. I promise to post the recipe for the pesto when I make it.