d1g1t1ze made a beautiful dessert out of berries from Dekalb Farmers' Market in Atlanta. Check out her Flickr set dedicated to the Cure for more great photos of food, including the finished Farmers' Market Berry Cups, and newly organized cupboards!
It's Week Six of the 8 Step Spring Kitchen Cure, and we're rolling ahead. Last week you caught yourselves up and some made bread for extra credit. The results were beautiful! (See our Week 5.5 check-in post for a nice shot of stlcolleen's loaf of No-Knead Bread). There were still people roasting chickens and veggies and making stock and soup. Others, like digitize (whose beautiful berries are above) boldly charged ahead and starting cooking free-style.
In the initial Cure sign-up form, you asked for everything from knife skills to coordinating a whole meal in an hour, to tips for cooking meat, to other requests for ideas and skills in cooking. We gave you some knife skills this week: How To Dice And Onion: The Video. Hopefully, learning quick little tricks like this will help you feel more and more comfortable in the kitchen. While we can't do a post on every request, we do encourage you to use the site to answer your questions. In the two and a half years that we have been publishing The Kitchn, we have covered many of these issues.
This week we're going to stock the pantry and plan a whole meal.
First, a note for those who need a hall-pass. Several of you are jammed up with exams (we have many students in our midst - tell us what you are studying!) and there are definitely many observing Passover, so we realize you may be taking a break. That's okay, you'll catch up.
When we asked Cure-takers to tell us what, specifically, they'd like to learn in these eight weeks, Ether Maiden said "Cost efficiency, stretching ingredients, while still making healthful tasty foods." Check. We can do that.
A peek into our own pantry cupboard. Ouch, we're out of Maldon Sea Salt. I'll be picking some up today, promise.1. Start with the Pantry
It all begins with having a well-stocked pantry. At the outset, this means spending some money. But in the long run, it will allow you to cook more with the small amount of fresh extras (like meat and produce) that you buy daily or weekly. Otherwise you'll constantly be buying each ingredient you need for a meal and finding you either have duplicates (so what if Fish Sauce costs $2/bottle? You don't need three bottles of it!), or you are caught off-guard without having what you need. By having a well-stocked pantry, you also are arming yourself with the tools you'll need to cook by instinct, instead of always following a recipe.
In today's email (have you signed up yet?), I'll talk about some top picks, and then tomorrow we'll post a more exhaustive list of pantry items that help any cook cook better.
2. Plan a Menu
Then comes meal planning. Things to think about when planning a meal:
- What is in season?
- What are you craving?
- What is your budget?
There are two basic ways to go about planning a menu:
- Start with your favorite cookbooks or recipes (we have over 400 original recipes in our recipe archive), making a list of ingredients from there, and then shop.
- Stroll through your local farmers' markets or grocery stores (if shopping in a supermarket, talk to the produce manager about what's in season and where it comes from), and pick up ingredients that call out to you, then search through recipes for inspiration and figure out a way to use what you bought. This second option may sound scary to many of you, but it's what we're trying to encourage you to do. Try it.
Three Sample Seasonal (and Regional) Menus
Here in New York, we're just starting to see produce in the Farmers' Markets. Here's what I would make based on what I've been seeing at my local market in Union Square, and what I know I can pick up easily at neighborhood food shops.
- To start: a fresh loaf of bread and serve it with some olive oil and chopped fresh herbs - we have chives, at least - and some cracked pepper to start the meal.
- A soup of ramps: adapting just about any recipe using leeks. Here is one for Creamy Leek and Yogurt Soup. I would replace the leeks with the ramps, and halve the amount of yogurt.
- A roast: there was some nice pork available. On top of barely cooked asparagus and topped with some pureed green garlic.
- For dessert (only if it's the weekend!): sadly, no berries here yet, still only apples and pears. I'd bake either with butter and dried lemon peel and top with some fresh mascarpone or goat cheese
Faith, in Ohio, suggests this menu based on what she's finding in her local markets:
- Radishes braised with salt pork and parsley
- Shaved winter greens salad (kale) with Meyer lemon dressing and Parmesan
- The Velvety Broccoli Pasta Sauce - except this time with lots of fresh garlic and and goat cheese instead of feta
Karen Gillingham, a food stylist and market aficionado in Los Angeles (and, full disclosure, my mother), has the following suggestions based on her last visit to the Hollywood Farmers' Market:
- Fava bean bruschetta or grilled artichokes with a lemony fava bean puree (made with lots of olive oil)
- Pasta carbonara with fresh Peas or asparagus
- Blanched kale or spinach salad with a blackberry dressing
- Cornmeal cakes with balsamic strawberries or rhubarb
The Week 6 Assignment
- Get your pantry stocked. If you have already done this in previous weeks, or if you don't want to spend any extra money this week, just promise me you have some good salt on hand. That's all I ask! The full list will be published tomorrow. A shorter list will go out today in the email. (Sign up!)
- Plan a meal, from start to finish, ideally taking your inspiration from what you find in the market. Use the comments section below to post a list of your loot, and we'll help you put something together. Don't be scared. Go for it! Stay as in-season as is possible at this tender young stage of spring.
- Post photos of the process in the Kitchn Cure Flickr Pool - we need photos of what you're up to to post on the site. What you're doing inspires everyone else.
And it inspires me, too. I hope you all know that.
All The Info
• Kitchn Cure: Week Five! Bread Baking Assignment
• Kitchn Cure: Week Five! Taking Stock and Reporting Back
• Kitchen Cure: Week Four! Fire Up the Stove
• Kitchn Cure: Week Three! Use What Your Mama Gave You
• Kitchn Cure: Week Two! Going Deeper - Goodbye Processed Foods!
• Kitchn Cure: Week One! Getting Started and De-Cluttering Your Food
• All Kitchn Spring Cure 2008 Posts
• The Kitchn Cure Flickr Pool Page
I used to keep a stocked pantry and I still stock basics like salt, sugar, flour, rice but I don't buy stuff just because it's on sale if I'm not going to use it for the next week. Mostly because I don't have a lot of storage space but also because I ended up with a "full pantry" of stuff I never used.
I don't know about other states but in Colorado they are multiple websites that tell you what is in season each month of the year. It's a good guide to use instead of going to the grocery store to see what they have and then going home to menu plan.
The internet is a great source for recipes. I love using people's blogs because they tell you what they thought of it and any changes they made. Also website like epicurious you can multiple reviews of a single recipe.
view http://badhuman.wordpress.com's profile
I'm one of those students (studying to be a social studies teacher, and if I'm lucky I'll graduate somewhere around 2011) who has finals next week. However, I'm getting caught up by roasting a chicken this weekend, with potatoes and asparagus and carrots - my husband is very excited about the chicken and not so much about the asparagus.
And I'm having friends over for dinner on Tuesday, so that might just get me caught up to week 6. I haven't decided what I'm making yet, but I have a lot of recipes bookmarked, so the hard part should be narrowing down all the options into one cohesive meal.
view kls987's profile
i have really been enjoying picking up something i've never tried at the farmers' market and then finding a recipe for it. last weekend we did that with brussel sprout rabe. so good!
i have a wonderful salt sampler that a friend gave me as a shower gift last spring. i've used up one tin so far... they're really great. check them out here: http://atthemeadow.com/salt/index.htm
i love planning menus! are there any other stipulations? should it be all dishes we haven't made before or does it matter?
last saturday our market was bursting with asparagus, greens, carrots, leeks, pears, potatoes, mushrooms and some lettuce, along with a variety of meats and seafood. i love living in the pacific northwest!
http://threadtrace.wordpress.com/
view cassiopia's profile
Another student here (law). My fridge is way too full right now, as I have gone crazy with the farmer's market (everything looks so gorgeous ; I cannot resist). I've got arugula, frisee, sorrel, a small handful of pea shoots, spinach, and some swiss chard (rainbow). Plus a bunch of french breakfast radishes, a few zucchini, a bulb of fennel, and 2 each of the following: leeks, ramps, green garlic, plain old scallions. Fresh herbs right now are cilantro, parsley, rosemary, and mint. Also have standard carrots and celery.
Then I've also got 1 huge sweet potato, small bag of purple potatoes, and a few new red soda potatoes. Also a giant bowl full of citrus (lemons, limes, oranges, grapefruit). Some garlic and onions.
My pantry right now contains so many different kinds of rice (white and brown long grain, white and brown basmati, carnaroli, paella, black, and bamboo) that I am filled with shame to look at it. It also has a few kinds of pulses (chickpeas, cannellini, green lentils, red lentils) and some odd grains, including a lot of couscous. I have a can of coconut milk and several cans of tomatoes.
If anyone has tips to use a lot of rice and a lot of greens, I'm all ears. Would any of those greens work in some kind of green veggie curry with sweet potatoes? Or maybe a couscous?
view renata's profile
I try to keep a stocked pantry as much as I can- and I stock what we eat. I'm not LDS (obviously, as I'm one of the Pesach constrained ones right now), but I do shoot for a 1 year supply of pantry goods.
A recent loss of much of my frozen food hit us hard- our new freezer it seems doesn't hold the cold AT ALL, and when the power was out for two days we lost pretty much all of it. Ugh. Huge hit to the pocketbook.
Moving mid-summer last year also prevented us from stocking our pantry with home-made home-canned goods to the degree that we usually do. We barely had enough to make it through the winter, let alone to the next harvest. With our last-frost date still half a month away, we're not too thrilled with the situation.
This reminds me, I need to head out and get rice again... and I need more oxygen absorbers. More gallon jars too come to think of it...
Thanks for picking my comment by the way!
view Ether Maiden's profile
@renata, you can always add greens to rice/grains. I made a brown rice, beet greens and Parmesan dish today for lunch. I just add chopped greens to the rice steamer with the rice.
@Ether Maiden, I hope your new freezer is still under warranty--that doesn't sound good at all!
I'm overflowing with greens. I hadn't finished up last weeks', and got a new CSA box this week with *2* bunches of turnip greens, baby kohlrabi with greens, radishes with greens (I'm torn between roasting and those great looking braised radishes), arugula, some mystery green (mustard? but not sharp enough), and 2 kinds of lettuce. And more basil.
Tonight is Catalan greens with raisins and pine nuts (and lots of garlic) on English muffins. I'm going to try and catch up on the bread baking by using the leftovers in savory turnovers, which was one of the suggestions in the recipe.
I think I might do a frittata with greens and some of the non-nitrate bacon from one of our farm stand/grocery stores. Frittata are meals unto themselves, so maybe just some bread and dessert with that.
A few new pics.
view RebeccaCT's profile
I am a graduate student, and I just don't have time to cook this weekend--I will be eating soup that I made and froze a while ago. I am however looking forward to next weekend when I will have nothing to do but play with my brand new kitchenaid stand mixer that I am getting as a graduation present!
view lcg's profile
OK... so, here's what I've got to work with:
frozen fish, lots of it- primarily salmon, though there is some assorted white fish in there too
potatoes, lots of them
roasted corn on the cob
half a roasted chicken
dryad's saddle mushrooms
morel mushrooms
ramps
pantry staples
thoughts? How can we make something tasty and good form this, without having to spend much? We'd actually prefer to not spend anything
view Ether Maiden's profile
@Rebecca
Oh, we lost power to the whole house for a couple days, which is why we lost everything. I'm used to freezers staying cold inside when the power is off as long as you don't open the door... not so with this one.
view Ether Maiden's profile
Just posted 3 photos to the pool this morning. My parents were in town and I found some AMAZING artichokes at Trader Joe's to plan the meal around. I went with my favorite from-scratch "hamburger helper" dish to accompany the artichokes, and B made a delicious fresh vinaigrette for dipping. Seriously, go take a peek at the photos. The darn things were gargantuan.
view d1g1t1ze's profile