Farmers Market: Bring on Spring!

Winter was quick to leave the Pacific Northwest this year and though there are still chilly nights and some snowfall in the mountains, we have been enjoying more than this season's fair share of blue skies and jacketless afternoons.

But the one sign of warm days to come that has me a bit giddy is the appearance of asparagus at the Portland Farmers Market. I wasn't really expecting it, yet there is was in all of its tiny stalked and fresh green glory. I've waited nearly a year to make Barbara Kingsolver's Asparagus and Morel Bread Pudding, but finally I can again put that on the Great Ideas for Dinner list.

Ahhhsparagus!

Not only did was there asparagus, but Groundworks Organics even had strawberries! I couldn't resist buying a pint of the promise of summer.

Everytime I go to the Farmers Market I try to buy something I've never prepared before. This week, I chose to try out rhubarb.

Gathering Together Farm had a great big pile of it, so I grabbed a pound or so, stuck it into my bag with my other purchases and made my way home to make...wait for it...

Rhubarb and Ginger Jam

1 pound fresh rhubarb chopped
3 tablespoons fresh ginger, grated
1 cup sugar
1 tablespoon fresh orange zest

Put everything into a medium saucepan and bring to a boil. Reduce heat to medium low and simmer for about 20 to 30 minutes, stirring frequently until the jam piles up on a spoon and looks all jam-like.

This jam is very good on buttered toast, a Nilla wafer or eaten straight off the spoon. I also used it, with incredible success, as the raspberry jam substitute in the Raspberry Shortbread Bars posted on Almost Slowfood, a fantastic blog written by my dear friend Peggy Bourjaily.

Even my husband J, who doesn't usually have much of a sweet tooth liked them and went back for seconds. Thank you so much Peggy, for always posting such people pleasing recipes!

Sigh...I love Spring.

The Promised Pierogi Post

Mmm...embracing my heritage...with my mouth.

When I was about three years old, my family moved South from Connecticut to western Tennessee. While there were things about the south my parents did enjoy – the longer gardening season, milder winters and wide open skies, there were a few things they missed about life in New England. Many of these things were of the edible variety. So every so often we would receive a care package of pumpernickel bread and hermit cookies from Rita’s bakery, banana Cream of Wheat, and a box or two of Devil Dogs and Drake’s Coffee Cakes. While my brother and I delighted at the sweets and our favorite flavor of hot cereal, we were less thrilled when our Christmas presents would arrive pungently scented with the aroma of pickled herring from of a broken jar mourned by our father.

Summer was the time when we would get our fill of our favorite foods still considered exotic in the Central time zone. Usually around the Fourth of July, my parents, brother and I would hit the road and drive the 1000 miles from just outside of Nashville to the home of my father’s parents in Naugatuck, Connecticut. For a week we feasted on Hummel Hot Dogs, Wise Potato chips, sandwiches on Millette’s bread with its gum-scraping crust. Our large family (my dad was one of 11 kids) would gather for a picnic before watching the town fireworks from the hill in my grandparents’ front yard. It was classic summer kid stuff. For me, the only thing that marred it was, the one thing worse than vinegar and fish liquid soaked into a stuff animal: Cold Beet Soup.

I was determined it was set up by the adults to be a trap for us kids. It’s a hot day, you’ve been running around catching up with cousins you haven’t seen in a year, your cheeks are sticky and flushed, your hair is stuck with sweat to your head and you sidle up to the picnic table looking for refreshment. Skip over the pickle plate with its cocktail onions and olives (later to be eaten one by one off of each of your fingers), past the lunchmeat, the shriveling hotdogs, the bags of buns and hard rolls, potato salad, coleslaw, until your eye settle on a big pot surrounded by ice. In that pot is something that looks so majestically sweet in its hot pink raspberry-ness, the metal container giving off a cool breeze. Your aunt offers to serve up a bowl for you and you nod with a “yes please” as she scoops a dollop of white fluffy cream on top. You take your bowl to a spot under the shade of a large tree and scoop a big spoonful of it to your mouth expecting sweetness and cream but no. Instead, you get a big mouthful of vinegar and beet and sour cream.

It scared me. It kept me from beets for years.

Seriously, doesn't this look like dessert?

It wasn’t until, in my early twenties, I was served a slice of Mark Bittman’s Rosemary and Beet Rosti and fell in love with the red root. It was a reunion of sorts, as I now believe a certain percentage of my Lithuanian and Polish blood must be concentrated beet juice. It is pure earthiness with a sweetness I can now appreciate, and do appreciate often in salads, on burgers, and in that palette enlightening rosti.

That rosti started an exploration of the foods that used to fill my grandmother’s kitchen, the dishes my father would request if we happened to travel up for a Thanksgiving or Easter visit.
One dish that always appeared on the big table in my grandmother’s kitchen next to kugle and homemade kielbasa was pirogi. I loved those potato pillows, a bit chewy and soft, filling and pleasant. I would pick them up by hand when I was younger, and smother them in onions and sour cream as I got older.

Now that I live in the Pacific Northwest and good pierogi seem few and far between, I decided to make a batch on Easter. Back in Connecticut, this is usually done by one of my Aunt Debbies (I have three). I used her recipe for the simple dough to cover the potato and cheese. Once I had the dough and filling ready, I invited a friend over to help me fill them and, of course, to try a few out. The result was a perfect activity and meal for a rainy Portland Sunday afternoon.

Potato and Cheese Pierogi
makes about 50 pierogi

For the dough:
2 pints sour cream
About 4.5 cups flour, maybe more, maybe less.

Put the sour cream in a bowl. Gradually add the flour, mixing with your hand until the mixture becomes a kneedable dough. Note: The flour must be added to the sour cream, this will not work the other way around.

For potato filling:
1 1/2 pound russet (baking) potatoes
6 ounces coarsely grated extra-sharp white Cheddar (2 1/4 cups)
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon black pepper
Optional: Sauteed mushrooms and shallots or any other filling you find goes well with potato

Peel potatoes and cut into 1-inch pieces. Cook potatoes in a large saucepan of boiling salted water until tender, about 8 minutes. Drain potatoes, then transfer to a bowl along with cheese, salt, pepper and mash with a potato masher or a handheld electric mixer at low speed until smooth. When mashed potatoes are cool enough to handle, spoon out a rounded teaspoon and lightly roll into a ball between palms of your hands.

Divide the dough in half, reserving half under the bowl. Roll out the dough to about 1/4" thick and cut with a 2.5” cookie cutter or glass. This is where it is really nice to have a pierogi making buddy. While one of you cuts out the dough, the other can fold it around the potato balls, sealing it on all edges. It is important that the seal is complete or else water will leak in to the pierogi when you cook it. You can use a fork to press down on the seal if you are concerned about holes.






Once the pierogis have been assembled, you can cook them by dropping them a few at a time into boiling water. When they rise to the surface, they are ready. I prefer to finish mine by sautéing them in a pan of onions and butter. Serve topped with onions and a good dollop of sour cream.

Because this recipe makes about 50 pierogi, you may want to freeze a few. Simply put the fresh pirogis on a cookie sheet, stick them in the freezer until they are frozen solid and then separate into freezer bags. Just remove and boil as needed.

Easter in the Kitchen

Easter was my second favorite holiday as a kid. Thanksgiving was the first, especially when we would make the trip from down south up to Connecticut to stay with my grandparents during the holiday. The over abundance of family and food combined with the mini-celebrity of being the cousins from out-of-state made for a really great family vacation.

Growing up, Easter was a little different. I can't really remember spending an Easter with my extended family in Connecticut before we moved back when I was in high school. Instead it was spent with with my brother and parents in Tennessee or Georgia, a bit less hectic than Thanksgiving, though just as festive. Easter baskets, eggs hidden around the house, church with the family.

And of course, the food. Easter candy is the best holiday-specific candy hands down- Cadbury cream eggs and mini eggs, malted milk ball robins eggs, Reese's peanut butter eggs, jelly beans. Yeah. The best. And of course for real food, ham. Most of you know this already, but I love ham. I'm sure there were other things served, but I'll always remember the ham.

This Easter, J and I spent a quiet day at home, but I couldn't quite let the day pass without a food celebration. Save for a short run in the morning, I spent most of the day in the kitchen feeling cozy as the rain fell outside.

On J's request I made what I can only call eggs and tomatoes for breakfast. This is a dish that I was first introduced to at a neighborhood Italian joint called Basta's. We went there one morning for brunch about a year ago and I ordered something similar to this. As they stopped serving brunch a while back, I haven't had it from them since, but this comes as close as I can get to it from memory.

When I had this at Basta's I remember saying "This is so good, I wish I was hungover."

Eggs and Tomatoes
Serves 2

4 eggs
1 28 oz can chopped tomatoes
10-12 basil leaves, torn
3 tbs olive oil, plus some for drizzling
1 tsp sugar
salt and pepper to taste
fresh mozzarella, sliced

Preheat broiler.

Heat tomatoes, basil, olive oil, sugar, salt and pepper in a saucepan over medium heat until hot. Break each egg and slip them into the tomato mixture. Allow them to cook until the whites are no longer translucent and hold together.

Turn off heat and scoop as much of the tomato mixture into two smaller casserole dishes as you can without disturbing the eggs. Next, scoop out the eggs and place two into each dish. Cover eggs with slices of mozzarella and a drizzle of olive oil. Place under the broiler until the the cheese bubbles and browns slightly.

Remove from oven and serve with grilled bread drizzled with olive oil.

So that was breakfast. After breakfast I went about making homemade pirogis, a staple on my extended family's Easter table and a damn good rainy day dinner...look for the recipe later this week.

I also managed to make some bread and just to let C know that I haven't gone over to the dark side, I made some carrot cupcakes with white chocolate cream cheese icing to share at work on Monday.

See C? I'm still doing the cupcake thing...no need to worry!

The Most Fun on Two Feet

Most people in Portland know about First Thursday where once a month the galleries in the Pearl District open their doors for an art crawl. However, what you may not know about, but should, is the slightly faster paced First Thursday Run, sponsored by Fit Right NW. It was an evening that combined two of my favorite things: running and cross promotional marketing.

Basically, you show up at Fit Right sometime before 6:00, sign up for the run, grab a snack, listen to the dj, and wait for the map reveal. Once they show the maps, you take note of 14 locations and then you are off! At each location you visit, you are given a raffle ticket for the great give-ways (shoes, massages, gift certificates) at the end. You have one hour to collect as many tickets as you can. I visited at least three shops I never would have thought to visit before that I intend on going back to some time in the near future.

Here's a video from their website that tells all about it:



I hadn't fully intended on running, since I'm still kinda of recovering from the big run on Saturday. I just jogged down after work to check out their new store and to see what the event was like. Once there, however, I felt like I could just sign up and maybe run to a few locations just to get a feel for it. I ended up running to all but one of the locations, crossing back and forth across NW Portland and dipping into the Pearl for a nice 40 minute jog collecting tickets as I went.

It was incredibly fun. I got to try out some new shoes for which I got a free t-shirt, I snagged some free Darn Good socks (and they definitely look like they may be just that), had a bagel, a glass of Deschutes Brewery Inversion IPA and had a good run at the same time. Best of all? It was totally free!

Thank you, Fit Right NW for a great evening. I'll be back to run again next month!