Table Talk

News and musings from Anastasia's Table. Feel free to browse some of the latest talk below, and get emails when new entries are added!

August 8, 2010

National Farmer's Market Week

The Department of Agriculture declared August 2-8 as National Farmers Market Week. The Derry Farmers Market just opened in July and I've been enjoying shopping at it every Wednesday afternoon. It's a small, but bustling market with a good mix of local products including produce, baked goods, maple syrup, wine, flowers and plants.

I love being able to meet the people who are growing my food and learn about what they are growing and how they are growing it. This winter, I'll be getting 1/2 of a pastured pig from one of the farmers.

This week's market bounty included swiss chard, eggplants, red onions, caramelized onion biscuits, lemon cucumbers, cherry tomatoes, leeks, and shallots.

The lemon cucumbers are not lemony, rather they get their name because they look like lemons. I sliced them thinly and dressed them with olive oil, white wine vinegar, salt, pepper, minced parsley, and a splash of lemon. For an even prettier salad, you could slice one lemon cucumber and one regular cucumber. I love that you don't have to peel cucumbers that come from a local farmer.

The eggplants are destined to be used in Tofu Triangles with Thai Chili Sauce that I hope to make tomorrow. I bet some of the hot peppers make it's way into this dish. The hot peppers will also be used in a Mexican black bean and corn salad.

The caramelized onion biscuits were served with Salmon Cakes. These are very tasty. The baker has a variety of savory biscuits. There was one with zucchini and one with bacon and cheese. Maybe I'll try that one next week.

On Sunday, the swiss chard will either go into scrambled eggs for breakfast or be sautéed with garlic for dinner. The leeks will make an appearance in mashed potatoes with leeks.

The red onions and shallots will appear in a variety of dishes throughout the week. Red onions are my favorite onions, and shallots improve just about anything. Some will go in salad dressing.

The cherry tomatoes are for munching. They sit out on the counter ready to be enjoyed as a snack or as part of a meal.

Posted August 8, 2010 12:20 PM in Kitchen Garden/Farmstand

April 1, 2010

All Natural Beautiful Easter Eggs

Are you or someone in your family allergic to or senstive to food dyes? Or maybe you prefer to avoid the artificial colors usually used to dye Easter eggs. Well, you can still have beautifully dyed Easter eggs. The ingredients are simple and you probably have many of them in your cupboard and refrigerator. This activity will take a little longer than dying eggs with an egg dying kit, but it’s worth the extra time to make naturally dyed eggs.

It’s a good idea to wear gloves when you make any of these dyes. Unless you also want to dye your hands. And don’t use your favorite towels to clean up; use old rags and paper towels.

Yellow Dye: Turmeric, is a spice best known for being an ingredient used to make curry, is the perfect dye for yellow Easter eggs. To make yellow turmeric dye, bring 1 quart of water to a boil, add 1 tablespoons white vinegar, stir in 3 tablespoons turmeric. Simmer 5 minutes, stirring to dissolve the turmeric. Remove from heat. Let cool until you’re ready to use it.

These deep yellow eggs were soaked in the turmeric dye for a few hours.

Red Dye: Beets are used to make red dye. If you’ve ever cooked beets, you know about how they stain. You can use fresh or canned beets. You need 1-2 beets, about 3/4 pound. Roughly chop your beets, and place the the beets, 1 quart of water and 1 tablespoon of white vinegar in a saucepan. Bring to a boil, then cover and simmer for 30 minutes. Strain out the beets and cool the dye liquid until you are ready to use it.

Blue Dye: When you boil red cabbage, the resulting purple liquid will dye your eggs blue. It seems odd, but it works! So for your blue dye, you need 1 pound of shredded red cabbage. Add the cabbage, 1 quart of water, and 1 tablespoon of white vinegar to a saucepan and bring it to a boil. Cover and simmer for 30 minutes. Strain out the cabbage and cool your liquid dye until you are ready to use it.

Here’s the red cabbage dye before the cabbage has been strained out.

Cooking Your Eggs: While you are making your dyes, you should also cook your eggs. For the best colors, be sure to use white eggs. Everyone has their own method for hard-cooked eggs. The first thing that you might notice is that I'm calling them hard-cooked eggs rather than hard-boiled eggs because I don't boil the eggs; boiling the eggs often results in rubbery whites, green tinged yolks, and shells that are impossible to remove.

Here’s my method. Place the eggs in a saucepan, fill the pan with water to cover the eggs by 1 inch of water, add 1 tablespoon of salt to the water (don’t worry, your eggs will not taste salty), bring the water to a boil, immediately remove the pan from the heat, cover the pan, and let the eggs sit in the pan for 16 minutes (for large eggs). But you’re not done there, you want your eggs to be easy to peel. My secrets to easy-to-peel hard-cooked eggs are twofold: salting the water and immediately plunging the cooked eggs into an ice bath (equal parts cold water and ice). Let the eggs sit in the ice bath for 5 minutes.

Continue reading "All Natural Beautiful Easter Eggs" »

Posted April 1, 2010 10:55 PM in Gluten-Free, Tips, Techniques & Tools

March 31, 2010

Cooking with Kelly

One of the things I love about my job is that everyday is different. And no matter how much I plan my day, an interesting challenge almost always presents itself. Today was no different.

Unless you live under a rock, you know that the Northeast is experiencing serious flooding. Well, that flooding closed my client's daughter's school, so she was home today. Kelly is in third grade and she loves to cook. I rarely see her because she is either in school or at her summer program. But today when she unexpectedly had no school, she helped me cook her family's meals.

I took a few minutes to think about how Kelly could help me, then we got down to work. I wanted to find things that she could do on her own or with just a little bit of supervision. Kelly likes to wash vegetables. Great! Kelly washed all the vegetables for me. Kelly likes to peel carrots, so Kelly peeled the carrots. She knows how to do these things, so while she did them, I did other things. Since Kelly likes to peel carrots, I figured she'd like peeling potatoes. Only she has never peeled a potato. So I told her to just do what she did with the carrots. Her family is a swivel-peeler family. I'm a Y-peeler gal. She was having a little trouble with the potatoes, so I offered her my spare Y-peeler to see if that was easier. Kelly is now a Y-peeler convert. And the proud owner of my spare Y-peeler. I also snuck in a little lesson on cleaning up after yourself. Kelly cleaned up all her peelings and washed her cutting board.

Look at that concentration! And forgive the blurriness, third graders move very quickly!

Kelly with Swivel Peeler Kelly with Y-peeler

The potatoes went into an Indian Curry with Potatoes, Cauliflower and Chickpeas. Kelly helped with stirring that. She loved the smell of the curry and knew that it was curry, but she doesn't eat curry.

Curry making