Bachelor Recipes vol1 #1

6/29/11

In a moment of weakness this winter I claimed that I would get more active in terms of the farm notes. Years ago I used to write them, usually at the end of a twelve hour day cutting vegetables and capped at the end by bunching flowers. I remember having to reread them in the morning before making copies at the local grocery store and heading out for the deliveries. I am always reminded of the chapter from “The Great Shark Hunt”, in which Hunter S. Thompson R.I.P reviews his notes and recorded journal entries only to find the drug addled ranting of a lunatic;let’s just say that some of those early farm notes required some last minute editing.

My intention in getting involved in this again is to provide some very simple recipes. I refer to them as bachelor recipes because most of them have their origin in a time when I lived alone in a small house about seven miles South of Rochester. Dinner was often from the garden and prepared and eaten using only the most rudimentary tools. The object was to minimize the impact on the kitchen; if possible using only one pan that had to be hand washed and eating out of said pan leaning over the sink… ah, the good old days. At any rate, many of these early recipes (if you can call them that) have been tried and true; they are simple, they taste great, they use vegetables fresh from the farm in a way that does not require a French dictionary, and above all they are designed for the person without a surplus of time and energy.

Let’s start with a short shopping list that will make everything else easier:

Olive oil: one gallon of mediocre oil for cooking and one gallon of excellent quality oil for dressings

Sesame oil

Salt: a healthy quantity of sea salt and a container of a nice finishing salt (consider a fleur de sol)

Pepper corns

Grinders for both the salt and pepper

Balsamic vinegar: You do not have to break the bank on this

Dried mustard

Garlic Powder

Hazel nuts

Good quality Parmesan and/or Asiago

A heavy cast skillet or two #10-#4

A giant stainless bowl and a smaller stainless bowl

Heavy duty aluminum foil

Salad spinner

A wine bottle or two

A few spill stop liquor spouts (those metal things they put in the top of the bottle in bars)

OK, that’s a good start. Most of the above is to get ready for the abundance of early greens; salads and sautés. The pourers and wine bottles are for the cooking oil and dressing. A wine bottle with a pour spout, filled with olive oil, sitting next to the stove-top is a must have. The fresh ground salt and pepper make a huge difference and are an economical way to fancify everything you cook. There is no substitute for a good quality hard cheese. A few heavy cast pans are all you really need in a kitchen, that and a decent Dutch oven (more later). The beauty of cast is that, if cared for properly, they require minimal washing and no scrubbing unless you make a mistake.

Sooooo… based on this week’s CSA contents:

Salad: prep all the lettuce and other salad greens at the same time. Wash out the sink and fill it with cold water. Cut the butts off the heads of lettuce (be aggressive, there’s lots) toss the leaves into the water and pull them out by the small handful, breaking them into manageable pieces and discarding any damaged leaves as you go and placing them in the strainer of the salad spinner. When the strainer is full, spin the lettuce dry and dump it into a giant stainless bowl. Repeat the process until all the lettuce is washed and dry. Do the same with any arugula or mizuna you might add to salad. Toss together in the giant bowl and place any salad you will not eat immediately into a plastic bag and put it in the fridge.

QnE Dressing: Take one of your empty wine bottles, fill it 2/3 full of best quality olive oil, add some salt, some pepper, some dry mustard, and some garlic powder.* You can also add a few crushed dried herbs like oregano or basil. You can even just stuff a whole stem of fresh herbs into the bottle, but remember you are going to have to get it back out eventually. Fill remainder with Balsamic vinegar and shake.

*There are only three measurements in bachelor cooking: some, lots, and all.

Traditionally in my family the salad was tossed with the dressing and served after the meal with a meager grating of good quality hard cheese.

Salted crispy sharp things: Wash, top, and trim roots from radishes. Wash peel and top the kohlrabi. Slice radishes just as thin as you safely can, do the same with the kohlrabi. Place them in the smaller stainless bowl or even better in the bowl you had the salad in (less washing). Salt them with the finishing salt, toss them around a bit. Serve as is.

As for the Broccoli or Rapini or cauli or tatsoi or joi choi or any other wacky Asian vegetable or brassica; wash and cut into manageable pieces, let them fall into whichever stainless bowl is already oily, and drizzle with olive oil, add some sesame oil and toss. Dump the oily vegetables onto a piece of aluminum foil and wrap them tightly taking care not to leave any gaps. You can either heat these at 350-400 in a toaster oven or better, place them on the grill. They are ready when you can begin to smell them, or when they feel light when you pick them up with tongs.

The Chard can be prepared as above, or rinsed and torn and then tossed into a medium-hot cast pan with a bit of olive oil. I like to brown a few chopped hazel nuts in the pan first and then toss the chard with these. Browning hazel nuts is easy, just don’t burn them. Chop them course and add them to a medium hot pan with just a bit of oil in the bottom. Stir them until golden brown.

The strawberries should be rinsed and eaten as you prep; after all you are cooking aren’t you. You deserve them. If you can wait you can slice them thin and serve them over a scoop of ice cream for dessert.

As for the mint… We’re busy, too busy to sit around drinking tea; we do, however, have time to rinse the bunch and stuff it into a jar of water with a bit of brown sugar, put it in the sun and wait. You will be rewarded with a mild mint tea that can be served over ice.