Fall comes again… finally!

As all of you wonderful friends and followers will know, I have completely failed at keeping up this blog during the late summer. Truth be told, I failed at keeping up with most things during that time, with the unique exception of harvesting my super prolific beans, tomatoes and summer squash at least three times a week. Now autumn has finally come to Oregon, and while most non-born-and-raised Oregonians are groaning and pouting about the rain, I wake up with a big smile on my face every day. This is my season! The leaves are changing, the mist is hanging in the dells and valleys, my neighbors’ porches (and my own!) are adorned with pumpkins, and the bean and summer squash plants have been exhausted. This is the time for big, warm, filling dinners with friends, baking everything I’ve been craving all summer, making cozy soups, and finally having the time to sip creamy chai tea or cinnamon-sprinkled coffee while I curl up with a good book. That’s right folks, the end is in sight for this farmer. Of course this time of year is not without its stresses as well. Questions are looming, such as how best to rest my land over the winter, which markets to apply to for next season, when to work the ground before it gets too wet, how to sell off the remainder of my produce now that my last market is over, and how my landlord’s changing plans will affect my production next year. But in the meantime, I’ve finally found the time to cook again, so I’ve got a terrific backlog of recipes and cooking ideas for you all!

Last week I called my friend-family together for an impromptu fall celebratory feast. The weather was perfect: misty and damp. I had a pile of vegetables left over from the market and begging to be used. Here is the menu:

Appetizer: Baba Ghanoush, made with beautiful Prosperosa eggplants from the farm 
1st Course: Julia Child’s classic Leek and Potato Soup, recipe to follow
Main Course: Pot Roast
Eggplant Parmesan, with Nubia eggplants from the farm
Roasted Caramelized Root Vegetables, including turnips, carrots and rutabega from the farm
Roasted Squash with Sage Brown Butter, using Delicata squash from the farm
Dessert: Apple Pie with a cheddar cheese pastry crust (nothing from the farm here, but absolutely delicious nonetheless! If you are as fascinated as I am by anything encased in pastry, then you must find the cookbook Pie by Angela Boggiano. Every recipe I have tried has been amazing, and I drool just thinking about those I have yet to make!)

As promised, I will now recount Julia Child’s super simple recipe for Leek and Potato Soup, which can be found in Mastering the Art of French Cooking, vol. 1. In fact, this recipe is the first recipe of the first chapter of the first volume of this masterpiece. That should impart to you how wonderful and important it is to have this little number in your arsenal. This recipe is flexible, and you won’t believe how good it tastes after you see how simple it is to make!

3-4 cups (about 1 lb) peeled potatoes, diced – I prefer red potatoes
3 cups (1 lb) thinly sliced leeks, including the tender green parts
2 quarts of water
1 tsp salt
4-6 Tbsp heavy cream (when I don’t have it in the house I use half and half)

Simmer the vegetables, water, and salt together, partially covered, for 40-50 minutes until the vegetables are tender. Mash the potatoes with a pastry cutter or pass the soup through a food mill. Many times Leek and Potato soup is served pureed, but I love to have the little leek pieces in there, so sometimes, I don’t even mash the potatoes, just leave them whole. Season your soup to taste. When ready to serve, reheat the soup to a simmer, pull off the heat and stir in the cream. If you would like, garnish with minced parsley or chives. Voila! The ultimate comfort food!

Markets may be over for the season, but you can still find Ravenhill Farm produce at Nostrana, OHSU cafes, and possibly a winter market tba! Keep up to date on farm antics, updates, and recipes on the facebook page, and for even more recipe ideas find me on Pinterest!

Little Stephanie’s Frisee Salad

Its time for a salad recipe with curly endive, otherwise known as frisee. This is a mildly bitter chicory, common in French cuisine. This recipe comes from one of my roommates. I have two, not including the dogs of course, and both of my roommates are named Stephanie. The way we tell them apart is a long story. Anyhow, this roommate used to work at a french bistro in McMinnville called Bistro Maison, and she picked up this salad from the chef there. We had it for dinner the other night (one for each of us!). Its simple, fast and easy, not to mention delicious!

Serves 2 as an entrée, or 4 as side salads

1 baguette
olive oil
3-4 slices of bacon
1/4-1/2 c. white wine
1 head curly endive (frisee)
4 Tbsp mustard vinaigrette or balsamic vinegar, etc.
goat cheese or blue cheese
2-4 eggs

First make the croutons. Preheat the oven to 375. Cut the baguette into 1-2 inch cubes and spread these on a cookie sheet. Sprinkle generously with salt and pepper, and drizzle with olive oil. Toss the bread so that the cubes are evenly seasoned. Bake until golden, tossing once.

Meanwhile, slice bacon into bite-size pieces and sauté on medium high heat. Season with pepper. After a few minutes, add 1/4 c. white wine. Continue cooking the bacon until done, stirring occasionally and adding wine if necessary. When finished, there should be some liquid left in the pan. Chop the frisee across the head, and toss in the serving bowl with vinaigrette. You could use any sweet vinaigrette or aged balsamic vinegar here. Sprinkle croutons and bacon on the frisee, along with cooking liquid, and toss again to evenly incorporate the elements. Poach egg (one for each salad) in simmering water. Remove when the yolk is still runny, as this will add to the dressing element. Top salad with either blue cheese or goat cheese (your preference, both are excellent) and a poached egg. Serve while the egg is still hot!

As always, I highly recommend that you buy as many ingredients as possible from local producers, at the farmers market! I will have this recipe at my stand and am always happy to recommend my fellow vendors!

Photographic farm update!

 

The market stand is looking very full these days! This past week I added zucchini and summer squash, as well as purple and yellow French filet beans!

At the farm lots of things are starting to come on! Romano beans (Italian flat beans) will be at the market this week, Italian peppers are getting big, and cipollini onion tops are beginning to fall. Eggplants are blooming:

And there are baby pumpkins and winter squash:

In other news, if you live in the Portland metro area and can’t make it to a market, you can buy Ravenhill Farm produce online and pick it up at a designated location! Connect2Fresh is a new start-up in Portland aiming to connect eaters with local food in a new way. Check out their website: www.connect2fresh.com!

 

Escarole and Peach Salad – summer in a bowl!

The advent of warm weather and of peaches (finally! I’ve been waiting since September!) has persuaded me to celebrate with a simple but stellar summer salad! This recipe comes from Chef John over at the Food Wishes blog. There you can watch a video of him detailing exactly how to make this salad. I will also have printed recipes at my market stands!

Escarole is one of the lesser-known salad greens, but all the more wonderful for it. As Chef John explains (sort of) in his video, escarole is a broad-leafed type of endive, a member of the chicory genus. Other chicories include radicchio and Belgian Endive. Chicories are native to Europe and many varieties are found throughout Italian, French and other western European cuisines. Escarole itself has been cultivated in England since the 1500′s and also shows up commonly in Sicilian cuisine. It has a slightly more toothsome texture than lettuce, with a mild, earthy flavor. It can get mildly bitter, though nothing like radicchio or frisee. This recipe capitalizes on that slight bitterness by complimenting it with the sweet peach and dressing. Chef John explains that escarole gets more bitter the larger it grows, so smaller heads are best.

Here’s the ingredient list:

1 small head escarole
1 ripe peach
4 oz goat cheese
1/2 cup toasted walnuts
1 tablespoon rice vinegar
1 tablespoon sherry vinegar
2 tablespoon olive oil
salt and fresh ground black pepper to taste

One of the reasons I chose this recipe to feature my lovely escarole is that you can find all of the fresh ingredients at both of my markets! I love supporting my fellow vendors (we’re all in this together, after all) so don’t forget to pick up the goat cheese from Portland Creamery and the peaches from Baird Family Orchards (at the NW market) or Thompson Farms (at OHSU).

Disclaimer: I haven’t actually had time to make this salad myself, but I hope to soon. I promise to let ya’ll know how it goes!

Recipe from: http://foodwishes.blogspot.com/2010/08/peach-and-escarole-salad-cause-im-tired.html

Funky veggie of the week #2

Aww, carrots in love!

NW Examiner article features RF!

Ravenhill Farm has received its first publicity! The NW Examiner is a neighborhood paper locally distributed in NW Portland, where I have a stand at the farmers market on Thursdays.  Food blogger and Carlton neighbor Martha Wright is doing a summer series on the neighborhood market, and in July she featured Ravenhill Farm and fellow specialty veg farm La Terra Vita in her article, all about why buying from small, local farmers really matters in the grand scheme of things. I am honored to share print space with Art from LTV, who is a great farmer friend, as well as an inspiration.

If you happen to live in a NW neighborhood, you’ve probably already received the July issue in your mailbox! If you’re not so lucky, you can pick up a copy at many NW locations, including Powells, Ken’s Artisan Bakery, Food Front,  and several Starbucks locations to name a few. You can also download the paper from their website: http://www.nwexaminer.com.

Thanks so much to Martha, who continues to faithfully shop at the market and is always a joy to talk to and share recipe ideas with! Check out her great blog at http://www.oregonpinotkitchen.com.

In other farm news, I harvested the first summer squash of the season today! The lovely, plump Magda Cousa is a Middle Eastern variety. Look for it at the markets next week, as well as Costata Romanesco, an Italian variety!

Hooray for summer and sunshine!

Funky veggie of the week!

Hey radish, how you doin?

Broccoli what???

I have decided that it is time for an official introduction. Friends, readers, confidants, meet broccoli raab! “Broccoli what?” you say?

Broccoli raab is actually a non-heading broccoli relative. Some say it is related more closely to the turnip. There are several other names that are commonly associated with this plant or with vegetables that look almost indistinguishable from one another: broccoli rabe, broccolini, Chinese broccoli, sprouting broccoli, or rapini. Some sources claim that these are all different varieties, others use the names interchangeably. The term “raab” can actually be applied to the flowerets of any Brassica vegetable that is formed when the plant attempts to flower and go to seed, so you might occasionally see “collard raab”, “kale raab”, etc. These are much less common than broccoli raab, but look very similar.

Broccoli raab has a much more pungent flavor than regular broccoli. One is intended to eat the entire thing, stem, leaves, flowers and all. Most sources recommend that raab  always be cooked, as this mellows the pungency. It is common to the cuisines of Italy, Portugal, the Netherlands, China and parts of Spain. The varieties that I have chosen to grow this year are Italian in origin. The simplest and quickest way to prepare raab is to sauté it with olive oil and garlic until the stems become just tender. I have been experimenting with raab quite a bit recently, as I have a lot to harvest and it’s not selling all that well at the market. The Italians often use it in pasta, so one night I sautéed some raab as described above, then tossed it in with penne and olive oil. That was good. But then a few nights ago, inspiration struck! Here is the resulting recipe:

Farmer Erin’s Spaghetti Carbonara with Broccoli Raab
Serves 1

1 strip of bacon
handful of spaghetti noodles
about 1/8 cup chopped onion
1 large clove of garlic, minced
1/2 bunch of Ravenhill Farm broccoli raab, cut into bite-size pieces
sprinkle of chili flake
1 egg
handful of freshly grated parmesan cheese
salt and pepper to taste

First, fry the bacon over medium heat. Meanwhile, set a medium-sized pot of water to boil over high heat. When bacon is mostly cooked, remove and cut into pieces. Add the onion into the bacon fat and cook until fragrant. Then add raab, garlic, chopped bacon and a sprinkle of chili flake. Cook this together over medium heat, stirring occasionally.

When the water is boiling, add in the noodles and a pinch of salt. Beat the egg, then add in the cheese and whisk together. When the noodles are al dente and the raab is cooked to your liking, remove the noodles from the heat. It is very important that this does not happen until the raab is finished cooking, because the steps that are to follow must be done very quickly for the carbonara to turn out. Drain the noodles as quickly as possible and immediately transfer them to your serving dish. Pour on the egg mixture and stir (yes, it is still raw, the heat from the noodles will cook it), then throw in the bacon and raab and stir again. Season with salt and pepper and top with more parmesan cheese, if desired. Serve hot.

Remember, the proportions in this recipe are for just one serving. Double, triple or quadruple it to serve a group. Trust me, they’ll be asking for seconds! And sorry, vegetarians and vegans, I just don’t think carbonara was meant for you!

 

The view from here – June 26, 2012

Every once in a while, I need to recalibrate myself, and that usually includes what I like to call “waxing poetical”. In the pursuit of transparency and providing an honest portrait of life as a small farmer, I will attempt to periodically share these thoughts with my readers. So here is my little bit of farmer philosophy for today:

Its 8:45 pm on the… third day of summer, I think. I’m sitting in the back of my pickup truck, at my farm, watching the sun go down. Yes, there are weeds that need pulling, onions to be thinned, a months worth of bookkeeping to catch up on. But I have always cherished the long light evenings of early summer in the Willamette Valley, and recently I have spent too many of them commenting on the lovely sunset as I rush through one chore after another. Tonight I am allowing myself to enjoy one gorgeous sunset. As I watch the orange glow steal across the sky, the to-do list fades from my mind, replaced only by awe and gratefulness for how truly blessed I am. This is the life I have been dreaming of. It is very different from the ideal, rosy experience I pictured, but the satisfaction in a hard day’s work, the pride in beautiful, tasty produce, and the comfort of this agricultural heartland remain steadfast through the worry, the frenzy, the fears of ignorance and unpreparedness. These are the things that get me through the long hours of sweaty work, that ease me to sleep at night, that motivate me to go at it again for another day when the list seems unending and the laundry is piling up.

Want to know what I’m selling at the markets this week? Check my Facebook page!

Radishes, collards, turnips, oh my!

Summer has begun, as they all seem to, with a flurry of activity. I find my self rushing from one place to the next, patching up the minor crises of running a business as best I can before galloping to the next thing that requires my attention. Every night I fall into bed exhausted and bemoaning the short number of hours before I must be at it again.

All that to say, the bulk of the planting at the farm is finished! Every crop is in the ground. All trellises are complete. Tomatoes, eggplants and peppers have their plastic coats to keep them warm. Vegetables are popping up all over the place. The squash plants seem to double in size every day. The pole beans, after what felt like weeks of waiting, have suddenly sprouted new leaves and are sending their tendrils to the sky. The onion seedlings finally look like more than green threads. Here’s Sammy, helping me lay plastic mulch for the eggplants:

Of course, the ryegrass cover crop and various weeds are keeping pace, right along with the crops. From a distance, my field of carefully laid out beds now looks just like a field of grass.

Every week more crops are ready to harvest. I started the markets 3 weeks ago with just salad greens to sell. Since then turnips, French Breakfast radishes and snap peas have joined the lineup. This week we have the exciting addition of Georgia Southern collards and White Russian kale.

Collards are my favorite braising green. I discovered this while working at Nostrana restaurant, where I was happily exposed to so many great foods I now love. I know that the traditional Southern way of cooking greens involves hours of cooking, but a working girl like me just doesn’t have time for that sort of thing! So here is my quick and easy recipe for collard greens:

Braised Collards with Honey

2 Tbsp olive oil
¼ cup diced onion or shallot
1-2 cloves of garlic, minced
3 oz. diced bacon, prosciutto, salami, ham hock, etc.
2 ½ lbs. collard greens, washed and roughly torn
3-4 cups water, stock, or combination of both
1 ½ tsp salt
pinch chili flakes
1 Tbsp honey
salt and pepper to taste

Heat oil in a large, heavy skillet or saucepan over medium heat. Add onion and garlic, saute til fragrant and beginning to soften. Add pork and saute til heated through. Throw in greens, toss to cover with oil, then add water or broth, salt, chili flake and honey. Simmer for 15-20 minutes, until most of the liquid is gone and the greens are tender, but not mushy. Season to taste and serve!

Vegetarian/vegan? Just leave out the pork, and if desired, replace the honey with brown sugar, or leave it out all together. Still delicious!

I also tried out another recipe this week, that I had read about but never actually seen: risotto with turnips. Turns out to be really good! Here’s my version:

Risotto with turnips and bacon

3 bacon slices, cooked crisp and crumbled
1 small onion or shallot, finely chopped
2 medium turnips, preferably with greens
3 1/2 cups chicken broth
3/4 cup Arborio rice
1/4 cup white wine
a pat of butter
1/4 cup grated parmesan cheese
Salt and pepper to taste

Reserve 1 tablespoon of fat from the bacon in a 3-quart heavy saucepan. Peel turnips and cut into 1/4-inch dice. If using greens, cut into 1/4-inch-wide slices and chop stems. In a saucepan bring broth to a simmer and keep at a bare simmer. Heat reserved fat over medium heat until hot and sauté onion, stirring, until just beginning to soften. Stir in turnips (and greens if using) and rice and sauté, stirring constantly, for 1 minute. Add white wine and simmer til mostly absorbed. Stir in 1 cup simmering broth and cook, stirring constantly and keeping at a strong simmer, until absorbed. Continue simmering and adding broth, about 1/2 cup at a time, stirring constantly and letting each addition be absorbed before adding the next, until rice is tender and creamy-looking but still al dente, about 18 minutes total.  When all the broth is just about absorbed and the rice is tender, stir in butter and parmesan cheese. Season to taste.Serve sprinkled with bacon and garnished with Parmesan.

I modified this recipe from one of the same name, found in the November 1998 issue of Gourmet magazine.

So don’t forget to stop by the OHSU market on Tuesdays, 11-3, or the NW 19th & Everett market on Thursdays, 11-7 and pick up some great produce and recipe ideas! See you at the market!