Eventful: Fill Your Pantry & Winter Vegetable Sagra!

Spring has always been a favorite time of year, coming, as it does, at the end of a cold, damp season here in the Pacific Northwest. The warming temperatures, the first taste of the peppery greens emerging from the soil—it rings my chimes every time! And of course the abundance of summer can't be beat, starting with the region's justifiably renowned berries and the ensuing cavalcade of summer vegetables and fruits.

As colorful as it is delicious!

But I'm finding that, in the last couple of years, fall and winter have wangled their way into my heart, especially with the emergence of new, packed-with-flavor varieties that local farmers have adapted to our maritime climate, many of which can thrive in the field without row covers or hoop houses. I'm not just talking about beets and turnips here, either, but a whole plethora of chicories—bright red radicchio, speckled castelfranco, curly endive and escarole, and even an Italian outlier called puntarelle—with their slightly bitter bite, as well as new squash types that will make your old butternut blush, along with other upstarts like purple sprouting broccoli.

To celebrate this season of deliciousness and sample it first-hand, on Sunday, December 8th, Friends of Family Farmers and the Culinary Breeding Network are joining forces to once again to present the Fill Your Pantry and Winter Vegetable Sagra. Fill Your Pantry is a one-day community bulk-buying event encouraging you to stock your pantry for the winter with items from local farms such as storage vegetables, fruit, beans, pasture-raised meats, grains, canned goods, and other products. Take a look at the incredible list of products and sign up to pre-order. (Pre-ordering is encouraged, with orders to be picked up at the event. Farmers will bring a limited amount of product to sell at the event.)

Fill your pantry and your belly!

The Winter Vegetable Sagra—"sagra" being Italian for a rural festival—will have some of Portland's best-known chefs offering (free!) tastes of dishes featuring the many different varieties of winter vegetables being grown by Oregon farmers, along with cooking demonstrations and activities for kids. Not only that, and this speaks volumes to me, there's a cookbook swap where for every good quality cookbook you bring in, you can swap for another one of your choice!

It's all happening on December 8th from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. at The Redd, Portland's hub for local food and farms, at 831 SE Salmon St. in Portland.  Past events have been not only a showcase of the vitality of our local food system, but an opportunity for the community to celebrate the bounty that is available to us year round.

Photos by Shawn Linehan Photography.

Squash Chronicles: Kabocha Glazed with White Miso and Maple Butter

It's all squash, all the time here at Good Stuff NW…or so you might surmise from the preponderance of Oscar-worthy starring roles that winter squash has been playing in this series of posts. My passion has been aided and abetted by the series of mouthwatering videos like the one above, produced by Lane Selman of the Culinary Breeding Network and the inimitable Chef Tim Wastell.

Squash season is still upon us, and you'll be finding these gorgeous orbs at local markets and greengrocers through February. Until then I'll be cramming as many of them into our dinner rotation as I can.

I'm particularly intrigued by the miso butter glaze that Tim demonstrates in the video above, since I've sworn to start exploring the possibilities of the fermented umami-bomb of miso in the coming year with the help of locally produced Jorinji misos. Get the recipe for the steamed kabocha glazed with white miso and maple above, and check out the rest of the Squash Chronicles.

Squash Chronicles: Black Futsu Salad with Radicchio

It's all squash, all the time here at Good Stuff NW…or so you might surmise from the preponderance of Oscar-worthy starring roles that winter squash has been playing in recent posts.

Much of the blame for this cucurbit-heavy obsession can be laid at the feet of the fellow in the video above, the estimable Chef Tim Wastell and his henchperson/enabler Lane Selman of the Culinary Breeding Network, I'm happy to share the results of their collaboration here.

Get the recipe for the Black Futsu Salad with Radicchio above, and check out the rest of the Squash Chronicles.

Squash Chronicles: Spaghetti Squash Cacio e Pepe

It's all squash, all the time here at Good Stuff NW…or so you might surmise from the preponderance of Oscar-worthy starring roles that winter squash has been playing in recent posts. Much of the blame for this cucurbit-heavy obsession can be laid at the feet of the fellow in the video above, the estimable Chef Tim Wastell and his henchperson/enabler Lane Selman of the Culinary Breeding Network.

Tim Wastell showing proper squash butchery technique.

A couple of years ago the pair held a Squash Party for which Tim concocted a mind-blowing squash ice cream that disrupted the comfy little niche I had created in my mind for winter squash. I came home and immediately made a winter squash sorbet and, damn him, it was stunning! It also began my quest for what else this herbaceous vine might be capable of.

Selman and Wastell recently held a Squash Sagra in which Wastell demonstrated squash butchery to a rapt audience. It's also where I learned of a series of videos of Tim making fabulously simple dishes using these much-maligned gourds. Filmed by my friend Jeremy Fenske, they are short and sweet and sure to inspire you. And, I hope, to blow apart that little niche you might have for this amazing food.

Get the recipe for Squash Cacio e Pepe. Find more squash recipes here.

Watch Oregon's Food System Changing!

A wonderful video on the Culinary Breeding Network Variety Showcase event that I posted about earlier. And if you look closely at the ballroom scene at about 15 seconds in, you'll see Anthony Boutard in his fez presiding over the Ayers Creek Farm table on the far end of the room.

Brava, Lane Selman, for putting together this important gathering!

Culinary Breeding Network Adds Flavor Back In Food

When a farmer is growing a vegetable for market in our current food system, the issues that are first on the agenda are characteristics like yield, ripening time and how long it'll survive being shipped hundreds, if not thousands, of miles from the farm. Not to mention being handled several times between the field, the distributer's warehouse and its eventual destination, which can turn a gorgeous box of bell peppers into a broken, mushy mess.

Lane Selman.

And what about flavor? For a long time now, that particular aspect has slipped to the bottom—if not completely off—of the list. That's why your grandparents might pick up a red bell pepper at the store and say something like, "I used to pick these from my parents' garden and eat them whole. Wouldn't do that now—peppers these days don't taste anything like they used to."

And they'd be right.

But you can tell your grandparents there's hope for the bell peppers, tomatoes, cucumbers and even lettuce greens the store. That's because of an Oregon State University (OSU) agricultural researcher named Lane Selman. A petite but mighty dynamo, Selman realized that there was a huge gap between what traditional plant breeders and farmers saw as successful crops—mainly disease resistance, yield and performance in the field—and what institutional buyers, cooks and chefs were looking for, which was flavor and texture.

Cucumber varieties.

Selman decided that the way to bring flavor back into the conversation was to bring all of these people together, so that seed and plant breeders could talk to farmers, chefs and cooks and figure out how to breed crops that would perform well for everyone. She formed the Culinary Breeding Network and began taking chefs into the field to taste vegetables and learn about how seed and plant breeders select for different traits. Plant researchers at universities who were developing new varieties of vegetables got involved, as well, along with organic farmers looking for new varieties to offer their customers.

Andrew Still of Adaptive Seeds talks flavor.

Out of those conversations was born the Culinary Breeding Network's Variety Showcase, where plant breeders, seed growers, fresh market farmers, chefs, produce buyers and food journalists came together to taste existing, unreleased and new vegetable varieties and breeding lines focused on superior culinary quality. Now in its third year, the most recent showcase attracted more than 300 people who gathered to taste and rate tomatoes, peppers, carrots, squash, herbs, beets, dried beans, corn and grains like quinoa, barley and sorghum.

A jaunty Anthony Boutard with his fava bean stew.

So you could find Philomath seed breeder and national treasure for his work with organic seed, Frank Morton (whose Outredgeous lettuce was chosen to be the first plant grown on the international space station), chatting about peppers with OSU's Jim Myers, whose tomatoes were drawing a crowd with a salad of tomato juice-soaked red bulgur wheat prepared by Ned Ludd chef Jason French. Across the room was a jaunty-looking Anthony Boutard of Ayers Creek Farm sported a matching fez-and-cravat ensemble while dishing out ladles of his fava bean stew along with chef Sam Smith of Tusk's fava bean hummus.

The network's mission is now supported by the Oregon State University Department of Horticulture, the Organic Seed Alliance, and Seed Matters—an effort by the Clif Bar Family Foundation to improve the viability and availability of organic seed—as well as the University of Wisconsin, Cornell University and the OSU Small Farms Program, all groups that see the Culinary Breeding Network as part of a next step in developing a sustainable food system.

And, hopefully, it'll lead to the day you bring home a big red bell pepper that your grandparents will say tastes just like the ones they used to pick in their gardens.

Chefs & Farmers Team Up for More Flavor

It's incredible that no one had thought of it before: bringing chefs together with farmers and seed breeders to collaborate on growing more flavorful ingredients. Fortunately we have a visionary in Lane Selman, an agricultural researcher at Oregon State University, who had the idea to do just that. This is the second year she has organized the Culinary Breeding Network's Variety Showcase, a tasting and evaluation of new vegetables bred as a result of these collaborative efforts. Here is Slow Hand Farm owner and consultant Josh Volk's report on the evening. Photos courtesy of the incomparable Shawn Linehan.

Monday night was the Culinary Breeding Network's 2nd Annual Variety Showcase in Portland, Oregon. The event brings together seed breeders working on varieties for organic production, farmers and chefs to highlight the work that they are all doing to promote new and special vegetable varieties. Lane Selman, the organizer and force behind the Culinary Breeding Network, does an incredible job of bringing seed breeders from all over the country and pairing them with chefs who can prepare their vegetables and give a sense of their potential.

Farmer Josh Volk (r) with chef Andrew Mace, Le Pigeon.

The format for the event is pretty simple: seed breeders and/or farmers are paired with chefs who will work with the farmers' vegetables to prepare a tasting. On the night of the event, tables are set up with displays of the vegetables alongside raw samples, as well as samples that the chefs have prepared. Then the room fills with journalists, chefs, farmers and seed breeders. The big crowd of about 200 sampled the goods and talked with the chefs, breeders, farmers and each other about what they were tasting.

Samples of a sweet paprika and Hungarian Black pepper cross.

As a farmer, I’ve been working with Lane on vegetable projects for about ten years now and she’s always included tastings in the work that she’s involved with, not forgetting the importance of flavor when choosing varieties. We’ve worked together on countless crops, mostly doing trials under organic production methods to look at their potential for yields, disease resistance, storage, cold tolerance, etc., but always also looking at flavor. In all of these trials we’ve been comparing new plant material from seed breeders alongside commercially available seeds.

Andrew Still of Adaptive Seeds (l) and Henry Storch of Old Blue Raw Honey.

About seven years ago she started inviting chefs to be a part of the conversation, and the synergy is incredible. Now, at the Variety Showcase, we have all three groups in the same room at the same time. As a farmer I’m able to talk to the breeders about what characteristics I’m looking for, and to the chefs about what they’re looking for. They also give me ideas about new crops, new techniques and new marketing avenues, and I get to see, touch, smell and taste the products right there. I had a great time catching up with friends from the food world and getting inspired by new crops and incredible preparations of old crops that give me new ideas.

Non-sweet vegetable corn from Bill Tracey, UW-Madison.

I was tabling with Andrew Mace from Le Pigeon and Shaina Bronstein from Vitalis Organic Seeds. With Our Table Cooperative I’ve been growing fennel trials so we had six to sample at the table, and Andrew had made a take on chips and dip with the fennel that was delicious. I didn’t have a chance to make it around to all of the other tables; every time I’d go out to try to see what was out there I’d run into someone I wanted to talk to and then spend all of my time on just one or two items, but I did get to see most of it. Plus I got to talk to a lot of people about fennel and what I’ve noticed while growing a dozen different varieties side by side this year. In the mix of crops being highlighted were carrot breeding lines, sweet corns—or perhaps more accurately vegetal corns which are sweet but also have amazing corn flavor and are meant for fresh harvest—really exciting work on American groundnut (Apios), winter squash, many different peppers and beans, winter melon, barley, wheat, shiso, parsley and probably a handful of others I either missed or didn’t get a chance to see.

This event in some ways is showing food at an exclusive craft level, but in typical Oregon style, it is anything but elitist. The emphasis is on featuring the vegetables and moving our food system forward using organic techniques, while celebrating the breeders who are making this possible and raising everyone’s level of understanding and creating positive connections.

To see more of the fun, check out Shawn's gallery of photos.

Squash Party!

I was fortunate to be invited to this event, charmingly called a Squash Party, by Lane Selman of the Culinary Breeding Network. As the video relates, it was a gathering of seed breeders, farmers, produce buyers and chefs to taste varieties of lesser-known squash that are being grown for their unique flavor profiles.

Musquée de Provence.

The aim of the network is to provide consumers with more delicious choices for their tables, not just with squash but with all kinds of produce like tomatoes, peppers, carrots, potatoes…you name it, it's being grown. And if the squash presented looks delicious in the video—including Chef Tim Wastell's squash ice cream paired with Linda Colwell's pumpkin seed sablé—in person it was fabulous.

Keep up the good work!

See my previous post about the Variety Showcase that Lane organized…more photos of gorgeous produce!

Farm Bulletin: To Every Farm, a Muse

No visit to Ayers Creek Farm is complete without a demonstration of the culinary uses of the food that contributor Anthony Boutard and his wife, Carol, grow on their 140-acre farm. To their credit, their decade-long Herculean effort has been rewarded with the appointment of their very own muse. 

Before the Olympian deities took over and bureaucratized the Office of Muses, there were just three muses residing on Mount Helicon: Aoide (expression), Mneme (memory) and Melete (occasion). Linda Colwell is our Melete. Whether it is a ramble or some other occasion, Linda steps in and everything flows smoothly.

Linda Colwell, Ayers Creek's Melete.

When Lane Selman of the Culinary Breeding Network asked us on a hopeful afternoon in April if we could host a lunch and tour at Ayers Creek for the Organicology conference in early February, it seemed like an reasonable idea. With our lovely Melete watching over us, what could go wrong? Nothing, as it turns out, even in a week marked by torrents of rain, the sun shone and we all had a good time.

The gorgeous groaning board.

Working with Mark Doxtader and Jason Barwikowski of Tastebud, and Sarah Minnick of Lovely's 50/50, Linda showcased the fruits, vegetables and grains of the farm. While we led a tour in the fields, Linda gave a talk about the various ingredients in the lunch. One participant confided to us that he loved Linda's talk so much that he was tempted to sit through it a second time. Here is the quartet's menu:

• Amish Butter popcorn with Aci Sivri cayenne
• Black Radish soup
• Green Posole made with Amish Butter hominy, pumpkin seeds, and sorrel
• Late treviso panzanella style salad with roasted Sibley squash and kakai seeds
• Roy's Calais Flint polenta with braised Borlotti beans with leeks and chicory
• Oven-roasted sweet potatoes
• Focaccia with late summer dried green grapes
• Sprouted barley toast with roasted winter squash drizzled with honey and Ayers Creek jam
• Winter field greens as available: rocket, chervil, kale
• Adzuki bean ice cream between Kakai pumpkin seed cookies
• Chester blackberry ice cream between Amish Butter and Almond cookies

Salad of winter field greens.

The Tastebud oven has welcomed guests to the Ayers Creek since the first ramble. This Christmas, we received greetings from a former Hillsdale Farmers' Market regular, now residing in Portugal, recalling that day. Sami's teenage daughter was convinced rather reluctantly to fritter away a Sunday afternoon at that ramble. The walk went well for her but the high point of the day was walking into the shade of the oaks and seeing her favorite feature of the Hillsdale market, the Tastebud oven. It always heralds a good event when Mark's truck maneuvers into position.

Move Over, Ice Cream: Squash Sorbet Steals the Spotlight

The Portland food boom continues: we're already famous for our beverages like beer, coffee, tea and wine—OK, sodas and drinking vinegars, too—our chefs, restaurants and food carts are second to none, and there seems to be a recent explosion of nouveau ice cream parlors out-weirding each other with crazy (and sometimes very unappealing-sounding) flavors like bone marrow, avocado, blood pudding and, because it is Portland, after all, bacon.

When I saw squash ice cream on the roster at a recent Squash Party—hosted by Lane Selman and Alex Stone of the Culinary Breeding Network to taste new and unusual varieties of cucurbits—you could say I was a bit skeptical. But then two things convinced me to give it a chance: that it was concocted by Tim Wastell of Firehouse restaurant, a guy as dedicated to field-to-table dining as anyone in the city, and that it was made from one of Ayers Creek Farm's astonishing and deeply flavorful Musquée de Provence squashes (above left).

Creamy, sweet and luscious, it was all I could ask from an ice cream, particularly since it was served on a pumpkin seed sablé, a type of French biscuit that was made just for the tasting by Linda Colwell. I came home and told Dave about it, thinking he might be up for attempting a sorbet, since due to his lactose-intolerance he's been whipping up some mighty fine examples in his ice cream maker. We also happened to have one of those same Musquée pumpkins that I'd picked up from the market the week before, and I had a feeling it might just match well with the cranberry tart I was planning on taking to Thanksgiving dinner.

Right on all counts—the rich sweetness of the sorbet melded perfectly with the tart cranberry-orange of the tart—we're now intent on doing some further experimenting in the less-traveled roads of sorbet-making. I'll keep you posted.

Musquée de Provence Squash Sorbet

2 lbs. Musquée de Provence squash or other sweet-fleshed squash

1 1/4 c. simple syrup

1/4 c. orange juice

1 tbsp. lemon juice

To make the squash puree:

Preheat oven to 400°.

Cut squash in half and scoop out seeds. Cut the squash into 1/2” slices and place on a parchment-lined baking tray. Place in oven and bake until the squash is fork tender, about an hour. Remove the squash from the oven and set aside to cool. 

Once squash is cool, scoop out the flesh from the skin and purée in a food processor.

To make the simple syrup:

While the squash is baking, in a medium saucepan combine 1 1/2 c. sugar and 1 1/2 c. water. Heat briefly over low heat, stirring until sugar dissolves completely. Set aside to cool.

To make the sorbet:

In a blender, blend 2 cups of squash purée with simple syrup, lemon and orange juices until smooth. Freeze in an ice cream machine according to manufacturer's instructions. Store in the freezer.

Seeds of an Idea: Chefs Working with Farmers

You remember Mendel's peas from your fourth-grade science class, don't you? Where this guy named Gregor Mendel, an Augustinian priest, grew peas in his abbey's garden and noticed how certain traits were dominant, meaning they could be passed on to future generations, helping to establish many of the rules of heredity.

Talkin' squash with Alex Stone of OSU.

Historically, farmers bred vegetables for themselves and their local communities, choosing seeds that would flourish in a particular climate or elevation and that their families and neighbors could enjoy. For the last several decades, the advent of large corporate agriculture, where crops are grown and shipped to markets far from where they are grown, has meant that new vegetables have been bred for traits like yield, storability, appearance and the ability to withstand the rigors of transport.

You want peppers? We got peppers!

Flavor, that most ephemeral of qualities, has fallen by the wayside in the industrial model, resulting in bland tomatoes, greens that taste like cardboard and fruit that has all the appeal of munching on a tennis ball. Lately though, the rise of farmers' markets and the beginnings of a return to sourcing foods locally has flavor rocketing back to the top of the list.

"Eeh…what's up, doc?"

World-famous chefs like Ferran Adrià are starting to work with farmers and seed breeders to bring back not just ancient varieties of wheat, but to develop new lines using traditional, non-biotech methods, like those used by Mendel. Here in Portland, that work is being forwarded by Lane Selman of the Culinary Breeding Network, a project of the Organic Seed Alliance and Oregon State University's Department of Horticulture.

Gorgeous indigo cherry tomatoes.

This past Monday, many of Oregon's top seed breeders, chefs and farmers gathered around tables overflowing with carrots, potatoes, peppers, cilantro, corn, beets, squash, onions and tomatoes to sample and rate new varieties. The chefs, like Greg Higgins of Higgins Restaurant and Bar, who had teamed with Good Stuff NW contributor Anthony Boutard of Ayers Creek Farm to make a hominy soup with Amish Butter corn spoonbread, got to work with farmers growing new varieties of these crops, each choosing one to prepare for sampling.

The most valuable part of the evening, though, was the conversations that spontaneously erupted over the rows of raw and roasted beets, the bowls of neon-colored peppers and the waving stems of cilantro. You can look for the results of those conversations to appear on restaurant menus and market tables near you.

See the Flickr photos from the Variety Showcase. Top photo and photo of Alex Stone courtesy of the Culinary Breeding Network.