Need a Vacation? Take Your Mouth to Portugal

I love to travel, but sometimes it's just not possible to jump on a plane and leave the world behind for a week or three. That's when I start planning for a foreign vacation right in my own back yard, with rosé chilling in a tub in the dappled sunlight beneath our oak tree and myriad plates of tapas like this one from contributor Jim Dixon of Real Good Food.

Portuguese Marinated Carrots

These are often served with drinks as a petisco, the Portuguese version of a tapa. Cut three or four carrots into roughly half inch slices (I split them lengthwise, then slice crosswise) and cook them in well-salted boiling water for about 10 minutes. You want them just barely tender, not soft.

While the carrots cook, make the marinade by stirring together a tablespoon of honey or sugar with a couple of tablespoons of Katz Sparkling Wine vinegar [regular white wine vinegar works, too], then adding four tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil. Toast a couple of tablespoons of cumin seeds in a dry skillet for a few minutes until they're aromatic and just starting to brown.

Drain the carrots and add them to the dressing along with the cumin and a couple of cloves of finely chopped garlic. Chop a nice handful of cilantro and add it; add salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste. If you can, let this sit for an hour or more. It's not traditional, but I like a little red pepper heat, and if you like things hot, add something spicy, like a pinch of cayenne. (In a few weeks I'll have some of Necton's new flor de sal with piri piri chile at my Activspace store, and it's really good sprinkled over the carrots.)

Serve these with good olives and a nice drizzle of extra virgin. If it's sunny, open a cold bottle of vinho verde and pretend you're in the Algarve.

Pesto From Carrot Tops Is…Well…Tops!

This time of year my craving for greens is practically insatiable. I'm coming home from the market with bunches of raab (or rapini or rabe) from multiple different vegetables—turnips, kale, mustard greens—and foraging through the aisles for nettles, fiddleheads…well, you get the picture. And since these days I only buy carrots with their tops still attached because I had one too many woody, flavorless carrots from the cheap-for-a-reason bulk bin, I've been giving their frilly green appendages the same lustful looks as their cousins the brassicas.

Using those tops is also a great way to keep perfectly good food out of the compost bin, so the other evening when I was casting about, as I usually do, for what-can-I-feed-my-family ideas by digging through the vegetable bin, I came across a few stalks of parsley along with the carrot tops, and decided to throw them into the blender with walnuts, a little salt and a couple of cloves of garlic. Stirring in a pile of shredded romano, the pesto got tossed with pasta and laid on top of a bed of arugula, then "garnished" with slices of a couple of seared pork loin chops I'd found in the freezer.

One-dish dinner, and it looked (and tasted) like a restaurant meal. I could get used to not wasting food!

Carrot Top Pesto

Carrot tops from one bunch of carrots, frilly greens stripped from stems
1/2 c. parsley leaves, stripped from stems
1/8 c. walnuts
2 cloves garlic
1/3-1/2 c. olive oil
1 c. romano cheese
Salt to taste

Place carrot top leaves, parsley leaves, walnuts and garlic in a blender. While blender is running, drizzle in olive oil until it becomes a smooth sauce. Pour into medium-sized mixing bowl and stir in cheese. Add salt to taste.

Toss with one pound cooked pasta. This pesto sauce is also delicious drizzled on roasted or grilled spring vegetables.

Don't Toss Those Tops!

For years I've been ripping off the tops of bunches of carrots and tossing them in the compost. When a checker at the store would ask if I'd like the frilly greens removed, I'd say, "Why, yes, thanks!"

Then a couple of months ago I stumbled across a reference to carrot greens in cookbook author Diane Morgan's "Roots," an encyclopedic tour of those edibles that grow beneath the soil. In it she describes that she, too, was a carrot top tosser until she found out they were edible, and I've since had several conversations with other former carrot top naïfs who now use the frilly, slightly carrot-y tasting tips in salads, sauces and sautés.

So now not only am I not wasting a perfectly edible source of greens, I have yet another delicious, vitamin-rich addition to my repertoire. Who knew?

Roasted Carrots with Carrot Top Pesto

My friend Hank Shaw, a forager and hunter of some reknown, loves to serve the game animals he hunts with the food that they may forage in the wild. Serving the carrots with their tops, while not quite the same thing, gives me a similar thrill.

1 bunch carrots with greens
1-2 cloves garlic
2 Tbsp. pine nuts (toasted in a dry skillet, if desired)
1/4 tsp. salt
4 Tbsp. olive oil

Preheat oven to 400°.

Remove greens from carrots, leaving 1-2" of stems attached. (I try to get long, slender carrots for roasting, but if the carrots are thicker, halve them lengthwise or chop into 1/2" coins.) Brush with olive oil and arrange on parchment paper on a baking sheet. Roast in oven for 30-40 min. until fork-tender.

For the pesto, remove leaves from carrot stems as you would with parsley or cilantro. Put the leaves in a blender and add garlic, pine nuts and salt. Add 2 Tbsp. of olive oil and purée, drizzling in remainder of olive oil, plus more if needed, to make a finely textured sauce.

Place roasted carrots on platter and drizzle with pesto, or serve carrots plated with drizzle of pesto. I usually put the remainder in a bowl on the table for pesto addicts to serve themselves.

Food Farmer Earth: Winter Farming Bitter & Sweet

My interview for Food Farmer Earth with Tom DeNoble of DeNoble's Farm Fresh Produce was a real privilege. I've wanted to do a story about what it takes to farm in winter, and I knew Tom would tell it like it is.

When it comes to farming through the winter months, Tom DeNoble of DeNoble’s Farm Fresh Produce in Tillamook is no romantic.

“Winter farming is a big gamble,” he said. “It’s like rolling the dice every year.”

But give him a choice between a height-of-summer carrot and one pulled out of the ground in January, and it’s no contest. He’ll choose the winter carrot every time. According to him, the quality of winter vegetables is just as good or even better than in the summer, though they may not be quite as pretty.

That’s because cold temperatures cause the plants to produce sugars that act as antifreeze, making them taste sweeter. And because they’re also growing more slowly, they develop more intense flavors.

Read the rest of the interview.

Watch part two, Winter's Cold Sweetens Crops. In this week's kitchen segment, author and teacher Diane Morgan makes an easy and delicious recipe, Microbrew-Braised Rutabagas. To get regular updates on local producers featured on Food Farmer Earth, consider a free subscription.

Ehhhh…What's Up, Doc?

Recent immigrants to the Northwest have a hard time getting used to our mostly sunless, rainy winter months. You know it's been particularly dreary when the natives start looking wan and defeated. But I was actually cheered to read that I'm not the only one feeling uncharacteristically cranky about the weather, as contributor Jim Dixon of RealGoodFood relates below.

Any Spring-like feeling I might’ve had last week vanished with the return of the cold and gray. I’ve lived in western Oregon my entire life, and you’d think by now I’d know better. Oh, we’ll have sunny days and even some really warm weather that seems summery. But it’ll be July, if we’re lucky, before we really dry out.

So it’s only fitting that any thoughts of tender, verdant vegetables fresh from the earth are dashed, and we return to the staples of the cold months, the hardy keepers, both local and trucked in from afar, that nourish us during the damp, featureless winter.

Carrots with Anise

Peel a lot of carrots (these taste really good, and you’ll eat more than you think you might). Leave them whole, split, or cut into coins; it’s your choice. Combine in a shallow pan with a good lid with a splash of water, equal amount of Katz Late Harvest Sauvignon Blanc vinegar [a good wine vinegar or white balsamic works well, too. - KAB], some extra virgin olive oil, a few cloves of chopped garlic, and a generous pinch of anise seed. Heat gently to a simmer, cover, and cook until the carrots are tender, about 20 minutes. Remove the cover or at least set it ajar and cook a bit more, increasing the heat if necessary, until the liquid has been reduced to just the oil. Eat hot.

Have Your Cake

I like my ruts. It's comforting to know my surroundings so well I almost don't have to think, so familiar that I could find my way blindfolded on the well-worn path, my fingers skimming the walls on either side.

It's like that when friends are coming over for dinner, requiring some sort of dessert to be served. The rest of the menu can go in any number of directions, but the wrap-up to the meal is pretty much predictable. That's not to say that it lacks excitement or its own kind of wonderfulness, since a good…you guessed it…fruit crisp or cobbler can reflect the season perfectly. Rhubarb in spring, berries in early summer, peaches later on. Then apples in the fall and winter alternating with the huckleberries and other fruit I (hopefully) managed to squirrel away in the freezer.

But sometimes the sheer familiarity of it makes me restless, like being cooped up in the house for too long. That's when I pull out some books, or leaf through old recipes looking for something, anything, that will be different. And, with a little luck, provide a tasty coda to the evening.

This cake recipe, written on an old index card in what looks like my handwriting from high school (no, no hearts dotting the i's), was one I copied from my mother's collection and that she made when I was growing up. She'd bake it in an aluminum sheet pan (with a cool sliding top should you want to take it on a picnic), then make a frosting by creaming together powdered sugar and butter with pineapple bits and coconut folded in. But I decided to bake it in a bundt pan with no frosting, the better to have it for breakfast the next morning.

Pineapple Carrot Cake

1 1/4 c. vegetable oil
2 c. sugar
3 eggs
2 1/2 c. flour
1 tsp. cinnamon
1 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. nutmeg
1/2 tsp. salt
2 c. carrots, grated
1 c. walnuts, chopped
1 c. crushed pineapple, drained
1/2 c. grated coconut

Preheat oven to 350°.

In large mixing bowl, combine oil, sugar and eggs and mix well. Add flour, cinnamon, soda, nutmeg and salt and stir well. Add carrots, nuts, pineapple and coconut. Pour into greased and floured 9" by 12" cake pan or bundt pan. For sheet cake bake 45 min., for bundt cake bake 80 min. or until skewer inserted into center comes out clean.