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Cooking with Hani

Posted in chef, events, food, tagged , on May 18, 2010|

Sous Chef 2 Go is offering their series of cooking classes again. Local chefs will teach you how to prepare foods from a variety of cuisines. First up is Hani Khouri, who will teach various Mediterranean dishes this Saturday, May 22, beginning at noon. For more information and to register, email Sous Chef 2 Go at info (at) souschef2go.com. An individual class costs $150, and a 5-class series discount is offered.

Class:

  • Features a different seasonal menu that you will learn to prepare
  • Includes a 2-serving take-home Recipe Bag and chef’s instructions
  • Showcases unique wines and include a wine tasting courtesy of Sous Chef 2 Go

Discover:

  • Taste the benefits of cooking with seasonal, local produce
  • Explore a variety of cooking styles and recipes using produce at its peak taste
  • Treat your loved ones to the very same meal you just learned to prepare
  • Enjoy a variety of sweet, tender vegetables that are in their prime

Learn:

  • Culinary skills and easy-to-master cooking techniques
  • Specially designed 2-hour classes will demonstrate a variety of recipes featuring different preparation and cooking techniques
  • Experienced instructors will demonstrate how to prepare gourmet meals
  • Take your cooking skills and general culinary knowledge up a notch

Sous Chef 2 Go
7758 SW 88 St. Miami, FL 33156
305.595.8010

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In a pickle

Posted in chef, food, people, photo, tagged , , , on May 7, 2010| 1 Comment »

Speaking of Gleaning Day, guests had an additional treat in store. Over at a table to one side of the barn, CSA member Lolyklara Palmahuergo set up samples of her lacto-fermented foods. They were all made following recipes from the cookbook Nourishing Traditions, written by Sally Fallon. It is chock full of ways to preserve all kinds of foods using natural fermentation, based on principles of the Weston A. Price Foundation.

I sampled a bok choy salsa which was packed with flavor, tangy pickled cucumbers, a zippy kimchi and milder pickled okra. There were pickled green beans, sweet potato, malanga, and sauerkraut. The foods were lacto-fermented, not made with vinegar or brine. She also makes two kinds of kombucha, chicken liver pate and pesto. All of the vegetables are organic.

Sample platter of pickled foods, sauerkraut on far left, beets in the middle, green beans bottom left, and a few things I didn't taste.

Lacto-fermented foods are made by using whey and sea salt. The whey is a by-product from making yogurt from raw milk, which is obtained from “free pastured animals from North Florida,” Lolyklara explained. She uses different cultures to also make pima milk, kefir, and buttermilk.

Lolyklara Palmahuergo

Eating fermented foods really helped Lolyklara overcome problems with fatigue. She had been exhausted the last few years, so she started reading a lot, trying to find solutions. “I’m a biologist originally and and this made sense,” she said, holding up her well-used copy of Nourishing Traditions. Not only does Lolyklara feel better, as an added bonus, her skin became clear and soft. Excitement about her recovery and a love of cooking propelled her to start making extra pickles to sell. “It’s about feeling useful and working, which I haven’t felt in the last four years since I got laid off from teaching German,” she explained.

All of the above mentioned fermented foods are available for purchase. Email Lolyklara at lolyklara(at)gmail.com to get on her mailing list or call 305-720-7766 to request a product price list and information on how to order. In addition, she is a healer working toward getting certified in the Healing Touch Program, and is looking for volunteers who would like free healings.

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Pick ’em while you got ’em

Posted in agritourism, events, farm, food, locavore, photo, recipe, tagged , , on May 6, 2010| 4 Comments »

glean to gather grain or other produce left by reapers; to pick up after a reaper; to strip (as a field) of the leavings of reapers.

Gleaning Day at Bee Heaven Farm is a laid back end-of-season tradition. CSA members are invited to bring a potluck dish, and rummage through vegetable beds and pick what’s left. About 80-100 people showed up last Sunday and many families brought their kids.

Waist high in weeds serching for morsels of food.

People started trickling in at 11:30 am. Those who had done this before knew the drill. They brought totes and snippers, and wore hats and sunblock. Instead of sitting down to eat first, they wasted no time in finding things to pick. It felt like an Easter egg hunt, only in this case you were looking for tomatoes and other comestibles.

Friends put me to work showing things to their grade school age boys. “Do you have carrots?” Mark asked. “Look, there’s some in this row,” I pointed out. He and Devin and I browsed down the row peering through weeds to wiggle carrots out of the ground. Getting fingers in the dirt was fun. Several sow bugs trundled out and the boys got animated. Forget playing video games. When was the last time you stuck your fingers in the dirt, tugged on fat orange roots, and communed with bugs? Heaven! Moments later we found ourselves over by the kohlrabi when the the horse snorted. Devin started. “What was that?” he asked. “Look at the other side of the fence,” I said. “It’s a horse, it’s a horse!” Mark exclaimed. You should have seen his eyes shine. I mean, it was a real, live horse!

Like peas in a pod.

Grown up kids were also having adventures and making small discoveries. Over in the next vegetable bed, I showed Nathan how to hunt for snow pea pods hiding among withered vines. Some pods were bulgy, and sure enough, had small peas growing inside. “This tastes amazingly good,” Nathan said, munching on a raw pea. One row over were small bull’s blood beets, perfect for roasting whole. He could see round roots showing above the ground and it made sense to him what he was looking at. One good tug and a beet came up, dirt and and all. “It’s a beet!” he exclaimed (just like a kid). And thus a connection was made: here is a plant growing, part of a mass of undifferentiated greenness, but as you pick it, it changes to food. Magic!

It was getting hot and I went back inside the barn, which was full of people eating and talking. The tables were loaded with lots of good food. A carrot and garbanzo salad seasoned with cumin was tasty, and I liked the Thai flavored mango salad. People ate almost all of the turnip slaw that I brought (recipe below). Managed to snag one of the last slices of Sylvia’s tart made with asian mixed greens, Hani’s goat cheese, and hard boiled eggs. She made her own crust and crimped the edge empanada style. You could taste the care that went into making it. The party was supposed to end at 2, but people were still hanging out when I left at 3. Once you get a taste of the farm, it’s hard to let go.

Everybody brought food, and it was all good.

Turnip Slaw

1/4 cup chopped red bell pepper
1/4 cup thinly sliced green onions
4 cups turnips
oil and vinegar
thyme (to taste)
salt and pepper

Peel and slice turnips, then cut into matchsticks. (Or, you can shred them in a food processor.) In a bowl, combine turnips with red peppers and green onions. Make a vinaigrette with your favorite oil and vinegar, including thyme, salt and pepper. Stir well. Refrigerate several hours for flavors to blend.

(Recipe originally from cooks.com, has been slightly modified.)

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Cantankerous gets crabby

Posted in chef, events, food, photo, recipe, tagged , , on May 5, 2010|

Still at the Fairchild Farm & Garden Festival… Ducked out of the lecture on preserving the harvest (sorry, Margie!) to catch Robert Barnum’s cooking demo under the big tent. Robert, as you might recall, is also known as the Cantankerous Chef. And Saturday he was downright crabby, showing his recipe for fried piper betel leaves with coconut crab sauce.

Robert Barnum with Fairchild volunteers Mary Hughes and Terry Shaw assisting. Mary Neustein is in the background, plating piper leaves.

When I got there, tempura batter had been prepared, and Fairchild volunteers Mary Hughes and Terry Shaw were dipping piper betel leaves (remember those from your CSA shares earlier this season?) into the batter, frying, and cutting them into pieces. Robert was finishing up making the coconut crab sauce. Saw a whole can of coconut milk going in. Mmmm, everything’s better with coconut milk!

Amaury and Tanya liked the crab dish.

The finished sauce was spooned out over plated betel leaves by volunteer Mary Neustein. Terry and Candy Sacher were handing out plates to the eager audience. As quickly as people got the food, it vanished. You’d think they don’t get fed at home, but yes, it was that good.

I grabbed a plate before it was all gone, and sat down to savor the flavor. The sauce had chunks of sweet (fake) genuine lump crabmeat provided by Whole Foods, and celery, bell pepper and onion, tasted gentle, slightly tangy and was creamy from the coconut milk. It could have used some kind of hotness. The recipe below calls for Tabasco, but there just wasn’t enough for my liking. The fried piper betel leaf was crispy in a light, egg-flavored tempura batter, and its sausage-y flavor contrasted nicely with the milder crab sauce. Actually, I liked the fried leaves just as they were, without the crab. They would be an interesting snack to munch on with a cold light beer, maybe while lounging in a hammock on the beach. Instead, there were white plastic chairs under a tent, and Robert had brought a bottle of his own wine made from the bignay or antidesma berry. Hard to describe, especially since I don’t have the vocabulary of a wine and food writer, so you’ll just have to try it for yourself!

Piper betel leaf garnishing the finished serving of crab and fried betel.

I had heard Robert talk a lot about this particular recipe, when he entered it into the Gordon Ramsay competition a few months ago, but this was my first time trying it. Robert said he had first tasted a similar dish in Sydney in a 12 course prix fixe dinner of Asian food, and liked the dish so much that he recreated it with a few tweaks over the years. The original crab sauce he ate had been “fire hot,” he explained, but his version was mild and mellow.

If you want to get a piper betel plant to grow in your garden, contact Robert Barnum at 305-235-1768 or possumplentious(at)yahoo.com.

If you want to buy a package of leaves for your own culinary experiments, contact Margie Pikarsky at 305-894-6657 or office(at)beeheavenfarm.com.

Tempura Fried Betel Leaf with Coconut Crab Sauce

Ingredients:

8 betel leaves, fresh and washed
1/4 cup corn starch
1/4 cup rice or wheat flour
1 tsp. baking soda
2 egg whites
1/4 tsp. salt
1 1/2 cup corn oil
1/3 cup cold water

1 medium onion, diced
1 rib celery, diced
1 green bell pepper, cleaned, diced
1 8 oz. can crab meat
1 tbsp. butter
1 12 oz. can coconut milk
1 tsp. garlic
1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. black pepper
4-6 juga-juga of Tabasco sauce
1 tbsp. brandy
1 1/2 tsp corn starch
optional hot pepper flakes

Method:

Heat oil in heavy pot with tall sides to 350 degrees F. Mix flour, corn starch, baking soda, egg whites salt and water in a bowl. Dip leaves one at a time in batter and place into hot oil. They cook very fast, 1-2 minutes, then flip. 1-2 minutes more then drain on paper towels and keep hot while you fry the rest.

Lightly brown the onions, celery and green pepper in the butter in a skillet. Add the seasonings and brandy and simmer for 5-8 minutes, and add coconut milk. Heat and add cornstarch in 2 tbsp. cold water or reserved coconut milk and stir till thickened. Add the drained crab meat and stir until heated through. Serve over the fried betel pepper leaves on a salad plate.

Recipe courtesy of Robert Barnum

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Good eats in the Garden

Posted in chef, events, farmer/grower, food, photo, recipe, tagged , , , , , , on May 4, 2010| 1 Comment »

It was a great weekend for the Fairchild Farm & Garden Festival, sunny and warm but not yet excruciatingly hot. A lot was going on, and I was running from presentations in the Garden Room to various tents and back trying to keep up with interesting events.

Margie Pikarsky

On Saturday morning, I dropped in at the start of Farmer Margie Pikarsky’s presentation on preserving the harvest. As usual, she gave a well-researched lecture on different kinds of food preservation — freezing, fermentation, dehydration, brining, pickling, and canning. The handout was chock full of info, and if you didn’t make it to the lecture, you can download it here.

As for following recipes and instructions that one finds published in books and elsewhere, Margie cautioned that “all publications are geared for the temperate zone. You can’t listen to them. We have to modify. It’s warmer here and chemical reactions happen faster. You have to be aware of that. Sauerkraut can take two weeks instead of two months. There’s potential for vegetables to go bad in the heat when fermenting. Start with organic produce which has less mold and contaminants.” Margie recommended the book Wild Fermentation if you want more detailed instructions for pickling and fermenting.

Stopped by the Cooking Demo tent to say hi to Laura Lafata aka La Diva Cucina. She was getting ready to give a presentation on preparing radishes with vermouth. The radishes looked happy to be in her hands, and vermouth is an ingredient I hadn’t thought of using. (The recipe is at the bottom of this post.)

Laura Lafata aka La Diva Cucina

Talk about food makes me hungry, so I prowled around looking for something good to eat. Found Margie standing in line at the bright green Native Conch stand, and we got the last of the conch salad. Thanks to Jason for taking care of us!

Claire Tomlin with potted herbs for sale.

Came across Claire Tomlin of The Market Company showing off her latest venture. She has ready-to-grow raised garden beds made of cedar that you can use in your yard. The beds come in a package that includes a cedar frame, soil blend, vegetable and herb starter plants, organic fertilizer and mulch. All you need to add is water and sunlight. It’s too late to plant almost all vegetables now (remember, we’re in the sub-tropical growing zone), but there’s more than enough time to get ready for fall planting. If you’re interested, contact Dylan Terry at dylanjterry(at)gmail.com or call 786-436-7703 for more information.

Pure beeswax candles available from Miguel Bode the beekeeper.

Said hi to Miguel Bode the beekeeper on the way out, and he revealed that he has the largest display of pure beeswax candles anywhere (well, at least at the festival). He uses 35 different molds to shape wax extracted from his hives.

My name was on the schedule for the food bloggers panel Saturday afternoon, but I couldn’t stay due to a schedule conflict. Thanks to Melissa Contreras and Annie Stamps of Fairchild for inviting me to participate in the Festival. You ladies rock!

Sauteed Radishes and Tops over Bow Tie Pasta with Apple Chicken Sausage

Serves four main dinners or six starter plates


Ingredients:

1 lb. box of bow tie pasta
1 bunch of radishes with tops attached
1 pkg. organic apple chicken sausage
dash white vermouth
good quality extra virgin olive oil
kosher salt and pepper

Method:

Put on pasta water to boil and once boiling, add a dash of salt. Cook pasta al dente in salted water for a minute or two less than suggested When pasta is cooked, drain into colander, saving 1/2 cup of pasta water. Set aside.

While pasta is cooking, fill sink with cool water. Chop radish tops and wash thoroughly in water, let green tops drain and then blot dry with paper towels. Wash radishes and thinly slice, set aside.

Heat large fry pan on stove and slice sausages into quarter inch slices. Add olive oil to pan and when heated, add sausages, lower heat to medium high and saute until brown on both sides, being careful not to burn. Put cooked sausage on plate, set aside.

Heat fry pan again and add more olive oil if needd. Once hot, add radishes, lightly salt and cook over medium heat until light brown on both sides. Turn up heat and add a dash of vermouth to deglaze pan, continue cooking radishes for another 30 seconds or until soft. Add to the plate of cooked sausage.

Heat fry pan and use more oil if necessary. Lightly saute greens until just wilted, add pasta to pan along with sausages and radishes and thoroughly combine all ingredients. Cook over medium high heat for another minute, adding a bit of pasta water to make a light sauce. Season with salt and freshly ground black pepper and serve immediately. Drizzle extra virgin olive oil over each serving.

Copyright (c) La Diva Cucina Inc.

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