A Boy’s Life

This recipe was included in the veggie box last year, but I can’t find on the Farm Fresh to You site, so I’ll reprint it here.

First, either make a pie crust or thaw a frozen one. I used the frozen crust this time. Bake the pie crust in a 350 degree oven until it’s lightly browned, about 10 minutes. Meanwhile, melt 3 tablespoons of butter.

Peel 4 firm-ripe Fuyu persimmons—and they do have to be Fuyu; the other types of persimmons are too astringent to work well—and slice them up. Peel and slice two tart apples (such as Granny Smith or Pink Lady) as well. Mix the fruit in a large bowl with 1/4 cup sugar, 1 tablespoon cornstarch, and the juice of a lemon.

In another bowl, mix together 1 cup crushed gingersnap cookies, 1/3 cup firmly packed brown sugar, and 2 tablespoons flour. Mix in the melted butter and squeeze with your fingertips to form lumps.

When the pie crust is ready, fill it with the sliced fruit. Scatter the gingersnap mixture on top.

Bake at 325 degrees for 1 hour, or until pastry is browned and filling bubbles.

I finally got around to making pumpkin puree from the pumpkins we got in our box a few weeks ago. I made two batches of pumpkin muffins and froze the rest of the puree.

The recipe for the muffins is one I clipped from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch probably around ten years ago. You preheat your oven to 350 degrees. In one bowl beat together 6 tablespoons melted butter, two eggs, two tablespoons molasses, 1 1/4 cups pumpkin puree, and 1/2 cup orange juice. In a separate bowl, combine 1 cup all-purpose flour, 1/2 cup whole wheat flour, 1/2 cup brown sugar, 1/2 teaspoon salt, 1 teaspoon baking soda, 1/2 teaspoon baking powder, 1/2 teaspoon ground cloves, and 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon. Stir the liquid into the dry ingredients and mix until just combined. Fold in 1/2 cup walnut pieces and 1/2 cup dried cranberries. Spoon into a greased muffin tin and bake for 30 minutes.

This week veggies included spinach, collard greens, red leaf lettuce, a fennel bulb and fronds, a bunch of leeks, a bag of bok choy, a butternut squash, five satsuma mandarin oranges, four persimmons, and five pink lady apples. Tonight we’re working on leftovers from last week’s cabbage and white bean stew, but tomorrow I’ll do pork chops alongside creamed spinach with leeks. Saturday, we’ll have a green salad with sauteed fennel and grilled steak tips, and then Sunday black-eyed peas with bacon and collard greens, and apple-persimmon pie for dessert. Monday, butternut squash and sage risotto; Tuesday, leftovers. Robin and I will have the bok choy at some point for lunch.

So that housing deal is showing some abortive signs of possibly lurching back from the dead. The seller’s bank wants to work with us to get a 203k mortgage. They’re willing to extend escrow 90 days (it shouldn’t take that long, but with a 90 day extension we wouldn’t have to worry about running out of time like we did on the other deal) and they’ll lower the purchase price to accommodate the cost of repairs. So now we’re waiting to get all that in writing, and then we’ll do some more inspections to make sure that the roof repairs and the fumigation are all that the house needs. I’ll let you know if anything comes of it. The one good thing is that if the repair costs stay under 35K, we could get what’s called a “streamlined” 203k mortgage, which would presumably be much less of a bureaucratic nightmare.

Meanwhile in our veggie box this week we got: lettuce, broccoli, four beets, four leeks, two tomatoes, a bag of little sweet peppers, three persimmons, a pomegranate, a bunch of cilantro, a kabocha squash, and a thing I’d never seen before that turned out to be kohlrabi. Last night for dinner we had a big salad of lettuce, broccoli, tomatoes, peppers, kohlrabi (it tasted exactly like broccoli-flavored jicama), bacon, and hard-boiled eggs, with home-made blue cheese dressing. Robin and I had the leftovers for lunch.

Tonight I’m using the leeks and beets in a buffalo borscht. I’ve gotten on a buffalo kick lately—I tried it in something, I forget what now, and thought it was delicious; plus it’s cheaper than grass-fed beef and has all the same health advantages (high in omega-3s, low in cholesterol and “bad” fats). Although I’m afraid my buffalo borscht might not turn out well since the friendly butcher warned me that buffalo meat is too lean to stand up to extended cooking. Well, we’ll see. If it comes out tough as shoe leather I guess we can just eat around the buffalo parts.

Tomorrow I’m going to try making cilantro pesto, which is again sort of a gamble, although there are plenty of recipes online. If it doesn’t come out well we can pick something up on the road, because tomorrow evening we’re packing up and heading to Carson City to celebrate Nonna’s birthday. Can’t wait to see everyone! It’ll be a short visit—we’re coming back on Sunday. Monday night I’ll finish up the vegetables by making Roasted Kabocha Squash Soup with Pancetta and Sage, and a persimmon-and-apple pie for dessert (I should post that pie recipe, it’s good).

Hopefully I’ll also have some cute Halloween pictures to post later in the week!

So that Hubbard squash turned out to make a fantastic soup. I started with the recipe given here, roasting the squash as they suggest with garlic cloves, a drizzle of honey, and sprigs of fresh thyme:

I scooped out the roasted squash flesh into a food processor, and processed it with a splash of cream until it made a nice even puree.

I didn’t have a ham hock, and I was dubious about the amounts of cream and milk called for in the original recipe (a quart? Really?), so I made some variations. I started by chopping up four pieces of thick-cut bacon into half-inch pieces, and frying them over in the bottom of a stockpot over medium-high heat. When the bacon had darkened in color and released its grease, I added the diced onion and two ribs of diced celery, and sauteed them in the bacon grease (I think I also put in a splash of olive oil, because there wasn’t that much fat in the pan, and I think about half a teaspoon of salt) until the vegetables were soft. Then I peeled the four garlic cloves that had roasted with the squash, mashed them up, and sauteed them with the vegetables and bacon for just a minute, until fragrant. Then I added the squash pulp, stirred everything up, sauteed it all for a few minutes more, and then added the five cups of chicken stock and another sprig of fresh thyme (I didn’t have the savory the recipe called for).

The recipe suggests letting everything simmer for 45 minutes, but I gave it like five because I was hungry, and it already tasted really good. Then I put in a cup of cream (hey, it’s better than a quart!), some more salt, a lot of fresh-ground pepper, and I put it into bowls and we ate it. It was easily the best squash soup I’ve ever had. Sam was enthusiastic about it too, although Robin wouldn’t even try it. He’s getting pickier, unfortunately. Maybe he didn’t like the color?

We had leftovers, but they disappeared quickly too.

My great-grandmother was a remarkable lady. Her name wasn’t actually Tocaya: it was Herlinda, or Linda for short. Tocaya means “namesake” in Spanish, and it was what she asked my aunt Linda to call her when her granddaughter Linda was born. Then all the other grandchildren—and, later, the great-grandchildren—grew up calling her the same thing, because as far as we knew it was just her name.

Tocaya was born and raised in Sinaloa, Mexico; her mother was a descendant of the Spanish nobility there and her father an American surveyor and engineer who became a naturalized citizen of Mexico. She married an American diplomat and traveled extensively engaged in her husband’s work—which apparently included espionage as well as diplomacy—before finally settling down in Texas. She lived to be 100 and left behind a thriving family that multiplied in every generation: I think she had two children, six grandchildren, and twelve great-grandchildren, though I may be forgetting someone. I remember her as a grand and stately lady, always carefully and respectfully attended, presiding benevolently over her brood. She was very proud of her Mexican heritage—although she always referred to herself as Spanish—and kept careful genealogical records that, according to her, went back to Christopher Columbus.

I recently asked my grandmother if she had any of Tocaya’s recipes, and she was kind enough to send me this one. It came typed on an old-fashioned recipe card:

I made it last night and it was delicious. Here it is, with my own notes:

1 chicken, cut up into 8 pieces, neck and back removed
1/4 cup olive oil
1 cup rice (I used brown rice, and as you can see it still comes out a lovely golden color)
1 medium onion, diced
1 sweet pepper, diced (the original recipe calls for half a green pepper, but the red/yellow/orange peppers are sweeter, and I don’t see any reason not to use the whole pepper. The original recipe also tells you to mince the onion and pepper, but in a rustic dish like this one I think slightly larger pieces are nicer.)
2 cloves garlic, minced or put through a press (originally called for one, but I’m of the opinion that any time you’re going to use one clove of garlic you might as well use two. I really like garlic.)
1 bay leaf
2 cups water or chicken stock (Tocaya calls for two cups of water and three chicken cubes. It seems to me that since there’s a whole chicken and an onion in there that plain water is fine. It’s going to turn into chicken stock by the time it’s done cooking anyway!)
4 tomatoes, diced
1 cup peas (I didn’t have the peas on hand so I left them out, but I can tell they would be nice if you have them. Frozen is probably fine.)
1/4 teaspoon saffron or tumeric (I used saffron, because I am thrift-challenged as we have already established, and cooking with the most expensive spice in the world gives me a thrill.)
pinch oregano
salt and pepper

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

Pat the chicken pieces dry and sprinkle both sides with salt and pepper. Pour enough olive oil (the original recipe called for “salad oil,” which I think could mean any kind of light-tasting oil, but olive oil is good for you) into a skillet to coat the bottom and heat the pan over medium-high heat. When oil is shimmering, place chicken pieces in skin-side down (you might have to do this in two batches) and let cook until lightly browned, 3-5 minutes. Turn the chicken and brown on the second side. Set aside.

There should be enough chicken fat left in the pan to cover the bottom; if not, add a bit more olive oil. When it’s up to heat, add your rice and saute, stirring constantly, until the rice turns light brown. (If you’re using brown rice you’ll still be able to see the color change when it’s slightly toasted. Turn the heat down to medium or medium-low if the rice seems in danger of burning.) Add your onion, pepper, and garlic, and saute until the onion is softened and the garlic is fragrant, a few minutes. Add the water or stock along with your tomatoes, saffron, oregano, and about 1/4 teaspoon salt and 1/8 teaspoon pepper, or to taste. Stir it all up and bring to a simmer over high heat.

Combine the rice mixture and the chicken pieces in a large covered casserole dish (or a large casserole dish which you have covered tightly with aluminum foil!) Try to get the rice submerged in the liquid, because any grains of rice that are left out are in danger of coming out crunchy.

Bake, covered, for 30 minutes. (Tocaya recommends checking and stirring it after 15 minutes.) Then uncover, give it a stir, and bake 40 minutes more, until the rice is nice and fluffy. Dish the rice out into individual servings and place the chicken pieces on top: or if you like you can let the chicken cool first, remove the meat from the bones, and shred it into the rice. Serves 6.

I think you could probably do this in a Dutch oven to make it a one-pot meal, although the chicken would have to sit on top rather than being distributed throughout the rice and liquid, and that might affect the flavor. Also, the chicken-to-rice ratio in this dish is quite high. You could probably double the amount of rice used if you wanted, though of course you might want to boost the seasoning as well if you did that.

Look what I found on my hard drive: a picture of a dinner I must have made months ago.

I remember it being yummy as well as pretty. The recipe is from the San Francisco Ferry Plaza Farmer’s Market Cookbook, which I use a lot, because it’s structured around the kind of local ingredients that we tend to get in our box. The salmon cakes involved a pound of skinned, deboned salmon, coarsely chopped and mixed with half a cup of chopped fresh cilantro, a fourth of a cup of scallions, a fourth of a cup of fresh bread crumbs, two tablespoons of dijon mustard, and a bit of salt and pepper, patted into shape and fried in a skillet over medium heat with a little bit of olive oil, about five minutes a side. The relish is just onion, corn kernels, tomatoes, and fresh basil, sauteed for a few minutes to soften the onion and corn. If you can get responsibly sourced salmon for a reasonable price, it makes a nice presentation without too much work.

This week we got a bunch of chard, a very small head of red leaf lettuce, a bag of bok choy, a pint of figs, a bunch of radishes, three sweet peppers, three beets, six small tomatoes (assorted kinds), six Gala apples, and a very big squash. The flier in the box says it’s a Kabocha squash, but I don’t think it is: it’s orange and diamond-shaped, and all the pictures of Kabocha squash that I can find are round and dark green. Mom, do you know what kind of squash this is?

Anyway, here’s the meal plan. Last night we had chard soufflé; tonight we’re having arroz con pollo with the tomatoes and peppers. My grandmother was kind enough to send a long a recipe that used to be her mother’s; I’ll post it after I’ve had the chance to try it out.

Friday I’ll roast the squash and make it into soup. I’ll probably make a salad to go alongside. Saturday we’ll have borscht.

There’s always a ton of leftovers from the recipe I use for borscht, so I’m not sure we’ll need much more food to last us through the week, but I did notice that they had local grass-fed “lamb” at the meat counter at Whole Foods. I put lamb in quotes because I think this time of year it must actually be mutton? For some reason in the U.S. they refuse to distinguish between lamb and mutton. Anyway, amusingly enough, my “bible of Italian cooking,” the Silver Spoon cookbook, includes a recipe for English Mutton Chops that seems easy and quick (brush ‘em with butter and put ‘em under the broiler? Okay!). So on Sunday I will be a Californian using an Italian recipe for English mutton chops. And then I think we’ll have enough leftovers for Monday and Tuesday; if not, some kind of quick pasta is always our friend.

This week in our veggie box we got a pint of figs, a big bag of small red grapes, a pint of cherry tomatoes, three yellow summer squash and two very leetle zucchinis, four medium-sized heirloom tomatoes, four nectarines, a whole bunch of red gypsy peppers, and also what I think are a few smaller chili peppers—although it’s hard to be entirely sure: they could just be very small sweet peppers.

I haven’t made one of these posts in a few weeks, but the box content has been mostly the same, except that we’ve been getting eggplant for the past several weeks, and sometimes pears instead of the figs or peaches. I’ve mostly been making ratatouille or caponata, and one week I made a beautiful vegetable torta—which I took a picture of—but I lost it along with my camera. Instead you can see the lovely whole wheat bread I made to go with the caponata a few weeks ago (I got the picture off my camera before I lost it):

Tonight we’re having halibut baked in foil with squash, zucchini and tomatoes; they had locally-fished halibut at the fish counter, so I got it even though it was more expensive than I usually buy. You’d think that living on the coast we’d get plenty of fresh local fish, but the environmental regulations are so strict around here that you can almost never get local fish. I think it’s short-sighted: shipping our fish in from halfway around the world has a deleterious effect on the global environment, after all. So, I sprang for the local halibut just to be supportive.

Tomorrow I’ll make pasta with cherry tomatoes, arugula, and goat cheese; Friday, I’ll put all of the peppers (sweet or hot as they may be) into a beef chili. I might make cornbread to go alongside. And that will take care of the veggies, so I’m not going to plan out any further than that.

As for the fruit, the nectarines and grapes will be eaten raw, but I found a nice recipe for fresh fig bars that I think I’ll use again this week. For that recipe I get to use the honey that Sam’s father harvests from his own backyard bees! It’s wonderful, wonderful stuff, and Pappy always seems to have another big mason jar full of it waiting for us whenever we run out. You might say that I married into honey. Hee hee hee.

We had a great time in Nevada celebrating Robin’s second birthday with Nonna, Pappy, the Anti-Sara, Nanita, Marqueño, and Great-Grandparents Elsie, Betty, and Wayne. I took lots of good pictures…and then somehow I lost my camera.

My mom sent me a couple of shots, though. Here, just on the edges of the picture, you can see the outskirts of the giant pile of presents that was brought for Robin. You can’t really see many of them, but you can see that he was happy and enthusiastic about investigating his gifts:

And here’s a shot of the Phillips menfolk, all together:

Mostly since we’ve gotten back we’ve been wrestling with the 203k process for our house. It’s unbelievably complicated and stressful. I wouldn’t recommend these loans, except that there really is no better way (at least for people who aren’t very skilled in construction work) to buy an older house and fix it up. DIY really wouldn’t be sufficient here—in fact part of the problem with the house is that it has suffered somebody else’s DIY efforts, all of which need to be ripped out and redone. And since lending standards have tightened, no bank would fund a conventional loan on a house in this shape anyway. So the 203k program is the only recourse for people like me who love older homes, but aren’t rich enough to buy one that somebody else has already renovated and is looking to “flip.”

Here is just one little part of the story: because these loans are funded through HUD, we are required to hire a HUD consultant in addition to our contractor. The HUD consultant basically gets paid for sitting around with his thumb up his butt for weeks, until the very last moment when he decides to throw a spanner in the works by insisting that our planned repairs will not satisfy HUD’s requirements. He says we have to get a very expensive soil engineer out to inspect the house’s foundation. This obviously causes more delay. Finally when the foundation inspection is complete, the soil engineer basically says “Well, yes, there’s some foundation cracking, which you would find in all older houses. It’s not about to fall down or anything.” HUD consultant insists that we repair the cracks. This adds $35,000 to the proposed scope of work. Sam and I weep and gnash our our teeth.

I don’t even have the stamina to recount all the other crap we’ve been dealing with in trying to close on the house. Suffice it to say that what started out as a $131,000 home that needed $25,000 worth of work is now a $131,000 home that needs $110,000 worth of work.

Obviously with each increase in cost Sam and I have been re-evaluating our commitment to this house. But the truth is that even a $250,000 home in this area is a very good deal (a one-bedroom condo in downtown Oakland goes for $375,000): and after all the work is done, it will be a lovely older home meticulously renovated, with the surface bits done to our exact taste.

There are still lots of things that can go wrong. The appraisal could come in low, requiring us to renegotiate the purchase price with the sellers. Also, the delays caused by the HUD consultant are going to force us to ask for an extension on the closing date: the sellers could refuse. Unexpected fees (like the soil engineer) are piling up, eating into our savings and making me worry about our ability to manage the closing costs. So, this thing is by no means a done deal and every day brings a new storm of stress. This is why I’ve been dodging questions about the house: I don’t really want to talk about it. I’ll let you know if something final happens, one way or the other.

Today’s box held a bag of peaches, a bag of nectarines, a pint of cherry tomatoes, a bunch of purple basil, two cucumbers, five big green-and-yellow pattypan squashes, two beets, two skinny heads of broccoli, two bunches of carrots, lots of little red sweet peppers, and a scant handful of okra. I truly hope that these five lonely okra pods are the trickle that heralds the deluge—I love okra, always have, it’s the Southern in me.

Tonight we’re having roast beef, with a side of squashes and okra sauteed with butter and salt. Tomorrow I need to finish up a pot of red beans and rice (I ended up making that last week instead of paella), so we’ll have that, maybe with cornbread. I have a zoo date with Wendy so I want to have dinner squared away anyway!

But I don’t want to let those tomatoes sit for too long, so Friday we’ll do a sort of villager’s salad with the tomatoes, cucumbers, basil, and maybe the peppers, roasted? I don’t know, I’ll have to research and decide on a specific recipe. I might get some sausages to make it a heartier meal.

Saturday I have plans with friends, so it’s probably delivery for dinner; Sunday we’ll have a chicken roasted with carrots and beets, and I’ll make chicken stock from what’s left of the carcass. If I get ambitious I’ll make a nectarine and blackberry crisp…but who am I kidding, Robin’s not going to let the nectarines last till Sunday.

Monday I might try out that buttermilk mac and cheese I was thinking about? We’ll see. Often these meal plans seem to go wonky towards the end of the week.

I’m going to save the broccoli for sticking into Sam’s bento. Wendy made the excellent suggestion that putting in crunchy vegetables (and maybe some dip) is a good way to fill up the bowls without including too much food. Sam isn’t going to be delighted with this plan, but he’s good about eating what’s set in front of him, and don’t raw vegetables cure cancer or something? I’ll make sure to include cookies on the crudité days, so he doesn’t feel like I’m sending him off with rabbit feed.

Oh, and Mom wanted the recipe for the tabouleh I posted a picture of the other day: so here it is.

Toss in a large bowl: 1/2 cup of medium-grind bulgur; the juice of two lemons; 1/3 cup of olive oil; a half teaspoon of salt; a pinch of cayenne pepper; a huge bunch of parsley (or two smaller ones) all chopped up; a couple of nice tomatoes (chopped); some fresh mint if you have it, or a heaping teaspoon of dried mint if you don’t (use 2-3 times as much fresh mint, and chop it up, or chiffonade it if you feel fancy); and a diced cucumber. These ingredients are fairly elastic; you can put in a cuke or a ‘mater more or less and it will come out about the same. You can put in scallions or minced red onion if you want (I think I did, that day). You can guesstimate the bulgur if you want. It’s really a forgiving recipe, and I say this as someone who generally measures the water when I boil pasta.

Let the bowl sit on the counter until the bulgur is softened and fluffy, about an hour. Then put it in the fridge and let it sit for another hour. Taste it and add salt and pepper, or even more lemon juice and/or oil, if you want. It should be very bright and tangy, and the vegetable to grain ratio should be about two to one.

I’m so glad summer is here! In our box today we got a pint of strawberries, a bag of apricots, four spring onions, a bag of lettuce, a bunch of carrots, a bunch of radishes, a bundle of fresh rosemary, and two little paper bags—one filled with beautiful heirloom tomatoes, the other with yellow gypsy peppers.

I wanted to work with those tomatoes and peppers immediately, so I made panzanella—Italian bread salad with tomatoes and other veggies. Here’s the recipe, adapted from The San Francisco Ferry Plaza Farmers’ Market Cookbook.

Press two or three cloves of garlic through a garlic press and into a small bowl. Add 1/4 cup red wine vinegar, a pinch of salt and several grinds of pepper, and mix it all up with a fork. Set aside.

Cut a loaf of country bread (we used whole wheat and it was delicious) into inch-wide slices. Toast or grill the bread slices, and when they are cool enough to handle, tear them into bite-size pieces and put them in a large salad bowl. Alternately, if you have slightly stale bread or really good croutons, you can use that instead.

While the bread is toasting, cut your tomatoes—two or three pounds of lovely, lovely tomatoes—into bite-size chunks and put them in the same bowl with the bread.

Add whatever you have to hand. A cucumber is good. If you have sweet peppers you can chop them up and throw them in. Anchovies or capers are good (six to eight anchovy fillets, minced, and/or 1/3 cup capers). As Wikipedia says: “Sometimes thought of as a ‘leftover salad,’ additional panzanella ingredients vary widely, and include lettuce, white wine, capers, anchovies, celery, carrots, red wine, red onion, cucumber, tuna, parsley, boiled eggs, mint, bell peppers, lemon juice, and garlic.” So, you know, you can put in any or all of that. I used the peppers, cucumber, and anchovies.

Whisk 1/2 cup of olive oil into the vinegar and garlic mixture until you have a vinaigrette. Pour half of your vinaigrette over the tomatoes, bread, and other ingredients; give them a good toss, then pour the rest of the vinaigrette in and toss again.

Pick out a tomato and a chunk of bread and taste them. If the panzanella needs more salt and/or pepper, add that now. Take a bunch of basil (a couple dozen leaves) and scatter them over the panzanella. Give it one more toss and it’s ready to eat. (If you make the panzanella ahead of time, the bread will soak up the dressing, and you may need to add a bit more olive oil before serving.)

Ours looked like this, and it tasted like summer through and through:

For dessert we’re having a fruit salad of strawberries, blueberries (on sale this week at Whole Foods), and apricot slices. On a long lovely evening like this we can only be grateful for our good fortune.