Farmer's Market Feasting

Nearly a year ago exactly, Zips and I discovered the Albuquerque Downtown Grower's Market. And on a spur of the moment flash of madness, on Saturday we got up at 6 in the morning, to drive three hours to visit it again. We were reminded how much we love farmer's markets with their crazy abundant variety.

We picked up a dozen ears of corn, carrots, peaches, grapes, potatoes, lavender...

A basket of these adorable pear-shaped yellow tomatoes...

And if you go, you must swing by the booth belonging to Black Bird Pies. They often give out sample bites of pie (this time it was their sweet potato pie)...

...and they have the most amazing fruit juices. Again, Zips chose watermelon papaya and I picked the thai basil lemonade and the raspberry sage lemonade. They were all equally awesome (and inspired Zips to concoct Sweet Basil Watermelon Water with our feast).

When we got home (after swinging by Bella Luca on the way home. I'll have to write about their cannellini and greens that I ordered!), we decided to gorge ourselves to celebrate the end of another summer, and rather than just fix the usuals for our Sunday dinner, to make everything with some new recipes.

I already have a great recipe for peach pie, so decided to branch out and make peach galettes. The peaches we got were the size of plums, but they actually yielded more fruit than I expected (I could have more than made a pie!)

Peach Galettes

I used a different dough recipe for the crust-- but now that I've tried it, I think I'd just stick with my usual pie crust recipe, just roll it out a bit thinner. The dough recipe was 1 1/4 c. flour with 8Tb. butter and 1/4 c. ice water. It only gave me 2 crusts, so I had to half it and make a third galette when I had excess filling. If I did it all over again, I'd just use a regular pie crust recipe that would probably give me 4 galettes.

The filling was 6 c. of sliced peaches tossed with

2/3 c. sugar

big dash of cinnamon (1 tsp.)

small dash of ground cloves (1/4 tsp.)

small dash of nutmeg (1/4 tsp.)

1 Tb. flour

juice of 1/2 lemon

Place the peach filling in the center of each crust about an inch from the edges and then curl the crust around the filling. If you get greedy like me, you can stack the peach filling a bit more after you've created the edges of the galette. You can even drizzle in a little of the juice. Just don't over-do it like I did and get the bottom of your crust soggy even before baking it.

Then bake at 400 for about 30 minutes.

Zips sliced up the yellow tomatoes, sprinkled some of our sweet basil over it and drizzled it with olive oil. Then scooped out some of our locally grown watermelon before juicing the rest of it and adding some chopped sweet basil to the juice (it was delicious!). I cubed the potatoes and carrots and roasted them with some olive oil and rosemary from our garden.
But another high point and new discovery was corn pudding. Corn Pudding. Two words I never imagined together. I couldn't wrap my brain around it. I had no concept of what it would taste like. But nothing about it looked bad, so I gave it a whack and am so glad I did!

Zipper's Corn Pudding

2 or 3 ears of fresh corn-- de-kerneled

2/3 c. milk (most recipes call for whole milk. I used soy milk. It was delightfully light and fluffy. Perhaps when I try this again with the southwestern variation, I'll use whole milk to get the full effect before experimenting more)

1 egg

1 Tb. flour

1 tsp. sugar

salt + pepper

Handful of basil or cilantro (I used basil-- about 8 or 9 leaves chopped)

Pulse half of the corn kernels in a food processor. I did this until I had a kind of sweet corn mush. Then add the processed corn to the rest of the kernels, the dry ingredients, and the basil or cilantro.

In another bowl, mix together egg and milk, and add this to the corn mixture. Then pour into a baking dish and bake at 350 for about 30 minutes. I finally got to use these little individual pans for like the second time in ten years!

It was an amazing feast-- that has left us both plagued with food ennui. I'll have to think up something quick to make life worth living after having eaten this sumptuously! Isn't that what summer's for?

Pie Overload!

When co-workers and acquaintences, (even my parents!) ask what a vegetarian eats on Thanksgiving, I have taken to announcing "WHATEVER WE WANT!" That said, I am dozing on Tofurkey-induced tryptophan!
I am so stuffed right now, but I still want more! My tongue says YES, but my belly (and pants) say NO! My favorites were the tofurkey itself and my new cranberry sides. Zipper's favorites were the crunchy french onions (nearly burned perfectly) from the green bean cassarole, along with everything fresh and/or crunchy. I tried hard to avoid the starch overload that I usually succumb to.

My new sad favorite is the ABC series Pushing Daisies. Sad because it's been canceled in only its second season. But I am inspired by the main character's gift of pie making (and the other main character's great love of cheese). So our Thanksgiving holiday really started last night when I got it in my head to bake not the two pies we had planned on, but four. So I did a pumpkin pie (plus two mini pies thanks to some leftover pie crust), a pumpkin cheesecake, Zipper's favorite blueberry pie, and an apple pie for myself (I don't like pumpkin). I can't believe I've never made an apple pie before! I didn't have one in my recipe book, and had to go hunting for one, but this one was phenomenal!

Apple Pie:

3/4 c. sugar

1/2 tsp. cinnamon (heaping half-teaspoons, if you're me)

1/4 tsp. nutmeg

1/4 tsp. ground cloves

5-6 apples (firm, tart, peeled, cored, sliced) I used champagne apples and gala

2 Tb. butter

Toss apple slices with sugar & spices. Pour into a pie crust and dot with pieces of butter. Put the top crust on, cut vents in crust, brush crust with a little soy milk and sprinkle with sugar. Bake at around 375 for about an hour.

I am also delighted to have kitchen-tested a couple of cranberry recipes. I'm sure by now, everyone's already picked their positions on the jelly can and sauce teams. My mom's always experimented with various recipes, and Zips likes to eat them fresh, raw, unsweetened. While I do enjoy the popping noise they make, and the fact that they resemble tiny apples, I simply can't do it. SO, I found the easiest and tastiest recipes for both a fresh raw cranberry relish, and a simmered sauce:

Cranberry Relish:

2c. fresh cranberries

2 skinned, cored apples

1 whole, seedless orange (skin on, chopped)

Pulse in a food processor until combined and relish-y. Add

2 c. sugar

Mix until combined and store at room temperature until sugar dissolves.

Cranberry Sauce:

1 c. sugar (more if ya can't take it)

1 orange

1 Tb. grated ginger (use a microplane zester)

zest the entire orange into sugar. Add juice of the same orange into a pot with the sugar and ginger. Simmer until dissolved and add

4 c. cranberries

Simmer until all the cranberries pop. Yum.

Here Zipper and I lounge in front of the Garfield Thanksgiving Special (the one where Garfield has to go on a diet just before the big eatin' day).

Here Zipper helps clean up. I am thankful she makes me laugh so often.

Tomato-Rama-Lama-Ding-Dong: Part 1

Zips' favorite breakfast item: breakfast tacos!
Our garden has totally spoiled us this summer. It's still astonishing to me that I can just go out and eat tomatoes to my heart's content, and not have to hand anyone any money for them!
Here's a haul from about a week ago. The plants have since yielded SO MANY that we can barely keep up. Nightly arabic salads, daily salsa batches, and occasional insalata caprese cannot dispose of as many tomatoes as we are producing. We have had to resort to other, more creative tactics.

But first, the blueberry U-pick opened for one more day, before being completely cleaned out. We did our part, picking approximately fifteen pounds. Here's Zips' big brother Bijoux, and Mini's tail checking out the haul. Some of them (the berries, not the cats) made it into our happy bellies, and two thirds made it into freezer bags for blueberry pancakes and pies in the future.

And speaking of pies, here's our veggie "chik'n" pot pie. The crust turned out better than usual, I hope to have the hang of it now, after absorbing some Paula Deen and Barefoot Contessa and Martha Stewart tips. The "chick'n" is thawed, cubed Quorn "chicken breast" style "Naked Chik'n Cutlets."


Veggie Pot Pie:
3 Quorn Chik'n Cutlets (cubed)
1 c. frozen mixed vegetables (corn, carrots, peas, green beans)
1-2 small potatoes, cubed (I used yukon gold)
1 can condensed cream of mushroom soup (cream of celery also works)
1 c. soy milk
2 9" pie crusts

mix the soy milk with the soup mix.
mix cubed chik'n, mixed veggies, and cubed potato together and pour soup/soy milk mixture over it.
pour it all into a crust lined pie plate, top with crust and crimp the edges.
Poke holes in the center of the top crust to let steam escape.

Bake for 45 minutes at 350.

The Best of Times...the Worst of Times

I was going to call this post "abbondanza part 2," but a visit to my garden tonight dampened my spirits a bit. Saturday we went blueberry picking at a local U Pick. We picked nearly five pounds of blueberries with plans to make more freezer preserves (god bless pectin!) and Zips' favorite kind of pie. We went in the late morning, although I had every intention of getting up early-- on a Saturday morning with a nice cup of coffee, I just couldn't get a move on... We were told that the Easter frost this year made it a smaller crop, and their website said they'l be closed for a bit to let more berries ripen. We'll be there when it opens again, because we found the BEST pie recipe EVER!
Again with the before and after...mmmm. our favorite way of getting our antioxidants...
Okay, so the pie recipe is totally adapted from this great Vegan Photo Blog and one of our favorite veggie blogs, Vegan Lunch Box (hers is linked to a pie contest winner on an episode of Emeril Live). Vegan Photo Blog also links to the Emeril recipe ("Polly's Perfect...") and gives excellent detailed instruction. I nixed the nutmeg, cinnamon, and lemon juice for the berry mixture. Here's what I did:

Excellent (Vegan!) Fresh Blueberry Pie

preheat oven to 375 (the recipe says 350, the electric stove I used runs cold, so I cranked it!)
Crust:

2 c. flour
2 ts. sugar
1 ts. salt
1/2--2/3 c. vegetable oil
3-4 Tb. soy milk (I used unflavored Silk)

mix dry ingredients together
whisk oil and soy milk together
add the wet mixture to the dry mixture

press most of crust dough evenly into 9" pie plate and up the sides. set aside remaining crust crumbs (should be 1/4 to 1/3 of original amount)

Filling:

1 qt. fresh blueberries washed & drained
3 Tb. cornstarch
3/4 c. sugar
4 tsp. margarine

mix cornstarch into sugar, combine well.
gently mix berries into sugar/cornstarch
place berry mixture into pie crust
dot evenly with margarine (1/2 tsp. per dot)
crumble reserved pie crust crumbs over top of berries.

Bake 45-50 minutes

I've never made a blueberry pie before, let alone a vegan one, let alone from scratch, but THIS one takes the cake! I hope to do it again with the tart Michigan cherries I bought at the farmer's market. I've got a recipe for the cherry filling, I'll post it if I have good luck with it!

In other, less satisfying news, the garden has been great, on autopilot and hanging in there for the rain we're expecting on Tuesday. We popped out there on the way home tonight to grab some of our amazing basil, when we noticed that something has totally ravaged our corn stalks. Two or three ears were half-shucked and picked clean, presumably by birds, and the remainder of the ear had been taken over by little black bugs. We picked off seven ears of otherwise beautiful bicolor sweet corn that would have been the pinnacle of our summer gardening experience. Several had been drilled into by those bugs-- just a tiny black hole that buggers spilled out of like that scene in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom :( We still have two or three baby ears growing. We'll just have to pay extra close attention to how they're growing and pick them before the birds do.
I'm going to see what I can salvage and work the rest into black bean salsa. I'll take a picture if it works.

Latest Excursions

Okay-- it's been a little too long since my last update. I have to look back at my photos to remember what's been going on in the right order. Here's a look at last week's csa haul-- "freckle" lettuce, swiss chard, carrots (carrots!!), green onions, and radishes:
When I went to pick it up, I was also asked conspiritorially, "do you like garlic?" and introduced to an odd curly thing called a garlic scape-- the sprouty thing that grows out of the "finest of the hardneck varieties" of garlic, that curl and straighten and produce seed-like bulbs.

It turns out, they make a delicious garlic butter!



Aside from that, the garden has taken off wonderfully. We've already picked and eaten the first 6 baby cherry tomatoes and are keeping a keen eye on everything else. I can't wait until I can eat a salsa entirely made up of produce I've grown (except for lime). Zips came out to visit at the garden, and spent time checking out the romas.

We've also got tomatillos, jalapenos and other hot peppers (I don't remember which are planted where, so it's going to be a game of spicy russian roulette!!) on the vine. Just need the sun and water. Salsa. Verde. Can't. Wait.

Zipper's still sleeping off the effects of the green tomato aroma.

Okay. What else? Tried out a no-bake vegan chocolate cheesecake recipe (from the April issue of Veg Times) to great effect. I'm not a fan of lots of flavored cheesecake. I'm an unrepentant chocolate lover. I'm a fan of classic cheesecake with strawberries. I try not to mix the two (unless I can snag the dark chocolate off the plate of a fellow diner's garnish). I'm overwhelmed by the Cheesecake Factory dessert menu. I'm not impressed. I just don't think they sound all that good. What's better than strawberries?? So I was dubious about this recipe.

I was wrong. It's totally tasty. I've eaten chocolate cheesecake before, and this vegan variety is totally compelling. The tofu makes for a less dense, lighter pie. The flavor is excellent! And the cookie crumb bottom is absolutely essential. (And the fact that it's no-bake won me over. Like I said. I'm no baker. trust me.)

No-Bake Chocolate-Swirled Cheesecakes



6 round chocolate wafer cookies (we had NO idea what this meant, so I unscrewed a Newman-O cookie and used the non-creme half. If I did it again, I'd crush the cookies so I could layer the bottom of the pie with cookie crumbs like a graham cracker crust)

1 c. vanilla soymilk (we only had plain soymilk, so I added a couple tsp. of vanilla
extract)

1/2 tsp. agar agar powder

2 oz. bittersweet chocolate, finely chopped (we only had unsweetened baker's chocolate and semi-sweet chocolate chips.. so I opted for the latter and used about 1/2 c.)

7 oz. silken tofu (I cut a 12 oz. block of silken Nasoya into a larger and smaller half. Obviously I used the larger)

4 oz. vegan cream cheese (Tofutti brand comes in an 8 oz. tub. I divided it in half. btw. It's delicious~!! So's their "sour cream.")

1/2 c. sugar
1 Tbs. lemon juice
2 tsp. vanilla extract


Coat 6 6oz. ramekins with cooking spray and place 1 cookie in each. (We used the ever-popular baby quiche pans and didn't use spray at all. And again, next time I'll crush up the cookies to evenly and completely cover the bottom).

Combine soymilk (some vanilla extract) and agar agar. Simmer for a minute over medium heat stirring constantly. Remove from heat and cool 3 minutes.

Melt chocolate in microwave (I always add a little water so it doesn't scorch or clump up) until smooth (in 30 second increments).

Blend tofu, cream cheese, sugar, lemon juice, and vanilla extract in food processor until smooth. Pour soymilk mixture slowly while processing until combined.

Set aside 1 c. of this mixture and add melted chocolate to the remaining tofu mixture in the processor and blend until well combined.

Pour chocolate mixture into ramekins and spoon (white) reserved mixture into ramekins and swirl with a knife (to make it look fancy. Don't swirl it too much, or it'll all just turn a lovely beige) Chill 3 hours or overnight.
No doubt. It was delicious.
I'm also really excited about trying it sans chocolate, adding lemon zest to the tofu mixture, and topping it off with the strawberry preserves we made a couple weeks ago. Or even the blackberry preserves. mmm.

Baby Pies and Cannellini Crostini

Summer school is starting soon, so we're trying to get in as much picnicking and adventuring as possible. Today I packed up the cooler with mini blackberry and peach pies, and a cannellini bean salad with crostini...but after our adventures, we ended up eating it all on the couch at home. Here they are before the mini-lattice tops:

And after...

Zips prefers the blackberry. After all, her proper name, Zarzamora, means blackberry. Can you believe we forgot to snap a photo after they were baked?? It's definitely TOO LATE NOW!

The cannellini bean salad is an approximation of a vegetarian dish served at Edo's Squid in Richmond, VA. I've never been to it, but my partner had a job interview in Richmond. Eating at Edo's and indulging in the ginger sesame dipping sauce for vegetable tempura at TJ's (which I've never visited, but of course will have to figure out the recipe for) were the highlights of her trip. In any case, I've got a pantry stocked with cannellini's and some panko crumbs for the future.

Cannellini Salad:

2 cans of cannellini beans (I use Bush's)
1/4 c. red onion THINLY sliced
1/4c. parsley (flat or curly.. I prefer flat) chopped
2 roma tomatoes chopped
1 tsp. lemon zest
2 Tb. lemon juice (or more to taste)
3 Tb. extra virgin olive oil (ditto)
salt and black pepper
The longer it sits, the better it gets...

Zips' big sister Mini checks out the crostini.

Favorite Thing: Veggie Pho

So... One of our staples (summertime, flu season, and any time at all!) is an entirely vegetarian version of pho-- (only the best noodle soup ever!). Here are some mouth-watering snaps from last weekend's batch.

This one's mine (needs just a little more cilantro and lime). The jalapeno is the first crop from our garden (pictured on previous post):



And this is the tricked out version my partner fixes. Nothing like a crisp salad in a bowl of soup!

In less than vegan news, trying to tap into my inner Barefoot Contessa, I improvised a pair of quiche recipes for breakfast. I felt sooo Ina-y rolling my french rolling pin over the top edges of the pie dough to trim it. Here's my spinach-feta and broccoli-cheddar quiches patterned after my favorite bakery cafe's offerings:

I'm salivating... more later.