Farm to table!

This may be a tad too long, but I have been absent for a few days. I have an archive of good stuff to post this week, and I will begin with some great acquisitions from the local markets...

Two great reasons to buy meat from places like Peaceful Pastures (East Nashville and Franklin farmer's markets): it is a lot tastier than bland, sodium-injected, antibiotic-laced supermarket stuff, and it is cheaper than meat of similar (or less) quality that one can buy at places like Whole Foods. Case in point: bacon! This was so thick that I had to slice off the skin in some parts. But, it is very tasty and contributed to a few good dishes last week:

An all-local line-up (L to R): green leaf lettuce, Yazoo Dos Perros ale, green onions, garlic scapes, "par-cel" (as the name suggests, a parsley-celery leaf hybrid), and the aforementioned bacon.


The above ingredients plus local free-range eggs made an excellent take on Salade Lyonnaise (I did use mustard in the dressing, but cider vinegar instead of wine vinegar).

Our first cookbook, The Joy of Cooking, now in its tenth year of use, provided the kale with bacon recipe. At least three kinds of kale have been availabe in Nashville this month.

The soup pictured above was my attempt to recreate something Heather ate recently at Sunset Grill (a restaurant in Hillsboro Village that actually deserves the good reviews that most places in the neighborhood do not merit). I made this apple-turnip soup with about a pound and a half each of red turnips and Granny Smith apples, which made it quite tart (and, according to Heather, much tastier than the source of its inspiration!), even though I added the leftovers of a bottle of Riesling in the mix. This was really good stuff! There is no need for a recipe: just saute some onions, throw in the cubed turnips and apples, enough broth or water (wine optional) to cover, and simmer until soft. Puree in a blender, add salt and pepper, and add some heavy cream (half to a full cup). I garnished it with the bacon (it ended up in five meals last week!) and some par-cel leaves, which made this dish a summer version of the cream of parsnip and celery root soup that we make so much in the fall and winter.

The perfect summer wine! I don't know much about Italian wine, but this was recommended by Will at Woodland Wine Merchant, a really great store in East Nashville that Food & Wine magazine reviewed two years ago, referring to the store's owner as an "idosyncratic visionary."

The main grape in this is Vermentino.

(If you are a Nashvillian, I should also mention how great the Wine Shoppe at Green Hills is; the labeling is not as helpfully obsessive as WWM, but the staff there is energetically friendly and very knowledgable, which is especially helpful in rebuffing the attempted rivalry by a bland newcomer a block away).

A large green zucchini sat around for a week before I sliced it and used it as the filing for a five-egg omelet.

Consider the above producer's URL as I quote from The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan:

We've come to think of "corn-fed" as some kind of old-fashioned virtue, which it may well be when you're referring to Midwestern children, but feeding large quantities of corn to cows for the greater part of their lives is a practice neither particularly old or virtuous. Its chief advantage is that cows fed corn, a compact source of caloric energy, get fat quickly; their flesh also marbles well, giving it a taste and texture American consumers have come to like.

I suppose if it's the only thing you get to taste, then you come to like it. Unfortunately, most people in North America are used to flavoring-injected mass-processed meat, so there is little appreciation for real beef, from cows that eat what their stomachs naturally process: grass! Luckily for us, there are several local farms in Middle Tennessee that raise animals the right way and sell tasty, unadulterated meat. West Wind Farms is new to us this year, and has provided great stuff, notably some drumsticks we got in East Nashville last Wednesday. As for the short ribs...

I seared them in a pan, rubbed them with Chinese five-spice powder, and cooked them in the oven at 250 degrees for three hours. Fall-off-the-bone tender! The side dish was local bok choy with an easy and excellent "Asian" dressing (great recipe- click here).

Finally, more local produce factored in another Asian-inspired recipe. We used the same sauce as above for stir-fried green kale, onions, carrots, garlic, green onions, and ginger root (not local), and served on buckwheat soba noodles from Whole Foods. A really great vegeterian meal!

That's all for now. More about Michael Pollan tomorrow, along with some other recent meals using local produce.

For those of you commenting (thank you Beth and Karen!), please share ideas or recipes!