You might call it phoning it in, but I call it I love The Awl

I just found this great Awl post from last fall about farmer's market fruits and vegetables "tasting like themselves." I felt the exact same way when I first tasted local New York State grapes - nothing short of revelatory. And the grape jelly I made from them! Lordy.

Minestrone fixings and grapes

It was an undeniably chilly morning at the USG; there's no turning back from this fall thing, people.
The budget was tight today:
1 bunch chard
1 bunch kale (the same fancy kind I got last week)
1 bunch beets with greens
4 lbs. carrots
4 plum tomatoes
3/4 lb. mixed greens
1/2 lb. Lakemont variety seedless grapes
5 lbs. Concord grapes
1 Osage orange

Total spent: $56

I got a bug to make minestrone with fresh cranberry beans, so I bought some tomatoes that looked perfect for soup (it's the tomato equivalent of having a face for radio), a bunch of chard...and made quite a serviceable minestrone with whole wheat rotelle.

The grapes are for another batch of homemade jelly, but I have to find some Pomona's Pectin, since Brooklyn Kitchen is out. I really have no idea where else to look, but I've got to figure it out soon.

News flash 2: making grape jelly is worth it

It is so good it is so good it is so good it is so good

News flash: making grape jelly is tedious

I started with 4 lbs. of Concord grapes, and after mashing them, simmering them for ten minutes, running them through my food mill, and straining them through cheesecloth twice, I have 3 cups of grape juice and lots of middling grape almost-liquid that is dropping out of my cheesecloth-lined colander at approximately the same rate that microwave popcorn pops when it's time to take it out.

Once I've got the 4 cups of juice I ought to have, it should be easy enough to boil the stuff with pectin and agave nectar, check for jell, pour into jars, and process...but right now things are a bit dire and boring. Though I suppose I can use a bit of forced relaxation given the way things have been the past few weeks...season change being what it is.

Today is stretching out errand-free until I have to go to class at 5, so once I've got the jelly sorted I'm going to make granola, lentil pepper-pot soup, and start some yogurt. And tonight before bed I'll put in a couple sheets of tomatoes to slow-roast while we sleep.

Risotto & dinner success; deals; grapes

Last night's dinner was a smashing success. Our apartment was too dark for effective picture taking, but the butternut squash risotto alongside garlicky spinach with grain sausage plated quite prettily. The risotto was very good, but next time I'll change a few things - add a little squash, simmer the squash innards with the broth as the recipe instructs for flavor, and use 1/2 to 1/3 the lemon juice I used this time. The slightly too bright flavor imparted by the lemon juice isn't bad, or bitter, as I feard it might be, just a little too much.

And, speaking of spinach, I weighed the $2 bag of "tender young spinach leaves" I bought at the greenmarket, and found that it's about 17 oz - so I used 1/3 of it for last night's repast. But what a deal! Usually, a 6 oz. back of baby spinach leaves is around $2.50 at Trader Joe's, and $4 at most stores. And this spinach was really terrific, and even pre-washed (though I did rinse and spin it again). Not to mention, it's locally grown, so won't have come from one of the Salinas Valley farms that supplied the e.coli-contaminated bagged spinach. (Don't get me wrong; I love the Salinas Valley. But those are some big farms - anyone who's driven the 101 a few hundred times knows it.)

We brought some of the grapes to the movies last night, and this morning I remembered the name of the variety - Canadice - which have an odd woodiness or spiciness to them, but which are quite good nonetheless. Their insides are softer than ordinary table grapes, so they "peel themselves" when you bite down on them. Luckily their peel has a nice tart flavor. I need to investigate the grape season, to see how long we'll have this fresh fruit option. I don't want to think about what's going to happen when there's nothing left...

One faux pas, but an otherwise uneventful trip

Green, green, green. Everything other than the squash is green these days, and half of it is bell peppers (which I hate), and broccoli (which I love, but which I can't buy because my photo assistant hates it). Maybe it was because I got up too early, but I had an unfortunately blah trip to the USG today...but I still managed to make some interesting choices.



Today's (mostly-green) selections:
1/2 lb. salad mix
1/3 lb tat soi
1 bunch Swiss chard
3 zucchini
4 assorted peppers - Anaheim and "El Diablero"
3 poblano(?) peppers
1 lb. seedless green grapes
1.5 lbs. nectarines
10 assorted apples - Honeycrisp, Mutsu, Macintosh, Macoun
1.5 lbs. whole wheat flour
Total spent: $36

The apples are for lunches - though I'm almost ready to settle down and make some applesauce. Maybe next week...though I don't look forward to carrying 15 lbs. of apples home on the L train! The Mutsus seem to be likely applesauce candidates, but I'm trying multiple varieties this week. Usually I use two types of apples in my applesauce, and nothing else.

I'll use the peppers like I did those from week before last - roasted in a big pot of black beans. The combination of poblanos and Hatch chiles I had last time was terrific, so this time I wanted to try new varieties. The Anaheims are mild, and the "El Diablero" were labeled medium, despite the ominous name. The poblanos I bought bagged, and there's about a 30% chance they're actually just very-dark green bell peppers. Luckily I have peppers to spare, in case they prove unusable.

The two dark green leafies will, once again, be used instead of my dear spinach; last week's chard wasn't as bitter as I expected. I heard about tat soi on a food blog message board as an alternative to spinach. Raw, it tastes a bit like a really mild sorrel. The tat soi, which I got from the weirdly antiseptic "microgreens" vendor I'd never bought from before, was the reason for my USG faux pas. I picked up a leaf to sniff it, to see if it smelled bitter or spicy, when one of the proprietors ran over. "Please don't touch anything!" she said, in a terribly alarmed tone, and threw away the leaf I'd touched. "Everything's washed." I apologized, and wanted to leave without buying anything, because of her unfriendly, accusatory tone, but I had to try the tat soi. Her attack wouldn't have been so offensive if there had been any signage up anywhere in their stand notifying customers not to touch the produce, but there weren't. It's the greenmarket. People touch stuff! But all their produce looked nice and clean, so maybe she had a point.

I'm not a huge fan of grapes, but my photo assistant is, so I bought him some seedless green ones (next time I'll remember the exact variety) as a surprise. We'll see what he thinks. The sample I had just tasted like grapes. As far as fruit goes, the options are rapidly diminishing. Peaches weren't looking very inspirational, so I went with some little organic nectarines - the kind that are "so organic that they're all blemished, but in a lovable way" - as well as the aforementioned apples and grapes.

In general, I've known "the change" would happen - fall, then winter, with fewer and fewer produce options - but that doesn't make me any happier about it. I'm going to have to start researching squash recipes in earnest; pumpkins and the like have been taking up more and more greenmarket real estate every week. Though I'm looking forward to getting to make soups, stews, and baked goods now that the weather's cooled off, it's hard to accept that berries are gone until next year, that tomatoes will soon be unavailable, that soon enough the last of the corn will disappear. But I'm optimistic that fall/winter will force me to try/enjoy more new vegetables than ever...next week I'm starting with celeriac!