Countdown + Madison

1st pickup scheduled for June 4! I'm really excited because the weather just turned super hot, which means I'm veering away from heavy comfort foods and searching for lighter summery noms. The first few shares last year were full of salad greens, green things, leafy greens, green... And green things are wonderfully light and refreshing, so I'm pretty happy.

Just got back from a trip to Madison to see the family and while we were there, we stopped by the farmer's market. Amazing! Madison might be smaller than New York, but it sure does have a farmer's market that can rival the best of New York's farmer's markets. There's a great sense of community, a history of farming, and UW Madison, which is a land-grant university and therefore maintains a strong focus and commitment to agriculture. Kind of like Cornell, but located right in Madison, instead of somewhere far away upstate.

Anyways, it was really great to see another food ecosystem all up close and personal. It's fun to see the commitment to local food in Madison. I was mostly struck by the sense of community and it was pleasantly surprising to see such visible ties between all the small farmers, producers, consumers, and restaurants. Also, we got to eat at L'Etoile, which I've been dying to do, and it was everything I hoped it would be!

The food was nothing groundbreaking, but it was well prepared and comfortable, in line with New York's locavore offerings and devoid of all the gimmicks and downright rude service that you sometimes get in the city (Rosemary's I'm looking at you). Stars of the menu included asparagus and morel mushrooms, as well as the last of the last batch of chevre from a local producer who had decided to retire. Apparently this is the best goat cheese in the region, so L'Etoile bought up all of the remaining stock once they caught wind that the woman who makes the cheese was going to retire. I sampled a little of my brother's plate and I have to say...I agree. Madison is practically synonymous with cheese, so I guess I should stop being so surprised by the quality of the cheese every time I visit.

The highlight of the meal for me was the amuse bouche, which was a lovely creme fraiche preparation with roasted asparagus, pepitas, and a drizzling of some sort of savory reduction, topped with a little tiny edible viola. I was so excited by the amuse bouche because that morning, I had stopped at a booth in the farmer's market, completely taken in by the little boxes of fingernail-sized edible violas that were on display. I gazed wistfully at them, snapped a photo, and grabbed a bunch of salad turnips instead. I thought they'd be fun to sprinkle over a salad for a whimsical summery touch, but I didn't know how my family would react to eating flowers for dinner. I was already pushing the envelope by picking up several greens they'd never seen before and I didn't want to scare them with too many new things all at once. So I gently closed the door on the idea of seeing those violas appear in my food...and then like magic, they reappeared as a delicate little garnish in the amuse bouche! L'Etoile is literally right in front of the farmer's market and I could identify so many items on my plate that I had seen just that morning, just one block away, which was all sorts of awesome. Fun times! Added bonus - my parents are now fans of farmer's markets and have decided they'd like to go every Saturday morning! I'd be jealous if I wasn't so happy :)

chickening out of eating chicken

kay so one definite downside of educating yourself about what you eat is that you actually notice what you're eating and you know what's probably in it (or not in it, as it were).

In the past, I've ordered chicken from a number of restaurants with no problems at all. Recently, I've noticed that food from my old standbys just doesn't seem as good anymore. I highly doubt that the food from all these places radically worsened at the same time, so the problem is probably me. But seriously, it's a problem. The chicken is weird. It tastes funny. It sometimes crumbles (yeah, I know right? that is not something meat should do, ever, except maybe ground meat but that's a totally different story and we won't go there today.) The chicken doesn't hold up to close inspection and it generally does not appeal to me. There are exceptions, of course, and I've started taking notice of which places serve food I actually want to eat.

Bored and curious, I googled these exceptions and discovered that interestingly enough, the places serving food I like tend to source free-range, hormone and antibiotic free, and sometimes organic chicken. It could be that a place willing to buy quality chicken probably invests in other high quality ingredients, generally leading to higher quality dishes. It could also be that they put in more effort to cook the chicken well. Whatever the reason, I've become more picky about what meat I choose to eat. Being picky is usually seen as a bad thing, but I think this time, the offense is forgivable.

(It's not just chicken, by the way, but inferior chicken has been the most obnoxious offender to my newly vigilant tastebuds.)

Alsoooo...it's still freezing. Spring, hurry up!

Fennel and Red Cabbage Salad

I've been holding on to a small head of red cabbage from CSA share #7 for a few weeks now, so I thought this might be a good time to try and use it up. Red cabbage is a great source of vitamins and minerals, including the antioxidant, Vitamin C. The thing about cabbage is that once it's cut, Vitamin C starts to disappear right away. Plus, it starts to wilt. So it's a good idea to use up the entire head of cabbage when possible, in order to maximize the health (and flavor!) benefits.

I had a bunch of oranges, pineapple, and apples stored in the fridge for sangria-making purposes (yum!), so when I happened upon a recipe for fennel and red cabbage salad with oranges, I decided to sacrifice a few of my sangria oranges for salad. Glad I did, because the salad turned out quite nicely. The original recipe called for things like pepitas, tamari, hemp seeds, and cilantro, none of which I had on hand, so I made a few modifications and tried to use up the random things I had lying around my kitchen. I also like keeping things simple and quick, to save time.

Ladies and gentlemen, behold my dumbed down fennel and red cabbage salad.

Fennel and Red Cabbage Salad
Ingredients:
- 1 small head of red cabbage
- 2 small fennel bulbs
- 2 oranges
- lemon juice
- olive oil
- balsamic vinegar
- salt

Recipe:
1. Wash and trim fennel bulbs. Reserve fronds and stalks for soup stock (stalk stock teehee) and garnish.
2. Wash and core red cabbage. If you're hungry, you could microwave the cores for a minute or two and eat them as a snack. Nom nom.
3. Slice the cabbage and fennel into thin strips, coleslaw style.
4. Drizzle the fennel strips with olive oil, lemon juice (I used the juice from a third of a lemon), and salt.
5. Slice orange segments into bite size pieces and add to the fennel mix.
6. If you're not eating the salad right away, store in the fridge and mix everything together just before serving/eating*. Keep the cabbage separate from the fennel so the red coloring doesn't leach into the fennel slices. Or the oranges. I imagine purple and orange in combination would turn a rather unappetizing shade of brown.
7. Toss the cabbage with the fennel/orange mix and then drizzle a bit of balsamic vinegar on top. Season with salt and pepper.
8. Garnish with a few fennel fronds.
9. Enjoy.

* If you're making lunch for work and you're short on tupperware (like me), you can wrap up the red cabbage in some saran wrap to keep it separate from the rest of the salad and put it on top of the fennel. Don't use foil, as the acid from the lemon juice might do funny things to your lunch :(

I had way too much red cabbage, so I just brought in the extra cabbage to work the next day, microwaved it, and added salt and pepper. Pretty tasty but it smelled pretty strongly of sulfur. Fortunately, my coworkers are accustomed to far more offensive smells, like fish and kimchi (we sit right by the microwave and the Korilla truck stops by every now and then), so I think I'm still on good terms with them. I hope.

CSA Share #11 is coming in tomorrow! I have a crapton of vegetables, but they're pretty storage-friendly, so I'll probably wait and see what I get in tomorrow's share before I cook any of the CSA leftovers. My inventory consists mostly of onions, garlic, jalapenos, and fennel stalks. I have a pint of frozen chicken consomme, so I might make some soup this weekend and freeze portions for later use.

On a somewhat (not really) related note, I had brunch with my friends at Clinton St Bakery down in the LES. Chocolate chunk pancakes with maple butterscotch syrup. I die. Haha. And the icing on the cake? When I walked in the door, I immediately noticed a sign hanging on the wall with a list of local farms that Clinton St. Bakery sources their fresh ingredients from. I excitedly pointed it out to my brunch friends, but I think my enthusiasm was a little one-sided. #foreveralone