Chris Look of Okra Farms

I got fired on Sunday.  This will be my last post.  I am no longer representing Okra Farms.  I don’t know what to say.  If you were following me at all, and hoping to see my smiling face when Okra opened it’s door, you will be dissapointed.  Either way, the day before Sunday was a fabulous day.  It was my birthday! I hit that real large number 29 and rocked it hard until the break of dawn.  But it all started here at the other end of the day.  Real early at the New Orleans East Vietnamese Market.  I went crazy, I really wanted to try all of the things, and so I did.  The rice, the smashed corn, the pork buns.  Oh goodness everything was so amazing.

This little guy was my absolute favorite.  It’s rice smushed up until its a paste, then wrapped around heavily seasoned pork and mushrooms.  The best part is the price coming in at a measly 2 bucks.  Heck it may have been 1, I don’t remember it was so early and I was so hungry.  After the market, my man Eric and I stopped my the VEGGI CoOp to check out their operation.  We talked veggies and I learned all about the many things they grow that noone wants to buy.  Things like buckwheat, oats, and some kind of potato that is sour tasting.  Needless to say I was intrigued and I can definitely say I will be getting in touch with the guys at the coop soon.

I spent the rest of my morning finishing off some brisket and stewed okra and tomatoes with squid.  These delectables were for the finale party of the Eat Local Challenge.  The party was a great time, and I spent a fair amount of my time catching up on a months worth of having no beer.  The party ended, and I went home the proud owner of most health improvement, and tying for first in the Ultra Strict category.  I really don’t know how I improved my health so much, but it must have been all the grass fed animal fat.  You may think I’m joking but that stuff really is low in saturated fats.  You can’t argue with a winner, ya’ hear.

Today is the last day of the official ultra strict challenge.  I’m planning on going strong until Saturday at the finale party where I will be drinking lots, and lots, of beer, and rum, and eating brisket, shrimp and all the things with my bare hands.  Important note, the meal will be entirely 200 mile friendly, just not the beer.  Beer is the only thing i miss more than bread. Glorious bread. I started melting cheese onto my eggs this way after experimenting with the technique on egg in a baskets. If you’ve ever seen an old nonstick pan infomercial, you will remember the part where they burn cheese to the pan.  It comes right out and honestly looks pretty delicious all crisped and salty....mmmm. So anyways, the plan with the egg in a basket was to crack the egg in the bread hole and let the bottom side get a good egg wall established.  Then you throw a slice of cheddar cheese over the raw side, nuzzling it into the hole.  Finally flip the badboy and smile as the cheese starts to sizzle, sealing the egg perfectly.  Without bread, or when I’m lazy, or can’t find a tiny cup to cut my holes, I just fry the cheese right to the egg.  It’s really fabulous, though it does really require a nonstick pan.  The accouterments were the leftover shiso rolls that wouldn’t fit on the baking sheet. I steamed them this morning and I must say, steaming is the way to go.  They were much more moist, and the shiso was much more pungent.  It was the perfect way to start a day of chicken coop building.

And what a great way to end that day.  I stopped by Zeitgeist for the green drinks, and local bingo parties.  I met lots of very nice people, had a great time, and came home to find my roommate, and fellow Ultra Strict competitor, had made me this little diddy of a dinner.  He sliced the leftover wrapped fish into little fajita looking pieces and fried them in fat.  Then he made a great tomato basil thang and put it all over rice.  Honestly this jack is some of the most amazing fish I’ve encountered.  This meal was spot on steak fajitas.  Nuff said.  My roommate also knows how to cook, I just never let him, HA! I would also like to point out my new bowl.  It’s green, and though it doesn’t have a handle, I think it’s going to be mine for a while.  It’s in it’s trial period.  If you’ll notice the other picture is of a different bowl.  I found 2 bowls and the other has a sweet lip that you can hold if the bowl is full of hot stuff.  It’s a tough competition to see which bowl comes out on top.  Luckily, I am allowed, by law, to use as many bowls as I deem fit.  Thank goodness for that.  

I just got finished with an awesome dinner with some old and new friends. I cooked up all the veggies you see here.  The most exciting, and certainly the most unique item was the bitter melon. The three bumpy looking cucumber things on the right are them. Bitter melon is certainly an appropriate name. Even with a long cook time, a healthy dose of salt, and some vinegar and sugar and they still were very bitter. They made the dish special and that was key.

Before that, lets talk about my lunch today. I have been sitting on a giant filet of crevelle jack since this Saturday. It was a firm and meaty fish when i cut it up and time had just made it more pungent.  I knew I was going to need to doctor it up to make it taste right.  I made a little balm out of slightly old yogurt cheese mixed with salt, cayenne, shiso, Vietnamese coriander, and garlic chives.  The yogurt cheese was a great substitute for sour cream. I rubbed it all over the top and then wrapped the fish best i could in spicy mustard leaves. This went into a 300 degree oven for about an hour.  My plan was to slow cook it and have the moisture from the fish steam the mustard.  I think 300 was way to high looking back now. Next time i will try 225 for a bit longer maybe.

Don’t get me wrong, it was delicious.  It was reminiscent of meatloaf with a creamy seafood flavor on top instead of bbq or ketchup.  Meatloaf is my favorite meal, so that’s a high compliment to this meal.  The jack continues to surprise me with it’s beef like flavor and appearance.

The jack even made it into dinner.  Yet again its wrapped in a tasty leaf.  This time I wrapped the fish sausage I made the other day in blanched shiso leaves.  I then roasted them in a 420 degree oven until the internal temp was 155.  The sausage was made a couple days ago, and I am so excited to have a thermometer, so i checked to be safe.  You could easily just wait till they sizzle and look like this.  Heck nothing and nobody is stopping you from just giving one a quick sample.

One of my friends brought corn and eggplant to dinner and inspired this little mix.  This is corn, eggplant, cayenne, jalapeno, garic and basil, cooked in pecan oil.  I started with hot oil and then threw everything into the pan until it was almost overflowing.  That cooled the pan off a bit and allowed me to slow cook the whole mess. It’s not really a saute at this point it’s more like steaming in each others juices.  It really turned out great.  It is important to leave the basil and garlic until you are closer to the end of cooking.

The star of the show.  Bitter Melon!!! this stuff is weird.  Even weirder than the thing from last night that I don’t know the name of.  That thing was sweet and custardy and cucumbery and all sorts of delicious.  Bitter melon is, well, it’s bitter.  You can eat the whole thing, but the seeds are a bit tough so i removed them for my chickens.  I chopped them up and mixed them with tomatoes, okra, chopped green beans, garlic, oregano, and salt.  They stewed while everything else was being cooked, so about 2 hours.

And this was the final result.  If you look closely, you can see the bitter melon chunks floating in the mix.  They really were still bitter, but as a whole this dish was really great.  Plenty of salt, and a good long cooktime really did wonders for another crazy vegetable.  Bitter melon, people. Try It!!

ELC ULTRA STRICT ZONE:

6-24 breakfast: eggs:Koenenn farms, mushrooms: Mississippi natural, peppers:Vintage Gardens

lunch: fish, mustard greens, herbs:NO East market, cheese: Country Girls Creamery

Oh man fish stock. This is after 30 hours of cooking.  I don’t know if that’s too long or what but this stock was strong. Too strong? Maybe. It was certainly strong enough that my roommates commented that the house smelled like fish sticks. It was certainly strong enough that I worried that anything it touched would be so full of fish flavor as to taste like nothing else.  I decided to use it anyways, sparingly.

I used about 4 cups in this corn chowder.  I wanted the chowder to taste like there was fish involved, and it worked like a charm. The illusion of firm chunks of fish is helped by the potatoes. They fool the mouth and mind with some help from the fishiest stock ever made. It was fabulous. Also included are scallions, peppers, basil, garlic, salt, and heavy cream.

I always like to saute as many veggies as possible for my soups. If I’m braising meat in the soup, I’ll cook the veggies in the meat fat.  In this case there was no fatty meat so I just cooked the corn, peppers, and basil in some lard. I added these to potatoes and sweet potatoes that had been boiling in the stock.  I thinned the stock a bit with water and seasoned it with Vietnamese coriander. I had read that Vietnamese coriander was used in fish soups, and had luckily picked up 2 bunches by chance at the NO East market last Saturday. Everything turned out fine and dandy, and the following morning I woke to a breakfast of eggs.

And then the whole day, working in the hot sun, I thought about short ribs. Slowly braising in the sun I thought about slowly braising the short ribs with celery, peppers, tomatoes, and basil.  In a particular hot part of the day I was hit with the realization that rosemary should come to the party as well. So short ribs were made, and eaten, and all that remained were 8 bones, and 2 small pieces of tough, that resisted the food miracle that is a 4 hour braise.

While we were waiting for the meat to cook we had a couple appetizers. One, was a pretty simple shiitake fry with duckfat and garlic chives. The other was completely out of the ordinary and pictured here. This is the baseball bat looking thing from my trip to the Vietnamese market.  Check the older pictures for a look at this thing whole.  I don’t know what it’s called, despite doing some research. I know that the texture is insane raw, it tastes a bit like cucumber, jackfruit, squash, custard, or something like that. It’s a weird thing to eat, and it just gets weirder when you cook it. The texture changes entirely and the weird inside gets very juicy.  I think I like it better raw, but it’s a trip no matter how you bite it.

And finally here are some mayhaw berries that I am cooking into a sauce to dress a special surprise for the Eat Local Challenge finale party.  It’s this Saturday, June 27th, which just happens to also be my birthday.  It’s going to be a good time, and the food is going to be good to eat, and all Ultra Strict friendly.  I’m making personally sure of that. :)!

ELC ULTRA STRICT ZONE

6-21: dinner: rice 4 dayz!

6-22: breakfast: last pork sausage, amarith greens: NO East market, eggs: Happy Hens.

lunch:last strawberry braised chicken necks, necks: DM farms, berries: hollygrove deal bin, molasses: Steen’s

dinner: corn, peppers, scallions: thurs market, potato: wed market(Periloux), sweets potato: goodeggs, herbs: NO East market, cream: progress dairy,

6-23: breakfast: eggs: Happy Hens

lunch : chowder and rice

I made it to the Vietnamese Market is NO East this Saturday.  I set my alarm for 5 am! When i awoke, i sat up with my feet off the bed and questioned my existence.  Was it even possible to be here, doing what I was doing, going to a market with intentions of buying things I had no idea how to cook.  “Why am I here?” i thought. No, “Why am I awake?” a more easily answered question to ask myself.  I was awake, and that is what mattered.  I dressed swiftly and made my way to the rendezvous with none other than the smoke master, the soil extraordinaire, Eric the Man.  We were both recently interviewed on a podcast by the way! check it out right here, http://bit.ly/omclocal . Shameless self-plug complete.  So we set out for New Orleans East to buy some fish and greens. As you can see, we did very well for ourselves.  The spread right here cost me a grand total of $40.  I wasn’t really sure what the fish was, but I knew I wanted to eat it.

The fish was a crevalle jack by the way.  It has super firm flesh with a dark color.  Scaling and filleting was as interesting as it is with any other fish, at least for me.  Lots of bumping up against bones and cursing, and I even found a scale on me hours later, yup classic.  In case you haven’t noticed, I hate wasting food, so it goes without saying that I was going to make a fish stock.  It’s still percolating away right now, a good 24 hours later. It’s going into a chowder for tomorrow’s dinner.

These are my B-E-Autiful fillets from the jack.

After cleaning up after the fish and stowing it for later I set about finally making breakfast.  This little diddy came about in order to tidy the fridge. I cooked some bacon to soft, not crispy then added chopped chanterelle mushrooms and sauteed them until they were just getting cooked. At this point I turned the heat down and added a healthy amount of cream and scraped the bottom of the cast iron.  I made sure to stir constantly so the cream didn’t scald.  When it started to bubble gently, I cracked 2 eggs into the liquid to be poached.  I waited until the edges started to whiten then sprinkled garlic chives on top, put a lid on and turned of the heat to let it steam finish.  Sorry it was too tasty, I didn’t get a picture of the finished product.

Lunch was a taste test of the jack.  Doesn’t it look like steak. Oh yeh buddy,

Full of fish, I set about making sausage.  This right here is 4 pounds of pork.  It’s heading into the freezer to get a bit chilled so it will grind better.

While the pork was chilling I gathered the other fixings.  Here, we’ve got thai basil, garlic chives, “hot” peppers, garlic, and scallions. The peppers were not as hot as I was hoping.  This recipe would be best with thai chilis or perhaps just good old cayenne if you can’t find them.

After grinding I added a touch of cane vinegar, and molasses, which is quickly becoming my favorite substitute for umame seasonings like Worcestershire.  I then had the bright idea to add a bit of ground fish to the mix.  Normal Thai sausage would have a healthy portion of fish sauce added, so I figured why not just add a bit of fish.  It worked so well, that I’m going to be making an all fish sausage, with beef fat, tonight.  It’s sausage week baby!

A delicious little patty cooked to perfect herby deliciousness.

ELC ULTRA STRICT ZONE:

6-20 breakfast:eggs: happy hens, mushrooms:thurs market(wild), chives:2 acre farms, cream: Progress dairy, bacon:Jubilee Farms

lunch: crevalle jack from NO East farmers market

dinner:pork: hollywood livestock, herbs: NO East market, scallions, peppers: thurs market, garlic: Envie Garlic Farm

Thursday night was the Eat Local Dinner at Growing Local NOLA.  They had a great spread including watermelon and arugula salad, and some really good shrimp.  I made sure to tell my tablemates to eat the shells.  I certainly did, they were spicy and crunchy and full of vitamins.  The best part was that all of the ingredients were sourced from within 200 miles.  A lot of the ELC events are not geared towards ultra strict participants. The chefs have an understandably hard time giving up certain ingredients, or sometimes just don’t have the time to research and shop for things they carry regularly in their restaurants.  The chefs that cooked this meal put in the extra effort, and I am extremely grateful.  Sorry, I don’t have any pictures as I was mostly occupied talking to my great tablemates.  I do, however, have this great picture of my little backyard garden and this other one of tomatoes in various stages of being stuffed.

I stuffed them with pork sausage seasoned with just scallions, as well as bacon fat rice mixed with cayenne.  I then topped them off with some creole creamcheese and threw them in a 420 degree oven until they were nice and soft and the cheese was a bit brown.

It was a dang good way to end the day.  I had just come home from the wild edibles talk with Dr. Charles Allen.  I snagged some grapes at the class that should show up tomorrow in some way.  I’m thinking sweet sauce, but they may get cooked with some pork and mint instead.  We’ll see how I feel about it tomorrow.

ELC ULTRA STRICT ZONE:

6-18 dinner: ELC event

6-19 breakfast: eggs: happy hens(goodeggs), bacon: Jubilee Farms

lunch: kale: inglewood farms, shitake: Mississippi natural products(goodeggs)

The worst possible thing happened on Tuesday. My bowl broke when it decided to jump off the counter onto our tile floors. I guess you can only eat so many meals in a row out of the same bowl before the bowl just can’t take it anymore.  I wish it had talked to me and let me know it was stressed so I could have given it a little vacation. But no, it made its choice and now it lies dead in it’s trash bag grave beneath used broth bones and good eggs plastic bags. It will be missed.

In the good news column, BACON!!! I mean how can you not feel better with bacon sizzling in the pan.  This particular bacon is from one of my favorite farms that frequent the Thursday market, Jubilee Farms. They usually have lots of different pork and beef cuts, but I know they also have a vegetable growing program as well. The couple who runs it are super sweet and you can and should go find them any Thursday at the crescent city farmers market.

After my fabulous breakfast of bacon and more bacon, I worked my butt off building raised beds.  When I got home I immediately jumped into making this amazing beef chili. My favorite part about this chili is how I got it to taste like chili.  For me the two main flavors of chili are peppers, and cumin.  Cumin is something that I have not been able to find locally, and I have had no luck finding any alternatives.  I hit the jackpot last Thursday when I bought a huge bag of shiso from the VEGGI CoOp for $2. I just thought I was getting a great deal but when I got home and popped a leaf ion my mouth something amazing happened. I tasted shiso, but not only that there was a distinct smell and flavor of my spicelove, cumin!  I was so surprised and excited that I ran around the house and forced my roommates to share in my discovery.  Not everyone could taste it, but I knew it was there.  In fact that discovery is really the whole reason I even attempted making chili.  It worked out so well.  On the cumin/shiso line of thought, it seemed to me that the new growth tips of the herb had the most pungent cumin likeness.  Here’s hoping VEGGI CoOp can keep this mutation going strong!

To go with the chili I made a pot of brown rice cooked with a smoked pigs foot.  This foot is from that fateful day when Eric and I pulled apart smoked beasts like the barbarians we truly are.  I cooked brown rice so that the foot would have enough time to properly break down and get soft and chewy. MMMMMM good stuff.  Breakfast today is going to be bacon on bacon again, but to balance it out I’ll probably have some pigs foot rice as well.  Oh pork, how i love thee, let me count the ways.

ELC ULTRA STRICT ZONE

6-16 breakfast, lunch: Leftovers, and fermented slaw w/ white patty pan, raw sugar: goodeggs, cukes: Thur market, and cabbage: Hollygrove deal bin.

dinner” stewed Okra and tomatoes

6-17 breakfast: BACON from Jubilee farms

Lunch-skipped for work

dinner: beef: Jubilee Farms, tomato: Hollygrove deal box, peppers: wed market, shiso: thur market(VEGGI CoOp), white patty pan: goodeggs, pork foot: Eric the Man.

Thursday market is one of my favorite markets, but I hadn’t been in a month.  I am so happy I went.  Friday lunch consisted of the last of the molasses beans and a hefty portion of corn salsa.  This salsa has corn, tomatoes, strawberries, sugar, cane vinegar, papalo, garlic chives and salt.  After a night marinating in the fridge it was ready for consumption.  This is where papalo really shines guys. It says something that it was so easy to eat this with a spoon considering my lack of tortilla shells.

Just so you are completely aware at how much I love tomatoes.  I’n a pretty big dude and my hands are also big, so trust me when I say this is a ton of tomatoes.  They are basically the best snack ever. Slice in half and sprinkle with salt and your day just got a lot better.

For dinner I needed to use up the last of the shrimp I got at market.  I chopped up hot wax peppers, cayenne, onion, tomatoes, scallions, garlic chives and garlic to flavor the shrimp.  I started the cooking process by browning one side of sliced pork jowl.  After turning I moved them to the side of the pan and sauteed the peppers, garlic and onions in the fat.  After they got mostly soft I hit that with the tomatoes and some salt.  Finally when the tomatoes started juicing I hit it with a bunch of shrimp and tossed the whole thing jowls and all until they were nice and pink and crunchy.

Don’t forget to eat your shells.  With BBQ Shrimp like this it’s not only economical, its damn tasty too.  To accompany my shrimp I made the best dang pot of rice I’ve ever seen.  The liquid for this is 3/4 the pork stock I made a while back.  The texture and flavor it gave the rice is divine, and you can bet I’ll be making rice like this again soon. Saturday is here and free breakfast is afoot at the Zeitgeist.  Hooray for free food!!

ELC ULTRA STRICT ZONE:

6-12 Breakfast: Leftovers w/ egg

Lunch: corn, chives, papalo: Thurs Market, tomato, strawberries: Hollygrove deal bin

I bought shrimp yesterday from the market.  I’ve been living here for more than a month and eating local the whole time. Can you believe that was the first time I bought shrimp from the market.  Don’t get me wrong, I’ve seen the people selling shrimp.  I just seem to always spend all of my money on all the other amazing things. About now you have to be asking yourself, why is there not a picture of a shrimp here?  I’ll tell you. It’s because the most exciting thing about buying shrimp from the market is all of the crazy teeny bycatch that come along with it. I got 4 whole baby flounder, 3 minnows, and 2 things that looked like pufferfish.  I was pretty sure that I couldn’t eat the puffy ones, but i fried the others up and ate them all whole. If you payed for it, well you better eat it all.

I also bought lots of tomatoes at the market. I was awarded an apron for doing so as well.  The tomato fest is on this weekend and I’ll show you how excited I am a bit later.  Right now, let me tell you about this picture.  This right here is okra and tomatoes stewed with oregano and salt until most of the liquid is gone.  After I did that i tossed some shrimp with the head removed, but not peeled.  2 things: save your heads for stock, and always eat your shells and tails.  Seriously, it’s just like how you should always eat your strawberry greens.  They are crispy, full of nutrition, and most importantly it’s a heck of a lot easier.

My next big purchase at the market were potatoes from Perrilloux farms.  I bought $6 worth, which is a hefty amount of potatoes. I chopped them a bit smaller and boiled them until really mushy.  I threw a sweet potato into the mix as well just for some flair.  After they were cooked and drained i tossed them back in the pot and added some duck fat and ripped up rosemary.  A good mashing was given and these beauties were born.  I had originally planned on using milk in these, but upon searching for it found it had been drunk.  Luckily I always have a healthy amount of duck fat and lard on hand.

The final market find were these fresh big ole peppers.  These are stuffed with a mixture of thyme rice, pork, salt, and cayenne. Before stuffing it’s important to blanch your peppers just so they don’t split too easily. After they are stuffed, roast them up at your favorite temperature until sizzling with browning edges.  Everything was done at right about the same time, just the way I like it.  Dinner was served.

Yeh Buddy.  It was a dang good meal, and the leftovers...oh yes there were plenty. Breakfast, lunch, some even made it into dinner tonight.  Which brings me to tonight’s dinner, and how it came to be.  

I love markets, especially in this city.  Today’s market was in Mid-City.  I hadn’t been to Thursday market in a month which is sad because Jubilee Farms always goes to Thursday market, and they make some dang good bacon. They also raise and cut up cows and pigs for other cuts of meat, but come on...BACON!!! So I bought some bacon, and a big soup bone shank cut to feed the roommates.  I snagged some corn out of the whole deal as well.  The VEGGI CoOp was also there selling criminally low priced herb bunches.  I bought 5 dollars worth. For what they were charging the sheer volume of herb I received was mind-blowing.  Oh yes and I got a couple containers of creole cream cheese and some proper cream for the next batch of potatoes.

After market I headed to hollygrove to snag a weekly box.  I knew ahead of time that I would be coming late to the box party but figured I’d give it a shot.  Unlucky for me they had sold out of boxes by the time I got there.  That ended up being a perfectly fine situation, for in their place were 38 beautiful, squishy, overipe, red tomatoes; sitting in the deal bin.  38 pounds of tomatoes for the whopping price of...$38.  Yeh i bought them all, and the last 6 pints of strawberries I may see this year. All from the deal bin, All hail the deal bin!!!

So stuffed tomatoes anyone? These are stuffed with rice, corn, and some very savory spearmint that I snagged from the VEGGI folks. I also made a fresh salsa from the corn, tomatoes, garlic chives, papalo, and strawberries.  I seasoned the salsa with salt, cane vinegar,and raw sugar.  I’ll be eating the salsa for lunch tomorrow. I also put some tomatoes in with the beans I had started yesterday. I “forgot” about them and they cooked for about 32 hours.  Needless to say they needed some brightening up, so tomatoes to the rescue.  Funny thing is, I still have about 30 pounds left...

Tomatoes on Tomatoes. It’s Tomato season everybody. Eat up!

ELC ULTRA STRICT ZONE:

6-10 Dinner: fish, shrimp, tomatoes, okra, peppers, potatos: Wed market, pork: Eric, the man!, herbs: Vintage Gardens, 

6-11 Breakfast, Lunch: leftovers!!! plus and egg from Cleaver & Co

Yesterday was a big leftover day as I continued to clean out the fridge.  Nothing of import was cooked, though my roommate did take the helm for dinner cooking a nice eggplant, pepper, onion stirfry and a 4 cup duck fat rice batch that 4 of us killed in one night. 12 whole cups of rice in one night.  We really love our rice. For Breakfast today I finished the cleanout.  I cooked some bacon then fried some leftover split okra in the grease.  I made a little egg sandwich using the last kale leaves from 2 nights ago.  Not too shabby, though I am starting to question the okra egg combo.  For whatever reason my mouth doesn’t like the texture of the two together.  It’s an odd sensation having something so delicious in your mouth yet fighting your gag reflex because of something stupid like texture. Oh well, I’ll get over it.

I also started a batch of beans for dinner tonight. I seasoned them with peppergrass, a cayenne, pork, salt, and papalo.  I covered them with water and then hit them with a touch of molasses.  Well it was supposed to be a touch but it kind of globed out of the jar on me.  Oh well molasses beans are delicious.  Peppergrass is a wild edible that is great as a seasoning.  It’s a bit spicy and its available free anytime you walk around the city. Seriously the stuff grow everywhere. Papalo is a new herb for me, and I’d like to thank Southbound Gardens for bringing it to my attention.  It is a good substitute for cilantro in salsas, but it has its own unique flavor.  I suggest everyone buy some from Goodeggs while its available. It is a taste experience that is worth the 3 bucks.

ELC ULTRA STRICT ZONE:

Breakfast:Kale, Okra:Saturday Market  Bacon, Eggs:Cleaver&Co

So these guys got chopped up, mixed with a healthy portion of duck fat and rosemary and roasted at 450 until nice and tender. The best way to roast veggies is with a convection oven, but we can’t all be pros all the time.  Either way they will end up looking something like this.

Not too shabby if i do say so myself. At the same time I was roasting the roots I was crisping up a favorite snack of mine that I invented for my Fabulous girlfriend.  She, and I truly, are huge fans of stuffed grape leaves.  At the farm where I used to work we grew shiso.  Noone bought it because they didn’t realize how tasty is was and so it grew to ridiculous sizes. Most importantly the leaves got as big or bigger than grape leaves.  So one day I had the bright idea to stuff the shiso just like grap leaves.  Needless to say, my girlfriend was pleased and a new favorite was born.  All you do is blanch the leaves in boiling salted water and then put them in cold water to stop the cooking.  Fill and roll with whatever is handy, I used rice, crab, and cayenne. Throw them is a hot oven, or fry them in a pan and in no time at all you’ll have something like this...

If you are observant, then you will already know that the leaves on the left are not shiso, but in fact that darkest of kales, DINO KALE.  Now this kale goes by lots of other names, but the important fact is that its great for making stuffed leaves!  To dip these little morsels I had some leftover mayo that I had made myself.  Its real easy.  get a blender and egg, a cayenne pepper or dried cayenne, salt, about a 1/4 cup of steens vinegar and a cup of pecan oil.  The recipie is all over the internets, I just replaced everything not local with stuff that was. With that dinner was ready and served.

But I’ve gotten ahead of myself.  There is one dish I forgot to mention.  The cleanout had another gem of a find.  Some beautiful, but very old and rapidly drying purple pole beans.  I must have picked these up 2 weeks ago from the hollygrove box.  Knowing full well that they wouldn’t be tender if sauteed, I set out to braise them while we ate our dinner like champs.

I seasoned them with leeks, lard, salt, and onion flowers.  I cooked them in the pork stock I had shown you bubbling the other day, though look at it now.

You know you did your stock right when you can spread that motha on toast.  Not like I have any toast though, still waiting to hear back from Bellgarde. :(   After 2 hours braising with the lid on i did another hour with lid off to reduce the stock and these bad boys were born.

If you had asked me what a dragonfly or grasshopper tasted like in say May, I would have told you crunchy, because I would have never eaten one.  That all has changed now and my eyes, and buds are open. Today, I would tell you that both taste very similar to raw or dried field mushrooms.  That, for me is a very tasty, taste indeed.  I was so happy to have tried bugs once at the beginning of June when we caught all these bugs, and even more so to get a second opportunity at the Audubon Insectarium this Sunday.  

Chef Zack Lemann made this amazing spread for all of the adventurous people who showed up to see what eating bugs is all about.  Turns out if you fry something in gritty corn and egg batter, or coat it in delicious soy, Dijon, butter then its going to taste fabulous.  I must admit even I, a devout Ultra Strict follower, had to try a fried dragonfly. I did not, however, eat the basil, the apple, or the dijon butter, though I must say the butter is a fabulous idea that may find it’s way on this blog if I can get a hold of some local mustard seed. No more cheating, I promise. :)!

Lucky for me, and my belly, there were plenty of dry roasted katydids, and grasshoppers, and even a cricket. Can you spot it!  I must say I enjoy them best like this.  Just like the mushrooms they taste so alike, they get a lot better after a good cooking in salt and fat.  To top it all off, one of my new friends brought a whole container if dried raw dragonflies that I swiftly devoured at the end of the presentation.  My favorite part was the little heads that had fallen off. Just like popcorn. Talk about smartfood...

After a long day of learning about tea farming, and eating bugs, I settled in at the homestead and prepared myself for the guests I would be having that night.  Wonderful guests that I had met at the kickoff party in May.  I already knew what I was making, and had the whole process going in my brain.  Let me just say that this meal is very special to me.  I’m not saying I invented it, but I had certainly never heard of it when I dreamt it up this past winter.  The dish is simple but the twist is fabulous.  Do you remember wagon wheel pasta? Have you ever made mac and cheese with wagon wheel pasta? Is wagon wheel pasta a 200 mile ingredient? Well here’s the punchline, lets hope it hits hard. Do you know what looks exactly like wagon wheel pasta?

A: OKRA!!!!

Yeh, so that’s the dish. I call it Kra n’ Cheese mainly because if I called it Ok n’ Cheese people wouldn't know to say “oak”.  Also Kra makes me think of Craw Wurm, which is a Magic reference. Confession: I am not only a food nerd, but all other sorts of nerd too, just wait and see.

So back to dinner.  My guest had brought lots of friends, and I couldn’t have been more pleased, but this Kra wasn’t going to feed everybody.  My friend suggested I make smothered okra. As far as I know, smothered okra is just good old okra n’ tomatoes with some tasty meat thrown in to go for the ride. Well lookey here what I happen to have a massive abundance of; Pork!!  All thanks to my smoke master friend from the Eat Local Food Fest.  So smothered okra was born using a touch of soul that I picked from my backyard (it’s oregano).

That right there is a whole smoked pig. Just perfection

I had the pleasure of picking apart all manner of smoked creatures this Saturday at the Local Foods Fest.  I showed up early to make sure I didn’t miss anything.  Without realizing it I stepped right into one of my favorite things in the world, getting my hands dirty picking perfectly cooked meat off of animal bones.  Some would say this is a skill intensive job, but I can say from experience that the only skill you need is the ability to peal a banana.  A healthy resistance to heat that comes from working in a hot kitchen is certainly an advantage as well.

Not only was there a whole hog, but a ham, a shoulder, and some other fun critters as well.  Pictured in the bottom right here is a LA grown 100% authentic raccoon. It was damn tasty too.  Probably the best of the bunch of critters.  There was also nutria and rabbit that had already been broken up by the time I got there. All in all it was a grease filled day I won’t soon forget.

I was lucky enough to end up with a bunch of bones and scraps that didn’t make the pulled meat cut.  This here is a menagerie of ribs.  On the left we have good old pork ribs, followed by some raccoon ribs hiding behind them, and finally the little pretties in the foil are from the nutria.  These got a quick heat in the oven and became a fabulous addition to the meatstraviganza that was our dinner last night.  Now I was so caught up in the meat high that dinner induced that I forgot to take any pictures with my greasy fingers.  Here is an explanation of the meal as well as a picture of some pork stock in progress as an apology.

So the ribs were one portion of the meal.  I roasted half of them straight up and smothered the other half with sweet baby rays for those of us not on the ultra strict path.  Along with that we had a chicken from Cleaver & Co that got brined, rubbed with lard and herbs, and roasted to perfection. I whipped up some sliders with diced red onion and jalapeno and seasoned with a Worcestershire replacement of my own design (rum, molasses, and cane vinegar).  To wash it all down we had a green salad with the lettuce of the week from goodeggs.  This was dressed with a corn, okra, carrot concoction that was seasoned with a shiitake dressing I made.  I made the shiitake dressing by slowly wilting chopped shiitake in a healthy amount of duck fat.  I then added chopped thyme and transferred it to a blender making sure to get every drop of fat out.  I blended this with a mixture of cane vinegar, raw sugar, salt, and water until the acidity and flavor was spot on.  All in all it was a decadent dinner full of excess and greasy hands.  Not long after I fell victim to the itis and passed out on a couch.

I call it the New Orleans Sunset.  Each chalice contains ice, the juice of a large orange, and lots of Orzya Gin, i mean like 3 shots.  I then split a blood orange between the two to give it that classic bicolor beauty. Sippin on gin and juice was a good way to start the night. Somewhere alone the line I tried to make salad only to find my arugula was quite slimy.  I hate to throw food away, so I figured i’d just cook it. I already had corn and basil for the salad as well as shiitakes for the dressing (which i will post tonight when i make it) so stir fry greens were born.  Here is where I made my first mistake. I didn’t wash the arugula. It came in a bag and was wet so i guess i just figured it had already been washed. Never make this mistake people.

So to cook these I heated up some lard to smoking and fried the shiitakes first, then after the first turn added the corn and finally the arugula and a healthy dose of salt. I covered the pan and let it sit on medium then low until the greens really got wilty. It was delicious except for all the sand...I had to wash the sand down with something so,

to make myself feel better I whipped up this little concoction. I’m calling it the strawberry satsumita.  2 parts ice, 1 part white rum soaked strawberries and the rum with it, 1 part Bayou satsuma rum, and Three Brothers sugar to taste.  Full disclosure, I don’t think the bayou satsuma is a 200 mile product.  Much like Oryza’s LA1 whisky, a decent amount of its ingredients are not from around here.  I tried to ignore that fact as I hit high on the blender and watched a beautiful, and highly alcoholic, drink be born.