ginger breakthrough

I think I discovered something brilliant. possibly.

a while back my ginger fell off of the top of the fridge into my freezer. I discovered it about a month ago. at the time, I couldn't think of a reason why I should or should not take the ginger out, most likely because I was contemplating something else, like where I put my jeans. (in the underwear drawer, btw.)

well, tonight I needed the ginger to make spicy sweet potato and coconut soup. the recipe required 2 inches of ginger peeled and thinly sliced. I personally hate doing minced or finely cut ginger because ginger, my friends, is a hairy beast. it is fibrous in such a way that makes it very difficult to slice it with any sort of elegance.

not so with frozen ginger! I was able to cut the knob into slivers of slices. so easy! so simple! I think that, from now on, I will put some ginger into the freezer maybe a day before I plan on using it. it will make my life a much better place.

my only concern is that there is some detrimental effect upon the ginger from the freezing. does anyone know of one? or some other reason why this is a really stupid idea?

fresh berry granita

you will need:

• 1 cup freshly squeezed orange juice (interpret "fresh" as you will)
• 3/4 cup cold water
• 1/2 cup agave nectar or honey (I used agave nectar because I hate honey)
• 1/4 cup sugar
• 2 generous teaspoons orange zest
• 1 16-oz package of fresh strawberries, quartered and green bits removed
• 2 8-oz packages of fresh raspberries

I have a lot of pictures for a very simple recipe. this is because strawberries are gorgeous things, particularly in late spring light. in a bowl, combine the orange juice, water, agave nectar, orange zest, half the strawberries and half the raspberries. blend these with your trusty hand mixer until almost smooth. (if you're using a blender, you can just put the ingredients directly in it.) add the rest of the fruit and continue to blend until the mixture is completely smooth. taste for sweetness. I found that it was plenty sweet and didn't need anything else, but you probably have a higher sweetness threshold than I do. you should add some more agave nectar.


pour the mix into a 9 x 13 METAL baking dish. (we'll return to the caps in a minute.) place the pan in the freezer so that it sits level. after an hour, the edges of the mix should be icy. use a fork and stir the icy edges towards the center of the dish, redistributing the mix. repeat every 30 minutes until the whole thing is solid.


now. in this picture, you're looking at a silicone dish. this sucker was great when I poured the mix into it, but when I tried to carry it across the kitchen to the freezer, the bottom gave way and granita liquid poured all over the white floor. and the fridge. that's not part of the recipe. learn from my mistakes!


once solid, take a fork and scrape the granita into icy flakes. pull the fork down the length of the pan until you have a dish of crystallized granita flakes. transfer the mix into a dish, cover tightly, and put it back into the freezer. once it's frozen in flake form, you have granita! you can scrape off portions into bowls and serve to impress your friends and family.

I must repeat: they will not be impressed if you spill the whole thing all over the floor. they will probably laugh at you and maybe help clean up but also probably smear some of your mess on you. and you'll deserve it for not listening to me.

lightly battered tofu (wwggwe)

to begin: W.W.G.G.W.E. stands for, "Which Will Go Great With Everything." I think wwggwe is an underlying philosophy of my cooking. garlic would fall into the wwggwe category, although it's not a recipe.

to continue: this recipe came to me via sean, who adopted it from his ex, who is - I hear - a formidable cook in her own right. if I were to judge based on this recipe, I would heartily agree.

you will need:
*one package of extra firm tofu, drained and pressed
*1/3 cup whole wheat flour
*1/3 cup cornmeal
*1/3 cup nutritional yeast
*salt to taste
*seasoned salt or garlic salt to taste
*plain soy milk
*olive oil
*a ziploc bag

combine the cornmeal, nutritional yeast, whole wheat flour, and salts in the ziploc bag. odds are that you'll want more salt than you'd think to put in, but that amount varies for everyone. if you're the sort of person that needs specifics, start with a tablespoon and go from there. seal the bag, shake so that everything is mixed, and set aside.

slice the tofu as you see fit. when dealing with a block, I like to slice it in half width-wise, creating two half-inch high rectangles. you can either make tofu "fingers" or cubes - whatever tickles your fancy. the important thing is to make sure your cut leaves the tofu with sides large enough to batter and brown. slivers won't work here, darlings.

pour the soymilk into a dish or tupperware container. you'll want enough in there so that you can coat the tofu. the exact amount will vary based on the size and shape of your dish. take about half of your tofu slices and coat all sides with soymilk. they don't need to be saturated, just wet enough so that the batter will stick. the tofu pieces go from the soymilk into the ziploc bag. pop the suckers in, seal the bag, and give it a good shake. you may want to do a little...massaging to make sure that every piece is getting coated on all sides.

heat a healthy amount of olive oil in a large, low saucepan. when the oil is hot, drop the tofu in. cubes can be done in two batches, tofu strips will need more than that. after a few minutes, flip one piece over. if it's golden brown on the bottom, flip the rest. cook for a few more minutes and then remove when the second side is a similarly wonderful golden brown color.

it make take a few tries to get the process down. I end up coating the second batch while the first one cooks, but if you have a partner in crime, you can have a continuous loop of coating and cooking. this recipe is so yummy. it is wwggwe for seri.

get a farm share with stone soup farm!

OK y'all. our friend Jarrett Man has started a fabulous new farm called Stone Soup farm out in Belchertown, Mass. The farm will have a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) component where a weekly delivery of the harvest will be made in return for your financial support of the farm.

This is Jarrett:

I know Jarrett and his farming skills well, and I have nothing but the utmost faith in him and his farm. I'll definitely be signing up for a full share to share with my roommates (a full share easily feeds three and can really feed four with no problem). If you're at all interested, check out the sign-up sheet at: http://stonesoupfarm.googlepages.com/CSASignupform2008take5alllocations.pdf (it's a .pdf) or you can learn more about the farm in general at http://stonesoupfarm.googlepages.com

The food will be fresh, local, and grown without chemicals. If you've had a tomato from a local farm, you'll never be able to eat one from the supermarket again. it's the same with carrots. The vegetables just taste completely different.

Snazzy farm logo:

To top it all off, you'll try things you've never had before, and you'll eat things that you wouldn't think to buy.

Financially, it's a great deal, at least if you eat a lot of vegetables. I pretty much eliminated my food bills from June until November last year. and if you split your farm share three ways, even paying on the higher end ($500) of the sliding scale, it's still less then $200 for an entire season of vegetables - and it's enough vegetables that except for some rice and pasta, and maybe some protein, you don't have to really have anything else!

The pick-ups in Boston will be in Harvard Square and near South Station. There's also one out in Leominster or Lunenburg or somewhere like that, and plenty more opportunities out in W. Mass. If you have questions - email Jarrett at stonesoupfarm@gmail.com (tell him Sarah sent you) or you can get in touch with me - but I might not have an answer :)

I really can't recommend this enough. really!

sunday rose muffins

sometimes breakfast is the hardest meal of the day. you wake up, you're hungry for something tasty, but you haven't been awake long enough to make actually decisions about what that something is. you could go out and buy something, but that would involve putting on shoes. cereal isn't serious enough and pancakes are so...expected. before the first cup of coffee is even half done, the whining has started and the morning is off to a rocky start.

this is when it's time to bust out the muffin recipes - especially if you've never made muffins before. as I type this, the muffins are in the oven and I have no idea how they'll turn out. however, it's been determined that if they taste anything like the batter, they'll taste pretty damn good. I clicked over to the post punk kitchen's website to get an idea for flour-sugar measurements, but the rest is pure invention. the cardamom is a tribute to sarah elisabeth's norwegian roots since norwegian baking puts cardamom in everything, thus making it the most delicious bread products to grace the planet.

*1 3/4 cups of whole wheat flour
*1 1/4 cups of sugar
*1 tablespoon baking powder
*1/4 teaspoon salt
*1 teaspoon cinnamon
*3 teaspoons cardamom
*1/2 cup soy milk
*1/2 cup vegetable oil
*1 tablespoon vanilla yogurt
optional:
*frozen raspberries
*walnuts
-preheat the oven to 400 degrees
-mix together the dry ingredients
-in a separate bowl, mix together the wet ingredients
-combine the two, suckers!

at this point, I poured half of the batter into a separate bowl (reusing the wet bowl). I added the defrosted raspberries to one batch and let the other batch stand as is. I opted to pour in some of the raspberry liquid too, which may have been a mistake. it made the batter much more liquidy than it had been. but, since the muffins are still in the oven, I have no idea what the consequences of this action will be.

-fill a greased muffin pan with the batter, filling the tin 2/3 of the way
in this version of muffin adventures, the six on the left are raspberry, the three on the far right are walnut, and the second row in from the right is just plain muffin flavored:
okay! now this is the part where I take the muffins out of the oven and see how they turned out. excitement!

twenty minutes later...

the muffins, folks, they're damn good. I'm not going to lie. they're pretty fantastic. you should make these. see how delicious they look? so delicious. they're very sweet (I blame the sugar), but they taste like divinity. so moist and full of cardamom. they fell a little bit because I wanted to make sure they weren't burning and kept the oven open a tad too long. oh dear me. sometimes I am so excellent at solving the breakfast dilemma.