Out-of-the-Box

Accidental Locavore Recipe for Green Harissa

The Accidental Locavore loves harissa, a spicy North African condiment, usually red, so when I saw this recipe in bon appétit for a green version, I had to try it. I used it to make merguez, but if you’re not into making sausage, use it for lamb or chicken. It would probably work really well on zucchini too. Makes ½ cup and adapted from bon appétit:

• 1 cup fresh cilantro, roughly chopped ( I probably used 1 ½ cups because I love cilantro)
• 1 cup spinach, roughly chopped
• 1 garlic clove
• 1 jalapeno or serrano chile, seeded
• ¼ teaspoon ground coriander
• ¼ teaspoon ground cumin
• ¼ cup olive oil
• Kosher salt to taste

Combine all ingredients except salt in a food processor or blender and process until smooth. Add salt to taste and check seasonings for taste. If it’s too spicy, add more spinach, cilantro and a little more olive oil. Serve and enjoy.

Accidental Locavore Recipe for Crème Fraiche

The Accidental Locavore sometimes has leftover buttermilk from making biscuits and unlike my mother, drinking it, is not for me. However, crème fraiche is the answer and it couldn’t be easier. Makes a cup.

• 2 tablespoons buttermilk
• 1 cup of heavy (whipping) cream

Mix the buttermilk and cream in a glass container. Cover and let it stand at room temperature for 8-24 hours until very thick. Refrigerate. It will keep (and get a bit thicker) in the refrigerator for up to 10 days. Serve and enjoy.

Make Your Own Bacon? Do It Yourself: Bacon, Mayonnaise, and More.

DIY bacon? Why not? Before there were supermarkets, and things came in packages, people made them themselves. Most of them weren’t terribly difficult to make, they just took time. Time to cure, pickle, ferment, age, and transform. For the next few months while New York is in the midst of winter, and the farmer’s markets become scarce, the Accidental Locavore is going to explore what I’m calling “Out of the Box”. I’ll show you how to make many things we just assume come in packages. You’ll learn how simple they are to prepare, and how much better they taste. Local products will be used whenever possible, and there will be how-to videos.

Some of the things we’re going to be tackling, in no particular order, are:

• Mayonnaise
• Mustard
• Ketchup
• Sriracha hot sauce
• Worchester sauce
• Bacon
• Panchetta
• Chorizo
• Ricotta (and gnocchi)
• Granola
• Ice Cream
• Salad Dressing
• Yogurt
• Creme fraiche
• Harissa
• Vanilla extract
• Marshmallows

If you have experience with any of these, please let me know what worked, what didn’t, and what’s become part of your regular repertoire. What would you like to see out of the box?

Recipe for Green Beans and Wax Beans Pickled With Horseradish

As part of the most recent baskets, the Accidental Locavore had a lot of beans, both green and wax. Since it was a little cold for a Salad Nicoise, and I was in a pickling mood, I put up the beans with a recipe from an earlier Food and Wine. The recipe is really easy, no cooking involved, and you don’t need any canning equipment, just some one pint jars. It’s also a good way to take advantage of the last of the dill and tarragon in the garden. The recipe says the beans are good after 24 hours, however they weren’t. Be patient and give them a week for the flavors to develop.

For 4 pint jars of beans:

• 4 pint jars (run them through the dishwasher to prep them)
• 1 1/2 pounds of beans (I made 1 jar of wax, and 2 of green, you can also mix them)
• 8 cloves of garlic, cut in half (4 halves for each jar)
• 8 sprigs of dill (two for each jar)
• 4 tarragon sprigs (one for each jar)
• 4 teaspoons black peppercorns (one for each jar)
• 4 teaspoons horseradish (one for each jar) (loving heat, I used the hot horseradish)
• 1 1/2 cups white vinegar
• 1/4 cup kosher salt
• 3 tablespoons sugar
• 2 1/2 cups water

Trim the stem ends of the beans so they fit in the jars. Pack them into the jars, tip side down. Each jar also gets two sprigs of dill, one sprig of tarragon, 4 garlic halves, a teaspoon of peppercorns, and a teaspoon of horseradish. In a large jar, or mixing bowl (I used a very large measuring cup), combine the vinegar, salt and sugar. Shake or stir until the sugar and salt is fully dissolved. Add the water, and mix. Pour over the jars until they are completely full. The beans need to be completely submerged. Cover and refrigerate. You can eat them after a day in the fridge, but give them a week, and you’ll be glad you did. They should keep in the fridge for 3 months. Enjoy!

Recipe: Greek Style Yogurt

This past summer the Accidental Locavore started making a lot of things that normally you just buy at a supermarket. The latest has been yogurt. It’s amazingly easy and the only “special equipment” you need is an instant-read thermometer (if you don’t have one, you must get one, it makes roasting meat and chicken a no-brainer), some cheesecloth (most good grocery stores have it) and a big strainer or colander. If you can boil water, you can make yogurt. (and if you can’t, check out this funny article from Serious Eats). The original recipe from Food and Wine was for a quart of milk, but we went through that in about a nanosecond, so I now double that and use half a gallon of milk (you’ll end up with about a quart of yogurt). If I had the refrigerator space, I’d do more. My friend Jeremy said to use Stonyfield Farm yogurt as a starter, so that’s what I’ve been doing.

• 1/2 gallon whole milk, take 4 tablespoons from the 1/2 gallon and put in a small bowl or measuring cup
  
• 4 tablespoons whole milk yogurt

Mix 4 tablespoons of the milk and the same amount of yogurt in an small bowl, or measuring cup. Put the rest of the milk in a large saucepan and bring to a boil. Let it stand off the heat until it reaches 100 degrees on an instant-read thermometer. This takes me about an hour (I just keep resetting the timer to check it). A skin will form on the milk. Don’t mess with the skin! You will probably have a small opening in the skin where you put the thermometer, if not make a small hole in the center. Pour the yogurt/milk mix into the hole.
Cover with a clean dishtowel. Put the pot in your oven with the oven light on and the door closed for 16 hours (overnight and then some). I put a Post-It over the light button so I don’t turn it off by accident. You’ll be amazed by how warm your oven is with just the light on. When it’s done, take the skin off with a slotted spoon (or clean fingers). Ladle the yogurt into a sieve or colander lined with two layers of the cheesecloth (over a large bowl) and refrigerate for up to 4 hours. How long you strain the yogurt will determine how thick it is. For Greek style, 4 hours, for more normal yogurt an hour or two is fine. Discard the liquid in the bowl.
Transfer the yogurt into a bowl or container, serve and enjoy.

Recipe: Riffs on Armenian Pickles or Mixed Pickled Veggies

There’s not much that the Accidental Locavore won’t attempt food and cooking wise, but pickling, and canning scare me. Last Sunday, I decided to confront that fear, and make the Armenian pickles that my mother used to make. Armed with a dozen jars, I called mom and got a couple of her recipes. This is what I did:

• First I cut up some pickling cucumbers and cauliflower that were in a recent farmbasket.
• They soaked in salted water (brine) for 2 hours (while I ran out to get the jars).
• Each jar gets a clove of garlic, and a 1″ piece of hot red pepper (I used serrano chiles since I had them), and a small handful of coriander seeds. I also had a little pickling spice so I tossed that in too.
• Fill the jars with your vegetables. I had a lot of veggies from the farmbasket, so I used the cucumbers, and cauliflower, some green beans trimmed, strips of yellow peppers, carrots, and pearl onions. The original recipe also calls for green tomatoes, but since I was trying to use what I had…
• Top the jars with a sprig of fresh dill
• Heat 3 quarts of water, 1 quart of vinegar (I used 2/3 white vinegar, and 1/3 cider vinegar), and 1 cup of kosher salt to a simmer. Remove from the heat and fill the jars to the top.
• Let them sit for 3 weeks.

I also put the sealed jars in a water bath, brought that to a simmer and let them simmer for about 10 minutes, but my mother later told me that wasn’t necessary. I’ll let you know in a couple of weeks how they turned out. Have you ever made pickles? How do you do them?

Recipe: Crunchy Granola

In the June bon appetit magazine, there’s a recipe for Everyday Granola, so the Accidental Locavore thought it was worth a shot. One of my big issues with granola is that it’s very hard to find any without nuts, (I’ve had severe nut allergies in the past). The advantage to making your own, is that you control exactly what does or does not go into it, and it’s really easy!
Her recipe calls for oats, pecans, coconut, brown sugar, cinnamon, ginger, salt, honey, vegetable oil, and dried fruit. Here’s the recipe with my tweaks on it:
Preheat the oven to 300 degrees. Line a rimmed baking sheet with parchment paper (don’t try to be cheap here and use wax paper, you’ll be sorry…trust me!).

• 3 cups old fashioned oats, I used Stone Ground Organic Oats from Wild Hive Farm. You should check them out, he stone-grinds a lot of grains, and flours they’re great, and local.
• 1/2 cup unsweetened coconut (try Whole Foods or a similar place, you do not want the sticky stuff from the grocery)
• 3 tablespoons brown sugar
• 3/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
• 1/4 teaspoon salt (I use kosher or sea salt for everything)

Mix together in large bowl.

• 1/3 cup maple syrup (recipe calls for honey but I don’t love the taste, and the syrup is local too).
• 2 tablespoons butter

In a small saucepan melt the butter and warm the syrup, mix. Pour the mixture over the oat mix, toss to combine. Spread evenly on the baking sheet. Bake until golden, about 40 minutes. Stir every 10 minutes to keep it browning evenly.
Place pan on a wire rack and stir granola to cool. I just let it sit on the stove burners (turned off) because there’s a lot of airflow. When it’s cool, add whatever dried fruit you’d like. This batch I added chopped dried apricots (my favorite), currants(tiny raisins) dried cranberries, and a little more coconut.

Recipe: My Dad's No Fail Mayo

The Accidental Locavore never buys mayonnaise anymore because it’s so easy to make, and once you’ve had homemade mayo, you’re spoiled for life. The only downside (if there could possibly be one) is that, like ice cream, you learn exactly what’s in it. As Kerry, chef from one of my favorite restaurants, Cafe Miranda would say it’s an extremely efficient fat delivery system…but yummy!
My dad taught me a long time ago how to make mayo, so here is his no-fail mayo:
In the bowl of a food processor (blender, or stick blender will work) put:

• 1 egg
• 1 TBSP lemon juice (or vinegar of your choosing)
• 1 TBSP olive oil
• 1 TBSP mustard (Dijon)
• (optional: 1 small clove of garlic, herbs like tarragon etc.)
• Salt to taste

Process a few times until well mixed. With the motor running, very slowly pour in about a cup of oil. My father uses ¼ cup olive oil and the rest canola, I use a light olive oil (basic cooking olive oil, not the good stuff). As you keep pouring you will see it start to look like mayo, when it’s your desired texture, stop, and taste. Correct seasonings and you’re done.
Makes about 1 cup, keep refrigerated.
Try it and let me know what you think. And hold on to this recipe because you’ll want it in a couple of weeks when the local asparagus are ready.

View the Archives