Playing with my food

There isn't anything as much fun for breakfast as Alpha-Bits cereal when you have an eight-year-old's sense of humor.

.

Kraft Macaroni & Cheese Crackers

Kraft has a new offering in the snack cracker category: Kraft Macaroni & Cheese Crackers. Available in three flavors - Mild Cheddar, Cheddar, and White Cheddar - Kraft's website says they've "taken that Kraft Macaroni & Cheese taste your kids love and baked it into a new crispy cracker they can crunch!"

If you're a fan of Kraft Macaroni and Cheese you'll probably like these crackers; I have to admit they do taste just like their namesake product, and that includes the criticism that they're too salty and have a distinct sour-milk aftertaste.

Kraft Macaroni and Cheese is known as Kraft Dinner in Canada. I wonder if Kraft is marketing Kraft Dinner Crackers there?

My First Award!

Recently, I was pleasantly surprised to find that KianLam Kho, proprietor of Red Cook - Adventures from a Chinese Home Kitchen, had passed along to me the Arte Award. The Arte Award originated on the Arte y Pico blog and is given by award recipients to fellow bloggers who, in their opinion, display creativity, present interesting material, and contribute to the blogging community in some way.

Kian and his blog certainly deserve the honor. I'm flattered that he thinks enough of my own humble scribblings to similarly honor me. And although it should inspire me towards some sort of higher standard, I promise that receiving the Arte Award won't keep me from opening the next tin of nastiness I find at the dollar store and writing about what I find within.

As part of the fun, I am allowed to choose five of my own recipients among the bloggers I read regularly.

The Royal Bacon Society - Of all the bacon blogs on all of teh Internets, this is my favorite. Marianne has it all covered, sweet or savory, meal or snack, for people or for pets.

Food for Thought - Chef John Hughes' recipes are wonderful, his restaurant reviews come from the unique perspective of a professional chef, and his blog and website are friendly and welcoming. Most of all though, I salute his commitment to seasonal dining and sustainable seafood harvests.

Just Cook It - Alex introduced me to the writings of Fergus Henderson, a celebrated English chef of whom I had never heard until I read a few references in Just Cook It. I guess one of the things I really like about Alex's writing is that his attitudes about food and cooking are so similar to mine, but with a British perspective.

Lobstersquad - I adore Ximena Maier's blog not only for the recipes and commentary, but for her illustrations. They're beautiful and whimsical and touching, and they make Lobstersquad a total delight to visit. Also, I'll slip in an extra plug for her drawing and artwork blog as well.

Fritter - Reading Sarah's blog is like sitting down for coffee and a visit with an old friend. There's always something delicious on the kitchen table as she shares recipes and reminiscences; she has the rare gift of writing with a smile in her pen, and it shows.

The Rules for the Arte Award:

1. Pick 5 blogs that you consider deserve this award with their creativity, design, interesting material, and also contribute to the blogger community, no matter what language.
2. Each award has to have the name of the author and also a link to his or her blog.
3. Each award-winner has to show the award and put the name and link to the blog that has given her or him the award.
4. Award-winners and the one who has given the prize have to show the link of “Arte y Pico” blog, so everyone will know the origin of this award.
5. Display these rules on your blog.

Local Food: Collins Creamery Ice Cream

In the 1990's, with bulk milk prices falling, two dairies in Enfield Connecticut took very different approaches to adapting to the new market. Trinity Farms, on Oliver Road near Interstate 91, started processing and selling their milk directly to the public at their dairy and has developed a loyal area following with their high-quality milks and creams, yogurts, and butter.

Powder Hill Farms, owned by the Collins family and located on the other side of town, went in a different direction. In 1997, they opened The Collins Creamery to sell ice cream made on the premises from dairy's own milk. It was a huge success and has not only helped the farm to prosper, it has helped the family raise public awareness of local agriculture. The farm welcomes tour groups and school field trips for a nominal fee, which includes a one-hour tour of the farm followed by ice cream at the Creamery.

The sign at the Creamery says "On the quiet side of town," and there's no doubt; located on Powder Hill Road in Enfield, the farm is surrounded by pastures, cornfields, and tobacco fields. It's off the beaten track to be sure, but the ice cream is well worth the extra few minutes it takes to drive there. They make over 20 flavors, ranging from the simple and delicious vanilla and chocolate, to more complex delights like red raspberry chocolate chip.

Hard ice cream is their specialty, but they do have a softserve machine if that's what you're after, and they'll hand-pack any ice cream flavor you desire into pints, quarts, or half-gallons to bring home.

On a warm and sticky summer evening, there's nothing like pulling into the parking lot at the Creamery and getting a cone or a dish of ice cream to take the edge off the sultry weather. The ice cream stand is near one of the old red barns, and part of the parking area borders a small pasture. Sometimes, a few of the cows are behind the stout wooden rail fence, and they'll come over to the fence to have their heads scratched, eat a handful of clover from your hand, or give you a friendly lick.

The Collins Creamery is pet-friendly, too. Well-behaved dogs (on leashes, please) are welcomed, and one of the items on the menu is the "Doggie Dish," a small portion of vanilla soft-serve ice cream in a cup, topped with a small dog biscuit.

The Collins Creamery
9 Powder Hill Road
Enfield CT 06082
860.749.8663

Links:

The Collins Creamery Website

Heirloom Tomatoes and Saving Seeds

Early July always drives me crazy. My tomato plants are doing great but we're still three weeks out from being able to actually pick anything, and the farm stands have nothing but hothouse tomatoes that are just a step or so up from the same watery bland "winter tomatoes" that I boycott anyway.

So it was a real surprise to me when I saw this huge, half-pound purple-tinted heirloom tomato at the supermarket the other day. It was the size of a garden-raised Beefsteak tomato with a blackish-purple blush to its skin. A gentle squeeze revealed it to be at just the right stage of ripeness, and it passed my best indicator of true worth: it smelled like a fresh-picked sun-ripened back yard tomato.

You can see from the picture above what I found when I sliced into this beauty. I can't believe how meaty it was - there were hardly any seeds at all, just firm ripe tomato bursting with sweet and tangy summer flavor. The near-seedlessness really intrigued me, because I grow six or eight different varieties of tomatoes every year and I've never found one yet that gave me a fruit with so few seeds. That's important to me because my daughter loves tomatoes but doesn't care for the icky mouthfeel of what she calls "the tomato guck." I decided that I'm going to save the seeds from this fruit and try to grow them next season. I'm trusting the label on the fruit calling it an "heirloom" tomato, which means it should reproduce true from a seed, but i don't know what variety it is or if it has a name.

By the way, it turned out that this tomato is a Sunset brand tomato, from the same Ontario hydroponics company that I have written about twice before - Mastronardi Produce Ltd. I guess I shouldn't be surprised at the quality of this one, given how good their other stuff has been.

---

Saving Tomato Seeds

Whenever I find a variety of tomato I really like, whether it's at a grocery store, farmers market, or roadside stand, I save some of the seeds to try out in my garden. Most of the time I have pretty good results with saved seeds. There is a bit of commitment involved in saving tomato seeds, but it isn't that difficult.

1. Scoop out the seedy pulp with a spoon or your finger, and put it goo and all into a small glass container like a jar or a juice glass. Something small.
2. Add some water to the seeds and swish them around a little.
3. Cover the top of the glass with some plastic wrap. Poke a few holes in the plastic to let some air in.
4. Put the glass in a warm place, like a window sill. It will ferment after a day or two. This is what you want. Fermentation gets rid of the goo and frees the seed. It also helps kill off any seed-borne illness that might be lurking in your tomato plant.
5. Every night while you're waiting for the fermentation, take off the plastic wrap and give the seed liquid a gentle stir. Soon you'll notice some foamy scum at the top of the glass. You're ready to take out your seeds.
6. With a spoon, skim off the scum at the top of the glass. Don't worry about any seeds that are in the scum, you can throw then away as well because they're dead.
7. Pour the liquid through a fine-mesh kitchen strainer and rinse with cool running water, swishing the seeds around gently, to remove any remaining traces of the goo. Put the seeds on some mesh or screening or a paper coffee filter to completely drain and air-dry. It will take a couple of days, during which time you should stir them around a little and keep them in a single layer so they dry evenly.
   
8. When they're completely dry, put them away in a paper envelope in a cool dark place until early spring when you can start them indoors.

.

Figs at Breakfast

Yesterday I picked up a big tray of plump, delicious fresh figs. I love them eaten just as they are, out of hand; when I was a kid, my uncle in Florida had a fig tree in his back yard and he'd always encourage us to pick and eat all the figs we wanted from that tree. Fresh figs still remind me of him and those summer visits.

Even so, I can't eat this whole package of figs by myself and my wife and daughter aren't so fond of fresh figs as I am. I thought about making that classic appetizer, grilled figs wrapped with prosciutto, only I haven't got any prosciutto in the house right now. But what's this? SCRAPPLE! How joyous!

I drizzled a bit of olive oil on a hot griddle and set a few halved figs, cut side down, on it to caramelize. While they cooked, slices of scrapple were sizzling nearby to crispy-outside-creamy-inside porky perfection. I served them up as a side to sunny-side-up eggs.

Now grilled figs wrapped in prosciutto is pretty wonderful, but grilled figs with scrapple is pretty damn good too. Fresh figs lose a lot of their "greeny" flavor when they're lightly browned, developing a rich and deep earthy sweetness that just seems perfectly at home with the sagey peppery porkiness of the scrapple. We will certainly do it again.

.

Garden Update: Hubbard Squash

I was checking on my Blue Hubbard squash vines, trying to keep them steered to the edge of the lawn, when I noticed three or four little blossom-topped balls among the leaves!

Yes, they're less than an inch in diameter right now, but come October they'll be big 20-pound bumpy blue-green footballs. My favorite winter squash.

Sunset Brand Long Sweet Peppers

Whenever I'm at the supermarket, I check the markdown bins to see what kind of interesting things I can scoop up on the cheap. Yesterday, I was there buying rolls so we could make sausage subs, and these slightly wrinkled but still quite useable long red sweet peppers were deeply discounted - the regular price was $2.49 a package, but I got them for 40 cents each. Score!

First thing I noticed was the label - Sunset brand, produced in the massive greenhouses of Mastronardi Produce Ltd. of Ontario. The same company that makes the best out-of-season tomatoes I've ever eaten. I'm happy to say that, even though these peppers were a little past their prime, they were completely awesome.

At first glance, these "Ancient Sweets" as Mastronardi calls them don't seem to be your average cubanelle peppers that have been allowed to ripen to red. Cubanelles are a thin-walled pepper and seem a little broader than these. The Ancient Sweets have a succulent thick wall, and were easy to peel after pan roasting. They were also absolutely delicious! Rich ripe pepper flavor, full-bodied and not overly sweet.

After roasting and skinning them I removed the small seed pod from the stem end and cut the peppers into long strips to put in the subs, and they were perfect, with a much better flavor than the common red bell pepper I would have used if these weren't available.

Right now, I'm drying two of the seed pods from the peppers. It's too late in the season to start pepper plants, but next year I plan to start a flat of them and see how many I can get to germinate. I'd like to nurse at least six of them to transplantable size and set them in the garden.

Dollar Store Stupidity

Job lots and dollar stores are great sources of inspiration for me. They've always got interesting food sections, thanks to failed product introductions, store bankrupcies, and short production runs. And then there are the crappo manufacturers who contract for huge numbers of shoddy gadgets they can buy for a nickle and sell for a buck.

Take this "dog food can opener," for example. It is, quite frankly, a piece of shit. Cheap bearings, soft scrapmetal parts, and a shoddy plastic handle practically guarantees this junk a short life. And it's a good thing they put "DOG FOOD CAN OPENER" on the card, because you sure as hell can't tell what kind of animal that bow-tied bastardization is supposed to represent.

But the text on the card is the best part:

"Perfect for easy opening of canned dog food." Of course it is. It's a can opener, right?

"Prevents mixing of dog and human food." What? WHAT?? Are they kidding? What kind of stupid bullshit is this? And are there really people out there so gullible as to think this is a problem? Damn.

Hoan - the manufacturer - used to be pretty reliable, a good source of inexpensive but well-made kitchen sundries. I still use a set of biscuit cutters made by Hoan almost 25 years ago. But somewhere along the way, I suspect they've gone a little downhill.

.

The Best Crab Cake Recipe Ever

I love crab cakes. They're pretty easy to prepare, make a great "impress-your-friends" appetizer for a dinner, or you can serve them as a main course for a light summer supper with a salad, corn on the cob, and chips. The secret to great crab cakes is excellent quality meat, a minimum of filler, and a light hand with seasonings that enhance rather than mask the wonderful flavor of the crab.

Any type of crab is good in a crab cake, but most of the native crabs here are on the small side and would take forever to pick. So, I start with a pair of good-sized Dungeness crabs. They're cooked on the boat and frozen for shipping to me here on the East Coast. Put them in a steamer for five or ten minutes and they'll be thawed and ready to use. Dungeness crabs also have a very good meat-to-weight yield. You'll need about a pound or so of crabmeat, so plan on buying two crabs, about 2 pounds each (heavier is okay - the ones in the picture were just over two pounds each.)

Pick the crab well; try not to break up the big meaty pieces that will come out of the legs and claws. Save any body fat and tomalley in a separate small container. You can use that later to make a delicious spread for bread and crackers, or blend it with cream cheese to make an awesome crab dip for chips.

When you're done picking the body and legs of the crabs, you'll have just over a pound of meat. Set it aside while you prep the other ingredients.

In addition to the crabmeat, you will need:

1 egg
2 tablespoons mayonnaise
1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
1/2 teaspoon of celery salt
1/2 teaspoon of Old Bay Seasoning
Paprika to taste
2 slices of fresh soft bread, grated into soft, bulky crumbs
A small amount of dried panko breadcrumbs

In a large bowl, combine the egg, mayonnaise, Worcestershire sauce, celery salt, Old Bay, and paprika. Whisk it until smooth.

Add the picked crabmeat to the egg mixture in the bowl and lightly fold the meat into the liquid until all the crabmeat is coated.

Next, add the soft fluffy breadcrumbs you made by grating the fresh bread. As you did before, lightly fold the crabmeat and breadcrumbs together until the crumbs are incorporated into the mixture. The mixture will look rather dry, but that's okay - you only want a small amount of binder to hold the crab cakes together. Remember - crabmeat should be the main ingredient in a crabcake, not breadcrumbs.

Prepare a tray large enough to hold all your crabcakes by sprinkling it with the dried panko breadcrumbs. The panko will help make the crabcakes crispy later, when they are fried.

You can form your crabcakes by hand, but it's easier if you use a biscuit cutter as a form (and they will come out more uniform, too.) For a main course, use a large or medium cutter. If you're making appetizers, you may want to use the smallest size cutter to produce bite-sized crab cakes.

Pack the biscuit cutter with crabmeat. Be gentle so larger pieces remain intact. Press the crabmeat firmly but carefully into the form, using some pressure so the patty will stay together.

Lift the cutter to the platter with the panko, and carefully unmold the crab cake onto the platter. Repeat until all the crabmeat mixture is formed into patties. With a medium-sized biscuit cutter as a form, you should get about eight or nine crab cakes (exact number will vary depending on the size of the crabs and how much meat you've gotten out of them, of course.)

Sprinkle the tops of the patties lightly with a little more panko and place the tray in the refrigerator for about an hour to chill thoroughly.

Refrigerating the crab cakes before cooking them is important. It allows the egg-and-crumb binder to "set" so the crab cakes don't fall apart when they are cooking. Don't omit this step!

Melt a few tablespoons of butter in a heavy skillet until foamy, then carefully transfer the crab cakes to the hot skillet. Fry over medium heat three or four minutes, until browned, then turn over and brown the other side as well.

Delicious crab cakes are delicious.

.