Some foods, like homemade bread, are more than just “cooking” and can be more like therapy.

Pasta is like this.

I was raised in a family where pasta was considered junk food, needless carbohydrates (obviously, we are not Italian or Asian!).

In Colombia, the starch of choice is rice and various tropical starch crops like the ever delicious yuca (cassava root to Americans).

To shake things up and also to get some of that food therapy, I make homemade pasta on occasion.

If you are interested in truly wholesome and healthy pasta, consider the sprouted whole wheat pasta I made in this post – Homemade Sprouted Whole Wheat Pasta.

That recipes takes days so its for the organized cook!

Sometimes you just want some delicious fresh pasta with little hassle and thats not hard.

You can choose to do it all by hand or you can use a food processor. I show the use of a processor here.

You can add additional nutrition (quickly) by using spinach puree, carrot puree, or other amendments to change the color and flavor.

Homemade Egg Pasta

Ingredients

• 3 cups all purpose flour
• 4 large eggs (we used eggs from our chickens)
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 3 – 4 tablespoons water (depends on dryness of your flour and size of your eggs)

Directions

Put all ingredients (except water) into your food processor.

Turn it on and let it go until you get smallish pea like dough.

You want it to have some body and for it to stick together when you pinch it.

I didnt add water until after I had dumped this mix out. I didnt want the water to overly activate the gluten formation in the dough (that leads to toughness!).

Bring the dough together and add 3 to 4 tablespoons of water. Knead dough for some 10 minutes to get it as smooth as you can. Mine was still a bit on the rough side but I went ahead to the next step.

Put this dough into a baggie or wrap in plastic and let sit at room temperature for 30 to 60 minutes.

Once the dough has rested, cut into 4 pieces and roll out each piece while the rest is still under wraps. Roll it out as thin as you possibly can. You can also use a pasta machine!

I cant use mine because it has polymer clay stuck in it .

Once rolled out, cut it as you like. I cut ours into a fettuccine sort of noodle. I am sure an Italian grandma would beat me about the head and shoulders and throw me out of the kitchen if she saw this but, hey, she never met my grandma nor made arepas either.

I use a pizza cutter to make my pasta strips. My 6 yo and my 3 yo helped me cut it all up. They loved helping out.

Hang up these dough strips while you roll out and cut the other balls.

Next its into salted boiling water.

Boil it until it has the texture YOU like.

Have your sauce and meat (we chose sausages) warming and ready to serve.

Serve and add some Parmesan if you like.

Enjoy!

Some time ago I reviewed a cookbook called “Tassajara Cookbook: Lunches, Picnics, and Appetizers” by Karla Oliveira where I covered Tassajara, a magical mountain retreat for the San Francisco Zen Center.

Today’s review covers the related book Tassajara Dinners & Desserts by Dale and Melissa Kent, a beautiful and delicious cookbook that shares simple go-to vegetarian meals used at the Tassajara Zen Mountain Retreat to nourish the monks, trainees and students who live in this amazing place.

The photography is just fantastic, inviting you to dive into this book to learn how to make these tasty dinners. The front cover holds nothing back, just take a look at it!

Contents:

Foreword by Senior Dharma Teacher Eijun Linda Ruth Cutts

Introduction

• What is it like to do active cooking meditation
• How the zen kitchen works

Starters

• Ginger Hummus
• Grandma Chu’s Sweet & Sour Marinated Asparagus

Vegetable Side Dishes

• Pungent Cucumber Salad with Black Sesame ad Ginger
• Moroxican Spiced Potatoes

Vegetable Entrees

• James Creek Farm Ratatouille
• Tagine with Apricots, Olives, and Artichoke Hearts

Baked Entrees

• Baked Muffaletta Crepes
• Annie’s Frittata with Caramelized Onions, Goat Cheese, and Sage

Beans & Legumes

• Butch’s Black Eyed Peas
• Chickpea Stew with Collard Greens and Indian Spices

Tofu

• Dragon’s Head Tofu
• Mole Verde with Tofu

Grains & Pastas

• Mushroom Squash Risotto
• Mint-Cilantro Udon with Fresh Ginger and Meyer Lemon

Desserts

• Lemon Sponge Custard with Raspberry Sauce
• Ricotta Chevre with Ginger Berry Compote

Basic Techniques

• Vegetable Stock and Variations
• Basic Ingredients and Sauces

For this review I chose to make the a vegetarian lasagna with a change to the book’s recipe. Instead of just using a store bought past (fresh or dried) I used some homemade lasagna I made from organic sprouted whole wheat I had made (see this post for information on making your own sprouted whole wheat flour “Making Sprouted Whole Wheat Flour” and this post on how to make lasagna pasta out of it “Homemade Sprouted Whole Wheat Pasta“). I also used homemade goat cheese (chevre) from our own goats in our backyard (Making chevre cheese from our home-milked goat milk) and organic chard I grew in our garden and egg from our chickens (Humble Garden).

Tofu Lasagna with Mushrooms, Goat Cheese, and Chard

Ingredients

• 1 pound dried pasta or 1.5 pounds fresh pasta
• Sauce:
• 1.5 cups chopped onions
• 1/2 cup diced carrots
• 1/2 cup diced celery
• 4-6 cloves garlic, minded
• 1 tablespoon dried italian herb seasoning (I used fresh oregano and basil from garden)
• 1 cup red wine
• 1 cups crumbled tofu
• 4-5 cups diced tomatoes (canned or fresh)
• Filling:
• 1 bunch chard
• 1 pound mushrooms, washed and quartered
• 1 pound goat cheese, softened
• 1 egg
• 1 1/4 cups grated Parmesan cheese, divided
• salt and pepper
• 3 cups grated Provolone, Mozzarella, Fontina, or Gruyere

Directions

Sauce:

Saute onions, carrots, and celery over medium heat until soft and a bit brown. Add garlic and herbs without stirring. Turn up heat to brown and then add wine to deglaze (scrape up fond – stuck bits). Add tofu and cook with much stirring until liquid almost gone. Brown the tofu a bit, coat with all other sauce parts. Add tomatoes and simmer for 30 minutes.

Filling:

Wash greens, remove stems, set the stems aside. Cop stems into tiny bits. Blanch greens and stem bits in boiling water (or steam them) until cooked through. Shock in icy water (this “sets” the chlorophylls so that the chard will be a bright green) and then drain. Chop roughly and then dry completely.

Bake the mushrooms in a 425 F oven or sear them on the stovetop. Set aside with the greens.

Mix the goat cheese, egg, parmesan cheese and 1/2 teaspoon salt.

Prepare the lasagna pasta as per instructions.

Oil a 9 by 13 inch baking dish, ladle some sauce on the bottom, add first layer of pasta. Spread 1/4th of the filling over the pasta and cover with some sauce. Layer on some tofu, goat cheese, greens, mushrooms as well as mozzarella (if using). Put down the next layer of pasta and repeat as before, 3 more times. The whole thing should end with a layer of pasta at the top and some more sauce. Sprinkle with parmesan and even, possibly bechamel sauce. (I didnt put the bechamel sauce, seemed a bit much to me).

Bake at 350 F for 30 – 40 minutes until the sauce is bubbling and top is toasty brown.

Our Take on this dish:
Everyone from the toddler on up completely enjoyed this dish. Remember that sprouted wheat yields a bit sweeter product (because the sprouting process started some of the starches on their enzymatic journey) and that any whole wheat pasta product will have a different sort of mouth feel than your usual “white bread” sort of “enriched” pasta product. In this case, the pasta had a lot of presence in this dish, lending an almost “meaty” sort of sensation, which was a plus to those family members who like to have meat at every meal!

My Take on this cookbook:

The book is simply beautiful, the recipes are diverse and quite inspiring for all sorts of eaters: vegetarians to omnivores! I can only say good things about this cookbook, it has been a pleasure to review and oogle over. I suggest giving it a try!

Product Details:

• Title: Tassajara Dinners & Desserts
• Hardcover: 224 pages
• Publisher: Gibbs Smith (January 12, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1423605209
• ISBN-13: 978-1423605201
• Product Dimensions: 10 x 7.9 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.6 pounds

A couple of posts ago, I showed you how easy it is to make sprouted whole wheat flour. In that post, Making Sprouted Whole Wheat Flour, I talked at length on the reasons for sprouting your grains so I wont delve into that today.

Instead, I am going to share one way I have used this flour for lasagna pasta. I will be posting on how this pasta came out a bit later when I review Tassajara Dinners & Desserts.

This recipe is pretty basic, you can piece it together online. As with anything made with flour, the recipe is a guideline because each batch of flour, the world over, will have its own unique level of hydration thus the amount of liquid needed to make it come together will be unique. For this reason, it takes some practice, a willingness to experiment and to fail, even with precious ingredients like this sprouted whole wheat flour that you have spent all this time with. If you lock up with anxiety, then its not fun and then you gotta wonder why you are doing it at all!

Thus, when you give this recipe a try, have a sense of play and don’t stress out if you need to add more liquid, you may very well. I did. I didn’t list the full amount in the recipe because I didn’t want you to start out using that amount but to rather use as needed.

In this case, the extra liquid I used was a freshly juiced spinach and carrot juice that I made on my new Champion Juicer that I got to review and share with you. I will be writing a review on this blog and also at my raw food blog Raw+Simple.

Homemade Sprouted Whole Wheat Pasta

Ingredients:

• 3 cups freshly ground sprouted whole wheat flour
• 1 c whole wheat pastry flour
• 5 eggs
• 2 tablespoons high quality cold pressed extra virgin olive oil
• Spinach/Carrot juice (freshly juiced)

Pinch sea salt

Directions:

On a clean surface, make a mound of the 3 cups of sprouted whole wheat flour and 1 cup whole wheat pastry flour. Make an indentation in the mound and start adding eggs. You will have to get your hands messy for this!

Add all eggs, oil and 1 tablespoon juice (if using) and then use a fork to carefully break the eggs and do an initial mix of the eggs. Now, with your fingers, start mixing in the flour without knocking down the walls. Just take your time.

Once the dough is together enough to knead, knead it like bread dough for 5 minutes to incorporate. This is the time when you will likely need to add more liquid. I added the spinach carrot juice until the ball came together and was not hard or overtly dry. It took about 4 ounces.

Once the dough has come together, put in a plastic baggie, seal, and allow to rest for 30 minutes to 2 hours, depending on what your day is like.

After resting, portion out some balls that equal about the amount that you think you want for your lasagna sheets. You can make any sort of pasta you wish.

Roll out sheets on a lightly floured board.

Hang up sheets and allow to dry until a bit stiff. Store in the refrigerator until use. I suggest using it as soon as possible as this flour has all of it’s oils and germ, not meant for super long term storage.

When ready to use, do not boil for long and do it right before you assemble your lasagna.

Let me know if you give this a try!

Ever since I have not been spending every moment either driving to or from work or at work, I have been able to spend some time at home reconnecting with the family in ways I have not been able to do in the whole of this past year. There is some qualitative difference for us between 2 and 3 kids that made me feel wildly out of balance with respect to making work and life mesh. Now that I have been able to decompress a bit and even tho the stress doesn’t end due to continued unemployment, I have been able to concentrate on something that was simply beyond my capacity before – our day to day food.

Sure, we have our own dairy goats but we have only one in milk and that was mostly for the toddler (with pasteurized cow milk intolerance). We have still be supplementing with conventional 1% cows milk.

We have bred the girls and there is some chance that soon we will have a visit from the caprine stork who will leave us baby goats (kids) and mommas in milk, thus increasing our milk output. I will be pushing hard then for a total ban on milk from the store.

Sure we have our own chickens and we buy no store eggs but we still have been eating conventional meat (organic store bought meats are WAY beyond our budget). I have been having to buy mostly chicken because that is whats inexpensive (99c/lb often) even though I KNOW that this meat is filled with unknown additives and are veritable nutrient-depleted bags of estrogen and estrogen mimics that are hell on our bodies (many cancers are estrogen-activated).

I have been putting together the seed starting schedule and I have already started indoor mesclun spring mixes for nibbling in the mean time. I have lots of tiny little seedlings which one day will give us fantastic organic nutrient rich eggplants and squash and cucumbers and lots more!

Yummy green sprouting lettuces

So, as you can see, we teeter between fantastic home-crafted food and cheap store-bought staples – considerable cognitive dissonance for me.

It has been an ambient undercurrent that had been festering for me for quite a while and then just recently the boil burst (to put it crudely) and I was left with an epiphany of sorts.

On the one had our diet didn’t suck all THAT badly. Its not like we drink sodas or eat frozen pizzas day in and out or any manner of things but on the other hand why do I feel so utterly unhealthy and have so much weight to lose? What part of this equation is not working. I think part of this is timing. Its been MANY months since the fresh bounty of our garden – we have not been eating fresh green things, fresh fruity things because those things in ADDITION to meats are expensive.

My epiphany boiled down to the fact that we do not experience natural health because of the things we buy from the store and our bodies are depleted of vital goodness (vitamins, cofactors, fruity juicy goodness).

For this reason I am exploring a diet that brings more living fruits and vegetables into our world, even in the dead of winter (I am looking out at several feet of snow as I type).

I am learning about the raw food diets out there and think I have decided that what makes sense to our family is not your traditional raw food diet. We already drink raw milk and I intend on keeping it that way. Our raw diet will mean that we will not drink any more “cooked” milk from the store. We wont start eating raw eggs but we will look for ways to use them that are easier on the proteins. We will eat MANY more fruits and uncooked vegetables.

We here includes our family of young kids and 2 adults. My personal diet is going to be even more raw and less egg intense than the rest. I am enjoying learning how the vegan raw foodists have crafted all manner of recipes that bring texture and variety to the raw table. One way to do this is by using a dehydrator. You can take sprouted seed and grains, add other ingredients (fruits, coconut for sweet; spices, peppers, shoyu for savory) to make crackers and flat sheets that make great wraps or other dish elements.

This doesn’t have to be about salads all the time! (If it were, I could not do it, I need more depth to my cuisine than that).

We already had a juicer and a butch blender so getting the dehydrator was the final step in preparing for this new way. I am also teaching myself the simple craft of sprouting beans. Tested the family on store bought sprouts and they seemed to like it so its a yes-go!

As with any diet, there seems to be no end to the fantastic health claims that you see associated with raw foodism (take a peek at the abundance of YouTube testimonials). I am not interested in all of that. I just know that my body is not thriving on the standard american diet (SAD). Neither are the other bodies in my family. If the SAD is what we have tried, not sure how bad it can be (and I am thinking there has to be an enormous upside) to adopting a more raw approach to our food.

Tell me if you have any experience with raw food and if you have any favorite recipes, sites, books, mentors.
I will be writing again about recipes that I like or that I come up with that fit in this category.

I am not big on making faux burgers and such so I will be exploring how raw food recipes can move beyond that inherently disappointing goal on to a more holistic celebration or exploration of food in it’s raw state.

Resources:

• Raw Food – wikipedia
• SproutPeople
• The China Study – effect of hormones injected into livestock on humans

Recently, I came across a solar cooking wiki and a whole group of YouTube videos about how Africans are adopting parabolic solar cookers in their villages. The importance of this didn’t really sink in for me until I saw how women walk hours through elephant infested nature preserves to find wood that they poach unsustainably. They get chased by angry elephants (its THEIR home after all) and the women spend ALL DAY finding dwindling resources, leaving behind unattended or poorly attended babies and small children.

In particular, there is the Zambian Mfuwe Solar Cooker Project initiated by Manda Chisanga, a guide in South Luangwa National Park who had won a guiding award and decided to spend his prize money on Solar Cookers.

“The documentary covers the installation of five SunFire14 Parabolic Dishes – the project has been expanded to 15 and we are looking at ways to get 500 Parabolic Dishes into the community to cover 6000 families.” source

With a parabolic solar cooker, all of these risky and ecologically unsustainable practices are stopped immediately. The women can stay with their kids, young girls can go to school instead of watching babies or collecting wood all day themselves.

If that doesn’t sound radical and revolutionary, you are not thinking it through.

You can learn all about the basic principles of solar cooking and see plans for building your own DIY cooker at the Solar Cooking Wiki. Give it a whirl and see what you think.

I have been wanting to make our own DIY solar oven for ages and have finally scraped together some found objects that we have used to make our first winter relevant solar cooker. No cooking is happening yet because I am still testing it and there was no sun to speak of today! We do this in part as a homeschooling project too so the testing is an important part of it.

If you do this, share! Let me hear about how it is going for you.

Found materials and also some high heat enamel spray (which I bought for this project)

Cut to fit insulation on bottom of the oven

Crafting, with duct tape, the interior box

Need to trim height of the box

Trimmed and taped and ready to be sprayed with enamel

Sprayed, dried, inside larger box, found insulation in place

Next step is to make all manner of reflectors to sculpt the photons into the oven

Materials for reflectors

Two reflectors made. I rigged up a tape slide holder on the backs so that the reflectors are placed without taping them onto the oven part.

Slide holder rig

One reflector rigged up

Black covered pot and temperature probes

Solar oven set up inside as we test it out

Made a third reflector and started testing positioning (which isn’t really intuitive, more experiential)

I know I could buy a solar oven but what fun is that?! Not terribly frugal either

Once we get a good sunny day I will test it properly and share back here!

Things were going ok and then pow, time contracted and chaos ruled the house!

I hope you all had an excellent Thanksgiving. We had an excellent time.

Today I am going to step through a few more shots. Food photography in our kitchen is tough so you will have to forgive the somewhat scary images, especially of the turkey!

I toasted baguettes for crostini.

I enlisted grandpa to help with the crostini. Cucumbers, caramelized onions with fig vinegar, roasted garlic, salmon, etc.

They came out beautifully!

I used asparagus fronds as greenery around the house.

Baby O had to watch from his area, drove him nuts.

The turkey was brined overnight.

Roasting pan with onions, olive oil and rosemary.

The turkey is lubed inside and out, salted a bit, stuffed with some garlic and rosemary and roasted breast down for 1 hour and then flipped and roasted until 160 F in the meat (used heat probe) Used foil toward the end.

The sugar in the brine makes for a dark roasted skin color!

While it was cooking the grandparents decorated a gingerbread house with the grandkids.

Shots of the turkey at the table, after nightfall, are always tough!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Technorati Tags: Thanksgiving, Food photography, kitchen, turkey, baguette, crostini, Cucumber, caramelized, onion, fig, vinegar, roasted garlic, salmon, asparagus, frond, brine, rosemary, gingerbread, house

Arrggg, my food processor has died.

I wanted to show you a photo of it exploding into tiny pieces as it was hit by a sledgehammer but I barely have time to write this and get it off my chest, so much to do.

In the grand scheme of things, whats happened is exceedingly irrelevant but in terms of my plans for Thanksgiving, this is a show stopper.

I can’t make a mousseline so now I am reverting back to a roasted turkey.

*sighs*

No disrespect to Martha and those who aspire to her homemaking pinnacles

I just have to be honest about this – my act doesn’t include perfect house cleanliness nor coordinated napkin rings.

Our table is more likely to be set with Ball canning jars and mis-matched plastic plates (antique ones marked on the back from some hospital cafeteria lord knows where!) than the china that Martha got handed down to her from her great-grandma. I just do not have that sort of family. I have nothing handed down. And, more importantly to us, we tend to spend the money we DO have on the food versus the plates it goes on.

I make do with what I have.

So with that sort of off my chest (it will climb back on soon, no doubt), I thought I would share what I am doing to try to attain some semblance of a turkey day dinner for us and the visitors on that day.

Its here where I stray into Dilbert territory and swerve away from the pink lacey recipe card get-ups that one might find in a Martha-fied kitchen. No, instead, I have been Mind Mapping our thanksgiving meal with the hopes that some project management might help the day go off well. I am demo’ing NovaMindso this is what you will see.

My preliminary mind map is pasted below.

Why so many veggies? Because our garden is in it’s last vestiges of existence and I want to use what is out there on Thanksgiving. If not then, when! I will likely reduce the amount of vegetables depending on what the quality of each turns out to be on that day. Food miles here – about 50 paces.

The Big Big Thing: (drum roll please) – There will be no grand turkey carcass on our table

Why, you ask?

Its a human rights issue. If I eat turkey two days in a row, and I am not exaggerating here, I get horrific hallucinations and violently ill (upper and lower GI) for hours. So, to spare me and my family this ignoble Thanksgiving tradition, I am going to make a turkey dish that will have NO leftovers and which I hope will be a nice change of pace.

What is this dish I speak of?

I am going to make a turkey breast mousseline en croute.

You may wonder what ungodly and fresh hell this is, I do not blame you.

Its essentially a turkey wellington of sorts. (Also think filet de boeuf en croûte) A turkey mousse (egg white, rosemary, and cream) studded with turkey meat chunks and cranberries will be wrapped with puffed pastry. A savory layer of crimini mushroom puree will coat the inner side of the puff pastry.

Once done, you slice it as thick as you wish. My goal is to make this in a way that doesn’t yield a grainy or overly firm or overly gelatinous mousse interior. Will let you know how that goes!

For further inspiration, I am engulfing the opulent and delicious “Williams-Sonoma Holiday Entertaining” that I received recently to review. I will be doing a thorough review of this cookbook later but for now, its all eye candy. I can not recommend it enough!

So the list, an organic and variable thing, is growing and evolving up to the last moment.

What grand plans do you have?

Do share, I adore hearing about what other people will do for their turkey day meal.

I guess its sorta voyeuristic but only in the best sort of way.

Technorati Tags: Martha, homemaking, coordinated, Ball, canning jar, plastic, plate, cafeteria, Dilbert, kitchen, Mind Mapping, project, management, NovaMind, garden, Thanksgiving, vegetable, Food miles, turkey, carcass, human rights, issue, hallucination, tradition, leftovers, breast, mousseline, en croute, wellington, filet de boeuf en croûte, mousse, rosemary, cranberries, puffed pastry, crimini, mushroom, puree, gelatinous, opulent, delicious, Williams-Sonoma, Holiday Entertaining, cookbook, voyeuristic

I recently had the pleasure of meeting Maria Speck, a member of the International Association of Culinary Professionals (IACP), Les Dames d’Escoffier and Slow Food USA who is a food writer and journalist. She publishes in the German magazines Stern and Brigitte, the DPA news agency in Germany, Saveur, Gastronomica, The Vegetarian Times, and Cooking Pleasures, to name a few. She was also a Knight Fellow at Stanford University.

I look forward to getting to know her better but in the few moments we got to chat I learned about these interesting classes she is teaching at the Cambridge School of Culinary Arts here in Cambridge, MA. She is on a mission to bring more whole grains into our kitchens and our recipes. She approaches these recipes with both a European and Mediterranean sensibility. Its certain that these classes should be interesting and delicious!

The first one is today and its conceivable that you might possibly still have time to get in. You would have to give them a call at 617-354-2020 to see.

Today’s (Friday October 26) course is called:

Warming Fall Stews from the Mediterranean (6:30 – 9:30 pm)

It is described this way:

Mediterranean cooking is most appealing in its simplicity. Find out more about its philosophy and fascinating ingredients by preparing delectable fall soups and stews. Learn how to add traditional whole grains, as has been done through the centuries. Journalist and food writer Maria Speck will demonstrate how easy it is to cook tantalizing dishes with wheat berries, whole wheat couscous or barley. Recipes include: Lamb Stew with Tomatoes and Cinnamon, Fish Stew with Fennel, Ouzo and Tomatoes over Couscous, Barley Stew with Porcini Mushrooms and Pancetta, and, for dessert, Orange Ricotta Pudding with Thyme Honey.

Cost: $80.00

Link to course page

She is slated for three more classes, including:

Breakfast Grains with Maria Speck (Friday, November 2, 2007 6:30pm – 9:30 pm)

Have you held off on luscious breakfasts lately? Concerned about all the processed white flour in your diet? Discover the many flavors of whole grains and learn just how easy it is to replace white flour in your family’s beloved breakfast treats. Journalist and food writer Maria Speck will present innovative recipes for delicious pancakes, quick breads, scones and more. Learn how to make the most of widely available whole grain flours: whole wheat, whole wheat pastry, white whole wheat, and stone-ground cornmeal. And, most important, you will learn the adjustments necessary to get perfect results with your own favorite recipes. Recipes include Cornmeal Pancakes with Blueberry Maple Sauce, Lemon Poppy Seed Bread with Honey Glaze, Walnut Orange Scones, and Chickpea Potato Biscuits and Herbal Goat Cheese.

Cost: $80.00

Link to course page

Quick and Easy: How to add Whole Grains to Dinner (Friday, February 1, 2008 6:30pm – 9:30 pm)

The experts are shouting it from the roof tops “Add more whole grains to your diet” –- but how? Learn about the subtle flavors and distinct textures that whole grains can add to your dinner table, and how to incorporate them into your busy life. Journalist and food writer Maria Speck will give a basic introduction to quick-cooking whole grains, including polenta, bulgur, whole wheat couscous and buckwheat. Add a colorful salad and pan-fried fish or chicken –- voila, dinner is ready. Recipes include: Quinoa with Chicken, Cranberries and Orange, Sesame Buckwheat Couscous with Dill and pan-fried Salmon, Polenta Verde with Spinach and Parmesan, Light Lemon Custard and Ricotta Millet Cream with Mixed Berries.

Cost: $80.00

Link to course page

A Mediterranean Journey (Friday, March 7, 2008, 6:30 – 9:30 pm)

The last course does not have a link yet but you can check back here for details later.

If I didn’t live so far from Cambridge, MA, I would definitely be going to tonight’s class. Let me know if you decided to give them a try yourself!

Courses:

• Warming Fall Stews from the Mediterranean (Friday, October 26, 2007 6:30pm – 9:30 pm)
• Breakfast Grains with Maria Speck (Friday, November 2, 2007 6:30pm – 9:30 pm)
• Quick and Easy: How to add Whole Grains to Dinner (Friday, February 1, 2008 6:30pm – 9:30 pm)
• A Mediterranean Journey (Friday, March 7, 2008, 6:30 – 9:30 pm)

Technorati Tags: Maria Speck, International Association of Culinary Professionals, IACP, Les Dames d’Escoffier, Slow Food USA, food writer, journalist, German, magazine, Stern, Brigitte, DPA news agency, Saveur, Gastronomica, The Vegetarian Times, Cooking Pleasures, Knight Fellow, Stanford, University, Cambridge School of Culinary Arts, Cambridge, whole grains, European, Mediterranean, sensibility, Stew, Lamb Stew, Cinnamon, Fish Stew, Fennel, Ouzo, Couscous, Barley Stew, Porcini, Mushrooms, Pancetta, Orange Ricotta Pudding, Thyme Honey, whole grains, breakfast, Cornmeal Pancakes, Blueberry Maple Sauce, Lemon Poppy Seed Bread, Honey Glaze, Walnut Orange Scones, Chickpea Potato Biscuits, Herbal Goat Cheese, dinner, polenta, bulgur, whole wheat couscous, buckwheat, Quinoa, Sesame Buckwheat Couscous, Polenta Verde, Ricotta Millet Cream

As you may know, we have been growing all our own vegetables this year. I have been writing about it over at my garden blog Humble Garden. I have learned a whole lot about organic gardening (mostly its about getting out of the way of nature, the zen approach – A healthy and diverse ecosystem with strategic and complimentary or companion intercropping and intensive permacultivation allows for a balance that gives you healthy plants with very little fuss at all).

We grew straw bale potatoes (potatoes are put on the ground – not in it – and straw is layered over it. See these links: “Its all about the green” and “A small harvest of straw potatoes” ) but have not reaped a large harvest. Potatoes are fascinating for their ethnobotanical journeys across the world and also its plant physiology but most importantly, homegrown potatoes have a distinct flavor different from the ones in the store, making any trouble you put into growing them worthwhile. I urge you to give some a try next year. You could grow them in containers so even intrepid sky high apartment dwellers should be able to hack homegrown taters.

As Alton Brown said in his second Good Eats episode, potatoes will grow in any hole you drop them in.

Even though the harvest was meager, what we have gotten, as I have mentioned before, are definitely tasty. I just wrote previous to this post in “Homegrown Potato Satori” about using them in a simple saute.

The potatoes have been lurking for me a bit because I do not have a large potato eating habit and so I do not know THAT many recipes for using them. I was raised to eschew pasta and potatoes, rice was King.

I was looking for SOME sort of inspiration for our taters before they were no longer brand spanking new.

The other day, I was reading a book called “The Lost Towns of Quabbin Valley” about the towns from the region that is now called the Quabbin Reservoir here in Massachusetts. These five towns were essentially summarily dismissed, condemned to obsolescence, taken by imminent domain and razed to the ground (This man-made lake is the water source for Eastern MA – Boston).

One of the photos in the book shows the North Dana schoolhouse (1910, I think) with a caption that talked about how the children would have hot lunch at school, one day a week.

A quote by Katherine Reed, a 90 year old former pupil, says:

“It was usually soup and often potato soup. Us older girl were allowed to leave class a little early to peel the vegetables. It happened on Fridays, and all the students brought their own cup and spoon.”

School lunch, one day a week, no plates or utensils! They probably had more nutrition in that one meal than is served all week in today’s public school’s meals. Don’t get me started.

In 1910, they were likely using potatoes from home gardens, very much like mine so I was inspired to make a potato soup that they may have eaten. My recipe has some things they likely didn’t have the money to add – cheese and sour cream perhaps, maybe even the pepper.

I searched online and through my old Joy of Cooking and didn’t find any recipes that sang to me. What follows is an admixture of all the recipes that I found with various sections from here and there to make this soup.

You may need to add more or less salt and pepper to bring it to a flavor right for you and your family. We had only this for supper and we were mighty satisfied. We liked it chunky. The thought of blending this soup makes me weep, it would make it into a glue-like mass.

For us, the flavor was the purity of freshly harvested potatoes. The salt and pepper were nice sub-notes. The sour cream, while decadent and optional (isn’t everything?), is a nice pure accent of creamy goodness. I can see using yogurt instead for a lower fat and different flavor. Adding the chives was also a nice additional layer of flavor. I added some cilantro and a bit of fresh sage to my soup more as a nibble of green versus a dominant over all soup flavor. You could incorporate sage into the recipe (I love sage) but I preferred to keep the main flavor to potato.

Cheesy Potato Soup
Ingredients:

• 8 medium potatoes (try to get fresh ones from a farmers market or grow your own) (I used the yellow skinned potatoes we grew)
• 1 C whole milk
• 1 small shallot, minced
• 3 tablespoons all purpose flour
• 3 C organic chicken broth
• 1 C finely shredded cheese (I used cheddar, you might want to get more creative with this if you wish)
• 1/2 C half and half (or more, up to you)
• 1 teaspoon sea salt
• 1 teaspoon freshly grated black pepper
• 1 tablespoon bacon fat
• sour cream – enough for a small spoon for each serving
• chives – small cut – for garnish

Directions:
Dig up potatoes, pitch any that have been nibbled on by resident rodents, hose off dirt while standing in front yard and enjoying the sunny fall day. Once inside, clean away all remaining dirt and peel potatoes. Boil in salted water until a knife slips in easily but the potato does not crumble apart. Remove to a strainer to drip dry. Do not let the potatoes sit in the water.

Bring the milk and minced shallot up to a scalding simmer (do not boil) and add the flour. Whisk very briskly to avoid any chance of flour lumps. Add the chicken stock and bacon fat and bring back up to a simmer. Add 1/2 teaspoon sea salt and 1/2 teaspoon freshly grated black pepper. Add shredded cheese and stir to incorporate.

Add potatoes and begin to break them down into smaller pieces. I suggest not using any sort of mechanical device, just the back of a large spoon. Do not make it a mashed potato soup. Leave a lot of texture.

Simmer until the remaining potato chunks are of a mouth feel that you like. Add half and half to the soup and bring back up to serving temperature. Do not boil. Add remaining or even more salt and pepper to your taste.

Enjoy!

Learn more about the Quabbin Lost Towns:

• Documentary – Haunting the Quabbin
• The Lost Towns of Quabbin Valley
• The Wiki on the Quabbin
• Maps of the lost towns

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