A Southern Feast

It was bound to happen. It's not our fault. With access to a real kitchen, our minds went into meal planning overdrive. Nancy had been craving fried chicken for a while now, so we decided to take the time to make it. Sunday night seems like a good fried chicken night. But why stop just there? Why not go all out? Why not add in some homemade mash potatoes, green beans with candy onions, country style gravy, and top it all off with bake peaches for dessert.
   Did I mention ice tea too?
The most amazing part was that we actually timed it so that it was all done at the same time! I still can't believe it. But the trick is to make the chicken as the oven preheats, when you put the chicken in, start boiling the water for the potatoes, and when the potatoes are ready to be smashed, start the green beans. I have to admit though, everything was homemade and local except for the gravy which did come from a packet. 

OVEN FRIED CHICKEN

Ingredients: 
Chicken Breasts (we used three to feed four people, but you can use as many as you need) 
3 tablespoons Milk
1 Egg (from a local farm, purchased at the Market House) 
Bread Crumbs
Herbs and Spices

• Paprika
• Thyme (dried from the garden) 
• Black Pepper
• Granulated Garlic
• Onion Powder
• Butter (at least 3 tablespoons) 

Directions:
Heat your oven to 375 degrees. 

In one bowl, mix the milk with the egg and beat well. 

In a second bowl, pour in bread crumbs (the amount depends on the size and amount of chicken you have, but a half cup to a cup should be a good starting point). Add in paprika, thyme, black pepper, granulated garlic, and onion powder depending on personal taste. 

You can use whole chicken breasts or make them into smaller cutlets. We decided to make them into smaller pieces, which increases the breading to chicken ratio and decreases cooking time. 

Grease a glass baking dish with butter. Place extra butter in a small microwaveable bowl and melt it. 

Dip the chicken in the egg mixture, and then dip it into the bread crumbs (covering evenly and fully) before placing in the baking dish. Make sure the chicken pieces are not touching in the pan. 

Drizzle the melted butter over the chicken pieces and place them in the oven. Smaller pieces may only need a half hour while whole chicken breasts may need an hour to cook. Make sure to check to make sure the chicken is fully cooked either by temperature or by cutting into one of your larger pieces to see the inside.

MASHED POTATOES
Ingredients:
water
potatoes (we used red potatoes from our CSA) 
Milk
Butter

Directions:
Place about a half cup to a cup of water in a pot. Bring water to a boil as you cut up the potatoes. Remember smaller pieces cook faster than larger pieces. If you used large pieces of chicken, then halve or quarter the potatoes. If you used smaller pieces of chicken, have fun making them a decently small size. 

Boil the potatoes until soft, and a fork or knife can be easily inserted into the pieces. Drain off excess water and put the potatoes through a food mill. If you don't have a food mill, you can use a good old fashion potato masher, electric beater, or a wooden spoon with lots of muscle behind it. Once the potatoes are mashed, mix in butter and milk til the flavor and texture fits your preference. 

GREEN BEANS
Ingredients: 
Butter
Green beans (bought at the farmers market) 
Candy onion or regular onion (chopped into large pieces) 
Soy Sauce

Directions: 
Melt the butter in a nonstick pan prior to throwing in onion pieces and green beans (note, green beans should have the very ends snipped or pinched off prior to cooking).

 Saute until warm and then sprinkle in soy sauce. 

Cook until desired level of crispness or softness. 


BAKED PEACHES
Ingredients:
Peaches, halved (The farmer's market had ripe white peaches that could not be passed up. Its a good idea to make this with the idea of one peach per dinner guest)
Nutmeg (fresh grated is the best) 
Brown Sugar (DARK is the only kind I use, but light can be substituted in) 

Directions: 
Set your oven to broil, with the rack towards the upper portion of the oven, but not at the way top, think upper middle section. 

Halve your peaches, and place them inside section facing up on a baking pan. Sprinkle each with nutmeg, and then a pinch of brown sugar. 

Place in oven and let cook until brown sugar begins to melt with the peach juices and the peaches are thoroughly heated throughout. Serve warm, right out of the oven. 

Cook out

There is one thing you come to miss living on a college campus over the summer, and that is the taste of grilled food. So far we have baked, sauteed, and boiled our way to some fantastic meals, but we needed something different. We needed grilled. 
    The biggest grill you can hide away in your dorm room, because they aren't exactly standard college cook ware, is tiny. The one we used tonight was charcoal based, and was just big enough to cook for four people if you didn't mind eating in sections. 
   The menu you may ask? 
~First, we started off with guacamole and blue corn chips. A nice appetizer after spending time weeding and watering garden. 
~Then we had grilled corn on the cob. (Grilled is the only way to go when it comes to corn) 
~After that was bean burgers topped with roasted peppers and garlic. 
~Last, to finish it all off, was zucchini brownies. A strange combination in name, but the healthiest way to eat junk food! 


Now over the next few days you will be getting the recipes for each thing we ate, from appetizer to dessert, but for right now I'm gonna give you the recipe for grilled corn!

Nothing like eating grilled corn outside on a summer evening

GRILLED CORN
Step by step instructions
Step one: get corn in your CSA share or from a local farmer's market. If you don't have access to either, you can buy it at the grocery store, it just might not taste as good. 


Step two: cut off the tops of your corn where all the silk hangs out, but DO NOT husk the corn!!!!


Step three: soak the corn in water for at least an hour if not more before grilling. 


Step four: grill over medium heat or whatever level charcoal you can make in a tiny grill for about 20-30 minutes. The outside of the husk will begin to char and burn, but this is to be expected. 


Step five: Husk your corn by peeling it back, but not tearing off the husk. It becomes a handy dandy handle! Add butter and salt, or whatever you like on your corn and dig in!

We started with half dozen ears, and we gobbled them up! 

Vegetable Baked Zitti

Pasta is super easy, especially something liked baked zitti where it is pretty much just sauce, noodles, and cheese thrown in a casserole dish and baked for almost an hour. The basic style of the recipe is also what makes it fun to play with when you have vegetables from your CSA laying around your fridge. 

Picnic with baked zitti

Our baked zitti ended up being layers of rigatoni, tomato sauce, Parmesan cheese, garlic, onion, zucchini, mushrooms, and mozzarella cheese. The trick here is to make sure you keep enough sauce around the pasta that they can keep in the moisture. 


Preheat your oven to 350 degrees and allow the zitti to cook about 40 minutes covered, and then 20 minutes uncovered to allow the cheese on top to cook a little or brown depending on preference. 


It is really good when served with garlic bread or salad. We choose garlic bread in order to ward off vampires. (Just kidding...)


The best of this meal is that it comes in a single dish with almost no clean up required. This means it is perfect for a picnic dinner outside! We spread out a blanket on the lawn outside the dorm, breathed in some good ol' fashion fresh air, and ate a deliciously simple vegetable baked zitti. 

Pancakes anyone?

   We have a ton of blueberries again. The result of going to a pick your own blueberry place out near Tamarak Lake. At only $2 a pound, we spent $26 dollars and emptied out a minifridge to make room for our 13lbs of blueberry goodness! This means that we had to brain storm on what to do with all these berries.
   The normal suggestions came up, like pies or jam. But we made those with our last batch of blueberries. One suggestion kept popping up though, that we couldn't ignore. It is the one food item that almost every person loves, and almost any person can make. Thats right, its a PANCAKE post!
      Pancakes are fantastic just based on the fact that they require minimal equipment and ingredients, and even less culinary specialty. The best part of pancakes though is that you can add just about anything to them. Chocolate chip pancakes, bananna pancakes, strawberry pancakes,whole wheat pancakes, apple cinnamon pancakes, blueberry pancakes, cinnamon roll pancakes... I think you get the idea.
     But why stop at just pancakes? Sure, blueberry pancakes are fantastic just as they are, but this summer is about experimenting and exploring. We have so many berries that we figured we would make BLUEBERRY SYRUP to top them with!
   We made our syrup ahead of time, and canned most of it so we can enjoy it all school year long. The recipe comes from the Ball canning cookbook, although we left out the lemon zest they suggested.

BLUEBERRY SYRUP
Ingredients:
8 cups blueberries
3 cups sugar
6 cups water (split 2/4)
2 tablespoons lemon juice


We started by measuring out 8 cups of blueberries into a flat bottomed bowl, or in our case, our dutch oven. From there, we went crazy smashing up the berries with a good old fashion potato masher. Its harder than it looks as we found out, but with enough muscle the blueberries start looking more like a soupy puddle. An easier way to do this would probably be in a blender, but we went oldfashion (and non of us have a big blender).


You then simmer the blueberries with two cups of water for about 5 minutes. Then it is time to strain. You can use any type of cloth that has enough weave to allow juice out, but thick enough to keep seeds and skins in. We used the thicker cloth you find in first aid kits to wrap wounds or make slings. Slowly but surely, we ended up with a bowl of berry juice. The dark shade of the juice made it so that even after we scrubbed our hands, we were still red handed!

Homemade bowl of blueberry juice!

As we were juicing, the other half of the group got the syrup going. The syrup is a mix of 4 cups water and three cups water brough to a boil until all the sugar is dissolved.


Once the syrup is ready, we poured it into the dutch over along with the juice, and brought it to a boil for about 5 minutes.

At this point, we ladeled the syrup into prepped half pint jars (washed and sterilized in boiling water for at least 15 minutes) and then placed the bottles in their hot water bath for 15 minutes (because we are at a higher elevation). The syrup that was left over we put in a jar that went straight into the fridge for pancakes this week.

Soo many jars of syrup!

PANCAKES!
Ingredients:
1 cup flour
2 T sugar
1/2 t baking powder
1/4 t baking soda
1/4 t salt
1 cup milk
2 T oil
1 egg


Mix together the dry ingredients, and then add the wet. The batter should be lumpy. Heat a greased pan or skillet until water dances when sprinkled on it. Pour on a spoonful of batter, flip it when bubbles appear throughout.


We made blueberry pancakes and banana chocolate chip pancakes. We heated the syrup and thickened it with corn starch. We served it with home-style potatoes (thinly sliced potatoes spiced with salt, pepper, chili and garlic powder and cooked in oil over medium heat to soft) and freshly scrambled eggs.

There would be a picture here, if it wasn't for the fact that before we even set everything on the table it was being nibbled at and eaten (the result of being hungry students!). It wasn't until we had finished off every last bite that we realized we had no picture to show you! 

Spinach and Chicken Pasta

Despite our tendency for things less than healthy (cookies, smore's brownies, pancakes), we can still make quick and healthy dinners. From prep to finish, this dish only took about 30 minutes, and fed three girls with leftovers.

Served in a bowl or topped with parmesian, this dish could be aesthetically amazing.

Ingredients:

   2 chicken breasts, sliced into thin strips

   lots of spinach

   2 cloves garlic

   half an onion

   mushrooms, cut up

   worcestershire sauce (how do you pronounce this?)

   pasta (we did a mix of penne and rigittoni, using up open boxes)

   oil/butter for cooking

Bring water to a boil in a pot, add in the pasta.

Heat the butter or oil in a nonstick pan. Throw in the garlic and chicken, cook it, add a dash or four of worcestershire sauce. Throw in mushrooms and onion. Let it cook for a bit, before throwing in the spinach. Once the spinach has cooked down, add more worestershire sauce depending on personal taste.

Drain the pasta, and top with the chicken and vegetables.

No matter how exhausted you are after work, this will taste so much better than just eating instant oatmeal or that leftover slice of pizza that you forget how long its been in your fridge. Trust us, why do you think we all cook together.

Tacos and Salsa

So here is just another quick update. So last week, we decided that we needed some good old fashion from a box dinner. Hard shell tacos are not something we have attempted homemade, and we figured we would have a nice lazy evening. How wrong we were! It seems that after cooking so much and making so many delicious meals, we couldn't just take the processed way out. 

The result was we made our own form of Mexican rice (with black beans, jasmine rice, and the sauce packet that comes in the taco dinner) and to really top it off, HOMEMADE SALSA. 

   This recipe is simply a mash up of great tasting stuff. We chopped up tomatoes, onions, and cilantro (fresh from the garden). We then sprinkled in lime juice and salt and pepper till it tasted right. A little extra kick can be added by cutting in some jalapeno peppers. 

Our Salsa! With bits already snitched from it! 

 We loaded up our tacos with seasoned ground turkey breast (its healthier and tastier than ground beef), cheese, our rice, and of course, the fantastic salsa and just... well, I think in this case a picture really is worth a thousand words. 

What do I do with what's in the fridge?

Some times, when we all dig into our fridges to see what we can contribute to group dinner the results are an odd mixture of vegetables and food. Its on those days that we get creative. So far, there have been three alternatives we turn to in order to use up random ingredients. 

First, there areTORTILLAS. We make these completely from scratch. Using only cornflour and water, we roll out thin pieces of dough and quickly fry them in a regular hot nonstick pan (No oil or anything). Its mostly a mix and cook until it looks right process since the humidity and heat causes a constant need for adjustment. 

This one has zuchini, peppers, mushroom, onions, and garlic, topped with cheddar cheese

We top them with sauteed vegetables, and them place them under the broiler with shredded cheese until melted. The way you eat it from there is up to you. Some of us topped it with another tortilla to make a quesadilla, others rolled it into a mock burrito, and others just added sour cream or salsa and ate it open faced. 

Second, there is PIZZA. The dough was just standard pizza dough, though we exchanged one cup of all purpose flour for one cup of cornflour. Everyone has their favorite recipe for pizza dough, and depending on how much time you want to spend you can find different recipes on line. We used a basic flour, yeast, water recipe that needed time to rise before being rolled out and topped. 

The toppings are very much whatever you have in your fridge. We started with the basic tomato sauce and mozzerella, and then just threw on whatever we had. For us, that ended up being things like artichokes, eggplant, garlic, mushrooms, fresh basil, and green peppers.  It was kind of like a supreme vegetable pizza. 


Bake it in the oven at 350 degrees until the cheese is melted and the crust is lightly browned and baked. Then you can cut them up, and in the time it takes to find your camera amid the cooking supplies, a lot of it will be gone! 

We made two pizzas, and between 4 of us, they disappeared completely

Third, or lastly, there is FRITTATAS. This was something I had never cooked before, but one friend really wanted to make. Pretty much it is a super fancy egg omelet that you don't flip and that has all the ingredients cooked into it. For two people, you need 4-5 eggs, though if you are really hungry or want to feed more people you can easy make it more. (I should also point out it 4-5 eggs to feed two hungry college students lunch, lets face it, we don't do normal portions) 

You can also salt and pepper it for personal taste, but I did without, it was delicious enough on its on.

What you want to do is crack the eggs into a large bowl, and whisk them with a little milk until they are super whisked. This isn't the consistency of scrambled eggs we are going for, but for a nice and fluffy omelet. You can throw the egg mixture in a pan (over medium heat) with whatever you wish to use up. We put in Swiss chard, basil, zucchini, mushrooms, and topped it once it was done with a little cheddar cheese that melted right into it.  The result is not only as fancy to look at as its name would suggest, but tastes incredible too. 

Simple Apple Tart

This is the very first blog post coming from a group of 6 college students trying to convince a board of professors that we deserve (what our school calls) a special interest house. None of us has blogged before, but we do all share a passion for cooking and eating locally. So please stay with us while we try to get all of the kinks worked out. We truly hope that you share our passions, or at least are inspired by the delicious foods. If it is possible for college kids who are currently cooking out of a dorm room, then it must be possible for you. 

This simple apple tart was easy to make and surprisingly beautiful considering the small dorm kitchen that we  have to bake in. It used about two pounds of Northern Spy Apples obtained from the local farmers market the day before!

We went to the farmers market with no plan, merely hoping to be inspired by something local, and lo and behold we found fresh apples tucked among the wreaths and decorations! The perfect ingredients for this super simple apple tart. 

Alice Waters’s Apple Tart
Source: Smitten Kitchen 

Dough: 
1 cup unbleached all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon sugar
1/8 teaspoon salt
6 tablespoons (3/4 stick) unsalted butter, just softened, cut in 1/2-inch pieces
3 1/2 tablespoons chilled water

Filling: 
2 pounds apples (We used Northern Spies!), peeled, cored (save peels and cores in a separate bowl), and sliced
2 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted
5 tablespoons sugar

Glaze:
1/2 cup sugar

Directions:

MIX flour, sugar, and salt in a large bowl; add 2 tablespoons of the butter. Mix until dough resembles coarse cornmeal. Add remaining butter, and mix until biggest pieces look like large peas. This would probably have been easier if we had a mixer, but it does work with the meager utensils that are scrounged from a mix of dorm rooms. 

DRIBBLE in water, stir, then dribble in more, until dough just holds together. Toss with hands, letting it fall through fingers, until it’s ropy with some dry patches. If dry patches predominate, add another tablespoon water. Keep tossing until you can roll dough into a ball. Flatten into a 4-inch-thick disk; refrigerate. Or in our case, cover and stick it outside (it was pretty chilly and we didn't have access to a fridge). 

After at least 30 minutes, remove; let soften so it’s malleable but still cold. Heat oven to 400°F.  Smooth cracks at edges. On a lightly floured surface (or a cookie sheet if the table grosses you out a little, as communal furniture generally does) , roll into a 14-inch circle about 1/8 inch thick. We did not have a rolling pin, but a half filled metal water bottle worked great! Dust excess flour from both sides with a dry pastry brush (or your hands). 

PLACE dough in a lightly greased 9-inch round tart pan, or simply on a parchment-lined baking sheet if you wish to go free-form, or galette-style with it. 

OVERLAP apples on dough in a ring 2 inches from edge if going galette-style, or up to the sides if using the tart pan. Continue inward until you reach the center. Fold any dough hanging over pan back onto itself; crimp edges at 1-inch intervals. 

BRUSH melted butter over apples and onto dough edge. Sprinkle 2 tablespoons sugar over dough edge and the other 3 tablespoons over apples. This feels like a ton of sugar, it really does, but it also results in a beautiful effect after the tart is baked and it really helps to highlight the apples.

BAKE in center of oven until apples are soft, with browned edges, and crust has caramelized to a dark golden brown (about 45 minutes), making sure to rotate tart every 15 minutes. It takes a bit longer and is more important to remember to rotate if you are using a tiny little finicky communal stove in the residence halls. 

MAKE glaze: Put reserved peels and cores in a large saucepan, along with sugar. Pour in just enough water to cover; simmer for 25 minutes. Strain syrup through cheesecloth (we didn't have a cheesecloth so we tried to use a paper coffee filter and a steamer part of a double boiler kit...it didn't work, but we don't think that it made a difference).

REMOVE tart from oven, and slide off parchment onto cooling rack. Let cool at least 15 minutes.

BRUSH glaze over tart, slice, and serve.

I swear for the following half an hour we showed every single person who walked by this beautiful tart, and let me tell you, our kitchen is located in an entrance/exit to a residence hall and there were tons of people walking through. Sadly, we just got to stare longingly at the beautiful creation before we packed it up and sent to a dear boss who had lost a loved one. We are proud to report that it was very well received though!

We hope to prove to you that you don't need a state of art kitchen to make beautiful and tasty food, you don't even need fancy equipment. It just helps to have fresh, local, and healthy foods as well as a a passion for good food.