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Carolyn's Cooking Corner

Winter 99 Edition

Two years ago Fred (Kirschenmann) and I raised a large garden. Even though I traveled a lot during the summer and the weather wasn't great (I planted the first things next to a 4 foot bank of snow), we harvested lots of wonderful foods. We started thinking about how little of our food actually came from our farm or garden. It became a challenge to eat the grains, meat, fruit and vegetables that we raised.

People from other parts of the country said we couldn't possibly do it. Where would we get our bananas? So we decided to think about nutrients, color and fresh things we could raise that would replace the stuff we bought at the grocery store. The most difficult part of this puzzle was what we could eat that would be crunchy and fresh in March. The more we looked into eating our own food, the more we realized that most newspaper and church cookbook recipes don't feature the kinds of foods we raise. We now buy only luxury items (toilet paper, a few fruit juices and ice cream) from the store and are convinced that our food is more luscious and beautiful than anything we could get shipped from Mexico, California or New Zealand in the middle of winter.

I offer these 4 recipes because they use ingredients that most people on the Great Plains raise on their farms or in their gardens.

We eat barley instead of rice. It is wonderful in soups. Our favorite way of serving it is with a beef stew on top of it. You can get big bags of pearled organic barley from Stengel's Seed & Grain, in Milbank, SD.

Barley
- 3 cups of water
- 1 1/2 cups of pearled barley
- salt and pepper to taste
Cook over medium heat for 50 minutes.
Check every 20 minutes to see if it has enough water. At the end, the water will have all been absorbed, but you don't want the barley sticking to the pan. If you want to serve the barley as a side dish, like rice or mashed potatoes, you can saute an onion in butter and add herbs (like dill) before adding the water and barley. You can also use a little beef broth instead of water. You will probably want to adjust cooking times and the amount of water to suit your needs.

Cheater's Beef stew
- Cut up one round steak into bite sized cubes
- Brown the steak and onions in a very small amount of butter or bacon fat
- Add two carrots cut up in bite sized pieces
- Mix with one can of Golden Mushroom soup and a quarter cup of dry sherry
(Sherry is optional)
- Cook at 275' for 3 hours
- Season with lots of pepper
Serve over cooked barley. If you don;t serve it over barley, add cubed potatoes during the last hour and a half of cooking. We of course recommend Kirschenmann Family Farm beef, or Ken Nelson's or Ken Pigor's... ANY NPSAS member's beef!

Roasted Root Vegetables - better than french fries.

Since we raise a lot of potatoes, carrots, turnips, beets and parsnips we have to figure out creative ways of cooking them. This is far and away our favorite.

Take an assortment of root vegetables (or just potatoes). For the two of us we will use one or two beets, two carrots and four small potatoes. Peel those that need peeling. (We don't bother peeling potatoes or carrots from our garden.)
Cut up the vegetables into one inch cubes.
Toss with corn oil or bacon fat. (Don't use canola or safflower oil because
they don't brown well. Don't use butter because it burns at a low
temperature.)
Spread in a single layer in a large pan.
Add liberal amounts of
- Pepper
- Garlic Powder
- whole leaf rosemary (lots and lots of it)
(you can use other herbs or just pepper and garlic powder)
Cook in a 400' oven for about an hour. Half way through cooking toss the
vegetables and make sure they aren't too brown on the bottom. Add salt.

Finally, if you want to wash this all down with something wonderful...

Cantaloupe smoothie

Take pineapple orange juice (about 4-5 cups)
Frozen cantaloupe (about half a cantaloupe)
Put it in the blender until it is smooth. Drink up!!

We decided to raise cantaloupe after hearing about Rick Mittleider's cantaloupe "farm". What a treat! Maybe this will give you ideas for your garden for next year. Happy eating!

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Spring 99 Edition

Beneficial People

Some years ago, when Fred Kirschenmann was on the board of the World Sustainable Agriculture Association, he was discussing grasshoppers with two Asian members of the Board. A man from Japan asked Fred if we have grasshoppers in North Dakota. Yes. How Big? Not too big. The other man recounted the story of a grasshopper infestation in Malaysia which had threatened to decimate fields and gardens. Enterprising fast food roadside stand operators deep fried the 4 inch long grasshoppers and served them as a protein-rich snack. These were hugely popular. Upon hearing this story, the man from Japan said, "Ah beneficial people!"

Organic farmers and gardeners have long known that some insects are beneficial
because they eat insects that damage crops. Every spring, I think, we don't need insects that eat insects. We need things that eat wild mustard.

Ah yes. Beneficial people.

Wild mustard is delicious, full of nutrients. The leaves are rich in folic acid, calcium and vitamin C. Don't tell your kids. The seeds, leaves and flowers are all edible. I'll focus on the leaves and flowers.

Salads
Mustard greens, particularly the new little leaves are delicious in salads. They have a spiciness which can become too spicy in hot weather. So eat them in the spring or eat the new little leaves. I often mix them with dandelion greens, chives, basil and a little lettuce for a salad that tastes, well, like spring. You can add the flowers for color. They really are edible - just like nasturtiums, rose petals (and rose hips) and lots of other flowers. But there is something magnificent about eating the flowers of wild mustard before they set seed -- ask any farmer.

Sandwiches
You can also use mustard greens on sandwiches. They really spice up cheese sandwiches and they are a lot cheaper than lettuce.

Cooking with mustard
Mustard greens cook like spinach. It takes a lot of wild mustard to serve cooked because it cooks down into a smaller mass. But the leaves are delicious steamed with a little butter.

Two recipes
Mustard/Barley Dumplings for soup (adapted from "Laurel's Kitchen")
1 cup cracked barley --put pearled barley in a blender for a brief shot or put hulled barley in a mill until its cracked to your specification. Toast the barley in a heavy skillet until you can smell it. Wash the barley and float any chaff off of the grain. Cover the barley with water and bring it to a boil. Cover tightly. Remove from heat.
1 LB of wild mustard--chop coarsely. Steam it until it wilts. Drain it thoroughly. Add spices - chopped cilantro leaves are really nice. You can also add sauteed finely chopped onion and garlic.

Mix in the cooked barley. Cool until it is lukewarm.

1 egg--beaten and added to the barley and mustard,

Add a little flour (barley flour if you have it) so that the mixture can be made into walnut size balls. When you have 10 or 12, drop them into your soup. A beef vegetable soup or a tomato soup are wonderful bases for these dumplings.

Cook at a medium simmer. Don't boil hard or they will fall apart. They should take about 8 minutes.

Ricotta-Wild Mustard Filling-- for lasagna or stuffed zucchini

You can add wild mustard to your favorite lasagna recipe by chopping the leaves and adding it to the ricotta cheese mixture. Here is a recipe for lasagna and stuffed zucchini flowers using the same ricotta cheese mixture.

Wild Mustard Lasagna
Beat together 1/2 LB of ricotta cheese (you can add some cottage cheese to this as well), 1 large egg, 1 tablespoon of flour, 1/2 cup Parmesan or similar dry cheese, salt and pepper, 2 cups finely chopped wild mustard leaves, and a little dry minced onion and garlic powder. If you have it, add fresh basil or oregano leaves chopped. Mix this well.

For lasagna, cook noodles, layer the noodles with the ricotta mixture and tomato sauce. Or stuff manicotti shells and cook with a tomato sauce poured over them. Grate mozzarella cheese over the top of the lasagna.

If you want to stuff zucchini blossoms with the ricotta mix, check the flowers for insects inside. I try to use only male flowers if I don't have enough zucchini or male and female flowers if I have too much fruit. A female flower has the little round beginnings of a zucchini at its base. Wash the flowers gently. Fill them 3/4 full using a narrow spoon, gently twist the end of the flower closed. Steam them in a little chicken broth or water. Serve by pouring melted butter over them. A little sage in the melted butter tastes divine!

I don't know about you, but when Jesus talked about faith being like a mustard seed, I wonder whether he knew just how good mustard could taste. Maybe that's why he loved the image.

Happy spring. Happy eating.

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Summer 99 Edition

My 95 year old grandmother was a young bride during the depression.  That experience shaped her entire life, particularly how she thought about money.  Her frugality still amazes me even though she now has enough money to live comfortably.  She saved every piece of string and even slit the toothpaste tube with a razor blade to get the last toothpaste out of the tube.  Since I spent most summers with my grandparents, I learned that one of the keys to saving money was her big garden.  She preserved the fruits and vegetables and they ate their produce year round.

When I moved to North Dakota gardening baffled me.  Spring was compressed into what seemed like hours and we moved from blizzard to 90' heat in the blink of an eye.  With the help of David Podoll and Tom Tomas I am starting to figure out gardening in the north country.  But I still turn to my grandmother for the finer points of preserving the food we harvest. Basic cookbooks (like _The
Joy of Cooking_) will tell you what to blanch and what can be frozen or canned, but nothing beats an old-timer for providing good advice.  Let me pass on a few of her tips.

I think of the garden as having four kinds of foods - those that need to be cooked before freezing, those that have to be canned, those that need to be dried, and those that can just be frozen as is.   Since many of us are gardening, farming and working at an outside job, I thought it might be helpful to pass on a couple of freezing tips.

Foods that need to be blanched.
Green beans
peas
snow peas (edible pods)
spinach, kale, chard
corn

All you have to do to blanch food is prepare the vegetable (shell it, cut it up, etc.)  put it in a pan with water just covering it and turn the heat on to high.  As soon as the water boils, give it another 30 seconds and take it off the heat.  Most vegetables when they are done, change into a brighter color.  Run cold water over it and package it for the freezer.  Corn takes just a little longer. I boil corn on the cob and then cut it off the cob with a sharp knife.  This is messy but not hard. 

The easy stuff - food that can be frozen without cooking
tomatoes
green peppers
herbs
zucchini
fruits

I just cut up green peppers and zucchini into bite size pieces and put them into bags and freeze.  Herbs like parsley, dill, fennel and basil can be dry packed into bags and frozen.  My grandmother used to can tomatoes.  I am quite grateful that I don't have to go to all that work.  All you have to do is cut the stem off the tomatoes and fill the bag.  When you are ready to use them, run the tomato under hot water and the skin will come right off.  Alternatively, you can puree the tomato and put it in containers.  Sometimes I saute summer herbs, green peppers and onions and mix it in with the pureed tomatoes.  This mixture can be used for soups, pastas and chili.

Many fruits can also be frozen without cooking.  Blueberries, raspberries, watermelon, cantaloupe, strawberries, peaches and apricots can all be frozen without cooking.  However, the last three last longer if they are tossed with a little bit of sugar first.  The sugar prevents oxidation and discoloration.

But what would a Great Plains summer cooking column be without a recipe for choke cherries?  Here is our local recipe for wine provided by our neighbor LaRae Hillius.  It is similar to the one my 93 year-old mother-in-law would have made and served to the threshing crews in the summer.  Tom Tomas and I have discussed this recipe and he prefers a yeast, like Montrachat, made for wines.  But that isn't the version we use in our neighborhood. Maybe we should have a chokecherry wine tasting at the next NPSAS conference.

Choke cherry wine

Wash and stem berries
Cook in a canner or pressure cooker until soft
Squeeze berries in a jelly press

Measure the juice.  You can add a little water, but don't dilute it too much.

For each gallon of juice, use 2 1/4 pounds of white sugar and 1 teaspoon of
yeast.  For every five gallons use one bag of raisins.  (I add apricots too.)

Mix in either a plastic pail or a ceramic crock.  If you don't have a jelly
press, leave the berries in, mash them,  and strain them out later.

Cover with a dish towel or something that will keep the dust out but let the
air in (my neighbor said to use panty hose, but take them off first).

Stir every day for 2 weeks.  Let it sit for the third week or until it is done
working.

Strain the juice through a thin clean cloth.  One recipe calls for straining
it through a loaf of homemade bread.

Bottle and loosely seal.  Store in a cold place.

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