Recipes

Chef Adam Anderson, formerly of Lucia's in Minneapolis, is on fire! One look at this week's farmshare bounty from Harmony Valley Farm, and he sent me not one, not two, but three recipes using the fresh, local ingredients in the box. Here's number 2:

Chilled Golden Beet Borscht with Fresh Dill and Chive Crème Fraiche

Serves 5-6

Ingredients:

When it comes to making and preparing food, you can’t get much more local than homemade. When your food is prepared, cooked, and served all in the same factory – a home kitchen – there is a sense of ownership over the food. It’s not just the sense of accomplishment, but also because it is so much easier to know your ingredients. There are tons of prepared, cured, and processed foods on the shelves of grocery stores that used to be made at home - they’d be much better tasting (and better for us) if they still were. It may seem like a lot of effort to make your own ketchup, jam, cake, or bacon; but it doesn’t need to be. Bacon is one of those foods that is processed to death in grocery stores and is so delicious homemade.

I'm a lucky guy, and I know it.

This recipe came to me from my new friend Michelle O’Kelley. She says it originally came from Bon Appetit in August 2000, and was recently delivered with her CSA box. According to Michelle, "it’s so simple and I happen to have all the ingredients on hand (except the Pernod)." We're getting tons of fennel from our farmshare this month, so a new recipe for it is welcome in my house. Here goes:

Fresh Fennel Vichyssoise

Before last week, I didn’t know what garlic scapes were. I’d never seen them, smelled them, or touched them, and I most certainly did not know where they came from. But our Harmony Valley farm share delivered local, organic scapes to Minneapolis last week - and oh, how far my family has come in one short week.

According to Mother Earth News:

By popular demand (2 requests qualify, IMHO), here's my matzo ball soup recipe. It comes from In the Jewish Tradition: A Year of Festivities and Foods, a terrific cookbook by Judith B. Fellner that I got from my friend Anne a few years ago. The book has loads of new takes on traditional Jewish foods, and most things are relatively easy to make. The matzo ball soup certainly qualifies as simple, good, and tasty.

Recently found another Twitterer named Elle who writes a great recipe blog. Elle is celebrating her first anniversary as a food blogger. Here's what her blog profile says:

Hi! Living in New England with my amazing husband, four kids, and six pets. I love to cook and collect cookbooks, which I read like novels. Doesn't everyone?

In any case, the site features all sorts of good, tasty sounding things. Some are even healthy, or seem to be, like this recent post about granola with yogurt, fruit, and nuts. (I'm fairly obsessed with granola, can you tell?)