End-of-the-season stews

Our farmers’ market is … diminished. With just three weekends left this season, the number of vendors was down sharply this weekend, filling just half the municipal parking lot where the thing is held. It always makes me a little sad, and fills me with “hurry up and buy stuff before it’s all gone” fervor.

On the bright side, lots of the produce available now keeps well, with a little care. Apples, garlic, hard-skinned winter squash can last for a month or more, unrefrigerated, if you keep them in a cool, well-ventilated place. I’m reminded of the tornado shelter at my grandfather’s north Texas home – I’m not sure he ever used it to shelter from the weather, but his wife called it the root cellar, and stored vegetables and home-canned goods there year-round, because it was dark and cool and dry.

Root cellars have gone out of fashion, but I’ve kept apples for months by wrapping them individually in newsprint and setting them in a big, shallow cardboard box, not too closely crowded and unlidded, down in the garage that occupies half the daylight basement under my 1908 home. And I don’t think I’ve ever had a winter squash go bad on me, even sitting for 5-6 weeks in the basket on my kitchen counter. They’re pretty much built for storage.

This weekend, though, I’m focused on the short term, not the winter ahead. I’m in rehearsals through December, which means I leave the house for work at 7:30 in the morning and don’t get home till after 10 at night. If I don’t spend my Sundays cooking, I’ll spend a whole lot more money than I want to eating during the week. So I’m getting back in the habit of preparing good, hearty dishes that reheat well and lend themselves to portioning into containers I can carry to work for lunch and dinner. I try to come up with strong-flavored dishes, packed with nutrition and taste, so I don’t get bored before the week is over.

Stews serve the purpose – and also lend themselves to slow simmering while I go about my other weekend domestic maintenance.

Here’s what’s on the stove today: A rich autumn stew of pork, winter squash and apples, and a spicy vegetarian chili that’s quick to make and wonderful served over brown basmati rice or homemade cornbread. The first is almost entirely made with food I bought at the market yesterday; the second uses local turtle beans I put on to soak before bed last night, but could just as easily be made with canned black beans. These are both nutritionally dense, low-fat dishes, and easy to adjust to suit your own tastes.

The number of servings depends on how hungry people are and whether you’re serving the stew as a one-pot meal or a dinner course.  It looks like I’ll get 6-7 meal-sized servings from of each pot of autumn goodness. With cornbread and rice, I’m set for the week.

End-of-the-Season Stew

Ingredients

• 2 Tbsp olive oil
• 1 acorn squash (or other winter squash of your choice
• 1 lb lean pork, cut in cubes. Most stew recipes call for pork shoulder; I tend to buy tenderloins (because they’re small enough for one person). But you could just as easily use the meat off a few thick-sliced pork chops. Just trim off most of the fat so you don’t wind up with greasy soup.
• 2 Tbsp flour
• 2-10 cloves of garlic, minced (I’m using a whole head’s worth, but I love garlic and got a lot of it at the market).
• 1 medium onion, chopped
• 3 cups good chicken stock
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 tsp minced fresh rosemary (or 1/2tsp. dried)
• 1 tsp minced fresh sage (or 1/2 tsp dried)
• 2 large potatoes, peeled (if you want) and cubed
• 2 large carrots, sliced into discs
• 2 tart apples, cored and cubed

Method

Preheat oven to 350F. Cut the squash in half; use a spoon to scoop out the seeds surrounding fiber. Oil the cut halves and place the squash cut-side down on a baking sheet. Bake for 30-45 minutes, until the skin can be pierced by a fork. Remove from oven, let cool enough to handle; peel off the rind (it will come off easily with your fingers) and cut squash into cubes. This can be done the day before.

In a heavy-bottomed pot or Dutch oven, heat remaining oil over medium-high heat. Dredge the cubed pork in flour and cook in small batches until browned on all sides. Add the garlic and onion, lower the heat if needed to keep it from scorching, and continue cooking until the onion has softened. Add stock and stir to free any browned bits from the bottom of the pot. Add salt, rosemary and sage, potatoes and carrots. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat to medium-low. Cover and simmer for 20 minutes.

Add apples and squash. Return to a simmer, then cook, uncovered, until potatoes and apples are tender, about 20 minutes more. Taste, correct seasoning, and serve.

Black Bean Chili

Ingredients

• 1/2 cup applesauce (mine’s homemade)
• Spices: This is where you get to shine. I like a lot of cumin in my chili, and I like heat; I still have fresh herbs in the garden. You know what you like. If your spice cabinet is modest, a couple of tablespoons of commercial chili powder would work. Here’s (approximately) what I used:
  • 1 teaspoon ground coriander
  • 1 teaspoon ground cayenne pepper
  • 1/2 tsp dried ground chipotle pepper
  • 1 tablespoon ground cumin
  • 1 tsp fresh oregano (1 /2 teaspoon dried)
  • 1 tsp fresh rosemary (1/2 teaspoon dried)
  • 1/2 teaspoon fresh thyme (1/4 teaspoon dried)
  • 1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper
• 3 cups black beans, soaked overnight (or two cans of black beans, drained and rinsed)
• 1 (6 ounce) can tomato paste (I’m using my oven-roasted tomato goo)
• 2 -6 cloves garlic, minced
• 1 medium onion, chopped
• 2 stalks celery, chopped
• 2 carrots, chopped
• 1 cup chopped fresh mushrooms (optional, but they add a nice heartiness to the dish. I’m using chanterelles)
• Vegetable stock or water to cover.

Method:

In a large pot or Dutch oven over medium heat, combine the applesauce with all the herbs and spices. Stir until well-blended. Stir in remaining ingredients, adding just enough stock or water to cover the vegetables. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer for at least 45 minutes, stirring occasionally. If it’s not thick enough for your taste, stir in a handful of cornmeal late in the cooking. Serve with cornbread and your favorite chili toppings (chopped onions, grated cheese, sour cream, etc.)

As with most chilis, this is better the second day – and I’ve found the heat doesn’t fully develop until then, so don’t get carried away if it doesn’t seem spicy enough to suit your tastes.

 

When life gives you apples …

… make apple crisp!

When the heirloom apples hit the farmers’ market each fall I can’t resist buying lots and lots of them – more, most years, than I can possibly eat.

This fall I’ve put several quarts of homemade applesauce, and more of apple-quince sauce, in the freezer. I’ve been packing an apple in my lunch every day, I’ve baked apples with delicata squash and honey – yum! – and I chopped one up with some leftover chicken and walnuts last night for a great chicken salad.

Tonight I got home from work, wandered into the kitchen in search of something for dinner, saw the four great big Warner’s King apples in the basket on the kitchen counter, and decided it felt like an apple crisp night.

I’d love to give you a recipe, but I don’t actually have one. I’ve been making apple crisp by my mother’s method, which uses no measurements, since I was a kid. It varies every time I make it according to what I have on hand – and what variety of apples I use – but I can’t recall ever having a bad batch.

The ingredients include rolled oats, flour, brown sugar, lots of spices (cinnamon at minimum, but any combination of ginger, cloves, nutmeg and allspice you feel like adding) and a fair amount of butter.

Peel and core some nice, tart cooking apples, cut them in bite-sized chunks, toss them with a little lemon juice if you want to enhance the tartness. Mix up a couple of handfuls of oats with some flour (roughly two part oats to one part flour), brown sugar to your taste and spices. Toss about two-thirds of the mixture with the apples and put them in a casserole (for a juicy result) or a flat baking dish (for more “crisp”). Dot with butter.

Cut some more butter into the remaining oat-flour-sugar-spice mixture till it makes pea-sized lumps. Add some chopped walnuts, pecans or filberts if you want. Sprinkle that evenly over the apples.

Bake at 350F for however long it takes – half an hour to an hour, depending on how big a batch you’re making; the apples should be nice and tender and the “crisp” nice and crispy but not scorched.

Serve it for dessert. Or dinner. Or, hell, breakfast. Hot, warm or chilled, with or without ice cream or cream. It’s all good. If not necessarily photogenic:

An Internet recipe box?

Quick one: I just stumbled across a potentially nifty new tool for those of us who have unmanageable lists of bookmarks – or worse yet, heaps of print-outs – of all the great recipes we’ve found on line.

http://www.food.com bills itself as an all-in-one Internet recipe box. It’s still in beta, but it seems to work well: You set up a free account, log in, and start adding recipes from your bookmarks, by searching, or by uploading your own. You can categorize them (I’m starting with an “Eating Locally” and a “Decadence” category, which pretty much tells you all you need to know about me), search, sort – and if you use the right browser*, you can even install a toolbar that will let you instantly add recipes to your box as you find them on the Web.

What it doesn’t do: Let you print, or even see the full recipe, straight from the recipe box, at least with recipes searched from the Web. In some ways, it seems to be a fancy bookmark list.

The “upload your own recipe” feature could be more accurately labeled ‘type in your own recipe.” You can keep them private or release them for others to use. However, it does provide a printable version of the recipe.

Looks useful. I wouldn’t enter my entire recipe collection in it (think of the data entry time!), but I’ll probably start using it to collect new recipes as I find or develop them.

* Don’t get me started about systems that support Firefox but don’t recognize that my preferred browser, SeaMonkey, is built on exactly the same code. Grrr …

Market season begins!

The farmers’ markets here in Albany and nearby Corvallis open tomorrow! After such a long, cold, dreary spring, you can bet I’ll be there with cash in my pocket and camera in hand.

Although it’s still very early in the local produce season, market manager Rebecca Landis’s latest email to her Market Friends list (subscribe here) promises new vendors, including Cinco Estrellas organic farm from Junction City, and treats from last growing season (filberts, blueberry products from Sunset Valley Organics) and lots of plant starts. And a couple of market stalwarts – the Salad Farm, with their lovely mixed greens; Steffan Farms, which always gets an early start by growing almost everything under cold frames – should be on hand.

I can hardly wait…

Quick one: Try these potatoes!

Holiday busy-ness is upon me and I don’t have time to write a Real Post just now, but if you love potatoes as much as I love potatoes, you must try these:

Crash-Hot Potatoes, courtesy of the excellent Pioneer Woman Cooks (the rest of The Pioneer Woman’s blog is pretty entertaining, too).

So, so good. Also easy. But mostly good.

Fall harvest: Put some away for later

Autumn market haul

Thanks to a packed schedule of work and theater, I haven’t been keeping this blog up the way I’d hoped to, but that doesn’t mean I’ve been neglecting the height of the harvest season. Far from it: at this time of year, practically every meal I eat (well, except the occasional hit-and-run “meal” of cheese and crackers or storebought hummus) is packed with local goodness: Tomatoes (yes, mine finally ripened). sweet corn, tomatoes (so did my next-door neighbor’s), eggplant, tomatoes, late-season berries, tomatoes …

Now the fall fruits are coming in. There were so many apple vendors at the market today that I went a little nuts, coming home with probably 20 pounds of gorgeous, crisp apples: Big, juicy Gravensteins, crisp little Daveys, Cox’s orange pippins, the quintessential English apple, and several heirloom varieties I can’t even remember.

I also picked up some perfectly ripe red Bartlett pears, a half-dozen late-season peaches, three beautiful little globe eggplants, an assortment of hot peppers, a nice big pork shoulder roast (I see slow-cooked pulled pork in my future), a dozen ears of yellow corn, two winter squash (a sugar pumpkin and a French heirloom variety, Galeux d’Eysines), and a pound of green beans.

A lot of food for one person, to be sure – but  I’m putting some away now for the months ahead, when fresh local produce will be hard to find and dear when you can find it.

I don’t can. I know how, but I have neither the equipment, the storage space nor the patience to stand over a hot canning kettle on a fine fall afternoon. I do, however, have a large freezer in the basement, and an ample collection of freezer containers. So I came home from the market, hauled out my trusty Applemaster and my big enameled cast-iron kettle, and set to work.

Four hours later, I’ve got several quarts of easy home-made applesauce, one of rosy-pink apple-pear sauce with dried cranberries, and some fabulously aromatic  peach chutney just off the stove and ready to spoon  into containers. Tomorrow, I’ll blanch the corn and cut it off the cob to freeze in meal-sized bags, and cook up a batch of eggplant curry to eat with some of that chutney. The squash will keep till next weekend, when I’ll roast and peel it and freeze the chunks for curries, soups and pies.

It’s getting late for local peaches, so you may want to squirrel this recipe away for next summer. It works best with slightly underripe fruit that’s still firm enough to stand up to the long cooking without completely disintegrating:

Peach Chutney

Autumn Peach Chutney

Ingredients:

• 5-6 large peaches, peeled, pitted and cut in chunks
• 1 small onion, diced
• 2-3 cloves of garlic, smashed
• 1 Serrano (or other hot pepper) seeded and minced
• 1/4 of a red bell pepper, coarsely chopped
• 1 cup cider vinegar
• 1 cup brown sugar, packed
• 3/4 cup raisins
• 3-4 Tbsp crystallized ginger, chopped fine
• 2 tsp mustard seeds
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• 5-6 whole peppercorns
• 1/4 tsp ground allspice
• 1/2 tsp hot red pepper flakes (more if you like a very spicy chutney)
• 1 tsp salt

Combine all ingredients in a non-reactive saucepan and bring to a boil while stirring. Turn heat very low and simmer 45 minutes-1 hour, stirring occasionally, until the mixture is thick and brown (if the peaches are very juicy, it may take longer for the liquid to evaporate).

Cool and spoon into half-pint freezer containers, leaving some head-room for expansion as it freezes. Keeps well in the freezer for up to 6 months; thawed and refrigerated, it will keep for a few weeks. Goes great with curries, or as a sweet-sour-and-spicy condiment for pork, lamb or fowl.

Experiments in ice cream

Oatmeal ice cream

Summer fun – houseguests, festivals, travel – have kept me from foodblogging for the past couple of weeks, and also made me miss a couple of weeks at the market. I made up for the latter yesterday with a market run that netted summer squash, turnips, lemon cucumbers, a fistful of fiery cayenne peppers, a big white onion, poppyseed cake, smoked bacon – and a mixed half-flat of berries: blueberries, raspberries (I still can’t get enough) and two varieties of blackberry, including intensely sweet Hoods (which grow on virtually thornless canes, making for scratch-free harvesting).

I’ve been craving ice cream, and a serendipitous Livejournal entry by a friend in Califormia gave me two inspirations: Blackberry puree, and (no, really) oatmeal ice cream.

Hm. Blackberries and oats: That, plus some sweetening, is my basic recipe for a very tasty blackberry crisp. The thought of turning those flavors and textures into ice cream … hmmmm …

Lacking an actual recipe, I improvised, using ingredients on hand and a variation on the the basic cooked-custard French Vanilla ice cream recipe that came with my Donvier ice cream maker (the sort with a cylinder that sits in the freezer just waiting for the ice cream impulse to strike, and requires no laborious churning – just a few turns of the paddle and it’s done).

Even using reduced-fat milk, the oatmeal provides a lush, silken texture that’s absolutely decadent. With plenty of cinnamon and a vein of deep purple berry goodness running through it, this is a fabulous summer-time ice cream. You could probably even pass it off as a healthy(ish) alternative to regular ice cream, although “healthy” is not one of my concerns when I want ice cream.

The oatmeal does give this ice cream a good deal of texture. People who, like me, love oatmeal will probably like it. People who find chewy ice cream off-putting may not – but it strikes me that you could run the cooked custard through a food processor and get it close to silky smooth, if you liked, before proceeding to freeze it.

Oatmeal ice cream with a blackberry swirl

Ingredients:

• 2 cups milk (I normally use whole milk for ice cream, but I had 2 percent in the fridge; in this recipe, there’s no loss of creamyness.)
• 1/2 cup raw oats (I like steel-cut Scottish oats, but regular old Quaker oats would be fine. Just don’t use the instant stuff)
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1/2 tsp cinnamon (or more, to your taste. I used about a tablespoon, but I really like cinnamon).
• 3 eggs
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 2 cups cream or half-and-half (I used 2 percent milk enriched with three-fourths of a cup of home-made creme fraiche).
• 1 pint fresh blackberries (reserve a few nice ones for garnish)
• Sugar and/or fresh lemon juice (optional)

For optional topping:

• 2 Tbsp raw oats, toasted in a dry skillet until fragrant and golden-brown. Careful not to let it burn!
• 2 Tbsp brown sugar

Ingredients

Method:

In a lidded saucepan, combine milk and salt; bring to a boil. Add oats and cinnamon, reduce heat, cover and cook for 10 minutes. Remove from heat. When cool, beat eggs and sugar into the oatmeal. Return to burner, cooking over a low heat and stirring constantly until the mixture is thick and creamy enough to coat the back of the spoon. Cool, then add cream and vanilla. Refrigerate several hours to overnight.

When thoroughly chilled, pour mixture into your ice cream freezer and freeze according to manufacturer’s directions.

Meanwhile, heat the blackberries in a small saucepan, breaking up with a wooden spoon, just until they begin to disintegrate and give up their juice. Press through a sieve set over a small bowl to remove seeds, pressing with a wooden spoon to get all the blackberry goodness. You should end up with an all but seedless blackberry puree. Taste; if too tart, add a little sugar; if too sweet, add a squeeze of lemon juice. Cover with plastic wrap and chill. Don’t be surprised if the puree gets quite thick; blackberries are packed with natural pectins.

When the ice cream is mostly frozen (scoopable but not hard), transfer to a lidded freezer container with a bit of extra space: spoon in a layer of ice cream, add some of the berry puree and continue alternating, running a spoon or spatula through the mixture a couple of times. Your goal is not a uniform blend, but ice cream with veins of berry running through it. Return to freezer for at least two hours to ripen. (Note: If, as I did, you use reduced fat milk instead of cream, the ice cream may freeze up too hard to scoop. Just let it sit outside the freezer for a few minutes before serving, or give it a few 10-second bursts in the microwave).

When ready to serve, mix the toasted oats with the brown sugar; place a scoop (or two!) of ice cream into a dish, sprinkle on some of the oat/brown sugar topping and crown with a perfect blackberry.

Makes a little over over a quart of ice cream. Share it with friends.

Beets and carrots and herbs, oh my

Roasted beet and carrot salad

Friends in warmer climates are telling me about their home-grown tomatoes. I put my fingers in my ears and console myself with the thought that our tomatoes will be along in their own good time – and that, meanwhile, there’s plenty of other flavorful produce showing up at the market.

This week I steered clear of the berries (well, almost. One pint of blueberries doesn’t count, does it?) in favor of vegetables: Carrots, shelling peas, cucumber, zucchini and a big bunch of mixed beets, red and golden and a pretty stripey red-and-white stripe variety.

I love root vegetables, and beets and carrots are never better than when they’re young and tender, full of sweet, earthy flavor. I love to roast them together, and just a little extra effort can make the difference between a nice mess of roasted vegetables and a terrific dish that highlights the subtle differences in the two vegetables flavors.

Beets, even young ones, take longer to roast than carrots. So why not take advantage of that fact and treat each vegetable a little differently, even when you roast them in the same pan?

Roasted beets and carrots with herbs

Ingredients:

• A mixture of red and golden beets (I used six medium-sized beets), scribbed, trimmed and cut in half
• 1 Tbsp Olive oil
• Sea salt
• Fresh thyme, finely minced
• 4-5 medium-sized carrots, scrubbed, trimmed and cut in roughly equal-sized pieces
• 1 tsp balsamic vinegar
• 1 tsp maple syrup
• 1 tsp cumin seeds

Method:

Preheat oven to 400F.

In a bowl, toss beets with olive oil. Spoon them out, leaving excess oil in the bowl. Place in one layer at one end of a roasting pan and sprinkle lightly with salt; scatter a few sprigs of thyme among them. Place roasting pan in oven. 15 minutes into cooking, use a slotted spoon to turn the beets.

Meanwhile, add carrots, vinegar, maple syrup and cumin to the bowl and toss well.

When the beets have been in the oven 30 minutes, add the carrots at the other end of the pan. Continue roasting for 15-20 minutes more, stirring once to turn, until tender and lightly caramelized.

Remove from oven and allow to cool slightly so you can slip the skins off the beets without burning yourself. Serve warm as a side dish, or, as I did, allow the vegetables to cool to room temperature, slice them into bite-sized pieces and serve them on a bed of lettuce with a little blue cheese, some toasted hazlenuts and a light vinaigrette incorporating a touch more thyme.

If you don’t have the time or energy to bother with roasting them, young beets and carrots are also splendid raw, grated or sliced paper-thin, and added to a salad or slaw – or just tossed with a little Meyer lemon juice, sprinkled lightly with salt and heaped on a plate as a crunchy, vivid savory.

It’s Memorial Day …

… and among many other things, that means it’s the official start of the Willamette Valley Eat Local Challenge, which asks those of us fortunate enough to live in Oregon’s most bountiful valley to make an effort to work local ingredients into our meals at least once a week all summer long.

As a long-time fan of eating what’s fresh, local and in season, I’ve been excited about this ever since I learned about it. What a great, fun way to put some mindfulness into our shopping, cooking and eating, and to learn more about the many good things that grow right in our own back yards – for some of us, literally.

So when I started planning for what seems to be turning into an annual Memorial Day weekend barbecue, I thought it was a great opportunity to kick off my personal effort to meet the challenge, and to do so with locally grown variations of traditional barbecue dishes, based on what I could find at the farmers’ market and local farmstands.

With apologies to my vegetarian friends, “barbecue” means meat to me: Baby-back pork ribs from Wood Family Farms, encrusted with a rub of ground mustard seeds, brown sugar and spices, slow-smoked on my trusty Weber grill by the ingenious method described here and then glazed for the last few minutes on the grill with pure local honey from the farmers’ market. They turned out falling-off-the-bone tender, sweet-smokey-tangy – and disappeared so fast when I passed the plate around that I was glad I’d also bought some local bratwurst!

On Saturday I’d picked up cabbage and carrots from the Heavenly Harvest farmstand, along with a couple of beautiful bulbs of fennel and some irresistable rhubarb from the farmers’ market. Those inspired me to put together a fennel-scented coleslaw and a big pan of rhubarb-pear crisp laced with candied ginger. I wasn’t sure how the fennel or rhubarb would go over with my guests – some people are averse to the licorice taste of fennel, and rhubarb tends to be a love-it-or-hate-it thing. I needn’t have feared – both the slaw and the crisp disappeared so fast that I didn’t even get a chance to photograph the dessert!

Here are the recipes. They’re both great ways to introduce unfamiliar flavors to finicky or skeptical eaters. Adapt them as you please to make them your own:

Coleslaw with fennel and carrots

Ingredients:

• 1 small head of cabbage (or half a large one), finely shredded.
• 2-4 carrots, scrubbed and shredded
• 2 bulbs of fennel, sliced in quarters, cored and then sliced into thin shreds
• 1/2 onion, thinly sliced
• 1/2 cup of real mayonnaise
• 1 Tbsp dijon mustard
• 3 Tbsp cider vinegar
• 3 Tbsp honey
• 1 tsp whole fennel seeds
• 1 Tbsp minced fresh Italian parsley

Method:

In a large bowl, combine the shredded vegetables and toss well

In a small bowl, whisk together the remaining ingredients to form a dressing. (You may need more, depending on how large your cabbage and fennel bulbs are. Pour the dressing over the vegetables and toss until thoroughly coated. Refrigerate until time to serve. Makes enough for a pretty good-sized barbecue, or a large hungry family, so feel free to improvise smaller proportions.

Rhubarb-Pear Crisp with Candied Ginger

Ingredients

• 4 cups rhubarb, cut into half-inch slices
• 4 cups red Anjou pears, cored and cut into half-inch cubes
• 1 teaspoon lemon zest, minced
• 1 Tbsp vanilla
• 1/3 cup sugar
• 2 Tbsp flour
• 2 Tbsp unsalted butter

For topping:

• 3/4 cup brown sugar
• 3/4 cup whole oats
• 1 cup flour
• 1/2 tsp cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp powdered ginger
• 1/8 tsp salt
• 4 ounces (1 stick) unsalted butter at room temperature
• 1/2 cup chopped walnuts
• 1/2 cup candied ginger, chopped

Method:

Preheat oven to 375F.

In a large bowl, mix the rhubarb, pears, vanilla and lemon zest. Stir together the sugar and flour, add it to the fruit and toss well to cover. Transfer the mixture to a 9×13 glass baking dish; dot with butter. (Tip: Putting a baking sheet under the dish will make it easier to handle and avoid oven spills if the fruit gets too juicy and bubbles up over the sides during cooking).

In another bowl, combine all topping ingredients except the walnuts and candied ginger, and cut the butter through (I use a pastry blender, but two table knives work well, too) until the mixture is coarse and pebbly. Stir in the walnuts and candied ginger, and then carefully distribute the topping to evenly cover the fruit.

Bake for 25-35 minutes, or until the fruit is bubbling and the topping is browned but not scorched. Cool, and serve either warm or at room temperature with a scoop of good vanilla ice cream. (I chose Tillamook vanilla bean ice cream – that’s almost local, right?)

So I’m off to a start. In coming weeks, I plan to write a bit about farm stands, a sausage maker and other great sources for local foods. If you have any suggestions or questions, I’d love to hear them. Leave a comment – and let me know if you’re taking part in the Eat Local challenge, and just how challenging you’re finding it to be. And that goes for those of you whose “local” is a long way from Oregon, too!

Yule fare: Wild Mushroom Pie

Our calendar calls Dec. 21 the first day of winter, but in these latitudes, the ancients had it right: This is the deep, dark heart of the season, and all our celebrations and feasting are, at bottom, gestures of hope for the return of the light.

It’s also a season of rich, hearty food, much of it sweet. I don’t know about you, but I tire of the sweets and start longing for savory even as I’m baking yet another batch of Christmas cookies.

This lovely pie is perfect Yule fare, especially when it’s made with good things harvested and preserved by drying during the growing season.

I have a little tabletop food dehydrator – nothing fancy, just one of those inexpensive models with a blow-dryer type attachment that fits on top of a set of tiered plastic drying trays. This summer, I pitted and dried sour cherries from the farmers’ market; later in the fall, big orange chanterelle mushrooms harvested from the woods in Oregon’s coast range. The mushrooms especially lend themselves to drying – brushed free of forest duff and debris, trimmed to remove small bits of rot and sliced crosswise, pounds of mushrooms can be dried to mere handfuls of leathery fragments. The drying concentrates their rich, wild flavor; reconstituted in a little hot water or stock, they add a deep, hearty element to stews, gravies – and mushroom pie.

I owe this recipe to my Internet friend Whit, an accomplished Colorado cook and caterer who posted it to a LiveJournal food community several years back. I’ve been making it ever since, with slight variations (he adds green pepper, which I don’t much care for, and doesn’t have access to the wonderful wild mushrooms of Oregon). Around my house, it’s become a holiday tradition, a hearty, easier-than-it-looks precursor to the roast bird and trimmings of Christmas day. While the flavors are rich, the ingredients are fairly simple, and entirely good for you.

Leftover mushroom pie, reheated in the oven, will sustain me today as I start the prep work for tomorrow’s feast (roast duck with pomegranate glace, tiny yams and sweet potatoes cooked with persimmons, oven-roasted Brussels sprouts and a tangerine-cranberry sorbet).

Bonus for those who are feeding holiday guests with dietary restrictions: The dish is vegetarian, and if you use a dairy-free pie crust, vegan as well.

Wild Mushroom Pie

Ingredients:

Crust for a two-crust pie, homemade or store-bought
Vegetable oil
3-4 small potatoes sliced very thin
1 medium white onion diced
3-4 cloves garlic chopped
A mixture of mushrooms, fresh and/or dried, wild and domesticated, to make 2-3 cups of coarsely chopped mushrooms. I used:
1 large portabello
A handful of crimini mushrooms
A few shiitake mushrooms
A generous handful of dried chanterelles, reconstituted by steeping for 30 minutes in the cooking stock (see below)
If you like, set aside one or two pretty mushrooms for garnish.
1 cup vegetable stock.*
pepper
fresh oregano
fresh chives
A cup or so of mixed dried fruits (I used sour cherries, cranberries and chopped apricot, but raisins, currants and even figs are lovely in this pie)
A small handful of whole (unsalted) almonds
Salt (you may not need it)
* Vegetable stock: Throw out the bouillion cubes; they’re full of MSG and mainly taste like salt. Use good canned stock such as Safeway’s O organics line, a high-quality stock  base or make your own: Toss vegetable trimmings and onion skins into freezer bags as you cook; when you have a nice big bag or two, dump them into a stock pot full of water with some fresh herbs and simmer until the vegetables are close to disintegrating; strain off the solids, discard and you’ve got flavorful stock. Use it now, or freeze it for later.

Preparation:

Line a deep-dished glass pie pan with crust; set aside the second crust to top the pie.

Heat oven to 375F.

In a large skillet, heat a tablespoon or so of oil to medium hot. in a large skillet or saucepan heat oil to medium hot. Add onions, garlic and potato and sautee until the onions are translucent but not browning. Remove and set aside in a bowl.

Add more oil and all the mushrooms and fresh herbs and pepper. Sautee, stirring occasionally, until the ’shrooms have softened and given up their liquid.

Return the potato mixture to the pan and let it cook down for a bit. Stir in the stock and let it simmer until the potatoes are becoming tender.

By now much of the liquid will have evaporated away. If not, strain the vegetables over a bowl to save the stock (It makes great soup!).  Stir the dried fruit and almonds into the mushroom mixture, check the flavor and add salt if necessary; I never do.
Fill the piecrust to overbrimming, mounding the filling in the center a bit. Pour a little of the reserved stock over the filling.

Top with the second crust, crimping the edges to seal. Use a sharp knife to slash a few vents in the surface to let the steam escape (feel free to be decorative)

Bake at 375 for 30-45 minutes, until the crust is golden-brown and the pie’s juices have begun to bubble up through the vents. If you like, add one or two pretty mushrooms for garnish about 10 minutes before it’s ready to come out of the oven.

Let the pie sit for a few minutes before slicing and serving. It will probably fall apart a bit anyway. You won’t care. Serve with a green salad and a nice glass of wine. Leftovers,  should there be such things, are tasty reheated or cold.