Author: yellowroomupstairs

Rick Hymer sells his wares at the Collingswood Farmers’ Market and from his home market in Monroeville NJ.  He starts the market season in the spring with bedding plants, flowers, herbs, and vegetable plants.  He moves into tomatoes, peppers, and corn (bi-colored!!!) but my favorite time of year is the autumn when Mr.Hymer sells his grandson’s pop corn and the best sweet potatoes, broccoli, cauliflower, and CABBAGE!!! I have ever tasted.  His cabbage has flavor.  It tastes like something.  I use it for cole slaw, side dishes, soup, and stuffed cabbage.  I freeze the cabbage slices in freezer bags so I can cook with them all winter.

Cooked with this method this cabbage is just plain sweet.

Ingredients:
1 head of cabbage, washed and sliced
1 stick of butter
sprinkle of salt, and to taste

Directions:
1. Core the cabbage and throw the core away
2. Slice the cabbage leaves into 1/2 to 1 inch slices
3. Rinse the cabbage in a colander
4. Melt butter in a large skillet with a lid.

5.  When the butter is melted turn the heat under the pan down to medium low
6.  Put the cabbage in the pan.  Put the lid on the pan.

7.  After ten minutes lift the lid and stir the cabbage.  Sprinkle with a large pinch of salt.  Put the lid back on.  Turn the heat down to low.

8.  Continue cooking slowly until all of the cabbage is soft. About 30 minutes.  Do not let the leaves get brown.  If the cabbage is getting brown, turn the heat under the pan lower or off and let the cabbage continue cooking under the lid.

(pictured: fresh ham pork roast, cabbage, mashed white sweet potatoes, fried apples)

 

Serve this as a side dish by itself.

Cook 8 ounces of eggs noodles and stir them into the cooked cabbage and top with some buttered bread crumbs.

Toss cooked cabbage with your favorite pierogi.

Mix with cut up hot dogs and kielbasa.

Or just eat it out of the pan…..

Absolutely delicious!

Hillacres Pride (I shop their meats and cheeses and eggs, etc. at the Collingswood NJ Farmers’ Market) has a NEW cut of meat.  A boneless fresh ham roast.  Fresh ham is different from ham.  It is not smoked and so it is, essentially, a pork roast.  Hillacres Pride sells a variety of pork roasts but this one is new because it is boneless.

The roast I purchased was just a little over 3 pounds.  The bone was cut out, the meat was rolled, and put into a string bag so that the roast would keep its shape.  It is a lean cut so a little bit of fat showing on the outside is a good thing.

I did a little research into the cut and decided on a simple dry rub and quick bake.

Thaw and pat the meat dry with a paper towel.  Then, using a prepared pork dry rub (easily purchased at your local supermarket or spice shop…or make your own) rub the dry spices on the outside of the roast.  Put the roast in a dish with a lid and leave in the refrigerator for three hours.

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.  Place the roast in an uncovered roasting pan.  Cook for 15 minutes at 400 degrees.  After 15 minutes, turn the oven temperature down to 325 degrees and continue roasting for one hour (about 15 minutes per pound or until the internal temperature of the roast reads 145 degrees).  Remove the roast from the oven and let rest about 10 minutes before carving.

As I am only feeding two, we had leftover meat, which, when sliced very thin makes a wonderful sandwich and/or the beginnings of a great Cuban sandwich.

 

 

 

Not quite a year ago I read a recipe in the Wall Street Journal.  Yes.  The Wall Street Journal. (27 February 2016)

The Journal has a lot of terrific recipes and they present them in a very unique fashion.

The story behind this bread (according to Gail Monaghan of WSJ) is that it is traditional and swoon worthy.  She developed the recipe after eating loaves of it at a guest home in County Cork.  Since three of my husband’s four born-in-Ireland grandparents were born and lived in County Cork, I knew I had to try it.  Even though said Irish husband said it was going to be dry and terrible like all soda breads.  And that he probably wouldn’t like it.

I gathered my ingredients, which are numerous and specific…especially the King Arthur brand Irish Style Flour and set to work.  First try….easy (the hardest part is waiting for the mailman to bring the Irish Style Flour)…aromatic…and delicious.  Especially with a smear of butter and a large mug of tea.  (My father used to make us sandwiches of peanut butter and butter on rye bread….this brown bread is worthy of that delightful combination.  Try it…you’ll see).

Ingredients:
1 3/4 cups all purpose flour
3 1/2 cups King Arthur Irish Style Flour (or stone ground whole wheat flour)
1/2 cup wheat germ
1 1/2 cups natural wheat bran
1 1/4 cups steel-cut oats
2 teaspoons baking powder
4 teaspoons baking soda
2 teaspoons sea salt
4 teaspoons dark brown sugar
1 quart plus 1/2 cup buttermilk, at room temperature

Directions:
1.  Preheat oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit.  In a large bowl use a large spoon to mix all dry ingredients until well combined.

Add buttermilk and stir until dry ingredients are evenly moist. (Be sure to use the correct measuring cups for dry and wet measurement.  Individual cups are for dry ingredients.  Glass is for wet).

2.  Divide dough equally between two greased loaf pans (approximately 9 or 10 inches by 5 inches).

3.  Bake in middle of oven until golden and crusty, 50 minutes.  Unmold and cool on a wire rack.

 

And, oh yes, Himself liked it.

This time, at husband’s suggestion, I added a 1/2 cup of raisins to one loaf.  Delicious!

Recently a new farmer has been selling her wares at the Collingswood Farmers’ Market.  Julie Pierre, the lone farmer of Our Yards Farm, has brought an assortment of produce and herbs to the market.  She uses organic practices and grew, this year, about 4000 pounds of vegetables on nearly a quarter of an acre of private and public land.  Essentially Julie Pierre grows vegetables in YOUR backyard.

Based out of Audubon NJ, Julie offers a 20 week CSA that runs from June to October.  But, had Julie not brought a table to the market, I would  have missed her beautiful vegetables and herbs.

Sadly last week was her last appearance for this year.  The crops she offers are done for the season.  She hopes to return to the market next season and make a bigger presence.

During the most recent weeks that Our Yards Farm has been a vendor I have purchased a variety of tomatoes (including green ones that I am letting ripen in my kitchen, bagged lettuce mixes, dried herbs, eggplant, peppers, butternut squash, and green and purple beans.

Everything has been fresh and delicious.  And gorgeous.

Last week I bought some green and purple beans.  I didn’t do anything special with them.  I steamed them and tossed them with a little butter and salt.  I’m sharing this with you for two reasons.  One, as only my husband and I are home for dinner (empty nesters we) I use my steamer basket for more than one vegetable.  On this night it was sweet potatoes (from Rick Hymer’s farm…the best!) and Our Yards Farm’s green and purple beans.  Two, to show what happens to those beautiful purple beans…they turn green (unless you eat them raw).  Still delicious though.

Ingredients:
green and purple beans, rinsed and tails snapped off
Hillacres Pride butter and salt to taste

Directions:
1. Rinse and tail the beans
2. Pile them in the steamer basket over an inch of water

3. Boil with a lid on, so the beans cook in the steam, until they are the desired tenderness .  (A rule of thumb as to steamed vegetable doneness …when you can smell the vegetable it is time to check for doneness).
4. Toss with butter and sprinkle with salt (to your taste)
5.  Serve.

The season is changing here in the Mid-Atlantic.  The farmers are bringing their cold weather crops to sell at the market.  And winter squash in all forms is widely available.

I love the taste and texture of winter squashes but some are more difficult to deal with than others.  Love butternut…but tough to peel and cut.  Love acorn…same problem.  Spaghetti squash is good but so much work (for me).  This year husband and I have discovered the joys of delicata squash.

Delicata squash has a thin skin which makes it easy to peel.  You can skip the peeling and eat the skin for more vitamins and fiber but my husband (and I) prefer to not eat the skin.  This squash is low in carbohydrates (much lower than a potato) and when steamed and mashed really does feel like you’re eating mashed potatoes.  (I’ve tried the mashed cauliflower substitute and it’s delicious but eating that does not scratch my mashed potato itch!)

So we were having burgers the other night and I wanted a French fried experience to go with, but I also wanted a healthier option.  I’d steamed and mashed and roasted a whole half of delicata squash so I figured I could easily make a French fry that would please me and my husband.

 

Ingredients:
Delicata squash
olive oil
butter
salt and pepper

Directions:
1. Preheat your oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit
2.  Peel squash

3. Scoop the seeds out
4.  Cut into French fry size and shape

5. Put on a rimmed sheet pan
6. Coat with olive oil, butter, salt, and pepper
7.  Dump onto a rimmed baking pan
8.  Roast for 20 to 30 minutes (watch the bottom doesn’t burn)

Simple! Delicious! Delicata!

I never thought I would think this…but this year I have too many tomatoes.

Many years ago I saved green tomatoes from my humble little garden because I wanted fresh Jersey tomatoes for as long as I could have them, and the last of them turned red on December 5.  Yes, I keep that kind of data.

I heard this morning on the weather that we here in Southern NJ have had 42 days of temperatures over 90 in July and August.  I don’t know if that has anything to do with how many tomatoes I have, but I do know it has a lot to do with how much I don’t feel like cooking or eating dinner.

Here’s a recipe for what to do with all those tomatoes when you don’t feel like cooking or eating.  It uses up your pile of tomatoes.  It utilizes your slow cooker (so there is no added heat to the kitchen).  And it is delicious!

I have  a surplus of plum tomatoes which were available from several farmers at the Collingswood Farmers’ Market.  Hymer Farms, Springdale Farm, DanLynn, Savoie, and even a visiting farmer…Our Yards (those were tiny and supersweet).  Many of the plum tomatoes are the San Marzano variety…one of the best.  But other varieties will do nicely as well.  I like to drop in some yellow plum tomatoes to help lower the acidity.  But, and here’s the beauty of this sauce, you can use plum, slicing, cherry tomatoes.  Mix them up for a delicious sauce.

This is a butter tomato sauce and it is delicious over pastas…all kinds.  Elbows, ziti, spaghetti, ravioli.  What’s your favorite?

Ingredients:
Enough tomatoes of all varieties to fill the crock of your slow cooker.
two tablespoons of olive oil
1 small onion, diced
2 – 3 cloves of fresh garlic
a stick of butter
pinch of sugar

Directions:
Preheat your crockpot to cook on low for six to eight hours.  Put the two tablespoons of  olive oil into the bottom of the crock.  Add the diced onion and the cloves of garlic.

Chop all your tomatoes and pile them in the crock.  Put the butter on top.

Sprinkle with salt and pepper to taste and the pinch of sugar.  Put on the lid and go find a cool spot to read a book.

After three hours or right before you’re going to eat, blend the cooked tomatoes into a sauce with an immersion blender.  If you don’t have one, you really should get one.  The one I have was twenty dollars and is wonderful.  I had an expensive one and it broke shortly after I bought it…simple is better where immersion blenders are concerned.

 

Once the sauce is blended you are ready to go.  Cook your favorite pasta and top it with the butter tomato sauce right from the slow cooker.  Whatever is left over can be refrigerated for a few days or frozen for a quick meal later on.

 

Every week at the market is a treasure hunt.  Where are the best tomatoes?  Who has the sweetest corn?  The ripest melons?  But I also like to look beyond the obvious.  I like to find things that are new (to me) and different.  This past week was a not just a hunt, it was a treasure trove!

My daughters and I get to the market early and take a walk to see what sparks our interest. While we always have the regular things on our list (the market is my supermarket when open!), we are excited to see new produce and we love to support our farmers’ efforts into extraordinary foods.

To that end…..

This week Schoeber’s had peaches and nectarines and all manner of jams and sauces….and green grapes!  A little tart but delicious and fresh.  I’m sure they will be sweeter this week.

Springdale, Buzby, and Viereck farms had a wide variety of tomatoes.  White, green, striped, and, oh yes, red (including heirloom varieties).  So pretty and delicious sliced up on a plate and sprinkled with coarse salt.

Springdale and Formisano farms had cranberry beans.  The edible beans are inside the pods.  These are delicious sautéed in olive oil with a little onion and green pepper (low and slow until the beans are crispy on the outside and soft on the inside).  These are also just great to clean and freeze in a freezer bag and then toss into your winter vegetable soup.

Flaim farm had something called field peas.  Another kind of bean.  They need to be parboiled before eating or, again, thrown into soup.  They also make an interesting hummus.

Some farms offer treasures made with their products.

A friendly young man at the Springdale Farm stand was happy to talk about his pickles.  I bought the bread and butter (sweet) type and dill.  I left the spicy hot ones for braver souls than I. Again, though…fresh and delicious and superior to those jars on the shelves for months at the supermarket.

Hillacres Pride was offering for sale for the first time, crackers made with their delicious cheese.  Way, way, way better than anything you can purchase at the supermarket.  Great with a nice glass of wine or for the kiddos instead of those fish shaped crackers.

Another advantage, for us, is when we walk we walk  the market backwards….we then start shopping (when the cowbell rings) at the Springdale Farm stand and walk with the sun at our backs, not in our eyes!

This week I’m going to be on the lookout for the first of the fall vegetables.  Maybe a butternut squash or some sweet potatoes or……

Eggplant are plentiful this year.  And lovely.  I adore eggplant but cooking them can be a chore.

This simple and delicious eggplant recipe will use up most or all of the eggplant you couldn’t resist buying at last week’s farmers’ market.  And you will enjoy it for days.

At Collingswood Farmers’ Market eggplant is available at nearly every stand.  Springdale, Flaim, Buzby, Dannlyn, Viereck, Formisano, Savoie, Fruitwood.  And they are available in all sizes, shapes, and colors.  Experiment!  An eggplant, despite how it looks, tastes like an eggplant.

This recipe uses small or baby eggplant, but it works on the big guys too.  (and it works with zucchini!)

Ingredients:
eggplant
olive oil
balsamic vinegar
salt

Directions:
-Preheat your oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit.
-Cut the top and bottom off your eggplant.  Peel them (or not…I like them peeled).  Slice them lengthwise…about a 1/4 inch thick.

(now this step is where people differ…at this point I place my eggplant slices in a colander and sprinkle them with salt and let them drain for about 30 minutes…not necessary, but my preference…after 30 minutes rinse and dry the eggplant slices)
-Line a pan with foil, dull side up.  Lightly spray or brush the foil with olive oil because eggplant tends to stick.  Place the rinsed and dried eggplant slices on the tray.
-Pour an 1/8 of a cup of both olive oil and balsamic vinegar into a bowl.  Stir.  And lightly brush the mixture onto each slice.  Make more of the mixture if you’re doing lots of eggplant.

-Bake for 10 minutes at 400 degrees.
-At the end of ten minutes, take the tray out of the oven.  Turn the eggplant slices over.  Brush with the olive oil and balsamic vinegar mixture.  Put the tray back in the oven.  Bake another 10 minutes.
-Remove the tray and immediately take the eggplant off the foil and place on a platter.  You can eat the slices hot but I like to let the eggplant cool to room temperature.  (Really great to do this in the morning and let the eggplant sit on the platter until you serve it at lunch or dinner.  Any leftovers can go in the fridge and be used for three or four days.  I love cold slices on my salad especially if I have some fresh Jersey tomatoes!)

-I do the same preparation with zucchini (on the left of the plate) (skip the salting) and it is delicious!

According to the weather report this morning we here in Southern NJ are entering our fifth heat wave of the summer.  Ugh.

I live in an old house and do not have central air conditioning.  Double ugh.

But…my children are adults now.  Married.  Living in their own homes.  So husband and I do not have to eat a completely balanced dinner every night.  We do not always have to set a good example.  And we don’t have to set the table with the fine china.

Tonight we’re having a delicious meal.  Lots of food groups represented.  Tonight we’re having grilled cheese with bacon and Jersey tomatoes on sour dough bread.  Yum.

The farmer’s market is overflowing with tomatoes.  It is a very good year.  At the Collingswood Farmers’ Market you can buy delicious tomatoes from the following farms…Springdale, Buzby, Hymer, Dannlyn, Fruitwood, Viereck, Formisano, Flaim…everyone has tomatoes and they are all delicious.

Delicious cheese and no-nitrate bacon can be purchased with one stop at Hillacres Pride.

And the best sour dough bread (or brioche, or whole grain, or honey wheat,or…) can be found at Wild Flour Bakery’s stand.  You might want to pick up an oatmeal raisin cookie (husband’s favorite) or a slice of a sweet quick bread for dessert.

The recipe is easy.  The dinner is quick.  And with a glass of iced tea and some cold melon slices (again…Buzby, Hymer, Viereck, Fruitwood) you have a perfect light and perfectly delightful Fifth Heat Wave of the Summer Thursday Dinner!

Ingredients
sour dough bread
cheese
bacon (pre-cooked…when it’s cool)
tomatoes (diced, because no one likes to bite into and then pull out by your teeth…a large slice of hot tomato)
butter or mayonnaise

Heat your frying pan to medium.  Butter one side of one slice of bread (or as Chef Michael Symon does…spread mayonnaise on one side of one slice of bread).

Put a piece of cheese on the bread.  Put a few pieces of crumbled bacon on top of the cheese.  Put diced tomato on top of bacon.

Put two pieces of cheese on top of tomatoes.  Cover with a second slice of bread butter or mayonnaised on one side (buttered side up).  When the first slice of cheese is starting to melt, with a large spatula, flip the sandwich.  If your flipping skills are as good as mine you’ll have to gently straighten up your sandwich with the spatula.  Put a lid on top and let cook only a few minutes until the cheese is melted.  Be careful not to burn the bread.

Easy.  Delicious.  And nutritious.  A summer delight!

It has been too hot here in hazy, hot, and horrible NJ.  Too, too hot.  Definitely too hot to cook!

I’m going to keep this post short and simple so you can read this, fix dinner, and get back in the pool.

Slow Cooker Whole Chicken

Ingredients:
a slow cooker
a whole chicken (from Hillacres Pride at the Collingswood Farmers’ Market)
salt
pepper
1/2 teaspoon dried thyme or two to three sprigs of fresh thyme
1 garlic scape (I freeze them in a bag to use all year)
juice of 1/2 a lemon
2 tablespoons butter
five aluminum foil balls or three to five small carrots or a couple of onions cut in half

Directions:
Plug your slow cooker in and set it to 8 hours on low.  Place five aluminum foil balls or three to five small carrots on the bottom of the slow cooker insert.   Place the thawed whole chicken (from Hillacres Pride…Collingswood Farmers’ Market) on top of the foil balls or carrots, BREAST DOWN.

Squeeze the juice of 1/2 a lemon over the chicken.  Put two pats of butter on the chicken.  Sprinkle with salt and pepper to your taste.  Place a couple of sprigs of thyme on the chicken or sprinkle dried thyme on it.  Put a garlic scape, if you have one. Put on the lid.  Wait 8 hours.

When the time is up, carefully take the chicken out and put it on a large platter.  Be careful as it will fall apart.  When it is cool enough to touch, pick all the meat off the bird and put it on another platter.

If you used carrots under the chicken, take them out and put them in a bowl to serve.  If you used onions, take them out and serve. If you used foil balls, take them out and throw them away.  What is left in the slow cooker insert is about two inches of delicious juice.  You can use it as it is or you can thicken it into a delicious gravy.  The meat of the chicken cooked this way is also delicious on a salad (with some bacon from Hillacres Pride…if you want to cook it) or as chicken salad.

Hillacres Pride sells pork, lamb, beef, cheese, sausages, and chicken to patrons of the Collingswood Farmers Market.  All of the meats are pasture raised.  Grass fed.  The chickens do not live in cages and, therefore, have muscles, which when exposed to high heat get tough.  Cooking a free range chicken in a slow cooker makes it moist and delicious…and keeps your kitchen, and you, cool.

Add some ears of corn and sliced tomatoes……totally delicious, totally NJ summer meal.