From the kitchen: baked sweet potatoes

  You can microwave a sweet potato, but it will taste a lot better if you bake it.  That's what a friend told us after we served him our baked sweet potatoes for dinner, and sent him home with some extra baked ones to eat later.
  I have multiple sweet potato cookbooks from the library right now, and after I try a few recipes from them, I'm pretty sure I'll hear what I always hear when I try a new sweet potato dish, "You can make that if you want, but they taste better if you just bake them."  Of course, I'm not including slicing potatoes into chips and deep frying them in lard.  And sweet potato pies are popular, too.  And everyone likes sweet potato biscuits every couple weeks, but our family can eat simple baked sweet potatoes multiple times per week and not grow tired, especially by rotating through the different varieties with all the different tastes, textures and colors.
  It doesn't seem quite right that such an easy preparation can be so good.  Just put the washed sweet potatoes directly on the oven rack and bake at 425 for about an hour.  That's it.

PRAISE FOR CORNMEAL

  We're just back from the mill this week where we had another batch of our heirloom white 'Floyd' corn ground.  After having it ground, we store it in our freezer until we bring it to you at the market. We don't understand what makes store-bought cornmeal sit just fine on the shelf for months, but we wouldn't want to store our cornmeal at room temp for more than a couple weeks.  In any case, there's a huge difference between our fresh cornmeal and what you're probably used to.  To keep it fresh, our freezer is now full of cornmeal, so this seems like a great time to sing the praises of cornmeal (we just had some delicious hush puppies last night).  We encourage you to stock up on cornmeal (simply store in your freezer for months/years or fridge for several weeks) and enjoy using the only local heirloom grain staple you're likely to find anywhere.  Isn't it time you sourced your most basic food staples from within your community instead of buying all your grains from huge-scale farms that you really couldn't know much about even if you wanted to, that you probably don't even know what state (or country) they're in, exclusively processed and sold by corporations motivated by anything but the interests of the health of our community (to say nothing of what's not even organic)?  Is that the system you trust to stand up against the onslaught of chemicals and biotechnology redefining food?  Here are a few of our favorite cornmeal recipes.  You can find more recipes, including a couple types of cornbread, fritters, and spoonbread, on our blog.  Anson Mills' website also has a lot of good recipes highlighting heirloom grains.  (Let us know, by the way, if you'd like to buy whole kernel corn for making your own hominy/tortillas/tamales/etc. from scratch.)

Almost As Good As Aunt Gerri's Hush Puppies

1 2/3 cup cornmeal
1/4 cup flour
1 tsp soda
1 tsp honey
black pepper
2 eggs
1 cup buttermilk
1/2 cup finely chopped onion

Mix well.  Drop in heaping teaspoonfuls into hot fat.  Flip and cook until well browned on both side.

Cornmeal Pancakes

1 1/2 cups cornmeal
1/4 cup flour
1 tsp soda
1 tsp salt
1 tsp honey
2 cups buttermilk
2 tbs butter or oil
1 slightly beaten egg yolk
1 stiffly beaten egg white

Mix dry ingredients.  Add buttermilk, fat, and egg yolk; blend well.  Fold in egg white.  Let stand 10 minutes.  Bake on hot griddle.

Corn Mush
we'll just give you a link for this one:
http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-cornmeal-mush.htm

Corn Bread Variations

Buttermilk Corn Bread

2 cups cornmeal
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
2 cups buttermilk
2 eggs
2 tablespoons honey
1 tablespoon bacon fat or butter

Preheat oven to 375. Mix the dry ingredients in a large bowl. Pour in the buttermilk and honey and beat in the eggs. Melt the fat in a cast-iron skillet. Pour in the batter and bake in the skillet for 20 to 25 minutes, until risen and browned.

Cakey Corn Bread

1 cup all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
¾ teaspoon salt
1 cup cornmeal
2 tablespoons honey
2 eggs
1 cup milk
¼ cup butter or lard

Mix together the dry ingredients. Add honey, eggs, milk, and fat. Beat until just smooth. Pour into greased 9x9x2 pan. Bake at 425 for 20 to 25 minutes.

Corn Griddle Cakes

Melt a couple tablespoons of fat in a cast-iron skillet. Mix cornmeal and a bit of salt with enough honey and water to make a sloppy batter. Spoon into hot fat and cook on one side until solid enough to flip. Cook on other side until done.

Melon Ice Cream

   It's melon season and it's also ice cream season.  So how about melon ice cream?  Why not.  We even found a recipe in an ice cream cookbook that inspired us.  Here's our version, approved by Hattie.

2 cups melon puree

2 cups cream or mix of cream and milk

7.5 oz honey

  Cut one melon in half.  Remove seeds and peel; cut into chunks.  Using an immersion blender or blender, puree.  Measure out two cups.  Put the rest in the freezer to use another time for ice cream or for making smoothies.  Add the dairy and the honey.  Puree again to make sure it is all well blended.  Thoroughly chill before freezing according to your ice cream maker.
  Next on the agenda - watermelon popsicles.

Time for lettuce

   We're off to a very nice start on a beautiful lettuce season, so please enjoy. May is perhaps the best month of the whole year for lettuce.  Right now the loose mix is at its peak. Our spring mix is an assortment of buttercrunch and green and red leaf lettuces. Our head lettuces have started to mature as well.  Last year we discovered a green butterhead variety, which you hopefully enjoyed as much as we did. This year we've found a red butterhead variety that's looking very good, as well as a new Romaine type, plus two Batavian types with heat
resistance we're hoping will extend our lettuce season into early
summer. 

   Here's our standard salad dressing recipe. Of all the meals we've shared with people, our simple salad dressing probably gets the most recipe requests of all, so here it is:

1/2 cup honey

1/2 cup apple cider vinegar
1 cup oil
1 tsp salt
2 tsp prepared mustard or 1/2 tsp ground mustard (optional)

optional additions: minced dried strawberries, poppy seeds, herbs...

Okra

It's almost too late to be sharing an okra recipe, but maybe you stocked up your freezers with enough okra to keep trying new okra recipes all through the winter. We've certainly had a bounty of okra this year. Maybe we shouldn't have planted that extra little row in the triangle garden. Now that the okra plants need to be bent over to be picked and are still growing strong, Melissa might confess -- Eric never! -- that she's gotten a bit tired of okra. We've sauted it, stewed it, roasted it, and fried it. Then a week ago we discovered a new way to cook it. Okra fritters! Suddenly, we weren't sure we'd frozen enough okra to keep us in fritters for the winter. We're nearing the end of the okra season, so enjoy some now and make sure you are stocked up for the winter, too.

Okra Fritters (adapted from Everyday Food)

2 cups oil or lard
1/2 cup cornmeal or flour
salt and pepper
2 cups coarsely chopped okra
1/2 small onion diced small (1/2 cup)
1 egg
1/4 cup buttermilk

1. In a large, heavy skillet, heat oil over medium. In a medium bowl, combine flour, 1/2 tsp. salt, and 1/4 tsp. pepper. Add okra and onion and toss to coat. In a small bowl, whisk together egg and buttermilk. Add to okra mixture and stir just until combined.

2. In two batches, drop batter in 2-tablespoonful mounds into oil. With a small spatula or butter knife, gently flatten each mound and fry until golden, about 4 minutes per side, flipping once (adjust heat if browning too quickly). Drain on paper towels. Season with salt and serve warm.

Summer harvest salad

We've found a delicious way to enjoy many of the summer crops together in this refreshing salad. Just toss some summer peas with a colorful assortment of vegetables, sprinkle with a vinaigrette and enjoy!

2 cups shelled and cooked fresh pink-eye peas (or other green summer field peas)
1 or 2 ripe bell peppers, chopped (optional)
1-1/2 cups cooked sweet corn cut from cob (optional)
4 large, meaty tomatoes, chopped
4 medium onions, chopped
2 stems basil, cut into strips

dressing:
4 tablespoons vinegar, balsamic or other
approximately 3 tablespoons honey
2 tablespoons olive oil
salt/pepper

Substituting honey

We feel a lot better about eating honey than granulated sugar. We believe that foods that are less processed and more homegrown are generally a lot healthier than their conventional counterparts (not just healthier for us directly, but healthier for communities and ecosystems, too). Perhaps you share our inclinations, and so the question we want to address here is: how does a person go about substituting honey for sugar, i.e. using less sugar and more honey? Some of the answers are as simple as realizing where the sugar (or corn syrup) in your diet is.
Honey is great for sweetening hot and cold drinks. In the summertime we like to keep a gallon of honey-sweetened peppermint tea in the fridge. Honey can, of course, be used to sweeten any kind of tea as well as lemonade or homemade grape juice. Honey is especially nice for mixing in cold drinks like lemonade, because honey's already fully liquid, so you don't get the granular mouth feel of sugar added to cold lemonade. It's easier to mix the honey in if the liquid isn't fully chilled, but when we make tea we do like to let the tea cool down a little before mixing the honey in so as to better preserve the floral aromas of the honey.
One of the honey substitutions that most consistently impresses guests at our table is our standard salad dressing. We'll fill a quart jar about a quarter full with olive oil (that's 1 cup), then add half as much honey and cider vinegar (or 1/2 measuring cup of each). Then we add about a teaspoon each of salt and ground mustard, plus a little black pepper, and shake it all up. That's our standard recipe, but try substituting honey for any of your own dressing recipes or marinades.
Where our family probably consumes the greatest amount of honey, though, is as a substitute for store-bought breakfast cereals. One of our favorite breakfasts -- and it's quick and easy -- is a bowl of "quick" oats ("quick" oats are cut more finely, so they're less chewy and pasty than uncooked regular rolled oats) with cold milk or yogurt, sweetened with honey, and enhanced with whatever fruit (fresh or dried) or nuts are handy. Even simpler and a common snack for the kids or for us is a bowl of plain yogurt sweetened with tulip-poplar honey. (Plain yogurt, by the way, is cheap and easy to make, if you're so inclined.)
Another easy way to use honey in place of sugar is in canned goods, especially canned fruit. When making syrup to can peaches or pears, for example, we use honey in place of all the sugar. We also use a little honey in our pickled beets and sometimes in applesauce, if we want to sweeten it any further.
Honey has more concentrated sweetness than granulated sugar, so a little more than 3/4 cup of honey (about 10 ounces by weight) will sweeten a recipe as much as a full cup of sugar. If you have a good kitchen scale, it may be easier to pour out a given weight of honey instead of trying to measure out the honey by volume -- it can go straight from the jar to the mixing bowl without anything to stick to in between. Just put your mixing bowl straight on the scale, tare out the scale if that's easy, and pour the honey straight in until you reach the right number of ounces.  One cup of honey will weigh very nearly 12 ounces.
Baked goods can be a slightly trickier category for substitutions because more chemistry is at play than just sweetening effect. With a lot of baked goods recipes we'll substitute just a third or half of the sugar with honey. Flan (a simple custardy dessert) is greatly enhanced by the flavor of honey when substituted for the sugar.
And, last but certainly not least, honey makes for delicious homemade ice cream! We like to use about a half pound of honey (7-1/2 ounces by weight, to be exact) for every quart of liquid (milk/cream/pureed fruit).

No-knead bread

When this recipe came to me last year via my mother-in-law's neighbor I was thrilled. I'd been trying to make artisian type bread (chewy with a firm crust) with some luck but found the recipes long and the process slow. I was far from being able to share the bread with anyone beside our family. Then I tried this recipe and right away I knew this was a bread I had to share. I bake the bread in 2 1/2 quart white Corningware round casseroles. I can fit four in my oven at a time. If you're heating up the oven you might as well make some extra loaves to share! We've also had great fun with many variations including herb; cinnamon, nut and raisin; olive and cheese, and multi-grain. This is the original recipe but I use a bit more salt and bake it at about 425 for around 20 minutes with the lid on and another 12 minutes with the lid off. This will depend on how hot your oven runs.

New York Times No-Knead Bread
(adapted from Jim Lahey, Sullivan Street Bakery)

3 cups all-purpose or bread flour, more for dusting
1 5/8 cup water
¼ teaspoon instant yeast
1¼ teaspoons salt
Cornmeal or wheat bran as needed.

1. In a large bowl combine flour, yeast and salt. Add 1 5/8 cups water, and stir until blended; dough will be shaggy and sticky. Cover bowl with plastic wrap. Let dough rest at least 12 hours, preferably about 18, at warm room temperature, about 70 degrees.

2. Dough is ready when its surface is dotted with bubbles. Lightly flour a work surface and place dough on it; sprinkle it with a little more flour and fold it over on itself once or twice. Cover loosely with plastic wrap and let rest about 15 minutes.

3. Using just enough flour to keep dough from sticking to work surface or to your fingers, gently and quickly shape dough into a ball. Generously coat a cotton towel (not terry cloth) with flour, wheat bran or cornmeal; put dough seam side down on towel and dust with more flour, bran or cornmeal. Cover with another cotton towel and let rise for about 2 hours. When it is ready, dough will be more than double in size and will not readily spring back when poked with a finger.

4. At least a half-hour before dough is ready, heat oven to 450 degrees. Put a 6- to 8-quart heavy covered pot (cast iron, enamel, Pyrex or ceramic) in oven as it heats. When dough is ready, carefully remove pot from oven. Slide your hand under towel and turn dough over into pot, seam side up; it may look like a mess, but that is O.K. Shake pan once or twice if dough is unevenly distributed; it will straighten out as it bakes. Cover with lid and bake 30 minutes, then remove lid and bake another 15 to 30 minutes, until loaf is beautifully browned. Cool on a rack.

Yield: One 1½-pound loaf.

Milk and Honey Flan

2 cups milk
1/2 cup honey
3 eggs and 2 egg yolks
Warm milk. Beat eggs with honey. Stir in warm milk. Pour into 4 ramkin molds. Place molds in 9x13 pan with warm water. Bake at 400 degrees for 20 minutes. Serve with fruit or honey.

Spoon bread with leeks

3 large eggs separated
2 1/2 Cups milk
1/2 Teaspoon cayenne pepper
1 Teaspoon salt
1 Cup cornmeal
2 Teaspoons baking powder
1 Cup fresh corn (cut from 2 or 3 ears)
2 leeks halved lengthwise, and sliced
fried ham or bacon
honey to drizzle

Heat oven to 400 degrees. Butter a 6-cup baking dish. Lightly beat egg yolks; set aside.

In a saucepan over medium heat, bring 2 cups of milk, cayenne, and salt to a boil. Sprinkle cornmeal into liquid, stirring constantly, and cook until thick and smooth, about 3 minutes. Stir in remaining 1/2 cup milk, baking powder, and egg yolks.

In a mixing bowl, beat egg whites until stiff. Stir 1 large spoonful of whites into cornmeal mixture, then gently fold in remaining whites.

Pour half of the batter into prepared dish. Sprinkle on corn and leeks. Add ham or bacon. Cover with remaining batter. Bake until set and golden brown, about 35 to 40 minutes. Drizzle lightly with honey. Serve immediately.