Full of Beans

The seasons march on, but some foods stay the same.

Memorial Day Weekend marks the beginning of the summer dining season, if not the actual beginning of summer..  For some, this means picnic suppers. My summer begins when I can fire up the grill and start eating on a screened in porch with a view of the river.  I’d like to say that my summer begins with an early harvest, but the veggies are still tiny seedlings, the peas only 6 inches tall.

The garden is all potential now. My garden is all potential right now: a delivery of composted manure, a newly dug bed on a sunny slope, germinating beets, carrots, lettuce, and spinach.

What to eat on al fresco when you are still eating last year’s harvest?  Why baked beans, of course.  

Baked beans, hot dogs, cole slaw, pickles!

Baked beans are a picnic tradition in the Northeast.  They travel warm in a Dutch oven and can be made in advance or baked slowly underground in a bean hole. The bean hole is a well-established tradition in New England that may date back to Native Americans, who prepared beans seasoned with maple syrup, bits of venison, and bear grease.  They baked them in a pit dug into the ground. It is thought that early European settlers adopted the bean, which is a New World food, cooking it with molasses or maple syrup and salt pork. Beans baked in cast iron pots buried in the ground became a lumber camp specialty and remains popular in New England – and especially in Maine -- to this day, particularly for public suppers and community gatherings.

Vermont used to be a center of bean agriculture.  There were bean elevators north of Burlington in the same way that there are grain elevators in the Midwest.  Trains sent the beans to Montreal, Boston, and New York and returned with tourists, who even then enjoyed Vermont’s rustic charms. Then, during World War II, the government set bean prices at a low of $.85 a pound, to encourage meatless eating at a time when meat was rationed.  But there was no ceiling on milk prices, so Vermont farmers switched to more lucrative dairy.  Local bean growing is slowly returning as milk prices tank, but demand far exceeds supply.

Dried beans are a long-season crop.  They do best in the flatlands and valleys, not in my short-season, mountain-top garden.

For cooking baked beans, I prefer navy beans, though yellow-eyes, soldier beans, and Jacob’s cattle beans are popular choices around here. Navy beans soaked overnight. I don’t bother with a bean hole; a 300° oven does fine for me.  And what goes best with baked beans for a summer supper?  Why, hot dogs, of course.  And cole slaw.  Welcome to summer.  I’m feeling full of beans.

Sunday Supper Baked Beans
Makes 6 servings

The two-stage cooking process (beans are boiled, then baked) is necessary to achieve a perfect texture.  Once the bean comes in contact with the acidic flavorings (ketchup, coffee, and so on) the skins will soften no further, so they must be cooked to tenderness first. This is a fairly classic baked bean recipe, tweaked a little for greater depth of flavor.  In the vegetarian version below, chipotle chiles replace the bacon for a touch of smoke.

2 cups dried navy or pea beans, soaked overnight and drained
8 cups water
1 large onion, halved and thinly sliced
1/2 cup pure maple syrup or firmly packed brown sugar
1/2 cup ketchup
1/2 cup brewed coffee
2 tablespoons soy sauce
1 tablespoon prepared mustard
2 teaspoons powdered ginger
4 ounces thick-cut bacon, diced 

1. Combine the beans with the water in a large saucepan.  Cover and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat and simmer, partially covered, until just tender, 1 to 1 1/2 hours. Skim off any foam that rises to the top of the pot.

2. Transfer the beans and their cooking water to a bean pot or covered casserole. Add the onion, maple syrup, ketchup, coffee, soy sauce, mustard, ginger, and bacon and mix well.  

3. Cover and bake at 300° F (no need to preheat) for about 3 hours.  Check occasionally and add more hot water if needed to make sure the beans remain moist. On the other hand, if the beans seem too soupy remove the cover during the last 30 minutes. Serve hot.
Vegetarian Baked Beans.  Omit the bacon.  Add 2 tablespoons chopped chipotles in adobo sauce and proceed as above.

Adapted from Recipes from the Root Cellar by Andrea Chesman.  ©2010 Andrea Chesman.  All rights reserved.

Volunteers in the Garden

Easy Pumpkin CakeI’m not talking about getting the kids or the neighbors or friends to help with big chores, like digging new beds or erecting fences.  I’m talking about volunteers, spontaneous growth of unplanned and unplanted vegetables.


Some people call them weeds.


You don’t have to be particularly inexperienced or particularly soft-hearted to think that volunteers are a good thing.  I rarely have to plant dill or cilantro because it just pops up near wherever it grew the previous year.  Tomatoes often volunteer and because I plant heirlooms, they breed true.  Last year we had a generous harvest from a single volunteer tomatillo plant (which was something of a mystery because I’ve never grown tomatillos).


So last year when a volunteer winter squash popped up in a corner of the garden, we—my son and I—allowed it to spread across the lawn.  We couldn’t guess the variety until it had fruited, so against my better judgment, we let it grow.  I knew it was likely to be some ancient winter squash throwback, some variety whose genes were mixed into a hybrid variety for a single characteristic like color, or days to harvest, but not necessarily fine flavor. It certainly grew vigorously and fruited copiously.  


The harvested squash turned out to have no verifiable identity. It looked like a green pumpkin, with paler flesh.  “Can I compost it now?”   I asked throughout October and early November.  “No, no, don’t throw it out!  Cook it.”  Who throws away good food?  Not me.

Spaghetti squash and no-name squash/pumpkin harvest

I cooked the odd squash and found the flavor insipid but not bad.  The flesh was watery, perhaps by nature but perhaps because it had been such a wet growing season. Whatever it was, I put by several quarts in the freeze because I’m not the type to waste food.  I figured even weird, watery, no-name squash would be fine in this foolproof recipe for pumpkin cake


Now it is time to use up the old harvest to make way for the new.  And I still have several containers of this squash. 


This quick and easy recipe is perfect for using up pureed winter squash or pumpkin—frozen or canned, insipid or inspiring. I topped it with chopped pecans and sent it off to the refreshment table for the May Ripton Community Coffeehouse concert with Dollar General.  It was eaten and I heard no complaints—sugar fixes what nature doesn’t. 

Easy Pumpkin Cake

Serves 12 to 15

At my children’s elementary school, this recipe was passed from mother to mother and from class to class.  It was featured at the school’s annual Thanksgiving feast, a meal prepared by parents and school children and shared with all the school families and the town elders each year.  It has become the cake I am most likely to whip up when a bake sale or potluck dinner catches me unprepared.  And it is absolutely foolproof.

First I drained the squash puree so it would be less watery.

2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour

2 teaspoons baking powder

2 teaspoons ground cinnamon

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon salt

1 1/2 cups sugar

1 cup canola oil

4 large eggs

1 3/4 cups cooked and mashed pumpkin or winter squash puree 

Cream Cheese Frosting

1 (8-ounce) package cream cheese, softened

1/2 cup butter, softened

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

2 to 2 1/2 cups confectioners’ sugar, sifted

1. Preheat the oven to 350° F.  Butter and flour a 9- by 13-inch baking pan.

2. In a medium-sized mixing bowl, combine the flour, baking powder, cinnamon baking soda, and salt.  Mix well.
 

3. In a large mixing bowl, combine the sugar and oil and beat until light.  Add the eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition.  Beat in the pumpkin.  Add the flour mixture and beat just until thoroughly blended.  Pour the batter into the prepared pan.

4. Bake for 30 to 35 minutes, until the top springs back when lightly touched.

5. Cool completely on a rack.

6.  To make the frosting, beat together the cream cheese, butter, and vanilla.  Add 2 cups confectioners’ sugar and beat until smooth.  If the frosting is too thin, add the additional 1/2 cup confectioners’ sugar and beat until smooth.

7. Spread evenly over the cooled cake.

From Serving up the Harvest by Andrea Chesman.  © 2009 Andrea Chesman.  All Rights Reserved.

Borscht! Glorious Borscht

What’s not to love about borscht?  It is infinitely variable, infinitely delicious, and beautiful to behold.

Borscht There aren’t many soups that are equally delicious hot or cold, in simplified or embellished form.  

The strange thing about borscht is that kids hate it, and I don’t know why.  I hated it as a kid, my kids hated it when young.  The odd thing is, we all agree it tastes the same; it is just now we perceive it as delicious, as in, “When are you going to make borscht again?!?”

One of the great things about borscht is that it uses a root vegetable that has staying power in the root cellar (your’s or your friendly farmer).  So this time of year, before the local harvests (at least in the Northeast), there are still beets to enjoy.  Be aware, though, that some beets may look okay from the outside, but be funky within.Some of these beets are moldy on the inside and must be discarded  Therefore it is a good idea to buy more than you think you will need.

If it turns out that the weather is chilly on the day serve your soup, serve it hot.  If it turns out to be a dazzling, hot spring day such as we have had lately, then serve it chilled if you like—with or without the potato.  My family is split about the potato with a chilled soup.  The potato lovers say potato is always appropriate.  I’m more inclined to accompany a chilled version with buttered rye bread.  Glorious! 

 

Borscht

Serves 4

Getting ready to cook borscht.

4 medium to large beets (1 1/2 to 2 pounds)

1 onion

4 cups vegetable broth, chicken broth, beef broth, or water

4 thin-skinned potatoes

Juice of 1/2 lemon

Salt and freshly ground black pepper

Sour cream

Dried dill, to garnish

1.  Peel and grate the beets and onions.  A food processor makes lovely, uniform shreds, which greatly enhances the soup.Shredded beets. The onions quickly take on the color of the beets.

2.  Combine the beets, onions, and broth in a saucepan.  The broth should just barely cover the vegetables.  Add additional broth or water if needed.  Bring to a boil, cover, and reduce the heat to a simmer.  Simmer for 30 minutes.

3.  Meanwhile, put the potatoes in a saucepan, cover with water, and bring to a boil.  Boil gently for about 15 minutes, until the potatoes are tender, about 20 minutes.  Drain and keep warm.

4.  When the beets have simmered for 30 minutes, add the lemon juice and salt and pepper to taste.  Simmer for another 5 minutes, until the beets are fully tender and the flavors have blended.

5.  To serve, put a potato in each bowl. Break up the potato with a fork or potato masher, but do not mash.  Ladle the hot soup over the potato in each bowl and top with a dollop of sour cream.  Sprinkle dill over the sour cream and serve at once.

Adapted from Recipes from the Root Cellar by Andrea Chesman.  ©2010 Andrea Chesman.  All rights reserved.

Use It Up Season

Maple-Pear Tea Cake. Plate by Mar Harrison

Old accounts of life in Vermont—everywhere really—used to note that spring, before the new crops started to yield, was the “hunger season.”  Stores of food were mostly gone, with the exception, perhaps, of some limp root vegetables, sprouting potatoes, and rotting apples in the root cellar. 

These days, in North America at least, hunger is more likely to be a year-round consequence of an unequal economy and not diminished food stores.  Still, neither forest nor fields are offering up fresh local foods just yet.  For the thrifty homesteader and localvore, it is “use it up season,” time to make sure you have eaten all the fruits and vegetables, jams and pickles you have put by, to make room for this year’s harvests.

I have a tendency to save frozen berries for a “special treat.”  So they are one of the items that tends to linger in the freezer.  Not so with tray-frozen wild blueberries, which were eaten as a snack by the handful and gone before the first frost.  Canned pears is another item that tends to linger, perhaps because of my insistence on canning in “healthy” apple juice rather than a sweet sugar syrup.  Sprinkle it with sugar, I say, if that’s what you want!

This year’s maple syrup crop was meager at my house—only a couple of quarts.  But the yield from 2011 was so great that even though I gave away plenty as gifts, there is still more in the freezer.  So when it was time to bake a treat for the Ripton Community Coffeehouse concert this month, a Maple-Pear Tea Cake was the obvious choice.

Ingredients for Maple-Pear Tea Cake, including pears canned in apple juice

I'm no Marie Antoinette.  I know that cake has nothing to do with real, physical hunger.  But in this season, when we hunger for working in the garden and renewing our outdoor lives, a sweet treat is always welcome. 

Maple-Pear Tea Cake

Serves 8 to 12

The combination of maple syrup and pears is heavenly, and this cake proves it.  A pint of pears yields one loaf; a quart would yield a double batch.

2 1/2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour

1 tablespoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1/4 teaspoons salt

2 large or 4 small pears, peeled (if fresh) and diced

3/4 cup pure maple syrup

1/4 cup firmly packed brown sugar

1/4 cup unsalted butter, melted

1 large egg, beaten 

1/2 cup sour cream or yogurt

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1. Preheat the oven to 350° F.  Butter a 9 by 5-inch loaf pan.

2.  Sift together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt.  Add the pears, tossing them to coat with the flour.

3.  Beat together the maple syrup, brown sugar, melted butter, egg, sour cream, and vanilla.  Stir in the dry ingredients. Spoon the batter into the prepared pan and smooth the top. 

4. Bake for 1 hour, or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean and the cake has begins to pull away from the sides of the pan.

5.  Cool on a wire rack for 15 minutes.  Invert onto a wire rack and finish cooling.  

A very moist slice. Plate by Mar Harrison

From 250 Treasured Country Dessert.  © 2009 Andrea Chesman and Fran Raboff.  All Rights Reserved.

March Market Madness

The email arrived in my mailbox with the title “March Market Madness.”  My friend Lauren Slayton had a problem.  She is a market gardener, brilliant baker, and superb cook who sells baked goods, soups, and other prepared foods at the Middlebury Farmers’ Market.  Like many growers trying to earn a living off the land, she finds it necessary to market “value-added” products.  Carrots may be a dime a dozen in the growers’ bins, but Lauren’s creamy Carrot-Ginger Soup is a whole other story.  It flies out of the market.  Likewise her potpies and rustic tarts, not to mention her breads, brownies, and cookies.

Now that it is March, Lauren’s supply of the vegetables she grew herself has dwindled. So she proposed a contest to help her come up with a localvore-inspired recipe for the next market, with extra brownie points (literally, meaning she would include brownies with the prize), if the recipe included onions or garlic, her last remaining vegetables.

 Red onions. Photo by Lauren Slayton

Onions don’t get enough love.  They are a workhorse in the kitchen, the backbone flavor note in many, many soups and sauces.  I don’t think my mother ever cooked a single dinner than didn’t start with “first you sauté an onion.”  But beyond French onion soup and batter-coated onion rings, there aren’t a lot of classic onion dishes.  So Lauren’s market regulars might have been stumped by the challenge.  But I wasn’t.

Just that week, I watched as my last pint jar of Rosemary Onion Confit was opened and consumed on biscuits with some nicely aged goat cheese from Twig Farm in Cornwall, Vermont.  I knew that onions can be the star of the show, so I sent her a recipe that will appear in The Pickled Pantry, which will be out in June.  The recipe makes a delectable, savory-sweet jam or rosemary-scented caramelized onions.  I’ve enjoyed it on turkey sandwiches and used it to as a filling for a pork tenderloin.

 Rosemary Onion Confit on a biscuit

Lauren used the confit as a filling for a rustic tart.  What will this relish inspire you to make?

Photo by Lauren Slayton

Rosemary Onion Confit

Makes 3 pints

            . 

¼ cup extra virgin olive oil

3 pounds onions, chopped

3/4 cup sugar

1 cup cider vinegar

1 tablespoon rosemary

1 tablespoon soy sauce, or to taste

Freshly ground black pepper

1.  Heat the oil in a large saucepan over medium-high heat.  Add the onions, reduce the heat to low, and stir to coat the onions with the oil. Cook, stirring occasionally, until the onions are brown and meltingly tender, about 30 minutes.

2.  Stir in the sugar, cider vinegar, rosemary, and soy sauce and simmer for 5 minutes.

3.  Pack the onion mixture into clean hot pint jars, leaving ½ inch headspace.  Remove any air bubbles and seal.

4. Process for 10 minutes in a boiling water bath.  Let cool undisturbed for 12 hours.  Store in a cool dry place.  

Recipe from The Pickled Pantry by Andrea Chesman.  ©2012.  All rights reserved.