Week Six: The Story

I know, I know, I know. It's the start of week seven.

BACK OFF ALREADY!

That was me, honing Chris Farley, by the way. I'm not even sure what skit or what movie but I felt very Chris Farley-ish typing it all angrily, in caps, like some modern day technological yell of frustration in the nooks and crannies of the blogosphere ethernet.

Something like that.

Stressed out fat-guy-in-a-little-coat fit of rage aside, I'll confess that last week's meal was a total farmer's market geek out. I truly felt like the parodied couple on Portlandia, the one at Gilt Club ordering chicken, going to great, great lengths to ensure it was raised local and humanely.

Mmm Chicory. Just like endive and
choke (frisee) lettuce.

That's because at least one component of each piece of the meal, save for the avocado, came from the Hillsdale Farmer's Market.

Sidebar -- I'm a bit distraught; I don't get to go to the farmer's market for another FOUR WHOLE WEEKS thanks to this weekend's Landmark Education forum in Seattle and then a much-needed vacation to the coast with Jason two weekends after that.  -- End sidebar.

Make sure to get your oil hot enough
before dropping these in.

Anyway. Dinner was more like a savory, comfort food brunch meal. I called back to my Southern roots, frying up a yellow heirloom tomato in bread crumbs seasoned with paprika, salt and pepper. That little fried baby sat as the boat (a raft if you will) for the farmer's market egg that Jason poached (Really...the suggestion that poaching a fresh egg is much easier than an older egg isn't a wives tail...it's WAY easier).

Who ever thought comfort food and
salad couldn't be one in the same?

The bacony cornbread, warm and perfectly moist, combined with the sweetness of the balsamic was a savory version of pancakes and syrup while the egg, with its broken yellow yoke, combined with the creamy avocado and salty hot tomato and crunch of spicy arugula for a salad that wasn't as healthy as could be but really, with the combined texture and tastes, it just really didn't matter.

The only thing that was missing was a glass of perspiring sweet tea.

Local, Portland tea, of course.

Culinary Concoctions Week Six: The Ingredient

So...math equation for you all:

(Work Stress + Life Stress) (Lack of sleep + Middle-of-the-week Tummy Woes)  = Me cooking, but not writing about it.

I can't believe how I've fallen behind with blogging this week! Dang it!

So...with that, a brief on this week's ingredient, chicory.

Jason and I went to (surprise, surprise) the Hillsdale Farmer's Market on Sunday and raided Ayer Creek Farm's stand, meddling our way in between women stockpiled with parsnips, salad greens and slices of winter squash boasting the boldest orange hue I've ever seen, to pick up a few bunches of chicory.

"I have no idea what to do with these," I confessed to Jason, whose eye was wandering to the one pound bag of ground cornmeal (that yes, he subsequently purchased).

So, come Sunday night, I did my research:

Chicory, a/k/a blue sailors, coffee weed and succory, is a bushy perennial herbaceous plants that's cultivate for salad leaves. However, it's roots are also used, baked then ground and used as a coffee substitute.

In the US, real chicory is often confused as curly endive. They're not one in the same. However, chicory leaves also include raddichio (a/k/a choke lettuce), sugarleaf and Belgian endives.

Ahhhh it all makes sense now.

To really geek out with ingredient research...I found that the chicory plant is one of the earliest plants cited in recorded literature. Horace mentions it in his own diet: "As for me, olives, endives and mallows provide substance." While I loathe olives, at least that gives me a starting point for creating a recipe.

Moreover, Lord Monboddo described the plant in 1779 as the 'chicoree,' which the French cultivated as a pot herb (No, fellow Portlanders, not a pot pot herb). Rather, chicory is, and has been since the Napoleanic Era, used in coffee or as a coffee substitute. And of course, even the Egyptians used it for the same purpose.

Recipe starting point number two...complete.

More about the recipe tomorrow!

Week Four: The Story

If you could put every warm feeling of winter -- wool mittens, your favorite sweatshirt right out of the dryer, the warmth of a coffee cup on your hands, the steam of tea -- and pair it against the coldest day of the season -- just miserable with such a bone-aching chill that it takes every iota of strength, courage and iron-will to get out of bed --

You have those two yin and yangs juxtaposed against each other?

Good.

Now just recall how truly, almost other-worldly that warm feeling is when you finally get out of that cold and...

Well...

Then...

You'll have some kind of idea as to how fantastic the vegetarian stuffing filled chard purses were.

Hold on. I need a moment.

Feel free to entertain yourself with this.

Okay. I'm ready.

Pre-leek-tied purse.

The stuffing turned out really great, especially with the warm savory mouth of the chard. I'll admit, in lieu of butter, I opted for a nice healthy dollop of (You guessed it) bacon grease to saute my vegetables in. The bacon grease added an unbelievably savory and subtly smoky flavor.

I'm sorry Meghann; I know you were hoping I wouldn't 'ruin it with bacon' but what can I say? The little blue bowl of warm bacon grease just spoke to me and the greedy little fat kid in me who would kill for that umami taste and texture just couldn't help herself.  Trust me, considering my growing waistline and the fact that I'm supposed to using this cooking experience to be uhm, healthy and sustainable (Which okay, bacon grease isn't healthy but I've got a solid argument that it does, indeed fall into the sustainable, oh-so-Portland tail-to-nose cooking ideology), she's definitely getting a time out in the corner (Followed by another early a.m. ten mile run).

Yeah, you can get an idea of
how small my kitchen really is.

Sidebar conversation aside, the purses were, I'll admit, kind of a pain to make. I'm actually pretty baffled that Epicurious/Gourmet suggested it as an appetizer. I mean, as much I love cooking and entertaining and wowing guests with pretty looking and amazingly tasting food, I'd have to have my arm twisted pretty hard to make these as more than just a meal (Which actually, they're quite filling and can easily stand alone as a hearty vegetarian dish -- hint, hint Piper, Ariel and all you vegetarians and vegans out there. To make it vegan, just use olive oil and swap the recipe's chicken broth for vegetable broth and perhaps add an extra pinch of salt to make up for the flat flavor of veggie broth). After all, one bunch of chard, which was about eight leaves thick, yielded six small-to-medium sized purses.

While a pain in the rear, they were still so so so worth it.

Really, had I chard in my fridge right now, considering I've still got half a loaf of stuffing...yeah, I'd definitely make them again. Right here, right now.

The great thing about that would be the fact that prep time would last no more than 20 minutes (as opposed to the 90 minutes I spent during round one) and, knowing what I know now (See tips below), I'm pretty certain they'd be even better. 

This one was special.
It needed a lot of leeks.

If you do make these (Which I so so so so SO recommend), keep these tips in mind:

1. Blanch your chard one leaf at a time. Pat dry them immediately after, otherwise, as I talked about before, the water will start to break your leaf down faster than a Portlander can put a bird on something and call it art.

2. Dry your blanched leeks asap too, for the aforementioned reason.
3. Make the stuffing ahead of time. It's not that time consuming to chop a bunch of veggies, but combined with everything else, you could save yourself a solid hour when you're hungry for some winter loving by making the stuffing ahead of time.

4. Use bacon grease. Like really. It's delicious.
5. Get creative with the stuffing. Really, my stuffing was more of a what's-in-the-fridge concoction. You can really play with the flavors, omitting the sage and Craisins for a less-Thanksgiving taste, adding paprika or curry for smoky, curried flavors, adding meat or a par-cooked grain like quinoa for extra carbs.