Veggie


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CSA Season is Here!

With winter officially out the door, so are your excuses for not eating fresh and local.

Most CSA farms are now accepting enrollment for the 2012 season. CSA, or Community Supported Agriculture, is a great way to eat fresh and local. Basically, you buy shares in a local farm and they split up their harvests between all of the shareholders. Most have different plans based on your family size. You can receive shares weekly, bi-weekly or even monthly. Some drop off at a centralized location, some let you come to the farm and pick it yourself. There are meat, vegetables and eggs to be had easily and for a reasonable price, so get off your ass and get some good food!

Check out LocalHarvest, a database of CSA farms, farmers markets and co-ops across the nation.

The Eat Well Guide compiles businesses that provide local, sustainable and organic food.

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Cornerstone Cooking: Crunchy Black Bean Tacos

We love us a good blog-to-book success story (hellooooooo, agents — what ver happened to Friday Fuck-Ups, the novel?) So I was excited to get my copy of Cornerstone Cooking, the new cookbook from Nick Evans, sometimes ES contributor and the man behind Macheesmo.

Of course, leave it to a blogger to come up with the first cookbook I’ve seen in eons that is actually useful. The concept behind Cornerstone is one we can get behind: “learn to love your leftovers.” In each of his eight chapters, Nick offers up one “Cornerstone recipe” — the simple things that you should just know how to make perfectly (roast chicken, spicy black beans, grilled flank steak, baked potatoes, marinara sauce, lentils, homemade bread and vanilla ice cream). Then for each one, he gives you about a dozen more directions for how to use that cornerstone dish up over the course of a week. For example, how to turn those spicy black beans into black bean burgers, black bean soup, huevos rancheros, black bean salad, and our favorite — fried tacos!

Check out Cornerstone Cooking on Amazon, or keep reading for the recipe.

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in Celebs / Recipe / Veggie 81 comments
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In Our Ideal World, You Can Make Guacamole Out of Anything

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New Food Word Alert: Carnevoyeur

Move over, flexitarians. There’s a new ridiculous word for describing how people eat today. Via The Rambling Epicure:

A carnevoyeur is “a vegetarian who derives satisfaction from watching other people eat meat or hearing about the eating of meat.”

It refers to the type of person who says she’s a vegetarian and talks about it ad nauseum, but can’t resist asking if she can have a taste when she sees a plate of boeuf bourguignon or crispy fried bacon.

Know any carnevoyeurs?

 

in Bacon / Trends / Veggie 3 comments
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America’s Best New Sandwiches — 2012

You want sandwiches? We got sandwiches. Last year, Endless Simmer’s post on America’s Top 10 New Sandwiches was our most-read story of 2011, and even helped turn The New Luther into a bit of a sell-out phenomenon. But America’s sandwich artisans haven’t stopped innovating, and we haven’t stopped salivating. So here we go, for your drooling-at-work pleasure, this year’s list of America’s top 10 craziest, loveliest, cheesiest, most creative new sandwiches.

10. The Noble Pig —  Noble Pig Sandwiches, Austin

Texas may be best known for its beef, but perhaps not for long, if chefs John Bates and Brandon Martinez have anything to say about it. Their year-and-a-half-old Noble Pig serves up a namesake sandwich that somehow combines everything that is beautiful about pork products on one truly outstanding sandwich. Tender pulled pork, spicy slivers of ham, and crispy bits of bacon are all mixed together, topped with provolone cheese, and served on toasted, house-baked bread, for a porky trifecta that hits all of the spots. (Photo: Marshall Wright)

9. Pane et Panelle — Bar Stuzzichini, New York

Chickpeas may get typecast as functioning only in falafel form, but it turns out balls aren’t all they can do. Panelle is actually an old Sicilian street food snack—chickpeas and flour formed into light, airy strips and fried in olive oil. Stuzzichini‘s sandwich revives that classic and perfects it, layering crispy strips of panelle on a sesame-studded bun, in between levels of soft ricotta and caciocavallo cheeses. The result is a light-but-addictive sandwich that will make you curse every overly dense falafel wrap that has crossed your lips.

8. Chicharrones Banh Mi — Ink Sack, Los Angeles

There are a million banh mis in American nowadays, but we were most swept away by this version from Top Chef champ Michael Voltaggio. At his new Ink Sack sandwich shop, tender slices of pork belly and pork butt are topped with pickled vegetables, plus the kicker — crispy chicharróne fried pork rinds, creating one incredible multi-culti pork bomb.

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in Bacon / Cheese / Eggs / Featured / Lists / Pig / Red Meat / Restaurants / Sandwich / Top 10 Lists / Trends / Veggie 8 comments
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Cooking Down the Fridge: Inauthentic Fried Rice

Recently, someone criticized an old post of mine, calling my gado gado recipe “as authentic as General Tsao chicken.”  Ouch.  Except that I made no claims about authenticity, and when I made it again this week, it was delicious.  Someday, perhaps I will comb the web for the bestest recipe there is before embarking on a three-hour dinner-making odyssey.  I’ll make tortillas from scratch before collecting freshly laid eggs from my personal chickens for breakfast.  Given my current life situation, I estimate this to be a possibility in the year 2032.  Until then, the Moosewood Cookbook will do just fine.

So, all this is to say that if authenticity is what you seek STOP READING THIS POST RIGHT NOW.  You will be only left bitter and disappointed.

Moving on.  Growing up, we did not eat casseroles.  My mom was raised in a family of six children with one income, so canned mushroom soup was a pantry staple.  Tuna noodle casserole, chicken a la king, chicken pot pie, the iterations of the creamy baked dishes were endless.  As a result, my mom was rendered unable to eat another casserole once she began her own household.  And as a result of that, I never got into the whole casserole scene.  Without a cream sauce and puff pastry crust, though, what was I to do with my leftovers?

Half a block of tofu, some dried out rice and whitish looking baby carrots can stare me down from the fridge, and I can confidently stare right back thanks to one secret weapon: fried rice.  At least once a week, usually on the day that a tenuous nap situation has left my nerves ragged, I fire up the cast iron skillet (that’s right, I don’t even use a wok —culinary sacrilege, I know) and get to work emptying out the fridge in search of dinner.

Here’s what usually transpires:

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