Rhode Island 100 mile

We’ve been noticing that a bunch of vendors up at the Wintertime Farmer’s Market in Pawtucket have been selling pea shoots lately. We picked some up to try them out and they’re very tasty. You have to pick the leaves off the tougher stems, but other than that, just a little olive oil and salt is all they need. We also have used them to make a coulis to serve with fish…just blanch them, blend them up with a little water and heat with a little butter…either drizzle the sauce on top or use as base to present your plate…they add a nice green punch to wintertime dinner!

-Josh

…as some of you know, every year I make my own hard cider. I was going to Hyland Orchard out in Sturbridge, MA when I lived up in Worcester, but this year I was able to find a RI vendor. Phantom Farms up in Cumberland was able to sell me 30 gallons- I dropped off my sanitized glass containers and they filled them with cider- right off the press. Although the cider fermenting process isn’t all that in depth, there are a few key steps that have to be taken to ensure the cider ferments properly…the first one being sanitization. Everything that touches (or has the potential to) the cider has to be thoroughly sanitized with an iodine based sanitizer. I like the iodine because it is a no rinse solution, so you end up using half the water you normally would because you don’t have to rinse…

Here is a typical container that I use to get the cider and also ferment with…this one is a 6.5 gallon glass carboy that has some raw cider in it…as you can see the raw cider is pretty opaque due to all the particulates that are present in the liquid…

Here I am heating up a gallon of the raw cider to 170 degrees to dissolve the sugar that I add to help produce the alcohol. I add about a pound of sugar per gallon of cider (it could be white or brown sugar- or even honey) to give the yeast a little more nutrients to do their thing.

After all the sugar has dissolved, the solution needs to be brought down to a temperature that can support the propagation of the yeast colony…which happens to be around 75 degrees. The thing is, you want to lower the temperature as quick as possible because this is the time where the cider is most vulnerable to infection…other contaminants such as bacteria or outside yeast can make their way into the cider if left exposed for long enough time. The coil you see in the pot is hooked up to the faucet- cold water circulates through the copper coil which exchanges heat from the cider to the water flowing through it. The hot water exits into the sink through the clear hose at the end of the coil.

Once the cider is cool, it is added back into the carboy along with a yeast culture. The yeast that you use determines a bunch of parameters about the final product- dryness, alcohol content and carbonation can all be controlled by the yeast. The picture above shows the particulate matter settling out a few minutes after the yeast is pitched.

Now the wait begins…the cider is kept in a place where the temperature is constant- around 65 degrees. An airlock on top of the carboy allow the CO2 from the fermentation process to escape, but doesn’t allow any outside air into the container. The primary fermentation can take up to a couple of weeks and then the cider is transferred to another carboy and allowed to sit for up to two months…this allows the particulates to settle to the bottom of the container making for a clear final product…

…we’ll cover bottling on a later post…

-Josh

First of all, we decided to spruce up the blog for 2009- we picked a different template- let us know if you like it or not (or have any suggestions to make it easier to read)…onto the post:

…for Valentine’s Day this year, I decided to cook Ingrid a multi-course meal for her “present”. Although not all ingredients are local, I was able to sneak some foods that were locally grown into the mix.

First mission, to create Ingrid a cocktail that contained alcohol, but didn’t taste like it. I added a little grenadine into the bottom of the glass, took one shot of Bailey’s, one shot of Godiva Chocolate Liqueur and two shots of light cream, shook them together and sprinkled cocoa on top. Results, you ask? Ingrid asked for a second!

First course- I’ve been growing more and more interested in the area of Molecular Gastronomy and those who practice it- Ferran Adria, Grant Achatz, Jose Andres and Ken Oringer, just to name a few. Completing some of these recipes are close to impossible, due to some of the equipment that you need but some are pretty easy and most are very cool. These were little crackers that when cooked, puff into little cracker pillow which are hollow. When they cool, you poke a hole in the side and inject a cheddar cheese and milk mixture. I had to improvise because I didn’t have a syringe- I ended up buying a 10ml medicine syringe used to give babies medicine. The hole at the end of the syringe was rather large, so i had to poke a pretty big hole in the side of the cracker, but it worked well. The cheese mixture was a little runny so it started to soak through the wall of the cracker- next time, I’ll have to make the filling a little more viscous.

These little cubes didn’t come out very well at all. They were supposed to be pine nut covered marshmallows which weren’t very marshmallowy at all. The recipe calls for heating 1/4 cup of milk to 105 degrees, adding gelatin and whipping it in a mixer. You then add 1 3/4 cup cold milk to the mix, all at once- it continued to mix and get foamy, but the gelatin ended up falling to the bottom of the mixer, leaving foaming milk which eventually turned back to liquid. I tried a second batch, but this time I didn’t use the mixer- I ended up getting really solid milk jello which the pine nuts would not stick to. Not very appetizing. I ended up throwing the rest of the jello-milk really high up in the air and out into the street. It hit the pavement and bounced.

These tidbits were really freaky and incredibly tasty! What you see here are buffalo mozzarella “ravioli” or spherical mozzarella, a technique that Ferran Adria of El Bulli created. The calcium chloride in the liquidized mozzarella reacts in a sodium alginate solution to form a capsule around it- allowing you to serve a liquid like you normally would a solid. You put the whole thing in your mouth and burst it with your tongue- out squirts a nice mozzarella explosion! I put a different salt on each “ravioli” and used basil oil on the plate. The capsules have to kept in water and were hard to drain, causing the basil oil to run all over the place. Next time, I’ll serve them already plated on a spoon.

Onion Tart- one of the tastiest parts of the meal. I made my first ever puff pastry dough- it was quite the experience, but well worth it. On the dough was a mix of ricotta from Narragansett Creamery and creme fraiche, grated comte cheese, caramelized shallot and everyone’s favorite- bacon! This one is definitely a keeper.

Olive Oil Poached Salmon, Pea Shoot Coulis, Orange Confit and Chives- This was an incredible combination of flavors- the soft salmon, the acid and sweetness of the orange, the creaminess of the coulis and bite of the chive all went together so well! I got this recipe from the French Laundry Cookbook- the pea shoots were bought that morning at the Wintertime Farmer’s Market in Pawtucket.

Roasted Whole Duck, Plum Chutney and Stovetop Potatoes and Onions- This dish came out pretty good- Ingrid and I decided that we probably won’t cook too many more ducks- the yield and the taste aren’t that great. We would much rather buy a locally raised chicken that we could eat throughout the week. The plum chutney was very good however and we found another good recipe to use our stored potatoes in- thanks to Jamie Oliver!

Chocolate Bottomed-Brioche Bread Pudding with Port Ice Cream- The only thing local in here are the eggs- sugar, chocolate and port wine don’t come from around here, unfortunately. This was a great dessert- I baked the brioche in the afternoon and used it as the bread for the pudding. I don’t even want to tell you how much butter and Rhode Island eggs are in this tasty treat!

-Josh

There was a great article in today’s Boston Globe about eating locally in New England during winter. Although we are not eating 100% local right now, we try to buy as much local items as possible to supplement what we have managed to store in our freezer. The Wintertime Farmer’s Market in Pawtucket has been really great this year. There have been plenty of meat purveyors and a smattering of produce- we bought some excellent pea shoots last week, along with some apples still left over from the Fall. All in all, we feel that even though we’re not eating 100% local right now, we’re still helping our local farmers by giving them at least a little support. On to the article!

Yesterday, before the Superbowl I cooked up a couple of pizzas that were made from scratch. I found a decent looking recipe in the Fearless Chef cookbook that seemed easy enough. I made the dough in the morning, punched it down early in the afternoon and then let it rise again right before rolling it. I almost messed up the recipe because it called for activating the yeast in a half cup of apple juice- which we did not have. I substituted 1/2 cup of water instead, but when I mixed the wet ingredients into the dry, things seemed a little odd…there wasn’t enough liquid. I went back and read over the recipe and noticed that I was supposed to add 3/4 cups of water and the 1/2 cup of apple juice. I added the additional water, but that made it too wet but another

tablespoon of flour helped that out. The recipe also calls for 2 1/2 cups of all-purpose flour, but I substituted 1 cup of whole wheat, so that probably accounted for some of my problems as well. The sauce also came from the same book and was very simple- onion, garlic, red wine, oregano, and canned crushed tomatoes (really good sauce!). I cooked one of the pizzas in a cast iron skillet and one on a cookie sheet at 500 degrees- I was supposed to use the grill, but it ran out of gas. The skillet pizza had some of our homemade sausage on it and Naragansett Creamery mozzarella. The cookie sheet pizza featured artichokes and the mozzarella. I think the final results came out in a tie- I liked the skillet pizza and Ingrid liked the cookie sheet version. Neither came out crispy on the bottom, but were good nonetheless. The sausage tasted good, but was a little dry and grainy…so we’ll have to hone those down during the Sausage Session, Act II.