Rhode Island 100 mile

San Francisco!

ri100mi — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 01:27:56 +0000

…if you guessed San Francisco/Sonoma County , you were right! Ingrid had a conference in San Francisco last Tuesday through Thursday and then we headed up to her friend’s house in Sebastopol for Friday and Saturday nights…I was able to explore the city when Ingrid was at the conference, and we both had some dining adventures when she was able…so here’s a rundown of Day 1:

We landed in San Francisco to a downpour around 11:30 in the morning…Ingrid knew she had to be at the conference at around 4, and we had an important stop to make, so we asked the taxi driver to stop at Dynamo Doughnuts on our way to the hotel…the mission was to try one of their bacon maple doughnuts (and some others, of course!) He obliged, and waited while I jumped out and got us some doughnuts…armed with the goods, he took us to the hotel and we sampled the treats…not as good as the Doughnut Plant in NY, but they were pretty tasty and the maple bacon was definitely the best of the bunch. They mix up the flavors on a daily basis, so maybe we just hit them on an off day. With little time to spare, we headed down (up? over?) California Street to the Ferry Building where the Farmer’s Market was being held. The market ended at two, so we had to hurry and we got a quick introduction to how hilly San Francisco really is. We made it to the market a half hour before closing and we were impressed with the ‘winter’ selections- especially the citrus. We picked up a couple of oranges for the hotel room and then headed inside for lunch at Boccalone. These guys specialize in cured meats and sausages- you can get sandwiches, simple platters or “cones” of their house made meats. I chose to get a three meat platter and Ingrid ordered their sausage sandwich. We ate at the little bar- everything was fantastic and well done. Post lunch, we wandered around the Ferry Building checking out the food stores and restaurants before heading back to the hotel. Ingrid took off for the conference and I headed over to Haight-Ashbury to check out the Magnolia Brewery. The walk was a little further than I thought, but well worth the trouble because I was rewarded with some excellent beers. Magnolia specializes in house-made European styles of beer and sustainably raised food offerings. The atmosphere was rather loose but service was attentive. I sampled their IPA, Saison and Schwarzbier-all were good, but I think I liked the Saison the best. I checked out the area aftwerwards and walked back to the hotel to get ready for dinner. Ingrid, myself and her students headed back to the Ferry Building for dinner at the Slanted Door…we had a little bit of a wait, but that allowed us to try some appetizers- one of them being an open-faced dumpling that was quite unusual in that the the dough was on the bottom with the ingredients spread on top…the dough was a little chewy…some us liked it and some didn’t. We were seated for dinner a little before our inital wait time was up – the menu was had a definitive Vietnamese influence- I settled on the flatiron steak with all of us sampling something different. Everyone enjoyed their meals and it was a great way to cap off our first day in San Francisco!

-Josh

Doughnuts on the counter at Dynamo:

Maple Bacon Goodness:

The next four shots are from the Market:

Hand-powered meat slicer at Boccalone:

The three meat platter:

Ingrid’s sandwich:

Magnolia Brewery:

The beer line-up:

Tagged: san francisco

Where did we go?

ri100mi — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 19:00:31 +0000

…can anyone guess where we’ve been?

Tagged: quiz

Lacking…

ri100mi — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 13:22:33 +0000

…sorry for the lack of posts as we finished up our local month…we’ve been super busy lately and haven’t really had any stellar meals to write about (although we did do the cod for Kim and Chris)…we did make it through the month, though and we ended up using a good portion of our local rations from the freezer. We were surprised at the availability at the Wintertime Market in regards to vegetable selection- I think that we lucked out in that sense. We weren’t left scrounging around looking for things other than potatoes! Now that anything is fair game again, and with our schedules relaxing a bit, I’m sure we’ll have more time to devote to the act of cooking and posting on the blog…

-Josh

Straight from the horse’s, um…cow’s mouth.

ri100mi — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 02:15:43 +0000

Caution- this post may cause a little queasiness in some people…

…we went on a little food adventure this week by experimenting with some beef tongue. Simmons Farm had one at the Farmer’s Market a couple of Saturdays ago, so of course, I bought it. I found a recipe in Fergus Henderson’s Head to Tail cookbook and it didn’t look too hard to get this otherwise forgotten piece of the beast into some edible form. I brined it for a week in a sugar and salt concoction and then boiled for three hours with some carrot, onion and some herbs and spices…then came the nasty part- getting the “skin” off the outside. It really wasn’t too bad- but it did seem a little wierd (all I kept thinking about is my own tongue). The meat was then sliced thin and grilled a bit with some canola oil. We ate it on top of some leftover toasted French bread rounds with some mustard and local greens. The verdict? A richer corned beef…not something to do too often, but we might revisit this someday…and no, it won’t be fed to any unexpecting guests! -Josh

Tagged: beef tongue

Cabbage . . . it’s almost gone!

ri100mi — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 01:13:51 +0000

Wow – cabbage really can go the distance! Josh and I just finished the first batch of the cabbage soup. Though I guess we didn’t really finish it all as there are at least two more servings in the freezer. But we finished the soup that was not frozen. One of the things that surprised me the most was how much I like it. Before our whole local challenge, when I thought of cabbage all I pictured was limp, light green leaves with very little taste or texture. The way we have been eating it, especially the cabbage and apple salad – it great. It has a fair amount of crunch and snap and we get the purple cabbage so it adds a nice bit of color to the plate. Yes – we still are getting the potatoes in on a regular basis (50 pounds goes a long way!) but we’ll be getting our fair share of cabbage this winter!

Tagged: cabbage

What to do with Cabbage?

ri100mi — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 00:23:39 +0000

We picked up a head of cabbage at the market a couple of weeks ago and it’s been sitting in the vegetable drawer of our refrigerator ever since…so I pulled out the cookbooks and found a couple of good uses for it- cabbage with apples and onions (pictured) and a nice hearty soup with the rest. I always forget how much cabbage there is in a head- once you start slicing and dicing, it adds up pretty quick! Roughly 2/3 of the head went into the cabbage/apple dish which was onions sauteed with apples then mixed with the cabbage and a little vinegar. The cabbage stays nice and crisp, which I prefer over boiled any day. This went perfectly with the Simmons Farm country style pork ribs we were lucky enough to grill before the big snowstorm that wasn’t that came through here on Wednesday. The soup was tonight’s mission…a whole bunch of stuff ended up in there- onion, yellow-eye beans, some turnip, potato (of course), carrot and the remaining cabbage. The soup turned out very hearty- one bowl will do and now we’ll have leftovers for the weekend! Don’t be afraid of the cabbage!

-Josh

Tagged: cabbage

Local Superbowl?

ri100mi — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 00:58:21 +0000

…so last week, a dilemma was presented to me- what to make for the superbowl and keep it as local as possible? I took an inventory of what we already had in the house- potatoes, frozen strawberries, flour, cornstarch, beer…and what we could get that was local. For the big game, I ended up coming up with a take on fish and chips- cod brandande with some homemade fries and for dessert, a strawberry tart…I did let the rules slip a little though and instead of wiping out our canola supply, I bought some peanut oil at the store. We received a new fryer for Christmas and thought that this would be the perfect time to use it. First off, the fries- I used the trusty mandoline to cut them into shape and rinsed them in cold water multiple times to wash away any residual starch. After drying them on paper towels, they were blanched in the hot oil for 5-6 minutes and left to cool and drain again on some more paper towels. To finish, they were fried for 2-3 minutes more in a higher temperature oil which made them a nice golden brown. Next up the cod- it was poached in milk for 5-7 minutes, drained and mashed with a fork. The cooked potatoes were folded in along with some garlic confit, paprika, olive oil and white pepper. The mixture was formed into balls and coated in the beer batter and fried for 5-6 minutes until golden brown. I ended up scraping the mayonnaise jar and adding some capers for a “sauce”. For the finale, the tart was a homemade tart shell filled with a pastry cream and topped with local strawberries that Ingrid had picked this past summer…which was perfect- not super sweet and a good way to watch the Saints complete their victory. -Josh

Tagged: superbowl

Soup’s on!

ri100mi — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 21:29:34 +0000

Last night was soup night in the RI100mi household. I took a Thomas Keller Bouchon recipe and added a few twists to make it my own…here’s the breakdown of ingredients and where they came from:

Butternut squash- Wintertime farmer’s market in Pawtucket.
Potatoes- From the 50lb bag that we bought at the Goddard Park Farmer’s market (stored in the PSD)
Carrots, Onions and Celery- All from the Goddard Market, diced and frozen for the winter.
Honey- Also from the Goddard Market.
Veal Stock- Made in December and frozen for future use.
Canola Oil- Already had it before the challenge- it’s fair game.
Butter- see above.
Sage- Frozen from our garden (2008).

-Josh

Tagged: butternut squash, soup

…day three.

ri100mi — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 00:54:24 +0000

We’re into day three of our Wintertime 100 mile challenge and this is our first official meal since the start- Day 1 involved some leftovers that we had and yesterday we had an event that served us dinner, so today was the first test of doing the challenge in winter- and you know what? It wasn’t that much different from doing it in summer. We found some nice greens at the market on Saturday, so I used that as a nice base and sautéed some local shallots and a fine Watson Farm skirt steak to sit on top…we had a homemade anchovy salad dressing base tucked away in the fridge which added some pop to the greens…all in all, not a bad start to the month (I have a feeling things are going to get a little interesting in a couple of weeks!).

-Josh

Tagged: skirt steak, winter greens

The truck (of goodness).

ri100mi — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 15:33:11 +0000

…outside of the Pawtucket Wintertime Farmer’s Market there parks a truck. Not just any old truck. It’s a truck that produces some of the best mobile take out food that you can find. The owners of Chez Pascal in Providence upgraded their hot dog cart that usually sits on the sidewalk at Lippett Park to this mobile purveyor of hand made sausages and other delectable offerings. On any given day you could find turkey and rabbit sausages, a bacon-wrapped meatloaf sandwich and homemade meatball subs (just to name a few). A stop at the truck has become a must for Ingrid and I after shopping at the market- we suggest that you check it out for yourselves.

-Josh

Tagged: the truck, wintertime market