COOKING SHOW
This simple tomato sauce is indispensable during those cold winter months, when you want an authentic taste of warmer weather. Seeded organic tomatoes are roughly chopped and slowly cooked down into a luxurious sauce. Make it simply with olive oil and garlic now; you can always add more ingredients if you feel like it in the winter.
COOKING SHOW
Learn how to dry fresh thyme and rosemary in your own home. Drying herbs yourself will give you great ingredients to work with when the fresh ones are no longer in season. Dried herbs have a more concentrated flavor than fresh ones, and so less are needed in cooking.
FOOD FOR THOUGHT
By Ellie Downing
For thousands of years olives have been viewed as a symbol of importance and peace. Archeologists have uncovered olive mills and presses, sculpted oil jars, as well as discarded pits, indicating a rich history of cultivation starting well before 3000 BC. Native to the Mediterranean region, the top olive and olive oil producers today include Spain, Italy, Turkey, Greece, Tunisia, Morocco and California. Three-quarters of the world’s olive oil comes from countries belonging to the European Union.
Ranging in color from pale green, deep eggplant, to black, olives boast a variety of flavors perfect for giving your favorite pasta or salad a little kick. Some of the most popular varieties include manzanilla, picholine, kalamata, niçoise and lugano. The difference between green and black olives is simply their ripeness. Unripe olives are green, whereas ripe olives are black.
Olives contain a high monounsaturated fat content and no cholesterol. Additionally, olives are a good source of iron, vitamin E, copper, and dietary fiber. Olive oil is the only vegetable oil edible right after pressing. No further processing is necessary which ensures we benefit from all those healthy natural antioxidants left in the oil.
Before delving into this wonderful fruit, however we do need to remove the glucoside, a particularly bitter compound.
Thankfully, the bitterness is naturally removed during the pressing process when producing olive oil. Olives harvested for their oil are picked ripe in late autumn and winter by means of traditional hand-picking or use of mechanical tree-shakers. The first press (‘virgin’ olive oil) is often very green and sharp in taste, which some prefer to the mild, more mature pressings. ‘Extra Virgin’ olive oil indicates a low acidity often desired for flavor.
Olives reserved for their fruit, often called table olives, are harvested at various degrees of ripeness depending the desired texture and taste. Table olives once picked are first cured to remove the bitterness and then often packed in olive oil or vinegar. Curing techniques include water-curing, defined by repeated water soaking and rinsing (a lengthy process), brine curing (often combined with the use of herbs and spices to impart a particular flavor), lye curing or dry curing. Dry cured olives are packed in salt. This process removes the excess water from the fruit resulting in a dry, furrowed fruit. Table olives are available whole, sliced and chopped, not to mention pitted, un-pitted and stuffed. Some of our favorites are stuffed with pimentos, jalapenos, garlic and almonds.
TASTY TIP
Infusing vinegar with wild herbs is an easy way to bring local tastes into your meals. In this white vinegar we added monarda from eastern Pennsylvania.
I've Been Pickled!
The Pickle and Chutney booth at Slow Food Nation, was one of my favorite stops in the Taste Pavilion. A highlight, beyond the pickled eggplant and kombucha, was Bay Area-based photographer Terri Loewenthal's Pickle Barrel Photo Booth. Her unmanned/unsupervised photo-booth enabled visitors to momentarily become part of the exhibit, an unique experience among the pavilions.
Each section of the Taste Pavilion was designed by a different architect. The Pickle and Chutney area was designed by Sagan Piechota Architects and featured canning lids hanging from the ceiling, racks of canning jars and pickling instructions in fun cartoon form lining the base of the booth. You can see all of the taste pavilion designs by clicking here or visiting the Slow Food Nation Flickr photo gallery.
COOKING SHOW
Slow Food Nation, Day 2
My head is still swimming a bit from all that I heard and continue to absorb from the day. The first panel that I went to was titled: "Climate Change and Food." I didn't film it, but I will be posting highlights/transcripts as soon as my little fingers can type them up. Like the panel yesterday on re-localizing food, this discussion also focused on a decentralized food system and smaller farms as the only means of surviving the massive climate changes that are occurring and will continue to occur- and like yesterday there was a tone of optimism and promise that truly does make things appear less bleak.
Later on in the afternoon, I went to the culminating discussion "Slow Food Nation." Michael Pollan, Vandana Shiva, Eric Schlosser, Wendell Berry, Alice Waters and Carlo Petrini. The line up of speakers kind of seemed too good to be true, but it was true! And I feel so lucky to have been able to listen in on their conversation. I say listen in because it felt less like a presentation for the audience than it did an exchange of ideas and exploration of how to move forward given the current social, political and environmental state of the world. The people who were on stage this evening are all working towards a similar goal, but their experiences and expertise covered a wide range of activity. There was something incredibly powerful about seeing those experiences and expertises playing off one another. I don't know if any of the people on stage tonight will walk away freshly inspired with new ideas to take on the challenges our world currently faces, but there was a feeling, at least to me in the audience, that something was being born. Not an idea, but a charged energy and appreciation of the movement itself. The direction we and our political leaders need to go is clear. The discussion tonight felt like a burst of energy to fuel us into that direction. (Again, I will be posting transcripts... but it was 2 1/2 hours long so it might take me awhile).
An Edible Weekend In Pennsylvania
Food is all around us. Last weekend, Emma and I went to Shohola, Pennsylvania. We are working on a local eating project with Leda Meredith and Ellen Zachos, so we went over to Ellen’s country house to explore our region more in depth.
Upon arrival Friday afternoon we immediately headed out again for a bit of watercress foraging. It is so great to hang out with Leda and Ellen, because you constantly are learning how to identify edible wild foods and fun tips for their uses in cooking. When I am around them it feels like everything is edible. It was amazing for me to see watercress growing in the wild- so pristine, vibrant, and green.
Friday night we were treated to delicious local-beef hamburgers grilled to perfection by Ellen's husband, Michael. Boy oh boy- were we in for a treat, because Ellen and Michael had just returned from New Mexico and had brought with them some green chiles. Emma and I are really dreaming about New Mexico these days, so we were delighted to have some of what- is- local-there on our on our local-here burger. I must add that while Michael was out manning the grill, us ladies made up a new cocktail- the Pennsylvania Pirate- a Shohola-Caribbean crossover with Elderflower Champagne, Brugal Rum, and muddled mint. That became the beverage of choice for our cocktail hours.
Saturday morning we went to the farmers market and bought our missing supplies: cheese, fingerling potatoes, eggs (hen eggs and guinea fowl eggs too!), plums, and purslane. After the market we headed over across the street and picked blueberries and blackberries like little bears for a few hours. We spent Saturday afternoon filming tips and techniques for our local eating month, so that all of our viewers learn how to store up for Winter on local foods. One of those techniques was preserving blueberries without sugar- one you should all stay tuned for (hint hint). Saturday night we had a special dinner, which everyone will learn about soon, made with 100% local ingredients. My favorite was the fingerlings cooked in duck fat. Yum.
On Sunday morning we wrapped everything up and sat down for a final lunch. One of Ellen’s farmers had given us some lamb sausage with paprika and parsley, which we through in the skillet. Ellen was generous and opened up a bunch of her chutneys: apple and chipotle, pear and ginger, and tomato, lemon, and ginger.
What I loved about the weekend was that I had a role in where my food came from. I had learned how to forage for watercress, and eaten the results in a salad. I had met the woman who sells the eggs and fowl at the market, and as a result I had faith in how those ingredients had been raised. I know that I can eat hot oatmeal in the Winter topped with local blueberries that I had picked myself. This is going to be an ongoing theme from now on, as we work more on learning how delicious local foods are.
