Susan

Another One-Pan Wonder

You may have noticed I have a thing for stews—particularly, chicken stews—one-pot (mostly), unfussy (definitely) dishes that are simple to assemble, easily scale up or down, take advantage of seasonal produce, and taste as good leftover as they do on Night One. There was the Riesling-fueled, Alsatian riff on Coq au Vin; the Mexican corn-and-poblano take; the Southern-influenced, peach-tomato-okra jumble; and,…

Squishy Squash: Spreadable Summer

Decades before Farm-to-Table was a nationwide THING, Madison’s L’Etoile (est. 1976), was championing small, local growers, constructing seasonal menus, and pushing vegetable-centric cooking beyond lentil cakes and baba ghanoush. A summer-squash compendium on the kitchn last week reminded me of a meal I’d had at L’Etoile close to 30 years ago—a meal that kicked off with a warm loaf of crusty bread and…

Old-Fashioned Father’s Day Cherries

Let’s set aside how ridiculous is seems for me, after the past ten days—a sticky stretch of picking, pitting, freezing, and cooking roughly two gallons (!) of sweet, sweet cherries from my own backyard—to actually buy a quart at yesterday’s Collingswood Farmer’s Market. These are different. These are sour cherries. And as of 10:30 this morning, Father’s Day, they’re now…

A Tree Grows in Philly

It’s not a giant tree. I think, actually, it’s a “semi-dwarf” tree. But now, in its seventh full year in soil, it’s cranking out quarts and quarts and quarts of sweet, plump cherries faster than we can pick and eat and process them. Over the past 18 months, the vacant lots behind us have gone from an…

Hand-Me-Down Muffins, Share-Worthy Curd

Kim Severson’s lovely and poignant Mother’s Day piece in last week’s Food Section sent me sorting through my stash of handwritten, handed-down recipes for one of my favorite fruit-spread vehicles, my mom’s Vanilla Muffins. Fragrant, moist, and simple, these were not muffins you studded with fruit; these were muffins you smeared with fruit. With, say, Aunt Harriet‘s peach butter, made…

Forage Potage

(faw-razh paw-tahzh) A thick soup, stew, or porridge in which found or scavenged items are boiled together until they form a thick mush. Yes, this one was a real hodge-podge. Ramps, the spring-heralding, wild allium that gave Chicago its name, picked up at the season’s first Headhouse Farmers’ Market Sunday. Stinging nettles—another truly foraged plant—that came…

Want to preserve that half-bottle? Screw it.

At least a couple times a week, customers ask me which tool is best for saving a partial bottle of wine. My answer’s always the same: Masking tape. Let me explain. I have a glass of wine with dinner most nights (it’s practically a BFOQ, after all), and there’s no way I’m killing off a…

Eastertide Fermentation Miracle

Perfectly Paschal purple, this ferment came together Easter morning, after I’d finished up a mixed-veg slaw to contribute to that evening’s holiday table. The slaw used up all the carrots, but the remaining cabbage and celeriac volunteered for laboratory duty. Time for more small-batch fermentation experimentation! I suspected my sunnier, Spring-warmed kitchen might kick the fermentation process into a higher…

More Carrots, Fewer Sticks

We haven’t been stockpiling on purpose, but Sunday morning I noticed our crisper’d somehow accumulated three pretty big bags of carrots. And LFFC’s weekly newsletter predicted another bunch would arrive on Tuesday. Yikes. For sure, we could stand to bump up our share of raw carrots consumed, so I peeled and sliced the biggest roots into snackable…

Miracle Cure for Root Fatigue

Carrots. Parsnips. Beets. Rutabagas. Celeriac. Kohlrabi. Radishes. Yadda. Yadda. Yadda. Our LFFC farmers’ high tunnels and hoop houses have gifted us each week with a small bunch of kale or spinach or cress or rocket (and last week, green beans!), but easily two-thirds of each sharebox has been roots—and as much as I love ’em, here, at the…