Who's your sprout?

Adele and I first truly understood the potential of brussel sprouts in Ithaca, New York, when we were reveling at a friend's farm the evening before Thanksgiving. Food was abundant; drink was flowing. Our friend Simon was concocting a brilliant beef stew with massive red slabs that he'd bought from a Brooklyn butcher. Stephen, the owner of the farm, was cutting off large, unruly slices of whole-wheat bread that someone had brought from an Ithaca bakery. A bearded man in overalls was dumping fresh cranberries into a bowl in between swigs of his bottle of hard cider. And then there were the brussel sprouts, gently sauteeing in their cast-iron skillet, nobody paying them any attention. That's what usually happens with brussel sprouts, they go unnoticed, ignored little nuggets of verdure. As we later learned from the local vintner who prepared them, he had picked them that very day off their frozen stalks and cut them in half, sauteed them in olive oil for a half hour, and then topped them off with walnuts. And they weren't bad. But then, they could always be better. The seed of possibility had been planted.

When we got back home we picked up a few packages of brussel sprouts. Our mission was to take what had been so pleasing to the eye in Ithaca (the lush green of the sprouts peppered with the earthy brown of the walnuts, the whole shining in aromatic olive oil) and turn it into something just as pleasing for the palette. In other words, we were looking for something a little softer, and a lot less bitter. Our solutions were simple, and sitting in right in our cupboards: chicken broth and raisins.



What we used: brussel sprounts, onion, garlic, walnuts, raisins, cumin, tumeric, salt, pepper, olive oil and chicken broth.

Finely chop about half an onion and mince a clove or two of garlic. Sautee in olive oil until soft. Meanwhile, wash, stem and halve the brussel sprouts. Add to the onions and garlic and stir to cover with oil. Add a couple teaspoons of cumin, a couple sprinkles of tumeric and salt and pepper to taste. Cook for a few minutes, then add just enough chicken broth so that it comes up to about half the depth of the sprouts. Bring to a boil, and add the raisins and walnuts. Reduce the heat to simmer, and cook until the sprouts are as tender and the liquid is nearly evaporated.

The finished product, which is quite pretty and smells lovely, makes a great side-dish for any meal. We've eaten it with everything from salmon to a simple cheese omelette to basic roasted turnips, which is how we ate them this evening.

Total prep and cook time : about 45 mintues.

Approximate cost : about 4$ for 4 servings

Broth, baby, broth!

Here’s one for the Zen masters among you: is a peasant truly a peasant if she buys pre-packaged vegetable broth at the village store? Probably not. Commercial broth is in the same food family as boxed muffins and pancake mixes and packages of instant rice pilaf. Somehow the modern food industry has convinced many consumers that these things are difficult to make and that we can all save precious time if we shell out a few bucks more for the pre-packaged, instant ingredients. But all the items mentioned above are scandalously easy to make from scratch and cost very little when made at home.

Whenever Josh and I cook, we keep a Tupperware container on the counter into which we put the onion and garlic ends, as well as the vegetables peels and ends. (Of course, if you’re going to do this, a word of advice: wash your vegetables before peeling so that the peels you’re saving will be free from dirt.) Some nights, it might just be a bit of onion; on another night, it may be carrot peels. When we get enough of it collected, we boil it down in plenty of cold water until the vegetables are virtually colorless. If we happen to have broiled a chicken, then we’ll throw our vegetable scraps in the pot with the chicken bones and fat to make a tastier broth. So to recap: throw your scraps in a pot (with chicken bones or meat if you wish) with cold water and boil them down until they are leached of color. Strain the liquid through a colander and that’s your vitamin-packed broth (aka veggie water).

Peasants and subsistence farmers and many others have been making homemade broth for generations. We’ve been doing it ever since we read about it many years ago in Mark Bittman’s How to Cook Everything. Not only are you getting the most out of the money you paid for your vegetables (which can be significant if you buy organic veggies), but you are also extracting all of the nutritious vitamins and minerals that can be added later to other food. We use it regularly instead of water when we make rice, bulgar, quinoa, etc., or we use it as a base for our soups. When we make a large batch of broth, we usually can it. For information on canning, visit the Colorado State University Extension website: http://www.ext.colostate.edu/pubs/foodnut/09348.html

No grain, no pain

Adele and I are beginning to commit more and more acts of blasphemy with regard to the USDA food pyramid. Namely, we're undermining the entire grain-based foundation of the pyramid and substituting squash and tubers - mostly sweet potatoes - for grains like rice and pasta. We're not on some anti-grain crusade (Adele would probably trade in our obese cat for a perfect baguette), but squash or sweet potato is a wonderfully delicious and filling substitute for our typical grains. Squash or tubers are the staple foods of many cultures across the world and are fundamental to traditional peasant cuisine. No need to stick with rice or pasta every night when there's so much variety out there that still fills us up and serves our carbo needs. And bonus: we also get pretty colors on the plate!


This is what tonight's meal looked like in it's original state: dandelion greens, onion, garlic, butternet squash and eggs.

Start with the squash by cutting it in half lengthwise and spooning out the seeds. Place them flesh-side-down in an oven-safe dish with perhaps an inch of water, cover and bake until soft, about 40 minutes. Start checking for done-ness after about 30 minutes by poking the squash with a sharp knife. If the knife slides through with no effort, it's ready to serve.



While the squash is baking, think about the dandelion greens and the egg. The greens are longer to cook than the egg, so think about that first. But at some point during the process, crack an egg per person into a ramekin. Sprinkle with salt and pepper, place in a skillet or pot and add enough water to come halfway up the ramekin. Bring the water to a boil and cook the eggs until the whites set to your liking. (It doesn't take long...)

For the dandelion greens, slice the onion and roughly mince the garlic. In a skillet, heat a bit of finely cut up bacon (I highly recommend it for the taste, but feel free to use olive oil or butter) until the bacon shrivels and crusts, leaving a hot layer of bacon fat. Remove the rinds with a slatted spoon and preserve. Sautee the onions and garlic in the bacon fat until soft. Add the dandelion greens and stir to cover with the oil. Add salt and pepper and a teaspoon or two of sugar and cook until the greens are as crisp or as soft as you like them.

Remove from heat, return the bacon rinds to the greens and stir.

Serve everything piping hot, adding a generous pat of butter to the squash and toasted wheat bread to sop up the egg if you want.

Prep & cook time : about an hour

Price : approximately 4$ for two people

Venison Stew

Students at the school we work at always ask if we're vegetarians or vegans because they never see us eat meat at the school cafeteria. We do indeed eat meat, and many of our best meals in the past few years have involved meat, but we're pretty choicy about the meats we consume. Of course, this choosiness isn't very peasant-like of us since peasants tend to be poor and often don't have the luxury of selecting which meats they will and won't eat. On the other hand, many peasants raise their own meat or procure it from local or regional sources that don't involve the industrialized meat industry. And that's what we try to avoid: the meat pumped full of growth hormones and antibiotics, the meat from animals raised inhumanely, the meat that doesn't really have taste unless you marinate or season the hell out of it, or that ambiguous brownish-grey meat that may be cow or pig or chicken...or wait, it's all three combined in some Frankensteinian meat processing plant. When we eat animal flesh, we prefer to eat meat we trust, meaning we generally know where it comes from, how it was raised (or lived in the wild), and how it was killed. To that end, we tend to stock up on meats when we go to Adele's cousin's biodynamic farm (Nezinscott Farm) in Maine or during hunting season when one of Adele's brothers kills a deer.

These are the St. Pierre brothers (Tony, Tom and Jean) with two of their sons (Matthew and Jason) and a brother-in-law (Ethan) on a typical Saturday morning during hunting season in Maine. The venison that went into the stew we made this week came from the deer that was killed by Tom (far right in the picture) whose wife and daughters don't like the taste of wild meat.

The ingredients are simple: a package of venison stew meat (a pound maybe?), 5 carrots, 1 large onion, 2 potatos, salt, pepper and paprika (lots o'). Please do add lots of garlic... we just didn't have any more on us when we made this (damn it). This made enough stew for four generous portions.

The best-tasting stew is the one that sits over night in its own juices, so we started making this stew last night to eat it tonight.



Heat some olive oil in a large dutch oven, and sautee the onions (and garlic). When the onions are translucent, add the meat, lots of salt and pepper, and about 2 good teaspoons of paprika. Brown the meat, then add just enough water to almost cover, bring to a boil, cover and reduce the heat to simmer for a couple of hours. (We watched this great French movie - Diva - while it cooked). Allow to cool and store in the fridgerator over night.

About 45 minutes before you feel like eating, peel and chop the carrots and potato. Throw them in with the meat and just enough water to cover everything. Bring to a boil, then reduce to simmer, cover and cook for about 30 minutes. The meat will be very tender, but the carrots and potato won't be mushy.

Total prep and cook time : about 4 hours, largely unattended

Total cost : hard to estimate, since we bartered the deer meat

Savory brown rice at sunrise

During my two years as a U.S. Peace Corps Volunteer in Zimbabwe, I generally ate corn three meals a day. Cornmeal porridge for breakfast, and thickened corn porridge (called sadza) for both lunch and dinner. With the morning porridge, many Zimbabweans added sugar, milk or butter. I always preferred it with butter, which made it creamy and salty rather than sweet and syrupy. The salty breakfast doesn't just apply to cornmeal though; as Adele and I explore the virtues of salty breakfasts, we're discovering that virtually any leftover grain can be transformed into a delectable and healthy breakfast. That said, why does oatmeal tend to dominate most peoples' breakfast grains? Not sure, but it's taking a backseat in our cupboard from now on.

Last night Adele and I made a simple vegetable stirfry with brown rice. Good eating, but nothing too interesting. However, since there was plenty of brown rice left over, we decided to transform it into our breakfast this morning.

By adding a little olive oil to the rice and stirring it around to cover, we were able to heat the rice without risk of it burning to the bottom of the pot. We added some chopped almonds and hazelnuts (but any nut could work), some sunflower seeds, dried basil and salt and cooked through until warm. Topped off with some freshly grated parmesan cheese, and accompanied by a slice of buttered wheat toast, this breakfast rivals anything we've ever had for brunch in restaurants.

Bulgar at breakfast: making the most of leftovers

Growing up on the farm, my breakfast of choice all the way through high school was a tomato sandwich on my mother's homemade bread and a tall glass of chocolate milk. Weird choice of fare for breakfast? Perhaps, but pretty tame considering what my mother was (and still is) known to whip up for herself for this meal: leftover spaghetti sandwiches, chicken pot pie, sardines on buttered saltine crackers.

Over the years, especially during college, I took to eating cereal for breakfast, sometimes toast with peanut butter and jam or honey. In the past couple of years, however, Josh and I have decided to change this up a bit and re-adopt my family (certainly my mother's) anything-goes attitude when it comes to breakfast food. Here's why:

I lived in France for several years and ate variations of the "baguette with butter" for most breakfasts. The incredibly tasty baguettes were made of flour, salt and water. The butter was churned cream. No sugar, aside from a perhaps spoonful in that dark coffee. Josh lived in Zimbabwe for a few years and travelled quite a bit afterwards and ate anything (salty or sugary) he could get his hands on for breakfast. During our travels abroad, we rarely saw foreigners downing sugary breakfasts. We certainly saw cereals, but they tended to be meuslix and bran cereals rather than chocolate puffy things and frosted stuff (what is that stuff, anyways?). Breakfast doesn't have to be defined by the American breakfast cereal industry, which really consists of just a few companies. New York Times food writer Mark Bittman agrees. Read his recent article about the virtues of rethinking breakfast: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/18/dining/18mini.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=your%20morning%20pizza&st=cse

The following dish is something we whipped up just the other day:

Breakfast bulgar. Remember that bulgar we talked about in yesterday's blog (Bulgar and friends) that was cooked with onions, garlic, cumin, cranberries and almonds? Well, we had some leftover, so I thought I'd recycle it for breakfast. Since there wasn't enough for two servings, I cooked up another half cup of bulgar, and added the leftover bulgar to heat when the fresh bulgar was almost cooked along with some frozen Maine blueberries (thanks to my sister Corrine who picked them last summer). Topped with butter, this is perhaps one of the yummiest breakfast we've ever made.

Bulgar and friends

Another early spring meal based on root crops, leafy greens, and bulgar, one of the hippest grains (more nutritious than rice or couscous!).

The beets: Peel and cube, mix with 1/2 a chopped onion, olive oil, salt and pepper, and roast in a 425F oven for about 45 minutes.

For the bulgar dish: 1/2 cup of bulgar, 1/4 of a finely chopped onion and garlic, a handful each of dried cranberries and chopped almonds, salt, pepper and cumin. Sautee everything but the bulgar in olive oil over low heat until onion is transculent. Add the bulgar and stir, covering the grains with oil. Add 1 cup cold water and bring to a boil. Reduce and simmer, covered, for about 30 minutes. Be watchful of the water and add more as need be.

For the greens: Collard greens (washed, trimmed and cut into long strips), 1 carrot (peeled, halved lengthwise and chopped fairly thin), 1/4 sliced onion and 1 clove garlic minced, salt and pepper to taste.

Sautee the onion, carrot and garlic in olive oil for a few minutes. Add the greens and cook over low heat, stirring occasionally, until greens are tender.

The finished dish: Bursts of flavor and color, healthy and filling!

Prep and cook time: about 1 hour

Cost: about 5$ for two people.

The First Meal

Before we get to the food, a few words of introduction on this sunny second day of spring.

• We aren't peasants. We teach at a private boarding school north of Boston. We do yoga and enjoy watching subtitled films. We don't have farm animals (though we'd like to) and, unlike most peasants, food takes up a very small percentage of our income. Despite these unpeasant-like credentials, however, we both grew up in rural Maine in families that subsisted, at one time or another, on farming and various approaches to gleaning and living off the fat of the land. Our families tended to eat very well without spending much money. And so do we.
• Our exploration of peasant food is in the context of globalisation. Thanks to the modern industrialized food system that you have to love and hate, many of us are far removed from our food sources yet we can get virtually any type of food we want at the grocery store regardless of the season. Your average peasant, on the other hand, tends to live near her food source and probably eats seasonal foods and preserves food to last through the winter. Most of us live in a world defined by globalisation. The food and recipes in this blog will reflect modern times, but will strive to retain what we feel are the essential qualities of peasant food: that it be delicious, economical, healthy, relatively simple and easy to prepare, and considerate of the seasons and local environment.
• Most of our dishes don't have names. Bake a sweet potato. Steam some greens. Saute some carrots and ginger. That all tastes damn good, but it doesn't necessarily have a cutsie recipe name. Most peasants don't use cookbooks or watch cooking shows; the ingredients and recipes are just a fundamental part of their lives. We're trying not to overcomplicate matters here. Most of it's straightforward food. Cook it. Eat it. Ommmm.

As with much peasant cuisine, our first meal on this exploration fits right in with Michael Pollan's introductory words in In Defense of Food: "Eat food. Mostly plants. Not too much."

It's the end of winter, so note the emphasis on root crops in this meal : carrots, turnips, sweet potato, onion. The white stuff in the measuring cup is quinoa, a grain we've recently discovered and fallen in love with (get it at any grocery store in the bulk section). It's super easy to make (it cooks like rice), it adds variety to the staple (and boring) base grains of rice and pasta, and it tastes excellent. On a final note, this whole meal can be quite easily vegan fare, except that Adele added butter to the turnip because she's French-Canadian and butter flows through her veins.

There are three parts to this meal, so you'll need to do a little prepping of the elements before jumping in to make sure that everything is finished and ready to serve at about the same time. So read ahead before starting...

1) Wash and make some slits in a large sweet potato. Wrap in tin foil and bake at 425F for approximately 45 minutes.

2) Peel and cube a large turnip. In an oven-safe dish, mix with olive oil and (optional) a couple pats of butter, the rest of the onion peeled and chopped, and 5 or 6 garlic cloves peeled. Roast in a 425F degree oven for about 30 minutes.

3) 2) Bring 1/2 cup of quinoa and a cup of cold, salted water to a boil. Cover and reduce to simmer for 20 minutes.

4) When the quinoa is about half done, heat a generous amount of olive oil in a large skillet. Add 2 finely chopped carrots, a 1/4 of a finely chopped onion, and 1 large clove of garlic minced, a handful of raisins, cumin (about 1 tsp), powdered ginger, cinnamon, coriandar (each about 1/2 tsp) and salt to taste. Cook on medium-low heat until carrots are just tender. Add the cooked quinoa and a little more water, and cook for a few more minutes.

A glass of red wine, a slice of lemon, and dinner is served!

Total prep & cook time: about an hour
Approximate cost: $7.00 for two people