An England Report

We are back from merry old England. We had marvelous time. It was a true vacation where we got away from it all. I won't bore you with a slide show with five hours of narration with all the minutiae, but I will share the highlight reel. We had the opportunity to visit London, Salisbury and a small picturesque seaside village in Cornwall.


Our favorite market we saw was the Borough Market down in the Southwark neighborhood of London. If you are interested in local food, this is the place to visit. The stalls just keep going and going. We were sad we didn't have a kitchen available so that we could purchase all sorts of delicious treats.


After spending a few days in London, we visited Salisbury. While there we saw Stonehenge, Old Sarum and the Salisbury Cathedral. We ate some great food at the Old Mill Inn where we stayed, but I didn't get any photos. After Salisbury, we headed further south to Cornwall. One of the famous regional traditions is Cream Tea. We enjoyed a couple of cream teas, but this photo captured the best one. Cream tea includes tea (of course) with scones, clotted cream and jam. Clotted Cream tastes like whipped butter crossed with creme fraiche, and it makes a decadent topping for some flaky scones.


The other regional specialty is pasties. Historically, Cornwall was a tin mining region, and pasties were a portable lunch for the miners. The story goes that the crust used to be tough enough that it could be dropped down the mine shaft without falling apart, and within the crust there was a mixture of beef, potatoes and turnips on one end and a sweet filling on the other end (dessert). The rolled crust served as a handle. The miners' dirty hands would only touch the "handle" leaving the rest of the pasty clean to eat it. Once they were finished with lunch, they would drop the dirty crust handle down the mine shaft.

Pasties still make great portable lunches. We purchased some from the local little market and enjoyed them out on our hikes along the Cornish Coastal Path.


While in Cornwall, we stayed at my Aunt and Uncle's house. They were away, so we had the place to ourselves. We enjoyed visiting the tiny village market each day to see what was available to prepare for dinner. We were amazed by the selection of local foods available: eggs, fresh bacon, sausages, tomatoes, potatoes, chicken and more.

It was a great trip! We have been actually been back for more than a week now. It's taken a while to get a post up because we had a bad case of jet lag and woke up at 4:00 AM each day last week. Five days after we returned to New York City, we moved to our new apartment in Brooklyn. We still have a lot of unpacking to do, but life is starting to return to normal.

This post is part of Things I Love Thursday.

Fried Rice and then off to England

We are off to England tomorrow bright and early. We decided to travel light, both taking one backpack small enough to carry on the plane. Because of this, we are going low tech and leaving the laptops at home. Our cell phones won't work there either, so this is our chance to disconnect and really get away from it all. I'll be sure to share some highlights when we return in two weeks.

We enjoyed a quick meal to eat up the last of our vegetables before leaving: Fried Rice. This is a great way to eat up whatever you have on hand.


Chop your vegetables and stir-fry until they are tender.


If desired, add the greens and cook until wilted.


Add cooked rice and cook until heated through. Add seasonings and cooked eggs.


I chose to garnish mine with a little extra Tamari and Srirachi Sauce.

I have to admit that I was wrong about fried rice. I thought I should pour the beaten eggs over the rice and vegetable mixture and cook it together, but my husband thought I should cook the scrambled eggs separately. I cooked it my way and the results were less than stellar. I swear that it has turned out in the past, but not this time around. The rice seemed to soak up the egg and the results were pretty gummy. (My husband thought it was fine, but I knew it could be better.)He is right. Cook the eggs separately.

You will hear from us again in two weeks. Cheers!

Chicken Scampi

We were so busy with the apartment hunt and planning our trip to England that we got behind eating up the vegetables the past couple weeks. By this last weekend, we had 2 tomatoes and 3 ears of corn that were past saving. In our 18 weeks of CSA farm share, it was the first food we were going to "throw out." To make ourselves feel better we didn't actually throw it out, but took it to the community garden to compost it. When we got to the garden the host suggested that we feed it to the chickens. She promised it would be a sight that we had never seen before, and she was right. She held the mushy tomatoes out, and the chickens jumped up to eat them out of her hand. I had never seen chickens jump before, and I have spent some time with chickens. We were happy to pass the tomatoes along for another creature to eat.



We had chicken scampi for dinner. This is one of my husband's specialty dishes. It's usually served with shrimp, but I'm allergic to shell fish so at our house it's made with chicken. It's a quick meal and always a crowd pleaser. I already wrote about it once here, but here is another take on it.

Chicken Scampi
2 large chicken breasts, cut into strips
6 cloves of garlic
2 lemons, juiced
1/2 t oregano
1 T butter
oil
salt and pepper

Heat up a skillet and add some oil to coat the bottom. Add the chicken, and cook until done. Add the garlic and cook one more minute. Turn off the heat and add the lemon juice, oregano and butter. Serve over pasta or rice.

Lemon juice looses lots of flavor when cooked, so always add it right at the end of the recipe.

This post is part of Works-for-me-Wendesday and Real Food Wednesday.

Cottage Pie and a Plan

We are heading to England on Thursday. This is our first international trip in our 2.5 years of marriage, and we are really excited. In honor of our upcoming trip, my husband came up with the idea of some shepherd's pie for dinner. I looked up a a recipe in Joy of Cooking, and learned that traditional shepherd's pie is made with chopped lamb. When you substitute beef, the name changes to cottage pie. The traditional recipe includes 1 carrot, 1 onion, 1 celery stalk, 1 lb of ground beef, some beef stock, rosemary, thyme and several potatoes mashed up for a topping. That sounds delicious for a cool fall day, doesn't it? We had to make a couple changes for what we had on hand (our recipe is below). For example, I looked through the cabinet to discover we were out of rosemary and thyme.

Our plan for the rest of the week is:

Monday- Chicken Scampi

Tuesday- Leftover Cottage Pie

Wednesday - Fried Rice with vegetables

Thursday - Off to England





Cottage Pie inspired by Joy of Cooking
2 potatoes, chopped
3 small salad turnips, chopped
2 leeks, whites sliced in half, and cut in thin slices
1 carrot, chopped
6 medium radishes, chopped
1 lb ground beef
2 tomatoes, chopped
1 T flour
2 t Old Bay
1 C Cheddar cheese, grated
olive oil

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

Add the potatoes and turnips to a pot of cold water. Bring to a boil and cook until tender. Meanwhile, chop the other vegetables and add the leek, carrot, and radishes to a hot frying pan with oil. Cook until tender. Remove from the pan and set aside. Add the ground beef to the pan. When it is almost cooked through, add the tomatoes, flour, and Old Bay. Cook until the tomatoes are softened. Add the leek, carrot, and radishes back in, and stir to combine. Mash up the potatoes and turnips, if necessary add a bit of liquid. Transfer the mixture to a baking dish, and top with the potatoes and turnips. Bake for about 15 minutes. Add the cheese to the top and cook for 15 more minutes.

The traditional recipe does not call for turnips, radishes, leeks or tomatoes. I think this is a very flexible dish that allows you to substitute any vegetables you have on hand.

Joy of Cooking suggested baking it in a pie plate, but I didn't think our pie plate was deep enough to fit everything. We cooked ours in a 9 x 11 pan, so I guess ours was less like Cottage Pie and more like Cottage Cake.

This post is part of Monday Mania and Menu Plan Monday.

Lentils with Beets and Goat Cheese

There are lots of things I love about participating in a CSA farm share: it arrives each week encouraging us to eat lots of vegetables, pushes us to try new and different things, and makes us get creative to find new ways to prepare vegetable overload. One down side is that I don't know the names of all of our loot. For example, we have gotten several beets each week for the last several weeks. When we pick them out of the bin (simply labeled beets)they are all lightly coated in dirt, and it is hard to tell what color they are. It is not until you are at home scrubbing them clean that their color is revealed. Are yellow beets simply called "yellow beets" or do they have another name? Are red beets just called "beets"? I did a quick internet search that was not very fruitful. I know the stripped ones are chioggia, but my knowledge ends there.

We made a simple dinner from lentils, carrot tops, goat cheese and yellow and red beets. I have made this before, and it is always satisfying. Here is the recipe from last time. This time we used some carrot tops we had on-hand. I had never really eaten carrot tops until recently. I always felt bad throwing them out, but I wasn't sure what to do with them. When I read about carrot top pesto over at Not Eating Out in New York it inspired me to change my ways. Carrot tops have a taste that are somewhere between parsley and carrots, and they add a nice fresh flavor to the peppery lentils, tangy sauce, sweet beets and creamy cheese.


Lentils with Beets and Goat Cheese

3 C chicken stock
1 c lentils
4 beets
3 T balsamic vinegar
2 T apple cider vinegar
2 t Dijon mustard
1 clove garlic, finely chopped
handful of carrot tops, chopped
goat cheese

Check the lentils for stones, rinse, and add to the chicken stock. Bring it to a boil, and then reduce to a simmer. Cook until the lentils are tender (15 - 60 minutes depending on the type of lentils). Meanwhile, scrub the beets. Place them in a sauce pot and cover with water. Bring the water to a boil, and cook until a fork can easily pierce the beets. Remove from water and let cool. Add the vinegars, mustard, garlic and carrot tops to the lentils. Once the beets are cool, use a spoon to peel the beets. Cut into bit size slices, and add to the lentil mixture. Serve them with goat cheese crumbled on the top.

I found that the yellow beets cooked much faster than the red ones, so check on them periodically to prevent over cooking.


This post is part of Fight Back Fridays at Food Renegade, Grocery Cart Challenge, Frugal Friday, and Finer Things Friday.

100th Post

This is the 100th post on City Share. This mile marker comes at an appropriate time because we are approaching a time of transition. All the posts thus far have been shaped by cooking and eating our way through our CSA share, but our summer share will end in a month. We are now researching some winter vegetable and meat shares (if you have any suggestions for NYC please let me know). Another change is that I have become motivated to not just keep eating local food, but to begin to incorporate more traditional foods into our diets. I have been inspired by Jenny at Nourished Kitchen and Ann Marie at Cheeseslave and many more. On top of these changes in our diets, we are going to move to Brooklyn next month. We are very excited to have found a lovely apartment with double the space of our current place.

To help me incorporate more traditional foods, I will be participating in Kelly the Kitchen Kop's e-class on Real Food for Rookies. The class has actually already started, but we have been busy lately so I'm just getting ready to begin on my own now. I will be sure to share my new found knowledge from her class.



In celebration of the 100th post, we have a delicious dinner to share with you. We had a flavorful grass-fed steak with sauteed leeks and mushrooms, a beet salad with yogurt dressing and green salad. Ahh, it was a fabulous treat dinner. The steak was delicious, the leeks and mushrooms were so good that we just kept eating them by the forkful before they even made it to the table, and the beet salad made my husband declare that "Beets are dirt candy."


Mushrooms and Leeks

1 T butter
2 leeks, the whites cut in half lengthwise and thinly sliced
3/4 lbs mushrooms, chopped (we used shitake and oyster)
1 T sage, finely chopped
salt and pepper

Heat a cast iron pan over medium heat and add butter. Once the butter is melted, add leeks and cook until translucent. Add mushrooms and sage and cook until the mushroom are tender. Add salt and pepper to taste.

Delicious eaten straight or over chicken, beef, rice, or pretty much anything else.


Look at this beautiful selection of beets.


After they are fork tender, peel the beets with a spoon.


Combine the ingredients for a dressing.


We added the beets and some chopped up carrot tops (parsley would also work) to the dressing, and mixed to combine.

Beet Salad with Yogurt Dressing

5 beets, scrubbed
1 t dry dill
tops of 2 carrots, chopped
1/4 small onion, finely chopped
1 clove of garlic, minced
1/4 C yogurt
salt and pepper

Bring a small pot of water to a boil, and add the beets. Cook until a fork can easily pierce the beets. Remove from the water and let cool. Use a spoon to remove the skin (we sliced ours in half first for the photo). Chop into bite sized pieces. In a bowl, combine dill, carrot tops, onion, garlic and yogurt. Add the beets and stir to coat the beets with dressing. Chill for 30 minutes to let the flavors combine. Salt and pepper to taste.

Thanks to all of you for reading. I appreciate your feedback and comments.

This post is part of Real Food Wednesday, Works-for-Me-Wednesday, Simple Lives Thursday, Ultimate Recipe Swap, Pennywise Platter Thursday, and Tasty Traditions.

Pork Chop and Mushroom Salad

I remember seeing a TV show several years ago where a chef visits an unsuspecting household and prepares a dinner for the family. I think he had an hour to prepare the meal, and he could only use the food in their pantry and fridge. The family always seemed to have a really well stocked kitchen: shrimp in the freezer, some fresh herbs in the fridge, at least a couple of vegetables, beans, rice, etc. I was not that impressed with the chef's results. I thought that anyone would be able to come up with the idea of shrimp and asparagus risotto with a side of sauteed vegetables if you had the same resources he was working with.

At the time, I was single, living by myself and working lots of hours. I did cook at home, but I had a routine where I would spend Sundays planning, shopping and cooking my meals for the week. I usually tried to freeze half of what I made, so that I would always have a variety of meals to chose from. I was really organized (much more than I am now). I never had much food just hanging around in the house waiting to be prepared. I wanted to see what the chef could make with what I had in my cabinets and fridge: some frozen blueberries and broccoli, a little yogurt, dry beans, milk, coffee, Kosher salt and some spices.

These days I frequently feel like the chef in the challenge. I come home from work and try to figure out how to form a meal from the vegetables in our farm share, the meat in the fridge/freezer, and the staples in our cabinet. Sometimes these challenges produce some unusual results. One such meal was pork chop and mushroom salad. It might not be a combination I would plan ahead to make, but it was really good. I would consider making it again. The mushrooms had a rich, meaty flavor that helped the salad seem more substantial.



Pork Chop and Mushroom Salad

1 pork chop
1/2 lb of mushrooms, chopped (we used shitake mushrooms)
1 T butter
salad greens
olive oil
vinegar (we like raw apple cider vinegar)
salt and pepper

Heat a cast iron skillet over medium high heat, drizzle with oil and add the pork chop. Cook for about 5 minutes on each side. Let it rest for 5 minutes, and then slice. Meanwhile, melt the butter over medium heat and add the mushrooms. Cook until tender. Toss the salad greens with oil and vinegar and top with pork chop and mushrooms.

Is your kitchen well stocked? Do you have any unusual creations that were the results of thinking on your feet?

This post is part of Hearth and Soul Blog Hop, Top Ten Tuesday, Tempt My Tummy Tuesday, and Tuesday Twister.