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.

Burgers and Greek Salad

I have been trying to avoid gluten for a few weeks. It's a bit of a dietary experiment. I haven't noticed any differences, but I haven't been a purist for too many days in a row. Tonight's dinner was a relapse into the world of gluten, but it was worth it. We had a Greek diner inspired dinner of burgers with fried onions and Greek salad. It tasted really good. Our burgers were made from some grass-fed ground beef we found on sale at Whole Foods, and they were seasoned with sage, garlic and a bit of Old Bay (my husband made them). These flavors combined beautifully with some melted cheese and the sweet, smoky onions. Delicious! The salad helped us eat up some of our CSA bounty. The dressing was a real success. The recipe is below.



City Share Burgers
1 lb ground beef
4 cloves of garlic, chopped
2 T sage, chopped
1 T Old Bay
1 large onion, sliced
Cheddar cheese, sliced
oil

Combine the meat, garlic, sage and Old Bay, and let sit for 30 minutes. Heat up a cast iron skillet, lightly oil the pan and add the onion. Cook until tender and browned. Remove the onions from the pan. Form the meat mixture into small patties and place them in the hot pan. Cook to your liking. Top with cheese shortly before done cooking and cover. Top with onions to serve.

Greek Salad Dressing
2 T Greek yogurt
1 t apple cider vinegar
1 clove of garlic, finely chopped and smeared
1/8 t dill

Mix the ingredients and let sit for 30 minutes.

We served the dressing over a salad of greens, radishes, golden cherry tomatoes, red onion, corn and feta.

This post is part of Simple Lives Thursday at GNOWFGLINS, Pennywise Platters Thursday at The Noursishing Gourmet, Tasty Traditions at Coupon Cooking, and Things I Love Thursday at The Diaper Diaries.

Brisket with Vegetables, Mashed Potatoes and Gravy

The weather suddenly feels like fall here in New York City. It's making me crave roasts and baked vegetable dishes. It's a great change of pace after spending a hot summer eating lots of salads and planning meals around cooking as little as possible. I thought I'd make another meal plan this week to make sure we eat up all our farm share vegetables.

Monday - Fresh ham baked with maple and mustard sauce, brown rice cooked in chicken stock, boiled corn, and sauteed kale.

Tuesday - Hamburgers with tomatoes, oven roasted beets, and sauteed beet greens.

Wednesday - Leftover ham, baked corn, and kale salad.

Thursday - Baked Chicken with kohlrabi and leeks, and a tomato salad.

Friday - Steak with fried onions, corn on the cob, tomato, radish and salad turnip salad.


Last night we had brisket with mashed potatoes and vegetables. I heated up some oil in my dutch oven, browned the brisket, and set it aside. I then quickly browned some onions and garlic, and added the rest of my ingredients. Once I had everything in the pot, my husband shared that he thought mashed potatoes would be really good with the meal. I had to agree that some mashed potatoes with gravy would be delicious, but I already had the potatoes stewing in the pot with everything else. But then we decided to try something new, we would cook the potatoes in the dutch oven with the brisket and broth soaking up flavor, and then pull them out after 30 minutes and mash them. It worked really well. We ended up with really flavorful potatoes, and only used one pot!

Brisket with Vegetables, Mashed Potatoes and Gravy
2 T oil
1 (2 1/2 lb) brisket, with "fat cap" (do not trim)
3 tablespoons sweet paprika
1 tablespoon kosher salt, plus for brisket
Freshly ground black pepper
2 medium yellow onions, cut into thick slices
12 - 16 cloves of garlic, peeled
1 c cooking sherry
4 c chicken broth
2 T fresh sage, finely chopped
2 medium carrots, peeled, and cut into 1 inch pieces
2 turnips, peeled and chopped
8 red potatoes, cut into large pieces
2 T butter
1/4 C flour

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.

Heat the oil in a large, heavy bottomed Dutch oven over medium-high heat until beginning to smoke. Season the brisket generously with the paprika, salt, and pepper. Place fat side down in the Dutch oven and cook until brown, turn and continue to brown on all sides, about 8 to 10 minutes. Transfer the meat to a plate and set aside.

Add the onions and garlic and cook over medium heat until starting to brown. Pour in the sherry and cook until reduced by about half. Nestle the brisket into the onions and garlic fat side up, add the broth and sage; bring to a simmer and place in the oven to bake, covered, until the brisket is fork tender, about 1 1/2 to 2 hours. Uncover, scatter the carrots, turnips and potatoes around the brisket and cook until they are tender, about 30 minutes more.

Fish out the potatoes, and place in a mixing bowl. Mash the potatoes with a fork or masher. Add broth from the brisket until they reach the desired consistency.

Transfer the brisket to a cutting board, thinly slice the meat across the grain.

Use a slotted spoon to remove the vegetables from the broth, and set aside to serve with dinner.

For a Pan Gravy: Melt the butter in a skillet and slowly add the flour. Make sure the four is entirely integrated with the butter before adding more flour. Cook until golden brown, and then starting adding broth ladle by ladle. Stirring until smooth, and then adding more broth. Once the gravy has reached the desired thickness, pour into the gravy boat.

Save the rest of the broth for another dish. We plan to use our for cooking rice this evening.

This post is part of Monday Mania at The Healthy Home Economist and Menu Plan Monday at I'm an Organizing Junkie.

Smoked Trout

Two years ago we were in Arizona to visit my family, and we spent several days on an AZ sightseeing trip. We went to Jerome, Sedona, Oak Creek Canyon, Williams, Grand Canyon and Flagstaff. My husband hadn't seen most of it before, and I was excited to show him the rest of the state where I grew up. In Flagstaff, we ate breakfast at a small diner downtown. It was great! We love the type of places where the waitstaff knows how the regulars like their coffee and their eggs. My husband ordered scrambled eggs and smoked trout, and the combination was amazing. We wanted to buy some, and we tracked the trout to Oak Creek Canyon, but they only smoke it for restaurants. We hadn't tried it again... until, yesterday! We were walking through our Whole Foods, and spotted some local smoked trout. We were so excited!

We had smoked trout and poached eggs for breakfast, and it was delicious. I hadn't tried poaching eggs in a while, so I looked up some tips. People recommended cracking the egg into a ramekin, and then gently submerging the ramekin into the boiling water and transferring the egg into the pan. We don't have any ramekins, so I used a small shallow bowl. They don't look perfect, but they were delicious. My husband came up with the idea of using a ladle tomorrow. We sprinkled a little chopped sage over the top. The creaminess of the egg yolk with the smoky, salty taste of the trout and the herby, fresh taste of the sage created the perfect flavor combination.





We also picked up our farm share yesterday. It was another roof top week, and we had to climb the 7 flights of stairs to pick-up our veggies. I just tried googling Anthill Farm the other day (the farm that provides our veggies) and they now have a website!


This week we will be enjoying garlic, onions, leeks, beets, carrots, kale, yellow beans, and corn. My goal is to eat them all from root to tip (if possible).

Sage Polenta with Fresh Corn

We got four ears of corn with our farm share this week, and we also got a bunch of sage from the farmers' market. We were racking our brains for a creative way to use them both. Suddenly, my husband had the idea to combine them in a polenta. He always told me that he didn't like polenta, but he found a recipe that sparked his curiosity.

I have never made polenta. I always thought it was fussy like risotto, and since my husband swore that he didn't like it, I never gave it a try. It's actually pretty easy. For basic polenta, just combine some water and cornmeal and cook for about 30 minutes stirring frequently. We jazzed it up with some sage and fresh corn. The results were delicious. It had a really creamy texture with hints of Parmesan cheese and sage with a crunch and sweetness from the fresh corn. We are totally sold and are ready to make polenta all the time. Here is the recipe:

Sage Polenta with Fresh Corn
small onion, finely chopped
clove of garlic, finely chopped
4 ears of corn, kernels cut off the cob
oil
5 c water
1 c corn meal
3 T sage, finely chopped
4 T butter
1/2 c Parmesan cheese
pinch of salt and pepper

Heat a heavy sauce pan and coat with oil. Add onions and cook until translucent. Add garlic and corn and cook for 2 more minutes. Remove from the pan and set aside. Bring water to a boil and gradually add the corn meal stirring with a whisk. Simmer for 30 minutes, stirring frequently. Stir in the sage, butter, Parmesan cheese, salt and pepper. Mix until smooth. Serve with extra Parmesan cheese.

We ate our polenta topped with sauteed chicken breast, oven roasted tomatoes and garlic. The combination was awesome. More on the oven roasted tomatoes in the next post.