stlbites.com – st. louis food blog of bill burge

Organic Farming and Soil

Nov 20, 2007 farming, sustainable agriculture

Here’s a very brief article that my Google Alerts picked up today talking about organic farm soil testing. Mostly I’m linking to it because they discuss crop rotation and cover crops — two topics Paul from Bellews Creek discussed earlier in the year at SLOWednesday.

I find the whole thing really fascinating, and while I never thought farmers were dumb-yokels in the first place, Paul really opened up my eyes to the pains organic farmers go through to ensure their soil is optimal.

When you get right down to it I suppose their soil is like gold for them, so it makes perfect sense.

Tags: Bellews Creek Farm

Dinner and a Dash of Honey

Nov 13, 2007 farmers' markets, groceries, slow food, sustainable agriculture

I’m still silly busy at work, but rather than leave you empty handed, I wanted to quickly comment that it brought a smile to my face last Thursday when Ruhlman was talking about how great his salad would be with a fried egg on top. Fried eggs on salads rule, and as you can clearly see, I proved this only a couple days prior to his encouragement that “fat is good” when I made this salad for Ellie and me.

This incidentally is why I’d wanted the frisee the other day. I instead settled for arugula as Whole Foods was a sans frisee Whole Foods when I was lured into their shiny overpriced store.

Grilled Benne’s Best flank steak, fried Prairie Grass Farms egg, arugula, Bellews Creek red onion, malvarosa cheese, and a sherry vinaigrette (that had a little Esther’s Honey in it)

And speaking of Esther’s Honey. Esther is a really wonderful woman to speak with as she loves talking about her honey bees.

I never realized until the whole Colony Collapse Disorder scare how important the roll of honey bees is in the world of agriculture and was fascinated to find out, when she spoke at SLOWednesday, that there are huge honey beekeepers that transport their bees all over the country on semis to pollinate all sorts of crops nationwide.

Per Wikipedia…

“One major US beekeeper reports moving his hives from Idaho to California in January, then to apple orchards in Washington in March, to North Dakota two months later, and then back to Idaho by November — a journey of several thousand kilometers. Others move from Florida to New Hampshire or to Texas; nearly all visit California for the almond bloom in January.”

From further reading, this mass transportation apparently does not happen as widely in other countries, and it was this fact that exasperated the scare for so many farmers in America.

Another interesting side note is that she also taught us that honey bees will take over weaker hives they come across because really all they want is food and a weaker hives honey will do just fine. She specifically told one story about bees coming across a weaker hive that had Colony Collapse Disorder and they instinctively knew to move on. Apparently nobody is quite sure how the bees knew what the humans did not.

Moving back to the semis, the other thing I found interesting is that this is obviously how they get all those specific varieties of honey you see lining the gourmet food stores. They know exactly what the bees were pollinating not because they had to guess off taste alone, but because they took them to it in the first place.

And coming full circle back to my jar of honey…

When I bought it I’d asked Esther if she noticed a lot of flavor variation from batch to batch. The one I’d initially picked up was a darkish honey which she was unsure of. Many of the other bottles were much lighter, and she said her neighbor, who grows a lot of thyme, had been telling her the bees had constantly been around his herbs at the time she had bottled that honey. So I swapped for the lighter honey and it really does have a noticeable herbaceous quality to it. I’ve really been enjoying it, and I keep slinging it in just about anything I make where honey would even remotely work as it has a sort of lightness that isn’t as sweet and overpowering as other honey’s I’ve used.

Tags: Bellews Creek Farm, Bennes-Best-Meats, Esther's Honey, flank-steak, malvarosa, Pairie-Grass-Farms, salad

Dinner Triumphant!

Oct 27, 2007 farmers' markets, general food

I suppose because of my years cooking, I have a tendency to aim high when cooking dinner at home. While that in and of itself isn’t a problem, what is a problem, is that I’m rusty. Rustiness, coupled with my being particularly critical, means that I’m more than a little unenthused with most of the food I make.

Take last Friday for instance. On call at work and having to respond within fifteen minutes, I was forced to stay around the house for most of the weekend. Having known this well in advance I decided to do it up big for dinner after spotting some celeriac earlier that week at the Berger Bluff Farms tent at the Maplewood Farmers’ Market. I also still had the beautiful carrots I’d picked up in Kansas City at the Farmers Community Market at Brookside and not wanting them to go to waste, I knew they would make perfect sides to what Ellie and I had been craving all week: pot roast.

So as previously mentioned, at lunch last Friday I headed off for Whole Foods to pick up an American Grass Fed roast. But alas, it was one of the cuts that were no longer available. I instead picked up a larger rib eye for us to share.

That proved to be my downfall as I overcooked the beef a little in my frenzy to finish passing the celeriac puree through a sieve and get everything onto the plate hot. I was clearly trying to do too much at once, and I was doubly irritated because it had been such a fine cut of meat.

American Grass Fed Beef Rib-Eye, Berger Bluff Farms Celeriac and Bellews Creek Farm potato puree, Kansas City Center for Urban Agriculture carrots, Claverach Farms chioggia beet greens, Our Garden butter

But thankfully, while my story does technically end there, it began with one of my greatest home-kitchen culinary triumphs — my appetizer.You see, my other reason for going to Whole Foods was because I’d thought they were going to have the Bell’s Best Brown Ale. They however did not, and knowing The Wine & Cheese Place did, I knew I’d be making the quick trip around the corner to yield that delicious brew. It was then that I also remembered that they now have salumi from Mario Batali’s father’s shop in Seattle, and that I could finally buy some of that as well.When I did work in kitchens, I was always what I referred to as a “flavor wheel cook.” While there are some chefs that truly can think outside the box and create flavors that are new and challenging, I didn’t possess that sort of raw talent. Just as I make up for my lack of natural athletic ability in my running now with sheer mileage, I made up for my lack of talent in the kitchen by literally reading the hundreds of cookbooks I have. When you do this, you start to see patterns. There are foods that clearly go together, and a spin of the flavor wheel of pork for instance, will yield things like rosemary, sage, thyme, cranberries, apples, honey, mustard, onions, juniper berries, and walnuts.

With that knowledge in hand, while you won’t be breaking new ground, it is possible to make phenomenally good food rooted in solid techniques and classic flavor combinations.

So before leaving Whole Foods I grabbed a 12 month aged manchego because the flavor wheel of most any cheese includes cured meats. Because of the strong flavors Salumi’s salumi has, I gave the next spin to the cheese. Manchego, a Spanish cheese, would go with things like sausage, garlic, mustard, sherry vinegar, onions, thyme and olives. It was at this point that the hand of brilliance reached out and touched me.

Manchego is a sheep’s milk cheese with a similar texture and fat content to Pecorino — I could make the budino substituting manchego for the pecorino. With an additional helping of good fortune, The Wine & Cheese place had Salumi’s mole salami. With a nice touch of heat, a dash of cinnamon, and the richness from the added chocolate, it would go perfect with my plan.

Not to pat myself on the back, but it really did turn out beautifully, and we devoured every bit. The richness of the budino cut beautifully through the heat of the salami and the slight addition of some fresh lemon juice in my vinaigrette gave the whole thing a zippy freshness that really worked, and for a change, I was completely pleased with something I’d made.

12 month Aged manchego budino, Claverach Farms mesclun, Salumi mole salumi, Bellews Creek Red Onion, with a sherry vinaigrette

Tags: American Grass Fed Beef, beet greens, Bellews Creek Farm, budino, celeriac, chioggia, Claverach Farms, salumi, urban agriculture, Whole Foods