Michael Pollan, In Defense of Food
market week: meal 3, beet bbq sandwiches, rosemary potatoes + green beans
I’m redeeming myself today on the beet front. From the get-go I knew I wanted to make bbq sandwiches with leftovers for one of my meals. I mean, it’s rare that leftovers can be so delicious, but something magical happens when you combine leftover meat and bbq. Many of the recipes for bbq sauce call for ketchup, but I wanted to start from scratch and use whole tomatoes. In the midst of making my sauce, I saw some beets on the counter and I thought, hmm, why not toss those in too. The result is a sweet and tangy sauce with a little zip at the end.
market week: dessert 1, panna cotta with blueberry maple sauce
This, this will rock your world. I don’t know if this ever happens to you, but sometimes I make something and when I taste it I can’t believe that I made it. It’s not that I think I’m a bad cook or anything, it’s just that this tastes fancy and well, I’m not very fancy. This panna cotta is rich and smooth and creamy and it’s sauce is the best blueberry sauce that has ever hit my tongue.
market week: meal 2, ricotta beet dumplings with rosemary breadsticks and greens
Ummmm…. I don’t know how to say this but I messed this meal up big time. Failure is a bummer, especially when all you have to show is a whole lot of dishes in the sink and a pile of hot pink spaghetti in front of you. I mean look at that spaghetti and try not to laugh. I started off with hopes of making beet-ricotta dumplings. I lovingly prepared them Sunday afternoon, then formed them yesterday evening. Things started to go awry when they weren’t holding together very well, but I forged on anyways. Once I had water boiling I placed them in and shazamm.. they basically disintegrated. Oyyy! What to do, what to do? I mean that’s a whole lot of fresh (pricey) ricotta that I just couldn’t let go to waste. So I pulled out some spaghetti thinking I’d use the ricotta mixture as a kind of sauce. Long story short, hot pink spaghetti is not very good, no matter how much brown butter sage sauce you put on it.
market week: you are awesome!
look how awesome you are! we’ve seen fresh produce from chicago, brooklyn, portland, farmington (CT), manhattan and toluca lake (CA). keep posting your pictures and emailing me with your posts. i’ll be creating a list next monday recapping all the delicious meals everyone created with links to your blogs.
thanks again for participating!
read: in defense of food by michael pollan
I’ve had this book in my purse for quite some time. Occasionally I would pull it out and read a few pages on my way to work in the morning, but the information was so intense that I actually found myself unable to get through more than a page or two at a time. Pollan explains in depth how grocery stores have become full of nutrient-enriched “foods” or imitations of food rather than actual whole foods (like fruits and vegetables). It’s interesting and definitely something I didn’t know much about, I just found it to be a little slow going. Finally after months of playing that little game, I made it to the third part of the book, the fun part where he talks about what to do with this load of information he’s given us. I zipped right through it, eager to see what the next page would hold and whether or not it’s something that I already do or something that I think I can do.
In Defense of Food is a must read to anyone interested in food and how the American food system has evolved (or devolved) over the last half of the last century. I was so inspired by the last part of the book that I created some little illustrations that I’ll be posting each day this week in honor of market week and bringing new ideas to everyday life through fresh, local and loved food. I hope you enjoy them.
market week: day 1, brisket with fresh salsa, fried okra + grits
Oh boy! Day 1 set a high bar. I was cooking up a storm yesterday in my kitchen, making this meal and preparing for other meals to come. I kind of felt the same way I used to when I’d get a new box of crayons, I just kind of went wild, it was so much fun.
Lately I’ve been picking up a big, affordable piece of meat like pork shoulder, short ribs or even a chicken to make on Sunday evening and then use the leftovers to make a new meal later in the week. I had been planning on buying a pork shoulder when I visited the market so I could make carnitas for tacos. I bought all my vegetables, including a whole lot of tomatoes that were pricey little suckers, to make fresh salsa and then I found out that both of my favorite meat sellers were out of pork shoulders or any similar cuts. I like to roll with the punches and sometimes they take you in a direction that leads you to better things. A vendor and I brainstormed ideas and we landed on brisket. It was something I’d never made, but I was up for the challenge and it payed off, because this brisket was melt-in-your-mouth delicious.
market week: dessert 2, raspberry yogurt granita
I made frozen yogurt a while ago and it’s so tasty I thought I’d try to add some fresh fruit and honey to it for a market week dessert. The only thing is, I got a little lazy. I decided not to use my ice cream maker because I lost the key part of it that churns, which means my arm is the churn until I find a new one, hence my being lazy. What I got wasn’t so much frozen yogurt, but more like a yogurt granita. It’s still delicious, tasting more like yogurt than ice cream, but that’s a flavor I love.
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