Posts Tagged ‘bread’

• Rocketry 101

  Date: 05.12.2010 | Category: Real Food | Response: 0

  It’s May and it’s Vermont. The dribs and drabs of snow left over from Mother’s Day have finally disappeared from everywhere but the highest elevations. It’s time to get something, anything in the ground. It’s still too early for beans and tomato starts will have to wait until Memorial Day. But there’s one plant whose seeds almost blast off even in cold soil, and that plant is arugula.

  The English call it rocket, a perfect name for this cool-season salad green that grows at a rate approaching lightspeed. The plants are often ready to harvest as early as four weeks after seeding. If left to set flowers and seedpods, arugula will easily self-seed. It’s unstoppable.

  Arugula may look like baby lettuce but one bite gives away its heritage. Its tangy, peppery taste tells you it’s really a member of the super-nutritious cabbage family. Though typically used raw in salads — local growers like Vermont Herb & Salad Company and Pete’s Greens include it in their mesclun mixes—it can also be cooked with pasta or meats to add real pizzazz. The leaves are also good on pizzas, in pesto and panini.

  Just-picked arugula is perhaps best when drizzled with a good olive oil and a squeeze of lemon, then sprinkled with a few shavings of Grafton two- or three-year-old cheddar. Try slipping a handful of tiny leaves into a sandwich of Maplebrook Farm’s prize-winning smoked mozzarella with Red Hen bread. But until your homegrown crop is ready for picking, you’ll have to rely on Vermont’s innovative veggie farmers and their sturdy hoop houses for your rocket needs.

  Wilted Arugula Salad
  from the FarmPlate Kitchen
  

  Arugula and oranges combine to make this salad a nutrition powerhouse. The salad is an excellent source of vitamins A, folate, C and K, and a good source of minerals including calcium, potassium and magnesium.

  Vermont Herb & Salad Company’s baby arugula can be found at Price Chopper, Rutland Area Food Co-op, Fresh Market in Burlington as well as many East Coast Trader Joe’s.

  2 large navel oranges
  12 ounces fresh arugula
  2 scallions, thinly sliced
  ¼ cup pine nuts or sunflower seeds
  2 tablespoons bitter orange marmalade
  2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar
  2 tablespoons olive oil
  Salt and freshly ground black pepper

  Working over a bowl to catch the juice, remove the orange peel and pith with a serrated knife. Cut the segments from the membranes and drop the segments into a large salad bowl. Add the arugula and sliced scallions to the bowl.

  Toast the pine nuts or sunflower seeds in a small, heavy skillet over medium-low heat then add immediately to the salad bowl. Return the skillet to the heat and add the marmalade, vinegar and any orange juice from cutting the oranges. Bring just to a simmer, add the olive oil and immediately pour over the salad ingredients. Toss well. Add salt and pepper to taste and toss once again. Serve right away.

  Serves 4

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• Pizza (and Heaven) on Earth

  Date: 02.12.2010 | Category: Restaurant Beat | Response: 0

  There are several fine reasons to live in Charlotte, in the heart of Vermont’s Champlain Valley — breathtaking views of Lake Champlain, the revitalized Brick Store, excellent schools, proximity to Burlington, the list goes on. For the town’s pizza cognoscenti, it’s the easy access to Jay Vogler’s pizza that tops the list.

  About a dozen years ago, Jay had been growing greens for area restaurants on his 64-acre farm, but he was ready to stop driving all over the county making deliveries. He leased the land to future CSAgriculturalists Dave Quickel and Emma Burrous and assembled a wood-burning oven a few steps from the house. Pizza on Earth was born.

  On Fridays in the winter (and Thursdays and Fridays in the summer), Subarus, Volvos, and tony hybrids turn in at the yellow clapboard farmhouse on Hinesburg Road. Families spill out, everyone eager to watch as Jay deftly slides the thin crust pizzas in and out of the hot oven with a long peel.

  Three regular pizzas are always available: plain, pepperoni and the ever-popular garden with two changing specials, anything from BBQ to curried mushroom. When we spoke to Jay yesterday he mentioned he’d been experimenting with kimchi pizza!

  It’s not just pizza that’s available at this cozy pizza cottage. Hand-formed breads with a faintly smoky flavor, scrumptious buttermilk English muffins baked by Marcia Vogler, beautiful tarts, perfect cupcakes, free-range eggs and, in the summer, homemade gelati all sell out all the time.

  Jay and Marcia keep it as local as possible using Vermont dairy products, farm partner veggies, local meats and King Arthur flours at every opportunity.

  Pizza on Earth is takeout only. In warmer weather customers are welcome to set up a picnic outside and enjoy the views of the Adirondacks in the distance.

  Pizza on Earth · 1510 Hinesburg Road, Charlotte · 802.425.2152

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• Naan

  Date: 01.27.2010 | Category: Recipes | Response: 0

  from the FarmPlate Kitchen
  King Arthur Flour’s white whole-wheat flour is perfect here, making lovely golden-colored flatbreads. You can also use half all-purpose and half whole-wheat flour.

  2½ cups King Arthur white whole-wheat flour, plus more for kneading and rolling
  1 teaspoon active dry yeast
  ½ teaspoon baking powder
  ½ teaspoon salt
  1 egg, lightly beaten
  2 tablespoons plain yogurt or milk
  ¾ cup warm water
  1 teaspoon honey
  2 tablespoons melted butter

  Combine the flour, yeast, baking powder and salt in the bowl of a food processor. Pulse briefly to mix. Add the egg and yogurt or milk and pulse 3 or 4 times.
  
  Combine the water and honey. Turn the processor on and slowly add the honey water until the mixture forms a ball.

  Turn out the dough onto a floured work surface and knead by hand briefly to form a smooth ball. Put the ball in an oiled bowl and cover. Set aside in a warm place for 45 minutes to an hour.

  Put a pizza stone or baking sheet on the lowest rack in the oven. Preheat the oven to 500ºF.

  Roll the dough into a thick rope. Cut the rope into 8 equal pieces. Roll 2 of the pieces into long ovals. Open the oven door and quickly toss each piece onto the stone or baking sheet. Close the door and cook the naan for 2 to 3 minutes, then flip them over and cook until golden brown, another 2 to 3 minutes.

  Lightly brush the naan with melted butter and cover with a kitchen towel to keep warm and pliable until dinner. Bake the remaining dough balls in the same manner.

  Makes 8 flatbreads

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• Cranberry-Walnut Quick Bread

  Date: 11.27.2009 | Category: Recipes | Response: 0

  from Mary’s Restaurant in Bristol, Vermont

  Chef Doug prepared this for the 2008 Feast of the Farms Harvest Celebration, held each September at the Inn at Baldwin Creek. He served it with slices of Vermont Butter & Cheese’s Coupole — a dense, aged goat cheese — but any creamy goat cheese would be delicious. Pair this with “Howl,” Magic Hat’s Black-as-Night Winter Lager, for a perfect start to a blustery evening.

  2 cups all-purpose flour
  1½ teaspoons baking powder
  1 teaspoon salt
  ½ teaspoon baking soda
  2 large eggs
  1 cup buttermilk
  2/3 cup brown sugar
  2 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted
  2 tablespoons vegetable oil
  1 teaspoon vanilla extract
  1 teaspoon freshly grated orange zest
  2 cups chopped cranberries
  ½ cup chopped toasted walnuts, plus more for topping

  Preheat the oven to 375°F. Grease a large loaf pan.

  In a large bowl, combine the flour, baking powder, salt and baking soda. In another bowl, whisk together the eggs, buttermilk, brown sugar, butter, oil and vanilla.

  Make a well in the center of the dry ingredients, pour in the wet ingredients and stir until just combined. Fold in the orange zest, cranberries and walnuts; do not overmix. Spoon the batter into the prepared pan. Top with additional walnuts, if desired.

  Bake until golden brown and a wooden skewer inserted in the center of the loaf comes out clean, about 1 hour and 10 minutes. Let cool in the pan for 10 minutes, then turn out onto a wire rack to cool completely.

  Makes one loaf

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• Red Hen Digs Deep to Go Local

  Date: 11.06.2009 | Category: Producer Beat | Response: 0

  Red Hen Baking Company, now located at the historic Camp Meade in Middlesex, VT, has been making celebrated organic, hearth-baked artisan loaves for the past decade.

  “We’ve been organic from Day One,” says Red Hen Baking owner Randy George. “And local ingredients have always factored into our products. Their use has increased as availability has.”

  But when it comes to producing a good, chewy loaf, it’s a nearly insurmountable challenge for New England bakers to go local. The best wheat for bread–hard red winter wheat–grows on the Great Plains and is then trucked to flour mills along the Mississippi, ten times the distance prescribed by most localvores.

  But Randy George doesn’t let geography get in the way of producing a truly local Red Hen loaf. He’d heard that the Champlain Valley had been a top wheat producer in the 1850s. Not coincidentally, the premier wheat breeder at the time was one Cyrus Guernsey Pringle, a Charlotte, VT, resident.

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