The Perfect Brown Rice

I don't remember eating a lot of brown rice as a child. Even white rice was rather uncommon, as my family championed the humble potato. Despite the lack of a long personal relationship with the stuff, nutty brown rice has become my ultimate comfort food. Throw a bit of butter on there, and depending on my mood, a little salt or brown sugar, and I'm a happy girl. It may not be the sexiest of dishes, but I can't seem to get enough.

The love, however, is not reciprocated, as I consistently find myself with an unhappy pot of rice - either burnt and dry, or too wet and soupy. To make matters worse, I buy my rice in bulk and with no real consistency in grain length, so I am constantly having to estimate a shift the amount of water and cooking time needed. A recipe for disaster, without an actual recipe. Of course, who should come to my rescue but that culinary stud, Mr. Alton Brown. His secret for perfect brown rice - baking it!

My dad used to tell me about the baked rice he'd serve at his restaurant, Maloney's. He'd bake it in a big, deep, metal tray, with equal parts chicken broth and long grain brown rice, dried oregano, and throw it in the oven with the baked potatoes - no exact science here ("We'd throw it in at 3 and take it out when we needed to serve it!") - and the texture could vary on any given night. Lacking such industrial equipment and wanting to maintain a sweet/savory neutrality, I ventured off into the far reaches of the Internet to find my own, simple, foolproof rice recipe.

I was torn between two possible recipes - Cook's Illustrated boiling method and Alton Brown's baked version. Though I usually trust CI with anything technique related, the thought of boiling rice and throwing away all of the water - along with a lot of the nutrients - didn't seem ideal, no matter how convenient. Alton's recipe preserved all of the rice's goodness without the fear of drying it out over an open flame (or in my case, sadly, an electric stove), and I just happened to have purchased a perfect little ceramic dish at the Goodwill - complete with "tight fitting" lid so lauded by rice enthusiasts.

The method is really simple, just a matter of spreading rice in the bottom of the baking dish, boiling the other ingredients, mixing the two, and letting the oven do the rest. An hour later, perfect brown rice. Really! It may take an extra few minutes, but the simplicity and quality of the result is totally worth it. Next time, I might use the chicken broth herb method of my dad's chef days, but for now, it's some brown rice cookies - results to follow.

Baked Brown Rice
Recipe courtesy Alton Brown, 2005
1 1/2 cups brown rice, medium or short grain
2 1/2 cups water
1 tablespoon unsalted butter
1 teaspoon kosher salt

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Place the rice into a ceramic baking dish with a lid.

Bring the water, butter, and salt just to a boil in a saucepan. Once the water boils, pour it over the rice, stir to combine, and cover the dish (if you don't have a lidded baking dish, no problem - use a regular one with tin foil). Bake on the middle rack of the oven for 1 hour.

After 1 hour, remove cover and fluff the rice with a fork. Enjoy!

Beet, Carrot, and Heirloom Tomato Slaw

I think my cheese grater has made a new best friend. Grating young, colorful beets and carrots has to be one of the easiest ways to use the root vegetable staples, and the result is quite versatile - raw or cooked, these pretty shreds show how the humble grater can save time and make the most of fresh-from-the-farm produce. This morning I dug around in the crisper for the last of my pretty golden beets (note to self: buy more beets!), pulled out the gorgeous baby carrots I bought yesterday, and found some raw spinach that my roommate Dragonfruit had purchased a while ago. The carrots were perfectly tender - nothing like the big, tough guys you find at the supermarket.

I grated the beets and carrots, chopped up a beautiful red and orange heirloom tomato, threw in some dried cranberries and pine nuts (these two are making their way into everything...) and dressed it all with olive oil, rice vinegar, chopped cilantro, and salt. On a bed of fresh spinach, this salad is a great balance between sweet, crunchy, and nutty, and the whole thing took less than five minutes. Try your root veggies raw - it gives them a summery crunch that challenges the usual connotations of winter borsht!

While we're on the subject of raw foods and summer crunch, the July 5th episode of The Splendid Table featured a pretty helpful discussion of which foods should and should not be refridgerated.

Russ Parsons, food and wine columnist for the Los Angeles Times and author of How to Pick a Peach: The Search for Flavor from Farm to Table, says never refrigerate these fruits and vegetables:

Bananas
Basil
Underripe stone fruit like peaches and nectarines
Tomatoes - never never never never never. Please. Just don't.
Potatoes
Onions - except sweet onions like Vidalia, Maui and Walla Walla
Garlic

Have a great Sunday, and Eat Well!

And the Streets Are Paved With Golden Beets

As much as I love leafing through food magazines, cookbooks, Internet recipes, and blogs, most of my cooking is improvised. I've accumulated quite a bit of culinary knowledge from twenty years of watching the Food Network and living with top-notch cooks, and now I love nothing more than creating my own recipes with simple, fresh ingredients. I think this is why I am so passionate about produce. I haven't mastered the art of meticulously measured baking, and while I love the challenge of homemade bread and cakes, I love even more that all that precision can be thrown out the window when you're working with a mise en place of fresh vegetables, herbs, good butter, garlic, and salt.

My dad always jokes about the title of the cookbook he's written in his head: First Saute Garlic and Onions, Then... And, honestly, this sums up a majority of his cooking. You can't go wrong with a base of caramelized aromatics, especially when your ingredients are as fresh as they can be. This freedom to build layers of flavor using a few stand-by methods and methods makes experimenting with new tastes and unusual ingredients a little less daunting.

I brought home some gorgeous golden beets and squash blossoms from the farmers' market, and didn't want to batter and fry the latter - like everyone seems to laud as the be-all-end-all of squash blossom dishes. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for dredging and frying, but I didn't want my first experience with the delicate flowers to be masked by flour and egg. I had a bit of Havarti from a great local fromagerie, so I cut a few slices and slipped them inside the cleaned blossoms. I then pan-friend them in a bit of browned butter. The end result - a perfectly gooey blossom with a delicate zucchini flavor. I'm officially a fan.

For the beets, I wanted something fresh, so I grated them and sauteed them with dill, garlic, and onions. A bit of cream finished off the dish, which was creamy and refreshing all at once. Yum! A perfect lunch - 100% local and 100% amazing.

Warm Golden Beet Salad with Dill and Havarti-Stuffed Squash Blossoms
3 small golden beets
1/2 c. sliced red onion
2 cloves garlic
2 T. butter, divided
1 T. fresh, chopped dill
2. T. heavy cream
5 zucchini squash blossoms, de-stemmed and cleaned (check for bugs!)
2 oz. Havarti, sliced into 5 strips

Grate beets using a cheese grater, food processor, or mandolin. Heat 1 tablespoon butter over medium heat in a small saucepan. Saute onions until soft, about 4 minutes. Add garlic, and continue to cook for another minute. Add grated beets and dill and cook until soft, about 5 minutes. Add cream, cook another minute, and assemble on a plate. Melt remaining butter in saucepan, insert cheese into blossoms and cook each side for a minute. Arrange around beets, garnish with extra dill. Enjoy!

Market Day - August 2nd

Another Saturday, another market!

The Park Blocks were buzzing early this morning, but I arrived just in time to catch a few shots of the market set-up and talk to my favorite farmers before the crowds descended. I love walking around the market before the starting-bell rings. Nobody can sell a thing until they hear the chiming at 8:30, so everyone is more than willing to chat and give tips for the best of the day's harvest. I skipped over to my dear friends at Monteillet Fromagerie to sample the day's new cheeses, and found the perfect peach for breakfast from "the Peach Ladies". Ah, how I love market day!

It seems every individual fruit or vegetable decided it wanted to be the most colorful, enticing item on the table, because the market was an explosion of jewel-tones this morning. There must have been more than eight varieties of beets, from ruby red-orange to golden yellow-pink, to a rich, dark beauty that was almost black. The carrots also put on their Saturday best, and I snatched up some beautiful babies that are so sweet they could be dessert.

The Great Summer Squash Invasion has also begun in earnest, as farmers around the square were hawking their little green and yellow jewels for bargain prices. The amazing Vicki of Sun Gold farms laughed as she told me how she sends her son out the pick the zucchini every three days, pulling in a huge harvest every time. I finally got around to picking out some gorgeous zucchini blossoms that I'll be experimenting with today, as well as some great baby squash - all for pennies. I'm sure, when my own squash plants explode in a few weeks, I'll be laughing at the thought of paying anything for them, but I'll deal with that irony when the time comes.


Tote bag in hand, I decided to adopt a new strategy that would maximize my time leisurely strolling and sampling, while allowing me to make the most of my paltry fifteen bucks. For some crazy reason, the Wells Fargo ATM located at the corner of the market was taken down, and I had to stretch my dollar. Luckily, there were some great deals, and I managed to walk away with all of this:

I made three circles of the market. The first time around, I made a list of all of the items I wanted - just smelling and observing what was at its peak - while snapping pictures like crazy. On the second loop, I recorded prices and quality at various vendors, and the third time around I purchased my goodies until the cash ran out. The only thing I wasn't able to get was a bit of corn - but there is plenty of time for that!

All in all, a fantastic morning. I can't wait to experiment with all of my veggies - especially the squash blossoms which I've never used before. I can tell this August is going to be a great harvest, and I hope you can all find some fabulous local treats this weekend. I leave you with the prettiest flowers of the day.


Eat Well!

This post is a submission to A Scientist in the Kitchen's To Market To Market: Celebrating Farmers' Markets Everywhere blog event. Check it out!

Morning Showers Bring...

The grapes on our trellis are getting bigger every day, and weather like today's make me want to celebrate the miracles of living in Oregon. I grew up in Southern California, where my parents keep a great garden that I was never really attached to. Sure, it was wonderful to eat a fresh tomato still warm from the sun, but I didn't understand the appeal of kneeling in dirt, pulling weeds from bordered beds, and sweating in the sun. Oh, how I lament those lost gardening years. No matter, though, because I've managed to catch garden-fever in Portland,

Where the good rain falls a plenty
and the crops and orchards grow,
I'm gonna hit that Oregon Trail this coming fall...

Woody Guthrie had it right, folks, and we should all be so lucky as to follow his example. I woke up this morning to a soft rain, misty skies, and a happy, happy garden! When my roommates Weasel, Greenbriar, and I set up this little plot a few months ago, we had no idea it would grow so well and so quickly. Our good friend Terra puts it best, "Gardens make me realize how ridiculous people are... sometimes we forget that we live on the earth and that the earth is capable of feeding us! Food isn't "from the store" - it comes from the land we live on!"

I thought I'd share a few shots of the new babies that *crossing my fingers* will be ripe and ready to eat soon. I hope all of your gardens (real and metaphorical) are in full bloom today!


Beautiful little peppers, that will be big, purple, heirloom Bells.


The first of the summer squash invasion!


My pride and joy - my tomato plants are pretty much tomato trees. When the first one of these guys are ripe, I'm going to throw a party. I'm not kidding!

Plenty: Using What You've Got

First - Happy August!

I'm almost finished with Plenty: One Man, One Woman, and a Raucous Year of Eating Locally, by Alisa Smith and J.B. Mackinnon. I've read a lot of books like this one, seeing as my job with the Oregon Environmental Council's Healthy Food and Farms program revolves around education and resources for eating locally, but what is special about Plenty was that it is set in the Pacific Northwest, B.C. to be exact. Though every state (and community and city block and even different spots in my garden) has different microclimates, it was great to read about the struggles and triumphs of eating locally in an area with similar resources as my dear Oregon. I've been attempting to eat as locally and sustainably as I can, but am nowhere near 100% local. While I'd love to try such an experiment under the right circumstances, I think what is most important is taking the steps to use the resources around me, getting to know my local farmers and producers, and making sure I'm living in a way that respects my resources.

One of my biggest challenges as a food lover is making sure my eyes don't get too big for my stomach. As you know, I love experimenting with food and new ingredients, which can be a bit taxing on my budget, my kitchen shelf and fridge space, and on the environment. Throwing out food that has gone bad before I've had a chance to enjoy it is a symptom of buying too much and reusing too little, problems that defeat the purpose of my efforts to live a sustainable life. Because I'm often cooking for myself, leftovers are a common phenomena, but I get too excited about some new recipe that I'll banish the Tupperware to the back of the fridge, only to find it a few weeks later (yikes). This is where the creative part comes in - I can no longer avoid eating leftovers and using the same ingredients for a few days (or weeks) - but that doesn't mean my meals ever have to be boring.

My roommate Weasel bought a great loaf of french bread from Trader Joe's last week, which had been thoroughly enjoyed - especially with that carrot soup a few days ago - but had gotten a bit stale. When I asked her if I could use the rest of it to make something for the blog, W laughed and told me to have at it - she wasn't planning on a meal of crunchy bread crust anytime soon. With visions of sugarplums sustainability dancing in my head, I set out to do something with the last chunk of the loaf instead of tossing it. I'm familiar with a lot of ways of using bread a bit past it's prime: homemade breadcrumb for coatings and stuffing roasted vegetables, bread and tomato soups, bread desserts, and the list goes on. Many traditional cultures - from Italy to Russia to Greece to Mexico - have developed methods of using leftover bread, as it was considered important to use every last bit of an ingredient to save money and time, something I - and most of us modern cooks - should really learn to do.

As I sat down to make lunch, I looked around at what was available - I still had a few of those wonderful little orange tomatoes, a bit of mâche, and some oregano and cilantro that wasn't getting any fresher with time. I decided to use up everything that might not make it to tomorrow, and put together a panzanella, a traditional Tuscan summer bread salad. I cut the bread into cubes and soaked them in red wine vinegar, olive oil, and salt for a half hour, tossed the tasty cubes with the halved cherry tomatoes, chopped herbs, capers, and some carrot shavings, and served it on a bed of mâche. Just a touch more olive oil over the salad, and I was ready to eat.

I'll be honest, it felt pretty great to be resourceful and creative - but it's only one step and I know I've got a long way to go. I guess that's what viable sustainability is all about - taking one step at a time towards better habits and a better life.

Have a beautiful day, and Eat Well.