It's that time of year, Olive time! Sort of like Hammer time, but without the parachute pants and house foreclosures. I have a baaaad feeling about this batch of olives. The first time I made olives was back in 2003 in Santa Monica, and I confess that I used lye in the initial curing phase. Boy, it really did the trick, and soon after the water ran clear, I brined them then ate them and they actually didn't totally suck. Funny, because I don't even really like olives all that much, I just wanted to see how to make them.
So when I saw a bunch of green and purplish Manzanillas at the SF Farmer's Market, I decided to have another go at olive curing. Sadly, my baby addled brain sort of forgot about them for a few days and I lost about a third to the elements. I decided to go the non-lye curing route this time, so on the advice of several websites, I whacked the olives with a rolling pin to help the water get into the center of the olive so that the yucky, bitter glucoside would be extracted easier. I may have banged some of the olives too hard (snort) cause after a week in water they were looking pretty damaged. Oops.
But carry on I did, after a week in water being changed daily, into a brine they went. The green got salt, white vinegar, lemon, garlic and rosemary, and the purple got red wine vinegar, cumin, coriander, black pepper and oregano. I have no idea if that was a good choice.
What's the worse that could happen?
Inspired by Biggles and his love for meat, I just HAD to capture this roast pork with a photo and a blog post. You know it's a good piece of pork when I blog about something other than my precious baby! Pork roast with a crust of crushed fennel seed, rosemary, garlic and olive oil.
When I pulled this baby out of the oven, and sliced it, seeing the perfect pink juiciness, I thought, "Oh I GOT to take a picture. Biggles would be so proud how well I treated this meat."
Miss you all and eating and writing and all the other great things that went along with food blogging. Especially the eating.
Broccoli is my stand-by veggie, I either eat it or salad just about every night. I love it, love it, love it, love it. The usual way to make good broccoli better is to add a couple tablespoons of butter and some salt. Oh yeah, now that glistening, hot broccoli beckons you. Right?
So in the spirit of eating vegetables new and different ways, and in the spirit of avoiding dairy, I did something completely different. I didn't make enough, I could have eaten all of it for dinner. Chris made me share.
Easy Yummy Broccoli
Broccoli, as much as you want, trimmed into medium-sized florets
5 or so anchovy fillets in oil* or salt, minced (if in salt, rinse and dry)
3 garlic cloves, sliced
good Olive oil
Blanch the broccoli in boiling water for NO MORE THAN 2 minutes, just to make a tad tender. Drain. Saute garlic and anchovy in 2 or so tablespoons olive oil over medium heat for a few minutes until fragrant and starting to brown. Add drained broccoli and cook, stirring occasionally. Test broccoli for how done you want it, about 6 minutes for still a bit crispy. Add salt and pepper to your taste. Eats!
*note: I use Talatta Anchovy Fillets in Olive Oil from Whole Foods that I keep refrigerated and just use a few fillets at a time. This has worked well, so I don't have to use a whole thing of anchovies or throw them away. These are also better quality than most of the ones in tins sold at grocery stores. I have yet to use anchovy paste but I think that I may try some if I can find some really good stuff.
Never! So I decided to pickle them. Conclusion? Not so much. I am not a pickled beet hater, I am a lover, just not of my very own pickled beets.
I boiled the beets skin on, for about 45 minutes. They were a little overcooked and I think they could even be undercooked so that they are just a tad crunchy when pickled. Rub them a bit, and they take their skins right off (sexy!). After they got naked, they were sliced, and added to a mixture of water, vinegar, sugar, salt, clove and allspice berry mixture (brought to a boil then cooled). The beets were joined by some sliced onions. Three of those ingredients were ALL wrong. Can you guess? Yep, the sugar, clove and allspice gave them that Christmasy almost fruit-cake flavor, too sweet and spicey. Not for me, thanks. Next time, I'm going with straight pickling spices and we'll see what happens. There is no denying, however, that they are beautiful...And Chris ate them anyway.
I have no idea. The lady at the Riverdog Farms stand at the Berkeley farmers' market said that this was a variety of radicchio, so even though it looks like plain old lettuce, it's really a much hardier and MUCH more bitter green. It definitely deserved to be cooked. It deserved to be cooked and eaten and it deserved to taste good. So I treated it bad, so so bad. Olive oil in a hot pan, funny radicchio variety in the olive oil, salt and pepper on top, swirl it around a bit, and then add some good chicken stock and braise for about 15 minutes with the lid tightly on. Conclusion: Good but VERY bitter, could probably have used a chopping before braising. Trying to braise these bad boys whole was really out there. Crazy. I'm wild like that.
Riverdog Farms
At the Berkeley Farmers' Markets on Saturdays at Center & MLK and on Tuesdays at Derby & MLK
My mother will be so happy to know that, despite my incredible sweet tooth as a child, and despite having spent all my allowance on as many candy bars, Jolly Rancher sticks and Laffy Taffy that I could afford, and despite me turning my nose up at fruit offered as dessert in foot-stomping refusal, despite all that, I often eat fruit for dessert. If there is no ice cream in the house. So for Sugar High Friday #7: Molasses, hosted by Derrick over at An Obsession With Food, I settled on fruit, but better.
Strawberry season hits like a bang, the rows at the farmer's market sporting that ripe scent, and I knew my basket wouldn't last another day. I used to eat strawberries dipped in white sugar, crunchy and sweet, strawberries were a sugar delivery vehicle. I graduated to dipping strawberries in chocolate and, when chocolate was not available, sour cream sweetened with vanilla and sugar. Sour cream with molasses instead of sugar seemed a logical step. Epicurious apparently already stole my idea 10 years ago, so this is not an original recipe, although I thought it was when I made it.
Strawberries Bathed in Molasses Sour Cream
You can follow the Epicurious recipe or do what I did
Strawberries, cleaned, hulled, halved or quartered
Sour cream
Molasses
Vanilla
Put some sour cream in a bowl, as much as you want. Add a bit of vanilla. Add some molasses, probably a tablespoon or so at a time until is tastes just right. Mix well. Slowly drizzle some molasses on top so you can take a fancy picture and your entry for Sugar High Friday looks tight. Eats. Lick bowl. Serves 1-4 depending on your gluttony level.
I am sure they have been doing it for centuries, "they" being either people without food coloring or people who hate food coloring and "it" being coloring things with beet juice. Fabrics and paints were dyed naturally by the Egyptians and Chinese, and right here in America, betalain is produced from a specially bred "high pigment beet" to be used as a natural food dye in the food industry.
I have accidentally "dyed" many things with beet juice, towels, tile grout, carpets, but had yet to use it for coloring something on purpose. So when I was recently in the throws of pickling some beets, it occurred to me that they could be used to liven up the butter-cream frosting that was at that very moment being 
whipped up in my Kitchen Aid. I did a quick test by squeezing a handful of beets skins into a tiny bowl with a tablespoon of frosting. This resulted in a beautiful, soft pink and no beet flavor which was exactly what I wanted for the cupcakes Chris was making (yep, and he makes the best cupcakes on the planet). So I squeezed away (squozed? squeezeded?), and whipped away until we got the perfect color. What simple pleasure I get out of this discovery, to be able to use a food I love to naturally enhance the beauty of another food I love makes me giddy. No, I'm not totally nuts. I just have this crazy thing about beets.
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