backyard grub

Backyard Grub Goes to School

A few posts back I mentioned my move to Boston to earn a degree at BU. Well, I have transplanted myself from the warm comforts of the south and relocated to New England. The school bell rings tomorrow morning when I start classes at BU's Culinary Certificate program.

I've started a new blog to let you in on my kitchen adventures... kind of with reservations, though. You, however, don't need any!

So far I'm calling it Burning My Fingers in Boston. Go visit. Lemme know what you think. (Yes, I am trying to find art. And I do have a digital camera, although it's a bad one.)

Remember Julia

It's a melancholy day. Sad to see her gone, but thankful for what she brought to the world.

I suppose the best way to pay tribute to Julia Child is to cook something from Mastering the Art of French Cooking. Or just cook something. Enjoy the cooking. Invite friends and family over. Open a good bottle of wine and share the food and drink in the warm company of people you enjoy.

Savor each moment.

Egullet has put together a tribute to her, too -- and you can visit her kitchen at the Smithsonian or watch some of her programs thanks to PBS.

Have Cheese, Will Travel

I'm so swamped with packing and making all the other moving changes, I've no time to cook dinner for myself lately. So I've taken to traveling around with olive oil, salt, and pepper in my car. (Probably isn't a good idea to leave the olive oil in my car during the summer in the south. Better stash it in my desk.)

Anyway, here's what I do with them: For my dinner break I stop by the nearby Whole Foods store, go to the salad bar and get some pasta. Plain. (Hang with me, okay?) Leave some room in the container, you'll need it. Then, run by the cheese counter and get some fresh mozzerella. Then go by produce and pick up some tomatoes (hopefully the ones with the 'locally grown' sign above them) and fresh basil. Check out, go back to work, and head for the break room in your friendly place of employment.

Now you have the makings for a nice salad:

* Cut the tomatoes in large dice and let them fall over the pasta.
* Tear the mozzerella into small pieces and drop them in with the pasta and tomatoes.
* Tear several leaves of basil into bits and put them in with the salad.
* Add salt, pepper, and generous glugs of olive oil (a good idea not to leave it in your car, a fruity olive oil is nice here and a hot car will ruin it.)

So eat! And enjoy! And smirk when the guy in the cubbyhole next to you strolls in with his fourth happy meal of the week! (Maybe you can throw in, "oh, I just love fresh tomatoes, don't you?")

If you're dining in your home and not your cubbyhole, then some minced garlic would be nice to add to this. But take my word for it, garlic is damned frustrating to mince with a plastic knife.

Herbed Cheese

This little dreamy bowl of flowers and herbs (and it is dreamy-looking not because of my clever 70s photography tricks but because I'm a bad photographer) is just about all you need to make a delicious bowl of herbed cheese. Throw out that sad bag of onion soup mix or ranch dressing and find the little girl at the Durham Farmer's Market who sold me the herbs and a recipe for only $2. More than worth it, I promise you!

Herbed Cheese
1/2 cup cream cheese, small curd cottage cheese, or a mixture of both
1/4 cup parsley
2 tablespoons rosemary leaves
1-3 garlic cloves
edible flowers such as calendula, bee balm, or nasturium
salt and pepper to taste

* Chop the herbs finely by hand or in a food processor.
* Add the cheese and process until well blended.
* Season to taste with salt and pepper.
* Cover and refrigerate. Sprinkle with flower leaves before serving. Great to spread on crackers, toast, or bagels.

You can use the same recipe to make herbed butter, just substitute a stick of butter for the cheese. Herbed butter on pasta...

Love Apples

I went to the Durham Farmers Market today to snap up some heirloom tomatoes. Though the Durham Farmer's Market is smaller than the State market in Raleigh, right now they have a wider variety of tomatoes. Mmm!

At the top are some pretty large Cherokee Black tomatoes with a nice deep flavor. Then, going clockwise, is a tomato I just tasted for the first time last week. They're called Brown Romas. They're about half the size of a grocery store Roma, but the flavor is richer and earthier. These were a nice suprise. Continuing around the clock are Green Zebras-- really zingy. Mmm! Then I have some red cherry tomatoes and some Sungold cherry tomatoes.

So what am I going to do with them all? Because I did go crazy. So far I made a salad with the brown romas, lots and lots of fresh basil, fresh mozzarella, olive oil, salt, pepper, and penne pasta. I think I'm going to make a tomato cobbler with the different cherry tomatoes. The zebras and blacks, I'll probably just enjoy with a little vinegar and olive oil.

Big News

I have been sitting on something for months that is really exciting (at least for me), and it's time to share it with you. I'm going to graduate school!

Depending on how long you've been reading my blogs, you may or may not know that I'm a working journalist... (I'm a producer for a television station) and, of course I have shared my love of food with you. I also love journalism-- or at least, I love doing journalism and I love what journalism should be to the people and communities news organizations serve. I have been torn between these loves-- for a long while I have thought of opening some type of bakery or cafe, but I wasn't yet ready to leave news. Last year it finally dawned on me that I could try to combine the two.

After looking at a number or programs, I found something really unique that I think fits my goals perfectly. I applied to Boston University's Master of Liberal Arts in Gastronomy program. This program was founded by Julia Child and Jacques Pepin, and it is the only masters degree in gastronomy offered in the United States. I'll be able to combine culinary training with courses in food writing, food history, hunger, nutrition, and more.

In the next few months, I'll be packing up and moving to Boston. School starts in September.

I'm not sure what will happen to backyard grub... I'm pretty sure I won't be posting as often between now and September. I'm also pretty sure I will at least continue chocolatada. I am also contemplating a blog of my adventures in the culinary training part of the degree...

Stay tuned!

Slow Foodies Love Farmers

Tonight my Slow Food convivium is having dinner at a restaurant in Carrboro called Panzanella. It's a unique place-- it is a community-owned restaurant, and part of the wonderful Weaver Street Market, also a co-op. So tonight is the first Totally Local Dinner-- all the ingredients are, well, totally local (grown within 250 miles). Part of the proceeds will benefit the Carolina Farm Stewardship Association.

If you can't join us, well, find a farmer and give 'em a hug. And buy their produce. Oh, and let me interest you in some reading: our convivium leader is a decent writer-- check out his food articles for the (Durham) Independent Weekly.

Saturday our convivium is having a tomato tasting at the Durham Farmers Market. I'll be the one cutting up tomatoes!

Salads with Bread

I am loving summer. Loving it. Trying to squeeze all the flavor out of it, because I think this will be my last summer in North Carolina before I am banished to a frozen American urban tundra for a year or two. (More on that to come later.)

So I am enjoying the produce at the farmer's market, I don't like to put a lot of cooking on fresh locally grown seasonal produce, so I keep it simple. Two of my favorites are salads with bread. Oh, I know, it's a lot of cutting. But I think of it this way: all I'll have left to wash is a knife, cutting board, and bowl!

This week I found some heirloom tomatoes, some purple ones (I think Black Cherokee) and some that were red and yellow bi-colored tomatoes. Mmm. So I used those, along with some ciabatta bread, to make panzanella. (That's Martha's recipe.)

Another of my favorites is fattoush, which my husband has taught me to make. It's kind of a Middle Eastern version of panzanella. Or maybe it's the other way around. At any rate, fattoush is great, and you can play with the ingredients, whatever you have available, whatever you like. (Which is why there are no exact amounts here. We just put whatever we think looks good to eat.) I like mine on the tangy side so I always add an extra splash of vinegar. I have also seen recipes with fresh lemon juice instead of vinegar. You can use other herbs, too, like fresh parsley or fresh mint.

Is My Blog Burning? Hoppin' John

Today is the fourth Is My Blog Burning Day. Pim wants to go around the world in a bowl of rice.

Welcome to the Carolinas, Pim and guests!

This is the first IMBB I've participated in, and as soon as I read Pim's theme I knew exactly what I would cook: Hoppin' John. I chose this dish because it reminds me of my maternal grandfather, who was a descendant of the Gullah, slaves who ended up in the Carolina Lowcountry. My granddad was a Presbyterian preacher who spoke with a geechee accent. Hoppin' John may have gotten its name from the way people used to invite each other over to their homes in the Carolinas: "Hop in, John!" Also Hoppin' John is supposed to bring you good luck for the year if you eat it on New Year's Day.

The dish itself is a mixture of rice and black-eyed peas and usually has some pork in it. The version I've chosen is more like a salad and is perfect for summer eating-- this came from Cooking Light magazine and features crab. Yum! All I need is a glass of sweet tea with lemon...

Slow Food Potluck

Today was the first Slow Food potluck I've attended. I had hoped to bring a lasagna using some seasonal veggies, but I never found a recipe that grabbed me.

So instead I found a recipe for Tagliatelle with Chicken from the Venetian Ghetto in Nigella Lawson's How to Eat. Except, I did change it up a little. I used orecchiette instead of tagliatelle. It was in the pantry, for one; and two, it just seemed to me that tagliatelle would be kind of wimpy next to the shredded chicken pieces. But that's just me. I kind of liked how the raisins and pine nuts got caught in the orecchiette. Also, I used golden raisins instead of sultanas. Those were in the pantry, too. I made this with some leftover chicken Saturday, just to test it out, and I used walnuts instead of pine nuts. Different but also good. If you're in a rush for dinner, this would be a good idea for one of those roasted chickens you get in the grocery store, you just might have to improvise a little for the sauce.

The entire dinner was fab-- roasted tomatoes, fish, flank steak, asparagus, several salads, a woman brought an assortment of homemade pickles (she let me take the rest of the dilled green beans home-- yum), and our leader brought some sourdough bread he baked in his brick oven.