October 20, 2008
Sunchokes
So, you might remember that I planted sunchokes (Jerusalem Artichokes / girasoles) this year. I planted them in the time-honored tuber (...or starfish) method of chopping one up and planting the pieces. I chopped one decent-sized sunchoke up into six marble-sized chunks and they turned into plants.
Big plants. 
Two weekends back I was by the NutHouse to pick up my half of our shared beer-bottle collection, and harvested one and a half of the plants, which are now taller than I am. I am now the proud owner of a few pounds of sunchoke. Also, realizing the amount of lost sunchokes still hiding in the garden soil, plus untold yards of good root, I am confident that while every other positive change I might have tried to enact on the NutHouse may go away and fade, no one will ever - ever rid the yard of sunchokes.
I've been seeking out recipes that use lots of sunchoke. Soup was my first stop.
Sunchoke Bisque turned out pretty well - it, er, tasted like sunchoke. 
Next recipe to try - pickled sunchokes!
Posted by griffjon at 09:12 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
August 20, 2008
Round up of updates
I realize that while I comment often here, I don't post much. So here's a wrap-up post on my life.
Work continues. Less horrible than a few months ago, but still I have too many tasks, too many interrupts, too little funding, and not enough pay or belief to work unpaid overtime to get it all done in a timely fashion. I'm still pursuing leads for a good and engaging ICT4D / social media 4 dev or citizen journalism via SMS/civic engagement type position with some field time, but based in DC. I've spent the last 5 months in a long distance relationship (after swearing I'd never do one of those again!) and I'm done with LDRs (again) (this one ends (happily) next month, see below). I've mostly made peace with DC. There's a hidden but interesting group of folks here. It's a stuffy, stodgy town (especially considering its voting record), but for the time being at least, it's my home.
Speaking of, I'm moving in with A (big step) in a real, honest-to-god rental rowhouse in a month. It's in the Capitol Hill area, essentially across the street from Eastern Market, which houses a great selection of regional produce and meat, and has a decent farmer's market combined with a craft/flea market on the weekends. We have a guest bedroom, so the open invite to friends stands. It has less crazy outdoor space than the Nut House, but it's also well maintained, and not shared with 6 others, not counting raccoons. I'll still be able to garden a bit.
Gardening is going well. The peppers are coming in, and the "random packet of peppers" has turned out to produce 1 anaheim, 1 poblano, 4 jalapenos and 5 banana pepper plants. I'd prefer more of the first few and no banana peppers, but them's the breaks. I planted 2 habanero pepper plants separately. The sunchokes are taller than I am, and it's looking like I'll have to come back to visit the house in the fall to actually harvest them. The tomatoes are peaking currently, which is great. I've been eating at least 2 huge tomatoes every day :)
The summer homebrews turned out decent; a solid lager and an experimental whitbier with lemon zest. Ironically, now that the two perfect-for-hot-august-days beers are ready, August is ending up with a series of downright pleasant days.
I'm reading Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. If you haven't read that book, I highly recommend it. I considered myself decently informed on the importance of local sustainable food, but I still learn one amazing thing per chapter, and it's just a heartwarming story that makes me want to go farm.
Posted by griffjon at 12:35 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
July 27, 2008
Produce!
Warning: Posted from a state of food bliss.The garden is doing well. A few of the tomato plants are struggling -- the new varieties that I hadn't tried before -- Early Girls (which didn't put out as much as promised) and a weird type that makes tapered-bottom tomatoes (I'll find its tag when I dig the plant up later). The rest of the plants are Quite Happy and I have probably 20 beautiful tomatoes in the kitchen waiting to be eaten. The potatoes, as I've already mentioned have come and gone and I have a handful left to eat. The sunchokes are still growing strong, and like potatoes I have to wait until the plant part dies back before digging in.
My squash was odd this year. The yellow/summer squash produced a few early on, then mysteriously died back. My cucumbers and zucchini never showed up, replaced instead by monstrous acorn squash plants which have produced around a half a dozen of humongous gourds so far. Packaging mishap? Mutants? Who knows.
The corn managed to make ears. They never filled out fully, but were tasty. I got about a half a dozen ears from the 5 plants that survived
The food bliss part is from enjoying the (literal) fruits of my labor - in the form of a BLT for lunch, using my homegrown tomatoes on freshly baked (by my machine) bread with homemade truffle-oil-infused mayo and local+organic bacon; combining into a heart-attack of YUM.
Photos after the jump.. All the produce parties together:
Check out these tomatoes!!
EXTREME TOMATO CLOSEUP!
Hot Bacon-on-tomato action with lots and lots of slippery mayo:
Posted by griffjon at 01:47 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
January 22, 2008
Why has no one ever told me about sunchokes?
I had sunchokes (Jerusalem Artichokes) for the first time at a Restaurant Week visit to Circle Bistro. They look like fat ginger root and taste like mild artichoke hearts. A and I located some at Central Markup. We tossed them in olive oil, lemon juice, salt, pepper, sage and garlic powder and roasted them for ~30 minutes and they were delish. Turns out they're basically the root of a sunflower and grow like weeds in the Northeast; so I'll be adding them to my garden as soon as I can figure out when they should be planted (you can cut up a sunchoke and plant it like a potato.
Posted by griffjon at 09:51 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
January 06, 2008
Pomegranante: Just a Good Idea
This week has been a week of adding pomegranate to things. Glazes, reductions, berry syrups. It's good. Thus far:
*A pinot noir/balsamic vinegar/pom glaze reduction with sauteed savory-spiced (salt, garlic salt, lemon) portabello mushroom slices (sautee the mushrooms with olive oil and spices until tender, then add some wine, vinegar, and pom glaze and reduce until damn yummy)
*Just plain pom glaze on fish
*added to orange or teriyaki-sh chicken
*1 tbsp each of wine, pom glaze, honey, sugar, and balsamic vinegar with ~8 mashed blackberries makes a really nice dessert topping for a lemon cake of vanilla ice cream.
Posted by griffjon at 09:54 PM | Comments (0)
November 14, 2007
Hot Hot Sauce
So... As I posted last week; I like hot hot sauce. Right? Right. If you know me in person you know I'm not afraid of mortal heat.
I found my match today; and it is MadDog MAgnum 357 sauce. It's supposed to be a one-drop-will-do-ya. Well, it glopped out onto my test chip at Pedro And Vinny's Burrito Cart (think FreeBird's in a cart, veg only, served by a friendly New Yorker in a big hurry); so I ate it, probably about a tablespoon in all.
Note that the "one drop" is one drop for an entire pot of chili, a whole hamburger, etc.
I teared up a bit on the way back to the office to enjoy my burrito laced with the much kinder, but very tasty Uncle Brutha's Fire Sauce No. 9 Chile Verde Garlic and Ginger . I was feeling a bit ill by the time I got back; then nauseous, and ended up in the bathroom preparing for Porcelain Goddess worship (I can't even remember the last time I had to pay homage for something I ingested). A few seconds later I woke up on the floor of the bathroom, sweating balls, and stumbled to our office's storage room and laid down to sweat, endure some GI burning pain, and contemplate my idiocy for a ~10 more minutes.
I'd say that the sauce needed a warning label, but probably the "Made with 6 million scoville unit extract" probably should've clued me in (the hottest variety of habanero, the red savina, comes in at around 500,000).
I'm feeling mostly normal now :)
I'd say that I've learned my lesson, but I probably haven't
Posted by griffjon at 01:42 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
November 07, 2007
Salsa Recipe
I've updated my recipe for my homemade salsa.
http://griffjon.com/recipes/howtomakeSalsa.pdf
Posted by griffjon at 11:17 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
July 31, 2007
Pepper Pain
So, I bought some poblano peppers at the farmer's market last weekend, and thought I'd make a quick-and-easy "chile relleno casserole" (roasted and skinned poblanos, sliced open, laid ontop of corn tortillas in a 9x9 bake pan with cheese and beaten eggs poured in, because I'm lazy and have not gotten the will to devote a full day to preparation like my Dad does).
I stand by my casserole plan. But next time I'll check the heat levels of the poblanos. They were hot like really good jalapenos or really mild habaneros. I was able to eat them, but not without crying.
Returning upstairs to clean my dishes, I tried to blow some hair out of my face, and my breath caused my eyes to burn and tear up again. Yowsas.
Posted by griffjon at 09:17 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
June 25, 2007
Purpled Salmon
Also, I sat down to cook up some dinner. The goal: tame my basil plant that's turning into a small bush and occupying more and more of my not-that-big kitchen. So - pesto it is. But what to go with the pesto? Noodles seem to be too easy, heavy, and obvious. So some pesto-encrusted salmon. Also, I had some shitake mushrooms that needed cooking, and bought some fresh asparagus at the farmer's market this morning. I reduced some syrah with the mushrooms, because shitakes sauteed in wine = the shiznizzle. I poured the remaining reduction over the salmon, and wrapped the asparagus with some turkey bacon.
Damn.
Posted by griffjon at 12:11 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
February 04, 2007
Drinker's Choice!
In Austin, there's this fantastic Turkish restaurant, Ararat - one of Austin's best kept restaurant secrets (that everyone knows). They have bellydancing all weekend and live bands during the week, and some of the best middle eastern food you'll find. Make reservations, as it's a small place that's always jam-packed.
Anyhow, Ararat has an appetizer, called "Drinker's Choice;" described as " Sesame blended with lemon and pomegranate creates a distinctive sweet and sour taste, complimenting almost any drink. " It's mindblowingly good. My problem is that I don't live in Austin anymore.
I undertook re-creating it, and have come close enough.
Mix equal 2 parts tahini and 2 parts plain yogurt with 1 part fresh lemon juice (bottled tastes funny), and 1 party honey. Add 1/4 -1/2 part salt (to taste, to enhance the flavor), and 1/2 part olive oil (for smoother texture). Put on top dried cranberries, chopped dried apricots and figs, and chopped nuts (almonds, cashews, and/or walnuts). Drizzle generous amounts of pomegranate syrup (available at Trader Joe's), eat with warm pita.
Posted by griffjon at 02:20 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack