Have a Cocktail: Variations on Greta Christina's Half Century

Not long ago, I sang the praises of the Half Century cocktail Greta Christina created, as published on her most excellent blog. I think I must've mentioned that the secret sauce of this delightful libation was the cardamom simple syrup. The thing is, the Half Century recipe requires 1/2 oz of this nectar... but the recipe Greta provided makes nearly a pint. What to do, what ever to do?

Well, make more drinks, obviously, amirite? After making a second Half Century (just for research, of course, to verify the initial results), I set about experimenting with variations on the theme.

My first thought was to try replacing the rye with Connecticut's own Onyx Moonshine (made in nearby East Hartford) and the lime juice with lemon juice, producing what I call, in deference to the fact that Connecticut is much older than Greta, the Four Centuries:

• 2 1/2 oz Onyx Moonshine
• 1 oz cardamom simple syrup
• 1 oz fresh lemon juice
• Dash orange bitters.

 This is brighter and lighter than the original, partly because the Onyx doesn't have the woody, smoky notes of a barrel-aged whiskey, but it has the smoothness of a whiskey drink, as opposed to the sharp bite of vodka or gin. Very nice.

And then tonight I ate half a grapefruit, looked at the leftover juice in the bowl, and thought (as I have before), "hmm, I should make a cocktail with that." Thus was born the Eastern Half Century, which is a kind of cross between Greta's original and the Eastern cocktail I blogged about earlier, replacing the latter's maple syrup with the former's cardamom:

• 2 1/2 oz rye whiskey
• 1 1/2 oz cardamom simple syrup
• 1 oz fresh ruby red grapefruil juice.

Also very nice. And the beauty part? I still have a couple cups of the cardamom syrup!

Continuing Adventures in CSA

Today I picked up the second week's basket (cardboard box, really, but "basket" sounds more Chopped-like) of goodies from the Futtner Family Farm CSA I wrote about last week. I haven't cooked or planned any dishes, but I intend to document each week's haul here as soon as I get it. I'll follow up with separate posts about anything specifically interesting I cook, but I also want to just generally document the CSA experience: What I got, and what I didn't use from the previous week's basket.

This week's goodies include 6 or 8 smallish ears of early sweet corn, a generous bag of mixed green beans and wax beans, a nice head of broccoli, two large tomatoes and two smaller ones, and a bunch of cut sage. Mostly, I imagine this will all end up as nice sides to other meals, though I'm starting to get jalapenos in my garden, and I've just bought a new grill, so I might try a roasted corn salsa.

From last week's basket, aside from the sauteed collard greens with bacon I already wrote about, I made a pesto from the basil, which I've used on sandwiches and on a nice buschetta (which also used a couple of the tomatoes). I still haven't done anything with the Chinese cabbage, which may be close to its sell-by date... but I'm still thinking. More soon....

Poor Man's Chopped: My Adventures in CSA, Pt. 1

I've been buying starter plants (hot peppers, assorted veggies, and herbs) for my garden, and occasionally a pint of fresh strawberries or a bunch of asparagus, at Futtner Family Farm in East Hartford for more than a decade, but this year I'm trying something new: I've signed up for their community supported agriculture (CSA) program. The concept of CSA is simple: You pay for a share of a farm's crop in advance, and then get regular (typically weekly) deliveries of food, varying as the season progresses. It's good for farmers, because it provides income security and higher total income; it's good for CSA members/customers because they get a regular and varied supply of high-quality produce, not to mention that they're benefiting their local communities by supporting local, sustainable, family farms like Futtner.

For an emerging foodie like me, there's another benefit, too: Each week I get a box of ingredients I didn't pick and may never have cooked before, and I have to figure out what to do with them in order to get my money's worth. It's not exactly Chopped or the "Mystery Box Challenge" from MasterChef... but for a decidedly non-Master non-Chef like me, I expect it to be challenge enough to be entertaining.

This week was the first of the CSA season. Pickup days are Tuesday and Thursday, and though I'll normally get my box on Thursdays, everyone picked up on Tuesday this week because Thursday was the 4th of July. My first box included 5 very nice tomatoes (two different varieties, but don't ask me what they are), a large bunch of basil, a "mess" of collard greens, a bunch (not a whole head) of Chinese cabbage, and a pot of thyme plants. The thyme went on my deck (with the bigger pot I already had); my wife made bruschetta with one of the tomatoes and a bit of the basil, and I made pesto with most of the rest of the basil (I'll chop and freeze what's left); and I'm still trying to figure out what to do with the cabbage (trying, really, to figure out how to make a little bit of kimchi). But tonight I did my first substantial CSA cooking: the collard greens, with bacon, as my contribution to tonight's Independence Day dinner.

Despite having deep roots in the South — my father's father was from Alabama and his mother from Georgia; my father grew up in northern Florida; and I was born in Florida and raised in Texas — I've not only never cooked collards, I've barely ever eaten them. I knew bacon was bound to be part of the mix — I can't remember my grandmother ever cooking green vegetables that didn't have bacon in them — so I just fed collard greens and bacon into the Google machine and came up with this simple recipe.

We only had half an onion in the house, and were uncharacteristically out of fresh garlic, so I substituted an eyeball-estimated half-onion-worth of minced garlic scapes (yes, more of the ones I got from my coworker) and about a quarter teaspoon of granulated garlic; otherwise, I followed the recipe pretty much exactly, carefully getting my mise en place "en place," cooking the bacon, adding the onions and scapes, then the sugar and seasonings, then the cider vinegar, and finally the collards and liquid.

Though I didn't eat collards as a kid, I did have turnip greens and mustard greens, and I was never a fan: In my experience of them was that they were typically boiled to mush, and even the bacon was typically an uncut lump of pork, boiled with the greens for flavoring rather than sauteed as an actual ingredient. This was a whole different matter: Perhaps because of my remembered wariness, I was careful not to overcook the greens, and the bacon became a distinct flavor and textural element. Interestingly, to my wife the combination of greens, bacon, and cider vinegar seemed German. In any case, everyone enjoyed it.

I imagine I'll see collards again in CSA boxes yet to come; I can't wait to experiment with other ways to cook them.

Have a Cocktail: The Easterner

So when I finally joined the 21st century and got an iPhone, I did what I assume every new smartphone user does: I gorged on apps. Things being (as a coworker used to say) as they are, rather than as they should be, one of the apps I downloaded first was a cocktails app called Mixology.

As with most of the apps I downloaded, I haven't really scratched the surface of what it can do, but I have discovered one feature that is really cool: You can search for drink recipes by ingredient. So when you have an item and you think, "I wonder what I could do with this," the answer is no farther away than your phone.

One of the items I've had handy recently is grapefruit juice: My wife and I have gotten into the habit of splitting a fresh ruby red grapefruit as an evening snack, and I find that after I've eaten all the segments, my half will yield an ounce or two of juice. Normally, I'll just drink it off, but so many great cocktails call for fresh citrus juice, and it seems a shame to waste it.

The obvious (to me, at least) pairing for grapefruit juice is gin, and there are, in fact, any number of delicious-sounding recipes for gin and juice (including Gin and Juice), but I was in the mood for something different tonight, so I keyed in grapefruit juice and... rye. And what Mixology offered me was:

The Easterner

• 2 oz. Rye Whiskey (I used Willet Single Barrel Straight Rye)
• 1 oz. Grapefruit Juice (fresh ruby red, in this case)
• 1/2 oz. Maple Syrup

Shake with ice and strain into a chilled cocktail glass.

That last ingredient was a bit of serendipity for me: I happen to have some local Connecticut maple syrup (from Maple Leaf Farm in Canterbury) that I purchased in a silent auction at a Democratic fundraiser, and I'm always looking for interesting ways to use it. This turns out to be a very interesting way: The maple is a perfect sweet pairing with the smokiness of the rye, and the grapefruit juice adds just the right bit of acid brightness to keep the overall drink from being... well, syrupy.

A quick search around the web turned up (on several sites) a different version that uses 2 ounces of juice and only 1 1/2 ounces of rye, and that adds grenadine, and maybe I'll try that at some point, but I doubt I'll like it better than this version, which is distinctly a whiskey drink, smooth and sweet and bright, but always with the rye out front.

Besides, with this recipe I had enough grapefruit juice to make a second. And that was a Very Good Thing™.

Actual Cooking: In a Pickle!

A couple weeks ago, I heard Terry Gross's 2-part Fresh Air interview with fermentation guru Sandor Katz, and was instantly moved to go out and buy his new book, The Art of Fermentation. You'll have to wait for a review — it's a massive tome, and I've barely scratched the surface — but the reason I was so hot to get the book right now was the fact that pickling cukes were in season at the Coventry Regional Farmers' Market, and Katz's description of making fresh sour pickles made it seem so easy even I could do it.

As of tonight, I can tell you that it is and I have! Last Sunday I picked up 4 lb of small, straight pickling cucumbers, a bunch of dill (to supplement my own heat-ravaged dill plants), and a fresh head of garlic, all from local farms, and Tuesday night I got "cooking" (no heat involved, actually):

I put the cukes in a large bowl of ice water and let them soak for about an hour. In the meantime, I mixed up about 3 quarts of a 5% brine (50g of sea salt per liter of water), using filtered tap water (just the built-in filter in our fridge). I rinsed the head of garlic and cut it in half crosswise (it's not necessary to even peel it); rinsed a goodly handful of dill fronds, plus some dill flower heads from my garden; and on a whim, peeled and quartered a small organic carrot (also from the CRFM): Everything went into a 1 gal glass jar (purchased from a local winemakers/homebrewers shop). Mindful of Katz's recommendation to include something high in tannin to help preserve crunch, but not having grape leaves or a green banana peel, I tossed in a tea bag.

Then I drained the cukes and loaded them into the jar, and then poured in the brine to fill. I was worried about how I would weight down the vegetables, to make sure they were well covered with brine, but the shape of the jar made that unnecessary.

Within an hour or two, small bubbles were rising in the brine; by the next day, a small amount of foam (but no visible mold) was floating in the neck of the jar. Thursday (yesterday), I tested one. It was definitely pickling, but not quite done; my Lovely Bride™ declared the flavor delicious. Tonight I tested another: It was clearly pickled all the way through, and really tasty... almost as good as the ones they serve at Rein's Deli here in Vernon (OK, I may be a tiny bit overly proud, there).

Later this evening, I'll transfer them to clean quart Ball jars and put them in the fridge. Since they're not preserved or processed, they'll need to be kept cold, and they won't keep forever, but I don't think that'll be a problem!

The best part is that I have a few cukes left over, and fresh jalapenos in the garden, so tomorrow I'll be able to try my buddy Andy's hot-off-the-(Word)presses Cucumber-Jalapeno Martini of the Month!

[edited for minor punctuation error]

Actual Cooking: Spring Salt Seasoned Salmon with Forbidden Rice

Yesterday was opening day for the Coventry Regional Farmers' Market, and also my first-ever day at a summer, outdoor farmers' market (I made it to CRFM's winter market a couple times last season). Mostly I was there to soak up the ambiance on a beautiful early summer Sunday, but I also had a mission to buy ingredients for dinner.

My first farmers' market newbie lesson learned is this: When you see something you want, buy it right then! I foolishly wandered around taking pictures and scoping out what was on offer, before grabbing some lunch, schlepping the camera back to the car, and getting down to serious shopping... at which point I found that almost everything I'd planned to buy — fresh whole duck, fingerling potatoes, fresh chevre, strawberries... — was already sold out. This may have been due to unique circumstances — huge opening-day crowds combined with fairly meager early-season pickin's — but still and all, I figure I'll grab it when I see it from now on.

I did manage to get the Lovely Bride™ some artisanal coffee beans from Bean & Leaf along with a gluten-free peanut butter filled Ring Ding from Shayna B's Gluten-Free Bakery, and I got myself some rye bread, a wedge of cheese from Woodbridge Farm, some pork loin chops for the freezer, and the new Connecticut Farmer & Feast cookbook.

A good day's shopping, despite my missteps... but none of it added up to Sunday dinner. For that, I turned to The Fish Market of Willimantic, onhand featuring Connecticut-caught fresh fish, for two beautiful salmon filets. Looking for a side-dish, I wandered by the Boxed Goodes stall and picked out their Forbidden Blend rice. While I was there, I also selected their Spring Season Salt spice blend to crust the fish.


Then home to cook! Actually, the cooking itself doesn't bear much description: You don't have to exactly be Eric Ripert to dredge a piece of fish in seasonings and put it under the broiler, nor to cook rice (even exotic looking black rice). Even I could manage it without any incident worth narrating. Add a small salad of mixed lettuce from my garden, though, dressed with a simple scratch-made vinaigrette, and it ended up being a pretty, tasty plate of all locally sourced/grown goodness.

In a day or two, I'll hop in my time machine and tell you about all the cooking I did over the Memorial Day weekend. 'Til then, bon appetite!

Breaking News! New Local Microdistillery

A story (curse you, paywall!!) in this evening's Journal Inquirer announces the forthcoming opening of Onyx Spirits, a new microdistillery in nearby (to me) Manchester, Connecticut. Apparently the initial products, to be released in April, will include a limoncello, a vodka, and a "moonshine" (corn whiskey, perhaps?). Watch this space for more information; you can bet that if public tours are available, I'll be there!