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Cooking

Keep it simple with soups from scratch

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Gomez Veggie Ville, photo by Madison Jackson

By Madison Jackson

Whether you spend your days working from home or out and about, these long winter months are hard on us all. What could be more comforting than a warm bowl of soup full of fresh and nourishing ingredients after a long day? Soups are generally healthful with benefits including high nutritional value and low fat. They are also easy to prepare, inexpensive, and delicious!

Kokinda Farm, photo by Madison Jackson

January is National Soup Month, so we encourage you to put together a simple soup by stocking up on vegetables, meats, and herbs at Saturdays’ farmers’ market. You will be all set to enjoy a satisfying meal on Sunday or a busy weeknight when you are low on time. Soups are easy to customize to your liking; make a simple soup a bit heartier with some noodles, beans, or rice. Or if you’re looking for something light, you can keep it basic with broth and vegetables. Just follow this introductory method and tailor it to your preferences and available ingredients.

Start with stock – preferably homemade, by simmering chicken or beef leftovers in water, or utilize vegetable parts like onion skins, root vegetables, and herbs. A good quality stock can make a good soup great! Then choose your aromatics such as carrots, celery, onion, garlic, leek, etc. For a little smokiness, add an item like a hambone or bacon. Saute your aromatics in a big stockpot with oil or butter until softened, then stir in herbs and spices to enhance the flavor. Bay leaves and thyme rarely goes wrong.

Shushan Valley Hydro Farms, photo by Emily Meagher

Add a carb if desired, like vermicelli or potatoes. And then, lots of vegetables to add nutrition and bulk to your soup. Seasonal vegetables to consider are kale, chard, and mushrooms. Add the stock and let simmer until ingredients are tender. You can optionally puree your soup after simmering for a silky smooth finish. Finally, add any extra meats, garnishes, and flavorings (like cream, lemon juice, or even hot sauce) for added fullness and flavor.

We’re sharing a recipe aptly called “Whatever Soup”, because it lets you use whatever you have in your pantry. It features produce from Gomez Veggie Ville’s “soup bags,” which you can pick up every Saturday at the farmers’ market. If you pick up a soup bag from the market, you’ll have several options, including carrots, onions, beets, potatoes, turnips, and cabbage.

This week’s recipe: Whatever Soup

Quarantine Cooking with Kids

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By Julia Howard

With schools closed and many of us working from home, parents are desperately looking for ways to keep their children occupied. Food provides many opportunities for learning and play as well as nourishing our bodies and teaching important life skills. Here are 5 simple ways to use food and our local food system as learning tools for young children:

1. Cooking and Baking
Cooking and baking offer many learning opportunities for children; organizational skills, counting, measuring ingredients, team work, even writing out a grocery list. Cooking can be as simple as a smoothie, a salad, no-bake cookies, or assembling a picnic. Offering choices and presenting the activity as a game can be helpful in keeping the attention of your little ones.

2. Crafts and Games
The internet is peppered with DIY crafts and games to keep kids entertained, but look no farther than your fridge for real fun. Making fruit and vegetable prints with discarded stalks, cores, and stems is a creative, no-waste activity for little ones. Building constructions or creating a piece of art from cut fruit and vegetable pieces can make a tasty snack much more entertaining.

3. Planting Activities
If you want to garden with your kids but you’re not quite ready to dig out a space in your yard, here are some ideas that provide opportunities to grow on a small scale. Herbs, leafy vegetables, and celery may simply grow in water by cutting the plant at its base and placing it in water. An indoor herb garden or an outdoor container garden offers the full gardening experience. If you don’t have time to plant seeds, contact your local nursery as many are offering curbside pickup for plants.

4. STEM Activities
Whether your child is learning about taste vs. smell or the phases of the moon, food can be used for countless STEM experiments to stimulate higher thinking and problem solving. Try shaking heavy cream to make butter, experiment with the many ways to bake a potato, or make ice cream with salt, ice, and cream.

5. Driving Farm Tour or Virtual Tour
For families itching to get out of the house, a short drive through farm country can lift spirits during this difficult time. Make a map of your local producers, roll down the car windows, and take in the beauty that the area has to offer. Nettle Meadow and the Kemp Sanctuary even offer a virtual tour of their farm with opportunities to meet their famous rescue animals.

This week’s recipe: Apple & Carrot “Superhero” Muffins

After Visiting the Saratoga Farmers’ Market, Curl Up with Cookbooks

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By Himanee Gupta-Carlson

 

Colder nights create excuses to make meals that warm the soul. If you’re looking for ideas, check out some of the cookbooks that farmers and volunteers with the Saratoga Farmers’ Market use. These books offer instructions and ideas for bringing out the finest flavors of our local foods and insights into the lives of those who grow and create these foods year-round:

For basics, start with The Joy of Cooking, which has been on volunteer Alexandra Morgan’s bookshelf since she received it as a graduation gift in 1993. Darina Allen’s Forgotten Skills of Cooking, which Leah Hennessy of Moxie Ridge Farm & Creamery describes as “what I’m all about,” similarly is more about the simplicity of such processes as dressing game, curing pork, making butter.

For meat, Christophe Robert of Longlesson Farm swears by two books. Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s The River Cottage Meat Book has recipes for the beef and pork cuts he sells at the market “that are spot on.” Fergus Henderson’s The Whole Beast: Nose to Tail Eating is Robert’s “book that lets me dream.” Its recipes are more challenging, but Robert says, they speak to an ethics of raising animals and eating meat in a way that uses the whole animal with love and care.

Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking remains market volunteer Chris Toole’s favorite cookbook in her collection of 100-plus for such recipes as daube de boeuf (a beef stew marinated in red wine), because the ingredients “almost all are available right here, at the market.”

Making the most of maple is Slate Valley Farm’s Gina Willis’s passion. She is writing her own cookbook, based on recipes from her grandmother and great-grandmother for using the maple products made at her family’s farm. She often turns to chef Martin Picard’s Au Pied de Cochoon Sugar Shack for inspiration.

And when in doubt the Internet offers quick answers. Mark Bocain of Freddy’s Rockin’ Hummus appreciates Rachael Ray’s cooking site for meal ideas “that fall somewhere between simple and elaborate.” Volunteer Jim Gupta-Carlson types his ingredients on hand into a search box. Scrolling through the results often determines what he makes for dinner on a given night.

The Saratoga Farmers’ Market is 9 a.m.-1 p.m. Saturdays at the Lincoln Baths Building in the Saratoga Spa State Park. Follow us on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.

Moussaka

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Adapted from recipe by Kenton and Jane Kotsiris of www.lemonandolives.com

Prep time: 40 mins

Cook time: 30 mins

Total time: 1 hour 10 mins

Serves: 4-6

 

Ingredients

*Ingredients available at the farmers’ market

  • 1 medium eggplants*, peeled and cut lengthwise into ½ inch thick slices
  • 1 lb ground beef*
  • ½ onion*, chopped
  • 1½ tsp tomato paste
  • ½ cup red wine*
  • 1 cup feta*
  • ¼ cup bread* crumbs
  • 2 cloves crushed garlic* (to preference)
  • Olive Oil
  • Salt and Pepper
  • Cinnamon
  • -Bechamel Sauce-
  • 2 cups milk*
  • 2 tbsp butter*
  • ½ cup flour

Instructions

  1. Take sliced eggplant and place them in a bow with water and salt to soak for 15min.
  2. Pre-heat oven to 350ºF and take eggplant slices and place them on a baking tray. Drizzle olive oil and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Place in oven for 10-12min, or until tender. Remove and set aside.
  3. In a large skillet, add olive oil and chopped onions and cook for 5min, or until tender.
  4. Add beef and brown. Once brown, add: wine, tomato paste, salt, pepper, cinnamon, and garlic.
  5. Simmer and reduce all liquid.Once reduced, add bread crumbs and feta cheese. Remove from heat.
  6. Sprinkle bottom of an oiled baking dish with breadcrumbs.
  7. Line bottom of a dish with ½ of eggplant, cut to make even and make sure entire bottom is covered.
  8. Add meat mixture on top and spread evenly. Then add remaining eggplant slices to cover the top.

Bechamel Sauce:

Heat milk in a pan. Then add butter and melt. Once, hot – slowly stir in flour. Stir continually over low-med heat until thick. Once thick, remove from heat and pour over eggplant/meat mixture. Spread bechamel evenly over top

  1. Sprinkle with cinnamon and feta
  2. Bake for 30min at 350ºF, until golden brown

Notes

Moussaka is an interesting dish. It can be made many different ways. Some people substitute eggplant for potatoes or zucchini. The specific blend of herbs is even debated and or changed. If anything, use this as a base and experiment. You’ll get it different ways depending on where you have it in Greece. So make it your own!

Cooking on a College Student’s Budget

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By Courtney Kramer

I spent the summer of 2017 as a Saratoga Farmers’ Market intern. Before that point, I had no experience whatsoever with farmers’ markets. However, I did have an innate passion for fresh meals with locally grown produce.

As a result, I came to the internship with a desire to learn how to cook better for myself and to use farmers’ markets as at least one of my sources for fresh, locally produced food.

But I knew very little about how farmers’ markets operated. I did have a lot of questions:

  • Would every stand sell fruits and vegetables?
  • Would each week bring different vendors?
  • How would non-cash transactions be handled?
  • What would happen if it rained?

I got some answers to these questions through my internship. But I also learned something more important. I learned how to cook, easily and quickly, and most importantly on the budget of a 20-year-old college student.

My grandmother is Italian. I lived seven doors away from her my entire life. I grew up with home-cooked Italian meals featuring fresh zucchini, tomatoes, and peppers along with spicy sausages and pasta.

On my own as a college student, I came to realize how much those fresh Italian dinners spoiled me. In college, I can eat in the college cafeteria or cook in my apartment. The latter option is more appealing, but time also matters: there’s school work, extracurriculars, and a social life. What could I do to cook quickly, easily and on a budget?

Broccoli from Humiston’s Vegetables, photo courtesy of Pattie Garrett

Working for the Saratoga Farmers’ Market gave me answers to those questions. I spoke with farmers, Cornell Cooperative Extension food experts, volunteers and customers who are experts on how to use fresh produce well. A few go-to ingredients that I’ll bring back to college with me:

  • Spinach (or any other cooking green): Whether you steam it or cream it as a side dish, put it on a sandwich, wilt it into pasta, it’s flavorful, colorful and nutritious.
  • Zucchini: These massive summer squashes are the most versatile veggies around. Use them as an appetizer, a side, an entrée, or dessert. They also pair well with tomatoes.
  • Broccoli: I can bake it, steam it, or saute it in minutes.

The Saratoga Farmers’ Market is 3-6 p.m. Wednesdays and 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. Saturdays through October at High Rock Park. Follow us on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook.