Kat of All Trades

Before I move into talking about 600 ways to use zucchini – it is, after all, nearly that time of year – I want to discuss this garlic scape pesto more. Have I mentioned how peppery and garlicky and creamy and generally delicious it is? Yes? Well, it is. I like this pesto, and I wanted to come up with ways to use it. After all, I made 1/2 cup for my first batch, and then plenty more with the giant bag of scapes. (I’m pretty sure this pizza, which Jeanne told me about on twitter, is in my future.)

Remember way back at the beginning of this blog, when I told you how much I like roasting chicken? Well, I bought a chicken at the greenmarket the same day that I got all of those garlic scapes. I enjoy experimenting with chicken, and it’s hard to screw up. I started thinking that the pesto could be a good rub between the skin and the meat, plus I had that lemon that I’d used for the juice in the pesto, and those potatoes from my CSA, and those green beans from the greenmarket…

Pesto Roasted Chicken with Potatoes

2 or 3 potatoes
1-2 tbsp olive oil
1 lemon
1 medium onion (about the size of a tennis ball)
1 chicken (I usually get a 3 lb bird for the two of us)
1/4 c garlic scape pesto
salt
pepper

Preheat oven to 475 degrees Fahrenheit. Wash potatoes and chop into one-inch pieces. Add potatoes to a baking pan (I used my 9 x 13 pyrex dish lined with aluminum foil) and toss with olive oil. Peel onion, and slice lemon and onion into 1/2-inch thick rounds.

Rinse chicken with cold water, and pat dry with paper towels. Use the handle of a wooden spoon to separate the skin from the meat as best you can. I try to separate it on the thighs and back as well as the breasts. You want to separate the skin enough to get your hands under it.

Using your hands, spread the pesto under the skin. It’s gloppy and messy, but do your best to coat the chicken evenly everywhere you lifted the skin. Use about 1 tbsp of the pesto on top of the skin and inside the cavity.

Once you’re done giving your bird a pesto rubdown, take the lemon and onion slices and stuff them inside the cavity. I never keep twine around to tie the drumsticks, so what I do is cut a little slice in the skin near each of them, and then you can tuck the end of the drumstick through that to hold them in place.

Push the potatoes to the sides of the baking dish, making room for the chicken in the middle. Put the chicken in the center of the dish, and sprinkle salt and pepper over it and the potatoes (especially over the potatoes).

Bake for about an hour and twenty minutes, or until a meat thermometer reaches 165 degrees Fahrenheit in the thighs (Make sure you aren’t hitting a bone).

Allow the chicken to rest, breast-side down, under a foil tent for about ten minutes before carving and serving.

While I was away from the blog for two weeks, something else happened in addition to the cooking and baking that I did: I was interviewed by two other bloggers! I really enjoy both of their blogs, so I’m thrilled to be mentioned. And of course, welcome if you’ve joined me from over there.

First, Bill of Tattoosday stopped me while I was on my way back to my office one day. I knew that he worked near me from reading his blog, and was hoping that someday he’d spot my tattoo. And then he did! We chatted briefly about my Mucha/art nouveau-inspired piece by the fabulous Joy Rumore, and now that conversation is preserved on the internet.

Then, before I baked these lovely balsamic pies with strawberry for the bake-off, Gina Hyams approached me via twitter to see if I’d be willing to e-mail with her about the event. I also took a few photos to appear with the interview. I’m really psyched about the final post, which you can read here!

And that, my friends, sums up my June internet fame.

I’m kind of in love with garlic scapes. They remind me of some weird vine out of a horror novel – think The Ruins – and I think they’re really tasty. I usually chop them up and use them in dishes in lieu of garlic cloves…until now. Because last week, Madura Farms Mycomedicinals, the mushroom purveyor at my local greenmarket, was giving away a shopping bag full of scapes to every customer. How could I pass that up?

The same Saturday that I came into my scape bounty, I had the pleasure of meeting Jennifer of In Jennie’s Kitchen. I like her approach to food – how could I not, with her passion for Italian cuisine? – and she’s wonderful to chat with in real life! At any rate, I was browsing around her website for recipes, and I came across her garlic scape pesto. That fit my qualifications: Uses lots of scapes at once? Check. Freezer-friendly? Check.

Of course, at the same time I was readying myself to make the pesto, my oregano was flowering like crazy. By crazy, I mean that there were flowers and buds on about half the plant. I like oregano, and I can take a hint.

I used Jennifer’s recipe as a jumping-off point and added some other flavors I enjoy. I used it on roasted chicken – I’ll tell you about that soon – and I always love pesto on pasta and bread. I think I need to go home and make some more.

Garlic Scape and Oregano Pesto (adapted from Jennifer Perillo)
Makes one cup.

12 garlic scapes
1/3 c almonds
1/2 c grated Romano cheese
1/4 c oregano
4 basil leaves
1 tbsp unsalted butter, softened
1/4 tsp salt
juice from 1/2 lemon
1/4 c + 1 tbsp olive oil

Add the scapes, almonds, cheese, oregano, basil to a food processor, and pulse until they are finely chopped.

Add the butter, salt, and lemon juice, and pulse until the ingredients begin to blend.

Begin adding the olive oil one tbsp at a time, until you reach desired consistency.

Eat on everything.

After not making time to post for two weeks – it’s my busy season at work! – I’ve got so many photographs, recipes, and stories to share. Since pie seems to be everyone’s favorite topic, I figured I’d start with a post about that!

For those of you who don’t know, I’ve been involved with Gotham Girls Roller Derby since 2007, first as a skater for the Bronx Gridlock, and now as their manager. When you’ve been working together for a while – practice  three or four nights a week, plus other events – you start to develop team traditions, superstitions, and inside jokes. The more you bond off the track, the better your connection will be when you’re skating together as a team. You trust each other.

Throughout those three and a half seasons, one of the traditions we’ve developed is sharing a victory pie for each bout that we win. That’s 13 pies so far: we play four bouts per season including the championship, and have only lost one in that time frame. One of my other teammates usually bakes; however, after our last bout, she was hosting our team barbecue, so we decided that I would take a turn. I have, after all, made a few pies in my time.

I still had plenty of rhubarb left from rhubarb fest, and at that point, strawberries were still plentiful at the greenmarket, so I’d picked up quite a few. The perfect early summer victory pie? Strawberry-rhubarb. One of my teammates doesn’t eat sugar, so I looked up some information about baking with agave nectar and went for it. If nothing else, I knew it smelled amazing when it came out of the oven, and it looked stunning in the yellow pie dish my teammates gave me as a manager’s gift at the end of last season.

I’d be exaggerating if I said that people dove at me when I arrived at the barbecue; however, I mean it when I say that the 12-inch, deep-dish pie plate was empty in under ten minutes! I’m pretty sure there isn’t a better way to spend a summer evening than celebrating victory, conversing, and sharing pie with friends.

Part of why I’m telling you this particular story is that I believe that pie is an amazing food that carries on a long tradition of friendship, community, and sharing food. My friend Lauren is in the last days of her Pie in the Park Kickstarter project, and she needs your help to make it a success. She’s planning to publish a Pie in the Park cookbook, which will include stories of baking, recipes, and pie tips. Proceeds from book sales will go to Clinton Hill CSA to help fund their low-income shares. The money raised from her Kickstarter project will help cover printing costs, as well as paying the book’s designer and illustrator a fair rate.

If you love pie as much as I do – and I’m pretty sure you do – consider donating!

Either way, you can still enjoy this recipe.

Strawberry-Rhubarb Pie, sans Sugar
Makes one 12-inch pie.

1 unbaked double crust
5 c rhubarb (1 lb)
4 c hulled and halved strawberries
1/3 c cornstarch
3/4 c raw agave nectar
1/4 c spring wildflower honey
1/2 tsp cinnamon
3/8 tsp salt

Preheat oven to 425 degrees Fahrenheit, and coat the bottom and sides of  12-inch pie plate with butter.

Roll out half of the dough for the bottom crust. Put in pie dish and crimp the edges of the crust.

Combine the rest of the ingredients in a large bowl, making sure that the fruit is thoroughly coated with the cornstarch, sweeteners, and seasonings.

Roll out the other half of the dough for the top crust. If you prefer to do a lattice crust, cut the dough into long strips.

Pour the fruit mixture into the bottom crust. Top with the rolled out dough or the lattice.

Bake for 15 minutes, then add a foil ring around the edge of the pie plate to prevent the crust from burning. Bake for 25 more minutes, and allow to cool before slicing and serving.

I grew up baking bread with my mom, aunt, and cousin every Easter (and my grandparents when they were still alive). When I say baking bread, I mean a full day adventure of mixing, kneading, shaping, and baking, culminating in many loaves.

When I was young, my participation consisted of punching down the dough after it rose. As I grew older, I was able to help out with almost all of the aspects, and my cousin and I became masters of twisting and shaping the dough. It’s the perfect bread, made from a family recipe handed down through generations. Part of the treat, of course, is that you only have it once a year. It’s hard to set aside an entire day for bread baking on a regular basis.

With all my recent jamming, though, I wanted good bread. Needed it, even. The crustiness. The doughy insides. The smell of it baking. Also, there are few combinations so perfectly matched as homemade jam and freshly baked bread.

I’d been reading about no-knead breads for a while, and then my mom sent me a copy of Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day sometime last year. While living with roommates, I never had enough refrigerator space to store the dough. That’s no longer a problem, though!

I like their recipe because it really is minimal commitment for prep – important when I’m busy spending time canning, gardening, and figuring out what to do with my CSA produce (more on that soon!) – and the bread is pretty freaking tasty. I mix up the dough, let it rise for two hours, and then put it in fridge until I’m ready to bake it.

I’d been getting used to the basic boule recipe provided in the book, and then all that white flour had me feeling a little doughy, which was not the goal I had in mind. I decided to give the light whole wheat recipe a try, though I double the amount of wheat flour because, well, why not? I think next time I’ll up the balance to half white, half wheat. I feel healthier that way, which is all that really matters.

The mixture didn’t seem to rise quite as enthusiastically as the pure white flour boule dough; however, it baked up to be a good loaf of bread, which I may have considered eating in a single sitting. My coworkers and knitting group seemed to be pleased as well, so I think I can call it a bread-baking success!

It’ll never take the place of Easter Bread, but it can fill the rest of the year. I’m also curious to try their gluten-free baking book!

(If you’re looking for bake-off details, scroll to the bottom! I think you should read about pie first, though.)

I’ve been experimenting with some pie recipes recently, taking seasonal favorites rhubarb and strawberry and playing around with flavors to see what I like best. They’re not quite ready for recipe sharing, but they are pretty enough for a peek!

I brought this pie to the Eagle Street Rooftop Farm pie potluck a few weeks ago (where I had the pleasure of seeing Brooklyn Homesteader and meeting Pie in the Park!). I’d been pondering what type of pie to bring, and then I remembered that I’d purchased 25 pounds of rhubarb the day before. I recalled baking a rhubarb custard pie last year, so I went back through my pie notes and decided to change up that recipe a bit.

In addition to the eggs for the light custard, I added some vanilla, cardamom, and orange zest. I think it needs a bit more work to balance things, but overall, people seemed to enjoy it, and I was pretty happy with the flavors. I think I’d like to try it without the custard, or with more time for the custard to chill; the day of the potluck, the pie came out of the oven and went directly to Greenpoint.

This beauty is a strawberry pie that I baked when I went to visit my cousins in Pennsylvania. Black pepper and balsamic vinegar both amp up the flavor of strawberries, so I tried them in tandem. It was good, but a little too much, or perhaps not quite the right amounts of each. More experimenting will be necessary!

In other pie-related news, I’ll be competing in a pie bake-off this Saturday, June 12! The bake-off, which Jimmy’s No. 43 is hosting, is a fundraiser for the awesome bk farmyards, a Brooklyn-based decentralized farming network. Tickets are $20 at the door, and doors open at 1:00 p.m. There will be so many amazing people bringing pies, and I’m super excited to be part of the competition. I’ll be bringing my balsamic pie – this time with strawberries – and I promise you won’t want to miss it. You can get all of the details here. Come early and bring friends! (And after the bake-off, come to Hunter College, where I’ll be managing the Bronx Gridlock to victory over the Manhattan Mayhem! Tickets are available here; that will sell out before Saturday.)

That’s a previous iteration of the balsamic pie. It’s as delicious as it looks.

Did I tell you I purchased a 25-lb box of rhubarb a few weeks ago? I’d been buying a few pounds at a time at $4/lb, and the girl at my favorite farm stand mentioned that they sold 25-lb boxes of rhubarb for $50. Half-price rhubarb? Yes, please!

Two of my amazing and wonderful friends were kind enough to come participate in Rhubarb Fest: chopping, bagging, freezing, and canning with me! We finished everything in two hours, including canning nine half-pints of rhubarb-blood orange jam.

I’m so in love with that jam. The color, the flavor, everything! You know it’s a good day when it starts with the giant box of rhubarb pictured first and ends with this:

Yes, that would be fresh rhubarb-blood orange jam over vanilla bean ice cream.

Since then, I’ve made rhubarb jam with lemon and lavender, as well as a rhubarb pie. The rest of the rhubarb is hanging out in my freezer, waiting to be paired with other fruits, including my preferred partner berry: blueberry!

A little while back, I showed you a photo of a knitted garment in progress. I’ve now given that item to its recipient, so I can tell you more about it and introduce you to my amazing little cousin!

The pattern that I followed for most of the dress is Little Liza Jane from the fabulous twist collective. When twist published that pattern, I knew I had to make it for someone. Then my cousin had a beautiful little girl…perfect timing!

I’d intended to make the pattern as written when I purchased the yarn ages ago. When I was ready to start knitting, however, I realized it would make more sense to knit a larger size (2T instead of 12 mo.). I was certain I’d still have enough yarn. I followed the pattern to the letter – it’s written incredibly well, and is very clear – until I got partway through the bodice and realized there was no way I’d have enough yarn to finish.

Had I not already started knitting the bodice, I would have used the yellow up to the bodice and then switched to another color. As it stood, I was a third of the way through the bodice, and I had no intention of tearing back those cables and lace. It wasn’t so difficult to knit, but I’m not the world’s fastest knitter, so it hadn’t gone particularly quickly.

After consulting with my knitting group, I decided to bind off the back when I split the garment for the armholes (I’d been knitting in the round), and then continue the front until I ran out of yarn. A note on binding off the back: I left stitches from two cable sections live so I could join the yarn for the straps and keep knitting in pattern. When I was reaching the end of my second – and final – skein, I knit three rows of garter stitch and bound off.

For the straps, I continued two of the cables in pattern until the straps were about six inches long, then added a buttonhole. After the first buttonhole, I knitted another inch, added a second buttonhole, finished the cable repeat, and bound off. I then blocked, stitched on the buttons, and here’s a baby dress!

Isn’t Gabriella the most beautiful model you’ve ever seen?

You Are My Sunshine aka Little Gabriella (based on Little Liza Jane)

Suggested needles: size 4
I used: size 3 (I knit loosely.)

Suggested yarn = 5 skeins Elann Callista (650 yards)
I used: 2.1 skeins Brown Sheep Cotton Fleece (450 yards)

Size made: 2T

And since you made it all the way to the end of this post, here’s a bonus photo of Gabby working on her downward-facing dog, while also reading a book:

While I was out of town visiting my cousins in Pennsylvania, my first post at Brooklyn Homesteader went live! I’ll be contributing there fairly regularly, so check it out for more posts from me and other awesome Brooklyn folks who are gardening, beekeeping, cooking up a storm, and more. It’s shaping up to be a fantastic resource for urban homesteaders or anyone who’s interested in becoming more self-reliant.

My first contribution is a button mending/replacing tutorial. The photo to the right is my finished repair job. Looking good, right?

If you’ve ever wanted to give a sweater or jacket a new look, or if you have a pile of clothes that are wearable except for a missing button or two, head on over to learn how to get stitching!

Remember those gorgeous strawberries I showed you last week? Well, I ate some, and then decided that I wanted the rest to be jam. I know the strawberry bounty is coming soon, and I wanted more small-batch jam-making practice.

At the recommendation of Kate from The Hip Girl’s Guide to Homemaking, I picked up Eugenia Bone‘s fantastic book, Well-Preserved, which contains “recipes and techniques for putting up small batches of seasonal foods.” I love the layout of the book: Bone provides you will a recipe to preserve a seasonal food, and then shows you two or three ways you can use your canned goods later. Plus, the photos are stunning. Yum!

I was flipping through all my canning books trying to decide which jam to make with the strawberries, and Bone’s strawberry balsamic jam looked stunning. Now, it did not look like jam – more fruit in syrup – but I decided to see what would happen.

I may have cooked it too long because I didn’t start my boiling-water bath early enough, or maybe my making a small batch even smaller meant that it cooked down more, leaving me without whole strawberries. Either way, it’s still delicious and I’ll be eating it very soon. Possibly between layers of cake, as Ian suggested.

Strawberry-Balsamic Jam (adapted from Eugenia Bones’ Well-Preserved)

2 c washed and hulled strawberries
1-1/4 c unrefined sugar
1/8 tsp unsalted butter
1-1/4 tbsp balsamic vinegar

Start your boiling-water bath! Sterilize your jars when your jam has been boiling for about 30 minutes.

Place the strawberries in a pot and bring to a boil over medium heat. Once the strawberries are boiling, add the sugar and stir until it is thoroughly dissolved.

Bring to a boil and then add the butter, which will help keep the foam volume down. Turn the heat down to medium-low and gently boil the jam for 40 minutes, until thickened to a loose, soft jam.

Stir in the balsamic vinegar.

Carefully ladle the jam into a sterilized jar. Process in a boiling-water bath for ten minutes, then remove the lid and leave the jars in the water for five more minutes.

This made 1/2 pint of jam.