Jared Brown's exploding garden

Posted on June 13, 2012 by bilrob

Jared Brown’s exploding garden

Lying in the grass at the edge of the garden on a sunny day, I feel like Gulliver in a Lilliputian forest of daisies. A neighbour commented that we’d seen enough rain. A bit of warmth with the water butts full, she said, and the growing season will take off. Now all Britain is blanketed in an impossibly yellow and green patchwork of oilseed rape and young wheat. Even the wilder spaces alternate grass, dandelions and buttercups.

dandelion

Our plot has exploded. The largest angelica has already passed three metres. It might have been taller but a windstorm last month left it stooped and leaning on braces. I’ve never known them to grow so tall. Rhubarb has been more abundant than ever, but the flavour is flaccid. We reluctantly discarded a few litres of rhubarb liqueur in favour of purchased local stalks. I must track down the farm and find out why theirs is better.

salad burnet

New in the garden so far this season, welsh onions. Billed as a perennial green onion, they are delicious: part onion green, part chive. I hope the partridges don’t enjoy them as much as they did the shallot sprouts. Also new, salad burnet. With a vague physical resemblance to coriander and cucumber-peel flavour it will end up in many summer salads. Salad is never so fresh as picked for the table.

parsnips

Parsnips harvested in mid-winter are wonderful. But what happens if you leave them into spring? Another question answered. They launch a metre of dense vertical foliage topped with seed heads. When I mentioned it at the pub a quick show of hands revealed three others had not only done the same but admitted it happened nearly every year. Dandelions scatter seeds prolifically, ground elder springs from the smallest scrap of root. The weeds in one corner of the garden are simply too beautiful to remove. Could I select plants that would juxtapose quite so harmoniously? Perhaps I will pull these later, but not just yet.

weeds

We’ve been potting strawberry runners again as we clear the ditches along the bed. In two bouts, we’ve deposited at least 50 plants outside the local pub with a “free: take one or all” sign. Both times, they were grabbed in an hour. We don’t know where they went, but it’s nice to know others will be enjoying Cambridge Favourites this summer, too.

ducks

Fellow allotment blog contributor Sparclear cautioned us about bird feeders attracting large birds. She also recommended we keep a source of rainwater for them. This quickly attracted the largest and most welcome birds yet: a pair of mallards who strolled the garden as a couple of tourists might wander around Bath or Stratford on Avon, before stopping for a drink and a foot soak.

poppy

I’ve always loved the poppy’s voluptuous blooms. We started these from seed five years ago and moved them with us from Ealing. This is the first flower, with nine more fat hairy green buds waiting in the wings.

solomons seal

Some flowers are beloved for their colours, others for their shape. Solomon’s Seal is in the latter category, transforming simple green and white into a nature’s art. Cut fly larvae will soon hatch and swarm up the stems to defoliate each one, so we will enjoy them while we can.

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In praise of the parsnip: head chef's recipe for simple puree

Posted on June 11, 2012 by bilrob

parsnips

In praise of the parsnip: head chef’s recipe for simple puree

PARSNIP is one of the many fruit and vegetables that benefit from frost and some slow growing over the cooler days of autumn into winter.

I am sure you can guess what family the parsnip is related? Think orange in colour.

Yes, the carrot. However, the parsnip is sweeter and seems to have more aromatic spice to its taste than its orange relative.

When buying parsnips, look for fresh firm ones.

Avoid large, old, flexible parsnips as they can have a woody core that is not nice to eat and no good for pureeing.

You may only have used a parsnip in your soup mix that you buy pre-packed in the supermarket.

But the parsnip deserves better than this.

I love parsnip – roasted or pureed are my favourite.

In fact, I think it is one of the best accompaniments to braised lamb shanks. Or any braised meat with red wine and tomato base.

It is also great spiced up with a little cumin and served as a cream-based soup.

Here’s my recipe for a simple parsnip puree:

* Peel and slice the parsnip on an angle around one centimetre thick so they cook even.
* Put it in a pot of cold water and boil until soft. You can test this by seeing if a knife passes through easily.
* Drain and place into a food processor with some diced butter and salt and pepper.

Paul Kuipers is head chef at Parramatta’s Courtney’s Brasserie.

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Persuading kids to become good eaters

Posted on June 3, 2012 by bilrob

Persuading kids to become good eaters

Ever tell your kids that spinach will give them big muscles, and carrots, laser vision?

Or resorted to the “you’re-not-going-to-grow” line when they won’t eat their greens?

We barter, beg, frighten and preach to get our children to eat right. But instead of trying to convince kids that healthy food is good for them, wouldn’t it be easier and less stressful to simply convince them that it’s good?

“What speaks to kids? That vegetables prevent heart disease or that jicama is crunchy, sweet and refreshing?” asks Sanna Delmonico during a presentation at last month’s Healthy Flavors, Healthy Kids conference held at the Culinary Institute of America San Antonio campus.

Delmonico, a nutrition instructor at the CIA in Napa Valley, Calif., said using positive messages when talking to kids about food and nutrition may be too abstract for them.

“Nutrition can be interesting stuff, but what’s more concrete and compelling is the food itself — the food is delicious, and it’s colorful, and it’s tactile and involves every sense,” Delmonico says during a subsequent telephone interview.

So instead of telling kids that Brussels sprouts have lots of vitamin C and K and fiber, and that they can’t have a cookie unless they eat them, frame a food as something they wouldn’t want to miss.

Delmonico suggests using phrases such as:

“Doesn’t it look good?”

“Have you tried it?”

“Look at how colorful and delicious it is.”

In short, encourage your kids to enjoy healthy foods for the flavors and pleasures they bring.

It’s the repeated, positive food experiences that will get kids to become so-called “good eaters,” Delmonico says. “You change behavior through the enjoyment of foods.”

To enhance the experience, get children involved in all aspects of food prep, including shopping, gardening and cooking. “They can peel garlic, rip lettuce or set the table. The more they’re involved, the more they’re likely to try things,” she says.

To keep the peace, serve at least one food everyone likes and, when introducing a new food, serve it with something kids already know and enjoy. “If they’re familiar with carrots, maybe serve carrots with a food they’re not sure about, like parsnips,” says Delmonico.

“Sometimes they learn to like things slowly, but that’s OK,” she says.

Meanwhile, relax if they skip on the unfamiliar vegetable and keep the focus on family and conversation. “The point of the family meal is to reconnect with the most important people in your life. It should be an enjoyable time, not a time to struggle over Brussels sprouts,” says Delmonico.

Think about the long-term goal, she says. “Is the goal to get them to eat five bites of Brussels sprouts on this day and at this particular meal or to be a healthful eater in their lifetime?”

What won’t help is being a short-order cook when they don’t like your dinner menu. Not only is it too much work for adults, but when there’s always mac and cheese, why would they try anything else?

“It doesn’t help kids expand and push themselves,” Delmonico says. “If they can fall back on the familiar, there’s no incentive.”

Claudia Zapata is a registered dietitian. Her column appears every other Sunday in Taste. Email Claudia at [email protected], follow her on Twitter at @ClaudiaZapata and on Facebook at Claudia Zapata, MS, RD.

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The KFC cookbook: a Colonel of truth?

Posted on June 2, 2012 by bilrob

The KFC cookbook: a Colonel of truth?

On Monday, KFC will release what its spokeswoman calls a “long-lost” autobiography and cookbook, allegedly authored by the so-called Colonel Harland Sanders some 40 years ago and sequestered since then in the “vault” of some “forgotten-about storage facility”. The Sanders story remains the basis of the KFC creation myth, and the company has never shrunk from using his kindly, goateed image as a kind of avuncular mask.

I’ve seen a preview of the book and the recipes are deeply unappetising, using lots of canola oil and margarine. There are deep-fried parsnips, a peach cobbler (“If you use frozen thawed peaches be sure to drain them well in a colander”) and “coffee the way we used to make it on the farm”. This last calls for a whole egg, “shell and all”, to be crushed into the coffee grounds. Perhaps it’s sublime.

What’s most striking about the recipes, of course, is how little they resemble anything the chain produces today. (Like BP, KFC now exists only in initials.) There isn’t a Zinger® salad or a Fully Loaded™ in sight. But that isn’t surprising. According to Ron Douglas, who wrote a book exposing secret recipes and who claimed to have cracked the “11″, Sanders was furious with the “sons of bitches” to whom he sold the business. They “prostituted every goddamn thing I had,” he said. “I had the greatest gravy in the world and … they dragged it out and extended it and watered it down that I’m so goddamn mad!”

In addition to the 11 herbs and spices in the “secret” recipe and the barbecue sauce it claims Sanders created, during the mid-90s KFC served rotisserie chicken supposedly based on a “lost” Sanders recipe. Odd, then, that two-thirds of young Americans don’t even realise he was a real person.

Without wishing to launch WoM’s equivalent of the Hitler diaries, it seems conceivable that the volume is genuine. The style (he always calls it “cookin’”, for example) may be a little homespun, the southern wisdom just a mite hackneyed, and there may be some strange mindblanks. (“I’m 19 years older than my first child, Margaret, so that must mean I was about 18 years old when I was married” – you’d have thought that someone who built an empire the size of KFC might remember a detail like that.) But all these are in keeping with a man deeply attuned to the importance of self-branding.

By the time Sanders died in 1980, aged 90, his business had over 600 branches in three countries; it now has 15,000 in 105. Today part of Yum! Brands, which owns 38,000 restaurants around the world, KFC sells more than one billion meals a year. It’s hard to parse Sanders’ identity amid this: he seems to have enjoyed creating a persona for himself, painting his face on the side of his car before he was famous, and the company – let’s say – tends to emphasise the positives of his biography.

Colonel Sanders cooking fried chicken.

Sanders actually grew up in Indiana. He began working when he was 10, so the story goes, to feed his family. He spent time on the railways and held jobs as an insurance salesman and a streetcar conductor. He once shot a man, and when he was a lawyer he supposedly assaulted his own client in court. The “Colonel” business was an honorific bestowed on him by the state of Kentucky: it has nothing to do with any military career, and Sanders only adopted his trademark Southern garb after receiving it. (Churchill, whose war record is a little more distinguished than Sanders’, was also a Kentucky colonel, but the old lion chose not to mark the distinction by donning a string bow tie.)

Sanders had finally wound up in Kentucky, running a service station, by the time he was 40. This folded in the mid-1950s, making the then-65-year-old perilously close to bankruptcy. He started franchising his fried chicken recipe to nearby diners, taking a commission on each meal they sold, and in 1964 he sold the new business for $2m (at least $15m in today’s money). He spent the rest of his life tirelessly travelling round the world visiting his restaurants and giving money to charities and churches. (Don’t miss this clip of him on an evangelical chat show in 1979.)

KFC was in the news for two other reasons this week. Greenpeace staged a stunt drawing attention to the chain’s alleged involvement in the destruction of the Indonesian rainforest. (Fast food, after all, is rarely good for the environment.) And the ASA announced that a 2005 KFC advert, featuring call centre workers singing with their mouths full, had attracted more complaints than any other commercial in British TV history. I confess I found that campaign quite funny, and rather more original than this strange piece of self-mythologising from a bogus soldier.

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Soup - Meals to warm you up (+recipes)

Posted on May 21, 2012 by bilrob

Roasted parsnip and spinach soup. Photo / Babiche Martens

Soup – Delicious winter warmers are but a pot away.

As I walk to work each day enjoying the crisp fresh feel of the start of winter, my thoughts have turned towards planning simple warming meals that are nourishing and tasty but take little time to get on the table at the end of the day.

Slow cooking is delicious but needs a bit of preparation and faffing about which can be too much effort when everyone is trying to get out the door by 8am. So soups have been getting my attention. Be sure to have some good home-made stock in the freezer, then all you need to do is grab a few veges or tasty extras, along with some crusty bread, on the way home and you pretty much have it sorted.

First up is a chowder simply made with kumara, a little wine, garlic, a splash of fish sauce and a squeeze of lime. Top with chopped up steamed mussels and finish with a drizzle of chilli sauce – robust, warming and delicious. This recipe is also good made with a combination of mussels, pipis and cockles.

Soup number two is a classic mushroom but made only with the portobello variety because of their strength of flavour – leave the buttons out of this one.

You can use a selection of true field varieties if you are lucky enough to have a secret location from which to forage, but the commercial portobello work fine.

Soup always needs a chunk of crusty bread so with this recipe I also have made whole grain toasties filled with blue cheese. Toast these in a pan until crisp and the cheese is melting on the inside and then dunk in the soup – yum.

For the tasty parsnip and spinach soup, roast the vegetables first to create a robust base before blending with well flavoured stock. Grate in a little fresh nutmeg and then puree. Add fresh spinach leaves to the hot soup so the leaves gently wilt and all the nutrients are retained. Top with extra rounds of roasted parsnips and a drizzle of the best olive oil you can get your hands on.

Chef’s tip

Make a large pot of stock by throwing in bones, vegetable ends and peelings. Some people like to roast the bones first for a deeper flavour. Cover with water and simmer. Don’t add salt because the flavour of what you are adding the stock to may be compromised.

There are excellent New Zealand-made chilli sauce products on the market – look out for Kaitaia Fire and Hot Samoan Boys, both excellent.

* Check out Viva’s Facebook page, the place to find out what’s hot in fashion, beauty, food, wine and design.

By Amanda Laird | Email Amanda

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Cooking the World's Largest Cabbage

Posted on May 18, 2012 by bilrob

Cooking the World’s Largest Cabbage

For the last year or so I have been opening my mind to new possibilities. Yes, I joined a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture), which has introduced me to many veggies I have never seen before, let alone cooked. That’s why my family now eats stuff like parsnips and fennel, two veggies we’d never heard of, let alone eaten. They are delicious, by the way. (Well the fennel I still have issues with; I mean it smells like licorice but isn’t candy. Isn’t that false advertising?)

But last week I had a challenge unlike any I’ve ever had. I opened the veggie box and inside was the largest cabbage head I have ever seen. I’m not kidding. I don’t where they grew that cabbage (it’s all local), but that thing was bigger than a human head. It was humongous. And scary. I mean, what was I, a non-cook, supposed to do with the World’s Largest Head of Cabbage?

And then a voice inside my head, a really stupid voice, said, “That’s easy; stuffed cabbage rolls!” And pretty soon all the voices in my head joined in, chanting, “Stuffed cabbage rolls!” (Yeah, I might have issues that go way beyond super big cabbage heads, but let’s not go there now.)

Anyway, after a small argument with my voices, I found a recipe on the Food Network website labeled “easy.” Hello? I’m telling you those people at Food Network are big, fat liars. Clearly, in Food Network land, “easy” means “you should be a 4-star Michelin chef before attempting this recipe.” Or it could mean “sucker.” I could go either way on this, but I am leaning toward “sucker.”

So one hour and five pans on the stove later, I was no closer to making an actual stuffed cabbage roll than I was to being president of the United States. My kitchen looked like it had been bombed by a very large cabbage and was covered in splatters from the meat that I was supposed to use for stuffing.

But at that point I was not letting that cabbage win. It was obviously a contest of wills and I would not break.

By then, I was ready to stuff. I got the cabbage out of the pot and I realized that it looked like slimy space boogers. It was falling apart and oozing over the plate. Yeah. Turns out there is a HUGE difference between “blanching the cabbage” and “boiling the holy crap out of it until it resembles something an alien would pull out of his nose.”

Have I mentioned it was now a personal war between the cabbage and me? Because it was on like Donkey Kong, people.

So I grabbed the cabbage and tried to stuff it. I don’t mind admitting that at one point in the stuffing process I considered taping the rolls together with packing tape. Of course I didn’t do that. I mean, it was already inedible. I didn’t need to add poison to the mix. I managed to slap some cabbage and some meat/rice mixture into a pan, cover it with tomato sauce and bake it. And that’s when I realized that cooked cabbage is not the most appetizing smell on earth. Basically, my house smelled like a dozen teenage boys were suffering the after effects of a chili-eating contest.

And yet, I was not going to pick up fast food. I was not allowing that dang cabbage to beat me. Because I am stubborn. And probably not as smart as I think I am.

At dinner I brought out my stuffed cabbage rolls. And Harry and Junior put it on their plates. And Junior (who eats anything and everything) poked it a bit and asked, “Is it alive?” And Harry looked at and said, “Oh, it looks good.” But the look on his face said, “Good Lord it looks like alien space boogers took over our dinner.”

And we ate it anyway. Because by that point, nobody was leaving the dinner table without doing so. After all, I wasn’t going to allow that cabbage to beat me. No matter what it smelled like.

But the next time I get a cabbage in my CSA box, I’m making cole slaw.

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Soup has many benefits, but it can be a problem if it has too much salt

Posted on May 16, 2012 by bilrob

chicken soup - ideal flu and cold treatment

Soup has many benefits, but it can be a problem if it has too much salt

To help cut your salt intake, select soup with no more than 480 milligrams of sodium per serving. Opt for broth-based vegetable soups with about 150 calories in each bowl. “You want to get the most food for the least calories to fill you up, which is really the soup strategy,” says Barbara Rolls, the author of “The Ultimate Volumetrics Diet” and a professor of nutritional sciences at Pennsylvania State University.

Here are some benefits of the ultimate comfort food:

?It can help you slim down. In one study, a group of volunteers reduced their total lunch calories by an average of 20 percent when they began the meal with low-calorie vegetable soup before eating pasta.

?It can help you sneak in extra nutrients. Not big on parsnips? A 2010 survey by the Consumer Reports National Research Center found them to be the least popular vegetable. But tossing overlooked produce such as parsnips and bok choy into soup is an easy and tasty way to get more vegetables into your diet. And whole grains such as barley, brown rice and quinoa will give your soup a boost of fiber. In place of salt, try adding aromatic seasonings including curry, garlic, ginger, sage and thyme.

?It feeds your soul. Research shows that a bowl of Grandma’s chicken soup won’t cure your cold, but it can reduce your symptoms. And according to a 2011 study in the journal Psychological Science, students who viewed chicken soup as comfort food felt a greater sense of belonging after having eaten it than did those who didn’t eat soup,

?It’s not just for winter. Don’t overlook chilled soup. Gazpacho, for example, is full of tomatoes, garlic, onions, cucumbers and peppers, and it’s healthful and tasty. Or try soup for dessert by blending fruit with low-fat vanilla yogurt and chilling before serving.

?It can be made at home. Bisphenol A (BPA), a chemical that has been linked to reproductive abnormalities and other health problems, is used to line food cans. Consumer Reports’ tests have found it in canned soups.

Research published in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that eating a 12-ounce serving of canned soup once a day for five days left participants with much higher BPA levels in their urine than when they ate soup made with fresh ingredients for five days.

To help avoid BPA in your diet, try making soup yourself. To save time, buy precut fresh vegetables and freeze individual portions.

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Gluten free, nuts, dairy - What's left?

Posted on April 30, 2012 by bilrob

Gluten free, nuts, dairy – What’s left?

I COULD HAVE figured the jokes I would get when I mentioned on Facebook that I was preparing snacks for my daughter’s preschool — dairy-free, gluten free, nut-free snacks.

“What’s left?” was the most common reply.

Like many child centers in these days of rising allergies, my toddler’s school has a blanket ban on nuts. But our particular class included kids who had other allergies and food sensitivities, too, including gluten free. We had to make a decision when the year began: Should we bring whatever snacks we liked when our turn came to supply the class, leaving the affected kids to bring their own separate, safe foods? Or should we try to prepare food everyone could eat together?

We went for the latter. And in the months since, I’ve been so glad we did, for a few reasons. One is that I love to see our kids diving into their treats every week united, feeling like a classroom family. Another is that we’re eating healthier snacks than I remember from my older son’s time at tiny school tables. Instead of Costco packs of processed granola bars and fruit leather, we’re wowed by whole and homemade foods. The third benefit? The restrictions have opened my eyes. I thought we were in for a real nuisance excluding so many ingredients. At the worst, I needed to buy some ingredients I wouldn’t normally have in my pantry.

I admit, there was the time when I was out of vanilla extract on my snack day and unthinkingly substituted some almond extract into my muffin mix. Oops. But I realized my error in time, and my own kids were happy enough to have a batch of nut-tainted muffins while I made a “clean” tray for school. Best of all — and contrary to what I might have expected — our snacks have tasted quite good. Adults could be deluding themselves about this, but I guarantee that our toddlers, digging into the contents of their gluten free, nut-dairy-free plates, are voting with fiercely opinionated and uncensored mouths. Mine voted “MORE. YUMS.”

A few tips:

1. Fruits and vegetables are simple and healthy. Along with banana wedges and bowls of berries and lightly cooked carrots, our kids have devoured (yes, really) roasted broccoli (sprinkle florets with olive oil and salt, and roast at 425 degrees about 20 minutes or until browned), sweet potato fries (same process as the broccoli, but peel and cut the potatoes into fries, and cook closer to 40 minutes), kale chips (wash, dry and stem a bunch of kale, tear it into pieces, toss with a tablespoon or so of olive oil, lay the pieces on a baking sheet, sprinkle with kosher salt, and bake at 300 degrees for around 20 minutes or until crisp).

One day we had an unexpected hit with curried parsnip chips, which one mom tossed together last-minute after forgetting it was her turn for snack. (She tossed thinly sliced parsnips with curry powder, lightly sprayed olive oil on a parchment-covered cookie sheet, put a single layer of parsnips on the sheet, sprayed the top with a little more olive oil, baked at 475 degrees for 6 to 8 minutes, then tossed them and baked another 4 to 6 minutes).

2. Dips are tasty and often packed with protein. Hummus frequently shows up at our snack table, as do bean dips or bean salads, sometimes accompanied by gluten free rice crackers. Guacamole is another winner.

3. Easy alternates: Markets are packed these days with foods that account for different allergies. Plain yogurt is out for our class, but soy yogurts are fine, and just about as easy to find.

4. Going gluten free: Even a few years back, baking gluten-free recipes meant painstakingly assembling a collection of alternate flours, adding bits of each to compose an acceptable baking mix. You can still go that route, but it’s far easier now to simply buy a bag of gluten-free all-purpose flour, available at most mainstream markets. Or, for one-time needs, even Betty Crocker now offers a line of boxed gluten-free mixes for muffins and cakes.

Two parents in our class happen to be nutritionists, which probably helps keep our snack quality higher. One of them, Kathryn Reed, got this recipe (using a baking mix from thepurepantry.com) from the other, Chera Prideaux Sheets, impressed by the three cups of vegetables and fruits the recipe contained. If you don’t see that specific baking mix at the store, most grocery stores now carry all-purpose gluten free flour, though, of course, it won’t have the buckwheat taste. Reed says you can also make these muffins with regular all-purpose flour if you don’t need to avoid gluten, but the texture is better gluten free.

Gluten Free High Fiber Morning Glory Muffins

Makes 12

2/3 cup safflower oil or coconut oil

½ cup honey or agave nectar

¼ cup brown sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla extract (make sure it’s gluten-free)

2 eggs

2 cups Pure Pantry Buckwheat Flax baking mix

2 teaspoons ground cinnamon

½ teaspoon salt

1 cup finely grated carrots (2 small carrots)

1 cup finely grated zucchini (about ½ zucchini)

1 tart red apple, unpeeled, cored and finely grated

½ cup seedless raisins

1/3 cup toasted coconut flakes (optional)

1 teaspoon grated orange zest

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

2. Blend the oil, honey or agave, brown sugar, vanilla and eggs into a large bowl for about 1 minute to incorporate. Add the baking mix, cinnamon and salt. Stir to combine.

Add the carrots, zucchini, apple, raisins, coconut and orange zest to the sugar mixture and stir well. Scoop batter into 12 paper-lined muffin tins and bake 25 minutes.

Gluten free Recipes with Bill & Sheila

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Goat meat - Montana lags behind

Posted on April 30, 2012 by bilrob

Goat meat – Montana lags behind

Goat meat is the meat of the domestic goat (Capra aegagrus hircus). It is often called chevon or mutton when the meat comes from adults, and cabrito or kid when from young animals. While “goat” is usually the name for the meat found in common parlance, producers and marketers may prefer to use the French-derived word chevon (from chèvre), since market research in the United States suggests that “chevon” is more palatable to consumers than “goat meat”.

Cabrito, a word of Spanish origin, refers specifically to young, milk-fed goat. In the English-speaking islands of the Caribbean, and in some parts of Asia, particularly Bangladesh, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Pakistan and India, the word “mutton” is often used colloquially to describe both goat and lamb meat, despite technically only referring to sheep meat.

As cited in a New York Times article, goat is “the most widely-consumed meat in the world. Goat is a staple of Africa, Asia and South/Central America, and a delicacy in a few European cuisines. The cuisines best known for their use of goat include Middle Eastern, North African, Indian, Pakistani, Mexican, and Caribbean. Cabrito or baby goat, is the typical food of Monterrey, Nuevo León, Mexico.

Goat has historically been less commonplace in American, Canadian and Northern European cuisines, but is finding a hold in some niche markets. While in the past goat meat in the West was confined to ethnic markets, it can now be found in a few upscale restaurants and purveyors, especially in cities such as New York and San Francisco. Bill Niman of Niman Ranch has recently turned to raising goats and he, along with other North American producers, tends to focus on pasture-based methods of farming.

Goat can be prepared in a variety of ways, such as being stewed, curried, baked, grilled, barbecued, minced, canned, fried, or made into sausage. Goat jerky is also another popular variety. In Okinawa (Japan), goat meat is served raw in thin slices as yagisashi. In India, the rice dish mutton biryani uses goat meat as a primary ingredient to produce a rich taste. “Curry goat” is a common traditional Indo-Caribbean dish. Cabrito, a specialty especially common in Latin cuisines such as Mexican, Peruvian, Brazilian, and Argentine, is usually slow roasted. Southern Italian and Greek cuisines are also both known for serving roast goat in celebration of Easter; goat dishes are also an Easter staple in the alpine regions of central Europe, often braised (Bavaria) or breaded and fried (Tyrol).

Montana

A state with about three head of cattle for every person, Montana has been slow to embrace the humble goat.

But with demand from new immigrant populations driving a market boom in this country, a few Montanans are getting in the goat business and trying the meat for themselves.

Producers are way behind consumers so finding the meat locally is challenging.

“You want to taste it? It’s delicious but you’ll be fighting other people at the grocery store,” said Yvonne Zweede-Tucker, who sells breeding goats locally and is the author of “The Meat Goat Handbook: Raising Goats for Food, Profit and Fun.”

“You go online and everybody is sold out, sold out,” she said. “The basic problem is the U.S. is about 6 million pounds short of goat meat a year and rising.”

For a producer, “it’s a lovely problem, but a problem,” Zweede-Tucker said.

“Most of the world consumes goat before they eat beef,” she said. “We’ve had room and capacity in the U.S. to raise cows, but most countries don’t.”

Zweede-Tucker said five acres is enough room for goats but would leave cows unsatisfied.

American demand is also driven by the health conscious. Goat meat is lower in calories and fat than beef, pork and chicken and is rich in iron.

The meat is like venison that was finished on alfalfa. It should be cooked slowly in moist heat. Slow cookers or roasting bags in the oven are good strategies.

Calls to Great Falls supermarkets and area butchers turned up no sources of goat meat. The Mountain Front Market in Choteau may be the only source in northcentral Montana, if not the state.

“It’s been pretty popular,” owner Jill Owen said. “People like it. A lot of people think it’s going to have a strong taste and it doesn’t. It’s not like lamb or gamey. I think it’s milder than beef.”

The store stocks chops, roasts, ground goat, breakfast sausage and kabob meat, all from Meadows Ranch along the Rocky Mountain Front near Ear Mountain. Producers Faithe and Tanner Lee approached Owen about stocking some of their goat meat to see if people would go for it.

Bill & Sheila’s Barbecue

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Cannelloni with parsnips and blue cheese

Posted on April 15, 2012 by bilrob

parsnips

Cannelloni with parsnips and blue cheese

Cannelloni (Italian: large reeds) are a cylindrical type of pasta generally served baked with a filling and covered by a sauce. Some types of cannelloni need to be boiled beforehand, for others it is enough to use runnier sauces/filling. If one cannot find ready made cannelloni, rolling lasagne around a filling is an alternative. The stuffing may include ricotta cheese, spinach and various kinds of meat or vegetables. The sauces typically used are tomato or béchamel sauce.

Swiss Chard Leek Cannelloni

Serves 12 as a starter

From Caleb Jones, chef de cuisine of Claudine in San Francisco. You can use green or red Swiss chard; however, some of the red chard color might color the filling, especially if the mixtures are combined too far ahead. Using the preferred brand of cannellini does make a difference. Rustichella d’Abruzzo is thin and supple when cooked, which makes stuffing easier. It also has an ideal proportion of pasta to filling.

Filling
4 bunches Swiss chard
5 1/2 to 6 large leeks
2 tablespoons butter
1 cup dry white wine
2 cups heavy whipping cream
1 cup whole milk + more if needed
– Zest from 2 oranges
– Salt and pepper, to taste
Parsnip cream
1 1/2 pounds parsnips, peeled and thinly sliced
2 cups heavy cream, or enough to cover
3/4 to 1 cup water, as needed
– Salt and pepper, to taste
– Lemon juice, to taste
Assembly and garnish
24 cannelloni shells (1 box), Rustichella d’Abruzzo brand preferred (see Note)
– Kosher salt
3 to 4 ounces Fourme d’Ambert or other mild, soft, blue cow’s milk cheese
– Grated zest of 1 orange
1/2 cup toasted, finely chopped walnuts
– Minced chives

For the filling: Strip leaves from the stems of the Swiss chard; discard stems or save for another use. You should have about 8 packed cups of uncut leaves. Clean and blanch the whole leaves; drain well and lightly squeeze dry. Finely chop the chard – you should have about 4 cups – and place in a large mixing bowl; set aside.

Trim leeks and discard dark green portions or save for another use. Halve the white sections lengthwise, rinse well and cut into small dice; set aside.

Melt the butter in a heavy-bottom saucepot over medium heat; add the leeks and cook, stirring, until slightly softened. Add the wine; continue to cook, stirring occasionally, until pot is about dry.

Lower heat to medium-low; add the cream and milk, and cook, stirring often, until thick and bubbly. Remove from heat, and scrape the leek mixture into the bowl with the chard – there should be about equal amounts of each. Stir in the orange zest and adjust seasonings. The filling can be made ahead.

For the parsnip cream: Meanwhile, place parsnips in large stockpot and cover with cream. Simmer until the parsnips are very tender, stirring occasionally and pressing down to compact the parsnips so all are covered, about 30 minutes. Remove from heat and let cool slightly. Working in batches, puree in a blender until smooth. (If the mixture is still very hot, fill blender only about halfway.) Pass through a fine mesh strainer into a bowl. Add 3/4 cup water (more, if needed) until the warm parsnip cream has the consistency of moderately thin gravy. Season to taste with salt, pepper and lemon juice. The parsnip cream can be made a day ahead; keep warm if using right away.

To assemble: Preheat the oven to 425°. Cook cannelloni in boiling salted water for 5 minutes (longer if using manicotti), until about halfway done. Transfer to ice water to stop the cooking. When fully cooled, remove the cannelloni from the water, drain well and stuff with filling, about 2 to 3 tablespoons for each cannelloni.

Place the cannelloni in a large casserole dish, or in separate serving-size oven-proof dishes. Cover each cannelloni with about 2 tablespoons parsnip cream. Bake for about 10 minutes, or until heated through. Remove from oven and crumble a little Fourme d’Ambert on top, about 1 1/2 to 2 teaspoons per serving. Return to oven for 5 more minutes, or until cheese melts. Remove from oven; sprinkle with orange zest, walnuts and chives, and serve immediately.

Note: There are 24 Rustichella cannelloni in each box (8.8 ounces, $7.85); serve 2 per person. You can substitute 1 large manicotti for each serving, but they are generally thicker and take longer to cook.

Per serving: 533 calories, 10 g protein, 39 g carbohydrate, 38 g fat (22 g saturated), 122 mg cholesterol, 180 mg sodium, 4 g fiber.

Wine pairing: The slightly sweet parsnip puree needs a relatively fruity white wine to match its richness. Try a Vouvray.

Italian Cookery with Bill & Sheila

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