Entries tagged with “Jordandal Farms”.
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Thu 15 Jul 2010
Buffalo Wings - Photo:Lindsay
The busy summer days have, unfortunately, resulted in some very simple dishes this past week. With all the great seasonal ingredients, you really want to make something unique and different but between boating, baseball games, and making any excuse possible to enjoy the few non-rainy days, simplicity has been high on my list.
We started the week out with some baked hot Buffalo wings ala Good Eats with Alton Brown. I’ve been catching up with some old episodes of, what is in my opinion, the best food geek show out there. After watching his tribute to the Buffalo Wing, I thought about the wings I had picked up from Jordandal Farms, at the Westside Community Market, a few weeks back. Although, like most Good Eats recipes, there were a few more steps then I would have expected, the baked wings came out crispy and flavorful. With a side salad of fresh greens topped with a light vinaigrette to balance out the high calorie wings, this made for one heck of a meal.
Beef and Broccoli - Photo:Lindsay
After a Wednesday market teaming with broccoli, I decided to make the most of the sirloin tip chunks that had been in the freezer for a few weeks. A quick search on Epicurious’ iPhone app (will launch iTunes) revealed a recipe for Quick Beef and Broccoli. Sounded like a great meal for after our evening workout. So, with just the most elemental of prep (cleaning the broccoli and trimming it right into a storage container when I got home from the market) we had a meal in as long as it took to boil some rice. While I thought it was OK, Lindsay was less than impressed, and wished it had some more flavor. I guess with convenience you sometimes get the occasional bland dish.
BBQ Onion Burger - Photo:Lindsay
Deciding I wouldn’t let another beef dish go down this grey path, I decided to go all out with a BBQ burger on Friday. With advance apologies to the folks at Fountain Prairie farms, who recommend only using a little salt and pepper on their burgers, I went a bit more extreme.
To start off, I mixed the meat with chopped bacon and roasted garlic chips. Some reserved bacon grease and a Tbsp of butter was used to slow caramelize a coarsely sliced onion. After 30 minutes of cooking on low, when the onions were a translucent light brown, I mixed in what might easily be the quickest and simplest homemade BBQ sauce (recipe @ allrecipes.com). The burger was topped with a slice of everyday cheddar from Bleu Mont Dairy, a heaping helping of the onion mixture and a few pickles. To “healthy” this meal up we served with it Green Beans from Xay Lo Garden and seasoned shredded turnips. Needless to say flavor was not an issue here, but an outside table setting made it a lot easier to clean up the inevitable mess. It was a happy and very satisfying mess.
Sat 12 Jun 2010
Posted by Lindsay under Farmer's Markets
1 Comment
Garlic Scapes Photo:Lindsay
Westside Community Market. Today we went to the west side community market since we were on a bit of a time crunch. Chad and I got up later (since we got home a little late last night) and were out there around 10:30am. A lot of the vendors were starting to pack up, but we were able to snag the following:
We plan on making some pizza this week along with a latin dish with the beef. We’ll also give the chicken wings a try!
Wed 2 Jun 2010
Carnitas Photo:Lindsay
Carnitas are usually found on the weekend menu at places that serve authentic tacos. You know, the kind that come with onion, cilantro, and a wedge of lime. Carnitas meat is a slow cooked pork that in another meal would be shredded, but in this incarnation is coarsely chunked and broiled at the last minute to get a crispy crunch on the outside. My new-found faith in all things Cook’s Illustrated was reaffirmed, when I found a simple recipe to make these delicious Pork Carnitas at home.
We used the pork butt I had picked up from Jordandal Farms at the Westside Community Market. Lindsay did most of the work for this one, slow roasting the meat while I worked a rare Sunday shift. I came home to a delicious smell very reminiscent to those weekend tacoreia visits. After they were done braising, we separated the pork into small chunks and tossed it with the reduced braising liquids.
The pieces were spread out over a cooling rack used for baking. We placed the rack on a baking sheet 8” under the broiler, and used the few minutes while the meat browned to chop up radishes from Thor Farm, cilantro from Lem Park Farm, and onion to garnish the tacos.
I also like pre-heating my tortillas on a dry electric griddle to make sure they are pliable.
As expected the Cook’s recipe didn’t disappoint, with rich flavor, and a satisfying crunch in every meaty bite. The radishes chopped with the onions and cilantro lent a nice flavor too.
The recipe calls for sour cream as a garnish, and after biting into the first taco I understood why. While very flavorful, the broiling does seem to dry the meat considerably, and with low moisture onions and radishes as garnishes, the tacos by themselves tend to be a bit dry. I didn’t have sour cream on hand so I served these with some extra salsa, which worked perfectly adding the needed moisture.
All in all, these made for a great Sunday recipe, and one I’m sure would impress some taco-loving friends.
Wed 2 Jun 2010
French Onion Soup Photo:Lindsay
French Onion soup is for some reason indelibly linked with hotels for me. As far back as I can remember, any time I stay at a hotel and have to order room service, I always see French Onion soup on the menu and I visualize a bubbly crock of tender caramelized onions topped by a baguette sopped in broth and covered with bubbly cheese. The reality is never quite that good, with salt usually being the primary taste, followed by a realization that room service can never quite deliver fast enough to keep the soup hot.
When I made beef stock from the soup bone I picked up from Jordandal Farms, I knew I wanted to take a stab at something a little different and French Onion Soup definitely fit the bill. For those of you out there like myself who had never made this before, the recipe seems a bit strange, cooking down four pounds of onions to a small browned layer at the bottom of a Dutch oven. To further deepen the flavor, Cook’s Illustrated recommended deglazing this layer three times instead of the usual once. Once the soup portion was complete, we ladled it into two large coffee cups (the only oven safe small bowls we have) and topped it with toasted baguette slices from Stella’s and the Gruyere we picked up from Forgotten Valley.
We made a light dinner featuring the soup and a farmer’s market salad. The soup was perfect with almost no saltiness to speak of, and a flavor so rich and deep, I can only say that the Cook’s research got it 100% right on this one.
If the onions we planted decide to cooperate at harvest, I will be remaking this soup, but hopefully doubling the batch.
Wed 26 May 2010
Bok Choi Photo:Lindsay
After visiting the Saturday Hilldale Farmer’s Market 2 weeks ago, I got a great recommendation from Nichole over at Madison A to Z. After reading about my disappointment regarding the lack of coffee the week prior, she suggested the nearby Westside Community Market, where there was FREE coffee.
With the new knowledge of another biking distance market, and this one with free coffee, I was sold.
While we had planned on trying to get over there early, Lindsay’s flight didn’t come in until very late Friday night. Letting her sleep in, we didn’t get to the market ’til almost noon, missing the free coffee by almost an hour (it’s available until 11, or whenever it runs out).
The farmers and vendors still had plenty of goods available, and much like the Hilldale market, the reduced crowd made for a very pleasant experience and plenty of time to talk to each seller. We saw some familiar names from both the downtown and Hilldale markets, as well as some new ones. Here’s what we ended up with:
In addition to picking up our week’s goods, I also got to talk with one of the market’s board members about the history of the market.
As Lindsay and I found out, the Westside Community Market, sometimes mistakenly called the Hill Farms Market, was started back in 2005 when a group of longtime Hilldale Vendors decided they wanted to move locations in response to the new location set out for them at Hilldale. The vendors established a board made up of member-vendors, and set guidelines mimicking the rules of the Dane County Farmers Market. This limits the vendors to selling only goods they produce or grow.
The market is car, biker, and pedestrian friendly, with plenty of free parking available.
Overall, we really enjoyed the market and all the great vendors we got to talk to. We’ll definitely go back to the WCM again – but this time I’d make sure to go early enough to score some of that free coffee!
