12/15/13 - The Kaleberg Christmas Party

This party was also the coming out party for our renovated Empire State Building, now with glowing Neopixel lights, and it gave Godzilla an excuse to positively glow with atomic fire.

08/05/12 - Farmers' Market Update

• Johnston Farms had its last English and snap peas, but is now getting great salad greens, thai basil, garlic and the very first tomatoes. We got a basket of a heritage variety and had our first real tomato salad of the season.
• The Korean Garlic Lady has gone full summer, and the garlic is back, along with potatoes, scallions, cucumbers and romaine.
• The Family Farm has gone back to its roots with potatoes and kohlrabi, along with their wonderful flowers.
• Clark Family had their usual beef, but also some young goat. We had goat mixiote (more below), and it was wonderfully tender and mild.

Goat mixiote is based on one of our favorite dishes at Rosa Mexicano. You can make it with lamb shanks, or goat, or pork for that matter. You just make up a chile paste with dried chiles, add some oregano, cumin thyme, garlic, cloves, pepper and a splash of cider vinegar. Rub down the meat. Wrap the various pieces in parchment, secured with twine. Then steam them for two or three hours over boiling dark beer. Be careful opening the packets, because the meat will be falling off the bone and delicious.

06/13/12 - Port Angeles Farmers Market

03/11/12 - Clark Family Beef Cheeks

• 4 tbsp olive oil (or so)
• 2 lbs (or so) beef cheeks with the fell removed, plus any oxtails you may have flopping around
• 6 medium carrots, chopped
• 2 medium onions, chopped
• 6 celery stalks, peeled and chopped
• 1 tsp cocoa or chocolate nibs or other unsweetened chocolate
• 2-3 cups dry red wine
• 1 large can whole tomatoes (28-32oz)
• salt and pepper to taste

NOTE

This is a pretty generic beef recipe. You can cook beef cheeks, oxtails, short ribs and probably other cuts that benefit from long, slow braising this way.

1. Use a pot, with a cover, that you can use on the stove top and in the oven. We use a big old Le Creuset. Heat it up on the stove top with a few tablespoons of oil and brown the meats on all sides. Do this is in a few batches, so you can caramelize the meat a bit. Raise the temperature gently, but you want that Maillard reaction. After browning each batch, put the meat aside.
2. Preheat the oven to 325F.
3. Brown the vegetables over slightly lower heat. Don't panic if a brown crust forms on the bottom of your pot. Just use a plastic spatula and it should dissolve with the water beig released by the vegetables.
4. Put the meat and any juices back in the pot. Add the cocoa powder and the wine and bring to a boil. Let it cook down a bit, but you'll want enough liquid so that the meat is largely submerged. Gourmet says to cook the liquid down to half its volume. We just boiled it for five or ten minutes and declared it ready.
5. Then add the tomatoes with their liquid, some salt and pepper. Bring to a boil again, then put the pot, covered, in the oven for at least THREE hours. It can't hurt to cook it longer. Braised beef cheeks are not about cooking a pointe.
6. Let it cool and stash it in the refrigerator overnight, or better yet, for a day or two. Remove any fat, reheat and serve.

10/27/11 - We've Been Falling Down On The Job

Maybe we just haven't been getting very good pictures. It's tricky taking pictures at the farmers' market. If nothing else, people are shopping for produce, and surely they have priority over a pushy photographer. In any event, here are a few pictures, a few good words, and we'll try to do better.

09/25/11 - A Farmers' Market Recipe

• 3 cups finely shredded cabbage
• 1/2 cup finely shredded carrots
• 1/3 cup thickly sliced green onions (including tops)
• 2 teaspoons chopped garlic
• 1/2 pound ground beef or pork, browned w/ salt & pepper to taste
• 1 thick, light-textured baguette, cut into 4 sections
• 1/4 cup fresh cilantro leaves

• 1/2 cup rice vinegar, divided
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon sugar
• 1 tablespoon lime juice
• 1 tablespoon chopped fresh ginger
• 1/2 teaspoon Chinese five-spice powder
• 8 teaspoons of garlic chili paste

1. In a bowl, mix cabbage & carrots with 1/4 cup rice vinegar, the salt, and sugar; let stand about 30 minutes.
2. In a food processor or blender, combine remaining 1/4 cup rice vinegar with green onions, lime juice, ginger, garlic, and five-spice powder. Whirl until smooth
3. Split baguette sections lengthwise almost all the way through, leaving halves attached at one side. Spread about 1 tsp. chili paste on 1 cut side of each. Add on top, then add cooked pork on cabbage mixture and cilantro leaves.

06/06/11 - Moroccan Meatballs

• 2 lbs of ground beef, grind it finely if you grind it yourself
• 1/4 cup chopped parsley
• 1/4 cup chopped coriander
• 1 medium sized onion or 2 small ones, finely chopped
• 2 pinches of cayenne pepper
• salt
• olive oil for cooking the meatballs

• 2 medium onions, chopped
• 1/4 cup chopped parsley
• one large can of tomatoes
• 1 tsp ground cumin
• 1 tsp black pepper
• 2 cloves of garlic, peeled and chopped
• 1/2 tsp cinnamon
• 1/4 tsp cayenne pepper
• 6 or 8 eggs

1. Combine all the meatball ingredients (except the oil) and mix them well. Form them into one inch meatballs and pan fry them in the oil.
2. Combine all the sauce ingredients (except for the eggs) in a large pot or pan. Pour in any juices from the meatballs. Cook uncovered for about 30 minutes until it is reduced to a rich gravy.
3. Toss the meatballs in the sauce and continue cooking for another 10 minutes.
4. Break the eggs and gently pour their contents into the sauce between meatballs so they poach. When the eggs are cooked to your taste, the dish is ready to serve. (It took our eggs about 20 minutes to cook through.)

04/27/11 - A Word From Johnston Farms

02/06/11 - Farmers' Market in February

12/18/10 - Alder Wood Bistro Brew 'n Burger

12/02/10 - The Winter Farmers' Market

If you do go, remember that Preston and Tuna Dan have been selling salmon, steelhead and black cod, and Preston has been selling chanterelles and white truffles. It's a great place for food shopping. We get our eggs, Clark Family beef, Bell Street Bakery bread and most of our seafood there. The Mystery Bay folks have been at the market too, selling oysters and clams, in the shell or steamed with butter and garlic. We've been sore tempted on some of these cold days.

09/16/10 - Oxtails

• 6 cloves
• 1 small cinnamon stick (from a jar)
• 1 teaspoon black peppercorns
• 1 tablespoon coriander seeds
• 2 tablespoons of cumin seeds
• 1 1/2 tablespoons mustard seeds
• 1 small dried red chili (sold in glassy packets at the supermarket)
• our oxtails - about four pounds
• 1/4 cup olive oil
• 4 cups chopped onions
• 10 whole garlic cloves
• 2 cups or more chopped celery
• 2 cups or more chopped carrots
• 1/3 cup sliced peeled ginger
• 1 cup dry red wine
• 2 tablespoons tomato paste
• 2 tablespoons brown sugar
• 6 tablespoons red wine vinegar
• 6 sprigs of thyme (or about 2 teaspoons)
• 2 five inch sprigs of rosemary (or about 2 teaspoons)
• 2 bay leaves

2) Then we got our big 39 liter Le Creuset oven ready pot. We got this on sale in Seattle and carried it home in our backpack on Kenmore Air. We heated up the olive oil in it and browned the oxtails. This meant turning them every minute or two to get all the sides.

3) We put the oxtails aside and dumped in the carrots, onions, garlic, ginger and celery and cooked them for ten or fifteen minutes. We wanted them all soft and the onions browning a bit.

5) We ground up all of the spices, the cloves, peppercorns, cinnamon stick, coriander seeds, cumin seeds, mustard seeds and red chili in our extra whirling blades of death coffee grinder and mixed them into the pot.

6) Next in were the tomato paste and brown sugar.

7) The oxtails. We haven't forgotten the oxtails. They've been sitting on our cutting board for a while now, oozing juices. At long last, it was their turn, into the pot with them and their ooze.

9) With all the ingredients in the pot, fire up the oven to 375F, put the lid on the pot and bring everything to a boil. Pop it in the oven for three or four hours. Check every hour or so and add water if it has dried out too much, but otherwise you're all set. It's ready when the meat is falling of the bones.

As with many Kaleberg dishes, it doesn't look like much in the picture, but it's mighty good eating.

04/03/10 - The Farmers' Marking is Springing Back

P. S. There is a real demand for local foods around here. The Clark Family Farm expected to sell two animals in their first month. They sold out in a week.

03/08/10 - Sefrina

We made this version with a 3lb 10oz pot roast from the Clark Family Farm. It had a nice big marrow bone which you can see floating there in the photo. The potatoes were from the Johnston Farm and the eggs from Westwind Farm, so this qualifies as a Port Angeles Farmers' Market dish. We also used dried chick peas, but they weren't from the Farmers' Market. You can make this dish with canned chick peas, but this is obviously not a dish you can throw together in a hurry, so why bother with time saving conveniences?

1. The night before, soak a cup of dried chick peas in water overnight.
2. Start boiling six cups of water in a tea kettle.
3. Preheat the oven to 375°F.
4. Take a big casserole with a lid and dump in the chick peas.
5. Add 3 or 4 pounds of beef cut into big chunks. Pot roast is great, but it is better if there is a bone or two.
6. Add six potatoes.
7. Gently tuck six raw eggs into the ingredients so far.
8. Chop up four cloves of garlic and sprinkle them on top.
9. Sprinkle with a few pinches of salt, 1/2 teaspoon black pepper, 1/4 teaspoon ground ginger, 1/4 teaspoon of saffron or turmeric.
10. When the water comes to a boil, pour it on.
11. Cover and put it in the oven for an hour.
12. Lower the heat to 250°F and let it cook for another five hours.