FoodNuts!

Archive for the ‘Shopping’ Category

In a time when things seem to be getting worse, it’s very nice to see some things that are getting better. Last November I wrote about the opening of a very nice, small produce stand that I found in Battle ground, Washington (see Produce stands, part 1), a great little place with excellent produce and a pretty good wine selection. I’ve since been there a few times (once going there right after shoveling in a load of horse manure into the back of my truck and, being rather conscious of its aroma, parking in the far corner, so as not to offend) and I can say that it has held its high rating in my mind.

My family and I went back there last Saturday and I can safely state that it has become more of a destination for meal planning. Not only a slight expansion in the wine and dry goods (nuts, dried fruit teas etc.), but also the addition of a meat department that came complete with its own butcher!

Please welcome Walt Coen, who is celebrating his 40^th anniversary as a butcher. Walt and his now-small (I have a feeling it won’t be that for long) meat section specialize in chicken, pork and beef. All the beef comes from Painted Hills, a ranch near Fossil, Oregon. They are well-known for raising beef in a humane manner, natural vegetarian diets and no antibiotics. Walt grinds all his own hamburger and bulk sausage in-house, and for link sausage they carry the local brand Zenners, and his selection of those should make any sausage lover happy (I hope one day to see Walt use his extensive knowledge and expand his sausage making operation to include making not just bulk, but link also. Right now, it’s merely a dream of mine).

Another great addition is wine tasting on Saturdays. The day we were there they had a beef brisket that had been marinating in pepper and burgundy for two days. Walt was preparing to smoke this for serving at the wine tasting. We didn’t stay for this, though I wanted to and I am sure it would have been a good time. Ill make sure we attend this in the future.

I look forward to going there again and for what other addition they may be doing in the future. Rumor be told, I heard word that it may have something to do with salami. But that’s just a rumor………………

Those of you that live in the sunny, warm land to my south are lucky in some ways that I am envious of. One of those are things citrus. When I lived there I loved picking lemons, oranges and grapefruit. There seemed to be at least one of these at, neglected, every house. Many of the fruits of these excursions ended up in screwdrivers, greyhounds (or salty dogs), and margaritas. Ahh, if only it was a bit more temperate of a family rather than so stubbornly sub-tropical. I still can get them, but there is something missing when one must purchase rather than enjoy the thrill of the hunt.

Along with the aforementioned gifts from the Goddess Pomona, I also have a love of the mandarin. Its flavor is more subtle and its intoxicating aroma is a large part of its taste (like the lime). But sometimes even the best of things can get better.

Enter the Shasta Gold mandarin, one of the newest members of the family.  I was at a fruit stand the other day and they caught my eye. Deeply orange, large with a rough-appearing hide, it looked sort of like a tangelo without the nipple. Since I am given to exploring novelties of the food world, I picked up about a half a dozen. They’re fantastic.  Easy to peel (and the peel is thin), seedless and very juicy. They have the aroma that I expected of a mandarin, and a wee bit tarter than the Murcott.

Apparently, it was developed in 2002 at the University of California Riverside. It is a hybrid of the Temple tangor (a tangerine/orange hybrid) and Dancy and Encore mandarins. So, as far as things go, it’s a real newcomer. If I still lived in the sunny, warm land of my origin, I would definitely plant at least one in my yard. But, then again, if I lived there I would be getting my apples and pears by proxy. Such a conundrum!

Anyway, my fellow foodnuts, give it a go. Perhaps one day it will be as common as other citrus are in the land of Helios. Then your children might have memories of “Shasta Gold” hunts to make an as-yet-unnamed cocktail.

I was researching Matt’s great posting on Timpano di Tucci, trying to figure out what pastas I would use if I were to do it, and found this funny little Quiz:

Take the quiz here

I got 18/24, took it again with my wife (who surprised me at her knowledge of pasta types) and then got 21/24. What’s your score? Try it and post in comments!

Off again to the local meat cutter (Ward’s Meats and it’s just that: you buy an animal from the farmer, the butcher kills it, and off it goes to a local meat cutter for cutting and packing. Our cutter is Ward). This time the goal of the journey is beef bones, both for us (consommé) and the dogs (chewing and burying). Oh, and for sausage casings (I’ve yet to attempt to make these on my own. It’s a project for the future). However, this discussion will focus on neither of these.

In our lives, we try to get closer to the source of our food. Not only is it better for you and you know all about it, but you can get things that normally you would pay for in the store for free (trading homemade preserves for things you want really does work) I like to make beef broth, consommé and stock, but to do this I need a lot of good beef bones. You can’t get these at the local grocery store, and butcher shops are getting to be few and far between. So, since the butcher and the cutter end up with an awful lot of them (and offal) and they just get sent to the rendering plant anyway, I intercept them at the cutter. Normally, we don’t pay anything for them, and they’ll give you more than you can take. We got some bones, and he also gave us a complete ox tail, sectioned, that a customer didn’t take. Ward just wanted it out of his freezer.

Once home, I got to work on Ox tail soup. I thawed them, opened them up and rinsed them off.

That’s them. So, now that we are at the starting point of this recipe, what shall we do? Let’s start, I say!

Ingredients:

21/2 pounds oxtail, cut and trimmed

½ cup unsifted flour plus 2 Tablespoons

2 Tablespoons beef drippings or vegetable oil

2 medium yellow onions, peeled and minced

6 cups of water and 1 pint bouillon

2 Tablespoons tomato paste

2 teaspoons salt1/4 teaspoon pepper

1 bay leaf

½ teaspoon thyme

3 cloves

2 sprigs of parsley

2 medium carrots, peeled and diced

1 stalk celery, diced

1/3 cup sherry or port wine

Dredge the oxtails in ½ cup flour:

Once dredged, brown in drippings. You will need a large, heavy-bottomed stockpot for this:

Drain on paper towels after browning. Add onions to oil, turn up heat to medium and sauté till golden, but not burnt. Sprinkle in remaining flour, mix well and brown lightly.

Slowly add the water and bouillon, stir in tomato paste, salt and pepper;

Place bay leaf, thyme, cloves and parsley in a bouquet garni and add to pot.

Return the oxtail to the pot, cover, and let simmer for 3 hours until the meat is tender.

Remove bouquet garni. Remove meat and separate from the bones, cut to bite size and add back to the pot. Add carrots and celery.

Cover and simmer till carrots are tender, about 15 minutes. Add wine when tender.

I often wondered why this dish exists. There is a high bone to meat ratio, and its the tail. After eating it, I now know why. It has an incredible beefy flavor, and the texture is like tender rib steak. A wonderful soup, it went very well with a cold, rainy winter day in the northwest.

Battle Ground, Washington is a small town just north of Vancouver, Washington.  It has seen a flurry of growth, both good and bad, in the last ten years. It has a main strip, called Main Street (believe it or not) that most of the city’s growth has been focused on. It just got its own exit finished off of I-5, exit 11 (11 miles from the Oregon border), so now it is really on the map.

Like I said, the growth is, as I see it, both good and bad. Malls, parking lots and congestion due to increased traffic , is, in my book, bad, yet virtually inevitable. But growth can also give rise to new things that expand an areas opportunities. It now has a brewpub (a branch of Laurelwood Brewing in Portland), a new library and community center. See, it’s not all so bad!

At the end of Main Street is a little produce stand that opened up around the end of summer, 2009. Its named, surprisingly, Battle Ground Produce Co.

We’ve gone there a lot since it has opened, and each time we go there it seems to get better and the reasons to go there get greater. The produce is great; most of it is locally grown. What can’t be grown locally is of a high quality and brought in from reputable sources (for example, in three days they will have Blood Oranges. These come from the hot areas of Southern California, and it gives me the opportunity to make Blood Orange Marmalade). The bread is from local bakeries, as are the honeys and preserves. They even carry locally made candies!

It was started by Lorne Alacano, who has 20 years experience in the green grocer trade, both wholesale and retail. And believe me, it shows. The shop is clean, immaculate and well stocked.  If that weren’t enough there’s more good news.

The stand is a cross between a green grocer and a wine shop. There is a wine room, full to capacity, with an excellent selection. Focused mostly on wines of the Pacific Northwest, they are of the low price range to about the higher middle of wine overall. They range from red and white dinner wines to aperitifs to desserts.  I am sure that anyone selecting a wine to match a planned meal will not come away disappointed nor empty-handed.

I love the concept of this market, and I hope to see more of them in the future. In marrying the wine and the produce, he has combined what food lovers want: great grocery supply and great wines to go with it, purchased in a single location. He doesn’t carry beer, and I neglected to ask him if this is something that he plans on doing in the future. Ill ask next time and update.

And there’s more; behind the wine room is another, currently under construction area. It will be the home of a classical (old style) butcher shop. Oregon and Washington raised beef and pork and Washington chickens. He has a butcher with 40 yrs experience who is setting it up and will be the man in charge.

If you live in the area, do yourself a favor and stop in and check it out. It is yet one more reason that makes it possible to stay north of the Columbia. They’re at 925 E. Main St., Battle Ground WA., Phone: 360-687-1718.

Enjoy!