Seacoast Eat Local

Turnips show up regularly in CSA shares but are too often relegated to the back of the fridge where they remain until they’re far past using. We took it upon ourselves to embrace the turnip and tested a variety of ways to prepare them. I’ve come to appreciate their sweet, peppery nature and how, in combination with other root vegetables or starches, can lighten a dish.

In this recipe for Yellow Eye Beans with Turnips, the turnips complement and enhance the characteristic resemblance of Yellow Eye beans to potatoes, the flavor of each playing off the other. Winter turnips are at their peak now, making it a great time to get better acquainted with them!

Yellow Eye Beans with Turnips

2 cups diced bacon (nitrate-free) [5 to 6 slices thick bacon]

1 – 2 jalapeno peppers, fine dice

2 teaspoons chopped garlic [2 cloves]

2 cups diced onions [2 medium-sized onions]

1 pound Yellow Eye beans, soak overnight and drain

2 bay leaves

2 quarts chicken stock

2 sprigs thyme

2 pounds turnips, ½” dice

Salt and pepper

- Render the bacon in a heavy bottomed pot.

- Add the onion, garlic, jalapeno, and sauté until the onion is transparent.

- Put the chicken stock, beans, bay leaves, and thyme into the pot and bring to a slow simmer.

- Cook the beans, uncovered or with lid ajar, until cooked half-way (45 – 60 minutes, depending on age of beans). Stir in the turnip. Add more water Ii necessary; beans should be barely covered.

- Continue simmering until the beans are tender (another 30 – 45 minutes). Season with salt and pepper.

— Adapted from Chef Peter Davis, Henrietta’s Table

Notes: Soaking beans overnight allows them to cook more evenly, but even soaking them the morning of the day you’re planning on cooking them helps. The original recipe calls for 1 gallon of chicken stock, resulting in a soupier dish — I cut the amount of stock to 2 quarts, and added water to cover as necessary during cooking; this allowed me to control the amount of resulting pot liquor. This dish can be finished with chopped parsley and, if you’re feeling festive, fried sage leaves makes for a beautiful seasonal garnish. This recipe makes a large quantity and is easily halved for smaller families.

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Come visit us at the Seacoast Eat Local Winter Farmers’ Market this Saturday, November 20, at the Wentworth Greenhouses in Rollinsford, where we will have free copies of this recipe plus another for “Turnips in Mustard Sauce” at the Seacoast Eat Local information table. Embrace the turnip, and learn the versatile potential of this week’s featured winter vegetable!

Here’s an update to a post we originally published for our first Holiday Farmers’ Market, in 2007! We hope to see you all this Saturday, November 20, 2010, for our 4th pre-Thanksgiving Market, 10 a.m. – 2 p.m. at Wentworth Greenhouses in Rollinsford. More details at www.seacoasteatlocal.org/winterfarmersmarkets!

This Saturday’s Holiday Farmers’ Market is going to be just plain awesome. There will be 50+ vendors there, selling everything from cheese to pies to honey to milk, a lot of meats and a lot more vegetables. With all that in mind, here are 10 tips for Saturday’s market:

1. Come with an open mind.  I often arrive at a farmers’ market hoping to find a particular ingredient, and when I do, I feel blessed. And, with a terrific list of what will be available on the website, I can strategically plan for some items I don’t want to miss. But sometimes things do sell out. And when that happens, I let serendipity be my guide — what is at the market is more than pleasantly surprising. Amazingly buttery potatoes alongside heirloom varieties of poultry, winter greens, and more.

 

2. Don’t like crowds? Don’t feel like you have to come at 10 am! The farmers’ markets are open until 2 p.m., and after 11:30 a.m. or so, you’ll find it easier to park and maneuver around. We’re now in much larger spaces this year so we can all have more elbow room, but if you’ve got strollers or just want a more relaxed experience, coming a little later in the day might be a smart choice. While we can’t promise an item or two won’t sell out, our vendors are well prepared for a large number of customers and would love to have your business at whatever time you make it!

 

3. Bring plenty of cash. There is so much good quality delicious food to be had, you might surprise yourself! In addition to food for yourself, you may wish to buy a pie for a neighbor, or a jar of maple syrup or honey as a gift for your kid’s teacher. Some foods naturally add up, like big, delicious turkeys.

 

4. Bring your checkbook. While farmers and food producers usually cannot accept credit or debit cards, almost every one does accept checks. This is not to say the food at the farmers’ market is very expensive, but the credit card back up isn’t there, so give yourself the checkbook as a back up.

 

5. Bring bags. Sturdy bags, and plenty of them. Those very inexpensive woven bags you see everywhere these days are awesome because they have flat bottoms, meaning you can get a lot of stuff in there without it crushing everything else. All the vendors will have plastic shopping bags, but a. it is hard to carry a lot of those and b. less plastic = better. I do a 1, 2 combo and bring a bunch of grocery store plastic bags into which I pile anything loose that needs to be weighed. That way, onto the scale goes my already pre-used plastic bag instead of a new one, and then it can quickly and simply go into my bigger totes.

 

6. Bring a cooler. Or two. There will be an amazing variety of locally raised meat for sale, which means providing your family with a healthier, more humane product that you can feel safe serving. Since meat is so easy to stock up on (it is all pre-frozen because of the nature of small farms and small processing facilities in New England), I will be making certain I get my share. Frozen meat turns into the ice cubes for the milk and cheese, et voila!

 

7. Take trips to the car. The foods of fall can be heavy. Potatoes, onions, and squashes, frozen cuts of meat, jars of honey. You can make as many trips to the car to drop off heavy things as you want.

 

8. Give yourself time to scope everything out. This is a big market! There is a lot to see and a lot to buy. Very special and particularly coveted things you might want to snap up on sight, but allow yourself time to make sure you didn’t miss anything on the first pass.

 

9. Give yourself time to relax. We have live music and a kids table where your youngsters can do a free craft, so grab a hot drink and a snack, and stick around for awhile.

 

10. Give yourself a pat on the back. Yes, -you- know the food at farmers’ markets is more delicious, more flavorful, and much much fresher, so if those are the only reasons you shop at farmers’ markets that’s more than ok. But buying local food is also a political act, an environmental statement, and a social contract — it’s saying that you care about your neighbors, your community, the health of your family and the environment alike. You are doing great things when you shop at farmers’ markets, take credit for it!

 

For directions, a list of vendors, and a list of products, visit Seacoast Eat Local’s Holiday Farmers’ Market webpage.

In memory, Thanksgiving dinners with my family would not be complete without the cranberry sauce that came in a can. My mother would open both ends of the can, push the contents out, and it would dramatically slide onto the plate already molded. I’m still nostalgic for those thickly sliced disks with the faint ridges from the can still visible on the sides, however, imagine my delight when I discovered cranberries did not have to come from a can and could be used in more ways than just sauce.

I look forward to when cranberries come back in season if only to make Cranberry Nut Bread. It’s perfect to have on hand for the holidays — it makes a festive teacake for an afternoon snack or to start off breakfast when the house is full of guests. And I make sure to buy enough cranberries to freeze so that I can continue to make this quick bread all winter.

Cranberry Nut Bread

4 tablespoons (1/2 stick or 2 oz.) cold butter, plus some for greasing the pan

2 cups all-purpose flour

1 cup sugar

1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon salt

3/4 cup orange juice (about 3 oranges)

1 tablespoon minced or grated orange zest

1 large egg

1 cup cranberries (fresh or frozen), washed, dried, and coarsely chopped

1/2 cup chopped walnuts or pecans

- Preheat oven to 350°F. Grease a 9 x 5-inch bread pan.

- Stir together the dry ingredients. Cut the butter into the dry ingredients, until there are no pieces bigger than a small pea.

- Beat together the orange juice, zest, and egg. Pour into the dry ingredients, mixing just enough to moisten; do not beat, and do not mix until the batter is smooth.

- Fold the cranberries and the nuts, then pour and spoon the batter into the loaf pan. Bake about an hour, or until the bread is golden brown and a toothpick inserted into its center comes out clean.

- Cool on a rack for 15 minutes before removing from the pan.

Notes: Adapted from “How to Cook Everything” by Mark Bittman. For some mysterious reason, this recipe did not make it into the second edition and is the only reason why I still keep both copies. I usually substitute whole wheat or white whole wheat in place of half of the white flour, and I toast the nuts lightly before adding to the batter. I’ve used pre-made orange juice when that’s all I had but, using fresh oranges and their zest makes all the difference. The oranges may not be local but I consider them a winter-time treat.

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Seacoast Eat Local will be selling cranberries at the Winter Farmers’ Market on Saturday at the Wentworth Greenhouses. These fresh cranberries are from Sugar Hill Farm in Maine. We sell products from northern New England not otherwise available at the farmers’ market to help support the organization of the market. We anticipate having cranberries for sale again at our Holiday Winter Farmers’ Market on December 18 — another chance to stock up and help support the markets!

Over at Seacoastonline.com, Rachel Forrest has written a guide to shopping at the Winter Farmers’ Market for your Thanksgiving dinner. The article comes complete with delicious ideas for planning your holiday dinner using the many vegetables to be found there, and includes basic instructions. We may not be able to wait until Thanksgiving to try them out!

 

I’ve checked out the long list of vendors and what they are bringing to the first Winter Farmers Market on Nov. 20 and I think that if I planned it just right, I could buy almost everything I need for an entire Thanksgiving dinner at that one market.

 

The only thing I’d be worried about is the turkey because you’d likely have to have already ordered your turkey by now, but check the Seacoast Eat Local website and Facebook page because they will be updating us on who is bringing turkeys to the market. FYI — Seacoast Eat Local’s fourth annual Holiday Farmers Market is Nov. 20 from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. indoors at the Wentworth Greenhouses, 141 Rollins Road, a mile past Red’s Shoe Barn of Dover. The Winter Markets continue until April in both the Rollinsford location and at Exeter High School.

 

For that first market, there will be 50 farmers and food vendors participating with cheese, wine and apple cider, pie pumpkins, apples and cream for dessert. Potatoes, carrots, winter squash, onions, beets, leeks, broccoli, parsnips, turnips, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts and salad greens will be in abundance, along with eggs, honey, and maple syrup. There will even be wheat flour and dried chili peppers.

 

A wide variety of beef, pork, poultry and seafood will also be for sale. Dinner rolls, pre-baked pies from locally grown fruit, bread for stuffing, and area food producers have pledged to a high standard of localism this year and will be offering ready to eat meals, soups and stews, jams and jellies that all contain locally grown ingredients.

 

I’ll be volunteering on Thanksgiving and after that, unknown. Teen Daughter Avalon will be away so taking time to work on various writing projects will be on the agenda for the long weekend as well as lazing around watching movies, reading books, exercising and perhaps some mayhem. However, if I were to make Thanksgiving dinner, which I still might, my ideal dinner is set out below — the simple version — and I think I can do it all from the winter market. I will often try at least one dish from a fancy food magazine but for the most part, it’s simple and basic.

 

For my Thanksgiving meal you will need about three pounds of butter. Just warning you. Oh, and IPA, which you cannot get at the farmers market. You can buy wine, however, and plenty of it.

 

Heritage Breed Turkey. Or at least organic or all-natural. Get Heritage turkey from Yellow House Farm (but they’re probably gone), organic from Philbrick’s, Carl’s Meat Market, and even Market Basket has all-natural. Check out www.localharvest.org for more ideas as well as the aforementioned Seacoast Eat Local sites. My turkey involves putting a cheese cloth soaked in butter on top for a period of time. No bags, no deep frying and I rarely brine, although I taste the difference in brining and like it.

 

Stuffing. Bread, sweet sausage, celery, onions, walnuts, apples, thyme or sage. All but the bread sauteed in butter. A great deal of butter is consumed in my Thanksgiving dinner. The bread should be a baguette cut into large cubes and left overnight to “stale.” Toss the ingredients with the bread and a little stock. Stuff the turkey. It looks like the only thing I can’t get at the winter market is celery and nuts.

Go to Seacoastonline.com to read the rest of Rachel’s article >