Category: Dark Days

Only a couple more Dark Days weeks left…

This week we started to ease out of the heavier wintery meals, and tried to ease into the next eating season. Cheeseburgers! With homemade buns! The buns are easy and add a whole new flavor dimension to your burgers – nothing like the mass-produced store buns.

Homemade Hamburger Buns

1 tablespoon active-dry yeast
1/2 cup warm water
1/2 cup milk
1 egg
2 tablespoons olive oil
1-2 tablespoons sugar or honey
pinch of  salt
3 – 3 1/2 cups  flour (I used about 2 cups bread flour and 1 cup whole wheat for a little health kick)

In a medium bowl, combine the water, sugar and yeast, and stir to dissolve. In a larger bowl, mix the flour and salt. Add the milk, egg, and oil to the yeast mixture and stir. Add the liquid ingredients to the flour, and stir to combine. Dump onto a counter or other flat, clean surface and knead for about 10 minutes, adding a little flour if the dough is too sticky.Place in a bowl and let rise in a warm place for about an hour.

After rising, cut the dough into 8 equal chunks, then roll into balls, flatten just slightly, and place onto a baking sheet. Let rise for another 20 – 30 minutes, then bake at 375 F for about 15 minutes.

Not all the ingredients were local for the buns (oil and yeast).

The cheeseburgers were just patties made from our ground beef, topped with some smoked Cheddar from the Middlefield Cheese Co-op, and when we served them, I put a couple homemade pickles on top. No tomatoes yet, but they were still pretty darn good burgers!

The Dark Days challenge is winding down for this year, as soon we’ll be able to much more easily procure fresh, local foods – most importantly, from the backyard!

Our meal this week was another simple one – the last of the spaghetti squash from the fall, topped with a jar of homemade tomato sauce that captures that summer flavor. Took about 10 minutes to prepare, and most of that was cooking time.

We’ve done quite a few simple meals, and I almost felt slightly guilty posting them before, like it wasn’t fancy enough. Compared to things like the lasagna or short ribs I’ve made, sure they’re nothing extravagant, but I realized that’s not really the goal. I can still make something decadent and time-consuming on occasion, but I guess the point we’re trying to make to others is that eating whole, healthy, local food doesn’t have to be time-consuming, or expensive, or fancy. Just good.

We’re almost running out of dark days around here – just a couple more weeks and the time changes again. Which means more fun trying to keep a toddler on some kind of schedule…

The challenge for this week involved making something vegetarian. My response to that was a creamy vegetarian lasagna with home-grown butternut squash, oyster mushrooms from Killbuck Valley, and some arugula that we picked up at the market on Saturday. Oh, and the noodles were homemade.  And so was the ricotta.

Making everything from scratch can be kind of time-consuming, so I did what I could in advance. It was well worth it though. As is always the case with these meals, everything is locally produced, minus the salt and pepper.

For the noodles, I used the same basic recipe as always. Roll out the dough (I kept them just a little thicker than I would for a linguine or spaghetti), then do a rough measure based on the pan you’re using (9 x 13), and cut to size. A pizza slicer worked perfectly, but you could also use a sharp knife, or if you have one, one of those little fluted-edged rollers. I didn’t care about appearance, so I just left some of the edges rough, as long as they were approximately uniform.

For the filling, I sautéed the squash (1-2 cups), mushrooms (1-2 cups), and arugula (1 medium bunch) in a bit of butter, then added some sage, thyme, and a little salt and pepper. I love the smell of butternut squash with sage and butter… I also had about 2 cups of ricotta that I made the night prior.

When everything’s ready, go ahead and start layering (the noodles don’t need to be boiled if they’re fresh). I did grease the bottom of the pan before the first layer of noodles, but if you’re making a standard meat lasagna, you’d ordinarily just put some sauce down first, no greasing. So, lay the first noodles, about three or four, depending on how wide you cut them. Crumble about half of the ricotta over the noodles, then spoon half the squash filling over that. Put another layer of noodles down, then repeat with the cheese and squash. You can go as high as your noodles and filling will let you, but I stopped at three. Because I didn’t want my noodles to be naked, I whipped up a quick cream sauce to ladle over the top while baking.

Cover with foil, and bake at about 350 F for 35-40 minutes. Take the foil off, and bake for another 10 – I just turned the oven off and left the lasagna in.

This was quite delicious, and the slight chew of the noodles was great – nothing mushy about this lasagna.

No, we didn’t make it from scratch, which would have been a lot cooler, but it is from farm right down the street, the Great American Lamb Company. So the Dark Days meal this week isn’t all that exciting; I have a couple bigger ideas, but didn’t have the time or energy to put them together. And we’re getting to the point that we need some variety, preferably something green…

In addition to the brats, I halved a couple of the remaining acorn squash, baked them for about 40 minutes at 325 F, then drizzled some maple syrup over them. It was a simple meal, but good. The bratwurst was (I guess not surprisingly) pretty lamb-y, so S had a bit of a hard time finishing it. It probably could have used a nice yogurt sauce to temper the strong flavor, but alas, just getting them cooked was work enough for one night. I long for the days that I can go outside and pick something, then come inside and steam it for a few minutes, and that’s dinner. Getting closer, I suppose.

Have a nice weekend!

Dark Days, February 15. We had some apple cider from Patterson’s left (which is working on becoming hard cider…), and I’ve been meaning to try this, so last night I did. I think I’ve only braised things twice now, but it’s quickly becoming a favorite method of cooking. If you start everything early enough to account for a couple hours of cooking time, things work out great.

For this dinner, I pulled out a pork shoulder roast from our hog, browned both sides for a couple minutes each in the Dutch oven, then simply poured in enough cider to just about cover it. Simmer over low heat for 2 1/2 to 3 hours, then remove and watch it fall apart on the plate.

I served this with the last of the Delicata squash, which I sauteed in a maple syrup-apple cider reduction. Delectable.

Very apple-y and gently sweet – the perfect flavor accompaniment for the luxuriously tender pork.