Pickled Beets/Salad

People seem to have very distinct ideas about pickled beets. Which is to say some people hate them, others love them and a fair amount can take them or leave them.

I love them, and given I grew up with a grandmother who used to by the ones in a can that were super sweet, cut into large dice and were suspended in a corn starch, thickened, sugar sauce (a close relative to the thick, red, sweet and sour sauce you get in Chinese Take Out Food on your ribs) it's amazing that I love them, you'd think I run from the room when they were present.
The proper name for the above mentioned thick diced beets is Harvard Beets.
Stick with pickling.

If you don't want to be bothered pickling your own Ricks Picks is a local pickle maker (and a real character) who sells a wonderful variety of wittily named pickles that are for sale at Whole Foods and sometimes at the green market.

If you are up for it, pickling beets is real easy and like most preserves and pickles such a treat to find at the back of your fridge mid winter.

After a couple of years of experimentation I've come up with this recipe which is spicier than most, with a nice balance between vinegar and sugar.

It occurred to me this week that these gems would be great in a salad. A kind of retro riff off of Alice Waters classic beet salad with goat cheese. A salad equally at home mid-February as part of a late night supper or in your high August picnic basket.

Julianne your beets, lets say 2 cups, toss them in about 1/2 cup of olive oil generously salt and grind fresh black pepper on them, and if you want add a drizzle of local honey (optional). Toss well and leave in a bowl.

Meanwhile roast some walnuts, pecans or hazelnuts until just brown and aromatic. Maybe 10 minutes at 350 maybe a little longer. If you choose hazelnuts toss them in a paper bag, shake
about and get as much of their annoying skin off as possible, but don't drive yourself mad over it.

When lightly browned, take the nuts out of the oven and empty them from the baking sheet into a bowl add a teaspoon of oil and some salt, toss.

You could use any green you want to but grated cabbage would be my first choice(I like to use both red and white) maybe 4 cups tossed in a mustard vinaigrette with a drizzle of the pickling juice (1/2 cup oil, 1 T Dijon mustard, 2 T cider or red wine vinegar, pickle juice to taste optional, salt and pepper) or a traditional mayo or use the one from the first potato salad from last week. Toss the cabbage with what ever dressing you are using. Let it sit in the fridge for 30 minutes if you can. Re-toss before assembling.

Top with the prepared beets, and finish with nuts and cheese. If it's winter I'd be inclined towards a crumbly Stilton in the summer feta or fresh goat cheese.

Ask you local cheese monger what's good and experiment.

Pickled Beets

Cook and peel 4 - 4 1/2 pounds of beets. Everyone seems to have a different method for this, the one I favor these days is here. It was pointed out to me that it is wasteful of water and that beats can be wrapped in tin and foil and cooked at 375F for 20-30 minutes and allowed to cool inside the tin foil (creating steam condensation) once pierced successfully with a tooth pick. Then peeled and processed.

I used to do this but found the skins didn't come off as easily, but that could have just been some weird idiosyncratic bunch of beets that I cam across determined to give me a hard time. Anyway...

In a heavy bottomed pan pour 4 cups of apple cider vinegar, 1 1/2 cups organic cane sugar, 1 teaspoon whole allspice, 2 sticks of Cinnamon, 2 teaspoons cloves, bring to a boil to dissolve the sugar, then turn the heat down so the pickling liquid is at a gentle simmer, add your prepared beets (I like to slice into thin disks the bigger beets and keep the smaller ones whole - also use a selection of types of beets if you can).

Simmer for 5 minutes. Remove from heat and let come to room temperature.

If you are canning them go ahead and place them in sterilized jars and process otherwise they make fine refrigerator pickles, place them in a seal able container (I use those fancy Italian ones with the glass lids, the brand name we get here in NYC is Fido, but any you fancy will work, just make sure they have been well cleaned and soapy water and rinsed).

The longer you wait to eat these babies the more imbued with mellow spice they get.

Orange Peel Oil Tires

So cool.

Recipe Testers, Relief, Celebration and a Favor

Hey there Urban Food Guy readers.

Over the last couple of months several of you have told me that you were going to make one of the recipes that I've posted here. This is great news. I like being helpful and it's good to know you find the recipes interesting enough and inspiring enough to want to try them in your own kitchen.

All the recipes have been developed and tested in my kitchen. As you've probably noticed, I'm fairly free and easy in my instructions, cooking being a personal expression of taste and every one's palate is different. I love really strong flavors, anchovies and hot peppers make me shiver with pleasure, yet I have friends who are repelled by anchovies and tortured by hot peppers. All of this to say that if you do make a recipe and you notice a mistake or have some insight or input into it please post a comment or feel free to email me at my new email address urbanfoodguy@gmail.com

And remember to always taste everything you are cooking as you go along, this is mostly advice for savory food, baking is another situation, one where you hope the person who wrote the recipe didn't make a typo (is that really 14 cups of flour? Or did he mean 1/4 cup? Oops)

On a more personal level I have to say that I am amazed by how many people are now reading my blog and how many of you when we meet talk to me about things that have been discussed here. It's very encouraging and it actually kind of blows me away - so thank you.

What started out as a lone voice in the darkness on this here intraweb thingy is becoming a community of people brought together by their love of good food and the belief that chemical and torture free food is not only good for our bodies and souls, but is good for the whole planet. Which I think we all would agree could use a little TLC these days.

This morning I had a rather stressful meeting that ended up very well.

After a year of under employment and much financial anxiety, in part created by the debt from my previous business, I successfully completed my bankruptcy filing. I hope that isn't too much information, but I have always believed in full disclosure and honesty in all aspects of my life and seeing as how you are my friends, my community, my supporters in so many ways I feel it is only appropriate that you be included in this part of the journey. Besides it's great f@%king news! What a relief! Yippeeeeeeeeeeee!!!

Having now been given a new lease on life I'd like to think about what my next steps are.

UrbanFoodGuy has grown and it makes me proud when I look and see how much stuff is on here! As exciting as the two cookbooks in the works are I still, however, have a pesky need to make a living.

I'm not really sure how much it means when people see how many "followers" you have?

My feeling is that more in this instance is better.

In this new world of things going viral, tipping points, and social networking sites, it seems to me the more you can get the word out the more people will stop in and the more chance someone might say: "he,y maybe I could get Urbanfoodguy to write, review, cook, consult...and pay him!"

So if you're feeling up to it and are so inclined, please sign up as a follower (scroll down to the bottom of the main page, it takes a minute). If indeed you check in here with any regularity or just happen to be passing through it'd make a great good will gesture (I'm not fussy and it's good karma).

Thanks for helping me spread the word. And if your feeling very energetic tell your friends and/or post about Urbanfoodguy on Facebook or Twitter or where ever it is you hang out. There's lots here to discover and everyone can always use a good recipe for Maple Cake!

In return I promise to keep posting more recipes, videos, news, commentary and generally keeping you up to the minute on what's happening in the world of food and the environment in my little urban corner of the planet on Manhattans' lower east side.

BBQ in Berlin Baby

Oops I had posted an image here that was actually NOT from the event I am cooking for, but rather a rival event - sorry!

Here the real poster for the Summer Camp event. Opening night BBQ and all other pertinent information can be found here: Exile

Fill er' Up

With great satisfaction yesterday I took my empty 32 ounce bottle of Ecocover dish washing liquid and an 11 ounce bottle of Avalon Lavender Shampoo with me when I left the apartment.

Why you may ask was I carrying empty plastic with me around town? Well...

...my first stop was the Green Depot who have 4 big tubs of bulk cleaners (dish, all purpose, window, tub and tile in both scented and unscented) at the front of their enviro-wonderland of a store on the Bowery. They refilled my empty container for me at a cost of $4.16 (9 cents an ounce or thereabouts) a savings of at least a dollar if not more depending on the brand you buy and where you buy it. It was great to know that this plastic packaging was going to see more of a life then one filling followed by a landfill.

Next stop on my journey was Commodities on First avenue, about a ten minute walk north. This store has been one of my favorites for years and yet it has taken me this long to realize that behind the checkout counter are all sorts of bulk goodies. I was able to refill my shampoo bottle with Nature's Gate shampoo for a mere $3.69, a total bargain.

A few words of caution here. As much as I love the idea of lowering my carbon footprint I do wish Commodities would change the brands of the items they sell in bulk, specifically the shampoo. This morning when I gleefully started to lather up my hair I was a little put off by the fake suntan lotion smell of the shampoo and the persistent oil nature of it. The other option they offer is that brand that shall go unnamed with all the weird fanatical vaguely antisemitic ramblings on it, the label itself is a small novella - you know the one. Well if you ever think to buy that brand please, take 45 minutes or seconds and actually read the ramblings on the packaging, then put it down and move on to a less, er, how shall I put it, ah yes - dogmatic - brand of shampoo.

The great thing about Commodities is that they are very receptive to suggestions.

Going to The Ten Bells for a Glass of Wine

Ten Bells is a few blocks away from. It's a dark "u" shaped bar that has walls of chalk boards and black painted tin ceilings.

I went there for the first time last summer. I love sitting at a bar and drinking wine and eating. I love it even more when the bar has an extensive list of tapas that keeps you coming back and is dedicated to all things local and authentic including it's wine. The Ten Bells has a true dedication to naturally made wines and I happen to know he buys all his wonderful local cheese from Saxelby.

It's hard not to like a menu with lamb prosciutto, wild boar cacciatorini, a local cheese plate and octopus and potato salad.

Neil, being the hard cider fan that he is, would be very happy to see Basque apple cider Bereziartua on the by-the-glass menu. The red and white list are both equally impressive for their dedication to wine making in the traditional manner, organic grapes and often biodynamic farming.

Makes me want to put on my pants and go out for a nightcap!

For all you Flesh Flippers, some Tips

Funny I just finished the long post below where I talk about my July 4th BBQ experience and then I get my Grist email and Ask Umbria has done a video on grilling. The term flesh flippers is so funny!

Heritage Radio Network and thoughts on BBQ and What to Eat?

Sounds like some right wing Christian thinktank, but thankful it's a Bushwick based radio station that's all about food and food related topics.

Today while blogging and doing research I've been listening to Urban Foraging. These guys and gals are a hoot.

I couldn't get the entire episode to play, but the segments played fine. I just finished listening to Extracting Flavors from Ingredients a chat with Will Goldfarb (dessert chef and owner of Room 4 Dessert) hosted by Zakary Pelaccio, Jori Jayne Emde.

The highlight of the conversation for me was the discussion of smoke, liquid smoke and how grilling and barbecuing things are carcinogenic.

My potentially annoying side note to this is that after having survived July 4th BBQ's I realize that between smoking cigarettes, consuming factory farmed meat, drinking GM high fructose corn syrup with gay abandon that most people really are either blissfully unaware of the dangers lurking in our food and to a larger extent in our food system or, they know, but just don't care.

Which makes me wonder, why do I care? I wish I had an answer for that, I wish the whole thing was simpler, but alas it isn't.

My favorite comment about my food habits from this weekend was the delightful and very generous hostess of one BBQ I went to who, when offering me a platter of hamburgers (some with bright orange American "cheese") and hot dogs on white buns, said:

"Oh just have one! I know you're all bitchy about food, but..." then she re-thought the offer and moved on to more enthusiastic eaters.

This theme is appearing in my life: what can I eat? Or probably more honestly put, what will I eat now that I know what I know about our food and our food system. A few days after seeing Food, Inc. I was on the subway reading Pollan's Botany of Desire as a bookmark I was using a postcard for Food, Inc. when my stop came I got up to exit and dropped my book the postcard fell to the floor as I bent down to pick it up an young Indian woman sitting across from me saw it and said excitedly:

"Oh I saw that at the Film Forum yesterday! Did you see it? I loved it...it was great, but now, I don't know what to eat."

Jon Stewart in his interview with Robert Kenner the maker of Food, Inc. echos this comment with: "I saw your movie and now i don't know what to eat."

Neil has banished himself from the hospital where he works cafeteria and complains now all the time: " There is nothing to eat!"

Which has started a healthy trend; I know make sure Neil has a lunch to take to work with him. It's cheaper and he knows from whence his food came.

Not sure where this particular digression was meant to go, other than to say I wonder how this will all play out?

As someone who soaks himself in information about the dire state of our environment and the relationship big agriculture, chemical companies, government subsidies and our general food culture plays in creating it, you have to wonder how long can it last? How long can we go along buying the same old deadly foods before something happens?

Certainly big business will fight tooth and nail to maintain the status quo because it makes them powerful and rich. In a recent panel discussion Anthony Bourdain confronts Alice Waters and tells her that all that matters, basically, is that it's cheap and tastes good and everything else is irrelevant.

Obviously where I stand on this is clear. I find it hard to even listen to Bourdain speak as he just seems to horribly out of touch and willfully stupid. However, he represents a large portion of the population.

So what to do? For me all I feel I can do is to continue to read and understand as much as is possible what the moral, ethical and environmental impact is on the way we eat and the way food is made and from there, make decisions on how and what I will eat.

This weekend made it clear to me that even people who know better are in no hurry to change the way they eat. It's deeply personal, ingrained and very hard to change something you have been doing all your life.

Change comes very slowly. My hope is that urbanfoodguy and all the thoughts/ideas/information here in might, just might and help change hurry up a little bit!

Watch the video and see what we're up against:

Bread and Butter Pickles: Part Two

This must be somehow symbolic, I'm about to reprint something I've previously written. Well written then now re-written. In the condiment post below I link to my Bread and Butter pickle recipe, which in reviewing it this morning realized needed a little work (throat clearing) and after doing the work I felt it needed to be view again in all it's refined glory.

The first Kirby's started to appear at the market this week and they are so good! Early in the season they haven't gotten fat and soft so you can rummage through and find the fashionably skinny and ultra crunchy ones. I have a feeling this is going to be the week of pickle making!

Salt: a word of warning - BE CAREFUL! I've had several batches of pickles that went terribly wrong because I either over salted or did not rinse properly. It's such a drag to wait two months to open up a jar of home made dills only to discover they are too salty.

OK enough of this here's the newly revised recipe and intro.

After much research into pickles and looking at special books dedicated to the art of pickling this is my interpretation of a recipe for Bread and Butter pickles from my favorite old standby The Fanny Farmer Cook Book by Marion Cunningham.

If you don't own this book you should and if you can get a hardcover it's better because the paperback is too small and the pages never want to stay open.

Bread and Butter Pickles

Slice 6 cups of un-waxed Kirby pickles into thin slices and place

Peel and roughly chop 1 pound of onions. A note on the onions. at this point in the Summer their are still small bulb onions being sold that have not developed the brown paper like skin we are all so familiar with in our traditional larder. This early summer onions are bursting with flavor, so if you can get them, use them. And if you can get them small enough just use a pound of small whole ones. They look nicer and if you are a Gibson drinker these little suckers will make you the celebratory of the cocktail circuit.

Kirby's are still being sold well into September and I find there is nothing more frustrating than an recipe calling for baby onions, an item nearly impossible to find in NYC even in season, when all you can find are plain old cooking onions.

All of this digression to say just use the onions you can find, it all works!

Mix the sliced Kirby's and onions (or whole small ones) together in a big bowl with 1/4 cup Kosher salt and let sit covered for 3 hours.

In a medium size pot add: 2 cups raw organic cane sugar (Turbinado or you can use brown sugar), 1/2 teaspoon turmeric, 1/2 teaspoon ground cloves, 1 T mustard seeds, 1 teaspoon celery seed, 2 cups cider vinegar and bring slowly to a boil.

Boil for 5 minutes.

Drain the sliced Kirby and onion mixture and rinse very well with water - you need to repeat this process three or four times otherwise the pickles may end up being too salty. This happened to me when I made them one night while drinking wine and smoking pot, which I don't recommended, being pickled while pickling can be a slippery slope to salty pickles.

Add them to the hot syrup and heat until almost boiling but not quite. Spoon the pickles into hot sterilized jars, fill with liquid leaving 1/4 inch head space, and seal.

If you want you can process in a boiling water bath for 10 minutes. I find the heat from the mixture creates a fine seal and I keep all my homemade pickles in the fridge just to be safe.

Home made July 4th Condiments

Ketchup, mustard, relish, oh my!

Why support big AG and Monsanto this weekend when it's cheap and easy to make your own condiments (it's fairly quick too!).

This post will be updating during the weekend, to start I'll leave you with a recipe I got from Tasting Table, it's probably the most elaborate and fancy, everything will be down hill from here.

Mustard

In a small heavy bottomed saucepan combine 1/2 cup organic cane sugar, 1/3* cup dried mustard, 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt, 1/4 teaspsoon tumeric and 2 T flour, whisk to combine.

In a bowl add 1 cup of whole milk, 1 egg yolk and 1/2 cup cider vinegar.

Gradually add the milk mixture to the dry mustard mixture.

Over a medium high heat cook, stirring constantly with a wooden spoon, until thick and bubbling.

Cool thoroughly and store in refrigerator, in a resealable glass jars.

For a more interesting texture, lightly brown in a heavy skillet yellow mustard seeds. When they have slightly brown and are aromatic, grind them in a mortar and pestle or in a food processor and substitute for the mustard powder.

Also, I'm a fan of cider vinegar which I can get, in a home made version, from a local farmer at the green market, if you don't have any white wine vinegar or white vinegar will all do in a pinch.

Also, the last word on mustard is that if you simply grind some mustard seeds, add sugar and vinegar to taste you will get a fine mustard without the bother of cooking it. The difference is the texture and body of this more basic mustard is not the one we have become so used to.

Explore! Mustard seeds are cheap. I buy mine at Dual Spices on First Avenue.

Relish

Take some home made bread and butter pickles and pulse them a few times in the food processor, et voila!

UrbanFoodGuy's Easy Indian Spiced Ketchup

Combined in a bowl: 1 teaspoon cumin, 2 teaspoons ground coriander, 1 teaspoon garam masala (curry powder) 1/4 teaspoon dry mustard, 1/4 teaspoon clove, nutmeg, ginger, cayenne pepper, 1/2 teaspoon salt, 1/2 teaspoon aseafotida* powder, 2 T palm or brown sugar and 3 T cider vinegar. Stir to combine.

Heat 2 T canola oil in a heavy skillet over a meidum high heat to almost smoking then quickly add the cider/spice mixture, stirring constantly for about a minute, then stir in 1, 9 ounce jar/tin of tomato paste, incorporate and bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer for 20 minutes. taste for seasoning adding more salt and pepper as you like.

* also called Hing available at most Indian Spice stores.

Tilth’s Heirloom Tomato Ketchup

Recipe adapted from Maria Hines

Makes about 11⁄2 quarts

5 pounds assorted heirloom tomatoes
1 cup white vinegar
2 tablespoon kosher salt
1 cheesecloth sachet containing 1 cinnamon stick, 5 cloves, 4 bay leaves and
10 black peppercorns
2 tablespoons sugar
2 teaspoons turmeric
Splash of bourbon (optional)

1. Core the tomatoes, but leave the pulp and seeds intact. Place the tomatoes in a
stockpot. Add water until the tomatoes are just covered. Add the vinegar, kosher salt,
spice sachet and sugar. Stir to combine.

2. Bring the mixture to a boil, then turn down the heat to medium-low and simmer for
about 1 hour. Stir in the turmeric, then remove the pot from the heat.

3. Strain the tomatoes and reserve the liquid. Remove the sachet. Puree the tomatoes in
a food processor--in batches, if necessary--until smooth. If the consistency is too thick,
add a little of the reserved liquid to thin it out.

4. Taste for seasoning, adding a little salt and/or sugar as necessary to balance the flavor.
Stir in the bourbon, if using.
5. Place the ketchup in a large bowl and cover with cheesecloth. Set the bowl in a
warm place (about 75F to 80F) for about 12 hours; letting the ketchup sit for this
length of time helps develop the flavors.

Transfer the ketchup to airtight containers and refrigerate for up to 1 month, or divide into smaller portions and freeze.