Turnip Gratin

I'm staring at my computer screen and dreaming about this creamy turnip gratin featured on the NY times Dinning/Wine site. Although I'm on a tight budget these days some turnips and a bit of milk couldn't break the bank could they and how much could 4oz of grated gruyere really cost?

I found out eight hours later...


Shit ain't cheap.
So it turned out to cost more then I thought. whatever. I'm committed.Lucky for me the lady at earthfare shredded the Gruyère for me so I saved the trouble of shredding it all myself, which would have proved difficult due to the shape of my kitchen and my lack of a cheese shredder. The whole process took about an hour of prep and and hour to cook. It's the first gratin I've ever had, and dang if it will be the last.

I brought home roughly 22$ worth of ingredients and made a fantastic dinner for myself and fed the three hungry men downstairs. It's easy enough so go try yourself.

Start here:

olive oil for the baking dish

1 garlic clove, cut in half

2 pounds turnips, small ones, peeled and sliced thin and round

Salt and freshly ground pepper

4 ounces Gruyère cheese, grated (about 1 cup nicely packed)

2 1/2 cups low-fat milk

1 teaspoon fresh thyme chopped

1. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. oil your baking dish and Rub the sides and bottom with the cut clove of garlic.

2. Place the sliced turnips in a bowl and season generously with salt and pepper and thyme. Add half the cheese and toss together, then transfer the mixture to the gratin dish and pour on the milk. It should just cover the turnips.

3. Put er' back in the oven and bake 30 minutes. Push the turnips down into the milk with the back of a large spoon. Sprinkle the remaining cheese over the top and return to the oven. Bake another 40 to 50 minutes, until all of the milk is absorbed, the turnips are soft and the dish is nicely browned on top and around the edges.

you'll love it.

xo pully

that type of year

I'm going to cut to the chase, because its been awhile and there's most likely no one out there anymore.

Twenty twelve is upon us, and I'm falling rather behind in the resolution department. I had one major personal goal to be accomplished pre 2012 and now that its over I'm kind of stumped. So I'm going to try to make a go again at this food writing thing.

For right now I'm going to sit and drink my coffee and let the thought marinate. But I'll be back around shortly.

still going

I mixed and baked 99lbs of white french bread this morning before the sun came up. As a result I am sleeping all day.

enter the civilized kitchen...

My first double yolker came this weekend with a crack against an 8inch cast iron pan. A double yolked egg appears when one yolk somehow gets “lost” and is joined by the next yolk. I added two more eggs to the pan and turned my attention back to the biscuits I preparing for lunch and back to the pages of my copy of Artisan Bread Everyday by Peter Reinhardt.

The last time I made biscuits I was a little less prepared. I used a recipe from the 1970’s Tassajara Bread Book , a remnant of the heath craze of the area it is full of recipes for whole grain yeasted breads that tend to be heavy, very heavy. It was no surprise to me when my biscuits turned out more like cow-pies then the buttery biscuits I had envisioned.

Even with Peter’s guidance my biscuits weren’t perfect, but they were a vast improvement. Feeling satisfied and full of buttery goodness I retired myself to the hammock and enjoyed the rest of the afternoon in the sun.

self indulgent harvest photo

dear friends,

come on over.

i'll cook and bake for you.


love, pully

pesto

I've made a few batches of pesto this season. It's just about the easiest food I've ever made and it takes no time at all. Gather and clean basil, add pepper, oil, garlic and some cayenne pepper and you've got yourself some pesto.

a pie crust

chelsea and pully. trash buddies. lovers of good food.

"I perfected my pie crust this weekend" my friend Chelsea exclaimed.

She shared the procedure with me, and here it is for you

1 cup flour
1/2 cup chilled butter
1/4 cup ice water

stick everything in the freezer for 20-30 minutes, remove and shape.

I usually use the pate sucree that I learned in Montana, but knowing Chelsea this will work well.

Fresh Ideas

An Elsewhere artist in residence came to the community table at the bcc this week. She was talking about a community exchange project that will take place right here in greensboro. Her objective is to bring people together from different pieces of the community to share with and learn from one another. It is my understanding that what is being shared can be of a wide range of things/emotions/skills but the idea is to create movement within the community. Unfortunately I misplaced her card, and cannot find her on the Elsewhere site.

I do remember her mentioning managing waffle shop project in Pittsburgh,Pa. Their site is definitely worth a look.

More to come...


http://www.waffleshop.org/

samantha and jason

This is Samantha, she is my neighbor. She comes over for chats.
Samantha has kitty cat leukemia .
She never complains.

This is Jason. He is the garden intern.
He enjoys carft-brews, live music and short shorts (on himself).
Ladies, he's available.

chestnut street.

kitchen, bedroom, and transportation.

photos from the farm.

farm photographs by ms. allie s

BCC Garden

a photo from behind a row of okra.

Factory Hog Farm Kick Off Meeting

Tonight I went to the first meeting of the Greensboro chapter of this nation campaign facilitated by Food and Water Watch. It was well organized and attended by some very passionate local justice minded folk.

Here's a blurb from the meeting announcement:

"In North Carolina, factory hog farms are dumping over 40 million gallons of untreated hog waste a day into unlined manure lagoons, as well as spraying the waste over fields within 75 feet of people's homes and schools. This toxic waste is destroying ecosystems and creating major health hazards for our fellow North Carolinians."

Check out their web-site if you get a chance and learn more about their campaign. Or if you have questions contact Cloe at cloe@greencorps.org

delivery

received just in time for a post baking shoot- my new pentax camera!

I finished two loaves of Pain a l'Ancienne- Rustic Ciabatta this morning. I used the cold-ferment process for this very wet dough (a method I prefer), and I'm quite pleased with the results.

Busy Bee

By 7.15 every morning I'm out the door. By 7.30 I'm in the garden, turning on our watering system and harvesting the days okra and peppers. There will be a greater variety of cultivars later this fall- but for now it's okra and peppers okra and peppers. I'm planting and prepping beds, talking to folks who pass by the garden and urging them to come in and work beside me.

Life's been busy and I'm doing less artisan baking and more subsistence cooking. Preserving pesto for the winter, making loads of hummus for lunches and pound after pound of granola.

extending my visa...

cousin jesse once told me that i was in the south on a temporary visa. being a northerner i suppose i have yet to fully integrate myself in the culture or marry into it.

today that will all change. this evening the garden is having an open house. for my part i will be making fried okra. my only previous experience with this southern delicacy has been at the K&W... so i have high expectations.

woman at work

"Ain't nothing gonna break my stride
Nobody's gonna slow me down
Oh no, I've got to keep on moving"

in the past week i have moved from spartanburg,sc (aka poot city, aka sparkle city) to my new home in greensboro, nc. this should not surprise the reader since, chances are we have met and spoken in the past 6 months.

in moving i left my full size oven behind for the smaller model i'm currently working with. so this weekend i put it to the test. i tried a recipe from peter reinharts book of whole wheat recipes to start with. i had been previously advised to lower the required temp in certain recipes to compensate for the size of the oven- and when i did this my ciabatta turned out quite well. no burning- nothing. how wonderful!

workin' it

at my count i have 15 calendar days, 9 working days and 2 hot-rocksana classes left in sparkle-city.

i'm going to try the Babka again for a potluck. and luckily enough i got a direct response to the lack of flaky-ness. by direct i mean direct from peter reinhart himself! so here we go with peter's suggestion:

before I forget, you are right about the babka and here's the reason why
: there was a typo and they forgot to add to the ingredient list for the
dough 1 oz. (2 tablespoons) of vegetable oil, any kind,
(this is in addition to the butter).

i'll try the recipe again with the vegetable oil and we'll see how it goes. 

Thanks Peter!

summer heat

it's pretty dang hot here in poot city. the other day i was in the final 15 minutes of my ciabatta prep and i discovered my oven wasn't working! imagine my shock and panic, i called a neighbor whose tiny oven promptly burnt the underside of my loaves.

in other news:

i had been posting things on the farmers website. but oops i posted a poem with a curse word in it and now since we had sooooo many complaints i have to pass my entries to be edited by heir director which means any post i send never see's the light of day! my bad. looking through the underbelly of the blog template i did find out people posted lovely comments about my other posts (which she declined to share with me) so it wasn't a total loss.

i'll survive (on summer squash and garlic) with ease and joy.

back to the books

i made the Babka from peter reinhart's new book this past weekend. it came out slightly less flaky then i would have liked but the result was chocolaty and enjoyable none the less. i also made the lean bread, most all of his recipes all for cold ferments that last over night.

most of the bread i bake calls for overnight cold fermenting, this works well for my schedule allowing me to stretch out the work over a few days. this new book explains the delights of the cold ferment technique as well alternative methods for people who like me don't own standing mixers.

my second amazon purchase was "the bread builders", i've heard good things about this text and after pouring over the library copy i ordered one for myself. its pretty good reading for anyone who plans to build a masonry oven or bake bread in one.