- Preparing the Scotch eggs
A Scotch egg is a hard boiled egg that’s been coated with a mixture of ground meat, dipped in egg batter, rolled in breadcrumbs, and fried. Cut open, they’re beautiful wedges of protein with bright hard boiled yolks at the center. We’d never tasted them, but found a recipe while flipping through a copy of Bon Appetit, and after hard boiling a dozen eggs the other day, we decided to give them a try. I couldn’t find the magazine, but the recipe in my battered old copy of the Joy of Cooking was worn and grease spattered, which was endorsement enough. Clearly someone had loved Scotch eggs! Feeling my frugal Scottish roots, I adapted the recipe to include what we had in our larder, replacing pork sausage and cubed ham with ground beef, chopped anchovies, and rubbed sage. The results were hearty, delicious, and fun!
- The finished egg
Scotch Eggs
Makes 6
*
6 hard boiled eggs
1/2 pound ground beef
1/2 cup fresh breadcrumbs
2 anchovies, minced
1 clove garlic, pressed
flour for dredging
2 eggs, beaten
1 cup dry breadcrumbs or matzoh meal
1/2 teaspoon rubbed sage
canola oil
*
Peel the hard boiled eggs and blot dry. In a medium size bowl, mix together ground beef, fresh breadcrumbs, anchovies and garlic. Shake some flour onto a large plate and roll the eggs in it. Divide the meat mixture into six balls and, one at a time, flatten them. Place a floured egg in the center and mold the meat around the egg so that it becomes a large oval with no white showing. Place the beaten egg in a shallow bowl, and in another shallow bowl, combine the dry breadcrumbs or matzoh meal and the sage. Dip each meatball into the beaten egg, then roll in the crumbs. In a deep skillet, heat enough oil to come up 1/2-inch on the sides of the pan. Fry the Scotch eggs until the meat is cooked through, rolling the eggs so that each side is crisp. Blot on a paper towel and serve hot or at room temperature, either plain or with Sriracha sauce.
posted by margaret Food, Recipes egg, Joy of Cooking, recipe, Scotch egg
Shabbat Shalom
Twice a year, the Levey Day School has a Shabbat dinner for students, parents, teachers and friends. Charlotte’s kindergarten class spent painstaking hours making tissue paper flower centerpieces for each table, while the older kids practiced a play to welcome the “Shabbat bride.” While they were getting ready, Margaret, Beatrice and Sadie were in the dairy kitchen of Temple Beth El, helping prepare a vegetarian Sephardic feast. The kids did an amazing job singing and leading prayers and the food–all prepared by parent volunteers–was delicious: homemade falafel, hummus, baba ganoush, carrot salad, roasted peppers and eggplant, chopped salad, matbucha, and an enormous couscous. We’re already looking forward to the next one!
posted by karl Family, Judaism Family, Judaism, Levey Day School, Sephardic food, shabbat
A delicious pumpkin dish
This time of year, we’re eating as much as possible from the root cellar. We’ve gone through most of our onions and potatoes, the turnips have gone soft (we’re eating them anyway), but winter squash is abundant and delicious. We’ve been hanging on to the butternut–they’re so good in storage that we still have one left from the 2010 garden–but are now down to the last few pumpkins. Thick and meaty, they make a great main dish on nights when we’re feeling veggie, and they’re equally tasty as a side with poultry and lamb.
The recipe below is adapted from Yotam Ottolenghi’s amazing cookbook, Plenty. We’re all over it these days, finding all kinds of new uses for kohlrabi, cabbage, and the favas we froze by the pound last summer. Baby Sadie has restricted my diet–no dairy, soy or coffee if we want a happy girl–so I made a few substitutions, but we all loved the results.
Crispy Stuffed Pumpkin
Makes 4-6 servings
*
2 lbs pumpkin, peeled and sliced into thin wedges
3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
1/4 cup fresh breadcrumbs (I ground the end of a whole wheat loaf)
1/4 cup chopped parsley
2 teaspoons chopped thyme
grated zest of 2 large lemons
2 garlic cloves, crushed
1/3 cup finely chopped pecans
Coarse sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
*
Preheat the oven to 375. Line a baking sheet with parchment. Place pumpkin wedges in a large bowl, drizzle with one tablespoon of the olive oil, and lightly toss to coat. Arrange wedges on parchment.
*
In a small bowl, mix together breadcrumbs, herbs, lemon zest, garlic, and pecans, and salt and pepper to taste. Sprinkle mixture over the pumpkin wedges, patting down so that the stuffing stays on, then drizzle with remaining olive oil. Sprinkle with a little more sea salt. Place pan in the oven and roast for about 1/2 hour, or until the pumpkin wedges have begun to crisp a little at the edges. Serve warm.
posted by margaret Food, Recipes pumpkin, recipe, root cellar, winter food
A delicious and festive festival of lights to one and all!
posted by karl Family, Holidays, Judaism cake, cookies, Hanukkah
Baby Sadie gets some love from big sister Charlotte, godmother Samantha, and grandmother (Nana) Nancy.
We’re in Sadie-land around here, spending more time than seems possible admiring her tiny fingers, thick hair, and increasingly round cheeks. After two weeks (and a few new fairy costumes) the girls are still smitten with her: Charlotte asks to hold her every morning before school, and Bea is more than happy to answer questions about her little sister when we’re on outings. Despite the sleep deprivation, the transition to life as a five-some has been as smooth as we could hope.
Sadie came home the night before Thanksgiving–so much to be grateful for this year!–and though we postponed the big meal until Friday, we did roast a 24 pound turkey with all the fixin’s. Between leftovers and the amazing meals that friends have stocked in our freezer, we haven’t needed to cook much in the last couple of weeks. In fact, we’ve ended up with extra–after Sunday brunch, we were left with a bag of bagels. Instead of tossing them to the chickens the next morning, we used the stale ones in this improvised bread pudding. I wouldn’t recommend using “everythings,” but plain or cinnamon raisin make a tasty dessert (or breakfast, if you’re a nursing mama with a sweet tooth). The spices are approximate–feel free to adjust to your taste, putting in less cinnamon if you use cinnamon raisin bagels, or adding 1/2 cup of raisins or currants if you’d like.
Sadie’s Leftover Bagel Pudding
Makes 6-8 servings
*
3-4 leftover bagels (plain, cinnamon raisin, blueberry, or multigrain are nice)
2 apples, peeled, cored and chopped
1/2-3/4 cup sugar (to taste)
1/8 teaspoon salt
3/4 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon cloves
1/4 teaspoon allspice
dash freshly grated nutmeg
2 1/2 cups milk (we use goat’s)
3 eggs, lightly beaten
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
3 tablespoons unsalted butter, plus more for buttering the dish
*
Over a large bowl, tear stale bagels into bite-sized pieces. In the bowl, combine bagel pieces, apples, sugar, salt and spices. In a medium-size bowl, whisk together milk, eggs, and vanilla. Pour milk mixture over the dry ingredients and stir to combine. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least 4 hours, or overnight. The bagels will absorb almost all the milk mixture as they soak.
Preheat oven to 375. Generously butter a deep 8×8 baking dish and pour in the soaked bagel mixture. Cut butter into pieces and scatter over the top of the pudding. Bake uncovered for 30-40 minutes, until pudding is puffed and lightly browned on top. Allow to cool for a few minutes before serving warm.
posted by margaret Food, Recipes apple bread pudding, apples, bagel bread pudding, bread pudding, leftovers, Recipes
Welcome to the newest member of the Ten Apple Clan: Sadie Pearl Hathaway Schatz born November 21, 2011 at 11:55pm weighing 9 lbs 3.5 oz. Mama & baby (and big sisters) are all doing great.
posted by karl Announcements
- Margaret, extremely pregnant and 10 days past her due date, cleaning the turkeys we slaughtered and processed yesterday.
Yesterday we “delivered” 8 turkeys weighing from 20-25 lbs, but no baby. Stay tuned.
posted by karl Uncategorized
The final fruit of our labors taken in before Fall's first frost
We had our first frost earlier this week, and with it came the frenzy of harvest. Bea and I spent the afternoon gathering tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, cukes, basil (and basil and basil), beans, and armloads of zinnias and cosmos. After supper, Karl went out with the headlamp and spread sheets and tarps over tomatillos, beans, and the few squash plants that haven’t been ravaged by the various bugs and blights that hit our cucurbits this season.
It’s beautiful and warm this weekend, and the plants we covered against the frost are now basking in the sun. Everything else is piled in the kitchen and mudroom, filling all the baskets and buckets we can find. Now, the pickling, freezing, and drying….
posted by karl Food, Garden, Homesteading & Farming Autumn, first frost, garden bounty, harvest
Our swap meet lobster and wild mushroom on rice
There are a lot of things about Maine that make it a pretty unique and interesting place to live. For example, last year we donated a year’s supply of eggs (one dozen eggs per week for an entire year) to the Levey Day School silent auction. This was the second year in a row that we have done it, and both years the top bidders were Perry and Sharon Newman of Portland. So part of our week is a regular egg drop off with the Newmans. Last week, I met Perry in front of Browne Trading where he was also picking up some fish, I think. I got there first and nabbed a valuable Commercial Street parking spot right in front. Perry pulled up behind, but in an illegal spot. I got out, gave Perry his eggs, and then headed home, giving him my parking spot. A dozen eggs and a parking spot! “Only in Maine,” Perry said, as I handed him his eggs for the week.
After breaking for the summer, last weekend our monthly Portland Permaculture swap meets started up again. And what a way to kick them off! Monique, from Lobsters on the Fly brought live lobsters, and several people brought foraged wild mushrooms.
(Side note: It’s a banner year for mushroom foraging in Maine. Walking through our woods the other day with Charlotte and Bea I counted at least 15 different mushroom species, in plentiful supply. If only we knew which ones to eat! Any foragers out there who want to come explore the bounty of our woods and share in the goodies — just drop us a line!)
So in exchange for a couple rounds of fresh chevre and a bit of aged manchego, we took home the fixings for an amazing lobster and wild mushroom supper (see recipe below). Only in Maine….
Lobster and Wild Mushrooms on Rice
Serves 4
2 lobsters, approx. 1 1/4 pounds each
2 tablespoon unsalted butter
2 tablespoons olive oil
3/4 cup minced shallots
1 tablespoon minced garlic
1/2 pound foraged mushrooms (we used Black Trumpets), well cleaned
5 sprigs fresh thyme
1 cup dry white wine
1/4 cup heavy cream
salt and pepper to taste
chopped fresh parsley, for garnish
*
3 cups cooked basmati rice
*
In a large pot, steam or boil lobsters in salted water until scarlet and just cooked. Be careful not to over cook, as they’ll be sauteed again with the mushrooms. (We steamed them on a bed of seaweed in a re-purposed roasting pan.) Let lobsters cool until they can be handled, then pick the meat, roughly shredding tail and claw meat, and set aside in a bowl.
In a large, heavy-bottomed skillet over medium heat, melt the butter with the olive oil until the foam subsides. Add the shallots and garlic and saute until fragrant, about 5 minutes. Add the mushrooms and cook, stirring continuously, until they begin to release their juices. Add the lobster meat and fresh thyme sprigs and pour wine over the top, lowering heat to a simmer and stirring occasionally for 5-8 minutes, until flavors have blended. Stir in the heavy cream and taste for seasonings–you’ll probably need less salt than you anticipate.
To served, pour sauce over a mound of rice and garnish with chopped parsley.
posted by karl Food, Recipes black trumpet mushrooms, lobster, permaculture, Recipes, swap meet
