Dining and Opining

After culinarily visiting Japan last month, the sushi-making tour made a stop at last week's GreenHouse MYO* Meal Night for an evening of seaweed wrapping and wasabi adventures. And so a little sushi tutorial here at D&O seemed to be in order.  I first learned my sushi-making strategy and technique from my oldest friend KW in her childhood Arkansas home, before I had ever even eaten sushi in a restaurant, and it has carried me through all these years. I don't know how authentic it is, but it's what I've got to share with you all for now. The building blocks for this particular sushi night: ...plus the nori (toasted seaweed wrappers) and some wasabi (a spicy Japanese green horseradish relative, which is delicious when added to soy sauce for sushi roll dipping). More details on my particular ingredients that merit further explanation: Sushi Rice: Cook sushi rice (special short-grain sticky rice is best, but any rice or even another grain would work) with 1 p...

It's likely that no amount of waxing poetic will allow me to fully describe my love for our local grocery store, the Willy St. Co-op , but let me begin with this small story (and I'm sure I will continue the love-fest at another time). On a recent trip (on a night when there was still snow, by the likes of the photo below!) to pick up a few items, I went over to the bulk honey dispenser with my little glass jar for a refill. After carefully weighing the jar and labeling it with its tare weight (so I wouldn't end up paying for the weight of the jar), I turned to the honey dispenser only to find it empty. With sadness, I thought of all that baklava, all that sweetened tea, all that mead that would get unmade, as my honey jar sat unfilled [that's what she said?]. But then!  A kind co-op employee, apparently seeing my distress, turned to me and said I think the honey truck just pulled up, let me go and check . The honey truck?! Could there really bee [sic] such a deligh...

As promised, today I am featuring a number of recipes for pie crusts from Mollie Katzen , which you can use for quiche ( see the quiche "formula" we use ), or for any other crusty dish. I've used the basic, spinach, and potato (though I substituted sweet potato) crust recipes, and they have all been great. If anyone gets around to trying the nut crust, though, do let me know, as it sounds delicious, and I'd love to know how it turns out! Basic Savory Pie Crust 6 Tbsp cold butter, cut into small pieces 1 ½ cup flour (can be up to ¼ cup whole wheat) about 4 Tbsp cold water, milk, or buttermilk extra flour for rolling the dough Use a pastry cutter, two forks, or a food processor to cut together the butter and flour until they make a uniform mixture resembling coarse cornmeal. (The food processor will accomplish this in just a few short bursts). As you stir with a fork (or as the food processor briefly runs) add the liquid, a little at a time, u...

Our old roommate DC introduced me to Mollie Katzen's Enchanted Broccoli Forest , which is just a really excellent cookbook with whimsical drawings and delicious recipes.  One of the "recipes" from this book that we use most often around these parts isn't so much a recipe, as a formula: a formula for quiche. We recently got to share this formula with our friend RG, who came over for some shared cooking and eating (and, um, we may have watched an embarrassing/awesome internet video or two ). A Quiche Formula From Mollie Katzen After you have prepared the crust (see preceding pages), there are three more steps involved before the quiche is ready to bake. These are (1) the cheese, (2) the filling, and (3) the custard--and they are all easy. Once the crust is prepared, the most difficult part is done. [ We "prepare" the crust by buying handmade and frozen ones from the Willy St. Co-op. But if you're not lucky enough to have a local supplier of pie crust...

My idea of a rockin' night? Baking bread, playing cribbage, and sharing conversation with a good friend. And it's even better when some beautiful photos capture the whole thing. Check out some Boston Brown Bread in the making (all photos taken by good friend, KG): The specific recipe we used came from a bread book KG had (perhaps he can fill in the missing title in the comments?), but a quick google search reveals recipes galore-- some using buttermilk , some steaming the bread rather than just baking it, some tying it down with a string . But no matter the particular method, all the recipes lead to a bread, rich with molasses and rye flour, often baked in a tin can. This bread has a storied past, and is said to have been passed down to white settlers by Native Americans, who were accustomed to cooking with corn meal.  Recipes for it appeared in the earliest Fannie Farmer cookbooks and were widely shared among New England cooks.  Here is just one such recipe, fr...

This weekend, we raised and moved a house. And though it left me with sore armpits , it also lifted my spirits and left me with this overwhelming sense of hope in the power of community and what can happen when people band together. This was the scene for all that hope-making, a small organic farm in Brodhead, WI called Scotch Hill Farm : And this was the house that we raised and moved: It was a greenhouse, or hoophouse , used by many farmers to extend the growing season by providing a warmer place for plants to grow. What you see above is just the frame of the hoophouse, withe the plastic covering removed.  The whole thing is 96 feet long, 30 feet wide and 12 feet high, and initially took two months to construct with help from 30 people. Tony and Dela Ends, the Scotch Hill farmers, had erected this hoophouse less than a year ago, and all was well. Or so it seemed until recently, when they were contacted by a local building inspector who said the greenhouse was too clos...

A special Saturday post to invite you all to "Like" Dining and Opining on Facebook. Go here and click "Like"!  Then, any time there is a new post, a preview of it will show up in your Facebook NewsFeed. And in the Photos of that fan page, there are some nice re-caps of my posts of the last three months. As always, any feedback on the blog is welcome. I'm so happy to have you few readers along for the ride. Hugs.