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Posts tagged ‘goat cheese’

Apr 17

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Butternut Squash Crumble with Goat Cheese and Sage

Of all the hypotheticals I’ve entertained in the daydream hours of spring, there’s one I return to with special frequency. If I had my own restaurant kitchen, what would be on my opening night playlist?

To say music sets the tone for an eating experience may be an understatement, but in many dining rooms the soundtrack goes woefully ignored. Neutral and instrumental seems to be the direction of choice, followed closely by a Pandora-style lineup of “Greatest Coffee Shop Hits: 80s, 90s and Today.” When a place does it right, though, the effect can be magical. Full disclosure: I loved The Little Owl on Bedford as much for their playlists as for their meatball sliders, and secretly bookmarked their website just for the pleasure of streaming Frankie Valli & the Four Seasons. (Do it! Their 3-song loop brings back many happy memories.)

At Love Apple Farms we frequently blasted music out over the garden terraces. Our garden manager had a proclivity for Phish and The Dead, but the best days were when a laptop in the tool shed was plugged into the speakers with an open playlist. “It’s not about choosing a good song, it’s about finding the song that captures your mood right now,” Ross told me earnestly one afternoon, and I took the wisdom to heart. My choices were generally scattershot, often verging on embarrassing (Sting, anyone? No, not the Police… “Desert Rose”). Fortunately my cohorts had better musical taste. When I think of the farm on late-summer afternoons I think of overripe cherry tomatoes, the clouds parting over Monterey Bay, and Ross sprinting to the laptop to play The Talking Heads’ “This Must Be the Place.”

Recently I’ve realized the same wisdom can be applied to cooking. It’s not about a perfect meal every night, but rather putting together what feels right. Sometimes I genuinely crave spaghetti with grated cheese; many afternoons I crunch on slices of raw red cabbage; other weekends I want a three-course Moroccan feast, the spices satisfying some unknown culinary desire. Some nights I need the pleasant ache of Madeleine Peyroux’s “I’m All Right” and Mayer Hawthorne’s “Just Ain’t Gonna Work Out”; other nights I slide around the kitchen to Lyle Lovett’s “Don’t Touch My Hat.” There’s a lot to be said for being true to the moment—in music and in food.

Butternut Squash Crumble with Goat Cheese and Sage

I fell in love with this savory crumble the moment I saw it on La Tartine Gourmand, and though it took me awhile to get around to making it, it didn’t disappoint. My adaptation uses goat cheese instead of tomato to make the filling smooth and creamy, and I also found that pre-roasting the butternut squash makes for a delicious, caramelized treat.

2 medium butternut squash

olive oil

salt & pepper

1 large onion

handful fresh sage leaves

1 small round goat cheese, crumbled

1/2 cup white whole wheat flour

2 Tbsp. butter, cut into small pieces

1/2 cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Peel the butternuts and cut them into small chunks; toss with olive oil, salt and pepper and arrange on a baking tray. Roast in the oven until soft and browned, about half an hour.

While the butternut is cooking, slice the onion and saute in olive oil in a medium saucepan. Roughly chop the fresh sage and add to the pan with a sprinkling of salt and pepper. Cook until the onion is translucent, then set aside to cool.

Mix the flour, butter and parmesan cheese in a bowl, rubbing the butter into the flour with your fingers until the mixture resembles course crumbs. Set aside.

Reduce oven heat to 350 degrees. Toss the warm roasted butternut with the onion mixture and the crumbled goat cheese. Spread evenly in a buttered baking dish and top with the crumble mixture. Bake until the topping is golden, about 25-30 minutes, and enjoy!

Sep 22

salad of mustard greens, soft feta, tomato and nasturtium

Most days I don’t tend to think of farm life as remote, and it’s certainly no harkening back to Little House on the Prairie. Half of us apprentices have smart phones, our weekly schedule is accessible via Google Docs, and with the newly installed Playstation at the cottage the shrieks of animated zombies can be heard every so often while I’m making dinner in the kitchen. Yes, we make cheese and engage in various other homesteading activities (shooting squirrels, anyone?) but all in all the farm is a thoroughly modern operation, complete with facebook page and twitter account.

This week, though, I’ve been thinking a lot about the ways the farm is a return to earlier times, at least for those of us who live here. There’s something about living and working in the same place that makes the happenings of the wider world grow slightly hazy—I wake up early, work a full day in the garden, do evening chores and then sit around talking and eating with the same people I’ve spent the day working with. It’s a community so rooted in place that it can feel a bit strange picking up a cellphone or answering an email, and sometimes I wonder if this is how it used to be: your whole life bound up in a single communal place and purpose.

Added to that is the fact that visitors often appear with little explanation, like travelers from afar. The guy with nice shoes from Taipei who rolled up his dress slacks to help us amend beds and stayed three days in the garden? As it turned out, he was a chef from a two-Michelin star restaurant in LA who had cooked for Chinese dignitaries and had a case of knives worth $5000. Day one I was  giving him a tour, wondering why he knew so much about litchi tomatoes and oyster lettuce, day two he joined us for fried green tomatoes and bobotie, and day three he had commanded our apprentices’ kitchen, searing salmon belly and roasting a chicken in my cast iron. Watching him chop an onion in 5 seconds flat as we all sat wide-eyed in the kitchen, I had to wonder—would this happen anywhere else? Living as a small farm community we welcome people, allow them to surprise us, and watch them go, and along the way I learn just what it means to belong to a place in the oldest sense of the word.

Salad of Mustard Greens, Soft Feta, Tomato and Nasturtium

Everything in this salad came from the farm–the mustard greens I sow weekly for the restaurant, tomatoes and nasturtium flowers from the recent harvest, and feta that we used before it had been aged. Any soft, fresh cheese like burrata will do just as well, and if you can’t find nasturtium flowers in your neighborhood (they grow like a weed!) planting them is a snap.

selection of small greens like mustards, baby spinach, and little bok choy

fresh, soft cheese

several ripe tomatoes

nasturtium flowers

1/2 onion, finely chopped

dijon mustard

honey

balsamic vinegar

olive oil

salt and pepper

In a small bowl, mix chopped onion, honey, and dijon mustard, then combine with balsamic and salt and pepper. Whisking constantly, pour in olive oil and mix until vinaigrette is thick and creamy.

Arrange your greens in a mound in a bowl or platter, and set tomatoes in a ring around the edge. Crumble cheese over the top, and garnish with nasturtium blossoms. Sprinkle vinaigrette on top or serve on the side.

Jul 16

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goat cheese zucchini lasagna

On any given day, this is what I see when I open our cottage refrigerator.

It’s an all-consuming battle, us seven 20-somethings versus a never-ending supply of goats’ milk (two gallons a day, to be precise). Fresh it tastes similar to cows’ milk, but after three or so days in the fridge it gets, well… goaty. We all have various tolerance levels for this unfortunate phenomenon—some grin and bear it by grabbing a five-day-old jar and pouring in a third of a bottle of Hershey’s syrup, some (read, me) give yesterday’s gallon a tentative sniff before hastily returning it to the fridge. “Finding out how much milk someone can drink in a day should be part of the Love Apple interview process,” someone joked my first week here, and though I had to laugh I also secretly cringed. I try to hide it, but since I’ve never been a milk drinker I’m the weakest link in our stand against the goats—Marty, Lupe, and Totes—and their prolific udders.

Still, I had a battle plan: cheese. A list of cheese recipes hangs from a magnet on our freezer door, and after consulting it thoroughly I decided I’d attempt cheese making on my days off this week. Armed with a packet of culture, a thermometer, and an enormous aluminum pot, I began with chevre, heating a gallon of milk to 86 degrees and stirring in the ordinary-looking white powder. And then… that was it. You let the milk sit for 24 hours to separate, then strain out the curds to hang for 4-6 hours. It was so easy I made three batches, satisfying myself with a mental tally for the day: goats—plus two gallons, Sara—minus three.

Of course the cheese never lasts as long as the milk. I eat it for breakfast on toast with jam, but cooking with it has inspired a number of dinners this week—eggplant zucchini gratin, goat pesto pizza, and a lasagna/pasta bake of sorts that threw all of the above (minus the pizza dough) together into two baked casserole dishes of cheesy goodness. Served with two-buck-chuck (those bottles are becoming a regular feature in my photos I know), it made for a wonderful Wednesday night. I’m even feeling a little better about milking at 7:30am tomorrow.

Goat Cheese Zucchini Lasagna

We only had a few lasagna noodles left so I ended up cooking some pasta and making that a layer–either way will work. Also you don’t have to make your own pesto and tomato sauce, but if you have fresh basil it’s especially worth the effort.

For the pesto:

several handfuls fresh basil

1/2 cup pine nuts

1/2 cups grated parmesan

2 cloves garlic

olive oil

For the tomato sauce:

3 cloves garlic, sliced

4 cups canned diced tomatoes

For the caramelized onions and mushrooms:

1 Tbsp butter

2 large onions, sliced into rounds

handful of large brown mushrooms

1 lb ground turkey

lasagna noodles (or penne pasta)

2 large zucchini, sliced into rounds

goat cheese, crumbled

salt and pepper

Blend the ingredients for the pesto in the blender until smooth, adding more or less of each depending on your textural preferences. In a medium saucepan, brown the sliced garlic in olive oil, then add in the diced tomatoes and simmer until most of the liquid has evaporated and the sauce looks thick and smooth. Meanwhile, heat butter in a frying pan over medium-high heat, then add sliced onions and mushrooms and caramelize, stirring regularly for about 40 minutes until they are dark brown and gooey. When the onions are done, set aside in a bowl and brown the turkey meat in the same frying pan. In another frying pan, heat olive oil and fry zucchini rounds in batches until each piece is lightly browned on each side. If you aren’t using no-cook lasagna noodles, boil a pot of water, cook your pasta, and drain.

To assemble, lightly oil a large casserole dish and begin layering, starting with the pesto and adding zucchini, pasta or lasagna noodles, tomato sauce, onions and mushrooms, meat, and goat cheese (in any order you choose). Finish with a layer of tomato sauce topped with zucchini and crumbled goat cheese, then bake in the oven at 350 degrees for about 45 minutes, or until sides are bubbling and cheese on top is beginning to brown.

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