Chorizo, chickpeas, poached eggs, FFF

Choizo w/ chickpeas & poached egg

This Friday's food forage dish was chorizo with chickpeas topped with poached egg.

The eggs came directly from our own chickens.

I used Mexican chorizo from Pine Street Market.




The chickpeas were our one cheat this week since there isn't a local source for them. We used dried beans and let them soak for a few hours first. Then into boiling water with one cinnamon stick.

Saute a diced onion and then add in the chorizo. Let this cook for a while before adding in the chickpeas. Then top the chickpeas and chorizo up with chicken stock. Let simmer for about an hour.

When ready to serve top with a poached egg. Each egg takes four minutes so don't forget to allow for the correct amount of time.

The greens are going pretty well in the raised beds now. They are on the eastern side of the house and it is about the only place that gets full sun.

Salad with truffle vinaigrette

I made a salad from lettuce growing in a raised bed we have here. This is a very good light and tangy vinaigrette for hot weather.

Truffle vinaigrette:

1 - tspn Dijon mustard
2 - tblspn honey
1- tspn white truffle oil
1/4 cup lemon juice
1/2 cup olive oil
salt
pepper

Combine Dijon, honey and lemon juice in a measuring cup

While stirring, drizzle in some good olive oil to form an emulsion. Add truffle oil.

That's it!

I topped the salad with Goat's Milk cheese crafted locally from Capra Gia.

It isn't local but it's worth getting, Edmond Fallot dijon mustard, nothing can compete.

You can get it from iGourmet.com.

Georgia Olive Oil is made here in Georgia and is available from their online store if you cannot find it locally.











You can always find out what is available to you locally at Local Harvest.

Burgers with poached egg, FFF

Earlier in the week we visited the Spotted Trotter's location in Krog Street Market and bought some of their special secret burger blend. We used this to make patties with for the grill.

They wouldn't say exactly what was in the blend but I'm pretty sure it's ground beef with some pork blended in. There was lots of flare ups from grease. I just had to watch it extra closely. They came out fantastic.

We used eggs from our own chickens and poached them to put over the burgers. We didn't use any bread at all just some Dijon mustard. It was very simple but very delicious.

Krog Street Market is a very happening new market on Krog Street, home of the scariest tunnel in America. Not cookie cutter and not overrun with posers yet it's a cool place to visit.

I even paid $10 for a chocolate bar from Xocolatl! It was good but I'm not sure how anything that has thousands of embodied food miles can be labeled sustainable.

And by the way, Ford Fry's newest restaurant Superica ain't bad either!

Friday's Foraged Food

Friday's meal with all local ingredients was awesome!

Duck breast over sauteed pokeweed and hostas with poached egg and goats milk cheese.

Pine Street Market had duck breast in house on Friday and I picked up a couple. I also used their bacon in the sauteed greens.

I always pick up goat's milk cheese from Capra Gia every Thursday at the Tucker Farmers Market.

The eggs came all the way from the side of the house, around 30 feet. Zero food miles.

Hostas

Rounding out this dish was pokeweed and hostas plucked from the backyard. It was a variation on a Fried Poke Sallet recipe that I got here.

I didn't have as much pokeweed as I needed because it is just now beginning to come up. The hostas have already gotten pretty big so I substituted them for what I lacked in poke.

You are supposed to boil the pokeweed in two changes of water before you eat it. But I don't really think you need to do that with very young pokeweed. You only harvest the leaves. Mature pokeweed that is red can make you sick if you don't boil it first. It tastes like spinach to me.

I boiled the poke and then I sauteed that and the hostas in the bacon grease with garlic and soy sauce. The soy sauce was not locally sourced. The hostas wilt down very quickly kind of like radicchio. It eats just like a lettuce. It is very popular in Asian countries.

I sauteed the duck breast skin side down on high heat for a few minutes, starting with a cold pan. This allows the fat to render out. Flip it over and then put it in a 200 degree oven for 6 - 8 minutes. It's best when rare.

Poached eggs are incredibly simple. Bring water to a boil. I like to swirl it before dropping in the egg. Then just crack the egg into the water and let it boil for 4 minutes. Remove it to a bowl of water.

This dish came out seriously good, better than I expected. It's the first time I've cooked pokeweed. I had no idea hostas were eatable until very recently and the yard is full of them. They come back every year whether you want them to or not. Poke salad was a staple not that long ago. Now it's been deemed poisonous by the internet and is fatal to even look at. But I don't buy it. Something so ubiquitous as to have a song written about it can't be that bad!

Mid-winter update

Two eggs per day now...usually. It's easy to tell who's egg is who's since they are such different colors. The light colored one is Cleo's and the darker one is Blondie's. Blondie's eggshells are very thick and kind of hard to break. Cleo's crack very easily and it's mostly yolk. I think she is a Jersey Giant. Hopefully they will all be laying very soon.

Fall Elderberry cuttings 

Elderberry cutting in 10"pot

The elderberry cuttings I took in the summer have done well. They are indoors and continue to put on new growth. It's basically a bullet proof plant to propagate.

Most of the goji berry cuttings have done well also. I have at least a dozen of them growing in pots indoors now. I believe that I paid around $15 for the one that I bought and it was about the same size as the ones I have potted.

Propagated goji

The goji's are just ridiculously easy to propagate. I don't remember having a single one not strike.

I cut up a long branch that fell off into little pieces and nearly all of them are now growing. Only the green section of the limb didn't take, all of the woody pieces are living in a couple of coffee cups filled with rain water.

Probably 10 or 12 4" long cuttings.

A few of the fig cuttings are now growing in pots. But I didn't have one hundred percent success with them.

I have a few of the raspberry root cuttings that are still going but they haven't been very vigorous. I think they are dormant.

Most of the comfrey root cuttings survived but the cats were eating the leaves and they got set back some, they are starting to rebound now. I put several goji, elderberry and comfrey plants from cuttings into the yard in the fall. The elderberry I put into a raised bed is going good but the cold hurt the goji a bit. The others in the yard got hammered by the chickens so it remains to be seen if they will come back up in the spring. I think there is a good chance they will.

Persimmon seedling

Seedlings
There are a few seedlings coming along quite well at the moment as well. Back in the summer I put about thirty wild persimmon seeds in a flat and of those two germinated. I put them in pots in the fall and they are indoors now. Persimmons grow very slowly. The tap root goes way down before the above ground growth shows itself. Both of them still have the seeds attached.

Lately, I've started a few citrus seeds from some fruit from the market. I've got four grapefruits growing from seeds I started with the damp paper towel method.

I also saved ten quince seeds and put them in a damp paper towel inside a zip bag and one of them germinated. It's now in a pot.

Quince seedling

Five tangerines germinated using the same method as well. I transplanted those over the weekend.  They are yet to break the soil.

I saved a lot of Bosc pear seeds and they are in the refrigerator until spring because they need to be stratified before they will germinate.

Grapefruit

Although the fruit trees in the yard are said to be dormant over the winter, that isn't exactly the case. Buds have been forming on a lot of the trees and also some of the shrubs have them too. So they aren't totally "asleep". The apricot has by far the most but the peaches also have a lot too. The last frost date for us is the last week of March, so it's just around the corner.

El huevo primero

The first egg came on Dec 19!

It was only about 3/4 the size of a normal egg. We think it came from Blondie.

So it's been a little over 18 weeks since they arrived.

I didn't expect any eggs just yet, not until next month. None of the others are laying yet, that we know of.

On the right you can see how small the yolk is compared to a normal egg.

La rubia