Josh Kilmer-Purcell's Blog, page 97
July 3, 2012
The Chatter for July
[image error]
We’ve lobbied really hard for Garrison Keillor to give up life in Lake Wobegone and move to Sharon Springs, but thus far he has not answered our letters or returned our calls.
Sharon Springs has beautiful people and above-average children, too, so on to Plan B.
What is a small town village without a small town paper to keep track of what everyone is doing?
Leila Durkin, proprietor of The Village Hall Gallery, is now editor of our own little paper.
Each month you can check back here for a new issue and follow the lives of the real village people. If you pay a real visit, you may even want to submit a story idea of your own!
You may not live in small town, but at least you can pretend.
The July 2012 issue of the Chatter is dedicated to Andy Griffith who inspired us all to find our Mayberry no matter what neck of the woods we call home.
http://www.scribd.com/doc/98994237/Th...
June 30, 2012
Mary and the Fish
[image error]
Mary Beekman is a four-year-old ghost who resides in The Beekman Mansion, and considers Brent and Josh her “imaginary friends.” Follow Mary Beekman’s Diary to learn what it’s like to be a young child in early 19th century America
Father and the boys went fishing this fine morning. Mother gave them jugs of water and some bread and butter with slices of ham for their lunch. They returned by midmorning with a full catch. They had placed some wet leaves around the fish in Father’s creel to keep them fresh until they returned home to clean them. They were shimmery and silver with sad eyes. In one of my story books, there was a drawing of a mermaid. Her eyes were sad too. They took a wide plank for a cutting surface from near the barn and carefully cleaned the fish. Father was teaching the boys how to clean the fish without losing much of the good flesh. I asked Father if they had come from the sea, but he laughed and said they had been in the pond. Someday I hope I can look upon the sea and learn about the sea shells and the creatures that swim there.
Mother enjoys fresh fish chouder and said she would make some for our supper. We have some crackers that are not freshly baked and she thought that would be a fine way to put them to use. She does not like to waste our food. We try to use everything we have grown in the garden, everything we have fresh or preserved because Mother and Father remind us of our good fortune in having enough good food to eat. It is good to live on a farm and not in the city. I like fish chouder too. But I am very careful to chew for bones. I do not want to have a fish bone become caught in my throat. Josh did not like to watch the fish being cleaned but Brent thought it was interesting. The knives must be very, very sharp.
Take a bass weighing four pounds, boil half an hour, take six slices or raw salt port, fry them until the lard in nearly extracted, one dozen crackers soaked in cold water five minutes; put the bass into the lard, also the pieces of pork and crackers, cover close, and fry for 20 minutes, serve with potatoes, pickles, apple-sauce; garnish with green parsley.
Fish Chouder from 1800 American Cookery by Amelia Simmons
June 29, 2012
Gartending: Old Glory
[image error]
For the Spring and Summer growing season, we bring you a new feature at Beekman 1802, the Soused Gnome. He’ll teach you how to “gartend”–create perfect seasonal cocktails using fresh ingredients from the garden.
The Red White and Blue Cocktail needs hot weather to make it groove. Red from red roses- woven into a simple syrup. White from white rum from Brugal, wonderful semi-frozen and blue from the aromatic and spicy organic blueberries from Driscoll’s- are there any better berries available in your supermarket?
I doubt it.
The Red portion of the cocktail can be duplicated at home if you have a source for red rose petals. You can also make fabulous syrups from Rose Hips that you slice and boil with water, but that’s more complicated.
I like using rose petals in my syrup.
You’ll want to find dried, organic red roses. They are throbbing with the essences of Turkey. Take about a cup of the rose petals and cover them with two cups of simple syrup. Let them steep like tea in the fridge for a couple of days.
The White quotient is a brand new, brilliantly clear and flavorful rum from Brugal. It’s labeled Extra Dry and for good reason. Aged in oak, yet thankfully missing that cloying depth of sweetness from the caramel coloring that plagues many mass produced rums. It’s crystal clear in color and seems to call out for mixers of all types, especially coconut water.
The Blue element of this cocktail is from muddled blueberries. What calls out to me about blueberries is the flavor of blue fruits. I seek this flavor in wine from Oregon. For some reason their wines remind me of blue fruits. The same holds true with this cocktail.
The preparation is perfectly easy. The first thing that I recommend is chill your glassware well. How do I do this? It’s easy. I think that this cocktail needs a Gin wash. What’s a wash? A wash is a way of placing a flavoring agent deeply inside your glass, but not into the recipe for the cocktail.
Take a short rocks glass and fill with one shot of botanical Gin such as Aviation. Add some rock ice and some water and place into your fridge to cool.
In a cocktail shaker, muddle about 1/3 cup of the Driscoll’s Blueberries with about 4 tablespoons of your rose-simple syrup. You can also use Royal Rose Simple Syrup of Roses if you don’t want to make this for yourself. (But I think you should try because making rose syrup at home smells so good!)
For two nice strong drinks add 3 shots of the Brugal Extra Dry Rum.
Crushed ice is necessary for this drink. You can crush it with a kitchen towel and a mallet. Makes a perfect cocktail.
Now, what about that chilled glass? Pour out the Gin, ice and water- just before filling with the crushed ice. Or drink it down really quickly, your preference. I come from the school of thought of not wasting liquor. Go figure.
The Red White and Blue Cocktail
Ingredients:
3 Shots of Brugal Rum
1/3 cup of Driscoll’s Blueberries
4 Tablespoons of Rose Simple Syrup
Aviation Gin for the wash – if you use great Gin like Aviation, pour into a glass for a sip later on
1 cup Coconut water with guava, unsweetened
Cucumber wedges, peeled and seeded
Preparation:
In a shaker add the 1/3 cup of blueberries and muddle with the Rose Simple Syrup until a nice slurry is created
Add the Rum
Add ice, fill that shaker about ¼ full
Add the cup of coconut water with guava
Shake well
Pour the Gin out of your chilled glass
Add the crushed ice to the glass
Strain the Blueberry, Rose, Rum and Coconut/Guava water into and over the crushed ice
Garnish with a slice of cucumber (also from your garden!)
June 28, 2012
Rose Petal Custard Puffs
We have several very old cottage rose bushes in the garden at the Beekman, and each time we pass by their intoxicating blooms we wonder “how can we capture that in a recipe?” Of course there are lots of rose recipes out there already. Tea breads. Rose jellies. Candied roses. But we wanted to try for something more decadent. Nothing too precious or tiny. We wanted a rose dessert that you could sink your teeth into. Something that would drip off your chin.
Like a custard pastry. Yes. A rose flavored custard pastry.
This dessert takes a little bit of extra effort, but the combination of the puffy pate-a-choux pastry with the rich egg-y custard is the perfect ending to a summer meal. It’s satisfying without being warm and heavy, and it tastes like a walk through a flower garden. Let us know how you like it.
Rose Petal Custard Puffs
For the pastry:
1 cup all purpose flour
1 teaspoon sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 stick of butter, cut into 1/2 inch pats
1 cup of water
4 eggs, lightly whisked.
For the custard:
10 cups of rose petals (Yes, this is a lot. Just fill a big bowl full. And be sure the petals are from a fragrant rose bush, or you’re just wasting your time.)
3 cups milk
7 egg yolks
1 cup sugar
4 tablespoons flour
4 tablespoons cornstarch
Powdered sugar for topping.
Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Line baking sheets with parchment paper.
Begin by making the pastry puffs. Whisk together dry ingredients (flour, sugar, salt.) Slowly bring water and butter to a boil. (Butter should be completely melted before water begins to boil.) Once boiling, immediately add dry ingredients and stir continuously with a wooden spoon. Keep stirring over medium heat for approximately 2 minutes. Mixture should be smooth and light brown.
Transfer hot mixture to bowl of stand mixer, and with paddle attachment beat on low speed until mixture has cooled to just above room temperature. Raise mixer speed to medium and add about 3/4 of the beaten eggs. Dough will separate at first, but then come back together. Once it does, test the consistency – mixture should fall from a spoon as a very very thick liquid, not as a solid paste. If still too thick, add the rest of the beaten eggs, mix more, and test again.
Once dough has reached correct consistency, spoon onto parchment-lined baking sheets. Size is unimportant. Make as small or large as you wish. (You may also pipe dough from pastry bag.) Bake puffs in 400 degree oven for 15 minutes, then reduce heat to 35o degrees and continue baking for another half and hour. (Check occasionally to be sure the surfaces are not burning.) At the end of the baking time, test one…cut it open to be sure the inside is completely cooked and mostly dry. If it isn’t, lower the oven temperature to 300 and bake another 5-10 minutes.
To make custard, place milk and rose petals in a large saucepan. Bring milk to boil, being careful not to boil over. Stir rose petals in milk as it heats. Once milk is boiling, turn off heat and continue stirring rose petals for several minutes. Let milk and rose petals stand for one hour.
While milk and petals are steeping, beat together all remaining ingredients in a large bowl with wooden spoon – egg yolks, sugar, flour and cornstartch – until smooth.
Once milk and rose petals have finished steeping, strain milk through wire mesh, being sure to press rose petals to expel all liquid. Return strained milk to large saucepan, and bring back to just barely boiling. Using a ladle, add one ladle full of hot milk to egg mixture, and quickly beat it into egg mixture. Once incorporated, repeat. (This will slowly raise temperature of egg mixture without turning it into cooked scrambled eggs.) Once 2/3 of the hot milk mixture has been beaten into egg mixture, pour egg/hot milk mixture into the saucepan with remaining milk. Keep stirring. Over medium heat, bring back up temperature of mixture until it thickens, stirring constantly. The goal is to thicken the mixture as much as possible without boiling. Once the mixture hits boiling temperature, the eggs will curdle and scramble.
When mixture is thick enough, remove from heat immediately and continue to stir for five more minutes until it has cooled enough to stop cooking. Place plastic wrap on surface of custard to stop film from forming, and cool completely in refrigerator.
Right before serving, cut the pastry puffs in half and spoon in (or pipe) cooled custard. Replace top of pastry and dust with powdered sugar. Garnish with rose petals before serving.
5 Beautiful Things
[image error]
This new feature is designed to inspire you to look at the world around you, to take note of the season at hand and to capture it – in memory or on film – for posterity. I will be choosing five photos each week for Beekman1802.com with this aim in mind. We’re calling the feature, The Five Most Beautiful Things In The World This Week
Sunday Lake
Several years ago our family purchased a lovely parcel of land just north of Ottawa, Ontario, where we built a log cabin. It is still a work in progress, since we are doing all the work ourselves, but it is such a beautiful spot. Each summer I like to spend at least a week there to recharge, rethink, reimagine and reinvigorate. I never underestimate the power of a beautiful natural spot to heal and restore what may be wounded in us. Below are photos I took last summer of the beautiful Sunday Lake and its environs. I hope you’ll visit me there in spirit!
[image error]
Photos: All photos by Andrew Ritchie
Andrew Ritchie is the creator of Martha Moments, a blog devoted Martha-Stewart related content and her community of supporters. He lives and works in Toronto, Canada, and has been a longtime friend of Brent & Josh, Beekman 1802 and Sharon Springs. Each week he’ll scour the world (wide web) to find the 5 most beautiful things to inspire you. Follow Andrew on Pinterest.
June 27, 2012
On with the Show
[image error]
We’re very proud of the success of “The Fabulous Beekman Boys,” and have so enjoyed meeting all the new “neighbors” from all over the world that it has brought into our life.
The show stands apart as one of the rare reality shows that captures a positive portrayal of small town America and good people working together to preserve and sustain a disappearing way of life. We thank our many viewers who have written us over the past two years to express their gratitude for a family-friendly show that focuses on optimistic achievement rather than spectacle.
As many of you know, Planet Green no longer exists, but thank your culinary stars that Cooking Channel (the little sister to Food Network) has swooped in to rescue the show.
On Sept 20, at precisely 10pm, Cooking Channel will start airing episodes from Season 2.
Here is where you become more important than ever!
You must tell everyone you know to tell everyone THEY know to mark their calendars.
If all of you tune in, they just might be convinced to turn the goat cam on again and start filming a Season 3.
Until then—we have a Harvest Festival to plan!! Sharon Springs is more fabulous than ever–just you wait and see!
Click here to learn more about Cooking Channel.
June 26, 2012
Strawberry Rhubarb Pie with Hazelnut Crumble
We used to be very anti-strawberry rhubarb pie. We thought there was something…oh…weak about adding strawberries to rhubarb. If you’re not (wo)man enough to handle a straight rhubarb pie, then maybe you shouldn’t be eating rhubarb in the first place, you know? A plain rhubarb pie has always been the first fresh fruit pie we make every year because it’s the very first green thing coming up out of the ground in our parts. By several months, in fact. And we love rhubarb. But there’s a good two and a half months between rhubarb’s first appearance and the next fruit – strawberries. That’s a long time to live on rhubarb alone.
Now, as much as we love rhubarb pie, it’s a bit one note. And that note is tart. But you know what a plain rhubarb pie is a helluva lot better than? A plain strawberry pie. Blech. (We’re not talking about those raw strawberry pies in the grocery store, coated with a thick layer of gelatin. We don’t really consider those pies. Don’t know what they are, actually.) There’s good reason why you don’t see a lot of baked strawberry pies. Because cooked strawberries by themselves taste like perfume smells on old ladies in church. (We’d like to go on record as stating that we love old church ladies. We just don’t like them baked in pies.)
When the strawberries start ripening at the Beekman, we’re never quite sure what to do with them all. We don’t make a ton of jam because, let’s be frank…two people can’t spoon through dozens of jars of jam each year. We freeze a bunch of berries. And dehydrate a bunch more. And we make some ice cream and muffins. But that still leaves a lot of berries. And the best way to use up any kind of fruit is to throw it in a pie.
So that’s how we got over our philosophical aversion to strawberry rhubarb pie. We got sick of plain rhubarb and we had too many strawberries. And you know what? We may have been wrong about strawberry rhubarb pie all along.
If adding strawberries to rhubarb is for weaklings, we don’t wanna be strong.
Strawberry Rhubarb Pie with Hazelnut Crumble
We make our strawberry rhubarb pie with white wine in the crust and hazelnuts in the topping. Boozy, tart, and nutty…sounds like a Beekman classic.
For the crust
1 stick of butter, chilled, cut into 1/2 inch pats
1 1/4 cup of flour
1 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons sugar
approx 4 tablespoons of chilled white wine (can substitute water or milk)
For the filling
4 cups rhubarb, cut into 1/2 inch slices
2 cups strawberries, halved. (or quartered if very large.)
1 1/4 cup sugar
zest of one orange, finely grated (if you don’t have one of these by now, you gotta get one!)
1/4 cup quick cooking or instant tapioca granules
For the topping
1 cup halzelnuts, choppedient
1 stick butter, chopped into small cubes
1 1/4 cup oatmeal
1/2 cup flour
1/2 cup honey
2 t salt
Preheat oven to 375 degrees.
To make the crust, use stand mixer with paddle beater. Beat together butter, flour, sugar and salt until butter is in flakes, coated with flour. Do not over mix. Slowly add very cold white wine, one or two tablespoons at a time. When dough first begins to form ball, stop beating, press into a ball with hands, wrap in plastic wrap, and refrigerator for 30 minutes or longer.
While dough is chilling, combine all filling ingredients in medium bowl. Lightly stir until mixed.
Once dough is chilled, roll out on floured surface until round is large enough to fill pie pan. Place crust in pan and crimp edges. Place pan with dough back in refrigerator to chill again.
Make topping. Combine all ingredients in medium bowl. Mix until just combined with wooden spoon. Do not over beat.
Remove pie pan from refrigerator. Fill with filling. Using fingers, drop small rounds of topping over surface of pie. Try to cover entire surface.
Place pie pan in oven. (Be sure to place an empty baking sheet on lower rack to catch any spills during baking.) Check on pie after 20 minutes of baking. If topping is getting too brown, lower heat to 350 degrees and tent lightly with tinfoil. Bake for an additional 30 minutes. Pie is ready when filling is visibly bubbling through topping.
Allow pie to cool almost completely before serving. Because both rhubarb and strawberries have a high water content, the tapioca must cool and gel in order to have a serve-able slice.
June 25, 2012
Afternoon Hail
Because of our unique foothills microclimate, we get a lot of strange weather patterns. But we’ve never seen a load of hail dump from the sky on a sunny day without any lightning, thunder, or wind. Until this afternoon…
June 24, 2012
Pickled Radish Pods
Most gardeners never let their radishes go to seed...so they've never harvested tasty seed pods like these.
There’s never an “okay” radish season. It seems that each year is either a bumper crop of perfectly bulbous spicy delicacies, or a complete bust of bolted, measly, woody tap-roots.
But even in the worst years, when late frosts kills the earliest radish seedlings and early heat waves force the surviving plants to bolt, there’s still hope for a radish crop. It just won’t be the roots. Instead, one can harvest the seed pods – or siliques.
Most gardeners have never seen a radish seed pod. Radish bulbs are pulled while they’re still tender…long before the plant has a chance to flower and go to seed. Alternately, during bad years – when a bulb doesn’t form due to weather patterns – most gardeners pull up the failed crop as soon as all hope is lost in order to make room for a different early summer crop.
[image error]
This giant radish root should have been picked about a month ago. But left in the ground, it sends up a beautiful stalk of lavendar flowers and edible seed pods.
But radish flowers and seed pods are a reward for those who leave a few plants in the ground long enough to go to seed. It only takes a couple of extra weeks for the radish plant to shoot up and form beautiful stems of white or lavender edible flowers, followed by inch-long pointed seed pods. These pods taste just like the radish roots that spawn them, and can be sprinkled raw into salads or on top of soups. In fact there is at least one radish variety, the “rattail radish,” that is grown around the globe solely for its long, tasty seed pods.
[image error]
Each radish plant will yield dozens, if not hundreds of seed pods. So you don't need to leave too many in the ground to bolt. Harvest the pods as they mature though. You don't want them much larger than these or they will get tough and stringy.
We always let a few radish plants go to seed. But only a couple. Each plant will yield dozens of seed pods. While we use most of them fresh, we also reserve some for pickling. Their heat can be tempered with a salty sweet brine, and are terrific when used in place of capers in most recipes. Pickling the pods is easy…all that’s needed are small canning jars and lids, and a pot large enough to submerge the jars for a boiling 10 minute water bath.
Pickling recipes are always hard to quantify, since one never knows how much bounty one will have to can. So we usually pickle “by the jar.” Which means we sterilize as many jars as we think we have harvest to fill, pack them with the produce, pour the boiling brine over the top, and finally process the jars in a water bath.
Before you start any pickling, begin heating your water bath. (It takes a while to get a water bath boiling, so you want this stated early.) Simply fill a large stock pot, or canning pot with water and place over high heat. (This is probably the cheapest water bath kit we’ve found, and it works just fine. We often just use a regular heavy pot though.)
For this year’s harvest of radish seed pods, we thoroughly washed all of the seed pods, which filled up three small pint jars. Before packing in the pods, we inserted three sprigs of Lemon Thyme into the bottom of the jar. (A bay leaf or other woody herb would also work.)
Our brine consisted of 50% water, 50% white vinegar. Then one tablespoon of salt and one teaspoon of sugar per pint jar. It’s easy to measure how much brine you’ll need. Simply take an empty jar of the size you’re using, and measure your liquids in that. If you have three jars of radish pods waiting to be filled with brine, simply combine 1.5 jars of water and 1.5 jars of vinegar in a sauce pan with three tablespoons salt and three teaspoons of sugar. Then heat to a boil, and pour into radish pod-filled jars. (You’re guaranteed to have enough brine, plus a little extra in case you spill.)
Place the lids on the jars securely, and gently lower jars into the boiling water bath with tongs. The jars should be complete submerged in the boiling water. Allow to boil for 10 minutes, then remove with tongs and allow to cool.
[image error]
We flavor our radish pods with lemon thyme, and use them as one would use capers. (They're also lovely skewered on a toothpick in a Bloody Mary.)
June 22, 2012
Dried Garlic Scapes
Tell an old-timer that New York City foodies buy garlic scapes for $6/lb, and they’ll shake their heads so hard you can feel the breeze. It wasn’t too long ago that garlic farmers simply left their snapped-off scapes in the fields to rot. The idea that top chefs would be clamoring for these garlic farm by-products was unthinkable a mere 10 years ago.
What is a garlic scape? Simply put, they’re the “flower stalks” of a garlic plant. In most northern areas, garlic cloves are planted in the fall, and send up their first leaves in the spring. The first warm, long days of summer trigger the plant to send up a very curly “flower stalk” – which doesn’t actually form a flower at all. If left unpicked, the stalk will form small bulbils at its end, which could be planted to grow more garlic. However most farmers prefer to snap off this central reproductive stalk to redirect the plant’s energy back underground. The result is a much larger garlic bulb come harvest time in late summer.
[image error]
Distinctively curly garlic scapes. We cut off the bulbous ends before dehydrating since they're often tougher and spicier than the rest of the stalk. They're lovely pickled, however.
This stalk, or scape, is very tender if picked early, right after it shoots up. It has the consistency of asparagus or green beans. When young enough it can be chopped and added raw to salads. When a little older it can be sauteed and added to eggs or pasta. Many folks simply toss them on a grill until they’re tender. We love to make a garlic scape pesto with them. The taste is, naturally, very garlicky. Some people claim it’s stronger than fresh garlic cloves, some say it’s milder. We say it’s roughly the same.
Since the season for scapes is very unpredictable, and very short-lived, we usually find that we can’t use all of the fresh harvested scapes quickly enough. (You’ll probably only see them appear in your farmers market for 2-3 weeks, tops.) Luckily scapes are easily preserved – either by freezing, dehydrating, or pickling. We choose to dehydrate ours, since freezer space becomes scarce later in the summer as more crops come in. (This is the dehydrator we use. It’s large and is usually in use all summer long preserving garden produce.) When later added to winter soups and stews, the chopped and dried stalks are a very welcome (if garlicky) breath of summer days.
[image error]
We dehydrate ours at about 125 degrees F, for 6-11 hours (depending on humidity levels.) Once fully dried, they can either be left in one inch pieces to be added to soups & stews, or whirled in a food processor until powdered.
