Food trends I can get behind, and some I can't

Ridiculous food trend, exhibit A. And $2.29 a carton? The prosecution rests.

 As the year winds down, it's time to rave and rant about some food trends that have crossed my path.

Heard a friend gushing recently about the contents of her winter CSA. I was used to such offerings from meat and cheese purveyors, but hadn't heard about vegetable growers hanging on through the winter in our northern climate. Turns out she gets not only cellarable root vegetables in the late fall and cold-frame sheltered greens in early spring, but she gets a couple of loaves of fresh bread, soups, hummus, pesto and other preserved produce. Genius on their part. Her favorite: a pumpkin pie that arrived in time for Thanksgiving while her kitchen was torn up for remodeling. Her growers are at Foxtail farm, but there are other options you can read about here.

Other food trends I like: Cocktail menus worth reading. The Witch Hazel at Eat Street Social proves that if you've got a chance to have a pumpkin-liqueur infused beverage right before the holiday, your shopping list seems less dire.

But other trends I can take or leave. I wasn't blown away by the Greek yogurt offerings to begin with, but now things are just getting silly in the yogurt department. Tomato, beet, parsnip and butternut squash yogurt just seems like you're trying too hard to make something work. And at four times the cost of yogurt I actually like, I can't see even trying Blue Hill Yogurt's offerings. Latest trend among my friends: lamenting that there’s not enough “normal” yogurt on the store shelves. All of us in the dairy aisle are clustered around the same limited supply, creating a cart traffic jam. And when you’re only getting 100 calories, you want them to be tasty. Not sure if I’m going to have to break down and learn to make my own reasonable version of yogurt; I’m guessing that’s one of those things that takes time to fine-tune to one’s liking.

Another bandwagon I won't get on: personalized wines. I'm not talking about wines you make yourself, which really are personalized, but these "gift" wines to commemorate an occasion. Just buy a better grade of wine and put it in a personalized bag if you must. The people at windsorvineyards.com absolutely missed their mark when they sent a catalog my way. On other hand, I got a bottle of wine for Christmas suitably called Train Wreck. That pretty much describes the end of the year at home and work. Looking forward to New Year's off.

Kale, chorizo and bean strata

 Kale, chorizo and red bean brunch casserole

Adapted from Better Homes and Gardens, Dec. 2014

Ingredients

1-2 tablespoons olive oil

1½ links of chorizo sausage, preferably uncooked, but cooked if that’s all you can find

1 large onion, sliced into ¼-inch rounds

1 15-ounce can red kidney beans, rinsed and drained

4 cups ½-inch bread cubes

8 cups kale, washed, stripped from stems and torn into 3-inch pieces

½ cup chopped sun-dried tomatoes

12 ounces fresh mozzarella cheese, cut into 1-inch cubes

12 eggs

2/3 cup cream

2/3 cup olive oil

¾ cup grated Parmesan cheese

¼ teaspoon grated nutmeg

Method

Butter a 3-quart baking dish.

Cook chorizo in a large skillet. Remove from pan and set aside. If using cured chorizo, add 1 tablespoon of olive oil to the pan at this point to get enough oil. Add onion slices, sprinkle with kosher salt and cook until soft. Add beans and sprinkle with more kosher salt. Transfer bean and onion mixture to prepared baking dish.

Add another tablespoon of olive oil to the skillet. Add kale and cook until wilted. Top bean/onion mixture with bread cubes, tomatoes and chorizo. Top with kale and then cheese cubes. Beat eggs. Blend in cream and oil. Stir in cheese and nutmeg. Pour over layers in casserole dish. Cover and chill for at least 2 hours or overnight. Bake at 350 for 45 minutes. Let stand for 10 minutes before serving.

Rating: Nice flavors, a hearty winter dish and best yet, it let me use up the last of the season's kale, freeing up a container to store more Christmas cookies. It's not my very favorite strata, which is a goat cheese artichoke and ham strata from Bon Appetit, my go-to for company brunch situations (and it's fine enough meatless, if you must).  But it's a perfectly tasty way to use up the chorizo I had left from another recipe. Note: If you don't use raw chorizo, you might want to substitute some sun-dried tomato oil for some of the olive oil to give it more flavor that the chorizo drippings provide.

Chicken with tomatoes, olives and feta

Chicken with tomatoes, olives and feta

Adapted from “One Pot,” from the kitchens of Martha Stewart Living

Ingredients

8 bone-in, skin-on chicken thighs

3 tablespoons olive oil

1 pint grape tomatoes, halved lengthwise

½ cup pitted green olives, halved lengthwise

6 medium shallots, halved lengthwise

3 sprigs thyme

2 tablespoons dry white wine

½ cup feta cheese for garnish

2 tablespoons chopped fresh tarragon or basil

Method

Sprinkle chicken with salt. Brown chicken, skin-side down, in 1 tablespoon of olive oil in an oven-safe pan. Turn chicken. Toss together tomatoes, olives, shallot and thyme with remaining 2 tablespoons olive oil. Tuck in around chicken in pan.

Bake at 375 for 40 to 45 minutes. Return pan to stove, deglaze with white wine. Top with feta and herbs and serve.

Rating: Tasty and easy. I’ve made this twice. The first time I made it more or less as originally written, only I forgot the feta and herb garnish. Since I had more grape tomatoes, I tried it again a few days later, making a few tweaks and this time remembering to add the garnishes. It was tasty enough the first time, but even tastier with those tweaks.

Chicken with potatoes and olives in garlic-lemon pan sauce

I suggested this cookbook to Santa for Christmas, but meanwhile it came up on my library request list, so I’ve got a chance for a sneak peak.

Braised chicken with potatoes and lemon

From “One Pot” from the kitchens of Martha Stewart Living

Ingredients

8 chicken thighs, bones, skin and all

1 tablespoon olive oil

1¼ cups chicken broth, divided

12 ounces fingerling potatoes, halved

5 garlic cloves, peeled

½ large green olives such as Cerignola, pitted and halved

1 lemon, cut into wedges

6 sprigs thyme

1 teaspoon cornstarch

Method

Brown chicken skin-side down in hot oil in oven-proof roasting pan or skillet. Flip over, add potatoes and 1 cup broth and bring to a boil. Add garlic, olives, lemon and thyme.

Transfer pan to 450 degree oven for 35 minutes. Remove from oven and return to stove top. Mix cornstarch with remaining ¼ cup broth and stir into pan. Sauce will thicken almost immediately.

Rating: Wondrous. Simply grand. It could hardly be easier, and what happens to the lemons that get cooked in the broth is just amazing: they’re like savory candy. Really nice pan sauce. Can you tell this went straight into the keeper pile? This is the kind of recipe that even if it’s the only good one in the book, it’s worth it, but there are several more likely prospects ahead …

Quark quiche Lorraine

Dave has this thing about German foods he learns about on websites he reads while learning German. It leads to things like a quest for pinkelwurst sausage and to picking up quark cheese when we saw it in the cheese case. Apparently this substance is ubiquitous in Germany. One place it’s certainly not ubiquitous is on the epicurious site, where I often start out a search for how to use up something. Usually there are thousands of hits I have to sift through; this time, there were six, so I branched out and found this one.

Quark quiche Lorraine

Adapted from the Lake District Dairy Co. website, a dairy brand owned by British dairy farmers. The premise of the recipe is that using quark instead of crème fraiche lowers the calories and fat while upping the protein and calcium. Since I don’t use crème fraiche in my usual quiche Lorraine recipe, it’s clearly aiming at a different texture anyway.

Ingredients

1 shortcrust pastry or pie crust

7 slices of bacon

1 pound quark cheese (or substitute a mix of 2/3 ricotta and 1/3 sour cream if you can’t find it)

½ cup grated cheddar cheese, divided

4 large eggs, beaten

¼ teaspoon ground nutmeg

Method

Roll out pastry crust. If you’re feeling ambitious and like making an actual pastry style crust, press it into a 10-inch tart pan with a removable bottom. If you’re feeling rushed, like I was, you can cheat and use a premade pie crust unrolled into a quiche pan. Prick surface with a fork. Chill for 10 minutes. Line crust with foil and fill with pie baking weights or dried beans. Bake at 400 degrees for 15 minutes. Remove foil with weights and bake for 5 more minutes until the pastry is pale golden brown.

Meanwhile, fry bacon until starting to turn color. You don’t want to get this breakfast-crisp, since it’s going to cook more later. Remove from pan and set aside until cool enough to cut into small pieces.

Scatter bacon over crust. Scatter 2/3 of the cheese over the bacon.

Mix quark cheese, eggs, nutmeg and salt and pepper to taste in a mid-size bowl. Pour mixture over top of the bacon and cheese.  Sprinkle top with remaining cheese. Bake at 375 degrees until golden and the middle is still a tad wobbly. Remove from oven and let stand for 5 minutes before removing from tin and slicing. Serves 6.

Rating: Not the same beast as actual quiche Lorraine, but then again it doesn’t purport to be that. (My own favorite comes from "Best of Baking" from HP Books.) It's slightly less puffy, and has more the consistency of quiche once it's been refrigerated. It was certainly tasty, and a fast weeknight supper if you've got ready-to-roll crust. I still think of quark as an elemental particle or a floundering pagination program, but now I've got a third definition and a possible use for it. No sign of pinkelwurst, though.