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Friday, October 29, 2010

An Amazing Dish You Can Make from a Farmer's Market Located in a Town of About 4,000 People.

          We eat a lot of wheat in this country.  And a ton of corn.  And a good amount of rice.  These grains are staples worldwide and offer great nutrition when eaten in their whole forms (not totally refined of all bran, germ, etc. which produces "white" flour).   But c'mon...we need a little variety!  Would we know what to do with millet?  Or quinoa (pronounced keen-wah; I totally messed that pronunciation up for a while)?  Or whole barley?  Well, I've got just the thing...


          So one night I was making dinner for some friends and ran out of arborio rice for risotto.  I had a box of a multi-grain pilaf mix and since some of the grains looked about the same size as the rice, I threw it in the pan.  It turned out fantastic.   So the next time I went to Your Dekalb Farmer's Market in Decatur, GA (Atlanta) I stocked up on a ton of different whole grains.  Monday night for dinner I just happened to have some kale from Lazy Willow Farm, a pound of pastured pork sausage from Tink's Grass Fed Beef, and a few extra dried figs.  (Also some organic spring mix that didn't get eaten for salad but next time I would probably just use more kale). Since it turns out Tink's Grass Fed Beef will be a the Washington Farmer's Market and Sandy from Lazy Willow will be back I thought I would share what I did.  (And just to make it even easier on everyone, I'm making up some pilaf & spice mixes you can get at our booth since not everyone has 7 types of grain on hand...)

Step 1:  Become a crazy person who buys up anything edible.

Some of my spoils used to make this meal.

Step 2:  Prep your veggies first.  Slice and peel a small head of GARLIC.  (Do garlic first so it can rest about 10 minutes to fully mobilize it's anti-cancer properties).  Chop an onion (I used red).  Wash KALE from Lazy Willow Farm. To slice, stack the leaves (an inch or so of the bottom stem cut off) and kind of roll them up a little.  This makes it more like slicing celery then a bunch of loose lettuce.  You can also get thinner slices this way.

Step 3:  Grab the grains (or a pre-measured & pre-spiced one from our booth tomorrow at the market) and "eye it" with some of each into a large skillet drizzled in olive oil.  Turn it on medium heat and stir the grains so they get a little oil on them.
White and black quinoa, bulgur wheat, amaranth, cracked wheat,  oat groats, pearl barley. 


Step 4: Add the onion and garlic and let everything toast around in there a couple minutes.  Add water, starting with about a cup.  Stir then add raisins, dried figs and walnuts.  After each addition of water, stir to mix and leave alone for a few minutes.  The water will be roughly 2x the amount of grains (so 1 cup of grains=2 cups of water).  You will keep slowly doing this until all the water is absorbed and the grains are softened but not mushy.  It is a very forgiving recipe since you can stir and leave it alone a few minutes.  (And those who are multi-tasking know how much you can get done in 3-4 minutes).



Step 5:  While you are adding the liquid to the grain mixture, grab another pan (I used a wok shaped thing I had because it was tall) and brown a pound of Tink's Grass Fed Beef pastured pork sausage.  (FYI:  The sausage is pretty lean so you are only going to render a small amount of fat. If you want, a dab of olive oil in the skillet helps it cook up great)

Adding spices to the simmering grains, nuts, and fruit.
Step 6:  While the sausage is browning, add whole coriander, turmeric, black pepper and marjoram (or dried basil or oregano) to your grain skillet.

Step 7:  Once the sausage is cooked thoroughly, add the meat to the grain skillet.  Then immediately add the kale to the sausage skillet so it can pick up some of the flavor.  Cook it until it wilts and softens slightly (5-10 minutes...we're not completely sucking the life out of them like we do collards).  Then add the kale to the grain skillet.

Left skillet is kale and the right is the browned sausage just added to the grain mix.

Step 8:  So now you have a ton of stuff all in one bowl (grains, nuts, dried fruit, spices, onion, kale, garlic, pastured pork sausage).  Taste it to see if you need to add more turmeric, black pepper or a pinch of salt.


Step 9: Enjoy!  You can also pair this with another market vegetable like we did!  And add mustard...I love mustard.


        What I love about this "recipe" is that the proportions don't really matter all that much.  You can add a TON of vegetables in this (I think celery, carrots, more kale, even spinach or spring mix, etc. would all taste good) and still have a really hearty "non-salad" plant based meal.  Add spices at will.  Add whatever dried fruit or nuts at will.  Think of this as a method and add or take away to make it your own.

        If you want to try out this recipe more exactly like this post, I've made up some bags of the grains, nuts, fruit and spices.  Visit a couple more vendors to get the kale, garlic and sausage at the market and you'll pretty much have everything you need except olive oil and onions.


(Eventually there will be a more comprehensive grain nutrition post, but not tonight and I'll be way too tired to think straight in the morning.  And eventually we'll offer more than just wheat based baked goods but tonight we're settling with whole wheat organic blueberry and raw sugar lemon butter glazed pound cakes.)  


       Okay..back to baking now!  Who all is coming down in the morning?  Or wishes they got to live in a cute small town too that had a cute little market behind the courthouse every Saturday?