We Provice Recipes

It was such a pleasure to watch Nigel Slater cook in Dish of the Day on BBC 1 before Christmas, and I did go on about it rather a lot, so it was probably not surprising, but very pleasing, to receive The kitchen diaries II as a Christmas present.  I have dipped into this delicious book and found so many recipes that I would like to make that I thought I would create an event to make sure sure that I do!  Its not a formal, black tie sort of event, that would never do for Nigel, its more of an informal  invitation to drop in and join me once a month to share some home cooking.

My Dish of the Month for January is a soup of bacon and celeriac from page 7 of The kitchen diairies II


This was a very simple soup to make, just the thing for a cold January day.  The most challenging part of the recipe is grating the celeriac.  But that is easy enough if you use of a food processor.  The flavour of the soup is subtle but with a mustardy kick.  It would be great served with a slice of baguette floating on top,  loaded with melted grated cheese.

Sue at Heaven on a Plate is also a fan of the TV programmes and The kitchen diaries, and will be joining me in cooking a Dish of the Month from Nigels recipes. If you would like to take part, you dont even have to own the book as you can cook anything by Nigel Slater.  You can access 56 recipes from Dish of the Day on the BBC Food website. There are also many recipes from Nigels regular column on The Guardian website.

The kitchen diaries II is divided by month and I plan to cook a dish from each month in that month, but that isnt compulsory either, you can pick and choose however you like.

If you would like to take part, then please:

• Make a Dish of the Month from ANY recipe by Nigel Slater
• Link to Farmersgirl Kitchen or A Little Bit of Heaven on a Plate
•  Use the Dish of the Month logo in your post
• If you use twitter, tweet your post with @serialcrafter or Heavenona_plate and #DishoftheMonth and we will re-tweet it to our followers. 

Rules:

• If you own The kitchen diaries II please do not publish the recipes on your blog without permission, they are copyright.
• If you are using recipes from the BBC Food website, please link to the recipe on BBC Food rather than publishing the recipe.  Likewise recipes on the Guardian website.
• One entry per blog.
• Recipes must be added to the linky by the 28th of each month.

 Add your Dish of the Month to the linky below:

One of the big questions whenever a farmers market is set up, is "what sort of vendors will be allowed?" Many people who want to shop at farmers markets immediately think, "Farmers only! No re-sellers!" The trouble is that finding people who farm all week and then are willing to spend the 1 to 3 days a week at the market, working from (say for example) 5 oclock in the morning until 2 pm, not including the commute, is pretty much impossible for a number of reasons; not the least of which is that if you are spending 2 or 3 days a week at a farmers market selling, you are not farming those days. And if you are not farming for those days, then you dont have enough to sell at a farmers market 2 or 3 days a week, and if you are not selling at a farmers market 2 or 3 days a week, you are not making a living - especially when you are talking about vegetables.

Consequently, most farmers markets of any size have re-sellers at many of the booths. Of course, there are re-sellers and there are re-sellers. If you are trying to eat local food and want to deal with farmers, should you avoid them? Not necessarily, although there are some unscupulous vendors out there, of course. There are also some very good and interesting ones that are an important part of the distribution system for local produce. Im probably going to talk more and more about distribution on this blog, because its a big difficulty for a lot of local farmers and producers.

Many of us recognize on sight the folks who have piles of out-of-season imported produce on their tables, and know that they have bought it at the Food Terminal and are re-selling it. Some of us avoid them, but they do stay in business, so obviously a lot of people dont mind! Its much easier to recognize that someone with a narrow selection of goods, in season, is probably a grower. And yet, these are not always the easiest vendors to buy from. Theres something more appealing about stopping at a vendor with a good selection of different items to choose from.

Consequently, there are also a number of farmers market vendors who fill a middle niche - they often grow some of the produce that they sell, and they also sell produce they acquire in other ways. I spent a day travelling around with Robert Foreman, who sells at Keady market on Tuesdays (where I got to know him) and also at St. Jacobs market (Thursdays and Saturdays), and who is one such vendor. His company name is 100 Mile Produce.

Since he is at market on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays are spent acquiring and preparing produce for the next day. Yes, thats a 6 day week. He used to go to a Sunday market too, where he would sell whatever was left over from the week. Hes been doing well enough this year though, that he has little left over and can skip working Sunday. Hes been doing this for 10 years.


I arrived at Roberts 24 acre farm just south of Wingham at 10:30 on Monday morning, as he prepared to go around and gather the produce he would need to take to Keady the next morning. He had already been on the road for several hours at that point, having just returned from dropping off 500 pounds of rutabagas in St. Clements.


We started off with a tour of his warehouse, really a large shed behind his house. Its a large, clean cement-floored space with two walk-in coolers, and this odd-looking piece of equipment. I couldnt have guessed what it was, but its a cucumber grader. You dump the cukes in at one end, and they fall through progressively larger gaps as they travel along it, sorting themselves from smallest to largest. Robert says it saves him hours of work each week when cucumbers are in season.



A few years back, he spent $20,000 to enlarge his warehouse and add a loading dock, another improvement that has saved him hours, not to mention his back. Cases of vegetables can now be wheeled on and off the truck easily instead of the constant bending and lifting required before.

Behind his truck lie some of his fields on one side, and his barn on the other side. He is using neither of them at the moment. His barn is used by a neighbour for beef cattle. In exchange Robert gets the manure for his vegetable fields, and the neighbour cultivates his fields. The neighbour gets to use the field on the left every second year as part of this deal, so its in soybeans this year as its his year to use it. Thats half of his land; the other half was planted with 9 acres of sweet corn (3 remaining to be harvested) and 3 acres of pumpkins. In addition, Robert rents a tractor for $700 a year. "Im not a mechanic!" he says. (Ive mentioned before how so many farmers need to be.)

This was a theme that came up again throughout the day - none of the farmers and gardeners we spoke to could do this on their own, in isolation. Farming is not for rugged individualists; it is a communal activity. Its really impossible to talk about "a farmer" doing anything all by themselves, let alone selling at market. Its almost always a bunch of farmers doing something.


This was the first of Roberts coolers, which he got second hand from a fast-food restaurant. Right now its actually being used to keep vegetables such as tomatoes and potatoes warm. The season for tomatoes is coming to an end as cooler nights begin to damage them. Soon they will be killed by frost, but right now there are still plenty, and his are being kept sheltered from chill damage in the (turned off) cooler, and also ripening a bit more.


The other cooler is also a second hand one, from a butcher shop this time. This one is being used as a cooler. Right now, its low tide in the warehouse, and it contains only bags of beets and a few odds and ends. Our goal for the day is to fill this cooler in preparation for the market at Keady tomorrow.


Our first stop was Gorrie Line Produce, 44106 Howick-Turnberry Rd, RR#1, 3 lines north of Gorrie and just off to the east side of Gorrie Line. This Mennonite-run business is a combination retail shop and wholesale vegetable and fruit warehouse.


The shop wasnt open yet and looked a bit empty as baking and other products had yet to arrive. There was a good stock of preserves and honey though.


We pulled up behind the shop, between it and the warehouse.


Inside the warehouse, bins and cases of vegetables stood ready. We loaded up some carrots and onions, and Robert asked about getting some garlic. This was not actually for his market sales; he wanted to get some to a young couple who were moving north in the spring, but who wanted to get garlic planted at their new farm soon as now is the time to be planting it.

Robert deals exclusively with Amish and Mennonite farmers, and as someone who travels around with a truck he is often able to transport items for them that they would not easily be able to move around using horses and wagons. Sometimes this is done as a sale, sometimes this is part of the web of mutual favours that help make up a community. In this case, he was selling the young farmers the garlic, although at a considerably lower price than he could have sold it at the markets.

The garlic in question wasnt actually here; it was still at the farm where it had been grown, being cleaned.


Nothing to say about this; its the yard at Gorrie Line Produce and I just liked the picture. Next we are off to the farm to pick up the garlic.

Garlic has been a bit difficult this year. Its selling very well. He had 3,500 pounds but it has all sold. In addition, one of the farmers growing garlic for Robert had nematodes in his, and its mostly unsaleable and completely unplantable. Fortunately, one of Roberts friendly competitors has only needed about 60% of some garlic he contracted for with Gorrie Line, and Robert has his permission to buy the rest of it. That will get him through the rest of the season.



At the farm where we are to pick up the garlic, we find the farming couple in their plastic covered greenhouse. I loved this greenhouse! It was still packed full of heirloom tomatoes, and was a slightly warm and pleasant place to be on a cool rainy day. We had a lively discussion about different tomato varieties, and they gave me a Pineapple tomato for the seeds. Hopefully, it will be in the garden next year.


I was very impressed by their cherry tomato plants. Even outside, they do get big, but these must have been 9 high as they had reached the ceiling. The tomatoes are obviously winding down, but they were still large and impressive.


The greenhouse is heated in the spring with a wood-burning furnace.


Theres an upper room above the furnace where seedlings are started, mostly empty now.


From there, you can look out and see the vegetable gardens and fields behind it.


They had spent the morning picking beans before the rain got started. These beautifully sorted beans were for another purchaser, who supplies to the restaurant trade. They were perfectly sized and arranged with all the stem ends together, and the farmers sold them for 4 times as much as Robert pays for his beans, in unsorted sizes and higglety-pigglety. I imagine they were four times the work to pick, though.

Robert (and most other buyers) wont buy beans or greens picked in wet weather, because it will deteriorate too fast. The farmers dont want to pick them then anyway, as it isnt good for the plants either. Consequently, Robert ended the day a little short of beans and greens.


We had found the farming couple cleaning and sorting garlic when we arrived. They were happy to sell it, and when they heard it was to be planted to stop cleaning it too, in exchange for a slightly lower price.



Outside, some of the gardens were planted with buckwheat as a cover crop.

Traditionally, gardens have been mostly womens work in the Mennonite and Amish communities, but as it becomes clear that there is money to be made in market gardening the men are getting involved as well.



We continued to travel from farm to farm, although we did stop back at Roberts farm at one point to drop off the collection so far, and there were some other chores, such as stopping to gas up the truck and replace a defective windshield wiper. In all, I believe we visited 7 farms, although I lost track after a while. The one above was fairly typical; large tidy farmhouses with large tidy gardens, often with a shed turned into a small shop for their produce, or at least a sign out front advertising farm and garden produce for sale.

The social aspect of the farm visiting was an important componant of the day. These are people with whom he has been working for over 10 years now, and with whom he hopes to work for years to come. People who dont have much to sell him today may have something he needs in the future. There was a little haggling about price that I saw; it might seem odd that in all the cases the guy who was buying (not always Robert) was offering to pay more, and the guy who was selling was requesting less. But everybody is aware that the deal has to work for all concerned, not just today but in the future. As is usual with haggling, they generally met in the middle. It was just amusing to see the usual process reversed.

We also spent an hour and a half at the Bruce-Huron Produce Auction; Im going to post about that separately later.


I tend to moan a little about how standard all the produce is at farmers markets, but heres one reason why. Robert saw some seeds for white cucumbers at William Dam, thought they looked interesting and got them for one of his farmers to try. They havent sold at all; no-one wants them. Good thing the farmer didnt plant very many.

That, by the way, is how Roberts agreements with his farmers work. He buys the seeds, and any sprays (generally fungicides) required. Sometimes he buys some of the equipment needed. The farmers supply the land, the labour, and some of the equipment. In general, Robert gets about 50% of the final selling price of the produce, and the farmers get 50%. It does vary a bit by vegetable. For more labour intensive crops, the farmers get a bigger cut. That would be things like beans, green onions and asparagus. For some things, he gets a bigger cut, for example beets. They are easy to grow and harvest, and he bears the cost of storing them.

Robert decides how much he is likely to sell of the various vegetables, and thats the amount he requests from his growers. Hes on the hook for that amount; if they grow it for him he is obligated to buy it. If the crops fails, as crops sometimes do even for the most experienced growers, its up to him to find a replacement source.

Out of his approximately 50% cut of the final selling price, he has other costs. He spends about $3,000 per year on seeds, a little less than $9,000 a year to rent space at the farmers markets, and about $1,000 a year on liability insurance. Then theres the cost of running his vehicles - he does as much as he can out of a modified mini-van to save fuel and reduce his carbon footprint, but he also has a small cube van. Theres the hydro for his coolers. He does hire help; he has university students help with growing and harvesting his own produce and selling at the markets in the summer, as well as some younger students hired on a more casual basis. When all is said and done, he hopes to keep 30 cents of every dollars worth of produce he sells.



The gardens are winding down. Once Labour day is past, sales at Keady slow down considerably. After Christmas, Robert has no more market sales until asparagus season starts. He works at the local Co-op for a couple of months in the spring, organizing seed sales and mixing fertilizers. The pay isnt great, but it keeps him in touch with the local non-Amish and Mennonite community, and gets him through a slow time of year.

Lamb Osso Buco with parsley papardelle was the recipe I started out to make, however the eagle-eyed among you will realise that that is not quite what ended up on the plate!  You will have to read my blog post to find out how this morphed into a pot roast.

Courgette Cake was a popular choice as Claire at Foodie Quine also chose to make this moist and tasty five a day in a cake.   Apologies to Claire for leaving her cake off the original post, I must have been seeing double!


I hope you will join us for Dish of the Month in October, the Linky will be posted on 2nd October. 

 As a kid Even now, my favorite part about the sweet potato casserole at Thanksgiving was the toasted marshmallow topping. I would eat just the marshmallows and my grandmother would add more to the potatoes and toast them again because I liked them so much. So okay, were agreed that marshmallows have about as much nutritional value as a tank of gas, which is why I subbed in a cinnamon maple pecan topping instead.
Four gigantic sweet potatoes later, whipped with some coocnut milk, spices, maple syrup, and a toasted pecan topping and your new paleo-improved side dish is complete!
Kyles cousin Brooke made dessert--homemade peach ice cream made with grassfed cream, roasted peaches, egg yolks, and maple syrup. I mean, it was G.D. incredible yall!

Sweet Potato Casserole
Makes a ton (i.e., 12 servings-ish)

• 4 large sweet potatoes
• 1/2 cup canned coconut milk
• 1 Tbsp. coconut oil
• 1-2 Tbsp. maple syrup
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp nutmeg
• juice of half an orange