The Apartment Farm

A little while ago I finally took my first culinary class – Knife Skills at The Chopping Block. There are so many classes I’d like to take there – Building Blocks: Brasserie, A Night in Chinatown, Focus on Sauces: Mother Sauces to Modern, and someday when I have two free weeks, I’d like to take the intensive week-long courses of Culinary Boot Camp and Baking Boot Camp. But I decided to start with the fundamentals, and husband was nice enough to sign me up for a Tuesday night class.

A lot of the really basic information I knew already, such as the difference between a forged full-tang knife (the blade runs all the way through to the end of the handle) and a stamped knife (where the blade is cut from a sheet of stainless steel and attached to the handle with just a few inches of metal). I also knew already that the forged full-tang knife is superior to the pressed knife because it will lost longer, it’s sturdier, stays sharp and can be sharpened and allows for more control while cutting. The different types of knives I was already familiar with as well, such as the large chef’s (also known as the French knife), short paring knife, midsize utility knife, serrated bread knife and the thin boning knife (which is the only knife that should have a flexible blade).

But I also learned some new information. The most important of which is how to hold a chef’s knife while cutting. Instead of gripping the handle in a fist, put your palm on the top of the knife’s handle near the hilt (where the handle meets the blade) and pinch the blade between your thumb and first finger, keeping your first finger curled against the blade. Grip the handle with your other fingers. By holding the knife in this way it will be balanced allowing you to have the most control and force with the least amount of effort. The second most important thing is the cutting motion – you want to rock your knife, and pull the blade toward you during the downward (cutting) stroke. I (and a lot of other people) have the habit of pushing the knife forward on the cutting stroke, which does cut, but has the disadvantage of being less efficient. By pulling the knife toward you on the down stroke, you have the benefit of gravity and physics on your side – basically, you can make more efficient, controlled cuts and do it quicker.

Sharpening is important for quality knives. There are two types of sharpeners – a honing steel and a sharpening steel. Most of us have the honing steels that come with those knife block sets. The main difference between the two is a honing steel does not remove metal from the blade, but realigns it so that the edge becomes sharper. A sharpening steel actually removes metal from the blade, creating an entirely new edge. For the average cook, you should hone your knife before every use, and have it sharpened every month or so. It only costs a few dollars per knife to have it professionally sharpened, but you can also purchase sharpening steels and do it yourself at home. As far as honing your knife, there’s really no wrong way to do it – just sweep the blade along the steel at about at 15 degree angle. But I did learn that you shouldn’t let anyone else hone your knife – the blade with sharpen with the idiosyncrasies of the individual, and if several different people are honing it, it will misalign the metal on the blade, making it hard to get it as sharp as you want.

So I learned some excellent things, and I try to practice them daily. It’s been a little difficult to retrain myself to cut properly, but I find that when I do it successfully, I’m faster and more accurate with my cuts. I’d recommend anyone take a knife class - it was informative and fun.  

Okay, making my own beer might sound a little obsessive. But I guess that I am obsessed with DIY food – I think it’s a great thing to be able to know how to do, and I enjoy it. And what hobby is better than one where you get to consume the output?

I have a catalog called The Northern Brewer, and it’s a wish book for people who want to brew their own beer and wine. They sell starter kits, all manner of supplies (siphons, bottles, brew kettles, taps - you name it), beer or wine kits as well as the truly DIY option of raw ingredients (hops, yeast, grape concentrates – all that jazz). It’s lovely to browse through.

I’ve read a couple of things that have gotten me interested in brewing my own beer, the first of which is a zine put out awhile ago called Brew Not Bombs by a Baltimore, MD group of the same name. It’s filled with some great info to pique your interest – a basic guide to getting started with brewing, history of beer, labels created by DIYers, beer recipes, some interesting essays, etc. I also have the Book The Homebrewer’s Companion by Charlie Papazian – and it is extremely comprehensive.

When I first brought up the idea of homebrewing to the husband, he immediately dismissed it as too expensive and complicated. So I went on an education campaign to convince him otherwise. You can get started with basic brewing equipment and the necessary ingredients for under $100. Add a few bells and whistles, like a glass carboy (basically a 6 gallon jug) instead of a plastic bucket and you’re still only at $125. And that’s buying the pre-fab kits and bottles from a supplier. Scrounging together your food-grade bucket, plastic tubing for the siphon and bottles yourself will cut some serious cash off the end price. This setup will allow you to brew five gallons of beer, which fill up about 48 bottles (that’s eight six-packs). The first brew will be your most expensive, since you have to offset the initial investment in the equipment. So your first beer will cost you about $2.60 per bottle. Subsequent brews, where you only need to purchase the ingredients (which run about $25 in kit form) will cost you only about fifty cents per bottle! That’s $3.00 per six pack, which is comparable to the cheap/mass market beer you can buy at the store, and about half the price of good quality/craft brews. So really, beermaking at home shouldn’t break the bank. And I really recommend recycling bottles for your brewing – it’s perfectly safe (when you sanitize them and remove the labels), it’s thrifty (two uses out of the beer you purchased!), and it’s better for the environment.

And learning how to make a good, basic beer doesn’t sound that complicated. In its simplest form, this is what you do – boil malt extract with some hops. After an hour or so, add some more hops to what is now called the wort (which is apparently pronounced “wert”). In the last five minutes of boiling the wort, add some more hops. Take it off the heat and put it in an ice bath to bring the temperature down. Add a few gallons of water to your carboy then add the wort. Then top off the carboy with water, leaving some headroom. When the wort in the carboy has come down to room temperature, add some yeast and fit the carboy with a stopper and airlock. Let it sit for a few weeks, then bottle. Let the bottles sit for another 2-4 weeks and then it’s ready to drink. Yes, there are a few intricacies to the process, such as timing, amounts of ingredients, prepping your supplies and whatnot, but as you can see, it’s not incomprehensible. With a good recipe to follow, I think anyone (including myself) can do it.

So, husband said that after we’re settled into our new apartment, let’s brew some beer! We glanced over the catalog together, and settled on two beers that are in the running as our first brew- Cream Ale or Extra Pale Ale. The Northern Brewer describes the Cream Ale as “An ale version of the light, fizzy American lager style… medium-bodied and smooth, gold in color and low in bitterness”. Extra Pale Ale is one of their most popular kits, and described as “clean, dry and very hoppy”. I’m more inclined toward the Extra Pale, and husband is more inclined toward the Cream. I guess we’ll have to rock scissors paper for it.

If all goes decently with our first brew (and even if it doesn’t – try, try again) there are many more beers that I’d like to try making – Nut Brown Ale, Breakfast Stout, American Wheat Beer, Bourbon Barrel Porter, Oktoberfest, and someday when I’m decently experienced – Oatmeal Stout, which instead of malt extract uses the real deal – grain. It’s takes 6-8 weeks to do a beer from start to finish, so I hope to have our first one done by the middle of September, and the second at the end of November. So we’ll probably try the Nut Brown Ale or Breakfast Stout for our winter brew. And who knows? If it turns out inherently drinkable, maybe you’ll find yourself with some home brew for a Christmas present this year. J

Interestingly enough, May is the month of figuring out what we’re going to be eating over the next year. In all honestly, that’s quite late. I should’ve had it figured out in January, in time to place seed orders. But seeing that we don’t grow much beyond herbs and salad greens in our apartment, waiting until May is fine. That’s when the farmer’s markets open for the season, and we start thinking about making the bountiful goodness of the summer to come last until, well, the next summer. And it goes beyond vegetables. This year, I’m also thinking meats.

We’re moving this summer, and our must-have apartment wish list includes a few things that will make conscious eating a bit easier (at least in my mind). Our wish list includes space equal or greater to what we have now, immediate outdoor access (be it balcony, patio, yard, what-have-you), eat-in kitchen (with a gas stove!) or separate dining room, and big windows. Nice little extras would be a second bedroom, hardwood floors, claw-foot tub and a brick accent wall. But those last things are the icing on the cake, and really don’t have much to do with making conscious eating easier. But the former ones do. The equal or greater space requirement relates to the need to purchase a small chest freezer (we still haven’t gotten one due to current space constraints), and have pantry storage for canned goods. Any little spot of the outdoors I’m going to inundate with edibles – my dreams (even on a little 5×3 foot balcony) include a few tomato plants, a columnar apple tree, a half barrel of dwarf blueberries (the husband loves blueberries), strawberries in hanging baskets, lettuces in window boxes and anything else I can manage to fit in. Kitchen space (with the gas stove!) so I can put up copious amounts of produce this summer without feeling like I’m working in a hall closet, which is basically what cooking in our current (electric-stove-outfitted) kitchen is like. And don’t even get me started on the pitfalls of an electric stove. Big windows – filled with edible plants of course. I can see my strawberry pot of herbs multiplying like there’s no tomorrow…

So what’s on this year’s list for food preservation? It’s alarmingly ambitious, as always.

5 pints applesauce

5 pounds beef jerky

5 pounds bison jerky

10 quarts canned quartered tomatoes

10 quarts canned roasted quartered tomatoes

20 pints canned tomato paste

5 pounds dehydrated mushrooms (mostly button and morel)

5 quarts frozen blueberries

5 quarts frozen cherries

24 ears frozen corn on the cob

20 quarts of frozen edamame (we eat this like chips in our household)

5 quarts of frozen strawberries

10 pints frozen sweet peppers

2 quarts frozen persimmon puree

5 quarts frozen pumpkin puree

5 pints canned roasted garlic

5 pints rosemary garlic olive oil

The only thing that seems truly daunting to me is the tomato paste. The frozen stuff is easy – wash, blanch, toss in bags and freeze. The mushrooms and jerkies will be easy, just stick in the dehydrator. The roasted garlic and olive oil will be easy too. Even the applesauce and canned tomatoes will be simple. But I know that it takes about 35 pounds of tomatoes to make 10 quarts. So for the canned tomatoes, I’m looking at 70 pounds alone. That will be two weekends worth of work for me. And I know that it’s going to take a lot more tomatoes to cook down into 20 pints of paste. A lot more. So maybe I won’t quite get there on that one… but I’ll try. We eat a lot of Bolognese in this house, and you can’t have my Bolognese without tomato paste. So I will definitely try.

But I also mentioned meat. While I’m certainly not producing any of it myself (from scratch, in the barnyard) I hope to purchase it directly from the people who do.

2 20 pound turkeys (the Thanksgiving and Christmas birds)

1 side of pork (including the Thanksgiving ham, sausages and mostly ground)

¼ side of beef (in a few steaks, stew meat and mostly ground)

A bit of lamb – a crown roast (for Christmas), a few steaks and some stew meat

8 chickens

I think I might need a bigger freezer than what I first planned on… but ambition is a great thing. If I can’t achieve it all, that’s fine. But I will certainly try. It’s about doing a little bit when you can, because as everyone knows, the little stuff adds up. And that’s an approach I can live with.

I’ve always wished that I was one of those people that had three hours in the morning before work (or no work at all) to have a leisurely morning that included a few cups of high-quality tea or coffee and an elaborately prepared multi-item breakfast – you know, the freshly baked rolls or muffins, omelets made to order with lobster or shrimp and seasonal vegetables, handmade breakfast sausages, just-squeezed juice. But I’m not. To be perfectly honest, I usually crawl out of bed a half hour before I have to leave the house to catch the train. Between showering, dressing, blow drying my hair and applying makeup (so I even look presentable to be in public in the first place) I’m lucky if I have time to grab my lunch (if I was smart enough to pack it the night before- if not, it will be an ATM-funded fast-food nightmare) and bag, that hopefully has the big four already in it – transit card, ATM card, cell phone and keys. And I god help me if I don’t have my book and mp3 player. Every thing else is peripheral. But, I digress. The topic at hand is breakfast.

I used to be a breakfast skipper. Actually, in highschool and my early college days (ah, the nostalgia) I used to down a can of Coca-Cola around 8:00 am and call that breakfast. But somewhere along the line, skipping breakfast lost its luster. I’m hungry when I wake up. My body demands food, and my brain agrees – I actually do want to eat, and preferably before 10:00 am. And recently I discovered a wonderful thing. Warm buttered French bread and an espresso. Filling, caffeinated and the absolute perfect combination. It’s always the simple things, no? The great thing is the bread is made in advance. You can make two loaves on Sunday afternoon, and stored properly, they will stay fresh for 3-4 days (if you don’t eat it all immediately). Espresso takes a few minutes to brew. We start it before the shower. We also pop the bread in the oven to warm at 350 for about 10 minutes, so the butter just melts into it. And if you don’t have a leisurely hour or two to enjoy it, you can certainly be satisfied in five minutes with two slices and a cup. And if I can fit an extra five minutes into my morning, anyone can.

Admittedly, I am not the baker in the family. Now, I can do decent cakes and cookies, but when it comes to bread product, husband reigns supreme. He’s just got a natural knack for it that it’s going to take me a lot of time and effort to learn. This is the basic French loaf recipe that he favors:

Baguettes

1 ¾ cups water

1 teaspoon active dry yeast

4 cups flour

2 teaspoons salt

1.) Proof the yeast in the water with the salt until the yeast is bubbly (5-10 minutes).

2.) Add the flour and mix until thoroughly combined. Knead the dough until smooth and elastic, 10-12 minutes.

3.) Transfer dough to a lightly oiled bowl, cover with a towel and set in warm place to rise until doubled in size, about 30 minutes.

4.) Turn dough out onto a lightly floured work surface, punch down, and divide into two equal portions. Round each piece into a smooth ball, cover with the towel and let rise for another 30 minutes.

5.) Shape each round into a rectangle about 8 inches long on a baking sheet. Cover with a towel and let rise again, for 1 hour.

6.) Preheat oven to 425. Score each loaf 5-7 times with a sharp blade. Brush each baguette lightly with water. Bake for 30 minutes. During the first 5 minutes, baste each loaf with a little more water. When done, they should be golden brown on top and sound hollow when you tap their bottoms. Cool slightly on wire racks before slicing.

Ah, cooking. One of my most ardent passions. In a moment of inspired boredom during my day acting out my office gnome responsibilities recently, I jotted down five three-course menus that I think are worth a mention to you all. For the ones I haven’t cooked, recipes will be forthcoming as soon as I do.

Menu A

Pancetta-wrapped dates with a balsamic vinegar drizzle

Palette de porc a la biere (pork shoulder braised in beer with a bread crumb/Dijon mustard crust)

Vanilla crepes with strawberry filling

Menu B

Salade Lyonnaise with lardons (basically thick center-cut bacon)

Coq au Vin  with wild mushroom couscous

Chocolate mille crepes (crepe cake with chocolate cream filling)

Menu C

Risotto croquettes

Boullabaise

Apple tart with cognac

Menu D

Heirloom cherry tomato salad with basil

Perch buerre blanc

Walnut custard

Menu E

Brussels sprouts with duck confit and a honey mustard vinaigrette

Braised lamb shoulder with rosemary and roasted root vegetables

Chocolate lava cakes

YUM! Food is a beautiful, wonderful thing.