The veggies have begun!

Our first farm share came today:

• Lettuce
• Spinach
• Strawberries
• Thyme
• Oregano

No picture, as we were out of town and Jim and Monika picked them up.

Refreshing hot day lunch: Cold Soba Noodles and Vegetables

From Noodle Fusion by Dorothy Rankin:

"Yield: 4 to 6 Main-course Servings

"These cold, chewy buckwheat noodles with crisp vegetables and a sweet, salty, and sour dressing have a lovely balance of flavors and texture. It is somewhat of a misnomper to call the liquid portion of this salad a 'dressing.' Consider it, instead, a delightful chilled broth that can be drunk from the bowl when the noodles are gone. This is wonderful made ahead and served icy cold in bowls. If you do so, refrigerate the noodles, vegetables, and broth in separate, well-covered containers."

12 ounces soba noodles
1 medium-size daikon radish, grated
1 carrot, peeled and grated
½ cup snow pea shoots
4 scallions, thinly sliced
2 T. rice wine vinegar
1 T. mirin
1 tsp. sugar
½ tsp. salt
garnish: 1 T. toasted sesame seeds

Cold Broth Dressing
1½ cups Dashi
4 T. mirin
2 tsp. peeled, grated ginger
2 scallions, finely chopped

Cook the soba noodles as directed. Drain and rinse thoroughly to cool. Meanwhile, combine the vegetables in a bowl. Add the vinegar, mirin, sugar and salt and mix well. Combine all the broth ingredients in a separate bowl.

To serve, divide the noodles among the bowls. Arrange the vegetables over the noodles and pour the broth over all. Garnish with the toasted sesame seeds.

(ams note) Very robust to substitutions. I used this as a general idea, substituting cabbage and bean sprouts for daikon and pea shoots, had to skip the scallions, and found out--after beginning--that we were out of mirin. Oops. Substituted more vinegar and sugar liberally in place of it. Then I just forgot the sesame seeds (oops again). Yummy nonetheless.

Homemade Yogurt

Yesterday I made yogurt. I have made it a couple times before, with a yogurt maker some years ago, but this was my first time making it with no special equipment. It was easy, inspired by Harold McGee's column in the New York Times, They Do the Work, You Reap the Yogurt.

It turned out perfectly. It's satisfying and a bit magical to have made something by microbial action (like sauerkraut, but starting with a known culture) that turned out correctly. I wouldn't say it pays off as a money-saving venture, as I managed to turn $1.00 worth of milk plus about $0.07 of yogurt into a $2.19 quart of yogurt, at a time investment of about 20 minutes, but it is good and fresh and sort of fun, like making cheese.

Another intriguing mention in the article was making crème fraîche, something that is hard to come by around here. I found a recipe from the Splendid Table that uses buttermilk as a culture, as McGee does, or you can order cultures from The New England Cheesemaking Supply Company (where we got our cheesemaking kit) as well.

Chicago style pizza

I've recently become enamored of Alton Brown's recipe for pizza dough. Makes a nice thin crust pizza at 550° F on a pizza stone. On the other end of the pizza scale, I've been wanting to perfect my Chicago Pan Pizza recipe. I attempted it this weekend for the first time in a long time. Influenced by this recipe, I tried it with these proportions for the crust:

1 cup water
2¾ cups flour
¼ cup cornmeal
½ tsp. salt
¼ cup olive oil
2 tsp. yeast

After running it in the stand mixer with a dough hook for a while, the dough was still too sticky, so I threw in some more flour. Probably still not enough, I'd cut down the water in this recipe. Also, double the salt to 1 tsp. Otherwise, pretty good. Cover with sliced mozzarella, mushrooms, sausage, a can of diced tomatoes and grated parmesan, in that order. I would use a full pound of mozzarella next time, and maybe a little more tomato sauce with the diced tomatoes. It's getting there.