Today I have cooked all day after a trip to the farmer’s market. The one item that hasn’t taken a turn in pot nor oven is the sack of groundcherries I brought home – I’m still much too in awe to start hacking into them hopefully.
Groundcherries, in all their husk'd glory
If you, like me, had never heard of these splendiferous little sweets – husked like a tomatillo, sweet as fruit, and near-identical in texture to a cherry tomato albeit with stonier seeds – you are in for a treat.
I’m considering making little cupcakes with them, a decision partially driven by the non-disposal, rainbow-colored muffin liners I brought back from a kitchen store in Norway earlier this summer.
Silicone muffin cups: full visible spectrum
Other items made today:
1. Carmelized onions and cubed roasted winter squash served over wild rice (A modification of this recipe.)
2. A great scape pesto that’s good even sans food processor:
Scape pesto, classy as can be in a reused grated Romano cheese container
3. My Mom’s minestrone (recipe to come)
A question in closing: Is homemade vegetable stock overrated or am I just really awful at making it?
Shoes, and ships, and sealing wax...and cabbages and kings!
Hey Katy! It’s not your fault the vegetable stock sucks. It just does. In my view, it just isn’t worth it. The only vegetable stock recipe I’ve come across that tastes reasonably good is one from Cook’s Illustrated, but it uses soooo many vegetables, it’s a colossal waste.
Honestly, sometimes a little water in food, instead of stock, is perfectly fine. Stock I think exists for injecting meatiness into things (and using up bones). Veg stock does neither of those things.
And thanks for the pic of the ground cherries. I’ve eaten them–for some reason, they occasionally dot the dessert tray at corporate catered dinner at an office where I freelance. But I’d always been calling them gooseberries in my head. Now I guess I need to go try a gooseberry…
Thank you for allaying my veggie stock-related insecurities–and explaining why other stock makes more sense. I’m pretty sure it was the lemon thyme and cup of wine I was tasting in the stock vs. heaps of veggie goodness, so am glad to lay that project to rest. I just had a conversation a few nights ago about why pork or lamb broth doesn’t exist. Any thoughts on that? It seems like it would be no gamier or intense than seafood stock, which is delicious.
As for the groundcherries – their flavor kept being compared to gooseberries, so now I need to try THOSE.
Katy Ball! I Just found out you have a blog. Amazing!
I thought I’d jump in and say that pork and lamb broth both exist! I’ve run into lamb broth in yemen-ey restaurants and other middle eastern places, and pork pops up in french and eastern european cooking. Those pig feet and skin are pretty rich in gelatin, so they are crucial when you’re making something wrapped in aspic + pastry crust or head cheese.
Oh, I am so glad that you found my severely under-maintained but still fun-for-me blog!
I appreciate the stock comments. I think that the total lack of any packaged/canned version of stocks beyond beef, veggie, seafood, and chicken is what makes it easy to think that stock simply isn’t made from other critters. It makes good sense that those ruminates would be the go-to beasts to thicken things up in their broth form, though. I’m surprised that such stock isn’t more widely available, not that I have any intention of cooking with it myself.
Aspic = innately hilarious but perhaps due for a reinvention following it’s 70s housewifely incarnation?
Headcheese = Pukeasaurus Rex. Have to be close-minded on this one.
Ah, just saw the “pescatarian” part. That’s newish, right? I’m sort of in the same boat as you, but I still use meat stock even if I don’t cook with big hunks of meat anymore.
Just to underscore the “water is fine” comment: I was reading a Rick Bayless cookbook about Mexican cooking where he talks a bit about how Mexican food is _not_ about concentrating meaty flavors and richness, but it took him a long time to realize that because he’d been trained by the standards of French food, which is totally meat-flavor-obsessed. So once you shake off the Frenchie stuff, vegetarian cooking gets a lot easier…
That’s funny about the meat stock vs. meat question: I’m actually more averse to stock than the actual slab of meat. There’s something insidious and distilled about the stock – meat with no meat texture – that freaks me out. I’ll try the occasional bite of chicken or really anything (just tried whale meat in Norway this summer because it felt rude, and like I’d be missing the chance of a lifetime to pass it by) if someone says it’s the best thing they’ve tried, but just don’t like all that chewiness. Plus, I have high cholesterol and should probably avoid red meat unless I love it.
Thanks for the advice on adopting the more Mexican approach to flavor creation. I agree that it’s easy to get seduced by the idea of always making something richer – and it’s good to be reminded to cool those jets. I’m not going to lie, though: I just found out about using beurre manie to thicken stock to make an incredibly buttery stew base and am trying to resist the urge (at least until this fridge full of food is with the angels).
Yay whale meat! I mean, not really, but… What did you think? I can’t even play the etiquette card–we bought it and cooked it ourselves in Norway. But maybe the way we did it was what made it taste like the overcooked liver of the sea.
Save the beurre manie for winter–when it will really hit the spot…
And make sure your doc is up on the newest cholesterol “policies”–AMA finally adjusted to say that it’s not the total number that matters, it’s the ratio between the good and the bad. My doc said my cholesterol was borderline last year, but she obviously hadn’t gotten the news. For that matter, my mother-in-law, healthiest lady I know, was dutifully taking Lipitor based on the old logic. Doctors’ convictions die hard. I only rant because I hate to see someone overhaul their eating based on bad science.