Red Pottage

Red Pottage soup

This one came from A Feast of Scotland by Janet Warren. I thought it was interesting because the beans get fried. Leaving out the celery and and mint and substituting canned tomatoes makes this late summer dish into a four-season recipe.

• 2/3 Cup haricot beans (white great northern)
• 2 sticks celery, chopped
• 1 cooked beetroot, peeled and chopped
• 1 onion, peeled and chopped
• 3 tomatoes, chopped (canned)
• 5 cups beef stock
• 1 ounce butter
• mint garnish

Cover the beans with water and let soak overnight.

Next day drain the beans, melt the butter in a large pan and add the beans and all the vegetables. Fry the ingredients for 5 minutes, stirring occasionally, then pour in the stock. Bring to a boil and simmer covered for 3 hours or until the beans are very soft.

Remove the beetroot then rub the pottage through a sieve  (I pureed with food processor), reheat, add seasoning to taste and serve garnished with mint.

The tomato dominates the flavor, I think it might be interesting to experiment without the tomato and with some wine and herbs.

cooked 12/28/11

Beef Stock

I’d never made beef stock from bones before, but I’ve done it with the turkey carcass after thanksgiving.

• beef bones (cut in short pieces to fit the pan)
• 1 small onion, quartered
• 2 cloves garlic
• water to cover

The recipe I found had me roast (400F) the raw nearly meatless beef bones until they had browned, then simmer the bones for 40 minutes with the garlic and onion. When cool, remove excess fat and the solids. You may want to puree the vegetables that remain.

Dairy

Both WSU and UI have research dairy herds. WSU processes the milk into Ferdinand’s ice cream and Cougar brand cheeses. UI presently wholesales its milk for commercial processing. Small dairies can sell raw milk in limited quantities.

• Milk
• Cream
• Cheese. Cheeses produced in the area include
• Cheddar (Cougar Gold)

Rice Pudding (Risgrynsgröt)

Bubbly hot rice pudding

This recipe came from my Swedish grandfather as a Christmas holiday treat. Milk, cream and eggs were probably common on the farm, but rice was an imported holiday treat.

The almond is an important part of the dish. Legend has it that the person who finds the almond will have good luck for the coming year. Krista will tell you about the truth of this — she got the almond Christmas Eve when we were dating and I proposed the next morning.

• 1/2 Cup rice (cooked according to pkg directions)
• 1 1/2 Cup milk
• 1 1/2 Cup cream
• 3 eggs (beaten)
• 1/3 Cup sugar
• 1 t vanilla
• 1 whole almond (blanched)

Mix all together in baking bowl. Bake 75-90 minutes 350F.

cooked 12/30/11

Rice

Rice is not locally produced. It qualifies as a potential exotic ingredient because it has a long shelf life and historically was shipped long distances. However, rice production might decline with global warming/peak oil.

For these recipes, rice is considered a exotic ingredient not a general staple.

Cukes and Cream

This recipe is in the collection of Swedish recipes I have from my mother. We eat it around the Christmas holidays. The modern recipe uses fresh cucumber, pickling it for a day or two. The historic recipe probably had cucumber pickled without spices.

Thinly sliced cucumbers (paper thin). Decorate the skins before slicing by any combination of scoring with a fork or removing some/all of the dark greek skin with a carrot peeler.

• 1 Cup white vinegar
• 1 Cup sugar
• 1 Cup water
• 1-2 Cup sour cream

Soak cucumbers in brine overnight. To serve, stir in enough sour cream to coat. Leftovers don’t keep well, its best to keep a batch of the pickles and make up smaller batches at meal time.

cooked 12/26/11

Root Vegetable

These root vegetables can be grown locally and are commercially available from local growers. Some growers have storage capacity, but amounts of storage are not known. These vegetables can also be readily stored in a home root cellar.

• Potato
• Onion
• Carrot
• Beet
• Garlic

 

 

Meat (fresh)

Animals for meat (cow, pig, chicken, lamb, goat) are raised locally but only commercially available locally under special conditions. Federal food safety regulations require that commercially sold meats be slaughtered in a USDA inspected facility.

There are two local outlets, Vandal Brand Meats at the University of Idaho and WSU Meats Lab that retail meat.

Citrus Fruit

Citrus has been (and could be) transported within the US by slower conveyance (train, boat).  Some people have raised lemons in a pot in their house, but local citrus fruits are unlikely to be commercially available.

Dried Fruit

Quite a variety of fruit is available in season locally, including apples, apricots, cherries, peaches, nectarines, pears, plums, and pluots, but as of December 2011 I don’t know of any local commercial source of dried fruit.

I have been drying fruit using a small electric dryer from Tri-State. It has 10 stacking trays above a heater/blower unit.

I am thinking about building a solar powered dryer, but still in the research stage.