Oven Fried Chicken

One of my favorite feminist gossip websites Jezebel, keeps posting a photo of Rick Santorum eating fried chicken. My political beliefs aside, this photo has become a substantial problem in my life because it makes me crave fried chicken. I check this website several times a day, and every time I see this photo I crave fried chicken! It is inconvenient. Granted, I did not even have my first glorious bite of fried chicken until two years ago at Hodak's, a famous fried chicken restaurant in St. Louis, MO, and I never have really craved it until this picture, but ghad, I really want fried chicken all the time now. Seriously though, morning, day, and night. Good thing I know how to cook!

Photo from Jezebel.com

Rick Santorum Inspired Fried Chicken:

 

This recipe isn't quite exact, I will update it over time, but hopefully it is enough instruction to give you the gist.

Cooking Time: 1 hour, 30 minutes

Ingredients:

1- 5 pound chicken, skin on and quartered

2 tablespoons + 1 teaspoon kosher salt, divided

2-3 cups butter milk

1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper

3/4 teaspoon red pepper flakes

1/2 teaspoon chili pepper, divided

1/2 teaspoon paprika

2-3 cups flour

1+1/2 cups corn flakes, crushed up

1/2-3/4 cup bread crumbs, italian or whatever

olive oil

black pepper to taste

Directions:

1) In a medium bowl mix buttermilk, 1 tablespoon of salt, 1/2 teaspoon paprika, 1/4 teaspoon chili and pepper together. Add quartered pieces of chicken to mix, preferably submerged, and let sit for 10 - 30 minutes at room temperature.

2) Preheat the oven to 450º F and line a baking sheet with aluminum foil. Oil the foil with light olive oil.

3. In a shallow bowl or large/ medium piece of Tuperwear, mix together flour, 1 tablespoon + 1 teaspoon of salt, a few black pepper shakes, 3/4 teaspoon of red peper flakes, 1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper, and 1/4 teaspoon of chili pepper.  

4) DO NOT POUR OUT THE BUTTER MILK!  Roll each piece of chicken in the flour mixture. Press the mix firmly into the chicken making sure every bit is covered well. Let sit for ten minute.

5) Thoroughly crush up corn flakes and add to remaining flour mix. Add bread crumbs too. Mix well.

6) Using a cooking brush, dab each piece of chicken with remaining buttermilk mixture and re-roll the chicken in the flour mixture. Try to get the corn flake mix on it. Brush more with buttermilk if the chicken is not wet enough to have more mix stick to it.

7) Put chicken on a baking sheet with the pieces not touching.

8) Cook for 25 minutes, rotating the cookie sheet at halftime (12.5 minutes). After 25 minutes, flip each piece of chicken over and cook for another 20 minutes, again turning the cookie sheet at halftime. Chicken should be a dark golden brown and at least 165ºF. (aka cook for at least 45 minutes)

9) Enjoy with steamed green beans, mashed potatoes, and your fingers!

ps: Just because this chicken inspired by him is delicious, this is by no means an endorsement of Rick Santorum... he makes my insides hurt from head to toe.

New York Times: "I Was a Cookbook Ghost Writer"

"I was a Cookbook Ghost Writer" is is a wee bit of a dark, but it is certainly a good read. Julia Moskin recounts her career as a ghost writer for cookbooks.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/14/dining/i-was-a-cookbook-ghostwriter.html

I find this article interesting because I have noticed an exorbitant amount of new cookbooks on shelves these days. I know food is "in" right now-- if a necessity of life can ever be a trend. The article touches upon how "chefs", such as Rachel Ray, have published thousands of recipes. But at what cost? I have been wondering how these busybodies have had time to produce these books and perfect so many recipes.

 It turns out that very few chefs write or test their own recipes. Someone else is hired to do it and receives minimal credit for doing majority of the work! On top of that, many of these recipes lack the attention to detail, accurate measurements, or specific directions that classic cookbooks have, such as Alice Water's The Art of Simple Food or Irma Rombauer's Marion Romauer Becker's, and Ethan Becker's The Joy of Cooking. Just yesterday my former teacher Greg and I were discussing how unreliable recipes in various cookbooks can be. We noted how often they require adjustments in ratios and flavor. He even noted that in one well- reviewed cookbook, a recipe did not include basic ingredients like salt! Reliable and well-tested recipes are depreciating in value.

I think this loss of value is an utter shame and a greater reflection of the general population's dying relationship with food. In an odd combination of new behaviors such as a demand for immediate gratification, a constant flow of new products, and less value placed on quality, our instructive tools for cooking are becoming a mimesis of many American's relationship to food. Our cookbooks are becoming equally poor in quality and detached from their original sources just as much as our food quality has decreased and our removal of knowledge about a food item's origin or production process has increased.

Am I getting too worked up over this? All I know is that after working for a food magazine and trying to test chefs recipes as well as my own, I can tell you that it is a ton of work. It is hard and requires multiple testing.  In fact, there are books on how to test recipes and how to write cookbooks! It is an art for the patient and obsessive.  I remember testing this roasted purple cauliflower recipe over and over again this summer in 90 degree weather in my third story apartment with a poorly insulated oven and without AC. Then, I had to call up all my friends and family and ask to test the recipe and their ovens and using their baking trays! Do you know how much cauliflower a person can eat in one week? (Not that much). Hopefully Moskin's article enlightens the public that ghost writing is not just a weird -lack of credit- process only happening in the world of super celebrities. Let's give the ghosts some more credit!

Purple cauliflower from Rhode Island Nurseries--noms

Second Rise

Hello!

Somewhere in the midst of: studying abroad in Scotland, founding a compost program, becoming president of the Environmentally Conscious & Community Oriented House, getting a kitten, being president of Greenhouse Club, interning for edible Rhody, interning again for Farm Fresh of Rhode Island, and becoming an Italian citizen, I neglected this blog and I apologize.

I want to bring back The Wheaton Tomato and continue to do what it was created for: informing the public about local food and providing recipes that complement locally sourced food. Since I am not working for FFRI anymore, a.k.a it's not the summer, I will introduce some new features to the blog.

Ideas:
-Post and provide links to new and relevant websites, such as sites for jobs, other cool blogs, recipes, news articles, etc.
-More recipes and pictures!
-Maybe change the name of the Blog so that the title still makes sense when I graduate in 70 days!*
-Gardening: photos from the greenhouse, advice, problem solving
-Compost information
-Farm posts from Summer 2011
-Photos of the kitten, Koa, "making" food


*I am thinking about calling it "Jelly" for my middle school nick name, or Gelly, but I had enough trouble getting people to spell it with a "g" then and I don't have the patience to correct people now. Maybe JAM-- the sibling acronym-- did you know a bacteria was named after us? SFMA: the shorthands for the two most influential locations in my life. We shall see what is available and memorable.

My aim is to produce a more casual blog that is equal in quality to the old days.

Until then, here is a photo of Koa writing a philosophy paper. I promise this will not turn into a cat blog.

Tamales for the Holidays!

For the last few years, it has been a tradition that during the holidays my family and Guadalupe (our babysitter/second mom) make tamales together. It's a long process. Today it took four hours with five people working. As much as I would love to share the recipe, there are so many different fillings (pork, 2 chickens, and peppers with cheese), types of masa, and preparation methods that I wouldn't even know where to begin. In all honesty, my family is still learning all of the parts. I do not think that any of us could make a full tamale. Each part takes so long that you have to divvy up the work, so we each only know a few steps. For example, today I was assigned to "The Ring of Fire". This is where you turn on the gas stove and pile green hot peppers over the flames and turn them until they are evenly charred. Although now I feel like a pro at this step, I have no idea how the meats were prepared!  Anywho, I hope you enjoy these photos. No more reading-- just take in the pictures and enjoy.

Pork

Tomatilla Sauce

Cleaning peppers after the ring of fire

2 Different Fillings

Chopped green peppers, orange masa has blended red peppers (see above) in it, white masa is behind it.

Masa. It's made fresh daily by La Palma in San Francisco

One of the Shredded Chickens

Pork

The tamales are steamed under some of the unused husks.

Momma Tamale!

Happy Holidays!!!

Maple Syrup Bread

The Ultimate Game Changer in the Bread World...for me

As is only appropriate during midterms, I seem to have acquired a bug in my stomach. Immediately defaulting to the BRAT (bread, rice, applesauce, toast) diet, I began wondering how to make these four basic foods more interesting. In addition, I have been think about how to appease a sour stomach while still incorporating protein and vegetables. That's all bull, well not really, but I made a fabulous dinner tonight consisting of steamed spinach, a fried organic free range egg, and maple syrup bread.

You can figure out how to cook and egg and how to steam spinach. More importantly, here is the bread recipe. This recipe is awesome because you get a sweet crust that is balanced by sea salt in the crust's "sauce". The bread was super light, airy, and moist. The basic bread is adapted from Anissa Helou's "Savory Baking from the Mediterranean: Focaccias, Flatbreads, Rusks, Tarts, and Other Breads".

Ingredients:
Makes 1 small loaf: this was clearly not enough

1. 3-4 tablespoons maplesyrup
2. 1 packet of yeast (active dry)
3. white flour
4. a dash of olive oil
5. salt
6. water

Directions:

1. In a small bowl, combine 1 packet of yeast with about 2 tablespoons of warm water. Stir together until creamy, and let sit for 2 minutes. Then, add about 1/3 cup of flour to the yeast. It may be necessary to adjust the proportions a tad, but you want a goopy looking blob of dough, some may call it the biga. It should be able to hold its form of a blob, it should not be runny.
2. Put one cup of flour  and 1/2 tsp of salt in the bottom of a larger bowl. Add the biga blob to the flour, on top of it, do not stir it in, and then add 3/4 cup of flour on top of the big to cover it. Let rise underneath a towel in a draft free space for 4-8 hours. I only gave it 4.
3. Take 1/2 cup of warm water and 1 1/2 tablespoons of maple syrup. Stir together so that it looks like watered down coca-cola. Add this mixture to the flour and biga and begin to mix together. Keeping add this ratio of water and maple syrup to the dough until it was an elastic texture. Knead for 3 minutes and then invert the bowl on the dough for 15 minutes.
4. Knead the dough for another seven minutes. Let the dough rise for 1 hour.
5. Fold the dough... I watched a video on youtube and this seemed to work swell. I always feel like I do this part wrong, so watch below if you are unsure. 
6. Let the dough rise for 1.5 more hours in the bowl covered by a kitchen towel in a warm area.
7. Remove the dough from the bowl and place on a baking sheet. Let the dough recover from the movement and just let it sit for about 15 minutes.
8. Heat the oven to 400F. Place a pan in the bottom rack of the oven to heat with the oven.
9. In a glass, or bowl, mix together 2 tablespoons of olive oil with 2 table spoons (or more!) of maple syrup and about 1/4 tsp of sea salt. Spread the mixture on top of the dough
10. Put the dough in the oven. In the pan below it, add 3-9 ice cubes.
11. Close the door and let cook for 17-25 minutes or until the bottom of the loaf sounds hard when you tap it and the top of the loaf is golden.
12. While the bread is cooking, steam up some spinach and fry an egg! 

PS. In the course of writing this post, I may have already finished eating the loaf.

Escobar's Higland Farm: A Member of Rhody Fresh Milk

    

  

Louis Escobar

     I had the pleasure of visiting Escobar’s Highland Farm and talking with Louis Escobar, the current owner. His father founded the farm in the 1920s, and Louis inherited the farm, after his father passed away in 1974. Today the farm is 98 acres in size. The land is used for a variety of reasons beyond just raising dairy cows. Much of it is utilized for agri-entertainment, which consists of a pumpkin patch, Christmas trees, and a corn maze. Louis explained that the farm was unable to support itself on the dairy-based income alone, so they began offering other services as a second source of revenue. This is common among Rhode Island dairy farmers. The profit margin for fluid milk is minimal, because large milk companies are able to undercut prices. In Rhode Island this has become a huge problem, and now there are only sixteen dairy farms in the entire state. Escobar’s Highland Farm is a perfect example of a farm that struggles to survive, as a result of large-scale industrial farming. What it has done in order to stay in business is particularly interesting from certain perspectives. Today I will look at this farm’s history, its involvement in the creation of Rhody Fresh milk, and what this farm in particular has done to make itself stand out against its larger competitors.

           In order to preserve the local dairy industry, Escobar’s Highland Farm and eight other farms joined together in 2004 to create Rhody Fresh. This is a milk cooperative, where by pooling their product, the small farms are able to serve a larger population, while decreasing the financial burdens of dairy farming by dispersing them amongst the eight farms.  All of the dairy farms in Rhode Island were initially invited to partake in Rhody Fresh. The milk is processed and packaged at Guida’s Dairy in New Brittan, CT. Having one label also allows consumers to know that they are supporting local dairy as a whole. In addition, by processing and packaging the nine dairy farms’ milk together, the products’ prices are able to compete with conventional milk prices. Rhody Fresh certainly typifies power in numbers. The co-op has been incredibly successful; within six months of starting Rhody Fresh, they surpassed their three-year financial goal.

      Escobar’s Highland Farm’s vitality is also due in part to the Aquidneck Land Trust. In 2005, the trust placed a conservation easement on 75 acres of the farm that protects it from ever being developed or used for anything other than farmland. This easement also preserves the open space that the farm provides to the community. The neighbors surrounding Escobar’s Highland Farm are also incredibly supportive. They appreciate the open space that the farm provides as well as recognizes the importance of maintaining local dairy operations.

Cows that are part of the 4-H program

            Louis also is conscientious of the farm’s environmental and social responsibilities. He regularly has the farm’s soil analyzed, in order to make sure that it is nutrient-rich and balanced. The farm has considerable acreage devoted to grassy open spaces. The cows are also fed a balanced diet of “Louis Escobar’s Feed”. This is a combination of whole stocks of corn, silage, grain, and hay. A nutritionist tests the cows regularly and has the feed adjusted accordingly so that the cows are always fed what they need. The cows are only milked twice a day in order to reduce stress on the animal. They are kept in open-air barns and taken for walks in pastures when weather permits. There are also outside pens that the younger cows stay in. These cows are used in the 4-H program. The purpose of this program is youth development. Participants can work on Escobar’s Highland Farm and learn responsibility and independence, by taking care of a cow. Through years of compiled knowledge, Escobar’s Highland Farm has managed to create a balanced and beneficial environment for everyone involved in the operation.

Open air barns

            It is difficult to watch Escobar’s Highland Farm struggle to stay in business. On one hand, the value of local agriculture is important. The fact that the local dairy farms are struggling to make profits is deflating.  I commend Escobar’s Highland Farm for using unconventional strategies in order to stay afloat. I have a feeling that Louis would rather use the farmland for more grazing pasture space instead of a profit making corn maze.  At the same time though, it is also hard to accept that they inadvertently reduced grazing space for the cows in order to increase profit.

This experience, among many others this summer, makes me question how much a farm can give up for the sake of staying in business. Where does one, both as a consumer and as a producer, draw the line between supporting local agriculture and supporting one’s environment? In regard to the cow’s quality of life and quality of product, how much is the consumer willing to give up for the sake of local? This is a question that I struggled with frequently this summer. Farm Fresh was clear that they valued local over anything else, but I do not think that I do.  When I left Escobar Highland Farm, I was distressed to see so many cows corralled into a muddy and confined space. When I drink milk, I prefer to imagine and wish to support farms where the cows have lots of grazing space and pasture to live off of. In reality, these ideals are difficult to achieve when running a small local business. But again, if this is not exactly an option in some states, how does a consumer find that balance and support certain ideals without destroying an entire population of local farmers that do not have the financial means to operate under ideal circumstances? I believe it is important to support Rhody Fresh and Escobar’s Farm in particular given its environmental and social efforts. Even with the challenges at hand, Escobar’s Highland Farm has done its best to not jeopardize the quality of its products and has worked tirelessly to preserve the historic and cultural values derived from local dairy. Rhody Fresh can be purchased at a variety of grocers in Rhode Island such as: Dave’s, Stop & Shop, Whole Foods Market, Brigido’s, CVS/pharmacy, Belmont, Eastside Marketplace, and Shaws as well as many local restaurants.

Update

I apologize for not posting anything for the past few weeks. I have been preparing to study abroad. There will be posts while I am here in Edinburgh. Some posts will still be about farms from RI, maybe some about farms in Scotland, and of course recipes. I've just been a bit behind preparing for a new country. Apologies.