Featuring winter vegetables...

Yesterday's snowstorm in the DC area felt like the start of winter, despite what the calendar says. So tonight I made dinner featuring two classic winter vegetables: sweet potatoes and brussels sprouts.

The sweet potatoes were part of a black bean chili from Eating Well. Usually I find their recipes too bland, but this is one of my winter standbys. (This might have something to do with my secret ingredient—hot lime pickle from the Indian market, instead of ground chipotle.)

I used sweet potatoes that I picked up on the last day of the Mt. Pleasant farmers market. (Unfortunately, everything else was from the grocery store.)

I also made brussels sprouts for the first time, using a Mark Bittman recipe. I had intended to roast them, but this was faster and, as a bonus, called for butter.

I actually halved the brussels sprouts, even though the recipe calls for them to be cooked whole. I thought they were better halved, but Bittman does warn they are easier to overcook that way.

The only thing I really changed about the recipe is that I threw on some shallot pepper from Penzey's. I'm not sure if it really added anything, but I forgot I had it and wanted to use it on something.

I thought the brussels sprouts turned out really well. I've never been a huge fan, but I've tried them a few times roasted and now braised, and I'm liking them more and more. This was a really easy recipe, too, that will definitely be added to the winter rotation.

Sweet potatoes and caramelized onions

Okay, I am going to come right out and admit that this is not the most appetizing picture I have ever posted. But this recipe for sweet potatoes and caramelized onions is so, so good. And, it takes full advantage of produce in ample supply at the farmers markets.

The recipe is from The Kitchn. Here are two things I did differently:

1. I used a mix of sweet potatoes, mostly because of what I had on hand. I used a Japanese sweet potato, a white sweet potato (is there a difference? The texture felt a little different when it was raw...), and a regular orange sweet potato. I couldn't tell a difference in taste or texture once they were all cooked though.

2. I used three onions (one yellow and two sweet) rather than the two onions the recipe called for because, well, I read the recipe wrong. But you know what? The more caramelized onions, the better. (I added a bit of extra oil to compensate.)

I served this with salad, but obviously it's a great side dish. Tomorrow I will be having it with brown rice for lunch.

Lunch on a day off

Wow. It has been more than a month since I last posted. While I certainly have been cooking during that time, I definitely have been slacking on all-local meals.

That's not to say I have not been using local ingredients. I've made roasted Japanese sweet potatoes (which I procured at the Crystal City farmers market) with miso-scallion butter. I've made sesame-garlic soba noodles with fried local eggs. I've made cannellini beans with local kale and garlic. But I didn't post about any of those, because I felt like they didn't really count.

As winter approaches, it is going to become even more difficult to make entire meals from local ingredients (especially since I did not try my hand at canning this summer like I had planned). So I plan to keep featuring local ingredients in my meals, but I'm going to give myself much more slack on using store-bought ingredients.

Which brings me to today's lunch. I have the day off from work, so I decided to take advantage of actually being able to cook at lunch. I had a bowl of local yellow cherry tomatoes slowly dying on my countertop, so I roasted them (halved lengthwise) with olive oil, salt, and pepper. When they were done (or rather, when I was hungry—about an hour), I added a bit more olive oil and some chopped chives (another farmers market purchase that needed to be used pronto). This became the topping for some homemade pasta from Radius, a great restaurant in Mt. Pleasant a couple of blocks from my apartment.

The results: delicious. I wish all weekday lunches could be like this.

Local farmers

Okay, this is not a post about me cooking anything local. In fact, when I recently had a chance to bring a dish to a potluck baby shower for a friend who is a farmer, what did I bring? Store-bought hummus and pita. Busy Labor Day weekend.

But I did want to mention that said farmer friend was featured on Serious Eats' "Meet Your Farmers" series. Check it out!

(By the way, much of the produce at the baby shower was from my friend's Frog Bottom Farm. And it was delicious.)

A simple local meal

Okay, it's been a busy couple of weeks for me, and I haven't had much time to cook, much less post.

But I was inspired by my friend Brianne. She just traveled all over the U.S. and Europe and blogged about what she did and, most importantly, what she ate.

Some of the meals she ate in Europe were so simple yet sounded so delicious, featuring local produce, cheeses, breads, etc. Very Alice Waters—local ingredients at their peak prepared simply.

So I made a very simple lunch of Russian banana potatoes (which I had to buy just based on the name), a freshly hard-boiled egg (still warm!), a sliced heirloom tomato with salt and pepper, some blackberries, and a few pieces of cheese. The potatoes were boiled and then tossed with some local butter, salt, pepper, and garlic chives.

The meal was delicious. If only I had eaten it in Paris.

Two-day refried beans

Okay, the refried beans don't really take two days to make. But as usual, I under-estimated the amount of time it would take to cook the beans from dried, so by the time they were ready I had long since cooked and eaten some spaghetti for dinner. I was hungry.

But I finished the refried beans tonight, and they were delicious. A little dry, to be sure—I think I didn't use enough oil. But good.

I used Mark Bittman's recipe from How to Cook Everything Vegetarian. I'm feeling a little lazy, so I won't post the full recipe here. But essentially I sauteed some chopped onions in a neutral oil (I used sunflower), added a tablespoon of cumin, added three cups of cooked kidney beans, plus some diced pickled jalapenos and crushed garlic, and mashed them until my back hurt. Since it has been hurting since Friday, I think I probably quit a little too soon. Mark (yes, we are on a first-name basis) says some lumps are okay, but as you can see in the picture, my refried beans are quite chunky. But still, it was a very tasty dinner, seasoned with salt, pepper, and cayenne pepper; topped with a fried egg (look at that nice runny yolk!); and served with a large salad.

As I mentioned yesterday, although many of the ingredients were local (lettuce, cherry tomatoes, egg, onions, garlic...) enough were from afar that I am not considering this a One Local Summer entry. But still, I think it shows how often you can use local ingredients in recipes every day without much thought or effort.

A healthy local salad for lunch

On Saturday I had plans to go to a Korean barbecue for dinner. Though I wouldn't be partaking in the giant piles of pork and beef that are sliced thin and cooked on a tabletop grill, I still knew I would be eating a ton of food. So, I decided to have a light, easy lunch.

My salad was composed of baby lettuces from Truck Patch Farms topped by halved cherry tomatoes and sliced apricots. And sunflower seeds (my salad weakness) from Connecticut, so not too far away. I also used a seasoning blend called Salad Elegant from Penzey's—it includes paprika, parmesan cheese, poppy seeds, sesame seeds, etc.

On the side I had the last two slices of focaccia with some chipotle goat cheese from Cherry Glen. Unfortunately the focaccia was a bit too far past its prime—a little too dried out for my taste. So I ended up sort of working the goat cheese into the salad.

This was such a boring (though tasty) lunch that I hope it will not become my One Local Summer entry this week, but I am going to the beach this weekend, so my cooking opportunities will be limited.

Today I am "wasting" a potential cooking day by making some beans for Mark Bittman's vegetarian refried beans recipe (from his excellent book, How to Cook Everything Vegetarian. Making beans from scratch takes a while but it doesn't involve much hands-on work, and the payoff is great.

Plus, dried beans are so cheap. I am using about half a bag of kidney beans that cost me $2 from the Indian market. That and some chopped onion, a little bit of oil, salt and pepper, cayenne and cumin, and some diced jalapeno, and I have my refried beans. Top that with a fried egg and some cheddar cheese, with a salad on the side, and I have dinner. And actually everything I am using is local except for the beans themselves (and the oil and spices, of course). Not bad.