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Equinox Uovo-Margherita (or Egg-Pizza)

September 23, 2015 By Lauren

eggpizza

Happy Autumn Equinox, friends!

If your September has been flying as fast as ours has, then this dish is for you.  Call it a frittata or tortilla or just plain ol’ egg-pie, the combination of potatoes + assorted vegetable + eggs + cheese has seen me through many a hectic day.  It’s my kind of fast-food: one whose ingredients can be found in even the emptiest fridge, that takes five or less minutes of active preparation and can be eaten for breakfast, lunch and dinner and mid-night snack.

Last week I happened to have a few beautiful (and slowly turning) heirloom tomatoes on hand, so I arranged them on top of the potato and zucchinni frittata I was making.  I only had six eggs to fill my very broad skillet, so I added a whack-load of parmesan cheese to bulk it up.  When I took it out of the oven, I realized it totally belonged to a different genre of egg-pies–namely, the pizza one.  I added some freshly plucked basil and a good glug of olive oil and presto: the uovo-magherita (or egg-pizza) was born.

tomatoes slicedtomatoes zuchinnis

The Autumn Equinox is the official start of Fall, a farewell to Summer and a welcoming of cooler days, longer nights, and also sweaters, wool socks, sweet cider, and what is slow-cooked, brothy, roasted, stewed.

Saying farewell to Summer means a farewell to zucchinis and heirloom tomatoes and fresh basil, too.  That’s why I’m sharing this egg-pizza w/ you.  Let’s send off Summer in style.  Fast-food one, at that, to enjoy these still not-too-cold evenings and this waning Summer light.

moi eggoven uovomargherita

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Equinox Uovo-Margherita (or Egg-Pizza)

My cast-iron skillet has a 15-inch diameter. The amount of ingredients you use will depend on the diameter of your pan. Egg-pie, for me, is totally intuitive --use what you have on hand and let go of precision! If you've never improvised on a recipe before, this is a safe place to start.

Ingredients

  • knob ghee
  • two handfuls of new potatoes, peeled and sliced in half then sliced thinly
  • 2 small zucchinis, sliced in half then sliced thinly
  • 6-8 eggs, whisked w/ salt
  • 1-2 heirloom tomatoes, sliced thinly
  • a generous chunk of parmesan, grated
  • few leaves basil
  • glug or two of olive oil
  • course celtic sea salt

Directions

  1. Heat oven to 300F (150C). Place skillet or pan on stove and heat on medium. Add ghee once skillet is nice and hot and let melt.
  2. Add potatoes, distributing them evenly. Let cook undisturbed for 5 minutes so that they brown. Add pinch salt.
  3. Add zucchinis and stir. Let cook for a few more minutes.
  4. Whisk eggs in large mixing bowl w/ pinch of salt. Pour over zucchinis and potatoes.
  5. Let cook on stove for 5 minutes. Arrange half of your heirloom tomatoes on top. Take off heat and transfer to oven.
  6. Let cook for 12-15 minutes. I like my eggs to be wobbly, so I take mine out on the early side.
  7. A few minutes before you take your pie out of the oven, add the parmesan cheese.
  8. Let cool and add other half of the heirloom tomatoes, the basil and the good glug of olive oil and sprinkle w/ salt. Enjoy!
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Filed Under: Animal, Dinner, Egg, Lunch, Recipes, Summer Tagged With: breakfast, dinner, egg, fall, fastfood, frittata, lunch, pie, pizza, summer, tomatoes, tortilla, zucchini

Harvest Corn + Potato Chowder

September 12, 2015 By Lauren

brightcorn

We’re deep into late summer, the season where all is ripe, ready to be pulled from soil, stalk, vine.  It’s harvest-time and for me that means 2 things: #1. cramming as many summer activities (swimming in the lake and biking long-stretches beneath already-starting-to-fade green and eating as many raspberries/tomatoes/summer squash as possible) as I can into these ever-shortening days and #2. preserving, because this harvest season, like all seasons, is turning and for this Winter I dream of a cupboard lined w/ jars of home-canned tomatoes, a freezer-drawer filled w/ home-frozen berries and cracking open a jar of home-fermented dill pickles on some bone-chilling night.

In Geneva, we’ve already had a few down-right Fall-like days and I made this chowder one fresh evening with some frozen chicken broth from last Winter.  The recipe was adapted from Jessica Prentice’s Full Moon Feast, a beautiful book about what feeds us (and it’s so much more than just food, y’all) throughout the year.  Each chapter is named for each month’s full-moon–harking back to an age where time was so deeply interwoven w/ what was on (or missing) from our plates– and Prentice uses a mix of history, folk-lore, nutritional science, and personal anecdote to deepen our connections between ourselves and our food.

twopotatoes

The first full-moon of late summer was traditionally called the “Corn Moon”–corn meaning “grain” long before European colonialists encountered zea mays (or the corn in this recipe).  Prentice talks about agriculture–how it’s shaped our social, cultural and environmental landscapes–and about balance.  To paraphrase: yes, the way most grains are grown in the U.S. are corrosive to both our planet and ourselves and yes, many folks would agree that the rise of agriculture was, indeed, the starting point of this anthropocene epoch.  But also: grains have seen us through many a long-mooned night, and, when prepared properly, nourished us for thousands of years.

shuck

Like corn.  Corn was held, in many cultures, as something sacred–a symbol of survival and sustenance, something that could be stored to see one’s community through the barren Winter.  The corn that has nourished indigenous Americans for centuries has little to do w/ the majority of corn grown in N.America (and shipped elsewhere) now.  Genetically-modified, grown in petroleum-based fertilizers, sprayed with petroleum-based chemicals–this kind of corn is not a symbol of life, but of war and death.

Perhaps that’s why so many nutritional camps have sounded alarm.  Many foods have become controversial in these past years, but none more so than wheat and corn.  For me, these foods are prime examples of why nutritional guidance should be nuanced and not applied with such broad strokes.  The corn I used in this recipe is an old variety, grown in organically-cultivated soil from a neighboring farm.  If I wanted to, I could shell and dry its kernels and use its flour all Winter long.  Sounds pretty sacred to me.

When I say nutrition should be nuanced, I don’t mean complicated.  Sometimes it can be as simple as just eating the foods around you.  Like a corn and potato chowder on a harvest new-moon.

corn-chowder

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Harvest Corn + Potato Chowder

Adapted from Prentice's Full Moon Feast

Ingredients

  • 3 ears corn and the cob
  • 1 quart chicken broth
  • 3 tablespoons ghee
  • 2 tablespoons za'atar or dried thyme
  • 3 small leeks, sliced into rounds
  • 1 carrot, diced small
  • 4 handfuls potatoes, cut into chunks
  • salt and pepper to taste
  • 3/4 cup raw sour-cream + 1 tablespoon for garnishing

Directions

  1. Slice the kernals of your corn into a bowl and scrape the corn "milk" into the bowl, as well.
  2. Heat your broth in a small pot with the corn cobs and simmer covered for 20 minutes.
  3. Meanwhile, add ghee to a heavy-bottomed soup-pot. Saute the leeks until translucent. Add carrots and cook and stir for another few minutes. Add potatoes and enough stock to cover (if you don't have enough, just add a little water). Add big pinch of salt. Bring to a boil, then simmer (covered) until the potatoes are well-cooked (about 15 minutes).
  4. Add corn kernels and simmer for another 5 minutes or until tender.
  5. Remove from heat and add sour-cream and stir. Add salt and pepper to taste.
  6. Garnish w/ a spoonful of sour-cream and enjoy w/ a slice of buttered rye-bread.
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Filed Under: Dinner, Lunch, Plant, Recipes, Summer, Vegetable Tagged With: chowder, corn, dinner, harvest, latesummer, potatoes, seasonal, vegetables

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