The vegetables and fruits that are common right now are leafy greens (lettuces, swiss chard, collard greens) and strawberries.  Leafy greens are great, but I was really on a mission to find strawberries.  The market opened at 8am and by the time we got there at 9am, all the strawberries were sold!  So, I explored a few other vendors.

Noble Springs Dairy was there with their delicious goat cheese.

One of the many farms present was Delvin Farms, with their lovely produce. There were also several farms present selling beef, pork and chicken.

Since I couldn’t find any strawberries, I decided to get some strawberry preserves from Norton Family Farms.

I was really impressed with the preserves.  They were just slightly sweet, really letting the strawberry flavor shine.  Norton Family Farms had several other preserves that I can’t wait to try next time.

If you are in the area, the Franklin Farmer’s Market is definitely worth the trip!

]]> http://nashvillefork.com/2012/05/23/franklin-farmers-market/feed/ 0 nashfork 100_6381 100_6382 100_6383 100_6384 100_6392 http://nashvillefork.com/2012/05/15/fresh-summer-produce/ http://nashvillefork.com/2012/05/15/fresh-summer-produce/#comments Tue, 15 May 2012 14:27:22 +0000 Sarah http://nashvillefork.com/?p=1933 ]]> Summer is upon us!  For us that means it is tomato, green pepper and cucumber season!  In the past, we have participated in community supported agriculture or a CSA.  For a variety of reasons, that just doesn’t fit our lifestyle this year.  To get our fresh vegetable fix, we plan on visiting some of the area Farmer’s Markets.  Here are a few that we plan on trying to visit soon:

1.  Franklin Farmer’s Market: According to the website, over 70 farms participate.  Located behind the Factory at Franklin, this market is open Saturdays from 8am until 1pm.  There is also a Tuesday afternoon market open from noon until 4pm at Harlinsdale Farm, located on Franklin Road across from the Factory.

2.  Thompson’s Station Farmer’s Market:  Operates from 2pm until 6pm on Wednesdays at 4691 Columbia Pike.  No idea how many vendors participate, but baked goods were mentioned on the website and I do love a great baked good.

3.  Nashville Farmer’s Market:  We’ve been here a few times, mostly before the flood.  It’s open every day except Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s Day.  The hours are a little bit of a moving target, because it depends on the individual merchant.  There are also about 10 restaurants located next door that we would love to try.

4.  12 South Farmer’s Market:  The market is located in Sevier Park on Tuesdays from 3:30pm until 6:30pm.  Meat, dairy, baked goods and produce are all sold, with vendors listed on the website.

As we explore these over the summer, we hope to share some pictures with you all and maybe a new recipe or two!  Is there anywhere else we should go?

When I was working in my post-doc laboratory, I was invited to a Diwali celebration by a fellow lab mate.  Being the good Southern lady, I offered to bring a dessert.  I knew there would be quite a few foreign nationals at the celebration, so I wanted to make something that would be novel to most of the people at the party and expose them to a Southern dish.  After trying my Kentucky Derby pie, one young man exclaimed that this was the best thing ever.  Now, I won’t go that far, but it’s pretty good.

For the pie, you’ll need…

• 1 cup sugar
• ½ cup self-rising flour
• 2 eggs
• 1 stick butter, melted and cooled
• 1 cup chopped pecans
• 1 (6 oz.) pkg. semi-sweet chocolate chips
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 1 deep-dish pie crust

Mix sugar, flour, eggs, butter, and vanilla until well-blended.

Add pecans and chocolate chips, mixing with a spoon.  Pour into 9 inch deep-dish pie crust.

Bake at 325 degrees for 45 minutes.

Enjoy! 

Phyllo chicken pie is super tasty and super easy.  While being tasty is great, the easy part is really what sold us on this dish.

For chicken phyllo pie, you’ll need…

• 4 cups of chopped chicken (we bought a rotisserie chicken and used all the meat from that)
• 8 sheets of phyllo dough
• One package of creamed spinach (we used Bird’s Eye)
• 1 tablespoon of dried onion flakes
• 2 Tablespoons of chopped garlic
• Zest/juice from 1/2 lemon
• 4 Tablespoons of butter, melted
• 4 oz of crumbled garlic and herb feta cheese

I’ve always been a little intimidated to work with phyllo dough….  I thought it would be temperamental and sticky.  Turns out, it was one of the easiest things I’ve worked with in a long time.

Preheat the oven to 400°.

Coat a 9 inch pan with non-stick cooking spray.  Place one phyllo sheet in the dish, allowing in to overhang by about 4 – 6 inches.  Brush with butter.  Repeat the layers until you have used 8 sheet of phyllo.

Microwave the spinach according to the directions on the package.  Combine the spinach, chicken, onions, zest and juice of the lemon, garlic, and feta cheese.  Spread the mixture over the phyllo.

Fold each side of the phyllo over the filling, brushing each with butter.  Bake for about 20 minutes or until the phyllo is golden.

Our phyllo on the left side got a little scorched.  I didn’t take the recipe seriously when it said to brush with butter and I paid the price.   Next time, I’ll be a little more liberal with my butter brushing.

The dish makes 6 servings and we paired it with our tomato and cucumber salad.  According to the recipe card, it has 340 calories, 21 g of fat, 19 g of carbohydrates and 19 g of protein.  Cary liked it so much, he said it should go in our normal rotation of dinner entrees.

If you are interested in checking out other recipes by Publix, they are listed here.

*Full disclosure:  Publix doesn’t know who we are.  We just like them. 

Cut two to three cucumbers into chunks.  I didn’t like cucumbers for a long time.  After eating sushi, I discovered that I like cucumbers just fine as long as the seeds and the skin were gone.   For this salad, I just include the flesh of the cucumber.  If you like the other parts, then include them.  Cut and de-seed three to four tomatoes.  I prefer heirloom tomatoes, but any kind will work.  Add a scoop of garlic and about a cup of Newman’s Own Light Balsamic Vinaigrette Dressing.  Refrigerate overnight and serve!

The lovely thing about this salad is that you can tailor it to your tastes.  If you like onions, add them.  Green peppers your thing?  Go for it!  Enjoy!

The Momofuku Milk Bar cookbook has been on my wish list for a while.  A few summers ago, Cary and I went to New York.  Dr. HBar suggested we visit the establishment.  We got to New York and started eating at all sorts of delis, burger places, cupcake places, and possibly the best Italian restaurant ever and totally forgot about her suggestion.  Biggest. Regret. Ever.

The cookbook came in this week.  I’ve been looking through it every night.  It’s a lovely book.  Christina Tosi combines whimsy and creativity in her recipes.  Apparently she takes very good notes, which results in very detailed, somewhat complicated recipes.  As a scientist, I appreciate the detail.  I wish the book had more pictures, but that’s really neither here nor there.

After much agonizing internal debate, I decide to make the crack pie.  It’s kinda like a chess pie, but not quite.

Before making the pie, you have to make oat cookie and let it cool.  I did this the night before making the actual pie.

For oat cookie, you’ll need:

• 1 stick of butter
• 1/3 cup of light brown sugar
• 3 Tablespoons of granulated sugar
• 1 egg yolk
• 1/2 cup of flour
• 1 and 1/2 cups of rolled oats
• 1/8 of a teaspoon of baking powder
• pinch of baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon of salt

Heat the oven to 350°F.

Cream the butter and sugar in a stand mixture with a paddle attachment for about 4 or 5 minutes.   The sugars should be totally incorporated.  She says it should be a pale white.  My mixture was really more like a tan color.

Combine the flour, oats, baking powder, baking soda and salt in a bowl and mix well.  Add this to the butter and sugar mixture.  Stir for about a minute until everything is incorporated.

Coat a cookie sheet with non-stick cooking spray.  Spread out the cookie dough on the sheet until it is about 1/4 of an inch thick.  Bake for about 15 minutes.  Once it is cooled, break it apart and store it in an airtight container.

For the filling, you’ll need…

• 1 and 1/2 cups of sugar
• 3/4 cup of light brown sugar
• 1/4 cup of milk powder
• 1/4 cup of corn powder
• 1 and 1/2 teaspoons of salt
• 2 sticks of butter, melted
• 3/4 cup of heavy cream
• 1 tablespoon of vanilla extract (the original recipe calls for 1/2 teaspoon)
• 8 egg yolks

One of the really neat things about this cookbook, is that Tosi uses ingredients that I am not familiar with.  For example, milk powder.  After reading her description, I think milk powder is the same as dried milk.  After hunting around the aisles at my friendly Publix, I found this.

I think it worked well.  The next ingredient that I was unfamiliar with was corn powder.  I read the description, which said to buy freeze dried corn and make my own.  Due to some time constraints, I wasn’t really interested in doing this.  I know chess pie recipes sometime call for corn meal, so I was hoping I could find a fine grain meal lacking baking powder to substitute.

I ran upon Bob’s Red Mill Organic Corn Flour with the only ingredient being corn.  It worked.  Corn powder is used in quite a few recipes in the book, so I was quite happy to find an easy substitute.

Place the sugars, milk powder, corn powder and salt into a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment and mix on a low speed until just blended.

Add the melted butter and mix for two to three minutes.

Add the cream.

Mix for a few minutes…

until all the white streaks from the cream disappear.

Add the eggs and mix until glossy.

Now it is time to assemble the pie!

In a food processor, pulse the oat cookie, 1 tablespoon of light brown sugar, and 1/4 teaspoon of salt.

Melt about 3/4 a stick of butter and mix it with the crust by hand.  Press the crust into two 10 inch pie pans.

Place the pie pans on a baking sheet and divide the filling between the two pie pans.  Bake for 15 minutes.

Reduce the temperature on the oven to 325°F and open the door for about 5 minutes (until the oven reaches 325).  Bake the pies at 325 for an additional 10 minutes.  The center of the pie should still be jiggly, but the edges should be firm.

Allow the pie to cook completely and place in the refrigerator, wrapped in plastic wrap.  Serve the pie cold.  I froze the second pie for a cookout we are hosting next week.  I’ll let it thaw for about an hour before I serve it.

When Cary tried this pie, he said it was so much more than chess pie.  He’s right…  after much sampling for consistency (that’s what any scientist does, right?), we decided the crust really made the difference.

The beautiful thing about this recipe is that you can change out the crust (pretzel maybe?) and add different things to the filling (fruit, pecans, chocolate chips).  Very versatile and absolutely delicious. 

Here are the ingredients for the cake:

• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 2 cups sugar
• ¼ teaspoon salt
• 4 heaping Tablespoons unsweetened baking cocoa
• 2 sticks butter
• 1 cup boiling water
• ½ cup buttermilk 
• 2 large eggs, beaten
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 teaspoon vanilla

The pictures from the original link are so pretty I’m almost embarrassed to post mine, but here goes! 

Melt the two sticks of butter in a medium size sauce pan on the stove.  Add the baking cocoa, 1 cup of boiling water and let the mixture boil for about 30 seconds while stirring.  Set the cocoa mixture to the side while you mix together the flour, sugar and salt in a bowl.  Add the cocoa mixture to the flour mixture and stir.

Combine the 1/2 cup of buttermilk, 2 eggs, vanilla, and baking soda together and stir it into the cocoa mixture.  Pour this into a greased 13 x 18 inch cookie sheet pan.   Bake at 350°C for 20 minutes.

While the cake is baking, go ahead and make the frosting.

Here are the ingredients:

• 1 3/4 sticks butter
• 4 heaping Tablespoons unsweetened baking cocoa
• 6 Tablespoons milk
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 1 pound (minus 1/2 cup) powdered sugar

Melt the butter in a medium saucepan.  (I just rinsed out the pan I used for the cake.)  Add the cocoa and stir for about 30 seconds until all the cocoa is dispersed in the butter.  Take off the heat and add the milk, vanilla and the powdered sugar.  Pour the icing on the cake.

Easiest and tastiest chocolate cake ever!

Sarah Lawrence at Little Tots Photography took these pictures.  If you are looking for a child’s photographer, she is wonderful.

*Disclaimer:  Sarah doesn’t know we have a blog.  She is just great! 

]]> http://nashvillefork.com/2012/04/07/our-little-chef/feed/ 0 nashfork Chef2 http://nashvillefork.com/2012/03/24/tres-leches-cake/ http://nashvillefork.com/2012/03/24/tres-leches-cake/#comments Sun, 25 Mar 2012 03:37:46 +0000 Sarah http://nashvillefork.com/?p=1851 ]]>

It’s no surprise that Cary and I are Pioneer Woman fans (see here and here).  So when her new cookbook came out, we were very excited.

This cookbook is a little different from her first one.  While there are lots of photos of her family, the focus of this book seems to be the food.  For each dish, she gives 2 or 3 ways to adjust the recipe so you can tailor it to your preferences.

Similar to her previous cookbook, the presentation of the recipes are beautiful.  I love the pictures at each step.  It is so helpful when you are making an unfamiliar recipe or using a new technique.  If you are looking for a great book with great recipes, we highly suggest it.

The first recipe we decided to make was Tres Leches Cake.  (Actually, we have a bet going on during March Madness.  When Cary wins a round, he gets to pick a baked good for me to make.  He picked this one.)

The cake calls for the following ingredients:

• 1 cup all purpose flour
• 1 and 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 5 large eggs seperated
• 1 cup sugar
• 1/3 cup whole milk
• 1 tablespoon vanilla extract
• 12 ounce can of sweetened condensed milk
• 14 ounce can of evaporated milk
• 1/4 cup heavy cream
• maraschino cherries
• Extra creamy cool whip (or whipped heavy cream)

Preheat the oven 350 and spray a 9 x 12 pan with non stick cooking spray.

Mix the flour, baking soda and salt in a large bowl.  In a stand mixer, beat the eggs yolks with 3/4 cup of sugar until they are light yellow in color.  Add the milk and vanilla to the egg mixture and beat until everything is just mixed.  Pour the egg mixture into the flour and stir.  In a clean bowl, beat the egg whites to the soft peak stage.  Add 1/4 cup of sugar and continue beating until the eggs whites are stiff.  Fold the egg whites into the bowl with the other ingredients and just mix everything together.  Place the batter in the 9 x 12 pan and bake for 30 to 35 minutes.

Allow the cake to cool completely in the pan.  Once it is cooled, flip it out into another 9 x 12 dish.  (She placed it on a platter, but I was really worried about the milk going everywhere.) Using a fork, poke lots of holes in the cake.

Mix the cream, condensed milk, and evaporated milk and pour over the cake.  At this point, I was very happy with my decision to put the cake in another 9 x 12 pan.  All the milk soaked into the cake in about 30 minutes.

You can top the cake with heavy cream.  However, in this house, we like cool whip and are not ashamed.  We bought the extra creamy (now with real cream!) cool whip and used that to ice the cake.

Top with a maraschino cherry and enjoy!

We had an excellent bartender.  Since it was a night out on the town, we asked him if he had any recommendations.  He suggested a drink called the Alpine.  When he described the drink, Cary and I snarled up our noses at the addition of gin.  Personally, I think gin tastes like a pine tree.  He convinced us just to try it, and we were hooked.  Not only did he make a delicious drink, he showed us how to make it at home (muddled lemon, equal parts Hendrick’s Gin and St. Germaine, a splash of soda water and a cucumber garnish) .  That, folks, is true service.

We tried the crab cakes and cauliflower tater tot appetizers.  We’ve talked about the crab cakes before.  My biggest surprise was how good the cauliflower tater tots were.  I didn’t quite know what to expect, but these were delightful crispy tots held together with some sort of cheese (white cheddar, maybe?).  They were very lightly seasoned resulting in a very aromatic and slightly nutty taste.  They went very well with the tangy mustard sauce and the Parmesan shavings on the plate.

The one complaint I have about Mack and Kate’s is that the menu isn’t detailed enough.  After debating for quite a while, I decided upon the scallops with butternut squash risotto.  I was pleasantly surprised that the risotto contained red and green peppers, red onions and some sort of light, creamy cheese along with the butternut squash.  The scallops were seared beautifully and went perfectly with the risotto.  If I had a little more detail (the addition of the peppers and onions), I would not have hesitated about ordering this dish.

Normally when I’m at a restaurant, I don’t get a chocolate dessert because they taste like they came from a box.  With some trepidation, I ordered the chocolate strawberry cake.  I was pleasantly surprised at the airy chocolate cake, with fresh strawberry layers and a somewhat heavy milk chocolate icing.  It was a perfect finish to a perfect evening.

*This is a post that wasn’t going to happen.  We had been to Mack and Kate’s on a previous occasion for brunch.  It was delicious, which is why we decided to go for dinner.  We had such a fantastic experience, I couldn’t help but blog about it. Sorry for the lack of pictures.