Farmer's market fare

     How I love the Farmer's market and all the fresh food that you can get there!  Needless to say, I have been making a lot of recipes that have been all/mostly from the farmer's market.  First there was the dinner saturday night; fresh red snapper with zucchini and sweet potatoes.  Lunch the next day was homemade pickles, a tempeh reuben sandwich (the best sandwich ever!), sugar snap peas and a dessert bowl of fresh berries with whipped cream.  For dinner, it was rice pilaf with beans and tempeh and artichokes.  So delicious!  Here are some of the recipes:

Kosher Pickles the Right Way



Makes about 30 pickle quarters or 15 halves
Time: 1 to 2 days

Ingredients:
1/3 cup kosher salt
1 cup boiling water
2 pounds small (“Kirby”) cucumbers, washed (scrub if spiny) and cut lengthwise into halves or quarters
At least 5 cloves garlic, smashed
1 large bunch dill, preferably fresh and with flowers, or substitute 2 tablespoons dried dill and 1 teaspoon dill seeds or 1 tablespoon coriander seeds

Procedure:


1. Combine the salt and boiling water in a large bowl; stir to dissolve the salt. Add a handful of ice cubes to cool down the mixture, then add all the remaining ingredients.
2. Add cold water to cover. Use a plate slightly smaller than the diameter of the bowl and a small weight to hold the cucumbers under the water. Keep at room temperature.
3. Begin sampling the cucumbers after 4 hours if you’ve quartered them, 8 hours if you’ve cut them in half. In either case, it will probably take from 12 to 24 or even 48 hours for them to taste “pickle-y” enough to suit your taste.
4. When they are ready, refrigerate them, still in the brine. The pickles will continue to ferment as they sit, more quickly at room temperature, more slowly in the refrigerator. They will keep well for up to a week.

     I first made these at Camp Cazadero during our vacation.  They came out tasting wonderful and I have been looking for pickling cucumbers ever since!  I was glad to see some at the Farmer's market and so bought quite a few (I don't think it was 2 lbs worth), quartered them and made this simple recipe.  I don't have fresh dill, so I just used dried dill with no seeds and lots of spicy garlic.  Mmmm... crisp and spicy. 




Kosher pickles

 Tempeh Reuben sandwich

Ingredients:
tempeh, grilled and cut into slices
Swiss cheese, sliced
sauerkraut (I used a kosher dill pickle from the Farmer's market)
mayonnaise
pickles, cut into tiny pieces
ketchup
bread

Procedure:

1) Cut up the pickles and combine with the mayo and ketchup until it tastes like thousand island dressing.  I can't give exact proportions for this, I just combines them all together until it looked/tasted like thousand island dressing.
2) Grill the tempeh (I used a Foreman grill).
3) Assemble your sandwiches: Lay down your thousand island dressing on both sides of the bread, top with the sliced tempeh and cheese and finally the layer of sauerkraut.  Grill until all the cheese is melted.  Again, a Foreman grill works wonderfully.
4) Enjoy the best reuben sandwich ever!

     What can I say?  This really was the most delicious Reuben sandwich I have ever tasted!  Scott agrees too!  And with the tempeh instead of the traditional corned beef or pastrami, it is a lot healthier for you too!  The sauerkraut has a lot to do with the taste, so get the freshest sauerkraut you can find!  Make your own!  I originally got this recipe from Wild Fermentation by Sandor Ellex Katz.  Here is a link if you want to check out how to make sauerkraut. http://www.wildfermentation.com/resources.php?page=sauerkraut



Tempeh reuben sandwich with sugar snap peas,
fresh pickles and a bowl of berries.  Best lunch ever!

      My final recipe is one that I made up myself.  I have been really enjoying this rice pilaf idea, so I tried to do something off of that (see previous entry and use no chicken chicken stock).  I figured that beans and rice make a complete protein, so I thought I would add some cooked beans into the mix.  I used the rest of my leftover black and red beans, soaked them overnight and cooked them separately from the pilaf.  I then used the rest of the grilled tempeh leftover from the Reuben sandwich and added that in with the beans at the end.  I also used leftover brown rice and wild rice.  I suppose it was a leftover kind of night!  My only complaint was, as usual (and even with soaking) the beans took forever to cook.  The rice pilaf took a long while too, although maybe that was because I followed the 1 part rice to 3 parts liquid instructions for the wild rice.  I think I could have gotten away with a 1:2 ratio.  A little no chicken chicken stock helped add in flavor and there you go!

A close up of rice pilaf with beans, wild rice and tempeh.