I’m heading to a screening of Fresh on Wednesday night with Lindsay. There’s still time to get tickets for Wednesday’s screening. Just visit freshthemovie.com to purchase them online for $10 plus a fee of about $1.25 per ticket. Otherwise, they’ll be $15 at the door.

Tuesday, June 2nd (SOLD OUT)
Times: 6:30 pm (Screening & Panel), 9:30 pm (Screening only)
Location: Bryant-Lake Bowl 810 West Lake Street – Minneapolis, MN 55408

Panel to follow screening:
Jeremy Iggers, Long time Twin Cities Food writer & Executive Director of Twin Cities Media Alliance 
Kristen Tombers, Owner and operator of Clancy’s Meat and Fish
Sandy and Lonny Dietz, farmers at Whitewater Gardens
Rhys Williams,Land Stewardship Project Board Member & organic and sustainable food distributor for Co-op Partners. 
Ana Joanes, Director & Producer of FRESH

Wednesday, June 3rd
Times: 7pm (Screening & Panel)
Location: The Riverview Theater – 3800 42nd Ave South – Minneapolis, MN 55406

Popcorn served with local Hope Creamery Butter!

Panel to follow screening:
Joanne Berkenkamp, Director of Local Foods IATP 
Maggie Adamek, Research Fellow – Local Foods, Sustainability, and Wellness & Co-Chair for Homegrown Minneapolis Local Foods Commercial Use Subcommittee
Greg Reynolds, Riverbend Farms
Ana Joanes, Director & Producer, FRESH
Tracy Singleton, Owner, Birchwood Cafe

Check for a screening in your area here: http://www.freshthemovie.com/screenings/fresh-screenings/

At the risk of being un-of the moment, I’d like to share some pictures from our February weekend in Duluth, MN. Allow me to set the record straight… this was the site of our first first picnic, attempted on the shores of Lake Superior and finished with gloved hands inside of a state park shelter with beautiful views of the lake.

If not for the snow, doesn’t this look like a lovely day for a picnic?

I thought it was a nice enough spot, and there were picnic tables. Tom reluctantly unloaded the (unnecessary) cooler.

In the end we got a little too cold and sought refuge. But as I said, we still had a lovely view of the lake. And with our teeth not so chattery and our hands not so cold, we were able to enjoy Tom’s creations a little more: lamb liver and pork terrine, baguette, Trader Joe’s dijon (too dijon for me, just dijon enough for Tom), olive oil, and parsley sprigs. It’s true that I continued eating with my leather gloves on. Tom found his fleece gloves didn’t take well to dipping bread in olive oil; he went bare-handed and was rather cold.

Finally, here’s the view from the shelter along with a few pictures from our stay in Duluth, MN. All images from the picnic were taken at Gooseberry Falls State Park. I’d like to return to Gooseberry Falls in the summertime, if we have a chance, to see the falls in their unfrozen state. Despite the cold, if you like to walk or hike, Duluth and the surrounding areas are a great place to visit. I’m sure it’s even better above freezing.

When I was looking for a recipe for spinach lasagna, Tom’s archival memory located the exact back issue from his collection in which such a recipe appeared. This one comes from the March & April 2004 issue of Cook’s Illustrated magazine. 

My lasagna didn’t come out looking quite so spinach-y as the picture in the magazine, but as anyone who complains about a CI recipe will ultimately reveal… I didn’t follow the recipe exactly. I changed things up a bit by making two smaller, square lasagne instead of one big 13×9. I usually do this when making lasagna as it is basically the same effort, and I get two dinners out my time instead of one. Lasagna #2 is already in the freezer waiting for the next time I don’t feel like cooking.

A few last words…

As it says in the article, “…use Italian fontina rather than bland and rubbery Danish or American fontina…” I found Italian fontina at the Wedge and I was glad I did. I passed up the Wisconsin variety (Don’t be fooled by Bel Gioso’s name… it’s Americano.) at Rainbow for the good stuff and it smelled sooo good when I took the cheese out of the plastic wrap today. No more non-Italian fontina!

Tom’s first words when coming in the door after work: “Smells like shallots!” I used to think “5 shallots” meant five of the shallot-shapes that come lumped in twos sometimes. I have known since I got some schooling from Tom a while back that 1 shallot is whatever the unit is BEFORE you take the skin off. I’m glad I know this now as my 5 large shallots that I picked out equalled exactly 1 cup—just as the recipe said they would when minced. 

Giving no-boil noodles a soak for 5 minutes in hot tap water makes for a WAY better end result. I used Barilla as CI suggested and did this soak that they talked about in a “Key Step” caption with photo. What a difference. As they said, “A five-minute soak… dramatically reduces the baking time for the no-boil noodles, allowing the spinach to remain fresh looking and tasting.” Try this the next time you use no boils… and don’t forget the foil on top!

Freshly ground nutmeg is awesome. I was reminded of nuez moscada en croquetas as I was grating it into the béchamel with my Microplane grater. If you don’t have one of these already (I know that most of you do), you should get one. Nothing is better for ultra-fine parmesan grating, chocolate shaving, nutmeg grating, and citrus zest creation!

The hardest part? Waiting the 10 minutes after it came out of the oven for it to cool before I could cut it and EAT.

I forgot to mention (as Sue pointed out in her comment), that Reisenthel baskets make great gifts. More than just gifts, they make great gift baskets. For example, here’s a photo from Tom’s birthday present from a couple of years ago.

If you look closely at the contents, you’ll notice this basket is how Tom came to know harissa. 1.5 years later, we’re still going strong on this jar.

The gift focused around Claudia Roden’s The New Book of Middle Eastern Food. In the section on “Flavorings, Aromatics, Condiments, and Oils,” Roden discusses and defines many ingredients that are key to Middle Eastern cooking but perhaps not typical in the average US kitchen:

Harissa. This very hot chili-pepper past flavored with garlic and spices is much used in North African cooking. It can be bought ready-made in tubes and cans but it will not have the special perfume of the homemade variety. To make your own, see page 464.

I pulled items from this list and filled the basket with them, knowing that a lack of hard-to-find ingredients might inhibit Tom’s creativity when looking through the book for inspiration.

If you’re purchasing a new cookbook for a friend, consider throwing in some key ingredients when you give the gift. I remember the hunt for all of these items being a lot of fun, especially once I discovered a gold mine in Yasmeen’s Mediterranean Foods in Saginaw, Michigan. They don’t appear to have a website, but you can reach them by phone at (989) 791-3082 or visit their location at 3545 Bay Rd in Saginaw, MI if you’re in the area. If nothing else, pick up a bag of dried limes and make yourself a pot of Chai Hamidh, as Roden says, “made by breaking open dried limes [with a hammer] and pouring bowling water over them” (p. 483).

Also in the basket: Bodum’s Assam tea press, a mint plant, roseflower water, dried limes, orange flower water, pomegranate syrup, Mustapha’s Moroccan Harissa and Olives, Gilway Demerara Sugar Cubes, Urban Accents rice, and several large containers of spices including sumac and whole fenugreek and nigella seeds.

Ever since I found Terrines, Pâtés, and Galantines in an antique store in Red Wing, I have been itching to make a terrine. But for whatever reason, I could never muster up the enthusiasm to assemble the various meat products required to make what the book describes as “the apotheosis of meatloaf”. It was the delicious duck terrine at the Red Stag Supper Club that finally convinced me to stop just talking terrine and start terrining terrine. Terrine.

Browsing the recipe section of T,P&G I found a recipe that was simple and rustic, two words that I like. The ingredient list for “Liver Terrine” was short:

• 1# chicken livers
• 1# pork
• 1 small shallot
• 2 T parsley, chopped
• 2 1/4 t salt
• 2 t pepper
• 3/4 t ground ginger
• 1/4 t ground cinnamon
• 3 T brandy
• 6 slices bacon

You begin to see what they mean by “apotheosis of meatloaf”! I didn’t have brandy on hand, so I planned to substitute bourbon, which I like better anyway. When I got to the butcher’s counter, I ran into a more serious deficiency: no chicken livers. Normally, the Wedge has a nice little bucket of the livers but, today being Valentine’s day (I guess?), they were out. My cashier suggested people might be buying Valentine’s for their cats. Luckily, the butcher was able to suggest an acceptable substitute:

As it happens, lamb liver is delicious, perhaps even more so than chicken livers. It has almost a piney taste, but in a good way. Of course, I didn’t know this yet, so I just went ahead with terrine assembly hoping for the best. Terrines are very easy, especially if you have a food processor. First I diced the liver:

Then I gave it a few pulses to catch it up to the already-ground pork, which I added and pulsed a bit to mix and grind further. The texture of a terrine can vary, from huge chunks of meat to a smooth paste. Since I was going for a rustic touch I left everything pretty coarse. After grinding the meat I mixed it with the rest of the ingredients, except for the bacon. The bacon is used to make a delicious little trough:

To which the meat mixture is added. I covered it and put it into a 350° oven for a couple of hours, until the juices ran clear and the internal temperature is at least 160°. After the terrine cooled I weighted it (for proper shape and texture) and put it in the refrigerator overnight. The next day, we had terrine bliss:

The perfect meal for a sub-zero picnic on the shores of Lake Superior! All you need is good bread and mustard (and cornichons, which the Wedge was also out of). The lamb liver was a pleasant surprise and gave this terrine an appropriately gamy flavor that has been missing from terrines I have made in the past. When dealing with something as high-fat as a terrine, a little gaminess can be a good thing. 

This was my first time using Terrines, Pâtés and Galantines and I was very encouraged by the result, even though I wasn’t able to follow the recipe exactly. I am looking forward to more exploration: especially if I can get my hands on a baby pig…