There are few things more satisfying on a cold winter’s evening than sitting down to a meal brought about by your own craft and ingenuity. When a morning spent tracking rabbits across the snowed-in woodlands yields a young hare to serve as the centerpiece to a meal, garnished by shallots from the root cellar, carefully laid aside in summer’s waning, and sour cornichons from the crock, with fresh-baked bread, sliced, toasted and topped with leeks from that same cellar, bacon curing since the fall’s slaughter and cream milked out in the barn at the crack of dawn, this is the stuff of foodie dreams, culinary transcendence.

Returning to reality, though, I would most likely have missed the rabbit (and not for lack of firing, many, many times), my leeks and shallots would be dried up – along with the cow – the cornichons would be used up or spoiled, and poor little Tom Junior would have died of cholera. I have no illusions about my ability to survive in more rustic conditions. Luckily, rather than being dependent on my instincts and wits for survival, I can avail myself of the conveniences of the modern city. Instead of hours spent trying to outsmart small furry animals, a leisurely bike ride to Clancey’s is all I need to obtain a rabbit, conveniently skinned, eviscerated and frozen – as well as some awesomely gelatinous beef stock. And while our urban living situation has forced Martha and me into quarters too small to house a root cellar with sand-filled barrels of leeks and shallots, the co-op keeps a good supply these and other allia going pretty much year-round. As much as I like to romanticize the food and eating styles of the past, I’m grateful for the modern food system. (Thanks Monsanto!)

But even if modern life doesn’t demand a strictly local and seasonal diet, we shouldn’t overlook recipes developed with a place and time in mind before such considerations were optional. There is something perfect about a steaming pot of heavy stew on a winter’s night when the snow is falling in fat flakes and the fact that I can buy asparagus in February isn’t going to change that.

The dishes that follow both come from Madeleine Kamman’s When French Women Cook, specifically the chapter devoted to Marie-Charlotte. Raised in Poitou, France and later located in Paris around the turn of the last century, for Marie-Charlotte seasonal and local were realities rather than trends. These two recipes are satisfying ways to use up the remnants of the winter larder, but are equally satisfying when the only foresight required is a trip to the grocery store in advance of a big snowstorm.

Lapin aux Echalotes at aux Cornichons

I have only prepared and/or eaten rabbit a few times in my  life, and this recipe produced the best tasting one yet. I thought the use of pickles to the stew odd but their sourness combined in a familiar and delicious way with the sweetness of long-roasted shallots. For having such a short ingredient list, this produces a very flavorful stew.

On cutting up rabbits: The recipe as printed simply called for a young rabbit, but the first time it is referred to the instructions they are called “rabbit pieces”. If your rabbit came whole like mine did, here’s how I cut mine up: remove the hind legs and the forelegs. Slice off the flaps of belly meat from either side. Cut tight along the backbone to remove the loins from both sides of the rabbit. There may be a couple of tenderloins floating in the cavity – cut them out. Reserve the ribcage and backbone for stock (I just throw it in with my chicken carcasses). To promote even cooking, tie the tapered end of the loins back over the loin to produce an even cylinder. Roll the belly meat around a piece of tenderloin each and tie into an even bundle.

• 4 T butter
• 2 dozen large shallots, peeled
• 1 young rabbit (I didn’t ask mine’s age)
• Salt and pepper
• 1—1 ½ cups brown veal stock (I used the excellent beef stock from Clancey’s)
• 6 small sour pickles, sliced.

Heat the oven to 325ºF. Heat the butter in a large, straight-sided pan. Sauté the shallots until just beginning to brown. Season with salt and pepper. While you’ve got the salt and pepper handy, season the rabbit pieces and stir in with the shallots. Allow to brown a few minutes and then transfer the pan, covered, into the oven. Bake 40 minutes, basting at regular intervals with the juices that will accumulate in the pot. (I basted every ten minutes.) Raise the oven temperature to 400ºF, remove the pan and cover and stir in the pickle slices and the stock. Return to oven, uncovered, and bake an additional 20-30 minutes until the rabbit pieces are well browned on one side (do not stir after uncovering) and the sauce is reduced to a glaze.

Roties aux Blanc de Poireaux

Garlic toast topped with a mixture of leeks, bacon, cream and goat cheese – probably not something you should eat every day, but after trying it you might be tempted.

• 3 T butter
• 1 large leek
• Salt and pepper
• 3 oz bacon
• 1 cup cream
• 1 oz goat cheese
• 6 slices french country bread
• 1 clove of garlic
• Parsley, chopped

Melt the butter in a large skillet, add the leeks and cook over low heat, covered, until the leeks are quite soft and reduced. Season with salt and pepper.

Meanwhile, chop the bacon into a rough ¼” dice and cook in a small skillet until crisp and most of the fat is rendered out. Drain the fat and reserve for another use and add the bacon to the leeks.

Add cream to bacon-leek mixture and allow to cook on medium low heat, uncovered, until cream is much reduced. Stir in goat cheese to melt. Cover and keep warm.

Toast the slices of bread and rub each with the garlic clove. Top each slice with a healthy spoonful of leek-bacon-cream-goat cheese mixture and sprinkle with parsley. Serve hot.

Not three hours after Martha published the news yesterday that we had taken delivery of a winter-blues-banishing box of limes and Meyer lemons from the good people at FruitShare, we received an email from one of their marketing people thanking us for the post. Lest you think something untoward has taken place behind your innocent blog-reading back, dear blog-reader, let me assure you that we bought our fruit share fair and square. Martha didn’t receive any kind of solicitation or compensation for posting about it – at least not that she has told me about!

In addition to some nice words about the blog – flattery is the surest route to any blogger’s heart – our fruity correspondent included some recipes, and, in a change from most food marketing, the recipes actually looked pretty good. I was particularly drawn to the Meyer lemon pesto, since I am a fan of off-beat pestos. After work, with neither plans nor ingredient shopping trips made for dinner, I found myself making Meyer lemon pesto sooner than expected.

Martha was glad I did; she loved the bright lemon flavor. I personally found it a little bitter from the pith, but it did get me thinking of warmer climates.

This recipe is basically the same as the one I received in the email, except I substituted parsley for basil and sunflower seeds for pine nuts – all in the interest of avoiding a trip to the store.

Meyer Lemon Pesto

• One Meyer lemon, cut into pieces and seeded
• ½ cup parsley leaves
• 1 clove garlic, crushed
• 2 T toasted sunflower seeds
• ¼ cup parmesan cheese, grated
• 3 T olive oil
• Salt and pepper to taste

Process first four ingredients in food processor until ground. Transfer to a small bowl; stir in cheese and oil. Season to taste with salt and pepper.

We ate it over fresh fettuccine; it would be a great accompaniment to a white-fleshed fish, as well.

Last Wednesday night I hustled from a meeting near the Mississippi to Cooks of Crocus Hill in Edina before their 9 o’clock closure, refusing the freeway. Our tropical jewel fruit share had arrived. I had called the shop earlier to find out exactly how long I had to drop in and pick up the fruit and after explaining their lack of refrigeration, etc. etc. it became apparent I really ought to come that night, so I made it work. From the original agreement from Cooks:

Nature can be fickle. We have tried to be as precise as possible when listing delivery dates of our crop shares to you [ours was advertised as mid-January, so these will definitely wobble a bit]. We will be notifying you as soon as possible regarding your pick up date and time. Please make arrangements to stop by for your share no later than 24 hours after the confirmed delivery time.

This all seemed like a bit of a pain until I arrived at Cooks to find my glorious, giant box of fruit. All is forgiven. “This is all for us?!” I blathered. I smiled! I was the only one picking up at the Edina location, so yes, it was all ours. This was no small box–it’s a good thing I had found a nearby parking spot.

I arrived at home still grinning from ear to ear with our little bounty from the non-frozen world. Thus began the bigger question: what are we going to do with all of these lemons and limes? So far they’ve brought a great deal of inspiration and cheer to this Minnesota-kitchen-in-February. Naturally, our plans around them are fueled by a lurking anxiety that we’ll fail to use our new citrus friends until they’re past their prime.

Lemon curd, tacos with lime, lime sorbet, lemon vinaigrettes, lemon chicken, limeade, pies, cakes, lemon-in-your-tea (or water!). It’s all on the table. The best part? You’re all invited over for cocktails.

Cooks of Crocus Hill offers crop shares (some of which are fruit shares) throughout the year. Unlike a traditional risk-oriented CSA, they promise refunds on deposits in the event that shares aren’t delivered. Find out what’s available now: http://www.cooksofcrocushill.com/cropshare/shares

For our fruit share, Cooks worked with the always certified organic FruitShare. We’re thinking of ordering directly from fruitshare in the future. Here’s what’s in season at the moment: http://www.fruitshare.com/Featured-Product

I dislike spice racks–those awful powder-coated ornamental metal racks with pre-labeled, pre-packed spices and their counterparts in beechwood with Lazy Susans built into the base. They just don’t make sense for most cooks or most kitchens. They’re merely decorative at best but, as I remember the one mounted behind my grandmother’s range, more often covered in unsightly dust and grime.

At some point, though, I realized our own system of tumbling stacks of assorted jars wasn’t really working. It was hard to see what we had, what was running low, and in addition to the stuffed shelf of spices, we had several larger containers tucked away in another space. Inspired by an old Door Sixteen post from January ’09, I picked up a crop of RATIONELL VARIERA racks from IKEA on New Year’s Day.

A note on the installation: IKEA’s instructions recommend removing the door to which you’ll be mounting the racks and doing the project on a flat surface. In theory, this seems very practical, and in a kitchen with IKEA’s own cabinets installed it might even be easy. But given the thick and many layers of paint covering every hinge in our kitchen, I determined pretty quickly that the door wasn’t coming down. Bar clamps to the rescue! I was able to secure the door with clamps to another door, giving enough stability to drill.

Knowing that we’d have to leave some spices in the existing cupboard, we chose those for the door by frequency of use and by grouping types of herbs and spices together. Herbs fit in the top rack, another holds seeds, baking spices fill the third row, and the most colorful group sits at the bottom: sumac, cumin, turmeric, coriander, cayenne, and paprika. We kept salts and peppers and Tom’s collection of Penzeys curries on the shelf along with saffron packages and bay leaves (the only flavoring that refused to fit through the smallish mouths of the IKEA jars).

For the labels, I bought a few sheets of adhesive-backed paper and used a Martha Stewart punch to make the shapes.

Transferring the majority of the spices (above left) to the racks on the cupboard door created room for olive oil and prep bowls in this space (above right).

I finished this project on January 2, and a month later, it still brings me way too much happiness to see these neatly labeled groups of spices gracing the inside of our cabinet door every day. It’s so nice to have easy access to all our flavorings and enjoy their colors through clear glass. As a bonus, the easy-open lids make the jars great for cooking. And so far, there’s only a little bit of dust on top of the jars…

There are plenty of fast foods that you can make better at home: this burger will beat anything that ever crawled out from under any golden arches, or, if Taco Bell is your thing, you can easily beat the experience at home by cooking up a bowl of oatmeal and throwing it in a tortilla. But there are some foods that are better never attempted at home; foods that benefit from economies of scale such that cooking them at home makes no sense.

Kushari is one of those foods. In Cairo, you don’t have to walk far to find a kushari stand, but the complexity of the operation – and these places only serve the one dish – is a clue to its unsuitability for adaptation at home. After indicating just how much kushari you’re interested in eating you can watch your bowl head down the line where it is filled from several pots, one man to a pot: rice, noodles, lentils, chickpeas, fried onions and tomato sauce.

Yes, this is really a dish with both rice and pasta, lentils and chickpeas. It’s a starch-lover’s dream, packed with affordable calories – which partially explains its popularity in Egypt. Preparing these ingredients to all be ready simultaneously is something the many employees of the kushari joint have down to a science. Doing it at home, unless you have a ready brigade of helpers and extra stove space, is a challenge. And for the humble result , you are better off just hitting up the local kushari place.

Unfortunately, outside of Egypt such restaurants are rare. (I did once locate kushari in Minneapolis, a special at the Lyndale Grill and Grocery.) So for those of you with a craving that can’t be satisfied and some patience, here’s what I did: my stove has four burners; I used three of them (the fourth being taken up by a pot of old frying oil that I am too lazy to clean). On one, I started a pot of rice. At 30 minutes, this is one of the longest cooking items. In a pan on another burner, I started caramelizing some onions. In a large pot on the third burner, I brought water and lentils to a boil.

After 20 minutes, the lentils were toothsome and ready to come out. But don’t drain them! You need that hot lentil water! I used a mesh strainer to fish out as many lentils as possible from the water and placed them in a covered bowl to stay warm. After bringing the water back to a boil, I added in broken vermicelli.

In the meantime, the onions had become suitably browned. Transferring them to a small bowl, I quickly wiped out the skillet and began heating olive oil, garlic and red pepper flakes until they were fragrant. To this, I added a can of tomato puree (actually a can of pureed diced tomatoes, but buying them pre-pureed would have been easier) and let the tomato sauce simmer. Soon, the vermicelli was within a minute of being done so I added a can of chickpeas, drained and rinsed, to the cooking pasta in order to warm them. If you wanted to make this dish more complicated, you could start with dried chickpeas.

The assembly of kushari proceeds in layers: a base of rice, topped with pasta and chickpeas, topped with lentils, garnished with fried onions and finally covered in tomato sauce. Whenever I ate this in Egypt it was served with a thin, vinegary hot sauce which I simulated at home by blending a little sriracha into a lot of rice vinegar.