Posted By Julia Clancy on Tue, Aug 2, 2016 at 9:00 AM

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Julia Clancy

Homemade goat's milk ricotta

I’m a toast person, though it must be thick-cut — that’s my only requisite. Toppings might range from a rubbed clove of garlic and a couple fried eggs to a smear of peanut butter (creamy) and jam (raspberry). Depending on my mood and the weather, the toast may be decked with butter and honey or kept plain to dunk in coffee and cream. It’s a breakfast staple I’ve clung to since elementary school, when I’d eat white-bread toast — center first, crusts last — before the early morning walk. 

Lately, my favorite way to dress a slice is with a few spoons of tender, homemade ricotta curds. I learned how to make ricotta from a friend’s Sicilian grandma, and it’s dead simple. There are just four factors: whole-fat milk, salt, acid and heat. After that, you need a saucepan, a cheesecloth and 20 minutes.

If you have ever tasted supple, just-made ricotta curds still warm in their cloth basket, you most likely understand their power to propel you out of bed faster than the promise of dark roast.

Tags: breakfast club , breakfast , toast , ricotta , homemade , recipe , Image , vegetarian , Image , Web Only

Posted By Julia Clancy on Sat, Jul 23, 2016 at 11:00 AM

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H.B Wilcox Photography

Raw beet carpaccio

I ordered beets from Elmer Farm in Middlebury and opened up a box of jewels. Spiraled orbs of Chioggia beets, garnet-hued red beets and golden beets so vivid they might have swallowed our summer sun whole.

I didn’t want to steam or roast these gems, fearing they would lose their color. Instead, I took inspiration from a dish I worked one night at Zuni Café in San Francisco. That evening, one of the chefs, Joe, created a gorgeous spread of slivered beets layered with circles of grapefruit and navel orange, the plate garnished with nothing more than a pinch of flaked salt and a thin float of Prosecco. It was striking. Those colors had come straight from the ground — no dyes or droplets, just a hit of red, orange and gold on a white café plate.

Tags: Vegetarian , beets , summer , Elmer Farm , Middlebury , recipes , Image , Web Only

Posted By Suzanne Podhaizer on Tue, Jul 5, 2016 at 7:50 AM

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Suzanne Podhaizer

Salad with smoked mussels and browned-butter vinaigrette

One of my passions is teaching people to create their own simple recipes, by demonstrating how to take an existing recipe and break it down to its components.

When I'm instructing people on this concept, I typically use basic vinaigrette as an example. The dressing is primarily made of two building blocks: fat and something acidic. 

Tags: browned , butter , dressing , salad , vinaigrette , recipes , Image , Web Only

Posted By Suzanne Podhaizer on Sun, Jul 3, 2016 at 1:23 PM

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Suzanne Podhaizer

Tomato and cheese frittata over spinach with micro-basil and a corn tortilla

When I have just a few minutes to make breakfast, I invariably make "eggs over stuff": a pair of sunny-side-up eggs on top of whatever I've got kicking around in the fridge. It might be leftovers from the previous evening's dinner, a green salad, corn tortillas with salsa — pretty much anything. In the time it takes the eggs to sizzle in the pan, I can assemble the other ingredients, and that's all there is to it. 

On the other hand, if I have a little extra time in the morning, I make "eggs under stuff." It's the quick-cooking lovechild of an omelette and a frittata. I put the oven on broil, crack and whip two eggs together in a bowl with salt, pepper and herbs, and pour the mixture into a pan coated with hot butter. Cook on the stovetop until the bottom is set but the top is still wet, and slide it into the oven. (Make sure you use an oven-worthy pan!)

Tags: breakfast , eggs , farmers market , tomato , frittata , cheese , Recipes , Image , Web Only

Posted By Julia Clancy on Sun, Jun 26, 2016 at 1:42 PM

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Julia Clancy

Asparagus with poached eggs and breadcrumbs

I keep a one-gallon bag of homemade breadcrumbs tucked in the freezer. The bag grows fatter week by week with odd ends of olive loaves, stale bagels, nubs of potato bread and too-old slices of homemade rye. The bread scraps will get slicked with olive oil and toasted into croutons; those that remain will be pulsed in a blender and zipped into the freezer bag. There they remain, until meatballs need making or a pile of spaghetti with herbs and cream begs for an extra hit of texture.

Currently, I have a favorite way to use those breadcrumbs waiting in my freezer. Determined to celebrate asparagus season as long as possible, I blanketed a platter of fat, roasted spears with toasted breadcrumbs and a few poached eggs. The runny orange yolks — courtesy of hens Alice, Riggs, Garfield, Houdini and George Costanza (yup, I know they're female) — mingle with the tender-sweet stalks and golden breadcrumbs for a dish that meets all go-to notes of color, flavor and texture. Here’s the recipe.

Tags: Breadcrumbs , Asparagus , Eggs , Summer , Seasonal , Recipes , Vegetarian , Image , Web Only

Posted By Julia Clancy on Wed, Jun 8, 2016 at 4:09 PM

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H.B Wilcox Photography / hbrookephoto.com

Preserved Lemons

It seemed to happen overnight: After a couple days steeped in heat and humidity, the rain clouds rolled in with an evening thunderstorm. My garden drank it up. The raised bed of herbs in the backyard seemed to bolt within 24 hours. Parsley. Chives. Big, downy leaves of mint.

I remembered the lemons I preserved last winter: scored, salted, packed in a mason jar and eventually forgotten in the back of my refrigerator — until the season's first herbs reminded me of a favorite recipe: Salsa verde with preserved lemons.

Tags: Recipes , Herbs , Vegan , Gluten Free , Salsa , Garden , Image , Image , Web Only

Posted By Melissa Haskin on Fri, Feb 26, 2016 at 12:24 PM

Melissa Haskin

Chocolate gelato

Walk a few steps up St. Paul Street from Trattoria Delia and you’ll find Sotto Enoteca. Same menu, same kitchen staff, different ambiance. Last Friday, I visited the cozy Burlington wine bar for an early dinner. I sipped WhistlePig Straight Rye Whiskey with a single square ice cube. Whiskey because my appetizer was chocolate.

To be specific, it was a profiterole — chocolate-covered, gelato-filled pastry. Think éclair but filled with Italian-style ice cream. Mine was stuffed with the vanilla version of the frozen treat. I found this to be a nice balance with the chocolate. However, halfway through the mountain of dessert, I still had to call in reinforcements. I couldn’t finish it alone.

Tags: gelato , dessert , sugar high , Sotto Enoteca , profiteroles , recipe , Image , Web Only

Posted By Hannah Palmer Egan on Tue, Nov 18, 2014 at 1:28 PM

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Hannah Palmer Egan

'Tis the season when markets are few and far between, and when farm stands tend to close at dusk, which comes earlier every day. That makes it tough to get farm-fresh vegetables with any frequency, except from the grocery. The good news is, autumn's harvest keeps for weeks, so you can stock up without fear of spoilage.

Right now, my crispers are stuffed with carrots from my last trip to mom's garden, beets from the Intervale's Half Pint Farm (from a weeks-ago trip to City Market), aging celery and a box of cranberries from Cranberry Bob. On the counter, my bowl of onions, garlic and shallots overfloweth.

A while back, I made a bunch of pie crusts and froze a few for a lazy day when I wanted pie, and, wanting to do something fun with this assortment of cool-weather produce, I threw together a quick (and beautiful!) savory galette with some cheese.

Like most of my farmers market recipes, this one is endlessly tweakable — mix and match the roots, swap shallots for onions or cheddar for pecorino (these will behave differently when baked but both will work), and voila! An impressive but easy supper awaits.

Oh, the joys of freezing pie crust! 

Tags: Alpine cheese , galette , pie crust , recipe , root vegetables , Image , Web Only

Posted By Hannah Palmer Egan on Tue, Nov 4, 2014 at 12:55 PM

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Photos: Hannah Palmer Egan

On Route 100 just north of Waitsfield village, Hartshorn's Farmstand offers a wild proliferation of root-cellar vegetables, squash in particular. Bins along the outside of the stand overflow with butternuts, acorns, hubbards, kabochas, delicatas, and — my personal favorite — buttercups.

I am fond of the buttercup for its rich, creamy flesh, subtle nutty flavor and relative ease in handling. Unlike the hubbard, which I also adore, the buttercup grows to a manageable size, cooks fairly quickly and is easier to slice without losing a finger to the knife.

And, when split in half and stuffed, these make a lovely entrée; they can also be cut, post-cooking, for a fine side dish. Either way, with fresh Vermont cranberries from Cranberry Bob, and sage, sausage and coconut, these stuffers make for a homey but interesting November meal. What's more, the recipe is vegan but for the sausage (and gluten-free!), so it's friendly for pretty much anyone.

The recipe can also be endlessly adapted: Substitute the sweet breakfast sausage for spicy andouille or chorizo, grapes for the cranberries, pears for the apples or rosemary for the sage. It's all good. 

Tags: buttercup squash , cranberries , recipe , Stuffed winter squash , Image , Web Only

Posted By Hannah Palmer Egan on Tue, Oct 28, 2014 at 2:38 PM

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Photos: Hannah Palmer Egan

With the summer farmers markets finished for the season, we're now in that autumn lull before the winter markets begin, and if you want farm-fresh produce, you'll have to hit up a farmstand — or your local co-op.

But with all the rain we've been having, late fall mushrooms are in full bloom. At the end of my Burlington block is an old maple tree that recently started fruiting with pounds and pounds of meaty oyster mushrooms — more than I could ever use. While summer oysters are usually milky white, as the weather cools, they start sprouting in shades of dusty brown, and these beauties were massive, some as big as my hand. 

I picked a couple pounds* (many more remain on the tree) and, feeling rich, started dreaming up a fall frittata with foraged apples from my pantry and a bit of McKenzie sausage from my fridge. A quick trip to City Market brought fresh sage, courtesy of Digger's Mirth Collective Farm, and Tarentaise, a mild, Alpine-style cheese from Pomfret's Thistle Hill Farm. And that, quite quickly, was that.

*For nonforagers, MoTown Mushrooms supplies great oysters in many colors, or you can usually find them at the co-op or other grocers. Also, any mushrooms you prefer will work well with this recipe.

Tags: Frittata , oyster mushroom , apples , alpine cheese , sausage , Image , Web Only