This is me, caught in the act, during the San Juan County Fair. I was cooking Paella and discussing the importance of local foods and the need to buy from Farmer’s Markets. You can hear me speaking at this event here.

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Here is a short video I made about hand making pasta.

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A little video care of new pans:

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Scapes come in many forms. They are the flowering stem of hardneck garlic and in the case of the photo–shallots. Their window of availability is now: end of May through mid-June. They are the by-product of the farmer’s desire to have his garlic bulb. By cutting the scape off the energy goes to the garlic head, or bulb, instead of the flower.
Once thrown away, a new awareness has come about that they are delicious to eat, easy to prepare and profitable for anyone who grows garlic. However, every year CSA subscribers find themselves with more scapes than they know what to do with or how to cook. There are very few recipes for them on the web, and most of those are the same.

Have a listen to Gastrocast #60 for some alternative ways to cook this wonderful vegetable with its slight crunch and mild hint of garlic sweetness. Of course the podcast is free, but you have to listen to me rant about the cost of fuel, what it will do to our food scene, and why now–more than ever–we must buy from local and sustainable sources.

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This week’s Gastrocast is out–the cooking show about “food, cooking and the politics of what we eat”. Apart from talking about things going on with the company, the island, and the garden we cook two Rhubarb dishes–A Rhubarb & Sweet Cicely Fool, and Grilled Pork Chops with Rhubarb Cumberland Sauce. It’s spring turning into summer, it’s food out of the garden and it’s all good.

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Just in time for weekend baking–Cookies! In this week’s Gastrocast we discuss chicken biosecurity, about sugar and Chef Neal experiements with three flavors of cookies–Apricot Pistachio Cardamom, White Chocolate Macadamia Mango, and Candied Ginger Coconut Lime.
Don’t miss out, Subscribe to the show either in iTunes or your favorite podcatcher. The subscription is free and the each new show will magically appear on your computer ready for you to listen to or transfer to your mp3 player.

Stay tuned for next week’s show where we’ll be cooking the beef brisket we corned in Gastrocast #42. To round out the show we’ll be asking a distinguished tasting panel to rate our home cured corned beef against two commercially made products.

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A new Gastrocast is available–We introduce the new chicks, talk about why we producie our own food and cook a fantastic winter dish–Choucroute Garni.

Next week we’ll revisit the Corned Beef experiment.

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In this week’s show we make a Winter Salad of Chicken Thighs with a Blood Orange Vinaigrette.

For this and much more check out the show or subscribe to it via RSS.

If you’re looking for detailed cooking classes taught by a knowledgable chef, who’s available to answer questions, this is a great way to find what you want–for FREE!

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The Great Corned Beef Experiment begins. Not because of approaching St. Patrick’s Day, but because it is winter and corned beef is so good, we’re making our own. It should be ready around the first of March. We’re curing a whole brisket to turn into Corned Beef for the classic Corned Beef and Cabbage and to make a smoked Pastrami. Both these will take place in a future Gastrocast episode.

Stop in an join us to find out how the experiment gets on.

I wanted to take a minute to write about our pet project. The Kitchen Garden Company is extremely proud to sponsor The Gastrocast Podcast and the Cookbook of recipes from the first 26 or so episodes.

First, a bit about what a podcast is. A podcast is a, generally, free downloadable audio or video show which is very much like radio. The difference is that, while many radio shows are podcasting, anybody can produce a podcast for very little cost. Furthermore podcasts reach an global audience instead of a geographically limited one, like radio. There are podcasts available for just about anything you might be interested in.

There are two ways of listening to a podcast. You can click on a link to the sound file on the show’s website. Or, you can subscribe to the show and have it delivered automatically to your computer at anytime of the day or night. This subscription takes place via an RSS feed which you subscribe to through an podcatching client such as iTunes, or Juice. Once the file is on your computer you can listen to it there, or load it onto your mp3 player and take it anywhere.

Some of our current favorite podcasts are The Wiggily Wigglers–a gardening podcast, Librivox Audio Books, and Eat Feed among many others.

The Gastrocast is a show “about food, cooking and the politics of what we eat.” Each week the show tackles a broad range of subjects and cooking techniques. Generally the first half of the show is news, life and culinary information. There are two recurring segments: the cheese board, which introduces cheeses and cheese care, and the ingredient of the week discussing unusual or seasonal food items, or ingredients being used in the shows cooking segment. Following this there is a cooking segment dedicated to bringing some new or interesting dishes into your kitchen. Everything in the cooking program is explained and fully photographed.

One of the best parts of the whole experience, we feel, is that you can contact Chef Neal Foley, aka The Podchef, via email or through the show notes’ comments on the blog. A great many questions, comments and suggestions have been left and this feedback has helped to improve the show and create a mini “community”, albeit an international one, around the Gastrocast.

Because of the number of requests for the recipes on the show to be written down we decided to produce a cookbook. Each recipe from among the first 26 episodes of the show is presented with full color photographs, tips, hints and clear, easy to follow text. The resulting 208 page book, which was written and photographed by Chef Neal and produced by The Kitchen Garden Company is hopefully the first of many such projects.
The cookbook is available as a free PDF download from the podcast blog-site, but for those wanting a hardcopy we’ve produced a full-color, paperback cookbook. I encourage those who are interested to check either of these options out.