Our Cousin's Farm

Lila:
So on Thursday I went on a three or four hour car ride to go to my cousin Ellen's house in Pennsylvania. Since I usually hate long car rides I wasn't exactly so happy about being stuck in a car for about three hours while I was sitting next to my oh so annoying little brother, but it was worth those pretty abysmal three hours, because Ellen has almost every kind of cooking thing that you could possibly think of and also she's just a lot of fun to cook with, oh and did I mention she has a pool with a diving board? Anyway so on Thursday we made Meyer lemon chicken with risotto, yesterday we made grilled steak ( Ellen did that), the grilled steak was amazing by the way, and I made the roasted potatoes, plus farro, I helped make the corn on the cob too. But unfortunately I can't eat corn on the cob because I have braces so my mother dearest has to cut the corn off of the cob for me ( sigh...) so I'm having a pretty good time here so far and my mother ( or Ellen) will tell you where to get these recipes and tonight we're making peach crisp - one of my all time favorite desserts.     

Ambika:
I LOVE my cousin's farm. I've been going there since I was a child and have many great memories of family meals cooked and shared there. For those of you who would like to know what farro is here is the Wikipedia definition. Basically it seems to be another type whole grain wheat, rather like spelt. We cooked it in chicken stock like rice - 2 cups liquid to one cup grain. We sauteed onions first, then added the farro and chicken stock, and cooked it until liquid was absorbed (there seems to be some debate on exactly how long we actually cooked it for - 20 - 30 mins). We then added lots of butter and parmesan cheese. I love farro and was introduced to it by Ellen years ago at an Italian restaurant. Frankies Sputino makes great farro btw if you want to try it and are in Brooklyn or NYC. I will make this at home for sure.

The chicken with Meyer lemon from the night before came from this recipe from the NY Times and was delicious! We substituted thyme for the rosemary because my husband hates rosemary and didn't use leeks because we didn't have any. I don't have any pics of that dinner, sorry. Here is a pic of the wonderful stove at the farm.

Some of the family at the dinner table.

      
Our cousin Katy showed us this great trick for buttering corn. First put a big pat of butter on a slice of bread and then butter your corn on the buttered bread!

Dinner was oh so yummy!!!

Our cousin Herb made a great salad and Lila made balsamic vinaigrette.

Lila will write about the peach cobbler in the next post.
Here are a couple more pics. 

Ellen at the grill:

Lila tasting the farro:

Potato Pancakes

Lila:

So today I made potato pancakes which were pretty good. They weren’t the best potato pancakes I’ve ever had. The best potato pancakes I’ve ever had were in third grade when one kid’s mom made them, those were superb. However the kid’s mom was a former food network chef so I can’t exactly make food network caliber potato pancakes - well at least not yet anyways. I don’t know why but they didn’t exactly have the right flavor, maybe it was because I used grape seed oil instead of canola oil. Anyway so in the recipe it said that you have to grate a large onion and let me tell you grating an onion is not a fun time. I mean anything that is onion chopping is a bad thing but onion grating is in a whole different category, it’s 1,000 times worse than bad because bad, well, just does not justify the awful stinging in your eyes. 

So bye I’m off to watch TV.       

Ambika: 

Lila really did do everything for this recipe, since I have never made them myself. I thought they were delicious - just needed salt. Here is the recipe we used. The mom Lila was referring to (former food network chef) wrote a cookbook  I remember: Kitchen Playdates: Easy Ideas for Entertaining That Includes the Kids ** 70 Delicious Recipes by Lauren Deen. Perhaps this book includes the superb potato pancake recipe.

 

Pan Fried Sea Scallops and Roasted Potatoes

From Lila:

“So it’s 8:30 in the morning and I’m unfortunately sitting here writing my blog post that I should’ve done last night but instead was watching Legally Blonde. Yesterday I made lemony scallop stir-fry at least that’s what I think it was called anyway, it sucked. I highly doubt that it was a good Introduction to scallops because they were chewy, tough, and slimy [uggh!]   So besides the scallops that sucked, I made the best roasted potatoes they are so addictive once you eat one you want to eat the whole plate or bowl. As you can already see I didn’t get my mandatory relaxing hours in. So bye my mom is going to post the link to the herb roasted potatoes. P. S.  I didn’t actually use the herbs. I think it makes the potatoes better.”

From Ambika:

I just want to say how proud I am of Lila for choosing and making this dish. She had no help or guidance from me since I have never made scallops before. She picked this recipe on her own. She wanted to make shrimp at first but since we are aware of the problem of overfishing on this planet we are now trying to only buy seafood according to the Monterey Bay Aquarium Seafood Watch guide. Lila did all the shopping for this dish and went to both seafood stores in our neighborhood looking for shrimp that were sustainably caught, and as you can see from the menu she was unsuccessful in finding any. Scallops it seems are ok from most places and so easier to obtain. I actually like scallops although I didn’t like this recipe. Anyone out there with a favorite recipe/method for cooking scallops please let me know.

The potatoes were truly scrumptious and Lila found the recipe on the Food Network website from Tyler Florence.