Welcome to Cuisine En Locale- come in, take off your coat and stay awhile

Hi. My name is JJ and I am a mom.
I am also a personal chef, a locavore, and a teacher.


I try my best to help anyone who wants to eat in a more healthy and educated way to do so without going crazy. It's a lofty goal, to be sure, but I have always taken the hardest shot on the table.

And I do a few different things to keep my hand in-
I help people with their party food and service needs, in and around my home town of Cambridge, MA.

I teach cooking and healthy eating, publicly at the Cambridge Center for Adult Ed in Harvard Sq, and privately by arrangement.

I guide people through the complicated process of reading between lines and beyond labels to feed themselves, and their families, in a healthful way, that satisfies their needs- body and soul.

And sometimes I do demos or I address groups and answer questions about how to decide what is good to eat in spite of all the misinformation we are assaulted with (if you would like me to come to you, just ask!)

If you are interested in fresh, local food, please consider signing up for my email blast list, which you can do by just sending me an email to jj@enlocale.com

This is the place where I post the moderately more coherent, thoughts I subject that mailing list to.

And some other random ideas as well.
I hope you enjoy them.

Drop me a line anytime, or leave a comment and start a conversation...

Chow!




Saturday, January 3, 2009

A tale (tail?) of two ducks

Actually it was four ducks and a turkey, but that isn't nearly so evocative or poetic as the title above, so we'll just pretend. Besides, these two had the most dramatic story, and the tastiest results, so we'll go with them, for the sake of prose and flow.

The scene:
It is a blizzard.
Well, a strong snow storm.
The temperature is dropping rapidly, and the wind is high. We have two local birds, about 7 pounds each, and a gas range. Eddy pulls up his hoodie (my stars, what is it with kids these days? Who wears a hoodie in sub-freezing temperatures) and, tongs in mitten, takes to the porch!

Each duck has in its cavity a potpourri of whole:
allspice, star anise, juniper berry, Szechuan and white, green and black peppercorns.

Beneath the rack are foil packages of soaked hickory chips, and the trick, we have found, is to keep these babies on the move. If you let them sit you have, plain and simple, a bonfire. But, if you turn them frequently, and keep a large box of salt on hand to control grease flare-ups, the resulting bird is fragrant with spices and smoke, buttery tender, and totally moist, as it bastes in its fats constantly.

On this particularly frigid evening we served our birdies with a reduction of loganberry syrup (local and bottled in season) and blackcurrant juice, to which we had added the bags from the ducks cavities, to simmer, before serving.

I recommend removing the skin to serve. It gets rather greasily charred during this process.
Carefully cut away the breast meat and slice it sideways, along with any other bits you can remove from the thighs and legs.

Yes, it's a lot of turning, for a relatively small amount of very rich meat, but it is so very worth it!

Thursday, January 1, 2009

Hope in 2009

Happy New Year!

I, for one, am full of hope.
I am hoping for a lot of change this year, and I feel, for the first time in a long time, like it is not a futile hope.
All around me, I feel, people are starting to notice the problems that they, themselves, have created with their food systems. The problems are so deeply entrenched that it is intimidating to look at them, never the less, the media, and public attention is growing steadily, and perhaps it is finally time for some real work to take place...
I am receiving emails daily about people all over the country who are helping in their communities to teach a healthier, more localized, dietary plan. Everywhere I am going I am noticing smaller label products and local produced foods on shelves, and in restaurants. Even though I know I am looking through the rose tinted glasses of the Cantabrigian, I am still hopful
For what do we have if we do not have hope.
So, at the dawn of this new year, I am hopeful
and I hope you are too!
Happy New Year my friends,
may it be one full of local food, naturally produced products and a happier, healthier life for us all.
With much love, JJ

Monday, December 22, 2008

Star light, star bright.....


Oh my, starry eyed surprise
Yes,
I love me some pate,
I love me some cookie cutters,
and sometimes you just gotta play with pastry.

Now THAT is what I call a trunk show!


I really blew it not taking photos of this event, but it was just so bloody cold, and we were trying to get it done without causing too many people to stop and stare, so it wasn't the first thing on my mind. All apologies, it would have been a great shot...
So, picture, if you will:
It is absolutely freezing, and you are pulling into the garage, at 10pm, when you see a pickup truck piled high with cardboard boxes full of frozen pieces of animal, and two people digging madly through them pulling out sausages, shanks, rumps and chops and tossing them into a box in the back of a crumbling Volvo sedan.
This is the reality of buying meat from a local farmer in the non-farmer's market season.
SO MUCH FUN!
Next time Aiden brings his truck-full of boxes to town I do hope you will join me, I can't really think of a better way to shop for meat!

Tuesday, December 16, 2008

The grocery list

I said something to my friend tonight that he said I should write down and email to my friends.
So, I'm going to try to remember what I told him.
What he asked me was, "where do you buy your food?"

So I said that I get butternut squashes and pumpkins, and apples and some potatoes from Whole Foods
And I get meat from Lionettes, and from Stillman when they are in town
I get some things from the Co-op. Celery root and garlic. Parsnips.
There are mushrooms floating around from PA
Dairy from the Dairy Bar in Davis Sq.
And then there's a bit of local stuff in the produce sections of Lionettes and Savenors, and there's always Wilson, though it does mean driving...

And he said. You should tell people that. We couldn't do that ten years ago. We couldn't do that one year ago.

He's right.

For this, my friend's, I am grateful!

May your hams be brined and baked with local maple syrup
Fondly,
JJ

p.s. I've been doing this crazy thing with ducks. Make me write about it... ask me how!