summer rice torte; grandma's test kitchen round 2

The monkey and I were on our way to Grandma's. I wanted to work on a summer version of rice torte. I wanted to make one sourcing nearly everything from the Berkeley Farmers' Market. I'd pull the store bought butter from the freezer for my one market exception, but the trick would be using brown rice instead of white and still getting that creamy rice pudding quality the dish is known for. A challenge was at hand, but I felt confident that a day in the test kitchen would yield some tasty results.

I used some familiar ingredients and proportions to hang my summer flavors on. For the rice component, I measured out 1 cup of medium grain brown rice, pouring 1/4 cup at a time into a spice grinder and giving it a pulse for a second or two. Mildly ground and cracked, I heated 2 cups of water with 1/2 stick of butter to a boil, adding the rice and simmering for about 30 minutes. The pot on the top right is this now, rice porridge. The cheese is tangy and hard, nice for grating. The squash is a sort of zucchini and some sunburst. That would be fistfulls of garden herbs. One large yellow onion and half dozen crimini later, generously splashed with olive oil and we're ready for a sauté. Put it all together with the eggs, bake it in a pan, and a bit of magic occurs. But more on that after the frying.


This dish makes the kitchen glow with aroma. Toss the onion, mushroom and squash together, cooking over a medium low heat. Add a few piches of salt early on. After ten to fifteen minutes, while the onions are translucent but not yet brown and the squash is getting tender, add the fresh herbs and some more salt. Cook it for another 5 or 10 and adjust the herbs to your liking. While seasoning, you will probably want to eat most of this before using it in the torte. Please refrain, as it will ruin the proportions later on. Trust me.

With the rice cooked, veggies soft, eggs mildly beat and cheese grated, combine everything in a large bowl, being careful to not scramble the eggs while mixing the hot ingredients together. Pour the entire thing into a 9x9 square plus some other fun round-thingy, or put the entire thing into a 9x13. Top it with even more cheese before putting into a very hot oven.




While the torte is in the oven, I like to treat myself to a little something. A little bresaola on sourdough, with a few green leaves and slices of cheese perhaps. It goes down real easy. Maybe even with a dry red wine. With a red beer, I'm sure.




I start the oven out hot, like 425 or even 450. Then after it starts getting poofy and a touch golden, I turn it down to about 375 and finish it. It usually takes about 45 to 55 minutes, with the amount of brown determined by personal preference. With this being a summer torte, I wanted to enhance the golden hues so I kept it on the lighter side. It tasted pretty golden too.



Did I mention this makes a great breakfast? With all the veggies and rice it's downright healthy too. Just don't eat it all in one sitting and have a little patience. It keeps and travels well (don't freeze it though) and will have your friends saying "what was that one dish you made that time, the tasty one with the.......what was that?"
To which you respond "Rice torte."
And they say: "Yeah! That one! MAN I love that torte stuff. Wait, did you say rice? I thought it had cheese or something?"
"Yes, and vegetables."
"Yeah, something green, I liked that, whatever it is."
"Squash. And it has eggs too."
"Yeah.....really?"

Start making this with any consistency, varying the ingredients as the seasons pass, and you will have a conversation along these lines. It's one of those dishes that certain ingredients do well to hide in. Perfect for getting in different foods you don't always like, but couldn't necessarily identify if pressed. So let me take a little inventory. Summer torte: it's yummy, local, ovo-lacto vegetarian, stores well, and allows parents to hide the greens.

I love summer.


SUMMER RICE TORTE
(I've included where I purchased the ingredients with a link if available, if not, then the BFM Vendor Directory link has been provided)

1 cup brown rice (Massa)
2 cups water (EBMUD)
1/2 stick butter (Straus)

2 pounds summer squash (Riverdog)
1 onion (Full Belly)
6-8 medium brown mushrooms (Solano Mushrooms)
1/4 cup olive oil (Stonehouse)
1 T salt (Aged Bay Salt - my own)
1 bunch parsley (from my backyard)
1 t rosemary (frontyard)
1 t thyme (backyard)
2 t oregano (sideyard)

6 eggs (Kaki)
1/3 pound hard cheese (Spring Hill)

Measure out 1/4 cup of brown rice into a spice grinder and give it a whirl. Do this with with the rest of the rice. Heat 2 cups of water and 1/2 a stick of butter to a boil. Add the rice and bring to a simmer. Simmer for 30 minutes or more, stirring every so often to check for consistency and lack of burning. While this is cooking, chop the vegetables and mince the herbs. Start sauteeing the onions, mushrooms and squash. When squash is softening and the onions are translucent but not brown (maybe a bit golden) add the fresh herbs and cook for another ten minutes. All of the vegetables should be soft. Crack the eggs and lightly beat with about 2/3rds of the cheese (finely grated). Combine the cooked veggie mix, cooked rice mix and raw eggs and cheese. Pour into a large caserole dish, cover liberally with more cheese and bake at 425 for 15-20 minutes, then 375 until finished. No more than an hour later and you have a golden summer torte!

Notes:
I have made something like this dish, and other versions of it several times. I have even had it using leftover brown rice and veggies from another dish, married them with cheese and eggs and voila! Yet another torte! There are endless combinations and you'd be surprised how forgiving all that eggs and cheese can be.

why did the chicken cross the road?

To get to the other side, right? But, for what exactly?

Anybody?.......got any theories?

Keep in mind, most chickens these days never see a road, let alone set foot on one, and then have a reason to cross it. So what are these statistically few up to anyway? Well, yesterday, after a long hot sweaty day out in the central valley, I found one answer to this age old question, while out touring a few farms that our food comes from. Namely, the source of the eggs, brown rice, and peaches that I feed my family.

Down stream from Lake Oroville, live the chickens supplying most of the yolky goodness and whitey structure to our meals. We have been eating them since hearing that these chickens roost in the trees at night and wander the farm. Now that sounds like free range. While on a field trip with members of the Berkeley Farmers' Market Advisory Committee, I was fortunate enough to check out the lives of these birds and their environs. I even witnessed one reason to cross that road.

In this case, it is to go lay an egg under the propane tank. Or any other place that individual bird might choose to. In fact, I heard if you leave a car parked for a week, you'll have eggs under it when you try to move it. Eggs end up being laid all over the place, in places deemed safe by the chickens. That is, if you are a chicken who lives at Kaki Farms.


When we arrived, the birds were roaming free under the canopy of orchard surrounding their optional "coop." There are a lot of persimmon trees around the place offering a nice thick shade, which you might have imagined, if you know what kaki means in Japanese. The birds here roam and scratch the earth where they please, tended by dogs (like tiny, itty-bitty "Cheech," pictured in the photo at top if you look hard enough, doing about thirty miles an hour), their owners Nicasio and Carmen, the surrounding neighbors I'm sure, and yes, roads.

This is a wonderfully diverse farm, that was a treat to walk around, seeing things such as the asparagus in its feathery and red berried state, young walnut trees, tons of tomatoes, corn, nopales....the list goes on. Kaki currently has wonderful blackberries and strawberries too. Hot sweet berries, plucked and popped in the mouth; the perfect treat in 90+ weather.

I'm happy to know that the chickens who lay the eggs I feed my kid (kids, when the wee one is old enough), are what looks to me like happy ones. With at least the option to go cross a road, eat grubs wherever they find them, and well, live what I believe is a somewhat normal life of a chicken.

Let's now go on the western side of the Sacramento River, near Chico, where there dwells a superman. We paid a visit to learn a few things about modern organic rice production and learned a few things.

Like this photo for example. If I tell you that it was taken in a rice field, you might assume that most of what is in the picture is rice growing. Wrong. Apparently, it's a lot of sedges and hard to kill weeds that must be dried out in order to temporarily rid the "check" of them. As Greg at Massa Organics explained, organic rice farming is a tenuous job, where one must alternate flooding your crop to act as a mulch to keep the weeds down, and then drying your crop, to keep the weeds down. Really, no matter what, you grow a lot of weeds. The magic is in playing the wet and dry cycles to minimize the unwanted greenery and let the rice up.

I saw many ducks, tons of black birds, and field after field of rice in various stage of flood. At some point, while our host was rocking two little ones in a stroller and standing over a third, he mentioned that they plant the rice in the spring, after soaking it a day to begin the germination process, and that it is done by airplane. Later in the fall, with the fields dried one last time and hard enough to support a heavy piece of equipment, and the rice is full and ready, comes the harvest.

Wait a second, did he say planted by plane?.........I'll have to come back to this one at a later date after I get my head around the logistics of that one. But I guess rice is a commodity item, and planted on large scale, even for a small scale family farm. It figures you'd have to do part of the work while flying around at speeds much faster than planting by hand, or tractors for that matter, would allow.

I tell you what, these folks do a ton of work. A ton. And I'm not just talking about the parental duties. As a father myself, with two monkeys, I have the utmost in respect for this family farm and their superdad. When I want local brown rice, I get some of their stuff, and now, picture the ten acres of rice straw that became their home, the beautiful views of Mt. Lassen, and how after four generations of farming rice, this family is definately doing their part in working toward sustainability and stewardship of their land.

But what about those peaches I mentioned earlier?

If you want the best peaches around, talk to Carl and his crew. This man is a powerhouse of exploration and discovery, as well as a pioneer of the organic movement in California. His solar powered oasis, known as Woodleaf Farms, is located at 1300 feet in the rocky foothills above Oroville. This farm started out with thin topsoil 20 plus years ago, but having been amended and built over the years with compost, minerals, and ground cover, it is now a stunning example of what vision, sweat, perseverance and time can do.

While touring, we got a first hand view of the his beautiful soil; black and rich with life. He dug down around a sprinkler, using it as a measuring post to demonstrate. After shredding through the grasses, the word fecundity came to mind. It's no wonder why his peaches are the yummiest things around, because his soil is too. Remember, you are what you eat? Well, that applies to trees to.

After hearing him talk about his philosophies and practices, seeing them in practice, then sharing lunch in his lovely home, I came away full with a warm fuzzy feeling about the place. (Yeah, yeah, peach farmer, I know....the pun is intentional) Here, everything gets a gourmet blend of love, respect and mindfulness, from caretakers who see the place as the larger organism that it is. People before me have pointed out the quality of his peaches, some say they can't be beat. I'd like to add to that: you can't beat his soil, water, or sky either.

A true explorer in the world of growing things (if astronaut means space exporer, then this man is a bionaut) he is steadily at work running experiments in bringing more power to the people by encouraging they utilize something like this raised bed to produce food at home. He is hard at work on test plots, and if the corn we saw there is any indication, we will see more of these in the near future. Anybody got any grant money? Talk to Carl Rosato. The man is FILLED with great ideas for our future.

A bright future that is. Filled with great food. That in producing it, gives back to the earth. Hungry anyone?

If you have the fortune of seeing where your food comes from, do it. You'll learn a few things. And likely, come away with enormous respect for the people who take part in bringing you life.

To the families and hard working help of Nicasio, Greg and Carl, thank you.