Yesterday evening, wine and cider industry professionals, chefs and the general public gathered in Richmond to celebrate Virginia wine and cider. The 2023 Virginia Governor's Cup medal winners had already been announced (with a whopping 614 entrants!!), but Thursday evening tastings were poured, small bites consumed and glasses were raised to toast those in the wine industry: from seasonal harvesters to vineyard managers and cider/winemakers. Although I was sad to not be in attendance, I know I can gather a few friends, hop in the car and enjoy these wines in perhaps the best setting — the winery itself. This weekend, consider trying a new winery or cidery and discover what all the buzz (and medals) are about!
EVENTS: Seed Swaps!
Have an event you’d like us to share? Email: info@edibleblueridge.com
Spring planting is on our minds! Mark your calendars for these grow-centric events:
3.02 Community Seed & Plant Swap - Charlottesville
3.02 The Magic of Compost - Lynchburg
3.11 Grow the Good Life - Bedford
3r.18 LEAP’s First Annual Seed Swap - Roanoke
3.25 Seed Starting Class at Friendly City Coop - Harrisonburg
WHAT WE’RE COOKING
Fettuccine with Hakurei Turnips and Kale Pesto
This dish celebrates the best of winter vegetables and you should be able to find most or all of the ingredients at your local farmer’s market. Nutty Tuscan kale takes the place of basil in the pesto and the hint of sweetness from the caramelized turnips pairs beautifully with creamy ricotta. While this recipe calls for bacon, you can opt not to use it for a meat-free meal.
Serves 2
For the Pesto
2 bunches Tuscan/lacinato kale, trimmed
3 cloves garlic
1/2 teaspoon salt
4 tablespoons olive oil
2 teaspoons lemon juice
For the Pasta
Fresh or dried fettuccine
⅓ pound cubed bacon
1 bunch Hakurei turnips, greens included
⅓ cup Tuscan Kale Pesto
1/3 cup shaved parmesan
1/3 cup ricotta
1/4 of one lemon
Salt and black pepper to taste
Fill a large pot with water. Add the 1/2 teaspoon salt, place over high heat and bring water to a boil. Add kale and 2 cloves of garlic to boiling water and cook until kale turns a brilliant green, about 3 minutes. Remove kale and garlic from water and place in a strainer. Reserve water for cooking the pasta. Add kale, cooked garlic and remaining clove of raw garlic to the bowl of a food processor and pulse. Slowly drizzle in 3 tablespoons of olive oil while pulsing. Add 2 teaspoons of lemon juice and pulse a few more times. Set pesto aside.
Remove turnips from stems. Roughly chop turnips and slice turnip greens. Heat a small sauté pan over medium-high heat. Add bacon and cook until bacon begins to brown. Remove bacon and place on a paper towel lined plate to drain off excess fat. Add turnips (not turnip greens) to the pan and cook in bacon fat until soft and the outsides begin to caramelize, about 5-7 minutes. Remove from heat. Using the water you cooked the kale in, cook fettuccine al dente (3-4 minutes for fresh, 12 minutes for dried pasta). Drain pasta and return to pot. Toss pasta with bacon and turnips. Fold in turnip greens, allowing them to wilt before drizzling remaining olive oil into the pasta. Add parmesan and ricotta and toss. Squeeze lemon over pasta, season with salt and pepper and serve.
POEM OF THE WEEK
Onions BY WILLIAM MATTHEWS How easily happiness begins by dicing onions. A lump of sweet butter slithers and swirls across the floor of the sauté pan, especially if its errant path crosses a tiny slick of olive oil. Then a tumble of onions. This could mean soup or risotto or chutney (from the Sanskrit chatni, to lick). Slowly the onions go limp and then nacreous and then what cookbooks call clear, though if they were eyes you could see clearly the cataracts in them. It’s true it can make you weep to peel them, to unfurl and to tease from the taut ball first the brittle, caramel-colored and decrepit papery outside layer, the least recent the reticent onion wrapped around its growing body, for there’s nothing to an onion but skin, and it’s true you can go on weeping as you go on in, through the moist middle skins, the sweetest and thickest, and you can go on in to the core, to the bud-like, acrid, fibrous skins densely clustered there, stalky and in- complete, and these are the most pungent, like the nuggets of nightmare and rage and murmury animal comfort that infant humans secrete. This is the best domestic perfume. You sit down to eat with a rumor of onions still on your twice-washed hands and lift to your mouth a hint of a story about loam and usual endurance. It’s there when you clean up and rinse the wine glasses and make a joke, and you leave the minutest whiff of it on the light switch, later, when you climb the stairs.
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Eat Well,
Lisa Archer
Publisher & Editor
