Fortunately, Dean's Beans ships their organic, fair trade beans in flat rate USPS boxes, up to five pounds for $10.35. I ordered their Mexican green beans ($4.50/lb), described as, "Large and smooth, make for easy roasting. Mellow and sweet, slightly acidic. This is such a well-rounded cup, good for any time of the day."
I roasted this first batch in the oven. Other methods offers more even roasting, but also require more in the way of equipment. I wanted as simple as possible for an inaugural batch.
Oven roasted coffee
I am by no means a coffee roasting expert, although I've drank more than my fair share. Hopefully my notes will communicate how easy the process is, and encourage you to research and roast your own.
Preheat oven to 500 degrees. While it comes up to temp, spread beans evenly on a cookie sheet, fairly close together. I was able to fit 3/4 lb. on a medium cookie sheet. Once the oven is hot, roast the beans, stirring them with a wooden spoon every two minutes. I noticed the beans around the perimeter of the pan darkened faster, so I worked those in to the center as I stirred. The more you stir, the more consistent your roast will be, but it's harder to keep the oven at full temperature.
After about 8 minutes, the beans will make a quiet popping sound as their moisture escapes. You can see them shift and roll in the pan as they pop. This is known as "first crack," and indicates an internal temperature of about 400 degrees. At this point the beans may smoke quite a bit, and you'll see the skins of the beans peel off and float around. This is all normal. My first crack occurred at 13 minutes, which makes me think I let too much heat out while stirring.
I've heard mixed opinions on how soon you should brew freshly roasted beans. There was a coffee roaster in Madison, Wisconsin who swore that beans were at their best within the first thirty minutes of roasting, and noticeably different after just half a day. Others say you should wait a day for the beans to fully develop their flavors. I was impatient and brewed a pot as soon as the beans were cool.
I immediately noticed that freshly roasted coffee has a brighter taste and is more aromatic. The color of the brew was on the light side, but the proportions were correct for a full flavored cup. Small amounts of volatile oils were visible floating on the surface. This first batch was an unqualified success!
I did notice that the coloration of my final beans varied slightly, due to the challenge of constantly circulating beans in an oven. Next roast, I think I'll attempt the air popper method, which promises more consistency but without investing in specialized (expensive!) roasters.
Related links:
→ Sweet Maria's offers a wealth of home roasting tips and supplies. This was the site that was first recommended to me by fellow roasters. It appears they may offer affordable shipping options now, but they didn't when I needed it most.
→ The temperature and color chart at Seven Bridges Cooperative helped me know where to aim with my roast.
→ Dean's Beans provides organic, fair trade green beans along with reasonable Hawaii shipping options and friendly service.
My food history is marked by milestones. I don't always recognize them in the moment, but looking back, certain events helped shape who I am. Among the earliest of these milestones were the regular Sunday dinners at grandma's house. The family all sat down around one big table for an old style "meat and potatoes" meal. Those communal dinners taught me the power of food to bring people together.
Another milestone came at sixteen when I baked my first apple pie from scratch because, "there's never anything good to eat in this house." The kitchen was a complete mess by the time I was done, but the pie was a tasty stroke of beginner's luck. My love of cooking was born.
The next milestone was not just messy but bloody, as I hunted a wild boar through the brush of northern Michigan. It was important that I understand the true cost of eating meat, to know where it really comes from. I needed to pull the trigger myself... or give up meat entirely. We used all 300 pounds of that beast, nose to tail.
Far from the brush, a leisurely dinner at the French Laundry blew open my mind to the creative possibilities of food. That meal for two cost as much as an entire month's rent at the time, and was worth every penny. Food can be fun!
And then there was the milestone when Junko and I first joined a CSA, Trillium Haven Farm. In a nutshell, Community Support Agriculture (CSA), is an arrangement where members pre-purchase fractions of a farm's harvest, usually on a monthly or yearly basis. The farm uses those payments to finance operations, and in return supplies each member with a weekly box of produce. When the harvest is poor, the box will be light. When times are good, it overflows. On average, members receive a diverse stream of fresh, organic produce at far less than market rates.
We joined Trillium Haven because we thought it would save us money while encouraging us to eat more fruits and veggies. What we didn't realize is how profoundly the experience would change us. It's cliche, but there is something almost spiritual about knowing the people that have toiled and sweated for your food. This is "buy local" on steroids. A community gathers around the CSA, brought together by our weekly deliveries. I can ask questions and swap recipe ideas not just with the farmers but with other members.
Each new weekly box provided a playful challenge, "how the heck do we use all this before it spoils?" Meals became a game of combining often novels ingredients in new and creative ways. We were eating better and having fun. When we moved to Oahu almost six years ago, we knew we'd want to connect with a new CSA community, but never found the right fit... until now.
Maʻo Organic Farms has launched a beta test of their own CSA. After much begging and pleading, we secured a spot midway through the trial run. Check out our first box, pictured below, weighed in at 11.5 lbs. It was loaded with carrots, two kinds of beats, basil, cilantro, parsley, endive, fennel, green onion, a bag of mesclun salad mix, pak choi, tat soi, lemons and oranges.
Our second box a week later swapped out a few items, but added arugula, two kinds of eggplant, kale, komatsuna, purplette onions, radishes, tangerines and turnips.
During the beta test, boxes run $30/week. That's about the total I might spend on produce during a good week, for less volume. This box is superior in every respect: it's all organic, tastes better, and hasn't been shipped across an ocean.
So far I'm quite impressed with the professionalism of the Mʻo operation. (Good farmers don't always run smooth CSA operations. The skillsets are different.) After-work pickup at centrally located V-Lounge is easy, with staff from the farm present to talk story and answer questions. Each box was neatly packed with a sheet listing the contents, offering a word from the farm, and providing a few recipes for the box contents.
Because the items are all freshly picked, even delicate herbs last the entire week between deliveries. In the first two weeks, I've been able to use everything in the boxes before it spoiled. I'm still making up my mind about the particular mix of items. The breadth and variety are nice, but the amount of each item is just enough to prepare a single dish. I wonder if sometimes it'd be preferable to have less variety but more quantity of each. I'd like to see a few more boxes before I'll know for certain.
Overall, I'm loving being part of the Maʻo beta run. CSA membership is been the natural progression and coming together of my food past -- the love of cooking, the creativity of food, the importance of knowing where our food originates, the power of food to bring people together -- while appealing to our frugality and a desire to eat well.
Maʻo will be opening up CSA membership wider in early 2010. Please contact me if you think you might be interested and I'll be happy to put you in touch with the coordinator.
Update January 7th: the Honolulu Weekly has a good article as the CSA opens more membership spots.
Growing up, my family always had big Thanksgiving dinners with family and friends crowded around a long chain of card tables. We'd cook one turkey in the oven, and then smoke another in the backyard. I picked up a sale turkey last week and tried it for the first time myself, using a box smoker (pictured) I picked up at Home Depot for $60. Slow smoking works adds so much flavor yet doesn't dry out the turkey -- no brining or elaborate herbs and spices needed!
I used kiawe wood for my smoke and it worked well, but conventional wisdom is to use mild fruit wood like apple or cherry. Use whatever you can get your hands on, including bags of pre-chipped hickory or mesquite from City Mill.
Smoked Turkey
Special equipment: a smoker
- wood chips
- 12-15 lb turkey, thawed
- olive oil
First, plan ahead. It takes 2-3 days to thaw a frozen turkey in the refrigerator, or 6-8 hours in cold water. After the turkey is thawed, pat it dry with paper towels and then let it rest in the fridge for another 3-4 hours to overnight. This dries the skin out so that the smoke adheres better. On top of all this, you should plan 30 minutes per pound for cooking. A 12 lb. turkey smokes for six hours! Adding it all up we get 3 days in the fridge + overnight drying + six hours to cook: about three and a half days!
Early on Thanksgiving Day, soak your wood chips in a bucket of water for about an hour before you start cooking. Wet wood == more smoke.
Light your coals. In your smoker, you ideally want your coals on the lowest level. Above that, I have a rack with a metal bowl of water to help regulate the temperature. The water isn't required, but it helps prevent burning and keeps the turkey moist. (If your setup can't accommodate a water bowl, push all the coals to the outer edges so they aren't right under the turkey.) At the top of your smoker, you want a wire rack for the turkey itself.
When the top coals are showing white ash around the edges, rub down the turkey with olive oil and set it on the rack. Toss a handful of wood chips on the coals and close up the smoker. Your goal is to keep the temp around 230 degrees. Open the vents or add charcoal to increase the temp. Add wet wood chips or close vents to decrease the temp.
Add wood chips whenever the smoke wanes during the first two hours. After that point, you don't need to worry about smoke. Too much smoke is overpowering. Instead, worry about keeping the temperature up by adding fresh charcoal as needed.
The turkey is done when an instant read thermometer reads 165 degrees when inserted deep into the thigh. DON'T OVERCOOK IT. Overcooking dries the turkey out. Nobody wants turkey jerky for Thanksgiving. Remove that bird from the smoker and let it rest for 30 minutes before carving. Enjoy!
Related posts:
→ Oven Kālua Turkey, if you're in the mood for melt-in-your-mouth
→ Top Ten Reasons Thanksgiving is Better in Hawaii
Cooking relaxes me.
The meditative rhythm of the kitchen slowly rolls back the chaos of work. Tweak the seasonings, sear a little hotter this time, maybe spill a little on the floor. The reward is in the smiles as people eat. I begin to unwind.
Yet there are days when even cooking sounds like too much work. You know the ones? Computer crashes, unreasonable people, impossible deadlines and nothing goes right. At the end of it all I want to collapse. It's on those days that I reach for my easiest dinner recipes. Unagi donburi, literally "eel rice bowl," can be prepped in the time it takes to cook up a pot of rice and it requires only common items from a Japanese pantry (soy sauce, dashi, mirin, rice), plus prepackaged eel.
Unagi kabayaki (grilled eel in a sweet sauce) is generally sold frozen in Japanese groceries. I picked up an 8 oz. package for $5 at Marukai and held it in the freezer until I needed a quick and easy meal. It kinda defeats the purpose if you have run out shopping for unagi in order to make "quick" and "easy," so buy a package in advance and just hold onto it.
Traditional unagi donburi consists simply of eel over rice. I like to add egg and scallions to turn this into a one bowl meal. Other variations could add shiitake mushrooms or bamboo root. My son likes green peas in his. Whatever floats your boat -- the whole point of this meal is to restore you.
Unagi Donburi with Egg
Serves 2-3
- cooked rice
- 3/4 c. water
- 2 T. mirin
- 1/4 c. soy sauce
- 2 t. dried dashi soup base
- 1 T. sugar
- 3 scallions, roughly chopped
- 8 oz. package unagi kabayaki
- 2 eggs, very lightly scrambled
- shichimi tōgarashi (optional)
Start your rice cooking. Wait a few minutes, because you don't want to finish the eel before your rice is ready. Now would be a good time to set the table, or depending on how bad the day was, crack open a cold one.
Once the rice is well on its way, heat the water, mirin, soy sauce, dashi, sugar and scallions to a simmer in a small skillet. Any optional variations like mushrooms, bamboo or peas should also be simmered with the stock to ensure they have enough cooking time.
Once the stock begins to boil, add the unagi. Cook 30 seconds, then pour eggs over top and cover with a lid. Cook one minute then serve immediately over rice in large, deep bowls. If there's any sauce left, drizzle that over top. Add a dash of shichimi tōgarashi for heat.
Then you can put your feet up, knowing that even the worst of days can't keep you from eating well.
The rise tonight of Nāhuihuiamakaliʻ (known in English as the constellation Pleiades) marks the beginning of the Makahiki in Hawaii, a four month celebration of the harvest, and a time of renewal and rest. Wars were forbidden to allow chiefs to freely move around the islands collecting tribute to Lono, the god of the harvest, and to allow the people to come together for feasts and sports. In modern times, the arrival of Makahiki is greeted with small ceremonies and reenactments around the island that attempt to preserve and perpetuate a small piece of the past for future generations.
Happy Makahiki!
Related posts:
- You can learn more about Makahiki from my post a couple years ago.
