Menu de Vegevore
Feb 15 2012

Mary, Mary, what do you have for us to eat this week?

Soldier Bean and Tomato Ragu with Sweet Potatoes to serve over White Polenta
The nice thing about polenta is that when it sets up you can reheat it in a sauté pan.  We recommend a little oil in there, and then pan fry them until they are piping hot.  Heat up the ragu in a sauce pan at the same time, pour it over the warm polenta triangles, and present it to your table.  Your table will dig it.

Mac and Cheese
Made with a celery root béchamel, just pop the top off these babies and toss them in a nice hot oven, round 350, for 20 minutes or so.  You want the inside to bubble and the top to brown, and then you wanna eatitup

Tomatillo, Yellow Eye Bean and O'Henry White Sweet Potato Chili with Triticale
Heat it up in a pan and do what you do with chili, however you do it.

Stratatatata
Chunkified with kale, buckwheat walnut bread and onions.  Like a magic mosaic of gorgeous foodness

Roasted Red Beets and Barley all dressed up in Honey Mustard and out on the town with Kale and Carrots. 
Stunning!  Oscar worthy!  Bravo, bravo!

Carrot Nori Rolls over Blanched Kale
Wow.  These are so good, I can't believe they are local

Fratine with Potatoes, Crimini Mushrooms and Herbs
Thyme, marjoram and oregano make this intensely fragrant egg dish practically irresistible. It's great hot or cold.  I know someone who likes to make sandwiches with it

Quickles!
Cabbage and carrot and hot peppers and garlic and ginger and onion and shallot and apple cider vinegar… oh my!  Wait a few days before digging in, they will just be getting  better and better

Perhaps you already know the famous punchline to the joke started in this title.  Maybe not, if you really want it, you can email me, but this is not about that.  I wrote an email recently about a lot of really wonderful events promoting the use and understanding of good food, which have been, and are still, happening all around us all the time, here in the hotbed of academic thinking about food security and all of the physical things that go along with it, the land of the bean and (formerly) the cod.  I was asked for a link, so this is to provide it.  The email below is as written, but I've added links to the various places I reference, because I was asked for that as well.  I'm fixing an error, and adding a few more thougts at the end.  Good luck, get to as many as you can, you cannot say you couldn't get out because of the weather... yet!

I feel kind of dumb. I just sent you an email and audaciously I titled it 'Local Food Things are Happening', and then I only told you about the Local Food Things happening in a tiny little part of my brain that has to do with Cuisine en Locale.  I feel like a moron, honestly.  As if the things we are hosting are the only things happening in local food.  Ridiculous.  I feel bad about this, and I want to tell you about a lot of other things, not things we are doing, that are happening all the time, all over the place, and that rock.

ONCE a Week
Omnivore Menu 2.6.12
So our Pats didn’t go all the way on Sunday. Though we thoroughly enjoyed our "ONCE for the Win" locavore wings, nachos and pigs in a blanket, we’re ready for some sophisticated fare – the kind for which you need utensils – like secret-recipe Cacciatore, cold mussel salad and marshmallow sweet potatoes. Tasty dishes like these kinda take the sting away now, don’t they?

• Spare Ribs our Brian sure knows his way around a spice rub – and so, he gave these a spicy BBQ treatment with our favorite local chipotle
• Chicken Cacciatore JJ’s Grandma's recipe gone wildly astray, with braised with white wine, bacon, tomatoes, toasted garlic, onions, carrots and a super secret ingredient: plums from our freezer stores!
• Scotch Broth a post-war Americana way to soup: think hearty broth, vegetables, barley and a combo of lamb & beef with a hint of warming nutmeg and oregano
• Mussel Salad Moussabek mussels from Great Bar Maine, steamed with hot sauce and garlic, and dressed with reduced mussel liquor, cilantro, garlic and red onion. Delightful cold on its own, also nice tossed with pasta or over a grain.
• Boston Baked Yellow Eyed Beans made with our homemade catsup, bacon, maple syrup, cider vinegar, red onion and a special spice blend (goes outstandingly with the ribs, might we add)
• Maple Marshmallow Sweet Potatoes made with a sweet syrup of apple, maple and butter, crowned with Heather’s homemade maple marshmallow topping
• Mashed Potatoes basic skin-on mash with butter and cream. Straight up tasty, forever
• Creamed Kale w/Sunchoke – our homage to spinach-artichoke dip in a healthy side dish form, made with bright green Newton Community Farms kale, roasted sunchokes and a nutmeg-onion cheddar sauce
• Pickled Tricolor Beets ruby, yellow and white beets in our fancy pickle brine

Go Pats! There's always next year

I feel like cooking, and I've got a lot to talk about.  Let's have dinner on Friday night!

ONCE on a Whim - ten courses of all local food, cooked on the spot by us for you, with love

- A rabbit and rye plate of rabbit rillette, Formaggio's award winning pork pate, rabbit-liver whiskey butter and housemade rye hardtack
- Pan seared Stillman lamb chops on Four Star barley cakes with a yogurt pan sauce
- Roasted heritage turkey.... oh, go on, I don't want to spoil it all for you!

Friday Feb 3rd at 7pm

$75/pp BYOwhatever you wanna drink
I will send a suggestion list to confirmed guests on Friday morning... if you want

Location disclosed only to confirmed guests

Reservations- 617-285-0167 or This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

On the 21st of January we return to Odin’s mighty hall (aka the Armory in Somerville) to dine among the Aesir gods, while being tended to by Valkyries

Join us!  $75 a person for endless feating and glorious festivities, or This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it for more info

Hi everyone!  Happy 2012!

We are all really excited over here in the Cuisine en Locale kitchen, because this month represents the first anniversary of our beloved ONCE a Week program.  We were thinking of buying it something pretty, but we felt like it had everything already, and that anything we got it would get returned, so we decided that there was really no better gift we could give it than a brand new baby sister…

Happy Holidays, Omnivores! With this, our last share of 2011, we think back on a full year of meals: through growing cycles, highs and lows, and everything else that goes along with locavore-dom – especially gorgeous, tasty, fresh food.  Now we’re hitting our stride with winter’s crops, tastily roasted, creatively spiced and full of immune-boosting nutrients to get you through the sneezy season unscathed. So thanks 2011 for the yumminess, and we look forward to feeding you all in 2012!

What is ONCE a Week?

ONCE a Week is a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) share style distribution of cooked food, prepared in one day by a team of chefs, from locally grown ingredients, and delivered to you to support your meal needs throughout the week.
It makes a great alternative to dining on take out a few times a week, and is an excellent solution for new parents, busy professionals and slammed students. Regular members have reported that they feel better and even lose unwanted weight when eating our food.

In the Cuisine en Locale kitchen, we like to make up words.  Who doesn’t?  Sometimes you just can’t find the word to say something the way you want to say it, and the remarkable computer that is the brain can twist an idea you already recognize and rebuild it.  Such is locavore, not that we made it up, it’s just a good example.  It’s a real word, you know, in the dictionary and everything.  It tells you what it is, even though it is rather odd sounding.  In the kitchen, on Weds night, we decided to call our brand new vegetarian ONCE a Week offering “Vegevore”.  We like it. It is sort of like Omnivore, which is what we call the meat inclusive share.  I hope it sticks.