 Our journey to healthy living and eating at Ozark Akerz has taken a lot of forms, both expected and unexpected. The unexpected have included brewing our own beer with wild-growing ingredients like cedar, passion flower (maypop) and ragweed the obvious has included growing our own herbs. We have herbs growing in the ground and in pots all year long, giving us a lot of ingredients to experiment and improve the seasonings we use in food. Right now we have rosemary, mint, 2 varieties of oregano, basil, thyme, marjoram, Italian parsley, sage and tarragon growing. We use these herbs to season everything from homemade beef sausage to moussaka and this time of the year, turkey, stuffing and many other Thanksgiving dinner sides. Before we started growing our own, we had already discovered that fresh was best. But we often found fresh herbs sold out around Thanksgiving and prices were steadily increasing. Herbs are easy to grow and care for and as a household that cooks a lot of meals they provide a regular supply and a lot of savings. We are never sold out and we dry some of them for use out of season. This can be as easy as laying out thyme or oregano on a paper towel to stringing together rosemary and hanging it to dry. The most important thing is airflow, we set or hang the herbs under a ceiling fan. The art of seasoning a turkey or any other meals has been an ongoing learning process. Sue is an alchemist in the kitchen, she is always experimenting. Her standard answer to "that's the best tasting ___ " (fill in the blank with just about any meal) is "well, we'll never have that again, i don't remember the recipe!". Her culinary inspirations and experiments are often spontaneous and she rarely writes down the amounts let alone the ingredients. A few weeks ago we were talking about how much positive feedback we had received for the radish recipes we shared from our social media community. Sue said she had begun to think about another recipe for our blog, A week later she said our Ozark Akerz Savory Cock 'n Bull seasoning would be perfect to share as a poultry seasoning for Thanksgiving dinner. The following week she broke with tradition and wrote down the recipe when she was making another batch. We call it Cock n' Bull because it's as good on poultry as it is on beef. Use it as you would poultry seasoning on chicken and turkey. We add it to beef roasts, brisket or to ground beef with other ingredients to make our beef sausage. Sue is on a roll to break tradition again, She is working on documenting our beef sausage recipe. Watch for it in a future blog post! You can either use store bought or home-dried herbs for this recipe. We store Cock n' Bull in a 1/2 pint mason jar. Ozark Akerz Savory Cock n' Bull recipe 3 tablespoons dried thyme 3 tablespoons dried sage 2 tablespoons dried marjoram 1 tablespoon dried rosemary 1 tablespoon freshly ground pepper 1/4 teaspoon grated nutmeg 1 tablespoon paprika 1/4 teaspoon cayenne Optional: 1/2 teaspoon smoked paprika 1/2 teaspoon dried savory Other Ozark Akerz recipes that Sue has captured (after much hounding by Mike!): Danish Liver pate Sue-Baby's Marinade and BBQ Sauce If you're not already subscribed to our YouTube channel, become a subscriber and click the bell icon to be notified when we release new videos. Support Ozark Akerz. Get your official Graze Against The Machine Merchandise or original art prints here 
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 Radish season is here! We eat them raw on sandwiches. In a few weeks we should have enough lettuce to grow a salad to add them to. We also ferment the roots and stems with cabbage, hot peppers and other ingredients and the leaves are added to stir fry or turned in olive oil, seasoned and baked in the oven for crispy snacks. Any woody stems, partially wilted leaves and other leftovers are fed to the chickens, turkeys, guineas and geese. This months harvest reminds us how much our soil has improved at Ozark Akerz Regenerative Farm over the past 7 years. Nothing but real food, from organic straw to organic raw milk has fed the soil since 2014. What was once a hay field with hardly any topsoil and hard pan clay is recovering to its natural state and is providing nutritionally rich and healthy food for two and four legged animals alike. From Bacon-Wrapped Smoked Radishes to Ethiopian Gomen and Radish Relish We asked our social media community to share how they use the radishes and radish greens and got recipes from Canada, France, India and United States. Thank you Joni, Patrik, Gordon, Vishal, Thom and Rachel for sharing your recipes! “This sounds funny but it’s so good: Pierce radishes with a fork. Toss with fresh black pepper, salt and dill and a little oil. Optional: Wrap with bacon Smoke on Traeger, Camp chef or indirect on a Weber grill....slow and low. The flavor is amazing, the spicy side goes away and they take on the smokey pepper flavor. It’s amazing.” Joni M., Snacktavist Foods - Idaho, United States “Here in France, they’re often served as an appetizer (at home). Dipped in soft, unsalted butter, then sprinkled with sea salt (sounds strange, but it’s not the same with just salted butter). Best with strong (spicy) radishes! I scoffed at the butter at first, but it’s really different and good!” Gordon R. - Grenoble, France “I chopped up some radishes for in my Thai curry a few weeks ago, it was good. They lose their bite after being boiled, but they had been in the fridge too long, and it seemed like a good way to use them. My wife uses the leaves for some Japanese stir-fry. She just chops them up and stir fries them in sesame oil, adds a little mirin, and salt and pepper.” Thom B. - Nova Scotia, Canada  “You might try gomen, an Ethiopian dish comparable to Indian saag, ritualised to specific recipes in cookbooks & commercially-supplied restaurants, but more commonly using any & all greens at hand (carrot, kohlrabi, arugula, parsley,...). Let me know if I can get you the crucial *berebere* spice blend bulk, but when out I use fresh turmeric, ginger, green chile, ground black pepper, etc. I'm probably not going by any valid recipe: mustard/ sesame/ olive oils, berebere, chopped onions, any finely shredded greens, sometimes tomatoes, sometimes coconut milk, stew. This is the spice I get at very good kilo (!) prices at our local Ethiopian bodega:” Patrik S., ecOasys - New Mexico, United States “Slice into 4, sprinkle a bit of sea salt, a twist of lemon and voila....😃😃” Vishal P. - West Bengal, India “I found a really great radish relish recipe that I can when I have too many. It's yummy added to tuna salad or as a condiment on hot dogs or brats. Great stirred into chicken salad or potato salad. Makes a great Raita mixed into plain yogurt. I love it on a cheese platter with sharp white cheddar 2 Cups white vinegar 11/2 Cups sugar 1 Tablespoon kosher salt 1 Tablespoon coriander seed 1 Tablespoon cumin seed 1 Tablespoon mustard seed 2 lbs radishes, shredded 1 Cup diced onion 2 inch knob ginger grated 4 garlic cloves minced Combine vinegar, sugar, salt, coriander, cumin, and mustard seed. Bring to a boil. Add the radishes, onion, ginger, garlic and return to boil. Remove from heat. Can cool and jar and put in fridge OR Use boiling water method . Ladle into hot half pint jars, covering solids by 1/4 inch liquid. Leave 1/4 inch headspace. Put on lids and process 15 min. remove from bath Cool Check seals Store in cool dark place up to 1 year.“ Rachel C. Brown Dog Farm - Wisconsin, United States We hope these recipes have inspired you to cook and eat radishes in different ways! It certainly has inspired us and we look forward to trying all of them! Let us know which one is your favorite by posting a comment. -Sue & Mike
Other Ozark Akerz recipes you may like: Danish Liver pate Our Most Popular Hot Pepper Sauce Æbleskiver and Gløgg Sue-Baby's Marinade and BBQ Sauce  We’ve had a lot of side hustles at Ozark Akerz over the years. From partnering with Raleigh Brewing Company to sell Ozark Outlaw, a small batch beer made with our jalapeño peppers to crafting Christmas ornaments out of black walnut shells and brewing our popular Mesquañero™ hot pepper sauce. Even people who didn't like hot sauce became converts after trying a sample of our mesquite smoked habanero pepper sauce. The funny thing is Mesquañero™ was a mistake! We forgot to add Ghost Jolokia peppers to one batch of pepper sauce and Mesquañero™ was born. It became our bestselling pepper sauce. Customers continue to ask for it, but we have to disappoint them. We would love to continue brewing Mesquañero™, but it’s very labor intensive and we no longer have access to a local commercial kitchen, so we've decided to discontinue it. It's not the end of Mesquañero™ though. We've decided to let it live on through you by revealing the recipe so you can brew it at home and share our bestselling pepper sauce with others.If you decide to share the recipe with friends and family or on social media, please credit Ozark Akerz Regenerative Farm. Thank you for helping us keep the recipe alive and smokin'!  Ozark Akerz Regenerative Farm - Mesquañero™ Hot Sauce Recipe. Ingredients
Base liquid:
Recipe Cut bell peppers in half and remove seeds. Soak mesquite chips before use. Put mesquite on hot coals and add whole habanero peppers and bell peppers (cut in half) to grill. Cook until soft with some blackening. Finely chop all bell peppers in a food processor or blender to create bell pepper mix. Remove and put in mason jar so you can save what you don’t use for other dishes. Finely chop habeñeros in food processor or blender. Remove and put in mason jar so you can save what you don’t use for other dishes. Add the following to food processor/blender and mix thoroughly.
After blending thoroughly, put through a strainer to remove solids. You can use the leftover pepper solids (affectionately known as gubbins) to season food or salsa. Enjoy! Sue & Mike You may also like: Video: Farm Tales with Rocky the Pineywoods Bull Video: How a Regenerative Farm Boosts Biodiversity & Conservation |
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