The Barefoot Kitchen Witch

Scallion and Red Onion Pancakes with Ginger Dipping Sauce

Or you can use chives...just scallions, just red onions, shallots, or whatever combination you want.

The recipe isn't mine - I found it on the Food Network website - from an episode of East Meets West with Ming Tsai.  If you want a copy of the recipe, here it is.  I pretty much followed it exactly except that I used a combination of the baby scallions and the young red onions. 

The first time I made these I used wild chives that were growing in among the horseradish and the asparagus.  I didn't take pictures, though.  And they were so good, I knew I'd need to make them again and this time TAKE PICTURES.

So here we go.

Bill had pulled red onions from the garden last weekend.  He'd planted them last year, we let a few of them winter over to see how big they'd get.  Well...maybe red onions aren't our crop.  They looked like fat red scallions.  I used one or two for this recipe, along with a ton of baby scallions Bill had thinned from our scallion planting.  Here are a few of them:

They were so thin - like chives - but with the white ends of scallions, or spring onions.  All I have to do was chop off the little bit of root at the end.

I had about a quarter cup of the baby scallions, so I used enough red onions to make the full half cup, more or less.

I'd made the dough first - just mixed the flour and boiling water together into a dough, shaped it into a ball, and let it rest for half an hour.  Easy as pie.  Easier, actually.

While the dough was resting, I also made the dipping sauce, which is fabulous, by the way, over rice or grilled chicken, or anything else, probably. 

It's extremely easy to make, too.

You just take your chopped scallions, red pepper flakes, minced (I grated mine) ginger, and sugar and put them in a bowl...

 

Add the rice vinegar (I actually used an organic brown rice vinegar, by the way, not the Chinese type listed in the recipe) and the soy sauce...

And ta-da, your dipping sauce is done.  Just stir it a bit to make sure the sugar dissolves.

And now it's time to make the pancakes.

You take your ball of dough - it's probably still warm - and roll it into thin, 1/8" or so, rectangle. 

Or, in my case, a rectanglish shape, which you brush generously with the combination of sesame and canola oil.

Then you sprinkle on your scallions (or whatever you're using) and salt and pepper...

Let's have a closer look, just so I can prove that there actually are bits of red onions in there.

See?  Okay, they look purple, but still.  They're not green.

Anyway, now, after admiring the distribution of your allium elements, you roll up the whole thing, jelly-roll fashion.  Or cinnamon roll fashion, depending on your taste preference.

It might be a little tricky getting it started, but just be patient and you'll do fine.

Yay! 

Okay, now the recipe tells you to cut this cylinder into four pieces, but I cut mine into six, just because I wasn't sure how much space they'd take up in the pan I'd be using.  So keep the pan size in mind when you reach this point.

Now, the recipe also tells you to take a piece and "twist 3 times."  I had a bit of trouble with this initially - the oil inside kind of dripped out - but after a bit of practice it gets a bit less messy.  Just squeeze genly while you twist the dough.  The twisting lengthens the portion of dough a bit and also helps create layers in the pancake.

Once you've done the twisting, lay the piece on your work surface and roll it into a spiral, like a snail's shell. 

Tuck the end underneath and flatten the whole thing with the palm of your hand, and then roll it carefully into a thin disk about 8" or so in diameter.  If it's not exactly 8, or if it's not a perfect circle, don't worry about it.  It will still taste fabulous.

Continue this way until all the pieces of dough have been twisted and spiraled and flattened and rolled out.

Now, in your frying pan, heat the oil (I added in the remaining sesame/canola blend, too) on medium high until very hot and place one of your pancakes in it.

Check the underside after a minute or so - it will cook very quickly when the oil's hot enough.  When the underside looks a nice golden brown, flip the pancake over and cook the other side.

You can go as dark as you wish, and when the pancake has browned to your liking, remove it and place on some paper towels to drain while you cook the next one.

In a very short time, you will have cooked them all. 

You can either serve them as they are or cut them into wedges and arrange on a plate with your dipping sauce.

Enjoy!

Peggy Fallon's "Rockin' Moroccan Salsa"

 

So colorful, isn't it?!  That's one of the lovely things about salsas - fresh ingredients and bright colors.

 

This one starts out like a lot of salsas - tomatoes, onions, garlic, cilanrto. 

What makes it "Rockin' Moroccan" is the addition of cumin, cinnamon, turmeric and paprika.  They bring a slightly darker, more exotic flavor to the mix.  My husband LOVED this one.  Kids - not at all.  But that's okay.  All the more for the grownups.

 

Actually, it's all gone now - the last bit of it went to work in my husband's lunch bag, along with some chicken I made last night and the fresh pita pockets I also made.

(The pita pockets were made specifically to accompany this salsa.  In Fallon's notes for this recipe, she suggests you serve it "with Baked Pita Chips, warm fresh pita bread, or Poppadums."  I didn't have any of the above.  I was going to just go with something else, maybe crostini or sesame crackers...but then I told myself "HEY - you've got the ingredients - MAKE SOME PITA BREAD!"  So, fearing my own wrath, I did just that.  I'll be posting that recipe between now and the end of the giveaway as well.)

Oh - yes, the giveaway - this salsa is one of the recipes from Peggy Fallon's book Great Party Dips, which I'll be giving away to some lucky entrant after the drawing next week.  You can enter the contest and get all the details here.    

But for now, here's a taste (pun intended) of one of the tempting offerings from Ms. Fallon's book...

First of all, here's a list of ingredients you'll need:

2 medium tomatoes, chopped

1/3 cup chopped red onion

1/4 cup chopped cilantro

1 T extra-virgin olive oil

2 tsp grated lemon zest

2 garlic cloves, minced

1/2 tsp ground cumin

1/4 tsp ground cinnamon

1/4 tsp ground turmeric

1/4 tsp sweet paprika

1/8 tsp cayenne pepper

dash of salt

And here's all you do:

1.  In a small bowl, combine the tomatoes, red onion, cilantro, olive oil, lemon zest, garlic, cumin, cinnamon, turmeric, paprika, cayenne and salt.  Toss gently to mix.

2.  Transfer to a serving bowl, cover, and let stand at room temperature for about 1 hour to allow the flavors to develop, or refrigeratefor up to 8 hours.  Serve at cool room temperature.

~~~

How much easier could that be?  Well, yeah, you can always open a jar of something and pour that in a bowl, but really, fresh is SO much better.

 

Squash and Sauerbraten Wontons

 

We had leftovers to use up.  Leftover Sauerbraten from this year's Oktoberfest dinner...leftover butternut squash...well, okay, just those two.  And the butternut squash wasn't technically left over yet, as I'd only cooked it that day.  But I quibble and digress.

I really don't remember how this formulated itself in my mind, but suddenly I was thinking Hey!  I could combine the remaining butternut squash with the sauerbraten and maybe some onions and garlic and seasonings or something...and put little dollops of them in wonton wrappers and fry them!

And that's pretty much what I did.

But this time, for a change, I took notes on quantities so that I could share an actual recipe with you rather than just "so I threw in a bunch of this and some of that..." and trust that you'll have no trouble recreating it, if you wanted to do that.

Here's what I used:

3 cloves of garlic, minced

1 shallot, minced

2 cups sauerbraten, shredded and then chopped fine

roughly 3/4 cup of roasted, pureed butternut squash

salt to taste

1 package small round wonton wrappers

Simple enough, right?

Okay, you combine the garlic, shallot, sauerbraten and squash in a bowl, mix it together really well, and then taste it.  Add salt if needed. 

Get yourself a little dish of water and a few plates.

On a dry surface, place a few of the wonton wrappers and then dip your finger in the water and dampen the perimeter of the wonton circles.  This will help you seal the edges after you fill them.

Next, place about a teaspoonful - or less, even - of the filling mixture in the center of each wonton.

Carefully fold the wrapper in half so that the edges meet and you've got a semi-circle shape.  Gently press out any air surrounding the filling and press the edges of the wrapper together tightly. 

 

Place finished wontons on a plate, but don't pile them all on top of each other.  One layer per plate, pretty much. 

Try not to let the wontons get wet on the outside - they'll stick together and then tear when you try to pull them apart.

Continue in this manner until either the filling is used up or you have no more wrappers. 

Next, heat up some vegetable or peanut oil, as you'll be frying these.  If you've got a deep fryer of some kind, use that, otherwise fill a wide pot with enough oil so that you'll be able to completely submerge a batch of wontons.  Have a wide metal slotted spoon handy, and also a plate lined with several layers of paper towels.  And finally, put a platter or large bowl either in the warming drawer of your oven (if you have a warming drawer) or in a warm oven (about 200 degrees) - once your fried wontons have drained, you'll need to keep them warm, unless you've got people devouring them as soon as you produce them.  (And if they're doing that, they'll be burning their mouths, because the insides of the wontons will be extremely hot initially.  So shoo them away if you can.)

Heat the oil to about 360 degrees and then carefully place some of the wontons into the oil.  Don't drop them; the oil will splatter and burn you and stain your shirt.  Put in about a layer of wontons - so that as they come up to the surface they aren't crowded. 

It also helps if your slotted spoon is nearly as wide as the pot you're using.  Any air that's inside the wontons will expand when heated, and your wontons will puff up like little pillows.  The thing is, the pillows will be puffier on one side (whichever side is on top initially) and if you try to flip it over so it will cook evenly, the persnickety little thing will roll right back to the way it was before, dark, cooked wonton skin on the underside, and pale puffy wonton skin on top.  The best way to counteract that is to gently, with your big slotted spoon, press all the little wontons under the oil the whole time they're cooking, so that the oil can surround them and turn them golden brown evenly.

These little guys cook quickly.  When they're done, set them on your paper towel-topped plate for a minute or so to drain off excess oil, and then put them in your warm bowl.  Make sure the temperature of your oil is still hovering around 360 and put in your next batch of wontons.  Continue this routine until all of them are cooked. 

Now, since the filling is already safe to eat before you even put any in the wrappers, you don't have to be as concerned with making sure the wontons are cooked through.  But just in case you want to check anyway, go ahead and sample one.  BUT - remember I said they're extremely hot inside?  I meant it.  So put your sample wonton on a plate and cut it in half, let it cool a bit and THEN taste it.  Try not to taste them all, though.  You really should leave some for other people to eat.

While these little wontons are tasty on their own, it's nice to have a little something to dip them in, too.  I made three dipping sauces - just winging them as I went along really.  Oh, yes, and I brought ketchup to the table for the kids to use if necessary.  With Alex, it was necessary.

My little sauces were these:

#1 - I combined the contents of two packets of Chinese mustard and two of duck sauce (we save these when we get Chinese takeout.  Same with the soy sauce.).  If you have more, make more.  I only had two packets of the duck sauce, and the 1:1 ratio is very important (to me) so that was all I could make.

#2 - I put about....oh a third of a cup of mayo in a bowl, added...um...about a tablespoon of sriracha (asian chili garlic sauce) and...the juice of a third of a lemon, and some (couple teaspoons) honey.  Really, once the mayo went in, everything else was to taste, so if you want more of something or less of something, go for it. 

#3 - My husband picked out this salad dressing the other day...hang on, let me go look at the bottle...okay it's Amish Naturals Heritage Line Honey Lime Dressing.  I poured about a third of a cup of that in a bowl and added about...a tablespoon of horseradish.  Again - taste as you go.  Always.

All of the little sauces were yummy, but Bill and I both liked the mayo-based one the best.  Julia tried some, too, because she's going through a "I can eat spicy-hot things and it doesn't affect me in the least!" phase ever since Alex dared her to try some hot sauce Bill was using one evening.  She's a tough little cookie, that one.

Anyway - nearly all of the wontons were gone by the end of dinner - Bill got the rest for lunch the next day.  We had these with leftover red cabbage (I still need to post that recipe, don't I...) just so that there would be some non-fried, non-fatty component to the meal.

Of course, not everyone is going to have leftover sauerbraten and freshly roasted and pureed butternut squash AND wonton wrappers on hand all at the same time.  But that's not really what this recipe is about.  It's more of a think outside the box kind of lesson.  Combine things you wouldn't ordinarily think of combining.  Think about how this might taste in combination with that.  Will it need something else to completely balance the flavor?  The texture?  And so on.

Be creative.  Have fun.  And try not to burn your mouth.

Roasted Garlic and Rosemary Sourdough Rolls

 

So, were you wondering what became of the garlic?  Here's your answer!

I love the combination of garlic and rosemary.  I especially like it when combined with a leg of lamb roasting in the oven, but I'm not overly fussy.  Ground lamb would work, right?  So I made these rolls to have with the Moussaka the other night.

Actually, I roasted the garlic over a week ago.  I had 16 heads of garlic that I sliced in half, laid out on some foil on a baking sheet, drizzled with olive oil, covered with more foil, and baked at about 350 for an hour or so. 

I let the garlic cool a bit

before squeezing it, now soft, sweet, and golden, into a bowl. 

Then I poured all the garlic into my food processor

and pulsed it til I had a relatively smooth paste. 

I froze most of it and kept some in the fridge for near-future use.

~~~~~

The day before I made my rolls (and moussaka), I added some flour and water to my sourdough starter to get it activated.

The day OF the baking, I made a batch of basic, easy sourdough bread - a 2-loaf batch. 

While the dough was rising, I went out to the garden and picked a few sprigs of rosemary and rinsed them in some water to get rid of any dirt or bugs. 

Then I picked the leaves off of the slightly woody stems and chopped them up into little pieces and mixed them with some of the roasted garlic paste.

Here's the dough after the first rise.

 

Gorgeous, isn't it?  I locked the bowl into place on my stand mixer and, using the dough hook, stirred it down.  Just wanted to share with you the lovely gluten strands pulling away from the side of the bowl....

   

Cool, huh?

I added the remaining flour and baking soda, and kneaded the dough by hand until it was - as they say - smooth and elastic.  I divided it in half, shaped one into a loaf and put it in my lightly-greased loaf pan.  The other half was patted flat on the counter and gently stretched and pressed into a vaguely rectangular shape.

 

You can see where this is going, right?  Next thing I did was to smear the garlic/rosemary mixture on the dough...

 

And then - yes - I rolled it up tightly...

 

Just like when I make cinnamon rolls.

 

I sort of pinched the edge against the rest of the roll, then sliced it into 16 pieces.  I placed them all in a greased 10" cake pan and let them rise for about half an hour before putting them into a 400 degree oven.

 

After 35 minutes, they were done. 

 

And I served them, still warm, with dinner.

Here's a shot of them - and the loaf of bread - on my dining room table, along with other bits and pieces of the day. 

 

They were pretty good - everyone liked them.  I think next time I'll add more of the garlic/rosemary mixture and maybe mix in some grated parmesan as well. 

They did, however, go very nicely with the moussaka.

A Closer Look...at Garlic

Last week I posted this photo and left it for people to try to identify.  Here are some images from the rest of that series. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Moussaka

Moussaka (moo-sa-KAH) is a delicious Greek dish of lamb and eggplant and tomatoes, topped with a light, fluffy custard.  My mom (and no, we're not Greek, we just like good food) used to make it when we were kids, and we loved it.  I have no idea why it's taken me this long to make it for my family.  But anyway - I've rectified that!

We had a nice little selection of eggplants - miniature dark purple-skinned ones, pale green, and long, skinny light purple Japanese ones.  I needed just a pound and a half, and the dark purple and pale green eggplants were plenty.  I'll do something else with the other ones.

Now, I could have sworn I had a recipe for Moussaka that I'd copied from my mother's recipe collection, but instead of looking through notebooks filled with recipes in my once-legible handwriting, I consulted a cookbook I've had for a long, long time, figuring that Moussaka would be found somewhere between the covers.

And I was right.

The book is Barron's Good Old Food by Irena Chalmers and Friends.  I bought this maybe 18-20 years ago (ugh!  that long!) when I worked for B. Dalton Booksellers.  It doesn't seem to be available in hardcover now, but I guess that doesn't really matter.  I do remember that I bought a copy for my mother as well as for myself.  And the reason was another recipe in the book - another meal my mom cooked now and then - Steak and Kidney Pie.  That sold me on the book.  I love Steak and Kidney Pie.  Hmmm...I should make that some time soon, too.

Back to the Moussaka.  Sure enough, there was a recipe for Moussaka in this book on page 76 (hardcover edition) - a mere 12 pages after the Steak and Kidney Pie recipe, incidentally.  I took a look through the ingredients, and yep, they sounded right.  I had everything on hand but the ground lamb.  I had some ground beef in the freezer, but you just CANNOT use beef in place of lamb.  It doesn't taste the same; it doesn't taste right, at least not for this dish.  So I bought lamb, and I was good to go. 

Here's what you'll need:

1 _^1/2 lbs eggplant

1/4 cup salt

3 T butter

2 small onions, finely chopped

1 clove garlic, finely chopped

1 _^1/2 lbs ground lamb

28-oz can whole tomatoes, drained, juice reserved

3 T tomato paste

1 tsp dried thyme (I used about a tablespoon of fresh)

1/2 tsp ground nutmeg

1 tsp freshly ground black pepper

3/4 cup vegetable oil (I didn't use this much - it's just for frying the eggplant - I just brushed the griddle surface with oil for each batch)

3 eggs

1 cup light cream (I had heavy.  I used it.)

1 cup grated Parmesan cheese

You'll also need some kind of casserole dish.  I used a Pyrex 13" x 9" pan, but something deeper but not as wide and long would work nicely, too.  You'd get more layers out of the deal.  But I'm getting ahead of myself....

Here's what you do:

Heat the oven to 350 degrees.

Slice the eggplant lengthwise and spread the slices on paper towels.  Sprinkle with half the salt and let them drain for 10 to 15 minutes.  Turn the pieces over and repeat with the remaining salt.

Heat the butter in a large pan over moderate heat.  Add the onions and garlic and cook until they are softened and translucent, about 5 minutes. 

Add the lamb and continue to cook for about 10 minutes or until the meat is no longer pink.

Chop the tomatoes coarsely and add them to the meat. 

Stir in the tomato paste, half the reserved tomato juice, the thyme, nutmeg and pepper.  Cook over moderate heat for 5 minutes.  Check the seasoning and add more salt and pepper if desired.

Pat the eggplant slices dry with paper towels.  Heat 1/4 cup of the oil in a large skillet, add a third of the eggplant slices and fry until golden brown on both sides.  Remove them from the skillet with a slotted spoon and drain on paper towels.  Fry the remaining batches of eggplant slices in the same way.

Place alternate layers of meat

and eggplant in an ovenproof casserole, ending with a layer of eggplant. 

Cover and bake in the 350 degree oven for 40 minutes.

Whisk together the eggs and the cream in a small bowl.  Stir in the cheese. 

Remove the lid from the casserole and pour the egg mixture over the top of the moussaka. 

 

(Sorry about the blur - I was rushing a bit.)

Return it to the oven and cook for a further 15 minutes, uncovered, until the topping is puffed and golden.

 

The whole family enjoyed this.  Well.  It took some time for Alex to fully appreciate the entire thing.  He picked the lamb out at first, but eventually discovered how wonderful it tastes when you have a bite with all the different components represented therein.  Julia liked the frothy custardy top part the best.  Bill had a couple helpings, and some for lunch the next day.  And me?  I could have eaten the whole thing all by myself.  Yes.  It's really that good.

Fun With Eggplant

 

Our gardens are winding down.  Bill's been pulling some of the plants that are finished, and every day we get something from the few plants still producing.  We've got tomatoes and peppers still ripening.  Swiss chard.  Pak choi.  A few others.  And we've got our fingers crossed that the second planting of scallions and peas and carrots will have enough time to grow and produce.

The vegetables in the photo above were from a recent harvest.  The colors were so gorgeous I had to take this shot.  We've got tomatoes, a cayenne pepper, a green bell pepper that now - a few days later - has turned red - and three kinds of eggplant.

The long, skinny purple eggplants sometimes grow curved, and Julia found one that looked like a "J" in among these.  So Bill went through the bowl...and this is the result:

 

It actually looks a lot like her handwriting...

Anyway, since he spelled out one kid's name with vegetables, he had to spell the other one.  Unfortunately, we don't have a lot of "E" shaped produce out there.  But where there's a Bill, there's a way (hahahaha - sorry, I know that was painful to read).

 

Oh, the fun we have.

But besides spelling your kids' names, there are other uses for eggplant.  There's eggplant parmesan...baba ganoush...and there's moussaka.  My mom made moussaka from time to time when we were growing up, and lately I've been thinking that it's been way too long since I've had some.  So, with our modest crop of eggplants picked and ready for action, I figured that was the way to go.

And that was all just a tease, because I haven't written it up yet, or made sure the photos look good.  So that's what I'm going to be doing right now, and I'll have that recipe up a little later this morning.  I wish we had more eggplant.  I'd make it again tonight.  It's THAT good. 

Stuffed Squash Blossoms Again - Just For a Moment

I think I'm getting the hang of these.

I'd read somewhere that you should slice the petals open - a quick snip along one side is all you need to do - to stuff them.  I tried it with these yesterday, and it made things easier - I could remove the stamen easily and the delicate blossom didn't just split open in random spots.

I made the filling of ricotta, oregano, sage, salt and pepper.  I left the oregano leaves whole, since they're pretty small, and julienned the sage leaves.

It's a lot easier to stuff the blossoms when they're already laying flat on the counter, and all I have to do is give each one a nice-sized blob of filling and then wrap the petals around.  Then I just closed the petal tips with a toothpick (although that toothpick may not have even been necessary - I'll try them without it next time) and froze them for a while until it was time to fry.

This time around, I dredged them first in plain flour, then dipped them in an egg thinned with some water, and then into a blend of half flour/half cornmeal, plus salt and pepper. 

They fried up nicely.  Unfortunately, there is no evidence of this as they were eaten very shortly after I removed the toothpicks.

Bill said they were the best ones so far (this is my third batch - didn't write up the second batch for some reason), and I agree with him.  I like the texture of the cornmeal - it accentuates the crunch and balances out the softness of the filling.

I still plan to bake a batch some time, but I'll wait til I have a larger batch to do that.

Carry on.

Stuffed Squash Blossoms

The same afternoon I made focaccia, I also made stuffed, fried squash blossoms.

It was a Friday, and at the farmers' market that morning there was a new (to me) farm in attendance selling lettuces and cabbage and squash - and they had big bags of squash blossoms.  So, of course, I bought some.

I'd never stuffed a squash blossom before, but that was no reason not to start.

I figured I could use some homemade ricotta and fresh herbs from the garden to stuff them and then dredge them in flour, then egg, then flour or flour and cornmeal or something before frying them.  Bill had suggested using some of the leftover filling for chiles rellanos that we had in the freezer, but I really wanted to use cheese.

Squash blossoms open in the morning and that's when they should be picked.  The flowers will stay open for a while after picking, but as the day wears on, they close up, and the petals eventually shrivel and shrink.  They can still be stuffed, but they're very fragile and will tear easily.

The male blossoms are the ones that should be picked - these won't produce fruit - they just help pollinate the female blossoms, and it's the bees (or my intrepid husband) who actually deliver the pollen - like a box of chocolates - to the female blossoms anyway.  The male blossoms just hang out on the vines, with their little yellow...um...stamens just waiting for the bees to come along and do all the work for them.  When you are preparing these blossoms for stuffing, you'll need to remove the stamen and also check for any little bugs hiding out in there.

(male on the left, female on the right, in case you were wondering)

Some recipes call for you to slice the flower open, and this makes some sense, since it's pretty hard to remove the stamen without tearing the petals anyway.  I didn't know about the slicing idea, however, until AFTER I'd made this first batch, so I just tried to do as little damage as possible.  Next time I won't worry so much.

My biggest concern was how to keep the cheese from oozing out during the frying process.  The outer petals were all shriveled and didn't look as though they could be counted on to hold any kind of a shape in the hot oil.  Hmmm...what to do, what to do.  (I could have looked up recipes in my cookbooks or online, but I wanted to figure it out myself.)

Well, as I was staring at the shriveled blossoms, I heard Bill's suggestion of the chiles rellanos filling again.  AHA!  I thought.  Not the filling - I still wanted to use cheese - but the process of making the chiles rellanos.  When we made those, I stuffed the peppers and then - here's the AHA part - closed them up with wooden skewers and then froze them.  Perfect!  That would work for the squash blossom, I figured.  And it did.

So first I went out to the garden and picked leaves and sprigs of just about all the herbs we had. 

I rinsed and dried an assortment for use in my blossoms and saved the rest for the focaccia or for other uses.  Then I chopped up the leaves and mixed them in with the ricotta and some garlic paste and it was time to stuff the flowers.

Like I said earlier, the blossoms are very fragile and a bit hard to stuff.  But I managed to stuff them by holding the blossom open in my left hand, securing the petals under my fingers somehow, and then spooning some of the ricotta in. 

Then I'd kind of fold the petals together and pin them with a toothpick.

Once they were all stuffed and pinned, I put them in the freezer and set up three bowls for the dredging and dipping.  First bowl had just flour.  Second bowl - eggs and some milk.  Third bowl - more flour.  Next time, though, I think I'll use a blend of cornmeal and flour, for the crunch.  I poured vegetable oil into a pot and started heating that.

When the oil reached about 360 degrees F, I took a few blossoms out of the freezer, did the flour/egg/flour dredge/dip/dredge thing with them all, and then gently lowered them into the oil.  The toothpicks held, and there was very little, if any, ricotta seepage.

When the first batch came out,

I had to try one,

 

just to make sure they were fit for consumption by other people besides my immediate family. 

They were.  So onward I went and fried up the rest of them.

They may not look very exciting, and the crispy aspect didn't last once they cooled a bit, but they tasted pretty good and people seemed to like them.  There weren't any left, as far as I know.

If you make them - and you should, if you have any sort of access to squash blossoms - just remember to remove the toothpicks before serving!

Grilled Salmon Cake, Polenta, Eggplant, and Pattypan Napoleon. Kind of.

I couldn't come up with a better name.  Or a shorter one.  Unless you count the working name of "Stack" as a good title for this recipe.  It works, but doesn't sound all that appetizing. 

We're growing pattypan squashes for the first time this year, and they are a wonderful crop.  We have one plant, and I don't know how many little squashes we've harvested so far, but there is no end in sight.

The other morning we picked five, and one zucchini.

 

Besides these, we had about 4 other pattypan inside and a couple more zucchini.  And one little eggplant.  And we needed to eat them.

It's been hot and humid here the last several days, and while I'd been originally thinking of doing some kind of pasta and fresh vegetable dish, I didn't feel like boiling a big pot of water and boiling up the kitchen at the same time.  And I didn't feel like making pizzas or focaccia that day.  So instead, in order to avoid as much heat as possible (hahahaha), I broke out my griddle and, yes, cooked several sliced yellow pattypan squashes, the eggplant, and more.  Yes, SO much more refreshing and cool than boiling water or baking something in the oven...

Anyway, here's the rest of what I did.  And keep in mind, this was all for the sake of using vegetables AND making a visually pleasing plate of food.

I sliced the pattypan squashes into circles about 1/4-1/2 of an inch thick.  I got about 4-5 slices per squash.  I also sliced the eggplant into (roughly) 1/4 circles...

And then - still going with the circle theme here - I got out a tube of pre-cooked polenta and sliced THAT into circles, about 1/3 of an inch thick.

And finally, I got out a can of salmon, drained the contents, and mixed that up with a finely chopped garlic scape, a couple of eggs, about half a cup or so of bread crumbs, salt and pepper.  When it was all combined, I shaped the mixture into about 10 balls.  Yes, again with the circle theme.

* A little tip - when forming balls or patties or cakes with any kind of meat or fish, it helps prevent sticking if you dip your hands in some cold water before you begin, and then again after every couple of balls.  Or patties.  Or cakes.

I put the salmon balls in the fridge (it was way too hot to leave them out, and I planned to cook them last) and then I fired up the two burners underneath my griddle. 

By the way - sorry, no more process pictures til the end.  I wasn't even sure I was going to write this one up until the end.  I should know better by now - I should just take pictures no matter what I think going into it.  But this isn't a terribly difficult thing to make, so I don't think you really need the step by step by step photos anyway.

Okay.  Once the griddle was hot, I painted it with some vegetable oil and placed all my circles of pattypan squash on to cook.  While they were sizzling away, I painted the top sides of the squashes with more oil and sprinkled them with some salt and pepper.  When they were soft and slightly browned on both sides, I drained them on paper towels and stowed them away in the warming drawer of my oven. 

I basically repeated the same process with the slices of eggplant and the sliced polenta, and then the salmon.  For the salmon - I placed the balls on the griddle and then gently pressed them down into cakes about 1/2 an inch thick or so.  As each food finished cooking, into the warming drawer it went.

While things were grilling, I was thinking about how to serve them.  I knew I was going to stack everything, kind of like a Napoleon, but I thought I needed more than just the four components. 

I had some fresh mozzarella sliced and sitting in salted water in the fridge.  It was a batch I made with half whole milk and half nonfat milk last week and I didn't like the taste or the texture at all.  As both my sister-in-law and my husband said, it was squeaky.  It didn't get soft and stretchy enough at all, even though I had the hot whey at 195 and up while I was trying to work with it.  (And no rubber gloves for me while handling the scalding hot whey!  I've got chef hands, remember!  And I'm stupid AND a showoff, too!)

Anyway, I had put the bland and squeaky mozzarella in a bowl of salted water because I figured it would both flavor and soften the cheese, and it did, actually, so I was slightly pleased with myself for that.  I thought the slices of mozzarella would go nicely in between layers of squash and polenta and salmon cakes, and the heat from the cooked items would also melt the cheese a bit.

I also made a little sauce or dressing to drizzle on top.  I whisked together roughly a third of a cup of olive oil, about a tablespoon of roasted garlic puree that I had in the fridge a bit of lemon juice, salt and pepper, and about a quarter cup of grated romano cheese.

So, once everything was cooked and I had my game plan for assembly worked out, I plated one and took some pictures (while my family waited impatiently forks in hands and stomachs growling...).  I was working with the late afternoon sun that streams in through one of the kitchen windows, which is the reason for the kinds of shadows I got.  I kind of liked the effect - to me, it says "HOT, HUMID DAY, BUT WITH FOOD FROM THE GARDEN!"

 And how did it taste?  Well, predictably, the kids didn't like in its entirety - the each tore it apart and ate the layers they liked.  And that was fine - they each had some of it.

Bill loved it, and I thought it was pretty good, too.  And just think - as more of our round or cylindrical vegetables ripen, I could make new versions, taller versions...skyscrapers on a plate. 

Food is fun.

Strawberry Balsamic Sorbet

According to my son, Alex, "This tastes just like strawberries!" 

I had a lot of strawberries on hand last week - end of the season strawberries that needed something done with them or else they'd start going moldy.

I had made a couple of batches of freezer jam...I made pies...and I made sorbet.

First - I made a batch of simple syrup. 

2 cups of sugar + 2 cups of water.  See?  Simple!

Pour the sugar and water in a pot and stir just to moisten all the sugar.  Place the pot over a medium flame and heat it until all the sugar has dissolved.  Once the sugar has dissolved, shut off the heat and let the syrup cool to room temperature.  You can do this ahead of time and refrigerate it, if you wish.

Next, the strawberries.  To be honest, I don't know how many cups or pounds of strawberries I started with.  I just used everything I had left - I'm guessing around 5 or 6 cups before I hulled and trimmed them.  After hulling them and halving them (and yes, trimming away any particularly mushy sections), I pureed most of them in my food processor and strained the juice to keep the seeds out.  I kept about half a cup of strawberries out of the processor and mashed them with a tiny bit of sugar.  I set these aside for later.

I had a little over 3 cups of strained strawberry puree and I combined that with 1 3/4 cups of simple syrup, stirred well, and put the mixture in the fridge for about an hour.

I apologize at this point for the scarcity of process photos. 

When the strawberry base was chilled, I got my ice cream maker out and set up and found some containers to keep the sorbet in once it was ready to go in the freezer.

I also got those remaining strawberries that I'd mashed with a bit of sugar and strained the excess juice from them.  I set the remaining berries aside again to mix into the sorbet later.

Once the strawberry sorbet had run its course through the machine, I stirred in the additional berries.  I also drizzled in some balsamic vinegar glaze - not a lot, maybe a couple of tablespoons - and then I scraped the soft sorbet mixture into a couple of containers and popped them in the freezer.

Several days later, we dug in. 

 

The sorbet had a delightful texture that was both icy and silky smooth.  The balsamic vinegar glaze wasn't really noticeable as balsamic vinegar, but it gave the sorbet a zing that cut through the sweetness and brightened the overall flavor without providing any sort of distraction from summery taste of fresh strawberries.

My kids loved it, and so did Bill and I.  In fact, Alex had a bit of Haagen Dazs Mango sorbet this evening - and he didn't like it.  He wanted my strawberry sorbet instead.

Okay, I realize that choice had more to do with the flavor of mangoes vs the flavor of strawberries...but still, homemade trumps store bought any day in my book.  I allowed myself a moment to pat myself on the back (figuratively, so no one would see).  And laugh.

And then I went back to loading the dishwasher.

 

So if you find yourself with an abundance of fresh summer fruit but the thought of making a pie fills you with dread and sends you running for the air conditioner, keep your cool by making some icy, silky, delicious sorbet.  No baking involvoved.

And Speaking of Eggrolls - How About Filling Them With Strawberries?

 

This was just an experiment - I had some leftover eggroll wrappers in the fridge and I had some strawberries.  And I thought - hey - deep-fried dessert! 

First, I chopped up the strawberries and mixed them with a little sugar.  In hindsight, I should have let them sit in the sugar longer to release more of the juice, and then either strained off the excess liquid or cooked it down a bit.  Lesson learned.  On we go.

Next, I took an eggroll wrapper and filled it with some of the strawberries...

I also made a couple of them this way -

When I had four made (like I said, this was experimental)

I heated up the oil to between 350-360 F and then fried these up.

You can't really see it well in those two frying shots, but just about all of the eggrolls leaked some juice, which is why I'd like to eliminate more of the liquid before the rolls are filled next time.

Once they were nicely golden brown, I removed them from the oil and drained them on some paper towels and then dusted them liberally with powdered sugar.

 

And then I got all fancy, drizzled some chocolate syrup on a plate, and arranged an eggroll just so...

 

And so, you ask, how were they?

Not bad.  Like I've already said, I'd reduce the moisture level of the strawberries - or I'd add something to help absorb the juice...like a cornstarch/sugar mixture...or some crushed plain cookies....hmmmmm.

They also don't need the chocolate - if I wanted to drizzle something again, just to be fancy, I'd maybe drizzle some thinned lemon curd or a strawberry coulis.  Or I'd serve the hot eggrolls with ice cream, because all those hot/cold, crunchy/soft contrasts would be nice.

And that's about it for now!  I'll be back later - I've still got a couple of other strawberry-themed posts to write - hopefully I'll get them up today or tomorrow. 

See you later!

Impromptu Eggrolls

Sometimes I take photos of something I'm making, but then get busy with other posts and forget (or neglect) to post some of the older recipes and photos.  Like with these eggrolls.  I made them in...early June.  Okay, so that's only about 5 weeks ago.  Could be worse, I suppose.

Anyway, in an attempt to rectify this, I'm trying to focus on some older recipes and process photos, just so I can put them to bed, so to speak.

I made these eggrolls in early June, with some leftover Farmers' Market produce and other odds and ends in the fridge.  If I remember correctly, I was originally going to make some kind of pasta dish with the vegetables...and then I thought pan seared dumplings would be fun.  And then I ended up making eggrolls.  I had the eggroll wrappers in the fridge, and a package of tofu, so I guess it was fated.

And because this was a "clean out the fridge" sort of creation, I can't give you exact amounts for the filling.  So this post isn't so much a recipe to follow as it is inspirational (I hope).  So let's go.

The whole thing started with the rest of the mizuna and mibuna I'd bought at the Farmers' Market the previous Friday.  I'd used most of each bunch, but there was still a significant enough amount left that I felt I should DO SOMETHING with it.  I figured I could chop it up and saute it or something....

I had a package of firm tofu...I had those eggroll wrappers...I had some black beans from a can - must have used some for something and these were what was left...I had onion and garlic...some mung bean sprouts...and part of a serrano pepper that was turning red and begging to be used.  Oh, yeah, and I had some mushrooms.

I sauteed the onion and garlic and mushrooms in some oil, and added the cubed tofu and continued to cook til most of the liquid was either absorbed or cooked off, and the tofu was just starting to turn golden.  I scraped all that into a large bowl, and then steamed the chopped greens in the same pan til they wilted nicely and gave up most of their liquid.  I added them, along with the black beans, chopped serrano, and sprouts to the bowl and mixed the whole mess together really well. 

 

I know.  "Mess" is a pretty appropriate term, isn't it.

Next, I got out my package of eggroll wrappers and started the assembly.

Ta-da!  You just need to remember to dip your finger in some water and run it around the perimeter of the wrapper so that you can seal the edges as you roll them up. 

I put about an inch of oil in a pan and started heating it, and while the temperature climbed, I made some dipping sauces.

And yes, I admit it, I made three sauces just so I could make use of this nifty little plate I bought at Pier One that same day. 

The first one I made was a blend of soy sauce and wasabi paste with some chopped chives on top.

Second sauce was simply a blend of sesame oil and rice vinegar with some roughly chopped cilantro leaves on top.

(Chives and cilantro came from our garden, by the way.)

And the third sauce - well, I wanted something thicker and creamier (clearly), so I blended nonfat yogurt with some hot pepper jelly - that orangey red blob on top is some of the jelly.

I must say, the set of sauces in their snazzy little platter was fun to photograph.

Yep, that was fun.  Back to work.

Once the oil had reached a temp of between 350-360 F, I started frying the eggrolls a few at a time.

As they came out of the oil, I kept them dry in the warming drawer of my oven until all the eggrolls were cooked.

And then I assembled them around the sauces and brought them downstairs to share with Bill. 

They were really good - with an occasional blast of heat from the chopped serranos that kept things exciting.  (It's important, in a marriage, to throw an occasional culinary curveball, you know.  Serrano peppers make the heart grow fonder.  Or something like that.)

So next time you have a variety of potential ingredients all hanging out in your fridge, and you know you could make some sort of pasta dish or a salad with them, but you just don't really feel like going those routes, get out your eggroll wrappers and stir up a few dipping sauces and...(get ready for it)

 

...fry something new! 

(Irritating pun intended.)

Open-Faced Flattery

I admit it, I was poking around on Photograzing (the Serious Eats version of sites like Food Gawker and Tastespotting), checking to see if the bread photo I'd submitted had been posted.  It had - but right next to my pale white bread photo was a luscious looking sandwich of roasted vegetables, goat cheese, and basil.  and it looked GOOD.  The photo was posted on The Kitchen Sink in a post entitled "Pondering a Picnics-Only Plan."

And not only did I find myself calling my husband over to see that picture, but I also thought - I could make something like that for dinner tonight.

So I did.

We had leftover zucchini, pattypan squash, and kohlrabi that Bill had grilled last Wednesday night.  I had about half a baguette.  I had fresh mozzarella that I made last Thursday (more on that in a paragraph or two), some 1/8 inch thick prosciutto left over from a recipe cooked here on...um...Saturday.  And half a 10 ounce log of Ile de France goat cheese that I was sent by a rep from Ile de France (more on that later, too).  What else - pepperoni and slices of romano for Alex.  I also had a bowl of fresh basil, brought over on Saturday by a friend.  Olive oil, salt, pepper, and balsamic vinegar rounded everything out.

Here's what I did.

I sliced the baguette lengthwise into thirds - I didn't want really thick bread.  Plus I wanted to be able to feed all four of us with what we had.

I put the slices on a cookie sheet and drizzled them (generously) with olive oil, and sprinkled them with salt and pepper.

I took some more olive oil, and some minced red onion (also left over from Saturday), sauted the onion for a couple minutes, and then sliced the grilled vegetables and placed them in the pan to heat up.  I cut up the thick prosciutto into inch-sized pieces...what else did I do...I guess that was it.

Okay, on one third of the olive oil drizzled baguette, I put down a layer of basil leaves, then pepperoni slices, and then thin slices of romano.  Ta da.

On the other slices...I put down a layer of basil leaves, and on top of them, slices of fresh mozzarella.

Now let me pause a moment and talk about this mozzarella, because every time I make it, I learn something.  I wanted to make cheese because Bill's brother and sister-in-law were here and yeah, sometimes I am a showoff.

And then it sort of backfires, which keeps me humble.  The last two times I made mozzarella, I used half whole milk/half 1%.  This time, for some reason, I thought I'd try half whole and half fat free.  I don't know why.  Maybe because I hadn't tried that combination yet.  Well, I got all my stuff set up, stirred in my citric acid and lipase...watched the coagulation begin...stirred in the rennet...watched the curds set up...strained the gorgeous curds...added my salt to the whey...and started kneading the curds, and...

They didn't want to stretch.  I knew the whey was plenty hot enough - it was hotter than usual, in fact, because I didn't want to spend too much time in the crumbly curd stage.  But the curds didn't get stretchy.  The held together and all, but they were not soft and elastic like they were supposed to be.  The texture was off - my sister-in-law said it was squeaky, and that's pretty much on the money.  I formed the cheese into balls as best I could, and stuck them in a bag in the fridge.  I tried a piece later - they were tough and unpleasant to chew.  Taste was bland.  My verdict?  Not enough fat.  I don't plan to use fat-free milk again in my mozzarella making.

But.

I got creative, because I was determined not to waste the two pounds of cheese I'd made.  So I sliced it all thinly and put it in a bowl of generously salted water, and stuck it all back in the fridge.  And that helped salvage the batch. 

So anyway, back to the open-faced sandwich I was talking about.  I put down the basil, and then this salvaged (moister, more flavorful) mozzarella.  On top of that went the sliced, grilled, reheated zucchini, pattypan and kohlrabi. On top of them?  The prosciutto.  And then?  Globs of goat cheese.

And here's another story. 

A month or so ago I got an email from someone at Ile de France cheese.  He asked if I'd be interested in receiving some samples of their cheeses and writing about them in my blog. 

And I thought - hey!  Free cheese?  Count me in!

The thing is, I've bought Ile de France's Brie often and I was already a fan.  I'd never had their goat cheese, though, so I asked if I could try that one.  I was told the cheese would ship on July 7th and I'd receive it on the 8th "in perfect condition."  And you know?  That's exactly what happened!

I saved the cheese for the following evening, when Bill's brother and sister-in-law were due to arrive.  I figured the more opinions, the merrier.

I served the goat cheese with a couple of different kinds of crackers, and, among the goat cheese fans in the group (Alex wanted no part of it, and my sister-in-law didn't want any), the consensus was that the Ile de France goat cheese was very, very nice.  It had a bright, fresh, kind of citrusy flavor (my opinion) - Bill's brother said it wasn't as "goaty" as other goat cheeses - I'm thinking he meant it was milder.  Half the log was gone before dinner that day.  It was soft and tangy and delicious.  I'd like to get some another time, along with a couple of other goat cheeses, and do a tasting, just to compare them all.  Hmmm.

Anyway, back to my sandwich.

I put the goat cheese on top of the grilled vegetables, and popped the cookie sheet in a 350 degree (F) oven for about 15 minutes.  The cheeses got nice and melty (okay, not the romano so much) and the whole thing smelled heavenly.  After I pulled the cookie sheet from the oven, I drizzled some balsamic glaze over the grilled vegetable sandwiches, sliced them into smaller sections, and served them up.

I think I could eat this sort of thing every day for the rest of the summer.  We've got squashes ripening on a daily basis - I can't think of a better way to serve them.  Really.  Sheer heaven.  The smokey grill flavor of the zucchini, pattypan and kohlrabi...the hint of bitterness from the kohlrabi (think brussels sprouts or cabbage)...the sweetness of the zucchini and pattypan, the basil, and the balsamic glaze...the soft salty/tangy cheeses and the savory salty proscuitto...and the earthy, fruity olive oil soaking into the bread. 

Julia had one slice.  Bill and I ate ALL the rest. 

I might have to make this again tomorrow

Thank you, Kristin, for the inspiration! 

Fluke Roll-Ups

When I was a kid, I remember my mother taking thin filets of flounder, topping them with a thin layer of some sort of ritz cracker stuffing, and then rolling them up individually, filling a pyrex baking pan with them and baking them.  We'd have them with rice, usually, and whatever vegetables and salad she had planned for dinner.

Recently, my brother-in-law, Jacques, gave us a gallon-sized plastic freezer bag crammed with frozen fluke filets.  The fish were caught by a fisherman friend of his.  Anyway, we stuck the bag right back in the freezer until we knew what we were going to do with the contents.

This past Sunday, I cooked them up.  I also utilized some of the pak choi we recently harvested from the garden.

(It was that one posing in the front of the photo.)

The other elements that inspired this dish were the Heat and the Humidity.  I didn't want to bake anything in the oven, and we didn't want to grill, so that's when I remembered the rolled up fish filets my mom used to make, and I thought "Aha!"

So here's what happened after I thought "aha."

First, I made a stuffing.  I don't really have an exact recipe - I just threw things in as they occurred to me.  But basically the stuffing was as follows:

Leafy parts of one head of pak choi, roughly chopped up into inch-size pieces (reserve the stalks - they'll be used, too, but later)

One sleeve of Ritz crackers (or other buttery-style crackers.  I am loyal to Ritz, personally.)

About a quarter cup of plain bread crumbs.

The juice of one lemon

About half a stick of butter, melted

The leftover cup or so of clam chowder that we brought home from the restaurant we ate at after we went to the zoo a day or so beforehand.  It was the white, or New England, style of chowder.

Salt and pepper to taste

I mixed the ingredients all together and set them aside.

Next up, I roughly chopped up one onion and the stalks from the pak choi.  I poured some olive oil in my big 14" saute pan and tossed in the onion and stalks and cooked them gently (lid on) til they were soft.

While they were busy softening, I got my fish out, rinsed it off, patted it dry.

These are three of them - there were...um...seven in total.

And then I started to roll...

I placed a filet on the board, lengthwise, patted some of the filling on most of it, and rolled from the end closest to me to the far end.  Why did I leave part of the fish filling-free?  Couple reasons.  For one thing, as you roll the fish up, the filling kind of gets smushed along and ends up filling in that empty spot.  If it was totally covered, you'd have filling squirting out the end.  (Lovely image, huh?)  But also, truth be told, I think my brain slipped into either maki roll or cinnamon bun mode, with the notion that I'd need a blank section to use as tape, kind of, to bind the roll together.  You know, like you would do making the maki rolls or cinnamon buns.  Yeah, sometimes the compartments in my brain smash together and the contents get mixed.

Anyway, I did that with all the fish and then I carefully set them all on top of the softened onion and pak choi stalks in my pan.

Like so:

I put the larger two in the center, where they'd be directly over the burner, and placed the smaller ones around the edges.  And I chose to set the fish on top of the onions and stalks so there would be no fish stuck to the pan anywhere.  I also, as you can see, had a bit of the filling left over, so I topped the fish with it.

Next, I placed the lid on the pan, set the burner on high, and set my timer for five minutes.  When the timer went off, I shut off the heat and set the timer for another ten minutes.  I DID NOT TOUCH the lid or the pan.  I just went about my business and let the heat and moisture work their magic.

When the timer went off, I took a peek at my fish (perfectly done - yay!) and made some couscous (which takes about 6 minutes).  Once the couscous was done, I dished it up.

Very simple, and very tasty.  Best of all, I only used one burner on the stove, and it was only on for 15 minutes.  (I nuked the couscous.) 

So next time you've got some fluke filets you don't know what to do with, and it's hot, and you don't want the oven on and you don't want to grill...give this a try.  Be creative with the stuffing, too - you just want to make sure it's moist.

And let me know how it turns out!

Lasagne of Homemade Components, Mostly

And that's a LOT shorter than the original title, which was "Lasagne of Homemade Ricotta, Homemade Mixed Greens Lasagne Noodles, and a Quick Homemade Tomato Sauce."  The "mostly" refers to the mozzarella string cheese I used (hadn't made my OWN mozzarella at this point) on top of the lasagne.

 

Okay, well, first off, I made the Ricotta cheese.  I love Ricotta, by the way.  In my post about making the ricotta, someone commented that I should not waste milk on making Ricotta, but I disagree - I could eat the whole batch of Ricotta ALL BY MYSELF WITH JUST A SPOON and would consider it a really good use of my time.  There's just something about it.  Yum. 

Okay, so the Ricotta was in the fridge, just waiting to be eaten (either by me with a big spoon, or in some other food form and shared with my family), so I made another batch of pasta dough.  This time, I wanted to make a green pasta, so I just went out to the garden and picked some things.  Really.  I don't have measurements - I just picked a couple of arugula leaves...a couple of swiss chard leaves...a mustard green leaf...a stalk of oregano...some chives...I think that was it.  I also thawed a some basil that had been frozen in olive oil, and I think I used a couple of garlic scallions.  I rinsed off everything from the garden, patted it dry, and then whirled it and three eggs in the food processor.

While the greens were drying (before I pureed them with the eggs), I poured the rest of the Semolina flour I had into my big white bowl (there was maybe half a cup) and added a couple of cups of flour and a sprinkling of salt.  I made a well, and then, after the greens and eggs were combined, poured that mixture into the well.

I stirred the flour into the liquid with a fork, and I added some water as needed to work the mess into a dough.  I think it was about half a cup or so of water.

And then I kneaded for about 10 minutes or so...

until it was a nice, smooth (well, except for the small bits of greens and garlic poking out here and there) ball of dough.

It smelled REALLY good... (I'd invite you to inhale deeply...but it wouldn't do any good...all you can do is look...)

And then I wrapped it in plastic and put it in the fridge.

And I left it in the fridge til the next day.  And oh, boy, did it smell even better when I unwrapped it that following afternoon.

I divided the dough into sixths or eighths, pressed and rolled each piece into a sort of rectangle thin enough to go into the pasta roller, and then I rolled each piece out into sheets.  I then cut each sheet into 3 or 4 pieces - VERY rustic -

and set them on cookie racks while I rolled out and cut up the rest of it. 

 

No - wait, I'm mistaken.  I didn't use all of it up - I used about 2/3.  I saved some to make into linguine later on.  And then there were also the scraps my kids claimed.

(that's a smiley face that Julia made)

Actually - Julia had helped roll out the sheets of dough - she's become a pro with the pasta roller - so much so that if I attempted to assist her in any way, say, by catching the sheet of dough as it came out the bottom, while she guided the dough into the top with one little hand and cranked the roller with the other, she gave me a LOOK and snapped "I can DO it!" in a tone that also distinctly said "So BACK OFF, Mommy!" 

I said fine and let her go to it.

Once I had enough sheets for the lasagne, I started throwing together a sauce.  I used a 28 oz can of whole plum tomatoes, some onion cut up, some garlic, about half a cup of red wine (what was left in the bottle), some water, and a can of fava beans.  I cooked the whole thing, added some salt and pepper, and used my immersion blender to liquify it all - mainly so the kids wouldn't be poking around looking for vegetables to avoid.  The beans added some thickness, too.

I heated a big pot of water while the sauce simmered, and started cooking the lasagne noodles in batches of 5 or 6 noodles at a time.  Because the pasta was fresh, they cooked very quickly - a couple of minutes and they were done.

I laid the cooked noodles out on dish towels on top of my cooling racks while I cooked the rest of them, and once all the noodles were cooked I assembled my lasagne.

The unmatched noodle shapes gave each layer a crazy quilt sort of look, but since each layer of noodles was covered with a layer of sauce and a layer of ricotta, it really didn't matter.  Actually, it didn't matter anyway.  Who cares?  This is home cooking, not a Food Network competition.

I also had seven noodles left over, once I'd built four or five layers of lasagne in the pan, so I rolled the remaining ricotta up in the noodles and covered that with the rest of the sauce.  Not manicotti, really.  I don't know what to call it, other than "for the freezer."

I baked both pans uncovered in a hot oven - 400 degrees F.  Since everything was already cooked, I just wanted to heat them through quickly.

And that was dinner that night.  And lunch the next day.

Herb Layered Ravioli Filled with Goat Cheese, Garlic Scallions and Wilted Spinach

  

Those are thyme leaves (from the window box near my kitchen door).  I also used oregano, tarragon, and chives.  But I'm getting ahead of myself.

I've felt the urge to make fresh pasta lately, and I've seen, over the years, pasta with herb leaves pressed between the pasta layers.  So, in that fresh pasta mood, and with PLENTY of herbs (though not all are ready) to choose from, I set to work.

I'd picked up a box of Hodgson Mill Semolina Pasta Flour at the grocery store the other day, so I used that for this batch of dough, and I doubled the recipe on the back of the box because I figured I could freeze any extra ravioli or make spaghetti or something with the trimmings from the ravioli and dry that.

Which is exactly what I did.

I'd also picked up a package of goat cheese for the filling.  I planned to enhance that with some other greens, either herbs or vegetables or something. 

I don't always go into these things with an ingredient list and a recipe.  I just think - hey, goat cheese ravioli would be yummy, and wouldn't it be pretty with whole herb leaves in the pasta dough?  And then I do it.

 Like I said, I doubled the recipe on the back of the box.  Very simple - flour, eggs, olive oil, salt, and water.

I used a big bowl instead of the counter, partly because I'm not always perfect with the stirring in of the flour and occasionally the dam bursts and I get egg all over the counter.

Also - because I like to use this bowl for handmade things like pasta or bread.

It's big and plain white and made in Italy.  It's got some chips along the rim, but otherwise, it's in lovely shape.  I didn't buy it in Italy, but I feel more Italianish when I use it.

Okay, enough of the silly babbling. 

I mixed my flour and salt together in the bowl and set those aside for the moment. 

Then I cracked 4 eggs, and added the olive oil to that.

(And if you look closely in the olive oil, you can see a little upside-down and reversed image of me taking this picture, in my green checked apron.)

I made a well in the center of the flour/salt mixture and poured the eggs and olive oil in.  I also added most of the water called for in the recipe, saving some to add bit by bit, if needed. 

The amount of liquid needed in things like bread and pasta doughs will vary depending on the humidity.  It's been pleasantly cooler and less humid the last few days here, and I ended up adding a touch more water than called for.  Hey - that's what makes all this exciting! 

Anyway, you add the liquid to the center of the flour, and then with a fork (or two fingers), gradually stir in the flour, working from the center outward.  (If you're working directly on the counter, you want to make sure the walls of flour stay intact until you've got enough of the flour worked into the eggs to make it more batter-like than just runny and sticky.)

Once you've got the flour and liquids pretty well incorporated, you can turn this rather shaggy dough out onto your work surface for the kneading.

It won't look very pretty at this point, but all it needs (no pun intended) is a little pushing and pulling and it will evolve into a nice, slightly elastic pasta dough. 

The texture, if you're using semolina flour, will be kind of rough, like a medium-grade sandpaper.  That's fine - that's what it's supposed to feel like.

Anyway, form this blob of dough into a ball and start to knead.  You'll want to knead this for about ten minutes or so.  If anyone has irritated you lately and you're still simmering a bit, now's the time to think about that person and work out all your repressed aggression.  Don't worry, the dough can take it.

To knead, you basically grasp the edge of the dough farthest from you, then pull that up and toward you, then press it down with the heel of your hand and, still with the heel of your hand, gently but firmly shove the dough away from you.  Turn the dough around a quarter turn and repeat.  Again and again and again.

Just for kicks, I kneaded with my left hand so I could take pictures with my right hand, and I set the camera mode to "sports" so I could have that continuous burst of shots as I kneaded.  Here's kind of what kneading looks like (when you're awkwardly kneading with your non-dominant hand.)

And that's all there is to it.  I know, it's much cuter when Julia's doing the kneading, but she was playing outside and couldn't be bothered to pose for this photo shoot.

As you knead, the dough will change from the original loose, shaggy blob into a more cohesive, slightly elastic, smooth (for something made with scratchy semolina flour) blob.  At this point (should be around ten minutes or so) you wrap the dough in plastic and put it in the fridge for at least an hour.

While the dough is resting (and the liquid is permeating the semolina and all the ingredients are working as a team to become pasta dough and not just a blob of stuff), you can get your herb leaves ready and mix up the filling. 

Actually, I made two fillings.  The goat cheese one was the originally intended filling, but Alex doesn't like goat cheese, or pretty much any soft white cheese, so I had to create something for him. 

I had some sliced pepperoni and a few slices of swiss cheese, so I diced those up together and that was the filling for one little batch.

He was happy with that.

For the goat cheese filling, I sliced up an 8 oz log of goat cheese

and two garlic scallions

and put them in a bowl so the cheese could start to soften.

I rinsed off a few ounces of baby spinach leaves

(I don't really know the amount - it was what I had left from last week's Farmers' Market excursion) and put them in a pan with a little olive oil and salt.  I put a lid on the pan, set the flame to medium high until I could hear the snapping and popping of water droplets on oil, and then I shut off the heat and let it steam.

Next, I scraped the spinach leaves into a cheesecloth-lined mesh strainer set on a bowl so the liquid would drain off and the spinach could cool.

But you can't really get rid of a lot of liquid that way, so at some point you'll have to gather up the corners of the cheesecloth and twist them a bit to form a spinach-filled, cheesecloth-wrapped dripping ball. 

And then you squeeze.

(Looks like I'm milking the spinach, doesn't it.)

You'll have to squeeze and then kind of rearrange the little mass of spinach in your hand so you can squeeze again from a different angle - keep doing this until you've squeezed out as much liquid as you possibly can.  You don't want a watery filling.

Once you've squeezed every drop of juice out, you can unwrap the spinach and chop it up a bit.  If you've squeezed nice and hard like you should, you will be able to see the cheesecloth pattern on the mass of mushed up spinach, like this -

After you give it a rough chop, add the spinach to your goat cheese and garlic scallions,

Grind on some pepper and sprinkle on some salt, and then mash it all together with a fork.

And yes, you could just spread that on a cracker and it would be divine.  But be patient.  Ravioli is heavenly, too.  Set the goat cheese mixture aside along with the pepperoni mixture (if you have an Alex or similarly selective child) and get your work area ready to make pasta.

Now, when I made and posted about tortellini on this site, I rolled out the dough with a rolling pin.  I didn't do that this time.  No particular reason - I just felt like using the pasta roller this time. 

You'll need all-purpose flour to dust your work surface and keep your dough from sticking, a rolling pin to get the dough flattened enough to put into the roller (if you're using it), a pizza wheel to slice the dough, some water to cement the ravioli edges together, and something to let your ravioli sit while they dry - I used cookie racks - plenty of air flow all around.  You can also set them on a tea towel dusted with flour.  The idea is - you don't want the dough to start sticking to the surface it's sitting on, because then when you lift it up, the dough will tear, exposing the filling for all the world to see.  There will be pointing and laughing, and, of course, weeping.  You don't want that.

OH!  I forgot to talk about the herbs!  Depending on what you grow (if you do) or what you can buy, and also on your taste preferences, the choices for your herb layers are endless.  I used creeping thyme, tarragon, oregano, and chives, mainly because they're all growing prodigiously and because I thought they'd all go nicely with the filling, individually and as a group.

Rinse off your herbs and dry them, and then carefully pick off the leaves (unless it's chives, and they can just hang out and wait).  You don't want to do this too far in advance, because some of them (like the oregano) will start to discolor pretty quickly after being rinsed and manhandled (however gently).

Set the leaves aside on a dry surface and go get your dough out of the fridge.  It's easier to work in small batches, so I cut mine in half, and then cut each half into thirds as I went along.

Take your first third (or sixth, or whatever size you choose to work with) and, on a lightly floured work area, knead it briefly into a little ball and roll that into a small log.  Take your rolling pin and flatten that log out and roll it out lengthwise somewhat so it's thin enough to fit into the widest opening of your pasta roller. 

Set your pasta roller (which you've clamped tightly to your work table) on stun - just kidding - set it to the widest opening and hold the end of the dough just at the opening of the rollers with one hand and start cranking with the other.  Once the dough catches, you can set it down on top of the roller and "catch" it as it comes out the other end.

Keep repeating the process, only you want to set the roller on narrower and narrower settings.  I went to "4", which was not the thinnest setting ("6" is on mine), but since I was going to be putting leaves in, I figured I wouldn't be able to use the very very thinnest setting without the dough ripping apart in the process as the leaves would catch in the rollers.

(Or, if you're going to do it all with a rolling pin, then just keep rolling and rolling until you have a nice, thin-as-possible sheet of dough.)

Once you've rolled it through the #4 setting (or you've got it as thin as you can with the rolling pin), dust the work area with some flour and lay out the dough. 

Now, with the herbs, you can either do batches of one kind of herb at a time, or you can do them all with a mixture of leaves.  I did both - first I did a batch of each kind, and then I mixed up the remaining herbs for the fifth batch.  (I didn't have enough filling to use the sixth batch, but don't you worry, I made good use of it eventually.) 

My first batch was done with the thyme leaves, but you can use the same guidelines no matter what. 

Eyeball the midpoint of your length of dough (mark it lightly if you need to) and sprinkle or place your herb leaves on one half. 

I'm sorry, but I just have to say, isn't that pretty?  Let's take a closer look.

Sigh.

Okay, now once you're done admiring the little leaves (I'm loopy, I know), gently and carefully lift up the unadorned half of dough and fold it over on top of the leavy half.  Press down to mash the sides together a bit (be gentle) and then run this through the pasta roller - same setting, #4 - or roll it out with your rolling pin to flatten all the layers together.

Cool, huh?  Now, if you want to really impress yourself, lift it up so there's some light behind it and take a look.

Okay, now put that down on your work surface and get your filling out.

I used a small ball of filling - i'm guessing around a teaspoon or so - per ravioli, and set them down along one side of the length of dough, about an inch apart. 

By the way.

My edges are not perfect, my ravioli are not perfect (visually), and maybe yours won't be either, but who cares?  If you've never made ravioli before - keep going, you're almost done! 

Looks aren't everything! 

And besides, the pretty little leaves in the dough will distract anyone anal enough to peer at your ravioli edges anyway.

Okay, so once you've got a whole row of goat cheese balls (sounds vaguely icky, doesn't it?) along one half of the dough, it's on to the folding and sealing portion of our program.

For this you'll need the water and the pizza wheel I mentioned earlier.  If you don't have a pizza wheel, a sharp knife or even a bench scraper will do (like the one on the left next to the pasta roller).

First thing you want to do is dip your fingers (two is fine) in the water and paint lines along the length of the dough on the outside edge (next to the cheese balls) and on the other side.  And then you need to paint water lines cross-wise, between each cheese ball.  Remember, we're going to seal the dough, so you need cement on all sides.

 

Okay, now the next part is a little tricky, kind of.  You need to fold over the cheeseless half of the dough and press down to seal the cheese inside the dough.  You want to expell any air that may collect next to the cheese, because you don't want the air pocket to expand and burst while you're cooking the pasta.  It's not desirable.

Okay, now see?  See how these aren't perfect?  Don't worry about it.  The more often you make these, the better your technique will become.  I haven't made ravioli in a long time, and I'm out of practice.  But I'm not worrying about it, because hey - it's homemade ravioli!

Okay, next thing you'll need to do is get your pizza roller or knife and cut these into individual ravioli.  I trimmed the edges a bit as I went along, mainly so the cheeseless part of the dough wouln't be lopsided.

Set the ravioli on a rack or floured towel and repeat the process with your next bit of dough.

Here are a few shots from the rest of the process.  First up, the oregano leaves and the pepperoni/cheese filling for Alex....

Next up, the tarragon leaves...

And then the chives.  Now, I learned a little lesson from the chives.  Just because I wanted them to be as flat and thin as the other leaves didn't mean they would.  Next time around I would slice or shred the chives lengthwise before adding them to the dough and that would prevent the pulling and ripping of dough I experienced when I sent the whole mess through the pasta roller.  Ah well, live and learn.

See the wrinkles?  That's where the thickness of the chives was resisting the pasta roller, and the pulling/wrinkling resulted in some little rips in the dough, right along the chives.  But just press it back together and you should be fine.

Once the chive ravioli are formed, I think they look rather dramatic.

Okay, now all that's left is the cooking.

Let the ravioli rest for about an hour (if you can wait that long) and then bring a big pot of water to a boil.  Add a generous amount of salt to the water, and then slide the ravioli into the water.  There should be plenty of wiggle room for the ravioli to cook, so you may need to work in batches.  Not to worry - fresh pasta cooks up very quickly.

Alex was actually pretty hungry about midway through my ravioli-making process, so I cooked up a few of the pepperoni ones for him.

A little butter and some grated parmesan and he was all set.  I tried some (Julia wasn't as hungry as Alex was), and they were pretty yummy - especially when I bit into an oregano leaf.  A little tomato sauce.   on these and it would be like little bite-sized boiled pizzas.  Which, now that I type it out, doesn't sound all that appetizing.  But pizza-flavored ravioli sounds okay.

Anyway.  I froze about half of the goat cheese ravioli and cooked up the rest for dinner.  I served it with a piece of wild-caught Alaskan salmon that I topped with a mixture of herbs and lemon juice, honey, and olive oil and cooked quickly under the broiler.

And that was dinner.

So (will she never stop talking?), to close, I just want to encourage you to make some ravioli, especially if you've never done it before.  Work with some friends or your kids or your spouse/partner/significant other or whoever - you can talk and work at the same time and when you sit down to eat, you can toast yourselves on a job well done!

And then shoot me an email or leave a comment to let me know how it went!

Grilled Halibut with Baby Shallot, Garlic and Ginger Marinade

 

We're growing shallots in the garden this year, and above are the seedlings that were thinned from the rest of their siblings in their square plot of ground outside.  They look like tiny scallions or chives, and taste similar. 

I'd picked up a just-over-two-pounds piece of halibut at the store on Friday, and we were planning to grill that Saturday night when my sister's kids slept over.  And so at the last minute, I thought - hey!  Baby shallots!  I could use them with the halibut somehow!  (I'm clever like that.)

So all I did (it's in the 90s here and I'm doing as LITTLE as possible in the kitchen, including prep work) was to cut the root ends off the baby shallots, and chop them up, mash up about 5 cloves of garlic, and grate an inch-sized knob of ginger.  I combined all of that in a bowl...

and added the juice of a lemon, a slug of olive oil, and some salt and pepper.  I slathered the flesh side of my lovely halibut with this mixture and let it sit while the coals heated up outside. 

Bill grilled the fish to perfection, and here's the result:

We ate the whole thing, between the 6 of us, along with salad made with some of my greens from my Farmers' Market haul on Friday plus red leaf lettuce, and green curly leaf lettuce from our own garden, a little assortment of cheeses, and some Italian bread (also from Friday's haul).  It was a simple, pleasant meal.  Perfect summer fare.

Strawberry Soup

Yesterday it was hot and humid - a preview of summer.  I wasn't in the mood to cook anything at lunchtime for the kids, but I wanted to give them something other than the ol' peanutbutter and jelly standby.

I have a ton of strawberries in the fridge (okay, a couple of pounds) and figured I'd start there.

Alex LOVES strawberries.  LOVES them. 

And Julia likes them.  She also likes soup.  Any soup.

Alex likes certain soups.  Like...Campbell's Tomato Soup.  That's about it.

So I got all lazily creative and put a bunch of strawberries and a few ice cubes in the food processor, pureed the heck out of it, and then poured the liquid into a couple of cute little bowls and added a half a strawberry on top as a garnish.

Yeah, super hard, I know.  And is it really a soup?  I could have strained it and called it a coulis, actually.  Or poured it into a glass and called it a smoothie (which is how I had mine.) 

But for the kids - it was strawberry soup.  And they were surprised, and delighted, and best of all, they ate it.  Yay! 

And some days, that's all I care about in a recipe.

A Closer Look at a Red Onion

 

 

More here.

Apple and Brie Quesadillas

From Food 2.0 by Charlie Ayers.

I knew I would like this one.  I love Brie, for one thing, and pretty much any form of quesadilla sounds good to me as well.  I also knew the contrasting flavors - the peppery arugula, the earthy brie, and the sweet/tart apple - would harmonize beautifully.

Best of all - I had everything on hand, although in smaller portions than the recipe calls for, including arugula growing in our garden.  I also didn't have whole wheat tortillas (as the recipe lists) - just the normal plain ol' white ones.  But hey - I had some.  So I ended up making 4 white quesadillas instead of 8 whole wheat ones, but otherwise I was all set.

So, without further delay... here is Mr. Ayers' recipe:

Apple and Brie Quesadillas

Makes 8///Prep Time:  20 minutes///Cook time:  About 24 minutes

2 Granny Smith apples

1 T fresh lemon juice

About 1/4 cup olive oil

8 cups arugula

Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper

8 oz (225g) just-ripe Brie cheese

8 soft whole wheat tortillas

Peel, core, and thinly slice the apples. 

Toss the apple slices with the lemon juice and 2 T water to prevent browning.

Heat 1 T of the olive oil in a large skillet over medium heat.  Add a few handfuls of arugula,

sprinkle lightly with salt and pepper, and move around with tongs for a few seconds until the arugula is just wilted.  Transfer to a bowl.  Add a little more oil to the pan and continue to wilt the remaining arugula in the same way.  Set aside.

Drain the apple slices and pat dry on paper towels.  Divide the Brie into eight portions

and spread one portion onto a tortilla.  On one half of the tortilla, arrange a few slices of apple and some wilted arugula. 

Fold over the other half of the tortilla and press together.  Repeat with the remaining tortillas, Brie, apples, and arugula.

 

Heat a little olive oil in the cleaned skillet.  Put in a folded tortilla and cook over medium high heat, pressing down with a spatula, until the base is brown and crisp.

Turn over and brown the other side.  Transfer the quesadilla to a cutting board. 

Cut into three or four wedges and keep warm.  Repeat with the remaining quesadillas.  Serve warm.

You probably noticed I cooked all mine at once on a griddle rather than one at a time in the skillet I'd used for the arugula.  I prefer doing that with quesadillas because they tend to lose their crispness if they sit around for too long.  They still taste good, but they lose the crunch.

Anyway.  The first person to try one of these was my husband.  I think he liked them - he mumbled (mouth full of quesadilla) something that sounded like "vat stuck in wood" - though I don't think that's exactly it.  It sounded like that, though.  Anyway, he grabbed another one and went outside to hide from the children.

I tried one - and yep, just as I thought, I liked it.  Warm brie, slight crisp/soft bite to the apple, the peppery arugula, and the crisp tortilla.  And so easy!

Next up - my son, he of the super olefactory senses.  He came into the kitchen sniffing the air and asking what that was. 

Now, the original plan, particularly according to my husband, (maybe he said "hats, puck 'n' hood!" ?  no...that doesn't make any sense...) was to keep the rest of the quesadillas for us to eat later, just the two of us, after the kids went to bed.  Yes, we are most definitely selfish and greedy like that at times. 

But I couldn't turn Alex away.  I could have told him there was Brie in it - that would have sent him running.  But...I want them to try things.  So I said there were apples in it, and I gave him a wedge.

And.

He liked it!  Yes, just like Mikey of Life cereal fame!

He walked around the kitchen, chewing, his face thoughtful, nodding his approval.

I nearly fell over. 

Anyway, next up - Julia - who had apparently heard Alex chewing from two miles down the road (just kidding - she was somewhere in the house) and wanted to know what she was missing out on.

Rather than stand on ceremony, she took a wedge of quesadilla off of the cutting board and took a bite.

She liked it, too, but that didn't surprise me.  She likes just about anything that someone else is enjoying.

So overall I'd say these were a definite success in this house.  (Much to my husband's dismay.  Less for him.  (Maybe he said "mats duck'n could"...but I don't think so.)

There is, as I type this, three hours after I made them, only one of the original four quesadillas left.

They are cold, but will be just fine when I heat them up.

And run out to the garage with them so I can eat in peace.

Just kidding.

But you go ahead and make them - you'll understand.

Thai Forbidden Rice Salad - With Info Correction!

From Food 2.0 by Charlie Ayers.  (You know, that from that giveaway I'm hosting.)

I like warm salads.  Or room temperature.  I'm not always in the mood for cold healthy stuff, you know?  I also like my salads to have texture.  And maybe something unexpected.  And I want my salads to dare me - DARE ME - not to have more.  That's what I want in a salad.  I'm not asking too much, am I?

So when I was paging through Food 2.0 early on, this was one of the recipes that caught my eye right away.  I've cooked with Thai Forbidden Rice before

{Hear that scratchy sound?  That's me pulling the needle off the record.  I received a comment from one of the co-founders and co-owners of Lotus Foods (Hi Caryl!) who pointed out some errors in this post, and, by extension, perhaps, Mr. Ayers' recipe.}  Here is her comment:

Hi and thanks for the beautiful blog using Lotus Foods Forbidden Rice®; gorgeous photos and i can't wait to try the recipe as well. Just wanted to correct some mistakes on content; Forbidden Rice is a registered trade mark of lotus foods and should not be confused with Thai black rice which is also known as purple sticky rice. (Perhaps I should write to the charlie ayers as well). Thought you may want to know that Forbidden Rice not only looks and tastes great but has very high nutritional value as well; in chinese medicinal medicine they say it is a blood tonifier, aids in the circulation of the blood and is high in chi. It invigorates the spleen and brightens the eyes. Black foods are considered kidney tonics. Thanks again and have a rice day, caryl co-founder/co-owner lotus foods

Thank you, Caryl - and I'm sorry for the misinformation I was putting forth!   Thank you for correcting me!  I appreciate it!

Oops. 

Back to my enthusing.  I've used Lotus Foods Forbidden Rice before - I love black foods.  (Well, usually.)  Maybe it's the visual drama.  I don't know.  But I digress.

Here's what a package of the rice looks like, at least in my local stores:

Lotus Foods also produces a number of other rices, some organic, including this extremely adorable and petite Kalirira rice, which I just bought recently and haven't used yet.  The grains are TINY.  I measured one.  3/8 of an inch!  I love tiny and cute.

But ANYWAY.  Back to the forbidden rice.  According to Lotus Foods' site, "Legend tells us that this ancient grain was once eaten exclusively by the Emperors."  Fortunately all that is past history, and we commoners are free to eat this beautiful grain, too.  When forbidden rice cooks, it turns from black to a dark, dark purple.  Kind of like that black/purple iris* outside in my garden that I would love to photograph while it's in bloom, but it's so darn windy that I can't get a good shot.  I'm full of digression today, aren't I? 

Perhaps I should just get on with the recipe.  It's simple and bursting with flavors.  Really, you should try it.

According to Charlie Ayers, here's what you need:

1 cup Thai black rice (also called forbidden rice)

kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper

2 T tamari (soy sauce brewed purely from soybeans, not like shoyu, which is a blend of soybeans and wheat)

2 tsp toasted sesame oil

juice of 1/2 lime

1/2 tsp sambal oelek  or other hot chili paste

1 cup roasted, unsalted cashews

1/2 red bell pepper, finely chopped

1/2 yellow bell pepper, finely chopped

6 green onions (scallions), thinly sliced

Put the rice, 2 cups water, and a pinch of salt in a pan.  Bring to a boil, then cover, reduce the heat, and simmer gently until the liquid is absorbed and the rice is tender, about 30 minutes.

Meanwhile, whisk the tamari, sesame oil, lime juice, and sambal oelek or chili paste together in a salad bowl. 

Add the cashews, red and yellow bell peppers, and green onions.

When the rice is ready, add it to the mixture

and toss to coat everything well. 

Add salt, pepper, and additional sambal oelek or lime juice to taste.  Serve warm or at room temperature.

If you can't get Thai black rice, try wild rice, or wild rice mixed with long grain rice, instead, and cook according to package directions.

I served this dish Saturday, when our friend John was here to brew beer with my husband and to talk food with both of us.  Here are bits and pieces (my notes were not entirely legible and he spoke quickly while my husband laughed) what John had to say about this salad:

"...vegetal...sweet but not in a bad way...every ingredient jumps out and tells you what it is while the rice remains a toothsome counterpoint to the supporting cast." 

Yes.  That's how John talks when he has a mind to.  The thing is - his words are a perfect summation of this dish.

Go get yourself some No-Longer-Forbidden-To-Us-Common-Folk black rice and make this tonight. 

I dare you.

* P.S.  That black/purple iris I mentioned?  While I was sitting here by the window, typing this post, I looked outside, just to look at all the irises that are blooming right now, and - my black/purple iris was GONE.  I gasped (yes, I did) and looked more closely at that part of the garden, and there, on the ground, was that iris stalk, with the huge dark flower at one end and several buds growing out of the rest of the stalk.  AND, there was a squirrel there, too, CHOMPING ON MY IRIS.  I ran out the front door and grabbed the iris stalk from the ground.  The squirrel had wisely fled.  And so now that iris is in a glass of water in my kitchen.  The original flower is damaged - petals creased and dirty from the fall.  But there will be at least two more blooms, and you can bet every grain of forbidden rice out there that I will take some awesome pictures of them.  So there, rotten squirrel!)

Broccoli Rabe and Cauliflower Gratin

I believe I have mentioned that we have had a bumper crop of broccoli rabe this year.  The thing is, broccoli rabe is kind of an early vegetable, and Bill had planted a ton of rabe in spots that will eventually (soon) be taken over by the mid-season vegetables that make up the bulk of our garden.  Did that make sense?

Well anyway, with so much broccoli rabe, I thought I needed to branch out from my normal "saute it in olive oil with some garlic and maybe some pancetta and grate some cheese on top and that's all it needs" philophy of broccoli rabe.  So I started looking through a few cookbooks to see what other people liked to do.

And then, of course, I deviated from that path a bit.  I found a recipe for a Vegetable Gratin in the book Giada's Family Dinners by Giada De Laurentis.  Cauliflower and broccoli were the vegetables she used, and so I thought, why not use rabe instead of the broccoli florets?  And so that's what I did.  I also used different cheeses than she recommended, mainly because I already had some good-sized hunks of cheeses left over from Julia's birthday party, and I figured I should use them up.

And so I give you Broccoli Rabe and Cauliflower Gratin.

(Adapted from "Vegetable Gratin" in Giada De Laurentis' book Giada's Family Dinners.  Original recipe pg. 178.)

Ingredients:

3 T unsalted butter

salt

1 head of cauliflower, cut into large florets

about a dozen broccoli rabe plants, pulled from the garden, cleaned, and chopped (roots removed)

2 T all-purpose flour

1  1/4 cups heavy cream

1  1/4 cups 2% milk

3 oz mild cheddar cheese, shredded

3 oz edam cheese, diced (because i didn't freeze it first and so it was impossible to shred)

1/2 cup plus 2 T grated peccorino romano cheese

freshly ground black pepper

2 T dried bread crumbs plus a tablespoon of dried oregano

Ready, Get Set, Go:

Preheat the oven to 500 degrees F.   Grease a 13 x 9 x 2 inch baking dish with 1 T of the butter.

Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil over high heat.  Add the cauliflower florets and cook for 2 minutes.  Using a slotted spoon, transfer the cauliflower to the prepared dish. 

Repeat with the rabe.

Meanwhile, melt the remaining 2 T of butter in a medium, heavy saucepan over medium heat.  Add the flour and whisk for 1 minute.  Whisk in the cream and milk.  Bring to a boil over medium-high heat.  Decrease the heat to medium and simmer until the sauce thickens slightly, whisking often, about 2 minutes.  Remove the saucepan from the heat.  Add the cheddar, edam, and 1/2 cup of the romano.  Stir until the cheeses have melted.  Season the sauce with salt and pepper.  Pour the sauce over the vegetables and toss to coat.

In a small bowl, stir the bread crumbs and oregano with the remaining 2 T of romano.  Sprinkle over the gratin. 

Bake uncovered until the topping is golden brown and the sauce is bubbly, about 15-20 minutes.

Pretty easy - and pretty yummy.  Alex didn't like it, but that was to be expected, as he's not fond of white sauces of any kind.  The rest of us, however, were pretty happy with it.

Google Hot Sauce - from Food 2.0, by Charlie Ayers

If you can't stand the heat...

...then this may not be the sauce for you.  From the book Food 2.0, by Charlie Ayers, this is not your run-of-the-mill hot sauce.  With seventeen ingredients, not counting water, this is a sauce that will set your mouth on fire and your taste buds tingling.  Sweet, tangy, smokey and spicy.  What's not to love?

Above is a photo of a breakfast taco I made this morning - scrambled eggs, sauteed mushrooms, sauteed broccoli rabe, melty Edam cheese, and a healthy drizzle of Google Hot Sauce right down the middle.  Forget the coffee - THIS will wake you right up!

I made the sauce Tuesday evening, and Bill and I tested it out on fish tacos - pan-fried tilapia, baby spinach leaves, fresh guacamole (with cilantro and chives from our garden), and Edam.  Edam is a nice, mild, soothing sort of cheese - an excellent foil for the super-assertive hot sauce.

Now, we like heat.  We eat things spicy.  But if it's just heat, and no real flavor, then we're not impressed.  Sure, our eyes may water and we may sneeze fire, but heat without flavor is just culinary window dressing.

So we tried the sauce.  And loved it.  I knew, when I started cooking, that it would be good.  Just the assortment of ingredients involved...and then the variety of smells that drifted through my kitchen while the ingredients simmered on the stove.  And I wasn't wrong.

Thank you, Charlie Ayers, for concocting this addictive potion. 

Google Hot Sauce is good stuff.  And it's simple to make, too. 

Here, I'll show you.

But first - a few words of caution.  And I'm sure you've heard it before, but it's worth repeating.  Unless you enjoy pain, wear gloves or use something (I used paper towel) to hold the chilies while you chop them.  These babies are HOT, and if you touch the insides with your bare fingers, you're setting yourself up for some serious pain in some form later on.  Touch your eye after handling a habanero, and you'll wish you were chopping onions instead.  Really.  So be careful.  And wash your hands well after you're done, even if you were taking precautions. 

Okay?  Now on to the sauce.

First - the ingredients:

1 cup fresh habanero chilies, roughly chopped  (I think I used about 12 or so)

1/3 cup fresh jalapeno chilies, roughly chopped (I goofed - bought serranos - similar, smaller, and hotter)

1 dried chipotle, crushed

2 T tomato paste

1 T minced ginger

1 T tamarind paste

1 T pomegranate molasses (I used plain ol' Grandma's)

1  1/2 T apple cider vinegar

1/3 cup fresh orange juice

4 tsp unrefined light brown sugar (I used turbinado)

juice of one lime

1 sm carrot, finely diced

1 small onion, finely chopped

1 celery rib, finely chopped

2 T Worcestershire sauce

1 T fish Thai fish sauce

3 T good drinking red wine (I used Robert Mondavi (may he rest in peace) 2006 Private Selection Pinot Noir)

And now - the complicated instructions:

Place all the ingredients in a heavy-based pan.  Add 1/2 cup water. 

Bring to a boil, then reduce the heat, cover, and simmer very gently, stirring occasionally, until rich and thick and the vegetables are very soft, about 45 minutes.

I took notes while this cooked, so I could describe the range of smells as the sauce simmered..."first - vinegar...then smoke and sweet...then mirepoix along w/the smoke/sweet...fruity, fiery, tangy."

Puree in a blender, then pass through a strainer  (oops - didn't do that, so I ended up with a few seeds and a bit of texture).  Add a little more water to thin to the desired consistency (didn't need it). 

Store in a clean, sealed jar in the refrigerator.  Serve to fire up any of the recipes that call for chili sauce, or use on tacos, crostini, wraps, or even peanut butter sandwiches!

Or to fire up your breakfast. 

* To enter the giveaway, featuring a hardcover copy of Food 2.0 and a nifty lunch bag, go here!

Food 2.0 - Another Cookbook to Give Away!

DK Publishing sent me an advance copy of this book several weeks ago, and I've been reading and re-reading the recipes ever since.

I've got about 20 pages marked with mini post-it note things, and I think I put off writing about it because I couldn't narrow down the recipes to one or two to focus on.

The official background of the book is here, on the DK Publishing website.  To be honest, I had vaguely heard of Charlie Ayers, but didn't know anything about him.  Turns out he cooked for The Greatful Dead before he was hired to feed the growing number of Google employees. 

I know now that food-wise, we'd get along pretty well.  His emphasis is on locally produced, organic ingredients and lively, intense flavors from a wide variety of cuisines.

The one and only recipe that I was actually puzzled by was his recipe for fish tacos.  He calls for fish sticks.    Now, I have used fish sticks in fish tacos, but it just seemed really odd, in a book espousing the virtues of local, fresh foods, that rather than suggesting some possible kinds of fish to use, depending on what part of the country you're in, he suggests fish sticks.  Maybe it's because not everyone has access to fresh caught local fish...but still. 

I've decided, since I couldn't narrow the recipes down, I figure over the next week, while the giveaway is running, I'll try out a variety of recipes and post about them, so you can sort of peek at the food before entering the contest, if you want.

Oh - and I should also mention - in addition to a copy of the book (hardcover and in color, not a paperback advance copy in black and white), the publisher is also giving the winner a handy dandy lunch bag, so you can tote your healthy, locally grown lunch with you to work every day.

So, to get things started, and to give you an idea of the sort of thing Food 2.0 has to offer, I'll be posting (separately) the recipe for "Google Hot Sauce."  It's got heat, and layers and layers of flavor.  It packs a punch, but does so with style.

In the meantime, to enter this giveaway, here are the rules:

First, to enter, I'd like to hear from you in the comments section of THIS post, do you shop at farm stands or farmers markets on a regular basis?  What's available in your part of the world?

Second, the contest will end in one week - Wednesday, May 28th, at midnight, eastern standard time.  Any entries posted after that time - or anywhere other than in the comments section of THIS post - will not be considered.

Third, this will be a random drawing - I'll have the old faithful Random Integer thingy pick the lucky winner.

Any questions?  Okay, then - let the contest begin!  Oh - and I'll be posting the "Google Hot Sauce" in a bit later this evening.

Okra and Tempeh, Indian Style

I was reading through all the Tuesdays With Dorie blogs these last several days, and I found a recipe on one that sounded perfect for dinner. 

It's Madhur Jaffrey's Sweet and Sour Okra, and it was posted by Shirlie of Stop and Smell the Basil (which, by the way, is good advice).

Anyway, it sounded good, I love Indian food, and, amazingly, I happened to have a package of okra in the freezer.  It was meant to be.

To get the recipe, please click on the link for it above. 

I added a package of tempeh to the recipe, because I didn't have the full amount of okra the recipe called for, but I did have a package of tempeh in the freezer, too, and I figured it would work nicely.

Tempeh, by the way, is fermented, cooked soybeans combined with the Rhizopus mold to form a whitish, chewy cake.  You can use it as a meat substitute if you wish - I've used it for tacos or fajitas, for example - or you can slice it up and fry it in some oil and make french fries out of it.  My kids like it that way.

Anyway, in addition to the okra and the tempeh, the recipe is full of plenty of intense flavor, including garlic, red pepper flakes, coriander and cumin, and turmeric, which mainly adds color, and has a faintly metalic taste (at least to me), and lemon juice. 

The dish came together really quickly, and while I was getting that ready, I cooked up some rice to serve with the okra/tempeh mixture.

Here's a small bowl of the final product:

I halved the amount of red pepper flakes called for, only because sometimes the kids don't like the heat.  Next time, I'll use the full amount.

Bill and I loved it.  The okra and the tempeh soaked in all the flavor of the spices, and the "sour" of the lemon juice was not overpowering.  It had a nice balance of warmth and faint tartness. 

Julia liked it, though she didn't eat a lot of it and mostly just ate her rice.

Alex...well, Alex took one look and didn't think he was going to like it.  The thing is, he does this with a lot of new things now, and once he tries them, he doesn't always dislike them.  So the rule is, he has to TRY it.  Just one piece, and if he doesn't like it, okay.  Just eat the rest of the food on the plate.

But he really, really didn't want to try it.  And we really, really (nicely) told him it wasn't going to hurt him, and he really really didn't know if he didn't like it because he'd never had it (okra) before.

So we found the smallest piece of okra on his plate, checked it to make sure no red pepper bits were hiding on it anywhere, and told him to just try it.

And, finally, he did. 

First Harvest, Two Ways

All of our gardens this year seem, at this point, to be more lush and productive than they were at this time last year.  Maybe it's the weather.  Maybe it's the super awesome compost we put down.  Maybe my husband's green thumb grew THREE SIZES that day.  I don't know.  But we've got a lot of green stuff out there.

We've been picking asparagus for several weeks now, and here and there a leaf of something, but yesterday, we actually harvested some things.  In a collander (so you know we mean business).

Here's the take:

Four pak choi, two more asparagus, and about 6 broccoli rabe plants.  Part of the reason we pulled these (except the asparagus) was because they had grown so tall they were blocking light from some smaller plants behind them.  The broccoli rabe can really go a bit longer, but, again, they were blocking light, and I was hungry.

My initial plan was to cook all the greens together, probably in some kind of pasta dish.  But something in me resisted that plan and so I figured, okay, I'll make two dishes.  I thought it would be fun to make these two dishes kind of similar, but with different ethnic influences.

No real recipe - I didn't measure things - but here's what I did:

Spaghetti with Broccoli Rabe and Asparagus

I poured some olive oil in a pan, added two crushed, sliced cloves of garlic, and about two tablespoons of tomato paste.

To that I added a good slug of Blueberry Wine (yes, blueberry) from Cellardoor Vineyard in Lincolnville, ME (not far from Camden).  Why Blueberry Wine?  The bottle was already uncorked.  And it's red.

I whisked all that together and let it simmer for a bit, and sprinkled some oregano in there, too.  While all that was going on, I also had a big pot of water on the stove, coming to a boil, for the spaghetti.

I rinsed the rabe (and trimmed off the roots) and the asparagus...

I also thawed some shrimp and sliced them in half, lengthwise.

Once the spaghetti was cooking, I sliced the rabe, broke the asparagus into pieces, and added them to the tomato paste and garlic mixture.  When that had cooked down, I added the shrimp pieces, and then, when the spaghetti was cooked, I combined the spaghetti with the sauce/shrimp/greens mixture and served.

A little freshly grated parmesan on top, and my kids were both quite happy to eat this for dinner.

While I was doing all that, I was also concocting this:

Thai Style Rice Noodles with Baby Pac Choi

 

First up, I trimmed the roots from the pak choi leaves.

And then I rinsed the dirt off...

And sliced the leaves cross-wise, about an inch wide, and set them aside while I assembled some other ingredients...

And they are:  ban pho (rice noodles about half an ince wide), zest and eventually juice of one lime, 3 dried thai chilis (sliced later), sliced fresh ginger, two cloves of garlic, and some shrimp. 

I also had on hand some fish sauce (nuoc mam) and soy sauce.  I think that was everything.

I immersed the noodles in a large bowl of boiling water to soak for about ten minutes.

Once the spaghetti had been added to the sauce in the first recipe, I had my power burner free and set the wok above that.  I poured some vegetable oil in the wok and heated it until it started to smoke.

To that I added the garlic and ginger, sauteed them briefly, then added the chopped chilis, and the lime zest, and the fish and soy sauces.  I'd say to taste, but it was more to see and to smell.

Next in went the shrimp, and on top of that, the sliced pak choi, and the lime juice.

After the pak choi was wilted, I drained the rice noodles and added them into the wok and tossed the mixture together. 

Because of the heat from the thai chilis, Bill and I ate this and didn't give any to the kids.

Both dishes were good, though there is certainly room for improvement.  But for a quick, impromptu pair of noodle and fresh greens dishes, they were pretty tasty.

I love spring.

   

Herb Crust Pizza - One Crust, Many Toppings

I made a bunch of pizzas last night.  Just for fun, I added some dried herbs to the dough. 

Here's what I used for the dough:

5 tsp dried yeast, dissolved in

4 cups warm water in the bowl of my 6-quart stand mixer.

After the yeast softened and started to bubble, I added

10 cups all-purpose flour

5 tsp salt

1 heaping tsp each dried oregano, dried thyme, and dried basil

Mix at second-slowest speed for about 5 minutes.

(If the dough is still sticking to the sides of the bowl, add more flower, about a quarter cup at a time, til the dough comes away from the sides.)

Turn dough onto a lightly flowered surface and knead the dough into a ball.  Flatten slightly, and cut into 8 pieces.  Pour some olive oil into a large bowl.  Shape 8 pieces of dough into balls and place in bowl of oil, turning each ball to coat with the oil.  Pour a little more olive oil over them - you want them to be lightly covered with the oil.  Let sit for half an hour or so in the oil.

While the dough rests in the oil, preheat the oven and prepare the toppings.

Preheat the oven to between 450-500 degrees F. 

Toppings are entirely up to you. 

Here's what I did with mine.

Well, first of all, before I'd even made the dough, I started making a sauce, because I didn't have any canned in the pantry.  I used two small containers of roasted tomatoes from last summer and a 28 oz can of plum tomatoes and their juice.  I also used about half a cup of chianti (what was left in the bottle) and about a tablespoon of fresh oregano I'd frozen in olive oil last summer.  I'd also put in about 8 smashed cloves of garlic.  And some salt and pepper.  And I let that cook down for a while - til I'd made the dough.  Then I put the sauce mixture through a food mill and then back on the stove for a little while longer.  I skimmed some excess olive oil off the top and tasted it - just needed a bit more salt.

Alex and Julia each made their own pizza.

Alex's - as always - some sauce, just a little cheese and an even distribution of pepperoni.

For Julia, I'd sauteed some mushrooms and some minced shallots...

When she made her pizza, she spread out a generous layer of sauce...all of her alotment of cheese plus the cheese Alex didn't use, and poured her bowl of mushrooms right on the center of the pizza.  She topped the mushrooms with a bit of Alex's leftover sauce, and then ate the restspooned the rest of it into her mouth.

 

After the kids had made their pizzas, they left, and I got to play.

I'd bought a pound of fresh mozzarella, and I tore that apart while I was cooking the sauce...

I minced half a shallot and sauteed that with a big handful of baby arugula leaves...

...and then I stirred in about a quarter cup of pureed basil and olive oil (from last summer) that had been in the freezer.  And then I stirred in the last of a container of ricotta cheese - maybe 3/4 of a cup or so.  And then I was happy.

Next pizza - half of the arugula/basil/ricotta mixture topped with torn mozzarella.

 

And then...sauce, a whole lot of shredded (pre-packaged) mozzarella, and the rest of the mushrooms.

And then...sauce, a lot of shredded (pre-packaged) mozzarella, and plenty of pepperoni.

And then the other half of the arugula/basil/ricotta mixture, a little parmesan, and a generous sprinkling of red pepper flakes.

Last two...

First - simple one - just sauce and both the shredded (pre-packaged) AND the fresh mozzarellas.

And finally - my favorite of the bunch - pre-packaged mozzarella, then the last of the fresh mozzarella, a tablespoon of minced shallots, and a little can of smoked oysters.

   

Of course, 8 pizzas was far more than we needed for dinner last night, and that's the whole point of making that many.  Lunch the next day.  And a late night snack the day after that.  And lunches for everyone when Monday rolls back around.

So go - make some pizza.  Be creative.  Have fun!

Broccoli Rabe - Sauteed in Olive Oil with Pancetta and Garlic

Well, the post title pretty much tells you everything you need to know about this little recipe.

I figured I'd post this today to celebrate the fact that we have broccoli rabe coming up in the garden as of yesterday.  Yay!

I love the slight bitterness of broccoli rabe.  Food can't, and shouldn't, always be sweet or salty.  The bitterness creates a nice balance of flavors on the plate.  I like to serve it alongside strong-flavored dishes like beef or lamb...or salmon...or coq au vin.  Okay, I like it with anything. 

And here's all I do.

First, get a bunch or two of broccoli rabe from the grocery store, or harvest all you can from your garden (if you're growing it.  if you have a garden.)  Rinse it well, cut off about 2 inches from the stem end (if they're the big bunches from the store) and then chop the rest of the rabe into about 3" lengths, more or less.  Set that aside.

Dice up some pancetta

(or bacon, if you can't get pancetta...I've also used prosciutto.  You could use ham, too, probably.  Something porky and salty, basically.) and put it a hot pan,

stirring occasionally, until it renders its fat and gets darker and crispy.  Remove the pancetta and add a bit of olive oil and some peeled, crushed (but no sliced or minced) garlic

to the pan, stir it around, and leave the heat on low to medium low.  You want the fat and oil to absorb some of the garlic flavor.  (I also like to use roasted garlic sometimes for a sweeter garlic flavor.)

After the garlic has started to turn golden, add in your broccoli rabe (you can remove the garlic first, if you wish),

turn the heat up to medium, and put a lid on the pan to trap the heat and wilt the rabe.  You may need to move the rabe around a bit so the bottom layer doesn't stick to the pan.

I take the lid off the pan once the wilting starts, and I try not to cook the rabe too far past that point, so the green color doesn't start to go gray. 

I also like to squeeze some lemon juice over it.

To serve, I just pass around a block of parmesan and a grater so people can add cheese to it if they'd like.  You can also add the garlic and pancetta back in if you'd like. 

Pretty easy, right? 

Two Easy Bean Dip Recipes

Didn't feel like putting much effort into dinner last night. 

So I made some baked chips out of leftover soft tortillas...and some crisp cheesy garlic toasts out of a leftover half loaf of ciabatta...cooked some shrimp...some edamame...put out the leftover small blocks of various cheeses in the fridge...crackers...smoked oysters...cucumbers...and these two bean dips.

There was something for everyone, and it was very peaceful to have a meal where no one complained about not having anything to eat.

Why two bean dips?  Because I couldn't decide if I wanted canneloni beans or black beans.  So I used both.  But separately.  With different flavors.

First up, the canneloni beans.  I used a 15.5 oz can and rinsed the beans well, drained them well, and put them in the food processor.  I added some dried rosemary...salt and pepper...olive oil...and a good squeeze of fresh lemon juice.

That seemed like a good start, so I put the lid on and pulsed a bunch of times until I had a slightly lumpy paste.  I tasted it, decided it needed a bit more rosemary and of course! some garlic.  (I had garlic warming in a bath of olive oil and butter for the aforementioned garlic/cheese bread, so I just took about a clove's worth of the garlic from the pot and added it to the bean puree.) 

Pulsed this mixture a couple more times, and poured it in one half of a crystal two-sectioned bowl perfect for the occasion.

Next up, the black beans.  Rinsed and drained them and into the (also rinsed) food processor they went.  To start off, I added some olive oil...lime juice...salt and pepper...ground cumin...and ground coriander.  Oh, yes, and half a shallot.

 

Pulsed everything until nearly smooth, then tasted it.  It needed more of the cumin and coriander, so I added a bit of them, and a bit more salt.  Then into the bowl it went.

Ta-da!  Pretty simple, no?

I didn't measure anything, so I can't tell you how much of anything to put in.  I would just say - start small.  You can always add more - you can't remove it once it's in there.

And don't feel obligated to do what I did.  My point, really - not that I had planned to have one - is that canned beans are really handy things to have on hand - a few additions and a whirl or two in a food processor and you have instant yumminess. 

Corned Beef Project: Day 9 - The Meal

Was it worth it?  Definitely.  I'll say that right off the bat. 

First off on Friday, I took a look at the packaged, pre-brined corned beef that I picked up for comparison purposes.  And then I looked up at the clock and realized I needed to get a move on.

"Simmer approximately 50 minutes per pound...." Um...okay, this brisket was 4.74 lbs, so that means...um...about 4 hours.  Okay, we'll put that one in first.  I cut open the package and took a look at the contents.

Very pink, and rather fatty on that side, huh?  Into the pot it went

covered with water, lid on, burner on high to bring it to a boil, and then down to a simmer.

Once I'd got that started, I took a look at the briskets I'd brined.

Not as bright pink as the other one, but that's okay.  They're not gray, at least.

Time to check in with the magazine article....

Remove brisket from brine.  Rinse with cold running water.  (Can be made 2 days ahead.  Wrap corned beef in plastic, cover with foil, and refrigerate.)

I just covered them with plastic wrap and put them back in the fridge, since I'd be cooking them in a few hours.

Time to get everything else ready.

You'll need the following:

4 bay leaves

1 T coriander seeds

2 whole allspice

1 dried chile de arbol, broken in half (I used a dried Thai bird chile - we have tons of them.)

cheesecloth (we have some, somewhere.  I used a plain piece of muslin instead.)

1  12-oz bottle Guinness stout or other other stout or porter (I used a porter my husband made.  And I used 2  8-oz bottles, so a pint instead of 3/4 of a pint.)

12 baby turnips, trimmed, or 3 medium turnips or rutabagas, peeled, quartered (no baby turnips to be found.  I bought the smallest I could find and halved them.  I used 8.)

8 unpeeled medium white-skinned or red-skinned potatoes (about 3 lbs)

6 medium carrots, peeled (I cut them in half as well)

2 medium parsnips, peeled, cut into 2-inch lengths (I used 4.  I like parsnips.)

4 medium onions, peeled, halved through root ends

1  2-lb head of cabbage, quartered (For some reason, I doubled the amount of cabbage.  Not sure what I was thinking at the time.  Probably wasn't thinking at all.)

And here's what you do:

Place corned beef in very large wide pot. 

Add stout (or porter)

and enough water to cover by 1 inch.

   

Wrap cheesecloth around bay leaves, coriander seeds, allspice, and shile, enclosing completely, and tie with kitchen string to secure.  Add spice bag to pot with beef;

bring to boil.  Reduce heat to medium-low, cover, and simmer until beef is tender, about 2  1/4 hours.  Transfer beef to large baking sheet.

Okay - here's a picture of the pre-packaged corned beef when it came out of the pot...

And here's a picture of the ones I brined and cooked according to Bruce Aidell's recipes in Bon Appetit:

I covered both pans with foil and put them in a 200 degree oven to keep them warm.

Add turnips and all remaining vegetables to liquid in pot;

bring to boil.  Reduce heat to medium and boil gently until all vegetables are tender, about 25 minutes.  Using slotted spoon, transfer vegetables to baking sheet with beef.  Return beef to pot and rewarm 5 minutes.  (I didn't need to rewarm the beef, as it was already staying warm in the oven.)  Discard spice bag.

While the vegetables were cooking, I put out a few things for people to nosh on when they arrived.

Here we have an assortment of Carr's crackers, a piece of smoked Sockeye salmon, a wedge of Wensleydale cheese with cranberries, and a block of aged Irish cheddar. 

Bill also bought oysters - 2 dozen - but I was too busy chatting and then slurping down the oysters once he'd shucked them to take any pictures.  Sorry.

Cut beef against grain into 1/4-inch thick slices.  Arrange beef and vegetables on platter.  Serve with Horseradish Cream and Guinness Mustard.

Starting with the potato at twelve o'clock and going clockwise, we've got some of the cabbage, carrots, a half of a turnip, half an onion, the Guinness mustard, the corned beef (the one I brined), Horseradish cream, and parsnips.

People sampled both versions of the corned beef and based on verbal feedback and evidence when the table was cleared, everyone preferred the home-brined corned beef. 

 

It has a distinctive, more complex, spicier flavor than the pre-packaged one.  It was just more interesting to eat.  I'll definitely make this again.

To recap, here's a shot of everything I'd made for this meal:

Brining the Briskets

Irish Whiskey Soda Bread

Royal Hibernian Brown Loaf

Horseradish Cream, Guinness Mustard

Lemon Sponge Pie with Chocolate Pastry Crust

I heartily recommend making this corned beef some time.  Sure, it's too late to make it for this year's St. Patrick Day dinner, but so what?  It'll taste good any day of the week.

And the leftover beef (and you should plan on making enough so that you DO have leftovers) will be nice in sandwich form,

or, my family's favorite - as corned beef hash.

Come back later for that one!

My New Favorite Food

FRESH baby corn. 

I'd never seen it in a local grocery store before, but the Stop & Shop that I go to (Route 2 in Warwick, in case you're keeping track or stalking) is in the middle of a big reorganization/reconstruction project, and it seems like they're also increasing the variety of produce and products they carry.  So a few weeks ago I was wandering around in the produce dept, heading for the avocados, and there they were.  Fresh baby corn.  Fresh.  As in, not in a can.  Actually they had a whole section of baby vegetables.  Baby zucchini.  Baby string beans.  And so on.  But none of that interested me - just the baby corn. 

I bought some, and Bill used it in a spicy Thai-inspired noodle dish that he made with some frozen cubes of red curry paste he made at the end of last summer.  He used tofu, maybe red bell pepper (I can't remember) and the baby corn, along with the noodles and the red curry paste and coconut milk and who knows what else.  Kafir lime leaves.  Cilantro.  And sliced cucumber all around the edges.  I should have taken a picture - it looked beautiful - but I didn't.  So he'll have to make it again.

But the thing I'm getting at is that in this very spicy and multi-flavored dish, you could TASTE the corn-ness of these baby corn.  They didn't taste like canned baby corn - that is to say, they didn't taste like CAN.  No, they - oddly enough - tasted like what they were.  Like corn.   Fancy that!

So of course, I bought some again the next week.  How good would it be if I just steamed the baby corn and melted a little butter on them and sprinkled them with salt and pepper?  Summer in March!  So that's what I did, and you know what?  THEY TASTED LIKE CORN! 

I realize this post may give you the idea that I don't have enough excitement in my life, if I'm turning cartwheels about corn, but I just like food to taste like what it IS, and so while we've used canned baby corn in the past, it's just been because the recipe called for it and canned was the only way we could get it.

Until now.

And so - yeah - this IS exciting.  Fresh baby corn.  That tastes like what it is.  YAY!

Gorgeous, isn't it?

Sweet Potato Gnocchi

Every Wednesday the Providence Journal publishes their Food Section - a collection of articles about food, recipes, local food-related events, and so forth.  I would love to get the paper delivered every day - and have time to read it - but we cancelled our subscription long ago because the papers would pile up and we'd end up either recycling them or using them to start fires (in the fireplace or on the grill - not just random ones).  So, we cancelled.  And the only thing I miss is the Food Section.  Of course, fortunately the paper is online, so I can check out the food stuff there, but it's not the same as turning the actual pages, so sometimes I'll buy the Wednesday paper. 

All that long and rambling opening to explain where I got this recipe.  It was featured in last week's Food Section, in a regular feature called "Chef's Secret."  People will write the editor of the food section to ask if she can get the recipe for something they'd had at a local restuarant, and each week a includes another example from these requests.  Last week someone wrote in to ask about the house gnocchi at the Blue Grotto, a restaurant in Providence.  You can read the article and get the recipe here.

I love gnocchi, as you may already know (see here), but I've never had or made sweet potato gnocchi before.  So I bookmarked the recipe and bought everything for it (with one exception - the baby spinach - oops), and planned to make it Saturday for dinner, but that changed unexpectedly, so I made it yesterday instead.

If you're going to make it (or regular gnocchi, for that matter), plan on several hours of prep work.  I know, that's a lot of time.  Some of it is just the cooking time for the potatoes, but still - it's all part of the process.  I will say - the reward is worth the effort.

Okay.  Per the recipe in Bold, with my own notes in italics...

SWEET POTATO GNOCCHI

6 sweet potatoes (4 1/2 pounds)

2 tablespoons brown sugar

2 tablespoons salt

1 tablespoon white pepper (didn't have any - I used freshly ground black pepper.)

1 pound ricotta cheese

2 eggs

4-5 cups all purpose flour

Bake sweet potatoes at 450 degrees for 1 hour 15 minutes. Overbake slightly making sure they’re soft inside. Let potatoes cool just enough to be able to handle; they should not cool down completely.

Scrape out the insides of the potatoes with a spoon into a mixing bowl with all of the other ingredients except the flour.

I actually had my able-bodied assistant, Julia, combine all the other ingredients (except the brown sugar and the flour) while I scraped out the potatoes.  She wanted to help.

I added the brown sugar to the scraped out sweet potato flesh...

and then we added Julia's mixture to mine.

and Julia mixed it all together.

Use the dough hook attachment. (We didn't - we did it all by hand.)  When the ingredients are incorporated, add the flour, one cup at a time.

Julia opted out of helping me at this point - the dough gets stiffer as you work the flour in, and it was too hard for her to mix anything.

The dough is finished when it is firm but yielding and slightly sticky. Knead by hand and roll into a ball. Place a damp cloth over the ball and put into the refrigerator for one hour.  (Didn't do that - the fridge part - I didn't have enough time.)

Lightly flour your working surface. Cut the ball into six pieces,

and roll each into a rope between 1/2-inch and 3/4-inch in diameter.

Cut into 1/2-inch pieces flouring them as you go.

Roll each piece on the back side of a fork or a gnocchi board.

The gnocchi are now ready to cook or freeze.

About 8 ounces of gnocchi is a good portion.

When cooking the gnocchi, bring water to a boil and cook until they float for 2 minutes.

I ended up with 5 cookie sheets of gnocchi.  I made the Blue Grotto's sauce while I cooked the gnocchi in batches.

Here's the Blue Grotto's sauce recipe - any changes I made are in italics:

BLUE GROTTO GNOCCHI SAUCE

1/2 cup heavy cream

1/2 cup white wine

2 tablespoons oil

3 tablespoons brown sugar

4 tablespoons butter

1/4 cup thinly sliced fennel (I diced mine - I was unfortunately trying to do too much at once and i didn't realize it said "sliced.")

1/4 cup white onion, thinly sliced  (again, I diced when I should have sliced)

1/8 cup roasted red pepper strips (once again - mine were diced, not sliced, and I used 1/4 cup)

1 tablespoon fresh basil (I used a handful - mostly because i forgot the spinach and - yes, this is ridiculous reasoning - I wanted more green)

1 teaspoon minced shallot (I used a whole shallot - about a tablespoon minced)

1 teaspoon minced garlic

Salt and pepper, to taste

2 tablespoons grated Romano cheese (I used Asiago.  I just felt like it.)

Small handful of baby spinach (like I said, I forgot to get the spinach)

And before I launch into things - here's a picture of a fennel bulb, in case you haven't looked for one before:

Fennel has a fresh, bright anise flavor and can be used in salads, soups, etc.  I remember trying a fennel and blood orange salad recipe a long time ago and it was really refreshing and different.  So go buy some fennel.

Heat pan with oil over medium heat. Add fennel, onion and roasted red peppers.

Sauté 1 to 2 minutes. Add garlic and shallots cook for 30 seconds. 

Add wine, basil and brown sugar.

Reduce by 1/3.

Add cream and reduce by 1/3.

Add butter and salt and pepper. Cook until butter is melted.

Add cooked gnocchi and toss with baby spinach (if you remembered to buy it) 

and grated Romano cheese. (Or, if you're me, Asiago.) 

Serves four.

~~~~~

I didn't toss ALL the gnocchi with the sauce.  I put about one cookie sheet's worth (1/5 the recipe) in a separate bowl and just tossed with some butter.  I had a feeling that Alex would dislike it on sight if he saw bits of onion and onion-like substances in the sauce, not to mention the bits of red that he would think are tomato, and would therefore refuse, and even if he knew they were roasted red pepper, he'd probably refuse that, too.  But I thought, maybe, just maybe, if it was just served with butter and grated cheese, he'd try it without prejudice.

And he did.

And after eating a piece of sweet potato gnocchi, he shut his eyes, stretched out his arms, and let his fork fall dramatically to the floor.  I wasn't sure if this was happy drama or not, so I asked if he liked the gnocchi, and he said no, he LOVED it.  That it was "THE BEST PASTA I EVER HAD!"  So a big thanks to Chef Robert Hanson at the Blue Grotto Restaurant for sharing the recipe with Food Editor Gail Ciampa at The Providence Journal and making my son a happy boy.

 

As far as the rest of the meal went, my husband and I loved this dish.  The sweetness from the brown sugar reminded us of balsamic vinegar, sort of.  In fact, now that I think about it, it reminds me of a tortellini dish we had at another local restaurant before it closed.  But anyway - I know I made some changes to the Blue Grotto's Gnocchi Sauce, but I don't think my end result strays too far from the way it would taste at the restaurant.  Guess we'll have to get a babysitter and go out for a meal some night soon.  But for now...

homemade will suffice.

Leek and Potato Soup

I love leeks.  I love everyone in the onion family, but I have a special affection for leeks.  I tried to describe why, but it sounded like really bad middle school creative writing, so I deleted it.   So we'll just skip that and move on to the cooking part.

I bought a couple bunches of leeks at the store earlier in the week, and potatoes, so that at some point this week I could throw together the soup.  It's one of the simplest things to make, and it's warm and comforting on a cold wintery evening.

The recipe I followed is from Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Vol. I., by Julia Child, Louisette Bertholle and Simone Beck.  It's the first entry in Chapter One - Soup.

Potage Parmentier (Leek or Onion and Potato Soup)

"Leek and potato soup smells good, tastes good, and is simplicity itself to make.  It is also versatile as a soup base; add water cress and you have a water-cress souop, or stir in cream and chill it for a vichyssoise.  To change the formula a bit, add carrots, string beans, cauliflower, broccoli, or anything else you think would go with it, and vary the proportions as you wish."

~~~~~

Here's what you need:

3-4 cups or 1 lb potatoes,

peeled,

and sliced.

 

3 cups or 1 lb leeks,

 

thinly sliced, including the tender green

* A few things to keep in mind about leeks - first of all, you want to trim the darkest green parts away - easiest way is to cut them on an angle while you rotate the leek on your cutting board.  You can see that inside the darker parts the green is lighter and kind of yellowish - this part is okay to use.  The darkest part tends to be drier, kind of like the skin you peel off of an onion, only not AS dry. 

Also, leeks tend to have dirt or sand in between their layers, and the best way to get rid of that is to slice the leek cross-wise

and soak it all in a deep bowl of cold water.

Swish the leeks around in the water to help loosen the dirt.  The leek will float, and the dirt and sand will sink to the bottom.

And you'll also need

2 quarts of water

1 T salt

And that's IT.  How simple can you get?

Place everything in a 3-4 quart sauce pot

and bring to a boil. 

Drop the heat down, partially cover the pot and simmer for 40-50 minutes or until the vegetables are tender.

Mash the vegetables with a fork or run them through a food mill - or use a food processor an immersion blender to puree everything.

Taste it, and add more salt if you think it needs it, and add pepper to taste.  Ta da!  You're done!

Now, if I had thought ahead, I would have picked up a baguette to serve with the soup.  But I didn't think that far ahead, and I didn't have time to make bread, so I found a recipe for a Quick Onion Flat Bread in a little cookbook called "Fast Breads!" by Howard Early and Glenda Morris.  It was published in 1986 and I think it's now out of print.  I've posted that recipe after this one, in case you don't remember to get a baguette while you're buying the leeks.

Oh - and below - I swirled in some half & half to make it look pretty.  The book calls for whipping cream or sweet butter stirred in before serving, and a sprinkling of parsley on top, but I didn't sprinkle parsley.  Sorry. 

   

Onion Rings

These are the sort of onion rings I mentioned in yesterday's post - the ones I made to go with my Buffalo Ball sandwiches.   I had one onion left over, so yesterday afternoon I cooked up another batch and took pictures so I could show you how little what I did to make them.

For a small batch you will need:

One large sweet onion - Vidalia if they're in season, otherwise, just pick the best looking sweet onion in the store.

Buttermilk.  Easiest is to buy the quart size, but if you can't do that for some reason, you can also find powdered buttermilk in the baking section of most grocery stores.

Each package gets mixed with a cup of water, so if you're going to go this route, you'll need at least two cups, and three would be better.

This powder is easy to use, and you can just buy some to have on hand.  When you need it for the onion rings, just whisk the powder with the water...

and ta-da!

Buttermilk.

Now, peel the onion and trim the ends a little bit...

And then slice the onion into rings approximately half an inch wide. 

Separate the rings and place them in the buttermilk.  Soak them for an hour or so in the fridge.

When you're ready to make the onion rings, fill a large pot about half full with vegetable oil and heat to about 350-360 degrees F.

While the oil is heating, pour some flour in a shallow bowl or pan, add salt and pepper, and whisk together to combine.

You'll also need a slotted spoon or tongs and a plate with several layers of paper towels. 

Set up your bowl of onions and buttermilk, the bowl of flour, and an empty bowl (the on-deck circle, so to speak) near your hot oil.  Take the onion rings, a few at a time, out of the buttermilk, dredge them in the flour and pile them on the empty plate.

Fry in small batches, turning the rings over about halfway through, until they are crisp and dark golden brown.  Remove from the oil, place on the paper towels to drain, and sprinkle with salt immediately.  Transfer to another plate in a warm oven, if desired, until all are cooked and ready to serve.

These come out crisp and light.  My husband said last night that he likes these better than the heavily coated ones you get that are basically thick, fried batter with a little string of onion running through the middle. 

To accompany the rings, I made a sauce of mayo and sriracha and lemon juice - you could also use a hot chipotle sauce mixed with the mayo as well.  Just a thought.

Whatever you do, serve the onion rings as soon after cooking them as you can.  Fried foods don't stay crisp forever, and these are definitely meant to be eaten the day they are cooked.  They don't reheat to the same degree of crispness. 

Enjoy! 

Printable Recipe!

Chiles Rellenos

From Mexico One Plate at a Time by Rick Bayless.  This book is a terrific introduction to Mexican cooking.  As the title indicates, the book focuses on a number of classic recipes in great depth, so you, the reader, can understand why the dish is made the way it is, what some of the regional differences are, and so forth. 

Chiles Rellenos - which simply means stuffed peppers - are a bit time-consuming, but well worth all the work involved, and rather impressive to serve.  This recipe is actually Chiles Rellenos de Picadillo en Caldillo de Jitomate, which translates as Classic Pork Picadillo-Stuffed Chiles in Tomato Broth.

For us, the coolest thing was the fact that we had, in the freezer, PLENTY of poblano peppers from the garden last summer, and we've just been waiting for the right opportunity to make this dish.  There's also a version in the book with just a cheese stuffing.  I'd like to make those, too, but this pork filling was delicious.  I had the last of the leftovers for breakfast yesterday, by the way. 

Anyway, on to the cooking.  Settle in - it's a long process.  But - well worth it!

First up - the ingredients:

3 T rich-tasting pork lard or vegetable oil.  (we used the lard - you can get it at most grocery stores, right near the butter.)

2 medium white onions, chopped into 1/4 inch pieces

2  28-oz cans good-quality whole tomatoes in juice, undrained OR 3 lbs ripe tomatoes, cored and cut into large pieces

1 tsp cinnamon, preferably freshly ground Mexican canela.  (we used what we had - regular plain ol' cinnamon)

1 tsp black pepper, preferably freshly ground

2 cups chicken or beef broth (we used chicken)

1/2 cup slivered almonds

1  1/2 lbs coarsely ground pork shoulder

1/2 cup raisins

1 T cider vinegar

salt

vegetable oil to a depth of 1 inch for frying. 

8 medium fresh poblano chiles, not twisted or deeply indented, preferably with long stems (okay, beggars can't be choosers - we used what we had in the freezer.  There were more than 8, but some were on the small side)

8   6-inch wooden skewers or 16 toothpicks

6 large eggs, cold

2 T all-purpose flour, plus about a cup for dredging the chiles

Sprigs of fresh cilantro, watercress or flat-leaf parsley for garnish (we didn't garnish; we were too hungry)

Okay, got all that?  Let's cook.

1.  The broth base and filling.  In a medium-large saucepan, heat the lard or oil over medium.  Add the onions and cook, stirring regularly, until they are very well browned, about 10 minutes.

(not there yet)

While the onions are cooking, puree the undrained canned tomatoes, or, if using fresh tomatoes, puree them with 2/3 cup water, using a blender of food processor and working in two batches if necessary.

When the onions are well-browned, raise the heat to medium-high and add the pureed tomatoes, cinnamon and pepper.  Stir regularly as the mixture boils briskly, reducing until it becomes the consistency of thick tomato sauce, about 25 minutes.

2.  The Tomato Broth.  Remove 2 cups of the tomato mixture and set aside.

Stir the chicken (or beef) broth into the mixture that remains.  Partially cover and simmer over low heat for 45 minutes or so, while you're preparing the filling and chiles.

3.  The Pork Picadillo Filling.  Set a large skillet (preferably nonstick) over medium-high heat.  Add the almonds and stir around until they color to a deep golden, about 2 minutes.  Remove.

(keep going - you want them more golden that those above.)

Crumble the pork into the skillet and fry, stirring often,

until thoroughly cooked (some of the edges should be browned and crispy), 10 to 15 minutes.  If the pork has rendered a lot of fat, drain it off.  Stir in the reserved 2 cups of tomato mixture, the raisins and vinegar.  Cook over medium heat, stirring regularly, until the mixture is very thick and homogeneous, about 20 minutes.  Stir in the almonds, then taste and season with salt, usually about 1 teaspoon.  Cool. 

4. Preparing the Chiles.  (* This isn't how we did ours.  Bill put our chiles under the broiler, which you can read about in the Green Sauce recipe that I posted yesterday.  But I'm printing the method from the book, because that's the way Chef Bayless wrote it.)

While the picadillo is cooking, pour 1 inch of oil into a deep heavy skillet or pot - the pot should be 12 inches wide and 3 to 4 inches deep for easiest maneuvering of the chiles - and set over medium to medium-high to heat to 350 degrees F.  In two batches, fry the chiles, turning them continually, for about 1 minute, until they are evenly blistered (they'll look uniformly light green, having lightened as they blister).  Drain on paper towels.  Remove the oil from the heat. 

When the chiles are cool enough to handle, rub off the blistered skins, then cut an incision in the side of each one, starting 1/2 inch below the stem end and continuing to within 1/2 inch of the tip.  One by one, work your index finger inside each chile and dislodge all the seeds clustered just below the stem.  Quickly rinse the seeds from inside the chiles, being careful not to rip or tear the opening any wider; rinse off any stray bits of skin.  Drain cut side down on paper towels.

(In this picture below, these are some of the chiles Bill had done under the broiler.  The skins have been removed, and the slits cut, but obviously the seeds are still there.)

5.  Stuffing the Chiles.  Stuff each well-drained chile with about 1/2 cup of the cooled pork filling,

then slightly overlap the two sides of the incision and pin them back together with a skewer or two toothpicks.  For the greatest ease in battering and frying, flatten the chiles slightly, place on a parchment-lined baking sheet and freeze for about 1 hour to firm.

(* I had a bit of a challenge working with our chiles.  First of all, like I mentioned earlier, some were on the small side, so obviously I used less than a half cup of filling.  Second, structurally I think the chiles had been weakened by being in the freezer since summer.  They tore easily when Bill was cleaning them out, so some of my stuffed chiles actually had 3 toothpicks (actually I used broken skewers, since I couldn't find our toothpicks until yesterday) in order to hold all the filling in.)

6.  Battering and Frying the Chiles.  Reheat the oil to 350 degrees F.  (Actually, since we hadn't used the frying method to blister the chiles, I just used the pot of oil we had on the stove from a recent deep-frying project.)  Set up a try lined with several layers of paper towels.  Separate the eggs:  whites into the bowl of an electric mixer, yolks into a small bowl.  Add 1/2 teaspoon salt to the whites and begin beating them on medium speed.  When they are beginning to look dry and hold a stiff peak but are not at all rigid, beat in the yolks two at a time until well incorporated.  Lastly, beat in the two tablespoons flour. 

(this should be a very light and frothy batter - soft and fluffy.)

Spread the 1 cup of flour on a plate.

One at a time, batter the first four chiles:  (we did 3 at a time - whatever fits in your pot of oil) Roll in the flour, shake off the excess, pick up by the stem, dip into the batter and quickly pull straight up out of the batter, then lay into the hot oil.  (If your kitchen is very warm, it's best to hold the remaining batter for the second round in the refrigerator.)  Once the first four chiles are in the oil, begin gently, gently basting them with spoonfuls of hot oil (this will help set the uncooked batter on top). 

When they're richly golden on the bottom, about 4 minutes, use one small metal spatula underneath and another one (or a spoon) on top to gently turn the chiles over.  Fry until the other side is richly golden, another 3 to 4 minutes.  Using the metal spatula, remove the chiles to the paper towels to drain. 

Repeat with the remaining chiles.

7.  Serving the Chiles.  Heat the oven to 400 degrees F.  (Preheat while you're frying the chiles.)  Once all the fried chiles have cooled for at least 5 minutes, pick them up by carefully rolling each one onto one hand, then transfer to a baking sheet (lined with parchment if you wish, for extra ease at serving time).  Pull out the skewers by twisting them gently (like taking darts from a dart board).  Bake for 15 minutes to heat thoroughly, to render some of the absorbed oil and to crisp slightly.

Meanwhile, bring the tomato broth to a boil and check the consistency:  It should be similar to a brothy somato soup.  If it's too thick, thin with a little water or broth; if too thin, boil rapidly until thickened slightly.  Season it with salt, usually about 1/2 teaspoon.

Ladle about 1/2 cup of the broth into each of eight deep serving bowls (large soup bowls or pasta bowls are perfect here).  Nestle in one of the chiles, garnish with herb sprigs and get ready for a taste of real Mexico.

(* We didn't serve them in bowls - we just put them out on a tray and let people serve themselves.)

We ladled the sauce onto the chiles instead.  But regardless - what an amazing dish!  Flavor-wise, it's the small amount of cinnamon that really makes this taste special.  And texture-wise, the frothy egg batter gives you a soft, tender coating - it's not crunchy like fish & chips, for instance.  You're not making that sort of batter - separating the yolks from the whites and beating the whites first gives you a souffle batter instead - the result is comfort food at its most sublime.

So go on, set aside a chunk of time and make these.  You will not be sorry.

Green Sauce

I love this sauce.  It may have been part of the first meal Bill cooked for me...or maybe the second.

Anyway - it comes from Betty Crocker's Mexican Made Easy - published in 1993, I think it may be out of print now.  Bill bought his copy for $2.99 at a Building 19 store an eternity ago.

Anyway, from Chapter 2 in the book - "Sizzling Sauces and Sides" - the description for Green Sauce is as follows:

                "This is a suave chile sauce, slightly chunky and rich with cream"

Suave?  I don't know about that.  There's definitely some heat to it, though.  I love it.  It's great as a dip, and we also used it in tacos made from a slow-grilled pork tenderloin, and it was fabulous that way.

What you'll need:

1 large onion, finely chopped (about a cup)

4 poblano chiles, roasted, peeled, seeded and finely chopped (about 1/2 cup)

1 jalapeno chile, seeded and finely chopped

1 clove garlic, finely chopped

2 T vegetable oil

1/2 cup whipping (heavy) cream  ( * we only use 1/4 cup)

1/4 tsp salt

Now.  If you've never roasted peppers, here's probably the easiest way.  Heat up the broiler in your oven, and put one of the oven racks on the highest level possible.  Put your peppers on a row in the pan so that when you place the pan in the oven, the peppers will be directly under the broiler flames.  Once the broiler is ready, put the pan with the peppers (it's sounding like a tongue twister in the making) on the top rack and broil for a few minutes, until the skin chars.  Pull the pan out, flip the peppers over, and char on the other side.  They should look like this -

or even more charred.  Oh, and all that gunk on the pan?  Just soak it for a while, and it'll come right off.  Or you could be smarter than we are and cover the pan with foil first.  Take your pick.

Anyway, when the peppers are nice and black on the outside, place them in a paper bag, close the top, and let them sweat a bit.

When they've sweated and cooled, you peel the skin off.  It's helpful to do this at the sink, so you can rinse the bits of peel away as you work.

Another option, if you've got a gas stove, is just to set the peppers (if they're big enough) on the burner over a flame.  Turn them periodically to get a nice even char all over.  Then proceed with the sweating and so forth.  Just - you know, don't go off and so something else while the peppers are on the fire.  It could be bad.

Okay, now, once you've got everything peeled and chopped and ready to go, place the onion, chiles, and garlic in the oil over medium heat in a small pan, stirring occasionally, until the onion is tender - about 8 minutes. 

Stir in the cream and salt. 

Ta-da!  How simple is that?  Especially in my house, where Bill does all the work and I just taste the finished product and give my professional opinion.

And my professional opinion is always "You should have doubled the recipe!"  (Yield is 1 1/3 cups)

So hey, if you're looking for a change from salsa for your Super Bowl party on Sunday (if you're having one, or going to one.  Or if you might be hungry all by your self) - make this instead! 

Daikon with Sesame Miso Sauce

A couple of days ago I posted a bunch of pictures of Bill making a soft shell crab maki roll.  He made a number of things that day, including a dish we'd made years ago and haven't made again in ages.  Since this particular soft shell crab roll included thinly sliced daikon as part of the assembly, Bill decided to make Daikon with Sesame Miso Sauce as well.

First of all, what the heck (you may be thinking) is a Daikon anyway?

It's a big radish.  Raw, it tastes, well, like a radish.  Cooked, it has a rather distinctive taste, kind of more like a turnip.  It's used fairly often in Japanese cooking and garnishing.  The one Bill bought was huge - about 3 inches in diameter and I don't even know how long the whole thing was because I didn't see it before he cut it up.

In the picture above, the radishes are obviously cleaned.  Fresh from the ground, they'll look brown.

Anyway, it's an interesting dish - the kids had NO interest in it at all - they didn't even know what it was, but somehow they just knew it wouldn't compare to raw tuna and salmon.  And they were right, because not too many things CAN compare to sashimi.  But I digress.

We got the recipe from one of the several Asian cookbooks we collected at the very beginning of our relationship - from the Creative Cooking Library - Taste of Japan by Masaki Ko. 

We used this book a LOT.  Looking through it recently made us a bit nostalgic, and so look for more recipes from this volume in the weeks and months ahead.  Pages are stained with food splatter (we must seem like the messiest of cooks, but honestly, only Bill is.  hahahahaha) and the book willingly opens to certain pages just because we made those recipes so often way back when.  I think it was a bargain book when we picked it up, and it may be out of print now. 

So, let's make this.

Bill made the sesame miso sauce early in the day, just to get it out of the way. 

For that you'll need:

a generous 1/3 cup red miso paste

a generous 1/3 cup white miso paste

1/4 cup mirin

2 T sugar

4 tsp ground white sesame seeds

(some notes...miso paste is made from fermented soybeans.  The darker the paste - there are also yellow and brown pastes to be had - the more intense the flavor.  We like the brown for miso soup.  Anyway, you can find them in some grocery stores, and very often in health food stores.  They come in little plastic tubs and seem to keep for an eternity in the fridge.  And mirin is a sweet sake used for cooking.  You can find that in grocery stores and health food stores as well.)

So what you do is mix the red and white miso pastes in a saucepan.  Add the mirin and sugar and then simmer for 6 minutes, stirring continuously. 

Remove from the heat and add the sesame seeds.

Pretty simple, right?

Okay.  You can do that ahead of time or you can do it while the daikon radish is cooking. 

To prepare the radish you'll need...

1 medium daikon (about 2 lbs)

1 T rice, washed (not cooked)

1 sheet kombu seaweed (about 8 x 4 inches)

salt 

(kombu is a form of kelp, most often used in flavoring stocks.  It's purchased dried and packaged, and you just break it apart and use what you need.  You don't rinse it off to clean it - that will remove a lot of the flavor and nutrients.  Just wipe it off if necessary.  You can find this in Asian markets and some grocery stores and health food stores.)

Clean and peel the daikon (if not already done) like you would a carrot or turnip.  Slice into 1-inch thick pieces.  Wrap the rice in a piece of muslin or cheesecloth and tie it with a string, leaving room for the rice to expand. 

Place the daikon in a saucepan and fill with water.  Add the rice bag and a little salt, bring to a boil, and then simmer for 15 minutes.  (The rice added to keep the daikon white while cooking and to draw off any bitterness.)

(Bill actually put the rice in tea infuser, which worked nicely.)

After that's done, place the kombu in a large, shallow pan and lay the cooked daikon on top.  Fill with water, bring to a boil, and simmer for 20 minutes.  The seaweed is used to flavor the daikon.

After the daikon was cooked, we placed the kombu on a plate, arranged the daikon on top and then top with the miso sauce.  (Or, you can wait to top with the sauce until you're serving it, which is what the book suggests.  We only plated up a small amount of the daikon and put the sauce on before bringing it to the table to save time.)

We also surrounded the daikon with a bit of seaweed salad that Bill threw together.  I'll check with him to see what exactly he seasoned it with, but it's a good bet he used rice wine vinegar and sesame oil with the two seaweeds.  Anyway, here's the final image.  The miso sauce is pretty thick - I actually thinned it with water just so I could try to drizzle it artistically (hahaha) over the daikon. 

And there you go.  A pretty simple vegetable dish with a lot of flavor and nutrients.

   

Renee Pottle's Vegetarian Burgers

As I mentioned in my recent post about Renee Pottle's cookbook I Want My Dinner Now!, I recently made the Vegetarian Burgers and these were a twofold hit - first time being as sandwiches for dinner, and the second time - for my husband the next morning as a substitute for corned beef hash with his eggs.  Now, they don't taste like corned beef, it was more the texture, but regardless - I got extra mileage and an idea for tweaking the recipe specifically for breakfast some time.

Anyway, here's the recipe for the Vegetarian Burgers - I'm giving you the 6-serving version, by the way.

Ingredients are:

3/4 cup quick cooking rice (brown or white) ( I used brown)

3/4 cup quick cooking oatmeal

3/4 cup breadcrumbs

1/3 cup peanut butter

3/4 cup cottage cheese

1 T instant minced onion

1 T instant minced garlic

1   1/2 tsp dried basil leaves

Got all that?  Okay.

1.  Mix rice and oatmeal in a large bowl.  Pour boiling water over mixture.  Cover bowl and let sit for 5 minutes.

2.  Preheat grill to highest setting.

3.  Drain rice/oatmeal mixture.  Add bread crumbs, peanut butter, cottage cheese, onion, garlic, and basil.  Mix well.  Shape into burgers, approximately 3/4 inch thick.

4.  Grill for 6-8 minutes, or until browned.  Gently remove from grill.

Serve With:  Pepper Jack cheese, sliced tomato and onion, and sesame seed hamburger buns.

~~~~~

And now, if I may, just a few of my own mental notes from the process. 

First of all, get everything measured out and ready before you pour the boiling water on the oats and rice.  If the oats sit in the water for too long, they get almost too mushy, and it's harder to drain the excess water.  (I learned that the hard way.  Don't make my mistake!)

Second, keep in mind that everything is already cooked or ready to eat when you put these on the grill - you're just browning them and warming them through.  It's not like you're dealing with raw meat or eggs - so if they're not steaming hot in the center, that's fine.

Third - some changes I made because of what I had on hand:  I didn't have the instant minced garlic, but I did have garlic powder.  BUT - don't use a whole tablespoon of garlic powder in place of the minced garlic, unless you've got a vampire problem.  I'd say a teaspoon or so of the powder in place of the minced, if you need to substitute.  Also, oddly enough, I was out of dried basil, so I used oregano. 

Fourth - I used a griddle instead of a grill because my mixture was SO mushy (because I let the oatmeal/rice sit longer than 5 minutes) I was afraid it would sink down in between the ridges and I'd end up with scrambled crispy veggie burger stuff.  Which probably would be pretty tasty.

~~~~~

Now, I'm thinking, if you have peanut allergies, obviously you're not going to use peanutbutter.  If it's possible for you, personally, to substitute another nut butter, then that's probably your best bet. 

~~~~~

Other thoughts...these are full of protein and whole grain nutrients and calcium, for starters.  And if you're so inclined, you can probably vary or add to these ingredients and create other "flavors."  I was thinking of dicing some mushrooms and sauteeing them until all the liquid was gone and adding those into the mix some time.  Or you could vary the seasonings, too.

Anyway, go ahead and give these a try! 

Recipe for Thai Spring Rolls

From Keo's Thai Cuisine, by Keo Sananikone.  I mentioned the Spring Rolls in this post earlier today.  Here's my version - slightly different but basically the same.  Mine are larger - like egg roll size - and the actual version has them smaller - little bite sized appetizers. 

These are the ingredients:

1/2 lb fresh ground pork

1/2 lb shrimp, chopped

10 dried Chinese black mushrooms (available in Asian markets and some grocery stores)

1 ounce bean threads (avail. in Asian markets and some grocery stores)

1 medium onion, finely chopped

1 carrot, shredded

1/4 lb bean sprouts

1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper

1-2 teaspoons fish sauce (Asian market or sometimes Asian section of grocery s tores)

1 teaspoon sugar

1 cup lukewarm water

14-16 rice papers - round ones, medium size (about 8" in diameter) (found in Asian markets in greater variety - sometimes in grocery stores.  They're used for spring rolls and nime chow, among other things.)

6 cups oil for deep frying

Got all that?

Place the dried mushrooms in warm water for 20 minutes to rehydrate.  Remove the stems and dice up the caps.

Soak the bean threads in warm water for 20 minutes as well.  Drain, and then cut them into roughly 1-inch lengths.  

Place the shrimp and pork in a large bowl.  Add mushrooms and bean threads once rehydrated and chopped up.  Add onion, carrot, bean sprouts, black pepper and fish sauce.  Mix well and let stand for fifteen minutes or so.

Place the teaspoon of sugar in the cup of lukewarm water to dissolve, then pour into a shallow pan wide enough for the rice paper to lay flat in it.  I used a small frying pan.

This is what the rice paper looks like when dry -

They're brittle and they crack easily.

Once you've got the sugar and water in a pan, place one of the pieces of rice paper in and submerge it. 

Let it sit for a few seconds, then remove it and place on a plate or other dry work surface.  Give it a minute or so to allow the rice paper to absorb the moisture.

Place some of the pork/shrimp mixture on the rice paper, like so:

Actually, this is a bad picture - the mixture should be closer to the edge of the rice paper, so mentally move this mixture closer to the bottom of the picture.  Now, fold up the bottom edge over the mixture, then fold over the right side and the left side - it's like making burritos and things like that - and then roll tightly to seal.

Continue until you've used up the pork/shrimp mixture.  When you're about halfway through the whole process, put the 6 cups of oil in a deep pot and set on a medium high flame.  If you've got a candy thermometer, attach it to the pan and keep an eye on the temperature.  You want to heat the oil to 375 degrees F.

Once you've got all the spring rolls made, assemble them and a few other things near the stove so you'll be all ready once the oil reaches temperature.  You'll need a large slotted spoon, two plates with several layers of paper towels, and the spring rolls and tongs.  Keep everything close by so you aren't dripping hot oil all over the place.

Once the oil is hot, carefully lower 4 of the spring rolls into the oil.  Don't splash them - the best way is to place one end in and lay the rest of the roll in gently.  Because of all the water in them, these will bubble up and make a lot of noise for a little while.  It's kind of fun.

Roll them over so they brown evenly.  This might be kind of difficult, as air pockets form inside the rolled rice paper and the rolls will stubbornly roll right back the way they were after you flip them so the pale side is down.  Don't give up.  Worse comes to worst, you can just hold them submerged in the oil until they cook evenly, but I don't like doing that because they seem to soak up too much oil that way.  It may take some trial and error.  But that's part of the adventure.

When they're golden brown, remove from the oil with a slotted spoon and drain excess oil into the pan before placing them on one of the plates with the paper towel layers.

Let them cool a bit and then slice one in half, just to make sure everything is cooked through.  Let it cool a bit more, and have a taste.  You've earned it.

Let the oil temperature come back up (if necessary) and then place 4-5 more rolls in and continue frying in batches until they're all done.  If necessary, keep warm in a low oven or a warming drawer until it's time to serve them.

~~~~~

The book suggests a Spring roll sauce, but this is the one we made -

1 cup hot water

1/4 cup sugar

1/2 tsp salt

2 T lime juice

1 T white vinegar

1 T fish sauce

Dissolve the sugar and salt in the hot water.

Combine with remaining ingredients.

~~~~~

And that's that.  The tighter you can roll them the better they fry - the loose ones tend to have bigger air bubbles.

And you don't have to use that sauce - you can use a hot sauce, soy sauce, whatever you want.  I used some of the green curry sauce that we had with the chicken at that same meal.

Give it a try - frying's fun!

Green Curry Paste

This is from the book Keo's Thai Cuisine, written by Keo Sananikone and published in 1986.

Green Curry Paste

15-20 fresh small Thai green chili peppers

4 stalks fresh lemon grass, coarseley chopped

3 shallots, thinly sliced

1 clove garlic

1 tablespoon coarseley chopped kha (kha is Thai ginger - we use the fresh common ginger you can get in the produce section of the grocery store)

1 tablespoon coarsely chopped kra-chai (kra-chai is "Lesser Ginger" - again, we use common ginger here)

5 kaffir lime leaves, choped (you can get these in Asian markets.  The flavor is unique and very much a part of Thai cuising)

1/2 teaspoon chopped kaffir lime rind (if we don't have kaffir limes, we use regular limes)

1/2 teaspoon ground coriander

1/2 teaspoon ground caraway seeds

1/2 to 1 tablespoon fish sauce or 1 teaspoon salt (or to taste)

1 tablespoon sugar

1/4 teaspoon shrimp paste (you can find this in asian markets)

2 tablespoons oil.

Combine all ingredients in a food processor and process until smooth.  If a mortar and pestle are used, then add oil after all other ingredients are ground.  Refrigerate in a glass container.  Paste keeps well for several months.

(Bill put the mixture in ice cube trays to freeze it, instead of in the fridge, and then popped out the cubes when they were frozen and kept them in ziploc bags in the freezer.)

Thai curry sauces are made by adding coconut milk to the curry paste.  The amount of paste determines how hot and spicy your sauce will be.

Pickled Peppers

From my sister.

OktoberFeast - Part 1 - the Sauerkraut

At some point in early September we decided that we would, for sure, have an Oktoberfest gathering of a few friends and family.  Bill brewed a Dunkel Weizen (a dark wheat beer) and we had assorted bottles of other German beers on hand.  We also had a couple bottles of wine - a Reisling that Bill made a year ago and a Gewurtztraminer that he picked up along with some of the beer.  No one drank either of the white wines.  Instead, the wine drinkers had some Italian reds.  There was sparkling cider for the older kids, and juice for the younger.

And now...the food.

We ordered some items from Bavaria Sausage, Inc.  in Madison, Wisconsin.  Anthony Bourdain lists Bavaria Sausage in his book Anthony Bourdain's Les Halles Cookbook, and we've been ordering from them for the past few Christmases.  We've ordered some of their complete meals to send to various relatives as Christmas gifts, but this is the first time we've ordered anything for ourselves.

We ordered a selection of brats and wursts...head cheese, and two smoked beef tongues.  Yes, beef tongues.  For the sole purpose of freaking people out.  (This is how my husband plans a dinner party:  beer and gross-out food.  We served a chicken foot soup at our very first dinner party many years ago.  Of course, I'm no better - I go right along with it.)

In addition to these tidbits, the rest of the planned menu included the following:

Smoked bluefish and some cheeses and grapes (to round out the appetizer selection)

Homemade sauerkraut

Bill's grandmother's Onion Cake

Sauerbraten

Spaetzle

Bill's grandmother's Onion Cake

Grilled brats and wursts

A beer-can chicken (for those who don't eat mammals)

Roasted root vegetables.

Rolls and assorted mustards for the brats and wursts.

And my "cousin-in-law" brought an apple-cranberry pie and some chocolate and peanutbutter chip bars for dessert.   

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The Sauerkraut

Bill started the sauerkraut about a month ago or so.  We found a few sauerkraut recipes online and he probably ended up using elements of all of them. 

We started with two heads of cabbage from our garden.  Now - just a little aside - when Bill bought the cabbage he planned to use it to fill in some gaps in the front garden.  It was sold as ornamental cabbage, and the leaves were very pretty shades of pink and orange, green and blue.  Really!  See?

Aren't they beautiful?  But they didn't stay that way.  They grew and lost the fanciful shades of color until only the green remained...and much to our surprise, little head of actual cabbage began to form.  Maybe we're just stupid, but for some reason we just thought this "ornamental cabbage" would stay leafy and colorful.  It didn't. 

It continued to grow until Bill "harvested" two heads in September.  Here's one of them:

Okay, back to the sauerkraut.  You slice up the cabbage into "slaw" and layer it with a generous amount of salt in a crock.  Cabbage, salt, cabbage, salt...and you push down on it with a potato masher or something as you go - you want to make it as compact as possible.  Once all the cabbage is in there, you place a clean cloth on top and then a plate with some sort of weight on top (Bill used a big beach rock left over from one of our clambakes.).  That's it, as far as the prep work goes. 

The salt will help the cabbage release liquid, and the whole mixture will ferment.  You will need to check it daily to skim any "scum" from the top, and you'll want to keep the crock in a cool spot - around 50-60 degrees so it won't go bad.  Yes, it will smell.  Oh yes.  And no, it's not something you want to say "oh, I got used to it" because, well...it smells.  It's fermenting cabbage, after all.  But still, it was pretty cool - we were making sauerkraut!

Now, we didn't really have anywhere cold to store this.  Well, we had the chest freezer in the basement that Bill uses when he's brewing beer.  He's got a regulator hooked up to the thermostat of the freezer and can set it at just about any temperature he wants.  But he didn't want any chance of the sauerkraut contaminating his beer, so forget that idea.  He ended up placing the crock in a large bowl and placing a couple of those ice pack things you use to keep lunches cold around the crock.  And that worked.  The bowl and crock sat out on the counter all that time...stinking up the place and taking up valuable counter space near the sink...but it was all for the cause. 

After a few weeks, he bottled it and stored it in the fridge.  (He also made a batch of kim chee with the other two heads of cabbage, but that will be another post.)

And the result?  It tasted like sauerkraut!  But with a "funk" to it, as our friend John described it.  A homemade vs. store-bought sauerkraut kind of funk.  A "nothing fake" kind of funk, I guess.  It couldn't have been objectionable - all the sauerkraut was gone at the end of the night.  It was perfect with a brat and some grainy mustard on a torpedo roll.

Next up?  Bill's Grandmother's Onion Cake....

Roasting Garlic

Two weeks ago I bought about twelve heads of garlic, intending to roast them in olive oil at the same time as some of the batches of tomatoes I'd been doing, but I didn't get to them until today.

Usually I peel some of the outer papery layers off and then old the head of garlic on its side and cut in half about midway between the stem end and the tip.  Today I mangled the first one and decided to try something different.  So I just broke apart the garlic heads and put them all in a foil-lined cake pan.

Then I drizzled a good amount of olive oil over the garlic cloves and stirred them around so all were well coated. 

Then I covered them with a sheet of foil, tucked the edges from the bottom sheets of foil up around the edges of the top layer, to tuck all the garlic in nice and snug, and popped them into a 300 degree oven (alongside three more pans of tomatoes!  It's our best tomato year ever) for about an hour or so. 

To be honest, I didn't time them.  I never do, really.  I go by smell and by touch.  Periodically I'd take the pan out and press on the bigger garlic cloves to see if they were squishy yet.  It might have taken longer - and of course oven temperatures can vary as well, so - use the squish test for best results.  You want 'em squishy.

When they're ready, take the pan out and let them cool until you are comfortable handling them.  The aroma - if you love the smell of roasted garlic - and if you don't, you're probably not going to do any of this - but like I was saying - the aroma is swoon-inducing.  If you've been in the kitchen the whole time, you might not realize just how deliciously garlicy this will smell, so go outside for a few minutes, pick some tomatoes, water a plant or something, and THEN go inside and take a good inhale.  Like I said - swoon-inducing.

What you want to do next is get a little bowl or container for the garlic, and another bowl for the papery parts.  Set the pan and these two bowls near your sink, because your fingers will get very oily during this process and the papery bits will stick to you annoyingly, so you'll want to be able to rinse often.

Next - you take one of the heads of garlic and hold it over the keeper bowl and squeeze the roasted garlic out.  Now - a couple of tips here.  I've found that it's best (if the papery part hasn't split already) to hold the clove with the stem end (the little flat end) down and the outer, rounded, convex side of the garlc toward you.  The garlic tends to squirt out at the bottom, and if the paper is going to split on the side anywhere, it seems to do that on the concave side.  At least, that's what happened tonight when I was doing it.  And I have the oil-splashed tee shirt to prove it.

The papery part goes in the other bowl (the slop bowl is what I call it), and every so often you'll notice the paper sticking to your fingers, so you'll want to run your hands under the water from time to time.

When you're done, you'll have a bowl of soft, golden-brown, roasted garlic that glistens with olive oil.

Voila!  Now, if you have time (I didn't tonight - I'd done enough for one night), you can dump all this into a food processer or blender and start pureeing it, drizzling olive oil in if needed to make a thick paste.  Then you could divvy it up into some small containers, freeze all but one, and keep that remaining one in the fridge.  Use a spoonful here and there - in a pasta sauce, smeared on bread, on your oatmeal...okay, I haven't tried that one, but who knows, it might be really good. 

Oooh - this is really good - get a baguette, slice it into about 1/2 inch thick rounds, lay the slices out on a sheet pan and put them in a 400 degree oven for about ten minutes.  Flip them over and put them in for another ten.  While they're baking, take some of your roasted garlic and whisk it in a bowl with some more olive oil, and maybe some salt and pepper.  When your little slices are dried out a bit, spread some of this garlicy oil mixture on each one and put them back in the oven for another five minutes or so.   

And then, just to drive yourself right over the edge, serve these garlicy baguettes with a slice of room temperature brie and maybe some apple slices or grapes on the side. 

Or skip the fruit, and don't invite anyone over, and just eat the whole thing yourself!!!

Just kidding, of course! 

I'd never do something like that, and I'm sure you wouldn't either.   

Certainly not.

Two Pizzas

I made two pizzas tonight.

Here's what I did:

Took two 16 oz packages of store-bought pizza dough out of the fridge about a couple hours before my projected dinner time.  Set them out on a counter - still in their packages - to come to room temperature.

Then I got the toppings ready...

First pizza -

Chopped about 3 strips of bacon into 3/4 inch square pieces (approximately).  Cooked them over high heat in a large saute pan until they had rendered most of their fat and were crisp.  Took them out of the pan and set them on a few layers of paper towel on a plate. 

Next - dumped in about, oh, 8 cups of sliced onions.  (I'm guessing - I just used up what I had, which was maybe 8 to 10 small to medium onions.)  Sprinkled a little salt over them and stirred them all around to coat the onions with the bacon fat.  Turned the heat down to medium low and let them go, stirring every now and then, until they just started to caramelize - roughly a half an hour.

While the onions were cooking, I combined about a third to a half of a cup of crumbled feta cheese with about the same amount of ricotta cheese.  Set that aside with the bacon.

Preheated the oven to 450 degrees F.

Then I started working on the topping for pizza number two.

I combined about a third of a cup of basil pureed with olive oil (this had been in the freezer all ready to go from when we harvested all the basil a few weeks ago) - with 3 big fat cloves of garlic, minced.  And about a tablespoon (all I had left) of grated parmesan.  Set that aside.

Assembly:

Pizza number one:  I spread the dough out on the baking sheet.  Rubbed a little olive oil over the surface.  Dotted the top with blobs of the ricotta/feta mixture.  Topped that with about half of the caramelized onions, and then sprinkled the bits of bacon over the top.

Pizza number two:  I drizzled olive oil over the pizza dough (already stretched out and ready to go).  Then smeared the basil mixture on top, and dotted (my word of the day) with ricotta cheese and sprinkled with salt and pepper.

They both took about 25 minutes to cook.  Alex liked the basil pizza.  Julia liked both.  So did Bill and I.  Bill's been sick, so he had tea.  Alex and Julia had juice, and I had some pinot grigio...hang on, let me see which one...Carsasa - estate bottled in Italy...it's actually a pinot grigio/pinot blanc blend (51%/49%)...and oddly enough, I couldn't see the year anywhere on the bottle...I'll look again later.  Maybe it was hiding.

Anyway - that's what we had for dinner tonight.

Oh!  Almost forgot - I've put the other half of the caramelized onions in the freezer.  I figured they'd be nice to have on hand.  If we were planning to have, oh, steak tomorrow, I'd have kept them in the fridge...and I would have bought mushrooms while I was at the store today, too....

Arugula Pesto

I don't have complete or precise measurements - this was just a "wing it" thing tonight.

Here's what I threw in the food processer:

A couple of big handfuls (handsful?) of arugula (from the garden)
A few small bunches of basil (from the garden)
Some Italian flat-leaf parsley (from the garden)
And some oregano (from the garden)
A couple cloves of garlic, smashed and warmed in about half a cup or so...maybe less...extra virgin olive oil
Around a quarter cup or more of good aged parmigiano reggiano (okay I'm probably making a lot of spelling mistakes today - I don't care - I'm just happy to have time to type) cheese
About the same amount of walnuts
Some salt and pepper
A few drops of lime juice (it's the green theme going on)
And half an avocado - for creaminess and to continue the color scheme, apparently

Added some cubed cooked chicken to this just before serving over tortellini.

Yummy.

It's nice to be home on maternity leave....

Basil and Nasturtium Pesto Crostini with Fresh Mozzarella and Candied Cherry Tomatoes

(from my old blog...)

Or maybe they're Bruschetta. They're sort of both and neither. Feel free to correct me.

Anyway. Nasturtiums are edible flowering plants that seem pretty easy to grow, based on our experience. I knew the flowers were edible (my mother used to grow them) but I didn't know the leaves were edible until this year.

Candied Cherry Tomatoes

A pint or so of cherry tomatoes
Olive oil
Kosher salt
Ground black pepper

Preheat the oven to 350.

Slice the cherry tomatoes in half, pole to pole (stem end to the opposite end), and arrange, face-up, in a baking dish.

Drizzle generously with olive oil and sprinkle generously with salt and pepper.

Bake until the tomatoes look kind of shrunken, about 20-30 minutes, with maybe a couple of the smaller tomatoes starting to turn dark brown at the edges. The aroma will be wonderful.

Remove the pan from the oven and let the tomatoes cool in the pan. If you make these ahead of time, store the tomatoes and oil in a sealed container in the fridge. Let them come to room temp before using.

The Crostini or Bruschetta Things

3 long baguettes (yes, baguette is a French, not an Italian, word. So it's a multi-cultural appetizer.)
Olive oil
About 10-12 nice-sized cloves of garlic, peeled and smashed, more if desired

Place garlic in a small saucepan. Cover with a very generous amount of olive oil - a cup and a half to two cups is good. Place pan on a burner on low heat. You just want to warm the oil and coax the flavor from the garlic.

While the oil and garlic are warming, preheat the oven to 375. (Yes, this is really fun to do in the middle of a muggy summer!)

Slice a baguette, on an angle, about 1/4" to 1/3" thick. Arrange slices on baking sheets. Place baking sheets on racks in the oven, and bake, about 6 minutes, until the bottom side of the bread is starting to brown.

Flip all the sliced pieces over and bake again for another 6 minutes.

Remove these from the oven and flip slices over again. Brush with the garlic oil and pop them back in the oven for a couple more minutes, just to dry the bread out.

Remove from the oven and cool. Store in sealed container.

Basil and Nasturtium Pesto

To make the pesto (and this is very general - I didn't measure anything as I was making it. Just taste as you go and adjust as you wish) you'll need the following:

A BIG bunch of fresh basil. We grow basil in our garden, but I'd used a bunch of it earlier and wasn't sure I'd have enough, so I bought a bunch at the grocery store. And I mean a BIG bunch. This was wrapped in cellophane like a generous bouquet of flowers, if that gives you any indication of how much there was. Oh - here's another - the leaves, after I removed them all from the stems, pretty near filled a large salad spinner basket. There you go! That's how much you'll need.

About 20 good-sized nasturtium leaves. More if you want more peppery-ness in the pesto, less if you don't. None at all if you just want a standard pesto. (I also used a few mustard green leaves, just for fun.)

Olive oil
Pine nuts or walnuts (we had walnuts, so that's what I used) to taste (I used about half a cup
Grated parmesan cheese (about 3/4 of a cup)
Fresh garlic to taste (I used about 6 cloves)
Salt and pepper to taste

Pick all the leaves and rinse off any dirt. Pat them dry on paper towels and place in the bowl of a large food processor, a handful or two at a time. Throw in some of the walnuts and garlic to weigh down the leaves, and process. Drizzle in some olive oil if the mixture seems dry and isn't pureeing nicely. Add more leaves, walnuts, garlic, and oil, and process again. Keep repeating until everything but the cheese, salt, and peper are in the processor, and puree until smoothe. (You can leave it chunky, but for my purposes I wanted it more like a paste. Chunky is nice on pasta.)

Pour green mixture into a bowl, and stir in the cheese. Add salt and pepper to taste.

To store, drizzle on just enough olive oil to cover the top, then seal the bowl with plastic wrap and put in the fridge. Bring to room temp before using. The olive oil on top keeps oxygen away and keeps the green from going brown.

~ Pesto also freezes nicely in ice cube trays. You still want to cover each compartment with a little drizzle of olive oil.

To Assemble It All

You'll need:

The baguette slices
The pesto
The candied tomatoes
Two balls of fresh mozzarella, each about the size of a tennis ball

Preheat the oven to 400 again.

Slice each ball of mozzarella in half, then put each half cut-side down on your cutting board and slice pieces about 1/4" thick, going the short way across. Set these aside.

Spread a generous teaspoonful or two of pesto on the oiled surface of a baguette slice. Top with one cherry tomato (cut side up) at one end of the baguette surface and a slice of mozzarella chese on the over half, with a bit of the cheese slightly overlapping the tomato. Place on a baking sheet. Repeat until the sheet is full, and bake about 5 minutes, until the cheese is starting to melt slightly. Serve.

These were pretty yummy. The nasturtiums and mustard greens give the basil a peppery kick, which is balanced nicely by the sweetness of the cherry tomato and the creamy texture and mild flavor of the cheese.

Hope you like them.

Whole Wheat Linguine with Leeks and Mushrooms

(from my old blog...)

I made this the other night...

Trimmed and chopped a couple of big leeks and let them sit in a bowl of cold water for a while to clean off any dirt.

Poured some olive oil and some butter in a pan and when the butter melted I added the leeks and also a package of sliced mushrooms. Covered the pan to sweat them a bit.

Filled a pot with water and started bringing that to a boil...

Took the cover off the leeks and mushrooms, added some salt and pepper and a sprinkling of flour (to thicken the juices, eventually) and poured some sherry into it. Cooked that for a little while, then added about 2 cups of chicken stock. Kept it bubbling.

When the water came to a boil, I added some salt and a package of whole wheat linguine. (You could use any shape pasta you like. I will just insist that you use whole wheat. It has a great texture and flavor.)

When the liquid had reduced somewhat in the pan of leeks and mushrooms, I lowered the heat just to keep it at a very low simmer. When the pasta was done, I drizzled a VERY little bit of cream into the leeks and mushroom mixture.

Drained the pasta, put some in a couple of bowls for Bill and I, and spooned some of the leek/mushroom mixture over the top. Grated a little parmesan onto that, and ta-da - dinner.