A Beet Salad

This entry could have been titled "Your Mother Knows Best." I was in Kansas City over the weekend, visiting my parents and sisters, and I baked an angel food cake for my younger sister's birthday. It was only the second "from scratch" angel food cake I have ever made, and I don't have the technique quite down. It ended up being fine, but I took it out of the oven a few minutes early, even though Mom advised leaving it in just a little longer. As soon as it cooled I was worried that it would be a little too, well, wet. I expect that angel food cake is one of those things that benefit from practice. But what is a person to do with all of those egg yolks?

Tonight we had a very simple supper. Chicken leg quarters roasted in a cast iron skillet with whole cloves of garlic, baked Yukon gold potatoes, and a very nice roasted beet salad, which also included a few steamed sugar snap peas, sweet onion, and fennel fronds, all dressed with a vinaigrette made of olive oil, walnut oil, and sherry vinegar. This year I planted Chioggia beets, along with golden and dark red varieties, so the salad had a nice mixture. I commented to Glen during dinner that I had started the salad back in the middle of March, when I planted the peas and onions. It was worth the wait.

Memorial Day Cookout

We had a few friends over for a Memorial Day cookout, and I decided that it might be fun to do hamburgers. Now, there are at least two reasons why I almost never cook hamburgers. First, I don't trust ground meat from the grocery store, even from Whole Foods. I have read that, in the typical package of supermarket hamburger, it is possible to detect the DNA of dozens of animals. Pretty scary. Second, I really dislike purchased hamburger buns. So I decided to address both issues in my hamburgers.

A friend gave me a copy of the cookbook from the Zuni Cafe in San Francisco several years ago, and one of the recipes that it includes is for the famous Zuni Cafe hamburger. It involves using whole chuck, which is cut into chunks and salted the day before, and then ground fresh on the day it is cooked. The method is pretty simple, even if it is a little time-consuming. My main concern was that the meat was a little too lean; I had bought grass-fed beef, so it was not very marbled. To raise the fat content a bit I ground some bacon in with the meat. It ended up being pretty juicy, and I did not detect any pronounced bacon flavor. I thought the meat might have been a little under seasoned, but otherwise it was tasty.

To go along with the burgers I made the hamburger buns from the Martha Stewart Living Cookbook. They were much better than the typical supermarket bun, and I was surprised at how quickly they went together. I was going to make her spicy ketchup, too, but I think that I will wait for tomato season. Instead, I made the gorgeous pink pickled onions in the photograph, which are also from the Zuni Cafe Cookbook. I honestly think that these onions were my favorite part of the meal, and I am glad that we only ate one of the two pints, so I'll have some to eat with sandwiches.

While I was finishing the prep we drank Leland Palmer cocktails, which are featured in the new issue of Bon Appetit (http://www.bonappetit.com/recipes/2010/06/the_leland_palmer). This is essentially a blend of iced tea and lemonade that is spiked with gin and limoncello. Very refreshing.

For dessert I made vanilla and strawberry ice creams, which we had with some very fudgy brownies. I was thinking of a Neapolitan-style sundae where the brownie stands in for the chocolate ice cream. When I was growing up we always had homemade ice cream for summer holidays. My family had one of the old-fashioned hand-crank White Mountain ice cream churns. It seemed like we had to turn that crank forever! It is a lot easier now just to pour the custard into the cylinder and flip the switch, but I sometimes miss the elbow grease method. The anticipation was almost as much fun as finally digging into a big bowl of pillowy frozen goodness.

Cold Suppers

In Washington, the approach of summer means that a heavy blanket of hot, humid air will soon be thrown over the city. Once that happens, eating hot food, much less preparing it, is not very appealing. And so the cold supper just makes sense.

That was the direction I went last night, even though it wasn't particularly hot. Instead, my motivation was a good combination of ingredients from the garden: A Tom Thumb mini-head lettuce, some sugar snap peas, sweet Walla Walla onions, and a couple of radishes. I added some chopped oil-packed sun-dried tomatoes, and one yellow bell pepper that was left over from the marketing early this week. I poached some chicken breasts in broth, shredded them, made a lemon vinaigrette, and put the whole mess together. I should have walked out to the backyard to get a handful of herbs (some lemon thyme and parsley, maybe, or some marjoram), but I was too lazy. The salad was still pretty tasty.

To go along with the salad I made some buttermilk biscuits, which I think are one of the most perfect foods around. I use a recipe from a cookbook called Soul Food: Recipes and Reflections from African American Churches, by Joyce White. I am a little ashamed that the biscuit recipe is the only one in the book that I really use; I have just never gotten around to exploring the rest of the collection. But it is a really good biscuit recipe, so I probably should inaugurate a weekly soul food night for at least a couple of months.

Little Growing Things

I definitely have some little growing things in the garden. And yet I still am in that period when I have put a lot of time, energy, and sweat into the garden, and it is really just teasing me with the promise of a bountiful harvest. Yes, there have been some radishes, and arugula, and lettuce, and just in the past few days some sugar snap peas and spring onions. But I still need to buy a lot of vegetables at the store. That is really the test, for me. Being able to go and harvest something for dinner, planned menus be damned.

My garden is a little different this year than in the past. More eggplant and peppers, no rapini and not so many salad greens. And somehow I have ended up with nine tomato plants, which is an all time high. It would take really terrible luck (or some really pernicious pests) to strike out in the tomato department this year.

It is always interesting to see what comes up on its own. This year I have tons of fennel, a lone cucumber, and three sturdy potato plants (Yukon Gold, I think) that I reluctantly had to pull up, since they were just in the wrong place. My dad calls these plants "volunteers," which is a term that really appeals to me. I suppose that these plants are also little gifts from the previous year, and sometimes rather unexpected. I was frankly stunned to see the cucumber. My cucumbers were a disaster last year as usual, victims of my reluctance to use chemicals. I picked only a few before the vines succumbed to some sort of virus that always seems to claim them. I don't even recall discarding a fully ripe fruit that might have yielded a seed that came up this year. I suppose that I'll just have to wait a few weeks to find out if it is the same variety that I tried to grow last year.

Well, time to go check on dinner.

All Trussed Up

Last weekend was a big cooking weekend. We had some friends over for dinner on Saturday, and I made a menu of carrot soup with star anise, braised beef short ribs with caramelized shallot mashed potatoes and roasted broccoli, and sliced oranges drizzled with Grand Marnier, along with some nut cookies. The recipe for the soup called for using two bags of baby carrots, but I substituted two bunches of fresh carrots, and I made a nice chicken stock to use in place of store-bought. I was inspired to do the short ribs by the current issue of Fine Cooking, which has a great guide to cooking these tasty nuggets. After the heavy meal, I thought that a light dessert was appropriate. though I did augment the oranges with some Greek yogurt, into which I mixed some chopped preserved clementines. (I have been trying to work through a whole quart of them that I made.)

I had planned on just having leftovers on Sunday, but instead I decided to debone a chicken and then fill it with a rice stuffing before trussing it. When we were in Kansas City for Christmas we made the ritual pilgrimage to Pryde's Old Westport, which is surely one of the greatest kitchen stores in the world, and I had picked up some pins that you use to truss birds. As should be apparent in the photo, the chicken is pinned together, and then kitchen twine is criss-crossed around the pins, almost like shoelaces. That part worked really well, though I was a bit disappointed in the stuffing, which needs a little work. Something about the seasoning combination, which included cumin, paprika, bay leaves, green olives, orange zest, some capers and sundried tomatoes, just did not work. I guess I'll just need to work on that.

Welcome to 2010

I decided to make stuffed cabbage leaves from the current issue of Martha Stewart Living for the second dinner I've cooked in the new year. The first was a simple supper of rosemary roasted potatoes and steamed mussels with a spinach salad. Tonight I wanted something a bit heartier, since we are freezing, and the cabbage leaves appealed to me. I followed the recipe pretty faithfully, though I did substitute some cooked barley for the rice in the filling of ground beef and pork. I thought that this worked pretty well, and the acupuncturist I was seeing for my back told me that I needed to eat more barley and kale. (Kale soup is on the menu for Tuesday.) It is a pretty spicy filling, containing a tablespoon of hot Hungarian paprika. I actually purchased mine in Budapest when I was there for work eighteen months ago, and I need to use it up. (I took advantage of that trip to eat a fair number of delicious pastries, as well...It's hard to go wrong at Ruszwurm, up at the castle.) We had the cabbage leaves with some roasted carrots and parsnips, which I did very simply with olive oil, kosher salt, and herbes de Provence. With dinner I opened a 2004 Blauer Zweigelt from Paul Lehrner, a spicy Austrian red wine, which was an excellent pairing, and we finished with a bit of goat cheese from Firefly Farms, a local cheese maker. All in all, this was probably my favorite meal of the year so far.

Holiday Blizzard

Washington and points north are experiencing the full fury of a Nor' easter today, less than a week before Christmas. We have probably fifteen inches of snow now, and it is still coming down pretty hard. Fortunately I managed to get to the grocery store last night after work. Though it was mobbed, I did lay in enough supplies to make it through the weekend without any problem. I always suspect that we could last a couple of weeks if it were necessary, but I hope that I never need to put that suspicion to the test.

Last night's dinner included some of my favorite things that I haven't cooked in a long while. We started with a cauliflower and Stilton cheese soup, which is delicious and very easy. Here's the recipe:

Ingredients:

1 small onion or 1/2 large onion, diced

1 rib celery, diced

2 T butter

One head cauliflower, cut into florets

1 potato, peeled and cut into large dice

2 c. chicken stock

1 c. milk

5 oz. (or to taste) Stilton, crumbled

salt and white pepper

In saucepan over medium heat saute the onion and celery until soft. Add cauliflower, potato, and stock, and bring to boil. Reduce heat to simmer, cover, and cook until cauliflower is tender, 20 - 25 minutes. Puree soup with blender (for smooth texture) or immersion blender (for slightly chunkier texture). Add milk to soup in pan over low heat, stir to combine, and add Stilton. Heat soup to melt cheese, stirring occasionally. Season to taste with salt and pepper.

For the main course I prepared a roasted chicken with a bulgur stuffing under the skin. Here is that recipe:

Bulgur Stuffing

Ingredients:

1 small or 1/2 large onion, diced

1 clove garlic, minced

1 T olive oil

1 c. bulgur

2 c. chicken stock (actually I used some leftover turkey stock)

1 pinch saffron threads

Saute onion and garlic in oil in medium saucepan over medium flame. After they turn golden add the bulgur and stir to coat with oil. Add chicken stock and saffron, and bring to boil. Cover and turn heat to low; cook 15 minutes. Take off of the heat and let it stand for 10 minutes. (Can be prepared ahead.) Fluff the bulgur and season to taste with salt and pepper.

Chicken:

Preheat oven to 425 degrees. Spatchcock a 3 1/2 - 4 pound chicken. (Spatchcocking involves removing the backbone and flattening the chicken out.) Work your hand under the skin on the breast, and loosen the skin over the breast and down both leg quarters. When the stuffing is cool enough to work with, put it under the skin of the bird, down both leg quarters and over the breast. If there is leftover stuffing, make a bed of it in a lightly greased roasting pan (I actually used a large cast iron skillet) and place the chicken on top of it. It will absorb the drippings, which will make it even more delicious. When the chicken is ready to go into the oven, sprinkle the skin with some kosher salt. Place the chicken in the oven and turn the temperature down to 375 degrees. Roast, basting several times, until chicken is done, approximately 1 hour. (I generally shoot for a thigh temperature of about 165 degrees, and then let the meat rest for 10 minutes or so. A spatchcocked bird cooks faster than an intact bird.)

With dinner we had a 2006 white wine from Domaine du Tunnel, the Saint Peray Cuvee Prestige, 80% Roussane and 20% Marsanne. It was a very pleasant though subtle wine, and it paired well with the chicken.

An Impromptu Cassoulet

We had our first snowfall in DC yesterday. The flakes were big and wet, and they quickly began to accumulate, at least at our relatively high elevation (around 400 feet above sea level). By the end of it we had maybe three inches on the ground, and even after a 40 degree day today some is still sticking around. That kind of weather makes me crave something hearty and stew-like, and the thought of cassoulet popped into my head as I hid under the comforter this morning. Cassoulet is true French peasant fare, full of beans, duck, and sausages. I don't think I have ever made it before, and I didn't really feel like consulting a recipe, so I just made something up that (I think) is relatively close. It is cooking now, so I guess we will see in an hour or so.

Here is what I did:

Cook about a pound and a quarter of Great Northern beans.

Start with a duck. Cut off the wings, legs, and thighs and season them with salt and pepper. Debone the breasts, and save them for a nice dinner later in the week. Brown the wings, legs and thighs in fat (preferably rendered duck fat) until they are nice and deep brown. (Or if you have plenty of time, make some real duck confit. Or if you have less time but access to a good market, buy some duck confit and you can dispense with the duck entirely.) Make some stock from the assorted leftover bones and skin and parts. After the stock has simmered an hour, degrease it. (If you know what is good for you, you will save the duck fat to use for other things, like sauteeing certain vegetables.)

Saute a few slices of chopped bacon in the Dutch oven that you will use to cook the cassoulet. After the bacon is crisp, remove it with a slotted spoon. Add one large sliced onion, two ribs of chopped celery, and two chopped carrots. Saute until soft, and then add two bay leaves, 3 cloves of chopped garlic, and 1 1/2 t of herbes de Provence. Continue sauteeing until the vegetables start to caramelize. Stir in 1 T or so of tomato paste, and then deglaze the pan with some stock or water. Add the cooked beans, the duck, the bacon, and 12 ounces or so of sliced smoked sausages. Add about two cups of stock, season with salt and pepper to taste. Put in a 325 degree oven for an hour or so.

We are having this with some roasted butternut squash chunks (leftover from the risotto), and a 2006 Bogle Phantom, which is a very hearty red.

(...a couple of hours later...) Dinner was quite tasty, though the andouille sausages I used were so spicy that it became more of a Cajun dish than French peasant...not that there is anything wrong with that. I'll have to try again with something less assertive, and perhaps I should read a few recipes. The wine, by the way, was a very good match. Big, fruity, just a touch hot. It definitely warmed the cockles of my heart.

Don't Look a Gift Squash in the Mouth

Although the photograph is of the apple pie I made for Thanksgiving

(from the Martha Stewart Baking Handbook), this post is about something else. One of Glen's colleagues gave us a butternut squash several weeks ago, and I have been procrastinating about using it. I finally got around to it tonight, when I made a risotto. I'm not exactly sure why, but sometimes my risotto turns out better than other times. Perhaps it has something to do with cooking it longer, and developing a starchier sauciness. I usually suspect that it is the quality of the stock. Tonight I used a mix of homemade and prepared, about half and half, and it was pretty tasty. Anyway, here's the recipe.

Toss about two cups of cubed (1/2 inch cubes) butternut squash with some olive oil, and put into a 375 degree oven to roast. Roast for 30 minutes or so, until the squash starts to brown. Add 1/2 c boiling water to a small amount of porcini mushrooms; let them steep until soft, then chop and reserve the mushrooms and reserve the soaking liquid. Saute two leeks (white and pale green part only) in 1 T of butter and 1 T olive oil over medium heat; add 1 1/4 cups arborio rice after the leeks are soft. Saute the rice for a few minutes, taking care to ensure that all of the grains are coated with oil. Add 1/2 c of white wine, and stir until the liquid cooks off. Start adding warm broth (you will need about 4 cups) in 1/2 cup amounts, stirring well. After you have added about half of the broth, add in the reserved porcini liquid, taking care to leave any sediment behind. Add the chopped mushrooms. Continue cooking, adding more broth and some salt to taste. Check the texture; it should still be a bit toothy when it is about done. Add water and continue cooking if necessary. Once the texture is close to done stir in the roasted squash. To finish stir in a few tablespoons of whipping cream, 1/4 cup Parmesan and a few tablespoons of chopped fresh sage. Garnish with additional Parmesan and some sage leaves, if desired.

I served this with some turnip and fennel wedges that had been tossed with olive oil, herbes de Provence, salt and pepper, and roasted in the oven along with the butternut squash. It was autumnal bliss.

Old Fashioned Pork

One of the highlights of Thanksgiving weekend was a day trip out to the horse country in Virginia, with our friend Suzanne, who raises ponies and teaches with Glen. We had a great time visiting the Vintage Ridge Vineyard in Rectortown. Instead of the regular tasting room experience, they seat you at a bistro table and bring a plate of food pairings to enjoy with half a dozen wines. The tasting costs $12, but it is really worth it. I bought three bottles and joined their wine club, which obligates me to purchase one case per year in exchange for a 20 percent discount. Virginia definitely is not Napa, but these people have made some very serviceable wine, and their passion is infectious. I also like the idea of supporting more local agriculture.

One of the wines that I purchased was a 2005 Cabernet Franc, which is fairly common in Virginia. We drank it on Saturday with the most amazing pork chops I've ever had. I picked them up in Middleburg, just down the road from Rectortown, at a place called Home Farm, which sells locally and humanely raised organic meats. They specialize in the old heritage varieties. Boy, those chops were marbled with the most delicious fat imaginable. I butterflied them and stuffed them with a mixture of wild rice, shallots, mushrooms, dried cherries, pecans, sage and parsley, and then I seared them and finished them in the oven for 20 minutes or so at 375 degrees. We ate them along with some Brussels sprouts tossed with butter and whole grain mustard. Sheer heaven, and a really nice match for the Cab Franc.

And then two more curries for dinner last night. And a great pot of vegetable soup tonight.

Autumn really is the best time of the year for cooking.

Impromptu Indian Dinner

Before doing the grocery shopping on Sunday I always plan a full set of menus for the week. I find the discipline helpful; it certainly cuts down on wasted food, and it eliminates nightly dithering about what's for dinner. And yet it is still important to be flexible and willing to deviate from the plan. Tonight was supposed to be a porcini and cremini mushroom pasta, which is one of my old standard recipes, but somehow that just did not appeal. So instead I improvised some miscellaneous veggies (part of a head of cauliflower, a lone potato, some frozen peas, a carrot, an onion and garlic) along with some spices into a curry, and a quick consultation with 660 Curries gave me a vague roadmap to do something else with the mushrooms. A little adaptation yielded a very passable mushroom curry, fragrant with garlic, whole cumin, black cardamom seeds, a cinnamon stick, a bay leaf, the very last ripe tomato from the garden, some Punjabi garam masala, and a dash of Vulcan salt from the Spice House in Chicago. Some toasted papadum, yogurt, and chutney made the dinner complete. My only regret was that we didn't have any ginger on hand, but I still called dibs on the leftovers for lunch.

I'll figure something else out to do with the porcinis.

Sunday Night Roasted Chicken

For Sunday dinner we had pollo al mattone, also known as "chicken under a brick." This is the cover recipe from a recent Bon Appetit issue, and it deviates slightly from the traditional method that involves grilling. Instead, the marinated and butterflied chicken is cooked in a skillet, pressed down by the foil wrapped brick. I used my black cast-iron skillet, which I had recently used to roast some chicken leg quarters and wings that turned out very nice. Tonight the chicken's skin was almost sinfully delicious. I am sure that most nutrition obsessives would frown on eating it, but it would be a crime to waste something that tastes so good. I am willing to lose a few months at the end of my life, or even a few years, to be able to eat such things.

Along with the chicken we had some standard smashed red potatoes and roasted cauliflower. Everyone should discover the joys of roasting the cruciferous vegetables (broccoli, caulifower, Brussels sprouts, etc.). Toss them with some olive oil, salt and pepper, maybe a sprinkling of the roasted garlic and red pepper sprinkles I get at Planter's Seed Co. in Kansas City, finished with a squeeze of lemon or some scattered parsley after they have roasted long enough to get a little browned and tender. There's no comparison between this and the steamed version.

Visit to Lake Toba, Sumatra

While I was over in Vietnam for work I added a too-short side trip to visit my friend Ningrum, who lives in Medan, on the island of Sumatra. While there I enjoyed the tremendous hospitality of Ningrum and her friends and family. The highlight was a trip up to Lake Toba, which is an enormous high-elevation lake that fills the caldera of the last "super volcano" to erupt on our overactive planet. Ningrum is friends with the family that owns the Toledo Inn, which is a sprawling hotel complex on the island that sits in the middle of the lake.

The cool mountain air was a very welcome relief from the heat of the lower altitudes, and that must have added to my appetite. We had awesome meals while we were up there, and I even went local and tried eating without the benefit of utensils...other than the ones at the end of my arms, that is.

That Lovin' Feline

Ramona frequently likes to relax on the kitchen counter. I should probably worry that friends and family will no longer want to eat at our house, since they will worry that our felines have the run of the place. And I suppose that is a valid concern. But there really is no way to keep cats from doing what they want to do, short of extreme physical restraints. And Ramona will have none of that.

We have been eating loads and loads of tomatoes from the garden, and they show no sign of slowing down for the time being. Alas, I am leaving on Thursday for close to two weeks in Vietnam and Indonesia, so I will probably miss a fair amount of the remaining crop. I need to make some tomato sauce or chutney before I go, so that the current pile doesn't go to waste. Maybe I'll do that tomorrow before running off to work.

Last week I made a delicious pasta with the end of the sweet onions. I call it "Pasta à la Pissaladière," after the French flatbread that is covered with onions and anchovies. The recipe is pretty simple: saute three sweet onions in a couple of tablespoons of olive oil, until they are soft and golden, and then stir in a can of drained olive-oil packed anchovies (give them a quick rinse if you don't like so much salt). Toss in a handful of oil cured, pitted olives, and maybe a tablespoon of fresh thyme. Add about half a cup of your pasta water to loosen it a bit, and then toss in the pasta. Long pasta is probably best, though I used fusilli. I also added a couple of tablespoons of pine nuts that I had sauteed lightly in a tablespoon of olive oil (until they were light brown). Garnish with Parmesan cheese, if desired, and sprigs of thyme.

If I do say so myself, this was pretty tasty, though I suppose it is important to like anchovies.

Finally a weekend at home

It has been five weeks since I had a full weekend at home, which is a little insane during gardening season. I guess that is why my plot looked a little rough, to put it mildly. But I created some order this morning, and I am already thinking about next year. Several crops just do not do well in the community garden, because of the hordes of pest. Cucumbers, some zucchini, and beans are very challenging to grow with organic methods when they are in the middle of forty or so garden plots. Next year I am going to bring a few selected things back to our yard and integrate them with the design of the mixed borders.

As the photo makes clear, we are getting some tomatoes now. After a month of drought, we just had a lot of rain, so I would expect that the indeterminate plants will set on some nice fruit. I sure hope so. Last night I made the pictured salad, which was just a sliced tomato on a bed of sweet onions, sprinkled with some basil, and finished with olive oil, salt and pepper. I wish that I could report that it was life-changing, but the truth is that this tomato was not very good. It was a little mealy, lacking in acidity, and it had very little tomato flavor. I wish I knew which plant it came from, so I would know not to plant that variety next year. I'll have to keep my eyes open.

Back from vacation

We are back from a vacation visiting family and friends in Northern California and Oregon, and enjoying a couple of days of "couple time." Of course, upon my return, I was greeted by an overgrown mess in both the garden and the yard. It is risky to take two weeks away just when the weeds are really getting going. On the other hand, it is nice to see real results from a couple of hours of work.

I dug the potatoes and onions upon my return, so now we need to get busy eating. I am planning to make a potato-fennel gratin tomorrow night, since I also have some fennel growing in the garden. There are still some really nice beets left, so I will probably pull the rest of those and roast them to have in salads.

Unfortunately, the pests are out in abundance. Something is laying eggs on my squash, so every day I go and scrape them off and hope that I am not missing anything. My cucumbers are wilting from some fungus, so I am starting some new ones. I am really disappointed because they are just getting ready to bear fruit, and it looks like they are going to die. I think that I am making a mistake by planting them too soon. Next year I will wait until later to start them, because I suspect that they are getting infected by something that flies through early in the season. It is frustrating.

I picked two grape tomatoes today, which is the sum total of the tomato crop so far. The other plants have quite a bit of fruit, but they are a little pokey. I guess it has just been too cool. Currently the best looking thing in the garden is a profusion of orange cosmos that I planted amongst the tomatoes and peppers; I had read that they are good companions for those plants, and they make a cheerful bouquet.

On the trip we spent a couple of days in Ashland, Oregon, where we saw plays that were part of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. It was great fun, and Ashland is a very pleasant little town. We had an excellent dinner at the Peerless Restaurant and Bar (http://www.peerlessrestaurant.com/index.html), which was probably the culinary highlight of the trip. We split a mixture of Washington and British Columbia oysters to start, and then I had a curried melon soup (containing cantaloupe, honeydew, some mango, and coconut milk). Glen had a salad with Asian pear and Rogue Creamery blue cheese. We split an order of pappardelle with duck confit and smoked tomato sauce, and we also split an order of butternut squash gnocchi with browned butter and sage, which helped to soak up the sauce from the pappardelle. Glen drank some pale ale with the meal, but I had a prosecco with the oysters and, with the rest of the food, a split of Cristom Oregon pinot noir, which was very tasty. I'll definitely look for it here. It had some earth in the nose that reminded me a bit of the way Virginia wines usually taste, but in a more muted way. For dessert we tried each of their four gelatos; the star was a dark chocolate with cracked pepper and cayenne. All in all, it was a very satisfying al fresco dining experience.

A Quick Weeknight Supper

Eggs are always a good choice for a quick weeknight supper, or at least they would be if I had lower LDL levels. But, as they say in France, tant pis.  I am always game to whip up a frittata, but I really prefer an omelette.  If I am cooking for the two of us, I generally make one big one and then divide it, so that we can both have hot eggs.  (One of my pet peeves is cold food that should be hot.)

Tonight I made an omelette with pepper jack cheese, mushrooms, a fresh Walla Walla onion, and beet greens, all of which I sauteed together.  My beets have great looking greens this year, so I picked a nice handful.  The beets themselves are still pretty small; it will probably be a few weeks before they can be harvested.  In addition to the omelette, we had a salad with some fresh lettuce, grape tomatoes, and nasturtium flowers.  I went a bit wild with the nasturtiums this year, so we are going to have oodles of them.  Unfortunately, I only planted one variety, so I should start some more if I want to broaden the palette.

One Down, 659 To Go

I had vowed to start cooking more Asian foods, and then I have been too lazy the last couple of weeks.  Maybe I will make up for lost time over the next couple of weeks.  Tonight I made a fish curry from Raghavan Iyer's book, 660 Curries.  The fish (tilapia) was very simple and delicious, seasoned with turmeric, tamarind, garlic, some chili peppers, and cilantro, all in a coconut milk broth.  We had it with rice and an eggplant dish called bhangan bharta, which a long-ago friend from India taught me to make.  And to top it off, I have made some vanilla pudding using the leftover coconut milk to replace half of the milk.  We'll see how that is a little later.

But here is the recipe for the eggplant.

Ingredients:

1 large onion, sliced

1 1/2 c diced tomatoes (canned or fresh)

2 T canola oil

1 t sugar

salt

2 - 3 T finely minced, peeled fresh ginger root, to taste

1/2 cup cilantro leaves and tender stems, chopped

1 good-sized eggplant

1.  Preheat oven to 375.  Roast eggplant until quite soft and wrinkly, about 50 minutes or so.  Set aside to cool.

2.  In the meantime, heat canola oil over medium heat in skillet or saute pan.  Add onion and saute until slightly soft.  Add tomatoes, sugar, and salt to taste, and cook over medium low heat, stirring frequently, until tomotoes and onions are cooked down nicely, to a jam-like consistency.

3.  Cut eggplant in half and scoop inside out.  Add eggplant to the tomato-onion mixture, and stir to combine.  Add ginger and cilantro, stir well, and correct seasonings.

For the fish curry recipe, well, buy the book!

The chicken with tarragon-cream sauce was pretty tasty, and it paired really well with the mashed potatoes.  We had that and then a small lettuce salad with radishes and nasturtium flowers afterward.  Here is the recipe for the chicken:

Ingredients (for two servings plus a lunch for a lucky person:

Three boneless, skinless chicken breasts

Salt

Pepper

Flour

1 T butter

1 T olive oil

1 medium sweet onion or two small ones (I pulled a couple of early Walla Wallas)

4 oz. mushrooms, sliced

1/3 cup white wine

1/2 cup cream

2 T tarragon leaves

1.  Lightly pound chicken breasts between waxed paper sheets.  Sprinkle with salt and pepper, and dredge lightly in flour.

2.  Melt butter in heavy saute pan or skillet over medium heat, and add olive oil.  Cook the chicken until just done but still juicy, about 6 minutes per side.  Remove chicken to a plate.

3.  Add onions and mushrooms, and saute until onions soften and mushrooms are cooked.  Deglaze the pan with the wine, taking care to stir up the browned bits.  Add cream and bring to a boil.  After sauce is slightly thickened, turn heat down to low, add tarragon, and return chicken and any juices to pan.  Turn chicken in the sauce to coat both sides.

We drank a white Burgundy with it; any unoaked Chardonnay would pair well.

June 13, 2009

I braved the weeds today for about an hour and a half, and to reward myself for my toils I jumped the gun and dug a hill of potatoes.  It is a little early, but I found some beautiful starchy gems.  The hill I dug is a bit of an outlaw anyway; it's parent was a potato that sprouted in the pantry, and I decided to go ahead and plant it.

I think I will make some chicken with a tarragon-cream sauce to go with the potatoes, and maybe we will have a little salad with the very last of the radishes.  I'm a little worried that they are going to be super sharp, but a soak in ice water usually cuts that a bit.

We have had unbelievable amounts of rain, and not very much sun, over the last week to ten days.  Some things look great in the garden, especially the potatoes and beans.  A lot of other things are very pokey.  The eggplant look terrible, and I wonder if I should just start over with new plants.  It was a little too cold when I planted them (like my father, I am a little impatient about getting things in the ground), and I am afraid that they may just never thrive.   The squash and cucumber plants look pretty healthy, but they are just small.  Hopefully they will have their growth spurt soon.  In the meantime, it looks like we will have green beans in the next week, which is unbelievably early.  I guess I am lucky; the beans are arriving before the bean beetles.