Why we haven't really been posting lately

This is really for Susan (our loyal reader).
Before:
And the view that greeted you when you walked in the front door:
During--Gabby helping:
After (well, close enough for now):
No after picture of the stairway, because it doesn't merit one yet.

Swiss chard with raisins and almonds

This was pretty good. I made it with what we had on hand, pecans instead of almonds, and regular old thompson seedless raisins. Used 2 weeks' worth of chard, which I'm sure was less than 2 lbs. Needs salt, of course. This was the recipe in our weekly CSA newsletter.

Swiss chard with raisins and almonds
Gourmet, February 2008

½ large onion, sliced lengthwise, 1/4 inch thick (1 cup)
2½ tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil, divided
¼ teaspoon Spanish smoked paprika
2 lb Swiss chard, center ribs discarded and leaves coarsely chopped
½ cup golden raisins
½ cup water
¼ cup coarsely chopped almonds with skins

Cook onion with ¼ teaspoon salt in 2 tablespoons oil in a 5- to 6-quart heavy pot over medium heat, stirring, until softened. Sprinkle with paprika and cook, stirring, 1 minute. Add chard in batches, stirring frequently, until wilted, then add raisins and water. Cook, covered, stirring occasionally, until chard is tender, about 7 minutes. Season with salt.

Cook almonds in remaining ½ tablespoon oil in a small heavy skillet over medium-low heat, stirring frequently, until golden, 3 to 5 minutes. Sprinkle almonds over chard.

Makes 4 servings.

Garlic scape pesto

In an effort to use garlic scapes in a new and interesting way, I tried making garlic scape pesto. It was inspired by this recipe, but more traditional in using a whole lot of basil, pine nuts, parmesan and olive oil. Really, it's just replacing the garlic with a whole lot of garlic scapes. It has a really nice, mild garlicky flavor - almost like cooked garlic.

Normally we throw in the weekly scapes into a stir-fry, which is also good.

More, more, more

This week:

• Basil
• Cabbage
• Chard
• Cilantro
• Cucumbers
• Dill
• Garlic scapes
• Lettuce
• Parsley
• Radicchio
• Scallions
• Zucchini

More herbs, more zucchini, first pickling cucumbers.

It's getting summery

This week in the box:

• Zucchini
• Broccoli
• Kale
• 3 heads lettuce
• Basil
• Chard
• Garlic scapes
• Scallions
  
• Oregano

We're starting to move beyond the spring greens.

Broccoli Potato Soup

From Barbara Kafka's Vegetable Love, abbreviated.

2 large floury potatoes, peeled and cut into 1-inch cubes
1 head broccoli, florets only, in 1.5-inch pieces (about 5 cups)
1 cup part-skim ricotta
6 cups chicken stock
1 T. kosher salt
freshly ground black pepper to taste

Steam potatoes until soft, about 25 minutes. Set aside. Steam broccoli until soft, about 10-13 minutes. Transfer potatoes to a food processor and puree until smooth. Pour into a medium saucepan. Transfer broccoli to the food processor and puree until smooth. Add the ricotta and pulse until just incorporated. Add 2 cups of stock and puree until smooth. Pour the mixture into a medium saucepan. Add remaining stock. Heat over medium heat until hot. Season with the salt and pepper.

My comments: first, my Mom taught us all the hard way once that it's just a really tragic idea to food process potatoes to mash them. You make an approximation of wallpaper paste. So I gamely went along and did it and made the requisite gloop, which was really hard to scrape out of the food processor into a saucepan (starch taffy, anyone?). I then proceeded with the recipe and added the broccoli mix to the same saucepan, heating and smooshing and stirring, and eventually stick blending to try to get the gloop to mix in. Even that didn't work completely. (Kels tried to make Kloese once and made potato soup--I try to make potato soup and get Kloese. Go figure.) So here's my question. Why do it this way? Susan? Can you think of any reason not to just throw everything in a pot with the stock and then stick blend it?

Is there something else I missed? I have reproduced the recipe as directed in the cookbook, and you'll notice that it never actually tells you to do anything with the potatoes again (i.e. it does not tell you to put the broccoli mixture in the same saucepan, I just assumed that's what they meant but it's not how it's written). Is that because they're so awful after you've food processed them that you throw them out and simply make broccoli ricotta soup? Is it because they meant to tell you to throw them back in with the broccoli/ricotta/stock mixture and process them together there, before returning it all to the pot? Next time I will try stick blending it all in the pot.

I used 4 cups of Kels stock plus some water, and even then only added 2 tsp. salt. I think a T. is too much, but since this isn't in the potato section of the book, it's only got 1.5 times the salt you'd want, as opposed to 4x or so. Also, I peeled and chopped broccoli stems and included them.

Raspberry lemon muffins

She lives, she breathes, she even bakes muffins!

1 1/4 cups sugar, divided
4 teaspoons finely grated lemon zest (about 2 lemons' worth)
2 cups all purpose flour
2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
3/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, room temperature
1 large egg
1 cup buttermilk
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
juice of 1 lemon
1 cup frozen raspberries

Preheat oven to 375°F. Mash 1/4 cup sugar and lemon peel in small bowl until sugar is slightly moist. Whisk flour, baking powder, and salt in medium bowl to blend. Using electric mixer, beat remaining 1 cup sugar and butter in large bowl until smooth. Beat in egg. Beat in buttermilk, then vanilla, 1 tablespoon lemon juice, and half of lemon sugar. Beat in flour mixture. Very briefly mix in raspberries.

Divide batter among muffin cups. Bake muffins until lightly browned on top and tester inserted into center comes out clean, about 35 minutes. Brush tops of muffins lightly with lemon juice; sprinkle with remaining lemon sugar and cool.

Modified from this recipe on epicurious.

Scapes

This week:

• 4 heads lettuce
  
• broccoli
• kale
• dandelion greens
• bok choy
• garlic scapes
• spinach

The most interesting thing to me is the garlic scapes (ramps). No strawberries this week.

Ice cream cake!

Ice cream cake is not really that hard to make. Line the bottom of a springform pan with crushed chocolate wafer cookies and melted butter, and cool in freezer. Soften ½ gallon ice cream until it can be mixed and spread over the crust. Freeze for at least 1 hour. Melt 8 oz. semisweet chocolate chips in ½ cup heavy cream, and spread over ice cream. Top with chopped candy if desired, and freeze for 3 hours. Soften a bit before removing springform ring.

Source: Eggs on Sunday

Marinated cauliflower salad with arugula

We've liked this recipe for a long time. I like to use prosciutto or other cooked ham instead of bacon, and skip the celery.

Marinated Cauliflower Salad
Arugula, bacon, and olives

Ingredients for 4

½ pound fresh arugula
½ head cauliflower, cut into bite size florets
1 teaspoon minced garlic
1 teaspoon picked fresh thyme leaves
¼ cup small diced celery
¼ cup diced scallions
½ cup cooked bacon, small diced and cooked
½ cup of your favorite olive, pitted
salt and pepper

Dijon Vinaigrette

1 cup cottonseed oil
¼ cup red wine vinegar
¼ cup dijon mustard
salt and pepper to taste

Method

Wisk together all the ingredients for the vinaigrette and set aside. Marinate the cauliflower florets in a ¼ cup of vinaigrette. Let stand 1 hour or overnight.

In a large mixing bowl, combine all the salad components with a pinch of salt and pepper. Drizzle with dijon vinaigrette, about 1 ladle or 2 ounces. Gently toss to coat with vinaigrette.

Plate on one large platter or individual plates and enjoy!

Source: chef2chef.net

Rotini with roasted peppers and spinach

I didn't have pine nuts, but otherwise followed this recipe pretty closely. It was fine, but a little bland. Needed more salt, and more dried red pepper and a little cream might be nice next time.

A little variety

This week:

• 3 heads lettuce
• spinach
• radishes
• peas
• arugula
• kale
• bok choy
• strawberries

That's a pretty good haul for the 2nd week. The pick-your-own quota for strawberries at the farm field is now 4 quarts.

First veggies

Now it really feels like summer, with our weekly vegetables back for the season. Largely greens this week, unsurprisingly.

• 6 heads of lettuce
• kale
• arugula
• strawberries

How are we going to eat that much lettuce?

Salad composée

It's the start of summer salad season. We're not getting our vegetables yet, but it's warm enough to feel like having a nice salad for dinner, with maybe a little wine and cheese afterwards. My standard summer salad ideal comes from this recipe, that appeared in the NY Times a few years ago. We don't often put everything in, but tuna on greens with a homemade mustard vinaigrette and whatever else we have is common enough.

Somehow, it doesn't work in February.

Salade Niçoise
(Adapted from ''French Provincial Cooking,'' by Elizabeth David)
1 head bibb or Boston lettuce
1 12-ounce can or jar imported tuna in olive oil
12 small new potatoes, cooked until tender and halved
1 cup green beans, ends trimmed and cooked until tender
½ red bell pepper, seeded and julienned
1 6-ounce jar marinated artichoke hearts, drained
2 firm ripe tomatoes, quartered lengthwise
2 hard-cooked eggs, peeled and halved lengthwise
6 anchovy fillets
12 black olives, pitted and sliced
Handful of capers
3 tablespoons tarragon vinegar
2 teaspoons Dijon mustard
1 garlic clove, peeled and crushed
¾ cup extra-virgin olive oil
Coarse sea salt and freshly cracked black pepper
1 tablespoon mixed chopped herbs, like chervil and chives.

1. Quarter the lettuce through the root end. Rinse and pat dry with paper towels. Place each quarter on a large plate or in a shallow bowl. Drain the tuna and place in a bowl; flake into bite-size pieces with a fork and scatter over the lettuce. Next, scatter the potatoes, beans, pepper, artichoke hearts and tomatoes. Arrange an egg half to the side of each plate. Sprinkle the dish with the anchovies, olives and capers.

2. Mix the vinegar, mustard and garlic in a bowl. Whisk in the oil until thickened. Season with the salt, pepper and herbs. Drizzle over salads. Serve.

Yield: 4 servings.

Fractions in HTML and Unicode

Not a food post, but about computer issues relating to recipes.

I haven't been consistent about this, but sometimes I try to put vulgar fractions into recipes as individual characters, rather than digits separated by a "/". It looks better, but I wonder if everyone sees them correctly.

Only three vulgar fractions are in ISO-Latin-1, so they have their own HTML codes:

¼ (1/4, HTML ¼)
½ (1/2, HTML ½)
¾ (3/4, HTML ¾)

I assume those work fine for most people. Lots more are in Unicode, so they can be added directly, but I don't know how widely they are supported by browsers, operating systems, and font character sets. I wouldn't be surprised if they disappear for some people if they set their font differently. Like these:

⅓ (1/3)
⅔ (2/3)
⅕ (1/5)
⅖ (2/5)
⅗ (3/5)
⅘ (4/5)
⅙ (1/6)
⅚ (5/6)
⅛ (1/8)
⅜ (3/8)
⅝ (5/8)
⅞ (7/8)

Not all are common in recipes, but many are helpful. I use some of them, but I don't know how to enter them except by cut and paste, so they are here mostly for my reference.

Let me know if you get funny characters where fractions should be.

Eggs & Cake

For Saturday brunch today, Cardamom Coffee Cake from the original Moosewood Cookbook, and bacon and eggs baked in ramekins. The cake was as rich as the Ashkenazic Sour Cream Coffee Cake we've made before, and it's a nice, easy way to make eggs.

Cardamom Coffee Cake

1 lb (4 sticks) butter or margarine, softened
2 c light brown sugar
4 eggs
2 tsp vanilla extract
4 c flour
2 tsp baking powder
2½ tsp baking soda
½ tsp salt
1 tbs cardamom
2 c sour cream (or yogurt or buttermilk)
¼ c light brown sugar
1 tbs cinnamon
½ c walnuts, finely chopped

Preheat oven to 350° F. Grease and flour a 10-inch tube or bundt pan.

In a LARGE mixing bowl, beat butter with 2 cups brown sugar until light and fluffy. Add eggs, one at a time, beating well after each. Stir in the vanilla.

Sift together the flour, baking powder, soda, salt, and cardamom in a separate bowl.

Add the flour mixture, ⅓ of it at a time, to the butter mixture, alternating with the sour cream. Stir just enough to blend after each addition. Don't beat or otherwise overmix.

Combine ¼ cup brown sugar, cinnamon, and walnuts in a separate small bowl.

Spoon approximately ⅓ of the batter into the prepared pan. Sprinkle with half the nut mixture, then add another third of the batter. Cover with remaining nut mixture, then top with remaining batter. Lightly spread into place.

Bake approximately 1¼ hours or until a knife inserted all the way in comes out clean. Allow to cool in the pan for 20 minutes, then invert onto a plate. Cool at least 30 minutes more before cutting into it. Enjoy!!

Serves 18

Chard Tart

This was one of our summer favorites that we never got around to blogging. We often need to use up extra greens when the veggies are coming in.

Swiss Chard and Herb Tart

Ingredients
1 pound Swiss chard, stems and ribs removed
1½ tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
1 garlic clove, minced
1 15-ounce container whole-milk ricotta cheese
½ cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese
2 large eggs
½ teaspoon salt
¼ teaspoon ground black pepper
¼ teaspoon minced fresh thyme
¼ teaspoon minced fresh oregano
⅛ teaspoon grated nutmeg
1 17.3-ounce package frozen puff pastry (2 sheets), thawed

Preparation

Cook chard in large pot of boiling salted water until just wilted, about 2 minutes. Drain. Squeeze out liquid. Chop chard.Heat oil in heavy large skillet over medium heat. Add garlic; saut
ée 1 minute.

Add chard; sauté until excess liquid evaporates, about 5 minutes. Transfer chard mixture to large bowl. Cool slightly. Mix in ricotta and next 7 ingredients.Position rack in bottom third of oven; preheat to 375°F. Roll out 1 pastry sheet on lightly floured surface to 14-inch square. Transfer pastry to 9-inch-diameter tart pan with removable bottom. Trim edges, leaving 1-inch overhang. Fill pastry with chard mixture. Lightly brush pastry overhang with pastry brush dipped into water. Roll out second pastry sheet to 13-inch square. Using tart pan as guide, trim pastry square to 10-inch round. Drape over filling. Seal edges and fold in.Bake until pastry is golden brown, about 45 minutes. Cool 10 minutes. Remove pan sides from tart. Transfer to platter. Cut into wedges and serve.

Add chard; sautée until excess liquid evaporates, about 5 minutes. Transfer chard mixture to large bowl. Cool slightly. Mix in ricotta and next 7 ingredients.Position rack in bottom third of oven; preheat to 375°F. Roll out 1 pastry sheet on lightly floured surface to 14-inch square. Transfer pastry to 9-inch-diameter tart pan with removable bottom. Trim edges, leaving 1-inch overhang. Fill pastry with chard mixture. Lightly brush pastry overhang with pastry brush dipped into water. Roll out second pastry sheet to 13-inch square. Using tart pan as guide, trim pastry square to 10-inch round. Drape over filling. Seal edges and fold in.Bake until pastry is golden brown, about 45 minutes. Cool 10 minutes. Remove pan sides from tart. Transfer to platter. Cut into wedges and serve.

Malaysian Chicken Satay

Our favorite chicken satay recipe from Cradle of Flavor. A good reason to fire up the grill for the first time of the season.

Cheese Fondue (Fondue au Fromage)

We got a fondue pot for a wedding present, over 2 years ago, and we don't use it often enough, but we both like fondue. We've made this recipe for cheese fondue before, with and without the tomato chutney. Oddly, the instruction booklet that came with the fondue pot had no recipes for a standard cheese fondue (although there was a "French Brie and Onion Fondue," which doesn't appear at all in the French language section of the booklet), they were all various forms of meat fondues and dips. Then we noticed that the French side of the instruction book has several pages of information about cheese fondues, plus 9 different recipes. I guess they thought that English speakers wouldn't like them (the German is intermediate, with a single cheese fondue recipe).

I would like to translate the whole cheese fondue section of the French section, but for now, here is the first recipe. It is practically the same as two versions available online, in French and English, but with its own campy flair:

The Classic Recipe

proportions, per person:

150-180 g Gruyère (grated or cut into thin strips)

100 mL white wine

1 tsp. lemon juice

150-180 g bread

and in addition, for the fondue:
1 clove garlic
2 tsp. cornstarch
1 shot of Kirsch
pepper (or grated nutmeg or paprika to taste)

After rubbing the interior of the fondue pot with the garlic clove, add the wine and lemon juice. Place it over a live fire, and, when hot, add the grated cheese, stirring continuously with a wooden spoon.

When the mixture has begun to boil, add the cornstarch, having previously dissolved it in the Kirsch, and simmer for 2-3 minutes. Your fondue is ready. You may proudly bring your culinary work to the table and place it over the lighted burner. Complete the seasoning with pepper, nutmeg or paprika to taste.

Do not forget to stir the fondue occasionally while eating to keep it well mixed. Little by little, at the bottom of the pot, the grillon will form. It must be divided fairly, for it is the best part...

The ambiance is created and gaiety reigns...

The literal translation for grillon is "cricket", but I suspect that his usage is unrelated, derived instead from griller, to grill or broil.

English booklet cover:












French booklet cover:

Orange Chicken

I was looking for an orange chicken recipe that doesn't require deep frying. This one was OK, but I should have been more careful to dry off the marinaded chicken before dredging it in flour - it made a gooey mes in the bottom of the wok. The sauce was good.

It's a lot like General Tso's chicken - it's not that hard, but makes a mess an takes several steps. In the end there are a lot of simpler meals that are just as good.