Chard – Leaves and Ribs – Baked

Chard is a highly versatile and nutritious leafy green vegetable with leaves and ribs (or stalks) that have different textures. The same goes for collards. It’s like getting two vegetables in one. You just need to cook the stems separately and longer, and add them to the leaves later (or serve them on their own). As the season changes from winter to spring, I can’t help but increase the greens quotient in this household, no matter the source, while respecting the fact that our own gardens are barely ready to plant.

After I separately cook the chard leaves and stems, I add a touch of butter, sprinkle them with Parmesan cheese and place in the oven at 375 degrees for a few minutes just to warm and melt. (This also allows me to cook the chard in advance and assemble this dish for a last-minute weeknight meal.) I added sautéed peppers, just because I had some.

Here I paired the chard with a baked white fish (fluke flounder) seasoned with lemon juice and topped with chives from my pot garden. The first harvest of the year.  My chives over-winter well and are the first signs of spring around here. Yay!

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Roasted Parsnips with Curried Corn Relish

Time to inventory what’s in the pantry from last summer and fall and start using it up!  Last year was a bounty year for canning in my house, with a couple of adventures per month and sometimes more often. This year, I joined Tigress’s Can Jam and committed to canning something new each month using the featured ingredient. So I am right on track to have a larder full!  What I find challenging is using up certain types of food in jars — relishes, pickles and jams mostly. The salsas, canned tomatoes, sauces etc. easily become part of other dishes.

I typically associate relishes with meat. The curried corn relish that I make about every other year is terrific with chicken and pork. But I discovered today that it is also a perfect accompaniment to roasted parsnips. Who knew? I like to leave the long tails on the roots, since they offer a textural change from the more bulbous tops. In order to make them roast more evenly, I cut a long split in the fat end. Then they roast, sprinkled with a little olive oil and salt, at 375 degrees, turning once, for about 20 minutes. The tangy kick of the relish was a great foil to the creaminess of the parsnips.

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Corned Beef to Pea Soup

St. Patrick’s Day, March 17, brings out a stir-crazy frenzy of events, mostly invented traditions as far as I can tell. Not to be a party pooper… I see this as an opportunity to purchase cabbage and corned beef (something I haven’t DIY’d yet) on sale. I’m stir-crazy too. Yes, we did make corned beef and cabbage with potatoes, but not in the New England Boiled Dinner tradition. The cabbage was roasted, and the potatoes were mashed with rutabaga and turnip. The corned beef (Boar’s Head – lean and reliable) was cooked slowly in water brought slowly to a not-quite-simmer for 21/2 hours. I added a quartered yellow onion skin on, 2 bay leaves and 4 garlic cloves to the pot and left that annoying little bag of spices clinging to the meat. The trick was letting it cook at what I’d call a murmur, not even a simmer. It was delicious.

BUT, I was left with a pot full of flavorful liquid, all dressed up with nowhere to go. SO, having a hankering for pea soup (on my mind since we’re supposed to be planting peas at this time of year), I cooked a split pea soup in the leftover corned beef broth. It’s traditional to add ham to pea soup, so the corned beef broth was a terrific substitute. When cooking any dried beans, peas, legumes etc., I have found the freshest ones in the bulk section of our local health food store. The proof is that the cooking time is less than what you read in most recipes. I sweated diced onions, celery and carrots in a tiny bit of olive oil, added rinsed and picked-over peas, bay leaf and thyme, and the liquid (no salting necessary), then the peas and cooked it simmering with lid half on, for about an hour, maybe even less. (I used 11/2 cup split peas and 2 quarts of liquid, holding back some liquid and adding it, along with water, as needed.)

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Roasted Cabbage

I cook cabbage in so many ways: steamed, braised with white wine and juniper berries, braised with apples, sautéed in a little butter and oil and tossed with herbs, stir fried with ginger and garlic, smothered, meaning slow cooked with a little white wine vinegar a la Marcella Hazan,  and so on. That doesn’t count fermenting to make kraut, combining with any number of ingredients in canned relishes, curing for kimchee-like salads, plus various raw slaws. Not to mention stuffed cabbage. Think I like it?

One of my favorite ways to cook cabbage, though, is to roast it in the oven. I have done this with regular green cabbage and with red cabbage. Halve the head of cabbage, remove the core, and slice the halves into wedges, 3-4 per half (1½ – 2 inches at broadest part). Sprinkle with a little olive oil and salt and roast in a pre-heated 400 degree oven for about 10 minutes, turning once. The edges will be brown and crispy, resembling the edge of a beautiful fabric, and the centers will be tender and tasty. Serve hot or lukewarm, along or paired with other roasted vegetables like parsnips (shown here) or carrots.

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OK Paris: A Correspondence Course 5 – Bored with Pasta

OK Paris is an ongoing exchange of culinary encounters and yearnings during OK’s half-year relocation from New York to Paris.

Although OK have friends with an oven and were recently able to make the apple pancake they’ve been craving, most of the time they’re cooking stovetop. Being half vegetarian, meaning one is, one isn’t, they naturally gravitate to pasta with vegetables. But that gets old, despite the unlimited variety (see my last post). I’ve been posting risottos, which can be made without broth, but that may be a little hard to master. So, go grains!

In an effort to diversify the starches in our diet at home, we’ve been eating grains other than rice: bulghur, quinoa, barley, farro to name a few. I personally enjoy hulled barley and farro because of their nuttiness and crunch. They are also high in fiber and nutritious. They do take longer to cook than the others but are worth the wait. I’ve been using them interchangeably.

Here is a simple dish of barley (orge in French) with sautéed mushrooms, shallots and dill. Asparagus would be a great addition. If using hulled barley, add 2 ½-3 times the amount of water as the grain, salt the water and bring it to a boil, lower the heat and cook slowly, covered,  for about 45 minutes. (Same with farro, which I think is farro in French?) Check for doneness  after 30 minutes because is sometimes cooks faster.  If you use pearled barley, which is one step more processed, cooking time will be closer to 20-25 minutes.

On cold rainy days, which Paris still has in March, I would braise root vegetables like rutabaga and carrot and add them to the grains. Or how about adding greens, and/or or carmelized onions with raisins, a little feta, a few walnuts? The possibilities are nearly endless, so use your imagination and bon appetit!

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Quick Midweek Suppers: Boil the Water, Light the Oven

Since I cook fresh evening meals everyday and come home late from work, I need to have a lot of tricks for quickly pulling off tasty, nutritious suppers within a reasonable time. When I don’t have anything specific in mind, the first things I do when I walk in the door are light the oven and set a pot of water on the stove to boil. This gets things started while I bring in the mail, put the dogs out, change my clothes and then bring in the hungry beasts for supper. I recently heard about someone else who does the same kitchen routine and I thought, ah ha, if you want to get something done, ask a busy person (and you’ll probably learn a short cut in the process).

While there are lots of possibilities in this scenario, I often find myself roasting a pan full of vegetables to toss in a bowl of pasta or over some whole grains like farro or barley. It helps to have a couple of pantry items on hand to introduce a depth of flavor. Olives, herbs and preserved lemons are good choices but my favorite is roasted tomatoes. At the end of canning season in the fall, when I’ve “had it” with water bath canning whole tomatoes and sauces, I roast plum tomato halves with thyme and garlic and store them in packets in the freezer. They thaw very fast and make an instant sauce. Mid-winter tomatoes from the grocery store are greatly improved this way too.

Here are a few examples of mid week suppers that we’ve had over the last couple of months. In other seasons we’d have roasted ratatouille vegetables with range zest and black olives, asparagus with lemon, roasted winter squash cubes with sage, and as many other combinations as we can imagine.

Pasta with oven-roasted fennel and tomatoes

Core and slice the fennel root, reserving the stems for vegetable stock and the fronds for garnish. Roast slices of fennel tossed with a little olive oil and salt at 375 degrees until soft, turning once. It’s important to keep the heat low enough so the slices are cooked through and not dried out. They can be tough. You should send up with some soft pieces and some crispy bits. Add some roasted tomatoes and toss with cooked pasta. Season to taste and sprinkle the dish with chopped fennel fronds. Optional: toss in some grated Parmesan cheese and/or add roasted red, orange or yellow peppers.

Pasta with oven-roasted cauliflower, red pepper and  tomatoes

Roast slices of cauliflower and red pepper and tossed with a little olive oil and salt at 400 degrees, turning twice, until soft and browned. When just about done, add minced garlic and cook for a minute or two. Combine with warmed roasted tomatoes and cooked pasta. Garnish with parsley. Optional: add cooked chickpeas and/or chopped black olives.

Pasta with roasted mushrooms and tomatoes

You can pan-roast sliced mushrooms or roast them in the oven. Add a tiny amount of oil and/or butter to a pan, add mushrooms and sliced onions and turn the heat up, tossing the mushrooms until done. Add thyme, garlic salt and a little balsamic vinegar. In the oven, you can just toss the mushrooms and sliced onions in olive oil and salt and cook them at 400 degrees, turning once. Make a sauce of the roasted tomatoes and mushroom mixture and serve it over pasta. Here I used pappardelle, dramatic wide noodles. Sprinkle with herbs.

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Paper Chef 50: the Winner Takes the Cake

Every month I read how hard it is to judge the Paper Chefchallenge and I think, okay, that’s being polite. Well, it’s true. This was really hard! So in honor of all of the entrants, I made you a really tasty cake (story and recipe below) using the challenge ingredients honey, ricotta, dill and eggs.

 

I also cooked my way through many of the entries, since I was shut in again in monsoon-like conditions. The whipping wind and pelting rain were what I imagine it would be like inside a dishwasher. Our local mini-hurricane produced water in similar proportions to Spikey Mikey’s disaster in Melbourne, but at the polar opposite geographically. Bravo to that adventure and a delicious result! (Check his photos OMG. The power outages and water bailing explain my lateness with this post.) I liked the suggestion that smoked salmon would be a good complement, and obviously Pauline (see paper Chef) would agree, given the addition of salmon to her beautiful quiche.  We also had a late entry from Kim of Live Love Laugh Eat, who made scones with honey, ricotta and dill.

 

All the recipes were great, so I started thinking about why we (or I at least) enjoy reading people’s blogs. I love to learn what’s behind the recipes, the stories, and I love to learn new things. Bill’s Brew-B-Que taught us about gruit, a hop-less ale, and its history in addition to giving us a new marinade. We made his pork chops for dinner and they were delicious. Kizzy’s Culinary Annotations is a treasure trove of interesting historical information and I enjoyed the Hungarian translations.

 

The prize for presentation would have to go to Cath of ShowFoodChef for the stunning baked eggs in sweet potato petals, which I made for lunch along with  the deviled egg over a honey-dark chocolate sauce by Alessio at Recipe Taster. I’m so glad you found Paper Chef. That sauce is amazing and even though I halved the recipe, I have a lot to use for another dish.

 

But of all of the stories, the one that grabbed me was Adele’s from Will Work for Biltong. (This month has been a good one for building vocabulary.)  While the recipe was almost identical to Spikey Mikey’s (is this a Melbourne thing?), the story was wonderful, especially the realization of the joy of gathering the family for a meal. Our family always ate breakfast together on weekends before the children scattered, and we typically ate pancakes. So Adele’s ricotta, dill and honey crumpets, in addition to being delicious (we had them for breakfast), were a reminder of those happy family days.

 

So, Will Work for Biltong is the winner of Paper Chef 50. I’m delighted to pass the spatula and will definitely keep the recipe.

Here’s a thank you to everyone who participated or just tagged along.

Honey Ricotta Cake with Dill (adapted from Dorie Greenspan)

I was paging through that wonderful volume Baking from my Home to Yours to find a cake that I could adapt for my wheat-free birthday girl, and I came across the perfect candidate: “Fluted Polenta and Ricotta Cake.” I substituted grated orange for lemon and added dill seed, which imparted a complementary flavor to the cornmeal. I had some figs from a Paper Chef adventure I didn’t submit, so it’s only fair that I share it now.

About 16 moist, plump Mission Figs, stemmed

1 cup medium- or fine-grained polenta or yellow cormneal

½ cup all-purpose flour

1 tsp baking powder

½ tsp salt

1 tsp dill seed

1 cup ricotta

1/3 cup tepid water

¾ cup sugar

¾ cup honey

1 tbsp grated orange zest

1 stick (8 tbsp) unsalted butter, melted and cooled

2 large eggs

Preheat the oven to 325 degrees. Butter a 10 ½-inch fluted tart pan with a removable bottom or a similar sized spring form pan, and place it on a baking sheet.

Check that the figs are moist and plump and if not, toss them in a small pan of boiled water and let them steep for a minute and drain. If larger than a bit, snip them into smaller pieces, about ½ inch.

Whisk the polenta, flour, baking powder, salt and dill seed together.

With a hand mixer or a stand mixer fitted with a whisk attachment, beat the ricotta and water together on low speed until very smooth. With the mixer at medium speed, add the sugar, honey and orange zest and beat until light. Beat in the melted butter, then add the eggs one at a time, beating until the mixture is smooth. Reduce the mixer speed to low and add the dry ingredients, mixing only until they are fully incorporated.

Pour about one third of the batter into the pan and scatter over the figs, Pour in the rest of the batter, smooth the top with a rubber spatula, if necessary.

Bake for 35 to 40 minutes or until a cake tester comes out clean. Remove to a rack to cool for about 5 minutes before removing the sides of the pan.

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Spicy Pork Stew with Poblanos and Sweet Potatoes

I am so lucky to live in an area (halfway between Philadelphia and New York) where local food is plentiful and varied, frequently organic, always fresh and relatively well priced. In addition to orchards and farms that grow fruits and vegetables, we have local farms selling milk, eggs and cheese, local beekeepers, local winemakers, local mushroom farms, local day boat fisherman who truck their catch to the farmer’s market, even a nearby flour mill.  There also are a few local farms that raise poultry, pigs, lambs, and beef in a sustainable, responsible way. So for me, being a locavore is relatively easy, even all year round, especially since I preserve foods in the summer and fall for my pantry.

A couple of weeks ago, I purchased some wonderful cubes of local pork, which I dreamed of stewing with abundant paprika and sauerkraut from the pantry. Dream is the right word since I forgot that I did not put up any sauerkraut this year. However, indulging my sometimes ridiculous habit of raiding the “soup bin” at the local health food store (where slightly bruised or otherwise less-than-perfect produce sells for a pittance a pound), I had scooped up some organic poblano peppers and a red bell pepper, neither of which was local. But they sure were thrifty.  Believe it or not, I still had sweet potatoes from our CSA farm and wanted to use the last of them. Plus whole tomatoes that I had canned.

I made a delicious and satisfying stew that followed my instinct and no recipe. While I call this a pork stew, truth be told, it had more vegetables than meat. While I’m not adverse to meaty stews, I prefer to have the meat present but in a secondary role. I thought that the poblanos made the stew a little bitter, so I added a teaspoon or so of brown sugar, which gave the stew another dimension of flavor.  I served this on rice but could have added black beans instead.

Pork Stew with Poblanos and Sweet Potatoes

1 lb pork cubes, trimmed

Paprika

1 tbsp vegetable oil

1 onion, cut into ¾-inch pieces

3-4 poblano peppers, charred, skins removed, cut into 3/4 inch pieces

1 red pepper, cut into ½-inch pieces

2 sweet potatoes, cubed

6 plum tomatoes, chopped, plus a little juice from the jar or can (or use fresh)

½ tsp adobo sauce from canned chipotle chiles (or use a little smoky paprika or pimenton or add a little ancho chile, softened in hot water since ancho chiles are poblanos dried)

Chicken broth (about 1–11/2 cups)

Brown sugar, optional (1-2 tsp or to taste)

Preheat the oven to 300 degrees. Sprinkle the pork cubes with paprika and brown them in batches in a little oil, removing them to a small Dutch oven. Clean out the pan, add a little more oil and the onions and cook for a few minutes until translucent, then add the peppers and stir to combine. Add the tomatoes and cook for a minute or two. Add the vegetable mixture, the cubed sweet potatoes, and a dab of adobo paste to the pork, pour on chicken broth just to cover, and cook in the oven for 1½ hours. Check every so often to make sure the liquid is simmering not boiling. If it’s boiling, turn down the heat. Otherwise the pork will dry out. Taste the broth; if it seems bitter (from the poblanos), add a little brown sugar.

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Whey Soup with Cauliflower and Leeks

Whey, a by-product of cheese-making, is the thin liquid that’s left after the curds are removed. The other day, I made a batch of fresh cheese that resembles ricotta and saved the whey for soup. This is a simple, fresh and clean-tasting soup that takes all of 15-20 minutes to make. You basically just simmer the sliced vegetables in the whey and puree them.

I have made this with potatoes and leeks, and also with celery, rather liking the paleness and light green tinge. The whey is greenish, from the riboflavin in the milk, which I have to admit takes getting used to. It’s low fat since the milk fat gloms on to the curds. Float some snipped herbs or a crouton on top and you have a light and flavorful low-calorie lunch.

Whey Soup with Cauliflower and Leeks

2-3 small leeks, white and pale green section, cleaned, halved lengthwise and sliced

1 tsp butter

½ head cauliflower, florets and core, sliced

3-4 cups whey left from a cheese-making adventure

Salt to taste

Herbs, croutons, or other toppings

Cook the leeks slowly in butter until translucent, add the cauliflower, stirring to coat. Add the whey, cover the pot and simmer for about 15 minutes, or until tender.  Puree in a food processor or in the pot using an immersion blender. Season to taste. Serve semi-hot garnished with snipped herbs and/or croutons.

Making croutons in the oven: brush olive oil on bread, salt lightly, add herbs if desired, and bake at about 450 degrees, turning, for about 5-7 minutes or until brown and crisp to your liking.

Making croutons on the stove: heat olive oil in a shallow pan until hot, add bread and fry it until golden, turning so that all sides brown. Sprinkle the hot croutons with herbs and salt (or Parmesan cheese).

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Curried Onion Jam

This curried onion jam was a completely off-the-cuff, intuitive experiment that turned out so well that it will become a permanent part of my canning repertoire. Now I’m sorry that I made such a small batch! Though not particularly photogenic, it has a memorable and intriguing sweet and sour flavor with a lingering aftertaste from the spicy curry and the onion. And it has a good “mouth feel.” I can imagine it served as a condiment, as an appetizer with crackers, or spooned into a squash soup, which is what I did with the small amount that didn’t get water bath canned.

The method and proportion of sugar to vinegar to onions came from a recipe for Onion Marmalade by Pam Corbin in her book Preserves, which is No. 2 in the River Cottage Handbook series (an amazing collection, highly recommended for the beauty of the books as well as their informative contents).  I halved her recipe and changed several ingredients.

The three-step cooking method progresses from long and low to short and high. After cooking the sliced onions very slowly in a large covered saucepot, sugar is added and the heat increased to cook off the liquid. Instead of the red currant jelly suggested by the original recipe, I added sultana raisins, the ones that are dark yellow. I also added curry powder. After the mixture has cooked down again, the pan is removed from the heat and cooled so that when the vinegar is added in the next step, it doesn’t instantly vaporize. The heat is again turned up a notch and the mixture lightly boiled until thick.

Curried Onion Jam (makes 2 half-pint jars)

2 lbs yellow onions, thinly sliced (10 cups)

3 tbsp olive oil

½ cup turbinado or demerara sugar (I used demerara)

1-2 tbsp raisins (I used organic Turkish sultanas)

1 ¼ tsp spicy curry powder

2/3 cup cider vinegar

½ tsp salt or to taste

Black pepper

Prepare the jars and water bath canner. Place the onions in oil in a large, heavy-bottomed saucepan and cook, covered, over low heat for about 40 minutes. Remove the lid, add the sugar, curry and raisins and increase the heat to medium high. Cook for about 30 minutes, or until much of the liquid has evaporated and the mixture is a dark golden color. Remove from the heat to cool. (The next step involves adding vinegar and you don’t want to add it to a hot pan because it will evaporate in a noxious cloud.) Return the pan to the stove, add the vinegar and cook at high heat, stirring, for 7-10 minutes until the mixture is thick and gooey. Season to taste with salt and pepper. Ladle into hot jars, seal and process in a water bath canner for 10 minutes after the water has come to a boil. Remove canner’s lid and let sit for 5 minutes before removing jars to the counter to cool.

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