Pea Soup à la Cappuccino

Imagine June. A table at the edge of a porch overlooking misty Lake Geneva. Thunder storm brewing. Sparrows flitting in and out, trying to share lunch with a bunch of regulars and a few dazzled newcomers.  And then, there arrives a perfect pea soup. White scoop of barely cooked peas suspended over a bowl of hot soup with a floating island of foamed milk. What a great idea. Creamy but light. This will definitely be part of my  expanding repertoire.

Hot Pea Soup à la Cappuccino

1½ lb fresh shelling peas  (a heaping dry quart or more)

3-4 c homemade chicken stock or vegetable broth

1 leek or small onion, diced

1 tbsp butter

Salt and pepper to taste

½ c milk (non-fat is fine)

Grated nutmeg

1 strip bacon, cooked and crumbled (optional)

Shell the peas. Set aside a few peas for garnish. Rinse the pods and simmer them in the stock or broth for 15 minutes or until they’re soft and have rendered their flavor to the liquid.

Slowly sauté the leek or onion in butter in a medium saucepan. Add the peas and stir to coat. Add the broth and cook until the peas are tender but still green, about 6-8 minutes. Puree the pea mixture in a food processor and return to the pan. Season to taste.

Drop the reserved peas in a small amount of boiling water. Froth the milk. When ready to serve, place some of the pea soup in a bowl, float the frothed milk on top, sprinkle with grated nutmeg and garnish with the reserved peas. If using the bacon, place it on the bottom of the bowl before adding the soup. It makes a nice, tasty surprise.

Makes 3-4 servings.

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The Best Banana Bread

I’ve been making this classic since I was a kid. I wrote down the recipe in a childish script in a now tattered spiral notebook, along with a few others that I still cherish. I later transcribed it, again hand-written, into a three-ring binder some time around graduate school, typed it to be “official” who knows when, and then word-processed it in a couple of programs over the past few years. I need to get it out to the world so I don’t lose it!

I’ve have distant memories of raiding a file box above my mother’s kitchen desk, where she kept pamphlets like the Pillsbury Bake-off series, which is where I suspect this recipe originated. While the original recipe would have called for a full-sized loaf pan, I typically have made it in half-size pans or more recently in a pan that creates 8 mini-loaves.   Much better for individual use, and also freezing, if they last that long.

What I like about the technique is that the leavening includes both baking powder and baking soda and the batter is left to stand in the pans for 15-20 minutes before baking. By pushing the batter up into the corners and allowing it to sit, you’re pretty much guaranteed to have well-rounded loaves.

Banana Bread

2 cups sifted flour

1 tsp double-acting baking powder

1/2 tsp baking soda

1 tsp salt

1/2 c butter, softened

1 c sugar

2 eggs

1 c mashed banana

1/2 c chopped walnuts (optional)

Sift together the dry ingredients and set aside.

Cream the butter with the sugar, then add one egg at a time, beating until smooth, Stir in the mashed bananas, mixing well.

Gently fold in the flour mixture until just incorporated. Add the nuts if using.

Pour into buttered baking pan(s), pushing the batter up into the corners.  Preheat the oven to 350 degrees and let the batter sit for 15-20 minutes while the oven warms up. (This last step is important to producing well-rounded loaves.)

Bake a full-sized loaf pan for about 60 minutes or until a cake tester comes out clean. Half-loaves bake for about 40 minutes and mini-loaves (8 to a pan) about 25 minutes.

Cool thoroughly before slicing.

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Cucumber Salad with Pickled Spring Onions

About a month ago, just as spring onions were starting to bulb, I picked up several bunches of scallion-like specimens with violet flesh, which were being discarded in our local organic produce market. While the green ends were somewhat compromised, nothing was wrong with the bulb end. Pickled in a simple solution of vinegar and sugar (light on the sugar), they’ve been curing in my fridge for a few weeks.

 I deliberately kept the sugar content low, thinking I’d serve them as a condiment with some undetermined entrée. Instead, I sliced them and used both the onions and the pickling liquid in a fresh cucumber salad. In retrospect, I would boost the sugar (which I did in this recipe) and use white vinegar rather than white wine vinegar. These little guys were so beautiful that I’ll have to repeat this experiment, maybe with their older relatives, the bunching onion.

 Pickled Spring Onions

3 bunches violet spring onions, trimmed of their green leaves

1 c white vinegar (or white wine vinegar)

2/3 c water

1/3-1/2 c sugar

1 ½ – 2 tsp salt

5 peppercorns

5 allspice berries and/or cloves

A few chopped herbs (such as lovage, tarragon or parsley)

Trim enough onions to fit comfortably into a jar with a tight fitting lid. Bring the remaining ingredients, other then the herbs, to a boil and add the trimmed onions. Bring the liquid back to a boil and cook about 1-2 minutes, until the onions are slightly soft but still firm. Place the onions in the jar, add the herbs, and pour over the pickling liquid. When cool, cap the jar and place in the refrigerator to cure for at least a week.

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Risotto with Sweet Peas

When short-term crops come into the garden and market, I tend to make as many variations as I can. I know that we can rely on our great supermarkets, especially in New York City, to provide us with anything from anywhere, anytime.  While that’s great fun, and makes for amazing eating, I still prefer the limits that true seasonality demands. Local peas are among those crops that are so short-lived that we want to make the best of them while they’re here. Even as the weather warms, we are still regaling in a great crop of shelling peas, so I thought I’d make a classic Venetian dish known as “risi e bisi.” I made it like any other risotto, adding a little smoky ham, which is optional of course.  Since I hate to waste those fresh green pea pods, I cooked them in the broth and squeezed them dry to extract the most pea essence I could. I think the classic way to make this involves cooking the peas with the rice. However, I steamed the peas separately since I wasn’t sure I was serving this immediately and I didn’t want the peas to brown. Also, it would be traditional to add Parmesan cheese and I included it in the recipe. I didn’t add it since I wanted the pea flavor to be as pure as possible. 

Risotto with Sweet Peas

4-5 c homemade chicken stock or vegetable broth

1 lb peas, shelled, reserving the pods

1 small onion (or ½ medium onion), diced

1 clove garlic, diced (optional)

Small piece of ham or pancetta, diced (optional)

1 tbsp butter or olive oil

1 c Arborio or other short-grained rice

¼ c white wine

Salt and pepper to taste

1/3 c grated Parmesan cheese (optional)

Rinse the pea pods and simmer them in the liquid for about 15 minutes. Remove the pods to a sieve and press down on the solids to extract as much pea essence as possible, adding it to the liquid, which should be kept warm.

Slowly sauté the onion and garlic and ham, if using, in the butter or oil until the onion is translucent. Add the rice and stir to coat, cooking for 3-4 minutes until the surface of the rice turns white. Add the white wine and stir to combine. When the wine has evaporated, start adding the stock or broth, about 1/3-1/2 cup at a time, cooking to absorb the liquid before adding more. This process should take about 20 minutes to cook the rice.  If you are serving this right away, you can add the peas about 10 minutes before the dish is complete. Otherwise, steam the peas separately.

When the risotto is done (al dente), add the peas if you’ve steamed them separately, add salt and pepper to taste, and stir in the Parmesan cheese. Serve as close to immediately as you can.

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Sour Cherry Jam

Our local organic orchard grows about a dozen types of cherries that all ripen at once, typically around Fathers’ Day. It’s shocking that over 300 cherry trees laden with thousands of pounds of fruit can be picked out over one weekend, but it’s true. Blink and you miss it, as I have many times. As consolation for a reunion that I missed because of a last minute business trip, I made sure that I picked cherries this year. Oh, of course, there are other opportunities to get cherries and you can always buy the fruit, but there’s nothing like a peaceful morning in the orchard with such beauteous bounty. (Other than the hoards of greedy pickers whom I avoided.)

 I picked a variety of cherries for eating – Heidelfigen, Rainiers, Hartland, Ulster, Chelan – and a couple of pounds of tart Montmorency cherries for cooking. Light red in color and very sour raw, I thought these would make a lovely sour cherry jam. While I’ve recently canned cherries in wine and port, and preserved them in brandy and kirsch, I haven’t made cherry jam in the last few years.

 The Montmorency variety is fragile, soft, juicy. I wasn’t sure how much sugar to add for jam so I cooked the cherries and measured them before adding sweetener. (Usually, I would macerate the fruit in the sugar.) After a second round of cooking with the sugar, the cherries were set aside to let the fruit plump. I had a motive for letting them sit: developing pectin from the addition of lemon peel, lemon seeds and the inner portions of the cherry pits, which I placed in a muslin bag. This technique has worked for me before, so I thought I’d give it a try. As a fallback, I knew I had canned pectin that I made from green apples last summer.  I didn’t need them though since the jam set up beautifully.

 This jam was stunning and delicious. I went back for more cherries the next week. They were riper than the first week and thus had higher water content, yielding more jars per pound.

Sour Cherry Jam

2 lbs sour cherries, pitted (yielding about 4 cups)

24 cherry pits

1 lemon

Sugar (around 1½ c, to be measured)

Reserve about a cup of whole cherries and coarsely chop the rest.  Pour into a large saucepan.

Place about 24 cherry pits between the folds of a dish towel and smash them lightly with a hammer so that the hard shell can be peeled off and the inner “nut’ revealed. Remove kernels, which should measure about 1–1½ tsp.  Peel the lemon, leaving the pith intact. Juice the lemon, reserving the seeds. Place the cherry pit kernels, lemon peel and seeds in a small muslin bag.  Add the lemon juice and the muslin bag to the cherries.

Bring the cherries to a boil and cook for about 5 minutes or until the cherry flesh is completely soft. Depending on the type of cherries used, the cooking time could vary widely.

Remove the muslin bag and pour the cherries and their liquid into a large measuring cup. (I got 2 cups.) Add ¾ of that amount (for me 1 ½ c) of sugar and return the mixture, including the muslin sack, to the saucepan. Bring to a boil and cooking, stirring to dissolve the sugar, for about 5 minutes. Remove from the heat, pour into the measuring cup, cover with parchment paper (love that trick from Christine Ferber), and, once cooled, let sit for 6 hours or overnight in the refrigerator.

Prepare jars and lids for water bath canning. Place a saucer in the freezer for testing the gel. Bring the cherry mixture to a boil and continue to cook until gelled (mine set in about 7 minutes, and was just shy of 221 degrees in temperature.  Set aside for a few minutes until the foam subsides. Remove the muslin bag and skim the foam. Pour into prepared jars and process in a water bath canner for 10 minutes after the water boils. Turn off the heat, remove the canner lid and let sit for 5 minutes before removing to a counter to cool undisturbed.

Makes at least two 8-oz jars or four 4-oz jars depending on the ripeness (water content) of the cherries.

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Broccoli with Sweet Preserved Kumquats

When I was at a local pea patch last weekend, I spotted a neighboring crop of broccoli that was starting to head and couldn’t resist cutting a few. Just-picked spring broccoli is a far cry from what you get in the supermarket or even from the farm in fall. Tender and sweet, it cooks in no time plunged into a large pot of boiling water.  Served simply with a little olive oil and salt or tossed into pasta, spring broccoli is a real treat.  Instead of using olive oil, I dressed the broccoli in a little kumquat liquid and garnished it with the preserved kumquats that have become an obsession of mine since the winter.

 I usually preserve lemons Moroccan-style when beautiful un-waxed organic fruit comes into the market, and dip into the jar all year long. This year, I also made lime pickle and preserved kumquats. The kumquats, unlike the unadorned lemons, contained sugar and spices in addition to salt, not to mention, a lot less salt. This is a liberal variation on an Indian recipe, posted by Tigress of Can Jam fame. Genius.  I made several batches of these kumquats – with the spices that Tigress used (fennel seed, cumin and black pepper) and with other traditional spices (coriander, cumin and cinnamon). I use the kumquat “juice” instead of oil and vinegar on salads and chopped preserved kumquats as accent, much as you would a pungent olive.  

Sweet Preserved Kumquats, thanks to Tigress in a Pickle

12 oz organic kumquats

Juice of 2 lemons

1 tbsp salt

½ c natural brown sugar such as demerara or turbinado

Spice mix

Alternative 1: 1 tsp fennel seed, 1 tsp crushed black pepper, ½ tsp cumin seed

Alternative 2:  1 tsp coriander seed, 1 tsp crushed black pepper, ½ tsp cumin seed, 1 3-4-inch cinnamon stick

Clean and thoroughly dry the kumquats, for a couple of hours at least. Slit each kumquat pole to pole but do not detach. Combine all of the ingredients in a jar. Seal and put it in a warm, sunny place (windowsill).  Shake the jar daily to re-combine the ingredients. The kumquats will gradually ooze their liquid. After about 3 weeks, the kumquats will be tender to the fork, at which time they should be refrigerated.  Use in a few months’ time.

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Bread Pudding with Alliums: Leek, Green Garlic, Garlic Scapes and Chives

Ah, another bread pudding to satisfy my other half’s culinary cravings. A reminder that there’s a chunk of stale bread in the drawer… what can you make of it? Sometimes just crumbs but this week a savory bread pudding, eggy and creamy in texture and chock full of the season’s fresh local alliums, members of the onion family.  I had long slender leeks, a long stalk of green garlic, garlic scapes and chives. Green garlic is the leek-like shoot, which in this case was harvested before the bulb began to form, thinning out the patch. Scapes are the stalks that carry the flower and once they start to bud and loop around, they’re typically snipped so that the plant directs its energy to producing the bulb that we associate with garlic. Here I sautéed the leeks, green garlic and scapes in a little butter and added the raw chives. I could instead have added the scapes raw, minced like scallions. Served with a green salad from our garden, this made a simple, homey meatless dinner.

Bread pudding is pretty flexible. I adjust the egg and mil mixture depending on the volume of bread and the wetness of the ingredients. Here I wanted more custard than in other similar recipes, so I increased the liquid and eggs. I could also have added cheese but I wanted the delicate flavor of the allliums to shine through. Note that bread pudding can be made the day before you’re serving it, and then popped in the oven for a little extra time since it will start out cold.

Bread Pudding with a Mixture of Alliums

4 c cubed stale bread in ¾-inch pieces

2 leeks

1 stalk green garlic

2-3 garlic scapes

2 tsp butter

1 tbsp water

Salt

2 tbsp chopped chives

1-2 sprigs of thyme, leaves removed

3 extra large or 4 large eggs

2 c milk

Optional: ¼ c heavy cream

If your bread is soft and not thoroughly stale, place it in a 250-degree oven for about 10 minutes. Place the bread in a large bowl.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Butter a shallow ovenproof dish (I use a 6×8 inch shallow glass pan) and find a wide shallow pan (such as a sheet cake pan) that can accommodate the dish.

Thoroughly clean the leeks and green garlic, slice them in half lengthwise and then crosswise into small pieces. Cut the garlic scapes into ½-inch lengths. Saute the allium mix in a little butter over medium-low heat for a minute or two, add the water and cover the pan, allowing the vegetables to braise without browning. Add a little salt and set aside to cool.

Combine the allium mixture with the bread cubes, add the thyme and chives, and place in the baking dish.

Lightly beat the eggs and add the milk and cream, if using, and pour over the bread mixture, pressing down on the bread to help it absorb the liquid.  Let it sit for 15 minutes. Place a kettle of water on the stove to boil.

Place the baking dish in the larger pan and pour boiling water around it to come up the sides about an inch. Bake for 45 minutes or until the custard is set. Remove the baking dish from the water and let it rest for 10 minutes before serving.

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Strawberry Rhubarb Sorbet with Ginger

I recalled from last year’s excellent rhubarb sorbet that rhubarb creates a good texture and the addition of a little corn syrup allowed a creamy and non-icy texture.  This year, I decided to incorporate strawberries and spice it up with ginger. I often see candied ginger added to jams and other concoctions, so I “candied” fresh ginger in the simple syrup used to poach the rhubarb. This was piquant and refreshing, great for the last sorbet of spring.

Strawberry Rhubarb Sorbet with Ginger

1 c water

1 c sugar

2 tsp finely chopped ginger

1 lb rhubarb, trimmed and cut into 1-inch pieces

1 pt strawberries, hulled

2 tbsp clear corn syrup

Combine the water and sugar in a saucepan and bring to a boil to make simple syrup. Add the ginger and simmer for 5 minutes. Add the rhubarb and simmer until soft and falling apart, about 5 minutes. Remove from the heat and set the rhubarb aside to cool.

When the rhubarb mixture is completely cool, add the strawberries and corn syrup and puree the mixture in a food processor until smooth. Refrigerate until very cold.

Process in an ice cream maker according to the manufacturer’s directions. Makes about a quart or a little more.

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Spring Zucchini Salad: First Harvest, Simply Served

The cross section of the first zucchini from my garden reveals a pattern of its life: nascent seeds on graceful branches, translucent flesh gradually tinged green inward from the shining green orb. Lovely and fresh.

 I’m having a good time watching the summer squash grow: male flowers tall on thin stems, female flowers nurturing their tiny orbs. The plants, once quivering from the cold of early spring, are now starting to stretch expansive leaves, creeping vines and tenacious tendrils across the garden. Later, I will probably use altogether different descriptions of the plants as they gradually overrun their turf, but now, in late spring, their robust attitude is most welcome.

 

The freshest zucchini deserves the simplest treatment: lightly steamed and sprinkled with a little olive oil and possibly some lemon juice or light vinegar. Here, I topped the disks with a compote of diced peppers and tomatoes with snipped herbs in a light vinaigrette.

Spring Zucchini Salad

1-2 zucchini or other summer squash, thinly sliced

Olive oil

Salt

Tomato and sweet pepper compote

Steam the zucchini until crisp tender and remove to a plate to cool. Sprinkle with (very little) olive oil and salt. Serve tepid, topped with tomato and sweet pepper compote.

Tomato and pepper compote

Adjust the amounts based on personal preference and the amount of zucchini you cook.

Combine 1-2 plum tomatoes, seeded and diced, ½ red or yellow sweet pepper, diced, a little vinaigrette made of olive oil, red wine vinegar and Dijon mustard, and snipped herbs such as rosemary and thyme, or parsley and chives. Let the mixture sit for a few minutes for the ingredients to mellow.

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Cold Green Pea and Mint Soup

This soup captures the moment in late spring when shelling peas are at their peak and mint is young, when the weather is hinting of heat, the moment when cold food is once again welcome. Inspired by a so-called “green pea gazpacho” that I ate at the Mövenpick Hotel in Geneva last week, I went to a local farm to pick shelling peas, grabbed some leeks from the farmer’s market and spearmint from my garden.

 I wanted the flavors of the fresh vegetables and mint to shine through so the preparation took a minimalist approach. After shelling the peas and trimming the leeks, I used the shells and the discarded green parts of the leek to make a vegetable broth. The peas were very young, just starting to fill their pods, and I found that once cooked, the shells contained a layer of pulp that could be eaten much in the way you eat an artichoke leaf, pulling the flesh between your teeth.

I simmered the leeks slowly in a little of the broth. I could have cooked them in butter or oil but was not convinced that the fat would translate well in the cold soup. I also cooked the peas in the stock, which enriched it even more.  After bringing the broth to a boil, I added the peas and cooked them briefly, only until they floated and the liquid started to return to a boil. I scooped them into a colander, which I plunged into a pot full of ice water to stop the cooking process.

 To make the soup, puree the cooled peas, broth, leeks, fresh mint leaves and a pinch of salt in a food processor until smooth. It’s important to have all ingredients cool or cold before pureeing in order to preserve the bright green color. Chill thoroughly. To serve, place a few cooked peas and some chopped scallions and/or chives in the bottom of a bowl and spoon the soup on top.

I liked the simplicity and pure, clean flavors of this slightly sweet soup. The version that I ate in Switzerland was smoother and creamier, and probably contained a potato and a little cream. It was probably also cooked longer and sieved. I will try this again, with a few variations, as this is definitely a late spring soup that I’d like to have in my repertoire. (By the way, frozen peas are pretty good, so you could make this with a 10-16 oz bag.) 

 As a lark (since as you know, I’ve rarely met a vegetable I didn’t want to roast), I roasted a few of the more tender pea shells as a little appetizer.  It worked!  The older ones were too woody, but the young pods were pliable enough to respond to the roasting technique.

Cold Green Pea and Mint Soup

1½ – 2 qts (1½- 2 lbs) fresh shelling peas, yielding 1½ c peas (10-12 oz), reserving shells

1 large leek, cleaned, white and light green part finely chopped, reserving tender green leaves

Water

½-1 tsp salt

1 c fresh mint leaves

Garnish: chopped scallions, reserved cooked peas, chives and mint leaves

Rinse the tea shells and leek trimmings and place them in a soup pot with water just to cover and add the salt. Bring to a boil and simmer for about 30 minutes. Drain and discard the vegetables (or reserve the most tender pea pods for roasting).

Simmer the leeks in a very small amount of broth until tender. Set aside to cool.

Prepare a pot full of ice water. Bring the broth to a boil and add the peas. As soon as they float and the liquid starts to boil, remove the peas to a colander and plunge it into the ice water to stop the peas from cooking.

Cool all of the ingredients. Reserve a few peas for garnish. Puree the remainder of the peas, with the broth, leek and mint, in a food processor until very smooth. Add a pinch of salt if needed. Chill until ready to serve. To serve, place the reserved peas, a little chopped scallion and/or chives at the bottom of a bowl, spoon on the soup and garnish with mint leaves. Makes about 4 cups, serving 3-4.

To roast the tender pea pods, preheat the oven to 425 degrees, sprinkle the pods with a little olive oil and salt and roast until crisp, about 7 minutes.

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