Kale Pesto with Whole Wheat Fusilli

20 Comments


What’s a girl to do when faced with too much kale and too little time? Make pesto!

When it comes to something like pesto, it’s hard to say that anyone has proprietary claims to any one recipe. I did look at this recipe on Tastespotting and this recipe on Food 52 for nut-cheese-oil ratios. In all honesty, I have so much kale on hand that I threw those proportions right out of the window. I just kept tinkering and measuring until I had a sauce that was so good, I wanted to eat more and more of it.

Kale has a clean, bitter flavor that I think pairs better with walnuts than pine nuts. When using walnuts, I like to also use walnut oil. Some Meyer lemon zest keeps the sauce nice and fresh. You can also zest a regular lemon if Meyer lemons are not available to you. If you don’t want to emphasize kale’s refreshing bitterness, you can use just olive oil. It will still taste great.

Kale pesto has an earthier flavor than basil-based pestos, and that flavor demands a heartier pasta like whole wheat. Fusilli is always a good choice for pesto because the spirals catch and capture the sauce beautifully.

It’s always a good idea to toss pasta and pesto together in a separate bowl. You don’t want the Parmesan in the sauce to burn and stick to the bottom of a hot pot or pan. The warm pasta — plus a little of the hot pasta cooking water if needed— will loosen the sauce up without the need for any external heat.

I am looking forward to eating my kale pesto in other ways this week, like on pizza or in lasagna. I hope it freezes well too because I made a lot of it!

Ingredients:

1 pound of whole wheat fusilli

2/3 of a cup of walnuts

2 cloves of garlic

2/3 of a cup of freshly grated Parmesan

The zest of 1 lemon

5 cups of washed and torn kale leaves, no stems and no ribs

1/2 cup of olive oil

1/2 cup of walnut oil

Salt

How to prepare:

1. Preheat the oven to 350°.

2. Spread the walnuts out in an even layer on a baking tray. Bake the walnuts until they are nicely toasted. This can take between 6-8 minutes. Be very careful to not let the walnuts burn. Let them cool before making the pesto.

3. While the walnuts are cooling, bring a large pot of salted water to a boil. Cook the pasta until it is al dente, about 12 minutes.

4. While the pasta is cooking, combine the garlic and walnuts together in a food processor with some salt. Add the Parmesan and the lemon zest. Pack all the kale into the food processor bowl and with the processor running, slowly drizzle in the olive and walnut oils. Continue to process everything until you have a smooth and creamy sauce. Adjust the seasoning.

5. When the pasta is cooked, drain it and pour it into a large bowl. Add the pesto, a dollop at a time, until the pasta is nicely and evenly coated. Serve immediately.

Spicy Braised Kale and Mushroom-Topped Polenta with Poached Goose Egg

24 Comments


In a fit of health consciousness, I went a little crazy at the market and bought several large bunches of local kale. When washed, it amounted to more than 30 cups. Yes, you heard that right: 30 packed cups of kale!

I love kale, but this was a little much even for me. Kale has been going into everything lately from eggs to potatoes, from soup to salad. But no matter how much kale I use, the pile doesn’t seem to diminish much. It’s the neverending pile o’ kale!

I took advantage of this kale-pportunity to try out another way to make polenta. Polenta is one of those things that is just elemental, like roast chicken or omelets. There are a million ways to make polenta. You can make it in the oven, the slow-cooker, the microwave or on the stove. You can cook it for 15 minutes or hours. You can spread it out onto a sheet pan and cut the hardened polenta into squares. You can deep-fry leftover polenta. The smallest amount of corn meal seems to make mountains of polenta. It’s a polenta-palooza!

Great to pair with the neverending pile o’ kale, no?

This polenta-making technique is from those fiddly folks at Cook’s Illustrated. It only takes 30 minutes of minimal whisking to achieve creamy polenta perfection.

And, as you can see, my CSA has goose eggs! Which are big honking suckers 😉 The equivalent, more or less, of two chicken eggs. There are a million ways to poach eggs too, but lately I have been liking Food52’s Control-Freak Poaching Method.

Ingredients:

For the polenta:

6 cups of water or stock

Salt

1 1/2 cups of yellow corn meal

4 tablespoons of butter

1/3 – 1/2 of a cup of grated Pecorino Romano or Parmesan

For the Spicy Braised Kale and Mushrooms:

2 tablespoons of butter

Olive oil

2 garlic cloves, finely minced

8 ounces of white button mushrooms, sliced

Salt and pepper

Red chili pepper flakes

1/4 cup of dry white wine

6 cups of roughly chopped kale

For the poached eggs:

Water

Salt

1 goose egg per person

How to prepare:

1. In a large, heavy Dutch oven, bring the 6 cups of water or stock almost to a boil with the lid on. Uncover the pot and season the water or stock with salt. Vigorously whisk the corn meal into the liquid a little bit at a time. As you whisk, be sure to get in all the corners and edges of the pot with the whisk to ensure that there are no lumps. When all the corn meal has been added to the water, cover the pot again and reduce the heat to low. Let the polenta simmer, stirring every 5 minutes, for 30 minutes total.

2. In the meanwhile, melt 2 tablespoons of butter with a little bit of olive oil in a large skillet set over medium heat. When the butter begins to foam, add the minced garlic and the mushrooms. Sauté the mushrooms until they give up most of their liquid and begin to turn golden. Add the white wine and as many red chili pepper flakes as you like. Season the mushrooms with salt and pepper. When the liquid has reduced to almost a glaze, add the kale to the pan and cover the skillet. Let the leaves wilt completely before stirring the kale and mushrooms together. Adjust the seasoning for a final time and remove the pan from the heat.

3. After 30 minutes, your polenta should be done. Move the pot away from the burner and vigorously whisk in the butter, one tablespoon at a time, until it has all been well-incorporated and the polenta is creamy. Stir in the Pecorino or Parmesan and adjust the seasoning.

4. In a medium-sized saucepan, bring about 4 to 5 inches of salted water to a near simmer. Carefully crack a goose egg into a small fine-mesh strainer. You want to separate the yolk and the more solid part of the white from the more watery part of the white. Carefully pour the egg into a large, shallow spoon. Gently lower the spoon into the water. Use another spoon to catch any bits of white that try to escape. When the egg is perfectly poached, the white should be opaque and when you gently move the egg back and forth, the white and the yolk should move in sync. When the egg is done, lift it out of the water and very carefully roll it onto a paper towel-lined plate.

5. To assemble the dish, spoon out about half a cup of polenta into a large, shallow bowl. Top the polenta with about a third of a cup of the spicy braised kale and mushrooms. Carefully position the poached egg on top of the braised kale and drizzle everything with good olive oil. Serve immediately.

Mascarpone-Polenta Cake with Rhubarb and Meyer Lemon

20 Comments


I wish that I was more of a baker. Unfortunately, my baking past is littered with all kinds of baking misfortunes: lumpy cakes, leaden cakes, cracked cakes, dry cakes, lopsided cakes, burned cakes, burned cakes with runny centers, runny cakes with charred tops. The list is unfortunately long!

I think it must be related to the fact that, when it comes to recipes, I am incorrigible: I rarely follow them to the letter. It doesn’t help that I am generally inclined to eyeball amounts instead of dirtying up another measuring cup or spoon. This is fine for regular cooking, but kind of disastrous when it comes to baking.

So when I decided to try to come up with my own recipe for a polenta cake with mascarpone that would make use of the first of this season’s rhubarb, I was pretty nervous.

Thankfully, it came out beautifully. The cake had a wonderfully moist and tangy crumb that beautifully complemented the rhubarb’s tartness. The idea of arranging the fruit (or vegetable? I guess rhubarb actually a vegetable) on the top of the cake batter comes from Nigel Slater’s Blueberry-Pear Cake from his Kitchen Diaries.

One more thing: be sure to remove any leaves from your rhubarb stalks before cooking. Only the stems are edible. The leaves contain oxalic acid that can make you pretty sick. It goes without saying to keep your animals away from rhubarb. More for you, I say. What a delicious way to live dangerously!

Ingredients:

About 2 1/2 cups of rhubarb, washed, trimmed and sliced into 1/2 inch pieces

1 cup of brown sugar, plus an additional 1/4 cup

8 tablespoons of butter (1 stick), softened

1 egg

3/4 cup of mascarpone

The zest and juice of one Meyer lemon

1 cup of all-purpose flour

1 cup of yellow corn meal

3/4 teaspoon of salt

1 teaspoon of baking powder

1/4 teaspoon of baking soda

How to prepare:

1. Line the bottom of a 9-inch springform pan with parchment paper. Butter the sides.

2. In a medium-sized bowl, toss the rhubarb with 1/4 cup of brown sugar. Let the rhubarb sit for about 30 minutes.

3. Preheat the oven to 350°.

4. Sift the dry ingredients (the flour, the corn meal, the salt, the baking powder and the baking soda) together into a large bowl.

5. In another large bowl, cream together the remaining cup of brown sugar and the softened butter. Add the egg, followed by the mascarpone, the lemon zest and the lemon juice. Continue beating the mixture until it is nice and fluffy. Beat in the dry ingredients, a little bit at a time, until they are well-incorporated into the batter.

6. Spread the batter out as evenly as possible onto the bottom of the springform pan. It will be thick. Arrange the rhubarb by pressing each piece into the batter in concentric circles. Bake the cake for about 1 hour and 30 minutes, until the top is golden and the center has set.

Let cool before slicing and serving.

Asparagus with Fried Egg and Parmesan

34 Comments


It’s asparagus season! Which means it’s time for my favorite fast lunch: sweet local asparagus topped with a fried egg and sprinkled with Parmesan. To anyone who thinks that making yourself lunch takes too much time, I challenge them to find something quicker than this meal.

But, Daisy, don’t you have to steam asparagus? Or boil it? That takes time!

Oh no no, young Padawan. You can . . . microwave it!

This idea comes from Andrew Carmellini‘s Urban Italian. In the book, he recommends microwaving asparagus as a quick and terrific way to perfectly cook it without sullying up another pot. I just have to quote him on this:

“Asparagus in the microwave is awesome. Yup. You read that right. I’m sure some food snob somewhere is recoiling in horror and throwing this book across the room, but I don’t care.”

I don’t care either. I love Carmellini’s food. He’s got a Michelin star and two James Beard Awards. If microwaving asparagus is good enough for him, it’s good enough for me.

This is one of those no recipe-recipes that can be multiplied by as much as you need. I give you the recipe for one but obviously, if you are cooking for more people, you will need to punch an extra minute or two into the microwave.

Ingredients:

6-7 asparagus spears, rinsed clean and trimmed of their woody ends

Olive oil

1 egg

Butter

Salt and freshly ground black pepper

Grated Parmesan cheese

How to prepare:

1. Spread out the asparagus in a single layer on a microwave-safe plate. Season the asparagus with salt and sprinkle on a little bit of water. Drizzle it with some olive oil. Cover the plate tightly with plastic wrap and nuke it for 1 minute and 30 seconds.

2. In the meanwhile, fry up an egg in butter.

3. Carefully remove the plastic wrap from the plate and arrange the asparagus spears on a clean plate. Top the asparagus with the fried egg. Season everything with salt and black pepper. Sprinkle on as much grated Parmesan as you like.

Serve with a good, crusty bread.

Moroccan-Style Brisket with Green Olives and Preserved Lemons

16 Comments


When I was an undergraduate, I had friends who could subsist on Cheerios and skim milk for the whole semester. I could never do that. First of all, I didn’t want to contract scurvy, beriberi or any other kind of disease caused by a vitamin deficiency. Secondly, the combo of cold cereal and low-fat milk remains heartbreakingly depressing and just plain unsatisfying to this day. Even after eating a big bowl of it, I still feel hungry.

Of course, those friends grew up and graduated to slightly more mature versions of “quick” meals like spaghetti and jarred sauce, or something with boneless, skinless chicken breast.

I don’t consider those to be very appealing either.

I like a meals. Real meals with real foods and real fats.

Having never been much of a snacker, I look forward to my two big square meals a day. I say two only because I still struggle to fit breakfast into my daily routine.

Believe me, if I were to have breakfast, it would be a square meal too!

What is a real meal to me? It doesn’t necessarily have to be a hot meal, but it has to be satisfying in a way beyond filling my empty stomach. I’m not looking for just the sensation of fullness. I want to feel fulfilled.

Lately, work has been overwhelming. My dissertation deadline is pretty much set for early August, which leaves me little time for much else but my good friends, weekly dim sum with my grandfather, and my parents.

But I will always make time for good food, cooking and even some blogging. Food is my passion. Cooking is how I decompress. Blogging keeps me social. Without it, I fear that I will start slinking around corners, stroking my pages and covetously purring, “MY PRECIOUS!”

Any LOTR fans out there 😉

In this period, I see nothing wrong with making something big and elaborate just for me. I can eat it for a week and feel nourished in both body and soul. This Moroccan-style brisket fit the bill this week. Preserved lemons give the brisket’s crowning sauce a distinctly delicious North African flavor. Preserved lemons can be a strong, but their strength mellows over time. This is why I would recommend that you make the sauce a day before serving the brisket. That way, the ingredients have time to meld together and their flavors can become rounder. Preserved lemons can now be found in many supermarkets and specialty stores. You can also order them online, but they are also ridiculously easy and inexpensive to make. Just remember to budget between 1-3 weeks of preservation time before they are usable. There are many recipes available online. This one and this one are good places to start.

Also, like any braised or stewed meat, brisket gets better over time. If you can resist the temptation of eating it straight out of the oven, let it cool and sit overnight in the fridge. It is also much easier to remove any fat from the surface of the sauce the next day.

This recipe is freely adapted from Joan Nathan‘s Foods of Israel Today. Her original recipe can be found more or less in its entirety here. It includes another recipe for preserved lemons.

Ingredients:

For the brisket:

1 3-3 1/2 pound beef brisket

3 cloves of garlic, thinly sliced into slivers

Salt and pepper

Olive oil

2 small onions, finely diced

1/2 teaspoon of ground turmeric

1/2 teaspoon of ground cinnamon

1 tablespoon of freshly grated ginger

2 bay leaves

1/2 cup of red vermouth

1 14.5-ounce can of crushed tomatoes

2 tablespoons of honey

1/2 cup of water

For the green olive-preserved lemon sauce:

2 small onions, finely diced

Olive oil

1 14.5-ounce can of crushed tomatoes

1/2 cup of water

6 ounces of pitted green olives

2 tablespoons of parsley, finely chopped

2 tablespoons of cilantro, finely chopped

2-3 preserved lemons, rinsed, flesh discarded, and peels finely chopped

Salt and pepper

How to prepare:

1. Blot the brisket dry with paper towels. If needed, trim the brisket of any excessive fat. Using the sharp point of a small paring knife, make shallow cuts all around the brisket and push slivers of garlic into the slits. Let the brisket sit uncovered on a wire rack for about 30 minutes.

2. Preheat the oven to 350°.

3. Season the brisket on both sides with salt and freshly ground black pepper. Heat about two tablespoons of olive oil over medium-high heat in a very large skillet. When the oil begins to shimmer, sear the brisket well on both sides. Remove the brisket to a large casserole or baking dish. Reduce the heat to medium and add the two finely diced onions to the skillet. While sautéing the onions, be sure to scrape up any tasty brown bits stuck to the bottom of the pan. When the onions begin to turn translucent, stir in the turmeric, the cinnamon, the ginger and the bay leaves. Cook the spices until they are fragrant (be careful to not let them burn). Deglaze the pan with red vermouth. Wait until most of the alcohol has cooked off before adding the tomatoes, the honey and half a cup of water. Let everything simmer together until it has thickened into a sauce. Adjust the seasoning and pour it over the brisket.

4. Cut a piece of parchment paper to just fit your casserole or baking dish. Completely cover the brisket with it and make a tight seal by pressing the paper down onto the meat and onions. Roast the brisket for about 3 hours, or until the meat is tender.

5. When your brisket is tender, remove it from the oven and let it cool completely in its sauce. If you can delay gratification, let it sit in the fridge overnight. This will make it much easier to remove any fat from its surface the next day. If that isn’t a possibility, try to skim as much fat as you can before moving forward.

6. While the brisket is cooling, make the green olive-preserved lemon sauce. In a large saucepan, heat about two tablespoons of olive oil over medium-high heat until the oil begins to shimmer. Sauté the onions until they begin to turn translucent. Add the tomatoes and half a cup of water. Reduce the heat and simmer the sauce until it has thickened. Add the olives, the chopped herbs and the preserved lemons to the sauce. Let everything simmer together until the flavors begin to come together, about 5-6 minutes. Adjust the seasoning.

7. When the brisket has cooled completely, slice it thinly on a diagonal against the grain. Return the sliced meat to its casserole or baking dish and recover it with its sauce. Before serving, heat your oven to 350°. Cover the casserole or baking dish with aluminum foil and bake the sliced brisket for about 30 minutes, or until warmed through.

Serve the brisket on couscous and topped with the green olive-preserved lemon sauce.

Kimchi Fried Rice

49 Comments


“I never see you eat rice,” Laura said, “Ever.”

“That’s not true! I eat risotto! and paella! and biryani . . .”

But despite my protestations, it is true though: I am not a fan of plain, steamed white rice.

I am so un-Asian.

When people find out I don’t really like plain white rice, I generally get two reactions:

• From non-Asian people, they look at me as if I just told them I was born with six fingers on one hand and the extra digit was removed at birth. At this point, they usually tell me how much they love rice.

• From Asian people, they just ignore me. I don’t even think they hear the “don’t,” they just hear the “like white rice.” Because what Asian doesn’t like white rice? Inconceivable!

Plain white rice was the bane of my young existence. As a child, it was always just giant piles of tasteless filler stacked in sticky, unswallowable heaps in front of me. My parents used to make me finish all of my rice before I was allowed to leave the dinner table. I used to drive them crazy by eating my rice grain-by-grain until they finally gave up and sent me to my room — which is all I really wanted in the first place.

As I have gotten older, I have learned to eat it. Partly because it gives me something to chew on as I contemplate all the dishes spinning around the Lazy Susan. After really strong flavors, I have come to appreciate white rice as a palate cleanser. Also, a Chinese meal just feels incomplete without rice on the table, regardless whether I eat any or not.

There is one way to always get me to eat my rice: fry it.

But let’s be honest, I’ll eat just about anything so long as it’s fried 😉

Kimchi fried rice is a particularly good way to get me to eat rice because not only is it fried, it’s so far removed from bland, steamed white rice that I will happily accept it on my plate. For this, I threw in some amazing all-beef hotdogs from my CSA. I know that there are a lot of people who don’t like hotdogs, but I never wonder what is in the ones that I get from my farmer. If you are a vegetarian, or just don’t like hotdogs, you can leave them out. Or replace them with Spam 😉

It’s also traditionally topped with a fried egg, and who can resist fried food topped with more fried food?!

Kimchi fried rice calls for a nice dollop of Korean red pepper paste, or gochujang. Gochujang is one of the most common condiments/ingredients in Korean cooking and as such, is fairly easy to find in Asian supermarkets. I think the problem is that there are so many brands of commercially-made gochujang that it can be a little overwhelming as to which one to pick. This is why I love this post from One Fork, One Spoon. As Diane and Grace point out, it’s hard to shop for Korean ingredients if you don’t speak Korean! I certainly don’t, and really appreciated their tasting notes and photographs of labels and brand logos.

Ingredients:

1 tablespoon of butter

1 tablespoon of vegetable oil

2-3 hot dogs, cut into pieces

2-3 green onions, chopped

2 cups of cooked (preferably day old) rice, japonica variety preferred

1 tablespoon of sesame oil

2 cups of napa cabbage kimchi, roughly chopped

1 tablespoon of gochujang

Salt

1 egg per person

How to prepare:

1. In a large skillet, heat the butter and oil over medium-high heat until the oil begins to shimmer. Add the sliced hot dogs and the green onions. Cook the hot dogs until they are heated through and the green onions have softened.

2. Add the rice to the pan, breaking up any clumps with the side of a wooden spoon or a spatula. Evenly drizzle the sesame oil over the top of the rice and let it cook undisturbed for about a minute before stirring it.

3. Add the chopped kimchi and the gochujang to the skillet. Stir everything together until red pepper paste has been well-incorporated and the kimchi has been evenly distributed throughout the rice.  Adjust the seasoning. Lower the heat and spread the rice and kimchi out in an even layer over the bottom of the pan. Let it cook for a few minutes until the rice has become nice and crispy on the bottom. Stir the pan again, scraping the browned rice off the bottom of the skillet. Adjust the seasoning for a final time and divide the fried rice into bowls.

4. In a separate pan, fry up one egg per person. Top each bowl of kimchi fried rice with an egg. Scatter some chopped green onions on top and serve.

Green Garlic Shrimp Scampi with Linguine

21 Comments


I am finally getting to the end of the massive amount of green garlic that I bought at the Greenmarket. Whew! It has been a very delicious process, but it still feels good to polish it off.

With the last three bulbs, I decided to go hog-wild with . . . not hog, shrimp!

Big, fat, sugary sweet Florida Gulf shrimp. Deepwater Horizon be damned. Yeah, there are some scary reports out there, but it’s not like I have Gulf shrimp every day. And I just had four. They were supposedly wild, which is supposed to be okay.

I live in New York City so I figure that the air I breathe is probably deadlier.

They were so tasty. And the green garlic was a great spring twist on shrimp scampi, that Italian-American classic. No green garlic? The original calls for regular garlic and is still delicious. Don’t want to chance it with Gulf shrimp? Go for any shrimp that make your motor run. Or no shrimp at all — the sauce for the linguine is incredible on its own.

On another note, has anyone been having a problem with the WordPress Reader? Generally, you should be able to see an updated feed of all the blogs you follow when you open it, right? Lately, it hasn’t been updating the some of the blogs that I follow. It’s really random, though. Sometimes it will just skip posts, or sometimes it just stops updating a single blog altogether.

I read somewhere that the solution is to edit the list and refollow everyone. I started doing that, but it was so annoying that I stopped.

Has anyone else had this problem? There must be another fix . . .

Ingredients:

1/3 pound of dried linguine

1 tablespoon of olive oil

3 green garlic bulbs, the white parts and the tender green stems finely chopped

1 tablespoon of parsley, finely chopped

2 tablespoons of butter

Red chili pepper flakes to taste

1/3 cup of dry white wine

1/2 pound of shrimp, shelled and deveined

The juice of one lemon

How to prepare:

1. Bring a large pot of salted water to boil and cook the linguine until it is al dente.

2. While the pasta is cooking, heat a tablespoon of olive oil over medium heat in a heavy saucepan or a Dutch oven until it begins to shimmer. Add the green garlic and sauté it until it begins to soften and turn translucent. Stir in the butter, the parsley, and red chili pepper flakes to taste. When the butter has completely melted, carefully add the white wine and the shrimp to the pan. Cook the shrimp until they are pink on the outside and their flesh has turned white or opaque all the way through, about 3-5 minutes.

3. Add the cooked linguine to the pan and toss everything together. Turn off the heat and add the lemon juice to the pasta. Toss again before dividing it up the and serving.

Fried Egg with Sautéed Ramps and Garlic-Rubbed Toast

18 Comments


Ramps. Just the thought of them at the Greenmarket makes me really excited. Ramps taste like the essence of spring given that they are the first greens to come up after a long winter of tubers and root vegetables.

I’m not the only one with ramp-mania either. Unfortunately, the dramatic rise in their popularity over the past few years has been raising concerns that foragers are over-harvesting to meet demand.

Ramps are notoriously difficult to cultivate. For the most part, they are a foraged food that is found and plucked in the wild. To ensure that the plant keeps growing requires foragers to leave their bulbs intact — problematic since most ramps are sold with their bulbs and roots attached.

So what do you do if you love them like I do? Should you stop eating them all together?

You don’t have to give up ramps as long as you stay committed to being a responsible consumer. If you forage for them, take no more than you can reasonably eat. If you can, just take the leaves and leave the bulbs in the ground. If you buy them, try to buy them from a farmer you trust. Talk to your farmer and make sure that their ramps are coming to you in a sensible and sustainable way. The Greenmarket NYC closely monitors and regulates foraged food to ensure that things like ramps will continue to be around in the future.

Celebrate their scarcity because that is what makes them special!

Once you get your hands on some sensibly-foraged ramps, this is a great way to prepare them for lunch or for a light supper. I hesitate to even call this a recipe since it is such a simple way to prepare them, but simple preparations are oftentimes the best way to showcase especially great ingredients.

Ingredients:

Thickly-sliced bread, as many pieces per person as you like

1 garlic clove

4 ramps per person, cleaned and bulbs split in half if they are on the large side

1 egg per person

Olive oil

Butter

Salt and black pepper

How to prepare:

1. Generously brush both sides of your bread with olive oil. Broil the pieces until they are golden brown. Rub a garlic clove on both sides of the bread, including the edges.

2. In a large skillet, heat some olive oil over medium heat. Add the ramps to the pan when the oil begins to shimmer. When the leaves have wilted and the bulbs have begun to turn translucent, shape the ramps into a circle and crack an egg into the center. Add a knob of butter to the pan. When the butter has melted, begin spooning the hot fat over the egg yolk as it cooks. When the whites have set, use a spatula to gently remove the egg and the ramps from the pan to a plate. Season the egg and ramps with salt and freshly ground black pepper.

Serve with the garlic-rubbed toast.

Ramp Risotto with Pancetta, Meyer Lemon and Parmesan

12 Comments


Spring is officially here when ramps are in!

And when I think ramps, I think risotto.

Sometimes, people think that risotto is difficult. But as long as you are willing to be patient, and don’t mind giving your stirring arm a little workout, risotto is a ridiculously easy way to have an elegant dinner.

This recipe is for two, but you can easily make the recipe for more people by adhering to the following ratio: for every 1/4 cup of rice, you will need one cup of liquid.

Ingredients:

1 quart (4 cups) of chicken or vegetable stock

3 ounces of pancetta, sliced into thin strips

Olive oil

1 bunch of ramps, cleaned with stems and leaves divided

1 cup of Arborio rice

1/4 cup of white wine

The zest and juice of 1 Meyer lemon

2 tablespoons of butter, cut into small cubes

1/4 cup of Parmesan, plus more for sprinkling

How to prepare:

1. Thinly slice the white ramp bulbs and roughly chop the leaves. Keep them separated.

2. In a saucepan, bring the stock up to a boil and then turn off the heat.

3. In a large Dutch oven or heavy-bottomed saucepan, brown the pancetta over medium heat until most of the fat has rendered and the pancetta has just begun to crisp. Spoon off all but one tablespoon of fat. Add the sliced white parts of the ramps and sauté them until they begin to turn translucent. Add the rice and toss the grains in the fat for about a minute or two.

4. When the rice grains begin to lose their opacity, add the white wine. When the wine has been absorbed, begin adding the hot stock, a ladleful at a time, while stirring constantly, until you have used all the stock or the rice has lost its chalky hardness and is perfectly al dente. This can take between 15-20 minutes.

5. When the rice is creamy and the grains are al dente, turn off the heat. Add the lemon juice and zest, the chopped green ramp tops and the butter. Incorporate everything into the rice. When the ramp tops have wilted, stir in about a 1/4 cup of Parmesan. Adjust the seasoning, adding a little hot water or more hot stock if the risotto seems to be a little thick. Serve immediately topped with more grated Parmesan.

The Daring Kitchen April Cooks’ Challenge: Whole Wheat Flatbread with Grilled Eggplant, Goat Cheese Ricotta, Sundried Tomatoes and Maple-Chili Pistachios

18 Comments


This was the Daring Kitchen challenge that almost didn’t happen. After a few weeks of thinking, toying with ideas and brainstorming, the challenge got put on hold and then was quickly buried under a sea of other priorities. When I finally got around to making a grocery list and buying ingredients, my oven promptly decided that it was no longer participating in my kitchen adventures 😦

I thought about changing direction and doing something else, but my heart had been set on making a flatbread. I went as far as to contemplate doing the flatbread in a cast-iron pan on top of the stove (the stovetop was still working) and using a mini-blowtorch to char the top of it.

“Daisy,” Laura said, “I think that’s a bad idea.”

I even went out and bought pressurized butane despite having doubts that my newly acquired mini-torch — meant for itty bitty crèmes brûlées — would probably melt or malfunction if used on something as big as a 12 or 14-inch pizza . . .

“Daisy. It’s just a bad idea.”

Sigh.

Thankfully, my oven got fixed a lot sooner than anticipated — which just goes to show that you can get anything fixed in this town so long as you utter three magic words:

I smell gas . . .

I thought that was pretty smart of me 😉

Once the oven was fixed, I was back on track, though given the chance, I would have tinkered with the recipe more before posting. To make up for how rough the recipe is, I have written the recipe based what I would do it if I were to make it again — like use a lot more eggplant!

Also, I would suggest that you tinker a little bit with your cooking times and temperatures as it appears that when they fixed my oven, they also re-calibrated it so that it seems to run hotter that it did before.

This month, David and Karen from Twenty-Fingered Cooking challenged us to come up with our own recipes using the three lists of challenge ingredients. The recipe must include at least one item from each list, and if we fail, we must order a pizza.

The challenge lists were:

List 1: Parsnips, Eggplant, Cauliflower
List 2: Balsamic Vinegar, Goat Cheese, Chipotle Pepper
List 3: Maple Syrup, Instant Coffee, Bananas

When I first saw the challenge, I was thinking of a balsamic, instant coffee and maple syrup-glazed steak on top of a parsnip-goat cheese purée.

Then I thought about using the eggplant and cauliflower to make a vegetarian chili with chipotle peppers and instant coffee.

Then I thought that it would be fun to try to challenge myself to make the most inedible dish possible. Some kind of cauliflower-instant coffee banana cream pie, or a banana-chipotle baba ghanoush, but I felt like that might be a violation of the challenge’s good spirit.

To save me from myself, I threw the idea out to amazing Heather over at Ruby and Wheaky (one of my favorite blogs and one of my favorite bloggers — do check her site out when you get the chance! She is a phenomenal writer). She suggested a “maple syrup and chipotle-glazed cauliflower dish,” “an instant coffee dusted baked/fried eggplant dish with a goat cheese topping,” “an eggplant, goat cheese sandwich with a side dish of coffee-infused banana chips,” or “a crazy sort of eggplant, goat cheese pizza topped with maple- glazed pistachio nuts.”

As you can see, her ideas were way better than mine!

A giant thank you to David and Karen for the great challenge! I had a ton of fun dreaming up different recipes. Your challenge made me feel like an Iron Chef!

Blog-checking lines:
Our April 2012 Daring Cooks hosts were David & Karen from Twenty-Fingered Cooking. They presented us with a very daring and unique challenge of forming our own recipes by using a set list of ingredients!

Ingredients:

For the flatbread:

1 packet of active, dry yeast (about 2 1/4 teapoons)

1 cup of lukewarm water (between 105°-115°)

1 teaspoon of salt

2 tablespoons of olive oil

2 cups of bread or all-purpose flour

1 cup of whole wheat flour

For the toppings:

2 medium eggplants or one large eggplant, cut into 1/4-inch thick slices

Olive oil

2 tablespoons of balsamic vinegar

1 teaspoon of salt

1/2 cup of sundried tomatoes, cut into thin strips

6 ounces of goat milk ricotta (or another kind of soft and crumbly goat cheese)

1/3 of a cup of shelled pistachios

1 teaspoon of maple sugar (or one tablespoon of maple syrup)

1/4 teaspoon of chipotle pepper powder

1/2 teaspoon of salt

How to prepare:

1. In a large bowl, mix together the yeast and the warm water. Let the yeast bloom undisturbed for about 10 minutes.

2. In a separate bowl, mix the two flours together. Once the yeast has bloomed, add the salt and two tablespoons of olive oil. Stir in the flour, a little bit at a time, with a wooden spoon until it has all been incorporated. Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured countertop and knead it for about 6-8 minutes until the dough is soft and satiny. Shape the dough into a ball and place it in a lightly oiled bowl. Cover the bowl tightly with plastic wrap and let it rise until it has doubled, about 1 1/2 to 2 hours.

3. In the meanwhile, prepare the eggplant. In a small bowl, whisk together the balsamic vinegar and 1 teaspoon of salt. Let sit for a minute or two to let the salt dissolve. Whisk in about four tablespoons of olive oil. Brush both sides of each eggplant slice with the balsamic-olive oil mixture.

4. Brush a grill pan lightly with olive oil and heat it over medium-high heat. When the oil just begins to smoke, lay a few slices of eggplant on the grill. Grill the slices for a minute or two on each side. If you want, you can give the slices a quarter turn on the grill so that they have some nice grill marks. Remove the slices to a plate as you finish them.

5. Preheat the oven to 350°. In a small bowl, toss the shelled pistachios with the maple sugar or maple syrup, the chipotle pepper powder and a drizzle of olive oil until they are evenly coated. Toast the nuts for no more than 5 minutes, checking them frequently to make sure that they don’t burn. Remove the nuts from the oven and let them cool before roughly chopping them.

6. Turn the oven up to 425°. Punch the risen dough down and stretch it out to cover the bottom of a half-sheet pan. Lightly brush the surface with olive oil and evenly arrange the grilled eggplant slices over the top. Scatter the sun-dried tomatoes and the goat cheese evenly over the eggplant. Bake the flatbread in the oven for about 10-15 minutes. The dough should be crisp and the edges should be browned. Remove it from the oven and scatter the chopped pistachios over the top. Drizzle the flatbread with olive oil and cut into squares to serve.