I’m Stuffed!

I’m not a vegetarian. I swear. I couldn’t possibly be more in favor of eating animals. Delicious, tasty animals. But when I looked back over the last four and a half month’s worth of recipes, I realized that you, my loyal readers, might be having a hard time buying my non-vegetarian-ness. Granted, there are my obsessive bacon entries, but there are also 12 entries in the “vegetables” category and only 1 or 2 in every other category. Obviously, I need to do something to reinforce my carnivorocity and convince you that this is not a blog about eating your greens. Unfortunately, this entry is not that.

It's not really my fault; my intention was to write about these gorgeous lamb steaks I picked up at the farmer's market last weekend. But the lamb guy at threw in an obscenely huge zucchini, just because he was trying to unload it. Despite Nick's well-documented disaffection for all things courgette, I couldn't not turn this 18" zucchini into something delicious. So, I did what anyone with a foot and a half long zucchini would do. I took it home and made a lot of really bad sex jokes.

Once that was out of my system, I stuffed it with quinoa, feta, and pine nuts. The original plan was to serve this with the lamb steaks, but the stuffed zucchini was a hearty enough meal in itself, alongside a tomato salad. So the steaks were set aside for another night and, alas, you’re stuck with another vegetable recipe.

To make up for yet another veggie-centric posting, I'll leave you with this, guaranteed to make any 4th grader laugh:

What’s zucchini’s favorite game? Squash.


Quinoa Stuffed Zucchini
Serves 4

1 obscenely large zucchini or 2 normal sized zucchini
2 Tbsp. olive oil
1 medium onion, diced
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 Tbsp. fresh oregano, minced
3 Tbsp. pine nuts, toasted
1 egg, lightly beaten
3 cups quinoa (prepared from 1 cup dry quinoa and 2 cups water)
2 oz. Greek feta, crumbled
Salt and pepper to taste

1. Preheat oven to 375-degrees.

2. Trim the ends and cut the zucchini in half. Using a melon baller, scoop the pulp out of the zucchini, leaving a ½” thick shell.

3. Heat the olive oil over medium heat. Sauté onion until softened, about 5 minutes. Add garlic and sauté for another two minutes.

4. Toss onion mixture, oregano, pine nuts, with the quinoa. Add egg and mix quickly, so the egg doesn’t scramble among the other warm ingredients. Season with salt and pepper and fold in the feta. Fill the zucchini shells to heaping with quinoa filling.

5. Bake shells for 30 minutes.

A Letter of Apology

Dear Swiss Chard,

I am sorry for the disrespect I showed to your Vitamin-K-rich leaves recently. It was not my intention to cause you any harm, emotional or physical, or to imply that you required an excessive amount of seasoning in order to attain edibility. I hold your collection of vitamins, minerals, and fibers in the highest esteem. My bones, my colon and I are indebted to your vast nutritive properties. I have the utmost respect for your slightly bitter, slightly salty flavor and I am committed to making sure people don't confuse you with your cousin, Spinach.

I look forward to many fruitful years working together.

Best wishes,

Andrea
The Best Bite


Sauteed Chard
Serves 4, as a delicious, nutrient dense side

3 tablespoons pine nuts
1 large bunch green or rainbow chard
2 Tbsp. olive oil
1 medium white onion, minced
2 tablespoons golden raisins
2 cloves garlic, finely minced
Juice of 1/2 lemon

1. Heat a small frying pan over medium heat and toast the pine nuts until fragrant. Set aside.

2. Rinse and drain the chard. Pull the stems off the greens. Chop the stems and set aside. Cut the greens crosswise into 1-inch-wide slices and set aside.

3. In a medium saucepan, heat the oil over medium-high. Add the onion and raisins, and cook until the onion is translucent. Add the garlic, and cook until fragrant, 1-2 minutes. Add the chard stems and cook until they start to soften. Add the chard greens and reduce the heat to medium. Cook until the chard wilts, probably not more than 10 minutes. Stir in the lemon juice and the pine nuts, season with salt and freshly ground pepper, and serve immediately.

The Obligatory Tomato Recipe

Am I the only one totally sick of salad? Am I the only one dreaming of slow-cooked stews and meaty feasts? Enough with the summer produce already, produce so gorgeous and colorful and tasty that it doesn't need much more than a sprinkling of salt and olive oil to reach complete vegetal nirvana. Enough with the abundance of perfect zucchini and tomatoes and peaches and corn. Dammit, I want to actually cook when I'm cooking. I want to work with ingredients that need me, like butternut squash and ugly little celeriac.

Yes, I mourn the loss of potential beach days. Yes, I will miss wearing flip-flops to work. And yes, yes, yes, I will completely regret writing these words when I have snot frozen on the end of my nose. But I've had it up to my eyeballs with salad as of right this very second.

The tomatoes, however, are posing a problem. They’ve been just about as gorgeous as tomatoes have a right to be. Sweet and fat and properly tomato-y. It would be a crime not to give them a proper shout-out, almost disrespectful to the effort they've put into being delicious. So here is one more salad recipe, because I know that come January, this is the salad that will occupy the majority of my occipital lobe, where I file all my food fantasies.

This is my variation on the classic Greek salad. Unlike the American version of Greek salad, I prefer it lettuce-free, the way the Greek peasants traditionally went for it (I assure you, the romaine in the photo is strictly garnish.) Unlike the Greek peasants, I ditch the olives because I’m not a fan (I’ve tried. I will continue to try, but it’s just not happening.) I serve it with warm pita chips (not sure where the Greek peasants stand on those.) Maybe it's more Greek-ish than actually Greek.

If you can’t get your hands on luscious, straight-from-the-farm, end-of-summer tomatoes, then don’t bother. Order in Thai and eat it straight from the container, because that’ll be the equivalent of the kind of authentic Greek experience you’ll get if you make this with listless supermarket tomatoes. Otherwise, it's a glorious tangle of summer flavors, enough to almost love salad again.


Greek-ish Salad
Serves 6

2 lbs. extra fabulous tomatoes, cut into 1” chunks
¾ tsp. salt
3 Tbsp. red wine vinegar
1/2 Tbsp. fresh lemon juice
3 tsp. minced fresh oregano leaves
1 medium clove garlic, minced
Pinch sugar
6 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
1/3 red onion, sliced as thinly as humanly possible
1 English cucumber, halved lengthwise
3 oz. feta cheese, crumbled
fresh ground black pepper to taste
4 pitas (I prefer whole wheat) toasted and sliced into sixths, so they’re sort of chip-like.

1. Toss tomatoes with ¼ tsp. of salt, and set aside. The salt will draw the water out, so it doesn’t wind up diluting your vinaigrette later.

2. Whisk together the remaining ½ tsp. salt and the next six ingredients (vinegar through olive oil). Set aside.

3. Toss the onion and cucumber together. Drain liquid from tomatoes and add those to the onion and cucumber. Drizzle with enough vinaigrette to moisten and toss, adding more vinaigrette if necessary. Season with pepper. Crumble feta over salad and serve with toasted pitas.

Behold the Indian Feast!

Can two dishes plus rice be considered a feast? They can if you’re the one making it.

Indian food is a pain in the ass to cook. Most recipes have so many steps, that the prep requires a load of prep: spices need toasting, onions need chopping, tomatoes need dicing, chicken needs skinning. Those two dishes can take hours to make. But Indian food is top of my favorite cuisines list, with its exotic spices, complex flavors, fragrant sauces. Why should restaurants get to have all the fun? Which is where Suvir Saran’s “Indian Home Cooking” comes in.

Suvir Saran is a pretty well-known chef in New York, and he’s cooked stellar upscale Indian at a couple of great places, including the wonderful Devi, where I had a great meal (with wine pairings). So I was delighted and a little bit mystified when I spotted the very talented Mr. Saran manning the steam tables in our very mediocre corporate cafeteria.

Here is how I imagine this came to be, but I could totally be making it up: “Indian Home Cooking” is published and some adroit publicist has a stroke of genius: send Suvir Saran to corporate cafeterias to cook his amazing food, armed with stacks of books. It's an excellent idea, really: we corporate drones are, quite literally, a captive audience. What the adroit publicist did not bank on was the restaurant-obsessed groupie who yelled “It’s Suvir Saran!” and waved maniacally across the cafeteria.

I can’t help it. It just came out. I wasn’t expecting to see a Michelin rated chef near the sporks. His eyes got really big and he looked scared. I bought my Indian lunch, and a copy of the book to boot (hats off to you, adroit publicist!). But Suvir is a man of strength. He can handle a fan base. He recovered and graciously autographed my book. He even gave me his email address and suggested I come into Devi as his guest. Obviously, he didn't think I was that much of a freak.

I never took Suvir Saran up on the offer. Partly because I wanted to cook something from “Indian Home Cooking” before I contacted him, but mostly because I was afraid he would think I was just trying to mooch a free meal off of his goodwill (which was pretty much the plan). But I liked that I had the option. I was truly disappointed at news of Devi’s shuttering last week. Now, if I want to eat his food, I have to make it myself. So that's what I did, preparing his Lahori Chicken Curry and Chilled Smoky Eggplant with Yogurt and Cilantro in tribute.

Suvir's recipes (I feel like we're on a first name basis; he gave me his email address) are actually reasonable for a home cook. And they're even reasonable for an American home cook, who might not have "12 cardamom pods" and "9 whole cloves" just sitting around (they lose their punch quickly, so use them stat or store them in the freezer.) Yeah, there's a lot of prep just to get your mise en place set, but that's just the nature of this kind of highly spiced cuisine. The chicken was really tasty and was a brighter, less-greasy version of the chicken curry available from our local take-out joint.

But the eggplant. Oh. My. God. The. Eggplant. Creamy and silky and smoky. Rich, but still seemingly virtuous. You can take Suvir's advice and roast your whole eggplant directly on the flame of a gas burner, but if you're like me, you'll switch to the less stressful oven roasting method when the eggplant catches fire and a flame shoots up from it. (Although I had taken the batteries out of the smoke detector.) It is a little more work than usual, for what amounts to a side dish. But it's worth every bit of effort, at least until my buddy Suvir embarks on his next restaurant gig. Or comes back to our cafeteria.

Chilled Smoky Eggplant with Yogurt and Cilantro
Courtesy Suvir Saran
Serves 4-6

1 large eggplant
2 Tbsp. canola oil
1 medium red onion, diced
1 tsp. salt
2 cups plain yogurt
1" fresh ginger, peeled and minced
1/2 fresh hot green chile, minced
2 Tbsp. chopped fresh cilantro
1/4 tsp. garam masala

1. Roast the eggplant on a cookie sheet in a 500-degree oven until blackened, about 20 minutes. Let cool and peel the skin off. Cut off and discard the stem. Put the eggplant into a bowl and mash with a potato masher.

2. Heat the oil over medium-high heat in a large frying pan. Add the onion and salt, and saute until the onion is translucent, about 5 minutes.

3. Add the mashed eggplant and cook, stirring often, until the dry, about 10 minutes. Take the pan off the heat and let cool for about five minutes.

4. Whisk the yogurt until smooth in a large bowl. All the eggplant and all the remaining ingredients and stir well. Chill until cold. Taste for salt and serve cold.

Whither radicchio?

Recipes are like friends; some you’re willing to go a little more out of your way for than others. Spinach Salad with Grilled Red Onion and Tahini Vinaigrette never seemed like it was going to be my BFF. It had been on my radar for a while, but it took the proper planet alignment in order to claw it’s way onto the table: a leftover jar of tahini (courtesy of Virginia T. Habeeb) happened to coincide with a fortuitous trip to the farmer’s marker (baby spinach! red onion!) and a gut-bustingly large Indian lunch. Fate had determined that a light dinner was on the cards and this was the light dinner it was meant to be.

I loved the idea: caramelized red onions and mild baby spinach tossed in a nutty tahini vinaigrette and served in bowl-like, purple radicchio leaves. But the radicchio was a problem, namely because I didn’t have any. There was none at the farmer’s market. None at the crummy grocery store 5 blocks from my apartment (hardly a shocker) and none at the overpriced-but-cute gourmet shop another two blocks beyond that.

I had to make a crucial decision: how important was the radicchio? It’s not like I was trying to make spaghetti and meatballs without meatballs. But the radicchio sounded good. My mental tastebuds imagined how the bite of the leaves would balance the sweetness of the onions. I wanted the radicchio, but I’d already been to three places and walked a mile in search of it.

Part of living the car-free life, means that the number of errands I can run or the distance I can travel in a day is limited to how far my hot-pink Pumas are willing to take me. Today, they weren’t very willing. I went home, radicchio-less.

The salad was great. The dressing is creamy, but still light (mixing it in a blender is a must) and the onions (I broiled) are fantastic. The recipe makes quite a bit of dressing, and I used the leftovers as a marinade for notoriously-bland tilapia a few days later with stellar results.

But I couldn't shake the feeling that those sweet onions and the nutty dressing could have used a bitter counterpoint. It needed radicchio. I guess I'll have to look a little harder next time.

Spinach Salad with Grilled Red Onion and Tahini Vinaigrette
Courtesy Bon Appétit, June 1996
Serves 10

1/2 cup water
1/4 cup white wine vinegar
3 tablespoons tahini (sesame seedpaste)
2 tablespoons coarse-grained mustard
1 teaspoon honey
1 small garlic clove, minced
3/4 vegetable oil

2 large red onions

12 cups (packed) baby spinach,trimmed
10 large radicchio leaves

1. Combine first six ingredients in blender and blend well. Gradually blend in oil. Season to taste with salt and pepper.

2. Cut onions lengthwise into 1/2-inch-thick wedges, leaving root ends intact. Place onions in 15x10-inch glass baking dish. Pour 1 cup vinaigrette over onions, coating evenly. Let marinate 3 hours. Chill remaining dressing. (Can be made 1 day ahead. Chill onions.)

3. Prepare barbecue (medium-high-heat) or preheat broiler. Sprinkle onions with salt and pepper. Grill or broil onions until golden, turning occasionally, about 12 minutes. (Can be made 6 hours ahead. Let stand at room temperature.)

4. Place spinach in large bowl. Toss with enough vinaigrette to coat. Season with salt and pepper. Fill radicchio leaves with spinach. Top with grilled onions. Pass remaining dressing separately.

Ugly Soup

Food should be pretty. As the Italians say, “we eat with the eyes first.” Perhaps this is why unattractive dishes like this and this tend to be less popular at buffets and potlucks. Although I suspect they wouldn’t do much better in the cafeteria at the Perkins School for the Blind. But when you’re cooking and the image you have in your head of the beautiful magic the ingredients will create together bears zero resemblance to the pot-full of bleached sludge you end up with, ugly cooking is ok. Especially if you know the ingredients are fresh and delicious and you don’t have anything else in the apartment to make for dinner.

This is what happened with this soup. I started with this Gourmet recipe, but played with the quantities and ingredients, adding in a couple of extra things along the way. When I was done, it looked like grout thinned with chicken stock. But it was delectable, velvety and packed full of caramelized summer squash. Rich enough for a meal, but cream-less, so it still felt kind of virtuous. And I was delighted to have happened upon an ideal use for my crisper full of aging vegetables. It was excellent reheated the next day as well, slightly mellower and still yummy but, alas, no prettier.

I did make the Mint Pistou Gourmet recommends garnishing the soup with, but it proved too much work for too little deliciousness. If you happen to have some fresh pesto in the house, a small dollop on top of each serving will be tasty and might even add a bit of polish, but this is never going to be the supermodel of soups, so don't get your hopes up.

I’m posting a pretty flower picture of instead of the soup, because the camera broke when I took it. Ok, I’m kidding. The camera is fine, and the soup isn’t so atrociously ugly that it’s a turn off. To be perfectly honest, it's not even that ugly; I just needed a good angle for this piece. I promise you’ll enjoy it if you make it. Unless it comes out like this. Then throw it away and promise never to set foot in the kitchen again.

Ugly Soup
Serves 6

4 Tbsp. unsalted butter, cut into pieces
1 medium onion, diced
½ teaspoon salt
1 large garlic clove, minced
1 ½ lb yellow summer squash, halved and thinly sliced
2 carrots, thinly sliced
¾ lb. yellow-fleshed potatoes peeled, halved, and thinly sliced
4 cups chicken stock
1 cup corn, fresh or frozen
Salt and pepper to taste

1. Melt butter in a 6- to 8-quart heavy pot on medium-low. Add onion and salt, stirring occasionally until softened, 6-8 minutes.

2. Add squash and carrots, and let cook for another 7 minutes. Add garlic and cook for 30 seconds. Add potato and stock and bring to a boil. Add corn, reduce heat to low and simmer, partially covered, until vegetables are very tender, about 15 minutes. Remove from heat.

3. Puree soup with a hand-blender until smooth. Add a little water or stock to thin it, if it’s become too thick. Return to heat and simmer for 3 minutes. Season with salt and pepper, and serve.

Just Try It.

For some reason, I feel pressure to make you like the foods you think you don’t like. I’m convinced that if you don’t like rhubarb, you’ve never had well-prepared rhubarb or if curry isn’t your thing, then you’ve just not tried the right one. And I will serve you perfectly prepared rhubarb and exquisitely executed curry and the sun will break through the clouds and beam great epiphanic rays upon your head and your life will change forever and I’ll be able to take all the credit for it.

I’m not sure why it’s so important to me that you like rhubarb and curry (or tapioca or tomatoes or avocado). There are things I don’t like (olives and black licorice) and, no matter how many times I try them, the old taste buds still aren’t having it. So if I haven’t been able to change my black licorice or olives tune, I’m not sure why I’m so convinced I can make Carolyn see the joy in beets (Come on, Carolyn. They’re sweet, they’re hot pink, they go with every outfit. What’s not to like?).

Nick gets stuck with the “just try it” treatment the most. He’s lucky he’s not a picky eater, so there aren’t too many things I can foist unwillingly upon him. But there is zucchini. I cleverly infiltrated it into dinner the other night with my Zucchini Basil Muffins, but why-oh-why doesn’t he appreciate the crispy, green summer squash full on? Has zucchini wronged him in some way? Did zucchini boil his bunny?

I am determined. I will show Nick the zucchini light.

And I will do it with Zucchini Carpaccio, the latest trend in the fast-paced zucchini-sphere. Recipes for Zucchini Carpaccio have popped up in cooking doyenne Patricia Well’s latest book, in unbearably adorable Parisian blogger Clotilde Dusoulier’s new book, in Gourmet, and on the Food Network. The recipes are variations on the same concept: thinly sliced raw zucchini marinated in a vinaigrette and sprinkled with some salty cheese for balance. Perhaps this kind of unadulterated zucchini exposure is what Nick’s been missing.

Zucchini Carpaccio is simple enough to wing, sans recipe. I sliced up a zucchini, as thinly as my below-par knife skills allow (I really need a mandoline.) Drizzled it with a lemon vinaigrette and scattered some salty, Greek feta and red onion slices across the top. A 15 minute steep in the vinaigrette later, I presented my beloved husband with my beloved vegetable.

The verdict? He liked it. He ate the whole plateful and said, “I liked it.” Now, I’m not fooling myself, I know that “I liked it” isn’t swooning with undying passion. But I’m making headway. Even if I still don’t like licorice.

Zucchini Carpaccio
Serves 2, as a light main course

1 medium zucchini, sliced as thinking as your knife skills (or mandoline) allow
2 oz. fresh feta
a few slivers of red onion, to taste
1 Tbsp. fresh squeezed lemon juice
1 tsp. Dijon mustard
½ tsp. sugar
¼ tsp. kosher salt
3 Tbsp. olive oil
Freshly ground black pepper, to taste

1. Lay the zucchini slices out on two plates. Scatter the feta and red onion across them.

2. Whisk together the next five ingredients and drizzle over the zucchini. Cover with plastic wrap and let sit for 15-20 minutes. Before serving, add a few grinds of black pepper to each plate.

Green Garlic Won't Blow Your Head Off.

The concept of “garlic soup” sounds like it would ensure a vampire-free future for all who sampled it. But this isn’t necessarily the case, I learned, when this week’s haul from the farmer’s market included a few bunches of “spring garlic.” Spring garlic, sometimes referred to as green garlic or young garlic, is basically garlic, jr. The long, green stalks are picked before the bulb has a chance to fully form and develop the papery skin around each clove, so the whole thing is edible.

I’ve never cooked with spring garlic before, and while I’d read about it’s mildness compared to fully-grown garlic, the pungent, powerfully garlicky aroma was a little disconcerting. I had an appointment with my trainer early the next morning and the last thing I wanted to do was show up with the essence of garlic emanating from my pores.

I needed the advice of an expert. And when it comes to produce, it doesn’t get much more expert than Alice Waters, the luminary of the seasonal cooking movement. Unfortunately, I don’t have Alice’s cell number, but her book, “Chez Panisse Vegetables,” is no shabby second. She suggests showcasing green garlic by pureeing it in a soup, with potatoes. She assured me that it's not powerful enough to blow our heads off (although she didn't quite put it that way.) Coincidentally, the Amateur Gourmet recently made the same recipe and wasn’t too impressed. But the recipe sounded so lovely and I had the ingredients in the house so I made it anyway. Although it turned out that I didn’t have all the ingredients in the house.

I only had 32oz. of the 48oz. (or 1.5 quarts) of chicken broth the recipe requires. I hate to make changes to a recipe before I’ve tried it as written. But, I hate more to leave the apartment on a breezy Sunday evening at 6:30pm, when I’ve got the music going and I can conceivably get dinner done in time to sit on the roof and watch the sunset. So substitutions were made, white wine was used, and the result was wonderful. Creamy, but not too rich. Mild but still garlicky, without garlic’s spicy bite. And perfect, served alongside Zucchini Basil Muffins and an early summer sunset. And my head? Still intact.

Green Garlic Soup
Based on Alice Water’s recipe from “Chez Panisse Vegetables”

5 Tbsp. unsalted butter
24 young garlic plants, 1/2 inch in diameter at the root end, white part only (8 oz.), halved lengthwise
¾ cup water

1lb., 6 oz. small, new potatoes, peeled and quartered

32 oz. chicken broth
16 oz. white wine

½ cup heavy cream

1 ½ tsp. salt

2 – 2½ tsp. white wine vinegar

Freshly ground black pepper

1. Melt the butter in a 6-quart non-corroding pot. Add the garlic and ¼ cup of the water. Bring to a simmer, cover tightly, and cook for 15 minutes.

2. Add the potatoes and remaining ½ cup water. Cook at a simmer for 20 minutes. Add the broth and the wine, cover the pot, and allow to bubble gently for another 20 minutes.

3. Using a hand-blender, puree the soup until smooth. Stir in the cream and salt. Add the vinegar, 1 teaspoon at a time, tasting the soup after each addition before you add the next. (Some vinegars may be strongly flavored than others.)

4. Pass the puree through a medium-fine sieve into warm bowls. Grind black pepper generously over each portion and serve.

I could never get over-baconed.

But if I give Nick one more pork-centric plate, he’s going to hurl it at my head (after eating everything on it, of course.) So, in the interest of avoiding damage to both my Calvin Klein dinnerware and my cerebral cortex, I prepared a light, baconless dinner that included savory zucchini basil muffins. I found the original recipe on Chowhound, when I was in search of a use for the most recent additions to my crisper, a trio of dark green zucchini.

Zucchini requires a little duplicity on my part, since Nick isn’t a big fan. I am, so I insist upon cooking with it, avoiding things that showcase it, like tians and ratatouilles, and tending towards the slightly more demure. And it doesn’t get much more demure than muffins.

I’ve wanted to make a savory muffin, something that could be an ideal sidekick for summer soups and salads. I made a few minor tweaks to the recipe, subbing 1/2 whole-wheat flour, adding some dry mustard for a mini kick (a kick-lette, if you will), and upping the all-important cheese quotient. The zucchini-ness is subtle enough not to put off Nick, and present enough to satisfy my zucchini fix. The basil is a nice addition, and I think it would work well with thyme too. And you know what it would be even better with? Bacon.

Zucchini Basil Muffins
Makes 12 muffins.

2 cups shredded zucchini
1 tsp. salt
2 eggs
3/4 cup milk
2/3 cup vegetable oil
1 cup whole wheat flour
1 cup flour
1/4 cup sugar
1 Tbsp. baking powder
3/4 tsp. dry mustard
2 Tbsp. minced basil
1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese

1. Toss shredded zucchini with 1/4 tsp. salt and set in a colander in the sink to drain.

2. Preheat oven to 450 degrees. Butter and flour a 12-cup muffin tin, or use my favorite, Pam with Flour.

3. In a large bowl, beat eggs and then stir in milk and oil.

4. Combine flour, sugars, baking powder, mustard, and remaining salt with a whisk, to aerate.

5. Add dry ingredients to egg mixture and mix, just until flour is moistened (batter won’t be completely smooth). Gently mix in zucchini and basil. Fill greased muffin cups about 3/4 full and sprinkle with cheese. Bake 15-20 minutes. Serve warm.

Recipe Test Drive

(This entry concludes Mint Week. But just because Mint Week is drawing to a close, we shouldn’t forget the refreshing thrills we’ve shared this week. Cue Air Supply music.)

I love vegetables. I could easily be a vegetarian. Except that meat is really tasty. I believe that if we weren’t meant to eat animals, they wouldn’t be so delicious. But one of the things I love about vegetables is that self-satisfied feeling I get when I’ve eaten them, since they’re good for me. Oddly, a strip steak doesn’t inspire the same look-at-me-fighting-the-cancer-causing-carcinogens pride.

At the top of my “Vegetables I Luv" list is sugar snaps; I was smitten with their alliteration, but it’s their scrumptiously sweet crisposity that stole my heart. I suspect vegetables wouldn’t have such a bad rap with the under-fives if parents started with these babies. They don’t need a lot of tarting up in order to show off; they shine whether steamed, sautéed, or tossed oh-so-casually into pasta, risotto, stir fries, or salads.

So, given my extreme fondness for the sugar snap in all forms, I couldn’t resist last week’s recipe in New York Magazine: Pichet Ong’s Sugar Snap Pea Salad with Parmesan, Almond Puree, and Mint (of course). This Pichet Ong fellow is a pastry chef who just opened up a place of his own here in N to the Y-C, which includes some savory foods in addition to his collection of much ballyhooed desserts. I'd like to try the place, since I enjoy much ballyhooed desserts, but until then I'd get a little Pichet sampler via this recipe.

The Verdict
The snap pea salad itself is excellent and it doesn’t require any Advanced Culinary Skills. The sugar snaps are blanched before being tossed with a lemony vinaigrette and some chopped mint. They’re served atop an almond puree and given a light sprinkling of parmesan. The resulting salad is fresh and moreish. Since the ingredients are so simple and light, it’s easy to piggishly power through the whole salad yourself, guilt-free (I do not recommend doing this, as the husband will be annoyed and you will have to watch a lot of soccer to make up for the indiscretion.)

The almond puree sounds more high-falutin’ than it actually is; simmer sliced almonds in milk until they’re soft, whiz it all around with a hand blender, and Bob’s your uncle. The puree is easy to make and totally superfluous. The flavor is very subtle, and by subtle I mean completely bland. At first, I thought maybe I’d futz around with the puree for a dinner party, since “almond puree” sounds so very professional-chef, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized it was gilding the proverbial lily. The sugar snap salad doesn’t need a puree. It doesn’t elevate it or add layers of flavor. It just gives you more utensils to wash. So, unless Pichet plans on popping over to Best Bite Manor to do the dishes, I'm chucking the puree.

A puree-free version of the salad easily earns a place in the weeknight rotation; it’s an appealing celebration of springtime goodness, the kind of thing that makes you think these vegetarian people might not be so off the mark. But I can’t shake the feeling that it might just be a teensy-weensy bit better with some bacon. Just like everything else.

We Should Send Fava Beans to Afghanistan

(Mint Week Continues. It’s taking me longer to get through all this mint than I thought it was, so we’re either going to have to turn this into Mint Month or just start chugging mojitos. Vote here.)

When it comes to homeland security, I think we can all take a lesson from fava beans. Those bad boys are safeguarded by not one, but two hearty layers of defense. Layer one is a spongy, 6” pod, which you have to tear open to get at the beans, usually between 4 and 6 per pod. Layer two is a waxy skin, traversable only by a good blanching in some boiling water, after which the beans need a little coaxing to slither out. These cousins of the much-maligned lima bean are a really pretty bright green with a creamy, mild flavor. Since they’re only available for a few weeks in the spring, fresh favas are quite a treat.

But are they worth the work? You buy a pound of fava beans and you de-pod and blanch and shell and wind up with a fraction of that. And the last thing I want to do when I get home from another stressful day writing ads that will never be produced, is to start wrestling with my vegetables. Lord knows I have enough vegetable-related tension in my life. Could I have my beans and eat them too? Could I come up with a more stupid last sentence for this paragraph?

The answer was a salad that was half fresh fava beans, half frozen peas. Frozen peas aren’t as toothsome and tasty as fresh peas, but after breaking down the favas' tight security barriers, I wasn’t about to get started shelling peas. We’d be eating dinner around breakfast time.

We had this light, springy salad alongside Poached Salmon with Mustard Sauce and some of Sullivan Street bakery’s amazing bread, drizzled with olive oil and toasted under the broiler. It was light, flavorful and totally mintelicious. Only forty more pounds of mint to go.

Fava Beans, Peas, Mint, and Feta
Serves 2

1 lb. fresh fava beans
1 cup frozen peas, don’t thaw
1 cup loosely packed fresh mint, chopped
½ lemon
1 ½ Tbsp. Extra virgin olive Oil
½ cup feta cheese, crumbled
Salt & Pepper to taste

1. Put a medium sized pot of water on to boil and the shell the fava beans. Have a bowl of ice water standing by, to plunge the blanched beans in, to stop them cooking. Plunk the favas into the boiling water for about a minute, then scoop them out with a slotted spoon and get ‘em into the ice water. Do the same with the frozen peas, also for about a minute.

2. Drain the favas and the peas and toss them in a medium sized bowl with the mint, the cheese, the juice from ½ lemon, and the olive oil. Toss it all together.

3. Add salt and pepper to taste, and more lemon juice or olive oil, if you taste it and think it needs it.

The asparagus is stressing me out.

Am I the only person who suffers from Extreme Vegetable Panic? I’m always seduced by bushel after peck of the fabulous farm-fresh vegetables at the greenmarket on Saturdays. I load up the fridge with (season permitting) snap peas and ramps and strawberries and leeks and corn and tomatoes and rhubarb and kale and just-picked baby lettuces, delighted at how well we’ll be eating during the week. And then comes the week.

On Monday, I go to work and there’s some sort of major crisis. We’re gonna lose the account! The client meeting is tomorrow! If we don’t have a new campaign in the next six minutes, the planets gonna blow! Tuesday and Wednesday are much the same and my produce starts to wilt or rot or dry out or whatever form of slow death is appropriate to its genus. By Thursday, I’m desperate to leave work before midnight so I can shell and sauté my fava beans and toss them with fresh goat cheese and mint before midnight. Sometimes I’m successful. Other times, I have no choice but to throw away their sad little corpses.

This is my weekly routine. And I’m not capable of ignoring the lovely, fresh things at the farmer’s market, because they’re always flaunting their lovely freshness at me. I’m terrified of joining a CSA, because I’m sure every week would end with a major vegetable-induced meltdown.

This week’s victim? Asparagus. One pound. But I wasn’t letting this one go down without a fight. I left work at 9:15. Walked in the door at 10:09 and, with barely a smooch on Nick’s cheek, set about stemming and blanching it and making a Spaghetti Carbonara to mix the bright, green stalks into. We ate at a quarter to 11. By that time, I was too tired to even eat that much and I collapsed into bed shortly thereafter. But I slept well, because this week I won the battle against my Extreme Vegetable Panic. Next week’s another story, though.

Spaghetti & Asparagus Alla Carbonara
Serves 4

1 lb. fresh asparagus
1 lb. spaghetti.
1/3 lb. bacon, diced
1 clove of garlic, smashed
4 eggs
1 ½ cups fresh grated parmeggiano reggiano
Lots of fresh black pepper

1. Set a large pot of water a-boilin’ on the stove. Add lots of salt, once it comes to a boil.

2. Snap the ends off the asparagus; if you bend the stalk, the woody part will snap off naturally at exactly the point where you should be eating it. The fresher the asparagus, the more you’ll get to eat of it. (Now, can you see why I was freaking out?!). Cut the stalks into 1” pieces and plunk it into the boiling water until it’s just barely tender, not more than 3 minutes. Scoop it out with a slotted spoon and get it right into a bowl of ice water to stop the cooking.

3. Get the spaghetti going in the same boiling water you blanched your asparagus in.

4. Put the diced bacon in a skillet and cook on medium. When some of the fat has been rendered out, add the garlic clove, moving it around occasionally, until the bacon is nice and crispy. Discard the garlic.

5. Break the eggs into a large bowl. Add the cheese and whisk it all together.

6. Drain the spaghetti and add it to the eggs, tossing quickly so the egg coats the pasta. Don’t worry about salmonella.

7. Add the bacon, the bacon drippings, and the asparagus. Toss, toss, toss. Season with lots of black pepper and some salt, if necessary. Serve with extra parmeggiano reggiano.

It's pronounced "keen-wa"

Carnivorously speaking, quinoa gets the shaft. It’s one of those “healthy” grains that meat-eaters generally lump into the domain of vegetarians, vegans, and the gluten-averse. While quinoa happens to pack boat-loads of protein, magnesium, iron, fiber, and riboflavin (and lord knows we all need more riboflavin) into every fluffy little whole-grain, its also an excellent accompaniment to meats of all kinds and therefore deserves some respect from the omnivorous among us.

Quinoa has a mild nutty flavor and a slightly crunchy texture that kind of “pops” in your mouth and it's super-easy to prepare. It definitely has blandness potential, but no more so than couscous or rice, and that actually points to its versatility. It’s fab tossed with either a fruity or herb-y vinaigrette, and served alongside burgers and hot dogs at a barbeque. I’ve served quinoa with lamb and beef, since it works really well with gravies and sauces. And most recently, I paired a veggie filled Quinoa pilaf with Sauteed Pork Medallions in a Mustard-Curry sauce with Tomato Chutney (As you can see in this lovely, poor-quality photo. I promise I'm working on upgrading my food photography skillz.)

The only reason I can imagine that it’s not the Most Popular Grain in School is that the Quinoa Growers of America aren’t springing for a Super Bowl spot or adequately financing the quinoa lobby. Or maybe they’re a bunch of gluten-averse vegans hoarding all the high-potassium goodness for themselves.

Quinoa Pilaf with Spinach & Carrots
Serves 4 as a side

1 Tbsp. olive oil
½ cup diced onion
1 large garlic clove, minced
1 cup quinoa
2 cups chicken stock
¼ tsp. salt
1 cup peeled baby carrots
2 cups fresh spinach, stemmed and washed or baby spinach leaves
Salt and Pepper to taste

1. Put the quinoa in a fine mesh strainer and rinse well, to remove the saponins.

2. Heat a medium saucepan and then add the olive oil. Sauté onion until translucent. Add garlic and sauté for another 30 seconds to a minute.

3. Add chicken stock, rinsed quinoa, and salt and bring to a boil. Reduce heat to low, cover and simmer until most, but not all, of the liquid is absorbed and quinoa is tender, about 15 minutes.

4. Meanwhile, steam the carrots in the microwave until barely crisp-tender; put the carrots and a few tablespoons of water in a bowl, cover, and nuke for 2-3 minutes. Alternatively, you can use a vegetable steamer.

5. When there’s still a tiny bit of liquid in the quinoa, add the carrots and the spinach and toss. Replace cover and cook until spinach is wilted and carrots are tender. Add more salt, if needed, and pepper to taste.