Monthly Archives: May 2011

My late spring salad: Beet, Chèvre, Arugula & Pine Nuts

Posted on May 23, 2011 | Leave a comment

So this is it. This is the salad that I wait all spring to make. It’s the chioggia beets you really can’t find in the winter here in Seattle. They’re still only available in the farmer’s markets – the weather has been so cold. This salad’s not fancy. Really, the vibe is more kitchen sink than thoughtfully composed. The varied textures: earthy and sweetly roasted chioggia beets, greenly cooling cucumbers, the sliced shallots pinked up in vinegar, providing a gently persistent bite – that’s what grabs me. Not to mention peppery arugula plus peppered spicy chèvre. Dotted with warmly toasted pine-nuts – I adore this salad. In fact, although it serves four, I would happily eat the whole thing, on it’s own, and call it dinner. (to give you an idea of just how greedy I am, this recipe lushly fills a 15 inch platter)

Beet, Chèvre, Arugula, Pine Nut Salad – serves 4

4 small chioggia beets
4 handfuls arugula, washed and dried
1 medium sized shallot, sliced thin
2 ounces fresh chèvre – with mixed peppercorns
half a peeled and seeded English cucumber, sliced
2 tbsp champagne vinegar
4-6 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
3 tbsp pine nuts, toasted in a skillet over medium heat for a few minutes
extra virgin olive oil
sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

Preheat the oven to 400
Trim the beets, cutting off both tails and leafy tops. Wrap them in aluminum foil and place them in a small baking dish. Roast in the oven for 1 1/2 – 2 hours. If you are appalled at putting such a small dish in the oven at such a high temperature for 2 hours, you could always roast a chicken to go with it – that would be lovely. (of course if you don’t actually feel like roasting a chicken and all you really want is the darn beet salad and actually not 2 whole hours from now but in, like, 1/2 an hour I suppose you could always steam them in a little vegetable steamer. 20-40 minutes of steaming depending on how big the beets are. It won’t be quite as good but it will still be pretty great.)
While the beets are cooking, put the shallot slices into a small bowl with the champagne vinegar. Manipulate the slices with your fingers to separate the rings and to make sure that they become saturated with vinegar.
When the beets are done, you’ll be able to push a fork into them. Don’t wait until they’re mushy and don’t take them out when they’re still crunchy. If you cook them early in the day they can sit on the counter until you are ready to peel them, slice them and put them in the salad. A cooked beet should NEVER see the inside of the fridge. They become horribly watery and mushy.
Add 4 tbsp olive oil to the bowl with vinegar and shallots. Whisk with a fork and taste – it should be nicely balanced without aggressive acidity. Add 1/4 tsp sea salt and taste again. You may like up to 2 more tbsp of olive oil. Add freshly ground black pepper to taste.
Peel the beets and slice them into 1/8ths.
On a large platter, arrange a bed of arugula. Scatter the cucumbers and beets over the greens. Then crumble the chèvre over everything. Toss the pine nuts evenly over the top and finally dress lightly, you may not have to use all the dressing. Be sure to fish out all the shallots and include them – they add so much flavor and delicate color!
Quickly get out your camera and take a picture before you eat the whole thing! I forgot to take a picture until it was nearly gone last time, as you can see:

So of course I had to make it again the next day!

(Sometimes I make a variation of this salad that includes roast asparagus – which may seem over-the-top and disorganized but I have to confess that I love it. Smoky toasted asparagus and smoky roasted beets – lovely. You can see I included tomatoes here – probably wouldn’t do that again. They weren’t offensive but they added nothing.)

le Grand Aioli

Posted on May 18, 2011 | Leave a comment

The reductive pleasure of this very simple meal is hard to convey. Plain poached cod surrounded by plain blanched haricots verts, asparagus, English peas and little beets. I would have liked baby carrots but we had a bag of the large workhorse variety so I cut them up and didn’t give it a second thought. Baby turnips and long French radishes would also have been elegant, modern and springlike but I came from 2 hours of standing in the fiercely cold rain for kid soccer and when I got to the market I just wanted to get out and get home. Fancy vegetables can wait for next time. (Believe me, there will be a next time) The glory of le Grand Aioli is of course the aioli, with its velvety opulent burn. Seriously, it takes less than 2 minutes to make. After demolishing the plate of fish and vegetables, which we plunged into the aioli, we went through half a loaf of toasted Colombia bread that had been slicked with a very green olive oil, spreading silky aioli over it thickly too. After that, I nabbed all the crusts of this excellent bread from the plates of my children (what a drag it will be when the kids figure out this is actually the best part) and wiped the little aioli bowl clean. It was that kind of dinner.

Of course, in my mind le Grand Aioli is meant to be enjoyed on a sunny terrace, cracked granite underfoot with a glass of very cold very crisp mineral-y white wine and white threadbare very soft linen napkins somewhere in the south of France or in a garden in England under a trellis of lilacs on an unseasonably warm late spring afternoon. We ate at our dining room table with a perfectly lovely Malbec my dad brought over and 3 children who initially complained bitterly about the meal and then suddenly ate everything in sight. And the sun came out too. I credit the aioli.

Le Grand Aioli – serves 4

You will have to make a court bouillon but most likely you have all the ingredients stored anyway. It’s very quick. Start with the court bouillon and everything else will fall into place.

Court Bouillon

2 pints water
2 carrots
1 large onion
1 stick of celery
2 cloves
7 peppercorns
2 bay leaves
1 tbsp sea salt
2 tbsp white wine vinegar

In a large non-reactive saute pan with a lid (unless you are one of those people who owns a fish poacher in which case now is the time to haul it out), combine all of the ingredients and bring to a simmer over high heat. Reduce heat to medium low and simmer for 20 minutes. Now it is ready to use.

Aioli

1 egg
1 tsp Dijon mustard
1 clove garlic smashed in a mortar and pestle with 1/2 tsp sea salt
1 tbsp white wine vinegar
freshly ground pepper
1 cup vegetable oil (or 3/4 cup vegetable oil, 1/4 olive oil – I find all olive oil to be too strong)

Place all ingredients in the tall narrow cylindrical container that comes with an immersion blender and blend for a few seconds until the oil is emulsified and the aioli is thick.

If you have no immersion blender, this can also be done in a food processor or blender, in which case you must leave out the oil and very slowly in a very thin stream add it to the rest of the ingredients as the blades are spinning.

The Vegetables

4 ounces haricots verts
1/2 pound asparagus, rinsed and trimmed
1 pound English peas in their pods, remove their pods
4 little beets
Baby carrots, peeled and greens trimmed short — or big carrots, peeled and cut to the size of a baby carrot.

The Fish

1 1/2 lbs skinned cod fillet

Consider also baby turnips, radishes, small potatoes (fingerling), baby artichokes, spring onions. Next time I make this, it’s going to be crazy and even more beautiful. You can also include quartered boiled eggs and garnish with parsley. I was too cold and too tired to do this.

Fill a 4 quart saucepan with water, cover and bring to a rolling boil. Add 2 tbsp sea salt and start blanching vegetables in batches. If you plan to steam the beets, set up a steamer alongside.

Scrub the beets and trim their tails and tops. The beets take longer especially if you prefer to roast them as I do: 1 1/2 – 2 hours in a 400F oven, wrapped in foil, but they can also be steamed and then peeled. I would steam them for 15-20 minutes if they are small.

The haricots verts, asparagus and English peas will take 2-4 minutes in the boiling water. Carrots take 2-5 minutes depending on their diameter. Start checking everything after 2 minutes. Blanch everything separately so you can carefully control when it is perfectly done. The vegetables should be crisp tender. A device called a spider is useful here, for fishing everything out quickly at the right time.

After boiling these tender green vegetables, it is nice to dump them in a bowl of ice water to stop the cooking. I have no ice maker so I pull them a little early and lay them in one layer on a rimmed sheet pan on a dish towel.

As the vegetables are cooking (they’ll be served room temperature), bring the court bouillon to a simmer and lay the cod in it. It will not cover the fish. Put a lid on the pan and simmer for 5 minutes. Turn off the heat and allow the cod to sit in the broth until you’ve finished the vegetables. About 15 minutes.

Carefully remove the fish to a large white platter that can accommodate it with all the vegetables. Serve with toasted crusty bread that has been slicked with olive oil and the aioli. A little dish of coarse sea salt would be lovely for sprinkling over everything.

Notes on a Cocktail

Posted on May 13, 2011 | 2 comments

Cocktails. I don’t usually make them. Given an opportunity, I like to drink them. And not surprisingly, I have some strong opinions about them. Fresh orange peel, cucumber infusion, muddled mint, Pimm’s, Hendrick’s, sugar cubes, a little float of beaten egg white. Not all in the same drink of course, but that’s the direction I run in: fresh, fruity, herbaceous. Complex without too hard an edge. My idea of a perfect cocktail speaks to something specific: spring, Christmas, elderflowers, cucumbers. I like to imagine a good cocktail is a flavor essay, a barman’s exploration of an idea.

So when the party committee I’m on met for a pre-party cocktail tasting a few weeks ago, I came prepared with a few ideas. I hoped we could come up with a simple but elegant cocktail that would be appropriate for a group of 40-ish moms. Someone brought a stack of those little plastic cups used for measuring out children’s Tylenol, so we could have many small tastes without drinking too much. Hilarious and so smart. One elegant guest brought a colorful bottle and said all we had to do was add some vodka. — This will be so easy, she said, My sister told me this makes quite a decent cocktail. After tasting it we all laughingly agreed with the comment — It kind of tastes like cough syrup. Then someone suggested Cosmos – That’s what the committee chose last year – but aren’t Cosmos a little passé? Too Sex in the City?

On committees, strong opinions can sometimes be a liability; other times, they come in handy. I’d brought bottles of chilled Prosecco and St. Germaine. An orange and a little orange zester to make the curl were wrapped in a tea towel in my purse. (I think that darn zester is still lost in the bottom of my handbag.) Anyway. I quickly mixed up the cocktail. It was a little heavy handed. Next time I do this I’ll slip the jigger in with the zester so I can measure properly. Still, we all agreed it was pretty lovely, cold with a subtle floral perfume. Especially compared to the cough syrup and vodka number we’d sampled previously. That’s how I ended up in charge of the cocktails at the party we were throwing. Which is kind of a joke because I never make cocktails; I only order them.

So yesterday, I went out to get my ingredients. I didn’t even know that the liquor store doesn’t open until 11. I had to stand outside in the ridiculous wintery rain for 20 minutes. Sigh. What if it didn’t really open when it was supposed to? Then at 11 on the dot, the lights flicked on and the door opened.

Wow. I couldn’t believe it. The same old guy. I’ve only been here a handful of times in the past 7 years and it’s always him. He’s vast and almost troll-like. He has small warty eyes. Many warts. Stringy grey long hair in a pony tail. His shirt is too large. His pants are too long and not exactly clean. Really he’s a toad of a man. Usually I run in and out of the liquor store. It’s not the sort of place that inspires lingering.

I asked him – So can you tell me about the Creme de Cassis. We’re having this party. Champagne Cocktails, Kir Royale. Can you recommend —

— Oh I can recommend something! He cut me off, not unkindly. He hurried to another display — I know which one you should buy. It’s a little pricey though — a thoughtful smile on his face.

He waved me over and took down a small bottle with pale green leaves and black currants on the label. A long and slender bottle from an artisanal distillery in Oregon. The liquid inside the blackest purple and gently viscous. I tipped it sideways and looked at the color, admiring the pretty label.

—Tell me about this one, I said. How is it different? (From the other, much larger bottle, half the price over there on the wall.)

He peered at me intently. I could see by his expression he was reliving some taste memory and wanting me to be there with him. I actually think I was there with him, kind of. – Let me tell you what I do with that stuff. Don’t waste it. I make these sugar cookies — he mimed how he carefully held the cookies with his fingers — So thin. So delicate. The sugar gives the perfect crunch. They shatter then melt in your mouth.

(Are you kidding me?! Delicate. Shatter. Melt.)

Then he says — I serve them on a very rich vanilla ice cream, with the vanilla bean flecks in it and then I carefully drizzle just a very tiny amount of this blackcurrant over the ice cream. It’s perfect.

(You sir, in your own peculiar way, are perfect too.)

Wow. — My grandmother liked her ice cream that way too. With a little purple-y liqueur drizzled on top. Only she just used Pepperidge Farm Chessmen. That certainly sounds very delicious. I will buy a bottle of that for myself. Imagine it swirled into a little Prosecco with a strip of orange peel! I will sit on the little bench on the patio, sipping Kir Royale, surrounded by sage, oregano, chives and Shasta daisies, taking it all in. For the ladies of the preschool however – all sixty of them – I think the big bottle will do just fine.

That guy totally made my day.

A Trio of Champagne Cocktails

If you can chill the Champagne glass, that would be very nice. For sixty, I doubt that I will.

Kir Royale

1/2 ounce Creme de Cassis
cold Champagne
a curl of orange peel from an organic navel orange

Pour the Creme de Cassis into the cold champagne glass. Pour Champagne to nearly fill the glass. Squeeze the orange rind over the drink, then drop into the glass.

Champagne St. Germaine

1/2 ounce St. Germaine (a French elderflower liqueur)
cold Champagne or prosecco
a curl of lemon peel from an organic lemon

Pour the Champagne into a cold champagne glass. Stir in the St. Germaine. Garnish with lemon.

Classic Champagne Cocktail

1 sugar cube
angostura bitters (I actually use blood orange bitters)
Champagne
orange or lemon peel (as above)

Soak the sugar cube with bitters and place in Champagne glass. Pour champagne over the sugar cube. Garnish with lemon or orange peel.

2 Comments

Posted in Briefly noted, Uncategorized

After School Snack: Cardamom Scented Mango Lassi

Posted on May 9, 2011 | 4 comments

Even though I love to cook, I never cook with my kids. Why? It’s too messy for one thing. For another, the older kids have gotten minor cuts while chopping and that makes me nervous. Frankly, the kitchen is an excellent place to temporarily check out from parenting – I like the focused solitary activity. Besides, the work I do there is still in service of my family. If I’m acting escapist in hiding out and chopping, so what? When I’m done, we’ll have an excellent dinner. I don’t want to manage developing knife skills, cross-counter trails of sugar, or little hands sticky with raw eggs. (How awful it is to confess to that!) Moms are SO not supposed to admit to these kinds of feelings. Sigh. I’m not going to worry about it though. There are other things to do.

After I read Madhur Jaffrey’s autobiography Climbing the Mango Trees, I thought: I want that kind of childhood for my kids, those kinds of food memories, the tumult of food culture that shaped her life. I imagine her in long braids and a bright dress, banging through the kitchen door after school, welcomed by a round terra cotta bowl of creamy basmati rice pudding scented with cardamom and garnished with shattered toasted pistachios. Or waking to a winter breakfast of daulat ki chaat, whose ingredients include fresh whole milk, seafoam and dew. (Dew!?!) Ms. Jaffrey describes this “heavenly froth” as “the most ephemeral of fairy dishes”.

Ok, ok. I know I can’t collect dew on the roof of my house and come up with some magically memorable breakfast. I can’t even get raw milk very easily. (Anyway, think of the bacteria!) And sea-foam? Forget it. I’m imagining the looks on their little faces if I told them that no, we aren’t having waffles and bacon for breakfast, instead, how about milk with sea-foam and dew!?! I want them to be able to roll with it, but maybe not that much.

Still, I think there are things I can do if I want to give my kids incredible food memories. Imagine getting off the school bus in Seattle, rain running off the shoulders of your parka, and stepping into a warm kitchen. There on the counter, a clear pitcher of golden creamy mango lassi, drops of condensation glistening on the sides. Serve it cold. Listen for the delicate slurp as you pour it into a glass. Pay attention and catch that earthy lemon scent of cardamom. Isn’t it lucky Ataulfo mangoes are everywhere in late spring?! This has to be a step in the right direction.

Ataulfo Mangoes

Mango Lassi

1 cup mango, cut from 1 ataulfo mango
1 cup yogurt
1/2 cup ice water
4 green cardamom pods
2 tbsp sugar

This couldn’t be any easier.

Put all the ingredients in your blender and whizz for 2 minutes.
Push the lassi through a sieve with a spatula or wooden spoon to remove the pulverized cardamom.
Pour into a glass and drink.

The hard part could be figuring out how to get all the flesh off the mango. A friend from New Zealand taught me. Here’s how:

Get started by slicing the sides off the mango

Cut a grid into the flesh of the mango

Tidy little cubes of mango

Next, peel the core and slice against the pit to remove all the mango flesh

Like I said, I don’t usually bring the kids into the kitchen when I’m working. For lassis I can make an exception.

4 Comments

Posted in easy, Fast, Uncategorized

Tagged breakfast, easy, fast

Megadarra/mujadarra: either way it’s delicious

Posted on May 5, 2011 | 2 comments

It’s been a busy crazy week. Sunday night was particularly nuts and we were running all over the place. So early in the day I made Megadarra (also called mujadarra). That sounds exotic, doesn’t it? Yet, it’s the sort of thing you can reheat effortlessly – which makes it useful when nobody in the house is eating at the same time. I recently ran into the recipe at Food 52. I felt as though I’d bumped into a friend I hadn’t seen ages.

Ten years ago, I was working 80 hour weeks on a competition in San Francisco as an architect. I was extremely pregnant and always starving. Most nights, I would race (well actually, lumber) around the corner just before the tiny middle eastern lunch place closed for the night, then rush (drag myself) back to the office with a huge styrofoam clamshell of steaming rice and dark lentils, tossed with a tangle of caramelized and charred onions. Back at my desk, tilted back in my chair, I’d prop my swollen feet up on my drafting table, pop open the box and inhale. Caramelized onions! Does anything smell better?! Tucked into a corner of the box was a small container of thick garlic and cumin scented yogurt to stir into the mix. Megadarra is kind of messy looking, certainly not beautiful — but absolutely delicious. The scent of delicately perfumed jasmine rice and tender, earthy lentils was complemented by burnished, glossy, sweetly-and-slightly-burnt onions. I’d swirl in the creamy yogurt and savour a dish of far greater complexity than its individual parts. Honestly, I don’t know how I would have completed the project without a big bowl of those steamy messy lentils as we geared up for another long night at the office.

When I later had a couple of small children to cook for, I cobbled together a recipe. Polka Dot Rice is what we called it and I served it with lamb, feta and mint sausages. Megadarra is a holy grail of a dinner; pleasing to both me and my kids. The caramelized onions are a little time consuming – I still think it’s worth the effort. I don’t know what it is about megadarra – I haven’t met a kid who isn’t kind of mesmerized by it. They look skeptical at first and then, shocking their parents, take a tiny taste. Could the attraction be the polka-dotty lentils?! Then suddenly they’re hoovering it into their greedy little mouths, their parents goggle eyed and jaws gaping with surprise. Even really picky kids seem to like megadarra. How did I ever forget about it?

I am obviously not going to write the whole thing up, since the perfect recipe is already out there, but I would like to show you some photos of the caramelized onions. I know most recipes say you can make them in 12-15 minutes! I can never do this. The onions are never as richly brown as they should be in that short amount of time. I just scorch them. It always takes me 30 minutes minimum to make caramelized onions properly. SO. Here’s how I caramelize onions – if anyone has any tips on doing this faster, I would love to know your method!

Also, the herbed and spiced yogurt that goes with this recipe is SO lovely – nuanced, sprightly and wonderful. It would be worth growing a little pot of mint just for this sauce. I was eating out of the bowl with a spoon!