The not-so glamorous side

There is a glamorous side to gardening, for sure.  The beautiful rows of fresh produce.  The radishes that are crunchy and peppery, not dry and mealy – the spinach that really tastes like spinach.

The flavors that come from the garden are like the turned up to 11 version of the factory-farmed vegetables I’ve tasted.

And yet.  There is another side.

The garden doesn’t care that I don’t need 10 cups of spinach today.  The garden doesn’t know that what I really want is one perfect tomato every other day, and then a nice even dozen on Saturday so I can turn them into sauce.

Instead, the garden churns out spinach at a frightening rate so that I am scrambling to get it processed before the leaves are so large they can be used as blankets.  The arugula goes insane and gets long and leggy and bitter overnight.  There are no tomatoes, and then there are two and they are treated like royalty, and then there are 10 million and the sauce making and caprese salads don’t stop for weeks.

There is also zucchini, which grows insanely and will produce specimens that rival baseball bats in an hour.  If you do not grow zucchini and want some, please let me know.  There will be a thousand sometime in mid-July.  I will happily trade you for some eggplant, because Curt doesn’t really like it and so doesn’t want to grow it.  I love eggplant.

The other not-so-hott side of the garden is the bugs and the dirt.  Garden produce isn’t washed on little conveyor belts in factories.  It comes out of the ground and into my kitchen, and it carries passengers.  Saturday when I was playing with the spinach it was a creepy looking clear spider.

The radishes yesterday came with 3 ants and a ton of dirt (radishes, grown in the ground, do not come out of the ground all scrubbed and pretty.  Woe is me.).  Broccoli comes with bizarre little green worm/centipede things that are nearly impossible to find – until they float to the top of the wash water and end up on the faucet and the dish soap bottle.

I wouldn’t give it up for the world – worms on the dish soap notwithstanding.

Thursday night macarons

I beat the macarons!  Muahahahaha!

Well, they aren’t the prettiest or the most perfect – but they’re really macarons this time.  Huge improvement, since last time they were a hot mess.

French Chocolate Macarons with Chocolate Ganache, adapted from this recipe found on Chow.

Cookies:

2 C confectioner’s sugar
1 C almond flour/meal
3 TB unsweetened cocoa powder
0.25 tsp fine salt
3 large egg whites, at room temperature
Pinch cream of tartar
3 TB granulated sugar

Ganache:

4 oz. bittersweet chocolate, finely chopped
0.5 C heavy cream
2 TB unsalted butter, at room temperature

Line two baking sheets with parchment paper; set aside. Fit a large pastry bag with a 1/2-inch plain tip; set aside.

Sift the powdered sugar, almond flour, cocoa powder, and salt into a large bowl; set aside.

Placing the egg whites in the clean bowl of a stand mixer fitted with a whisk attachment. Beat on second highest speed until opaque and foamy, about 30 seconds.

Add the cream of tartar and beat until the egg whites are white in color and hold the line of the whisk, about 1 minute. Continue to beat,adding sugar 1 TB at a time.  Continue beating the egg whites until the peaks are stiff, and the whites are shiny, about 1 minute more. (Do not overwhip.)

Using a rubber spatula, gently fold the dry mix into the egg whites in three batches until the dry mix is just combined.

Transfer the batter to the pastry bag. Pipe out 1-1/4-inch rounds about 1 inch apart onto the baking sheets, about 25 per sheet. Pick up the baking sheets and knock them on the counter. Let the rounds sit at room temperature for 30 minutes to dry the tops and ensure even cooking.

Ganache:

Warm the cream in a small saucepan over medium heat until it just starts to boil. Remove from heat and gently stir in the chocolate and stir until the chocolate is melted. Let sit for 1 minute. Add the butter and stir until smooth. Chill in the refrigerator until slightly thickened, about 30 minutes.

Heat the oven to 350°F and arrange two racks in the center of the oven. Bake the macarons for 6.5 minutes.  Swap sheet locations and rotate sheets.  Bake for another 6.5 minutes.  Transfer the sheet to a rack to cool completely.

Assembly:

Pair macarons of similar size.  Pipe or scoop about 1 tsp. of ganache onto the center of a macaron half.  Top with another half and press gently so that it looks like a mini hamburger. The filling should not ooze out the edges. Refrigerate until you are ready to serve.

These are really amazing – somehow both rich and light, creamy and airy, at the same time.  Kind of like a cookie/brownie/candy thing?

Next time I’ll be more careful about the piping – I overfilled the piping bag and was having a really tough time keeping the batter in the bag.  Also I am not the steadiest piper on the planet under the best of circumstances, and with the overfilling issue I definitely got some uneven macarons.

Next time, little cookies.  Next time.

The existential questions

Very important things have been on my mind.  Specifically – what is a burger?

This article inspired the question – it talks about pork burgers, lamb burgers, burgers made of fish.  The photos seem to show burgers on flatbreads, burgers on hard rolls, soft rolls, and some with no bread at all.

Googling “what is a burger?” got me over 24 million results, the first of which stated that a burger is “United States jurist appointed chief justice of the United States Supreme Court by Richard Nixon (1907-1995).”  Not quite what I was looking for.

Wikipedia states the following:  “A hamburger (or burger for short) is a sandwich consisting of a cooked patty of ground meat, (usually beef, but occasionally pork, turkey, or a combination of meats) placed between two buns.”  (Emphasis in original.  Also, if any of my law professors are reading – yes, I know Wikipedia is a terrible, awful source.)

Top Chef University says on Twitter that a Top Chef burger should be grilled, and should comprise 50% chuck, 25% skirt, and 25% short rib served on brioche.

I look forward to many burger-related experiments this summer – I thought this would be an apt post right before Memorial Day when apparently summer “officially” starts.

The only hard line I’m prepared to draw regarding the “what is a burger?” question at this time is that a burger is a sandwich.  A sandwich must have two pieces of bread – a wrap is not a sandwich, nor is there any such thing as an “open-faced” sandwich.  (ETA:  A roll, which has an identifiable top and bottom, qualifies as “two pieces of bread” to me and can be made into a sandwich.)

Conduct yourselves accordingly.

How do you define a burger?  What is your ideal burger?

Homemade pizza

Last week the New York Times published an article about making pizza at home.  Look, here it is!  I must admit that I was a bit suspicious – because seriously, 48 hours?  48 hours is a long time. I can get pizza delivered in one hour.

But it doesn’t taste like this.  Also, this is so cheap compared to delivery pizza – even with the salmon and all the arugula.

Slightly weird and amoeba-looking, but delicious.

1/4th of New York Times recipe for Pizza Dough with Yeast

4 oz. smoked salmon

4 oz. chevre, crumbled

Olive oil

Cracked black pepper

Lots of arugula – probably about 4 ounces?  A full strainer – this was picked about 20 minutes before we made the pizza.  I heart the garden.

Preheat oven to 500F.  Take dough out of refrigerator and let it rest for an hour.

Shape dough; if you’re more talented than me your pizza might be something resembling round.  Mine was a semi-oblong amoeba shape.

Drizzle with a bit of olive oil and top with cracked pepper, salmon, and chevre.  Bake for 4 minutes and remove from oven.

Top with half the arugula, sprinkle with olive oil and cracked pepper.  Return to the oven for 3 to 4 more minutes, or until pizza is lovely and brown.

Top with remaining arugula and let rest for 5 minutes before slicing.

We split the pizza and had some steamed Chinese long beans on the side.  The pizza wasn’t perfectly round (um, clearly) but it was pretty delicious anyway.

Maybe my cooking mojo hasn’t departed this earth permanently.

Mojo

Has anyone seen mine?

I mismeasured an important element in a batch of macarons, ruining $17 worth of almond flour.  Not to mention 7 egg whites and a really nice vanilla pod.

Also, I bought a quart of organic strawberries yesterday – only to discover they are completely and totally rotten today when I opened the container.

This all makes me very, very crabby.  Also, it means that I don’t have anything to blog about this week right now.

And I gained two pounds overnight.

I did make some of this pizza dough, though we haven’t cooked it yet.  Also some of this jap chae, which was delicious… no pictures though.

This week, we’re going to be eating:

Grilled chicken + carrot salad with harissa, feta, and mint

Aloo gobi + rice (frozen still from a couple weeks ago – we didn’t end up eating it last week)

Jap chae + kim chi (we had this last night.  So yummy.)

Chicken & andouille gumbo (freezer) + rice

Spinach & feta baked eggs

Homemade pizza with smoked salmon, goat cheese, and arugula

Thai basil chicken (gai pad gaprow) + rice (or rice noodles?  We’ll see.)

I’m going to try and get rid of my bad case of crabbiness.  In the meantime, I apologize for the sparse posting.

Crumble with me

Spring rocks.  It’s still early – I am getting rhubarb at the farmer’s market, but am still buying most other fruits at the grocery store or Costco.  At least they’re organic…?  My guilt is mitigated by the fact that they are so very, very tasty and that this past winter was so very, very long.

Strawberry raspberry rhubarb crumble – inspired by this recipe originally posted at Smitten Kitchen

Makes 6 to 8 servings.

For the topping:

1.33 C flour

1 tsp baking powder

2 TB white sugar

4 TB turbinado sugar (sold as Sugar in the Raw)

Zest of one lemon

1 stick unsalted butter, melted

For the filling:

2 C rhubarb, chopped into 1-inch pieces

2 pints strawberries, hulled and halved or quartered

1 pint raspberries, rinsed

Juice of one lemon

0.5 C sugar

3 TB cornstarch

Pinch of salt

1. Heat oven to 375°F. Prepare filling: Toss rhubarb, strawberries, raspberries, lemon juice, sugar, cornstarch and a pinch of salt in a deep pie plate or other baking dish – I used that blue oval casserole dish I use for almost everything. 

2. Prepare topping: In a mixing bowl, combine flour, baking powder, sugars and lemon zest and add the melted butter. Mix until small and large clumps form.

3. Cover fruit mixture evenly with topping. Place pie plate or casserole dish on a baking sheet, and bake until crumble topping is golden brown in places and fruit is bubbling beneath, about 45 minutes.

We ate it plain, and it was delicious.  I think next time we need some ice cream (preferably homemade,  yum).  Must make Curt get on the ice cream wagon.

Gnocchi on parade

Packaged gnocchi always seem like they should be good, don’t they?  They’re convenient but good lord – they don’t taste very good.  Which is sad, because if they were tasty we would eat them more often, but since they suck we are forced to wait for the stars to align and for me to actually make gnocchi.

Which is bit of a pain and also takes quite a lot of time.  Woe is me.

But we had good dinner!

Potato gnocchi, adapted from this recipe posted on 101 Cookbooks in 2007.

3 large russet potatoes, halved (skins still on)

2 large eggs, lightly beaten

1 C flour plus additional for dusting

Fill a large pot with cool, salted water.  Add potatoes and bring to a boil.  Boil until potatoes are tender all the way through – about 25 minutes after the water begins boiling.

Remove the potatoes and set aside.  When they have cooled enough to handle, peel the potatoes with a paring knife.  Run the potatoes through a ricer into a large bowl (if you don’t have a potato ricer, you can use a fork – that’s what Heidi of 101 Cookbooks does.  You just don’t want a lot of lumps).

This is the sole picture of the gnocchi-making.  I suck at this “photo” game.

The potatoes should still be warm but not hot – you want to be able to handle them, and you do NOT want them to scramble the eggs.  Add the eggs and about half the flour to start.  Knead gently to combine – slowly add more flour if the dough is too sticky.

Separate the dough into small balls and roll into tubes about 0.25 inch in diameter.  Cut into pieces about 0.5 inch long.  Dust with a bit more flour.

If you like, you can cook them at this point – they’ll taste fine.  If you want the gnocchi to have little ridges, hold a fork in one hand and place a gnocchi pillow against the tines of the fork, cut ends out.  Use your thumb and press the dough in and down. The gnocchi should curl into a slight “C” shape, and the side that was against fork will have pretty little ridges.  Sauce likes to hang out in the little ridges, so ridges are a good thing.  Dust with a bit more flour.

Bring a pot of salted water to a hard boil.  Drop the gnocchi in a few at a time – don’t add so many the water stops boiling.  Watch them carefully as they cook very quickly.  The gnocchi are done when they start popping to the top of the boiling water – remove them with a slotted spoon.

Add to your serving bowl and sauce gently. I used the French Laundry tomato sauce (the open book in the background of the photo is the FL cookbook), which is the essence of tomatoes and fresh herbs and little else – simple.  The gnocchi are delicious on their own so the sauce doesn’t need to be something crazy.

Enjoy as soon as possible.  And next time I’ll take some pictures.

A promise

I promise to post something of substance soon.  I am worn out and haven’t gotten the pictures off the camera yet… so sad.

I made appetizers for 80 for a retirement party yesterday – the menu:

Mini BLTs

Mini spanikopita

Meatballs + tomato/basil sauce

Caprese skewers – grape tomato, basil, marinated mozzarella + balsamic vinaigrette

Antipasto rolls – marinated artichokes & roasted red pepper wrapped in salami

I forgot to take pictures (again).  But by all accounts it was delicious and I had a lot of fun cooking – win for everyone!

I also made gnocchi for dinner last night (post coming on that one) and a strawberry-raspberry-rhubarb crumble that was utterly delicious.  I love spring and summer!  So much good stuff.

In other news, how does one go from being the Calorie Commando  to being held for attempting to hire a homeless guy to kill your wife? 

And this guy is incredible – he did break the U.S. record during his run last week.

We live in weird world.

Up for this week -

Aloo gobi + rice (the rest of what I made and froze last week)

Chipotle pork tamales + beans & rice

Hainan chicken & rice

Tortilla chicken soup

Asian tenderloin salad (the salad greens in the garden are going nuts!)

Happy Monday!  Soon, I promise!

Soft polenta with sausage & mushroom ragout

I don’t want to become that person who takes a nice vegetarian (vegan! till you add cheese, which I always do) mushroom ragout and adds a whole bunch of meat to it and pronounces it much improved.  I tried to be true to the original dish, but… this rainy, yucky, dreary May needed some Italian sausage, dammit.

I won’t apologize.  It was delicious.

Soft polenta with sausage & mushroom ragout

Soft polenta

3 links Italian sausage (these were pretty mild, next time I will try and get some with more spice)

2 TB extra virgin olive oil

3 cloves garlic, minced

0.5 medium onion, finely chopped

1 pound cremini mushrooms, finely chopped

That super-tiny mushroom on the knife was my favorite.  So adorable.

3 TB tomato paste

2 TB kalamata olives, pitted and finely minced (if your olives aren’t pitted when you get them, you can press them with a flattened knife to squish the pit out, as you would to peel garlic.  They won’t be pretty but they’ll be pitted – good for this recipe, bad for recipes or presentations requiring whole olives.)

0.5 C dry red wine

1 TB fresh basil chiffonade (take 3 or 4 basil leaves.  Roll tightly until you have a little tube of basil, then use your sharpest knife to cut thin slivers.)

See?  Beautiful.  Also it smells like heaven.

Salt and freshly ground black pepper

Grated Parmesan, for serving

Heat a large skillet over medium heat.  Add the sausages and cook, turning occasionally, until just done.  Remove sausages from the skillet and thinly slice.  Set aside.

Add the olive oil to the same skillet.  Add garlic and onion and sauté until soft. Add mushrooms and cook over medium heat until they wilt and give up their juices. Do not let juices evaporate. Stir in tomato paste, olives and wine.  Stir to combine and return sausage to pan.  Cook for a couple of minutes until the flavors marry a bit.

Remove from heat and season to taste with salt and pepper.

To serve, put about a cup of the soft polenta on a plate or in a bowl.  Add the sauce on top, and top with the basil and grated cheese, if desired.

It’s not the prettiest dish ever, but it was just the thing for a rainy 50 degree day in May.

Hokkien mee

I have a serious noodle addiction.  Once Curt and I were having a chat about what we would do for our last meals and I told him I wanted to do noodle bar from around the world.  Think about how great that would be – the best of the best, bring me your noodles.

And there would be no worrying about how many calories or carbs were in any of it since I’d be dead the next day anyway.

Hokkien Mee

1 lb. fresh noodles

8 oz. shrimp, tails off

14 oz. firm tofu, pressed and cubed

4 oz. beansprouts

1 bunch scallions, diced

4 cloves garlic, minced

pinch of chili flakes

2 TB soy sauce

1 TB chili garlic sauce, plus additional for serving

2 TB vegetable oil

Lemon slices (for serving)

Cook the noodles for three to four minutes in boiling salted water. Remove, drain, and rinse with cool water. Set aside.

Note: once you start the next part, things move really fast. Chop & wash everything first.

Heat the oil in a skillet or wok over medium high heat. Add garlic & chili flakes, cook for a minute or two. Add tofu, cook a couple of minutes, and then add the shrimp.  Cook the shrimp until just pink.

Dump the drained noodles on top. Add soy sauce & chili garlic sauce, and stir to until the noodles are all coated and everything is combined. Let cook for a couple of minutes, to crisp the noodles on the bottom of the pan. Add beansprouts and scallions. Stir to get new noodles on the bottom of the pan, and let cook until a bit crisp, probably about 2 to 3 minutes.

Serve in bowls. Garnish with some lemon slices if you like.

We also had it with some braised bok choy… 2 heads of bok choy, chopped, and cooked in a skillet with half a cup of water, a few drops of fish sauce, and some red chili flakes.

Noodles = love.