Continuing a celebration of Spring

photo from chow.com

I passed the mushroom stand at the market and there they were, gleaming green and beckoning to me, fiddlehead ferns. Oh boy.

Home and into the refrigerator and well, they slipped my mind for a couple of days. Carol is doing a Cornish hen for dinner and I’m making plane reservations. “Can I use these fiddleheads?” she said.

“Sure, I think we just sautéed them before, but I’ll check the Internet for recipes,” said I.

Well, I Googled “fiddlehead” and the descriptions, facts and recipes came forth as if a fiddlehead cornucopia (if you twist your mind a bit, a fiddlehead looks like a cornucopia.

I learned a lot. It’s especially fun to compare information from various sites, and in the case of fiddleheads, there are experts galore. Most are from the northeast — Maine, Vermont, Quebec — and take pride in the gathering and foraging as well as the cooking and eating. (Rule: Unusual foods have — self-proclaimed — experts, common foods don’t.)
Continue reading →

(or, “Demystifying Fava Beans,” as Cook’s Illustrated would say)

Favas, a sure sign of Spring.
Favas, a process.
Favas, a great, over-the-top, green taste.
Favas, how much is enough?

It is true. One needs some time and patience to get to the great taste part of a Fava Bean. And it’s almost all in prep, because by the time you’ve liberated the beans, the cooking of them is simple and easy. Then it’s all about how to serve, and with what to pair them.

My recipe list includes soups, salads, stews and pasta dishes of one kind or another, most often as a side dish for a main course. They almost always include green garlic — it’s that season, too. In any dish, the fava beans should be the star, it doesn’t work in a supporting role.

Favas Soup — a simple green soup with favas and spring garlic and salt and pepper and water and whatever fresh herb is easily at hand
Fava Bean Orzo, a risotto made with orzo (orzotto?)
Umbrian Fava Bean Stew (Scafata) chopped onion, fennel, chard and tomatoes
Fava Bean Ragout (from Chez Panisse Vegetables by Alice Waters) w/olive oil, rosemary and garlic
Fava alla Romana — (from Classic Italian Coookbook by Marcella Hazan) This is quite wonderful. Not strictly a vegeteble dish, very meaty. Peppery too. w/pancetta
Our Favorite Fava Beans (from Mariquita Farm) sautéed with green garlic and oil
Julia’s Fava and Orzo Salad (from Mariquita Farm) with bits of carrot and radish
Rice Salad with Shrimp and Fava Beans
Fava Bean and Couscous Salad w/scallions and a honey vinaigrette
Fava Beans w/Tomato and sweet onion over tagliatelle
Garganelli Pasta with Fava Beans — (Chez Panisse Cafe Cookbook) Garganelli is a type of egg pasta characterized by a shape that resembles a small, ridged, rolled tube, similar to a quill.

Fava and Fresh Ricotta Bruschetta

Time was when I was mystified by favas, what on earth do I do with these? No longer. Continue reading →

For some reason, Creamed Spinach is a staple side dish at steak houses throughout the land. The creamed Spinach entrenched in my taste memory is one that I ordered in a steak house in Chicago, near the Drake Hotel. It was rich and creamy with a fine pure taste of spinach coming through.

I can’t remember ever making it at home and I probably haven’t, although that’s one of the few ways I like spinach. The cream takes the edge off, for me, literally. For me, spinach raw or cooked has a characteristic that sets my teeth on edge. Other greens, dandelion, chard, turnip, beet, mustard, collard, don’t affect me that way.

In our California winter there are few green vegetables at the Farmers Market other than greens. As I was thinking about what would be good as a side dish for leftover Tuna Balls and Spaghetti, that creamed spinach from Chicago came to mind, but I had no spinach. Why not creamed Swiss Chard?

Step one, Google “creamed spinach.” Whole Foods Market was on the first page, so I took a look. Spinach and cream sauce were prepared separately and combined. Their recipe used grated Parmesan cheese as a thickener for the cream. That would work. Other recipes that I checked used flour as a thickener, basically a béchamel sauce, or with the addition of cheese, a Mornay sauce. One, from Boston Market (“That’s my home.”) surprisingly started with chopped frozen spinach and used no cream at all. Continue reading →

From the plate up,
Shaved deli ham, I like to call it Ham Carpaccio
Sliced cucumbers
Salt and pepper
Sliced peeled tomato
Salt and pepper
Lemon olive oil

Hooray! The endive, tomato and cucumber lady is back at the Farmers Market.

This Week at the Ferry Plaza Farmers Market

My vegetable selections for February 23 included Swiss chard, big ol’ artichokes, little bitty cauliflower, wild arugula, baby carrots, radishes, and two kinds of dry farmed potatoes.

The chard accompanied Shrimp Scampi over noodles. (recipes below)

The artichokes were steamed, halved, de-choked and dressed with vinaigrette while warm.

Potatoes were grilled along with Trout onna Plank (story to come).

Cauliflower, carrots, and radishes were served on the side as crudités enhancing Spaghetti with Crab sauce. We snacked on the rest.

Arugula made a nice salad as well as a bed for Artic Chard.

That’s all well and good, but I yearn for asparagus, green beans and English peas. They’re in the Supermarket now — from Mexico — but we can wait. They’ll be in the Farmers Market in the next few weeks. Oh boy. Continue reading →

A Week’s Tomato Binge

Labor Day weekend, brought a tomato glut to my corner of the world.

Of course the Wednesday food sections were all over tomatoes with Revisiting the Caprese by Janet Fletcher in the Chronicle and So Many Tomatoes to Stuff in a Week by Melissa Clark in The New York Times. Mark Bittman of the Times chimed in with a Tomato Paella video.

Thursday, I snagged San Marzanos at Andy and Julia’s Marquita Farm Thursday box night at Piccino café in Dogpatch. At the Saturday Farmers Market, which seemed unusually busy, I got a couple of heirlooms from my regular heirloom guy and later saw some more that were so beautiful I couldn’t pass them by. Last, but not least, I got a basket each of red and yellow cherry tomatoes. That should be enough for a week’s tomato binge.

We got a head start with Janet Fletcher’s Tomato Bread Salad with Burrata, accompanied by grilled shrimp. For this, we put together a salad of toasted bread cubes, tomatoes, cucumber, onion, olives, capers and basil leaves with a red wine vinegrette. The salad was composed around a fine piece of Burrata, the very fresh Italian mozzarella, and we finished it with grilled shrimp, uncalled for and unnecessary, but divine. Oh boy! Continue reading →

I hate to throw away flavor! That’s why I save chicken and meat bones, mushroom stems and the like.

Now that it’s heavy duty tomato season, tomato cores and skins just bursting with tomatoness demand a choice: toss, compost, do something. When I peel and core one or two tomatoes, I generally stuff the skins and core into a bag of bones in the freezer for use in the next stock.

On this day, I used five Early Girls to make a tomato base for soup. That seemed enough to make tomato water. What th’ hell is that? Continue reading →