Pining for a coast?

I've been eating less seafood in Chicago than I might have eaten back in Massachusetts — I know that much food travels way too far either way — but some fish (sardines, mackerel) really don't travel. And then I realized that we can get decent mussels.

I made a basic egg pasta recipe ⅓ all purpose flour, ⅔ semolina.
 

I sautéed onions, whole chiles de árbol, and celery in butter with olive oil. To this I added garlic and cherry tomatoes, and then a splash of white wine and the mussels: it cooks in a couple of minutes, just the right time for fresh pasta to cook.

Garnished with salt, pepper, and parsley, it's simple, quick, easy, and delicious.

chanterelles with pasta

Some beautiful chanterelles from the market (most likely the last of the season)...

 With shallots, simmered (covered) with some chicken stock (for about twenty minutes), then with crème fraîche, salt, and peper added, and simmered uncovered until the sauce reduces.

This I served with fresh pasta that I managed to roll out thinner than usual.

Tastes like heaven, feels like fall, as the season quickly fades into interminable Chicago winter.

finally, asparagus

Finally found fresh, local(ish) asparagus -- not being in Western Massachusetts this spring has been tough. All it needed was sautéeing with an anchovy, garlic, capers and some white wine. Toss with pasta, top with parsley and parmesan.

pappardelle with rabbit

This is a recipe from Jamie Oliver's Cook with Jamie (London: Michael Joseph, 2006); I tend to be very skeptical of all celebrity chefs, but I've received two of his books as gifts and everything he does is great. Leeks baked with bacon? Amazing. Pasta with stewed rabbit? Also amazing.

I used ½ AP flour, ½ semolina, rolled the dough out slightly thicker than I usually do and cut it by hand for pappardelle.


A full rabbit, jointed is marinated overnight in olive oil, salt, pepper, garlic, lemon zest, thyme, and rosemary. It gets seared and is them simmered in white wine, in the over, with more garlic, rosemary and thyme. Shredded, with the cooking liquid strained, it is finished with green olives (I forget the name of the ones I bought, but they were great), marjoram, thyme and parmesan. As with many delicious things, I forgot to take a picture before digging in. Served with Julia Child's recipe for haricots verts: boiled, then dry-sautéed until the moisture is gone and topped with butter and parsley. My new favorite way to eat haricots verts.

ravioli with tarragon beurre noisette

I started with three cloves garlic, a small onion, a small carrot and lots of greens (more than shown, in fact, I probably doubled that) : mizuna, komatsuna, kabura turnip greens ans mustard greens, all chopped very fine.

Make your pasta: 1 2/3 - 1 3/4 cups semolina, 2 eggs, salt. Cover with a damp towel.

Sauté the garlic, onions and carrots until slightly translucent in 2 tbs butter/1tbs olive oil. Add the greens, cook until they've lost a good deal of moisture. Add 1 tbs cream and season with salt and pepper.

Roll the pasta out until its pretty thin. Shape ravioli free form (like I did) for large ones or use a mold.

While prepping the beurre noisette, let the ravioli rest on a grate to dry slightly.

Heat 6 tbs butter, skim. Cook until it starts to brown (it will get darker even once poured out)., then pour into another container. Add 2 tbs fresh tarragon. Deglaze the pan with 1½ - 2 tbs vinegar and reduce to 1½ tsp. Pour butter back into pan, turn off heat.

Meanwhile, poach the ravioli.

Top with the beurre noisette.

Very very good. And pretty simple. The idea came from sorrel-turnip green raviolis with beurre noisette that I had once. Tarragon makes it even better.

(nota bene: At $7.99 a bottle, the wine in one of those photos, La Poule blanche, is great. It's Chardonnay, Sauvignon Blanc and Viognier: a little minetally — not much — with fruit and a nice finish. Perfect for summer.)

small projects

Garlic scapes are on a "as you can use them" basis at the CSA, so I've grabed a few bunches each week. I made a pesto last week with one part garlic scapes to one part basil plus walnuts, cheese, olive oil, salt. That was quite good. I've also made a vegan version of that.

Even better:
• handful of garlic scapes
• quart of snap peas (whole)
• ½ cup walnuts
• ¼ - ½ cup olive oil
• salt, pepper to taste

Puréed and tossed with pasta (aim for as mush bean-scape mix as pasta and it's real good).

Also, small, but timely: I'm making a lambic-ish beer. I made a wheat beer (one part light barley malt, one part flaked wheat, two parts wheat malt) that sat out overnight, covered in cheesecloth to invite wild yeast, added ale yeast and then added strawberries after the first week. Could be terrible. Could be amazing. Yes, it's an amateur attempt at best (hoping to have more research done come raspberry time).

asparagus

I've eaten asparagus probably two-to-three (maybe sometimes four) times a week for the last month. It's everywhere, it looks so good, and it's the only local vegetable at the moment.

Asparagus frittata (made with the stalks and a small potato) topped with asparagus tips marinated in a vinaigrette:


Asparagus, steamed, tossed with penne, ricotta and capers:


(Even better, but not pictured: grilled asparagus with penne, capers, preserved lemons and pine nuts).

Tonight I made buckwheat noodles with bean curd and asparagus.


This was some of the best asparagus I've had all season, that wild looking asparagus that will have three, maybe four, heads per stalk, small satellite flowers branching off the main stem. This bunch was from Intervale Farm who has a stand at the Easthampton farmer's market.

For four people:
- 1 bunch (1 - 1½ lbs) asparagus
- 1 package pressed marinated bean curd
- 2-4 bunches buckwheat noodles (they're usually bound with paper ribbons "per serving")
The sauce: 2 T. tamari, 1½ T. rice vinegar, 1½ t. mirin, 1½ T. sesame oil, 1-2T chopped or grated ginger root.

Make the sauce. Let it sit. While pasta cooks, steam the bean curd and asparagus. I steamed until the asparagus was just hot (but barely cooked -- this is best with very fresh, tender stalks). Top the pasta with the bean curd and asparagus. Pour sauce over it all. Enjoy.

Lastly, since I can't resist the temptation to ferment:


This started a week ago as one bunch asparagus, cut on the diagonal, 2 T. kosher salt, one small onion, sliced, some coriander and yellow and brown mustard seeds, 3 cloves garlic and some pepper. In a two liter crock I placed everything but the salt and placed a saucer over. I then made brine with 3 or 4 cups of water and the salt. Test every day or two, and then store in a covered jar in the fridge once it tastes "right" (i.e., to your taste). They're crunchy and tangy and delicious. I'm very excited.

Lastly, Flayvors of Cook Farm in Hadley (I used to get raw milk there) has, I've been told, "Hadley grass" ice cream. (Hadley grass being a play on Sparrow grass, being a corrupted vernacular for asparagus that dates to at least the 18th century.)

I'm also excited that next week my CSA share starts next week!

autumnal

I've been thinking about parsnip pie — I'd like to make one (or some) for Thanksgiving — so I gave it a go last night. Two medium parsnips were roasted with salt and olive oil and then puréed with a clove of garlic, two eggs, milk and pepper. I baked them in small tart shells made with a sage-thyme crust.

And voilà... they were quite good. Not as cute as I'd hoped, but I thought quite delicious.

Then there was homemade pasta with sautéed purple cauliflower, purple kale and bâtons of sunchoke. Last week I made mashed sunchokes — this was a much better use of the sunchoke.


And then there was an ad hoc bosc pear crisp (we were out of apples): simple, very very good — and I tried whipping some crème fraîche that I had made and it was incredibly good. Tangy, not sugary-sweet like whipped cream. Really quite delicious.

day 10

A hardboiled egg, a tomato and a pickle for dinner.

It's day 10, and last night the pickles were half-sour dills, and quite good. I'm going to keep on going for a few more days and see how they continue as we go along.



Sorrel + ricotta + pine nuts + paramsean = this.

Throw it in the food processor, add it to fresh pasta, top it with parsley, and that's it.

(And there's wild purslane growing in the garden!)

july. peas.

I saw a recipe for a pea pesto a couple of weeks ago. It had cooked, frozen peas. (Not particularly aestival). I forget what else was in it.

It's July, and I had a bunch of fresh peas, and it's hot and I wanted simplicity, so I decided to work with that. I made papardelle with 1/3 whole wheat pastry flour and 2/3 semolina. I then put 3 or 4 cloves of garlic, a half-handful of pine nuts, maybe 2 cups of shelled raw peas, some grapeseed oil and some parsley.

The result was almost fluorescent green and certainly very delicious. Really really really good. And it'd be quick if I hadn't tried to make hand-cut pasta by hand on a hot, humid day. (It got fickle and a little sticky...)

(Now I need to figure out what to do with purple kohlrabi...)

going a-way

It's been a few weeks, but to commemorate M.'s becoming of a Trojan, we had a party to wish her well as she left for Troy. Starting with this roasted pepper.







I made two sauces for the lasagne: roasted red pepper & garlic and an Italian sausage sauce. I'm not really a sausage person, and just becoming a meat person over the last two years, so I decided to give it a go. The hot Italian sausages at Wholefoods are quite wonderful in sauce (but divine with beluga lentils, as I had the other night).




Then there was pasta, the cheeses (sliced mozz., on top, ricotta-parmasean inside), spinach, the assembly...

The fun part was the hors d'oeuvres. I made limoni di amalfi from the Jamie Oliver book from M. They're lemons, halved and hollowed, filled with anchovies, mozzarella, cherry tomatoes and basil which are then baked until it's gooey and lemony and ready to be spread on toast... or sucked right out of the shell.

There were also other crostini: a bruchetta, sautéed garlic and greens, and a roasted garlic-white bean mash.


D. made lemon bars and brownies for dessert, and my co-hosts (or the hosts, as it wasn't my house), A. and K. did a wonderful spread of cheeses, crackers. And, in his fashion, A. had an 8mm movie for us: Fine Food, Fine Pastry, Open 6 to 9.

Yummm.

& lasagne

Stephanie was here for a wedding, and Jonathan due to his new location. So...

While the tomatoes were brining, I made lasagne -- a white lasagne with delicata squash, carrots, mizuna and the standards (ricotta, paramsean, parsley).

Meanwhile, Jonathan documented the lasagne noodles on the rack. (Nothing special this time around, just eggs, semolina and salt...)

And then Stephanie and Jonathan prepped apples for the nougatine tart that was heavenly. Recipe courtesy of Tartine.

(I'm having a major internal debate: grad school or cooking school?)