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Monday, February 27, 2012

An Accidental Harvest

I've been holding myself back lately. I've caught a glimpse of sunshine for at least a few minutes most days these past several weeks, and for those few minutes I have thought, "what's the worst that could happen?" My first true garden season is approaching, and I'm having a hard time waiting until the "proper time", whenever that may be. If the ground is warm enough for seeds to germinate, should I plant them? We still have a possible four months of regular rain, even if we luck out and the temperatures don't plummet again.

Well today is a brilliant sunny day, a true basking outside with a book and a dog kind of day, and I'm not waiting anymore. My seeds that I planted indoors a couple weeks ago are sprouting nicely (first hurdle cleared!), and it's time to head outside. My excitement at a spring, summer, and fall full of home-grown produce aside, I am trying to keep from getting ahead of the timeline, so today is just for planting bulbs for summer flowers and getting the soil in the veg garden turned over.

The bulbs in, the soil looking healthy and wormy, my last swipe with the pitch fork and I come up with a small bunch of what look, smell, and taste like spring onions. I'm thinking of roasting these sweet bulby surprise gifts and folding them into a simple risotto with mascarpone and black pepper. I'll raise my glass of, hmm, a crisply clean Alpine white wine and toast an auspicious start to garden season.


Tuesday, February 21, 2012

This Week's Pasta

I can eat pasta every day. In fact, I did eat pasta every day when I worked at Maialino, where it was readily available both fresh and dried, and a pair of twelve gallon tanks of boiling water were on constant standby. At home it may be a touch more effort, and I may only eat it once a week, but if pressed to name a favorite food category, I think it might just be pasta.

So, I've convinced myself that I should probably get good at making it. Or at least respectable. This time I decided on a filled pasta - let's just, for now, ignore the innumerable regional differences in Italian pasta vernacular and call them ravioli - made from white flour and whole eggs.



Whether on its own or as a binder for vegetable fillings, ricotta is often found in filled pastas. So I bought the best milk I could find, added some buttermilk for acid, and heated it until it curdled. I then strained out the whey and - easy as that - checked ricotta off the list.







I wrapped and pressed the ricotta to get as much moisture as I could out of it, and mixed it with sauteed spinach, garlic, lemon zest, and olive oil.











The pasta dough came together fairly easily, and then it was a good old ravioli assembly line (can it be an assembly line with only one assembler?) to the finish.



The only sauce a pasta like that needs, or wants, is butter.

Monday, February 20, 2012

The Bitter End

"The responsible consumer must also be in some way a producer." So says Wendell Berry, and so continues our effort at home to tip the scales toward production. While the veggie seeds are in their pots and the sauerkraut ripens in the garage, why not make some booze?! (Or at least flavor it.)

Hopping on the mustachioed and be-flannelled mixology bandwagon, we thought we would have a go at vermouth. We started with a leftover inexpensive wine, took a portion of it and heated it to a simmer in order to promote the oxidative flavors typical of vermouth. We returned that heated wine to the remainder and poured it over an assortment of bitter aromatics - wormwood (from which vermouth takes its name), gentian, quassia, and mugwort - and a mix of spices and herbs. At this point we caramelized some sugar and added it to the whole mix for a sweet vermouth. After some solid steep time we strained out the aromatics and added a shot or two of brandy to the wine to bring it up to around 17 degrees alcohol.


As it turned out we went a bit heavy on the bitter flavors, a mistake easily avoided by our next method: making single-flavor infusions of herbs, spices, barks, and roots in high-proof alcohol, and then taking minute amounts of those strong infusions and making a mix of house bitters.


The next step, of course, is to grow the grapes and make the wine, and to forage or grow the aromatics. But, in the immortal words of Bob Wiley: baby steps.

Thursday, February 16, 2012

Crab Pasta

The pasta crank arrived today, and with it the craving for a simple, soulful bowl of noodles. It being winter in Oregon, I thought immediately of Dungeness crab. It's easy (if a little time-consuming) to prepare, and with 20 percent of its body weight being meat, it presents one of the higher reward-to-work ratios among its arthropod peers.

I made just enough fresh spaghetti for two ample servings, adding a whole egg into the mix in order to give the pasta the richness to carry the sweet crab flavor. While the dough rested, allowing the flour to absorb more water and the gluten to develop, I cooked the crab. It took about ten minutes in simmering water followed by a quick dunk in ice water, and then a slow process of cracking and snipping of shell, and picking of tiny filaments of meat. By the end I had a respectable pile, plenty for two people.

For the sauce I kept it starkly straightforward: olive oil, minced garlic and chile flake, and a dab of butter. I turned the tomalley out from the shell into the pan and warmed it through, thickening it slightly, and then added the picked crab meat.

The pasta, rolled out and cut now, cooked in about 90 seconds, and from there it was a flip in the pan and a shot of roughly chopped parsley. A nice little meal, unless you want leftovers.


Oh yeah, we had Kumamoto oysters, too. Tiny and tasty, but I still miss that East Coast brine.


Tuesday, February 14, 2012

Fondue Night

What better way to celebrate Valentine's Day than with slender two-tined forks, a fresh baguette, an array of bite-sized morsels, and a bubbling pot of Switzerland's greatest export since chocolate and neutrality.

I'm writing, of course, of fondue: white wine, a splash of kirsch, a blend of Gruyere and Emmental cheeses, and an evening of dipping and sipping (a white wine from just across the border in the Jura region of France). For me, there's no more relaxing and pleasurable way to eat.

When we make fondue we tend to eat it all; the rubbery mass of congealed cheese in the fridge isn't nearly as appetizing the next morning. So this time we limited the amount, and the number of fixings, to a reasonable repast. Sliced apple and Bosc pear, blanched potatoes and broccoli, and a baguette just out of the oven. We enjoyed it all, and still had room for a slice of pie.



I can think of no better way to combat the hustle and bustle of contemporary life, or to make a joy out of what has for most people become the drudgery of cooking dinner. Slow down! And have a fondue night.

Monday, February 13, 2012

A Taste of Florida in the Northwest

Trying to figure out the timing on making this pie was the hardest part. It had to be cooked a couple of times, and then frozen for a specific amount of time, not too long, and then heated, and then cooled again, and only then served. So, it took a few days to get it made more or less properly, around my work schedule.

On Day One I made a graham cracker crust. On Day Two I made the coconut cream: whipping cream and shredded coconut, heated and reduced by about half, then cooled and spread onto the crust. Next came the lime filling: whipped egg yolks, sweetened condensed milk, juice from fresh key limes, poured over the coconut cream. That whole insanely rich assemblage was then baked just until set, and refrigerated for a day. On Day Three I whipped the egg whites with sugar and more shredded coconut and dolloped them on top of the pie base. A quick (although ultimately not quick enough - see photo) run under the broiler, and then back into the fridge for a short time.

My oh my. So good. Like sunshine - extremely rich and decadent sunshine - in a slice.



Wednesday, February 8, 2012

Flour and Water

Seeking redemption for my disgraceful gnocchi execution of the previous day, I returned to the flour bin armed with only a rolling pin and a dash of tap water. Stripped down to its bare essentials, pasta is made of flour and pretty much only flour, with the addition of just enough water to turn it from a powder to a dough.

I went with tradition and so with semolina. Semolina is the milled endosperm of durum wheat, a grain that is high in protein and thus in elasticity, and thus, in turn, possessing the makings of a properly al dente noodle. I kneaded it into a smooth and silky ball, let it rest for a couple hours, and then rolled it out and cut it into fettuccine-like strands. I tossed it with a little more flour to prevent sticking, and let it dry slightly in the cool kitchen.




As the pasta was meant to be the star of the show, I made a starkly restrained sauce: chopped canned tomatoes and a smashed clove of garlic warmed in a glug of olive oil. And that's it.


Tuesday, February 7, 2012

Gnocchi. Sort of.

I've been working with flour a lot lately. Pastries, breads, and of course pasta. As my pasta crank is on the opposite coast, though, I've been limiting myself to fairly easily formed shapes, or, in this case, something that doesn't even have to be rolled out.

The abject fear and revulsion that has been professionally ingrained in me at the thought of a heavy, doughy gnocco is certainly helpful, but can be taken too far. It is a dough, after all, not just potatoes. So it turned out that I took the minimal flour rule a bit too far, and ended up with something of a weak finished product, little dumplings just barely holding themselves together. Not heavy, certainly, but neither were they right. I'll get it next time.

The sauce was straight up classic: butter, deeply browned, the nutty flavor intensified by cracked hazelnuts. A punch of chopped sage continued the earthiness and a squeeze of fresh lemon woke the whole sauce up. The nutmeg in the gnocchi rounded out the flavors, as any Italian grandmother could tell you it would. A warm, homey sauce. Now if only I had some decent gnocchi.

Wednesday, February 1, 2012

Apple Pie and Vanilla Ice Cream

We thought we'd return from our East Asian feast with an all-American dessert. I used a much-practiced vanilla ice cream recipe, rich with egg yolks cooked in vanilla-infused cream to a ribbony custard and chilled to a scoopable but not hard consistency.

The apple pie was pure and classic: Granny Smith and Pippin varieties, tossed with sugar, flour, cinnamon, and nutmeg, and wrapped up in a buttery, flaky crust. It wasn't hard to see why it's classic.