Eating Dirt

Spicy Asian Slaw or What to do With Cabbage?

In the past couple of weeks we have eaten at least five cabbages. I was surprised this week, to find none in our CSA box and only one in the fridge, already slated to be sliced and dressed to go with a noodle soup that would use the last of a previously roasted chicken. Winter, or Spring in some places, is cabbage season. They are beautiful in the garden, gathering dew with dusty hues of plum, pale and bright green. And they are great in salads of all sorts, stir fried and steamed, but sometimes I'm just not sure what to do with them all.

So, as a last resort, I planned to make an asian slaw recipe I'd found in my collection of favorites. I don't recall ever making this before, but there it was. I had my doubts, mostly because as a general rule I don't love coleslaw. Its OK, especially when made with sesame oil and peanuts, but not something I'm interested in wasting too many calories on.  

"Make Cole Slaw!" my husband said, when I asked, dejectedly, what to do with the two cabbages we received last week. So I did. And it was shockingly good. Even my daughter ate it, which wasn't too surprising, since she tends to like raw vegetables, though not usually with sauce or dressing.  We ate it with an asian style noodle soup, also easy and delicious, so I'll add that recipe here as well.  

Enjoy!

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Spicy Asian Slaw (adapted from an old Eatwell Newsletter, I think):

Makes 4-6 servings.

For the dressing:

1/2 c mayonnaise

1 T toasted sesame oil

1 T mirin (or rice wine vinegar)

3-6 Tchili sauce (rooster sauce, or something like that)

1 T grated ginger

2 T fresh lime juice

1 t salt

1 T sesame seeds

Mix the ingredients together, then set them aside while you assemble the slaw.

For the slaw:

1 small green (preferably savoy or napa) cabbage - if you use a large one, double the sauce recipe

1 small turnip, grated

1 large carrot, grated

4 green onions or 1 small onion, thinly sliced or grated

1/4 cup chopped fresh mint leaves

1/4 cup chopped fresh cilantro leaves

Core the cabbage, quarter and slice it very thinly. Transfer to a large bowl or salad spinner, fill with water and swish, then lift the cabbage out to drain, or spin it in the spinner. Add the cabbage, grated turnip, carrot, onion, mint and cilantro to a large bowl. Mix in the dressing, then let sit in the fridge, covered, for up to four days.

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Quick Asian Noodle Soup (adapted from Lucinda Scala Quinn's Mad Hungry):

Makes 4-6 servings.

4-6 c chicken broth

1 T minced or grated ginger (peel it first)

1 star anise

1 large shallot (or 2 small ones) halved and thinly sliced

1 jalapeno or serrano chili, sliced longways, seeded and sliced into rounds (add as many or few as you want)

3 small leeks or some scallions, thinly sliced

1 bunch spinach leaves, washed

1 t salt

pepper

3/4 lb soba noodles

1 T sesame oil

1 c or so leftover cooked chicken

Heat the chicken broth, adding the shallots and leeks, ginger, star anise and jalapenos as you slice them, then the salt. Let that simmer gently while you wash the spinach (set it aside when finished), chop the leftover chicken and cook the noodles separately according to their package directions. When the noodles are done, drain them and toss with the sesame oil, then put some in the bottom of each bowl. Add the chicken and then the spinach to the soup, give it a stir and turn off the heat. Taste for salt, grind some pepper on top, and ladle the soup into the bowls, over noodles.

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Roast Chicken Tacos

Tonight's chicken tacos were the best dinner ever. In addition to both kids eating it, my daughter ate five radishes. Five!  I've been putting beautiful little radishes - in red, pink, purple - on the table and eating them with great relish around my family for years now, but I I've never seen her eat more than one tiny nibble, until tonight. Truth be told, I don't even like radishes that much. I used to worry about what to do with the bunches we would have stacking up in our produce drawer, and at one point resorted to making a sort of radish cream cheese spread, which actually is quite good on toasted brown bread. The funny thing about radishes is that the longer you keep them, the spicier they get. So depending on whether you like them hot or not hot, leaving them in your fridge for a while may not be such a bad thing. And now that the majority of my family will eat them, I can grow them in the garden!  

But I digress...the tacos were grand. Really delicious. Everybody loved them. They were easy, though I mistakenly waited to roast the chicken until after picking up my daughter from preschool, which seems to have led to one of her more massive bedtime meltdowns this evening. The chicken could have easily been roasted this morning, or even last night or the night before. Of course, then we would have missed out on the crispy salty roast chicken skin, which is one of the most delicious things on earth (it goes soggy after a night in the fridge), but I guess we could just eat it with breakfast or whenever the chicken comes out of the oven. 

When you're making this, be sure to get really good produce - a rancid avocado or flaccid radish would be a deal breaker. This afternoon my son and I picked up a chicken over at Alpha Market in Cole Valley, where they also had baskets of little organically grown apples that look like they came from someone's backyard, for $1.85. I know, I know, apples aren't really in season yet, but my son keeps asking for them. He is one of those kids who never wants to eat what we have a lot of. Then we swung by Fresh Organics on our way home, which is expensive as hell, but has great produce. I love shopping at Rainbow Grocery, but we cannot walk to it. When I'm heading east and staying close to home, these places are the next best thing.

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Roast Chicken Tacos (adapted from Canal House Cooking Volume 4):

1 whole roasted chicken

a dozen or so corn tortillas (taco size)

1 avocado (or more if your family likes them), peeled and cut into slices

1 fresh poblano chile pepper, roasted, peeled, seeded and sliced thinly

cotija cheese (as much as you want), crumbled

2 limes, sliced into wedges for squeezing

1 bunch fresh radishes, scrubbed clean with the leaves left on

salt

This recipe will feed four, with lots of chicken left over. If you want to feed more people just get more tortillas, another pepper, avocado and pepper. To make it into a really quick dinner you can roast the pepper and the chicken ahead of time. Both will keep for a day or two in the fridge. I suppose you could even buy a chicken already cooked at the market and bring it home, were that a more convenient option.

To roast the pepper, hold it with a pair of tongs over one of the gas flames on your stovetop. If you have an electric burner that heats up, you may be able to just lay the pepper on top, but I've never done it. Either way, be very, very careful to pay close attention to your chili, otherwise you may burn the house down. Have ready a small paper bag before you roast the pepper, and when the pepper is blackened and charred all over, drop it into the bag and close it. The pepper will steam a little bit, and in twenty minutes or so you can remove it from the bag and peel its skin off. Then slice it in half, cut out the stem, scrape out the seeds (being careful not to scrape out the flesh) and cut it into thin strips.

To roast the chicken, first make sure that it is brought up to room temperature before you put it in the oven. Otherwise, what should be an hour cooking time will become much longer. It takes at least a couple of hours out on our kitchen counter to warm up, but then we live in a place where the temperature is 55° on the first of August. At your house, the chicken may come to room temperature more quickly. You don't want to leave it unrefrigerated for too long in a warm location because bacteria will grow that can make you sick. 

After the chicken has been out of the fridge for however long seems appropriate, preheat the oven to 400°. Lay out some paper towels on a big plate, and wash your chicken in the sink, then pat it dry on the plate. Next rub the inside of the body cavity and the outside of the bird with salt. Lots of salt. If you want your chicken to look pretty, use some cooking twine (you buy it at the grocery store) to tie its legs together, as though it were crossing them. You can even throw a few fresh herbs in the body cavity beforehand if you want, thyme, parsley and rosemary give the meat a nice flavor. Place the chicken breast side up on a shallow oiled baking dish or baking sheet with high sides (at least a half inch or so) and put it into the oven. It will need to cook for about an hour, you can check it after 30 minutes, and when the skin is starting to look nice and browned, slice a knife into the thigh joint. If the juices run clear, then the chicken is done. Let it rest for a few minutes before carving.

Once the chicken is done, and the other ingredients have been prepared and put out in small bowls, call your people to the table and then toast the tortillas. Like roasting the chile pepper, lay a single tortilla over a low gas flame on your range for a few seconds, then flip it over using tongs. Once it is warm enough to fold in half, put it on a plate and pass it to the table, the lucky recipient can assemble their taco and eat it. Also like the pepper, be very careful not to let it catch on fire. Stovetop tortilla heating requires vigilance, and I'm willing to bet that your local fire department would recommend you use the microwave instead. Should one happen to light up, quickly grab it with your tongs, drop it in the sink and douse it with water. If the fire is too big for your tongs, grab the fire extinguisher that you (should) have installed close to your stove. Its easy to keep one hidden in a cabinet.

To assemble the tacos (all ingredients should be out on the table in small bowls, with the sliced chicken on a larger plate), just put a couple small pieces of chicken on the tortilla, then add avocado, roasted chile, cheese, salt and pepper, a squeeze of lime. Radishes should be eaten separately, you can sprinkle a little salt on your plate and dip it in that.

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More Fava Love

This morning the kids and I harvested breakfast and dinner from our garden. Not a full meal, but at least part of it. For starters, we had a handful of home grown strawberries - a few of the tiny white alpine ones, and half a dozen nice red ones, minus a few slug bites. It turns out that a strawberry takes at least a week or so as a red berry to become fully ripe. We didn't realize this right away, and I had doubts our garden could actually produce sweet berries. But now I know, it just takes a long time for them to be ready. The red berries need to be dark red and super shiny, swollen looking, almost. Just turning red isn't enough. The little white ones are harder to gage, but the best indicator seems to be that they get larger than I expected, soft, and dry out a little, so that they are lighter in weight than their less sweet neighbors.

The white alpine plant is super productive, I'd love to find a red one. Its probably too late to plant berries for this year, but I'm plotting a spot for next year to replace my son's digging area. He'll have to move his ancient, rusty dump truck somewhere else.

We also dug up potatoes - about five and a third pounds from a three foot by four foot section of one of the raised beds. I am really cheap at heart, and would like to at least feel that I'm getting a reasonable deal on the produce we grow, and in this case I do. I paid about three dollars for seed potatoes, planted half of them back in January in this location, and then ignored them until now. I think thats a good trade - they were essentially free, since I didn't give them any water or food. Now that our dry foggy summer has arrived, I'll have to become a slave to the hose for everything else. Or maybe debug our sprinkler system, though after the humungous water bill we still haven't paid off from last year, I'd rather stick with something I can control. Maybe I'll buy one of those old school rotating sprinklers that screws onto the hose for the lawn.

The favas from our garden really surprised me last week, and this morning the kids picked more. I know that fresher produce always tastes better, but I figured that the favas growing in our yard would taste about the same as the ones we get from our CSA box. But that was way wrong. Picked just before cooking, they are like a completely different food - bright green, soft and really delicious. Our CSA favas are fine, but now I know I should eat them right away, instead of letting them languish in the fridge for a week or more while I schedule time for podding, skinning and cooking. Its much better to just bump the schedule back half an hour and do it as soon as the beans are picked.

So the favas win my Cheapest Yardfood Award. They need really, absolutely, no care (as long as it still rains occasionally), appear to have no pests, and are a thousand times more tasty than what you can buy in the store, one hundred times more than when fresh from someone else's farm. What a great deal! 

After the potatoes were dug, my daughter requested that we eat them with roast chicken for dinner. So we did. Along with some favas. The recipe I used for favas is actually for asparagus, but I threw in a bit of both. This is the third time I've made it, and it is good this way, but I think it might be better with favas alone. When they are super fresh. My good friend Shelley gave me this cookbook, Fast Fresh and Green, for my birthday, and I'm really enjoying the author's blog posts as she gardens and cooks, just like me.

When preparing this dinner, have the favas removed from their pods (they don't have to be skinned yet, but it would be easier if they were) before you start cooking. Then begin with the chicken. Once it is in the oven put on a pot of boiling water if you need to skin the favas. Prep the potatoes and get them in the oven when you flip the chicken after the first 20 minutes, then use the next 20 to prep the veggies and the last 20 to cook them. My kids love to take favas out of their pods - yours might too.

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Roat Chicken (adapted from Alice Waters' In the Green Kitchen):

One three to four pound chicken

Salt

Sprigs of thyme or other herbs

Olive Oil

Preheat the oven to 400°. Wash the chicken with water, then pat it dry with paper towels. Salt it liberally inside and outside. Put the chicken in a lightly oiled roasting pan, breast side up. Put a few sprigs of herbs in the cavity, then tie the legs together. Tuck the wingtips under the back of the neck.

Roast the chicken for 20 minutes, then turn the chicken over and roast breast side down for 20 minutes, then turn it over again so that it is breast side up and roast for 20 more minutes. To test for doneness, pierce the leg joint with a knife and make sure the juices that run out are clear, not pink. When done, remove the chicken to a platter and let it rest for ten minutes before carving.

While the chicken rests, add a little stock or water to the pan and, using a wooden spoon or spatula,  scrape the brown bits off and stir them into the liquid. Then remove the fat (you can spoon it off, but I like to pour it into a fat separator). Pour the juices over the meat after carving, right before serving.

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Favas and Asparagus with Dijon Thyme Pan Sauce (adapted from Susie Middleton's Fast, Fresh and Green):

1/4 cup chicken stock (you can always sub in water if you don't have any - and its good to freeze it in small increments, next time you have extra)

2 Tablespoons dry white wine (like sauvignon blanc)

1 Tablespoon olive oil

1 Tablespoon unsalted butter

2 bunches medium asparagus or 2 cups peeled and skinned favas (you'd probably want two full plastic bags worth before podding, see below for fava prep instructions) or 1 of each

1 Tablespoon fresh thyme, with the leaves pulled off the stems (you can sub in dried if needed)

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon Dijon mustard

Combine the stock and water in a measuring cup.

In a large, straight sided saute pan, heat the olive oil and butter over medium high heat. When the butter has melted and is bubbling, add the asparagus and favas and salt, toss to coat. Arrange in one layer, and cook without tossing until the undersides are browned, about four minutes.

Give the veggies a good stir, with the intent of turning them to their other sides, and let them cook over medium heat for another two minutes. Carefully pour the measuring cup of liquid over the pot, it will sputter, so be careful. Simmer for a couple minutes, until the liquid is nearly gone, then stir in the thyme and mustard and turn off the heat. Serve the veggies while warm and pour the pan juices over them.

Fava Bean Tagine

 

I love the way that rolls off my tongue - fava bean tagine. I bet if I made it into a little song and dance, while I served dinner, my daughter would repeat it all day long - just to annoy me. But would she eat it? Well, yes, under duress. I spoon fed her all the fava beans (which she enjoys raw, but not cooked) and sweet potatoes, in exchange for a bowl of super sugar clifford crisps, or some other fake-healthy organic sugar cereal. The chicken and cous-cous she ate on her own. My son refused the vegetables outright, but that is nothing unusual.

The tagine wasn't mostly favas, they didn't even make up a large percentage of the meal, but I did use a whole bag from last week's CSA delivery. Not counting what's in the garden, I"m all out. 

In this tagine, I replaced the usual green peas that my friend Khadesia taught me were OK to throw in at the last minute. She wouldn't use chard, or spinach. No kale or stir-fry greens. Carrots, sure. Sweet potatoes, of course. Turnips, maybe. But something green?  Only peas. I guess I could serve it with a salad, but I prefer to think of a tagine as a one-pot meal, excepting the cous-cous.

In my garden, favas are the one thing (besides mildew) that will always grow.  When I planted my garden in mid-January, only the favas managed to get going before the weather warmed up. They are great for the soil (if you cut and compost them before they flower, some say) and are great to eat, unless you have inherited an enzyme defect from your parents. Even if you have, Wikipedia tells me that most people with the disorder don't react to fava beans. 

There is also quite a bit of protein packed into them - according to Nutrition Data's website, a one cup  serving has 187 calories, 1 gram of fat, 33 grams of carbohydrates, 9 grams of fiber and 13 grams of protein. Also lots of vitamin A, folate and choline (whatever that is). That is for boiled beans, so I'm sure the fat changes when they're cooked in olive oil, but they start out good.  When you compare that to the green peas, its about the same with less protein.  

So I guess those brits with their grey skies and mushy peas were on to something. I have to say that I'm pretty impressed that I can grow 13 grams of protein per cup in my backyard without doing much of anything. But now I see that a cup of roast chicken has 43 grams of protein. So maybe its not such a good deal after all. But I'm definitely more sure than I was yesterday that a meat serving doesn't need to be very large.

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Khadesia's Chicken Tagine:

1 chicken, cut into parts

4 small sweet potatoes or 2 large

1/2 cup peas (or snap peas or fava beans - shelled, boiled briefly and skinned)

1 or 2 slices preserved lemon

1/2 bunch cilantro

1 Tablespoon olive oil

2 largish pinches saffron threads

1 teaspoon ground coriander

1 teaspoon ground turmeric

1 teaspoon paprika

1 teaspoon colorant (safran)

salt and pepper

Heat the oil in a tagine - be careful not to turn the heat up too high (I use a medium low setting) because you can crack the tagine .  The temperature is about right before you hear a lot of sizzling. Sprinkle a little salt on the chicken, then arrange it in a single layer in the tagine. Add the preserved lemon to the chicken - on top is fine. Sprinkle half the spices (1 pinch saffron, 1/2 t coriander, turmeric, paprika and colorant) on top of the chicken, salt and pepper it and add half the cilantro. Put the lid on the tagine and cook over  for about twenty minutes.

While the chicken is cooking, wash, peel and slice the sweet potatoes into long slices (I usually cut them in half, then half the halves longways).  Wash the peas. If you're using favas, snap them out of the pods, then drop the beans into boiling water for about thirty seconds. Drain them and pour them into a bowl of ice water, then skin them. Its easiest to pinch the pale green skin on the stem end, then gently squeeze the bean to get it out.  When twenty minutes have passed, flip the chicken over, then sprinkle the remainder of the spices and cilantro on top. Lay the sweet potatoes on top of the chicken.  Cover and cook for another twenty to thirty minutes.  For the last few minutes, add the peas or favas.

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cous-cous:

1 cup cous-cous

2 cups boiling water

1 tablespoon olive oil

salt

Bring the water to a boil in a teakettle or separate pot and keep it simmering.  Heat the oil in a large skillet (or low sided pot), then add the cous-cous and stir it around for a couple minutes until it browns just a little bit. Stir in 1/2 teaspoon of salt and remove the skillet from heat.  Pour in the water, it will bubble up and make some noise.  Quickly stir it one time, then cover the skillet with a lid and let it sit for ten minutes. If it seems too dry, then add another cup of water in the same manner. Fluff the cous-cous before serving.

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Lemon Chicken Salad

 To come clean, lemon chicken salad makes our dinner sound more special than it actually was. Ina Garten's recipe in The Barefoot Contessa Cookbook calls for grilled lemon chicken, which I'm sure is delicious, but was just not in the cards tonight. I used the remainder of our roast chicken from earlier this week, and while slicing it up, marinating it and then cooking it again on the grill was enticing, it was also too ridiculous. 

Instead I made the dressing (it contains lemon - and so justifies the name), tossed the chicken in it, added  some peas, snap peas, lettuce and sliced red pepper. Hooray - easy! And the most amazing thing?  My semi-vegetablephobe daughter cleared her plate. Lettuce with vinaigrette, chicken, toast, those are easy things. But red pepper and cooked peas? Never! Until tonight, when after four years and ten months of withholding dessert unless she eats the rest of dinner, my ploy worked. All for two stale Girl Scout shortbread cookies (what are those called? Samovars?). Unbelievable.

My son, on the other hand, wouldn't touch it. But that's fine with me. I'm sure he'll love the next thing his sister hates, it just seems to work like that. And he'll surely gobble down breakfast tomorrow.

I'm not terribly familiar with Ina Garten, my friend Rosanna gave me her cookbook as a gift a couple years back, and from time to time I'll make something from it. Lots of tasty salads, beautiful desserts I haven't tried (its so hard to put in all that effort when my kids won't get any, which meansI have to eat half of the thing myself). She has a show on the food network, but, I have to own up, I don't watch the food network. I'm sure that if I did, I would never actually do anything. According to her Wikipedia Bio, she is a former White House nuclear policy analyst. That is very interesting. Does this influence her cooking? Does she make funny political references on TV? Will someone just tell me so I don't have to watch it myself?

For dessert, strawberries. And stale cookies, for those who finished the meal. These strawberries arrived in our Frog Hollow CSA box, following closely on the heels of strawberries from our Eatwell Farm CSA box, which followed the flat we bought for my son's birthday party from the UCSF Wednesday Farmer's Market. And now there are some in the garden!

Life is good when we have abundant strawberries, and production should be ramping up over the next month or two. We picked our first ripe-ish strawberry from our garden today. It was not, sadly, the beauty I mentioned earlier in the week. That wonderful, perfectly shaped, rosy red glowing first berry of the 2010 garden disappeared. Completely. The entire thing. I fear it it was a raccoon, but hopefully one of the tree pruners who visited us that morning ate it. I really don't want to be battling raccoons for my strawberries. That sounds like a losing battle. 

This morning we also tried some little tiny white berries that are growing on our largest plant, which we bought last summer at the Ferry Plaza Farmer's Market. It is an alpine strawberry plant, and I thought that meant it grew tiny red berries, but it seems they are tiny white berries. For weeks these berries have been dangling seductively, each about the size of the tip of my pinky finger, not changing in color or size. Not even a blush of pink. This is the plant that for a while seemed to be raising its own colony of fruit flies. And finally, this afternoon, I clued in. 

We tried the berries, and the kids loved them, but I'm not sure why. Maybe they stayed on the plant too long. Maybe our sandy soil (do I dare even call it soil?) needs more compost. To me they were strawberry flavored, but not terribly sweet - a little bit bitter. Now that I know, I won't wait around for the next batch of berries to turn red, we'll snatch them up right away. Maybe that will sweeten them up.

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Lemon Chicken Salad (adapted from The Barefoot Contessa Cookbook):

leftover chicken (a breast and leg, or whatever you've got)

1 lemon

2-3  Tablespoons olive oil

1 red bell pepper, sliced

lettuce, cut into approximately 2x1" pieces, washed and dried

1 cup sugar snap peas, shelling peas (shelled) or a combination

salt and pepper

First of all, make the dressing. Squeeze the lemon into a measuring cup, then, holding your spoon over a jar with a lid (but off, right now), pour the lemon juice into the spoon then dump it in the jar, to measure the amount. After putting all the lemon juice in the bowl, add an equal number of Tablespoons of olive oil. Add salt and pepper until it tastes good to you, I like about 1/2 teaspoon of each. Put the lid on the jar, shake it up, and set aside.

Slice the chicken meat into small strips - about 2" by 1/2". put them into a small bowl, then dump half the dressing on top and stir it around. Let that sit while you chop and wash the lettuce and wash the peas. While you're washing, put a small pot with about an inch of water in the bottom on to boil. When it is boiling, add the peas. If you have a combination of snap peas and shelled peas, add the shelled peas first, then the snaps after about five minutes. Let it cook for another three minutes, then pour them out into a colander in the sink and then into a bowl full of cold water to stop the cooking process. After a few minutes drain them into the colander. Shake as much water as you can off the peas, then get out a really big bowl. Put in the lettuce, peas, peppers and chicken - pour it in to get all the dressing. Toss it with tongs, then, if more dressing is needed, add some and toss again. Serve immediately, and grate some fresh pepper over the top.

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Joy of a Roast Chicken

Today was a near perfect spring day - fitting, since May Day was this past Saturday. We had no plans this morning, which allowed me to tidy the kitchen to near acceptable standards of cleanliness, something it hasn't achieved since early two thousand six. There was only one timeout for the kids while I swept and rinsed and scrubbed and sorted, they were largely good on their own, playing "camping" in the sunny living room by redesigning the sofa into a tent complete with special secret agent devices.

I opened the kitchen doors to the back deck and pulled the mildew smitten snap pea plants from their pots, harvesting their final bounty and readying the soil for something more hardy - perhaps mildew resistant snap peas? The kids and I went down to the garden and marveled at our one half red strawberry - if the weather gets warmer, it might be ready to eat this week. I only hope the slugs don't find it first.

We watered the garden and planted some thyme. We counted slugs and refilled the beer traps (many, but nothing to rival the ninety-seven dead slugs we counted last thursday). I noted the lack of carrots we have growing in all three carrot beds we've planted. The kids made mud pies. I wondered about the brown spots continuing to appear on potato leaves throughout the garden. The kids sprayed themselves with the hose. I puzzled over whether our largest strawberry plant has fruit flies or something more sinister. The kids took their clothes off and peed in the grass. We gathered up our dirty laundry and went back inside for bean and cheese burritos.

After preschool, my daughter's ballet class was cancelled. So we went home and I unwrapped the still frozen chicken that had been sitting on the counter since last night. Into the oven it went and again I threw open the doors to the yard and out we went. 

We added some rocks to the strawberry garden terraces and started collecting stakes for pea tepees. The kids sprayed themselves with the hose. I realized how snappy the blue and yellow violas look in the back beds - they've finally grown too tall for whatever flower munching insect has been eating them up. I went back inside to put some potatoes and carrots in to roast with the chicken and poured myself a glass of prosecco. The kids made mud cakes. 

Back in the garden, I stood in the warm sun assembling stakes for the pea plants while our ancient apple tree's branches rustled above me.  "Mommy, when will the apples be ready?" my daughter asked as she tried to sneak our sharpest scissors out of my pocket. "Me cut!" said my son, waving twenty-five feet of unrolled twine he had knotted into a roundish lump. This is it, I realized. This is what I love so much - the light in my eyes and the wind in my hair and the plants and my children all gathered around. 

"I'm cold" said my daughter, going into the house. "Me too" said my son, going into the house. And they left me there, to finish building pea teepees, as the sun settled down toward the ocean. 

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Roast Chicken with Potatoes and Carrots (adapted from The Joy of Cooking):

1 whole chicken, thawed and brought to room temperature (if possible)

1 to 2 pounds of small waxy potatoes, scrubbed and cut in half (fingerlings, yellow fin, yukon gold or something like that)

1/2 to 1 pound of carrots, scrubbed and cut in half lengthwise and crosswise

salt

olive oil

Preheat the oven to 400˚. Rinse and pat dry the chicken, making sure to remove the giblits if any have been stuffed inside the bird. Sprinkle the chicken generously with salt and rub it into the skin a bit. Sprinkle more salt inside the cavity. Put the chicken in a roasting pan, breast side up (or down if you'd prefer the breast meat not dry out and can handle the breast skin not getting crunchy and delicious). Put it in the oven and set a timer for 25 minutes.

A few minutes before the timer rings, put the carrots and potatoes in a really big bowl, then pour a couple tablespoons of olive oil and a half to one teaspoon of salt on top. Toss them together using tongs until all the veggies are coated with oil and salt. Put them on a cookie sheet and put them into the oven with the chicken when the timer goes off.  Set the timer for 20 more minutes. 

When the timer goes off, check the chicken for doneness - it should be nice and brown and crispy. You can take its temperature in the thickest part of the thigh, if you'd like. Your meat thermometer will tell you what temperature the chicken should be. You can also check for doneness by pulling the chicken partway out of the oven and using a knife to cut into the skin between the thigh and body. The juices that come out should be clear. If they are pink, it isn't done. If it isn't done, put it back in the oven for ten minutes, then repeat the check for doneness. Keep an eye on the veggies, and when they have a golden crust on them and are soft, take them out. If the chicken is just about ready you can always turn off the oven and let it finish as the oven cools off. This often allows me to pick up someone from school, throw some laundry in, or prevent howls of distress by letting the Thomas episode finish.

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Salad:

1 large or 2 small heads crisp green lettuce (romaine, little gem, whatever)

2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

1 tablespoon champagne vinegar

1 tablespoon dijon mustard

salt & pepper

In a small jar with a lid, combine the olive oil, vinegar and mustard. Put the lid on and shake it up, then add salt and pepper to taste. 

Remove any imperfect outer leaves from the lettuce, then cut it into horizontal slices and then vertical slices, like a checkerboard, so that the lettuce pieces are about 1x1'. Wash and dry them. 

Put the lettuce in a really big bowl and pour 2/3 of the dressing on top, then toss it with tongs. Taste, and add more if needed. Serve immediately and grate more pepper on top once it is on your plate.

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Grilled Chicken with Harissa and Mint

 Chez Panisse was wonderful. It remains my favorite restaurant, and I think this was my best visit yet. For starters, while we were having a drink at the bar upstairs, Alice Waters walked in. I didn't talk to her, but it was pretty exciting nonetheless. My champagne was fantastic and my husband had a really interesting wine that was unpasteurized and sulfite free - delivered every day in reusable stainless steel bottles and consumed that evening. I'll have to get the name and and post it, he remembers things like that. It was definitely different from the usual sauvignon blanc, a little cloudy and not as layered on the palate as many traditional wines, but I'll gladly take that in lieu of sulfites on occasion. 

Before our dinner even came we were treated to a kitchen tour, which is always fun, but this time we got to check out the meat and produce walk-ins. Behind big shiny doors (copper, if I remember correctly) were such wonderful things to eat!  A whole row of little lambs hanging side by side, and in the produce cooler I saw the biggest morel mushrooms of my life. And there was something else in there that amazed me, but I cannot remember right now. Maybe later I'll be able to share. Back at our table we could peer into the kitchen and watch sardines on the grill, which is a really beautiful sight. Almost as good as the Parisian Chef in the NY Times this past Sunday.

Monday dinners at Chez Panisse are a smaller affair than the rest of the week, and certainly no friday or saturday extravagance, but it was the perfect thing - not too much food. Well, not too terribly much food. We had sardines for our first course, which I've never eaten before.  They are pretty fish, petite and very shiny. Really delicious, and also easy to just slide the meat (or should I call it flesh? or fishflesh? ) off the bones. I ate the skin with it.  Such a small fish has very fine skin, I guess. Tasty!

The main course was lamb with house made couscous. Our waiter had one of the chefs come out to describe to us how they made the couscous, and now I understand why my Moroccan friend Khadesia told me a couscous takes all day to make. She must have been talking about making it from scratch, not the bagged kind I like to boil up in fifteen minutes on the stove. At Chez P, they start with flour and spray it with a little water and just roll it around in a sieve, then let it sit and dry for a while, then spray it and roll it some more, then let it sit and dry for a while, then spray it and roll it some more, and eventually it turns into couscous. It was served with a lamb broth and spring veggies (artichoke, peas, asparagus) along with butternut squash, and lamb, of course. A really good way to use up the end of the winter produce and still get to eat spring goodies - I'm not sure I would have thought of combining those myself.

Dessert was rhubarb and a yogurt ice cream, and mine came with a little candle for my birthday!

Which reminds me, thanks for all the Facebook Birthday wishes. Hopefully I'll login again to Facebook sometime soon and respond.

And then today, back to the significantly less glorious kitchen in my own house. Actually, today there was no cooking - we had Thai delivered.  But yesterday, we had grilled chicken with harissa.

Harissa is a fabulous thing.  In fact, there was some with our couscous at Chez P. on monday. But I love it because I can make it myself, put it in a little clip-top jar with a quarter inch of oil covering the top and keep it in the fridge for a thousand years. Its been so long since I made harissa that I don't even remember what is in it. You don't have to make it from scratch, though, its easy enough to buy at a middle eastern grocery or probably at Andronicos or Rainbow. But if you happen to have a food processor and access to Deborah Madison's Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone, you can make it pretty easily too.

The chicken recipe was a winner - so easy my husband could make it, really good and the kids ate it too, with a little coaxing. They would not eat the snap peas we steamed to go with, but thats OK because it left more for me. Another score from Nigel Slater, this one will go into the little striped books where I store my best recipes. And I guess I'll post the harissa one too, since my husband just trotted in with the book and dropped it next to me. Now I have no good excuse not to.

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Grilled Chicken with Harissa and Mint (adapted from Nigel Slater's The Kitchen Diaries):

2 teaspoons harissa paste

2 Tablespoons yogurt

3 Tablespoons olive oil

4 chicken pieces (we cut up a whole chicken and use 2 breasts and 2 thighs, but you can do whatever)

a handful of mint leaves

salt and pepper

Stir the harissa into the yogurt, then whisk in the olive oil, a little salt and some pepper. It might look a little curdled, but don't worry about it. Roll the chicken pieces in this. 

Heat up the grill, and place the chicken on it to cook. As soon as nice char marks are on the lower side, flip the chicken pieces onto their other sides and continue cooking. To test for doneness, take a knife and slice into the thickest part of the chicken. The meat should look opaque and have only clear juices running out, not pink.

Mince the mint leaves. Sprinkle them onto the chicken after it is done cooking. Serve hot off the grill, with a simple salad or steamed snap peas.

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Harissa (adapted from Deborah Madison's Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone):

12 dried red New Mexican chiles

3 guajillo chilis

4 garlic cloves

salt

1 Tablespoon caraway seeds

1 1/2 teaspoons coriander seeds

1 1/2 teaspoons cumin seeds

1 Tablespoon olive oil, plus extra for storage

Wipe off the chilis with a damp cloth, break off the stems, shake out as many seeds as you can. If you're sensitive to chilis you'll want to wear gloves for this. Tear the chilis into pieces, put them in a bowl and cover them with boiling water, and let it stand for at least 30 minutes. Remove from the bowl, and snip the chilis into little pieces.

Grind the chilis, garlic, 1/2 teaspoon salt, caraway, cumin and coriander seeds and a little oil in the food processor until a smooth paste forms. Add a little of the chili soaking water if needed. Pack into a clean jar, cover the surface with oil and refrigerate.

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Chicken, Orzo and Greens Stew

 I came across this recipe when looking through Jesse Ziff Cool's Your Organic Kitchen, thinking it was one I had made in the past and loved, but really I had something else that uses sun dried tomatoes in mind.  I'll have to find that one and try it out.  Chicken and Orzo stew is a good one for using up some greens and serving some pasta.  Its quick to make - my husband cooked it up while I shuffled about doing some other terribly important thing - and tastes pretty good, though I think I would leave out the wine if you're cooking for kids. At our house, at least, wine in food just seems to be a flavor they don't enjoy. So of course, neither of them ate it. We finally managed to convince them that the chicken wasn't so bad if removed from the stew and accompanied by a cream cheese sandwich.   

Early this afternoon I was lucky enough to have some culinary adventures of my own, in one of my favorite neighborhoods - Hayes Valley. I love the grassy green space filling the Octavia Boulevard's esplanade, especially for the really big art installations that change every year or so.  I love the sunflowers and black eyed susans that grow at its edge and the kids' climbing structure just beyond. We refer to it as The Spider Playground. On sunny afternoons I like to take my kids and stop at the Blue Bottle Coffee kiosk on Linden, then savor my coffee at the playground.  Next we cross Octavia Boulevard and pop into Miette for a treat to have after lunch and then continue on down the block for lunch and a loaf of bread to go at La Boulange.

But this morning, I was on my own.  I stopped for some beans and an iced coffee at Blue Bottle, and also picked up a tiny coffee cake made with Magnolia Stout from Magnolia Brewery.  Magnolia has been on the corner of Haight and Ashbury streets, in the upper Haight, for many years. Back in its early days my husband and I dined there weekly. Magnolia's brewmaster Dave Mclean makes really great beer and is an all around nice guy - so the cake was too great an opportunity to pass up.  Blue Bottle's pastry queen, Caitlin Williams Freeman, baked my little treat, and I'm told she and her husband, Blue Bottle founder James Freeman, are really nice too.

So back to my cake.  It was good - nutty and spicy and genuinely unusual with its caraway seed finish - but just begging to be eaten with a hot cup of coffee and not an iced one.  So with much anticipation, I'm saving it for tomorrow morning. 

While puttering about over there, I came across something else I haven't encountered before - Project Homeless Connect's Community Garden. Community gardens have been popping up like mushrooms lately, partially due to the Mayor's Healthy and Sustainable Food Directive of last year, I suppose. Which is all good and well - I am a huge fan of community gardens. However, its hard not to look at them with a more critical eye, simply because there are so many. They're just becoming too trendy for their own good. 

But this one is different - its focused on connecting homeless people and housed people, in an attempt to create community. Its a really intriguing idea. I can think of many reasons why homeless and housed people might not want to connect at all. Can a garden bring them together?  I'll be checking in on their website to see what develops.

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Chicken, Orzo and Greens Stew (adapted from Jesse Ziff Cool's Your Organic Kitchen):

6 oz orzo

1 1/2 teaspoons whole mustard seeds

2 Tablespoons olive oil

1 pound boneless, skinless chicken breasts, cut into thin strips

1 red onion or shallot, thinly sliced

3 garlic cloves, minced

1/2 cup dry white wine (I wouldn't add this if you're trying to feed young kids)

2 cups chicken broth

3 Tablespoons chopped fresh oregano

1 pound greens (chard, stir fry, spinach, whatever), thinly sliced

Parmesan or Asiago cheese, grated

salt & pepper

Cook the orzo according to the package directions, drain and place in a large serving bowl. 

While the orzo is cooking, place the mustard seeds in a large skillet over medium heat.  Cook, stirring often, for 5 minutes, or until lightly browned and fragrant.  Add to the bowl or orzo.

Heat the oil in the same skillet over medium-high heat.  Add the chicken and cook, stirring often, for 5 minutes or until browned and cooked through.  Remove with a slotted spoon to the bowl or orzo.

Add the onion to the skillet and cook for 4 minutes, or until soft. Add the garlic and cook for 2 minutes more. Add the wine, broth, oregano and greens.  Cover and simmer for 2 minutes, stirring occasionally, or until the greens are wilted.  Season with salt and pepper to taste and add to the bowl with orzo.

Toss to blend and garnish with cheese.

Chicken and Greens Stir-Fry

 

Green on greens.

I realize the calendar listed "bean stew with herbed pesto" for tonight's dinner, but when I went to soak the beans this morning, and happened to check the recipe, I realized we had no chicken stock.  And while most of the time I would just sub in water, I bought special beans that look like little cows for this one, so I didn't want to mess it up. 

Instead, I put a chicken out to thaw and finally got around to using the greens from last week's CSA box. I've been so taken with the first asparagus and shelling peas this spring that I've let some of our more ordinary workhorse items - leeks and greens and green garlic and spinach - fall to bottom of the fridge.

This recipe is an oldie but goodie - we've been eating it for years.  Usually we make the sauce and greens with tofu and rice, but when I need chicken stock, it only makes sense to eat some so that I have leftover bones to simmer all night.  Either one is good. At our house the kids won't touch tofu unless it is completely tasteless and floating in a bowl of broth. So usually, if we have languishing greens, we'll eat the tofu version for a late supper after the kids are in bed.

Any kind of greens will work, what we get are actually called stir-fry greens, and are made up of young leaves of chard, kale, spinach, mustard and all sorts of other leafy green brassica-like things.

I managed to make it in to Omnivore Books this afternoon, to pick up a copy of Gordon Edgar's Cheesemonger: A Life on the Wedge.  He has been working at Rainbow Grocery's cheese counter since 1994, which is only one year longer than I have been shopping there. According to Omnivore, he is "witty and irreverent, informative and provocative".  I can't wait to read his book. I also can't wait to see him speak at Omnivore this Saturday, at 3:00 pm.  How could you not want to hang out and hear the dirt on cheese?

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Greens and Tofu/Chicken Stir-Fry (adapted from Deborah Madison's Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone):

1 large bunch stir-fry greens (or any other sort of greens)

12 oz firm tofu or 2 chicken legs (thigh and drum included)

4 large garlic cloves or 4 green garlic stalks, finely chopped (depending on the season)

a two inch or so piece of ginger, peeled and finely chopped

2 Tablespoons dark sesame oil

4 Tablespoons sesame oil

8 teaspoons brown sugar

6 Tablespoons soy sauce

2 Tablespoons vegetable oil

Before you do anything else, start a rice cooker with a couple cooks of rice in it. Next, pull the leaves off the stems of the greens, then wash them in a salad spinner.  Spin dry, and put them aside.  If using tofu, slice into 1/2 inch x 2 inch pieces.  If using chicken, cut the meat off the bone and into 1 inch square or so pieces. 

Mix the soy sauce, brown sugar, sesame oils to make the sauce. Put the vegetable oil in a wok, and heat it up.  The whole point in stir-frying is that the pan is so hot, the food just needs to be stirred around for a brief period of time - so crank up the heat.  When the oil is shimmering, add the tofu or chicken.  Stir it around for a minute or two, then add the garlic and ginger.  Let the garlic and ginger soften, but not color or burn.  When they are soft, add the tofu or chicken, and stir-fry.  When the meat (or tofu) looks done (slice open the biggest piece you can find to make sure its not pink inside), dump the greens on top of the chicken/tofu, and stir-fry them as well.  When the greens are wilted, pour the sauce over the greens and chicken/tofu.  Stir it all together and turn off the heat.  Serve over rice!

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Slimy Leek, Pea and Chicken Pasta

 

Sometimes we turn to last minute alternatives.

The kids and I spent the morning visiting the doctor,  investigating my son's complaints of tummy aches and other intestinal issues that have been carrying on for the last few weeks.  I figured his GI problems were due to the fourteen days of antibiotic he'd ingested to treat an ear infection back at the beginning of the month, in addition to the seven days of antibiotic he'd taken for a staph infection about a month before the ear thing. But when his eyes got goopy and he started barking like a seal I figured I should take him in.  

"Hrm..." the doctor said "his tummy feels fine, but he has a really big ear infection".

Well imagine my surprise that he'd been able to foster a new, nasty infection so quickly in the same ear. But, it turns out, its the same old infection, just bigger and badder, and now identified as antibiotic resistant.  So he gets another fourteen days of a new antibiotic.  And when the doctor confirmed my suspicions that the stomach problems were probably a result of the antibiotics, she asked me about my son's diet.

"Gus is kind of like a bat.  He eats mostly fruit." I told her.  And she thought that was fine, but recommended that he (which of course means we) start eating lots of "white, starchy things".  "Don't feed him any whole grains", she said.  And with that she was gone, leaving me with a blindingly white prescription flapping in my hand and two insane children groveling at my feet, shredding the exam table paper and rubbing themselves all over the clinic floor.  

Yikes.  No whole grains?  Thats like, all we eat.  Aside from fruit and vegetables. Perhaps that should clue me in to why my son has such active bowels.  But I took it in stride and realized we had a wonderful opportunity to have white, processed grain pasta with our scheduled dinner. 

Except that my kids wouldn't eat it.  In fact, I wouldn't even eat it.  When the recipe asked me to simmer the leeks in chicken broth I got a little nervous, and in hindsight I wish I'd gone with my gut and sauteed them instead.  Even my husband, who actually ate the pasta, was surprised that I hadn't.  He thinks that will fix any problems, but I'm not planning to test his theory.  This one won't make it into my three star and above archive - which, by the way, I'm planning to put up sometime soon, in printable 4x6 notecard format - get your recipe boxes ready.

So instead, we had a cheese plate and toast.  Havarti and Cheddar from Say Cheese, where we'd stopped after the doctor, luckily. Thanks guys, for saving the day!

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Creamy Leek, Pea, and Chicken Pasta (adapted from Sunset Magazine, April 2010):

8 oz spaghetti or other pasta

1 cup shelled peas

1 bunch leeks, sliced (about a cup)

1 green garlic, sliced

1 cup chicken broth

1 cup coarsely shredded chicken

1 cup cottage cheese

salt & pepper (about a teaspoon of each)

Cook the pasta in salted water, following package directions and adding the peas to the pot for the last few minutes. Drain and put it in a large serving bowl. Meanwhile, bring the chicken broth to a boil and cook the leeks and garlic in it.  When the leeks are soft, add the chicken and pour over the pasta.  Stir in the cottage cheese and salt and pepper.

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