Eating Dirt

A Little Motherly Love: Lamb, Carrots and Fava Salad

This year I made my desires for Mother's Day known well in advance: no gifts, just a day at home in the garden and a big dinner, cooked as a family.  It was delicious, and I got gifts anyway - three of Andy Goldsworthy's books, much loved by my kids after we watched his Rivers and Tides together a week or two back.

I spent the day puttering out in the yard, planting this, pulling that, occasionally enlisting the help of our kids and more occasionally having a glass of wine. Rose, of course, since the sun was shining. I collected favas, spring onions, mint, arugula and snap peas for the salad, which was the only part I had to make myself. Fresh favas are the best thing in the world, picked from the garden and eaten hours later. The flavor difference between them and the ones from the store, or even from the CSA box, is surprising. Perfect to go with some spring lamb.

These recipes are from David Tanis' A Platter of Figs, the first spring menu in the book. Its not something I would make every day, but a little fancy, with two kinds of meat (lamb wrapped in bacon) a salad, vegetable and a cake for dessert. All good springy things to enjoy with your Mom!

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Roasted Lamb and Saffron Carrots (adapted from David Tanis' A Platter of Figs):

(serves 4-6)

for the lamb:

 

1 boneless shoulder roast of veal, 2 to 3 pounds

salt and pepper

3 garlic cloves, sliced

olive oil

a few rosemary sprigs

a few thyme sprigs

3 ounces thinly sliced pancetta (or bacon)

1 T butter

2 spring onions, finely chopped

water or dry white wine

For the carrots:

1 lb carrots

1 T butter

2 cloves garlic

1/2 t grated lemon zest

Season the roast well with salt and pepper. Insert the garlic slices into the lose flesh on the underside of the roast. Drizzle a little olive oil over the meat. Lay the rosemary and thyme sprigs on the meat, then wrap the pancetta slices around the roast, tie it all together with kitchen string and place in a roasting pan. Refrigerate for a couple of hours or over night.

Bring the meat to room temperature and preheat the oven to 400°F. Roast the lamb for 45 minutes to an hour, until the internal temperature is 130°F. Let the meat rest on a platter, loosely covered, for at least 15 minutes before carving.

While the meat is cooking make the carrots and prepare the salad (recipe below). Peel the carrots and slice into thin coins. Sauté them in 1 T butter with a little crumbled saffron and a couple minced garlic cloves. Season well with salt and pepper and a half teaspoon of freshly grated lemon zest. Add 1/2 cup of water and simmer, covered for 5 minutes, or until the carrots are tender.

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Fava Bean Salad with Mountain Ham and Mint (adapted from David Tanis' A Platter of Figs):

2-3 pounds fresh young favas (sub in peas or snap peas if you don't have enough)

 

1 large fennel bulb

2 spring onions, thinly slivered

 salt and pepper

fruity olive oil

1/2 lemon

1/2 bunch mint

4 slices cured ham, such as jamon, serrano or prosciutto

arugula leaves

Shuck the favas, then blanch the beans in boiling water for 10 seconds, cool them in a large bowl of ice water. Pinch the skin and pop the bean out. This is a good task to share with kids.

Trim the top, stems and core from the fennel, and when you are ready to make the salad slice it into thin shreds or use a mandolin. Put them in a bowl with the favas (and peas), onions and some salt. Drizzle generously with olive oil to coat. Coarsely chop the mint leaves and add them, and squeeze the juice of half a lemon over the salad. Toss well, taste and correct if it needs more salt, oil or lemon.

 Pile the salad onto a large platter, surround with the ham or tear it into strips and scatter over the salad. Grind some pepper on top, garnish with some arugula and serve immediately.

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Salmon Cakes

 
I've been struggling with pan frying cakes and patties of all varieties for a long time now.  They never turn out right - sometimes they stick, sometimes they fall apart, sometimes they burn to a crisp. But tonight I asked my husband for advice, knowing that he has a tendency to remember everything he reads (but nothing I say) and that he read Russ Parson's How to Read a French Fry a thousand years ago when it first came out.  Parson's book is all about kitchen science, and  I seem to remember it deals with sticky patties.

"Protein molecules will stick to the pan until they have been cooked long enough to denature the protein," he told me. So this time I strictly followed the frying time recommended by my recipe, and actually set a timer to really get it right. And low and behold, it worked. The patties didn't stick, they didn't burn (once I turned the heat down low enough) and they didn't fall apart. 

And as an extra bonus,  both my children gobbled them up and asked for more. As usual, my daughter ate her salad and my son did not. "No," he told me, " salad has vegetables in it. I don't like vegetables".  I did manage to get him to swallow two bites after bribing him with strawberries, though.

But whatever, we managed to polish off nearly an entire bag of produce box lettuce, along with some cilantro and mint. I've found that sometimes the key to a really good salad is tossing in a couple small handfuls of whatever fresh herbs I happen to have around. They add just enough to push lettuce past the edge of humdrum and boring to unusual, exciting and delicious. So far I have yet to find an herb combo that falls flat, though really strong flavored ones (like sage) must be used in moderation.

As for the chives, grow a pot of them outside your kitchen door. Otherwise they molder in the bottom of the fridge and get slimy. Yuck!

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Salmon Cakes with Greens (adapted from Epicurious)

 1/4 cup mayonnaise

1/4 cup plus 1 tablespoon chopped shallots

2 teaspoons Dijon mustard, divided

1/2 cup buttermilk

1 1/2 teaspoon fresh lemon juice

1 pound salmon fillet, skin removed, finely chopped

2 egg whites

5 tablespoons drained capers

1/2 cup plain breadcrumbs

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/4 teaspoon black pepper

2 teaspoon olive oil, twice

4-8 cups lettuce or mixed salad, depending on who will be eating

2 small handfuls of herbs

Mix together the mayonnaise, 1 tablespoon shallots, 1 teaspoon mustard, buttermilk and juice in a bowl, then set aside. This is the dressing for your salad.

Chop and wash your salad greens and herbs, dry them, wrap them in a towel, place in a plastic bag and put in the fridge. You can even do this a few days in advance.

In a larger bowl, combine salmon, egg whites, the remaining 1/4 cup shallots, capers, breadcrumbs, remaining 1 tsp mustard, salt and pepper. Mix well and shape into eight 3-inch-round patties. Heat oil in a large nonstick skillet over medium heat. Cook four salmon cakes until their bottoms are golden, about 6 minutes. The cakes will not be easy to remove from the pan until they are fully cooked, so resist the urge to scrape at them if they don't come up in one piece, and make sure to turn down the heat if your pan starts to smoke. When your time is up, flip and cook until golden, 5 minutes more. Toss greens with half the buttermilk mixture; divide salad among 4 plates; top each with 2 salmon cakes. Garnish with a dollop of crème fraîche or mayo and a sprinkle of chives. Serve with remaining dressing on the side.

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Strawberry Pocky Sticks

This was one I just could not pass up today. I guess it says a lot, that I backpedaled halfway down the block after the "Giant" part of the Pocky package I'd seen in a window of Sakura made it into the active regions of my brain. Larger than normal food strikes me as an unusually American passion, I can't imagine people in Japan would want to trade their delicate packs of pocky for one of these huge curling iron sized items. But who knows. Maybe its the next big thing.

For those of you not familiar with Pocky, it is a sort of long, thin, dry biscuit of the type that come in long tubular shaped packages from the U.K., coated with chocolate or a strawberry stuff similar to the "yogurt" that sometimes covers American pretzels. Being Japanese, Pocky has a convenient handle that is free of chocolate or strawberry coating, so that your fingers do not get smudged. 

I first discovered Pocky back in the nineties, during my time working at a tech company affectionately called "The Rocketship" by our CEO, who was later jailed for investor fraud. Or maybe it was his right hand man who went to prison, I don't remember. But that detail is not important. What is important is the glitter and sparkle of the dot-com days. Everyone was rich back then, and we were all high on life, along with a variety of other things. 

My desk butted up against that of Ms. Pinky Weitzman, a woman who I believe is now playing electric fiddle for a band somewhere in New York City. She was long and lean, terrifically stylish with platinum blonde hair and pale creamy skin. "Daahhling..." she would croon, "You just cannot put your code in my database. It wheel not work..." Careening wildly about with a pocky stick dangling like Cruella Deville's cigarette, she would offer me one with a flick of her wrist and disappear back behind the screen of her monitor. Later in the day we would all head out to the incredibly sketchy bar next door for a gin and tonic, and months down the road she and another pal introduced me to my future husband.

Dinner tonight was uneventful - grilled seabass, corn and tomato relish on toast and a sort of zucchini salad. When I complained that the zucchini was too oily, my husband told me "that's because its Greek. Did you know that in Greece almost forty percent of their calories come from olives?" He liked the zucchini quite a bit. The kids loved the fish, toast and grilled corn, but wouldn't touch the rest. 

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Smoky Corn and Tomato Relish (adapted from Tori Ritchie's Tuesday Recipe):

2 ears of fresh corn

1 lb tomatoes

1 garlic clove, minced

1 small red onion (or white or yellow if thats all you have)

1/8 teaspoon pimenton (smoked paprika)

1 semi-spicy pepper, an anaheim chile is a good candidate

2 Tablespoons olive oil, plus more for grilling

1 Tablespoon fresh lime juice

salt and pepper

Shuck the corn, then oil the outside lightly and lay the ears on a hot grill. Also put the tomatoes and pepper on the grill, slice the onion in half, oil the cut side of each half and lay them on the grill too.. You can leave the tomatoes there for five to ten minutes, or until they get nice charred grill marks, and the other veggies for longer, until they are a bit charred on all sides (you'll have to rotate them every now and then). If you're making fish to serve alongside this, it is a good idea to put the fish on the grill when you remove the tomatoes, leaving the corn, onion and pepper on the grill while the fish cooks.

After removing the veggies, let them cool for a bit, then cut the kernels off the corn into a big bowl, slice each tomato in half and squeeze each half gently over the sink to remove the seeds. Next chop the tomatoes into 1/2 inch chunks and add them to the corn. Remove the skin from the onion and chop it into 1/4 inch pieces. Peel the skin off the pepper, slice it in half, remove the seeds and membrane, and cut it into 1/4 inch pieces as well. Mix the veggies together and sprinkle with a little salt.

In a small bowl, mix the olive oil, lime juice and minced garlic. Stir it into the vegetables, add some freshly grated pepper and taste for salt.  This should be served on toast, either while still warm or at room temperature.

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Zucchini with Harissa, Olives and Feta (adapted from Canal House Cooking Volume 1):

4 zucchini, sliced into thick rounds

a handful of cured olives

1/2 cup coarsely crumbled feta

a small handful of parsley leaves, chopped

rind of 1/4 preserved lemon, chopped

1/4 teaspoon caraway seeds (or a combo of fennel and cumin seeds)

1 clove garlic

juice of 1 lemon

2 Tablespoons harissa paste (you'll find it at mediterranean markets and Rainbow Grocery)

5 Tablespoons extra virgin olive oil (the best you have)

salt

Bring a salted pot of water to boil, then add the zucchini and boil for about five minutes, until it is soft but not squishy. Drain the zucchini in a colander in the sink. Toast the caraway seeds in a frying pan over high heat, until they are fragrant, but before they start to color. Remove them from the pan and crush them in a mortar. Add the clove garlic and about 1/2 teaspoon salt and crush it all together with the pestle. If you don't have a mortar and pestle just chop it all finely. Stir in the lemon juice, harissa and oil. Season to taste with salt. 

Put the zucchini in a bowl, then add the dressing and toss to coat. Scatter the feta, olives, parsley and preserved lemon over the top and serve.

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Grilled Fish:

2 steaks (or the fillet with skin) of any white fish (about 1 pound)

1 lemon, sliced in half

olive oil

salt & pepper

Lay out your fish in a glass dish, then cut the lemon in half and squeeze half of it over the fish. Sprinkle a Tablespoon or so of olive oil over the fish, then salt and pepper it - about 1/8 teaspoon of each. Flip the fish over and do the same to the other side. Let the fish marinate while you prepare the grill and whatever else you have to make for dinner (I like rice and arugala salad with this). Cooking the fish should be the last step, aside from dressing the salad.

Heat up the grill to whatever temperature you use for fish - our grill is particularly wimpy, so I blast it up to high.  

Lay your fish on the grill.  Close the lid and leave it for five minutes or so, then check to see if there are nice grill marks on the fish. If so, flip it over onto the skin side. If not, let it cook longer and keep checking until the grill marks are there.  After flipping, shut the lid again and come back in five minutes to check for doneness.  I think the easiest way is to take a sharp knife and slice into the thickest part of the fish. When it is opaque inside, it is done. Serve the fish right away.

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Pasta Pasta Pasta!

My preschool daughter recently spent an afternoon with some classmates making homemade pasta - fettucini, spaghetti, a few ravioli. Her instructor said they made pasta for about an hour, then went off to play. Around five o'clock all the children's parents and siblings gathered to eat dinner. Dining together with other families from her preschool was really wonderful, especially since the kids had made our meal.  We vowed to do it again and all went home to sleep.

This week her grandparents came to visit, all three of them.  They arrived thursday afternoon, and that evening we made some more pasta. Many years ago my husband and I received a pasta maker for a wedding gift, one of those classy, shiny stainless steel do-hickeys of questionable Italian design. With the new machine we made pasta exactly once, probably nine years ago. Even back then, when we were so much younger and child free, with infinite time to fritter in the evenings, I remember pasta making as a chore. 

For one thing, the clamp that is supposed to hold the pasta maker still just wouldn't clamp on to any of our table surfaces. Now in a different home with infinitely more tables and counter tops, I figured something would work this time. But no, yet again, the clamp was able to secure the pasta machine to none of our tabletops - not the kitchen table, not the kitchen counter, not the dining room table, not the butcher block. 

So after a multitude of minutes of twitting about, sputtering and cursing, my husband and his father came up with a system.  Grandpa used the clamp to secure the pasta machine to a cutting board, then held the board down on the butcher block table. My husband fed the pasta dough into the machine, and the three year old turned the crank. By then our highly skilled pasta maiden had disappeared into the living room, declining to help for the rest of the evening. 

About four hours after beginning the process we ate dinner - fresh fettucini with herb pesto and an arugula salad. The food was delicious. But the process, probably not one I'm going to repeat for another nine years.

We took our pasta making instructions from Canal House Cooking #3, the spring issue. Canal House has just updated their website with all sorts of nice details, including additional recipes, equipment recommendations and best of all, a blog.  I can't wait to read more about what they are up to day to day. Now if only Nigel Slater would write a daily blog. 

I was hoping the Canal House folks would include their pasta lesson in the online excerpt of #3, but they did not, so I'll have to explain what we did myself. Their pasta instructions are beautifully illustrated, so if you have any desire to start making fresh pasta, you should really buy the book.

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Arugula Salad:

1 bunch arugula

1/2 lemon

2 Tablespoons olive oil (or so)

3 Tablespoons pine nuts

a bit of parmesan cheese, shaved

salt and pepper

Wash the arugula and cut off all the long stems with no leaves.  Spin it dry and put it in a salad bowl.  In a small skillet, toast the pine nuts on medium heat.  They will burn very quickly, so you should devote all your attention to the skillet while they toast.  When they are brown and smell good, remove them from the heat and into a bowl. Right before you serve the salad, squeeze the lemon and toss it with the greens.  pour the olive oil into the bowl, salt and pepper and toss. Sprinkle the pine nuts and cheese over the top of the salad.

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

2 garlic cloves

1/2 teaspoon salt

3 Tablespoons pine nuts

3 cups loosely packed basil leaves (stems removed, leaves washed and dried), marjoram and tarragon 

1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil

You can make this with a mortar and pestle, but I choose to use a food processor instead.  Add the garlic, salt and pine nuts and process until fairly finely chopped. Then add the herbs and olive oil and process. Taste for salt and add more if you like.

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Fresh Fettucini with Herb Pesto:

All you need to make fresh pasta is flour,  eggs, and a pasta machine.  Each pasta machine comes with instructions.  I really think its easier for you (and me) to just follow those, and not my unillustrated interpretation.  I will say, however, that letting the dough rest for an hour or two before rolling it through the machine seems to be key. Don't skip that part!

Hang the noodles to dry a bit before you cook them, while you make the rest of the pasta. A pasta drying rack is really helpful, but as you can see, we like to improvise at my house. Once you've noodled up all the dough, made the pesto and have the salad ready to be tossed with the dressing, then drop the fettucini into a pot of boiling water.  It only needs a few minutes to cook - really, like two to three.  Taste for doneness (you want it too feel firm but immediately give when you bite it) and remember that its better to err on the side of undercooked than over. Most fresh pasta is made with egg, and has a different texture than dried pasta, which is not made with egg. My husband describes it by saying "fresh pasta is more supple than dried". 

Once the fettucini is done, drain it in a colander in the sink, and quickly dump the colander contents back into the pot.  Then add some pesto, mix it up, and serve.

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