Eating Dirt

Scorcher!

Today was HOT. I love hot here because we don't get much of it. At 7:00 this morning, when I ventured out to fetch some forgotten item out of the car, it was already seventy degrees.  Seventy!  Its a rare day when the temperature passes seventy even in the afternoon around here. So of course, the dinner menu needed a little work. I'm not about to eat comfort food soup when the temperature is close to ninety at dinnertime. 

I was lucky enough to visit my friend Steph at her home in Oakland this morning, where she fed me a tasty potato salad with mint and peas - very refreshing on a sweaty day. She then gave me the recipe, which had been given to her by our mutual friend Meagan in Brooklyn, who years ago gave me a delicious fajita marinade I will post sometime this summer. We grilled some up a few weeks back while all the grandparents were in town with great success. Today, since we happened to have new potatoes (both from our garden and the CSA box), peas and mint in the garden I had the salad again for dinner. We also have favas, so many favas, so I added some of those as well. I figure anything you can do with peas you can do with favas too. 

The potato salad was great, alongside some grilled swordfish with watermelon for dessert. I know...swordfish! Its full of mercury!  And thus is something I shouldn't feed the kids. But they love it, and so do I, so we eat it a few times a year. I've tried calling other meaty fleshed fish swordfish, but my kids always know better. They do eat most fish, though, which is just great. I wouldn't voluntarily eat fish until I went away to college, so their love of it just blows me away. But then I didn't have a problem eating cooked green vegetables like they do, so I guess thats the trade off.

After hearing last week's NPR story on high levels of lead found in kids' juices, I feel a little of the hook for choosing poisonous dinner foods for my children. It seems I just can't escape toxins in foods, and the best way to avoid sick kids is to eat a very varied diet. Lots of different things, with the intent of avoiding a buildup of whatever nasty stuff is found in any one particular food item. So there, swordfish naysayers.

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Potato Salad with Mint, Peas and Favas (adapted from Epicurious.com):

2 lb small new potatoes (red, white, fingerlings, whatever)

2 Tablespoons white wine vinegar

1 Tablespoon minced shallot

1 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon pepper

3 Tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

1 cup podded (that means removed from the pod) peas (you can sub in frozen if you like)

1 cup podded fava beans 

2 Tablespoons chopped fresh mint

For starters, put  some generously salted water on the stove. While it is coming to a boil, scrub the potatoes, then cut them into one inch chunks (roughly).  When the water boils, toss in the potatoes and let them boil gently for ten minutes or so, testing them occasionally by poking one with a sharp knife. When the knife easily pierces the potato, they are done. Drain them into a colander in the sink and let them cool. Then, put about two inches of water back into your pot and heat it to a boil again. When it is boiling, throw in the peas and favas and let them boil vigorously for four minutes. Drain them into another colander in the sink. If you are using just frozen peas you can omit this step and add them to the potatoes, thawed. 

While the peas and potatoes cool, mix together the shallots, vinegar, oil, salt and pepper.  When the favas are cool, you'll need to remove their skin. Many of them will have already split their skin, so you can just squeeze them out. If not, then pinch a little hole in the skin and squeeze the beans out that way.

Mix together everything except the mint and let it stand or put it in the fridge. Right before serving (you can serve it cold or room temperature) mix in the mint.

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Grilled Fish:

2 steaks (not 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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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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Polenta and Blood Orange Sorbet

Polenta is a rather intensive affair, when cooked at home from dry crunchy grit. The traditional recipe calls for near continuous stirring, for half an hour to fourty-five minutes. Deborah Madison offers a more modern walk-away version, but it needs to sit in a double boiler for an hour and a half, after two separate pots of water are brought to a boil, one at a time, on top of each other, all before the grit even comes into play. At my house, a cooking time that long and with that many steps could only be accomplished with very well orchestrated planning, which is not my forte.

So I chose the stir a lot method. I figured I'd be standing right by the stove, prepping veggies for the accompanying ragu, so it wouldn't be a big deal. And it wasn't. Except that I failed to notice what else was going on in the kitchen, most notably the scissors in my daughter's hand and the hair on the floor.  

Luckily it wasn't mine. I am too old for a mullet. But on a rather perky soon to be five year old, the look can be somewhat fetching. Jon Bon Jovi did always have a sort of preschooler-esque discipline about him, and when I found her in the living room, sitting on the sofa with the orange sky gathering through the window behind her, I could see the resemblance. 

Perhaps devoting all my attention to cooking dinner under the guise of taking care of my family is a bit misguided, but the polenta was pretty good. Excellent in fact. The ragu was passable. And the blood orange sorbet? Fabulous.

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

If you're making this with the ragu, you'll want to start the pancetta step of the ragu before the polenta.

2 cups course cornmeal

1 1/2 teaspoons salt or to taste

2 to 6 Tablespoons butter

Bring six cups of water to a boil in a large, heavy saucepan. Add the salt and then the cornmeal in a steady stream, stirring constantly with a whisk to avoid lumps and having the meal seize up within the first few minutes. Lower the heat and cook, stirring more or less constantly for 30 to 45 minutes. If the polenta seizes up into a hard mass, add small increments of boiling water while it cooks, to smooth it out. When done, taste for salt and then stir in butter. Serve immediately or keep it warm over boiling water (in a double boiler) until ready to serve.

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Provencal Vegetable Ragout (adapted from Cooking Fresh from the Bay Area):

1/2 pound pancetta, cut into one inch pieces

1 leek, sliced thinly into rings

1-3 sprigs thyme

1 cup chicken stock

1 quart water

8 to 10 baby carrots, scrubbed (sliced into baby sized pieces if you use larger carrots)

3 spring onions, sliced (spring onions are pretty small, about the size of a leek)

1/2 cup chanterelles or other forest mushroom (rehydrated dry ones work fine)

2 cups freshly hulled peas or shelled and peeled fava beans I'm sure frozen would be OK)

1 bunch asparagus, rinsed and trimmed

2 Tablespoons butter

Heat a small saucepan over medium heat. Add the pancetta and brown, for about 5 minutes. Add the leek and thyme and cook until the leek starts to soften. Add the chicken stock and water. Bring to a boil, reduce the heat to low and simmer uncovered for an hour or so.

When the pancetta is tender and there is about one cup of liquid remaining (after about an hour), remove the thyme and transfer the mixture to a saucepan large enough to hold all the vegetables. 

Bring the heat up to medium, add the carrots, onions and mushrooms to the pancetta-leek mixture. Cover and cook for about four minutes (longer if you used older carrots). Add the peas, cover again and cook for two minutes. Add the asparagus and butter and cook for four more minutes, or until the asparagus and carrots are tender. Be careful not to let the liquid evaporate completely, you may need to add a little bit of water. When the ragout is finished, there should be only a small amount of liquid coating the vegetables.

Taste and salt, if necessary. Serve over polenta.

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Blood Orange Sorbet (adapted from Chez Panisse Cooking):

This is one of my favorite recipes. Ever. I've been making it yearly since my husband and I were given a fancy juicer by one of our wedding guests. Maybe since even before that, using a hand juicer, after my parents gave us an ice cream maker. Its a little late in the season this year for blood oranges, but if you, like me, buy them and then spend weeks agonizing over the right time to make sorbet, they will keep fine in a plastic bag in the fridge. 

12 to 16 blood oranges, to yield 1 quart juice

grated peel of two of the oranges

1 cup sugar

Grate the peel of two of the oranges and set it aside. Juice the oranges and strain through a fine-mesh sieve (this is a great job for little kids, have them rub a spatula along the bottom of the sieve to help the juice drain through). Place the juice in a pan or bowl and add the sugar and the peel. Stir the mixture until the sugar is entirely dissolved (another good preschooler job). Chill the mixture in the refrigerator, then freeze in an ice cream maker. Serve the day it is made.

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More Pasta and Veg

We had a busy weekend, as usual, with one of the highlights being Urban Sprouts' Greens, Eggs & Jam brunch on Saturday. My husband, kids and I rode our bikes along Golden Gate Park's panhandle bike path over to Ida B. Wells High School in the Western Addition for the party. The greens and eggs were fabulous - lots of yummy food from NOPA, Radio Africa & Kitchen and Contigo Restaurants, and the bluegrassy band was fun. My daughter was stumped when asked to identify their instruments - "a violin and three guitars" she told me. But it was actually a fiddle, mandolin, banjo and one guitar.

The best part of the event was meeting students from San Francisco's International Studies Academy who were preparing pesto from herbs they had grown. As you may know, pesto pasta is my children's favorite meal. They watched, wide-eyed, as the industrial strength blender mixed a green paste, bright enough to rival last month's disastrous Bean Stew with Herb Pesto. But this pesto was delicious. The big kids mixed it into the most humungous bowl of pasta I've ever seen, and served it up to my little kids straight away. 

Now we have another pesto to add to our usual basil, pinenut and garlic variety. I'll just have to keep bugging Urban Sprouts' garden teacher for the recipe.

Last night for dinner we had pasta with vegetables, which is becoming standard fare at our house. Its quick and easy and uses up lots of vegetables. My husband mixed up some appeasement meatballs with the kids, and that was dinner. The meatballs weren't as popular as usual, I suspect because the onion wasn't chopped finely enough and there was insufficient salt. They ate the pasta, leaving most of the vegetables behind. 

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Meatballs (adapted from The Spatulatta Cookbook):

This one is fun to make with kids. I'm fine having them mix the meat barehanded, as long as they scrub up well before and after. If you aren't, give them some disposable gloves or plastic sandwich bags to put on their hands.

1/2 pound ground meat (pork, beef, lamb, chicken, turkey, sausage, whatever)

1/2 pound of another ground meat (again, pork, beef, lamb, chicken, turkey, sausage, whatever)

1/2 cup breadcrumbs (you can make these by pulsing a couple heels of bread in the Cuisinart)

1 egg

1 small onion, very finely chopped

1 clove garlic, finely chopped

1/2 teaspoon salt (more or less, its hard to say)

1/4 teaspoon pepper

Preheat the oven to 350˚. Put both meats and the breadcrumbs in a large bowl. Have your kid break the egg into a small bowl, remove any eggshell bits that may have gotten into it, then add it to the meat in the big bowl, along with the onion, garlic, salt and pepper. 

Use your hands to mix and mash all the meat together, making sure the salt and pepper and onions are distributed throughout. Take handfuls of the mixture and form them into ping-pong sized balls. My husband likes to use an ice cream scoop for uniformity. Place them 2" apart from each other on a cookie sheet. 

Bake until the meatballs are browned on all sides and smell really good.

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Pasta with Spring Vegetables:

You can make this with just about any pasta and any vegetables.

1 lb or so fresh fettucini

1 bunch asparagus, sliced into 1" pieces

a couple handful very young fava beans, shelled (you can eat the inner skin along with the bean when they are very young)

a couple handful very fresh shelling peas, shelled (you can sub in frozen if necessary)

2 Tablespoons olive oil

parsley, finely chopped

lemon, for squeezing

parmesan cheese, grated

Bring a large pot of salted water to boil for the pasta. Also bring a small pot with about an inch of water to boil. When the small pot boils, drop in the vegetables and let them boil for three minutes. Then dump the pot into a colander in the sink. Fill a bowl large enough to hold the vegetables with cold water and ice and dump the veggies in. This stops the cooking process quickly, to insure they don't overcook. 

Boil the pasta, reserve a 1/4 cup or so of the water and drain it in the sink, then dump it back into the pot. Add the vegetables, olive oil, salt and pepper and some of the pasta water. Stir it up and put it in a large bowl, garnish with the parsley, cheese, more pepper and a bit of lemon if you like.

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A Spring Take On Pasta Primavera

 

No eggs for egg salad today, after yesterday's debacle.  

I love fava beans.  To me, they are the harbinger of spring.  Yes, they are a pain to prepare - first you shell the beans, then you boil them really briefly, then you skin the beans - but I find it a reasonable tradeoff. Favas start showing up at the market around the same time as shelling peas, asparagus and lilacs. Lilacs are my absolute favorite, except for  Lily of the Valley, yet another springtime superstar of the garden. I would gladly trade a year's worth of chocolate to get both of those to flower every spring in my yard.

Pasta Primavera, on the other hand, I have mixed feelings for. It is one of those foods usually more fatty and salty than good, and can range anywhere from comforting to frightening, depending on who makes it for me. But this one is from Canal House Cooking again, and is both a joy to cook and to eat. Like the name implies, it actually uses young spring vegetables, not old crufters you might find at the grocery store in January.

Its ham and spaghetti appeal to kids and manly meat eaters, and the veggies aren't too hard to separate out, should someone deem them unfit for consumption. The only caveat to easy assembly are the favas and peas. I recruit my kids to help shell them. Its the one time I encourage them to shred food, so they don't mind helping out. Getting started on those early on in the day is a good idea, they can sit out on the counter just fine and will benefit from a few minutes of attention here and there.

Today was the perfect spring day - I made dinner with the kitchen doors open to the deck and wandered down to pick mint from the garden. Lots of sun, not too hot. Hopefully tomorrow I'll make it out there again to start some seedlings, but that is looking doubtful. I hope the weather holds until Thursday. 

My bad decisions of yesterday were replaced by plain old bad luck today.  We managed to make it to the Garden Railway at the Conservatory of Flowers, which was very cool - a miniature railroad featuring city landmarks all built of recycled trash - but the fog machine was broken, so the 11:15 fogging I had promised the kids didn't happen.  Instead, we identified and counted the kitchen gadgets used to build the Ferry Plaza building. Then this evening at dinner, I managed to break two corkscrews while attempting to open a bottle of riesling.  Luckily, I found my old swiss army knife while cleaning out my top dresser drawer this past weekend - and it did the job just fine. 

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Pasta Primavera (adapted from Canal House Cooking volume 3):

Extra-virgin olive oil

1 cup diced smoked ham (if you have kids who will like this part, double it)

1 cup fava beans, shelled, then dropped for 30 seconds into boiling water, then peeled. 

1 cup shelled peas

1 bunch chopped thin asparagus

1 stalk green garlic

1 pound spaghetti

1 Tablespoon tomato paste 

A few finely chopped fresh mint leaves

Grated pecorino romano cheese

For starters, you can prep the fava beans and peas in advance.  The peas just need to be shelled.  The favas need to be shelled (the easiest way is to break the end off the bean pod, squeeze out a bean, then break it again to get to the next bean, squeeze it out, and so on).  Then drop them for 30 seconds into a pot of boiling water.  Drain them and dump them into a bowl of ice water.  Then peel them (the easiest way is to pinch a bit of the skin off, then just squeeze the bean so it pops out of the pinched spot).

When its time to make dinner, bring a large pot of salted water to boil over medium heat.  The pasta takes about ten minutes to cook, so don't start it until fifteen or so minutes before you want to eat.  Instead, turn the heat down to simmer once it boils, so that your water is ready to heat up quickly when you are ready for it.  Put about two Tablespoons of olive oil in a large, low sided pot or pan over medium-low heat.  When it is hot (it will shimmer, but should not smoke) add the ham.  Stir it around for a couple minutes until it starts to brown just a little bit, then throw in the green garlic and peas.  Add about 1/2 cup of the boiling pasta water, stir it up, and let the peas simmer in it for five to ten minutes, until they seem done to you. Then add the favas and asparagus and cook it for about five minutes more.  Remove the pan from heat and don't put a lid on it.  

If you haven't already, put the pasta on to cook.  Turn the heat back up so that the water boils vigorously, then pour it in and mix it up right away, to prevent clumping.  When it is done, drain it and then put it back into the pot.  Add the tomato paste and about three more Tablespoons of olive oil and stir to coat.  Then add the vegetables and ham, along with any pan juices, to the spaghetti and stir it together.  Salt and pepper to taste. Serve into bowls, sprinkle with the fresh mint and grate some cheese over the top.

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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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Asparagus!

 

Mmm...tasty!

 What is a home without tequila?  As I found this afternoon, perfectly fine, as long as there is vodka around. The margarita recipe I posted last friday works well with either one.

Today I had the honor of meeting Novella Carpenter, author of the book Farm City about her adventures in urban agriculture in Oakland, CA.  She was great, even more Farmy than I had imagined she'd be.  As she likes to explain in her book, she is not the first to raise a garden and livestock in an inner city.  Its not that uncommon in other countries, and even some parts of the United States. Today, I'm told, Detroit has the most active urban farming community in our country.  Nonetheless, her story of breaking ground for a farm in Oakland's Ghost Town neighborhood where she raises poultry, rabbits and pigs is pretty impressive.  

As for my garden, I took the big step of planting our pre-sprouted bean seeds today.  if you remember from a day or two back, the seeds have been growing in paper towels as my efforts to settle them into the ground were thwarted by uncooperative children.  Today I finally dispensed with my need for family planting and planted them by myself.  Naturally there was much shrieking and rending of garments when my children learned the fate of their seeds, but luckily I had a few left for them to drop into holes in the ground.  And now, thank goodness, it is done.  

For the second time this month we ate an asparagus and pea salad, from Canal House Cooking's spring issue. It is so good that I plan to make it again before the season ends.  We also grilled salmon, my college pal Jenny Nelson's recipe, that Jason and I first ate years ago on the east coast in their wonderful garden. This spring pairing is great, and for the kids (there were five - my friend Shelley and her munchkins joined us for dinner) there was also a side of buttered pasta, some sort of twisty noodles they were very fond of. I had some too, really not a bad addition to the meal.

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Asparagus and Pea Salad (adapted from Canal House Cooking Volume 3):

1/4 cup grated parmesan cheese

1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil

2 bunches thin asparagus,  sliced crosswise after tough bottoms have been trimmed off.

1 cup fresh peas, shelled

4 skinny spring onions, thinly sliced

1 small head butter lettuce, washed and chopped

8 pieces cooked bacon, chopped

1 handful fresh mint leaves, chopped

pepper & salt

Bring a pot of water to boil, and toss the peas in for two minutes, then the sliced asparagus.  Boil for two more minutes, then dump the pot into a colander in the sink.  Then immerse the vegetables in a big bowl of ice water to stop them from further cooking.  Put the lettuce, onions, mint and bacon in a salad bowl, then add the peas and asparagus when they are cool.

Put some water on in a kettle to boil, keeping it warm until the rest of your meal is almost ready.  At that time, heat the water back to a boil and mix 1/4 cup of hot water with the parmesan and olive oil.  Whisk it until smooth.  Add the pepper and some salt.  Pour this dressing over your salad, toss it and serve.

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Jenny Nelson's Grilled Salmon:

1 Tablespoon olive oil

1 Tablespoon soy sauce

1 Tablespoon dijon mustard

1 Tablespoon brown sugar

1 teaspoon butter

1 teaspoon grated ginger

1 teaspoon honey

fresh wild caught salmon filet for four

Put the olive oil, soy sauce and brown sugar into a teeny-tiny pot over low heat (I use a metal measuring cup).  Bring it to a gentle simmer, then add the butter, ginger and honey. Stir it all together, then let the sauce simmer until it thickens, so that it is not terribly runny any longer. Remove it from heat.

Lay each piece of salmon skin side down on a sheet of tinfoil, and fold up the edges to make a sort of boat around the fish. This will hold the sauce in place, so the tinfoil edges should be close to the fish edge, and at least as tall.  

Heat the grill, and when it is medium heat, put each fish boat on the grill, and brush the sauce on with a pastry brush.  Try to divide it equally among the fish pieces.

Close the grill lid and wait five or ten minutes.  Then check on the fish - it will be a paler pink color and opaque looking when it is ready.  You can cut into the middle of the fish with a knife to see how its done and judge for yourself.  Bright pink is undercooked, but you don't want to cook the fish so much that even the middle is overcooked, so a completely opaque middle section is too cooked.  When the fish is ready, you should be able to scoop it off the foil, leaving the skin behind, with a spatula.

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Chicken Tagine with Sweet Potatoes and Peas

 

Mmmm...spicy peas. 

How exciting that the San Francisco Chronicle answered my quest for a homemade energy bar in their Sunday food section this weekend!  Thanks Mr. Hearst, I promise I'll stop threatening to cancel my subscription whenever your delivery boy throws the paper through our window.  I'll test the Cherry Chocolate Energy Bar recipe out later this week.

Yesterday we dined at my friend Laure's house.  She served a delicious salt cod dinner and we brought a pea and asparagus salad from a recipe in the latest Canal House Cooking. I'll have to make the salad again soon, it was really tasty.  

Tonight I made a tagine with chicken and sweet potatoes. My Moroccan friend Khadesia showed me how to cook this, so its really her recipe. She usually makes it with frozen peas, but today I picked my first harvest of snap peas from our garden, so I'm putting those in at the last minute instead.  The best part of this dinner are the sweet potatoes.  They cook on top of the chicken, so basically are steamed over spices.

Today was a great day in the garden.  First of all, we finished planting the strawberries.  Sixteen of them (a few are leftovers from last year) in a terraced rock garden that should get enough sun, if I can find an arborist to lop a couple branches off our ancient apple tree.  I'm determined to have great berries this year so that my kids can feed themselves (I'm also planting a dozen raspberries). I'm debating whether or not to mulch with black plastic, then coconut hulls or straw on top. I'd love to hear about your strawberries, if you have any.

As for the peas, they have been growing like crazy over the sides of our deck.  I have to reel in the vines that hang down over the railing to pick the peas, as though I'm bringing in lobster traps.  Unfortunately all our pea plants have powdery mildew right now, so I'm planning to pull them as soon as their current flowers have turned into peas and are ready to eat. The mildew seems to start at ground level and then travel outward, so the newest growth is fine, while the part in the pot look horrible.  From now on I'll be more careful to buy only mildew resistant seeds. 

Now, back to the tagine.  One of the spices I use is a bit of a mystery to me - it is on the far right of today's photo. My friend Laure brought it to me from Cambodia.  It is labeled Imit or maybe 1mit.  It calls itself Khmer Safran and has a picture of a rootish thing, that looks like what turmeric comes from, basically an orange piece of ginger.  Khadesia called it "colorant", which appears to be a typical ingredient in a moroccan tagine, but she said it is not the same as turmeric.  My friend Laure told me it was "safran" and left it at that. I think it smells similar to turmeric. Wikipedia tells me that turmeric has been called Indian saffron in the past and used as a replacement for saffron (the kind from a crocus), so maybe that is why what appears to be turmeric is labeled safran. Go figure.  I'll  list it on the ingredient list, but good luck finding it.  Your tagine will probably be fine without it.  

You will need, however, the proper cooking vessel - a tagine. My favorite is the Emile Henry version, in red. Its kind of pricey.  I served this with cous-cous, which I made really quickly in a regular old pot. Khadesia tells me that to make couscous you need a couscoussiere to cook it properly, and would probably be horrified to see my instructions below.

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Khadesia's Chicken Tagine:

1 chicken, cut into parts

4 medium sweet potatoes

1/2 cup peas (or snap peas)

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.  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.

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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. Fluff the cous-cous before serving.

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Spring Risotto

 

Peas are fun to shell - especially when you are three years old. 

Last night's dal was, as usual, very popular.  The turnips were great - really good mixed in with rice. Jason thinks the turnip greens would have been a nice addition, as the meal was a bit monochromatic.  

Risotto is really simple to make, its great with all sorts of spring veggies and nice for evenings when I'm feeling brain dead, like tonight. And since its just about almost spring, there were shelling peas at the grocery store this week, so I bought some.  Green garlic and leeks were in our produce box, and we just happened to have chicken stock in the fridge.  The kids and I sat out on the back deck and shelled peas this afternoon. Then they loaded the pea pods into their toy dump trucks and delivered them around. Lovely!  

Also a salad, the same lettuce pomelo one from two days ago, especially if you still have 3/4 of a pomelo languishing in the fridge like I do.  A simple lettuce with vinaigrette will do too, if thats the case, I would add a half teaspoon of dijon mustard to the vinaigrette recipe - not so great with fruit, but good when its just lettuce.  A few sliced radishes would be nice as well, if you're not using fruit.

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Very Early Spring Risotto:

2 T butter

2 cups arborio rice

2 leeks, thinly sliced

3 stalks green garlic, thinly sliced    

1/2 lb peas, shelled

1 quart chicken stock

salt & pepper

parmesan cheese

Heat the chicken stock to simmer in a covered pot.  In another large pot, heat the butter.  When the butter is melted and starting to froth, add the leeks and green garlic.  Cook them for about ten minutes on low heat, until they are translucent.  You don't want them to color, at least not much. Add some salt, if you're using unsalted stock, about a teaspoon or to taste. Add the rice, stir to coat it with butter and let it sit for a minute or so.  Add the peas. Next add a couple ladles of stock and stir the rice.  You'll need to stir frequently (but not constantly) until the rice dries out, then add a couple more ladlefuls of stock.  Continue on, adding stock, stirring the rice, letting it dry out, then adding more stock again, until the rice is done - it will be soft and a bit chewy, usually in thirty to fourty minutes.

When its done, add more salt if needed, serve and grind pepper over the top and grate some parmesan on top.  Thats it. Really, its that easy.

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Chicken Stock:

1 big crockpot

Leftover chicken carcass

1 large onion   

2 stalks celery 

1 small carrot

We usually make stock the night after we roast a chicken, or cut the meat off for some other chicken meal.  Sometimes we just cut the meat off (two breasts, two thighs, two drumsticks) and freeze it for later, when we need some stock.

Put the meatless bird in the stock pot.  Trim the ends of the onion and peel the paper off, quarter it and put it in the crock pot.  Scrub the carrot and celery, then chop them into five or six pieces each and toss them in.  Fill the crock pot with water.  Set the crock pot to low, and leave it over night.  

If the chicken has a lot of leftover meaty bits on it, then after an hour or two pull it out and shred the meat off, then save it in the fridge for chicken rice (or noodle) soup.  Put the chicken carcass back in the crock pot.  

In the morning, strain the stock into a fat separator, and pour it into jars.  Let it cool for an hour or two, then put it in the fridge.  It freezes really well, but you have to use widemouth glass jars for that (a curved neck will crack when the liquid expands as it freezes).  You can also keep it in the fridge indefinitely, as long as you either use it within a week, or take it out and boil it for five minutes every week.

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