Pie for Dinner

I would like to pretend that this mushroom cabbage galette from Deborah Madison is some kind of health food. I mean, it’s cabbage! And mushrooms are good for you! And you can totally use low-fat sour cream and even I will not scoff. But let’s not kid ourselves. Galette = pie. Plus, Smitten Kitchen has made this before, and you know how she feels about healthy food. And there’s the bit at the end where you dump a load of melted butter on top of everything. So let’s abandon these virtuous fantasies and get with the cooking.

Start with the dough–I went with a yeasted tart dough (much simpler than it sounds), though DM suggests an alternative galette dough that’s basically just pie crust. 

While it rises (or chills, depending on what kind you’re making), saute a diced onion and some sliced shiitake mushrooms, with thyme, tarragon, & dill in a good amount of butter. 

When they’re soft, add a big pile of thinly sliced cabbage, a bit of salt, and a half cup of water. Cook, covered, until the cabbage is tender.

At this point, the recipe instructs you to add water and then raise the heat to cook it all off, ending with a relatively dry pan of veggies. I would recommend NOT adding any more water–just cook off whatever is left in the pan when you take the lid off. Turn off the heat, then stir in a pile of chopped parsley, a chopped hard-boiled egg, and some sour cream. Splash in a little vinegar (white wine is fine if you don’t have tarragon, as called for) and season with & salt and pepper.

Set the oven to 400F. By this time, your dough should be properly risen or chilled. Roll it out into a big, thin circle. Another instruction I don’t entirely agree with: place the rolled-out dough on the BACK of a sheet pan. Then pile the filling into the center, in a circle about 7 or 8 inches across, and fold the edges of the dough up over it. Brush the whole thing with a couple tablespoons of melted butter and bake for 25-30 minutes. 

The reason I would suggest putting the galette on the normal side of a sheet pan can be seen above. If you are not 100% expert at rolling out dough without holes; if you were not 100% thorough in making sure all the water was cooked out of the filling; and if you are maybe a bit sloppy in brushing on the melted butter: all of these are reasons to want a pan with sides. But guess what? I know who cleans the oven.

And your galette will not suffer from it, even if your oven does.

The galette gets served with horseradish sauce. You can probably buy some, or make it yourself with a mixture of sour cream, grated horseradish, chives, some sugar, and a tiny bit of salt & white wine vinegar. 

Cheesy Apple Goodness

There are people who put cheddar cheese into their apple pies. I’m not really sure if it’s worked into the crust, or grated into the filling, or just hidden in between the layers, like that surprise smear of wasabi that often clears out your sinuses when you aren’t paying close attention to your sushi. Whichever way it’s done, it’s not how I make apple pie. The only apple pie for me is my mom’s, known as Fishmarket Apple Pie (or sometimes Birthday Pie, because that is what there is for my birthday, as cake is for people who don’t know better). And you cannot put cheddar into that pie. Trust me.

The truth, though, is that I do not generally make apple pie at all, because my mom does such a great job that there is no point in getting in on that game myself. I do, however, get in the muffin game. Often. And somehow I got it into my head the other week that there needed to be some apple cheddar muffins in my life.

I started with Deborah Madison’s cheddar muffin recipe, figuring that if you can add a cup of fresh corn kernels (one of her suggested variations), then adding a cup of chopped apples in more or less (more) kernel-sized pieces should work, too. In addition to that, you’ll need some flour, cornmeal, baking powder, grated cheddar, eggs, milk, vegetable oil, and honey. Oh, and some fresh ground pepper, which was sort of an afterthought, but I’m really glad I included it.

Mix together the dry ingredients in one bowl, the wet ingredients in another, and have the cheese and the apple bits ready. The egg/milk mixture goes into the flour/cornmeal, and is fully combined. Then stir in the grated cheese. For this, I think the sharpest cheese available is best, to contrast with the tart sweetness of the apples. And it should be grated on the coarse side.

Next, in go the apples. I prefer to leave the skins on, especially if they’re red apples, because it’s prettier. And on that subject: Macintoshes would be great. These were (I think) Macoun. Granny Smiths or something else tart would be lovely, also.

Then you just need to pour it into your muffin tin. I always prefer to use paper liners, on account of being lazy. Buttering and flouring muffin tins is tedious work, and cleaning them out is even more so. But do whatever you like.

Bake at 375F for 20-25 minutes, until a tester comes out clean. (The one thing I’ve noticed about my beloved Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone is that I always need to round down the temperature and/or cooking time on muffin recipes. I suspect that maybe my muffin tins are a bit smaller than Ms. Madison’s, but it is a consistent adjustment I always have to keep in mind, and it’s easy enough if I actually remember.)

Apple Cheddar Muffins
adapted from Deborah Madison
Makes 10-11 muffins, depending on the size of your tin

1 1/4 c flour
1/2 c cornmeal
2 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp fresh ground pepper
2 eggs
1 c milk
2 Tbsp vegetable oil
1 1/2 Tbsp honey
2 c grated sharp cheddar
1 c chopped apples

Preheat the oven to 375F. Prepare a muffin tin, either with paper liners or by buttering & flouring.
Combine the flour, cornmeal, baking powder, salt, and pepper in a large bowl. In a smaller bowl, mix up the eggs, milk, vegetable oil, and honey. Grate the cheddar coarsely and chop up the apples into pieces, no larger than 1/2″ cubes.
Pour the wet ingredients into the dry, and mix until just combined. Add in the cheddar, and then the apples.
Spoon into the muffin tin, and bake for 20-15 minutes, until a tester comes out clean.

Rainbow Salad

This is one of those recipes where I started looking up ideas for various things I had in the fridge, and magically found something that used ALL of them. “Broccoli, comma, and roasted pepper salad with tomato vinaigrette.” Further proof that things that grow together go together.  Also, considering I had olives on hand as a take-home gift from a recent Cook Club (thanks, L!) and had feta in the fridge from some other random recipe, I didn’t have to buy a thing to make this. So it’s also proof that a well-stocked kitchen is the most essential ingredient for quick and easy cooking. And it’s so very pretty.

First, preheat the oven to 400F and spatchcock the peppers. This is not a term used with vegetables usually, but it’s applicable. Cut in half, remove the core and the seeds, and smoosh them onto the cutting board, so they sort of almost lie flat.

Put them on a baking sheet, cut side down, and brush the skins with olive oil. Bake for 10-20 minutes, until the skins are wrinkled, then transfer them to a bowl and cover it with a plate.

Then, make the vinaigrette. Mash up a clove of garlic with a little salt, and combine it in a bowl with some diced onion (or shallot), red wine vinegar, a little balsamic, and some fresh ground pepper. Let it stand while you dice some tomato and halve and pit some Niçoise or Kalamata olives. Whisk in some olive oil, then add the tomatoes and olives.

Cut up the broccoli into little florets, and cut the stems into chunks about the same size. Blanche in salted water, then strain.

By this time, the roasted peppers should be cool enough to handle. Uncover the bowl and remove the skins. Then cut them into bite-sized pieces.

Then it’s just a matter of combining everything: the peppers, the broccoli, the tomato dressing, and some crumbled feta. Finish it up with some chopped parsley, oregano, and/or marjoram, and taste for salt and pepper.

Not the World’s Greatest Muffins – or – Try, Try Again

Sometimes I need to see someone else do something before I can clearly see what a good idea it is. For example, I cook very frequently from Deborah Madison’s Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone. This is a book that lives in my cookbook stand; there is no point in putting it away because inevitably I’ll just pull it off the shelf again tomorrow. (I sort of feel the same way about making my bed…)  That said, I have learned over the years, through observing other people who own the book, that I have a tendency to ignore her section on baking.  In my defense, the book is about a hundred thousand pages long (actually 742), so I’m sure there are many other sections I’ve ignored, too. (Wait, that doesn’t actually sound like a defense at all…)  When I saw the book on my friend M.’s shelf, I asked her what she makes the most often, and the answer was a molasses-buttermilk quickbread that I’d never noticed at all (and which is delicious).  And just a couple of months ago, Pinch My Salt made some nectarine muffins using the basic buttermilk muffin recipe, variations of which take up two entire pages in the book. Pages I had never even seen.

So when I was looking for something quick and easy to make with my soon-to-be-overripe white donut peaches, the answer was waiting for me in the cookbook stand. 

First, some fuzzy donut peaches, which need to be peeled and diced. (I needed a cup altogether, which was not quite all of these, though if you’re using regular peaches it would be even fewer.)

Then the batter: mix up flour, baking powder, baking soda, and a little salt.  And in a separate bowl, buttermilk (usually I use plain yogurt, but this is milk + lemon juice in a 1 cup:1 tsp ratio, which is also an acceptable substitute), eggs, vegetable oil or melted butter, brown sugar, and flavorings. I went with a little vanilla and a little orange flower water, because I’m obsessed with it and because I think it goes very well with white stone fruit.

Wet gets mixed up, then combined with dry. 

And finally stir in the diced fruit.  This batter seemed suspiciously runny to me, but by now I trust Ms. Madison implicitly (with mixed results).

In spite of the fact that I had been looking for a simple recipe, I decided to complicate things with a streusel topping. This is a mix of flour, rolled oats, brown sugar, butter, and (in this case) lime zest and cardamom. I wasn’t sure if I’d added a few too many flavors, but by the time I was second-guessing myself, it was too late to go back because I’d mixed everything together and I’d used up the last of the brown sugar. So a big spoonful of topping on each muffin cup, and into the oven for 25 minutes. 

Here’s the thing: 25 minutes was too long in my oven. And also I think I cut out too much sugar from the batter. Following M.’s example (different M.), I have been significantly reducing the sugar in most things I bake, with generally excellent results. But I think it was a mistake here, for some reason. Even with the (fully sweetened) crumb topping, there wasn’t enough flavor in the muffins. And they were dry. Which just means I’ll have to try again, and tweak a little more–maybe use my usual yogurt instead of milk + lemon juice, maybe use melted butter instead of sunflower oil, maybe add some cinnamon or cardamom to the batter…

That said, I think the lime/cardamom/orange flower combo was a winner.  So I won’t tweak TOO too much. 

And one interesting thing I learned: the recipe was supposed to make a dozen muffins, but I wound up with enough for 13. Since my muffin tin naturally only has spots for 12, I decided to pop another muffin liner into a small ramekin. And look what happened:

One short, squat muffin, with a larger ratio of muffin-top to -bottom, which I’m told is desirable by many people.

White Peach Muffins

1 1/2 c all-purpose flour
1 c whole wheat pastry flour
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1/2-3/4 cup packed brown sugar
2 eggs
1 1/3 cups buttermilk
1/3 c vegetable oil
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 tsp orange flower water
1 c diced white peaches

Streusel topping
1/4 c flour
1/4 c rolled oats
1 1/2 Tbsp lime zest
1/3 c packed brown sugar
1/4 tsp cardamom
4 Tbsp butter

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.  Grease a 12-cup muffin tin or line with paper liners.

In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon, ginger, and salt until well combined.  In a separate smaller bowl, whisk together the eggs, buttermilk, brown sugar, melted butter, vanilla extract, and orange flower water.  Pour the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients and stir until just combined.  Gently fold in the diced fruit.

Fill the muffin cups nearly to the top. Put a spoonful of streusel topping on each.  Bake at 375 degrees for 20-25 minutes or until a cake tester comes out clean.

Fast Food

What I really wanted to make tonight was this mashed potato recipe from Modern Spice: Inspired Indian Flavors for the Contemporary Kitchen that’s got mustard seed and hot peppers and coconut flakes and sounds fantastic. But what it does not sound like is a complete meal, and I did not have the energy to make TWO dishes. So instead I turned to Deborah Madison once again, for her Indian-Style Saute of Cauliflower and Greens. The greens I had were kale and the greens from the actual cauliflower (they are edible, which I should have known intuitively but had to be told about on somebody else’s blog) so I altered the recipe by boiling them a bit ahead of time. (The original calls for spinach and watercress, which just need to be wilted when they’re added into the rest of the already-hot dish.)

In any case, you need some potatoes, and some cauliflower, and an onion, and a bit of carrot.

The onion gets sliced thin and sort of caramelized in ghee (or clarified butter).

The potatoes get peeled, diced, and steamed or boiled until tender.

The greens, if you’re not using something like spinach, should be cooked sort of al dente.

The cauliflower gets quartered and sliced thin, which is not how I’d usually cut it up. Brown it in more ghee/butter–

and then add in the caramelied onions and some garlic, as well as turmeric, cumin, coriander, and mustard seeds.

Chop up the greens, grate the carrot–

and then add them into the pan, too, with some salt and water (the cooking water from the greens works perfectly).

Cover it and let it cook until the greens are cooked through and most of the water has cooked off. Then finish it off with lime juice and fresh cilantro.

I was surprised by how NOT overwhelming the spices were in this dish. That seems like an odd comment to make–and I don’t mean it in a bad way–but it was my immediate reaction. My second reaction was, “Did I really just make this dish in less than an hour?” In the future, though, I think I’ll go with spinach for this one. I think there was too much brassica in one pot this time.

New favorites

So I have been a bit overloaded with potatoes lately. For several weeks now, we’ve been getting 4 POUNDS of potatoes with each delivery. It’s a little ridiculous. So I keep looking for new interesting ways to prepare them. Often it winds up being just a variation on mashed potatoes (with celeriac, with kale, with turnips, with mustard seed, hot pepper, and coconut…) but that never feels like a whole meal.

This recipe, on the other hand, is not only a legitimate meal unto itself, it’s also my new favorite thing in the world. It comes from Deborah Madison’s giant veggie cookbook, and it is a Lebanese stew with chickpeas, carrots, and tomatoes.

Start off by cooking some chopped onion in olive oil. Meanwhile mash up some garlic with ground coriander (that was a new technique to me–I’ve seen garlic mashed with salt, but never a spice).

Then in go the potatoes, cut into a chickpea-sized dice, the carrots in a rough chop, the garlic/coriander mix, and a dried hot pepper.

Cook that for a while, and then add the chickpeas…

and some peeled, diced tomatoes.

Stir it all up, add a bit of water, and simmer until the potatoes are cooked through, maybe 20 minutes.

Garnish with chopped parsley, some lemon juice, and black olives (I used oil-cured Moroccan olives, which seemed like the best choice from the options at Agata & Valentina).

Once again, I learned that Deborah Madison has most of the answers (the question being in this case, “What do I do with these potatoes?”). I also learned, again, to trust her marginalia, which advised for this recipe that it is also good cold. And is it ever. I enjoyed this quite a lot when it was straight out of the pot, but somehow after sitting in the fridge overnight, it tasted ten times better the next day, not even heated up. I find that to be rare with potato dishes especially.

Have you lived?

I don’t think you have lived. Until you have tried this Swiss chard recipe, I don’t think you have lived. Yes, that’s right, in the photo below, the slightly over-exposed, flash-heavy, un-color-corrected photo of my dinner, the most exciting thing on the plate is that messy mush of dark green on the right side.

More exciting than lamb chops? More exciting than potatoes (or anything, really) with pesto?! Yes. Trust me. Even when I tell you it’s vegan. Just trust me. Serve it with lamb chops to make up for that. Serve it with anything. It is my new favorite thing in the world and I fully plan to make huge batches of it and freeze it so I can always have it on hand.

Here is a close-up:

Not much to look at, but if you could see her like I do…

Here is what you need to do (thanks, again, to Deborah Madison):

Take a bunch of chard and separate the leaves and the stems. Cut the leaves into ribbons and the stems into a coarse dice. Dice a small onion, mash up a clove of garlic with some salt, and dump it all in a big pot with some olive oil, a little bit of water, a big handful of cilantro, a teaspoon of paprika, and a few grinds of black pepper. Stir it all up. Put the heat on low. Put a lid on it. Let the magic happen. Come back in 45 minutes (and maybe stir it once or twice in the interim).

That’s it. There’s no butter, no chicken stock, no parmesan. I cannot explain the depth of flavor in this dish knowing what goes in. It is making me completely rethink my stance on cooking vegetables for long periods of time.

The also-rans from the dinner in question:

Savory Mint Lamb Chops with window-box mint

Potato salad with pesto and green beans, a now favorite inspired by Smitten Kitchen

It was a very herb-heavy meal, and I was worried there’d be some conflicting flavors, but it was delicious. There’s no chard coming this week, but there is kale, and turnip greens, and it’s a 50/50 shot that I’m going to try the same recipe with one or both of those.

Alliterative Alimentation

I think my favorite meals tend to be ones that come from the simplest recipes, the kind that have just a handful of ingredients, the kind where the preparations are so basic that the quality of your produce matters enormously. This is why when I see anything that includes corn cut off the cob, I’m not likely to try it–not because I won’t like it, but because if I have wonderfully fresh sweet Jersey corn, I am going to steam it and eat it off the cob. Period. I don’t want to mess with a good thing.

So Deborah Madison’s Fettuccine with Sautéed Peppers and Parsley was the perfect thing to make with this week’s bounty. Plus, almost every ingredient starts with a P, and word nerd that I am, that amused me greatly.

I had a mix of sweet peppers to choose from, including purple bell peppers, which sadly lose their lovely color when cooked, and round of Hungary, which taste shockingly like paprika and are probably my favorite of all the varieties we’ve received.

The peppers get sliced into thin strips, just about as wide as the pasta, and then sautéed in olive oil for about 10 minutes.

Then you dump in some of the pasta water, the cooked fettuccine, and the parsley, and stir it all up.

Season with salt and pepper, top with parmesan, and you’re good to go.

I think in the future I’d change the ratio of veg to pasta to be more like 1:1, or at least 1:2.

Maybe I’ll finally get around to making another batch of pickled peppers with NEXT week’s delivery. Maybe.

The Veggies That Grow Together Go Together

I remember reading somewhere, not too long ago, that one of the principles of the now ubiquitous “seasonal cooking” concept is that things that grow in the same ground together, at the same time, tend to taste good on a plate together. So it’s kind of gratifying when I start looking up recipes for the weekly bounty and find something that prominently features multiple items.

Such was the case with Deborah Madison’s potato and leek gratin, which J. and I made Thursday night. Potatoes? Check. Leeks? Check. We cut the recipe almost in half (I only got 2 lbs. of potatoes), made it in an 8″x8″ baking dish, and subbed in cheddar for gruyere. Which only means I have to make it again so I can do a proper taste test between the two…

Mandolin the potatoes, slice and rinse the leeks, and dump them in a pot with a couple of sliced garlic cloves, a bay leaf, and a couple of thyme sprigs. Cover with milk, add a couple of big pinches of salt, and simmer gently until the potatoes are tender.

Note: keep the heat as low as you can, or else be prepared to spend some quality time at the sink, scrubbing scalded milk off the bottom of the pan.

Drain the whole thing over a bowl so you reserve the milk. Then layer the potato mixture in a baking dish, alternating with shredded cheese, and seasoning with black pepper and nutmeg.

(for another example of J.’s skills at neatly layering thin slices of potato see this entry)

End with a layer of cheese, pour in the reserved milk (or most of it), and stick it in a hot oven.

Tada!

As a side, I prepared braised collard greens. I have decided that this vegetable is not destined to become a commonplace ingredient in my kitchen, because I don’t understand how a leafy vegetable that needs to be cooked for at least a half an hour can possibly retain any nutrients. And while I like the flavor enough, there are lots of others I like more.

In this preparation, first you have to boil the greens (stems removed) for 10 minutes. THEN you put them in a skillet with a tablespoon of ghee, some sliced green onions, and some of the cooking liquid for at least another 15 minutes, ideally more. Serve with hot pepper sauce (the spice and the vinegar are both great complements to the deep slightly bitter richness of the collards).

Leftover Night

Inevitably, when I come home on Monday evening with my arms loaded up with fresh produce, there are still a few stragglers from the previous week’s shipment, things where I hadn’t gotten around to finding just the right recipe yet. This week, I had a bunch of red sorrel, about a half a head of radicchio (from two weeks ago, actually), and some ragged beet greens. Also lying around were a couple of eggs, and a potato. The answer: a spanish omelet with sorrel sauce, and sauteed radicchio with whatever I could salvage from the beet greens. (Apparently, sorrel is almost always served with eggs or potatoes. I did not know this. I had it once in a cooking class with grilled squid, which was delicious.)

First the sorrel sauce, again courtesy of Deborah Madison. Melt some butter in a saute pan, throw in the sorrel leaves (you’re supposed to chop them up first–luckily I was using cast iron so it didn’t matter that I forgot) with a little water, and cook, stirring occasionally, until the leaves are all broken down and cooked. Put in a little salt and there you go. (This was red sorrel, so the final product was kind of brownish and not overly pleasing to the eye, but it was very good still.)

Then for the omelet, which I had forgotten how much I like. All you need is a little potato, a little onion, some cheese (my sevillana host-mom’s secret ingredient), and some eggs.

The fun part is flipping it. Rather than a fritatta, where you stick it under the broiler for the last few minutes, with a tortilla española, you cook it partway through, cover the pan with a plate, flip it over, and slide it back into the pan.

Meanwhile, the greens were cooked in a mix of ghee and olive oil, because it seemed like a good idea.

End result was quite satisfying, if not the quickest of Monday night dinners.

Tortilla Española
serves 1 very hungry person
(technically this recipe does not include anything from the CSA)

1 yukon gold potato, 3-4 oz, diced
1/4 c diced onion
2 eggs
1-2 Tbsp milk or cream
1-2 Tbsp grated cheese (gruyere works well)
salt and pepper
butter and/or olive oil

Saute the potato and onion in the butter/olive oil in a saute pan over medium heat, until the potato is just cooked through and lightly browned. Scramble up the eggs with the grated cheese and milk, and pour it over the potatoes and onions. Let cook most of the way through. Put an inverted plate over the pan and flip the pan upside down, then slide the omelet back into the pan to cook the rest of the way.