Molly Sheridan
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Molly

Can’t Wait, Won’t Wait: Quick Spring Pickles

pickle_top
April 29, 2012 By In condiments & pickles, csa & vegetables, diy, eat me

The Preservation Kitchen. Canning for a New Generation. If reading material is any indication, this is going to be the summer of packing things into jars. And if not jars, then bottles.

Still, though I am perhaps past the desperate early-April rush to consume the first fresh greens of spring right now, this minute, I have neither the budget nor yet the patience to actually commit any of my market finds to long term caning storage–no matter how lovely the little spears would look lined up on my pantry shelf. Still, I was anxious to do something with all these recipes and glassware I’ve been gathering, so this weekend, I split the difference and did a bit of quick pickling with ramps and asparagus. I know I can’t wait 6 mos., but 24 hours I should be able to manage. More or less.

More than anything, I was out to try this quick pickled ramps recipe once I spied the inclusion of juniper berries, an ingredient I just happen to have on hand due to my adventures in mead making. I’ve already snuck an early sample with breakfast, and better find some restraint or they will all be gone by nightfall.

(Do check out Andrea’s entire “Where the Wild Things Are” series if foraging and herbs and such get your imagination fired. I get ridiculously excited when I see there’s a new post.)

ramps

ramps: pickle prep

pickling the asparagus

asparagus on ice

Pickled Ramps

Pickled Ramps: Bet you can't eat just one.

Playing With My Food

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April 25, 2012 By In csa & vegetables, eat me, salads

This post was inspired by two things.

1. The $14 salad I ate last week that arrived looking like an SNL sketch ripping on modernist cuisine. Once I tamped down the snarky commentary in my head, it tasted so delicious I was shamed (at least until the check arrived) for my quick judgment call. An 1/8 of a pound of split pea pods and artichoke hearts perched on a slick of fennel dressing (accented–I’m not making this up–with a single, paper-thin radish slice) never tasted so lovely.

2. The fact that when I opened the refrigerator to figure out dinner last night, nothing was cooked besides the beets, and it was already 8 p.m.

Oh, and part 2b. I had been wondering if you could dye strained yogurt, which I also had on hand, with turmeric to make a bright yellow, tasty sauce.*

Okay, and 2c. For the past two weeks, every time we sit down for dinner and dig into the asparagus/greens/broccoli/brussels sprouts/sweet potatoes/etc., I wonder aloud, “How could anyone not like vegetables? They taste sooo good!” Granted, in our house they usually get served with all kinds of fun dressings made up on the fly, but that all really just brings me up to the actual point of this disjointed preamble.

Playing with food–especially as a gateway platform to enjoying vegetables–is to be encouraged.

I don’t actually find the time to create art much anymore, but for two minutes before I sat down to eat last night, I decided to get out the big plate and just get ridiculous. Maybe it’s the insidious influence of the Food Network, but that little creative vacation almost made up for the preceding 48 hours of stress and anxiety. It was just fun. And then I ate it.

Non-toxic finger painting that’s completely safe to lick off your finger tips.

* You totally can use turmeric to make a bright yellow, tasty sauce. I added one pressed garlic clove (mince it instead if you prefer a less potent dressing), 1/4 tsp salt, and a 1/4 tsp turmeric to about a cup of strained yogurt. Now I think I might just have to design an entire set of yogurt-based “paints” for plating/saucing/taking things too far. Beet juice? Blueberry juice? What else might make a good edible yogurt dye?

Pancakes with a Heart of Gold

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April 12, 2012 By In breads & breakfast, eat me, mains

There’s a restaurant here in Baltimore that Brian and I pretty much regard as an annex of our own home: Golden West Cafe. Considering the frequency with which we dine there, you’d think I’d have tried everything on their rather extensive menu, but I am a child of habit and pretty much restrict myself to two (super awesomely satisfying) dishes.

There used to be a third.

At some point, however, my beloved lemony pancakes, the ones flecked with zucchini and onion and stuffed miraculously with a slice of brie cheese in the middle, disappeared from the menu. I don’t know where they went or why they left; they didn’t leave a note.

They did make enough of an impression on me, however, to set my hands to some recipe forensics. After just a few tries and tweaks, I had my own version of those flapjacks back on my plate.

Lemon Zucchini Pancakes with a Heart of Brie

1 cup flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon sugar
3/4 cup buttermilk
1 egg
1T olive oil
1 small zucchini
2 scallions, finely sliced
1 tsp. lemon zest

6 thin slices of brie

In a medium-sized bowl, sift together flour, baking soda, salt, and sugar. Set aside.

Shred zucchini and blot well with paper towels to remove as much excess moisture as possible.

Beat egg into the buttermilk and add this mixture, the oil, zucchini, scallions, and lemon zest to the dry ingredients. Whisk together until just incorporated. Allow to rest while bringing your skillet or griddle up to medium heat.

When hot, grease lightly with a little butter (I keep a paper towel nearby to spread the grease around and keep it from getting excessive). Drop batter by the scant 1/3 cup onto your cooking surface of choice; it’s somewhat thick, so you may need to spread it just a bit with your ladle, but don’t thin it out too much. You want some fluff.

The delicious, cheesy heart of the pancake.

When dry around the edges and ready to flip, place a slice of the cheese on top of the uncooked side and turn in over in the pan. If you have a problem with the cheese melting to the skillet instead of browning and crisping, lightly re-grease the pan before you set the uncooked side down on it again.

Continue in this manner until all pancakes are made. I got six 5-inch cakes.

Serve hot topped with a pat of butter and a drizzle of honey.

Indivisible: Kitchen Fail Edition

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April 6, 2012 By In the rabbit hole

This was meant to be my inspiring Easter recipe post. That, as it turns out, just wasn’t to be.

My idea was this: I would raid the used book store for old cookbooks and unearth lovely recipes for quaint and classy baked goods from their disintegrating pages. And so it was that I began work on a Finnish Coffee Bread–perfect for your Christmas, er, Easter table!

I knew disaster was lurking, even before I started. I didn’t want to deal with a “ten-plus cups of flour” dough volume. Did that stop me? Yes! Until I tried to do the math and the division by three became increasingly ridiculous. I got to the “4 eggs” and, since I had never made this bread before and I didn’t know what I should be looking for if I went by touch, I put the calculator down, crossed myself, and proceeded full steam ahead with a full batch.

All my liquids and spices and 5 cups of flour in, it was so far so good, until…
 
 

Well, no picture due to me lunging across the counter for the off switch while shouting “Oh, for Chirst’s sake!” (I know, not exactly, um, honoring the season) as the dough climbed up and over the dough hook and into (that’s right, into) the stand mixer arm.

So what we had here was another edition of “Wonderland Kitchen: Scrubbing eggy dough out of my stand mixer so you don’t have to!” Once I turned the dough out onto a well floured counter and worked the rest in that way, I was sailing along just like a scullery maid, visions of Downton Abbey fueling my little fists of furry.

The dough doubled, it was braided, and the oven was pre-heated. The loaves were slow risers on the second round, but I was getting impatient, tired, and cranky, so I jumped the gun a bit and wrestled all three into the oven. The appliance temperature plummeted and I couldn’t get it back up fast enough. Lessons were learned the hard way.

In the end, the bread was not as soft and airy as I would have liked and the braid was torn asunder from the eventual but delayed oven spring. It’s not terrible, but it’s not something anyone would want to showcase at an Easter feast this weekend, as initially intended.

Not all that tasty; not all that attractive, either. Plus, it's kinda burnt on the bottom.

I do have three loaves of it in the freezer now, however. Hmmm, a bread pudding just may be in order!

To be continued…

There Can’t Be Only One: Spring Asparagus

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April 4, 2012 By In condiments & pickles, csa & vegetables, eat me

Spring asparagus. Not the dry and woody and confusingly available in the grocery store in January kind, but pencil thin and freshly picked. Who could limit themselves to just one bunch (@ $2 each!) per week? Not I, said the little cook. And so, after asparagus tart, there was asparagus…well, pesto, in a sense. Puree in another. Sauce? Condiment? Dip? Yes, yes, and yes. Pass the crackers. Hell, pass a spoon.

After my “first of spring” produce splurge this weekend, I had stretched the grocery budget too tightly to handle a whole cup of pine nuts, and so I swapped in the walnuts I already had in the pantry and saved the few pine nuts available for garnish; it was still fantastic. This is an awesome dish from Super Natural Cooking, no matter what you smear it on.

(P.S. It was Heidi Swanson who taught me to make pesto-type toppings out of many green things, including broccoli. So check her out, be brave, and get creative; it’s awesome on the green side.)

Spring Asparagus Pesto
from Super Natural Cooking

1 bunch asparagus spears trimmed (I also cut mine in half to better fit in my pot)
a few generous handfuls of baby spinach
2 garlic cloves, smashed and roughly chopped
1 cup Parmesan cheese, grated
3/4 cup toasted pine nuts (1/2 cup walnuts work as well, if that better suits your budget as it did mine)
1/4 cup olive oil
1 T lemon juice
salt

In a pot large enough to accommodate your asparagus, bring salted water to a boil. Boil asparagus for two to three minutes, until just tender. Drain and transfer to a food processor, along with the spinach, garlic, Parmesan, and nuts of your choice (toast them first, if you can spare the time). Turn processor on and puree, drizzling in the olive oil while it runs. Add lemon juice and salt. Taste and adjust seasonings as needed.

Pesto can be tossed immediately with pasta or kept in a sealed jar in the refrigerator. Cover the exposed puree with olive oil to prevent discoloration.

A Feast of Green (Spring is Here! Edition)

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April 1, 2012 By In csa & vegetables, eat me, mains, sides

This was the first weekend my Saturday market produce haul has truly felt exciting in quite some time. And even though I’m usually tempted to purchase a rainbow of vegetables on these outings, this was a monochrome venture and that was fine with me. The bright greens of pencil-thin asparagus, Brussels sprouts, spring onions, and cilantro captured my eye. Some of this was imported from our neighbors to the south, admittedly, but I’ll take their hinting promises; no peas yet, but they are assuredly on the way.

Back at home, there was also a largish pile of actual cookbooks that I had been stocking up all winter and have now finally put to use (as opposed to looking again to my normal kitchen fuel—the cooking blogs of others). I first turned to Nigel Slater’s doorstop of a vegetable Bible Tender, a book I had been drooling all over, with its vegetable-by-vegetable recipes and amazing garden photographs. Even though my own vegetable patch will once again be restricted to about 18 sq. ft. this year, I’m looking forward to following him in the kitchen as if I was producing much more. To start, I put some of the asparagus towards his Tart of Asparagus and Tarragon. Though I had a bit of a pastry fail here (my error, as I added too much water to get the dough to come together, and then disliked the texture of the bottom crust, so take care) the interior was rich and silky. I tossed in a handful of chopped spring onion because I could not resist. (I know! I’m bad like that.) If I had managed the dough with more finesse, it would have been a perfect addition to a spring brunch table, for sure.

Tart of Asparagus and Tarragon

Tart of Asparagus and Tarragon Makings

Next up was a bag full of Brussels sprouts. It sometimes shocks those who have never eaten these beauties roasted in Balsamic vinegar that this vegetable is a household favorite, but even we were getting a little tired of that method. Epicurious kicked out a Roasted Brussels Sprouts recipe in the Momofuku fashion that two out of two Baltimoreans definitely agree should be added to the regular dinner rotation. Don’t be afraid of the high oven heat, but do keep an eye on them. My delicate sprouts needed a bit less time to brown darkly. Also, mind your salt/sugar/heat balance in the dressing and don’t be afraid to adjust to suit your tastes, then only add enough to coat, not to drown. I had plenty left over, into which I scooped enough peanut butter to thicken it a bit. It will serve as a fantastic salad topping for the week.

Roasted Brussels Sprouts

A recipe from Heidi Swanson’s inspiring Super Natural Cooking rounded out this feast. I had a mix of red and truly, deeply purple fingerling potatoes that were much too small (some not much larger than jelly beans) to Hasselback as her roasting recipe indicated, but her dish did include harissa (!) which I just happened to have a nice jar of, plus a garlic yogurt dressing. I was in heaven just reading about it and would not, could not let size stand in my way!

Roasted Purple and Red Potatoes with Herbed Garlic Yogurt

Roasted Purple and Red Potatoes with Herbed Garlic Yogurt
Adapted a bit from Super Natural Cooking to suit smaller potatoes

2 lbs. fingerling potatoes, mix of red and purple, in 1-inch chunks
3 T olive oil
2 tsp. harissa
salt

For the dressing

1 cup Greek yogurt
2 garlic cloves smashed and minced
3 T cilantro, finely chopped
3 T fresh mint, finely chopped
1/2 tsp. fine sea salt
black pepper
lemon juice (optional)

Preheat oven to 375F.

Mixed the oil and harissa together, drizzle over potatoes and toss to evenly coat. Spread out on a foil-lined baking sheet and sprinkle lightly with salt. Roast 40 minutes, stirring halfway through.

Meanwhile, to prepare the dressing, mix the yogurt, garlic, cilantro, mint, salt, and pepper in a small bowl. Thin with a bit of lemon juice if desired.