Wednesday, May 22, 2013

While Rome Burns


Sausage + fiddleheads = dinner

It's spring, finally. (Or did we skip straight to summer? It broke 90 up here yesterday.) So after a month or more of reading about all the MIA seasonal delights - ramps, rhubarb, fiddleheads - that ought, according to magazine editors and food bloggers everywhere, to be overflowing at my local farmers' market, I finally managed to find two of the above. No ramps, alas, but the Co-op had rhubarb and ferns. I had no idea what to do with either, so naturally I bought them anyway.

Washed fiddleheads
Google, as usual, was quick to provide inspiration, with a nod to some French blog I'd never heard of for the rhubarb compote and Saveur for a link to a ramp recipe I didn't really follow. I usually go to Saveur first when I'm looking for something in particular, and they rarely disappoint. Anyway I didn't take any photos while making the rhubarb, so apologies for that 'cause it's all bright and colorful (ETA: I've added photos of the finished product), but the fiddleheads should make up for it. They're photogenic little things, that's for sure, all green and smooth and curled up. The ferns I'd eaten in Indonesia weren't nearly so pretty. At some point I'm gonna have to find some to transplant to my garden so I can pick my own - $10/lb at the store, ouch - because this was delicious. The taste of spring, while it lasts.

Herbs & garlic

Rhubarb-Berry Compote
1/2 lb rhubarb
6 tbsp orange juice
~5 tbsp brown sugar
2 handfuls mixed berries, fresh or frozen (strawberries, blueberries, blackberries, raspberries, etc.)
1 tbsp minced ginger
lemon juice to taste


1) Preheat oven to 375. Cut the rhubarb stalks lengthwise, then chop into centimeter-long pieces. Put these in a glass baking dish, sprinkle with 2 tbsp of the sugar and 3tbsp of the oj, and roast uncovered for about 45 minutes, stirring halfway through.

2) Put the berries, ginger, the rest of the sugar, and the rest of the oj into a pot and simmer for about 5 min. Add the rhubarb and all the juices from the pan and simmer another 5-10 min, until things start to thicken up. Mash the berries a bit with a fork.

3) Take a taste. If you want it tarter, add a squeeze of lemon juice. If you want it sweeter, add a little sugar. Let cool until just warm and serve over ice cream, yogurt, biscuits, or on its own with a spoon.

C'est parfait.

Fiddleheads and Sausage (inspired by this)

1 link sweet Italian sausage
1/3 lb fiddleheads
1-2 cloves garlic, minced or pressed
1 small handful mixed herbs, chopped (I used oregano, sage, and tarragon. Loooved the tarragon.)

Post-chopping.


1) Rinse & trim the fiddleheads. Make sure to rub the sides of the coil to get the little brown bits off. Set aside.

2) Cook the sausage in a pan over medium heat. (Cast iron works well.) Let it brown well on all sides, then cover a bit so the inside cooks. Cut it open to make sure it's not too pink. Set on a plate, leaving all the juices in the pan.

Mmm, Nica's sausage

3) Add the fiddleheads to the pan with the sausage juices and a little olive oil. Add the garlic and herbs and saute until the ferns are just cooked through but not soft or limp, 5 minutes tops. You want these fresh, not mushy. Add salt & pepper to taste.

4) Serve with the sausage and some good bread to mop up the liquid. If at all possible, eat outside on a patio while slapping away the season's first mosquitos and sipping prosecco.

Mid-saute.

Saturday, May 11, 2013

Catch Up/Run Down

It's been a hell of a month since my last post - end of semester, dissertation writing, term paper writing, term paper grading, pizza party throwing, with occasional bouts of trying to get some damn sleep. But as of yesterday I'm a free woman, with my paper turned in and my grades recorded and only my dissertation to keep me company (that one's not going away any time soon). So apologies for the long radio silence, and hopefully I'll be able to catch up soon on all the wonderful things I've been making. Yes, there's a lot of them, and they were wonderful (pizza! falafel! arepas!), and I have pictures, lots of pictures. Meanwhiles, here's some of the best things I've put in my mouth recently. I suggest you follow my lead where possible.

Purple Haze chevre
 Remember my last post, where I talked about how awesome goat cheese it because it doesn't make me sick? Since then I've been trying out all the wildly expensive goat and sheep cheeses at the Co-op (and by all I mean about 3 so far) to see which are worth the time & money. Answer: this one. My main problem with most goat cheese is that frankly it tastes like I'm licking a goat, which, forgive me, is not generally on my to-do list. Purple Haze costs something like 7 bucks for a little 4-oz slice, which is ridiculous, except that it tastes amazing. Like seriously, mild and creamy and not like goat sweat at all. And the outside is dusted with lavender and fennel pollen. If your pretentious artisanal bullshit alarm bells are going full blast here I don't blame you, but seriously, unbearably precious as it admittedly is, this shit's good. Though while I love fennel almost as much as avocados, and therefore life itself, if you're not a fan of the liquorice family this might not be the cheese for you. In which case good, more for me.

Little bundles of joy, fancy toothpicks optional.

Purple Haze chevre stuffed in a date and wrapped in prosciutto
Sweet salty creamy liquoricey porky hell yes. (As suggested by their website.) The only trick is to use enough cheese & prosciutto to counterbalance the sweetness of the medjool date, which is basically honey in solid form. I can't eat more than like two of these at once, but those two make me very happy.

Beltane Farm feta
While we're talking goat cheese, can I mention Beltane Farm? I got a container of their goat feta at the Wooster Square farmers' market ($8. Ouch.) and literally could not stop eating it. No really, literally. I'm always a sucker for feta, but these guys nailed it like woah. I've yet to try their herbed chevres, but eagerly anticipate the chance. Probably next Saturday. I'll let you know.

Sono Bakery at the farmers' market
I missed the farmers market this morning and I was pissed - no delicious delicious baked goods for me. Sono does a lot of things very well, but my hands down drop dead favorites are the caramelized onion/olive focaccia and the apricot pistachio tart. The former reminds me a lot of the pissaladiere I ate in Nice, but fluffier. And yes, I could totally make this myself instead of spending $7.50 on a big chunk of bread with toppings, but a) the last two times I've tried to caramelize onions I've forgotten about them and ended up with a pile of charcoal, which doesn't bode well, and b) then I couldn't eat it on a bench in Wooster Park by the cherry trees. Yes, I know it was raining today so I couldn't have done that anyway, and I don't care.

Wonderful, gooey, half-eaten apricot tart.

#2 on the list of wonderful things they make is the apricot tart. I'm a total sucker for stone fruit, particularly apricots, and particularly when there's pastry involved, as evidenced by my weekly apricot danish at the Auckland city farmers' market this past summer. This is a butter tart crust, with ground almond filling and fresh apricot halves on top, covered with crumbled pistachios. The photo's crap, since I took with my phone in the park - this was not going to last long enough to make it home to my real camera. I plan to buy like five on my birthday later this month and go to town.

Restaurant Week at Oaxaca and Yolande's
Restaurant week is long gone, but at least some of this is still on the menu and totally worth ordering. For starters, Oaxaca. The first course, black bean soup was good but nothing special - I could make it myself. The main dish was slow-cooked pork shoulder with cinnamon and ginger and all sorts of other spices. The flavor was so deep and layered and downright fantastic I nearly melted right there. It reminded me of the lamb vindaloo at Thali, which is one of my favorite dishes in New Haven (same owners, no coincidence). I want that recipe. And dessert, an 'orange-scented flan with caramelized sugar', was quite possibly even better. Not so sure I caught the orange, but there was definitely cardamom in there, and an anise cookie. My only gripe was a too-sweet bit of grape something. No need for extraneous touches, just leave the flan alone.

Yolande's, two days later, was empty. I was literally the only person in the restaurant. Which is sad, 'cause the food's pretty good. For brunch it's a crepe place, and totally affordable; lunch and dinner it goes all bistro and the prices double. But for Restaurant Week, whatever. This meal was brought to you by the letter O, for overkill, in the best way possible. Appetizer: French onion soup, with a giant dollop of gooey, melty gruyere in the middle (the crouton sank). Possibly more cheese than soup. I consider that a good thing. Course two: 'Lamb chops, lamb merguez, and a fried duck egg with greens and tomato Provencale'. Well. The chops were dainty and nicely pink in the middle, the merguez was a good solid sausage, the duck egg was runny and rich, the 'greens' were ramps cooked with an equal volume of bacon, and the whole thing was cooked in roughly a stick and a half of butter. So it was delicious. 'Tomato Provencale', as it turns out, is half a tomato, roasted with breadcrumbs, herbs, and a little cheese. Hardly a light dinner, but with a glass of cheap cote du Rhone to cut the richness, a really really good one. Dessert was an apple tarte tatin that could've used an extra few minutes in the oven, and which I couldn't eat more than a few bites of, due to a stomach full of animal fat. Then a walk home under that trippy-ass rainbow they projected from East Rock in honor of the city's 375th birthday. Definitely an evening I'd repeat.

So in short: Eat fancy-pants goat cheese. Make a focacia. Go to Yolande's. Thank me later.

And some cherry blossoms to eat it under.