Kat on Thyme

Green Day at the CSA

Seattle produce… today is sponsored by the color Green. Yesterday was the first pick up day for the Community Sponsored Agriculture co-op that the family for whom I work has joined for the season. Here in the Northwest, the season runs from the first week in June to the end of October. How a CSA works, is that people buy a share of an organic farm and then each week they receive some of the farm’s bounty. The Root Connection is the CSA that we belong to, and the farm is just down the hill from the house.  They offer pick-up locations elsewhere, but picking up produce from the farm has its bonuses. My favorite of which will certainly be the bring your own scissors, u-pick basil patch. In fact, they have a whole garden of herbs for cutting, fresh greens, and u-pick flowers that come with the farm share. And not only are the vegetables all organic, they use fertilizer from a local farm that raises cows naturally. I met the cow lady the other day when I was there, and she described her cow’s contribution to the vegetable patch as, “Good Poop!”

And good poop grows good vegetables. This time of year in Seattle, most of what’s growing is green. In fact, everything in the share yesterday, besides a lovely bunch of smooth, fuchsia colored radishes, was green. Baby bok choy, two different kinds of lettuce, dandelion greens, kale, chard, and some green I had never seen before that looked vaguely Asian, perhaps some sort of cabbage. I enjoy the challenge of working these vegetables into my menus creatively. I made a salad of green leaf lettuce, avocado and grapefruit with a pineapple and lemon thyme vinaigrette. I tossed the dandelion greens with some fruity olive oil and salt and pepper and used them as a bed for the curry and black sesame dusted ling cod. The bok choy, I sautéed with garlic and finished with a crisp white wine. And with the radishes I made a little pickle-like dish with orange zest and fresh tarragon.

All the vegetables were beautiful, and prepared simply, their flavors shone. I look forward to many more farm filled meals this summer.

Radish and Orange Pickled Salad

1 bunch radishes, sliced thinly and then julienned (I used a mandoline)
Rice wine vinegar for tossing (about ¼ cup)
Juice of one orange (save a few strips of zest before juicing)
Salt to taste
Sugar to taste
1 Tablespoon honey (or use all honey instead of the sugar-honey combo)

2 strips of orange zest, removed with a peeler and thinly sliced
About 2 teaspoons fresh tarragon (add at the end to preserve the color)

Mix the radishes with the vinegar and orange juice toss to coat. Sprinkle with salt, sugar, and honey and taste. It should be tart, a bit sweet, and pleasantly salty, although not like a regular pickle- that’s too salty. Refrigerate for about an hour to blend the flavors. When you’re ready to serve, stir in the orange zest and the tarragon.

Why the Y?

Why the Y? It’s taken me years to come up with the answer to that question. When I worked for Sea Education Association some years back now, my compadre in the galley (Erik, now owner of Pie in the Sky Bakery in Woods Hole) campaigned on behalf of his little Swiss Y-peeler. And me, I was believer in the OXO Good Grips peeler. We volleyed attributes of the two styles of peelers, each trying to convince the other that ours was the peeler to stay, as if someone were going to throw one or the other overboard at the end of our debate. The good thing about our difference of opinion was that he was never using my peeler and I never used his. It seemed like a good arrangement.

Quite a few years later, when I had quite forgotten about the Y-peeler, entered Chef Drew, another Y-believer. I just didn’t get it. Indeed the peeler was sharp, but you would think those Swiss, who make such precision time keeping instruments, could design a peeler that didn’t rust in the dishwasher. I actually bought one for Drew to keep in my kitchen, since we cooked together often, but I never used the thing. I did like watching Chef Drew’s nimble hands working the peeler, and I softened to the idea that perhaps, it might be a worthwhile addition to my toolbox. Drew still prefers the lithe little Swiss peeler, and thinks anything made my OXO is chunky and awkward, but when OXO came out with a Y-peeler, I tossed my little Swiss one in the Goodwill box and replaced it with the big, chunky, and comfortable grip of the OXO. Ahh, much better.

So of course, now that I own the darned thing, I use it all the time. I find it useful for slicing cheese for panini, and making carrot and cucumber ribbons for salads. Since I hold and use a regular peeler like I use a paring knife, I was a little uncoordinated with the Y-peeler at first, but indeed, it’s a good tool for the price and it takes so little room in the drawer, it’s a keeper.

Green Bean & Carrot Ribbon Salad with Thai Style Vinaigrette

2 Tablespoons lime juice   
2 Tablespoons fish sauce   
2 teaspoons granulated sugar   
1 small clove garlic , minced or pressed
1 small red jalapeño chile , minced  (green if you can’t find red)
2 medium carrots , peeled of skin and then peeled into ribbons
1 Tablespoon peanut oil or vegetable oil 
1 pound green beans, blanched and shocked in cold water
1/4 cup chopped fresh mint leaves, or a combination of mint and basil
1/3 cup chopped roasted, salted peanuts
1 avocado, a few cherry tomatoes, and some slivers of red cabbage, for garnish

Whisk lime juice, fish sauce, 2 tablespoons water, sugar, garlic, and jalapeño in medium bowl until sugar dissolves. Reserve half in large bowl; toss carrots with remaining dressing and set aside. Toss blanched and shocked green beans with the other half of the dressing. Toss half the mint into each bowl and stir to blend.

To assemble the salad, arrange the green beans on a platter and using tongs, top with the carrots. Arrange the garnishes around the beans and carrots and drizzle with the dressing that is left in the bowl. Sprinkle with the peanuts and serve.

Serves 4.

Summer Barbecue Challenge Wrap-up Round Up

Lex Culinaria, a fellow food blogger, put out the call to cyber food junkies for fabulous summer barbecue recipes. So, last weekend I responded with a few blog entries on grilling and was excited to see links to them on her website. I was also excited to see what fabulous recipes and blog sites that other folks submitted. So, not to let a wrap-up go unappreciated, I decided to make five of the recipes at work today. Unfortunately, time got away from me and I didn’t get a chance to make the grilled pita bread (and there was tons of bread in the house already screaming to be grilled) but I did manage to make the other four, and they were all wonderful. Kudos to all who submitted recipes!

The first recipe I made was Helen’s Grilled Asparagus, Tomato, and Feta Salad. Whole Foods didn’t have organic cherry tomatoes today so I opted for Romas which I quartered, seeded, and then sliced lengthwise. I used more olive oil (I’ve never had a delicate hand with the olive oil) and a bit more balsamic vinegar than the recipe called for. I also took Helen’s suggestions of adding some basil, so I did a combination of basil and mint for the dressing. Very delicious indeed!

Also for lunch I made a salad with the Teriyaki Grilled Tempeh from McAuliflower's site.  I have to admit, I fudged a bit on this one because I didn’t want to buy both mirin and sake, and I knew I could make it work with what I had. So I substituted crisp white wine for the sake and dry sherry for the mirin. And since mirin is sweet, I upped the sugar slightly on the sauce. This recipe turned out so nicely I wondered why I don’t cook with tempeh more often! To make this into a salad, I made a simple dressing of rice vinegar and a bit of the warm sauce and tossed it with some spinach and baby Russian kale from the garden. Then I sliced mangos and fanned them on top of the greens. And then above that went the sliced tempeh, a healthy drizzle of the sauce, and a sprinkling of cilantro. Very easy and so tasty. Thanks, McAuliflower, for the recipe, and the reminder that tempeh is delicious.

And of course, to honor the host of the Barbecue Challenge, I made Lex’s recipe for Char Sui Beef Bundles. And to accompany them, I also prepared Haalo’s Grilled Potato Skewers. The people for whom I cook don’t eat much beef so I opted for pork loin that had been butterflied, pounded, and then cut in strips. Trent, my man at Whole Foods, did the butterflying for me but when it came time for pounding, it was naptime at the casa, so I skipped that step. I made the marinade as written except that I left out the Five Spice because, well, because I don’t like it. It was delicious without. I mixed up the marinade with an immersion blender which worked great. For vegetables I chose red bell pepper and snap peas, and instead of tying with green onions, I used big chives. It turned out very nicely but I think I would have preferred to use Lex’s thinly sliced beef. Next time!

And the potatoes. YUM! I chose tiny red creamer potatoes and for seasonings, I went with fennel seeds and a few sage leaves skewered between the potatoes. I didn’t want to go too Mediterranean since the bundles were decidedly Asian. I thought fennel was a nice meet in the middle. I started the bundles in the oven (400 degrees) since it was raining out and then moved them to the grill when I put the bundles on. You could do the whole thing in the oven, in fact, since they cook over indirect heat. I experimented with putting more than one skewer in a bundle, to save on foil, and that worked just fine too. The potatoes were creamy and delicious and the garlic added a nice touch, both for it’s scent and flavor. Next time, I might like to open the bundles and put them over the direct heat, once they’re cooked through. That would provide the nice grill marks and a bit of barbecue flavor as well. No complaints, however- it’s a recipe I’ll surely make again!

Thanks, everyone, for your wonderful input to my day at work! And thank you Lex for your inspiration.

Thursday Night at the Olive Bar

Truly, the more I learn about food, the more I recognize how much more there is to know. I think that’s the attraction. So I was on one of my regular runs down the olive bar at Whole Foods (they should just get me a bar stool) looking for savory additions to the tuna and white bean salad I was  making for lunch. The selection changes often so there’s always something new to try. One of my favorite olive bar treats is the grilled cipollini that are marinated in balsamic vinegar. They have a wonderfully crunchy texture for being grilled and they’re sweet and tart and full of deliciousness. I use them often in panini and tossed into pasta salads.
But getting back to the part about learning something new, when I went to type out the recipe, I checked the spelling for cipollini in the Food Lover’s Companion (great reference and fascinating to peruse) I came across its definition as well. It goes like this:

cipollini [chihp-oh-LEE-nee]
These bittersweet bulbs of the grape hyacinth taste and look like small onions, which is why they're also called wild onions . Fresh cipollini are hard to find in the United States but do make an appearance in some Italian markets during the fall. Jars of cipollini preserved in oil are also sometimes available. For peak flavor, fresh cipollini  should be slowly simmered or braised. They can be served as an appetizer or vegetable.

Who knew! I see grape hyacinth growing in ditches all over Seattle! It’s likely the beautiful purple flowers are done blooming for the season, but if the cipollini are a fall crop, I’m going to start carrying a trowel in the trunk of my car come about mid-August.

But in the mean time, I’ll have to get my cipollini the less adventurous way, at the grocery store.

Olive Bar Tuna and White Bean Salad

  1 can white beans, rinsed
2 cans tuna, in water, drained
1 Tablespoon pickled red peppers, minced (the spicy ones are good!)
3 grilled and marinated cipollini, chopped
2 Tablespoons oil cured olives, chopped
2 Tablespoons capers, drained
3 French cornichons, chopped
1 sprig fresh mint, minced
2 tablespoons fresh chives, thinly sliced into rounds
2 tablespoons parsley, minced
1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar
Zest and juice of one lemon
¼ cup olive oil (more if it seems dry)
Salt and pepper to taste

Combine all of the previous ingredients and taste. Adjust the seasonings to suit your taste. Add more olive oil, lemon, salt and pepper, or fresh herbs to balance the seasonings. Serve with toasted bread or crackers, or as a sandwich filling.

Broccolini Sounds Better

Again, my Whole Foods receipt was a stumper. I don’t recall buying “asparation.” It sounds like something that might happen after a marathon, or too much Ultimate, or running wind sprints after practice. “An acute case of asparation,” my medical chart would read. “She was so young!” my family would mourn.

Lucky for me, asparation isn’t a malady. It’s quite healthy, actually. It’s a vegetable. I can imagine the board meeting at Sakata Seed Company, where the vegetable seed was developed. Everyone sitting around a big table, throwing out ideas for a name. It’s long and thin and green… how about something like asparagus but a little new-age. Appeal to vegetarian baby boomers who do yoga...

In Salinas California, where the vegetable is marketed nationally as “broccolini,” it seems they put a little more thought into their marketing campaign. People like Italian stuff. And “broccolini” makes me think of little broccoli which is more or less what it looks like. Bingo.

Broccolini (I hereby will only use the broccolini name because asparation is just dumb, and my auto-correct keeps changing it to aspiration anyway)  is a hybrid vegetable which crosses Chinese kale and broccoli.  Apparently, it’s extremely labor intensive to grow, because it has to be hand harvested. Pickers will only take one or two stems from each plant so there are multiple harvests per crop cycle. Instead of growing one stalk with a large head, like broccoli, broccolini has many tender stalks and small flowering buds on top. They are lovely. The taste is a bit sweeter than broccoli with a touch of bitter as well.

I found a recipe for a beautiful salad in one of Martha Stewart’s cookbooks. I played with the recipe a bit and came up with this one…

Broccolini Salad with Carrot Ribbons and Radicchio

1 pound of broccolini, stems trimmed and stalks cut in half (separate the ends with flowers from the ends without flowers)
1-2 large carrots, made into ribbons with a peeler
½ small head of radicchio, sliced into ribbons
1 tablespoon lemon juice (I like Meyer lemons)
1 teaspoon lemon zest, finely grated (do this before juicing!)
1 teaspoon sherry vinegar
1 teaspoon Dijon mustard
1 teaspoon honey
2 Tablespoons olive oil
Salt and black pepper to taste

Bring a medium pot of water to a boil and add about a tablespoon of salt. Next to the stove place a large bowl of ice water. Add the stem parts of the broccolini to the water and cook for about a minute. Then add the rest of the broccolini and cook until crisp tender. Another minute or so. Transfer the cooked broccolini into the ice water to stop the cooking process. Drain again once it’s cool and place on a clean towel to absorb moisture.

In a small bowl, whisk the dressing ingredients from the lemon juice to the honey. Then slowly whisk in the olive oil. Add salt and pepper to taste and adjust to suite your tastes. (More honey, more citrus or vinegar?)

Combine the broccolini, carrot and radicchio ribbons, and the dressing and toss to coat. Taste again. If it tastes good to you, serve right away.

Serves about 4.

The Dressing Makes the Meal

The first thing my neighbor, Gretchen, said when I mentioned that I was going to write a food blog was, “You have to write about salad dressing!” Gretchen lives next door and so we eat together often. It’s no more difficult to cook for two than for one, and many nights I wouldn’t cook for myself at all if Gretchen weren’t around to share dinner with me. It’s the blessing and the curse of being a chef- I know how to make good food, yet after cooking all day, I don’t feel like cooking for myself. I eat a lot of toast, unless Gretchen is around.

But back to the salad dressing! With the invention of bagged salad greens (hallelujah, mixed baby organic lettuces all washed and in a bag) there is no excuse for not having a beautiful salad with dinner, or as dinner for that matter. Some lovely greens with something from the grill, say grilled chicken and vegetables, and anything else from the fridge or pantry that sounds good, nuts, dried fruit, canned beans (rinsed and drained), cheese, olives, makes a fabulous dinner. Add a loaf of fresh bakery bread and arrange the salad artfully and you’ve got one fast, easy, and elegant dinner. And what makes the salad truly delicious, is the addition of homemade dressing. I use a hand blender, or immersion blender, for mixing dressings to create an emulsion which keeps the oil and vinegar together and works to thicken the dressing. A regular blender works just fine as well. You can also go old school and whisk the oil into the dressing, but unless you’re a whiz with a whisk, the dressing won’t be as thick, and you’ll also have to mince your herbs and shallot before adding them to the dressing.

Simple Balsamic Vinaigrette with Tarragon

4 ounces balsamic vinegar (I like Whole Foods brand Aged Balsamic)
2 teaspoons Dijon mustard (again the Whole Foods brand is good)
1 good sized sprig tarragon or other fresh herb, use the leaves only (more if you’re using parsley)
½ shallot or 1 garlic clove, peeled and chopped into a few pieces
1 Tablespoon maple syrup or honey
½ teaspoon salt
Freshly ground pepper
6 ounces good olive oil

Put everything but the olive oil in the cup that comes with a hand blender, or in the jar of a regular blender. Blend to mix ingredients. With the motor running, poor the oil very slowly into the vinegar mixture to create an emulsion. Taste and adjust to suit your preferences.

Makes about 10 ounces of dressing.