white bean salad/mustard maple carrots

Like my most recent entry (which was a while ago, sorry), this post doesn't feature the best looking photograph, but it does have one new take on a Cascone classic, as well as two brand new side dishes, so I hope that will help to make up for the poorly lit picture.

roast vegetable mash with sauteed mixed greens and sausages

So recently I told you about a meal that I thriftily prepared from ingredients I found tucked away in my cupboard, and how Nathan probably wouldn't approve since thinks he's better than everyone who gets some modicum of enjoyment from throwing together a dinner that way. I also mentioned that he's equally dismissive of "market meals." Basically, he just likes to be judgey when foodies are involved.

On that note, I'm afraid I'm going to have to out him, because this meal is entirely composed of food from the Union Square Market, and Nathan was totally complicit in its purchase and preparation.

bacon-y carrot potato crusted pie

Sometimes all it takes is a photo, and a recipe will jump the line straight to the top of my "to cook list." A ridiculously rustic pie, with a burnished filling of caramelized carrots and bacon? Why don't you twist my arm a little harder, photographer blogger lady man sir?

butter-fried potato and apple slices with porcini mushrooms, shallots, parsley and sage

Man, I can't believe how January is already flying by! And here I am, still blogging about something I made back in October. Luckily, this meal was mainly root vegetables and apples, which store pretty well throughout the winter, so this is still fairly seasonal. As you'll see in the photo above, there were three components of this meal: maple carrot turnips, garlicky turnip tops and, for the main event, potato and apple slices fried in butter with shallots, porcini mushrooms, sage and parsley.

maple carrots and turnips

maple syrup glazed carrots and turnips

Last summer, my very first food co-op share included turnips. I had never ever cooked a turnip in my life, and thus had no idea what to do with them. My friend Megan lives and runs an organic farm, (and earlier this year was blogging about it), so I asked her how she liked to cook them. The resulting recipe, rich with butter and maple syrup, was so delicious I immediately submitted it to the CSA newsletter. I admit that the combination might sound strange, but it highlights the veggie's natural sweetness and gives it a beautiful sticky sweet glaze and is just off the hook good every time I make it, which is every time I have turnips. Megan also gave me a nice method for cooking turnip tops, which I haven't made recently, but will include nonetheless. Here is my submission, first composed on 6/17/09:

A newcomer to community sponsored agriculture, I was excited to receive my first share of vegetables from Norwood. However, I have to admit I was intimidated by the selection, as I had never cooked a turnip in my life! I put out a cry for help on facebook, and a very good friend of mine, who lives on an organic farm, responded with a pair of recipes which she dubbed "the best way to eat turnips." I am not too sure on the measurements, so this is the closest approximation I can come up with.

Caramelized Maple Turnips and Carrots
6 small white turnips
2 carrots
3 or 4 tbsp real maple syrup
quarter stick of butter
1 cup stock (or enough to cover the carrots and turnips in the pan)
salt and freshly ground pepper to taste

Wash turnips and remove the greens, which can be cooked separately. Chop into small slices. Peel carrots, and slice into thin disks. Place carrots and turnips in a pot, and pour in enough stock to more or less cover them. Cook on medium high heat until carrots and turnips are almost cooked all the way through and the stock has mostly boiled off. Then add butter and syrup, and let that cook down until it gets nice and caramelized. Sprinkle with salt and pepper and serve to guests who won't mind if you lick the plate.

Braised Turnip Greens
6 turnip tops
1-2 cloves garlic thinly sliced
1 tbsp bacon grease
red wine or apple cider vinegar
salt and freshly ground pepper to taste

Wash and chop turnip greens. Peel and mince garlic. Heat bacon grease in pan over medium high heat. Add garlic and turnip greens and cook until tender. Serve with a drizzle of vinegar and a dash of salt and pepper. Enjoy!

sugar snap pea and carrot soup

sugar snap pea and carrot soup

So, with this post, I'll have reached the end of sugar snap pea season. It was definitely a good experience, and opened my eyes to the joy of farm fresh peas. My last week of peas sat in the fridge longer than they should have, so I figured making them into a nice soup would be good, since they were no longer as sweet.

On a tip from Tenli, Nathan's mom, I shelled my peas and then sauteed the pods in butter. Then I added some water and let that boil away to make a nice broth. I strained out the pods, and was going to discard them, but they were actually surprisingly tasty, so I decided to incorporate them into my soup after all. This turned out to be a good decision since it imparted further pea flavor and it helped keep the soup from being too watery.

Meanwhile, I had sliced up some onion and carrots, and got those cooking in a little more butter. Once I had my pea broth, I added that and some frozen chicken stock, and let that all cook together. Then came the peas. Once everything was nice and soft, I added the pods back in and went to town with the immersion blender.

This only made two or three cups of soup, (it was only a pint of peas), but once properly seasoned, it was delicious. Sweet but hearty, it was a simple and successful meal. Topped with sliced scallions and paired with bread and butter, it was SO GOOD. Pea soup is always the best, isn't it? Will have to make split pea soup in the winter.


a summery soup of peas and carrots

cilantro lime coleslaw

coleslaw with a kick

This was my first foray into the world of slaws, and I had no idea what I was getting myself into. This mammoth bowl of coleslaw is only half of what I made. A head of cabbage goes a long, long way!


a brightly colored slaw

I decided to make this coleslaw because there was a big old head of red cabbage languishing away in the back of the fridge. Back when Nathan and I made our second bagna cauda pasta dish, I had been in charge of the grocery shopping. I was tired after a long day of work, so when I went to my local Key Food I half hoped/half believed that the red cabbage they had on display in the produce section was actually radicchio. When Nathan arrived he quickly set me straight, and was so kind as to head back out to try his luck at Fine Fare. We both feared the mission would prove fruitless, but he inexplicably found two lonely radicchio heads, sitting in the produce case as if they were waiting specially for us. Indeed, the cashier had no idea what they were, nor how to ring them up, and the manager was equally flummoxed. After much discussion, it was determined that they must be runty red cabbages, so they ended up costing about fifty cents collectively.

That worked out great for the bagna cauda dish, but it also meant that I wound up with a totally superfluous head of red cabbage. Fast forward to my first food co-op pick up a few weeks later, and I've got a fridge full of veggies and a barbecue to attend at my dear friend Christine Jones nee Flood's house. I know I want to bring something to eat, and when I remember I have the cabbage, coleslaw is the obvious choice. I also still have winter food co-op carrots that aren't getting any younger, so I'm thinking this is perfect.


coleslaw close-up

When it comes to finding a recipe, I turn immediately to the smitten kitchen, where Deb has a well established love for slaws. This basic Ina Garten recipe seemed like it would work well enough, but then I dug a little further and discovered this cilantro-laden variant. Since I had gotten a bunch of cilantro from the co-op, I decided to go in that direction.

I chopped up a full head of red cabbage, about half of a small red onion, and then I peeled and thinly sliced 7 or 8 little carrots. This took forever and a day, but I like to think my newly acquired knife skills would now speed up this process considerably. I also decided to add some garlic scapes, which I sliced into little rounds. Then I chopped up some of the cilantro. After all the slicing and dicing was completed, I packed all my chopped veggies into the biggest tupperware I had, which was fit to burst.

I brought this home to Long Island and dressed it the next day, about a half an hour before the party. I was in a bit of a rush, so I ignored the recipe's measurement and just mixed together some mayo, salt, pepper, sugar, lime juice, cayenne pepper and dijon mustard. This only lightly coated my slaw, which was actually what I was aiming for. At this point I realized that I had enough coleslaw to feed a small army, and that only about half of it was going to fit into the largest salad bowl my parents had. Needless to say, I had a lot of leftovers. This slaw is great, but it gets soggier and more liquidy as the days go by, so unless you're having a party of 20 people, stick to half a head of cabbage. That being said, cilantro and lime are a kick ass way to jazz up a typical slaw. It was a great take on a traditional summer dish, and I would certainly make this again.

The whole barbecue was awesome, although I'm sure any Southerner worth his salt would have had a few choice words with us for calling it that. Mrs. Flood served up a typically impressive spread, including amazing brats. Meaghan made some delicious orzo salad with chickpeas, grape tomatoes and basil which would have totally housed Jimmy Bradley's lentil version. It was a delicious dinner, and not bad to look at either— and neither were the lovely guests! It's always a blast to get back together with my high school friends, and I only wish it could happen more often.


it may not be real barbecue, but it still looks like summer to me!

cream cheese frosted carrot cake/rice crispie treats

So back in the fall Jess and I went out to her uncle's house in the Southhampton. He has an amazing glass mansion on the beach with this dream kitchen stocked with just about every gadget imaginable. The past couple of years, he's been so kind as to let Jess bring her friends out for a weekend pre-memorial day or post-labor day. Last year, we came out in September to a surprisingly well stocked fridge with instructions to help ourselves to anything. This meant delicious frozen ravioli and sword fish, high quality Rao's tomato sauce, a tin of old fashioned banana pudding mix, slivered almonds and a tupperware full of homemade cream cheese frosting. Naturally, we took advantage of the latter two items by making a carrot cake, which we slightly altered by adding some chopped walnuts, which are generally one the best parts of any carrot cake.


cream cheese frosting on an almond carrot cake

The recipe proved delicious, and I've had it stashed away to make again ever since. The perfect opportunity arose over Memorial Day Weekend, when Laura and I threw a little party for our friends at the apartment. I had cream cheese in the fridge, a big bag of walnuts from BJ's, some left over almonds from our lentil dish, a lemon or two, plus carrots and eggs from the food co-op, so this cake was calling out to me.

Somehow, things did not go as smoothly as I had planned. I suspect that Jess did most of the actually baking last time around I did mostly things like toasting the nuts and getting the eggs out of the fridge while I made salad and pasta and such. Also, the food processor and other high tech grinders and such in the Southhampton probably really sped up the process. In any event, I had no idea how labor-intensive this little bugger was. First you toast the nuts, then you chop the walnuts and grind up the almonds to make flour. Then you zest a lemon, shred the carrots, measure the dry ingredients and mix in the egg yolks. As if that weren't enough, you have to whip the egg whites, and then fold them into the batter in two batches. You might think that you could bake the cake and be done with at that point, but no, I had to make my own frosting too, creaming together a stick of butter and brick of cream cheese with vanilla and a reduced amount of powdered sugar! Luckily, that part was super easy and came out awesome.

The cake itself was pretty good, but it was a lot of trouble when I had a party starting in less than two hours. I was frosting the cake and picking out the fullest walnuts from the bag to candy and decorate the cake with while the guests were milling about. It was a little stressful. Good, but stressful!

This cake is probably best if you have a reasonable amount of counter space and a food processor, but for those of us less fortunate, there are other confectionery delights that can be made in a snap. Why yes, I am talking about rice cripsy treats, specifically this salted brown butter rice crispy recipe. As any child can tell you, rice crispy treats are the best. What savvy moms can probably tell you is that they are damn easy to make as well! Simply melt a stick of butter, let it get golden brown, then take it off the heat and stir in a package of marshmallows. Then you add a quarter teaspoon salt and six cups of rice crispies, stir it all together and then press it into a pan. That's all there is to it! So if a 20 step cake is a bit daunting, know that you can always fall back on a childhood favorite. Plus, I had almost half the cake left over and no rice crispy treats whatsoever!

duck legs with spinach, carrots and mashed potatoes

So awhile ago Nathan and I went down to the Tompkin's Square Park Farmer's Market on a Sunday to "see what was fresh," as is so popular amongst the food blogging set. We picked up some beautiful duck legs, cute cipollini onions, some fresh spinach and little potatoes and made us some braised duck.

Now, duck is probably my favorite meat, and I know Nathan is pretty fond of it as well. We made an incredibly delicious roast duck for Christmas dinner at my parents' house this year, but this was our first attempt at an every day sort of duck dinner. Back in December, we made a typically complicated recipe from the epic Chez Panisse Menu Cookbook. This time around, we once again took a page out of Alice Waters' book, but we were less ambitious and looked to The Art of Simple Food and Chez Panisse Cookbook for our inspiration.

We trimmed the extra skin and fat off the legs, sliced it and fried that up first to render the fat. We tried eating the cracklings with salt and pepper, but they weren't as good as I thought they would be. Kind of burnt I guess. Meanwhile, we let the duck sit after we'd salted and peppered it. After an hour or so, we browned the legs in my big oven proof frying pan, pouring off the fat as it collected.

After the skin of the duck was a nice mahogany brown, we removed it from the pan and set the legs aside for a moment. We tossed a couple of diced food co-op carrots and some chopped celery into the pan and let that cook for awhile. Then we added the duck back in, skin side facing down, a bunch of the peeled cipollinis, and poured in some homemade chicken stock and a little white wine for the braising liquid. I am pretty sure we also added some lemon zest as per Alice's suggestion.

We put the pan in a 425° oven and covered it for a half hour. Then we flipped the duck and turned down the temperature to 325° for an hour to an hour and a half. At some point, and I don't remember when, we dumped off the braising liquid and let the fat rise to the top so we could skim it off. When the legs seemed thoroughly tender, I put the spinach and some parsley in the pan and let that wilt in the juices.

Unfortunately, I found that this dish, while flavorful and delicious, was just too greasy and oily. Even though we skimmed off as much duck fat as we could, it really clung to the whole dish. I was especially disappointed with how greasy the spinach got, even though we just added it the very end. Of course, it was duck with amazing onions and vegetables, so we didn't complain too much. I'm just not sure if braising is the best way to go with such a fatty animal.


not your typical meat and potatoes

More successful were Alice's easy mashed potatoes. We chopped them up into medium sized pieces and boiled them about 15 minutes. After draining them, (reserving some of the water), I put them back in the pot and turned the heat back on to dry them out for a few minutes. That's a trick Aunt Cathy taught me. Then we took them out of the pot and poured in a little milk and potato water, which we also heated. Then we added back the potatoes and some butter and whipped it all together with the electric mixer. Delicious! I ask you: how are mashed potatoes so good?


easy mashed potatoes

loaded baked potato with cumin carrots and pan fried pork chop

I made this dinner last Friday before I went out and it was super easy. It also adhered to my favored meal formula: meat + starch + veggie = dinner. Yay. In a twist on a meal my parents have made countless times, I made a simple pork chop, a baked potato, and some cumin roasted carrots. It was easy, homey, and utterly satisfying.


pork, potato, carrot

The star of the meal, believe it or not, was the baked potato. I had gotten some fairly small red ones from the food co-op, so I poked holes all over the largest one and popped it in the microwave on the baked potato setting. I also set the toaster oven to 350 degrees so I could finish it off in there. I fried up a little bacon and chopped up some scallions to sprinkle on top. I also had some sour cream I was going to use, so I decided to try using this cool bacon horseradish dip that Laura got me in Florida. I just mixed a small amount of the mix into some sour cream, and it was instantly a delicious dip. I'm not generally a proponent of powders and prepared foods, but this was actually pretty tasty and the company claims to sell natural foods. I don't want to know what's in it, but I'll definitely eat it again, haha, as well as the cucumber dill variety.


purple potato with bacon horseradish sour cream dip

The potato itself turned out wonderfully. I had never had baked a potato that was anything but a boring yellowy white inside, but this little beauty was a lovely shade of purple. So cool. I love loading lots of stuff in my potatoes, so this was definitely a winner, haha.

A couple of hours before I started cooking, I defrosted a pork chop I'd had in the freezer for awhile. I decided to prepare it as simply as possible, partially because I felt damn guilty about all the sour cream and bacon. (Of course, I was cooking the bacon and the chop in the same pan at the same time, so I probably shot myself in the foot there...) Nathan's stepmom, Patricia, had gotten me this awesome pink Australian salt for my birthday, and although it's really cool, it's also the sort of thing that almost feels too good to actually use. However, the label suggests using it on meats, so that is just what I did, along with some freshly ground pepper. I cooked on fairly high heat and it turned wonderfully golden brown.

The third thing I made was these cumin roasted carrots I had recently stumbled across on a food blog. With all the moving we've done recently, I've had ample opportunity to familiarize myself with the forgotten contents of my pantry, including a bag of cumin seeds. Tossed with olive oil oil, salt and pepper, my cumin seeded carrots were like crispy sweet potato fries after 35 minutes in the oven at 400 degrees. If I were you, I'd check these puppies after 25 minutes because they cooked way faster than the recipe claimed. That being said, these were awesome and I am definitely going to continue making them with my surplus of food co-op carrots. I also tossed in some of my chopped scallions, which made for nice if unnecessary addition.

All in all, it was a very successful meal, and it gave me plenty of fuel for my Friday night fun.