ravioli with swiss chard, sugar snap peas and garlic chips/radish salad sandwich

ravioli with chard, sugar snap peas and fried garlic chips

So last Monday night when Nathan left for vacation in Italy, I decided to cook up some Borgatti ravioli. I had had a box in the freezer since I was last up on Arthur Ave the last weekend of April, but I was waiting for a special occasion to break it out. I guess I was feeling like if I couldn't go back to Italy, I could at least eat the best ravioli this side of Atlantic. The time was right. (Appropriately, Nathan actually gets back TODAY, and I am so excited!!!)

As I was leaving work, I stumbled across this recipe for spaghetti with swiss chard, olives and garlic chips. I had seen it before, but it hadn't particularly struck me at the time. However, with a bag full of chard slowly wilting back at home, it suddenly seemed much more appealing. So, when I got home, I dug into a fridge full of vegetables and used that recipe as a jumping off point for my dinner.

Obviously, I switched the pasta from spaghetti to ravioli, but other than that I followed the recipe fairly closely, with one notable exception. I've never really liked olives. Lately, I've been coming around on them somewhat, but I still usually avoid them. I definitely don't keep them in the house, and I didn't go out shopping, so they got axed from the recipe.

I sliced the garlic into thin chips and fried it in hot olive oil until golden brown. I removed the garlic from the pan, and added a diced shallot, which I cooked until soft. Then I added a pint of shelled sugar snap peas, (after almost five days in the fridge, the pods were truly sad looking), and then the chopped leaves of a bunch of chard. (I reserved the stems for use in a dish Nathan likes to call chard surprise, but I'll be saving that for another post.) Meanwhile, I boiled my ravioli in a pot of salted water until it floated. Once the chard was wilted and the pasta drained, I tossed it all together and added back in the garlic chips. Yummy!


ravioli with veggies and open faced salad sandwich

I also had some old Italian bread in the fridge, the end of a head of food co-op lettuce, not to mention that never ending bag of radishes. I toasted the bread with some butter so it would taste less stale, and then just topped it with thinly sliced radish, the red leaf lettuce, kosher salt, fresh cracked pepper and a drizzle of olive oil and red wine vinegar. It wasn't as extraordinary as my last radish sandwich, but it was quick and easy and helped me use up some of the food I have in the fridge. (If you too have a surfeit of radishes, you can simplify this even further and just eat them sliced with butter, salt and pepper. That's how I finally finished mine off.)


radish and red leaf lettuce salad on Italian bread

So that was that. Dinner without my boy. Inclusion of peas aside, I think he would have liked it. That being said, for those of you keeping track this type of dinner is getting to be bit of a standard in my kitchen. Olive oil, garlic, onion, cooked greens, an extra veggie and some pasta... It's getting a bit formulaic, and I'm wary of falling into a rut. That being said, when there are so many greens to use up, there's only so much you can do with them. If anyone has any especially interesting suggestions, please pass them along!

What I did particularly like about this recipe that made it stand out from the pack was the crispy fried garlic slices. If you too are intrigued by the idea of garlic chips, I also happened upon this post which a couple of other interesting ideas for crunchy fried garnishes. I use a lot of browned garlic in my cooking, but it's generally more finely chopped and serves more as additional flavoring than as stand alone element of a dish. I'm intrigued by exploring this idea of crispy little garnishes and what not. In my first post of the year, I mentioned a dinner that Nathan and I made that included blue steak, creamed spinach and a poached egg with crispy onions. This we did accidentally, but I ended up really liking it. This other blogger's post has got me thinking that there could really be something to this flavorful crispy thing!

gnocchi with pan fried radishes and turnip tops

gnocchi with radishes

So remember when Nathan and I made Jody Adam's disastrous gnocchi in cream sauce? Well, even if you don't, I've had nightmares enough for the both of us. They were soggy, leaden, doughy lumps that sat in our stomachs like cannon balls. An undisputed utter failure.

Well, believe it or not, we had uncooked gnocchi leftover which I actually froze and saved, and I was recently brave enough to defrost them and try again. Nathan told me to just throw them away and not suffer through the awfulness yet again, but I hate to waste food, and I suspected they might be slightly better if I were to pan fry them to a crisp golden brown. (This smitten kitchen posts assures us that after pan frying we will never boil again.)

The verdict? Browning made all the difference! They still weren't super amazing or great, but they were actually quite palatable, and much lighter than the cream laden ones we had cooked the first time around. I'm sure I could improve with practice, but I think the first batch went so badly wrong because we used too much cream and didn't reduce it enough, not because of any fatal flaws in the gnocchi itself. Somewhat of a comfort.

Of course, I had to go and overload the cast iron skillet by about 5 or 6 gnocchi, making it nearly impossible to flip the little dudes without smushing them together. Typical move on my part. Luckily, I still got them all to brown, and if a couple of them joined together to form conjoined twin super gnocchi, it had very little impact on the final flavor.

As for the gnocchi accompaniments, I was inspired by my surplus of radishes and starting-to-yellow turnip tops. I happened across a New York Times article and recipe that sang the praises of cooked radishes, and I was immediately all about it. You can only slice so many of those things and throw them in salads.

I quartered my (surprisingly large) radishes and set them face down in a hot oil pan and just let them brown for about three minutes. After they started to color, I added some finely chopped garlic and stirred it all around for a bit. Then I added the chopped green tops of two bunches of turnips, mixing them around until they all began to wilt. After the tops were cooked through, I added the golden brown gnocchi back into the pan and sprinkled with shredded parmesan. It was all actually pretty good. Cooked radishes are damn tasty, and when it comes to gnocchi, pan frying is definitely an appealing option.


homemade gnocchi: better pan fried

pasta with peas and broccoli rabe

pasta with peas and broccoli rabe

So, my first batch of peas, I pickled, and I liked them more than I expected. So, when week two of sugar snaps rolled around, I was feeling more generously towards the little legumes. (I just googled "are sugar snap peas legumes?" to be sure, and the results suggest they are. I apologize if I am mistaken; botany is not my strong suit.)

That Friday night I decided to make myself up a quick dinner before heading downtown to a party at my friend Becky's house, and I decided to make a dish that would honor the previously maligned pea, and my father's usual preparation of it. As I mentioned in my pickled pea post, my dad will often make a simple pasta dish with peas, onion and olive oil, and I usually try to get as few peas as possible. He also makes a similar dish with garlic and broccoli rabe. Since my second food co-op share included both of those veggies, I decided to combine the two ideas into one meal.

When I told Nathan of my plan, he got angry because "peas are the worst!" I tried to assure him that farm fresh peas were completely different from the frozen supermarket blandnesses he was used to, but he was adamant and kept saying "I can't believe you'd rather stay home and cook worsts instead of letting your boy take you out to dinner." I held my ground though, and was ultimately pretty happy with my decision. You'd be surprised how satisfying it is to get through even a small part of a weekly food co-op share.

I began by shelling the peas and setting the pasta water to boil. Then I sliced up an onion and cooked it in olive oil until it was very soft. After that, I added sliced garlic and the broccoli rabe, discarding the thickest stems. I cooked that over medium heat, stirring to keep the broccoli from burning. Then I added the peas and my secret ingredient: the olive oil and hot pepper flakes from an empty jar of anchovies. This fish infused oil gave it a little extra saltiness and richness, but the dish would obviously still work with regular oil and red pepper flakes. Once the pasta was al dente, I drained it and added it to the pan. I used campanelle, which is Italian for bell and is also a pretty cool pasta shape. I cooked it all together for a few minutes longer, and then ate it with plenty of grated parmesan. Delicious.

I realize now that I kind of screwed up with the peas. They were still delicious and fresh, and I should have cooked them up in the pods, rather than shelling them. They still tasted amazingly sweet and were crunchily delicious, but tossing the pods was definitely a waste. I've since made a similar dish with peas that stayed in the fridge for a few days longer, and by that point the pods had gotten nasty and wilty. While they were in their prime, however, they should be used. I won't make that mistake again.

asian style tat soi and zucchini stir fry

food co-op stir fry

This dish was really simple, so it was sad that I screwed it up. I started off by trying to recreate a baked zucchini dish my dad and I invented last summer. I had sliced zucchini and summer squash sitting in the fridge, so I simply rubbed them with brown sugar and sesame oil laid them flat on a tray and baked them in the toaster oven. Looking back, I think my dad and I also used butter and salt and pepper. These want a significant amount brown sugar, and I think I skimped on it.

While these were the toaster, I chopped up some tat soi, leaves and stalks both, and sauteed them in hot vegetable oil with minced garlic and ginger. Since I had already used the sesame oil and ginger, I started to feel like my veggies were asian inspired, and decided to add some soy sauce. Usually, I only use soy to make fried rice, which can absorb a lot of soy flavor. The tat soi was overwhelmed by what I thought was a small glug of soy, and the dish became overpoweringly salty. To try and spread the soy around, I threw the zucchini and squash into the pan. Not only did this not particularly help, it also meant that I completely lost the brown sugar and sesame flavors. It was sad. Not terrible tasting, but disappointing nevertheless.


zucchini and tat soi with soy sauce, sesame oil and ginger

You might expect that I paired these veggies with some sticky rice, and if I had planned ahead, that's probably what I would have done. However, this wasn't so much a planned ahead dish as much as a "oh shit, these zucchini and summer squash slices have been sitting around since Sunday! and I need to use that tat soi!," so I ate it with leftover mac and cheese. The two made relatively strange bedfellows, but I was eating by myself and I wasn't too bothered by it.

It was my first time eating tat soi, and I liked it. I just wish I hadn't killed it with so much soy sauce. If the food co-op gives us more I may try this simple blanched and sauteed version. I also plan on trying my sesame brown sugar zucchini again, since it didn't work out so well this time. I think I just lost sight of the goal. Oops.

farmers' market sandwich creation

sandwich with both parts of the radish

I don't know if you've noticed, but I tend to improvise a lot in the kitchen. That's why you won't find a lot of recipes in my posts, but rather more free form explanations of what I've been up to in the kitchen. This might be frustrating if you're not super comfortable in the kitchen and you are looking for more exact instructions on how to replicate our meals at home, but I do always link to the recipes that were my jumping off point, so hopefully this isn't too much of a problem.

Anyway, my point is that even though I don't worry too much about following a recipe exactly, I almost have one (or two), that I am using as a guide. Therefore, when I come up with a dish entirely on my own, it is kind of thrilling, even if it is only a simple sandwich, like the one I am going to talk about today.

Going on three weeks ago now, back when Nathan and I were still doing our Master Meals series, he suggested I swing by the Union Square Market on Saturday afternoon so we could make Jonathan Waxman's famous chicken on Wednesday. I thought this was a good idea, but by the time I got down there, the chicken vendors were gone, and we never did get around to making more Master Meals.

What I did make was this delicious sandwich, inspired by the bounty of the late spring farmers' market:


fried eggs and goat cheese atop radishes

Thin-as-I-could-slice-'em radishes, creamy salted goat cheese, a runny fried egg and sauteed radish tops atop a crusty roll. All freshly bought down in Union Square and prepared with a minimum of heat and thus ideal for a hot summer day. What was especially great about this light little meal was that it all kind of came together in my head organically, (no pun intended), as I wandered the market.

"A huge bunch of radishes for a dollar? Those would be great marinated with oil and vinegar, salt and pepper and served on some buttered bread, and I can cook the greens up with some lemon juice. But how can I make this more of a full meal? Eggs for $2.25 a dozen? Oh, a HALF dozen? Expensive, but now I want to make egg sandwiches, so let's just go for it... Oh look! They are closing up for the night so a bag of four rolls is only two bucks! Anything else? There's goat cheese. I love goat cheese. Four ounces for $5. Great!"

This all came together brilliantly. The radish slices gave it crunch, and the buttery bread and runny eggs richness. Nathan made the astute observation that the lemon in the greens mixed with the egg yolk made it taste a bit like hollandaise sauce, and the goat cheese was the perfect creamy, last minute addition. These sandwiches were so good, I'm even going to write up my approximations of a formal recipe so those of you playing along at home can make this yourselves. So, without further ado:

"The Garlicus Maximus" – Whole Radish Sandwiches on Garlic Bread with Goat Cheese and a Fried Egg
makes 2 sandwiches

the green tops from a large bunch of radishes
2-3 medium to large sized radishes
2 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp red wine vinegar
kosher salt
freshly ground pepper
½ a lemon, juiced
½ a stick butter at room temperature, plus extra for frying eggs
2 cloves garlic
1½ tbsp goat cheese
2 rolls

1. Wash the radishes, removing the greens and setting them aside. Slice the radishes as thin as you can. (I don't have a mandolin, but I imagine it would be helpful in this situation.)
2. Mix the olive oil and vinegar in a small bowl and add the sliced radishes and a generous amount of salt and pepper. Let marinate while you make the rest of the sandwich.
3. Smash the garlic cloves into a paste. You can use a mortar and pestle to do this, or you can scrape the clove with the side of your paring knife. Mix the garlic into the softened butter.
4. Slice your rolls in half and spread the garlic butter on both sides. Toast in the oven or toaster oven until golden brown.
5. Saute the radish greens until wilted over medium low heat in a frying pan. They should still be wet from when you washed them, which will prevent them from burning in the hot pan, but you can heat up a little oil or butter before you add the greens. Add lemon juice and season with salt and pepper.
6. Fry two eggs and season with salt and pepper.
7. Assemble the sandwiches. Layer the thinly slice radishes on one half of the sandwich, and the lemony greens on the other. Pour a little of the left over vinegar and oil mixture over the sliced radishes. Spread a goat cheese over the radish slices, and top the greens with the eggs. Crack a little black pepper onto the cheese. Fold to close, and enjoy.


soon to be devoured sandwich

PS: If you are, in fact, playing along at home, or even just reading along, drop us a line. I'd love to hear how our recipes turn out back in your kitchen, and it's great to get feedback. Kthxbye.