Read the recipe here.
I’m happy as a clam because it’s early summer and that means peas in the farmers markets. Sugar snaps and shelling peas are at their short season’s peak and I’m eating them at every opportunity. I’ve made some simple dishes like steamed shelling peas with roasted potatoes, but this week I wanted to get a bit fancier. Crepes, I thought, would make a nice wrapper for some sautéed sugar snaps, and would put a dent besides in the binfull of buckwheat flour aging in my fridge, needing to be used up.

Wilkow Orchards always has great sugar snaps at Brookyn’s Boro Hall farmers’ market: plump, crisp, so tender you can eat them raw. I brought some home and prepped them carefully, snapping off the stem ends and pulling them down along the pods’ undersides to pull out any strings.  For good measure I do the same along the backside of the pod, in case there are any ‘back’ stings, but these were so tender I needn’t have bothered.

I sautéed them together with turnip greens from the Paisley Farm CSA and a nice, fresh spring onion. I finished the mixture with goat cheese for a simple and tasty crepe filling.  I used my standby Joy of Cooking recipe for the buckwheat crepes, though of course you can use whatever crepe recipe you have on hand, however plain or fancy.

So far so good, but the dish needed a sauce to round it out. My repertoire of sauces is, I must confess, pretty limited, so at first all I could think to do was make some variation on that familiar mainstay, the Béchamel. But a flour-thickened sauce didn’t seem quite right. It wouldn’t be summery enough for this dish.

I’m lucky to have on hand a copy of Sauces, the excellent cookbook / reference book, by James Peterson. There I learned that one can use reduced cream in place of a floury roux to thicken a sauce. I used this technique to thicken a flavor base made from the greens tops of the spring onion, sauteed in butter. To this I added white wine and stock, cooking until the liquid was mostly evaporated. Then I added a mixture of cream and crème fraiche, and cooked it down until it reached a thick, spoon-coating consistency. I flavored it with some prepared mustard, chopped herbs, salt and white pepper. (I’ve written up these steps in recipe format here.) The result was a perfect topping for my crepe-wrapped peas and greens.

Paradoxically, though rich, the cream sauce tasted lighter than a floury béchamel would have. I’m very happy to add reduced-cream sauces to my arsenal, but I must admit it’s a bit of an embarrassing discovery: it’s such a simple and basic technique that I’m sure it’s already well known to many home cooks. I’m excited to experiment with more variations soon, assuming of course that I don’t use up all of my cream by spooning it over strawberries.

Read the recipe here.

Every year on St. Patrick’s Day I make a corned beef and cabbage dinner, and every year I seem to have a ton of cabbage left over. So this year I found the smallest cabbage in Brooklyn.

A bowl of my corn chowder looks pretty tame next to the photo in the James McNair cookbook I got the recipe from, but it was awfully tasty anyway. I used sweet corn that I’d frozen at the peak of the season last summer. I’ve been eating my frozen corn all winter, and there’s still a lot left. Even seven months after it went into the freezer, it still tastes way better than Green Giant.

In late January, for Karol’s birthday, we had a festive potluck party at our favorite local pub. Our contribution to the spread was these homemade egg rolls, filled with cabbage and ground pork. They were a team effort as usual: Karol rolled them & I fried them. I made a spicy mustard dipping sauce simply by grinding a generous scoop of mustard seeds in a mortar and pestle, with some water and rice wine vinegar. Our friend Cathy also brought eggrolls, and wrote about the novel process she used to make them, with no deep frying required.

I’m still making whole wheat leavain bread, every other weekend or so. It’s coming out pretty good every time, though I’m still not getting that professional, crackly crust that home bakers strive for. It’s possible I’m getting the best crust I can make in my non-professional home oven (and it’s a crappy rental-apartment oven at that), but I’m searching the Internets for tips and tricks from other bakers anyway. The bread is quite tasty, and hearty enough to keep me on me feet. I eat it for breakfast, smeared with plenty of yogurt cheese and the peach butter that I canned last summer.

Another recipe from the King Arthur Whole Grain Baking book, and another use for the natural-yeast levain that make my homemade bread rise. I start these waffles the night before, by mixing some levain into whole wheat flour and water to make a sponge that ferments overnight. The next morning I use the sponge to make a batter. The waffles are hearty but not heavy, and deeply rich with flavor. They make a white flour waffle seem as satisfying as a saltine.

Living in New York gives you a sense of constant access. There’s always something open, so you always assume you can find what you want whenever you want it. In other cities you wake up to the reality that in most places markets close for the holidays. This awakening happened to me last week as I drove around my home town, searching for a grocery store open for business on Christmas morning.

Our official Christmas dinner would be on the 26th, when my brothers returned from visiting with their in-laws, but I’d planned a Christmas day mini-feast for my mom and dad and me. I’d bought a plump ‘Amish’ chicken from a local butcher shop, and took stock of what was on hand in my mom’s cupboard: potatoes, sweet potatoes, onions, spaghetti squash. But about the details of my menu I dawdled. “I’ll just run to the grocery store in the morning to get what I need” I thought.

When I got up on Christmas morning I made a quick list, just a few items to fancy things up: some fresh herbs to stuff inside the chicken; some mushrooms to sauté with the spaghetti squash; chicken stock for extra gravy; a green veggie for an additional side dish.I hopped in my car and  headed for the store. But every supermarket was surrounded by a vast, empty expanse of parking lot.  My errand was in vain. I was incensed. I just couldn’t comprehend that there was nowhere to get my hands on some fresh parsley.

I still needed to get dinner on the table though, so I calmed myself down and got to work. And I realized pretty quickly that a dinner made from what I had on hand was going to turn out just fine. This was, after all, the Midwest. No one was going to care if the roasted chicken wasn’t thyme-scented.

There was milk and butter to make the mashed potatoes creamy. There was brown sugar, butter and flour for a tasty, streusel topping for the sweet potatoes (made from this excellent Epicurious recipe). Without mushrooms, I turned to a trick my girlfriend taught me to give the spaghetti squash a boost: slowly caramelized onions. I found carrots and maple syrup in the fridge and made glazed carrots. There was plenty of gravy for the three of us from the pan drippings augmented with a splash of the potato water. I had homemade applesauce I’d brought from home and sourdough bread from my Brooklyn neighborhood. And to keep true to my Mennonite roots I made a relish tray from the Amish cheese and sweet pickles my mom had on hand for the next day’s big feast. For dessert there were Christmas cookies. Mini Christmas Dinner was a robust, simple, homey success.

And what’s more, since I didn’t have herbs to wash or mushrooms to slice or any of my other fancy extra touches to deal with, dinner was simpler, more manageable, and made it to the table on time (well, the chicken roasted a little slower than expected, but that’s a different story). The relative simplicity of the meal meant fewer dishes, lowered stress, and a reliable serving time. And it really didn’t short-change the flavor of the meal. It’s my culinary lesson for the new year: sometimes simple is the way to go.

With the cooler temperatures of Autumn I’ve taken up bread. Years ago made bread fairly often but I gave it up after moving to Brooklyn. In Carroll Gardens, the neighborhood where I first settled, I discovered a trove of incredible Italian bakeries, small storefront shops with names like Caputo’s and Mazzola. Suddenly, home baking seemed utterly unnecessary. I found a huge range of breads: long Italian loaves and thinner French-style baguettes; bread made from semolina flour; ring-shaped loaves and sourdough and whole wheat loaves; breads studded with olives, and lard bread – yes, lard bread — stuffed with cheese and salami, that left translucent oily patches on the brown paper bag I brought it home in.

I was in bread heaven. Every variety was delicious, and much more interesting than the sandwich loaves I’d learned to make from the Joy of Cooking. Once, I overheard one of my Carroll Gardens neighbors – an affluent newcomer, not one of the long-time Italian residents – actually complaining about the bread from these bakeries – not as good, apparently, as what she was used to getting in Manhattan. I was appalled. “Spoiled yuppie,” I thought. “Can’t appreciate anything.” How could anyone want bread better than this? What bread could be better?

Five or six years ago my brother Joe wore out his hip and went in for a new one. Housebound during his recovery, he passed the time making bread, following the recipe for Pain au Levain in the King Arthur Flour Whole Grain Baking cookbook. On a visit to his place I tasted one of these loaves, and I was shocked. My brother is a good cook and an experienced baker, but even so I was surprised by the rich, deep flavor of the bread he’d made.

To leaven his bread, instead of packaged commercial yeast he’d used a levain – a sourdough culture made only whole wheat flour and water left out to capture yeast from the air. The flavor of that bread stayed with me, and this summer I resolved, once the weather cooled, to try and make my own. I raised my own levain, carefully feeding it twice a day until it was bubbly & lively, then began using it to bake my own loaves. I’ve just finished my forth batch, and am very – and increasingly – pleased with the results. It’s a hearty bread with more depth of flavor than I find even in my beloved neighborhood Italian bakeries. It’s the sort of bread, I guess, that my Manhattan-expat neighbor was pining for.

Pain au levain has been my introduction to artisanal bread-making: using natural leavening in place of commercial yeast, and using slow, traditional techniques for proofing, kneading and shaping the loaves. A loaf of pain au levain takes all day to make, with lots of hands-on attention required during much of that time.

These days the fancier food shops all sell plenty of Brooklyn-made artisanal bread. I can walk up the street to the Brooklyn Kitchen and buy a beautiful loaf from Roberta’s or from Scratch Bread. But I’m happy to be making my own. It’s cheaper (though probably not by all that much: keeping my levain fed and healthy ensures I’ll go through a $5 bag of King Arthur flour every week or two, whether I’m baking or not), and there’s a lot of satisfaction in a pulling well-formed loaf out of my oven. But more than that, what really draws me to baking bread this way is how alive and natural it is. My bowl of bubbling levain is a mini-garden, and I’m cultivating flavor and nutrition that’s been coaxed from the very air of my kitchen. Like eating produce grown from the soil of my backyard (if only I had one), baking with my levain seems more than a little miraculous.

I’m only at the very beginning of what I’ll learn about these venerable old breads and their techniques and traditions. I’m excited about what I’ll discover, and happy to know I’ll be eating lots of great-tasting bread along the way.

Read the Recipe for Corn Poached Flounder Fillets Here
Maybe because it was such a a warm September but there still seems to be plenty of sweet corn in the farmers’ markets.  But this late season stuff might not have the succulence or luster of the corn you got back in July; or maybe you’ve got a couple ears from your CSA left in the back of your fridge whose kernels are getting those shriveled little indentations. For this recipe, no matter. You get the chance to replenish some of that faded flavor when making a corn-spiked poaching liquid to cook fish fillets in.

Making the broth is simple: puree corn kernels together with a bit of water and a chopped shallot (onion will also work if that’s all you’ve got). Strain this through a sieve and flavor it. I’ve used this broth to cook a few different kinds of fish, but flounder has come out my favorite. Its flat fillets poach quickly, and its delicate sweetness matches well with the sweet corn broth. If you can’t find flounder, halibut or sole or just about any whitefish will work.

White rice makes a perfect accompaniment for this dish since it soaks up the extra broth nicely. In these photos though, I served it with roasted thin-sliced potato and zucchini disks, presented in a sweet delicata squash shell. Pretty, and tasty, but not as good at soaking up the extra corn broth, which really tastes too good to waste.

Try as I might I never succeeded in getting a good photo of this dish. On the plate, I promise doesn’t look nearly so much like cafeteria food these photos might make you think. I’ll have another chance soon though, even after the last of this season’s corn is picked. I expect this dish to work quite well with the corn I put up for the winter in my freezer.
Read the Recipe for Corn Poached Flounder Fillets Here

It’s happened again. “Oh dang,” you say, opening the fridge door and looking in at a sad, droopy bunch of chard or lettuce or basil. It looked so hale when you brought it home from the market, and now it’s gone all wilty.

But wilted greens is a problem there’s a solution for. And it’s a simple one. Just wash out your sink and fill it with ice water. Untie your bunch of greens and drop them in. Wait 30 or 40 minutes. Pull them out of their chilly bath and drain them on clean kitchen towels. Problem solved: your greens are proud once more.

“Oh why bother,” you say. “They’re the same leaves even if they’re wilted, aren’t they? Can’t I just chop them up and cook them like they are?” You can, of course, especially if you feel like you must punish yourself for not wrapping them up better in the first place. But in a more forgiving mood you’ll agree that perking up your greens in an ice water bath makes them easier to handle, makes them cook better, and gives them back their crispy texture and fresh flavor. It’s worth the time and the ice cubes.

On Not Eating Out in New York, Cathy Erway and the proprietors of the Ger-Nis Culinary and Herb Center posed an interesting recipe challenge: create a “Sustainable Spring” recipe.  Spring ingredients have not yet arrived here in the Northeast, so this would take some imagination, and maybe also a bit of luck. Well, luck was with me last weekend, and in the produce bin at Dean and Deluca, downtown New York’s venerable fancy food shop, I found fiddleheads. They looked a little gnarly — they weren’t the fresh, seasonal treat I’ll soon find in the local farmers markets  — but they were good enough to try out the entry I’d dreamed up for Cathy’s spring recipe contest: beer-battered fiddleheads, fried up golden brown, and dipped in a garlicky aioli.

Fiddleheads, along with ramps, are among the very first green things to appear in the farmers markets after a long winter of apples and turnips from cold storage.  And like ramps, fiddleheads are foraged, not farmed.  They’re truly a crop that’s more organic than organic: not only are they grown without agricultural chemicals, they’re grown without agriculture! They simply appear, as soon as the sun and the soil is warm enough. To maintain the crop year after year, the forager needs only to pick some, not all, of the delicate fern-tops, so that the ferns will live on to grow again next spring.

Batter-frying fiddleheads poses a problem: how to coat them with batter without hiding their distinctive, curlicue shape? I started by thinning out the batter with a little carbonated water, but still when dunked into it the fiddleheads became shapeless blobs that could’ve been beer-battered chunks of anything. While I stood scratching my head, my girlfriend Karol devised a smart technique: instead of dunking them completely in the batter, she swirled them gently in a thin layer of batter poured onto a plate. Perfect: this allowed just enough batter to cling to the fiddleheads, while still letting their spiral figures show through.

The aioli was simple and straightforward and relied entirely on ingredients I had on hand: garlic, salt, an egg yolk, olive oil and a lemon. My dream to was to make a seasonal aioli from spring garlic, but I couldn’t find any, not even at Dean & Deluca, so this time around ordinary garlic had to do. Since I didn’t have garlic greens to give it a spring-green hue, I improvised with some finely chopped chives. The result was fresh tasting and just garlic-spiked enough. Making it was so easy I’ll think twice before picking up that next jar of flat-flavored mechanical mayo from the grocery store.

The final dish was a real springtime treat – or, in this case, a pre-springtime treat. I hope to try the recipe again as soon as I find some locally-harvested, truly seasonal fiddleheads at the market – if spring ever gets here!

Here’s the Recipe for Beer-battered Fiddleheads with Green Aoili.

On line at Ronnybrook Dairy’s greenmarket booth last week a woman waxed euphoric about how delicious was their yogurt cheese and how much she missed it. Uncharacteristically I kept my mouth shut and didn’t butt in to say how easily she could make it for herself at home.

“Yogurt cheese” is just yogurt that’s been drained and pressed to give it a thick, spreadable consistency. I use it like cream cheese as a spread on banana bread or scones or biscuits for a quick breakfast. Unlike cream cheese it’s spreadable at fridge temperature. And it’s got all those famous yogurt health benefits in place of the stabilizers and preservatives needed to hold together a package of Kraft’s Philadelphia brand. I think it tastes better too: fresher, brighter, less gummy. Its tangy flavor is less neutral than cream cheese though, so it may not be ideal for some of those favorite cream cheese recipes.

To make it you need a large piece of cheese cloth, a colander, and something heavy – say, a big can of tomato sauce. Lay the cheese cloth in two or three layers inside the colander, leaving plenty of overhang at the colander’s edges. Set the colander over a large bowl and pour 1 quart of plain yogurt onto the cheesecloth. Take one of the overhanging edges and lay it flat over the yogurt; repeat with the remaining edges so that the yogurt is completely covered. Set a small plate on top of the folded cheesecloth and set the weight on top of the plate. Set aside and allow to drain for 3 or 4 hours or overnight in the fridge. Remove the yogurt cheese from the cheesecloth and keep it in a sealed container in the fridge. (I still haven’t figured out what to do with the sour whey that drains off. It’s got to be good for something.)

Mostly, I’ve eaten the unflavored yogurt cheese as-is, relying on the scone or banana bread underneath it to supply the extra tastiness. The possibilities for flavorings are endless though. I mixed maple syrup and finely chopped walnuts into one batch with great success, and I sweetened another batch with some chopped farm-canned apricots. Simply spreading the unflavored cheese on toast and topping it with a layer of marmalade works great too. Vanilla and honey are flavorings I haven’t tried yet but that  surely would work very nicely. And what about savory flavors? Roasted garlic? Sure! Curry powder? Why not? And I’ll bet a handful of chopped dill would make it ready for that ultimate cream-cheese-replacement test: lox. Stay tuned to see if it works!

The Tao Restaurant has a revered place in the history of Bloomington, Indiana, where I went to college. It was very much a product of the 1970s: it was owned and run by a yoga ashram, as was the adjacent bakery, Rudi’s (named for the ashram’s founding swami, Rudrananda). It was a little pricey for my student budget but I managed to go a few times. I remember it as an elegantly homey place with food that was quite delicious. When I lived in Bloomington in the mid ‘80s The Tao was in its final years. The ashram had already moved to Boston (later they would relocate again to Portland, and soon Rudi’s and The Tao closed up shop. The building now houses a collegiate sports bar called, ironically, Yogi’s.

One of the Tao’s chefs, Sally Pasley, wrote a cookbook called The Tao of Cooking. It came out in 1982, what one might refer to as the “late hippie” era. The recipes, all vegetarian, draw both from the earthy and natural ethos of the ‘70s and from the growing culinary sophistication of the ‘80s. They span the globe: there are recipes for samosas, for chiles rellenos and for Turkish boreks, for gnocchi and for Japanese egg rolls. There is also lentil soup and tofu burgers and something called Hobbit Pie. And there is Big Veg, the soy burger that was “the mainstay of the Tao menu in its early years.”

I was happy to find a Soy Burger recipe in the Tao, not only because it affirmed my memories of the restaurant’s hippie culture but, more practically, because the Paisley Farm Winter CSA had recently left me with a pound and a half of dried soybeans. I followed the Big Veg recipe almost exactly. It made a batch of burgers that were hearty, very healthy-tasting, and… a little bland. They were more earthy ’70s  than sophisticated ‘80s;  their flavor was, to quote one Bloomington blogger, more well-meaning than delicious.

But nonetheless it’s a very good recipe: it’s an excellent blank canvas onto which any number of flavors can be drawn. Unlike, say, black beans, soybeans don’t come with much flavor of their own, and so they happily take on whatever flavor you give them. Think of tofu to understand what I mean. Big Veg could be curried, or given an Asian treatment of ginger and sesame oil. It could be spiced up with smoky canned Adobo sauce or with a spicy Thai mixture of jalapeno, cilantro, lime, coconut milk and lemon grass. Or to add a bit of irony with your flavorings, mix in a small amount of pork that’s been roasted, shredded and tossed in barbecue sauce. Use pork raised on a small local farm: you’ll bring Big Veg in an idealistic full circle from its hippie-era origins to our own locavore era – not such a great distance, perhaps.

With thanks to Sally Pasley Vargas, to The Tao of Cooking and to The Tao restaurant, I’ve typed up the recipe for Big Veg below, accompanied by a few suggested variations. I haven’t tried these variations yet: if you do – or if you dream up one of your own — I’d love to read about it in the comments section.

Big Veg
From The Tao of Cooking, Sally Pasley, Ten Speed Press, 1982
The Big Veg was the mainstay of the Tao restaurant in its early years. All manner of leftovers can be incorporated into the mix. I like mine on toast with sliced tomato, Bermuda onion, and ketchup.

1½ cups soy beans
1 cup finely chopped onions
1 tsp. finely chopped garlic
¾ cup grated carrots
¼ cup ketchup
1 egg
1 tsp. salt
pinch cayenne pepper
1 Tbsp. Worcestershire sauce or soy sauce
½ tsp. thyme
1 cup bread crumbs
flour for breading
bread crumbs for breading
beaten egg
oil for frying

1. Cover soy beans with water and soak overnight. Cook until tender, about 1½ hours. Drain and mash to a paste with a food mill or food processor.

2. Mix beans with remaining ingredients and taste for seasoning. Form into eight patties

3. Dredge patties lightly in flour, coat with beaten egg and roll in breadcrumbs. Heat about ¼-inch of oil in a heavy skillet or frying pan and fry until crisp and brown on both sides.

Variations:
Curry Soy Burger:
Smash the clove of garlic from the recipe and 1 additional garlic clove with the edge of a knife. Place them into a mortar or small food processor with the teaspoon of salt. Add 2 tablespoons of curry powder (or more, to taste) and mix into a paste, adding a few drops of water if needed.

Heat a tablespoon of butter in a large skillet. Add the minced onion and curry paste. Cook, stirring, over medium until the onion is translucent and evenly mixed with the spices, 5 to 7 minutes. Allow to cool slightly, and add to remaining ingredients. Omit the thyme; substitute 2 tablespoons tomato paste for the ketchup and 1 tablespoon lemon juice for the Worcestershire sauce.

Asian Soy Burger:
To the mixture above add: 2 tablespoons minced ginger, 2 tablespoons sesame or aji oil and an additional tablespoon of soy sauce (do not use Worchestershire sauce). Omit the salt. Omit the ketchup and add 1 tsp sugar. Use ½ cup chopped scallions in place of ½ of the onion and 1 tablespoon chopped chives in place of the thyme. Dredge in panko in place of the breadcrumbs.

Soyburguesa Mexicana:
Heat a teaspoon of corn oil in a skillet and add ¼ cup fresh or frozen corn kernels. Cook, stirring occasionally, until browned approximately 10 minutes. Allow to cool.

To the bean mixture add: the roasted corn kernels; 1 to 2 tablespoons adobo sauce from a can of chipotles; 1/3 cup finely chopped cilantro. Omit the ketchup and add 1 tablespoon + 1 teaspoon lime juice. Omit the Worcestershire / soy sauce. Omit the thyme and replace it with 2 tsp Mexican oregano. Dredge in cornmeal in place of the breadcrumbs.

Read the recipe
In Indiana in the ’70s there probably weren’t many white kids who regularly ate curry at home, but I was one of them. My mom was from a missionary family and grew up in Maharashtra, India. On special occasions she’d make a big pot of her special curry and serve it up with papadum, tomato chutney, spicy mango pickle from a jar and piles of white rice. We kids always requested it for birthday dinners, and our eager dinner guests would swoon from the heady aroma of spices.

But even if I was a little more savvy about Indian food than some of my fellow Hoosiers, of course I was still very naïve about it. To me, Indian food simply meant the dish my mom made: big chunks of beef and potatoes stewed in a brown gravy spiced with curry powder. It wasn’t until college that I began to learn how vastly many different kinds of dishes can be can be called “curry.” In Indian restaurants I found dishes made from lamb and chicken, from any number of vegetables, from fish. Later, in cookbooks, I even found curries made from eggs.

In my cookbooks there are recipes for hard boiled eggs in spiced sauce, for eggs scrambled in spiced butter, for Parsi-style omelets, and for eggs baked in a casserole with cilantro and cumin. My favorite method though is to poach the eggs in a spicy broth and serve them with a sauce made by thickening the broth with yogurt. I made a version of this recently and served the eggs atop a warmed pita spread with roasted eggplant, alongside a dish of coriander-spiced potatoes. It was filling and satisfyingly spicy, and a small step away from being entirely vegetarian: with vegetable broth in place of chicken stock the dish is entirely meat-free. For familiarity’s sake I’m calling the dish “curried eggs,” even though I know that ‘curry’ is really a westernized term, mostly used to describe the flavors of South Asian food by those who live in other parts of the world.

And I’m calling it ‘curried’ even though the dish contains no curry powder. Curry powder is also a westernized creation, a pre-mixed blend of cumin, coriander, cloves, cardamom, fenugreek, turmeric, etcetera that’s essentially a short cut to creating an Indian flavor. By most accounts it’s not used by Indian cooks. Instead, they cook with the individual component spices, varying them according to their preferences, their region, or the dish they’re making. As one cookbook author states it: “the Indian cook keeps the spice box handy near the stove, so that he/she can use the spices much the way a painter uses a palette, as mood and family preference dictate.”

In this spirit my curried eggs are spiced with a combination of garlic, ginger, cumin and turmeric. I’ve only recently kicked the curry powder habit, and have just begun learning how to blend my palette of spices, so I don’t know if this combination is a correct or acceptable one. It was awfully tasty though, so I think I’m off to a good start.

Recipes:
Curried Eggs on Eggplant Pita
Coriander Skillet Potatoes