pink and green

We made it up to the Bellingham Farmer’s Market last weekend, always a welcome activity when spring is making itself felt but our local market won’t open for weeks yet. We placed an order for half a cow from Skagit Angus Beef, bought an astonishing quantity of leafy greens, two chunks of goat feta and some fresh, purple-tipped asparagus, then swung by the Bellingham Pasta Company’s table and picked up a pound each of lemon pepper linguine and nettle fettuccine.

I love fresh pasta, but seldom make it myself (perhaps because it often turns into a drama-filled production complete with tears and recriminations), so it’s always fun to have some different noodles in the house. The nettle pasta we used immediately for lunch.

One of my standby there’s-nothing-in-the-house-to-eat meals is pasta with canned tuna, capers, olives, chile pepper, and tomato. There are endless variations depending on what’s in the pantry, and it’s always good. I wanted to use tuna with the nettle pasta, but this time I didn’t want such a pungent sauce, for fear it would overwhelm the delicate green flavor. After a quick consultation with a few cookbooks, I tossed together a sauce of mashed tuna (the really good locally-packed albacore from Island Trollers) mixed with raw garlic, fresh chives from the garden, and a splash of cream to moisten it. The noodles, after their three minutes in the boiling water, went into the bowl with the uncooked sauce, and I swirled it all together. It was delicious – light, garlic-scented, but still highlighting the fresh noodles. One of my better ideas.

matzoh brei

I first heard of matzoh brei a few years ago, while reading something by Ruth Reichl – I don’t remember what it was any more, but it made an impression on me. A sort of Jewish French toast, a simple mixture of matzoh and egg, fried in butter and topped with syrup, it sounded just like something I would like – but I had never had it or seen it anywhere. My husband, who grew up eating vast quantities of matzoh, didn’t remember ever having it either. And for some reason we never seem to have matzoh on hand.

Then last week I saw the Passover clearance display at the co-op and, on the spur of the moment, decided to grab a cheap box of matzoh. We ate half of it straight with Saint Nectaire cheese (yum), but set aside several pieces for a weekend breakfast. I went looking for recipes and actually had some trouble finding any – none of my Jewish cookbooks included it, but I did find a version in a book called The Good Egg, so I used that – although I upped the egg quantity so there would be a one-to-one egg/matzoh ratio.

Later, I checked online and found Ruth Reichl’s version here. It’s just a bit different from the one I used – in hers you run water over broken matzohs, then scramble them with the egg in the pan, whereas in mine you soak the entire matzoh and then break it up, then fry as a solid cake. When Jon asked his mother, it turned out that she did used to make this occasionally, but her version apparently involves milk. Obviously there’s a certain amount of permitted variation. I think it would also be good as a savory, with herbs and hot sauce. We may need to experiment further.

If you grew up with matzoh brei, how did your family make it?

Matzoh Brei

Adapted from The Good Egg by Marie Simmons. Serves two.

• 3 sheets matzoh
• 3 eggs
• pinch salt
• 2 Tbsp butter

Place the matzoh in a pan, pour cold water over to cover and let sit 5 minutes. Lift the matzoh out and lay on a clean towel to drain, then carefully transfer to a mixing bowl and break it up loosely. Beat together the eggs and salt and pour them over the matzoh. Stir together.

In a large nonstick skillet over medium low heat, melt the butter. When it bubbles, scrape in the matzoh and egg and flatten into a pancake. Allow to cook several minutes, until the bottom becomes golden and a bit crusty. Break the pancake into sections with a spatula and flip the sections. When cooked on the second side, put the pieces on plates and top with maple syrup.

If you’re not worried about keeping kosher, I recommend pork sausage with this. Or bacon.

squid noodle

When you buy squid or shrimp in the grocery store around here (even at the fish market), it’s usually bagged frozen stuff that the shop has just thawed that day. This is why we usually buy big bags of it ourselves, so we can thaw it out in small quantities as we want it. We never have any lack of ideas for the shrimp, but somehow the squid wasn’t getting used very quickly. I spent some time hunting out recipes for pre-cut rings and tentacles, especially Chinese, which I thought would be particularly well-suited. I found surprisingly few Chinese recipes for squid, but lots for clams, and it occurred to me that if clams in black bean sauce was such a fixture, why not squid in black bean sauce? Why not on noodles? And a dinner concept was born.

So far I’ve been making it up as I go along each time, but maybe at some point I’ll settle on a particular recipe – or maybe not. I tend to cook by the “spoonful of this, spoonful of that” method in any case. If you have squid in the house, and you can remember to thaw it in time, this is a fantastic, blazingly-fast weeknight dinner – certainly no more than half an hour from start to finish, if you prep while the noodles are cooking. And you could use considerably less chile than I do, if you don’t happen to like having your sinuses cleared by your dinner. But what I really love is the contrast of texture between the squid and the noodles, and the saltiness of the black beans. Everything else is flexible.

The way I’m doing this at the moment (subject to change as I experiment, but this is way tasty): first I cook and drain the noodles – we’re really liking udon with this, but any kind of slithery noodle would work – and toss them in a large bowl with some of the sludge from our homemade hot chile oil and a splash of soy sauce. Then I get all my condiments, squid and vegetables ready to go, as none of this takes any time at all to cook. I heat peanut oil in the wok, and toss in chopped garlic and scallions. As those sizzle, I add a spoonful of chile-garlic sauce and a spoonful of fermented black beans. Then I add the squid and start stir-frying briskly, adding a splash of rice wine. As soon as the squid turns opaque (perhaps a minute), I turn it out into the bowl of noodles. Then I put the wok back over the heat and toss in a bunch of chopped greens, like bok choi or beet greens, and stirfry with a bit of soy sauce until wilted, then scrape those into the noodles as well. Serve hot. Slurp.

twist my arm

Alright, alright, I finally did it. I made kale chips. But only because everyone else in the food blog world has already made them and raved about them. Well, and because I love kale and it seemed stupid to pass up a potentially fabulous way of cooking it. This post over on Use Real Butter was the last straw as far as I was concerned (her kale photos are gorgeous), so when I picked up a bunch of kale for a pot of soup, I saved out a bowlful of leaves to roast into chips to go with my sandwich at lunch.

It was, I have to admit, very good. The leaves lost all chewiness and became, instead, ethereally crisp and delicate, dissolving on the tongue with a slight crackle. I ate something like half a bunch of kale all by myself without hardly noticing. I intend to make these chips again very soon, perhaps with a bit of cumin sprinkled over, or a little dipping sauce of garlicky yogurt. And need I point out that these would be really fun to serve with drinks?

Note: There are recipes for this all over the internet. I made the Use Real Butter version, but Deb has a good-looking one over at Smitten Kitchen – as well as a great serving suggestion. Kale popcorn? Yes, indeed.

baby Caturday

No, we didn’t adopt any new kittens. We did, however, buy a new printer with a scanner, so I was able to dig out our cats’ baby pictures and put them on the interwebs at last! Weren’t they adorable? And tiny?

the research continues

We’ve continued on our recent kick of trying new cocktails, mostly from Left Coast Libations but occasionally dipping back into other cocktail references. The trouble is, if we don’t write down what we’re trying, we forget the names almost instantly. When I went through my photos from the last few weeks to see what I had shot in the way of cocktails, I found several – but I had only a vague idea of which drinks they had been.

This one I’m pretty sure was the Historic Core, created by Joseph Brooke in LA. It had Rittenhouse rye, apple brandy, Chartreuse, Carpano Antica vermouth, Angostura bitters and lemon peel. I remember it as being interesting but not riveting.

This one was a complete mystery to me. I liked how Jon zested the orange, but I had no memory of the drink itself. When I asked, he said it was a variation on a drink called an Ueno San, with rye instead of bourbon, cocchi americano instead of Lillet, orange bitters instead of peach bitters, and Carpano Antica. So there you go. I suppose we might experiment more with that one.

Maybe I should take better notes.

Shaker lemon pie

This isn’t so much of a “when life gives you lemons” thing, as a “go out and buy lemons so you can make this!” sort of thing. You need no excuse to make lemon pie.

I’ve mentioned this pie before – it’s what we had for a snack when I took Kate McDermott’s Art of the Pie class last year – but I hadn’t made it myself until now. What I like about it is how easy it is to make – you just need to think ahead a little to give the lemons time to macerate in the sugar – and how much it’s really about the flavor of the whole lemon. I made it for Easter brunch and, while it was eclipsed a little by the rhubarb custard pie I made at the same time, we ended up needing to make copies of the recipe to hand out to our guests. This is good pie.

Lemon Shaker Pie

Thanks to Kate McDermott for the recipe!

• 1 recipe for a double pie crust (mine is just 2 cups flour, 1 stick butter, salt, and ice water)
• 3 large lemons
• 2 cups white sugar
• pinch of salt
• 4 eggs, beaten

Wash and dry the lemons. Slice them as thinly as you can (we used a mandoline to good effect), pick out any seeds, and combine them with the sugar in a container. Stir well and allow to sit overnight, or at least 4 hours.

Preheat the oven to 450°.

Roll out your bottom crust and lay it in a pie pan. Give the lemons a stir and mix in the eggs and salt, then pour this into the pie shell. Top the pie with either a lattice or a solid crust (make sure to cut steam vents if doing a solid top) and put it in the oven. After 15 minutes, turn the heat down to 375° and bake another 20-25 minutes, until set. Let cool before cutting.

Depending on the tartness of your lemons, you might serve this with whipped cream or vanilla ice cream.

Tai Bai chicken

We’ve been in the mood for Chinese food a lot lately, but were wanting some new ideas. Opening some Chinese cookbooks at random led me to a chicken recipe in Land of Plenty that I’d never noticed before. It’s called Tai Bai, apparently in honor of the poet Li Bai. It’s easy to put together and involves very little chopping, which is a real selling point some nights. It has no garlic or ginger – the primary flavors are chiles, both dried and pickled, plus Sichuan pepper. It’s moderately fiery, so I wouldn’t recommend this one if you don’t have much spice tolerance. We think it’s delicious.

Fior di Sicily

A heavy amaro, a bitter orange aperitif, a really good vermouth, and elderflower liqueur, all mixed together in a glass. This didn’t sound like a very likely combo when I first heard it, but when Jon put the drink together and gave me a sip, I was amazed. The word that comes to mind is comforting: sweet, spicy and deep. This is a drink that’s going to make a lot of appearances next fall. It’s definitely more than the sum of its parts.

Fior di Sicily

From Left Coast Libations by Ted Munat and Michael Lazar

3/4 oz Averna amaro

3/4 oz Carpano Antica vermouth

3/4 oz Aperol

3/4 oz St. Germain elderflower liqueur

orange peel for garnish

Combine the spirits in a mixing glass, stir with ice, and strain into a cocktail glass. Flame the orange peel over the drink, then add the peel to the glass.

smoky stew

Directions: in August (approximately six months before serving), barbecue some pork ribs. Make sure they’re good and charred and salty. Eat them, then make stock out of the bones and freeze it. In April, take the stock out and thaw it. Cook some beans. Blanch collard greens and chop them. Sear chunks of country-style boneless pork ribs in oil and remove them from the pan. Saute a lot of garlic in the remaining oil, then add back the pork and pour in the smoky, salty stock. Simmer, covered, until the meat is tender, maybe an hour. Add the beans and greens. Eat voraciously, and wish you had thought to make cornbread.