Recently in recipes Category

The following is great summer fare, as it can be served warm or at room temperature. In Europe this basic preparation is made throughout the Mediterranean and is eaten as picnic and bar fare. You may also add or substitute ingredients. I often add blanched asparagus spears in a spoke pattern and sliced red pepper between the spokes for a more colorful presentation. The frittata is just as good for lunch or breakfast the next day.

• 1 pound Swiss chard
• 1 to 2 large baking or boiling potatoes
• 1 cup thinly sliced onions
• 1 large ripe tomato
• 1 cup thinly sliced fennel
• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 6–9 eggs, lightly beaten and seasoned with salt and pepper
• Grated Swiss, Parmesan or cheddar cheese (optional)
• Salt and pepper to taste

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

Prepare chard by washing well, removing and discarding the thick part of the center core, and finely chopping or slicing the leaves. Add chard to 1 tablespoon oil in 8–10 inch skillet with an oven-proof handle and saute for three minutes till softened. Remove from skillet and add remaining oil, add onions and fennel, and sauté until softened and lightly colored, about ten minutes.

Peel and thinly slice potatoes crosswise and layer slightly, overlapping in concentric circles over the onion and fennel. Salt and pepper lightly and put in oven for 10 minutes. Remove from oven carefully and lower oven temperature to 375 degrees. Sprinkle chard over potatoes and arrange tomato slices over chard. Gently pour seasoned eggs over mixture and place mixture back in oven for 25–30 minutes or until puffy and lightly brown on top. About ten minutes before you remove from oven, you may sprinkle with grated cheese.

Cut off the tops of three or four fennel bulbs (three to four cups). Remove the cores by slicing the bulbs in half lengthwise and cutting out the triangular cores in the centers, and slice very thinly across the grain of the bulbs. Save some of the nicer dill-like leaves for garnish.

Whisk together ¾ cup of a good mayonnaise such as Hellmann’s or, even better, your own homemade mayonnaise; three tablespoons of freshly squeezed lemon juice; the grated peel of one bumpy lemon (about one teaspoon); 1 teaspoon of salt; and 1 teaspoon of freshly ground black pepper. Mix into the fennel and let macerate for 30 minutes. Serves six to eight as a side, unless your family likes it as much as mine and can only stretch it to feed four.

This recipe is only a guide; you may like it more or less lemony with more or less salt and/or pepper. Adjust to your own taste and enjoy with grilled seafood or as part of a vegetarian meal. It goes well with other meats, especially pork, and is an outstanding accompaniment to salmon.

• 3 Tablespoons sugar
• 1 and ½ teaspoons cinnamon
• 6 1-inch thick slices challah bread, cut into 1-inch squares
• 1/2 cup unsalted butter, melted

Place bread pieces on a large cookie sheet or baking tray and spread with melted butter. Mix cinnamon and sugar and sprinkle on bread. Toast in a 325-degree oven for 12–15 minutes.

For dressing, mix well:

3 Tablespoons light oil 1 Tablespoon finely shredded orange peel 2 Tablespoons fresh orange juice 2 Tablespoons balsamic vinegar 1 teaspoon kosher salt

Thinly slice 2 large heads of Bibb lettuce and add 2 cups of fresh strawberries. Add bread cubes and toss lightly with dressing. Add spiced pecans and serve.

Serves 4–6

Spiced Pecans for Strawberry Salad

Toast 1½ cups pecans in a 375° oven for 8–10 minutes.

Combine 2 tablespoons sugar, 1¼ teaspoon five-spice powder, ½ teaspoon kosher salt and ¼ teaspoon red pepper. Set aside.

Combine 2 tablespoons maple syrup, 1 teaspoon dark brown sugar and 1 tablespoon butter. Bring to a boil and stir in toasted nuts. Lower heat and cook while stirring for one minute. Add warm nuts to sugar-and-spice mixture, mix well and cool completely.

Add to Strawberry Salad or serve as hors d’oeuvre.

This is one of the best-tasting things you will ever put in your mouth! I promise. If you have a motorized ice-cream maker of any kind, it should do a good job with this mixture, but I have always made it the old-fashioned way because I like the texture of the finished product as well as the taste.

• 5 cups rhubarb, cut into 1-inch pieces
• 1 cup water
• 2½ cups superfine sugar (You can make superfine sugar from regular sugar by whirring it in your food processor for two minutes.)
• 2 cups strawberries

Combine rhubarb and water, bring to a simmer and simmer, covered, for five minutes or until soft. Let cool slightly.

Puree sugar with rhubarb in food processor and pour into a large bowl. Puree strawberries, press through a fine sieve to remove seeds and add to rhubarb mixture.

(This is where you can empty the mixture into an ice-cream maker and process until nearly frozen; then finish off in the freezer.)

Place mixture into two loaf pans and chill in the freezer until mushy. Remove and beat with an electric mixer until smooth and light but not melted. Repeat chilling and mixing. Scoop into a refrigerator container and freeze solid. Thaw 30 minutes in the refrigerator before serving.

Photo by La Grande Farmers’ Market

Dear Shopper,

This week I am going to talk about greens about three weeks earlier than I would normally be able to talk about them. But then I will probably spend the entire growing season catching up — thank goodness my food magazines all arrive about a month early, or I would really miss out on the timely new recipes.

We provide a handout at our markets in the spring and fall that provides basic instructions for cooking greens simply and quickly, and now I have another good one clipped and copied from the April Eating Well magazine that has good pictures and short descriptions of the different varieties. This page about kale has links to pages about chard and other greens.

I can wax eloquently about greens. I spent several years of my youth in South Georgia, where greens were treated with reverence — even if that did mean cooking the flavor out of them and substituting the smoky flavor of a ham hock. That was still good, but not nearly so fresh-tasting and flavorful as the greens cooked the way I and others now recommend.

We now have examples at the market of those early greens and some of the best baby kale I have ever eaten. A package that will easily serve three people costs $2.75; it has been prewashed and is so easy to prepare.

We also have chard, which has many uses in sides, salads and soups. Here is a good spring recipe for young chard. Don’t worry about separating the stems in young chard, though — just treat the soft stems as part of the leaves.

I want you to hear from an expert on the nutritional benefits of greens, which make them one of the most effective products in your preventive medicine pantry. Greens are essentially medicine on the plate, which of course is the case with all healthily prepared vegetables. Please learn from our friend and occasional speaker at our markets, Debra Dennis of Indigo Lifestyle Solutions, who works with clients who want to adopt healthier lifestyles, including changes in diet.

Green vegetables are the foods most missing in modern diets. Learning to cook and eat greens is essential to creating health. When you nourish yourself with greens, you will naturally crowd out the foods that make you sick. Greens help build your internal rainforest and strengthen the blood and respiratory system. They are especially good for city people who rarely see fields of green in open countryside. Green is associated with spring, the time of renewal, refreshment and vital energy. In Asian medicine, green is related to the liver, emotional stability and creativity.

Nutritionally, greens are very high in calcium, magnesium, iron, potassium, phosphorous, zinc and vitamins A, C, E and K. They are crammed with fiber, folic acid, chlorophyll and many other micronutrients and phytochemicals. Whenever possible, choose organic. But eating non-organic greens is much better than not eating any greens at all!

There are so many greens to choose from. Find greens that you love and eat them often. When you get bored with your favorites, be adventurous and try greens that you’ve never heard of before. Broccoli is very popular among adults and children. Each stem is like a tree trunk, giving you strong, grounding energy. Rotate among bok choy, napa cabbage, kale, collards, watercress, mustard greens, broccoli rabe, dandelion and other leafy greens.

I hope that you will seek out greens to brighten your Easter feast this week and learn to eat them more often as part of a seasonal diet. They really are tasty!

See you at the market!

Not since that catchy “incredible edible egg” campaign years ago have I seen so much homage to the lowly egg — lowly in this case only because of where it sits when it enters the world. Let me count the ways for you: The April editions of both Living and Bon Appetit magazines have entire sections devoted to eggs with lots of good information, advice and recipes. The April Eating Well magazine has a great picture of an egg-salad sandwich and four variations on the easiest salad in the world to make. And Mark Bittman, writing for the New York Times Magazine, created an elaborate chart that can lead to 400 combinations using eggs for every meal of the day. It makes clear that eggs can be the star of any meal at any time of day and can still entertain at a party, too.

Bon Appetit gives us insight into the architecture of the egg, from which I learned about the chalazae, those little white squiggles that anchor the yolk to the egg. And I now know how to recognize a fresh egg from an older one — the inner white of a very fresh egg will be cloudy. But that doesn’t mean that older eggs don’t have their uses. In the informative section, Jean-Georges Vongerichten imparts the secret to the “softest scramble” of eggs, and we are treated to yet another foolproof guide to the perfect boiled egg. In addition to some great recipes, we also learn how to interpret the language on an egg carton. Need I remind you at this point that we have our own secret? Buy fresh eggs from the the farmer, and not only will those eggs represent the best of what an egg can provide naturally, but if we wish, we can meet the chickens that laid them.

In addition to laying out all kinds of lovely ways to present eggs at an Easter-egg-hunt party, Living magazine includes a lovely essay by Rory Evans about the “odd couple” of egg and yolk in one shell. The recipes are presented under the title “Divide and Conquer,” and all of them highlight either the whites or the yolks, or a combination of the two, but used separately.

And if you like egg salad and remember your mother’s fondly, check out the variations in Eating Well including Cobb, Niçoise, veggie and sweet southern.

I hope you pick up at least one of these magazines to learn more about using eggs as protein in a balanced meal. The introductions to all of the articles reiterate that the cholesterol “scare” some years ago was just that. And some caution about looking for eggs that are labeled cage-free or omega-3 enhanced. Here again, if you buy them from a farmer, they are already healthier eggs from healthier chickens. Eggs are easy to work with unless you are trying your first pavlova — and do stay away from meringues on a humid day. Even at this time of year, they can be a centerpiece of a frittata (like this one or this one) or poached or hard-boiled and added to a salad of sauteed greens and a lemon juice-based vinaigrette. We will have more egg recipes at the markets this week and at our seasonal markets, which start opening in April.

I have given you lots of leads today and welcome your own creative takes on the egg as the answer. The question being: According to Bittman, “Eggs are simple, almost infinitely useful … why do people have trouble embracing them?” Good luck with transforming them from incredible to embraceable in your own kitchen.

Serves 4

• 2 pounds pork loin roast, trimmed and cubed into 1-inch pieces
• 1 medium onion, chopped
• 1 fennel bulb, chopped
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 2–3 cups homemade beef stock or good-quality store-bought beef or chicken broth
• 3–4 carrots, diced into ½-inch pieces
• 3 large white or yellow potatoes, diced
• ½ lb Brussels sprouts, trimmed and halved

In a large sauté pan or Dutch oven, brown the pork pieces, which you have patted dry with paper towels, in 3 Tbsp of oil. You may need to do this in more than one batch.

Remove the meat when brown on two sides, add the onions and fennel to the pan and sauté for 5 minutes; add garlic and sauté for another 2 minutes and then add back to the pan the pork and its juices. Add the stock or broth and bring to a boil. Reduce to a simmer and cook slowly for about 45 minutes to an hour until the pork is very tender.

In another pot, blanch the carrots, potatoes and sprouts in boiling salted water for 5 minutes. Add these to the simmering mixture about 30 minutes into the cooking time and season to taste. I used dried thyme and fresh rosemary. Just before serving, add to the mixture a slurry of 1 Tbsp cornstarch and 1 Tbsp water, stirring constantly until the liquid thickens. Serve on rimmed plates or in wide soup bowls with good bread and country butter. Enjoy!

This is really more of an “instructional” than a recipe, as chili can be made so many different ways. But no matter how you make it, chili is only as good as the basic ingredients you use and the techniques you use to prepare them and add them to the mix.

Unless I am making chili for the Congressional Chili Cook-Off, which I did once for two different members of Congress (one of whom actually won the contest with my chili), I make chili according to a fairly simple procedure.

The best way to start is with 3 pounds of market ground beef and 1 pound of flavorful sweet or hot sausage. Brown all of the meat well in small batches and drain each batch thoroughly. (With beef from Angelic Beef, you may need a little oil in the pan.) Drain off any fat in the pan and add about 3 tablespoons of fresh oil. Sauté your diced vegetables in the oil till soft.

For the amount of meat suggested, I use 1 medium onion, 1 small bulb of fennel, 1 small green pepper, 2 jalapeño peppers and 3 cloves of garlic. Dice the onion, fennel and green pepper and finely chop the jalapeños and garlic. (The amount of seeds you include will affect the hotness of the chili.) Add the browned beef back to the pan and stir in one large can of diced tomatoes and about three cups of good-quality beef broth or, better yet, your own beef stock made from market soup bones.

Add 1 tablespoon each dried oregano, basil and ground cumin and 2 tablespoons of your favorite chili powder. Bring to a boil over medium heat; lower the heat to a simmer and cook the chili for 45 minutes. Season with salt and pepper to taste and add additional herbs or spices as desired. Add additional broth if needed. Stir in 2 cans of good-quality drained and rinsed beans of your choice and simmer for another 15–30 minutes until thickened. Improve on this by using some of Heritage Farm’s dried beans, rinsed, soaked and precooked — canned beans, even the best, add a sweetness that is unnecessary.

This chili has a great flavor and consistency and only gets better when reheated. It is good for Cincinnati chili when served over some pasta with grated cheddar cheese and chopped green onions.

In a very old city near the boot-heel of Italy called Matera, this is a very old method of making lamb stew. According to the May 2010 issue of Saveur Magazine, this can also be cooked under a pastry crust, which of course would undermine its name. To make this even more scrumptious, make a beef stock from Angelic Beef soup bones and substitute it for at least half of the water.

• 3 lbs. boneless, trimmed lamb shoulder, cut into 2” cubes
• 2 lbs new potatoes, peeled and cut into 2” pieces
• 1/3 lb. pecorino cheese, cut into ½-inch cubes
• ¼ lb. piece soppressata or spicy salami, cut into ¼-inch cubes
• 2 tsp. crushed red chili flakes
• 4 sprigs thyme
• 2 carrots, cut crosswise into ¼”-coins
• 1 large onion, roughly chopped
• 1 rib celery, chopped
• ½-head curly endive or escarole, roughly chopped
• Kosher salt and freshly ground pepper to taste

Combine ingredients in a 5-quart Dutch oven or heavy saucepan with 2¼ cups of water. Cover pan with aluminum foil and then with the lid. Cook over medium-low heat, shaking pan occasionally, until tender and the juices have slightly thickened, about 2½ hours.

Both of these stocks are adapted from Gourmet Magazine. For many years the magazine included a page at the end called the Last Touch, which always had a theme-directed collection of short recipes. The January and February pages were devoted to white sauces and brown sauces and included the basic stocks that would be needed for the sauce recipes than followed. These two stock recipes are the ones I have used for more than 40 years, and they produce great stocks with minimum effort. Especially in the winter, I usually have one or both in the fridge or freezer all the time. I adapted the recipes somewhat, but I left in the quaint language.

White Chicken Stock

In a 5–6 quart kettle, combine a 4-pound fowl with the giblets, if you like, with 3 quarts of water and bring the water to a boil. Reduce the heat to low and skim the froth that rises to the surface. (This is necessary only if you need a very clear broth for aspic or a clear soup.) Add one large onion with two cloves stuck in it; 2 leeks, split and washedl 2 carrots, cut in big chunks; and one stalk of celery, sliced into 3 pieces with some of the leaves. Add a small handful each of fresh thyme and flat-leaf parsley, one bay leaf and a clove of garlic. Simmer the stock, continuing to skim if you wish, for two hours.

Remove the fowl from the kettle and remove the meat in large pieces and return the carcass to the kettle. Simmer for two hours longer, adding some boiling water if necessary to keep the ingredients covered. Strain the stock in a colander lined with cheesecloth and press the solids. Let the stock cool on the counter and refrigerate. The fat will come to the surface and can easily be removed when you need to use the stock.

Stock will keep for some time sealed by the fat; if you are not using all of the stock for a recipe, save the fat, return it to the pot and reheat before cooling and refrigerating the remainder. This applies to your beef stock, too.

Brown Stock (Beef Stock)

In a large baking pan, spread out 4–6lbs of beef shanks and/or meaty soup bones, two large onions and one carrot, all cut into large pieces. Brown meat and vegetables well, turning occasionally, in a preheated very hot oven (450°). Transfer to a 6-quart kettle. Deglaze the roasting pan with 2 cups cold water over high heat, scraping up the brown bits, and add this to the kettle along with 3–4 quarts of cold water, 2 stalks of celery, some fresh thyme and parsley, and a bay leaf. Bring to a boil while skimming the froth and then simmer, uncovered, for 5–6 hours or until reduced to about two quarts.

Strain the stock. If you use meaty bones and want to use the meat in soup or a meat pie, separate the large chunks of beef from the bones after two hours and then return the bones to the stock for the remaining two hours.