Summer picnic salad, crab season practice, lamb's quarters

Well, I've managed to neglect the blog for nearly half a year. If it were a garden it would be bursting with nettles, blackberry vines and horsetail by now. Yum, actually...
Last weekend we had a potluck barbecue at the beach and I opted to throw a side of Copper River Sockeye basted with Basil and Green Olive Pesto. We also brought a farro salad that enjoyed a nice reception, probably thanks to the little nuggets of Salumi Guanciale hiding in nearly every bite. There have been requests for both recipes so I shall provide them down below. All told it was a perfect day at the beach, cool in the shade tan-worthy in the sun. I think we may be paying for our good luck with the dreary clouds that set in at the crack of dawn Monday morning. Aaah, well. It is a Seattle summer after all!
I have a very big party I'm cooking for on glorious Lopez Island late this summer and one of the things we'll be cooking up is locally caught crab (and if we're lucky, Spot Prawns from nearby San Juan). To get my chops back on crab, I bought three yesterday: one live (to my four year old's screaming glee, he lived in the bathtub for several hours. A sort of edible pet), one cooked and chilled and a final one flash cooked and frozen on the boat off of Dungeness Bay. I need to see how I like the frozen crab, some really love it. It's a big test- in order to feed up to 75 people locally caught crab it's going to take some freezing ahead so no crabbing rules are broken, I suppose... The big recipe I wanted to try first was a yuzu-miso sauce with lime beurre blanc. It sounds extra fancy and fussy but took about 6 minutes to create after I set things up (another 5 minutes)- all told, far quicker than prepping the crab. I haven't tried the frozen crab yet, but the sauce was incredibly nice.
One of my crab partners-in-crime arrived with a grocery bag full of lamb's quarters. I blanched them for 30 seconds with large sprigs of cilantro and then sauteed the whole bit in olive oil and a big dollop of the Yuzu-Miso Sauce. Delightful!

Now onto the recipes. Sadly, I didn't take any pictures- too busy making sure my kiddo didn't test out the live crab's reflexes. I will try to post some pictures when it's crab practice part 2!

Farro and Butternut Squash Salad
2 cup pearled farro (non pearled will take quite a bit longer to cook and should be soaked in a slightly salted brine overnight)
5 cups homemade chicken stock
dash kosher salt

1t olive oil, plus more if needed
1/4 cup Salumi Guanciale*, cut to 1/4" cubes
2 cups butternut squash, cut into thin 2" slices
2 cups leeks, cleaned, quartered end to end and sliced to 1/4" pieces
1/2 cup garden herbs (I used rosemary, lemon thyme, parsley, sage but play around if you don't have these), loosely packed

Balsamic vinegar
Walnut Oil

First, cooked your farro. Give it a quick wash in a colander, allow to drain a minute and then add to the chicken stock and salt in a large saucepan you can cover. If you don't have homemade stock, that's fine- just leave out the salt as commercial stock can be salty. Bring to a boil and reduce to a simmer. The farro will be cooked in about 20 minutes, go a little longer to allow the farro to fully absorb the stock.
Now, I am a lazy cook. I knew I would be making this salad for the Sunday party, so Friday night while making dinner I cooked the farro and then put the whole pot in the fridge before bed (once it had cooled). On Saturday, I prepped the veg and left them in the fridge as well, leaving only 10 minutes of prep on party day. Of course, you can do everything all at once, but I like to stretch the prep out.
Heat the olive oil in a wide, high sided saute pan over a medium high flame. Use a spoon to make sure the whole surface is coated then add your guanciale. Cook for 2-3 minutes then add the squash, leek and herbs and a healthy pinch of salt, saute for 6-8 minutes. If you notice they are a bit dry add some olive oil, 1 T at a time. When the veggies have a tinge of brown, empty the pan into a large mixing bowl. Add the farro and season to taste with balsamic and walnut oil, starting with 1 T of each. I did two additions, but trust your own taste.
Chill and serve.
A nice addition to this salad is goat cheese and to make it a whole meal, you can serve it on a bed of greens like mizuna, butter lettuce or arugula.

* any kind of guanciale will do, even pancetta in a pinch, but a combination of Seattle pride and favoritism make Salumi's guanciale my best choice.

Miso-Yuzu Sauce
1/4 c lime juice
3 T finely chopped shallot
1/4 c butter

2 T shiro miso
1/4 cup sake
2 T yuzu vinegar

First, make a beurre blanc with the first three ingredients.
Over medium flame, heat the lime juice with the shallot for 2 minutes, making sure the juice does not completely evaporate. Then add the butter in 4 parts, whisking after each addition.
Now add the miso and sake in. Cook for 2 minutes and then remove from heat and stir in the yuzu vinegar.
This sauce is lovely on crab and also mixed into greens. We also tried it on rice vermicelli to lovely results.

Basil and Green Olive Pesto
This is a bit more of a tapenade than a pesto, but it is so very green I couldn't resist the misplaced moniker!
1 cup packed basil leaves
1/2 loose cup italian parsley
3 garlic cloves
1 cup pitted green olives, Castelveltrano or Bellas
1/4 c walnuts, toasted
1/4 cup peppery olive oil, Columela is a favorite
Mix all ingredients, except olive oil, in a food processor and blitz for 3 minutes, streaming the olive oil in once the ingredients are chopped. Scrape sides down and process a further 1 minute. The mixture should be smooth.

A new, perhaps terrible, liqueur in our cabinet

To be fair, the name "Blackmaker Root Beer Liqueur" should have been warning enough. Root Beer is great, especially homemade root beer. Especially on a hot summer day. But turn it into alcohol and its presence in drinks takes me back 20 years when most of the people around me were looking to their "cocktails" to be as close to soda pop as possible (I was a snob- I liked bourbon and brandy).
But what can I say, I'm a sucker for a nice label. And look at that label- very typographic and the illustration reminds me of nice woodcut. So I'm a sucker.

I mixed it up in equal parts with the Russell's Reserve we were gifted at Christmas (again, I'm a snob and we're only using it mixed), squeezed in half a meyer lemon and then shook shook shook with ice. Voila! Poured into tiny taster cocktail glasses. Blech. Horrid. I would rather suck on bad cough drops.
Then it occurred to me. Thanks to my generous Santa of a husband, I have a lifetime supply of various bitters in hand.
A few dashes (really it takes a lot of bitter to take the sweet off this drink!) and the whole things was transformed. Complex palate revealed, warm on the way down (which is so nice after a day in the snow) and disaster averted. The Blackmaker is made with nutmeg, wintergreen, cinnamon, clove, ginger, sweet birch and anise. Thanks to the bitter all but the wintergreen revealed itself, trailed by a little bit of vanilla that was hiding in the Russell's.

If you're dying to try this cocktail, here's the real portions:
1.5 oz Blackmaker Root Beer Liqueur
1.5 oz Russell's Reserve 10 year Bourbon
3 dashes of Regan's Orange Bitters (No. 6)
1 t fresh lemon juice (I used Meyer Lemon)
Loads of ice, shaken for half a good dance song, decant into one luxurious up drinks glass or two smaller Thin Man Era glasses if you'd like to share.

A friend asks for a recipe, I post

I'm trying to make it a new policy that when a friend asks for a recipe that I post it here. I could be saying "if I had a nickel..." it happens so often, but instead I'm trying to find a system that binds me to my original goal with this blog- to write about the foods that I'm inspired by right now and give recipes.

This recipe is one I used to pull out all the time when I wanted to have duck but was too poor to buy. I found a version of it in an old cookbook I dug up at one of my favorite old bookstores, Powell's, about a hundred years ago when I was first cheffing for a living. I served it up at my first secret restaurant dinner so many years ago in San Francisco and was met with the hearty approval by my guests. Add a little lump of quickly braised greens and you have a minimally laborious meal.

I hope that my friends continue to ask me for recipes- I do love giving them out.

The only downside to this new plan, is I don't really have pictures of the food I'm advising you to make. But since I like pictures so much, in honor of the impromptu Farmer's Market Blackberry-Raspberry Jam I made tonight- here's something to drool over.

Now onto the recipe (pardon the format, a small hat tip to some of my cookbooks from the 20s and 30s, hope it's legible enough to follow):

SALT ROASTED CHICKEN

Well, first you have to buy a ton (well, 5 pounds) of rock salt. The kind for ice cream works best. Now buy a whole chicken. Take out the neck and gizzards and whatnot. Clean her all up, pat her dry and leave her overnight in the fridge, on a rack, uncovered (air circulation). If you had a very cold protected place to hang her up that's ideal, but who has that?
Now, it's been at least 12 hours and you're ready. Take an orange, pierce little holes in it, about 10 total. Drop a bay leaf inside the gal, then shove the orange in and some scallion whites, cut to 3-4". Sew it up if your feeling fancy (call it dressing her if you're feeling really really fancy). Let her rest.
In a good sized wok, heat up your 5 pounds of rock salt, covered works well, over medium high heat is best. This will take a while and you'll hear hissing and popping when it's ready. Have a large bowl or pan nearby.
Spoon out about 2/3 of the rock salt into your spare pan/bowl, leaving a decent valley in the bottom of the wok, making sure you have about an inch of depth. Place your dried, dressed bird on top and quickly (but carefully, very hot) spoon the salt you removed back onto the bird. Try and make sure you have completely covered her back up. It should just look like a little hill of glistening, piping hot salt.
Cover with the lid and cook over medium low heat for 1 hour.
Remove the bird from the salt and then let her rest for 10-15 minutes. Get your cleaver ready. This is your chance to work on your best tough guys poses with the cleaver. If you're anything like me, you won't look so tough when you're actually trying to perform carving magic on that bird.
Now that the bird has rested, chop into halves (somewhere around her waist. Now half those end to end. Chop the breasts into halves and the leg joints as well.
Serve with hoisin sauce mixed with hot chili oil and some finely chopped fresh scallion.

Autumn is my favorite- Soup season!

Now that the weather has changed to a lovely pallid hue and I've pushed every bit of summer I could get my hands on into jars to bring sunshine into my winter, it's time to turn on the oven and leave it on.
This is the time of year I dream of having an AGA, buy a cord of wood and hunker down indoors (okay, there's an occasional rain soaked hike).
Soup season officially started today with a little pot of Three Sisters- white bean, corn and squash. Shared with another mom and three pre-schoolers in the midst of games involving every pillow in the house thrown on the living room floor and something to do with mermaids and magic crystals.
Here's the recipe. I hope to be posting more soups, soon. Or at least cooking them!

Three Sisters Soup
2 ears corn, husks still on
2 lb kabocha squash
1 cup cannellini beans
1 bay leaf
3 T olive oil
1 medium onion, chopped
2 garlic cloves, coarsely chopped
1 T kosher salt
a few grinds of fresh pepper

Preheat oven to 400°
Put the beans into a 1 quart tight sealing pot and fill with water to cover by 2". Add in 1 T olive oil and bay leaf.
Place this and the kabocha squash in the oven for an hour. In the last 30 minutes, toss the corn in as well.
Once it is cool enough to handle, cut the squash in half, scoop out and discard seeds, then scoop out the flesh and set aside.
Remove the kernels from the corn cobs and scrape them with the dull side of the knife to remove the rest of the pulp. Set all of this aside.
In a large stockpot, heat the remaining 2 T olive oil. Add the onions and garlic and saute over medium heat until softened. Then toss in the corn, squash and beans, plus the salt. Fill with water  to cover plus 2". Bring up to a gentle boil then reduce heat and simmer for 30 minutes.
Correct seasonings and serve with crusty bread and kale salad.

Canning, canning, canning

Waiting on more lemons to preserve

Well, I've gone a little nuts now that I have a bigger kitchen, more cabinets and a whole larder/laundry room again. Plus, it's summer... Albeit, a kind of crummy summer cropwise, but I've managed.
To date there have been:

-Nearly 6 pounds of local, self picked blueberries bagged and frozen.
-Half a peck of pickles. Lower East Side Sours. Yum.
-David Lebovitz's Pickled Carrots in a magical bottomless jar in the fridge (the same for beets).
-Lemongrass and Lime Confit.

-Korean Red Pepper Veggies in quantity.
-Allspice liqueur
-Sauerkraut. Jah.
-Plum Sauce gleaned from the lovely bag of the scrummy stonefruit that appeared on my back stoop last week (I am so giddy for our neighboring tree. It is a fantastic producer!)
-Pickled Okra (a miserable failure with okra that was a wee bit too senior to pickle whole- read stringy)

-Jubilee Farm's Green Beans and some outside sourced Yellow Wax, both pickled.
-Tomatillos- as salsa and as little cooked critters that'll be used in pork shoulder roasts this winter.

-A 15# local Albacore all fileted and packed into wee jars with lemongrass or preserved lemons (also, homemade) or the traditional bay leaf, peppercorn and garlic.
-And last but certainly not least, The Green Tomato Conserve. Which has created several addicted households already... It looks like there may be loads more GTC in the future as the late summer sun withdraws before finishing the job of ripening the fruits of those overburdened tomato plants generous friends have all reported. There's a rough recipe below. I encourage swapping out some of the aromatics I used for some of your favorites. This first batch was perfumed with cardamon and coriander and probably would be just as home on an onion pakora as a chevre tartine.

So here are some recipes and also glamour shots of my canning fun.



Green Tomato Conserve
2 organic lemons, scrubbed
12 - 18 oz. water
16 medium sized green tomatoes, blanched, peeled, cored and chopped
10 green cardamon pods, 3 cloves, 1 piece mace, 1 T coriander, 1 small cinnamon stick tied into a large piece of cheesecloth and tied with a long string
2 cups tart apples, peeled, cored and diced
3 cups sugar

Peel lemons end to end, then cut peel into thin slivers. Using at least an 8 quart stockpot, cook peel in the water for 30 minutes (start with 12 oz then add as the water cooks off, making sure pan never dries). Add apples, tomatoes, sugar and the spice bag (tie the long string onto the handle of the pot for easy removal). Bring to full boil and boil 20 minutes, stirring often.
Remove spice bag. Reduce heat to simmer and cook a further 20 minutes, stirring often.
Slice peeled lemons very thin, then add to mixture and cook a final 20 minutes, stirring often.
Pour into sterilized jars and seal. Water process for 15 minutes if not fridge storing.

Gobble up!

Some Blueberries in Molasses that, erm, molded...

Historic dining out and wines from Bath

I hate writing short posts. I hardly ever do it, but if I haven't yet visited a restaurant what do I have to write aside from a short list of expectations embellished by anticipations. But as I write this post and commit to posting it, I lock myself into trying these places.

A few days back I discovered a little blog that I liked and am sad to say, seems to be left fallow even more than mine. Still the 3 posts that it has are noteworthy and now I am very excited to try out Kettner's in Soho. I am looking forward to trying their brasserie, love dining in an historic (opened in 1867 by Napoleon III's chef, Kettner) and yet still gorgeously lush (the champagne bar seems to have a lovely speakeasy feel) setting and am tickled that I have a partner in crime who would like to ditch the kids one day and have tea at The Pudding Bar. How could you not adore that name?

And a little more down market, but probably just as thrilling is a place that may very well satisfy my craving for bahn mi, pho and the like. I just read here and there and here about Bahn Mi Bay in Bloomsbury. Sure, I'll have to make it a day trip, rather than the little pop round the corner I had in San Francisco, but for good pho and good bahn mi, I'll manage. Plus I can pop in and carry it all over to Coram's Fields and happily munch while the munchkin plays. I can already tasted the pate, feel the crunch of the crusty bread and pickled whatnots inside. Maggi sauce awaits!

Alright, that's two restaurant visits I have to make good on, onwards into the wine...
Since moving to London in early 2009, I have been very disloyal to every wine shop I encounter. I've dabbled. I brought home bottles jammed in the bottom of the buggy from Kew, sat on the bus for an hour just to bring home a little this and that from The Winery and even nurtured a relationship with our local wine expert at Nicholas (sadly he seems to have moved back to France). The other big names, Jeroboams, Odd Bins, Majestic have seen me pop in from time to time, often making use of their delivery offers. But the latest long arm reach for wine has been so successful I may abandon most of my London wine shops for good (I will go back on this, I know I will, of course I will) as I have been delighted by the February Case selection from Great Western Wine in Bath. I discovered them very much by accident back in January while searching the google maps for the guest house that accommodated us for a mini break while my folks were in town. Bland name recalling long uncomfortable journeys on National Rail, sneaking someone's reserved seat since we were last minute and they never showed, GWW is nothing like their name. The palate of the wine buyers there is distinct. I am far from a wine snob and the longer I live in the EU, the more ignorant I feel, but there you are- an unassuming wine shop that will make every bottle seem a treat to this food pairer. Loads of good tasting notes. New world, old world. Heavy hitters, gulpers and a couple of subtle reds from France in the last batch. Friday I will be enjoying the first of my two cases I just ordered- Bin Ends and the March selection. Let's hope it's a long relationship.

It's that Tea Cakes time of year, again.

I've been a little extra enamored of my Tartine Cookbook this winter. The chill in the air coupled with a somewhat unreliable boiler (it was touch and go around Christmas) has turned me into someone who has the oven on constantly. Yet I'm a perfect candidate for an Aga... Who am I kidding though? I've always been that girl.

It all started with an overstocked of treacle (so Steamed Gingerbread Pudding) then moved on to a stockpile of bananas so ripe they went black. Perfect company for the dates we brought back from Marrakech which were in need of a dish to fill out (and so Banana Date Teacake). Poppyseeds in need of a home went into the very short lived Lemon Poppyseed Teacake (which sadly may prove itself much longer lived as chunk on my midrif). I feel that Tartine's authors, Elisabeth Prueitt and Chad Robertson, are a rarity in the current world of celebrity cooks.  They are very capable chefs who run a successful franchise while managing to publish cohesive, reliable and delicious recipes. I hope there will be more cookbooks and their careers will be long. What this Londoner wouldn't give for a quick stop in for their gougeres, to be devoured in Dolores Park in the afternoon sun (yes it's San Francisco so the sun is as rare as the Prueitt/Robertsons of the world, but there you go... my fantasy, my way).

Not until I accepted that the fragrant quince-pear puree I had lovingly simmered was not going to magically transform into membrillo unless I got on the ball did my baking spree depart from the Tartine book (with a little shortbread cameo from my other desert island book- the Baker's Dozen cookbook). I searched and searched for the recipe that would hit all of the things I wanted in my tea cake- to use up all my puree, to have nice crumb aided by my backstock of semolina and yield deep earthy undertones by using olive oil. On my hunt, I found some nice things to try in the future- Egyptian Basbousa, American Applesauce Cake, Italian Olive Oil Cake, etc etc... Then I just decided to wing it. I mean I used to be a professional baker, right?
Luckily the gods were smiling at me on the first try. I like the cake recipe I came up, although I may try to add a little more acid in the form of yogurt to give it more levity on the next go. But sitting here with a slice and cup of, looking out my window at London at large, this will do.

QUINCE PEAR TEA CAKE

2 cups hard winter or bread flour
1 cup semolina
1 cup granulated sugar
1 teaspoon chunky sea salt (e.g., Maldon)
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon fresh ground nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
2 teaspoons baking soda
1 cup raisins
1/2 cup + 2 T olive oil
2 1/2 cups quince puree*

Into a mixing bowl, sift together the dry ingredients. Add raisins, oil and quince puree. Beat until well blended. Pour batter into greased and sugared 11" x 7"  loaf pan. Bake at 190ºC/ 375°F for 55 minutes. Check cake's moisture before removing from oven. I use a fan assisted oven, so if yours is strictly conventional, your time may be longer by around 10 minutes.

*To make Quince puree:
Core and quarter one large quince and 6 small bosc pears. Place in a saucepan with 1/2 cup sugar. Drop in an optional 2" piece of fresh ginger, smashed slightly. Cover with water and simmer until the quince is quite soft, about 2 hours. Allow to cool so easier to handle and then run the solids through a food mill, retaining the liquid and adding this back to the mashed solids. Alternately, I used a potato ricer and then carefully pressed the mash through a medium sieve to remove any pips or bits of skin. This recipe should yield around 3 cups. (p.s. If you have extra it mixes nicely with gin and ice for a shaken cocktail)