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Fava Beans, and the Spring-iest Salad that Ever Was Sprung

11 Saturday May 2013

Posted by in Beans and Peas, Green, Spring, Vegetables

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Poor fava beans.  Besmirched by Hannibal Lecter, neglected by most Americans, their fat, lumpy pods looking like just a whole lot of bother.

fava bean podsDon’t get me wrong, favas are a bit of pain in the heinie. (Fun Fact: also spelled hiney!  But not heiny, as I originally thought.  Thanks, dictionary.com!)  As anyone who has read, oh, even one of my posts can attest to, I’m a lazy cook.  I don’t like peeling, trimming, turning, shelling, or barely even washing.  I eat the parts most people toss and if it can all quickly go into one pan, preferably with bacon, and just get stirred around until it looks done, I’m happy.

Not so with favas.

broad beansFava beans (also known as faba beans, fave, broad beans, English beans, horse beans, pigeon beans, field beans – I’m getting the sense that these suckers have been around a while, yes?) take a comparatively whole lotta work.  They’re protected from the elements by not just one but TWO casings – the outer pod and an inner soft shell – and you have to shuck both before you can eat them.  Don’t, ahem, assume other bloggers and cookbooks are being fancy pants and take a bite of the de-podded but still white-shelled bean.  It’s nasty.  Not that I did that.

But the good news is that the whole double-shucking process isn’t nearly as time-consuming as it reads.  The beans pop out of the pods pretty easily, and with a good blanching the worst part of the de-shelling is a bit of vegetation under your nails – which might not even be true if you blanch properly.  fave in shellsI never have ice on hand, so my ice water is cold tap water, which if you’ve ever taken basic science class, you’ll realize means that as soon as you add hot favas to the water, the whole thing heats up instantaneously and does a horrible job of blanching.  But good news continues!  Because even with sub-par blanching, the beans are still pretty easy to peel.  It just takes time to go bean by bean.

And then!  You get these squat, nutty, oh so green nuggets of delight.  They don’t taste like beans at all, in my opinion, because they’re not little explosions of mealy mush.  (I’m not a big fan of beans, as you might guess.)  The closest approximation is garbanzo beans, but really only in terms of texture, since fava beans have nothing of garbanzos’ astringency.  Fava beans taste like a nut that doesn’t stick in your teeth, a little sweet, a little buttery, and a wee bit ‘green.’  But what they really taste like is Spring.

English bean in podI don’t know how, I don’t know why – maybe it’s their intense green color, their cute little shape, their inherent freshness since you’re eating them essentially raw – but when you taste a fava, it tastes like a sunshine-y day and a cool breeze.  They were so spring-like that we actually laid out a blanket in the back yard and made a picnic out of our meal rather than eat at the table.  I’m not kidding.

Look for healthy, springy, pale to medium green pods without a lot of brown spots (a few are okay), and in which the beans aren’t bulging out of the pod.  Bulging beans means they’re a bit old and overgrown. (I feel like there’s a pot belly joke in here, but having been pregnant twice in the past 3 years, I have stopped commenting on bulging bellies.)  And then, to the work:

First, de-pod your beans.  There’s technically a string that runs along the back:

fava beanAnd if you can catch it it will peel right open, but if not, just tear it open.  You’ll find 3-6 beans nestled snug in their beds.  The cushioning looks like a pillow:broad bean cushion

While you’re de-podding, boil some water.  When you have your little pile of whitish-looking beans and the water is rolling, toss them in for just 1 minute:

fava beans blanchWhile they’re boiling, fill a bowl with ice water (not just cold tap water).  When the timer goes, toss them in and let them sit 1 minute.  The outer waxy covering should shrivel and pull away from the green legume a little.  Then, bean by bean, remove that outer coating.  On the left, a boiled bean; on the right, the coating removed:

fava with and without membraneSee how green they are?  That’s it.  Now they’re edible.  Some people puree them, some people saute with garlic and lemon (though I find cooking further isn’t necessary), but we chose to make

The Spring-iest Salad that Ever Was Sprung

Prepared fava beans
Breakfast Radishes
Fennel
Cooked Breakfast or Sweet Chicken Sausage (optional)
1 lemon
Olive oil
Sea or kosher salt (you want it chunky, not finely ground)

Slice the radishes into small pieces and shave the fennel as finely as you can.  Mix with favas and and the sausage if you’re using it.   Our fennel was particularly licorice-tasting this time, so we combined in a ratio of about 2:2:1 for radishes, fava beans, and fennel so it didn’t overpower.  Squeeze the lemon juice on top, drizzle with olive oil, and toss to coat.  Sprinkle with salt.

Spring SaladThat’s it.  It was awesome.  The fava beans are mellow and nutty and add an unexpected bit of richness of flavor, the radishes and fennel added a little bite and complexity, the lemon dressing and chunky salt added a brightness that enhanced the freshness of all the ingredients.  It was spring in a bowl and was the inspiration for our impromptu picnic – good crusty bread, a few slices of quality cheese, and very cold wine and you had a happy little family, though the toddler just ate the favas and sausage and ignored the sharp little radishes and fennel slices.  I honestly think I’ll leave out the sausage next time, as we really only added it because we wanted to use it up, and though it added a nice savory sweetness, I think the salad would be even springier without it.  Other additions?  Next time I’m adding thinly sliced asparagus, even garlic scapes if I can find them, but in my estimation, the best Spring Salad is one just like this: find the freshest Spring ingredients you can, toss them together, and put down a blanket in the back yard.  And just this once, leave out the bacon.

Peel/Trim? Definitely.  A few sources say you can eat without the second shelling if the beans are absolute babies, but the casing is pretty bitter in anything bigger.
Edible when raw? Sort of.  Blanch to remove the casing, and then they’re edible.  It’s possible to buy them dried like other beans, and then you have to cook them just as you would black, pinto, kidney, etc.
Worth the price of organic? One of the few foods to which I’m going to say Probably Not.  There’s so much peeling and shelling going on here that any pesticides sprayed on won’t make it to your plate.  It’s true that what you’re eating is the seed, so anything in the soil is going to be concentrated in here, so if you’re that concerned, feel free, but if you’re that concerned, you’re probably buying everything organic already.
Best with:  Do I have to say liver and a nice chianti?  Yes, yes I do.  Otherwise, spring vegetables that taste clean, green, and fresh are the way to go: radishes, young garlic, young onion, mint, dill, lemon.  Ricotta would be lovely, even a mild goat cheese, but anything stronger will overpower the subtle, mild flavor of the fresh nutty beans.
In Season: Spring.  In some areas they grow into the summer, but in Southern California, they’re usually gone by late May.
How to Store: In the fridge.  They should keep about a week in their pods.  After blanching and preparing, the shelled favas keep a few days, but rinse in water before using if you prepared them in advance.
Note: There is a potentially fatal disease called favism, that is an allergic reaction to fava beans.  While very rare, it can affect some people of African, Mediterranean, or Southeast Asian descent.

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Stinging Nettles

29 Friday Mar 2013

Posted by in Green, Herbs, Leafy, Miscellany, Spring, Vegetables

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I don’t know that I’ve ever been more excited to eat something that I’m afraid to touch.NettlesI first heard of nettles as edibles (whee! That’s fun to say!) years ago when I was reading a book on the Irish famine.  I’m Irish-obsessed, in case you didn’t know (my daughter’s name is full-blown Irish Gaelic), and at the time I found it tragic that they ate weeds to survive when the potato crop failed.  But in a different Irish famine book (yes, obsessed), there was some mention of nettles as actually a staple food before the famine (if you don’t know Irish history, it’s tragic.  TRAGIC tragic.  The English were right bloody arseholes.) because they’re one of the richest sources of iron, vitamins A and C, and a full 10 to even 40 percent protein (and to that I say, what the what??  Vegetarians, get in here!).  They’ve also long been a staple in herbal medicine, since they supposedly are one of the best treatments for hay fever, and also for arthritis.  I was intrigued.  Nettles seemed pretty awesome.

Silica StingersExcept that they will sting you.  The taxonomy derives from the Latin for “I burn” and they’re chock full of little stingers especially on the new growth.  Standard rule of thumb for harvesting is to wear gloves, but I don’t own rubber gloves for cooking, and I was frightened.  The farmer at the market made fun of me dismissed my fears and said they weren’t that bad, but I wasn’t taken chances.  So here was my oh-so-graceful and professional method for dealing with nettles:
1. Let farmer with callused hands and scoffing bravado put them into bag.  Don’t put other veggies in same bag in case the prickers brush up against things and stick to my innocent chard or beets.
2. Remove from bag by grabbing only the bottom two inches of stem and awkwardly hold the whole bunch under the faucet to wash.  Rinse by shaking vigorously, thereby blessing the whole kitchen with nettle holy water.
3. To prepare for cooking, just as awkwardly hold giant nettle stalks over the largest frying pan I have, hot with oil, and chop off hunks with kitchen shears, trying not to get burnt by the spitting oil because the nettles weren’t really dry from the vigorous shaking and in case you haven’t heard, oil and water don’t like each other and in a hot pan they take it out on me.

Miraculously, this method worked out really, really well.

Nettle StalksThe nettles lose their stingers within about 30 seconds of cooking, so you could probably cook them, then slice them more neatly if you liked, but I’m not fussy about presentation so much, and I don’t like getting burned by hot, thornless nettles any more than I like getting stung with raw nettle thorns…  Most sources DON’T recommend my version of preparing them (I can’t imagine why) but recommend blanching instead:

  • Plunge nettles into already boiling water for about 30 seconds to 1 minute to get rid of the stingers)
  • Plunge into an ice bath to stop the cooking
  • Roll in towels or paper towels to dry them off

At this point, they can then be sauteed, sliced, frozen for later, whatever, and they’ll be a brilliant green to boot.  I 1) am lazy 2) never have ice on hand and 3) broke my favorite and largest mixing bowl last week, so plunging and bathing and creating more dishes [4) don’t have a dishwasher] is not part of my repertoire.  But if you are the opposite of me in any of those criteria, you can blanch like a normal person.

Nettle branchNettles taste a bit like the lovechild of spinach and an artichoke.  They don’t have the chalky feel of spinach and are milder in flavor, but they do have a little of the mineral/metallic/plastic tang that artichokes always seem to have.  There’s a hint of lemon in there as well, and though they’re a little grassy, they don’t in any way taste like grass or weeds – though if you buy nettles instead of picking them, make sure you pick out the long strands of actual grass that seemed to show up in all the bunches.  Nettles are toothy-leaved and roundish-stalked, not long, flat blades. (Did I, I know you’re thinking, shrug and assume those long blades were perhaps a rogue type of weird nettle stalk among my branches?  Yes, yes I did.)  Look for healthy-looking plants that have not yet begun to flower (flowering makes the leaves turn bitter), the younger the better for sweetness and mildness of flavor.  You can just use the young leaves, not the full stalk and tiny flower buds the way I did, if you want to keep the flavor as mild as possible and still reap all the nutrient benefits.  Nettle soup is a classic way to use them, or nettle pesto once they’ve been blanched, but I liked them sauteed:

Lemon-Parmesan Pasta with Stinging Nettles
Nettles
Olive Oil
Freshly grated parmesan (not the green tub)
Lemon
Garlic cloves
Spaghetti

  • Boil water and start the pasta.  Once you’ve added the noodles to the water, start your nettles:
  • In a very large pan, saute chopped nettles in roughly a tablespoon of olive oil (Use as many nettles as you like – like any leafy green, they cook down quite a bit).
  • When the nettles are wilted, squeeze the juice of one to 1 1/2 lemons into the hot pan.
  • Add a little more olive oil, along with chopped garlic (we used 2-3 cloves for just 2 1/2 people, but we love garlic).  Cook until the garlic smell hits you, just a minute or so.Lemon-Parmesan Pasta with Nettles
  • Drain the pasta, reserving about 1 tablespoon of the pasta water (you can save yourself the trouble of “reserving” boiling hot water by just draining the pasta lazily so a little of the water stays in the pot).  Add the pasta and reserved water to the frying pan, and mix.
  • Spread the pasta dish out in the frying pan to get the most surface area, and grate fresh parmesan on top.  Fold the pasta dish into the serving bowl as if it were an omelette – slide half in, then fold the other half on top – then toss immediately.  This gets the parmesan integrated into the food so you don’t just have hunks of parmesan in certain bites and none elsewhere.
  • Top with salt, pepper, and a little more parmesan if you like.

Next time, I’m making Dungeness Crab and Wild Nettle Frittata or Stinging Nettle and Asparagus Risotto.  They both sounded awesome, but I didn’t find the recipes until I’d already eaten my bunch.  But I’ll buy more.  They’re too tasty not to try again, and besides, I refuse to be intimidated by a vegetable.  I’ll brave you yet, nettle thorns!  Just not, you know, this season.

Stinging Nettle LeafTrim? You can trim a bit of the tough base and eat the rest, or trim off everything but the leaves – your choice.  But watch out for the stingers!  They’re most prevalent towards the tips, so you can grasp the bottoms without getting stung.  Use gloves, or my wimpy method as above.
Edible when raw?  No.  You will get stung, and possibly get burning welts in your mouth and throat, even if you puree them – it’s an acid that causes the burning, and it needs to be cooked to be deactivated.  Unless, of course, you’re part of a contest.
Worth the price of organic? Probably.  Though they’re basically a weed, so there’s no real reason someone should be using a bunch of sprays on them anyway, I’d still go for organic since you’re eating the leaves where the residue will sit.  If you can’t find them organic, I would definitely do the blanching technique and probably toss that water rather than using it for tea (as some people do).
Best with:  Frankly, kind of everything.  They’re such an ancient food and grow in so many places that recipes abound, from Italian pestos to Scottish soups to Indian curries.  I like to eat as seasonally as possible, so I like them with other spring flavors like young garlic ramps, lemon, fresh fennel, asparagus, peas (if you don’t hate them)…  Nettles are a bit more delicate than some other leafy greens, so I personally avoid stronger flavors like anchovies or my beloved bacon as well, but that’s only because nettles don’t need it the way bitter greens do.  It certainly would taste fine if you decided to go that route.
In Season:  In cooler climes, you can probably find them Spring into early Summer, maybe even again in fall, but here in Southern California, you’re looking at a window of just a few weeks in early Spring, so jump on them while you can.
How to Store: In the fridge, in a produce box or plastic bag,  they should keep for a week or more uncooked.  Once they’ve been blanched, use or freeze pretty quickly.
Note: If you get stung, dock leaves are the miracle cure, but since most people don’t have those lying around – make a paste of baking soda and water and apply to the area, and once the inflammation goes down, make sure there are no stingers stuck in your skin.  If so, remove with scotch tape.  There’s no danger in getting stung other than the pain, so it should go away with no ill effects in a couple of days regardless.

Brussels Sprouts

12 Tuesday Mar 2013

Posted by in Fall, Green, Miscellany, Spring, Vegetables, Winter

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This is how pathetic my life has become: when my husband goes out of town, I live it up by eating brussels sprouts.  Seriously. (Did you know there was an ‘s’ on the end?  No?  Me neither.  I mean, I know they were named for the city, but I always assumed the vegetable was “brussel sprouts.”  Ah the wonders of google’s super-condescending Did you mean brussels sprouts? as if google was channeling the annoying grammar kid in grade school…)brussels sproutsBut they’re lovely little nuggets of nutty vegetable goodness and he hates them, or did.  Conventional wisdom (read: the label on the bag when you buy them at the store) suggests popping them in the microwave for a few minutes with a hole cut in the corner for venting, and voila! Delicious veggies!  So here’s a tip: NEVER TAKE COOKING ADVICE FROM A PLASTIC BAG.  Even if it does have halved sproutfriendly-looking exclamation points and promising adjectives.

Brussels sprouts microwaved in the bag taste like, well, vegetables microwaved in a bag.  They’re sorta steamed and sorta healthy-tasting and sorta mushy and definitely edible and definitely fast, but when all is said and done they taste a little…sad.  And definitely need to be smothered in soy sauce.

Like any somewhat tough, somewhat bitter vegetable, the key to brussels sprouts is to roast them.  Sweeter roots and tubers like sweet potatoes and beets can be cut thin and survive a quick 20 minute roast and come out just fine, but with brussels sprouts?  You’ve got to roast the crap out of them.  trim

 

Cut off the ends,
trimmed v untrimmed
half sprout

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Cut in half,

 

 

 

toss with a bit of olive oil, and pop them in a 400 oven for at least 30 minutes.  About halfway through cooking time, shake the pan to toss them around a bit, and then back in they go.  When they’re done, they’ll be absolute mush in the center, which sounds really unappetizing, but what happens is that all the bitterness dissolves away and the residual sugars caramelize in the heat and the mush you’re left with is a little sweet and a little caramelly and a little nutty and tastes awesome with anything with a little strength behind its flavor – red onion, goat cheese, walnuts, steak, or just very nice sea salt.  They’re very earthy when they’re left almost whole like this, and would probably be wonderful smoked.

shredded brussels sproutsBut if you don’t have time for a long oven roast, there’s another secret that we only recently discovered that makes them even better, and way faster and easier: shred them.  If you have a food processor, run them through the slicing blade.  The resulting pieces are thin enough to pop into any pan for a quick saute or stir-fry with whatever else you’re serving, or even edible raw.  I’ve swapped them out for the kale in my raw kale salad with fantastic results, used them in place of the cabbage in a cole slaw (since brussels sprouts are really baby cabbages anyway), and tossed the shreds into a spinach salad with warm bacon dressing for a little vegetable variety.  When shredded, the natural bitterness is not nearly as noticeable, and just lends a little sharpness; if you’re cooking, you’ll get to that sweet nutty flavor ASAP instead of waiting for the slow roast.

A quick recipe:  Throw some sprouts and a shallot through the processor, and into a pan with a little olive oil.  Cook until everything is soft.  Feel free to leave it without turning much, ‘cuz you know I like my bitter things a little burned.  Splash some champagne vinegar on there if you have it, or cooking sherry, or rice vinegar, or apple cider vinegar.  Sprinkle with salt.  Eat by the panful because it really is that good.tiny cabbages

Look for tight sprouts without yellowing or curling on the outer leaves and few spots.  If you’re buying them from the market instead of the store, you may see them in their natural state, which is attached to a giant stalk, which looks bizarrely attractive but is inedible.  If you do buy them on the stalk, you can cut each sprout off with a knife, or just twist and pull each one off – the little stems that sometimes come off too are edible, but will need to be steamed or roasted very well first.  You get a lot more bang for your buck when you buy on the stalk, but a lot more work, and frankly, my fridge isn’t big enough to hold it…so no pics.  Sorry.  When we move to a bigger house and get a bigger kitchen, I swear I’ll buy a giant specimen just for you.

Trim? Yes.  Slice off the bottom brown edge.  Some people say to just put an ‘x’ in the base, but that seems like more work to me and I don’t like tough stems.  Remove any wilted leaves.
Edible when raw?  Yes, but better sliced thin or shredded first.
Worth the price of organic? Apparently not, though I would have thought otherwise.  Organic brussels sprouts are particularly hard to grow, so they’re not that common, and because each little sprout is packed so tightly, they don’t harbor a lot of bad stuff.  So give ’em a good wash and save your pennies.
Best with:  Strong flavors with a little sweetness that can stand up to the bitter earthiness but bring out the sweetness of the sprout – shallots, lemon, soft cheeses, pine nuts, walnuts, bacon/ham/piggies…  Strong flavors that have a bitter edge, like marjoram, turmeric, or even my beloved garlic, can heighten the sulfuric edge, making them taste a little like rotten eggs if you’re not careful.
In Season:  Fall through Spring.
How to Store: In the fridge, in a produce box or loosely sealed plastic bag, they should keep for ten days to 2 weeks.  If they start to yellow at the edges, peel off the outer leaves and eat within the next day or two.

Haricots Verts, Golden Wax and Other Sorta Green Beans

21 Sunday Oct 2012

Posted by in Beans and Peas, Fall, Green, Miscellany, Purple, Summer, Yellow

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I used to hate green beans as a kid.  Frankly, in most cases, I still do.  I don’t blame my mom for this – she bought high-quality frozen green beans as I recall – but to be honest?  They taste like vegetables.  Like the vegetables of kids’ tear-induced tantrums – a little sharp, a little bitter, and very, very green.  And they squeak.  Seriously.  Some people actually know them as squeaky beans.  And God forbid, in my opinion, you buy them canned.  Add to the squeaky bitterness a metallic aftertaste, and it’s like eating medical equipment.

I discovered 2 problems with my green bean past.  1) I was eating the wrong kinds, and 2) I was cooking them wrong.  Most of the time, if you buy something labeled green beans, it’s probably Kentucky Wonder or Blue Lake – a relatively fat, fleshy bean with a succulent pod surrounding thin, tiny seeds.  I’m sure plenty of people like the somewhat meaty, earthy flavor, especially when smothered in cream of mushroom soup and fried onions, but I am not one of those people.  I am, however, something of a Francophile, so I’m pretty sure many of those same green bean loving people think I’m merely being pretentious by saying that I hate green beans but I love Haricots Verts.  Which, yes, translates to “green beans,” I know.

But Haricots Verts are a different breed entirely from the fleshy cut variety that taints many a side dish.  For one thing, they don’t have to be green.  They come in purple and yellow and speckled and all sorts of beautiful colors.  Haricots Verts and their slender brethren are thin, dainty, unimposing in their somewhat parched state.  They crisp easily or soften and blend in with the crowd when necessary while still maintaining a wee bit of vegatative flavor.  They’re milder than their heartier cousins.  They still squeak, but I like to imagine more of a dainty accident than the bold mouse-like squeak of their friends.

As for eating them wrong, every blog and recipe I can recall commands steaming, blanching, boiling or microwaving.  And to that I respond: bleh!  It’s a good way to release some vitamins, sure, and to soften them up, of course, because they can get a bit stringy or a bit of a chewy-wood thing going on when they’re not cooked enough.  Sure.  But…bleh.  What a way to make them taste like earthy, mineral-y mush.  Nope, the trick I discovered?  Burn them.  Burn them all.  (And if you’re not picturing a creepy Donald Sutherland in Backdraft right now, you don’t watch nearly as many movies as I do, and also, I envy your uncluttered brain.)

I don’t like burnt food.  I scrape burnt toast, pick around burned roasts, hell, I throw out burned cookies and if you know me that’s practically a hangin’ crime for all the rules it violates, but green beans, as far as I can recall, are my one exception.  Get a little burn on them and all that metallic minerality takes on hints of something akin to a savory caramel, the last wee traces of succulence get dessicated into crispness, and you’re left with something sharp and sweet and so tasty we always end up eating all the green beans before we even touch the main.

When buying haricots verts and their friends, look for fleshy, bright beans that snap easily.  They shrivel and get tough and bendy as they dry out and get older, and as much as I like them drier, you want to do the drying, in the pan, not nature on the vine.  Any variety that’s young and slim will do (have I lived in Hollywood too long?) but I like ones labeled Haricot Verts,  Haricots Jaune (the thin yellow ones at the top), Golden Wax for something a bit fleshier (the ones in the red bowl), or these Purple Queens for Halloween – they look almost black.  All of them, really, are varieties of filet beans, so you can look for those, too.  Snip off the ends with the stem still attached, and burn away.

Burnt Green Beans

Any color Green beans
olive oil
Herbes de Provence (or at least Rosemary)
garlic cloves
sherry (optional)
goat cheese (optional)
sea salt

Heat enough olive oil in to lightly cover the bottom of a pan, preferably cast iron (you want a pan that will get nice and hot, and that’s not a brand new non-stick – the non-stick doesn’t give a great burn, though it’s serviceable if that’s all you’ve got).  Toss the green beans into the pan, and let them sit.  This is the hard part.  DON’T TURN THEM, toss them, or otherwise touch them.  Make something else, do the dishes, whatever, until they start to get a little burn on the bottoms.  (If your beans are on the fleshier side, you may want to add a healthy dose of sherry here to steam them open a little, then let them burn afterwards.)  Toss/flip and let them start to get a little burn on the other side – you don’t want them burnt beyond recognition, but you want some blistering/black color going on.  Chop the garlic (I like 2 cloves, but one will do.)  Sprinkle liberally with herbes de provence and stir.  Add the garlic and cook very briefly, until you can smell it, maybe 1 minute tops.   Put on a plate and sprinkle well with sea salt.  If you like goat cheese, mix some in just before you remove from heat – they’re AMAZING with goat cheese, but just as nice on their own if you’re not the dairy type.  Added bonus?   They don’t work well if you fuss over them, so screaming babies, rambunctious toddlers, and a big, balloon glass of wine can all be addressed while your green beans get nice and crispy.  THAT’S the kind of side dish I like.

Trim? Yes.  Snip off the stem end.  If they’re larger or fleshier, you may want to peel the string down the side as well, but younger specimens don’t need it.
Edible when raw?  Yes.
Worth the price of organic? Yes.  Green beans don’t make the Dirty Dozen, but they make the Dirty Twenty, and that’s enough chemicals for me, thanks.
Best with:  Stronger flavors – goat cheese, lemon/citrus, garlic, ginger, vinegars.  Woodsy flavors  like rosemary, sage, thyme and mushrooms complement nicely.  They hold up well as a side dish from everything to the lightest sole to the meatiest steak, so there are really no holds barred.
In Season:  Summer, though in warm-season climes like here in L.A, that actually means Late Spring and Early Fall, since the hot months are too hot for the vines to flower.
How to Store: In the fridge, in a produce box or loosely sealed plastic bag, they should keep for a few days.  If they start to get bendy or a little shriveled, they’ll still taste fine if you crisp-cook them as above; if you can see bean seeds outline through the tight, shriveled skin, they’ve crossed the hump and are no longer very tasty.

Swiss Chard (now with Sweet Potato! and of course bacon…)

16 Tuesday Oct 2012

Posted by in Fall, Green, Leafy, Miscellany, Red, White, Winter, Yellow

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There’s a lot of repetition in my recipes and posts, if you haven’t noticed already.  Greens are greens, and they all go nicely with bacon.  That’s not my fault.

Swiss chard is no exception.  Of all the bitter greens you’ll find at the market, swiss chard is the mildest and the prettiest.  Rainbow chard is the most common variety, simply because it’s so pretty.  Red, white and yellow stalks wink at you as they snake up the center of the phenomenonally large, deep green leaves.  Look for fresh looking leaves with slightly firm stalks – ignore a few rips, tears, or bug holes.  Chard leaves aren’t as hearty as something tougher like kale, so they do rip easily.  The stalks do bend a little, but they shouldn’t be bending on their own or wilting.  The leaves can range from almost purple in the red varieties to kelly green in the yellow or white, so look for those signature brightly colored veins, rhubarb-like stalks, and wide, soft leaves.

Wash well – I recommend at least 2 rinses – scrubbing the stalk with your thumb under the faucet.  They trap a lot of dirt.  

Chard is slightly sweet as greens go and a little nutty.  (I feel like I should make some sort of vaudevillian pun here.  I’ll resist the urge.)  Because it’s a little milder, it can sneak its way in to almost any recipe, though it really shines with other fall vegetables – winter squashes and pumpkins, walnuts, root vegetables.  I had planned to use this chard in a sneaky green way by slicing it up very fine, mixing with ricotta, stuffing it into giant pasta shells, covering with sauce and cheese, and baking.  But we had our very first fall day in Los Angeles last week – cold and rainy and absolutely delightful – and I wanted something far more Autumnal.  (I don’t think that word means what I think it means…  Autumn-y?  Sure.)  So instead, I made a Chard and Sweet Potato Gratin.  I made enough for the husband and I to have some for dinner, to save some for the toddler for tomorrow’s lunch, and maybe even a little leftover for my lunch.  No dice.  We ate the whole pan.  Oops.

Sweet Potato and Chard Gratin

This is not a real gratin because there’s no bechamel.  I like to think of it as lazy (wo)man’s gratin – mix ricotta with another soft cheese or a splash of whole milk and you have something not at all as rich and delicious as bechamel, but serviceable and super fast for a work night supper.

  • Sweet potatoes – I used 3 smallish/medium-sized for a 2 1/2 qt oval casserole dish, but if I’d used the giant ones in the bag I might have only used one.  You’ll have to eyeball.  And yes, botanically I think these orange ones are yams, but I call ’em like they’re labeled.
  • Swiss chard (I used 4 or 5 giant leaves)
  • Ricotta (I used about 1 cup)
  • Goat cheese (I used about 3 inches from a goat cheese log) – as above, if you don’t like goat cheese, you can sub in something else like farmer’s cheese – very mild – or just a splash of whole milk to thin it out
  • Cheddar or other melting cheese (I used about 2 oz)
  • 1-2 slices bacon (If you’re lucky enough to have a Trader Joe’s, get the bag of Ends and Pieces – a steal at something like $2.99 a pound and perfect for recipes in which you’re cutting up the bacon anyway.)
  • olive oil

Chop the bacon into bite-sized pieces and fry until almost crispy.  Preheat oven to 400.Slice the sweet potatoes into long, thin slices.  Drizzle a little olive oil on the bottom of your dish to coat.  Layer one layer of sweet potato into the dish.

Slice the chard into thin strips, discarding the bottom stalks. Layer half the chard on top of the sweet potatoes.

Place the goat cheese in a bowl in the microwave for 20-30 seconds to soften (not melt).  Mix thoroughly with ricotta.  Using about half the mixture, dollop spoonfuls on top of the chard and use the back of the spoon to spread them over the layer.

Sprinkle half the bacon on top.

Place the rest of the chard on top.  Layer another layer of sweet potatoes to cover.  Spread the remainder of the ricotta mixture on the sweet potatoes.  Sprinkle with the remaining bacon.  Grate the cheese or break into chunks and disperse over top to cover up any “holes.”  Bake at 400 until sweet potatoes are soft when stabbed with a fork and cheese is melted, about 20 minutes.

ugly but delicious!

For Chard:
Trim? Yes, at the bottom of the stalk where it gets tough and splintered, though some people lose the whole portion below the leaves as well.
Edible when raw?  Yes, when young.  It’s very chewy, however, so if you get large/older leaves, definitely cook the stalks, and probably the leaves as well.
Worth the price of organic? Yes.  Greens are generally considered high on the Organic Preferred list.
In season: Fall, Winter.
Best with: Fall foods – winter squashes, pumpkin, squash, sweet potato, even apples and dried fruit like raisins.  Walnuts, pecans, bacon or sausage for protein – earthy, smokier flavors do well.  Garlic, carmelized onions, goat cheese – sweeter flavors complement the greens’ slight sweetness.
How to Store: Like other greens, wash in warm water, give them a cold bath, and store in the fridge for a few days or possibly as long as a week, though that’s pushing it.

Tromboncino Rampicante

11 Tuesday Sep 2012

Posted by in Green, Squashes, Summer, Vegetables, White, Yellow

≈ 6 Comments

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Sorry it’s taken me so long to post; I was busy giving birth to this:

Which leaves little time for farmer’s marketing and even less time for cooking and blogging.  But how do you NOT buy this when you see it at the market?

Especially if you like zucchini, which I do.  I’m a little annoyed at the Summer Squash selection this year, frankly – everyone’s got a blog post about what to do with all that zucchini that is so clearly taking over your garden that you need to make it into breads, fritters, cakes, casseroles, and other creative, delicious-sounding recipes, and here I am, zucchini-less.  My garden won’t grow (probably because I forget to water it), and none of the sellers at the market seem so flush with zucchini that they’re marking down the prices into the ridiculously-cheap category, which means if I buy zucchini, I’m buying it to use for its sweet, squashy self, not to use it up.

Which I guess is a gigantic tangent to: How I Found a New Yummy Zucchini.  Usually called Tromboncino Zucchini or Zucchetta Rampicante, it’s also sometimes just called Squash with some horribly misspelled version of one of those names in parentheses on the farmer’s handwritten sign.

Summer squashes have far more variety in flavor than one might expect, given that they’re always lumped into that same massive category.  There’s crookneck and zucchini and patty pan and little stripey ones that the husband and I like to refer to as hand grenades…  Rampicante is slightly sweet and slightly nutty.  It’s most similar to zucchini in flavor, but a little nuttier.  I don’t think it’s as mealy as crookneck, but sources differ on how to avoid the mealies with this guy: some say that the young ones start out quite mealy, others say that the younger/smaller fruits will always be the sweeter and more flavorful, so if you’re worried about mealiness, go with one of those.  How to tell?  They turn into a trombone as they grow, so shorter, straighter squash are what you would look for, though it’s possible to grow them straighter by trellising them, so again, look for short if you’re looking for young.  This sucker is pretty full-grown, maybe 2 or 3 feet long if you stretched him out.  Personally, I think the problem is steaming at any size.  People are constantly telling me to steam squash because it’s so healthful that way, but to me, it tastes like mealy baby food.  Not a fan of any kind of steamed squash, frankly.

They have a very pale green skin, sometimes almost pale yellow or tan, sometimes so light they look almost white.  They tend to have varied faint white stripes like some zucchini varieties as well.  The really nice thing about this variety is that all the seeds form in the bulbous part at the end, the way seeds all collect in the center of hard squash.  That means you’ve got this whole long length of stem with no seeds.  It’s drier and firmer than zucchini, though the pores near the skin do weep when you cut it, but I imagine if you wanted to make something akin to Rampicante Parmesan or Fried Zucchini (dredging in flour and deep frying) it would probably be excellent for that since it is drier than its cousin who can sometimes get mushy.  The skin is edible as well – a bit tougher than zucchini skin, but nowhere near winter squash toughness or even delicata squash or something in which people tell you the skin is edible but the texture’s tough and awful…   All this means that Rampicante are really, really easy to work with, so you get a lot of bang for your buck.  Which is nice, because I’ve only seen one or two sellers with them ever, which means they’re twice the price of other summer squash per pound.  C’est la vie for the experimental veggie eater.

Actually, that’s the weird part about Tromboncino – pluck it early, and you have got a summer squash that’s basically edible from end to end minus the seeds.   Let it grow big and keep it around, and the skin will grow tough like winter squash, so it stores well.  If you’re worried about your personal fruit having too tough a skin, go ahead and peel it.  I’ve only bought it as a summer squash; the online consensus seems to be that as it matures into a winter squash, the texture gets stringier, more watery, and less flavorful, much like the interior of a carving pumpkin, so I think I’ll stick with the summer harvest for now.

Like I said with the zucchini this year, I’m not wasting this puppy on “use it up” recipes, but you don’t need to.  Zucchini is often easy to julienne or similar because of its straight shape; rampicante is easier to slice into rounds.  If you have a food processor, chop the neck into straighter sections before putting through the slicing blade and you’ll have a gagillion Rampicante rounds in no time.  If you put the bent part in, you’ll have long slices instead.

I like to saute in olive oil and garlic and toss into practically any dish – it does take a bit to cook through to the center if you slice too thick, so try to keep them just a cm or 2 in width if you’re slicing by hand.  Half-inch rounds are just too big.  They’re also nice tossed with olive oil and salt and roasted on 400 or 450 like beet chips until crisp, or crisp-ish really.  They’re a great alternative to potato chips or some other horrible for you snack.

As for the bulb, scoop out the seeds, and chop the rest up any way you like.  Again, I always prefer sauteed in a little olive oil or roasted over steamed, but if you feel like trying it steamed, steam the bulb end since your pieces won’t be uniform in shape.  Hmm…maybe a mashed Rampicante?  Like mashed potatoes, but more summery?  I may learn to like steamed squash after all…

Rampicante with Sausage, Beet Greens and Goat Cheese

  • Rampicante Zucchini
  • Beet greens, stalks removed and greens sliced or torn into bite-sized pieces
  • Sausage, chopped into bite-size pieces (I prefer sweet Italian Chicken Sausage from Trader Joe’s)
  • Pasta (I like spaghetti in this recipe)
  • olive oil
  • goat cheese

Notes: There are no measurements because it really is to taste and depends on the number of people being served.  Half a trombone zucchini served 2 hungry adults and a toddler; likewise half a bunch of beet greens, but we’re veggie-happy and everything depends on how big a bunch you get.  For the sausage, my lazy strategy is to simply hold the sausage over the pan and use kitchen shears to lop of pieces – no cutting board to disinfect afterwards!  Same thing with the goat cheese:  I buy it in a log and just use a fork to hack off chunks right onto the plate.

Slice your rampicante however you like and remove the lower stalks from your beet greens, chopping them into 1/2 to 1-inch size pieces.  Saute in olive oil until everything starts to soften, then add sausage.  Cook until sausage is brown and slightly crispy – don’t stir too often or the sausage and rampicante won’t crisp up.  This is very much a “leave it alone, I have dishes to do and a toddler to wrangle while dinner cooks” kind of meal.

While these are cooking, boil water and start the pasta cooking – this goes nicely with any carb accompaniment, frankly, so cous cous, brown rice, barley, polenta, or anything else you fancy makes a fine substitute for noodles.

When the sausage is almost done, throw in the green parts of the beet greens – they cook fast, so now is the time to start stirring, adding a bit more olive oil if everything’s looking too dry.  When the greens wilt, toss the pasta in the pan and stir everything together (added benefit: if you mis-timed your carb cooking or are using up leftovers, here is where everything gets to be the same temperature, so feel free to use last night’s leftover Chinese food takeout rice straight from the fridge.)  If you’re watching your calories or using up leftovers, add a splash of water instead of the extra oil above – the hot pasta water is great for adding a little thickener.

Pour into serving bowl and add chunks/crumbled goat cheese on top – feel free to toss to distribute, but it will lessen the final appearance as the melted goat cheese deliciously though unattractively slimes every strand of pasta. 

Peel?  If it’s young or small or you buy it mid-summer, no.  If you’re buying in fall and it’s a big, old fruit, or if you just think it’s going to be too tough for your tastes, yes.  This squash serves both seasons of squash descriptors.
Edible seed? No.  Scoop them out and toss them.
Edible when raw? Yes, if it’s young, though I would probably only eat the neck of the squash raw since the bulb gets more winter squash-like, and I would shred, grate, or julienne – I’m not a huge fan of raw summer squash in the first place, and this variety is a bit tougher than some of his friends, so I don’t know that giant raw hunks of it would be the way to go.
Worth the price of organic? Questionable, but probably not.  Summer squash in general isn’t a horrible pesticide keeper, and winter squash is one of the least offensive conventional vegetables you can buy.  Rampicante is known among squash gardeners as being surprisingly resistant to many bugs that plague other squashes, so it means it probably isn’t getting sprayed down even as heavily as other squashes.  Since it’s so rare at the markets at this point anyway, I probably wouldn’t sweat it and would just buy whatever they have, especially if you plan on peeling.  If you’re going to eat it skin and all, you may want to take the monetary plunge, but I don’t bother with this guy, and I’m pretty picky about organic when I have the chance.
In season: Mid-late summer through Fall – Earlier in the season, treat like a summer squash; later in the season, peel and treat like a winter squash.
Best with: Garlic, basil, oregano; Italian cheeses (parmesan, ricotta, mozarella…); cinnamon and sage for savory soups; lemon or orange for splash of citrus; tomatoes and other complimentary summer vegetables like eggplant
How to Store: In the fridge when fresh, it should last a good week or longer.  Once cut, the pores begin to weep and it begins to dry out, so use it up within a couple of days at most.  You can wrap it in plastic or foil if you like; just don’t shove it into the fridge with the cut part exposed because it will leak sappy moisture onto your shelves or other food…Not that I’ve done that.  As winter squash, it can keep uncut in a cool place for as long as a couple of months, but it should be hard-skinned first.  If it’s still too young, it will just rot.

Frilly Purple Kale

15 Sunday Jul 2012

Posted by in Fall, Green, Leafy, Purple, Spring, Vegetables, Winter

≈ 7 Comments

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It’s a little annoying when I go to the Farmer’s Market and there are seven thousand and three varieties of kale, and they’re all very pretty but they all look a little like something greenspeople plant by the thousands at Disneyland in Autumn rather than something I want to put on my plate, and you ask the farmer, “How do I eat this?” and he replies, “Like any kind of kale!”  Yeah, thanks.

But I guess that’s why I started this blog in the first place.  I don’t have cookbooks full of kale recipes, and even if I did it’s unlikely I’d have tried enough of them to be able to speak nonchalantly about them, like, “oh, of course, I’ll just whip up my Kale a la Bligadibong.”

This guy:

is technically called Redbor Kale, I think, but I like to call it Frilly Purple Kale, for obvious reasons.  He’s not red, for starters.  But he was pretty, and I need more iron in my diet and it’s a little hot for Kale Chips (what are Kale Chips you say?  Glad you asked!  Post on them coming up shortly…  Posted!) so I figured, why not?  Let’s try something new.

I thought a kale slaw of some kind might be nice, since kale is related to cabbage after all, but I couldn’t decide whether to go traditional mayo-type, or interesting peanut dressing, or something else entirely.  Finally, I settled on modifying this one for the main reason that it contained no red peppers which I’m not a big fan of.  In addition to being a lovely little side salad, I very much like that it’s vegan, which makes no difference to a bacon-lover like myself, really, except that bacon is always my go-to for bitter greens, and probably isn’t the healthiest counterpart.  More importantly, though, since it’s vegan that means no dairy, which means it can sit outside at a barbecue most of the afternoon and not poison my friends.  Score!

Kale Slaw with Toasted Walnuts

My changes:  I used 1 bunch Frilly Purple Kale and then at the last minute threw in 1/3-1/2 bunch of Curly Kale because it was in the fridge about to go bad and I didn’t think I had enough salad.  As an added bonus, however, the salad turned out much prettier with a little more variety of color, so I think I’ll do this in the future as well.  The recipe calls for just one large carrot, but I had 3-5 medium (again, about to go bad – end of the week fridge clean-out here) so I went with those instead.  And again, I recommend a little heavier on the carrot – it gives it a nice crunch.  I also wasn’t about to take the time to mince walnuts, so I took my good ol’ trusty bag of Walnut Halves and Pieces and just sort of crumbled them into more uniform sizes with my hands.  I probably ended up using more than the 1/4 c called for, but I also liked that I could actually taste them.  Minced seems…picayune.  But do take the time to toast them – toasting nuts brings out the flavor so you can use less, and the bit of warmth when they’re fresh out helps wilt the kale a bit.

  • 1 1/2 bunches Kale, preferably Frilly types because they’re prettier
  • 3-4 medium carrots – I like  to use multi-colored instead of just orange, again, for looks
  • 1/3 cup red wine vinegar, separated into 2 tbs + what’s left
  • 1/3 cup extra virgin olive oil, separated into 1 tbs + leftover
  • 1 tablespoon honey
  • ½ teaspoon ground ginger
  • 1 clove garlic, minced
  • ½ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
  • ¼ teaspoon sea salt, more to taste
  • 1/4 – 1/2 c crumbled walnuts (toasted)

First thing after washing, you’re going to want to get rid of this guy:That’s the center rib of each leaf.  I often skip this step when I’m cooking kale, but for raw kale salads, it’s just too fibrous and unappetizing.

The easiest way to remove that rib from Frilly Kale is to fold the leaf in half and just run the knife down the side of the stem.

Please don’t mock my knife skills.  I have none.  I’m amazed I haven’t lost a thumb yet.

Pull all the lovely leafy parts away and toss the ribs into the compost pile.

Line up your leaves and slice them into thin strips.  This will make a giant mess that will severely disappoint your dog when she races over to see what you are spilling all over the floor.

Now comes the kinky part.  Put your shredded greens (purples?) into a bowl, add 2 tbs red wine vinegar, 1 tbs olive oil, and some salt, and give it a massage.

That’s right, a massage.  Don’t just toss it people, rub it in.  That’s the key to eating raw kale.  Raw kale is a tough, somewhat bitter little bugger, and as a tough, somewhat bitter little bugger myself, I can tell you, the only thing that makes it palatable is softening it up through a good massage.  And doing dishes for it.  Oh wait, that’s just for me.

Give it a good 3 minutes of rubdown, working the dressing and salt in, and then let it sit.  Turn on some ocean sounds for it so it can really relax.

Meanwhile, start toasting walnuts on aluminum foil in toaster oven at 325 for 8-10 minutes.

Peel your carrots and remove the tough stem end and maybe a bit of the tip if your peeling skills stink and it’s got dirt on it still.  If you have a food processor, I recommend attempting to put your carrots through the grater because if it works it’s super-fast, looks much nicer, and gives you just a wee bit of crunch without making the salad all about the carrots.  But since my carrots were getting a little wiggly, it only worked on 2 of them, so I had to chop the last one into shredded carrot size by hand.  Pain in the patootie.  Lazy lazy people might just want to buy pre-shredded carrots from the grocery store and I wouldn’t blame you.

Toss the carrots with the now-placid kale.  With a whisk or blender, combine the remaining oil and vinegar, honey, ginger, S &P, and garlic – do use a fresh clove if you’ve got it instead of garlic powder; it makes a difference.  Toss the dressing into the salad.Take the toasty walnuts out of the oven and dump them into the salad – toss quickly and carefully – they will be hot.  You will accidentally burn your hands and may suck on your fingers on instinct and then have to remind yourself to wash your hands again before continuing to toss.  Not that I did that….  You may choose to let them cool first, like intelligent people probably do, but I actually like that the hot walnuts help the kale wilt just a little bit more – if you’re making this salad right before eating, that’s a good thing.  If it’s going in the fridge until tomorrow, it probably doesn’t matter.

I honestly love this salad – it’s good cold, it’s good room temp, it keeps well, and it’s a lot healthier than cole slaw or potato salad for summer barbecues.  Also, it’s pretty.  I like pretty.

Some General Kale Facts:

Trim? Not necessary if you’re cooking it, though often preferred – for this recipe, lose the center rib.
Edible when raw? Yes – it needs to be massaged or wilted slightly to reduce the toughness, but it’s lovely.
Worth the price of organic? Yes – greens are on most “Must Buy Organic” lists, kale in particular, frilly kales especially in particular because pesticides get trapped in the curves and frills.  Organic all the way.
Best with:  Kale in general is good with bacon, goat cheese, vinegars – strong flavors to help counteract the slightly bitter taste of the leaf.  I also like soy sauce, peanuts/peanut oil, teriyaki, and other Asian flavorings for the sweet/sour interplay.
In Season:  It likes a frost, so technically fall, winter and spring, but I’ve never NOT seen it for sale unless it’s been 100 degrees for a straight month.  If one variety of kale is gone, you can usually swap in another.
How to Store: A trick I learned from an Internet stranger on a forum for all greens – as soon as you get home, fill your sink with warmish water.  Soak your greens as you scrub them with your fingers to get the dirt off the stems.  Drain the sink, then refill with cold water – the warm water opens the plant pores so they’ll absorb more water; the cold closes them to prevent wilting.  Pat dry with paper towels or spin in a spinner and put in the fridge.  Kale is a nice hearty green that we’ve been able to keep around for as long as 2 weeks, but I wouldn’t count on longer than a week if you want to be able to use the whole thing without yellowing bits.