A Heads up on Fiddleheads

My foraging for fiddlehead ferns this year was limited to the grocery store. When last I attempted to procure some of these New England springtime delicacies for my cooking pot I didn't realize that the coiled-up new growth of several different varieties of fern can be eaten, but that many varieties are inedible and may in fact be poisonous, so I was a frustrated forager.

This time a survey of my two competing supermarket chains a few weeks ago turned up a small amount of fiddlehead ferns at $4.99 a pound. They had already been wrestled out of their fuzzy jackets and are so beautiful with their architectural lines and cool green color, that I had to buy some to cook up for a lovely supper side dish.

I got a pot of salted boiling water going at full tilt, and then steamed the fiddlehead coils for ten minutes, until they were fork tender. I then served them simply with a pat of butter. They taste a bit like asparagus, but with a more grassy, earthy flavor, redolent of the odors of walking in a cool, mossy forest. My husband and kids were not enamored, however, and commented on their resemblance to a certain variety of garden pest.



No matter. I ate them all up and savored every bite. Fiddleheads are supposed to be very nutritious when cooked (don't eat them raw, as they have certain toxins that need to be boiled off in the cooking water) and they are certainly one of the most beautiful vegetables one can behold on the plate. I am sharing this discovery of a new and gorgeous vegetable with Simona of Briciole, who is this week's host of Weekend Herb Blogging, a blog event that explores cooking with herbs, vegetables, fruits and flowers. Weekend Herb Blogging is now in its fourth year and is headquartered at Cook (Almost) Anything At Least Once.

Announcing My Legume Love Affair #20

The 20th edition of My Legume Love Affair (MLLA) is being hosted here at The Crispy Cook from today through February 28, 2010. This popular foodie event is the brainchild of Susan, The Well-Seasoned Cook, and was started to celebrate information and recipes about the edible members of the Fabaceae family (formerly Leguiminosae), most commonly known as legumes.


Legumes include a broad variety of beans, peas, pulses and other vegetables and leguminous by-products, and any of these can be featured in a MLLA submission, including: beans (fresh and dried), peas, tofu, black-eyed peas, tepary beans, lentils, chickpeas and chickpea flour (besan), fenugreek, peanuts, limas, favas, mung beans, and many other legume varieties.

To join in the MLLA fun you can submit a post featuring one of these legumes with a link to this post on The Crispy Cook and to Susan's blog here. Recipes submitted to other events are also permitted but recipes from one's blog archives can be accepted ONLY if updated and reposted as current.

There are two prizes to be awarded to a randomly generated winner. Susan is generously donating a copy of "The Pasta Bible" by Teubner, Rizzi and Lang to be sent worldwide. If the winner resides in the U.S., they will also receive a Hurst Bean Box - A case of six bags of the winner's choice of Hurst Bean products, suitable for every diet, donated by Hurst Bean. (Due to shipping restrictions, this prize can only be awarded if the winner is a U.S. resident.) Susan does not receive any product nor financial compensation for her arrangement with Hurst Bean to provide this prize supplement for My Legume Love Affair.

You may submit more than one recipe or blog post to MLLA #20 but only one submission will be considered for these prizes. Susan and I, and our family and friends are not eligible for the prize drawing.

Send your MLLA entry to me at: oldsaratogabooks At gmail dOt cOM, with an attached photo (250 pix wide preferred), your blog post URL and your location. I will post a roundup for MLLA #20 shortly after the deadline of February 28, 2010. Don't have a blog, but still want to join in the fun? Send my your information and I'll post it for you on The Crispy Cook.

For leguminous inspiration, you may want to check out some of the previous MLLA roundups or see one of my MLLA posts below:

Previously I have enjoyed contributing to this beany bonanza with recipes for

Zippy Black-Eyed Pea and Pasta Salad,

Red Noodle Beans (very fun to grow) and Tofu,

Fava Beans,

Spicy Roasted Chickpea Nibbles,

Black-Eyed Peas with Preserved Lemon,

Dan's Favorite Gluten-Free Veggie Burgers,

Rice Noodle Sushi Salad

Green Bean Bhajis.

I look forward to seeing what everyone will cook up for My Legume Love Affair this month!

A Spicy Kale Soup Recipe from a Centenarian Azorean

A bookseller colleague sent me an heirloom recipe many moons ago when we were chatting about our mutual love of cooking. She has a neighbor, a certain Mrs. Lewis, a native of the Azores, who was 102 years old and still cooking up wonderful things in her kitchen at the time my buddy sent on her recipe for Kale Soup. I like to think Mrs. Lewis is now 103 and still stirring up pots of this wonderful soup, which is a traditional favorite in Portugal and the Azores, an Atlantic chain of islands 900 miles west of Lisbon and a Portuguese Autonomous Region.

My hardy kale plants soldier on in the Crispy garden even under the snow and after enduring several bouts of freezing and thawing along the temperature scale. Kale is a super vegetable in terms of nutrition too. Kale is high in many great vitamins and nutrients, including betacarotene, Vitamins C and K, lutein and calcium, and it makes a hearty soup for these chilly days of deep winter in upstate New York.



I am reproducing this treasure of a recipe below verbatim, (**funny typos and all, you'll see) and will just note that in deference to my Crispy spouse, Dan, who eschews meat, I substituted 1 (12 oz.) package of Melissa's meatless soy chorizo, removed from its inedible casing, for the linguica sausage called for by Mrs. Lewis.



Mrs. Lewis' Kale Soup

4-6 cups water (depends on how many you're severing**)
1/2 cup chopped up onion
1 clove garlic
1 potato small
1/2 cup thin slice linguica
2 cups kale chopped
Salt to taste

Bring water, onion, garlic, salt and linguica to boil. Add greens and potato, cook until tender. Serve with bread. If you don't have linguica you can use salt pork and if you don't have meat use red beans.



This hearty recipe is my contribution to this week's edition of Weekend Herb Blogging. Weekend Herb Blogging is a weekly event that was started by Kalyn's Kitchen and has been organized by Cook (Almost) Anything At Least Once for the last year or so.

I am happy to report that I the host of WHB #218 this week and will be happy to accept recipes featuring plant ingredients (herbs, vegetables, fruits, seeds, stems, flowers, etc.) until Sunday, Jan. 31, 2010. Entries must be submitted by:

* 5 pm Sunday - New York City Time (EST)
* 3pm Sunday - Utah Time
* 10pm Sunday - London Time
* 11pm Sunday - Rome Time
* 9am Monday - Melbourne (Aus) DS Time.

Your post can be informative, spotlight a particular ingredient and/or include a recipe where your chosen ingredient is one of the primary ingredients in the recipe. WHB posts must be written specifically for this blog event and may not be cross-posted in other events.



If you have a great veggie recipe to share this week, please send your posts to oldsaratogabooks AT gmail DOT com with WHB#218 in the subject line and the following details:

Your name Your Blog/URL
Your Post URL
Your Location
Attach a Photo: 250px wide

Looking forward to seeing what's cookin' in your kitchen this week. I've already had several cool WHB submissions and can't wait for more to include in the roundup.

Fennel Two Ways: Fresh and Baked

The best recipes are often the simplest, and cooking with fennel seems to bear this out. The sweetness and delicate anise flavor of fresh fennel is a welcome note in our summer salads. We also enjoy simple salads of thinly sliced fennel dressed with a squeeze of lemon, a splash of olive oil and some salt and pepper (and don't forget to decorate with some snipped fennel fronds!)


I had great luck with my fennel crop this summer after hiding them from ravaging bunnies and voles amidst some spiky pumpkin vines and we enjoyed many delicious fennel salads. After perusing my winter seed catalogs and looking longingly at the fennel page, I recently splurged on some supermarket fennel and tried baking them, similarly dressed, in the oven. They were fantastic! Baked fennel is a meltingly luscious side dish. The anise flavor mellows and a richer roasted taste comes forth when the fennel is cooked, and it makes a wonderful accompaniment to grilled fish.

Fennel Going in the Oven


Simple but Sensational Baked Fennel

2 large bulbs of fennel
3 Tbsp. olive oil
Salt
Pepper
1 fat clove garlic, peeled and minced
1/4 cup grated Parmesan

Trim fronds and pithy stalks from fennel. Trim off bottom end. Chop into quarters. Toss with olive oil to coat. Add garlic and toss again to coat. Season with salt and pepper and sprinkle with Parmesan.

Place in casserole dish and cover with foil.

Bake at 375 degrees F for 20 minutes. Remove foil and bake another 10 minutes to let edges get CRISPY and browned.

Serves 4.


Fennel Coming Out of the Oven

I am sharing this recipe with Maninas: Food Matters, who is this week's host for Weekend Herb Blogging. Now in its 216th week (impressive!)this foodie blogging event started by Kalyn's Kitchen and now headquartered by Haalo at Cook (Almost) Anything At Least Once celebrates the fruits, herbs and vegetables that grace good cooks' tables all over the world.

I Heart Pumpkin: A Multiplicity of Gluten-Free Pumpkin Treats

I Heart Pumpkin. What a great bounty from the old pumpkin patch this year. I planted four hills of Rouge Vif d'Etampes, a French heirloom variety this year, and even after giving away pumpkins to various friends, I still have ten pumpkins adorning my kitchen floor (we have had our killing frost so my babies have to come inside).



After last weekend's pumpkin bonanza, where I got 16 cups of pumpkin puree out of a 30 lb. beauty that was almost as big as Cinderella's Coach, I cooked up a big batch of pumpkin treats for my family.

There was a moist and spicy loaf of Pumpkin Bread, which I studded with a cup of golden raisins:



And a couple of Impossible Pumpkin Pies using Susan the Fat-Free Vegan's great recipe. You mix up all the ingredients in a blender or food processor and then pour it into your pie pans. This pie comes out very custardy and makes its own crust on the bottom. No foolin' around with rolling out crumbling gluten-free crusts between waxed paper and then cursing while attempting to transition them into the pie pans.



Then came the roasted pumpkin seeds. They were so ridiculously easy to make, I wonder why I never tried them out. Here's what I did:

Roasted Pumpkin Seeds

Rinse and remove pumpkin flesh from seeds. Pat dry.

Toss with corn oil to coat, sprinkle with salt and pepper.

Place on lightly oiled cookie sheet and toast in a preheated 300 degree F oven and toast, stirring every 15 minutes, for about an hour.

Voila! A nutty, healthy treat!



This trio of pumpkin delights is being sent over to Life, Gluten Free, who is the current hostess of Go Ahead, Honey, It's Gluten Free, a monthly blog event started by Naomi at Straight into Bed Cakefree and Dried. The theme of this month's round is "Pumpkin Treats" and I look forward to the roundup for other autumnal cooking ideas as nine other pumpkins await me in the Crispy Kitchen. Life, Gluten Free will post the roundup after the end of October, so do join me in stopping by for a tasteful peek at some more pumpkin fun.

Mom's Cheesy Cauliflower Casserole

My mom always thoughtfully makes special dinners for our family when we come to visit, even though Dan's gluten-free diet makes her nervous. And the vegetarian part makes her crazy so she and her husband try to entice him into partaking of the meaty dishes on the table and convert him back to the carnivorous realm.

We had a sumptuous dinner at my mom's the other day and she made a terrific cheesy cauliflower casserole that we all devoured. Here's her great recipe:



Mom's Cheesy Cauliflower Casserole

1 head cauliflower, cut up into florets

1/4 cup gluten-free flour mix (Mom used Bob's Red Mill all-purpose)
3 Tbsp. unsalted butter
Pinch of salt
1 cup milk
1/3 cup sour cream
2 eggs
Grated Cheddar and smoked gruyere cheese (Mom says add as much as you like)

Steam cauliflower in boiling salted water until al dente.

Place in buttered baking pan.

Melt butter in saucepan. Whisk in flour. Add salt, sour cream, milk and eggs. Stir until creamy and until lumps are all gone. Add in cheese and stir until melted.
Pour over cauliflower in baking pan.

Bake at 350 degrees F for 1 hour, or until nice and bubbly and browned on top.

Makes 6-8 servings.

Baked Stuffed Busillus Frying Peppers

What a weird gardening year. After an inordinately slow start with our cooler and rainier than normal Spring and Summer, the Fall garden season has been balmy and today, October 7th, we have yet to have a killing frost. The always fertile zucchini plants keep pumping out produce, though the vines are somewhat withered, and my bell and frying pepper plants just keep fruiting away. The trees are just shy of the peak of autumn color, but we still have summer veggies. Just plain weird.

Faced with this autumnal abundance, we have been eating a lot of peppers and eggs, peppered tomato sauce, raw pepper strips, and packing egg and tuna salad into small hollowed-out peppers for breadless lunches. Not to mention those countless numbers of diced peppers cryogenically preserved in my chest freezer and which fly out to bonk us in the head every time we open the overhead freezer compartment in our refrigerator.



To keep up with this pepper bonanza, I decided to make some stuffed peppers. I have a gorgeous bunch of Busillus pepper plants which are still blossoming away. They are very faintly hot when cooked and they make my hands tingle slightly after I handle them, so people with sensitive skin should probably wear gloves. And try not to rub their eyes right afterward either.

Some of the Busillus Peppers are turning a glorious red, but most stay dark and glossy green. Despite their unfortunate name (doesn't Busillus sound like a pathogen?), they are a new favorite in our garden. They are incredibly productive and taste wonderful fried up with onions and garlic as the basis for other dishes, but I wanted to feature them (and use a good number of them up) in a casserole for supper, so I came up with this version of the classic rice-stuffed peppers.



It was a satisfying supper and was even better heated up as leftovers for successive lunches. The queso fresco cheese gets soft, but doesn't melt as much as other cheeses, so if you want a gooier stuffed pepper, you could substitute Monterey Jack. The herb patch is still green, so I harvested some fresh cilantro, plucked some homegrown garlic from the garden shed and got creative in the kitchen.



Baked Stuffed Frying Peppers

1-1/2 cups enchilada sauce, divided (check ingredients to make sure wheat is not added as a thickener)

12 oz. queso fresco

2 Tbsp. olive oil
1 onion, chopped
3 fat cloves garlic, peeled and chopped
2-3 extra frying peppers, seeded and chopped

12 large frying peppers, tops cut off, seeds and ribs removed, and slit up one side

1 bunch fresh cilantro, finely chopped (about 1/2 cup)
Salt and Pepper to taste
2 cups cooked rice (make up a bigger pot of rice to serve peppers over later, mmmmm)

Line a 9x13 inch baking pan with 1/2 cup enchilada sauce.

Bring a pot of salted water to a boil. Working in batches, blanch prepared peppers 4-5 minutes, or until skins are easily pierced with a fork. Drain and cool. Repeat with remaining peppers.

Cut queso fresco into wedges as below.



Heat oil in frying pan. Add garlic and cook, stirring, one minute. Add onion and chopped peppers and cook until softened, stirring occasionally, 7-8 minutes.

Add cooked vegetables to mixing bowl. Add rice, cilantro, and salt and pepper to taste. Mix in about 1/2 cup enchilada sauce to moisten. Stuff about 2 Tbsp. rice mixture into each blanched pepper. Place a wedge of cheese in the center and place in prepared baking dish. Drizzle peppers with remaining enchilada sauce. Cover baking dish with foil and bake in preheated 350 degree F oven for 45 minutes.

Serves 6 pepper lovers. Delicious over more plain cooked rice.



This seemed like the kind of recipe that would be enjoyed over at Weekend Herb Blogging, a weekly blog event run by Haalo of Cook (Almost) Anything At Least Once, where the focus is on the Vegetable Kingdom. This week WHB is being hosted by Susan the Well-Seasoned Cook, whose blog has lots of gorgeous photography and is the headquarters of My Legume Love Affair. Susan will have a roundup of all the Weekend Herb Blogging entries after Sunday's deadline, so be sure to swing by and see what everyone's playing around with in kitchens from around the world.

Putting A Monster in a Jar: Pickled Cauliflower

During this overly damp and cooler than normal growing season in upstate New York, we've had mixed success with our garden veggies. The zucchinis, beans, greens and cucumbers grew with tropical vigor, but other vegetables, like the tomato crop, suffered from the various viruses and pests that love wetter conditions.

We had a six-pack of cauliflower transplants in our garden and only two came to a head. But head they did. They were cauliflower whoppers and grew to be 14 inches in diameter. I used one earlier this summer over the course of a week, snagging florets for raw snacking, stir-frying others, and baking the rest with some grated knobs of cheese.

Then I was faced with another gargantuan cauli-monster and I thought of Dog Hill Kitchen's Gingered Sweet Pickled Cauliflower recipe. I've never canned with cauliflower, so I was eager to try out this recipe, which Dog Hill Mistress Maggie says is similar tasting to those jars of mixed vegetable pickles you sometimes see in the pickle aisle.



My monster cauliflower was thus preserved for winter months when our garden consists of a frozen, rabbit-gnawed couple of Brussels Sprouts stumps, topped with snow. I used a couple of Bucillus frying peppers from our garden instead of the prettier red chile pepper called for in Maggie's recipe, but otherwise, I was faithful in following this great (and long-bookmarked) recipe. Thank you Maggie!

I am submitting this pickled cauliflower post to Weekend Herb Blogging #199 which is being hosted by Mele Cotte. Weekend Herb Blogging is a weekly blog event that puts the spotlight on those members of the Vegetable Kingdom that sustain us, and is headquartered at Cook (Almost) Anything At Least Once.

Our First Garlic Harvest

Last Fall Dan and I were casting about looking for seed garlic to plant with no luck after many calls to garden stores, when my wise friend Linda gave me rhetorical thump on the head and suggested I just find some garlic at a farmer's market and plant the cloves. Of course! That's how people have planted garlic for eons before garden stores were invented. Duh.



We were late getting our cloves in the ground (November) but almost all of the garlic we planted raised their pointy green heads this Spring and we hovered over them, snipping off their scapes and checking the state of their advancement from the green to the yellow leaf spectrum. Some of the garlics were flopping over entirely, so after some consultation with Linda and her love, Leo, my personal Garlic Guru, who lives one garden zone south, I yanked up a few bundles to see how the bulbs were filling out.

Some heads of garlic were small, some were plump, but all looked ready to cure. I yanked them all out, tied then into clumps of 7 or 8 with twine and have them hanging in our open-ended garden shed. It's been a week of curing time now, and their formerly damp, purplish skins are turning into the papery white heads that I am used to with store-bought garlic.



My garlic investment has been rewarded six times over from the initial sack of garlic we planted, so I am very happy. It's an easy crop to grow, as I didn't really need to weed or water it much and my most voracious garden pests (voles, Japanese beetles, flea beetles, cutworms) don't seem to mess with the Stinking Rose.

I found some good information about harvesting garlic here at this website, although the authors gave me frights with their warnings about treating garlic like eggs and having only up to a week to harvest the garlic to avoid ruining your crop. I tried to avoid bruising the garlic and will pick the fattest, healthiest cloves to replant later this Fall. As they adapt to my soil and micro-climate, I should have some even plumper, more spectacular garlic in the years to come.

To celebrate my homegrown garlic harvest, I'd love to hear about any recipes or special ways of preparing my favorite Allium. Garlic, yum..........

Braised Tatsoi with Dried Oyster Mushrooms

It's been a rainy garden season here in upstate New York. Something about the jet stream dipping high into our part of the meteorological map, so we're getting a daily shower or two all summer long. It's great for the greens and everyone's flowers and lawns look lovely. But we have yet to have a red tomato, one of life's great garden pleasures. Even the cherry tomato plant has not produced anything except green marbles. I guess we need a blast of sunny days.

Here's a mini garden tour of what is exploding in a vegetable madness. We have lots of cilantro, dill, and other herbs, some Bachelor's Buttons (for the pollinators), and rows of mustard and other mixed greens which are flowering because I haven't gotten out there often enough to trim and eat them:





There are the first tiny yellow string beans, some kale and lots of pickling cucumbers which we've been slinging into salads and making into refrigerator pickles:



And then there are two beautiful rows of glossy tatsoi which have really enjoyed this rainy weather. Tatsoi is an Asian member of the Brassica family of vegetables and is a beautiful plant that produces a pretty rosette of dark green leaves on crunchy white stalks. It had a little problem with flea beetle damage when the plants were small, but it shot up quickly after that little setback and we have tons to harvest now. I previously shared a recipe for Tatsoi with Mushrooms and Indian Spices and now have another recipe which used up a packet of dried oyster mushrooms we had in the pantry.



Braised Tatsoi with Dried Oyster Mushrooms

3 heads tatsoi (makes about 5 cups of leaves)

1 oz. dried oyster mushrooms
1 cup boiling water

1 Tbsp. cornstarch
1 tsp. sesame oil
2 tsp. soy sauce

3 cloves garlic, peeled and chopped
1 (one inch) piece gingerroot, peeled and minced

2 Tbsp. Peanut oil

Separate tatsoi into leaves. Rinse and soak tatsoi several times to remove all dirt. Trim stems and let drain in colander.

Cover dried mushrooms with 1 cup boiling water and let soak 10 minutes. When mushrooms are soft, remove them and crush them in your hands to remove moisture. Chop fine and set aside. Reserve mushroom liquid.

Mix cornstarch, sesame oil, and soy sauce together in small bowl. Add in 2 tsp. reserved mushroom liquid and blend into a paste. Reserve this sauce for stir-frying later.

Heat wok or large skillet over high heat. Add peanut oil and heat 1-2 minutes. Add garlic and ginger, stirring, and saute 1-2 minutes, taking care not to let garlic burn. Add tatsoi and cook, stirring, to coat leaves with oil. Let wilt down a bit, about 3-4 minutes of cooking time.

Add remaining reserved mushroom liquid and chopped mushrooms and bring to a boil. Lower heat, cover wok, and let simmer until tatsoi is tender, another 4-5 minutes.

Remove cover, add sauce ingredients and cook, stirring, until sauce thickens. Season with additional soy sauce if needed and serve hot.

Makes 4-5 servings. Great over rice for a quick vegetarian dinner.



This recipe is being submitted to Anna's Cool Finds for Weekend Herb Blogging #194. This weekly blogging event celebrates members of the Vegetable Kingdom and was started three years ago by Kalyn's Kitchen. It is now headquartered at Cook (Almost) Anything At Least Once.

My Legume Love for Fava Beans

The fresh fava bean is a legume I have heard people swoon over and certainly Hannibal Lecter's infamous comment about them pairing well with liver and a nice Chianti in the book and film "The Silence of the Lambs" is arresting, so they have long "bean" on my list of vegetables to try out in the Crispy Garden. The seeds are huge: as big as my thumb and look as magical as any fairy tale bean, so they were easy enough to plant.

The plants are unusual and lovely as well. They grow fast into crunchy, squared off stalks with graceful leaves and black and white blossoms.



Unfortunately, as soon as the plants started to blossom, regiments of black aphids invaded, with accompanying camp followers of ants to stroke their adbdomens for some sort of insect "honey". They must have taken Lecter's culinary advice, because they were all over the delicate tips of my fava plants and I couldn't really squish them off without hurting the plants. I tried blasting them with water, but again, the fava tips are somewhat delicate, so I had this black blight on some of my fava beans when they developed their large seed pods. They come right out of the stalk of the plant, so this is truly an unusual looking vegetable to have in the garden.



The yield from one packet of seeds was not huge, but I did harvest one colander's worth of fava pods. They are very cute legumes, all snug in their downy sleeping bag pods. It is somewhat laborious wrestling them from these coccoons, sort of like waking up a teenager on a dark winter's morning. You can't just split open the pod and shake out the beans, like one does with fresh peas, as the pods are very fibrous and the favas each have a tough little umbilicus that one has to snap individually with a fingernail. After my wrestling match, my colander's worth of produce had shrunk down to 2 cups of favas.



Now I had still one culinary prep step to go with my favas. The bigger beans have a tough membrane that needs to be slipped off, so I prepared a hot and salty water bath for my favas and blanched them for 5 minutes. After they cooled, I again had a laborious project of attempting to slip off their skins, which worked on the bigger beans, but which only served to smash up my smaller favas, so in the end, I left the membranes on the smaller ones.



From two rows of fava plants to one colander of bean pods, now I had only one cup of precious, delicious, buttery favas. Such green gold must be accorded the finest treatment, so I hovered over cookbooks, cooking websites, perused my friend Linda's multiple fava recipe emails (she had been over for a garden tour earlier) and ended up making a simple, but luscious sauteed fava topper for some pasta.

It's a simple recipe: I heated some olive oil in a skillet, sauteed a few cloves of sliced garlic, seasoned with salt and pepper and added my favas for the last couple of minutes to heat through and then added this green crown to our bowls of pasta with some slivered fresh basil for an elegant Spring supper. Legume love indeed.

I'll have to consider planting favas again in another garden season. While the plants were gorgeous, if aphidious, the harvest was somewhat meager. I enjoyed picking them and cooking them, but it does seem unproductive to end up with one cup of edible greens after all that time and effort. Sort of like trying maple syrup production when one has only one tree.

Perhaps if I can research aphid control, it would make sense to grow them again if I could grill them in their pods as per this delectable recipe for Grilled Fava Pods with Chile and Lemon, and avoid the arduous shelling. I (with Linda's guidance) also noticed some other tasty recipes for favas which intrigued me for the future: Saute of Fresh Favas with Onions and Fennel, Tagliatelle with Favas and Romano, and Persian Sabzi Polo.

My kitchen and garden experiments with fava beans seem like a good submission for one of my favorite monthly food blog events, My Legume Love Affair, the brainchild of Susan, The Well-Seasoned Cook, which is being hosted this round by TongueTicklers. You can join in the fun by submitting a post about your favorite legume to TongueTicklers by July 31st. There are even a couple of prizes involved, including a cookie cook book and a collection of dried beans, so be sure to check out the MLLA Event this month.

The Return of the Green Lance: Braised with Ginger

Previously, I filled you all in on a new resident in our garden, the Green Lance, a hybrid Chinese broccoli variety (also called gai laan, spelled various ways). It is a very attractive Spring vegetable, a cruciferous family member that sets up a fleshy stalk that one cooks after there are several flowering buds. Inspired by the superhero name, I pounced upon some Green Lance recently



and harvested some more stalks to cook up in the Crispy Kitchen. The stalks definitely were woodier after some toughening in the early summer sun, so I would peel them at the base like one does to asparagus next time. I braised them with lots of slivered fresh ginger after learning a little bit about traditional Chinese cooking and the medicinal properties of various foods in "The Last Chinese Chef" by Nicole Mones. This book is the current selection of the foodie book club, Cook the Books, hosted this round by Deb of Kahakai Kitchen. If you would like to join us in reading this book and cooking up something inspired by your reading, check out the Cook the Books blog. The deadline for reading and blogging about our current book is August 28.

Anyway, we like the flavor of the Green Lance and it was braised up with some ginger to reduce the "wind" that has been causing various members of the Crispy Casa to sneeze and get congested during this damp and cool summer.

Green Lance Braised with Fresh Ginger

1 bunch Green Lance (or gai laan or Chinese broccoli), woody parts trimmed and sliced into one inch sections

2 Tbsp. peanut oil
2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
1 (1 inch) piece gingerroot, peeled and slivered

2 Tbsp. soy sauce
1 Tbsp. sesame oil


Heat oil in wok until very hot. Add garlic and stir constantly for one minute. Add ginger and stir 1-2 minutes more, or until very fragrant.

Add Green Lance and stir-fry 3-4 minutes. Add 1/4 cup water and cover wok to steam another 5 minutes, stirring once or twice. Remove cover and add soy sauce and garlic and stir-fry another several minutes, or until Green Lance is tender.

Serves 4.




Haven't been blogging as much as I have been gardening and working hard at the bookshop (it's our busy season) but I will return soon with more gardening/cooking posts and a fuller Cook the Books post about "The Last Chinese Chef", which was a terrific read. It made me want to explore Chinese cooking and try out some new kitchen techniques, so stay tuned. And you never know when the Green Lance might just show up again.....

The Green Lance: A Captivating Asian Vegetable

One of the delights of living in the Great Northeast is cuddling up in winter next to the fireplace with a hot mug of tea and a pile of seed catalogues. The kitchen gardener dreams of resplendently tangled beds of vegetables and herbs when the warmer weather rolls around again and it makes for many a pleasant reverie. One of the vegetables that caught my fancy this past catalogue season was the Green Lance, an Asian vegetable also known by many aliases, such as Gail Lohn, Pak Kah Nah, Chinese Kale or Chinese Broccoli.

I was captivated by the comic book name, the short growing season (50 days) and the description of its taste as being somewhere along the broccoli-asparagus spectrum. Yum yum. I got my seeds from Johnny's Selected Seeds and planted them during the cooler Spring weather and am now harvesting my first crop of this tasty, hardy vegetable. I waited until I had a couple of flowering stalks and then cut the plant down to a long stub, as I will hopefully have a future crop of smaller side shoots in a few weeks.

The plant itself is very attractive with long spears and elegant little florettes on top. A couple of white blossoms opened, so I knew I better get out my knife and harvest a bouquet of Green Lance to cook up for dinner.



Somehow, I don't have any cookbooks with recipes for cooking up my beautiful Green Lances, so I just did a simply stir-fry, served over rice, for my inaugural experiment with this elegant vegetable. I am not clear as to whether one should just cook the stems and flower buds, and not the leaves too, but I went ahead and we munched on all three with equal relish. I did find some other Green Lance cooking ideas listed at this informative post from a Santa Barbara, CA restaurant, so look for some more recipes in the future from yours truly as I harvest and experiment later in the garden season.

Stir-Fried Green Lance with Black Beans

1 bunch Green Lance (5 fat stems with buds), chopped into 1 inch sections
2 fat cloves garlic, peeled and sliced
1 Tbsp. peanut oil
1 tsp. fermented black beans, rinsed and drained and coarsely chopped

Heat oil in heavy pan. Add garlic slices and cook, stirring, one minute.

Add Green Lance and stir until stems are crisp-tender, about 3 minutes. Add black beans and stir another 2 minutes. Even the fattest stems are tender after this cooking time, although later in the season, when the plant's skin is thicker, I may have to adjust the cooking time.

Serves 2.


I know I will be enjoying this tasty veggie many more times and will definitely grow it again in the Crispy Garden. It was very easy to grow, and despite a little damage from cutworms and flea beetles, there were so many seedlings in the row I planted that we will have a more than abundant crop, particularly if the side shoots start popping out in the hotter summer weather.

This post will be shared at the always fun, always informative blog event Weekend Herb Blogging, hosted this week by Erbe in Cucina. This bilingual blog hails from Italy, and is a great resource for gardening and culinary information about a rainbow of herbs. Weekend Herb Blogging is the brainchild of Kalyn's Kitchen and is now headquartered at the Australian food blog, Cook (Almost) Anything At Least Once.

The Spring Garden 2009

Ah, Spring... Time to play in the dirt and walk around the yard barefoot. The birds have started sitting on their eggs and the first herbs and vegetables are arriving onto our dinner plates. We've already had a couple of meals of our own asparagus and have reveled in the fresh tastes of dill, oregano, chives, thyme and even a few surprise cilantro plants popping up in the garden beds.

I am a first-time garlic grower, and have been hovering over the cloves planted last November. They are green and vigorous and managed to survive a weird winter of freezing and thawing and an onslaught of meadow voles, so I see some garlic scape pesto and garlands of dried garlic in my future.



Every year I try to add a few new herbs and vegetables to my repertoire. Last year I tried leeks, but was foiled by those voracious voles who chomped down on my tender baby leek bulbs in a sneaky subterranean assault. I also planted Anise Hyssop from seed and didn't really see much action there, but this Spring a luxurious little shrub of this herb has unfurled and I look forward to harvesting its leaves for tea. If anyone out there has some other culinary or medicinal information about Anise Hyssop, please leave a comment below.



New to the Crispy Cook's kitchen garden this year is a lovely legume I've always wanted to try, based on the raves I've heard about fresh fava beans. The seeds were huge, like magic beans, and have sprouted into very robust bean seedlings, so I have high hopes for actually consuming some later in the season. Again, any fava bean recipes and tips gratefully appreciated. I have heard that steaming the fresh favas and then slitting open their skin and serving them forth with shavings of Pecorino cheese is divine, so I'll keep you posted. I also have a recollection that they go well with liver and a nice Chianti, but that could be hearsay.



Another new inhabitant in the Crispy Garden this year is Green Lance, a variety of Asian green residing somewhere along the kale-broccoli continuum. Green Lance is supposed to grow up to be a thick-stemmed, flowering cruciferous vegetable that likes to be steamed and stir-fried, so voles and cutworms willing, we will dine on them next month.



Memorial Day Weekend is the traditional day of planting the more tender veggies in our area. We just had a frost last week, so I am holding off on sticking the tomato plants out just yet, but when I am off tomorrow, it will time to get muddy toes and fingers planting string beans and zucchini.

With visions of sugar snaps dancing in my head....

Foraging up some Spring Tonic with Dandelions and Fiddleheads

My dog Martha and I headed out in the alfalfa fields behind our house to stretch our six legs on a glorious, if windy, Spring afternoon last week, and while we were puddle-hopping off into the forest line (it is the height of Mud Season, that fifth part of the year packed in between the six months of Winter and three weeks of Spring that we get in the Northeast) I spied some lovely coiled ferns getting ready to unfurl. I picked a generous handful to bring back to the Crispy Kitchen dreaming of steaming them up for an elegant pasta topper.

When I got home and perused my home library, I found I was once again foiled in my efforts to snag a free meal from the great outdoors. Last year, my trusty Nettle hunting hound and I gathered stinging nettles much too late in the season to make them palatable and it seems my impromptu fiddling with ferns needed further research as well.

I assumed fiddlehead ferns were a variety of fern, when in fact there are several edible ferns which one can harvest, some of which cause FOOD POISONING. Plus, you are supposed to scout out your fiddlehead patch the summer before when you can correctly identify the fern species from their height, leaf patterns and seeds.

Reading of my copy of Stalking the Blue-Eyed Scallop by the late Forager King Euell Gibbons stated that the bracken fern was edible and delicious raw or cooked. I thought I probably had collected the tips of the bracken fern, the most common fern in our area, which Euell said were covered with a "rusty, cottony felt" when then emerged in the Spring. They certainly were sweatered up and it took a laborious and incomplete removal of their fuzzy bits by rubbing them with my fingers. After reading here that ingesting raw bracken ferns are linked to stomach cancer (I'll have to research what Euell died from) I decided to nibble on cooked fiddlheads only.



I got a small pot of lightly salted water going on the stove and boiled them up until they were tender, hoping the remnant fuzz would fall off, which it didn't. I then scarfed up two ferny bits and found them unbearably bitter and hairy, so into the compost bucket they went.

All was not lost however, when I went back out into the sunshine to root out some young dandelion greens (you gotta get 'em before they flower or they are too milky and bitter) from my garden beds and lawn. Many, many cold water rinses and hand pickings later, I had 2 cups of springy, tangy greens to saute up with some garlic and oil and toss with last night's leftover rice for a Spring Tonic lunch for the hubby and I. And it was a delicious success!

Here's my easy recipe for a Somewhat Free Lunch:



Spring Tonic Dandelions and Rice


2 cups fresh, young dandelion greens, washed and picked over carefully

2 cloves garlic, peeled and finely chopped

2 Tbsp. olive oil

3 cups cold cooked rice

Salt and pepper to taste

2 tsp. cider vinegar

Heat oil in frying pan. Add garlic and cook, stirring, 2 minutes, or until golden. Add dandelions and cook down, stirring often, about 5 minutes. Add cider vinegar, and season to taste with salt and pepper.

Toss in cooked rice and stir until heated through, adding a splash more of olive oil if needed.

Makes 2 hearty and supremely satisfying servings.

I am submitting this post to the Grow Your Own event started by Andrea's Recipes and which is being hosted this month by House of Annie. This fun event rounds up posts about foods grown, foraged, fished, and hunted up by great cooks around the world, so be sure to check back after May 1st at House of Annie to see an always-interesting roundup.

Cook the Books: A Vegetable Navarin Inspired by Kitchen Confidential

The third book selection for the bimonthly foodie book club, Cook the Books, is Anthony Bourdain's dishy, entertaining and often over-the-top memoir, Kitchen Confidential". Jo in Athens, Greece, the blogger extraordinaire at Food Junkie, not Junk Food, is the current hostess in the lineup that includes yours truly, and Deb the adventurous foodie at Kahakai Kitchen in Honolulu. Jo picked a great book to "sink our teeth into" and one which I had read several years back and enjoyed as much again on the second reading.

Kitchen Confidential inspired a mini publishing boom among other restaurant chefs and food industry types, and I have read many, but Bourdain's vivid prose and no hold's barred writing style makes him the king of the kitchen confessional. He has written a couple of foodie/Mafioso novels, but it's his non-fiction that is the most striking. I have a review of his book, Nasty Bits, Hooves and Snouts over at the Book Trout if you want to sample more of his essays about various cuisines, food trends and restaurants.

For Cook the Books, readers are asked to come up with a blog post and dish inspired by the current book pick. There were many luscious French and Italian foods which Bourdain describes in Kitchen Confidential which I thought about making, including a CRISPY grilled whole fish, and I also toyed with the idea of actually making a luscious brunch spread that didn't just consist of chopped up bits of leftovers from the weekend dinner rush, but ultimately, I found that a passing reference to the complicated garnishes for a lamb navarin that clog up Bourdain's "meez" (mise en place) to be the impetus for my Cook the Books dish.

Since the Crispy Husband shies away from eating meat, making him one of "the enemy of everything good and decent in the human spirit, and an affront to all I stand for, the pure enjoyment of food" (Bourdain's meat-crazed, provocative definition of a vegetarian), I searched out a Vegetable Navarin recipe. I found an elegant Spring Vegetable Navarin here, but without fresh fava beans (just planted some in the Crispy Garden this week!)and other baby spring vegetables available in the local markets yet, I tweaked the recipe a bit to make do with what was in the larder.

A navarin is a French culinary term for a stew that traditionally incorporates lamb, herbs, potatoes and spring vegetables. The object is to infuse the stew with all the flavors, colors and textures of the produce without overcooking them, so it was a fun project to attempt during a luxuriously unhurried weekend afternoon. The result was quite delicious and I would even have offered a soup plateful up to Monsieur Bourdain if he had shown up at my door. I think he might even have liked it, meatlessness notwithstanding.




Spring Vegetable Navarin

6 medium turnips, stem and root tip trimmed off and cut into six or eight wedges

2 cups fresh string beans, trimmed and cut into 1 inch lengths

Butter

3 shallots, peeled and diced

3 cups vegetable broth

1-1/2 lbs. red potatoes, cut into six or eight wedges

1 cup baby carrots, cut into 1/2 inch chunks

3 fat leeks, trimmed and washed carefully to remove silt, then cut into 2 inch strips

1-1/2 cups frozen petit pois

4 Tbsp. snipped fresh chives
2 Tbsp. Italian parsley, finely chopped
Salt and pepper to taste


++++Be prepared to wash a lot of cooking vessels for this luscious dish, but it's worth it!+++++++

Bring 3 cups of lightly salted water to a boil in a medium saucepot. Place steamer basket full of cut up turnips and bring back to a boil. Cover and steam until tender, about 10 minutes.

Remove steamer basket and dump turnips into a colander. Rinse with cold water and let drain and cool.

Place steamer basket back in saucepot and add string beans. Bring to a second boil and cover and steam 5 minutes, or until crisp-tender.

Remove steamer basket and dump beans into colander. Rinse with cold water to stop cooking and let drain and cool with the turnips.

Heat 3 Tbsp. butter in large, heavy-bottomed saucepot. Add shallots and saute until lightly browned, stirring often, about 8-10 minutes. Add vegetable broth and potatoes. Bring to a boil, cover and reduce heat to a simmer. Simmer 8-10 minutes.

Add carrots and leeks and simmer, covered, until carrots and potatoes are tender, about 10 minutes.

Add in steamed turnips and string beans, frozen petit pois, and salt and pepper to taste. Cook, uncovered, another 5-10 minutes, or until all vegetables are tender and broth is slightly reduced. Add in chives and parsley, reserving some to garnish each serving. Add an additional tablespoon or two of butter, if broth is not rich enough. Optional garnish of dried cow hoof (available in better pet food stores) for carnivorous rock star writer guests.

Be sure to check back at the Cook the Books blog to see the roundup of all the blog posts, book reviews and cool recipes that Jo will be putting together for us after the April 25th deadline.

Weekend Herb Blogging #180 Announcement

I am honored to be the host of Weekend Herb Blogging #180. Weekend Herb Blogging is a food blog event that focuses on recipes and informational posts featuring herbs, vegetables and other plant ingredients. Haalo of Cook (Almost) Anything At Least Once is the coordinator of Weekend Herb Blogging and you can find out more about the event, who some upcoming guest hosts will be, as well as WHB roundup archives on her site.

Here are the rules for submitting an entry:

1. Entries to Weekend Herb Blogging must be posts written specifically for Weekend Herb Blogging. This means they cannot be cross-posted in other events.

2. Weekend Herb Blogging entries should have the goal of helping people learn about cooking with herbs or plant ingredients.

Only two types of entries will be accepted:
* Recipe posts where a herb or plant ingredient is one of the primary ingredients in the recipe
* Informative posts that spotlight one herb or plant ingredient, particularly including information about how they are used in cooking.
Naturally, posts can be a combination of both these criteria.

3. Posts must contain the phrase Weekend Herb Blogging with a link to the host for that week (The Crispy Cook) and to Cook (Almost) Anything at Least Once.

4. The posts may be written anytime during the week but you must email me with your submission at oldsaratogabooks AT gmail Dot com with WHB in the subject line by Sunday, April 26, 2009, 5 pm Eastern Standard Time. I will endeavor to have the roundup posted the next day.

5. In your email please include the following information:

* Your Name
* Your Blog Name/URL
* Your Post URL
* Your Location
* Attach a photo (250 pixels wide maximum)


You can catch last week's informative roundup which featured Rose Vinegar, Asparagus Souffled Omelet, Tanglad Juice, Stuffed Zucchini Flowers, Prickly Pears and Cabbage with Fresh Coconut, among other deliciousness in the tasty spread hosted by The Cabinet of Professor Kitty.

For my entry this week, I was inspired by reading Donna Leon's wonderful Venetian mysteries featuring the philosophical and stout-hearted Inspector Guido Brunetti. He is always in search of real truth and justice for the victims of the murders he investigates, despite the corruption swirling around the police and government offices, the grinding criminal justice system and his suspicious and vainglorious boss. Brunetti is enamored with his wife and children, his history books and his meals, which often are preceded by a glass of Prosecco. I searched out a bottle of this sparkling white wine and Dan and I enjoyed it while I prepared a version of Zucchini Trifolati, as mentioned in one of the most recent Brunetti books I inhaled.

I typically saute up coins of zucchini with garlic and basil and tomatoes from the garden all through August and September, but this time I wanted to try slicing my zucchini into thin ribbons with a vegetable peeler to make the dish a little differently and it was terrific. The zucchini gets soft and slippery almost like a noodle and cooks up very quickly. In this dish, I used slow-roasted tomatoes from last year's garden that were thawed from our freezer, so they added a nice rich flavor, but you could use canned plum tomatoes as a substitute.

Zucchini Trifolati

2 medium zucchinis, ends trimmed, cut in half widthwise, and then peeled into ribbons with a vegetable peeler (see photo below)



5 cloves garlic, peeled and sliced
2 Tbsp. olive oil
1 cup roasted tomatoes (or drained meaty canned plum tomatoes)
2 Tbsp. basil leaves, rough chopped (mine came from the freezer)
Salt and pepper to taste
Grated Romano cheese for garnish

Heat olive oil in medium skillet. Add garlic and cook, stirring 2 minutes, or until golden. Add tomatoes and stir around 2-3 minutes. Add zucchini ribbons and cook, stirring often, about 5 minutes, or until nutty and crisp-tender. Season with salt and pepper and garnish with cheese.

Serves 4 as a side dish.

This is my contribution to Weekend Herb Blogging #180. I have already received some entries for this always-flavorful, always-delicious, foodie event, so feel free to join in the fun by the April 26 deadline.

Turning Cabbage into Cole Slaw, Memphis-Style

When it is winter in upstate New York, local fresh produce is in short supply, but one thing you can always count on is the trusty Cabbage. They are good keepers and you can eat them raw or cooked, but please don't overcook them because their delicate texture and flavor will be wrecked. So many people hold their noses about eating cabbage because of bad experiences with slimy, swampy-smelling cabbage that results from overcooking.

I was excited when I saw that my blogger buddy Simona of Briciole was hosting the latest round of Fresh Produce of the Month featuring my favorite cruciferous vegetable (actually I love all those cabbagey types: brussels sprouts, cauliflower, kale, bok choy, tatsoi, mustard greens, etc.)

I am just squeaking in on the last day for this Brassica blog event, so you'll have to wait until the next featured fruit or vegetable is announced to participate, but look for Simona's cabbage-filled roundup after today's deadline.

I was inspired to make a different kind of cole slaw for my cabbage entry. I usually like to make my Grandma's cole slaw recipe (shredded cabbage, carrots, and onion in a mayonnaise dressing) or an Asian-style slaw (rice vinegar dressing) but I thought I would give a Southern-style mustardy Memphis cole slaw recipe a whirl after examining this recipe. I grated my own cabbage and carrots, but otherwise followed this recipe, which calls for salting the veggies to release some liquid and then adding a spicy boiled dressing. It proved to be a hit with my Crispy gang, and I was unable to snatch it away for a sexy foodie photo before most was consumed, hence this rather forlorn shot below.



Be sure to tune into Briciole in the next week to catch the full Cabbage Catalogue, or as Simona translates into Italian: Verdura Fresca del Mese: cavolo.

Culinary Trip Around the World: Poland

Joan at Foodalogue came up with the brilliant idea to plan A Culinary Tour Around the World event both to sample the world's cuisines and to promote BloggerAid, a new consortium of food bloggers united to raise awareness and funds for world hunger. Last time, I traveled with Joan to Norway, where unfortunately I was blinded by the whiteness of the food, but now we journey to Poland, my husband's paternal grandfather's home land. While Dan never sampled much Polish food at home as his family, like many other immigrant families at that time, wanted to be as Americanized as possible, we do know a few Polish phrases like "Dah me boozhie" (Give me a kiss) that his grandfather passed on.

I had some cabbage (kapusti) in the vegetable crisper and thought I'd try some sauteeing it up with mushrooms and dill seed for some Polish flavor. The recipe turned out to be a toothsome one and I paired it with some plain steamed rice for a simple dinner, as I had a fancy Polish cake to pull out for dessert.



Sauteed Cabbage a la Polska

1 half head of green cabbage, core removed and chopped coarsely
1/2 lb. mushrooms, cleaned and sliced
4 Tbsp. butter
Salt and pepper to taste
2 tsp. dill seed

Melt butter in large skillet. Add mushrooms and saute, stirring occasionally, 5 minutes. Add cabbage and saute, stirring, another 10-15 minutes, until softened, adding water if skillet becomes dry. Add dill seeds and season with salt and pepper to taste, and cook, covered, another 5 minutes to let cabbage steam up and become tender.

Serves 4 as a side dish.

Now, I had high hopes for my Polish dessert. I have a newly acquired cookbook, "Ultimate Cake" by Barbara Maher (NY: Dorling Kindersley, 1996), which, like the other DK publications, has clear photos and lots of them, to illustrate all different kinds of cakes and baking techniques. I was flipping through it and my caught on a Polish Coffee and Walnut Cake recipe which was virtually gluten-free, so I thought I would attempt making it, despite the fact that there were about a twenty different steps to its fabrication.

In the last book I read, Diana Abu-Jaber's "The Language of Baklava" (for the Cook the Books club), the author describes the great divide which separates cooks and bakers: "Cooks are dashing, improvisational, wayward, intuitive; bakers are measured, careful, rational, precise." I am a cook and when I tackle being a baker it takes great restraint in following instructions exactly, measuring precisely and not deviating on some cooking tangent. I was determined to make this complicated Polish treat without doing anything different other than subbing some gluten-free breadcrumbs for the tablespoon of bread crumbs called for in the recipe.

And so, with Ms. Maher's detailed cookbook instructions and lavish illustrations, I:

-Separated and whipped egg yolks and whites
-Prepared a Coffee Mousseline Buttercream Icing
-Made Simple Syrup and Coffee-Flavored Sugar Syrup
-Concocted Apricot Glaze
-Made Coffee Glace Icing
-Sliced a Cake into Layers

It took me the better part of two afternoons to do all these steps in my fabulous dessert and I enjoyed learning some new baking skills. However, this story ends badly at the very final step, when after brushing my split nut torte with apricot glaze and letting that dry, I attempted to "coax" my coffee glace icing over the top of my cake and down the sides. As much as I tried to coax this frosting over my cake, it kept bunching at the top and pulling at the glaze, which in turn, pulled at the top layer of crumbs from the cake. Granted, my cake was a little (alright, a lot) lumpier than the model cake in the cookbook photo, but this kept my Polish cake from becoming the gloriously beautiful dessert I had slaved for.

Nonetheless, my culinary Polska Palooza proved to be a hit with my family, as we all enjoyed the humble cabbage dish and ate my less-than-perfect cake, as it was still awesomely tasty.



I hope to join Joan on some of her other stops along her Culinary Tour of the World. Next up is Germany, which is another cuisine I'm not entirely familiar with, so I will have to go forth and research their traditions before attempting a Teutonic feast. One thing is for sure, I am not going to try any fancy cakes!