Archive for July, 2010

Fresh Pea Soup with Pea Jelly

July 12, 2010

Because I have so much food to share and because I haven’t posted many recipes lately, I am kicking off a week of posting everyday.  I also happen to have a husband out of town and a week with no food event in sight, so I have a few spare minutes to write and share.  If I don’t set the goal for myself, it will never happen.  So I hope you’re hungry!

Let’s start with pea soup, shall we?  My brother Michael is dating a young woman who I really like.  She happens to be a terrific photographer and she sold a photo to a magazine.  (Thankfully, she is not a food photographer – otherwise I would feel really embarrassed around her.)  She wanted to celebrate and offered to take him out to dinner.  She is a vegetarian and, rather than watching her suffer through yet another pasta or risotto in a restaurant, he suggested they come to my house.  Cute, right?  I was touched and planned a special menu.

I’ve been eying the recipe for these little pea squares ever since I bought Maria Elia’s The Modern Vegetarian.  If you want to make a special meal to impress, this is a terrific book to explore. Vegetarian cookbooks often fall into predictable patterns.  You will see a ratatouille, recipes using polenta, tians, pasta dishes.  Not this one.  How about Watermelon Curry with Black Beans and Paneer?  Or Fresh Borlotti Bean Cassoulet?  Every recipe is interesting and different.  Not a lot of quick and easy, but really special food.

High on my list of all time favorite foods in the entire world is fresh English peas – also called shelling peas.  One of my earliest food memories is opening up one of the pods and delighting in the peas’ green sweetness.  I have to tell you that is still how I like them best.  Just fresh, raw, and straight out of the pod.  I do occasionally use them in small batches barely cooked. An example would be added to a risotto or a spring vegetable stew at the last minute, just enough to soften them the slightest bit.  But I would never use them in a soup for several reasons.  (You may be nodding your head and saying, “Yes, let’s get on with it Dana”, in which case skip ahead.)

They are expensive for the yield.  The cheapest I ever see these guys is about $3 a pound and sometimes as high as $6.  A pound of English peas includes the pods so you need to buy 2-3 pounds to get 1 pound of actual peas.  Not cost effective for soup.

They take a lot of time to prepare. For something that takes less than a minute to cook, they are a lot of work to shell.  It is easy and meditative work to do, but still.

They aren’t as tasty as frozen. Now don’t cry blasphemy!  A fresh and perfect pea is about as good as it gets.  But so many of them are not perfect.  They have grown too big so the sugar has turned to starch and your gorgeous pea tastes a little like cardboard.  Those guys in the freezer section are flash frozen right after picking so they are almost all sweet.

I always have bags of peas in my freezer and they are definitely what work best in this soup. Ivermectin for sale   I’ve made other versions of fresh pea soup before and really it’s hard to go wrong.  You add a bit of onion, some stock and some herbs, but otherwise you just allow the pure flavor of peas to come through.  This recipe has the ingenious idea to hold back some of the peas until just before pureeing so the soup doesn’t go all split pea color on you.  It stays nice and green.  Love little ideas like that.

Elia calls these Pea Jelly and I think they are sheer genius.  They are very easy to make and look pretty spectacular against this soup, or anything else come to think of it.  Next time, I will make them in a smaller and deeper container so they are even more cube-like for better visual appeal.  So often fancy garnishes disappoint in the taste department but not this one.  It is the pure essense of peas and tarragon – a wonderful combination.  I served the soup with these and then promptly ate every speck of leftover.

One last note.  I’m a bit Goldilocks when it comes to pea soup.  Too cold and the delicate flavor gets totally muted.  Too hot and we go dangerously into split pea soup territory.  I like mine just right, which is to say cool room temperature.

One Year Ago: Vietnamese Tofu Sandwiches

Pea, Basil, and Mint Soup

Adapted from The Modern Vegetarian
Serves 4

If you have an opened bag of really old peas in your freezer, don’t use those.  Do yourself a favor and buy a fresh bag. There is no need to thaw them before using.

1 tbsp. olive oil
1 small yellow or white onion, peeled, finely chopped
18 oz. frozen petit pois peas
2½ cups water
Leaves of half a small bunch of mint
Leaves of a small bunch of basil
Pinch of sugar
1 tsp. salt

Heat the oil in a medium saucepan.  Add the onion and sauté until softened and translucent.  Add two-thirds of the peas, the water, half the mint and basil, the sugar, and the salt.  Bring to a boil, then simmer for 20 minutes or until the peas are tender.

Put the soup in a blender in batches, adding the remaining peas and herbs, and blend to a smooth purée.  Adjust the seasoning to taste.  (DT: I wouldn’t make this soup too far ahead of serving time so it keeps the color.  Just enough to allow it cool is probably good.  Also, it is quite thick.  If you like thinner soup, thin it with water.)

Pea Jelly

You can find agar agar in natural food stores of Whole Foods.

2/3 cup water
Pinch of salt
4 oz. frozen shelled peas
1 tbsp. butter
1 small shallot, finely diced
2 tbsp. chopped tarragon
4 tsp. cream
½ tsp. agar agar powder or 1 tsp. agar agar flakes
Salt and pepper

Bring the water to a boil, add a pinch of salt and cook the peas until tender.  Drain the peas, reserving the cooking liquid.

Heat the butter in a small pan, add the shallot and cook until softened and translucent.  Add the peas, tarragon, and cream and simmer for 4 minutes.

Measure the reserved cooking liquid and make it up to 2/3 cup, if necessary, with water.  Return the cooking liquid to the heat, whisk in the agar agar and simmer for 2 minutes.  Pour the two mixtures into a blender and blend until smooth.  Pass through a sieve and season with salt and pepper.

Pour into a shallow plastic container and let cool before refrigerating.  Refrigerate until set (about 1 hour), then cut into cubes and serve with the soup.



Summer

July 9, 2010

If you have ever lived in Seattle, or know anyone who lives in Seattle, then you are familiar with the words “summer starts on July 5th”.  Some years we are lucky and get a sunny June.  This year the entire spring was a nightmare of cold temps and lots of rain.  It stays light here until 10pm around the solstice but what good does that do you if you can’t even be outside in the light because of the rain?  Those words – the ones about July 5th – became something of a mantra in our city this year.  Leading up to that (late) first day of summer, I was seriously considering a move to California.  And I grew up here.  I can’t imagine the poor souls who recently moved here and were wondering what in the sam hell is going on with the weather??

Well, what do you know.  July 4th was 57ºF and raining.  July 5th the heavens parted and the sun came out.  Today, Friday, it will be 91ºF.  Now trust me, seeing the sun and feeling warmth on my skin is intoxicating.  That vitamin D thing is real!  But (I swear I’m not complaining!) would it be too much to ask for, maybe 75ºF?

I have a backlog of recipes to share.  Summer means lots of things food-wise.  It also means new haircuts and shorts jammies.

Oh yes!  I had a little contest a few weeks ago and have finally picked a winner.  As usual, my trusty sidekicks picked the winning comment number and I took a picture of it.  That picture did not turn out.  So please trust me when I say comment #24  wins David Lebovitz’s The Sweet Life in Paris and her choice of one of his other books.  Cynthia says this about Paris:

There’s a hospital, or what I think is a hospital, near Notre Dame. I peeked in their courtyard, and saw a statue dressed in bright gold pajamas. I neither speak nor read French, and my traveling companion was off photographing the cathedral. Too see that bit of whimsy made my day. The fact that I was in Paris! didn’t hurt, either.

Cynthia, send me an email with you address and choice for the second book!  Thank you all for your thoughtful comments and suggestions.



Lunch with Friends

July 8, 2010

Here is something you probably hear over and over.  Food bloggers are a friendly and fun group.  I live in a city where there are so many good ones and I have had the good fortune to meet some wonderful people locally just through keeping a blog.

Also, just in the last year, I have had lunch with Stacey in New York, Erin in Boston, Allison in San Francisco, and Ele and Hilary in London.  (Is it crazy ridiculous that I have traveled that much this year?  This is not usually my life.)  These are all women who, previous to our lunches, I had never met in person, just through their writing.  In every single case, I was delighted with the women I met and look forward to a chance to see each and every one of them again.

When I mentioned to Ele and Hilary that I was coming to London for one day, they immediately responded that we should go to Ottolenghi for lunch.  The restaurant is named after the owner who is originally from Israel.  He has turned his amazing food and aesthetic into a thriving business with four locations and a weekly column in the Guardian.  He himself is not a vegetarian but his column and his most recent cookbook is.

Periodically I have mentioned my imaginary Dana Treat restaurant.  You know, the one that is only open from 10-3pm?  The one where there I get to make whatever I want, change it up daily, where everyone loves my food and pays me well for it, and very nice magic fairies appear out of nowhere to do all the clean-up?  That restaurant.  Well, I would love my place to be a little like Ottolenghi.

Imagine.  Clean white space.  Big communal table and lots of little ones.  Huge bowls of the daily sides and salads that the servers come and take from throughout lunch.  Gorgeous and rustic sweets arranged just so – the kind you wish you had time to make yourself.  I could learn a lot from Ottolenghi – we all could.

Fortunately, there is that cookbook!  Actually there are two.  I bought the brand new one, Plenty, while in San Fransisco and then Ele and Hilary bought me the first one at the end of our lunch (so sweet!).  Please don’t ever quote me on this (and Randy! avert your eyes!) but I kind of feel like I could throw away all my other cookbooks and just cook out of these two books for the rest of my life.  They are that good.  Plenty is a wonder to behold.  The look of the book, quality of the paper, and the photographs are enough to justify the price, but then the recipes!  Swoon.  All vegetarian and all sound amazingly delicious.  The first book, Ottolenghi The Cookbook, features some meat and fish recipes but with plenty for the vegetarians and also has breads and sweets.  I’ve started with this book.

I have only been home for nine days, and already I have made three things from it.  All amazing.  This dish isn’t going to win any beauty contests but it was so incredibly tasty.  Thin pasta, rice, caramelized onions, and lentils make for a very brown dish so I would highly recommend making the (very tasty) tomato sauce to top it.  I don’t always like sweet flavors in my savory dishes, but the touch of cinnamon was most welcome here.

One Year Ago: Coconut Bars
Two Years Ago: White Beans with Roasted Tomatoes (still a fave, and yes, I made the same cake this year)

Kosheri

Adapted from Ottolenghi, The Cookbook
Serves 4-6

Being an English cookbook, all his measurements are in grams and milliliters.  In addition to changing that, I also played a bit with the proportions a bit.  I have found the Kitchen Pro app on my iPhone incredibly helpful.  There are lots of components here but the onions and the sauce can be done days ahead of time.

1 cup lentils
1 heaping cup basmati rice
2 oz. angel hair pasta, broken in to 2-inch pieces
1 2/3 cups vegetable stock or water
½ tsp. grated nutmeg
1½ tsp. ground cinnamon
1½ tsp. salt
½ tsp. black pepper
4 tbsp. olive oil

Spicy Tomato Sauce
4 tbsp. olive oil
2 garlic cloves, minced
2 red hot chiles, seeded and finely diced (I used a jalapeño)
2 14-oz. cans diced tomatoes
1½ cups water
4 tbsp. cider vinegar
2 tsp. salt
2 tsp. ground cumin
¼ cup cilantro leaves, roughly chopped

Start with the sauce.  Heat the olive oil in a saucepan, add the garlic and the chiles and fry for 2 minutes.  Add the tomatoes, water, vinegar, salt, and cumin.  Bring to a boil, then reduce the heat and simmer for 20 minutes, until slightly thickened.  Remove the sauce from the heat, stir in the cilantro and then taste.  See if you want more salt, pepper, or cilantro.  Keep hot or leave to cool; both ways will work with the hot kosheri.

To make the kosheri, place the lentils in a large saucepan and then cover with cold water.  Bring to a boil, then reduce the heat and simmer for about 20 minutes.  The lentils should be tender but far from mushy.  Drain in a colander and set aside.

In a large skillet with a tight-fitting lid, melt the butter over medium heat.  Add the raw pasta, stir, and continue frying and stirring until the pasta turns golden brown.  Add the rice and mix well until it is coated in the butter.  Now add the stock or water, nutmeg, cinnamon, salt and pepper.  Bring to a boil, cover, and then reduce the heat to a minimum and simmer for 12 minutes.  Turn off the heat, remove the lid, cover the pan with a clean kitchen towel, and put the lid back on.  Leave like that for about 5 minutes; this helps make the rice light and fluffy.

Heat the olive oil in a large frying pan, add the onions and sauté over medium heat for about 20 minutes, until dark brown.  Transfer to paper towels to drain.

To serve, lightly break up the rice with a fork and then add the lentils and the onions.  Taste for seasoning and adjust accordingly.  Serve hot with the tomato sauce.



Big French Salad

July 4, 2010

Right before I left for France, like an hour before, I read this post by the ever thoughtful and ever hilarious Cheryl.  She had just celebrated the same birthday that I was about to fly off and celebrate, and she chose to be very quiet about what they actually did.  It was just the thing I needed to read before my trip.  I realized I had been approaching this vacation with more thoughts about how I would write about it than with thoughts of how I would experience it.  I never obsessed about the food I was going to eat but I was kind of obsessing about the fact that I wasn’t obsessing.  What food-loving person doesn’t plan her every meal and snack in Paris?

I had a vague idea of some of the things I wanted to eat but I really wanted to try and keep things fluid.  I think staying more relaxed about expectations means a smaller chance of disappointment.  In my mind, I composed a list of things I would like to eat, but I tried to not have any emotional attachment to those things.  My list included:  crèpes, croissants, café crème and baguette with jam each French morning, felafel in the Marais, Berthillon’s salted caramel ice cream on the Île St. Louis, and somewhere along the line, a big French salad.  Any or all would have been fine.

The truth is, Paris is not a great city for a vegetarian, especially at dinner time.  Not only is French food meat-heavy to begin with but, in my limited experience, the Parisians seem to be as baffled by the idea of not eating meat for a main course as they were when I studied there 20 years ago.  I get funny looks when I say I don’t eat meat, not even poisson, and inevitably I end up with a plate of vegetables for dinner.  Good vegetables, but still.  This is not the case if you go to a Moroccan restaurant or an Italian restaurant, both of which are easily found all over Paris.  But if you are going traditional French, vegetable platter it is.

As it turns out, I didn’t have a crèpe, only one café crème breakfast because I slept late every morning (poor me!), only part of a croissant, and I did not get my big French salad.  I eat a lot of salad in my life so you might be surprised to see a salad on my “want to eat” list.  Have you ever had a French salad?  I don’t mean the palate cleaning greens that you see in multi-course meals, I mean the kind you find in any good brasserie.  A filling, healthy, perfectly balanced salad.  You see, Paris is a pretty good place to be a vegetarian at lunch time.  Omelets, crèpes, salads and pommes frites are in abundance.  They look at you a little strangely when you ask to leave the poulet off the salad, but it is still filling and wonderful and features that perfect, mustardy, and oh-so-simple and yet totally perfect French vinaigrette.

Over the next few weeks, I plan to make some of the food I missed (including the main course portion of an Indian dinner at a beloved restaurant in London), some of the food I ate successfully, and some other things that were inspired by the trip.  But for now, salad.  And a few photos.

The morning of the baguette and café crème.

Let me tell you, it was hot in Paris.  Like 90 degrees hot.  Also let me tell you that my parents are both leaning and I am standing upright.  And my mom is still taller than me.  5’3″ baby.  I got the short gene in the family.

Yes, I got my salted caramel ice cream.  As much as I wanted to, I was not actually two fisting it here.  Just holding Randy’s while he took the photo.  He had sorbet.  If it had been more salted caramel, I would have eaten his.

One Year Ago: Spring Vegetable Salad
Two Years Ago: Mushroom Pearl Pasta with Sweet Peas and Goat Cheese

Big French Salad
Dana Treat Original
Serves 2

You will notice green beans in the recipe but no green beans on the plate.  The whole time I was eating my salad, I felt like something was missing.  All the while the already-blanched beans were calling to me from the refrigerator.  Next time, drink wine with dinner not before.

Salad:
1 handful green beans, trimmed
2 medium Yukon Gold potatoes, peeled and cut into ½-inch cubes
1 handful cherry tomatoes, halved
1 10-oz. can corn, drained
1 carrot, peeled and shredded
½ small avocado, cut into ½-inch pieces
2 hard boiled eggs, peeled and halved
Several leaves of romaine lettuce, torn

Lemon Mustard Vinaigrette:
1 tbsp. Dijon mustard
1 tbsp. white wine vinegar
Juice of ½ a lemon
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
3 tbsp. olive oil
1 tbsp. chopped chives (optional)

For the salad: Bring a medium saucepan of salted water to a boil.  Have a bowl of ice water ready.  Put the green beans in the water for 2 minutes, then scoop them out and into the ice water.  You want them blanched, not cooked, so they still have a crunch but are not raw.  Once they are cool, drain the beans.

Meanwhile, add the potatoes to the water and cook until just tender, about 10 minutes.  You don’t want mush so if anything, undercook them a bit.  Drain the potatoes.

Lay some lettuce down on each of two dinner plates.  Group the remaining vegetables around the plate and don’t forget the green beans.  Drizzle dressing over the salad and serve with a crusty French bread.

For the dressing: Put the mustard, vinegar, lemon juice, a healthy pinch of salt and a few grinds of pepper into a glass jar.  Top with the lid and shake vigorously.  Remove the lid and pour in the olive oil.  You want this dressing to have a lot of bite, so you will use less oil than the traditional 3:1 ratio.  Top with the lid and shake vigorously once again.  Taste and adjust seasoning as necessary.



Bounty

July 1, 2010

I’m home.  It was hot.  I got a pot.  The end.

Just joking.  You’ve never known me to be particularly pithy, have you?

My trip to Europe was wonderful as you can imagine.  I had worried a bit about it being too short and that I was trying to cram too much in that short time.  But I didn’t feel that way at all.  By a good stroke of luck, I was able to get right on Cannes time without the three days of jet lag that I used to feel whenever I would fly East.  I think that helped.  And of course I would have liked more time in each of the three cities I visited but I never felt like I was running from one to the next.  The fact that I didn’t have two very sweet but very-noisy-demanding-of-my-time-and-attention boys following my every step made the whole trip feel luxurious.

This also helped contribute to the feeling of luxury.  That would be the view from our hotel room.

You know how every family has stories that get told over and over again?  Every time we all start to talk about American ideas of what European hotels should be, my mom brings out the one about me biting into a bar of soap in Cannes.

In 1971, Europe was impossibly cheap for Americans and because my parents were young and insane, they decided to take me on a whirlwind trip to five different countries.  I was just under a year old.  In Cannes, we stayed at a very posh looking hotel called the Carlton.  The rooms all had toilets but no baths or showers and if you wanted to bathe, you had to call for a maid who would unlock the room with the bath located on each floor.  After a day of playing in the sand, I was filthy and my mom decided she would just get in the bath with me to wash off.  For one second she turned her back and in that time, I managed to get a hold of a bright white bar of soap and take a big bite – a foodie even then.  As soon as I actually tasted what I had bitten into, I started to scream.  And because that little bite of soap got stuck behind my brand new front teeth, I continued to scream.  My mom, horrified, tried to hook her finger behind my teeth to get the soap out and I bit her.  Imagine my poor mother, 25 years old, naked with a screaming baby and a bleeding finger in a hotel where she barely spoke the language, just waiting for some gendarme to come and bust down the door to save the screaming baby.  One of those funny now, so not-funny then stories.

Anyway, the irony is the Carlton is where Randy and I stayed.  I assure you, we had a bathroom with a tub.  And we had that view.  I don’t remember one second of that 1971 trip, so I will tell you that this was really my first trip to the Côte d’Azur – the beautiful Riviera.  I am always amazed by the diversity of landscape in that incredible country roughly the size of Texas.  This view has nothing in common with the rolling hills of Normandy or the Kansas flat of the region right around Paris.  It is a beach very different from the wind-swept wild sands of Brittany and the food, accent, and look of the people is completely different too.  Cannes would probably not have been on my life’s itinerary if not for a conference which brought Randy there.  And we certainly would not have had the room with its king size bed, soaring ceilings, and incredible view, so I am grateful to have experienced it.

But on to Paris and the list of kitchen shops I had crunched in my fist.  We walked into the first gleaming gorgeous shop and I got that huge flutter of excitement in my gut.  Like the proverbial kid in a candy shop – where do I start first??  I want one of everything!  (Incidentally, I later found myself in an actual candy shop on the Île St. Louis and I got precisely the same feeling.  I walked through the shop, running my hands over the gorgeous sweets on offer, and was too overwhelmed to actually buy anything.)  As my eyes flicked around the shop and as I wound my way up three floors of beautiful things for the kitchen, I started to realize something a bit disturbing.  I have most of this stuff.

There are those people who say that all you really need in the kitchen is a few good pots, a frying pan, a trio of sharp knives (chef, paring, bread), and a cutting board.  While I appreciate the simplicity of that claim and can certainly tell you that those are the only things I use without fail every single day, I am the person who will also tell you that having a citrus juicer and an egg slicer, several bench scrapers and pastry cutters, 9, 10, 11, and 12-inch fluted tart pans, all manner of palette knives and offset spatulas, countless wooden spoons, and an egg poacher – not to mention drawers and cabinets full of other things – is a joy impossible to describe.  Until you find yourself on a trip six years in the making and realize that all those things you thought you might purchase?  Well, you already have purchased them.

Not everything of course.  I bought some tiny tartlet pans and a loaf pan in a size you never see in the States.  I got a couple of serving forks and a spatula with a wooden handle, and a bread knife from Poilâne.  I bought a copper ladle that I will probably never use because it’s too pretty.  I also got this guy.

On my search for a brand of copper pot well-known in France but impossible to get in the States, what I found is that everyone sells Mauviel.  The type you can get in any Williams Sonoma store.  The exact brand of the gorgeous risotto pot that my parents bought me for Hanumass last year to start me on my collection – the pot that I returned because I was going to find my boutique brand of pot in Paris, and I wanted them all to match.  No need to kick me, I am doing it to myself as I type.

Anyway, the prices were better in Paris than in the States and I couldn’t come home pot-less so I decided on this beauty.  As someone who bakes, I actually have use for a double boiler.  Yes, putting a bowl over a pot of simmering water works just as well – but isn’t this pretty?  My dad, ever the scientist, asked me about the chemistry of this decision.  Why do you need copper if you are trying to tame the temperature?  Don’t you buy copper for the heat conductivity?  Silly dad.  No,  you buy copper because it is gorgeous.

Speaking of gorgeous.  Look at my mom.  I have that to look forward to.

Anyway.  I got all kinds of food treats and ate some yummy things.  All to come in the next post.



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