Scottish Cow

Strawberry Tarts

Our fridge is dead.  It revolted on Friday and before we realized what was really happening, it had brought everything inside to room temperature.  Overnight.  Ugh.  Right now the freezer is teasing us and keeping itself around 35.  Which means it is now the fridge.  What used to reside in that freezer is now in the chest freezer, except for the unintentionally thawed hot dogs, which sustained us through the weekend.  The service guy is coming tomorrow.  Needless to say, there isn’t a whole lot of inspired cooking going on here at the moment.  However,  there are a few posts waiting to be written, so I’m lucky.

We got some ridiculously good strawberries last week from the CSA share.  So ripe and juicy they left everything they came near looking like a crime scene.  So delicious and addictive, they had the power to leave you in some sort of strawberry-induced fugue state.  Red all the way through and already so soft, it didn’t seem like we’d be able to vanquish them simply by eating them as fast as possible.

So a tart was in order.  This style (galette, I believe) was inspired by a plum galette that my mom often makes (it’s very good).  So, I guess this is really a strawberry galette.  Naming aside, it’s also very good.  This style suits me perfectly:  No worries about rolling it out big enough for a tart pan, I could just roll it out until it seemed to get thin enough to start causing me problems.  No worries about neat slices and arrangements of strawberries, just roughly quartered.  Sweetened lemony blobs of ricotta dropped on top.

Oh, the ricotta.  I’m not even sure if it’s fair to call it ricotta.  It was a small tub from these folks (Goat rising?  Definite bonus points for the domain name, as it leaves me with an image of some furry, stubborn beast floating up from the field with a "maaaaaaaaaa"), via my dad from our visit a few weeks ago.  It was like a cross between ricotta, cream cheese and creme fraiche.  Thick, creamy and slightly sour.  It was so good.

So yes, the style.  If it looks haphazard, it was me getting the tart done as quickly as possible.  I like the fact that it's not too fancy.  The biggest pain is getting the tart dough made – not hard at all, just takes a few minutes.  I’m not quite sure why I did 2 tarts, but it could certainly make one big one.  In fact, if you’re making tart crust, it probably makes sense to make a bunch.  If you’ve got a good tart crust and a regular savory pastry crust in your bag of tricks, you can make all sorts of good stuff.  We’ll do a quiche or something savory soon.  Dinner…dessert…everything is better with crust.

Tart Dough (adapted from The King Arthur Baker's Companion)

1 1/4 C all purpose flour
1/3 C sugar
Big pinch salt
1 stick cold unsalted butter (1/2 C)
1 egg yolk
2 TB cold water
1 tsp vanilla extract

Mix the flour, sugar and salt.  Cut up the butter into 1/4" cubes and add to the flour.  Use a pastry blender (forks, knives and fingers will probably work alright too) and work the butter in, until is dispersed and it looks (like every recipe tells you) pebbles.  Mix together the egg yolk, water and vanilla.  Stir into the dough.  I use a spoon or spatula to bring it together and then dump it out onto the counter and use my hands.  If it seems too dry, definitely add a little more water.  Once it’s a nice big ball,  flatten it out a little, wrap with plastic wrap and if you have time, put it in the fridge for an hour.  If you’ve got a lot of time, put it in overnight and just take it out a little earlier than you need it.  If you want two smaller tarts, divide the dough before wrapping and cooling.

Tart Assembly

Oven to 400.

Quarter up some strawberries.  Toss them with a few spoons of sugar and set aside.

Whip up some ricotta with lemon zest, a few drops of vanilla extract, and a spoon of sugar.  Taste it.

Roll out the tart dough on a floured countertop until it’s as thin as you want it.  Probably about 1/8 inch.  Move it to a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper.  Strain the liquid from the strawberries and sprinkle some around the middle of the dough, leaving an inch or so around the sides.  Crimp up or fold over the edges to build a nice edge to hold in the good stuff.  Plop (ok, not such a great word) some ricotta in a few different places on the tart.

Bake it for 20-30 minutes – just keep an eye on it and you’ll be able to tell when it’s done.  Golden brown and bubbly.

Enjoy!

(Nothing to do with strawberries, tarts or galettes, but here’s a radish from the garden…just liked the photo…)

Ours, All Ours

Yes!

For dinner the other night we had a salad composed entirely of stuff that grew in our dirt.  Our dirt!  I realize this isn't terribly novel or earth-shattering, but it was the first crop out of our first real family garden - so I'm allowed some excitement. 

For days Molly and I had been stealing lettuce leaves out of the garden when we were nearby, but then we noticed a red radish top sneaking out of the ground and decided it was time.  The following night, we headed out with the basket to collect.  The spinach is growing miserably - probably went in too late, possibly went in too close together, definitely wasn't thinned out.  So we've got about half of it in that basket.  The lettuce looks like a big leafy carpet, it having been seeded too closely also, but we've got a ton of it.  I'm guessing the leaves would get bigger if they actually had some breathing room, but who knows.  They are damn tasty in their current size, so I'm not complaining.

The arugula is growing like crazy too - it was a gift to Tina from another Buffalo blogger (thanks Josie!!) - so we had three different leaves, and some sliced radishes.

To go with that, we had a quick homemade vinaigrette and here's the plan for that...

A vinaigrette is supposed to be somewhere in the range of 3:1, oil to acid, with some salt and pepper.  That's the important part.  The rest is just adding additional flavors.  A little mayo or mustard.  Some garlic, chives, shallots, scallions and/or some herbs.  You can use a whisk (more work), a blender (more creamy) or an old jar (ah, just right).  This is how I always remember doing it, so sure enough, it's how I still do it. Put everything in and do the shake.

This one started with about 1/4 C of lemon juice and 3/4 C of oil (half grapeseed and half e.v. olive oil).  Olive oil has a lot of flavor, grapeseed helps tame it.  I love lemon juice.  I actually ended up adding a little rice vinegar because it didn't have enough acidity.  A couple good pinches of salt and pepper.  Some minced green garlic and chives.  And a little bit of mustard and a little bit of taragon.  It may not have needed all those additions, but it was nice and bright and full of flavor (and not full of whatever it is that keeps bottled dressing alive in the fridge for months.)  Just keep tweaking it until you've got what you want.

Here's it is, before and after the shake-a, shake-a, shake-a:

...

Not related, but for those that think the food writing in the Times is perhaps a bit snooty - they did a root beer tasting - I thought that was cool - their tastings are wine most of the time, beer sometimes (love those), but this was a first.  Like the author, I rarely drink soda, but when I do, a nice root beer is always good.  Yes, I said "soda."  Any comments from the "pop" drinkers will be moderated swiftly and appropriately.

Finally, there's three new links included at the side - Amber's Ambry, Turkey Cookies and Angry Chicken - three crafty blogs.  "Crafty blogs? WTF?!"  You say,  "Is he going soft?"  Nope, actually I've always been.  They are mostly focused on crafts, but all 3 often have thoughts about cooking, food and gardening as well.  Food and crafts.  There are some obvious parallels.  They are both all about the homemade.  They are both concerned with turning quality raw ingredients into something better.  Creation and experimentation.  Patterns and recipes.  Immense satisfaction.  Excessive and creative swearing when your equipment isn't cooperating.   

Most importantly these blogs are all very funny, well-written, and personal.  You get a real sense of the author through the words.  It's why I read them and why you might be interested as well.  Even if you, like me, don't get very excited about buttonholes and rolled hems.

Mmmm...rolled hams...

CSA 6/24/08: For the Love of Choker Lettuce

Now we're talking!

The share was really good this week...spinach, leaf lettuce, arugula/other greens, radishes/turnips, frisee, herbs, and STRAWBERRIES.

First the frisee.  I love it.  There always seems to be a couple sprigs floating around in those bagged leaf salad mixes.  Tina avoids it like the plague - she calls it choker lettuce.  She seems to think the lettuce has some innate desire to lodge itself in her throat.  I've never really considered lettuce to be vengeful or evil, but either way, more frisee for me.

The classic frisee dish - a French salad with hot bacon nuggets (lardons, for the culinary correct), vinegary dressing made up from the bacon fat, all topped with a poached egg - yeah, a bacon and egg salad.  The frisee can stand up for itself, flavor and texture-wise, so it's not totally wiped out by the breakfast ingredients that find themselves on top of it.  Maybe we'll have one?!

I did the whole steaming thing with the spinach - do you know what a pound of spinach looks like after you steam it for a few minutes, and then squeeze out some of the liquid?

On Tuesday nights now, our kitchen transforms into a veggie-processing disaster area.  Cleaning, sorting, storing and deciding what is going to get used when and how.

No time for composition, lighting adjustment and putting each veggie in its place - this is what the one section of countertop looked like last night...

Those are today's lunch salads sitting on the left front burner there.  All the chopping was being done out of the frame to the right.

Molly and I also decided to take advantage of something else in the car for holding our veggies, instead of the reusable grocery bags:

The post office gave me our week's worth of mail in it...little did they know what they were doing.  Hopefully there are no postal workers reading this.  Is placing dirty arugula in a marked postal tray a federal offense?  Tina assures we I won't be using it again (how does she know?)  and has suggested a flexible laundry basket.  Sounds good to me.

We'll be eating tons of strawberries just as is and there's a strawberry tart in the works.  Lots of salads... arugula pesto... spinach pizza...and all the choker lettuce I can handle.

Back to Work & Some Peanut Dressing Love

We're back from a lovely week away, visiting my parents and getting to see most of my mom's side of the family (sorry Renny & Eva), including Anya, who has been hiding away in Beijing for months on end.  She's a little over a year old, and absolutely adorable.  It was infinitely neat seeing her and Abby interact a little, and again as much sad to think they won't see each other again for quite a while.

We remembered our Grandmother in our stories and our thoughts and had a huge dinner of peking duck and champagne in her honor.   In fact, we spent most of the week eating and drinking great things.  Which is nothing new - visiting my folks and eating with my family is a food-wise reminder that there's nothing better or easier than taking simple, great ingredients and not screwing with them too much.

The one thing that never ceases to amaze me is the quantity and the quality of the local cheeses around Northampton.  Combine this with the three incredible bakeries in town (bread focused bakeries, no less) and you're pretty much set.  Look at these guys - my favorite, the white rinded one in the middle, is a goat's milk cheese they get at their local farmer's market.  Come on.

It makes me want to quit my job, get some land and some goats, and start supplying Western New York with something even half that good.

Just so this post isn't completely made up of fromage-related daydreaming, here's a quick recipe - Noodle and Veggie Wraps with Peanut Dressing. 

For us, the peanut butter-based dressing has definitely reached the status of a comfort food.  It's easy, it's always good, we always have the ingredients and we have some happy memories associated with it.  It's like a friend that's always there.  A delicious, edible friend, made of items in the pantry.

Our first experience with it was at Mary Chung's, a Chinese place in Central Square, in Cambridge, MA.  We had the Dun Dun Noodles a LOT when we lived out there.  Simple dish:  noodles, bean sprouts and thinly-sliced cold chicken, with a thin, spicy peanutty dressing.  I mean spicy.  There would practically be tears rolling down your face, and you'd be begging Mary for more.

This one is significantly less spicy (hence, kid-friendly), but there's nothing stopping you from taking it wherever it is you'd like it to go.  The dressing is simple and I never measure it, so:

- A couple of heaping spoons of peanut butter (make it chunky) into a bowl.  Add a little hot water, and whisk it up.

- Add a good pour of soy sauce and stir it up - it should taste good already.  Add more water or soy sauce if it's too thick or not salty enough.

- At this point, I add other things depending on what we have and where the dressing is going - almost always some a lime juice or rice vinegar.  For the heat - chili flakes or sriracha is all you need, and add as much as you need.  Sometimes, minced garlic or scallions, cilantro, brown sugar or honey.  Often, I'll have to go back and add some more peanut butter to balance it back out.  Again, hot water is great to thin it out and not change the flavor much.

If you haven't already finished eating the dressing with a spoon...or your fingers, you can make the wrap.  It had some boiled and cooled udon noodles, shredded lettuce, shredded carrots, and slivered radishes all piled up in a steamed flour tortilla (#1 use for our microwave).  Spoon in some dressing, wrap it up, and you're set.

I'm out on the front porch right now and the bugs are attacking the laptop screen, so it's time to go.  Speaking of quitting my job above, I've already done that once this month, and my new one starts tomorrow.  Like the first day of school, all over again.  Need to go make sure my pencils are sharp.

One last treat from the week away.  Older than me:

Gobs of Greens

We had this issue last year with the CSA, and I suspect we’ll have it again – more greens than we can handle.  We got a smaller size this year to help with that, but still, short of transforming ourselves into a family of rabbits, we’re not always going to get to everything. 

This past week, knowing we were going to be out of town in the near future, it made sense to take some preemptive steps to avoid excessive contributions to the compost pile, big stinky guy that he is.  The veggie share had 2 bunches of braising greens, in addition to the lettuce, and they immediately got chopped and sent to the steamer above.  They just needed a few minutes and a toss about half-way through to wilt nicely.  Not cooked away to oblivion, just softened up.

Next, the vacuum sealer had its turn.  I don’t know if you’ve bought into the idea of one of these yet, but it’s a fantastic tool for preserving good stuff for when the good stuff isn’t available anymore.  The only issue I’ve run into with ours is when you’ve got too much liquid in whatever it is that you’re sealing.  It immediately sucks it out into a trough, making a mess of everything, and making me nervous that a black hole will be born when garlicy tomato juice goes through the vacuum mechanism, sucking the guts of the universe though a dopey appliance in our little kitchen.

In reality, it seems the closest we’ve gotten to an extinction-level event is the bag not actually getting sealed.

Aside from that, it’s a beautiful thing and fun too - to see food get severely compacted.  I put a soft roll in one bag to see the result and it shrank it down into a little bready nugget. 

We’re still working through bags of roasted tomatoes and pesto from last summer, and I’m thinking these greens will be great in a soup or a calzone come October. 

Hmm.  I guess it’s not much of a stretch to think something will be great in a calzone.

Addendum:  I've been informed by several members of my "thrifty New England family" that my vacuum machine should consist of:

• My mouth
• A straw
• A ziplock bag

I guess we have to do a side-by-side comparison and see how it stacks up against the machine - ignoring cost of course :)

Apparently, our family motto is borrowed from the old adage:  "Use it up, wear it out, make it do or do without."

All this time I thought it was "Eat and drink lots of good stuff."

Ducks

 

My Grandmother passed away this week, after a long battle with Alzheimer's disease.

When I think of the most lasting memories from my childhood, the most vivid images, and most joyful recollections, they are overwhelmed by Esther.

Dusty summer days spent at The Granary, the old well-lived-in farmhouse in New Hampshire, in the fields, in the woods, walking across the street at dusk to stand at the barbed-wire fence, waiting for cows to come by on their way home.

Vacations in the winter, with my cousins, to warm, beautiful places.  Chasing lizards, flamingos, coconuts, waterfalls, and beaches, gathering every last shell we could find.

Sitting the cool, dark, downstairs of her old house on Long Island, playing double solitaire for hours. 

Incredible pictures and souvenirs from her own travels around the world to Egypt and China and Greece.

If you count my time in college as part of my childhood (and you probably should), driving to Hanover from my parents house on my breaks, to visit and talk, to catch up, walk around her community and have lunch across the river in Vermont.

More than anything else, I remember the village of Stony Brook where she lived.  The beach, the ice cream shop, the harbor, the giant statue of Hercules, the grassy hill leading down from the post office, the little stream there running through the rocks.  Nothing, though, was more important than duck pond.

Walking from her house to the deli, picking up chicken salad, and continuing to the duck pond from there, feeding the ducks and feeding ourselves.  Overzealous geese, orange bills, swans and glowing green mallards, just waiting for us.  In and out of the murky black-green pond, begging for bread.  It was the first place I wanted to bring Molly when we were there last December.

If she wanted her grandchildren to grow up in love with the world around them, she has undoubtedly succeeded, and we love her for that.

 
(Vermont, Summer 2000)

For When You Don't Feel Like Moving Your Arms

You can always count on the The Onion for something like this. So disgusting, so freakin' hilarious, so...um, possible, I guess. Somewhere out there is a Pizza Hut marketing guy saying, "The hearty meat mask?  Damn!  That's good!" 

New Wearable Feedbags Let Americans Eat More, Move Less

"It's hot steamy food in your face, right now."

I just hope they're leaving out the tomatoes.  About that?  Yeah, let's have another hoo-ray for local and homegrown produce.

CSA 6/10/08: Not Gonna Forget the Beets in the Microwave this Week

I will now blame Tina for the crime alluded to in the title.  Well, first of all, I'm not a huge beet eater.  Second, it was probably my fault for bugging her to steam beets at 10 PM.  They were discovered after a weekend alone in a way-too-hot kitchen.  Bright purple moldy sludge.  A modern art masterpiece.  Get thee to the compost pile.

The share this week:

• 2 bunches bok choi
• 2 heads lettuce
• 2 bunches "braising greens"
• 2 bunches Japanese turnips or 2 lbs beets/onions/celeriac

It was like a Noah's Ark of vegetation.  First of all, I love the bok choy.  It's great in stir-fries, and steamed with some rice or fish.  It's even nice raw in a salad - you get your recommended USDA of crunchy from the stalks and leafy from the, duh, leaves.

No time for the turnips - selected more beets this week, with Molly tugging on my shirt whispering, "Daddy...me and mommy love beets..."

Braising mix?  Eh, not sure about that one yet.  We did well with the rapini and mizuna last week.  Rapini ended up with the ricotta on toast, and also (unblogged) were the "burgers" made from ground beef, sauted rapini, garlic, bread cubes and feta.  Ugly, but tasty.

The mizuna ended up in wraps and salads along with the arugula.  Also mizuna steamed with asparagus and broccoli and then stir-fried with rice wine, soy, garlic and sesame oil.  I would eat ANYTHING with that on it... I think...

And ironically, as I write this at 11 pm, there are beets a'steamin' in the kitchen.  Oh no we didn't!

Oh yes we did.  They'll be ready for salad tomorrow as long as they aren't forgotten.

And here's the celeriac that you all were waiting for:

1) Peel the ugly ball carefully.  I use a knife to slice off the sides - I end up wasting more good root then I should, but I value my fingers. Chop into 1 inch (or smaller) cubes. 

2) Peel & chop 4-5 nice big potatoes (I used something that was like a Yukon Gold) into chunks.

3) Boil till tender.  Make sure the celeriac is nice and soft - it doesn't mash as easily as the potatoes do.

4) Drain.

5) Heat a knob of butter (great phrase, always wanted to use it) in the pot.  Add some garlic - I used some chopped up seed pods (picture below - just the white/yellowish part).  Regular ol' garlic is fine. 

6) Add potatoes and celeriac back in.  Mash REALLY well - use a masher, beater, ricer, whatever - the celeriac needs to get worked over, or else it might be stringy.

7) Add salt, pepper and creme fraiche to taste.  I should be embarrassed that I ended up dumping a whole pink-colored tub of creme fraiche from the Vermont Butter and Cheese folks in, but...I'm not.  We don't eat mashed potatoes often, and damn, these taste good.  Small portions, right?  Not counting the quantity licked off the spatula.  And the masher.

A Delicious Dinner, Drink Too

This dinner is a few weeks old, but I've been excited to post about it.  It's still bouncing around in my head (and tastebuds) for a few reasons*:

First, it came out really well.  It was in the first batch of grilled meals for the season, which is always exciting.  It had just a few, great, simple tasty ingredients.  Nothing complicated.  If every meal tasted like this, I'd be really happy.

Second, it was the first meal in my new wine & food initiative**.  Let me explain... I really like wine - drinking it, enjoying it with dinner, cooking with it.  I mentioned somewhere in an earlier post about growing up in a wine-loving family.  It was always part of our meals.  I don't remember ever not liking it.  The problem now is that I just never give it a lot of thought.  I will grab a bottle from the store out of convenience and similarly grab it from our cellar out with the same sense of convenience, without enough regard for what we're drinking it with. 

So the purpose of this initiative is two-fold:  First to try some new varieties to get a broader sense and appreciation of what's out there, increasing my experience and enjoyment, and second, to try out some of the classic and some of the unconventional wine and food pairings out there and really think about how the two are impacting each other.  A great blog I've been reading lately is Good Wine Under $20, which is informational, well-written, and well, in my price range.  A fantastic book to go along with it (discovered on the blog of course) has a rather long title that starts with What to Drink with What You Eat.  It's absolutely chock-full of information.  There are 3 sections - The first talks about all the experience, practice and enjoyment of pairing food and beverage (make no mistake, wine is the focus, but it touches on liquids from water to beer as well).  The second is a two-way dictionary where you can look up foods or beverages and find suggested pairings with different levels from "Ew, don't do that again" to "These two, consumed together, will ignite your socks."  The third section has favorite tasting/drinking menus from notable food folks.

Whew - so that's the plan.  You can expect some posts along this same vein - wine and a meal (with recipe, ideally) paired together, either shooting for the potential of a perfect combination, or in the effort to try a previously-unenjoyed variety.  Learning is fun after all.  Don't tell my 5th grade teacher.

So back to dinner, it was grilled hanger steak, grilled asparagus, and rice.

First, the hanger steak.  This cut has been all the rage for the past several years.  In fact, it's probably on the downside of the rage-curve now, but that doesn't detract from it's tastiness at all.  It's a piece of meat that my parents introduced me to after finding it at one of the ridiculously good food sources around Northampton, MA.  Initially, I couldn't find it around Buffalo.  I went to a local chain butcher and was informed that they didn't think it existed.  I walked home, printed out a picture and some information about it.  "Oh, ok." was the response.

The asparagus was grilled along with the steak.  I got lazy on the asparagus, and in an unfortunate bit of positive reinforcement, it turned out alright in the end.  There were some bigger stalks in the bunch, and I didn't peel them.  I also accidentally burned some of them.  Instead of having to deal with a bunch of charred, stringy, indedible stalks, it had the same effect as roasting peppers.  The burnt skins came right off and left the soft, creamy interiors ready...for something. The texture wasn't great for eating just as asparagus, but they disappeared wonderfully into the leftovers (photo below).

Then the rice...oh man, the rice.  I had heard of the whole rice-cooked-like-pasta technique before, but didn't really get the bug to try it out until reading this post on Angry Chicken, one of the craft blogs Tina follows.  We've done the rice a few times like this now, and it really is nothing short of life-changing, if you're a rice lover and don't have a rice cooker (that's us).  It's worked on regular ol' white rice, basmati, jasmine and brown rice.  You basically cook the rice just like pasta.  Take it out when it's just about done.  It seems to be completely foolproof unless you don't use enough water.  Yes, I'm a dork - I do think a new rice cooking method is life changing.  Get over it.

The wine.  I decided to have this Malbec above with it.  Why?  It was already in the cellar (purchased last year sometime).  It was also a variety I hadn't had yet.  Finally, by all accounts it's a great wine for beef.  Makes sense, if you follow the idea of pairing wines and foods that prosper in the same region.  Argentina is the place to go for Malbec, and it's also the place for some of the world's best beef.  So this felt right.  The wine was used for a marinade, a sauce and to accompany the meal, and it was perfect.  Very fruity, berry aromas.  A little leathery too. And enough body to go with the steak after it was grilled.  Don't recall the exact price but I can tell you it wasn't more than $20.

It was certainly a consistent experience - the wine seemed to bring out the flavor in the beef (especially, I'm assuming, given the marinade and the sauce) and vice-versa.  The wine, tasted after a bite of the steak, was bolder and took on an additional edge.  Definitely a winning combination.

So the complete plan for the meal:

1) Take your steak (any grillable cut), place in ziplock bag, fill with enough red wine to coat, add a bunch of black pepper, a pinch of salt and a swig of balsamic vinegar.  Squish it around, and leave overnight.

2) Take it out of the fridge long enough before grilling to get it close to room temperature.  Remove from marinade.

3)  Preheat the grill and get a big pot of water boiling.

4) If the asparagus are big, peel the stalks :)  Toss them with some oil and salt.

5) Cook steak on your grill to desired doneness.  I don't know your steak, so I can't tell you how long.  I've been trying to do it by touch and avoid the thermometer.  Elise has a good illustrated post on that if you need some help or haven't tried it.  This steak took probably 4-5 minutes per side (ended up a little more done than I'd like).

6) Get the asparagus on the grill too, and don't burn them like I did

7) Back in the kitchen get your rice into the boiling water.  I added some salt as well, just like pasta. Once it's done, drain and put back in the pot with the lid on.  Stir in butter or oil if desired (I did butter and chives).  It will stay warm for a bit.

8)  Since this wasn't cooked in a pan, there were no good bits to make a sauce out of.  You can fake it.  Saute some minced shallots/onions/garlic (I used shallots).  Add a big splash of chicken stock and boil it down.  Add a big splash of the wine and boil it down until the sauce thickens up.  Take off the heat, add some butter.

9)  Get everything off the grill, let steak rest for a few minutes.   Pour any juices into the sauce.  Eat and enjoy!

Leftovers - fried rice with garlic and onion, diced left over steak and asparagus, egg over easy, topped with the leftover sauce and more chives.  Pretty tasty.

Next up in adventures with food and wine is my attempt at a Vietnamese rice noodle salad with bbq pork (Bun Thit Nuong, I believe is the name), paired with a German Riesling.

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* Tina accuses me of making verbal lists for everything.  Maybe I do.  It seems like I'm always saying "First off...Secondly..."  Oh well.  Must be how my disorganized mind is trying to impose some order.

** Apologies for the use of "Initiative."  This might be called an Initiative or maybe a Strategic Program at my day job.  Maybe part of the critical path to a successful engagement.  Sorry, I'll stop now.  Sometimes I wish I was a park ranger and not a software developer.

Love That Dirty Water

We're shipping up to Boston for the weekend, but first, here's a quick recipe from this week's CSA share.  It was inspired by a piece on ricotta in the Times a couple weeks back.  A chef was talking about the great simplicity of a bowl of ricotta and some crostinis.  Man.  I don't know why we've never tried that.  We love ricotta.  We love grilled bread.  We put little blobs of ricotta on grilled pizza all the time.

So here's the plan for this one:

Rapini - rinsed it off, discarded the very bottoms of the stalks, chopped the rest, stalk and all.  Over medium heat - oil, garlic, salt and mild red pepper flakes.  After the garlic cooks for 30 seconds, stir in the rapini, and cook till tender, lowering the heat if necessary.

Ricotta - whipped some up in a bowl with salt, pepper, a bunch of microplaned lemon zest and a nice dose of olive oil.

Bread - thick slices of chewy sourdough, spray with cooking spray and grill on both sides till crispy.

Spread the ricotta on the bread, pile the rapini on top, and crunch away.

Can't wait to land in Boston.  It's high on the list of all time favorite places.  We won't have much time for relaxing and eating, but that's OK.  Wedding festivities for a good friend are always something to look forward to.  We'll leave the airport, through the tunnel, speed past the city on Storrow Drive alongside that dirty water.  Past the bridges, the crew teams, the softball fields, and the brownstones in Back Bay.  We'll make way for ducklings, drive past the old apartment in Watertown, wondering for a second who's in it now.  Somewhere along the way, we'll talk about the Sox and super burritos from Anna's, and before we know it, we'll be on another plane back home.

I wonder what the garden will look like 3 days from now...