The carefree joys of summer food, the ease and pleasure of northern cooking in these longest days of the year, cooking straight from the market or the garden, so different from those increasingly anxious trips to the root cellar as the winter drags on--that was to be my theme for today's report.
Until I noticed that I was cooking...carrots...potatoes...onions, and steak. Root cellar fare, during summer solstice week? What gives?
But it's not root cellar fare, far from it. Roots, yes, but the carrots are sweet babies barely thicker than your pinkie, the potatoes are creamy dense nuggets fresh from the ground, the onions are purple-skinned, translucent, crisp and fragrant. And when you can enjoy it out of doors 
on a gorgeous June afternoon, after the cool front has come through sweeping away a stormy, hot, sticky and anxious (for sensitive dogs) night, so much the better.
And there was basil. We don't have that in February. We shopped the market Saturday, picking up those beautiful carrots from Peter and Carmen , onions from Yia Vang and potatoes from Va Vang, basil from Jennifer, and finally a gorgeous bone-in, grass-fed sirloin steak from Sara.
The preparation was simple--with ingredients this good, you don't have to do much. I did take a couple of extra steps. The potato dish was a grilled version of champ, the Irish potato-and-scallion mash. After boiling the new potatoes until tender, I drained them, tossed them with a little olive oil, salt and pepper, and put them on the grill to color. Same with the spring onions, trimmed and split. When those things were done, Mary took them away, chopped up the onions, smashed the potatoes into them with a good chunk of Hope butter and some of that Gardens of Eagan basil.
The carrots I blanched until tender-crisp, and then I glazed them in a mixture of:
1 1/2 tsp blackberry jam
1 1/2 tsp grain mustard (some stuff Mala made using Furthermore beer, fantastic)
1 1/2 tsp butter
salt & pepper
a couple of pinches of piment d'espelette (or use cayenne, or omit)
I was going to use maple syrup for the sweet element, but we'd forgotten to pack it, and in the end I was glad for that. The blackberry jam, from our own berries, was less sweet, which was good, and also brought a complex, brambly savor to the sweet carrots. I just let those brown up over the waning coals while I sliced the steak and set the slices atop a slice of our brioche, browned on the grill and buttered.
The steak I salted and peppered, then grilled to medium rare (about 4 minutes per side) over the coals of apple and oak. I must admit that I'm leery of buying prime cuts for grilling--T-bones, rib-eyes, sirloin, etc.--that are frozen, as all the meat at our farmers market is. I've had frozen steaks from other producers where all the juices run away down the drain when I cut open the plastic. Once cooked, those steaks wind up dry and gray and wan. Such was not the case with this Hilltop Pastures sirloin. It was a superb piece of meat. The pork from Tom and Sara of Hilltop Pastures is always excellent, too; and I've mentioned before, but will mention again, the wonderful lamb that Anne and Charlie Leck of Sheepy Hollow Lamb bring to the market each week.
I love to cook and have spent a long time learning how to do it, and one thing I've learned in that time is that the simplest things can sometimes be the hardest to pull off. There's no rich sauce to hide mistakes, so if the steak is overcooked, or it's just not good steak, what are you going to do? I've also come to realize that the clean dry heat and smoke of a real charcoal fire are seasonings as important as salt and pepper.
So I'm not going to blithely say that anybody could make this meal; but anybody who reads this can. The meal starts at the market and runs through your devoted appreciation of these splendid products of the season and our place, and that colors your thinking as you decide what to do with them, inspires the exceedingly pleasant work of turning them into fare for the table.
If that table is set someplace like the Bide-A-Wee gravel garden, with dogs lolling in the grass and the faithful Grundig tuned to WOJB radio, well, that's just gravy--figuratively speaking, I mean.
Text and photos copyright 2010 by Brett Laidlaw
Mary got home from work yesterday, came into the kitchen, stopped and said: "It smells like summer in here. Why does it smell like summer?"
I swept a hand toward my mise en place of chopped and sliced and slivered garlic, ginger, green onions, chilies, and a bowl of "fish fragrance" dressing, soy, sesame, dark vinegar, sugar, sambal, hua jiao. "Because we're having Chinese food!" I said.
Mary smiled.
Specifically, we were having Sichuan food, the best thing in the world to eat on a hot and humid summer evening; last night definitely qualified.
One of the dishes was gong bao tu dou ding, which might bring to mind the desperate, slurred imprecations of a drunk outside a bar after closing time.
Drunk outside bar, disheveled, holding out hand, staggering: "Hey, buddy, couldja gong bao tu dou ding me?"
You, alarmed, recoiling: "I beg your pardon? You want to go where? You want me to bring you what? Look, uh, I, I gotta go...".
And...scene! Here concludes another episode of Trout Caviar Internet Theater.
Gong bao tu dou ding=Kung Pao Potato Cubes. You might not have heard of it. I might just have made it up, as gong bao tu dou ding draws exactly zero results in a Google search. Kung pao potatoes gets a few. But this isn't any particularly original preparation, just a nice vegetarian variation on the Sichuan classic Kung Pao Chicken, gong bao ji ding. Gong bao is usually translated as "grand duke," as a certain gentleman of that rank was said to have particularly enjoyed the dish. Ding is a small cube, a dice. Many Chinese dishes specify the shape of the food in the title. Pian=slice; si=shred.
I'm not going to tell you what ji means. Here I substitute pieces of nice, firm, sweet market new potatoes for the meat component of the dish. Chicken is used most commonly in Sichuan, followed closely by pork, and gong bao tu ding, kung pao rabbit, is on many menus, as well. Vegetarian versions may use mock duck (wheat gluten) or cubes of fried tofu.
Oh, and I have to tell you the literal translation of the characters that mean potato, tu dou: it's "earth bean." Love that.
I was very pleased with this earth-beany iteration of kung pao. I would make it again, if I didn't have any meat on hand, or just for variety, and another way to use those excellent new potatoes.
Gong Bao Tu Dou Ding
1 generous cup (6 ounces by weight) small new potatoes, red or white or a combo
1 Tbsp slivered ginger
1 Tbsp finely sliced garlic
2 scallions, in 1/3-inch pieces (use the white and the light green)
3 dried red chilies (or more, to taste), cut in half
1/2 cup raw skin-on peanuts--available in Chinese markets and at co-ops
1 tsp whole Sichuan peppercorns (hua jiao)
Sauce:
1 Tbsp rice wine or dry sherry
1 1/2 tsp Chinese dark vinegar
1 1/2 Tbsp soy sauce
1 tsp sugar
1/2 tsp sesame oil
1 tsp cornstarch
1 cup canola or peanut oil
Wash but do not peel the potatoes. Cut them into pieces, roughly 1/2- to 3/4-inch cubes--my potatoes were so small, barely bigger than grapes, I just cut them in half, and some I even left whole.
Heat a wok or deep fry pan, and add the oil. When it is hot (dip a piece of trimmed scallion green in; it should sizzle right away), add the potatoes and fry for 3 minutes, moving the pieces about gently with a wok shovel or spatula. The potatoes should just start to brown. Drain on paper towels.
Pour the oil off into a clean heat-proof container, like a Pyrex measuring cup, and reserve. Heat the wok again, add about 1 tablespoon of the oil, and the peanuts. Cook over medium heat, stirring constantly, until the peanuts are lightly, uniformly brown, about 2 minutes. Drain on a paper towel.
Mix all the sauce ingredients in a small bowl. All these steps can be done well in advance.
Just before you're ready to serve, then, heat your clean wok again, and add 2 tablespoons of the reserved oil. Add the chili pieces and the hua jiao, and stir-fry--high heat--for 30 seconds, until the spices become dark and fragrant (you will sneeze). Add the garlic and ginger, and stir-fry for 15 seconds--don't let the garlic burn. Add the potato pieces and the scallions. Stir-fry for 1 minute.
Stir the sauce well to dissolve the settled cornstarch, and add it to the pan all at once, stirring briskly. Add the peanuts. Stir-fry another 30 seconds.
Serve with steamed rice and cold beer.
Quick pickle of snap peas and carrots.
The flashing chopstix of delight.
Text and photos copyright 2010 by Brett Laidlaw
...make salsa.
But first I must digress--it's early for that, I know, but what can you do.... "When life gives you lemons, make lemonade," appears to be a harmless, optimistic cliché, with it's implication of turning something bad into something good. But since when, I ask, are lemons the epitome of something bad? Since when are lemons bad, at all? I wish life would give me lemons, lots of them. I'd not only make lemonade (maybe I'd sweeten it with maple syrup, to keep things a little local), but I'd also set a batch of preserved lemons curing, make lemon curd, carve a twist for my martini, spike an aioli (not too much, we're not making lemon mayonnaise), douse some chicken thighs with lemon juice to then rub with thyme and garlic, grate in some lemon zest, ready for the grill. And lots of other things. Bring on the lemons. Although they don't grow here. But we're not dogmatic.
Lemons are sour, but sour isn't bad. If life gave you Twinkies, now that would be bad. I'd like to see what you'd do then. Turning Twinkies into something good, now that would be a culinary miracle to match the loaves and fishes.
Sabayon. Tabouli. Hollandaise. Life would be dull without lemons.
I only mention the lemons-lemonade thing because there hasn't been a great variety of vegetables at the market yet this year. I think everyone's a little puzzled, because spring got off to such a fast start, one of the warmest Aprils on record. But then early May was much colder than normal, with frost as late as we've seen it in many years. The rest of the month moderated, but not so much that we'll be seeing cucumbers or zucchini any time soon, never mind peppers and tomatoes. Although, the corn and apples will be early this year, I hear, so go figure.
What we have had is a long season of lovely lettuces, and pot greens, radishes well past their usual woody and bolting time, and peas, mostly sugar snap peas. Those are the ones, of course, that look like regular "English peas," all plumped up, unlike snow peas, but you can eat the whole thing, shell and all. For a few weeks now snap peas have been the only above-ground vegetable-that's-not-a-leaf available at the market, and we've used them in stir fries and steam sautés, sliced them into salads, cheater's noodle bowl, snacked on them raw (the dogs love them, too). I won't say I'm tired of them, but I will welcome the sight of a summer squash or green bean, some day soon, I hope.
Getting on with it: Last night I was driving home from a market committee meeting, after 7:00, and I knew Mary was making tortillas (duck confit fat for the shortening, freekin' magic...) to have with some carnitas I'd sort of accidentally made out of a smoked pork shoulder, and I was trying to think of something fresh and crunchy to serve with our tacos, but I knew that those usual salsa suspects, the tomatoes, peppers, cukes, were nowhere to be had, locally, and then I thought, Hey, I'll make a snap pea salsa!
And I did. And it was good. I could also see a nice piece of grilled fish resting on a bed of this.
Snap Pea Salsa
Makes a generous cup
1 cup sugar snap peas
2 green onions--use the white and some of the green
juice of 1/4 lemon (or if life has given you a lot of limes, use lime juice)
2 Tbsp sunflower oil*
2 pinches salt
1/2 tsp sambal oelek--chili paste with garlic--or a small chili, chopped fine
String the peas if need be--I find they usually have a pretty tough string on the top--and chop them medium-fine, 1/4- to 1/3-inch pieces. Chop the green onions the same way. Mix everything together. Best if it sits 20 minutes or so. Can be made a day ahead.
You could add some herbs to this, too. Basil, parsley, mint. Cilantro if you like it, but I don't. If life gave me cilantro, I would be challenged.
This blog's theme is not meant to imply that there is anything bad about snap peas. Not a bit.
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* I mentioned in a recent post about mayonnaise that I'd found a local producer of virgin sunflower oil, Smude. We ordered a bottle, and we've really been enjoying it, using it mainly in salads. It has a nice, mild, nutty taste, and a very pleasant viscosity. It matches with the delicate flavors of tender spring greens very well.
Text and photos copyright 2010 by Brett Laidlaw
A tasty cheat. Yes, I said cheat, not treat. Though it's both, really. The cheat part is that the basis of the dish is none other than a package of pickled vegetable flavor Doll brand instant ramen. The treat part is the addition of snap peas, green garlic, spring onions, garden greens, home-smoked bacon, and drop an egg in the middle. And the secret ingredients, a couple of teaspoons of our cider vinegar, about half a teaspoon of espelette pepper. Couple good dashes of soy sauce to round it out.
I make no apologies, and I ate it right out of the pan I cooked it in. Drank a Bell's Oberon, the only wheat beer I really like. And I do really like this one. Of course, this was another Bide-A-Wee bachelor supper.
I'd love to hear about your favorite kitchen cheats, whether they involve the versatile rotisserie chicken, frozen dough, a doctored Totino's, whatever. I used to get a lot of mileage out of Campbell's chicken broth diluted to about one-third suggested strength, three cans water to one of broth. Come on, folks, give it up. We know everyone cheats once in a while.... *
Bide-A-Wee Noodle Bowl
serves one
In a saucepan or small skillet with highish sides, cook a couple of slices of good bacon gently, until just crisp and most of the fat is rendered. Remove the bacon from the pan, and toss in a handful of snap peas, stringed and sliced in half on a diagonal (or sub other veg, green beans, sliced turnip, carrot, whatever you have or like). Add also one bulb of green garlic, sliced, or a good clove of regular garlic. Now add the water, however much it asks for on the ramen package, or just wing it, enough to cover the noodles. And add the noodles, and a couple of handfuls of greens. Simmer for three or four minutes. Add the ramen flavorings, a couple glugs of soy sauce, some espelette or cayenne or sambal if you like it a bit hot. At the very end add two teaspoons of good cider or rice wine vinegar.
Crack an egg and drop it right into the middle of the noodles. Leave the pan on low heat for about a minute, place the bacon slices on top, then whisk it away to a hot pad on the table.
Eat out of the pan with chopsticks, and drink a good beer, or beverage of your choice.
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* The 1979 film Breaking Away is one of my favorite movies of all time. Ostensibly about a bike race, it is in fact a compendium of poignant wisdom pertinent to just about every important aspect of life on earth. In this case, it's Dave Stoller's heartbreaking realization after being disillusioned by the visting Italian cyclists he has idolized: "Everybody cheats. I just didn't know."
Oh, and it's really funny, too.
Text and photo copyright 2010 by Brett Laidlaw
...yesterday, the Midtown Tuesday afternoon market, which runs from 3:00 to 7:00 right through the end of October now. The market had a damp start this day, and was a bit quiet, but it was clearing toward 5:00 when I left, so perhaps things picked up from there. I took home the makings of a simple grilled supper from a couple of vendors new to the market this year: fresh brats from Chuck Thompson of Painted Hill Farm, and lovely sweet onions from Ross and Emily of Laughing Stalk Farmstead .
I put those over moderate coals, the thick-sliced onions slicked with a bit of olive oil, salted & peppered, while atop the stove I made a "steam-sauté" (another great technique picked up from Jacques) of tiny market new potatoes, green garlic, garden kale and turnip greens.* The onions were a treat. The brats were very good, as well, and get a load of the ingredients: pork, water, salt, white pepper, marjoram, nutmeg, celery, cardamon, red pepper. Hey, where's my corn syrup?!? I want my nitrites!
Kidding. Welcome to the market, Chuck, Ross, and Emily. Find them at Midtown on Tuesday afternoon, but not Saturday.
Served with grilled bread, Mala's excellent homemade mustard, and rhubarb ketchup. Yes, rhubarb ketchup. It is a sausage's best friend.
I swiped this...er, adapted it, from a recipe by Jean-Georges Vongerichten. The original called for port and orange rind, I think. Using a local product, the orange-and-spice flavored ratafia from Nan Bailly's Alexis Bailly Vineyard, was my inspiration. And I used our own cider vinegar, where the original called for red wine vinegar, so you takes your pick.
Rhubarb Ketchup
makes two pints
2 pounds rhubarb stalks, cut into 1/2-inch pieces
1/3 cup Alexis Bailly ratafia
1/4 cup good apple cider (or red wine) vinegar
1 cup sugar
1/4 tsp salt
Pimente d’espelette or cayenne pepper
In a medium saucepan, combine the rhubarb with the ratafia, vinegar, sugar, and salt and bring to a boil. Cook until the rhubarb pieces wilt into the liquid. Cover, remove the pan from the heat, and let steep for 30 minutes. Then simmer over low heat, stirring often, until the rhubarb falls apart, about 5 minutes. Depending upon the rhubarb's, what shall we call it?--viscosity, perhaps, you may need to add a little water. I've made this where the end result is quite fluid, while the most recent batch was pretty gloppy. But I didn't mind. I just let it be.
Add the espellette or cayenne pepper at the end, to taste. I use espelette, which is milder than cayenne, and about a half teaspoon just imparts a little zing.
You can purée it in a blender or FP for a smoother product, but I don’t.
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* Into a saucepan with a cover place the new potatoes, a bit of butter, a bit of olive oil, good pinch of salt, a cup of water. Bring to a boil, cover, cook five minutes. Add one bulb green garlic sliced, and a couple handfuls of greens, coarsely chopped. If the water has all boiled away, add a little more. Cover and cook 7 or 8 minutes more, until the potatoes are tender. At the end remove the lid so the rest of the moisture can evaporate, and let the vegetables brown a bit. Add a little more butter if you like. Taste for salt, serve.
Text and photos copyright 2010 by Brett Laidlaw
I suppose there must be people in the world who buy a piece of cheese, eat it up, then buy another, eat it up, and so on. That would surely be a practical, economical approach to cheese consumption. It is not ours. I'm certain we are not alone in this. Lured by the siren song of the gouda, the enchantment of the chevre, cheddar's sharp summons, we find ourselves frequently over-cheesed. And so the cheese drawer fills up with little bits of not-so-appealing fragments of fromage in tatters of cellophane, and mold starts to set in, and we despair. I hate to throw out food.
In this case, there's a very delicious way around that: get out the FP and whip up a batch of fromage fort, "strong cheese." I came to this preparation thanks to Jacques Pépin, who made it on the series that came out around the time his memoir, The Apprentice, was published. In the old-time, authentic version of this dish, the odds and ends of cheese were submerged in vegetable stock (the water from poaching leeks, which I guess the old-time Lyonnaise did a lot of) and white wine, and left to molder away a good little while. I'd have to think that another round of fermentation occured, resulting in du fromage bien fort, indeed.
With this version we don't get quite that funky. You can let this mellow in the fridge for a couple of days, or use it right away. For the cheese, it is truly a potluck approach--hard or soft, blue or goat, washed rind, whatever you have that needs to be used up. An assortment is nice. Of course, the stronger the cheese you start with, the stronger your end result will be. For the batch I made this week, it was mostly fairly mild cheeses--some cheddar, gouda, gruyère, fresh chevre, even a few curds. If your cheese has gone moldy on the outside, just trim that off.
A food processor makes short work of this. If you don't have one, I suppose you could grate the cheese and work it well with a spatula to beat the wine or cider in. That sounds tiring, though, and this really is a lazy man's method of taking stuff that's a couple days away from the garbage can and turning it into un délice.
Keeping it local, I used some of our hard cider where the original calls for white wine. All the cheese was from Minne'sconsin. I had a little more than twelve ounces of cheese, to which I added a half cup of cider, which was almost too much. It seemed a bit runny just after I blended it, but it set up fine in the fridge. The amount of liquid required will vary somewhat--I had a decent portion of the quite soft chevre, for instance, which contributed to the softer texture. Add less liquid to start; you can always add more.
To serve it, either just spread it on toasts, crackers, or slices of baguette; or, for something insanely delicious, put on your broiler and brown those baguette slices on both sides, spread with some of the cheese, and put them back under the broiler to brown. If I ran a wine bar, these grilled fromage fort toasts would be on the menu at all times. You wouldn't be able to keep enough sauvignon blanc in the joint to keep up.
A couple of those bubbling brown babies alongside a frisée aux lardons salad (I grew the lettuce, smoked the bacon, baked the bread, made the vinegar in the dressing, laid the egg...oh, wait, what the hell am I saying...) makes for a fantastic summer supper.
White wines from Bordeaux, which are mostly sauvignon blanc with perhaps a bit of semillon mixed in, are a great value. Crisp, clean, grapefruity, sometimes carrying hints of tropical fruits, many are available for less than $10 a bottle--and some even come with screw caps, for your picnicking pleasure!
Fromage Fortto fill two ramekins with perhaps a bit leftover
8 ounces cheese bits and ends, trimmed of mold and rind
1 large clove garlic, chopped
a few good grinds black pepper
1/4 to 1/3 cup hard apple cider or dry white wine
First, fit your food processor with the grater attachment, and grate all the harder cheeses--this is an optional step, but I prefer the texture when I first grate the cheese, then blend. Omit any softer cheeses like chevre or brie at this point.
Now combine all the ingredients--holding back a bit of liquid--in the processor bowl. Blend for about 30 seconds, until the mixture is quite smooth. Pack into ramekins or a lidded crock. Use right away, or refrigerate. The taste and aroma will become stronger the longer you keep it--in The Cuisine of the Rose Mireille Johnston says to cache it away for 15 days. I'm not sure I'm that brave....
Here is Jacque's recipe, from the Food & Wine site.
Joyeux fromage, everyone.
Text and photos copyright 2010 by Brett Laidlaw
I have an almost Pavlovian response to the sight of a ramekin. It's not the sweet dishes commonly served in ramekins--pots de creme, creme caramel, etc.--that perk up my salivary glands. Rather it's the savory, rich, robustly flavored concoctions like rillettes of pork or duck, or fromage fort, that get my mouth watering. They transport me straight to the hour of the apéritif, as that enticing little pot is presented flanked with slices of crusty baguette, sweet butter, and of course there's a glass of wine in the picture--mine is a Loire valley white in this fantasy, a muscadet or sancerre.
I'll stick with a crisp French white to accompany this recipe, even though its inspiration comes from across the Channel, British potted shrimps, as seen on one of Rick Stein's "cookery programs" on the BBC. Here at the geographical heart of North America, we're a bit distant from traditional shrimp fishing grounds. It is on my to-do list to get after some local crayfish this summer, but in the meantime I decided to try peeling a couple of small smoked brown trout, which I combined with melted butter, finely chopped shallots, chives, and tarragon.
This made the basis of a simple after-the-market Bide-A-Wee supper, along with market new potatoes and fat Wisconsin asparagus boiled and laced with lemon-chive butter, fresh cheese curds, fresh bread, and a bottle of pouilly-fumé. It was a sultry evening, perfect for a light, flavorful meal like this. Those first new potatoes of the year, no bigger than a ping pong ball, nearly stole the show. But in the end I'd have to give the laurels to the potted trout, rich and smoky, spiked with the tang of the shallots, punched up with a nice hit of tarragon. Spread on bread grilled over the coals, it was utterly satisfying.
If you're not inclined to catch your own brown trout and smoke your own, fear not. You can use the quality smoked rainbow trout from Star Prairie or Bullfrog Fish Farm (speaking to my fellow Minne'sconsinites, of course; the far-flung amongst you, you're on your own...). Smoked whitefish would be good this way, too, I imagine. Herring or lake trout might be a bit too rich for all the butter--then again, too much of a good thing might be just enough...!
I had two small brown trout of about nine inches. Skinned and carefully deboned, they gave me five ounces of meat, and that filled two half-cup ramekins exactly. The farmed rainbow trout will be bigger; one fish should easily provide that five ounces of cleaned fish.
Butter is a main component of this dish, and I think Hope Creamery butter is the best around. It must be unsalted, because the smoked trout will also be quite salty. For this reason I don't add any additional salt, but you can taste your trout mash before packing it into the ramekins to see if it needs salt.
Potted Smoked Trout
5 oz (150 grams) smoked trout, skinned and deboned
3 ounces (6 Tbsp) unsalted butter
1 small shallot very finely chopped, about 1 Tbsp
2 sprigs tarragon, chopped fine
1 Tbsp chopped chives
ground black pepper, optional
salt if needed (see above)
Place the butter and shallots in a small saucepan and melt the butter over low heat.
In a mixing bowl, reduce the smoked trout to very small flakes using either your hands or a couple of forks. Add the herbs, then spoon in 2/3 of the butter. Scoop down to the bottom of the melted butter to get most of the shallots into the mixture. Stir vigorously for about a minute so it all comes together a la rillettes. Pack the mixture into two ramekins. Pour the remaining butter over the top, creating a butter seal.
Refrigerate for a few hours, or overnight. Bring out of the fridge an hour or two before serving. Serve with fresh baguette slices or grilled bread, a fresh garden salad, simply blanched asparagus and/or new potatoes tossed in butter, some fresh snap peas, radishes, that sort of thing.
This could serve as the basis for a wonderful tartine breakfast, as well as a warm night simple supper or elegant lunch. Luncheon, is a word my mom would use; ladies who lunch don't actually go to lunch, they go to luncheons....
Text and photos copyright 2010 by Brett Laidlaw
on a gorgeous June afternoon, after the cool front has come through sweeping away a stormy, hot, sticky and anxious (for sensitive dogs) night, so much the better.
