Desiree Potatoes with Blue Cheese and Garlic

Ranui Gardens CSA
Last Pick of the Season 2012

In her well-researched tome, Vegetables, from Amaranth to Zucchini,  Elizabeth Schneider  describes the Desiree potato as a European favorite that is best steamed because it turns pearly alabaster with its flesh waxy, satiny and sliceable. “Pure delicate flavor with a high note–like sparkling wine.” This simple presentation is meant to showcase the potato’s quality.

2 pounds Desiree potatoes

3 to 4 cloves garlic

3 tablespoons unsalted butter

1/2 teaspoon kosher salt

4 ounces mild blue cheese

Chopped parsley leaves, optional

Scrub the potatoes very well with a vegetable brush. Place them on a steamer rack over plenty of boiling water. Cover. Reduce the heat so that the water boils gently and cook until the potatoes are tender in the center when pierced with a knife tip, about 25 minutes. Lift the steamer rack and let the potatoes cool slightly.

While the potatoes are cooking, slice the garlic into thin slivers. Heat the butter in a skillet on very low heat. Add the garlic and salt and cook, stirring often until the garlic softens. If the flame is good and low, this could take 10 minutes—just don’t let the garlic turn brown.

Mash potatoes slightly and arrange them in a warm serving dish. Drizzle the buttery garlic and blue cheese on top. Sprinkle with chopped parsley if you want more color.

Figuring about 1/2 pound of potatoes per person–this recipes serves 4.

Read Full Post »

Random Vegetables with Savory Peanut Butter Sauce

I had some “Thai” peanut and sesame baked tofu in the fridge. I wanted to serve it with the spaghetti squash and beet greens from last week’s Farmer’s Market. The problem was I had already stirred quite a bit of basil pesto into the spaghetti squash the night before and I needed a sauce that was compatible with both pesto and sesame peanut tofu. I must have looked in five different cookbooks for inspiration when I came across Deborah Madison’s Quick Peanut Sauce in Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone. (I have said it before,” If you want the best vegetarian cookbook out there, that is the one.)

The random vegetables are just that—whatever you have on hand, whatever you feel like eating, or whatever you find in your CSA box or Farmer’s Market. Garlicky and tangy and sort of sweet, this, my variation of Ms. Madison’s sauce, enriches an assortment of vegetables, as well as grains and proteins. Serve it cold, spooned over your choice of goodies.

Heaping 1/3 cup chunky (unsweetened) peanut butter

¼ cup rice wine vinegar

2 or 3 cloves garlic, minced

1 ½ tablespoons tamari soy sauce

2 teaspoons brown sugar or honey

1 teaspoon chili oil

2 teaspoons toasted sesame oil

¼ teaspoon Real Salt, or to taste

¼ cup water

In a bowl, mix the peanut butter, vinegar, garlic, soy sauce, brown sugar, chili oil and water with a fork. Taste and add the salt if you deem necessary.

Makes about 1 cup.

Read Full Post »

Carrot Macaroons

We always have carrots in the fridge. Most evenings there is a carrot in our dinner salad and Robbie slices carrots and puts them in our sandwiches for color and crunch. They flavor our soups along with onion and garlic and at times we enjoy carrots roasted or steamed. I love it when we find fresh garden carrots in our CSA box—I take advantage and think outside the eating “box.”

This cookie is Alice Medrich’s recipe from Chewy Gooey Crispy Crunchy Melt-in-your-Mouth cookies. I added cayenne pepper and subbed orange for the lemon zest. The cookies are delicious and different but not that easy to make. I mixed them together last night; right after I pulled them from the oven, I went to bed. This morning Robbie came from the kitchen and said, “Good news and bad news. Those cookies are really good but they stick to the parchment paper—I can’t get them off.” I thought not-to-worry because I’d read a note in the recipe telling how to remove the cookies from the parchment:  hold one cookie at a time while gently peeling the parchment away from it. But when we pulled a cookie off the paper, some of it still stuck to the bottom of the cookie. Robbie had figured out a solution by the time I got to the kitchen—he had turned the cookies over—the sheet of parchment with cookies stuck on it–and rubbed the paper with a wet kitchen sponge. Voila! The cookies released from the paper. I think if I ever make them again I will put them on a silicone baking mat—most everything releases easily from a “Silpat.”

Be sure to use unsweetened coconut—available in specialty markets that sell nuts and dried fruits, and in natural food stores. The highly sweetened coconut we use in German Chocolate frosting is not a good substitute.

Carrot Macaroons

¾ cup whole almonds

2 large egg whites

1 cup organic cane sugar

1 teaspoon pumpkin pie spice

Pinch cayenne pepper

¼ teaspoon Real Salt

1 1/3 cup finely shredded carrot

¾ cup unsweetened dried shredded coconut

Heaping ¼ teaspoon grated orange zest

Preheat the oven to 325 degrees F.

In a food processor, pulse the almonds until you get chopped almonds ranging from finely chopped to mostly finely chopped.

In a stainless steel bowl, whisk the egg whites with a fork until frothy. Stir in the sugar, pumpkin pie spice, salt and cayenne. Add the carrot, coconut, almonds and orange zest and stir until everything is moistened. Set aside for 10 minutes to dissolve the sugar and hydrate the coconut. (This is when I took a shower and brushed my teeth.)

Set the bowl directly in a wide skillet of barely simmering water and stir the mixture with a silicone spatula, scraping the bottom to prevent burning, until the mixture is very hot to the touch and any liquid at the bottom of the bowl has thickened and turned from translucent to opaque.

Drop by heaping teaspoons 1 inch apart on parchment lined baking sheets or on silicone baking mats on the baking sheets. Bake about 25 minutes, until the tips of the carrot shreds begin to color. Allow to cool completely. (This is when I went to bed.)

Remove the cookies from the pan as best you can—use Robbie’s trick if you line your pans with parchment.

Keep in a box loosely covered—they will loose their crunch if kept airtight. Alice says do not freeze and I have not tested her caution.

Makes 48 small cookies.

Read Full Post »

Red Wine and Shallot Jam with Vanilla Bean

I checked a great cookbook out of the library a couple of weeks ago—The Flexitarian Table by Peter Berley.  Flexitarian unites the words flexible and vegetarian—and many of the recipes offer a choice—you could prepare the meat version or the vegetarian version. We don’t eat much meat in our house so I wasn’t looking for this option, but I had read a promising review of the book and I am always seeking new workable, creative and delicious recipes.

To accompany Schnitzel, made either with seitan or chicken livers, author Berley provides recipes for Bitter Greens and a Red Wine-Shallot Compote. We find bitter greens in our Ranui Garden’s CSA box at least every other week and this is the second week for shallots. In fact, I have been hoarding my shallots for just this recipe, so now I have extra for something else. I made this variation of the compote and we will enjoy it with sautéed kale, on toast or crackers with goat cheese, or maybe with some venison if our hunting friends are generous.

Red Wine and Shallot Jam with Vanilla Bean

1 pound shallots

1 1/2 cups red wine

1 cup water

¼ cup agave syrup

3 tablespoons red wine vinegar

2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar

½ teaspoon Real Salt

1 vanilla bean

Freshly ground black pepper

Cut the shallots in half lengthwise. Tear the dry outside layers off and remove the tip and the tail. Slice thinly crosswise and put into a medium skillet. Add the red wine, water, agave syrup, both vinegars and the salt. Split the vanilla bean down the middle with a knife and scrape out the tiny seed pods. Add both the vanilla bean and the seeds to the skillet. Grind a generous amount of black pepper into the skillet, at least 20 turns of the grinder. Bring to a boil. Reduce the heat to a low simmer and cook, stirring occasionally, until the liquid is gone, about 1 ½ hours. Keep cooking and stirring well after you think the jam is finished; the shallots will become much softer and more jam-like if you just keep on cooking.

Serve warm, or spoon into jars and refrigerate or freeze until you are ready to serve. It will keep about 2 weeks in the refrigerator.

Makes about 1 1/2 cups jam.

Read Full Post »

Real Salt, Summer Savory and Garlic

Real Salt, Summer Savory and Garlic

Let’s talk about salt, the mineral that we eat, critical ingredient in cooking, enhancer/improver of food, sodium chloride, sprinkled throughout world history for many reasons more than culinary.

Is all salt the same NaCl, sodium chloride, be it table salt, kosher salt, flake salt, rock salt or sea salt?

Technically and chemically yes, salt is salt, but there is more to salt than sodium chloride, and I’d like to convince you to go think that way when it comes to buying, seasoning with, eating and enjoying salt.

I think I have known for a long time that salt is not all the same, that industrial refined sodium chloride is different (and less healthful) than salt that’s allowed to keep more of its natural qualities, be it mined salt or evaporated salt. A couple of years ago I attended a salt tasting workshop in Portland, Oregon. Our “selmelier” was Mark Bitterman, who showed us in a short two hours how geography and environment (terroir) and production methods can affect the crystallized shapes, flavor, color and mineral makeup of salt. We tasted more than 20 salts, including flaked salt from Japan, evaporated over fire, fine delicate grey salt skimmed from the sea and evaporated by the sun, and pink rock salt mined in Pakistan.

Then I read his book, Salted: A Manifesto on the World’s Most Essential Mineral, with Recipes. Bitterman teaches readers how and why and to appreciate salt’s diversity, especially when it comes to the kitchen. He talks about the craft and history of salt, with sidebars about our sense of taste, the science of salt and its relationship to our body, and the iodization of salt. Since reading his book, I have expanded my pantry to include some wonderful “finishing” salts. I love the sweet flavor of Murray River flake salt from Australia on fresh vegetables and the aromatic way black truffle salt dresses up potatoes and eggs.

For a good personal tasting illustration, try fleur de sel from France contrasted against Morton kosher salt, a tiny pinch of each salt baked as a finish on a buttery chocolate shortbread. See for yourself.

Why do I specify Real Salt in many if not most of my recipes? It’s a good cooking salt, for pasta water and baking, any time the salt will dissolve in the food. Real Salt is mined in Central Utah, near the town of Redmond. It comes to us unrefined, with more than 60 trace minerals intact. It is not processed by heat nor does it come from a huge industrial plant that makes sodium chloride mainly for fertilizer and deicing. (I am not paid by Redmond Trading Company to say this, nor do they give me free salt.)

I like the sweet (as opposed to bitter) taste of Real Salt and its slight pink color, and the calico flecks of brown and grey from the extra minerals. (But, give Real Salt the chocolate shortbread taste test above and you’ll hopefully see why there are better tasting salts for supplying the final “finish” sparkle to food.)

My friend Teri excitedly called me a couple of weeks ago about a salt recipe with fresh herbs and garlic. She listens to The Splendid Table on NPR religiously every weekend and had just heard Sally Schneider describe Tuscan Herb Salt. I missed the initial airing of Sally’s conversation with host Lynne Rosetto Kasper, but not to worry–The Splendid Table is easy to hear later as a podcast and the website has the recipe links and more. Teri knew Sally’s recipe would be fabulous with most garden-fresh herbs. Here is my version with this week’s Ranui Gardens CSA summer savory. Try it on fresh sliced tomatoes or lightly steamed green beans.

summer savory salt

Real Salt, Summer Savory and Garlic

1 clove garlic, peeled

2 teaspoons plus 4 teaspoons larger flake salt (like kosher)

½ cup fresh summer savory leaves

Drop the garlic and 2 teaspoons of the salt into the work bowl of a food processor while the food processor is running and process until the garlic is uniformly chopped. Add the summer savory leaves and pulse until the leaves are well chopped. Transfer to a baking sheet and mix in the remaining salt. Let the pan sit out for a few days until the herbs and garlic are obviously dry. Store in a jar.

Makes about 1/3 cup.

Read Full Post »

More Zucchini

Well I guess since zucchini is green it falls into the category of greens, and farmer John did say there would be lots of greens in our Ranui CSA boxes. This is the third week straight with zucchini.

What to do?  At least it’s the Roman varietal zucchini in our boxes; Costata Romanesca does have more substance and real flavor than the brunt—of–jokes classic green zucchini .

Zucchini Ideas:

Grill zucchini simply, with olive oil and salt and pepper, which is what we did last week.

Or bake up some Chocolate Zucchini muffins—a variation from the Chocolate Zucchini Bread in my Chocolate Snowball cookbook.

Go to fellow blogger Gwen’s  terrific recipe for stuffed zucchini—and read her funny comments about zucchini.

This post from another blogger has ideas for the top 10 best things to do with too much zucchini. As I read Cheryl’s ideas I was giggling out loud—“lol” in internet vernacular.

This summer I’ve been writing monthly for Catalyst Magazine here in Utah. Go to Catalyst’s July issue to learn fun zucchini facts and trivia as well as my advice to pick and enjoy the blossoms before they turn into the green phallic fruit.

Here is a variation on the recipe for Squash Blossom Soup from that same Catalyst article. Enjoy this soup hot or cold.

For efficiency, use an immersion blender to puree the soup, it stands right in the soup pot and eliminates the muss and fuss of hot soup transfer and exploding out of the blender. An immersion blender is a purchase worth every penny.

Cotija cheese is a Hispanic-style cheese–somewhat salty and doesn’t really melt–you may substitute any cheese you want or skip it altogether.

Squash Blossoms on the Grill

Zucchini Soup

1 tablespoon canola or grapeseed oil

1 onion, chopped

2 cloves garlic, minced

About 5 cups grated zucchini

3 cups veggie broth

1/4 cup cilantro, basil or parsley leaves

Dash cayenne pepper

Real Salt or sea salt

1/2 cup crumbled cotija cheese, optional

1/4 cup lightly toasted pumpkin seeds, optional

Avocado slices, optional

In a large saucepan, heat the oil on medium heat and sauté the onion and garlic for about 5 minutes. Add the zucchini and the broth, cilantro and cayenne. Cover and simmer 10 minutes, until the zucchini is soft. Puree in a blender, or with an immersion blender.

Season to taste with sea salt and more cayenne.

Serve garnished with garnishes of crumbled cheese, pumpkin seeds or slices of avocado, if you wish.

Makes 4 to 6 servings.

Read Full Post »

Red Mustard Green and Soysage Pilaf with Oranges and Olives

Red mustard

You may have noticed an occasional red mustard leaf or two in our Ranui Gardens CSA weekly salad mix. This week John is giving us an entire ½ pound. This is a gorgeous “green”, more variegated purple/green than  red—though with cooking the bright purple color, disappointingly, leaches out. To preserve the color, toss the chopped greens into the rice mixture at the very end, just to wilt. Expect a spicy, peppery, substantial pilaf.

As with all greens, strip the leaves from the stems after washing. Discard the stems. If you just can’t stand throwing them to compost, chop the stems and sauté with the soysage. Soysage is my word for non-meat soy based “sausage.” I use Gimme Lean brand ground sausage style, which is readily available in grocery stores here in Park City. The flavor is so familiar that I once fooled my father-in-law, who grew up on a farm in North Dakota. As the name indicates, there is not a lot of fat in soysage, requiring a sauté with ample oil.

The pilaf recipe is a variation of one from my beloved reference cookbook, Vegetables from Amaranth to Zucchini, by Elizabeth Schneider. In my habit of penciled notes in the white margins of cookbooks, I jotted “excellent, double the cooking times.” I have included the additional time adjustment in the directions.

Chopped mustard, green olives and orange zest

Red Mustard Green and Soysage Pilaf with Oranges and Olives

1 tablespoon plus 2 tablespoons grapeseed or olive oil

1 cup brown basmati rice

1 clove garlic, minced

½ teaspoon fennel or cumin seeds

2 cups vegetable broth or water

4 to 8 ounces soysage, cook’s choice

½ pound red mustard greens, washed, stems removed and chopped into 1/2-inch pieces

¼ cup chopped pitted green olives

½ teaspoon grated orange zest

1 orange, peeled, cut into sections, and diced

1 tablespoon fresh-squeezed lemon juice

1 tablespoon honey

Heat the first tablespoon of oil in a medium saucepan. Add the rice and cook, stirring often, until you see a bit of golden color, about 5 minutes. Stir in the garlic and fennel, stirring another minute or so, but don’t let the garlic turn brown.

Add the vegetable broth, cover, and return to a boil. Lower the heat as low as possible and cook until all of the water is absorbed, about one hour. (To see if the water has been absorbed without stirring, tilt the pan to the side.) Let sit about 10 minutes; this “finishes” the rice.

While the rice is steaming, heat the remaining oil in a medium to large skillet. Cook the soysage, breaking it up with a wooden spoon as it cooks, until there is a golden, meat-like color to it. Set the skillet aside, but keep warm.

Prepare the mustard greens, olives, orange zest and sections and set aside. In a bowl, whisk the lemon juice and honey together.

When the rice is hot and has sat the requisite time, reheat the skillet with the soysage. Fluff the rice into the skillet with a fork, stirring in the red mustard, olives, orange zest and orange dice, along with the lemon/honey mixture, and incorporating the soysage. Serve as soon as the mustard has wilted.

Makes 6 to 8 servings.

Red Mustard Greens and Soysage Pilaf

Read Full Post »

Rosemary Oatmeal Scones

This week’s CSA box

This recipe comes from my cookbook, Chocolate Snowball: and Other Fabulous Pastries from Deer Valley Bakery. Fresh rosemary is a must here; make these only when you have fresh rosemary on hand—like we Ranui Gardens CSA members this week. If you are questioning pastry with rosemary, you will find its strong, pungent, lemony, slightly piney and distinct flavor a delightful surprise. After all, rosemary is a member of the mint family, and we incorporate mint in desserts all the time.

Trivia: ancient Greeks and Romans used the dark grey-green needles as a culinary and medicinal herb and considered rosemary a symbol of fidelity, friendship and remembrance; brides wore garlands of it in their hair, as did Greek students during their examinations.

To impart the rosemary’s fragrance, strip the needles from the stem, chop them very finely, and steep in hot cream. When the rosemary infusion is cold, mix it into the dry ingredients. At Deer Valley we form the dough in rounds and freeze until needed.

Rosemary Oatmeal Scones

1 1/2 teaspoons finely chopped fresh rosemary

3/4 cup half-and-half cream

1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

1/3 cup sugar

1 1/2 teaspoons salt

1 tablespoon baking powder

1 1/2 cups old-fashioned rolled oats

12 tablespoons (1 1/2 sticks) cold unsalted butter, cut in 1/2-inch pieces

3/4 cup golden raisins

2 tablespoons milk or heavy cream, optional

1 tablespoon crystal or granulated sugar

Heat the rosemary and the cream in a small saucepan over medium heat until very hot but not boiling. Refrigerate until the cream is cold, about 30 minutes.

Sift the flour, sugar, salt and baking powder into a large bowl, and stir in the rolled oats. Cut the butter into the dry ingredients, using your fingers or a pastry blender, until the mixture resembles coarse meal. With a fork, stir in the cold rosemary cream and the raisins, and mix until the dough comes together. It will be quite sticky. To form this soft dough into a round, line a 9-inch round cake pan with plastic wrap. Put the dough into the pan and fold the plastic wrap over to completely cover the dough. Form the dough into an even round disk, about 1/2 inch thick, by pushing the dough around under the plastic wrap. Refrigerate or freeze about 1 hour, or until cold enough to cut.

Preheat oven to 375˚. Line a large baking sheet with parchment paper, or coat lightly with butter or cooking spray. Cut the scone dough round into 10 pie-shaped wedges. Arrange on the prepared pan at least 1 inch apart. Brush with milk or cream, if using, and sprinkle with sugar. Bake 15 to 20 minutes or until the bottoms are light golden brown and your finger doesn’t leave an indentation when you touch the tops.

Makes 10 scones.

Read Full Post »

Warm Chickpeas and Mizuna

I bought a new cookbook this summer that sounded right up my kitchen—Super Natural Every Day. Author Heidi Swanson blogs at 101 Cookbooks. 101 Cookbooks has a fun premise for someone like me who has a hard time resisting another cookbook—Heidi decided to cook her way through her own collection of more than 100 cookbooks and chronicle the recipes. Her site has since evolved and continues to be an exploration of recipes in her life, focusing on natural, whole foods; I imagine her writing is now famous enough that she makes a living as a blogger. And a cookbook author, because the two help support each other. At any rate, I bought her new cookbook. Heidi is a fabulous writer and when I have time I indulge myself by catching up with her blog.

In Super Natural Every Day, there is a recipe for Chickpeas and Dandelion Greens. Here is my twist, with mizuna, another green (with a bitter edge of flavor) that we find in our Ranui Gardens CSA box this week.

2 cups cooked chickpeas (otherwise known as garbanzo beans), or 1 (15-ounce can) garbanzo beans, rinsed and drained

3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

4 cloves garlic, minced

¼ teaspoon red pepper flakes

Real Salt

½ pound (or so) mizuna leaves

1 teaspoon sherry wine vinegar

¼ cup toasted pinenuts or walnut pieces

Put the oil, garlic, red pepper flakes and some salt in a large skillet. Heat over a low flame, stirring often, until the garlic begins to sizzle, but before it gets any brown color at all. Stir in the chickpeas. Add the mizuna to the skillet and stir as it wilts. Sprinkle on the sherry wine vinegar, stirring. Transfer to a serving dish and garnish with the nuts.

Makes 2 to 4 servings.

Read Full Post »

Pesto, Potato and Red Onion Pizza

When we entertain, which isn’t very often, Robbie and I like to do pizza, with all manner of toppings and themes, like Mexican perhaps. In the summer we use the grill, in the winter the oven—its very convivial to hang out at the bar in our kitchen, chatting and sipping and watching the pizzas go in the oven and come out, and tempting all of us with a new combo. Thank you Deborah Madison, who, in The Greens Cookbook, taught me all about pizza possibilities. Smoked cheese is my latest discovery—I love the extra lilt it gives to pizzas.

Pizza in America is not what people usually make at home—but a quick and easy order and delivery. Robbie even fell for a dinner invitation recently; when the host said we were having pizza, Robbie pictured homemade crust and creative toppings. Boy was he surprised when dinner came out of a box.

We went to Moab for a 3-day desert holiday on Monday and I was in charge of dinner that evening.

Bron French mandoline

I packed our pizza stone and the mandoline and made sure to bring the green chile pesto and the package of Iraqi flatbread, a gift from our friend Peter, that I had been hoarding in the freezer. In Salt Lake City, pick up this yummy Persian flatbread at Pars Market on Highland Drive.

Iraqi flat bread

I used the mandoline to quickly slice the potatoes thinly, and I even impressed myself with how easily the pizzas came together.

This recipe is for one pizza, but you can make as many as you wish. Use my whole wheat pizza dough recipe or pick up some Iraqi flatbread—the cooking time will vary, depending on which you use, the dough and the cooking vehicle itself.

Pesto, Potato and Red Onion Pizza

1 10-inch pizza crust, raw and freshly shaped, or pre-baked

Several Warba, yellow or red potatoes (6 to 10 ounces total) well-scrubbed and very thinly sliced

1 clove garlic, chopped

Extra virgin olive oil

Salt and freshly ground pepper

Green chile or regular pesto

¼ cup very thinly sliced red onion

About 4 ounces smoked cheddar or mozzarella cheese, grated

Over low flame, heat a couple of tablespoons of the olive oil in a large skillet. Add the sliced potatoes and the garlic and season with salt. Cook and stir for about 5 minutes. Add 3 tablespoons of water and cover the skillet. Cook another 5 minutes, just until the potatoes are tender. Take off the cover and let any remaining water cook away. Set aside.

Place the pizza stone in the oven or grill and preheat to 450 degrees or as hot as you can get the grill.

Put the pizza crust on a pizza peel or an upside-down pizza pan that you have sprinkled lightly with cornmeal. (The cornmeal acts as ball bearings so the pizza can slide onto the stone.)

Drizzle some olive oil on the crust and spread it around with a brush or your fingers. Spread about 3 tablespoons of pesto on next, followed by the red onion slices and some of the cheese. Now arrange the potatoes, so that all of the dough is covered except for ¾ of an inch around the edge. Season with salt and plenty of freshly ground pepper. Sprinkle the remaining cheese evenly over the potatoes.

Slide the pizza onto the stone and bake it for 6 to 10 minutes, until the edges and bottom are deep golden brown.

Makes 1 pizza

Read Full Post »