Savory

Radish top pumpkin seed pesto

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Rodney and I got engaged the Spring before we started business school and the time seemed ripe for a trip. With a small window between work and the start of school, we decided to pack up our bags and head to Europe. We spoiled ourselves by starting our trip in Spain, hitting Barcelona first, and then making a short stopover on the islands of Mallorca and Ibiza. We got into the usual kind of trouble over there, riding scooters on highways and staying up until dawn. I’m still thankful that we survived those few days, even if my camera didn’t.

From Barcelona, we traveled by overnight bus to France, where we met my parents who were living in Nice for a month. This all sounds very Lifestyle of the Rich and Famous, and I promise you that it’s not. This was the one time when the stars aligned and multiple family members somehow ended up on the same trip of a lifetime in the same area, at the same time. This will never happen again. Or maybe it will if we actually do become rich and famous.

To celebrate our pre-dawn arrival, my step-dad met us at the bus stop and hustled us back to their apartment where we were met with an impressive spread of French cheese, salami and duck terrine.

As you can imagine, we ate like gluttons; so much so, that Rodney and I made ourselves sick and had to spend the next day in bed suffering from severe gastrointestinal distress. Too much raw milk cheese isn’t always a good thing.

Fortunately, after our week of binge eating in France, we were on our way to the Liguria region in Italy. Our plan was to hike through Cinque Terre and get healthy again with a mix of salads, fish, and lotsa lotsa pesto.

If you’re a fan of pesto, there is no better place to eat this stuff than in Liguria. Pesto is religion here, with shriveled old Nonnas duking it out for bragging rights over who makes the best version.

With our bellies full of pesto, we headed south to Amalfi. Like our experience in Mexico, we didn’t know where we’d be staying, but hoped for the best, and ended up finding a gem of an apartment with a roof deck facing the Mediterrean. Our place was and run by a mother/son duo, both of whom loved gelato and neither of whom spoke a lick of English.

As you would expect, they grew basil on their doorstep. More pots than I could count, so heisting a few leaves here and there was a no brainer. 

We split our roof deck with another apartment, and thus found ourselves sharing dinners and conversation with an Australian couple who were visiting from the city of Adelaide.

“I dated a guy from Adelaide, he’s an actor, I met him on my study abroad in Sydney” I once mentioned. “Name is Damon Gameau.”

As luck would have it, their daughter was at a party with Damon when her parents called to check in. As heard from our side of the phone “Lovely time in Italy, beautiful villa in Amalfi, staying next to a gal who said she dated an actor from Adelaide. Yes, his name’s Damon Gameau. Oh you’re at a party with him! Well tell him that we’re with Jessica! His old girlfriend from Sydney.”

There was a lot of “what a coeencidence Muriel” kind of stuff before the daughter said “hold on Mum, I’ll go and tell Damon”.

A minute passed, and the daughter came back on the phone to report that Damon had never heard of me.

I don’t know how you can forget a girlfriend of 6 months, but apparently it can be done. We went on a mini vacation together. He introduced me to homemade carbonara and Tim Tams. We used to drink white wine in our cramped garden in Coogee Beach. We were in a house fire together. How can one forget these things?

So I dusted off my pride, and focused on the pesto. Because, what’s more important in life, amnesic ex-boyfriends who didn’t use enough shampoo…or pesto?

Exactly.

And here’s a little secret that I’ve learned in the past year or two: pesto can be made with just about any green. And basil, though I love it, needs to be treated with care or it can turn dark.

So my favorites lately have been of the more….exotic variety. Arugula pesto, carrot top pesto, radish green pesto, kale pesto. Name the green, you can make it into pesto.

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My go-to combo is usually garlic, olive oil, parmesan cheese, and pine nuts, but I’ve discovered recently that pumpkin seeds make a fine substitute for nuts for our nut-allergic friends (our daughter included).

You don’t even need a recipe for pesto, although I’ve provided one below – just blitz the garlic in a food processor, add everything but the olive oil and pulse to a paste, and while the motor is running, add enough oil until you hear it slushing around loosely. Season to taste.

So whether you’ve signed up for a CSA and are preparing to get overwhelmed with greens this summer, or you (like me) can’t bear to throw away the beautiful vegetable tops that so often become compost or trash, I hope that this gives you some inspiration to get your pesto on. Enjoy!

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Savory

Jerry Garcia beets

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I’ve been meaning to address the topic of beets for some time because, like ramps, there seem to be divided camps: those who love them, and those who would veer across three lanes of rush hour traffic to avoid them.

I would plant myself firmly in the beet lover camp, although I do admit that they’re an acquired taste. They have an earthy mustiness that takes some getting used to, but once you’re there, rejoice. Because not only do they taste great, but they’re also one of the healthiest foods on earth.

A few of their benefits:

  • They help clear out BPA that resides in everything from your water bottles to your canned vegetables
  • They lower your blood pressure
  • They’re rich in all kinds of vitamins and nutrients like vitamins B and C

I’m sure there are more, but the purpose of this post is to talk about this beet dish and why you need to make it now.

What some of you may not know is that the beet greens themselves are also edible. And I do hate it when vegetables/vegetable parts are described as “edible” since it suggests that you caaaan eat them, but why would you want to?

Beet greens aren’t just edible, but they have a flavor profile on par with Swiss chard, kale, and other leafy greens. The problem is that when you see beet greens in the grocery store, the greens have often seen a few too many days and ill handling, and they end up wilted and yellowing. Sometimes you may scratch your head and think “do moths eat beet greens?”

Those aren’t the delicious greens that I’m referring to. Head to your nearest farmers’ market to find just-picked beets and you’re in for a treat.

In celebration of all things beet, I decided to make a dish that uses all parts of the beet, nose to tail. So put on your beet butchering hat, and take a look at what I’m calling my Jerry Garcia beets.

Alternate titles for this post included “Hallucinogenic beets” and “Meaty nose-to-tail beets” but to keep the vegetarians and non-drug users reading, “Jerry Garcia beets” seemed to be a good compromise.

I also liked the sense that I was naming my dish after an actual person. When I’m reading through cookbooks, I’ll sometimes come across a dish titled after someone special in the author’s life, like “Rinka’s mom’s beans” or “Aunt Julia’s salad dressing”, which makes me think: who is this Rinka and why is he or she so lucky to have a mom who makes such fabulous beans? And why don’t I have a dish named after someone?

I did think of referencing one of my favorite culinary folk heroes, my Dad, famous for his raw flour and red wine Thanksgiving gravy, poured through the beak of a ceramic bird called “the puking chicken”.

But unfortunately – or fortunately – he has no connection to beets. Inspiration needed to come from somewhere else.

By happy accident the beets turned out this color:

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Your reaction here might be “eeeew” (particularly if you’re a beet hater) or “awesome”. So I may be speaking to the minority of people who will agree with me, but multicolored creamed beets were the highlight of my day. And this isn’t joke food. This ain’t no Janet Jackson nipple cupcake, nor is it a cookie dough ice cream-filled taco. It’s real deal food; food that I would happily serve to friends and family, whether they live in California and can handle this kind of thing, or New York, where they’d have mild, wavelike panic attacks about all of that color.

It started as a simple idea. I set out to cook some creamed beets & beet greens, using all parts of the beet, from the vibrant stems to the lush greens.

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Savory

Mother’s Day brunch

I wasn’t planning to write a Mother’s Day post. Today’s post was supposed to be about ramps, but ramps will have to wait. Mother’s Day is a more timely subject, and one that I shamefully didn’t prioritize.

It’s not that I don’t love Mother’s Day, I do. But I tend to get excited about it on actual day itself, when at 11AM, someone in the house (not a child) says “oh crap, it’s Mother’s Day.” Then I start to scheme about all of the wonderful things that are heading my way….a late afternoon nap perhaps, or a 7:30PM bedtime with a good book.

I hope that my lax attitude towards Mother’s Day doesn’t sound harsh. I’m certainly not an old curmudgeon who goes about disparaging Valentine’s Day and the rest of the Hallmark holidays. If I’m to be completely honest, I’m equally forgetful about anniversaries. Rodney and I are often shocked to see a bouquet of flowers show up in our apartment every November, courtesy of my mother, who doesn’t forget these things.

But here’s the thing about forgetting communal holidays. It’s much better if it’s forgotten until the end of the day. At which point you realize the error of your ways, have some celebratory Champagne, and head to bed happy and a little drunk.

The worst time to remember is mid-morning, when you feel compelled to do something about it outside of the home.

Which is how, two years ago, we ended up at McDonald’s.

Not my first choice either, but here are the facts: 1) we were staying at the lake for the weekend where there are only 1-2 decent restaurants, decent meaning not McDonald’s, 2) everyone within a 15 mile radius goes hunting and gathering for a table at one of said restaurants, and 3) McDonald’s was right around the corner.

Based on my food and recipes, you may have presumed by now that I’m more skilled in the kitchen than a McDonald’s fry cook. Which isn’t a fair comparison, because it’s possible that he’s a talented chef who’s butting up against the chronic and debilitating constraints imposed by McDonald’s corporate.

But the point is this: my food tends to be better than what you’ll find at your neighborhood Golden Arches. Meaning that we could have gone back to our house, tails between our legs, and prepared a splendid brunch of Eggs Benedict, plump sausages, and blood orange mimosas. But that would be admitting defeat.

So rather than making me do all of that wonderful gruntwork which would have had me humming The Sound of Music all morning, Rodney suggested that we go to McDonald’s. Because, you know, the kids are hungry and we should probably find somewhere quickly before tectonic plates shift, the ground opens up, and world disintegrates into a smoking heap of ashes.

McDonald’s is one of those “in the case of an emergency, break glass” kinds of places. And I suppose that hungry kids = emergency, although in my highly trained medical opinion, treatment should have included a return to the house STAT for some whole grain crackers and a yogurt squeezers while I did the Sound of Music thing.

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Pickled things

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I have a serious question: why are all of the jam and jelly canning classes left until August? Do the preservation experts of the world not realize that strawberry season will be upon us in the blink of an eye? And that perhaps some of us would be interested in learning to properly preserve them at the peak of freshness?

I’ve bought a few books on preserving, and I’m ready to take the plunge, but for some reason, oh I don’t know why, I’m a little scared of botulism. That was one of the reassuring things about making beer – despite the long list of ingredients, and the multi-staged sanitizing efforts, our teacher swore to us that if we messed up, our beer would not make us physically ill. The worst thing that could happen is that we’d brew a batch of horrible tasting but perfectly healthy beer.

That, I cannot say for jam. One wrong move and you’re done, correct? Maybe I’ve read one person’s horror story and am making sweeping generalizations. But one person or many, I’ve been scarred. Jamming can wait until I have a professional tell me the same thing as our beer instructor: relax, you’ll be fine, your jam won’t kill you. Reader, if you’re that jamming professional from whom I seek validation, please speak up. And if anyone knows of a jam/canning class in NYC before the summer starts, I will pay you back with Bitcoins and praise.

But pickles…I’ll blow through a batch of pickles in a few days so there’s never any need to worry about long storage times. And it’s just about the easiest thing you can do in a jar. Water, salt, sugar, vinegar, that’s it. Throw some spices into the mix and you can take the flavor profile in any direction you’d like – classic with dill and coriander, or exotic, like I did last week with some beets, using cinnamon and star anise.

A few weeks ago I tried out some Vietnamese Do Chua – carrot and daikon radish thinly-sliced and left to marinate for a few days in a simple bath of water, white sugar, salt and vinegar.

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Let me tell you, there is nothing like homemade Do Chua when you’re craving Banh Mi. Not craving Banh Mi yet? Get yourself over to your nearest Vietnamese takeout spot where you can sample the real deal. And if you’re up for it, Banh Mi is pretty easy to make at home – it took 20 minutes to make this bad boy and my stomach was singing all afternoon.

Banh Mi

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Vegetarian lasagna

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I once told a horrible tale about suffering through month after month of vegetarian lasagna.

This is not entirely accurate.

Yes, it was the summer when I was pregnant and deluged with weekly deliveries of vegetable-filled CSA boxes. It was exhausting, but it was also thrilling – each week opening a box to something new, something fresh, plucked from the ground only a day or two before.

I don’t know how much vegetarian lasagna I made that summer but it was enough to put a spare freezer on my Amazon Wishlist. Never mind the lack of space in my apartment. Details…Throw an afghan over it and there you go, instant coffee table.

What I really should have done is gotten a food manufacturing license and started to sell them at the local Walmart. They would have flown out the door, especially given the competing options which are full of cultured Dextrose and other unmentionables.

My technique is simple – I make a quick tomato sauce – in a pinch you can use a good jarred version. But it takes three minutes to sautee an onion & carrot, add a can or two of tomato puree, season, and let it simmer while you tend to the rest.

With the sauce simmering, I cook (most often grill on my indoor grill pan) the vegetables and prepare the remaining ingredients.

Although I’ve made lasagna with fresh pasta before, it can be time consuming, and you can get great results with no boil noodles. When you’re using no boil, or oven ready noodles, you definitely need a filling that has some heft – this isn’t the time for an airy cream sauce. I cut my vegetables into thick slices, drizzle some olive oil, season, and grill then until they’re nice and charred. No indoor grill pan? Slice them the same way, and roast them in the oven instead. They’ll still pack plenty of flavor.

When the vegetables are done, all I have left to do is to mix an egg into the ricotta, and I’m ready to assemble.

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The layering is pretty simple. Here’s my rule – don’t sweat it. Even after layering countless lasagnas, I still lose track of what goes where. It’s hard to remember the order – was it noodle, sauce, ricotta, veg? Or noodle, sauce, veg, ricotta? Don’t panic! This is not life or death. As long as you have some sauce on the bottom, and leave enough sauce for the top, it will be….just….fine….

I only say this because I was once that person – the lasagna novice who was overly concerned about having the layers in the right order; I would dart back and forth from the recipe, reading the instructions once, twice, thrice. Child’s play! Now you know my secret – that with homemade tomato sauce, fresh ricotta, and grilled vegetables, you really can’t go wrong. Just do me a favor- season it well- those plain noodles need to be salted and if you’re just seasoning the fillings, the noodles will be bland.

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