I realize that none of these ingredients are considered wild like the things I usually write about, but it keeps within my love of frugal foods. I love turning leftovers into something that makes people say you made this with what?
Leftover grilled chicken is a great starting point. I use it on top of salads, or as a great starter for fajitas. Endive, along with its cousins frisee, radicchio, and escarole, is a relative of the plant chicory, which is seen along roadsides all over the country. Don't expect to pick and eat wild chicory though. It is almost always too bitter to use. I will cover other uses for it in a later post. A few years ago I had the pleasure of attending an event at an upstate college where the chef went crazy on endive hors d'oeuvres. This wasn't one of his creations, but that event inspired me and started my love of this wonderful spoon-shaped green.
Separate your endive into individual leaves. Lay a thin slice of cheese (I used an aged swiss) along the bottom of each piece of endive, then add two to three small chunks of your grilled chicken, a small slice of avocado, some chopped sweet onion, and cover with alfalfa sprouts. Drizzle some olive oil over each one, and a small amount of sea salt and ground pepper. Serve any extra ingredients around the stuffed leaves.
I guarantee that your leftover-phobic family members will be cured after trying this.
Now I know what I'm going to do with all the fresh peas I saw at the Santa Fe farmer's market this weekend. Clotilde at Chocolate and Zucchini has figured out a brilliant use for all those leftover pods when you're done shelling: Chilled pea pod soup. You saute the empty pods with some onion and garlic, deglaze white wine, toss in the blender and press through a food mill, add some nutmeg and chill. Voila, a cool, silky green soup the color of a summertime lake. How perfect would that be for a simple Sunday lunch, with a chunk of baguette and some good prosciutto?
Boy, the mayor and city council of New York City really want you to eat healthily. First they banned trans fats, then they made restaurants post calorie counts on menus, now they're making a push to get more vegetables on the streets.
New York is getting ready to issue about 500 licenses to food carts that sell only fresh fruits and veggies. Mayor Bloomberg says that while he respects the hot dog cart as a New York institution, he hopes that the vegetable cart gets just as much respect. He also hopes that by making fresh fruits and vegetables more available, especially in lower income areas, New Yorkers will lose some weight and reduce skyrocketing levels of obesity-related diseases.
The move has its critics, of course. Mainly the critics say that just because the fresh produce is available doesn't mean people will it it. What do you think about New York's veggie cart plan?
This dude isn't as known as the others. Balthazar Getty, part of the epic Getty family, first made waves as Ralph in Lord of the Flies, and later popped up in films like Lost Highway, and on television shows like Charmed. But he also cooks! At least, he did in the realms of teeny bopper mags. After Garlic-Fried Steak and Tacos, he's going for a good side -- one that would probably go really well with Luke Perry's steak.
I hope you enjoyed these retro teen cookin', and if you happen to have any others, please share!
These wrinkled, pear-shaped objects are called chayote in Mexico and Central America, mirliton in New Orleans, zucca cenetaria in Italy, christophene in France and choko in Australia. And that's just to list a few of this pale green squash's many names.
The chayote (as it's usually called in American supermarkets) is native to Mexico and was brought to Europe by Spanish explorers. Now it's all over the world - apparently there's a long-time urban legend in Australia that McDonald's apple pies are filled with chayote, not apples!
When cooked, it's got a firm, starchy, slightly grainy texture and a zucchini-like flavor. In Mexico, I've most often had it as a side dish, sauteed with a little salt and pepper. Which to be honest, is a little boring. In Southern Louisiana it's often served stuffed with a spiced meat or seafood mixture. You can also use it as a vegetarian filling for tacos or enchiladas, or puree it for soup. Many American chain grocery stores sell chayote, as do most Hispanic markets with produce sections.
I have really been grooving on both green garlic and garlic scapes this spring. I've been cooking with them as well as tossing them raw into salads and marinades. As we head into the hotter days of summer, they are starting to disappear, but if you made still be able to find scapes at your local farmers market. Making pesto with them is a really great treatment and is super delicious.
I never thought I'd see the day when I had something in common with President Bush, but here it is. Apparently we both love asparagus. Who knew?
On the German leg of his European tour last week, President Bush commented on how great the German asparagus was, saying how much he enjoys the vegetable. According to McClatchy online, the President now has a chance to sample ten pounds of Washington State asparagus, sent to the White House by two Washington State lawmakers.
Senator Patty Murray and representative Doc Hastings are naturally proud of the asparagus from their state, as Washington provides about 40% of the asparagus produced in the US. It's one of my very favorite vegetables. I'm not sure if President Bush feels as strongly about asparagus as I do, but at least he has some taste. How do you feel about asparagus?
For reasons I've yet to understand (perhaps in recompense for my obsessive heirloom veggie gardening), the food fates smiled upon me today. I reached into the crisper drawer for a bunch of scallions, and instead drew out (gasp!) ramps -- still viable, even though my last foraging adventure was several weeks ago, and ramp season is gone, daddy gone. They weren't 100% cook 'em up and eat 'em with nothing else fresh, though, so I hedged my bets and went with a fave of mine -- ramp pesto. Should you not be similarly gifted by the veggie gods, garlic scapes work well, too.
My personal favorite is sweet corn ice cream. It sounds odd, but once you taste it you think "oh, that makes sense." The pale yellow ice cream has a subtle, summery corn flavor, studded with fresh kernels, like buttered corn on the cob distilled into a perfect, chilled essence.
I just had some today, at a place called Tara's in Santa Fe that specializes in non-standard flavors - they also make terrific sage, strawberry balsamic, chile-pistachio and black sesame ice creams. But there's something about cold sweet corn that's perfect for a hot June evening. My parents, recently returned from Singapore, described a local street food that I just may hop on a plane to try: corn ice cream, drizzled with syrup, and slapped between two pieces of pink-dyed white sandwich bread.
Until then, I'll have to make do with this recipe for sweet corn ice cream on Epicurious and am planning to try it this weekend. I bet it would be good with a cayenne caramel sauce.
The fiend that is tomato paste: Most recipes call for a little smidge, but even a small can is way too much. These tips will help you make the most of your paste.
I've been in an Indian state of mind all day, having picked up some tasty-looking tandoori naan at the store today, and trying to figure out what I want to make with it. Unfortunately, I haven't made too many Indian dishes from scratch, save butter chicken long ago and some recent tasty pakora. Luckily, there's a cooking show that details all sorts of Indian dishes -- Show Me the Curry.
In this episode, Anuja and Hetal make Aloo Matar, a simple dish of spices, potatoes, and peas. This is a recipe that they consider to be one of the easiest Indian dishes to make -- and it's definitely a great way to get into the wonders of ingredients like turmeric and chaat masala.
Also be sure to check out their guides for stocking your pantry, as well as their tasty-looking raita recipes.
Back when I first wrote about cattails, I promised a return to the subject soon for something I described as cattails on the cob. Allow me to explain this delicacy to you. In the late spring, if you watch cattail plants, you will notice that the well known sausage-like fruits of the cattail plant start to mature inside of the central leaves. Look at the leaves for a swelling and pull them out of the plant. If you slowly peel the husks away, you will find the two parts of the cattail flower inside. The upper, or male part of the flower is what we're after. These green spikes will bloom and produce pollen once they emerge from the husk which makes the season very short. If you find too many already blooming, don't fret, because the pollen is another of the offerings of this amazing plant.
Amy, Alec, and I journeyed Saturday once again to The Great Vly Swamp, in West Camp, New York. While Amy and Alec sought after dragonflies and birds to photograph, I started checking the cattails. I had just caught the season at the tail end, as many of the flowers were covered with pollen, and some of the sausage-like seed heads had already started to form. Even this late in the season, I still managed to harvest enough of the flower spikes to make an interesting side dish. Before we left the swamp, I grabbed a clean bag and collected some pollen by carefully bending the stem of the pollen covered flower into the bag and hitting the stem a couple of times. I managed to get about half a cup, but could have collected a lot more.
A quick look around before leaving gave me some other reasons to return to the swamp at a later date. Pickerelweed which will produce a nutty snack food in the early fall, and arrowheads, which produce a good wild potato substitute.
Be it fish, garlic, or cabbage, dinner is delicious - until it's all gone, but its scent remains in the air, permeating the furniture and generally grossing you out.
Aside from sticking a fan in the window and setting it to 'exhaust,' Apartment Therapy has some great suggestions on how to get rid of those lingering odors:
Leave a dish of vinegar on the counter overnight, or leave it out while you're cooking (careful of boiling it, though, because then you'll replace the fish smell with vinegar, and that's not really any better)
Simmer a mixture of half-vinegar, half-water on the stove
Simmer a mixture of lemon and orange rinds on the stove for about half an hour. Throw some cloves in, too, if you have them
Before you cook fish, core and slice an apple into thin layers. Then submerge the apples and fry them in oil until they turn brown. Then, go ahead and cook your fish.
Oh, hot peppers -- they've created a big divide between those who love a little spice in their food, and those who recoil at the littlest bit of tongue sass. Michael Ruhlman is, no surprise, in the former category. He just put up a great blog about the lovely spice of peppers, and said, quite aptly: "These fruity, spicy wonders make life better in so many ways." Indeed! Now if only I could get my friends on board so that I don't get looks of startled pain when I throw a little bit of spice in. (Says the girl who can only handle a strong medium heat herself, but she's learning.)
Anyway, the post holds one little bit of knowledge that makes me wish I had The Elements of Cooking a few years ago: "The heat in chillis (capsaicin) resides in the white flesh to which the seeds are attached..." See, a few years ago, during the height of cheap tomato season, I prepared to make a lot of salsa. So, I sat myself down and prepared a slew of jalapenos to go in the mix -- and I stupidly cleaned out the insides with my fingernails.
I washed my hands a few times, but once that juice gets under the nails ... searing pain! Imagine putting your hand in an oven or fire and feeling it burn, but your skin staying in tact -- for a good twelve hours. So, my friends, it might be easier to scrape out the insides with your fingers, but it's so very worth it to use a knife.
Now I know what I'm going to do with all the fresh peas I saw at the Santa Fe farmer's market this weekend. Clotilde at 
This dude isn't as known as the others. Balthazar Getty, part of the epic Getty family, first made waves as Ralph in Lord of the Flies, and later popped up in films like Lost Highway, and on television shows like Charmed. But he also cooks! At least, he did in the realms of teeny bopper mags. After Garlic-Fried Steak and Tacos, he's going for a good side -- one that would probably go really well with Luke Perry's steak.
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