Dandelion and spring onion french dip

Now for the more interesting thing to do with dandelions and caramelized onions that I promised. But before going into the sandwich itself, let's talk caramelization. I've used the word before, but I've really just meant browning the onions or whatever. Real caramelization is something else entirely. It's kind of like how both grilling and slow smoking go by the name barbecue. Here's how I went about doing the real thing.

First I sliced up the spring onions, cleaned them well, and put them into my giant cast iron pot with just a little salt and a little oil. The angle's not good, but it's about 2/3 of the way full.

After 45 minutes covered at medium heat they're fairly well reduced and there's a good bit of liquid accumulated. At this point I removed the lid to let the liquid boil off.

About an hour later, the liquid's just about gone and the onions are starting to collapse. There's been a bit of browning [It's more attractive with white onions.], and the pot is starting to sizzle a little at this point. I turned the down to medium-low and started stirring more frequently, about every 10 minutes instead of every 20.

A half hour later, the onions have cooked down even more, have browned appreciably and are melting into kind of an onion jam. Cooking longer would be better, but there's real danger of burning so I pulled them out at this point. The flavor is kind of like browned onions, but sweeter with a lingering mellow complex savoriness. Really lovely.

Now that I've got my onions, on to building my sandwich.

I started by stemming and blanching my dandelions. Then I put a cup of beef broth in a pan, cooked it down a little to concentrate the flavor, added a dollop of caramelized onion and then the dandelion.

While that simmered, I laid a few slices of roast beef on top to warm through and cook just a little. After the beef was warmed up, I grated some sharp cheddar cheese on top. And finally, I assembled the sandwich with all those components plus some tomato.



The dandelion is carrying a lot of beef broth so the bread got properly wet just after I took this picture. I had a little cup for dipping too, but I didn't really need it.

You've got the beef's savoriness against the sweet onion, sharp cheddar, slightly bitter greens and the acid of the tomato--just a lovely combination of flavors. Would browned onions have worked as well? Not really. That would be good too, but it would be more a standard cheese steak flavor profile. This is something different; the caramelization brings out more of a pot roast aspect to the beef so there are different elements coming to the fore. I should make it both ways and compare and contrast, really.

CSA week 18 - Quinoa-crusted quiche

It's been a while since I've made a quiche. I spent some time last Fall experimenting with crumb crusts trying to come up with something with a good texture that didn't require most of a stick of butter to make. I finally settled on using cracker crumbs mixed with finely grated cheese and blind baked like a pie crust.

So when I finished making beet-top, spring-onion, grape-tomato pizza last night with plenty of each left over (not to mention half a ball of fresh mozzarella), and thought of quiche as a way to use up some more, I wanted to do something a bit different with the crust.

Frequent commenter Kat has made polenta crusts that she's talked about on her blog so I thought I'd try quinoa to see how that might work.

I started by cooking up a half cup of quinoa, mixing it with a quarter cup of panko bread crumbs, salt and a spice blend and letting it cool. Once it was workable, I pressed it into a 9-inch pie pan. It was a little crumblier than I wanted, although it was sticking together, so I decided to pre-bake it. I grated a good layer of pecorino toscano over top before putting it into a 350 degree oven for 10 minutes. The results were interesting. The cheese melted to form a sort of shellac over the quinoa. I think mixing it in would have worked well, but this protective coating should keep the crust intact.

Meanwhile, for the filling, I fried up a couple thick slices of bacon until crisp, set those aside and sautéed a handful each of beet- and spring onion-tops along with a good bit of parsley. Once those were just about done I added a handful of grape tomatoes to cook just a little bit. I just quartered the tomatoes instead of slicing them as I wanted to have them be distinct chunks in the quiche and not just a general tomatoey flavor thinning out the custard. And finally, I chopped up a thick slice of mozzarella into half-inch cubes, crumbled the bacon and mixed it all together for the final filling.

I decided to experiment with the custard a bit too as I had half a cup of leftover Greek yogurt I wanted to use. I mixed that with a cup of milk, a quarter cup or so of grated cheddar cheese and four eggs for the custard. That turned out to be just a little too much so I wasn't able to get the pan into the oven without spillage, but I didn't lose a whole lot.

I baked it at 375 degrees for 45 minutes and then ate leftover pizza while it cooled because the whole thing took a lot longer than I expected and was getting really hungry.

After 15 minutes of cooking, here it is.



Near the center, quiche and quinoa stayed separate and the quinoa stayed crumbly so it's not much of a crust there. But closer to the edges, and particularly up on the sides, the custard soaked down. It's delicate, but it holds together and I think it'll be firmer once it's cold. The flavors blend nicely too. The soaking in means there's less custard on top so the filling ratio is higher than I was hoping for and it's hard to judge whether the yogurt has any real influence on the flavor. So I'm inconclusive on that part of the experiment. I was worried about the random mix of cheeses, but they're all mild. The bacon smooths over any faults and the quinoa matches well with the eggs and smokiness so, even if there are faults in some specific areas, I'm going to call this overall a success.

CSA week 14 - Cold avocado, arugula and spring onion soup

I've adapted this from this recipe for cold avocado, spinach and scallion soup, but the only ingredient I didn't change was the lime so I'm comfortable calling this recipe mine.

Ingredients:
1 Monroe avocado (or 2 Hass), roughly chopped
1 lime, juiced
the middle bit of a spring onion (or 4 scallions), sliced
3 ounces (by weight) arugula leaves without a whole lot of stems (or one pack of baby spinach)
2 1/2 cups shrimp stock or broth
4 sea scallops, brined and dried
1 slice bacon, chopped
several grape tomatoes, chopped
a few drops of hot sauce
salt and pepper

1. Fry bacon over medium-low heat until crisp. Remove from pan, turn up heat and sear scallops in the bacon fat. Let both cool.

2. Chill all the ingredients.

3. When everything is good and cold, put avocado, lime juice, spring onion and arugula into food processor, holding a little bit back for garnish if you'd like. Add a little broth and process out the big chunks. Slowly add more broth while processing until the soup is to the texture you'd like. I aimed at smooth and creamy myself, but I could see that you might like it with a little texture or a little thinner. This will take a couple minutes so there's plenty of time to check and adjust seasoning as you go along.

4. Top soup with scallops, bacon, tomatoes and any of the green stuff you saved. Serve with toast spread with cream cheese. Makes two large servings or four soup courses.


Hmm, that's surprisingly good stuff. It's not quite creamy enough that you think there's actual cream in there, but it's impressively close. The avocado is quite mild so the flavor is mostly spring onion and arugula. I was afraid the processing would bring out the bitterness of both, but it's just nicely peppery with a little oniony burn. You could make this with baby spinach and sweet onion, but it wouldn't have any character.

It needs a good bit of salt, pepper and acid to bring the flavors out. It would be easy to overdo it and have the hot sauce and lime be primary flavors, which wouldn't be bad if you wanted to take the recipe in a Southwestern direction I suppose. I'd use chicken broth, leave out the scallops, and add a little cilantro, cumin and top with grated montery jack cheese if I were going to do that.

The tomatoes, bacon and scallops all match well, but the scallops stand out as particularly good. I'll have to remember to pair scallops with arugula in the future.

Overall, pretty nice and really easy, especially since you could prepare everything beforehand and just blend it at the last minute. And you can impress guests since it seems pretty sophisticated if you don't make smiley-faces in the bowls.

CSA week 14 - Tilapia and spring onion confit

I'm not sure "confit" is quite the right word here. Some definitions just say "poached in fat" while others require "poached in its own fat". Obviously, I did the former here as there's not a lot of fat in a tilapia. I didn't want to be imprecise but "Olive oil and butter poached tilapia and spring onion" is kind of long for a title.

Semantics aside, this is based on a recipe for oil poached fish that was in the New York Times a few days ago. I was a bit tired of the kitchen after baking bread and making ice cream today so I was looking around for something not too difficult to make tonight that used at least one of the CSA vegetables along with whatever else I had to hand. And it had to go well with the bread which ruled out some otherwise promising choices. I was about to make a version of a chicken and leeks recipe that really works best with chicken breasts I don't have when I remembered this recipe and how nice scallions and onions are when they get soft and start falling apart after being cooking in butter on low heat. No reason spring onions wouldn't work too.

So I defrosted a tilapia filet and cut it into inch-wide squares which I sprinkled with a little salt and pepper. I also cut one of the spring onions stem to stern, just trimming the ends a little, into half inch pieces.

In a medium pan I heated a Tablespoon of olive oil and a Tablespoon of butter over low heat just until the butter was all melted. Then I added the fish and a spring of rosemary and let cook for five minutes turning down the heat when it started to sizzle. Five minutes was a bit long but my fish wasn't quite entirely defrosted.

When the fish was about halfway to turning opaque I added the spring onion, a minced clove of garlic and a bit more salt and pepper, stirred to coat everything in fat, put on a lid and cooked for another three minutes.

Then I finished it off with a little chopped parsley, a half teaspoon of capers and a squeeze of lemon, removed the rosemary and served.


The onion is still slightly chewy with the thicker pieces retaining just a little crispness while the tilapia is firm but creamily moist. The tilapia's flavor seeped out as it cooked so this is more of an onion dish with an understated fish sauce than fish with an onion sauce. The spring onion tops are just the green bits of the scallion overgrown so you have to like that, but if you do it's a nice match with the other flavors here. The fresh notes of the parsley and capers pair well with the onion, the lemon cuts the fattiness and it all tastes lovely with a few slices of fresh baked multigrain bread. Quick, easy and highlights its ingredients so worth a quick post I figure.

CSA week 18 - sausage with potatoes and cabbage

Why do people make recipes that produce enormous quantities of food? "Serves four" I get but "serves eight"? Who has eight people to serve on a regular basis? Of course if this recipe explicitly said "serves eight" I would have halved it, but it didn't and I wasn't paying close attention so I'm halfway through my prep before I notice the enormous piles of vegetables accumulating.

On the plus side, there goes half my share in one go and I think it will freeze well. Also, if you poke around the website where I found the recipe, you see that it's specifically intended for slow food/local ingredient cooking; I'd feel like a jerk making it with supermarket vegetables.

So the recipe in question is this one slightly modified from Jessica Prentice's cookbook Full Moon Feast. I used a spring onion (including the green bits) instead of the leeks, dandelion greens for the generic greens, and subbed in a a turnip for one of the potatoes. I considered roasting everything to get some extra flavor but I was concerned about overcooking so I just made sure to get some color on as much of the vegetables as possible before my pan filled up and everything started steaming instead of frying.

I also threw in some Spice House Bavarian seasoning (and some parsley) since I was using bratwurst for the sausage and I wanted to localize the flavors. It could as easily been an Irish dish or Portuguese depending on the type of sausage and the seasonings.

Finally, I used some Greek yogurt instead of sour cream. It isn't emphasized in the recipe, but it really pulls the whole dish together. And pulled together nicely it did, I'm pleased to say, as I've got enough here for at least four more meals. A big pile of limp cabbage isn't much for presentation, but the turnips and red-skin potatoes do add a touch of color.

I served it over spaetzel, but I think the potatoes and turnip were starch enough so that wasn't really necessary. It's a shame my lighting was so bad on that photo, it looks like I managed to pretty up the plate, but you can't really see it. Ah well.

CSA week 17 - kabak mucveri

I had hoped to make the oil down today but breadfruit has proven elusive. I can think of a couple other likely places to check so all hope is not lost. On the other hand, it doesn't use any CSA vegetables beyond the onions so it can wait a few weeks until I have nothing else on the agenda.

Instead I made the squash fritters I mentioned last Saturday. This is a Turkish zucchini fritter recipe that I found here. If you remember my last squash fritter, that time I ran the squash through the food processor and it ended up mush. This time I shredded it by hand, salted it and drained it for a half hour (although a few good squeezes at the end did most of the work). It's still mush, but it's a mush with a much lower water content and a good bit of flavor. In another minor substitution, I used the stalk of a green onion to substitute for the scallion and yellow onion called for.

The recipe gives a choice of kasseri or feta cheese and I was rather surprised at how different they were when I found the kasseri. The feta was much more flavorful--this is the same feta I called bland last month when I made a lousy Greek salad, but it's aged very nicely--but the kasseri promised to melt much better. In the end I went half and half.

I noticed too late that the recipe called for shallow frying in a flat pan, but I don't think deep frying did any harm other than to the aesthetics. The fritters were quite mild, but gained flavor as they cooled. Even around room temperature they never really burst with flavor, but at least you could tell they were made with squash. The original recipe suggests pairing with a lemon-garlic-yogurt sauce and grilled meats which are both good ideas. The mild fritters' flavors were emphasized by the contrasts. The suggested garnishes of tomato, olives and hard-boiled egg seem like they'd work too if I had remembered about them. I'll try them with the leftovers later.

On the whole not bad, but not fabulous. I do wish I could have tasted the dill and parsley. Maybe if I boosted the fresh herbs with dried in the next fritter I make.

CSA week 17 - Sweet and sour chicken gizzards and shrimp

I found the time to throw together a quick stir fry tonight mainly because I somehow managed to spend way over my budget on a simple dinner out last night.

Now for those of you going "ugh. Sweet and sour gizzards," I'd like to point out that not only is deep-frying the quintessential gizzard preparation, it is a traditional meat for sweet and sour dishes. And anyway, it's no more or less icky than any other chicken meat. It's just a different sort of muscle.

While the stir fry was quick, it was actually little complicated. Sweet and sour dishes are generally made in three parts.

1. Deep fried protein.
In this case the gizzards and shrimp. I tossed both in a Tablespoon of cornstarch, two Tablespoons of soy sauce and a bit of salt. If I had more time I would have preferred a more substantial batter, but this was fine. There was a particularly nice effect on the shrimp as the batter got caught in the legs and shell and crisped up.

2. Stir fried vegetables.
I used the leftover heart of the mei qing choy (which was still in great shape after all this time. I'll have to remember to keep a head around in the future), a tomato from a couple weeks ago (just on the verge of going off), the bottom of the stalk of a spring onion from this week, a pepper of some sort that I had around and some canned sliced water chestnuts. I didn't bother to clean out the wok after emptying out the deep frying oil so the stir fry ended up a bit gritty, but it was tasty grit so I don't really mind. When the vegetables were nearly done, I threw the protein in to get them warmed back up and everything mixed up.

3. Simmered sauce.
The sauce was 1/2 cup sugar, 1/2 cup white vinegar, 3/8 cup water heated in the microwave to dissolve the sugar along with a handful of pineapple chunks from the freezer. I boiled that for about a minute and then added a mixture of 1/2 Tablespoon cornstarch, 1/2 Tablespoon soy sauce, a few shots of hot sauce and a 1/4 cup water. Once it came back to a boil it thickened up and everything was done (except for the rice I forgot to make).

Easy and mighty tasty, but man did I make a mess of the kitchen.

CSA week 15 - roasted broccoli, spring onion and grape tomato

This is a slight take off from the Cook's Illustrated (a.k.a. America's Test Kitchen) recipe for roast broccoli. The main differences being me not bothering with most of their refinements. That's not unusual for me as they often overcomplicate recipes, but usually each step or ingredient I leave out is a small but noticeable deviation from an ideal result.

This time, though, the difference was in the broccoli. They don't mention it explicitly, but it's safe to assume that their recipe starts with supermarket broccoli. The CSA broccoli we have is more delicate; I think it's a hybrid with the trippy fractal Romanesco variety. You can see a little bit of the spirals and the distinctive light green coloration in the heads. The delicacy meant that I didn't need to peel the stems (such as we were given) and I couldn't cut the florets into tidy halves to lie flat the way the recipe prescribes.

The key bits of the Cook's Illustrated recipe I kept were tossing the vegetables in olive oil with a dash of salt and sugar (to encourage browning) and cooking them at 500 degrees F for ten minutes or so. I was quite worried the onions would scorch far before that but they held up well. On the other hand, I was hoping the grape tomatoes would burst and start creating a sauce, but they just shriveled up.

My initial plan was to roast the broccoli, onion, tomato and maybe some pepper and mushrooms to go into a macaroni and cheese. (Not the instant sort. I have a very nice recipe for from scratch. Well, maybe the instant sort. Kraft dinner isn't anything like real macaroni and cheese but it has charms of its own.) But I decided that for the first time I made this, if it turned out, I wanted to really taste it and not drown it in a heavy cheese sauce.

Instead I figured I could add a bit of butter and use it as a pasta sauce on its own. My choices were plain or egg pasta (in various shapes), or one of the three varieties of ravioli I currently have in the freezer: black olive artichoke, garlic Gorgonzola, and three mushroom. Which would you pick? After some deliberation I went with the garlic Gorgonzola ravioli. Gorgonzola goes with broccoli; It's true. But I've got to say I liked the roasted vegetables best all on their own without any pasta or cheese getting in the way. In retrospect, they'd work better as a topping for steak than for pasta. The same goes for Gorgonzola now that I think about it. Now if only I actually liked steak.

CSA weeks ten, eleven and eight? - salmon tartar

I've talked about salmon tartar before (way back in week two) so I won't go into too much detail here. If you've been reading along for a while you may have noticed a decreasing level of precision in my cooking. With all of the practice I've been getting I think I'm developing more of a feel for working with vegetables and I'm becoming more comfortable with improvising. I only made the tartar tonight because I started thinking about dinner a bit too late to start brining the chicken; I didn't have a game plan in mind or all the ingredients on hand that I wanted. The original thought was a dill and cucumber sauce for poached salmon but my sour cream had gone all pink. Instead I just started throwing things together. Cucumber from this week's share and dill leftover from a few weeks ago were naturals with salmon of course, and a bit of spring onion wasn't too risky. The interesting ingredient, if there is one, is the shiitake mushrooms from last week. In retrospect they give the same earthy base to the flavor that usually comes from the toast points. I also tossed in some capers (preserved in salt, not vinegar. The vinegared ones would be a bit too strong I thought.), a few shots of hot sauce, lemon juice, salt, pepper and a pinch of dried dill to supplement the faded fresh herb.

Looking back at the recipe from week two what I did, this week wasn't too different, but I was winging it then too (although after having done my usual research). I'm still quite pleased with the combination of flavors and textures and proud of my decision to use the mushrooms; You can't take that away from me.

CSA week eleven - mushroom faux-risotto

As I mentioned at the beginning of the week, despite having risotto rice available, I was of a mind to use Israeli couscous instead. It's rather easier to make (although real risotto isn't nearly as hard as it's made out to be) and it turned out poorly the first time I talked it up so I wanted to have another post with a successful use. And I'm pretty happy with how it turned out so on we go.

I started by slicing up half of the fresh shiitakes in this week's share, and equal amount of cremini mushrooms and half of the spring onion (the left half as I wanted both the white and the green bits). I also soaked a handful of dried mushrooms; since I was going downscale I didn't bother with the good stuff and just used some of my ever-growing collection of dried creminis. The nice thing about storing mushrooms in a paper bag in the refrigerator is that they never go bad, they just dry out. Unfortunately they do so fairly rapidly so I end up transferring them to my pantry and buying a new batch of fresh mushrooms to start again. Dried creminis have a more intense flavor and a chewier texture than the fresh so they are worth keeping around as an addition ingredient option. Plus, you can infuse flavors in the soaking water (in this case I used a couple teaspoons of dried thyme) and use the soaking water as a substitute for broth. When all that was ready I gave it a sweat in butter and olive oil with a bit of salt and pepper over medium heat until everything was reduced in volume by half and nicely tender. I removed the mushroom mix to a bowl.

I added a bit more olive oil to the pan and briefly fried some chopped ham and pork (the sliced stuff for Cuban sandwiches). Again, since I wasn't doing a fancy real risotto here I didn't feel the need to go out and buy some prosciutto. Actually, I'll bet there's a good source of serrano ham in town somewhere. If any of you know, please post it in a comment. I used a couple slices of ham and a couple slices of pork which was probably a bit much. Once that had a bit of moisture drawn out and a little color I added it to the bowl with the mushrooms.

Then I wilted the turnip leaves and added them to the pile. Why not? I mixed everything together (adjusting the salt and pepper to taste) and added a shot of soy sauce to intensify the flavor of the mushrooms.

I heated a Tablespoon of olive oil in the pan and added a cup of Israeli couscous. I toasted the couscous over medium high heat for five minutes, stirring frequently, to get it a nice golden brown. This gives a lot of toasty/nutty flavor to the final dish so don't skip this step. You can do the same thing with pasta, too. Give it a try.

Next, I added a cup and a half of mixed chicken broth and mushroom soaking liquid. I had a bit over a cup of leftover chicken broth in the refrigerator but the ratio isn't important; use whatever you've got handy. Remember to strain the soaking liquid as it gets gritty. Brought it back to a boil, covered, turned down the heat to medium low and simmered for ten minutes stirring occasionally.

At this point the couscous should be just about done: tender and chewy and most of the liquid absorbed. I turned off the heat, added the mushroom mix, a handful of grated Parmesan and a quarter cup or so of some soft mild melty cheese. (I had caciotta al tartufo on hand but whatever you've got will work so long as it's mild or particularly good with ham and mushrooms), put the cover back on and waited five minutes. Then I gave it a stir to distribute the melted cheese, checked the seasonings, and served with a glass of white wine and I suppose a green salad would compliment it if you were in to that sort of thing.

In retrospect, I would have liked another quarter cup or so of broth to make a creamier sauce, but otherwise it turned out beautifully. The couscous was perfectly done much more easily than rice would have been and with less fuss, too. The rest was done no differently than I would have done a real risotto (the mushrooms get mushy if you leave them in while the rice cooks). I don't think the turnip greens added much, but they weren't a problem either. While the sauce unified the whole, each of the components got to keep its individual flavors and textures. The mushroom and toasted couscous flavors dominate with the pork supporting and the cheese mainly supplies texture. All around pretty easy and tasty.

Addendum: A point in couscous' favor is that it doesn't go all chalky and mushy when you freeze it like risotto does. I just defrosted a saved batch and the texture is indistinguishable from fresh. Since I freeze lunches to bring in to work, I really need to start making this more often.