Beets Rock!

Tonight, I figured it out. I hadn't realized it before leafing through the August Gourmet (trying to find some great skillet-cooked potato recipe). I hadn't thought about my blogging muse before a colleague of mine asked earlier today. Naiveté. Youthful exuberance, perhaps. I came across a recipe for beet carpaccio with goat cheese and arugula and was instantly overjoyed by the fact that I had all three of those ingredients sitting in my fridge. Right then I knew it was a post.

I suppose when I spend $50 per Whole Foods trip I shouldn't be so surprised to find myself with ingredients, but at that moment all the planets had lined up and that beet carpaccio and I were destined to be together, for however short a time.

Local chevre, even local-er arugula, and golden beets. Man, it rocked. I don't even know where to start. Alabama, I've got to hand it to you. Y'all's got some good produce. The arugula from Jones Valley Urban Farm was the most assertive green I've ever eaten. Arugula is typically peppery, but this batch lit my mouth on fire (in a not unpleasant way). And the Belle Chevre goat cheese is available nationally at some specialty retailers. The effusive arugula heat matched the sharp chevre and the mild beets.

Tonight, I repurposed a drink shaker to make my salad dressing. perfect.

Quick Balsamic Dressing (serves 1)

1 1/2 tablespoons olive oil

2 1/2 teaspoons balsamic vinegar

1/8 teaspoon dried thyme leaves

1/8 teaspoon dried oregano

1/8 teaspoon dried rosemary (more like a heaping 1/4 fresh rosemary)

Shake and pour. Come on, who needs to buy salad dressing. Remove the strainer from the shaker when pouring. May as well get the herbs.

Marketwatch: Is it spring yet?

Reading Peter Singer and Jim Mason's The Ethics of What We Eat (review) is making me question my gastro-values and it inspired me to go to the Union Square Greenmarket for the first time in a while (perhaps the first time this year...). Hopefully I will write a post after I finish the book.

I popped by the Greenmarket at 8:30 a.m. Monday morning and it was even more barren than I thought it would be. No fewer than three flower stalls, the pretzel guy, two bakers, Red Jacket Orchards, and a small smattering of produce venders. As I mentioned I didn't expect much, since it is still so early, but I was shocked to find only carrots, potatoes, onions, apples/pears, kale, leeks, and rosemary. I thought there would be some leftover fall squashes, you know, things that don't spoil so quickly.

Before I sunk completely into despair, I purchased a lovely goat cheese and strawberry tart from the Buon Pane. Any readers who were around last summer for the awful strawberry-ricotta frittata episode will remember my theoretical affinity for strawberries where they aren't supposed to be.

The tart, unlike my frittata, was everything I'd hoped for: the bread was fresh and chewy, the strawberries retained their sweetness and texture (ie they hadn't become stewed and bland-jammy), and the goat cheese and rosemary added a delightful nip.

And on a somewhat related note, I just found that The Girl Who Ate Everything approves of Buon Pane. Can't have too much positive reinforcement...

I have to imagine more venders showed up during the day, but I certainly hope things start growing soon. I want spring foods.

(Oh, and I bought some kale and leeks. The kale made its way into a pasta salad [post later?] and the leeks are still in a holding pattern. Perhaps a soup.)

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The photo's from our flickr.com site. Check it out for more of the same.

Holy sweet tomato

The sun was shining, the birds were chirping, I was only a little bit nauseous for lack of sleep, and there were tomatoes. Oh there were tomatoes...

That was how a post I started three weeks ago began. Get yourself to a Farmer's Market and get some heirloom tomatoes. Get them.

I'm sorry for the month-long hiatus; it's been a crazy one. I'll do my best to synopsize.

RESTAURANTS:

Restaurant week: Indochine (6/10 - solid food, fun atmosphere), Terrace in the Sky (7/10 - good food, awesome view), Osteria del Circo (7/10 - probably a good intro to Maccioni's style)

Other: Ivo & Lulu (8.5/10 - lovelovelove French Caribbean, BYO wine), Cubana Cafe (6/10 - fun, sweet sangria, good pulled pork)

COOKING:

I got into salads. Steak salads, chicken salads, pasta salads. They were all pretty damn good and cheap. You'll see recipes an soon as things calm down (September?).

PICTURES:

At least you get some pictures from the Union Sq. Greenmarket.






Technorati Tags: Food, Market, Restaurant, Cooking
Special thanks to my camera for the pictures!

From the Office for Unmitigated Failure: Strawberry Frittata

I will adapt from Alice B. Toklas, cookbook author.

"The [frittata] was dead, killed, assassinated, murdered in the first, second, and third degree. Limp, I fell into a chair with my hands still unwashed , reached for a cigarette, lighted it and waited for the police to come."

In the last few weeks, I have committed over 4 quarts of otherwise wonderful strawberries to an awful death. When this project started, I was reasonably confident that I could adapt some existing recipes to recreate some subway musician's hallucination of a frittata containing strawberries and ricotta cheese.

The first iteration gave me hope. It wasn't too bad, I reckoned; less cheese, more strawberries, and maybe some melted cheese could make it work. What I didn't realize was that it was the strawberries themselves that were the problem. This new frittata with shredded Gruyere cheese, ricotta, and all the normal frittata ingredients would have been egg-a-licious if it weren't for the disgustingly stewed strawberries.

There are only a few times in my gustatory history where I can remember feeling physically revolted upon tasting anything. No, just one time. Stewed carrots. I was five.

I can understand why it failed, but I don't know how to fix it. The recipe has too much liquid in it. Too much liquid that gives it that nauseating, soggy, soupy quality. No food porn either. It looked horrifying. That and my inability to read, measure, and execute simple tasks. In a ray of potentially good news, I decided to top it with a strawberry salsa. Unlike the frittata, the salsa didn't suck (however, in all truthfulness, I botched that recipe, too. Instead of leafy coriander, I used coriander seeds. In my defense, the recipe wasn't specific about what kind of coriander was to be used.)

If I were to make it again, I would vigorously reduce the liquid contents; draining the ricotta liquid, no water, and maybe draining any strawberry juice. Also, I might put the strawberries in much later in the cooking process, instead of in the beginning (to stop them from stewing).

In conclusion, I cannot, in good conscience, continue development of this recipe and for the same reasons cannot publish my working recipe. I cannot subject anyone, no matter how brave, to it. Save yourselves, and please, think of the strawberries.


Technorati Tags: Food, Recipe, Failure, Cooking

From Recipe Development: Strawberry Frittata

This has a weird story behind it, so I may as well get it out of the way.

There's a subway performer that I talk to in the 14th Street traverse - that hot, awful, uphill, block-long tunnel from 6th to 7th Avenues. Richard plays the flugelhorn, which is basically a mellower-sounding trumpet, and he started talking to me one time when I stopped to listen to him (while that traverse might not be good for much, the echoes make a trumpet sound awesome).

Anyway, since then I've had a couple of interesting conversations with him. During one of them, I mentioned that I loved trying (and writing about) new and interesting foodstuffs, so he told me a story about how he and his bandmates were instantly and ravenously hungry this one time and they made a strawberry frittata with ricotta cheese in it.

That was a few months ago, right after I made the bacon and mustard greens frittata, actually, and the idea of developing a strawberry frittata has been kicking around in my mind since then.

After taking a trip out to see my dad in the Hamptons, I got some strawberries from the local farm stand that made me want to try the recipe out. I'm not going to give specifics until it's good enough to share with our general readership, but the first attempt came out reasonably well. I purposely made it quite bland so I could see what I had to work with, only adding eggs, whole-milk ricotta, and chopped and macerated strawberries.

I might take it in a South American/ Spanish direction by making some kind of fruit salsa.


Technorati Tags: Food, Strawberry, Long Island, Cooking