Salade Niçoise

Salade Niçoise

In early Spring, the farms around here start selling tiny artichokes. The best are chokeless and tender enough to eat raw. Trim off all the outer parts and submerge immediately in lemon juice to prevent discoloration. The raw artichokes end up tasting a bit like apples.

Also in our salad we had beets, defrosted frozen green beans, broiled butterfish, canned anchovy fillets, and olives. The lettuce was tossed with a garlic vinaigrette, and we paired the meal with a rosé and a ciabatta.

Artichokes with garlic aioli; pasta with onions and tomatoes

We forgot to take pictures yesterday. The entre was a simple enough: in the cast iron skillet, cook three onions, coarsely chopped, with 1 Tbsp butter for about 25 minutes, then add 1 pound slightly old cherry tomatoes, halved, and cook another ten minutes; toss with farfale and fresh basil. But what made the meal special was the appetizer. We peeled the outer layers from two artichokes, and boiled them for 30 minutes (much too long, as it turns out, but they were tasty nontheless). We dipped the petals in a home-made garlic aioli:

1. Mince one large clove garlic and mash with some salt in the mortar and pestle into a paste. The salt helps it mash.
2. Separate an egg and save the white for some other dish. In a medium mixing bowl, whisk together the yolk, the minced garlic, and 1/2 tsp water.
3. Measure between 1/2 cup and 1 cup olive oil into something with a pour spout. For a large gathering, one egg yolk will accommodate up to 1 cup oil, but we used only 1/2 cup for the two of us.
4. Dribble some olive oil into the egg mixture, and whisk to combine. Dribble a little more in, whisking all the time. Pretty quickly the mixture will thicken and lighten in color. When this happens, you can start pouring the olive oil in faster, whisking all the time.
5. Alice Waters says the let the mixture refrigerate for 30 minutes to let the flavors marry. She does not like the aioli made more than a few hours ahead.

A note on raw egg. My understanding, based on Cookwise, is that salmonella, though definitely a risk with any raw egg, is largely a problem only if you have unhealthy chickens. And it is only a problem in the yolk, not the white. The white is almost entirely pure protein, with no fat whatsoever, and the salmonella bacteria have nothing to eat. Salmonella is passed from mother to egg inside the chicken, and is in the yolk. There have been cases of salmonella in the white, but they are very rare, and require that you do almost everything wrong, like leaving your eggs at room temperature for more than a week. Anyway, it's a risk in the yolk, and if you feel better, you can pasteurize it before use. Kill temperature for salmonella is 140°F for 5 minutes, or 160°F for instant-kill. Be careful, though: 180°F is scrambling temperature. So it's best to use a double boiler with an accurate kitchen thermometer. Or just risk it with one Farmers' Market egg.

Three days of dinners

Farmers' Market today was particularly full: all the local (and non-local) recycling and community farm and so on organizations set up booths for Earth Day. I just devoured a basket of strawberries.

In any case, it's been a few days since I've written up my cooking.

On Wednesday, we had a fennel gratin from Chez Panisse Vegetables —

Preheat the oven, say 350°. Thinly slice one large fennel bulb (washed, saving the stems and leaves for stock) and one large leek, going against the grain so that the bulbs separate into disks. Also thinly slice a few yellow potatoes. For each of the ingredients, sauté in a healthy dose of butter to brown each side. Then transfer to a shallow baking dish, and toss with fresh herbs and salt and pepper. Pour over half a cup of cream and one cup vegetable stock. Bake 40 minutes.

We also had a salad — fresh lettuce, walnuts, with a light dressing of mustard, olive oil, red wine, and salt — and a red wine. Finishing the meal was vanilla ice cream and peach cobbler —

More of a cookie-bar, really, I roughly followed this recipe for blueberry oat bars. For an 8-inch square pan, my oven was already hot from the grattin (350°F), and I lined the pan with parchment. In a medium-large bowl, I combined 1 1/2 cup rolled oats, 1/2 cup white flour, 1/2 cup brown sugar, 1/4 tsp baking soda, 1/4 tsp salt (I like salt, but I thought this dish on the salty side, so be warned) and 1/2 tsp cinnamon. Then I mixed in 6 Tbsp melted butter. I reserved 1/2 cup of the mixture, and packed the rest into the prepared pan, and set in the oven to bake 12 minutes.

Meanwhile, in a medium saucepan, I melted 2 1/2 cup frozen peaches from last summer, with 1 Tbsp lemon juice. In a small bowl I combined 1/4 cup white sugar and 1 Tbsp corn starch, and then added these to the peaches and, stirring constantly, cooked until slightly thickened. I poured the topping over the cooked crust, crumbled the crumb over the mix, and 30 minutes.

Thursday saw another Chez Panisse-inspired dish, although I wasn't as happy with it. We had baby artichokes and spring onion, and Alice Waters suggests a ragout. I ended up trying to follow her recipe —

While my boyfriend cut yellow potatoes (washed) into chunks and set them to boil in salty water until tender, I softened the onion in butter, and then added half-artichokes, the outer layer removed. These we sautéed a bit, continually adding more butter, splashes of water, and ice-cubes of frozen vegetable stock. Some fresh herbs and a few stalks of asparagus went in brilliantly, and the artichokes brown beautifully. But upon serving everything was tasty except the chokes. Or, rather, the chokes tasted great, but many of the petals were simply inedible. It turns out that much more of the baby choke needs to be removed before cooking.

We had red quinoa — combine with 1 1/3 parts salted water, bring to boil, and simmer covered ten minutes, then let steam another twenty — drizzled with a fruity olive oil, a very sweet white wine, and ice cream sundaes for dessert.

The best meal recently was Friday. We began with appetizers: olives, and baguette and dipping oil — fruity olive oil, with dried thyme, crushed sumac berry, and sesame seeds. Meanwhile, I had washed, peeled, scooped, and cubed an orange acorn squash from winter storage, and set it in a lasagna pan in a 400°F oven, with olive oil and salt; the squash needs to cook roughly 30 minutes.

Then I brought enough salted water to a boil and then turned off the heat, so that I could add pasta when ready. Fifteen minutes before eating, bring back to boil, and add a pound of farfalle. In a wok, I toasted some pine nuts and removed them, then added olive oil, fresh oregano, black pepper, and one bunch washed-and-sliced red chard, and sautéed. Then go in the squash, the pasta, the pine nuts, and crumbled sharp cheese. More fresh oregano is in order, and the pasta should be served immediately.

Candles and a nice white wine made for a lovely end-of-the-week meal. We went out for ice cream at Ici afterwards.

A gourmet picnic

I took the boyfriend on a picnic on Sunday, and wanted to impress. The menu:

• Artichoke. Set a couple inches of lightly salted water with lemon juice in a large pan tall enough to fit an artichoke the long way. Trim from the artichoke the lowest (leathery) petals, and peel the stem. Also slice off the top spines with a clean horizontal cut. Place the artichokes top down in the water, stems pointing up, put on the lid, bring to boil, and simmer/steam for thirty to forty minutes.
  
• Aioli. In the kitchenaid fitted with the whisk, combine to taste melted butter, olive oil, white wine, lemon juice, and salt. Beat well. To thicken, whip in a little arrowroot at the end.
  
• Hot dogs. I based my recipe on this one from PPK. First combine wet ingredients, mashing beens with a fork or in the kitchenaid: 1/4 cup pinto beans, 1 cup veggie broth, 1 Tbsp olive oil, 2 Tbsp soy sauce, 1 small bulb fennel, minced, and the leaves of 2 sprigs fresh oregano, minced. In a separate bowl, combine dry ingredients: 1 1/4 cup vital wheat gluten, 1/4 cup nutritional yeast, 2 tsp ground paprika, and a few grinds of black pepper. Add wet into dry, mixing by hand; knead a bit by hand. (I'm serious: this is much better if done by hand than machine.) Set up the steamer (I don't have a real steamer, so I used my steam canner). Cut six sheets of aluminum foil — 8 1/2 by 11 will do it — and divide the seitan into sixths. One-by-one, knead each a little more, and then roll into a log, and wrap tightly in the foil, twisting the end like a tootsie roll. Steam the logs for 45 minutes.
  
• With the hot dogs we had various pre-made fixings: mustard, ketchup, sauerkraut, and buns.
  
• Strawberries. From Lucero
  
• Whipped cream. 1/2 cup whipping cream, 2 Tbsp sugar, a hint of vanilla. In the kitchenaid with the whisk it is very fast.