Leek Love

Ed and I have a lot in common - we both love strong cocktails, Eddie Murphy's stand-up routines, novelty junk food (we had simultaneous joy attacks upon discovering Hubig's snack pies in New Orleans) and watching Billy the Exterminator late at night on A&E... but our most convenient shared love at the farmer's market is the humble yet glorious leek.

Braised leeks are a crazy good accompaniment to a roasted chicken. They take about the same amount of time to cook - assuming you're roasting a smallish chicken - and their flavors are totally complimentary. They're also equally easy to make - right after you dress your chicken and pop it in the oven, you can slice your leeks in half lengthwise, wash them really well to get rid of all the sand and dirt between their layers, sear them in a mixture of melted butter and olive oil, then add a generous splash of white wine, a few cups of chicken broth and some thyme and pop them into a 400-degree oven for... you know, a while. An hour, maybe? Then plate them together and dig in!


Tender, yielding, mildly flavored braised leeks next to a juicy, salty roasted piece of chicken? That's love right there. Each piece brings out the best in it's partner - the sweetness of the leeks makes the chicken more savory, and the crunch of a well-roasted piece of chicken skin makes the soft layers of leek even more delicious and amazing.

Speaking of leeks - and love - ramps are back in season! Ramps, those tasty little wild leeks, are once again at the Greenmarket, their leafy green tops heralding the beginning of spring. Last year I made this ramp and poached egg spaghetti dish, which I made again this year for Ed and I on a lazy Saturday evening. (This time, I sprinkled the top of each dish with this super cool red Hawaiian sea salt that my friend Liz gave me. How cool does that look?)



As we sat side by side on the couch, twirling our spaghetti and letting the soft egg yolk coat each strand, Ed was like, "You know what would make this even better? Red pepper flakes."

Reader, I'll be damned if he wasn't right. A little something spicy is exactly what this bowl of luscious pasta needs - something to cut the richness and add a little bit of edge.

And that's love right there, too. A little bit of comfort, a little bit of fire, all in one cozy little bowl.

Early spring always makes me so impatient. I wake up on a warm Saturday morning, throw on a light sweater and a pair of sunglasses and hike on over to the Greenmarket, expecting to see a huge bounty of ramps and greens and young garlic and teeny tiny baby peas, and maybe even a few strawberries? But when I get there, it quickly becomes obvious that even though today feels like May for us city-dwelling human beings, it's still winter in the vegetable world. Bummer!

But when you cook with the seasons, you learn to make do with what's available. The big pile of wintered-over onions for sale reminded me of this onion tart from Cooking Light magazine. It looked so good and so easy, I just couldn't resist!

White balance, why can I not master you?!

And it was good. I made a few substitutions - full fat swiss instead of light, and no feta cheese - just straight up, onion-soup-style caramelized onions and swiss. I also added a splash of white wine to the onions after they'd cooked for a bit. I think it gave them a little bit of extra flavor. Ed and I shared this tart for a simple weeknight dinner with a chevre chaud salad on the side - greens dressed simply with oil and balsamic and topped with breaded and fried rounds of goat cheese. Along with a glass of white wine, it was the perfect meal to make one feel that they're eating al fresco during springtime in Paris! (Even when one is actually eating on one's couch watching reruns of the Jersey Shore.)

Early spring is also a good time to sneak in those last few hearty wintery dishes like stews and potpies, since pretty soon you're gonna be all, "Stew?! You crazy? There's aspargus in the fridge, you nut! Snow peas! Little baby radishes!"


This shrimp pot pie was an excellent way to clean out my fridge - and freezer - to make room for the spring bounty that I know is right around the corner. The forgotten carrots, the half full bag of frozen peas, the shrimp I'd bought on a whim - they all come together in an onion-y broth with a touch of cream and a "crust" made out of crescent rolls from a can. (One of my many, many guilty processed food pleasures.)

My penance for that shrimp pot pie meal was this spectacular kale salad.


I used to be afraid of kale, until I had a really amazing kale, feta and lemon dish at my friend Beth's dinner party. It was so great, in fact, that I started making it myself at home all the time. And then a funny thing happened - I started actually craving kale. And this salad is a great way to eat it. I think it's the way that all of the different flavors work together - sweet apples, tangy cheddar, tart lemon, toasty walnuts, all jumbled up with earthy kale and olive oil and salt. I made mine with apples and cheese from the Greenmarket, so the cheese was a little bit milder than cheddar, but it still worked incredibly well. Oh man. I am in love with this salad. I want to marry it and have its babies. No joke.

But hey, speaking of love...


I'll leave you with this proof that I actually can master my camera's white balance every once in a while: the chocolate cream pie with heart-shaped sprinkles that I made for Ed for Valentine's Day. It's my sister-in-law's recipe, one that we beg her to make for every big occasion where such a pie could possibly be eaten. (Thanksgiving, Christmas, Easter, the Fourth of July... hell, when is it ever a bad time for chocolate cream pie?) Hers always comes out way better than mine did - possibly because I failed to follow the directions precisely. But even slightly messed-up chocolate cream pie is a pretty great thing. Which is appropriate, of course, because my Valentine is a pretty great thing, too.

Chocolate Cream Pie
adapted from a cookbook, but I'm not sure which one, so temporarily presented without proper attribution...

store-bought graham cracker crust
3/4 c. sugar
1/3 c. cornstarch
1/2 t. salt
3 3/4 c. whole milk
5 large egg yolks
3 oz. unsweetened chocolate, melted
2 T butter, cut into pieces
2 t. vanilla extract
1 c. whipping cream

In heavy saucepan, combine sugar, cornstarch and salt. With wire whisk, stir in milk until blended and smooth. Cook over medium heat, stirring constantly, until milk mixture has thickened and boils. Boil 1 minute.

In a small bowl with wire whisk, lightly beat egg yolks. Beat 1/2 c. hot milk-sugar mixture into beaten egg yolks. Slowly pour egg yolk mixture back into milk mixture, stirring rapidly to avoid curdling. Cook over low heat, stirring constantly, until mixture is very thick or until temperature on candy thermometer reaches 160.

Remove saucepan from heat and stir in melted chocolate, butter and vanilla until butter has melted and chocolate is smooth. Pour hot chocolate filling into graham cracker crust, press plastic wrap onto surface and refrigerate until filling is set. (About 4 hours.)

When ready to serve, whip cream until stiff peaks form and top the pie.

Winter in the Northeast is not exactly the most exciting time for the locavore blogger. Today's the first time I've been to the Greenmarket in a month, and even then it was too frigid to spend much time browsing around and finding inspiration. I scampered back to my apartment with nothing more than a pint of cream, a jar of raspberry jam and some honey for winter cold-fighting tea with honey and lemon.

On the bright side, though, being cooped up indoors all day inspires a lot of little projects. Last weekend's little project was a collision of two marmalade recipes: Eugenia Bone's Three Citrus Marmalade, but with a smoked salt twist inspired by Anarchy In a Jar's Grapefruit Marmalade with Smoked Salt.

The resulting marmalade is a lovely, bright spread with the sweetness of Meyer lemons, the tartness of grapefruit and a slight bitterness that's balanced by a mild smoke flavor. Neither too bitter nor too sweet, I've been eating this every chance I can get! And I'm pretty sure I'm going to have to make another batch sometime very, very soon. Even though citrus isn't local, it certainly is seasonal, and I want to make sure that I'll have enough of this perfect marmalade to keep my pantry stocked all year long!


And what could possibly make this marmalade better? Homemade buttermilk scones, you say? Well, don't mind if I do!

Three Citrus Marmalade with Smoked Salt
adapted from Well-Preserved by Eugenia Bone

2 grapefruits, pink or red
4 oranges (I used navel)
3 Meyer lemons
4 to 5 cups of sugar
1/2 t. unsalted butter
1/2 t. smoked sea salt

Peel the skin off of one orange and two lemons with a vegetable peeler and use the back of a knife to scrape off as much as you can of the white pith. Cut the cleaned rinds into thin matchsticks, then put them into a saucepan with 3 cups of water and cook over medium heat until tender. (About 20 to 25 minutes.)

Meanwhile, peel the remaining fruits. Cut them in half through the middle to remove seeds, then coarsely chop the oranges and lemons. For the grapefruit, cut supremes by slicing the flesh from between the membranes with a sharp paring knife. Measure the resulting fruit pulp and juice mixture - I had about four cups altogether. You'll want to match the amount of sugar to the amount of pulp; so for four cups of fruit, use four cups of sugar. If your yield is closer to five cups, use five cups of sugar.

Add the pulp, sugar, softened rinds and their cooking water to a large, heavy pot. (I used my IKEA dutch oven.) Cook over medium low heat, stirring occasionally, until the mixture reaches 220 degrees on a candy thermometer. (The original recipe suggests that this will take about 30 minutes; I found that it was more like 45 minutes, and required the heat being turned up to medium during the last 15 minutes.)

When the marmalade reaches 220 degrees, remove it from the heat and add the smoked sea salt. Continue to stir for three or four minutes while marmalade cools to insure proper distribution of the peels and pulp.

This recipe yields a little bit more than four half-pints of marmalade. If you're heat processing your marmalade for shelf-stability, jars should be processed for ten minutes. Otherwise, refrigerate cooled marmalade and eat within a week.

The CSA may be over for the season, but the farmer's market is still going strong! Sure, it's a little bit chillier - or, a lot chillier - but the stands are still full of lovely local produce, and it seems extra important to support our local farmers now.

And it's extra extra important for me to be full of lovely local produce now, since I've jumped back on the Weight Watchers bandwagon. WW just revamped their program to put a greater emphasis on the importance of fresh fruits and vegetables for healthy diets, and I'm totally thrilled. Because, you know, I love vegetables!

Unfortunately, I also love cooking vegetables in massive quantities of fat, which is not exactly gonna help my caloric bottom line (or my actual bottom) so I've got to start learning new ways to turn the same old veggies into healthy new recipes. A good place to start? Well... Weight Watchers, apparently.


Remember this post about butternut squash pasta? I came across a WW recipe that was shockingly similar, except with whole wheat pasta instead of regular, part-skim ricotta instead of full-fat and a conservative sprinkle of toasted walnuts and really good Parmesan for flavor. Delicious! I think the changes actually wound up improving the finished dish. Parmesan shavings pump up the umami without being quite as in-your-face as bacon bits, and I liked how the ricotta stayed in creamy little pockets in the casserole. Oh, butternut squash! You're delicious even without a stick of butter. Who knew?


I plated the pasta with a seriously amazing red cabbage and apple stew. My mom used to make this cabbage dish when the weather got cold. The cinnamon and apples make the house smell so warm and cozy, and the cabbage just sort of melts into this soft, tangy purple lusciousness. I couldn't find any red cabbage at the market this week, so I picked it up from the supermarket, but the apples are crispy Granny Smiths from the greenmarket. I snuck a couple of "test slices" while cooking and wished I'd picked up more apples - even this late in the season, they were crunchy and tart.

And red cabbage stew keeps well in the fridge, too! Behold, the red cabbage leftovers topped with chicken apple sausage from Trader Joe's.


Barely any WW Points and barely any cooking? Dinner is done.

RED CABBAGE AND APPLE STEW

1 small head red cabbage, shredded
2 crisp, green apples (Granny Smiths are great) thinly sliced
2 T apple cider vinegar
2 t sugar
1/2 t pumpkin pie spice
1/2 t cinnamon

Combine all ingredients in a medium pot. Cover and cook over low heat, 30 to 45 minutes, until everything is nice and soft. Add water, a splash or two at a time, if the pot starts getting dry. Serves: a lot of folks.

The first cluster dinner party, no one thought to bring a camera. The second one, I brought a camera but forgot to charge my battery. This year, I brought the camera and charged the batteries, then promptly got tipsy and started taking incredibly out of focus pictures. I apologize in advance for my shoddy camera work. Maybe you should go have a few cocktails yourself before you read this entry? Adding some blur to your vision can only help!

Anyway, the dinner party was a great success! It was our most ambitious yet - six courses, eighteen people. But except for leaving the smoked salt at home, which left my brussels sprouts swathed in marmalade but bereft of smokiness, it all went off without a hitch.

The first course was a crowd favorite: chicken liver pate topped with bacon jam and chopped green apples.


I think this might have been my favorite course, too. It's a gorgeous little fat bomb, the rich chicken liver fighting with the smoky sweet bacon jam for unctuous domination, before the crispy and tart green apple comes in and smacks them both down. Booyakasha!

Next up, my dad's super secret turkey garlic minestrone!


Every year after Thanksgiving, my pops simmers the turkey carcass into the richest, most golden turkey broth you can imagine, then freezes it until Christmas morning, when he turns it into a garlicky minestrone, slicked with olive oil and full of escarole. The whole thing is topped generously with shredded Parmesan cheese and served with fresh baked bread. I made Dad's recipe a little less hearty (keeping out the beans and pasta) and skipped the side of bread, but other than under-salting the broth a bit, I think I did it justice.

The third course was leek and dried cranberry bread pudding with a creamy mushroom gravy.


The bread pudding was basically just my adaptation of the leek bread pudding from Ad Hoc at Home, but with cranberries added before baking. The gravy was simple - just crimini mushrooms cooked with butter, olive oil, thyme and white wine then added to a roux of butter, flour, cream and milk.

Fourth course was the piece de resistance: confit turkey leg with mashed parnsips and baby brussels sprouts with marmalade.


Turkey gets such a bad rap, but when it's well-prepared it can be so delicious. Brining helps and so does sous vide cooking, but for those of us without massive immersion circulators, turkey leg confit is definitely the way to go.

I followed this recipe fairly faithfully, save for the overnight salting. (And I replaced vegetable oil with olive oil in the hopes that olive oil would contribute a little extra flavor to the turkey.) After cooking and cooling and de-boning, I popped everything into the fridge with a bit of extra duck fat on top. At the party, I melted the duck fat, chopped the confit into small pieces and re-heated the turkey chunks in the duck fat. So. Freaking. Good.

The parsnips were easy - a quick simmer in chicken stock, then they get drained and mashed with obscene amounts of butter and cream, salt and pepper. Parsnips are so underrated. They're not all that tempting in the grocery store, but once cooked, they have a surprising sweetness without any of the starchy heaviness of mashed potatoes.

And the brussels sprouts were easy, too - I heated some butter and olive oil in a skillet and let the sprouts cook in there for about five minutes. After they're a bit browned, I added half a cup of water and popped a lid on the pan - that way, the sprouts can steam in the middle but still retain some of that caramelized, buttery goodness from the initial saute. After they were tender, I stirred in a few scoops of orange marmalade and a sprinkle of sea salt. (I would have used smoked salt, but I left it at home. Womp womp!)

After this course, people were all, "So, what's for dessert?" and I was like, "one more course before you find out!"


A salad course, that is. Field greens and radicchio in a maple-balsamic dressing, maple-roasted rutabaga, green apples, pumpkin seeds and a sprinkle of truffle salt. All of the important tastes were present: sweet, salty, bitter, tart, earthy. And aren't those colors gorgeous together? I think the finished product was a little bit over-salted, perhaps because of the super-salty pumpkin seeds, but with a lighter hand on the sodium, I think this was one of the best salads I've ever made.

And finally, dessert: a cinnamon meringue with pumpkin mousse and pomegranate seeds. Sort of like a pavlova and a pumpkin pie got into a fight.


I was shocked that the meringues came out as well as they did, since it was raining on both of the days that I was baking them. I attribute their success to the relentlessly dry heat of New York City apartment radiators. Antiquated heating system, I couldn't have done it without you!

And that was the dinner party! At least the food part of it. The best part, if course, wasn't the bacon jam or the parsnip mash - it was the people who came and made it amazing. My colleagues are the best ever, and everyone got up and pitched in at one point or another, pouring wine or collecting dishes. As always, though, Jenny and Danielle were the best "sous chefs" a lady could ask for, chopping veggies and expediting plates. No one can pull this off solo. I'm lucky that my friends are so willing to come together and put in work to make every dinner party we have a truly amazing evening.

Cluster 2, you da best!

I just read Michael Pollan's excellent Food Rules - it's a quick read, and full of the kind of sensible nutrition advice that we should all abide by. One of his "food rules" was: eat all the junk food you want... provided that you cook it for yourself. It takes a lot more time and energy to make a batch of ice cream than it does to dash out to the bodega for a pint of Vermont's finest, so you probably won't be inclined to whip up a batch of mint chocolate chip more than every once in a while. (Which, of course, is about how often one should be eating ice cream.)

While I'm definitely not ready to follow all of Michael Pollan's advice to the letter, I think he has an excellent point with the cook-your-own junk food thing. I've been on a Kraft mac and cheese jag lately, and it's really not good for anyone. (And especially not for anyone who's hoping for leftovers, since I can totally dust one of those boxes by myself with astonishing speed.) Solution? This homemade broccoli mac and cheese, which requires barely more time or effort than opening up a packet of neon orange cheese powder.

I set a small pot of water on the stove, then cooked the shells in the boiling water while the broccoli steamed in the steamer insert. In a separate pot, I whisked together a few teaspoons of butter and a tablespoon of flour to make a roux, then added a few cups of milk, a generous pile of shredded cheddar, four slices of American cheese and some salt and freshly ground pepper. By the time the cheese melted and the sauce came together, the pasta and broccoli were both done. Ta da!

And the best part? This is so satisfying and filling, there were actually leftovers to tuck away in the fridge for a hungry boyfriend. Homemade junk food, more satisfying than the "real" thing? Michael Pollan, I think you're on to something!

A simple weeknight dinner: brussels sprouts cooked in bacon grease and olive oil, topped with shavings of ricotta salata and a runny poached egg. This could also be an awesome brunch dish - I'm pretty sure that Maialino serves a similar dish for breakfast, and it covers all the important brunch bases: eggy, cheese-y and bacon-y.


And another one: homemade chicken fingers, maple-glazed carrots and mashed fingerling taters. These carrots were gorgeous - all purply-orange and bright yellow. The awesome purple color didn't survive the peeling and cooking process, but whatevs - they're still pretty, right?