When the farm gives you mint, make mint iced tea.

I picked up today's bounty from Umami Girl's garage and the whole hot, sweaty walk back to my apartment I had one thought on my mind: ICED MINT TEA. 

Juice of 2 lemons

A glug of Real Maple Syrup

3 Tablespoons Rooibos Tea 

Bruised Farm Fresh Mint (I used the mint sprigs to tie the tea bags)

Hot Boiling Water

Yield: 3 huge American-sized glasses of iced tea. 

The ingredients were all combined somehow, someway in my dutch oven and left to steep until I couldn't wait any more. 

Once my patience ran out, I stuck a spoon in and had a taste... not sweet enough. I was bummed, but have no fear, I prevailed with a, dare-I-say-it, INGENIOUS idea. I rescued some manky looking strawberries in the back of my fridge, cut them up, and using a wooden spoon, bashed them with a little sugar in the bottom of my highball glasses (2 strawberries per glass). I poured the still warm tea in, added a bunch of ice and a sprig of mint and holy tasty, it's delicious!!! Iced Mint Lemon Strawberry Rooibos Tea! 

Feel free to substitute strawberries for peaches, I bet that is just the absolute shiz. 

WARNING: May result in difficulty breathing.

Goodness.

I made pancakes this morning in order to polish off my leftover blueberry sauce and now I need to lay down. 

I didn't even make it half way through! 

Fresh from my parents' garden: baby leeks!

As if I didn't have enough vegetables from this week's CSA delivery.... 

When I was home earlier this week, my mom sent me back to my apartment with a bag of veg from her garden. 

Baby kale leaves, young radish greens, lemongrass stalks, parsley, cucumber, and..... drumroll please, baby leeks!

(there were zucchini blossoms too, but not *quite* ready to be stuffed with cheese, batter dipped and fried)

I have lusted after baby leeks for a while now, ever since I first laid my eyes on this recipe for Pan-Seared Scallops with Asparagus and Baby Leeks by the one, the only, Jamie Oliver in his book Happy Days with the Naked Chef. The recipe is, as the brits say, "brilliant," and I've made it several times with asparagus only, so last night was a real treat to make the complete version for my weekly dinner with my dad.

Baby leeks are sweet, tender, mild, and grill up and caramelize wonderfully on a hot grill pan with a good bit of oil. After sampling, my dad and I started discussing how delicious leeks in general are, and how we never used to eat them until recently. I recalled recoiling in my youth to the sound of them... it went something like "Ewwwwwww LEEEEEKS..." 

What was I thinking!?

A Sweet Start

As if we needed another reason to be obsessed with Deborah Madison.  

As I prepared to bake a pie tonight, I had to reference her for recommendations on butter and shortening and lard and what, exactly, my options were (more on that later).  And what I found in her introduction to the Tarts and Galettes section filled me with joy: "There's nothing like a piece of warm pie for dessert or the same pie reheated for breakfast." (!!!!)

I am definitely the baker of the "Eat More Butter" duo and there have been many a crisp and bread pudding and brownie batch I've churned out that have spent far more time on our breakfast plates than our dessert ones.  I was perfectly satisfied with this tendency of mine beforehand, but I really must say that it made me a little giddy to learn that this culinary idol of ours falls prey to the same temptations.  

As much as I've always been opposed to sugared, candied breakfast cereals and the like, I firmly believe that home-made baked goods are a worthy start to the day.  And now I know that at least one respectable person supports me in that stand :)

As for the pie itself, it's still in the oven, so I'll get back to you tomorrow...

A different kind of local...

On Monday Night, Jamie and I walked west and checked out the 98th annual St. Ann's Italian Festival in Hoboken, and I'll get straight to the point.......

YUM. Pictured at right is a spicy italian sausage on a roll with onions, peppers, broccoli rabe and a charred hot pepper. There was equal veg to meat on this delicate roll and I was equally in heaven and loving my italian neighbors. 

Special highlights of the night included the entire city singing along to Bon Jovi's "Livin on a Prayer" and an entire brigade of old Italian ladies making zeppoles.

The festival runs through the end of this week and this bit of tasty costs $7. 

Ribs + Broccoli Collards = Heaven on a plate.

Okay let me just say that I kicked some serious ass in the kitchen on Wednesday night. Granted, I did not actually serve dinner until after 10pm, it was still a phenomenal success.

The Menu:

- Greg's sticky glazed fork & knife pork spare ribs

- broccoli collard greens with shallots and garlic

- baked sweet potatoes

- rice *note to self: in the future, this should be replaced by cornbread. 

Oh yeah!

I'd never made ribs before, but thankfully my culinarily talented older brother is well versed in the ways of racks of ribs. He started with a Jamie Oliver recipe, and then made it his own. I love my brother's cooking and I also swear by the collective bible that is Jamie Oliver's cookbooks, so I knew all would turn out well. 

Greg's Sticky Glazed Fork & Knife Ribs 

Ribs: A pound of ribs per person should do it... I got over 4 pounds for three people and there are plenty of leftovers (lucky me!). You can use baby back ribs or pork spare ribs. I didn't have a choice, and went for the spare ribs - all turned out beautifully!

For the rub: 

Smoked Paprika

The best chili powder you can get your hands on 

Cumin

Cayenne pepper

Cinnamon

brown sugar

salt

pepper

mustard powder

coriander

chipotle chili powder

For the glaze:

1 jar of apricot preserves

White wine

A hot pepper (dry or fresh, it doesn't matter)

Drippings from the ribs

Preheat your oven to somewhere between 210 - 250 degrees. Mix the dry rub together in whatever combination your instincts dictate. Don't have a few of the ingredients? Who cares, just throw some spices in a bowl and mix 'em up. Put the ribs on the largest pan you've got... I used the bottom of my broiler pan. The ribs hung off the ends, but no matter! Rub the rub all over the slab of ribs, on both sides. Put 'em in the oven to cook for about 3 hours, checking for doneness with a half hour to go. The ribs should want to fall off the bone. 

Take the ribs outta the oven and let them sit while you preheat the broiler nice and high. 

Put a jar of apricot preserves in a saucepan with a good pour of white wine. Add a nice whole chili, ripped in half. I used a dry chili here and it gave some excellent heat. Greg suggest pouring in some drippings, but my ribs didn't have much. I guess if you've got em, use them. Cook over medium/high heat, stirring constantly and let the glaze reduce until it is almost like glue then IMMEDIATELY take off the heat and pour over the ribs, making sure everything is coated nicely. 

Place the glazed ribs under the broiler and let everything caramelize. When some spots start to burn, your work is done and it is time to wow your guests. I served the ribs on a big cutting board and let everyone hack off some meat as they wanted it. Delicious. 

I served the ribs with:

Sauteed Broccoli Collard Greens with Shallots and Garlic

I had no idea what broccoli collards were or what to do with them when I got this week's farm share. Digging around on the internet provided nothing remotely useful, so I went to Deborah Madison for guidance. Surprisingly, I didn't find anything specifically on broccoli collards, yet I stayed in the cookbook and ended up treating the broccoli collards like collard greens. They aren't actually collard greens, they are just the leaves from the broccoli plant. Who KNEW they were worth eating? This will be a great recipe for my parents, as a rabbit just had a field day with all their broccoli. At least they can eat the leftover greens (see photo from their garden, below left).   

And they are so good. SOOOOO good. 

Deborah Madsion, whom you must be able to tell that we idolize, offers this recipe for collard greens, modified to use what I had handy from the farm share:

Leaves from one broccoli plant (a.k.a. Broccoli Collard Greens)

brown butter

1 clove of garlic, thinly sliced

1 shallot, diced

red pepper flakes

salt

Throw the leaves from one broccoli plant into a pot of boiling, salted water and cook for 10 minutes, reserving the cooking water. 

Heat a nice hunk of butter over medium heat in a big skillet and let it get brown... it should smell a little nutty. 

Throw in the shallot and garlic and let sit in the butter and get all fabulous. Don't stir too much. When the shallot is soft, put the broccoli leaves on top, with a good ladle or two of the water it cooked in, plus 1/4 teaspoon salt and the pepper flakes. Lower the heat a bit, cover and let everything do their magic. The greens will be ready to go in 30 minutes. All the water should be cooked off at this point...  taste for salt, and serve! 

The saltiness of the greens was magic with the sweetness of the ribs. Highly highly recommended. 

Variation on a Theme: The Breakfast Quesadilla

Last night's quesadilla was so good that I decided to use up the rest of my carrot tops in exactly the same way today.  The only meal I was going to be eating at home was the first of day, so I decided to throw a little egg into the mix and officially call it breakfast.  You could do this one of two ways: after the veggies are sauteed and tender, add lightly beaten eggs to the pan and scramble the whole mess all together (one of my favorite ways to prepare eggs, whether you're stuffing them into a tortilla or not) or, as I did today, saute the veg as before, pile it onto your quesadilla, top with a little more cheese and then fry up an egg and pile that on top, too.  Add more cheese to hold the whole thing together and return to the pan to melt the cheese and brown the tortilla, as before.

Here is the tortilla just before I added the fried egg.  I threw some chopped tomatoes in today and, you may also notice, I used an entire tortilla as my base.  As I finished my last few bites last night I was left seriously wanting more, so today I decided to use two tortillas and make a much bigger quesadilla.  This not only turned out to be entirely too much food for me, it was also a disaster when it came time to flip the quesadilla in the pan, so I'd recommend going with the original approach.  It's easy enough to simply make an extra if you're feeding someone with a large appetite...

Carrot Tops: Take 2

As promised earlier in the week, tonight I decided to try cooking up the carrot tops from this week's delivery.  Per the suggestion on our CSA's "Harvest Tips" I sauteed them with some other veg and fresh herbs and made them into a quesadilla.  Which was totally delicious.  That may have had more to do with the copious amounts of butter and cheese than the actual carrot tops, but sauteing definitely killed the bitterness of the greens and is probably the way I'd go in the future.

Carrot Top Quesadilla

Butter/Olive Oil

Chopped Carrot Tops

Chopped Vegetables (I had onions and zucchini)

Fresh Herbs

Salt and Freshly-Ground Pepper

Grated Cheese (I used Cheddar and Jack)

Flour Tortilla

A Bit More Butter

Heat mixture of butter and olive oil in a large frying pan over medium-high heat.  When butter is melted and pan is nice and hot, add carrot tops and chopped veg.  Season with salt and pepper, stir in herbs and saute until tender.

Meanwhile, grate cheese onto your tortilla (I used whole wheat, because I opt for whole wheat flour over white most of the time -- less processed).  When the veg is ready, spoon it onto one half of the tortilla.  Grate more cheese on top and fold the empty half of the tortilla over.  Melt more butter in your pan and return the (now assembled) quesadilla to the pan.  Cook until the  cheese is melted and the tortilla is browned, flipping once (after the cheese has melted a bit and is holding the ingredients together -- otherwise you'll likely loose all of the ingredients as you try to flip!).  Yum!

Jersey Blueberries 4 Prez

Born, raised and now living as an adult in the Garden State - known elsewhere in the country as the armpit of America - was certainly a challenge for me growing up and especially at college. A friend of mine from Oregon (best known as the filming location for The Goonies) once tried to convince me that his state was infinitely better than mine to which I responded with three pages of notes proving to him that New Jersey was without question the greatest state in the union.

Being from New York, Jamie would, without question, disagree with me, but let's face facts, people - she lives in New Jersey too. 

Why all this talk about New Jersey? Because I just gorged on two handfuls of Jersey blueberries - on sale 2 pints for $5 at Garden of Eden. Some of them are the size of cherries! Ah, New Jersey. Point is, they're ripe, they're local (hopefully not as local as exit 13 on the New Jersey Turnpike) and boiled down with some maple syrup, some sugar, and some spices they make a fabulous topping for vanilla ice cream (not to be confused with frozen yogurt). 

Blueberry Sauce 

Recipe adapted by Jamie from the great, amazing Deborah Madison, author of Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone.

3 cups blueberries, stems removed.

2 teaspoons REAL maple syrup 

1/3 cup of sugar

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon ground ginger

1 pinch ground nutmeg

juice of one lime to taste

Rinse the berries, drain them, and put them directly into a saucepan.

Add the maple syrup, sugar and the spices.

Bring to a boil, stirring here and there until the berries fall apart and the sauce looks good enough to scald your tongue on because you can't wait to try it.

At this point, add the lime juice. 

Depending on the sweetness of the berries, the sauce may need a little more sugar, so sweeten to taste.

Couldn't be easier! Serve warm over vanilla ice cream, like I did last night. Any leftover sauce would be insane over french toast, dutch babies (a.k.a. german oven pancakes) or pound cake. We're thinking a good cold, spoonful of the sauce would also be great stirred into some greek yogurt. 

Home-Grown

Not by me, of course, but by Farmer Rich, my new favorite person.  Farmer Rich is master of our CSA, and thus responsible for the delivery of fresh, super-delicious veg that we get each week.  Tonight's dinner was a straight-up farm share affair: almost everything that you see on that plate was home-grown (organically!) by Farmer Rich and his helpers in Wantage, NJ.  Call me a CSA nerd, but a fully farm-share meal excites me.  And so do all the colors on that plate! 

Disclaimer: I am neither a food stylist nor a photographer. Both talents fall squarely in Diana's camp. Plus it was late, I was hungry, and my food was getting cold! But you get the gist. Stay tuned for far better visuals when Diana is on the job!

I got home from work around 9:30 tonight, without the energy (or patience) to spend an hour or two cooking.  So I opened up my crisper and pulled together a perfect light, late-night dinner: glazed carrots, a make-shift salad and "five-minute" beets, which were a leftover from last week's delivery.  Accompanied by some crusty sour-dough bread (yep, you guessed it, slathered in butter).  

Just for the record, every single vegetable and herb I ate tonight came from the CSA.  Here's what I pulled together (in about 25 minutes -- cause it's that easy, not cause I'm that talented):

Glazed Carrots 

Adapted from The Art of Simple Food by Alice Waters, goddess of local, seasonal, sustainable cooking

Carrots

Water

Salt

Butter

Brown sugar

Fresh herbs (suggestions: cilantro, parsley or basil)

Freshly-ground black pepper

If your carrots are fresh from the ground or relatively young (mine were both), don't bother peeling them.  Most of the nutrients lie close to the surface so it's preferable to leave the skins on and just scrub 'em clean.  

Cut the carrots into coins or sticks.  Put them in a wide-bottomed heavy pot and cover halfway with water (you don't want the carrots stacked more than an inch high).  Add a good pinch or two of salt and a couple of teaspoons of butter per serving.  Bring the water to a boil, then lower to a simmer and cover.  Cook until tender.  Remove the lid and boil until the liquid reduces into a buttery sauce that coats the carrots.  At this point I added a little sprinkling of brown sugar, in homage to a carrot recipe my mom makes that is simply delicious.  It's a great pairing, but I didn't want to overshadow the flavor of the super-fresh carrots and herbs so I just used a little.  After stirring in the brown sugar I added my chopped herbs -- basil (it was so fragrant and delicious that I literally wanted to bathe myself in it when we got our delivery this week) and salad burnet (don't worry, I hadn't heard of it either until it showed up in last week's delivery.  Incidentally, epicurious.com and foodnetwork.com haven't heard of it either.  It tastes more or less like a cucumber.  But it's an herb. Yeah.).  Remove the carrots from the heat, season with pepper and more salt if necessary, and enjoy.

Salad 

Super simple and totally adjustable based on what you got in the fridge.  I used:

Heart of red iceburg lettuce

More basil and salad bernet

Chopped carrot tops.  Did you know that your carrot TOPS are edible?  I didn't know until tonight when I wondered, and went digging online.  They taste pretty much like carrots, but are a bit bitter, apparently because of the high potassium content.  I ate them raw in the salad tonight but later this week plan on experimenting with cooking them.

Dressing of apple cider vinegar, minced shallots, salt and olive oil.  It's the simplest dressing ever, but always refreshing and tasty.  You don't even need the shallots if you don't have them. Let the first 3 ingredients sit together while you prepare the rest of the meal.  Just before serving whisk in the olive oil. Three parts olive oil to one part vinegar is generally a good ratio to work from.

5-minute Beets

From Deborah Madison's Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone (the bible of all things vegetable)

Fresh, raw beets, coarsely grated

Butter

Salt and freshly-ground pepper

Water

Lemon juice to taste

Chopped fresh herbs (suggestions: parsley, tarragon or dill)

Melt the butter (a tablespoon or more per pound of beets) in a skillet, add the beets and toss with salt and pepper to taste.  Add a quarter cup of water (roughly) per pound of beets, cover the pan and cook over medium heat until beets are tender.  Remove the lid and raise the temperature to boil off any remaining liquid.  Taste for salt, season with a squeeze of lemon juice (don't leave this out, it really adds another dimension to the flavor) and toss with the herb (I used parsley).  Can be served warm or room temperature.

All of these recipes are quite basic and totally adaptable, which makes them great staples for your kitchen repertoire.  Another thing I really like about both the carrots and the beets is that, although they're both cooked in water, it's a small amount and the water is boiled off, not drained, and thus most of the veggies' nutrients make it onto your plate.  Plus they both have butter, and you know how we feel about butter :)

Topped off with a dessert of Ben & Jerry's (Fair Trade) Vanilla Ice Cream and zucchini bread (baked by Diana), it made for quite a satisfying meal.

The Butter Manifesto

It all starts here. With butter. 

We firmly believe that butter is good for you (gasp!). 

You can bake with it, sauté with it, spread it on some crusty artisanal bread, and best of all, you don't have to skimp on it. At least, that's what our mommas taught us. And they both have good cholesterol. 

Just to make sure we're all on the same page, we're talking about REAL butter, you know, from a cow. Not margarine, not butter spread, not I Can't Believe It's Not Butter. If your thoughts are immediately going towards your waistline or nutrition labels or calorie counting, we ask you to stop right there and subscribe to this blog. Join us as we talk about great food, great ingredients - REAL ingredients - and our philosophy about health, well-being and the pursuit of nutritional happiness.