Jenmenke

Road Warrior

asparagus

Meatless Monday Twenty!

So, I had bookclub on Monday this week. Didn’t prepare ahead and have Meatless Monday on Sunday. Didn’t cook meatless for my family before I left. Didn’t do much of anything, really. Except have a rotten, horrible day. I can’t remember everything that happened, but Monday was bad, bad, bad.

I was late to bookclub as usual, but what to my wondering eyes should appear?

But a Sheilabird cooking Meatless Monday for Jennie, so dear!

Yes, it’s true. My friend Sheila cooked a Meatless Monday meal in my honor! Well, I don’t know if it was really in my honor, but she said it was, and I am choosing to believe her. Of course, I didn’t have my camera. And of course everyone was freaking out about me taking pictures with my iphone. So they all stink. The pictures, I mean. Not the guests. But really! What’s so bad about a nasty picture on my blog? No one reads the stupid thing except you guys, and you don’t care, do you?

Anyway. It was lovely. Sheila’s bookclub dinners always are. She served something she made last fall called Indian Relish (Is that right, Sheila? I’m too lazy to call you) over cream cheese with those wafer-thin crackers that remind me of ice cream cones. The relish reminds me of pepper jelly, sort of sweet/onion/hot… So good

And she had an awesome zinfandel.

Which I promptly spilled on her brand-new-not-even-finished-quilted tablecloth.

So uncouth.

The main event was what she calls Green and White Pasta, even though we all know pasta isn’t really white. Maybe the white should be the green onion. Anyway, it’s a recipe that originally called for broccoli that she has morphed into a conflagration of green veggies. Any you have on hand, really. She used asparagus (AND DIDN’T CALL ME FOR ANY!), peas, thin green beans and green onions.

Yuk! I just found a wood tick stuck into my shoulder blade. I saw it in the mirror last night and thought it was a zit. Sorry. I guess I thought you’d want to know that…

This is how you make it:

Green & White Pasta, serves 8

  • 1 lb Pasta. Pick a fun shape. She used Campanelle, but also likes Gemelli.
  • 6-10 cloves garlic minced (to taste)
  • 4 T olive oil, divided
  • 1-2 t red pepper flakes (to taste)
  • 1 small bunch asparagus (figure about 12-16 spears)
  • 1 cup green peas
  • 1 bunch green onion
  • 1 small bunch chives (if you haven’t killed them all with Round-Up yet), chopped/minced.
  • 1 small bunch haricot vert (thin green beans)
  • juice from 2 large lemons
  • 1 cup shredded parmesan cheese, plus more for garnish
  • 1/2 cup pine nuts, toasted. (to toast, spread on cookie sheet and bake at 350 for about 8 minutes. WATCH CLOSELY! better to under-toast than to over-toast.)
  • salt and pepper to taste

Blanch the asparagus and beans till just tender crisp and chill in an ice bath. Drain and cut into approximately 2-3″ pieces. Cook the pasta in well seasoned water until just al dente, drain. In a large heavy bottomed pot, big enough to hold the entire dish, heat 2 tablespoons of olive oil over medium heat and add garlic. Saute until fragrant, about a minute. Add green onions and pepper flakes, saute another minute. Add the beans, asparagus, peas and chives to the pot. Saute until warmed thru. Add the cooked and drained pasta to the mix, gently stirring to combine. Add another 2 tablespoons (or more to taste) of olive oil. Add the lemon juice and parmesan cheese. Stir until everything is hot and combined. Top with toasted pine nuts and serve with more parmesan on the side.

Enjoy!*

* I hate when waiters say “Enjoy!”

Meatless Monday Eighteen!

Morel Mushroom and Asparagus Risotto

If you haven’t read the Morel post from yesterday, please do. It gives background information necessary for truly understanding the nature of this very special Meatless Monday meal.

No, I’m not talking about the asparagus, that I’m ready to plow under. I’m talking, of course, about the two-year wait for morels fresh from our own woods. I liken it to the meals you eat while camping. Nothing tastes better than anything you make to eat when you are camping. And morels that you found yourself, in your own barren forest, taste better than any other.

I also — finally — made my own vegetable stock. I didn’t open any books to guide me on this journey, mind you. I just threw some veggies in a pan.

Roasted them at 450 for about 30 minutes.

Added water and simmered for an hour or two…

And just like that I had vegetable stock that tasted exactly like… water.

It was a beautiful golden brown color. It had a good aroma. But it tasted like water. And so it began, the random dumping of ingredients into the pot. I added tons of garlic, bay leaves, a sprig of rosemary, another onion, another carrot, two more stalks of celery, some wine, a splash of balsamic.

No, I’m not kidding. I really did add all that stuff. And in the end, it tasted like very weak vegetable stock. Which was actually perfect.

Because, have I written about making risotto before? How I love it so much, but when I make it it always seems so cloyingly rich? How I used to use my homemade chicken stock, but have eventually gravitated toward watered down store-bought Swanson’s broth? I think I might have, but if you didn’t read it, now you know.

So, I really was after a weak-tasting stock. Still, I was shocked at how many vegetables you actually have to use in order to get any flavor! I thought the roasting of them would combat that, but it didn’t. It just gave it a deeper color.

Anyway. Enough of that. I made it, it was delicious and I didn’t miss chicken broth one bit in this recipe. In fact, it was so good, I just might make the risotto this way always. Well, when I have the time to be farting around all day, that is.

For the four of us (and this left two servings of leftovers), I used 1 1/2 cups of arborio rice and about … I’m thinking back here…. about 8-9 cups of liquid. I could not believe how much liquid I needed. 3/4 cup of it was white wine, about 6 cups of it was the stock and the rest was water I kept adding at the end to get it the consistency we like — more soupy, less dry.

Due to unforeseen circumstances, I made the risotto to just-short of being done and finished it two hours later. If you don’t know me personally, you will think the unforeseen circumstance was something like : the dog got hurt and had to go to the vet. Or, a friend called and asked for my help with driving her kids around…

But you’d be wrong. The unforeseen circumstance was soccer practice, which has been on the calendar for weeks. It was unforeseen in my own mind only. Dave was looking at me like I had three heads when I told him we were eating before practice. Of course, he was right and I was wrong.

But things happen for a reason, I like to think. And in this case it was the marvelous discovery of risotto being ‘par cooked’, or whatever the hell those Top Chefs call it on TV. I think this is what restaurants must do, as they can’t possibly be making risotto to order from scratch at a restaurant because it would take too long. It suddenly makes risotto a viable dish to make for company if you don’t want to be standing at the stove for an hour while guests stand around saying things like “Isn’t there something I can help you with?” …As you run around like a chicken with your head cut off, plunging your dirty hands into the food they will be eating later. Always a little disconcerting…

Oh my gosh. I talk/write too much. I’m not even at the damn recipe yet… I’ll just get to it. Sorry.

Morel and Asparagus Risotto (vegetarian)
  • 6-8 cups weak or watered down vegetable stock
  • 3/4 cup white wine
  • 1 1/2 cup arborio rice
  • 2T butter or olive oil
  • 1 small onion diced (I used frozen chopped leeks)
  • 1 large clove garlic, pressed
  • large bundle of asparagus cut on the diagonal into 2″ pieces, blanched
  • 2 cups (or whatever you can manage) washed and dried morel mushrooms, cut in half and sauteed in butter till browned
  • 1 cup finely grated pecorino or parmesan cheese

I put much of the prep instructions up there in the ingredient list. I wanted the asparagus to look perfect in the rice and not be overcooked, so I opted to blanch it rather than to cook it in the risotto. I think this is worth the extra dirty pan because with fresh garden asparagus, the tips would look mutilated from the stirring.

I also wanted the morels to have as much flavor as possible. I’m often disappointed when putting morels in with other foods, because you miss them in the other flavors and then they seem wasted. It is why I far more often just saute them in butter and eat them out of the pan. So for this recipe, I sauteed them in butter until the edges started to brown and crisp, salted and peppered, ate a few and saved the rest for stirring into the almost finished risotto. When I realized I needed more liquid than the vegetable stock I had ready, I deglazed the mushroom pan with water and used that for the liquid. It worked great and I would recommend it if you find yourself in a similar situation. OR, if you use dried mushrooms, save the soaking water and add to the risotto. It has a lot of flavor. (see? I’m still talking too much)

Bring the stock to a simmer in a sauce pan. In a separate large dutch oven or pan large enough for the finished risotto, heat the butter or oil over medium heat, and saute the onion until soft and translucent, about 5 minutes. Add the rice, stirring constantly, and saute for another couple minutes. Add the wine, stirring, until mostly absorbed. Add the stock, 1 cup at a time, stirring more often than not, as the stock is absorbed and is mostly absorbed by the rice (when you stir there isn’t liquid sitting on the bottom of the pan anymore), add another cup of stock. Occasionally take a bite of rice to see what stage it is at. Mine took about 25 minutes to get to the point that I ran out of time. At that point, I had added all of my 6 cups of stock and  the mushrooms. I covered it so the cats wouldn’t eat it and left. When I came back two hours later, I heated up 2 more cups of water (I do think that par cooking the rice and finishing later uses more liquid, so if you are making it to eat right away, you will use less), and finished cooking the risotto. Stir the blanched asparagus into the rice. Stir 3/4 cup of the grated cheese into the rice. Put into a big pretty bowl and top with remaining cheese.

In retrospect, I think a squeeze of lemon juice would have been really good, but by this time, it was about 9:20pm at our house and my kids would have stabbed me in the eye with a fork if I had told them to wait. This also explains the rather horrible photo, too, which for me has now become a tradition for Meatless Monday posts.

Asparagus Diversion

Perfect fast lunch for a Meatless Monday

Tastes better than fresh hollandaise, I swear.

Cook a few spears of fresh asparagus in water like I show you in my first asparagus post.

Gently fry (not like me with my huge freaking bubbles in the whites) one or two fresh eggs

(rub the feathers off first)

Put them together, break the yolks, squeeze with lemon or lime and shave with pecorino or parmesan an drizzle with olive oil or a pat of butter.

Then, try not to egg-fart for the rest of the day. Or is that just me?

The Lazy Way to Cut Back Asparagus Plants

Burn ’em right in place…

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not actually endorsing this method. I’m simply stating that it is a very good way to rid yourself of a very massive amount of dead asparagus tops in short order.

No cutting.

No grunting

No hauling.

Perfect for me. You might want to read last year’s post on this garden chore. [Which I pretty much hate.] Why didn’t I think of this sooner? It’s like cutting out the middle man!

Also very dangerous and unpredictable.

But very effective. Provided I haven’t killed the plants. Guess I’ll have to wait and see on that one…

Assuming they turn out fine, I think I will add it to my annual repertoire. Just don’t tell Dave. He was quite upset with me.

Notes for next year’s burning:
  1. Have hose hooked up and water ready.
  2. Burn in the still air of morning. (*bonus is that neighbors and husband are also absent at this time.)
  3. Stomp down combustible tops more thoroughly so that burning is more even and reaches the fat, soggy, hard-to-cut bottoms.
  4. Have a wider angle lens on camera to allow for larger field of view in case grass starts on fire again.
  5. Bring marshmallows.

My Favorite Ragout

Actually it is my only ragout.

I don’t even really know what a ragout is. In fact, up until opening the cookbook just now for the general recipe, I was thinking it was called Ragu! Wait. Is that the same thing? Just a different spelling?

Wikipedia to the rescue:

The term ragout (French ragoût) refers to a main-dish stew. (The etymologically related Italian ragù is a sauce such as Bolognese used typically to dress pasta.)

Your (and my) lesson for the day.

So they are basically the same. Good. I was right. I love being right.

Anyway, this recipe is from a cookbook I’ve had for years: Jacques Pépin’s Kitchen: Cooking with Claudine. It’s taken from their PBS cooking series, which I used to see every now and then. I got it as a thank you gift for donating to public television. I love his recipes. But like most cookbooks I own, I don’t use it much. This one recipe being the exception. I don’t follow it to the letter, because it calls for lardons. No wait: salt pork. It calls for salt pork, which of course I absolutely never have, even if I did know what it was. Salt pork, I suspect, is one of those ingredients that, if bought locally in a standard grocery store in Minnesota, would pretty much stink when compared to the salt pork that Jacques uses. So, with my rationalization, substitutions are a must. Plus, it skims about 30 minutes off the recipe.

What, you don’t believe me? This is the intro to the recipe in the book:

Salt pork is sometimes called cured pork or sweet ‘pickle’ in this country. In France, this type of meat is called lard — hence the name lardons for the small pieces of it we add to stews and other dishes. (What we call lard in the US is called saindoux in France.) French lard is similar to what the Italians call pancetta, and both of these versions of unsmoked bacon are usually leaner than the salt pork we find in markets here.

Look for a salt pork slab with as much meat on it as possible, then cut it into 1/2″ pieces, blanch the lardons to remove most of the salt, and sauté them to enhance their flavor.

Told you.

My method is much faster: I simply use bacon fat to brown the chicken for the bacon flavor and sprinkle crumbled bacon pieces (that I keep in the freezer for quick use) over the dish in the last few minutes of cooking.

I’m not saying it’s better, mind you. But at least it doesn’t require a trip to the grocery store…

Sometimes I’ll throw spinach or kale into the mix, sometime sweet potatoes. If I don’t have white wine, I’ll use red. Scallions get replaced with regular onions or frozen chives if I find mine in the crisper to be slimy and gross…

The point is, just make it work. Don’t get all freaked out because you don’t have what the recipe calls for.

Chicken Ragout ‘Jennie’ (originally titled ‘Jeannette’)
  • 1 T bacon fat
  • 4-6 chicken thighs, skin removed. Either boneless or bone-in
  • 1 bunch scallions (about 6) cut into 1/2″ dice
  • 1 medium onion chopped
  • 2 t flour
  • 1-1/4 c water
  • 1/2 c dry white (or red) wine
  • 2 cloves garlic, pressed
  • 1 t dried thyme leaves
  • 2 bay leaves
  • 1/2 t salt
  • 1 lb small potatoes, left unpeeled but cleaned
  • 1/4 t Cholula or other hot sauce
  • 2 T bacon crumbles
  • optional chopped parsley for garnish (which I also never have)

Heat the bacon fat in a large sauce pan or sauté pan. When it’s hot, add the thighs and sauté them over medium heat for 6-8 minutes, turning once. When chicken is well browned transfer to a plate, reserving the contents of the pan.

To the pan, add the scallions and onion, mix well and cook for 5 minutes over medium heat, stirring occasionally.* Add the flour, mix well and continue browning the mixture for about a minute.

Add 1 1/4 cups water and the wine, stirring well and scraping all the cooked-on brown bits off the bottom of the pan. Stir in the garlic, thyme, bay leaves and salt. Bring to a boil, stirring occasionally. Add the potatoes and browned chicken thighs, nestling everything into the liquid. Return to a boil, then simmer covered over low heat for 30 minutes.

Remove the bay leaves, add the hot sauce and bacon crumbles. Sprinkle with parsley and serve with good bread.

*This addition to the pan will spatter considerably. I say, who cares? The kitchen is a mess after cooking dinner anyway. Dave says, “Use the splatter screen!”

“…But I don’t have a splatter screen.”

“What happened to mine from College?”

“Who cares!”

Guess what I got in my stocking for Christmas this year?

I hate it.

World’s Smallest German Shorthair Pointer

mutant asparagus

Or is it the World’s Tallest Asparagus?

It’s really hard to show just how tall the asparagus really is. I suppose I should be in the shot, to show the human proportion, but then, you’d all see how gross I look. (But just so you know, it is way taller than 5’7″ me.)

Actually, I am really liking this camera. I can’t believe how good it makes me look:

All cameras should have this feature. Who needs wrinkle cream?
All cameras should have this feature. Who needs wrinkle cream?

This, my friends, is called auto focus. And what was focused was the post behind me. I kind of like it that way. Who need skin-enhancing software — or wrinkle cream, for that matter, when there is the much cheaper out-of-focus option available?

Here is a better picture of a different post (that is falling down). The sweet dumpling squash planted on the right side of the fence is in the process of actually crawling and climbing onto the falling-down fence. It is soon to overtake the garlic, planted on the left, which needs to hurry up and mature. Otherwise, where it stands now, planted between the mutant asparagus and creeping squash, it doesn’t stand a chance.

sweet dumpling squashI’m thinking that a new feature of this site could be WWYT (what were you thinking). That’s a nod to my soon-to-be-published friend Sheila, who got picked for a mention in David Pogue’s Twitter book. He liked her acronym. And so do I. But since adding a tab might take three years to figure out on wordpress, I’ll just randomly throw them in. Today’s is:

Strawberries: WWYT?

StrawberriesWhy you ask? Because you have to be INSANE to try to grow strawberries in a home garden. It only makes you realize that you must be ingesting some pretty effing insane amounts of pesticides when you eat the spankin’ clean berries from the store. These are my strawberries. And I share them with the birds, the bugs, and Lord only knows what else. ( I cut them up, lest my family figure out that the other half of the berry they are eating was recently in the mouth of a chipmunk.)