Toast

Collards, Deconstructed

I am a long-time fan of slow-cooked greens with smoked pork and cornbread. It is a mainstay of american home-cooking, and can be one substantial, stick to your ribs inducement to heavy labor. Or, in the alternative, it is an excellent lead-in to a big old, afghan-covered long winter's afternoon nap. Despite its southern origin, it is not really a hot weather dish at my house.

I have a personal craving for dark bitter greens which is sometimes so intense that I think it must signal a nutritional deficiency of some kind. So when the collards showed up in the CSA farmbox this week, there was no question that I was going to be eating them. All. Up. This is a dish simultaneously so utterly simple and so baroquely fusionesque that describing it as if it had "origins" is entirely ridiculous. Naturally, I can't resist. However, basically, it is a room temperature salad.

Checking epicurious in the hopes of finding a recipe for collards that seemed summery, I came upon the main recipe, which is a Brazilian method for cooking ribbon-cut collards very quickly in the fat rendered from a couple of chopped slices of bacon. In need of my cornbread to go with, I came upon the remains of some polenta with parmesan from last night, which I had spread in a cakepan and refrigerated. This got cut up into cubes, which were browned and tossed in.

The result is a chewy room temperature Brazilian/Italian/Pittsburgh hillbilly salad, which made a very satisfying summer lunch. This is how you make it- enough for 2 people. I made it in my wok, because it is a good pan for cooking down food of serious volume. You have plenty of room to stir it around. A big saute pan would be fine, too.

1/2 lb collard greens
2 slices bacon
polenta, spread in a pan, chilled until firm, and cut into 1/2" cubes
salt
pepper
pinch red pepper flakes
spray olive oil

Cut the bacon into small pieces, and cook in a large pan until crisp. Meanwhile, prepare the collards. Cut both sides from the tough center stem and bottom stem of each leaf. Stack the leaves in a tidy pile and cut in half cross-wise. Roll each half into as tight a roll as you can, cut into thin ribbons and put in a bowl.

Preheat your broiler, and spray the polenta cubes with olive oil spray, or toss in a little olive oil. Place them in a single layer on a foil-lined pan, and broil until crispy and browned, keeping a close eye on them. It is best to brown them quickly, so the center will not get tough...but as they are small, they could burn easily-be careful!

Once the bacon is crisp, add all the greens to the pan with a bit of salt, some pepper, and the red pepper flakes. Stir them until wilted, toss in the polenta cubes, and serve. Or, let it cool down a bit first. This is very chewy, you could cook it longer if that's totally not your thing, but I think it would lose quite a bit of its character. And I am not a person who generally goes for seriously al dente veg. Obviously, you could also cook some onions in the bacon fat, or add red wine vinegar, or raisins. but I like the plain article, and , of course, it is very, very easy.

The polenta cubes may seem like a bit of a pain- and they would be if you fixed them specially. But if you just make some nice soft polenta to go with your dinner the night before, and do a bit extra- the next day the collards thing is easy-peasy, as Jamie Oliver might say.

A Spin or Two on a Seasonal Favorite

If you do not live in California or some such all-season growing area, chances are you are still waiting for your local produce to show up. One of the very earliest local goodies to appear around here is spinach. Like that salt-of-the-earth old salt , Popeye, I just loves my spinach.* And the tender baby leaves are so delicious uncooked, that a spinach salad is the first thing that comes to mind when it arrives. I have an old favorite, but I decided to try a couple of new things this year.

One is a spinach and pear salad using the rest of my duck confit. (I haven't forgotten about the duck breasts and the duck soup I promised. Consider this post a semi-related interlude.) The other is an idea I got from reading Karin Welzel's article in the Tribune Review**, about Cafe Zao, a local restaurant I have yet to visit-despite the fact that it is located only a couple of blocks from my workplace, and next door to the Public Theater. As you might guess, this has been mostly a cost issue.

After reading about the place, I've concluded that I need to save up for dinner at Cafe Zao. In the interim, though, I thought would try Chef Toni Pais' recipe for Cold Spinach Soup and Shellfish Salad, which you can find with Karin's article. I was so very not disappointed. Wow. As she points out, the soup can also be used, hot or cold, as a sauce for fish or poultry. Surprisingly, large quantities of pine nuts are involved, and the effect is brilliant. It's so intense, and fresh tasting- really amazing stuff. The seafood salad is also pretty special, and I found that it was well worth looking for the ponzu- a citrus-y vinegar.
It did take me some time to find it- the Lotus Market here is enormous- and not all the sauces have English labels. The ponzu didn't have one, but there was an ingredients list on the back, and it said "Ponzu" on top.

I made the soup according to instructions, but my seafood salad was a shrimp-only affair. Also, I did not do the fancy business with the PVC pipe rings, but put the shrimp salad in a little dish centered in the soup bowl instead. Another serving option might be an ice-cream scoop of the salad in the center of your dish, and the cold soup poured carefully around it. That's how I plate up rice with an estoufee or gumbo, and it works pretty well.

Here is the recipe for the spinach salad. I used toasted walnuts, as well as substituting the confit for the bacon. It was yummy.

I have an attraction to dark green vegetables that is so intense that I suspect it is based in some nutritional deficiency. I made a special bus trip to Whole Foods for dinosaur kale on a snowy day this winter, only to discover they were out of it. I nearly cried. Surely this is not normal? I can tell you that the produce guy looked at me with something between pity and fear when I, uh, ...expressed my dismay.

BTW, if you use the google search function in the left hand column, and search the blog for "spinach", there are few other nice things you might want to try.

____________________

*I was surprised to discover, reading up on the original Popeye comics, that in the days before animation, our man Popeye did not have a spinach habit at all. He was just, well, cranky and violent and not-so-brilliant- in the nicest possible way, of course. He had a generous heart and was always, naturally, devoted to the lovely Ms. Oyl. I highly recommend these early cartoons, they are fascinatin', as he might put it. If he, say, had a blog. Or could read and write. Or was, you know, real. But, as always, I digress.

**I don't subscribe to, the Tribune Review, one of our two local papers. Thus, I was unaware of its really nice food section, which, fortunately for me, can be read on the internet. I met Karin Welzel when she emailed me to talk about peas, and I've been catching up on past articles ever since.

A Couple of Not So Green Salads

I have been making a homely supper/indoor picnic for my friends, while re-perusing the classic spiral bound cookbook White Trash Cooking, and debating about what sort of potato salad to make. That's not the potato salad you see there, but another not-so- green salad, to be named later. I figure just about every body knows what a basic American potato salad looks like.

I had a big mason jar of Clem's ambrosial barbeque sauce that I brought home with me, which I do, pretty much annually, stopping at Clem's barbeque pit on the way back from our work conference in State College, PA. I also bring home half a rack of fire-pit barbequed ribs- but those disappear shortly after I make sure the cats are okay, and well before I unpack. A week or so later, I make a supper of pulled pork sandwiches, coleslaw, potato salad, and some kind of cobbler or pie. It's a thing.

The coleslaw recipe is a fixture- non-negotiable, in this context, anyhow. but I am always open to potato salad variations, from the hokiest to the haute-ist. Potato salad is a tremendously versatile dish, a blank canvas for the painting of, well whatever- I'll let this wonky metaphor fade on out- you probably know what I mean, anyway. For this meal, though, I thought something down-homey would be compatible- hence the book.

Whenever I consult WTC, I am surprised and a little embarassed to recall just how little most of the recipes appeal to me. I think of myself as a lover of plain home cooking, fried chicken, biscuits, greens, etc, but much of this stuff is pretty sickly, though intriguing. A lot of processed foodis involved- cake mix dumped on some peaches for a cobbler, canned vegetables and soups in casseroles, and the like. The book is full of strong, admirable characters, and is utterly noncondescending- so what am I, some kind of food snob? I don't know. I certainly don't scorn the use of humble, unlikely, or hokey ingredients- I make a chicken thing with coca-cola- and it's good. But a ton of these recipes-I can tell I'd hate them.

I greatly prefer, southern/country cooking-wise, most of the recipes in the books of Edna Lewis, with or without Scott Peacock, her buddy, fellow chef, and, at the end- her caretaker. There are lots of recipes with titles that are the same as those in WTC, but they are different, sound good, and taste good when you make them. You can tell they come from the same place and time- Scott Peacock even recalls the very same cake-mix cobbler recipe, as being tasty, but a bit "oversweet". He notes that while his mother used supermarket biscuits in her blackberry cobbler- he makes his from scratch. These guys are chefs, though, not home cooks like me. E.L. was from a country cooking tradition, but she was a sophisticated person, who spent many years cooking professionally, and writing about food.

I guess these two were looking to the food of the generation before S.P.'s mother's era...folks who didn't have the option of adding gratuitous doses of chemical novelties to the food they grew and raised. When all that stuff appeared for the first time- cake mix, Cool Whip, packaged biscuits, jello and pudding, it must have been irresistable, fun and magical-especially to people who did hard physical work all day, and were used to a lot of laborious cooking as well. Once considered special, and a treat, these instant gratification foods are so much a part of our culture that we may be considered annoying elitists if we avoid them .

Surprisingly, though, these two cookbooks offer virtually the same potato salad recipe, except that the Lewis/Peacock version has cider vinegar, and the WTC one uses pickle juice. So that's what I made, and it is nice. It is basically boiled potatoes, cubed, mayo, a little chopped onion, a little brown mustard, hard-boiled egg yolks, a little cider vinegar, salt and pepper. Very basic, very good. I generally add a little celery seed and some finely chopped fennel or celery.The more egg yolks you add, the better it is, no question There is no potato salad more elemental, and pretty much everyone eats it.

Which brings me to the salad you see in the photo- this is a "BLT Salad", which sounds like a refugee from WTC, but was actually found in a Lewis/Peacock book. Like the potato salad, it has an added luster when prepared mostly from fresh veg from my CSA farmbox. (The coleslaw, too- there was a crispy, beautiful cabbage this week.) This is how you make it:

Wash and dry some very crispy lettuce- we had romaine, (but even iceberg would be better than something soft or buttery), cut it up and top with chunky croutons, freshly made from good white bread; crispy bacon cut into squares; and a beautiful tomato or two, cut into smallish cubes. Add salt and pepper, and just before serving, toss with just enough good mayonaisse to coat it lightly. So very good. But how could it not be?

There is some green in this salad after all, but what with the bacon and mayo, it ain't exactly your palate-cleansing pile-o-greens. Still.

Rat@2E

I was going to call it "Roasted Rat", but had a failure of nerve. Can't fool anyone, anyway- it's another version of the ubiquitous ratatouille. There are good reasons why you see it everywhere-especially now. This concoction is made a bit differently from the ratatouille we grew up on. Or, that I grew up on, at least, as prepared by my mother, channeling Craig Claibourne. And there was absolutely nothing wrong with that stuff- it was a taste revelation for an American kid in the sixties, and I adored it, hot or lukewarm. In fact, it was such a novel treat then, that it is hard for me to realize how humdrum some people now consider it. It doesn't spoil it for me at all- I still think it's brilliant.

When I was growing up, my friends were mostly pretty interested in the non-ordinary food my mother turned out at our house. I don't think we always give children and teenagers enough credit for being willing to try something new- especially if it comes from someone who has given them goodies before. Within reason- I'm not suggesting offering strange adolescents a buffet of offal to gag over. But most will tackle their first artichoke bravely, especially when there's something obviously delicious, like melted butter, to dunk it in.

The lovely flashback in "Ratatouille", where the Cruella-esque food critic is transported to his childhood table, and his mother's fragrant ratatouille, charmed the pants off me, and 'tis the season, anyway. Over the years, my methods have become less and less traditional, as I have followed to it's logical (in my mind) extention, Julia Child's advice to cook the ingredients separately, at first, preserving the distinct flavors. My daughter makes a fine ratatouille with a similar theoretical basis, there's a gorgeous one in "Cucina Sympatica", and the artful chef-y French Laundry version modeled in the film is inspirational, too (though I do feel, with the redfox, that it would be quite the trick to plate it as suggested.)

This one-not really a ratatouille at all, I suppose- evolved in large part from my annual summer obsession with roasted vegetables. I can go a solid week, really, wanting roasted vegetables for supper every night, with maybe a little leftover chicken, or lamb or something tossed in, over a pile of salad greens- preferably with lots of arugula. Sometimes I shave a little cheese (the ricotta salata is dandy for this) over the greens first, and toss the hot veg over, so the cheese melts a bit. Fresh herbs on top, shredded thinly do not hurt, either. I know you can use any number of (or no) dressings over such a pile, but my favorite is the following:

a very finely chopped large shallot
sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
juice of a large lemon
extra virgin olive oil in same quantity as lemon juice, maybe just a tad more

Mix together, and let it sit for at least 30 minutes if possible. Pour over roast veg, in reasonable quantities- it will keep a few days in the fridge-though you must bring it to room temperature, of course, if you expect to pour it. Simple, but somehow insanely good with any roasted veg. Don't substitute for the shallot, if you want to see what I mean about this.

Anyway, the following is a not-quite ratatouille variant/elaboration of the roasted veg supper:

Using a mandoline or with a knife and an extreme deftness such as I do not possess, very thinly slice zucchini and yellow summer squash, red onion, eggplant and fennel bulbs. Set out on cookie sheets sprayed with olive oil. Thinly slice several garlic cloves over all, spray with more olive oil and sprinkle with salt and pepper, thyme or dried basil, and a bit a lavender, if you have some.

Roast at 450F or so, until going crispy. Meanwhile, char, peel, and cut into squares a green pepper, red pepper, or one of each. Arrange veg in baking dish. Pour dressing, or a little balsamic vinegar-a decent tasting super-market type- over the veg. Pour over all, a not-drained 15 oz can of chopped tomatoes (preferably Muir Glen fire-roasted ones, which I buy by the case these days). Sprinkle with a little light brown or demarra sugar. Cover with aluminum foil and bake at 350F for 30 minutes. Uncover and cook about 10 more minutes.

Using a spatula, gently fold the veg over one another to distribute them, but not break them up too much, while adding a few extra glugs of the balsamic. Thinly slice some fresh basil, and sprinkle over. Let this sit around awhile, if you can, after it's cool, for the flavors to migrate a bit. The more balsamic vinegar you add, the more it becomes like a condiment, rather than a vegetable dish. This is good, too-you can put it on a sandwich or something-as you might a chutney. It should not be very wet, however, whichever way you do it, as that spoils it, IMHO.

Use this stuff, if you like it, in any of the myriad ways a person serves ratatouille. It is really nice with a runny poached egg on top , and some toasted rustic-type bread. Or otherwise.

Marcella's Broccoli

Many thanks for all the broccoli assistance. (If you are staring at some farm fresh broccoli, and feeling a bit down about it, check these comments for suggestions-there may be hope for us yet).

I decided to give Lynn D.'s Marcella Hazan suggestion a try first, and found the recipe trolling the net on a UK site for a CSA there called "River Nene." This is what you need:

680g broccoli
225g onion, thinly sliced
60g black greek olives, pitted (important to use nice olives)
4 flat anchovy fillets, roughly cut
50g fresh parmesan, cut into thin slivers
salt
6 tbsp olive oil
225ml dry red wine

You cut the broccoli into florets, dividing the larger clusters in half. (ugh, don't usually care for that bit of the broccoli, but I did it.) Then you peel the stalks and cut them into long strips, about a 1/4 inch thick. In a sauté pan, or the like, make a thin layer of onion slices, and next a layer of broccoli stems. Dot with a few olives, some anchovy fillets and a few slivers of parmesan. Sprinkle with a bit of olive oil. Repeat, saving the broccoli florets for the last layer. Add the red wine, cover and cook for 1 hour (!) over a low heat or until all the wine has evaporated. Marcella says not to disturb it or stir, and to eat it straight away when it is done-reheating being a Bad Idea. Don't know why, and didn't try that. Ate it all up, with bread and a bit of goat cheese, for supper. (I made about 2/3 of the recipe, consistent with the amount of broccoli I had, and shared it with one other person.) I'll bet it would be just as nice at room temperature, though.

As you can see, this is not pretty. Doesn't look like a treat. But it is. I who shrink from broccoli, embrace it. Well, maybe not embrace, broccoli is not so huggable, despite the tree-like appearance. But I like it this way- a lot. Be advised, especially if you are, as I am, dubious about broccoli in general, that it is different from all prior broccoli recipes I've tried. Thank you, Lynn- a keeper.

Them Little Trees: Please Advise

It was maybe Ogden Nash, or Roy Blount Jr, quoting Ogden Nash, or Roy Blount Jr. himself, channeling Ogden Nash (?), who was responsible for an anti-tribute to those 'little green trees" our parents hoped we would eat, to wit:*

"The stores are all out of broccoli......loccoli."

I am pretty much devoted to the complete spectrum of the edible vegetable world, and I adore broccoli rabe. I hesitate to align myself in any way with certain ex-presidents of whom I entirely disapproved. But I've just never been much of a fan of basic broccoli. In fact, truth be told, I absolutely hate it raw, and any platter of crudites including them nasty little green trees will be approached with great caution by moi.

Cooked, I'll eat it. Thanks to a past intervention by my daughter (aka the redfox), I now realize that part of my broccoli problem was focusing on the top section, which is the least pleasant bit, despite being treated by some as the sort of "filet"/asparagus-tip-like part. The texture of that section, the leaves, if you will, of the broccoli "tree" is, in my view, little short of nasty. I believe it was also the redfox who pointing out the wisdom of peeling the stalks. This is actually important with all but the youngest, most baby broccoli, as the outer skin is very tough.

So, I will eat just about any well-cooked broccoli dish these days, but I'm definitely lacking luster when it comes to preparing the stuff. I got some in the farmbox this week, and there's going to be more. 'Cause it's grown locali (ack, sorry-slipped out).

Generally, I fix it like broccoli rabe, with olive oil, garlic, and a bit of hot pepper and/or vinegar. When I do that, though, I find myself wishing it was broccoli rabe instead. So I'm asking for some help here. Point me in the direction of some good ways to fix regular old broccoli, and I will be forever grateful. I do already realize that anything drowned in hollandaise is bound to be acceptable.But I haven't gotten much further.

See, there's this comment section below...will you give me a hand with this?

*I have always wanted to say/write "to wit". Please forgive me.

Illustration is taken from a Clarice Cliff vase (not my own.) If broccoli resembles trees, they would be bubble-topped deco-y trees, I think.

Blossoming

I was both delighted and alarmed when I saw the plastic bag of 10 zucchini blossoms tucked in the corner my farmbox on Wednesday. These little darlings are probably my favorite (non-basic) food in the entire world, even including smoked salmon. But I had two lots of company coming, and there were not enough flowers to feed them to the guests. And they don't wear well, squash blossoms.

Normally, when I am lucky enough to get some, I make squash blossoms a bit of a personal event- stuffing them with ricotta and herbs, frying them in batter, or even doing both. I did not consider trying either while making an entirely separate birthday dinner. Because it does take the edge off the even the most wonderful food, when you are so tired you can hardly get it from plate to mouth.

But this is what I did, and I think it worked out very well. I tried something new with the blossoms, which I might never have done otherwise, being so enamoured of the original treatments. Plus, it made them last, stretched them out a bit- and that can't be bad, when you are dealing with treasures.*

I found this recipe for Spaghetti all'Aquilana, and made it right away. Despite the initial frying, it's pretty simple, and I had it for supper, after work. I was left with enough residual energy to do some party prep for the next day. The initial non-batter blossom frying does give the cook an opportunity to indulge in a stolen crispy salted blossom in the midst of preparations. The spaghetti made a really fine supper, and, importantly, leftovers. The leftovers will be turned into a large day after the party frittata, with the addition of eggs, fresh basil, and some very thinly sliced zucchini ribbons, sauteed briefly, to catch up with the cooked leftovers. All very nice.

And those squash blossoms are particularly good with the saffron in the spaghetti recipe. I've been thinking about making a risotto, also using some saffron, if I'm lucky enough to get more. Now that I've branched out. Or there's a Mario Batali recipe for tortelloni filled with mascarpone and zucchini blossoms. A person could make those using the wonton wrapper cheating method. I just may not be able to resist the batter fried, stuffed extravaganza ones, though.

*I do understand that not everyone feels as strongly as I do re squash blossoms. Intellectually I understand. Viscerally, it puzzles me. If it is possible to be viscerally puzzled.

Barbara Kingsolver, First Farmbox, and Rhubarb Ice Cream

I have been reading Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, her story of her family's year of eating locally on their Appalachian farm. I picked it up because I thought highly of her Poisonwood Bible. Before I read the latter, I had tried a couple of her earlier novels, and found them okay, but not so interesting. I thought P.B.was far superior what she had done previously, and wanted to see what she had to say about a topic which is simultaneously close to my heart, and, well, annoying.

So far, I' m a little surprised that I'm enjoying it so much. In my younger days, I read "back to the land" books dreamily, and devoured everything I could find on sustainable agriculture, seed saving ,genetic diversity, and eating locally. The romance of the imaginary organic farm has lost a lot of its appeal for me- I am an urban sort of person, and prefer to let my CSA farmer do the actual bulk growing.

I do miss my garden-I long for it every spring- and I need to come up with a way to have one again, but I know that the realities of farm life are truly not my cup of tea. Likewise, I feel that I understand the political food issues. Though I'm not an expert, and don't do enough about those issues on a political level, I don't need convincing of their righteousness. And I'm easily bored, especially when there's preaching.

This book does not pretend to be The Way for everyone. It is unassuming, personal, sensible, and encouraging. It is also loaded with lots of good practical , factual backup for any arguments you might have with, say, people who claim corporate chemical farming some how serves the poor of the planet, and who decry as "elitist" advocates for local, organically raised and free-range food.

Ms. Kingsolver's science background and writer's chops serve her well. She speaks confidently, and simply. The Monsanto stories, though not new, are just chilling. Her family and their home are interesting and appealing, without being too exemplary, or cute. I'm about half way through the book, and I'm a little bit re-motivated. Not that I was demotivated, but I'm sort of jazzed on the issues again. And the woman has me wanting to try my hand at making cheese. Meanwhile, the supermarket fruits and veggies from afar are looking like an even worse choice than usual, and I'm delighted and relieved that it is the beginning of the new year for my CSA farmbox.

The first farmbox of the year always looks beautiful to me, though it is necessarily a bit sparse, since we are in western PA, and it is barely June. There are herbs, spinach, lettuce, pea greens, strangely unformed, yet slightly woody onions, lovely crisp radishes (as mentioned earlier), and a bunch of rhubarb. (And, as every year, with the first box, there is a complementary round loaf of some soft-crusted mushball whole grain bread, which must be toasted to be tolerable. I don't get this- in all other ways, the Kretchmanns exhibit excellent taste. Oh well.)

I'm having a Tilapia filet, baked in parchment with pea greens and herb butter for dinner. I'll let you know how it goes-it's an LA Times recipe, since deleted, but reconstructed via the good memory of an egullet member. There's going to be a supper of farmbox baby spinach with pinenuts and raisins over polenta in the picture too.

The rhubarb, washed and diced, is about 2 cups worth, just about enough for a quart of ice cream. This is how I made it:

Stew the rhubarb, cut into very small dice, for about 15 minutes in 2/3 cup of water with a pinch of salt, 3/4 cup sugar (or a mixture of sugar and golden syrup), a squirt of lemon juice, and a half of a split vanilla bean. Cool thoroughly, chilling if possible.

Combine the chilled rhubarb mixture with 1 cup of cream and one cup of milk. Freeze according to your ice cream maker's directions. This is a delicious, not too sweet, subtly flavored concoction, IIDSSMS.

Consume, feeling elegant. I'm going to save some for next weekend, in the hope that there will be strawberies in the farmbox. Clearly this ice cream woud be insanely good with some pulverized real strawberries on top.

Minestrone for Days on End

There are no ready to eat leftovers, and it is nearing the time when when my wooden crate will be refilled with CSA farmbox veggies, to be dealt with reasonably promptly. I am looking for some time to make jam from some beautiful and delicious greeny yellow plums I got on an (unwise, heat-stroke tempting) trip to the Strip district on my lunch hour today. I will also be getting 10 pounds of windfall apples with my farmbox. Since I intend to make the apples into a supply of apple pectin jelly, I will not be wanting to do a lot more cooking until after next weekend , when the the jelly is (I hope) finished. Some other (non-food) things need to get done as well, not leaving much puttering time. I will, however, still be wanting to eat.

Fortunately, I have all the ingredients for a basic Italian-American minestrone, which I intend to eat all week, possibly for lunch and dinner both, so I don't have to think about planning meals. I have been known to eat the same thing for many meals in a row when I am neither busy nor overwhelmed, but just on a bit of a kick about a particularly good thing. I don't really expect to find the sameness boring or annoying before the soup is used up. This is particularly true because I picked up a big lovely loaf of Mediterra farm bread and some nice cheese, along with those plums.

I have been making this minestrone far too long to use a recipe. I don't deviate much, though..this is comfort food, and needs to taste familiar. About a half hour of active time today, and I'm ready to eat for the week. The asterisk shows farmbox ingredients, and the # symbol is for herbs from my porch garden:

a too-large zucchini, chopped*
a large carrot, chopped*
2 fat spring onions, chopped*
1/2 fennel bulb, chopped*
2 medium potatoes peeled and chopped*
1/4 cabbage, shredded*
4 cloves garlic
can of cannelini beans
several handsful dried ziti
large can San Marzano tomatoes (I only have 3 ripe tomatoes of my own so far)
3" parmesan rind
salt
pepper
aleppo pepper-a pinch
fresh basil#
fresh oregano#
fresh sage#
fresh thyme#
strip of peppered bacon
bit of olive oil
1 qt of chicken/veal stock-homemade, and really, I must immodestly add, good. You can use a boxed broth, of course, if you haven't got any homemade.

Heat some olive oil in a 5 quart heavy dutch oven , and add the bacon (pancetta's even better, if you have some), cut into thin pieces with scissors, the onions, and a couple of sage leaves. Cook slowly for a few minutes, then add the carrot, fennel, and cabbage, and cook until soft. Add everything else but the pasta, plus enough water to bring it almost to the top of the pan, with maybe an inch to spare. Bring to a boil, then turn down to a simmer. Cook slowly for about an hour. Add the pasta, and cook 10-15 minutes more. Serve with some freshly grated parmesan.

This reheats nicely. Of course, the pasta will be mushy, but it is supposed to be; it is a particular sort of soup, not an al dente pasta with sauce. Actually, the pasta dissolves a bit, and thickens the soup. Children seem to like minestrone , or perhaps it is just a good vehicle for playing with your food. I have been known to use alphabet noodles or other silly shaped pasta when doing this for kids. For just me, ziti will do. I like the way the beans get stuck in them, it makes them nice to bite into.

I am going to be needing this bit of comfort-I came home today to discover that my plants had been moved again, and my apartment's porch shrouded in tarps...there are roofers here now, for who knows how long. No little before dinner nap for me, they are still banging on the roof at 7 pm. At least this time, they didn't break my last remaining tomato plant. Given the dark tent over the porch, obliterating all light, I'm going to have to hope they finish fast. Damn all these improvements.

Gemelli with Shrimp and 3 Peas

Am I overdoing it with the pasta here? I do tend to eat a lot of pasta in the summer. Well, and in the winter,too, actually. Anyhow, I was out of ideas for the peashoots that came with my farmbox this week. There were lots of them. (Peashoots that is-not such a lot of ideas.) First, I made the Potage St. Germaine with Peashoots and Chives that I figured out last year, which also addressed the lettuce glut. I even managed to avoid the multiple equipment failures and personal klutziness issues that were such fun the first time.

Nice, but there's a limit to the amount of it a person wants to consume. It is more the small bowl than the giant bucket kind of thing. I remembered seeing a recipe for a stir fry with 3 peas, and decided to adapt the idea for a pasta, with a few shrimp I had on hand. I wouldn't call this a sauce, since it is not at all liquidy. This non-liquid business was more or less intentional, with the idea of a pasta salad for lunch tomorrow in mind. The "three peas" are snow peas, regular peas, and peashoots. I thought it was pretty good with the shrimp, but if I left the shrimp out, I would have used parmesan shavings, instead of the breadcrumbs.

This is what I used:

4 oz bacon, cut in thin strips, cross-wise
a shallot, minced
2 cups peas shoots, chopped up coarsely
1 cup snow peas, whole
1/2 cup defrosted frozen little peas
pinch aleppo pepper
10 raw shrimp, shelled
1/2 cup veal broth
1/4 cup fresh mint, sliced very thin
6 oz gemelli or other pasta
toasted breadcrumbs

This is what I did:

I started the pasta water and the sauce at the same time. As soon as the pasta water boiled, I added and cooked the pasta. The sauce was ready first. When the pasta was cooked, I mixed them together in the sauce pot. For a saucier effect, you could add a bit of the pasta water.

To make the sauce, I cooked the bacon in a heavy pan until it was crispy, then removed it to drain on paper towels. I added the shrimp, and the aleppo pepper, and cooked them until just done. I removed those too, sauteed the shallots, peas shoots and snow peas. Then I put everything back in the pot with the broth, cooked it all down a little, and plopped in the prepared pasta. I mixed the mint in last. It was nice warm with toasted breadcrumbs on top. Not so bad with a little vinagrette and some oily olives, room temp, for a lunch next day.