Toast

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.

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*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.

Picnic Tourte and A Golden Delicious Digression

I have gone on at some length about my regard for the late Mireielle Johnston, and her wonderful cookbook, Cuisine of the Sun. More than a few of my most reliable and well loved recipes came from this collection of "Classical French Recipes from Nice and Provence," which appeared in my life in the late seventies. It was, to me, a key to a whole world of distinctive, delicious and unpretentious food. No doubt the recipes are classic, but they were also chosen, refined and executed by a brilliant home cook, and very clever lady. I was pretty much never disappointed when I trusted her judgment.

There was not much in this book I hadn't tried or considered in one form or another, but there was one unusual dessert I never got around to making. She called it,"one of the most traditional and well-loved desserts of Nice", but also a "curious blend". The tourte de blettes always seemed odd, including as it does spinach or chard, and cheese in a sweet pie. I had been curious to try it, but shy of commiting time and ingredients to something I might well not like. Now that I had a farmbox, with plenty of spinach and chard, some pine nuts I got for a gift, and the blog to encourage me experiment, it seemed like a good time to give it a try.

The ingredients are these:
(BTW MJ says this serves eight. This borders on the hysterical. I would say it serves at least 12, and I am known for my greed.)

Pastry

3 cups unbleached all purpose flour
2 eggs beaten
1 cup softened butter, unsalted
1/2 cup sugar
about 1 tbsps salt

Filling

4 large golden delicious apples
3 tbsps raisins
1 tbsp dark rum
1 cup of cooked, drained and squeezed and well chopped chard, spinach, or combo
4 tbsps pine nuts
1/2 cup confectioner' s sugar
1/4 to 1/2 pound mild, bland cheese (gouda or mild cheddar, eg.) diced small
2 beaten eggs
grated rind one lemon
2 tbsps currant jelly
3 tbsps confectioners sugar

Digression: It's about those golden delicious apples. I know they are horrible eaten out of hand, a travesty of an apple-the texture is mealy and the flavor insipid; the skin is unusually tough. Crispness, one of the most essential qualities of an eating apple, is pretty much entirely absent. (Caveat: I have never had one freshly picked, usually any apple right off the tree is a thousand times improved from a storage apple.) I assumed, from sampling it, that the golden delicious was bred for storage and transport, and regularly ignored for years directions to use them in cooking. I just substituted something I knew to be a reasonable cooking apple.

I had vaguely remembered a dispute reported in the early days of common marketdom, in which the many fabulous varieties of English apple were seen as threatened by a French proposal to recognize fewer varieties. Since most of the recipes including the golden delicious were French, I guess I just thought that the poor dears didn't have good cooking apples to choose from, or some foolishness of that kind. I may have even been pompous on the topic-it seems likely. I'm here to tell you that this was a Serious Error. In turns out that somehow, in cooking, the golden delicious is magically transformed. It softens, while keeping its shape, and the sugars condense, or something, resulting in an almost flowery, carmelized yumminess. End of digression, I think.

Pastry:On a floured surface, work the ingredients together until well blended, stretching the dough away from you with the heel of your hand. Shape into two balls, one 2/3 and the other 1/3 of the total dough. Cover with a clean nonterry dish cloth, and leave 2 hours at room temperature.

Tourte:Peel the apples and cut 2 in small cubes. Put the raisins and rum in a little pan. Boil and then simmer 2 minutes. Preheat oven to 425F. Mix the greens, raisins, apple cubes, pine nuts, sugar, cheese, lemon rind and eggs, in abig bowl. Slice the remaining apples. Roll the pastry out thinly. Butter a deeper than ordinary pie dish, casserole or mold, and spread the larger circle of dough in the bottom, up the sides, and over the edges of the baking dish. Prick it all over with a fork. Heat the jelly and brush it over the bottom and sides of the crust. Add the filling, and cover with the apple slices.

Cover with remaining circle of dough, and trim neatly. Poke the top crust with a fork, and bake 15 minutes. Turn heat to 325F, and continue to bake until golden- approximately 45 minutes more. (It should be a darker gold than appears in the pictures, which are washed out by sunshine and an inept photographer-me.) Sprinkle with confectioner's sugar. I snuck mine out of the pan, because it was an old beat up metal one, but if you make it in a pretty baking dish, you won't have to upend it.This may be eaten, said Ms. Johnston, warm or cold, and is especially suited to buffets and picnics.

I would agree. I was surprised by the taste. It is simultaneously a very individual flavor and not weird. Not a sharp taste at all, neither the greens nor the cheese stand out. If any taste dominates, it is the apple, but just barely. It's all kind of mellow, taste-wise, in the manner of a custardy sort of thing, though an entirely different texture. It is quite solid, but soft, not chewy- just sort of densely packed. Unlike a ricotta kind of pie, it is not prone to collapse. It is easy to slice, hence good for picnics and buffets- or to take sliced, in a lunchbag. It goes extremely well with strong hot coffee. I'm in favor, and glad I tried it. I'm thinking of making some for company. Meantime, I've got a lunchbag treat for the week. I might pre-bake the bottom crust a little next time.

If At First: A Ricotta Tart with Pine Nut Praline and a Warning

I found this recipe on Nick Malgieri's website. I have seen quite a few recipes for this traditional Italian ricotta-pinenut tart-some with the pinenuts encorporated into the pastry, some in the topping. This is a sweet version, but I have seen savory versions with spinach- and I must say they look nice too.

Mario Batali says that you will find a ricotta pinenut tart in virtually every bakery in Italy-it is a traditional classic. He suggests that a slice with a glass of wine in the afternoon is the way to go, and I am inclined to agree, now that I have ahem, calmed down. It is lush and creamy, not too sweet, and has nice little bursts of flavor and texture from the peel, caramel., and pine nuts.I liked it, and my friends did too.

I've been looking at all these recipes for awhile, deciding which to try. The arrival of a Mother's Day gift including a glorious immense bag of pine nuts tipped the balance in favor of this recipe, which carmelizes and highlights the pinenuts. It is the creation of Jo Bettoja, an American cooking teacher, author, long time resident of Italy, and friend to Mr. Malgieri. I have adapted this only very slightly from the recipe on the website, for your convenience, in case you decide to make it- which course of action I cautiously recommend, as explained below.

Caramelized Pine Nuts
3/4 cup sugar
1/2 teaspoon lemon juice
3/4 cup (about 3 ounces) pine nuts, lightly toasted

Dough
2 cups all-purpose flour (spoon flour into dry-measure cup and level off)
1/3 cup sugar
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
8 tablespoons (1 stick) unsalted butter, cold, and cut into 10 pieces
2 teaspoons finely grated orange or lemon zest
4 large egg yolks
2 tablespoons milk or water

Ricotta Filling.
2 pounds whole-milk ricotta
1/2 cup sugar
2 teaspoons grated orange zest
4 large eggs
Caramelized Pine Nuts (see above), chopped into 1/4-inch pieces

One 9-inch round pan, 2 inches deep, buttered

Caramelized pine nuts: Butter a jelly roll pan. Mix the sugar and lemon juice in a medium saucepan and stir. Cook over a medium flame, stirring with a metal spoon, until the sugar starts to melt .Decrease the heat to low and cook until it is a deep amber color. Immediately stir in the pine nuts and pour the mixture onto the buttered jelly roll pan. Let the nuts cool for a few minutes. When they are firm, but not hard, loosen the caramel from the pan with a wide spatula and turn it over to prevent sticking.

When it is firm and cooled-chop it up with a large knife. You can store it in an airtight tin, if you like.

The dough is easiest to make in a food processor, so I will give you those directions. You can make it by hand, though. I did, my processor having recently given up the ghost (Shortly after I made this tart, I gave in and got a new one on sale- a nice little 7 cup Kitchenaid with an additional small bowl and blade): Combine the dry ingredients in the work bowl of a food processor fitted with the metal blade. Pulse several times to mix. Add the butter and pulse about 10 times to mix the butter in finely. Add the orange zest, yolks, and water and pulse repeatedly until the dough forms a ball. Invert the dough to a floured work surface and carefully remove the blade. Squeeze the dough into a disk, wrap it in plastic, and refrigerate it while preparing the filling. You can put this in the fridge for 2 days before proceeding, or freeze for a couple of months..

Preheat to 350F.

Filling: Put your ricotta in a large mixing bowl and beat it smooth with a large rubber spatula. Beat in the sugar and orange zest. Beat in the eggs, one at a time, beating smooth after each addition. Stir in half the chopped pine nut caramel.

Remove the dough from the refrigerator and gently knead it on a floured surface until it is smooth. Place it on a floured surface. Flour the dough and roll it to a 13-inch circle. Transfer it to the prepared pan. Press the dough well into the bottom and sides of the pan. Use a bench scraper or the back of a knife to sever the excess dough at the rim of the pan.

Pour the filling into the pan and smooth the top. Sprinkle with the rest of the pinenut praline. Use a table knife to loosen any dough on the side of the pan above the filling and turn it down over the filling.

Bake the tart until the dough is baked through and the filling is slightly puffed, about 45 minutes.
Cool the tart on a rack, wrap the pan in plastic, and chill. Thoroughly. Well. I mean this most emphatically, as you will see.

To unmold the tart, for serving, warm the bottom of the pan over low heat for a few seconds. Invert the tart to a rack and remove the pan. Replace the pan with a platter and invert the whole stack and remove the rack. Obvious alternative-springform pan. I used a deeper, smaller pan, more like 7" at the bottom, and a bit wider at the top, aiming for a taller tart, which I hoped would look impressive. It is certainly tall. If you do this, it will take longer to bake and set, of course-in my case, over an hour. Stoves vary wildly, too.

Warning: I do like it tall, but it is a bit tricky to handle this way. In fact, you are looking at my second tart. I was impatient, and didn't let the first one chill properly. It was pretty when it first came out, but slowly, slowly cracked, quivered and collapsed into a trainwreck/ mudslide before my eyes. I reacted to this baking disaster with all the aplomb of a disappointed toddler. Be glad you were not there to witness the event. After I hastily reassembled my persona, the blubbery mass, studded with caramelly nuts, was delicious served in bowls- so I knew I had to try again. Stubbornly, I used the same deeper, smaller pan.

In retrospect, a picture of the first tart, fully collapsed, would have been good here. It didn't occur to me at the time. After the cave-in of the tart, and my personal disintegration, I was way too giggle-ridden to operate a camera. Anyhow, I had the hiccups.

Pinenut Preview: Pasta with Ricotta and Herbs

I received a delightful Mother's Day package this week, which contained, among other wondrous things, a giant pound and a half bag of pinenuts. I was gobsmacked. I have the redfox to thank for this windfall. This is the approximate quantity of pine nuts I might have expected to permit myself over a period of, say, ten years. You will be seeing a lot of celebratory pine nut cookery around here for a while, and how could that be bad?

You may be happy to hear that the consumption of pine nuts can lead to weight loss. Apparently, the oil in pine nuts has been found to the suppress the appetite of experimental subjects. Naturally I am pleased to be afforded an opportunity to shed those excess pounds by the simple expedient of eating one and one half pounds of pine nuts. Perhaps I'd best not eat them all at once, lest I fade away entirely.

I am mulling over my plans for a ricotta and pinenut tart, found at Nick Malgieri's website, which is unique in it's use of carmelized pine nuts. Mmm. Meanwhile, however, a person has got to eat. And this is what I had for supper Saturday night.

Pasta and Pine Nuts

feeds 2 for light supper or lunch

angel hair pasta 8 oz
whole milk ricotta 1/2 cup room temperature
mascarpone (opt) 1 tbsp
grated rind of 1 lemon
juice of 1 lemon
pine nuts 1/2 cup
freshly grated parmesan
oil cured black olives, handful chopped
fresh basil handful chopped
fresh chives small handful, chopped

Preheat oven to 325F. Put pasta water on to boil, with lemon juice and salt added in the water. Put pine nuts on a cookie sheet and cook for about 7 minutes, or until they start to smell nice. Remove from oven. Put most of the pine nuts and everything else but the herbs and parm in a biggish bowl. Cook the pasta. Drain, saving pasta water. Add hot pasta to bowl and toss around to mix all ingredients well. Add a little pasta water until the pasta sauce is a bit creamy. Toss in fresh herbs. Decant into 2 shallow individual bowls. Grate fresh pepper over, scatter remaining pinenuts on top, and then parmesan.

Consume with bread and maybe some grilled fresh asparagus-done in olive oil and sprinkled with sea salt, coarse pepper and fennel seed-yum. (gorgeous-$1.99 this week!)

I loved my supper. But I just didn't feel thinner. Better have some more.