Lettuce production has kicked into full gear. Every other day, I harvest about 1 gallon of leaves – far more arugula, mizuna and tat soi than I can eat on my own. I’m thinking about starting a CSA for my neighbors as a way to share the wealth.
In the meantime, I’m giving away bags of lettuces as gifts when visiting friends or meeting with clients.
I’ve become a bit more resourceful in how I use arugula. It’s not just for salads. Lettuces can be substituted for spinach in a recipe that calls for cooking greens. The peppery flavor adds sparkle to any dish. You can also use arugula in place of basil for pesto.
Yesterday, I sautéed a fistful in a little olive oil to use as a filling for an omelet. I topped it with homemade ketchup from last summer.
I planted my first lettuce seeds 60 days ago, and today I had my first significant harvest – a full gallon of arugula, mizuna and tatsoi. The smaller, earlier cuttings made for lovely garnishes on pizzas and flatbreads.
Some of the plants have already started to bolt. Temperatures have soared into the 80’s for the last week or so, and the plants are not happy. They’ve developed thick stalks and have begun the process of going to seed. While I love this unseasonably warm spring, the lettuce production will taper quickly. On the bright side, the leaves are spicier than usual.
Arugula does not need much flavor enhancement, just a simple dressing of olive oil and garlic. With a garnish of baby artichokes and fava beans, this is a quintessentially spring salad.
Pan Fried Artichokes with Arugula
2 artichokes, or 4 baby artichokes 1 bunch arugula, trimmed and washed 6 slices prosciutto 6 tbs. olive oil 4 cloves garlic, sliced 4 tbs. shaved Parmesan cheese 1 tbs. lemon juice Fava beans, blanched salt and pepper to taste
Clean artichokes: Trim the stem by ½ inch. Cut away the tough outer green skin. Trim away tough out leaves, until left with the white hearts. If using large artichokes, cut in half, and cut out fuzzy choke.
Slice the hearts as thin as possible.
Heat 2 tbs. olive oil in a pan. Add the artichokes, season with salt and pepper and stir fry for a few minutes until they start to brown. Add the garlic, and continue cooking for 2 minutes more, or until the garlic is lightly browned. Add lemon juice.
Toss the artichokes with the arugula. Sprinkle with prosciutto, favas and Parmesan.
Every mother’s day, growing up, my sister and I would walk one block down the street to “Azalea Park;” a small parcel of public land lined with a rainbow of azalea plants. They peaked just at Mother's Day. We would pick the flowers and string them together to create a lei for our mother.
This year, I’m in DC just a few days before Mother’s Day, and it seemed like the perfect time to resurrect the old tradition. It must have been 25 years or more since I last made her a flower garland. But as we pulled into the old neighborhood, I noticed that “Azalea Park” was mostly green with a few flecks of pinks and reds and just as many brown spots of blooms past their prime.
It seemed odd to me that I would have been able to create such lush leis growing up, and today there are slim pickings. Is this a case of global warming, that the plants are blooming weeks earlier than they did 25 years ago? Or is this just an anomaly of a very cold winter followed by the warm spring temperatures?
In any case, I was able to create a small gift for my mother… and thank her for the wonderful love and memories of my childhood. Happy Mother’s Day!
A major water-line ruptured a leak last Saturday, leaving the Boston area (and over 2 million homes) without potable water for three days. By some stroke of luck, Cambridge was spared from this fiasco as we have our own water supply. But Boston and 27 other communities were under order to boil water before using it for drinking, cooking and even washing dishes.
The next day, it was clear this “boil water order” might extend for several days… so I got on the phone and invited friends in affected areas over for dinner. With such short notice, I wanted to cook something simple and savory (and economical) that could easily scale up for a crowd.
At first blush, chicken enchiladas seemed like a great idea: a one dish casserole that would easily round out with a salad. But then I thought about how many steps actually go into enchiladas – making the sauce, cooking the filling, softening the tortillas and then rolling them. And, of course, serving enchiladas is really not an easy feat – unlike the restaurants that bake them in individual dishes, a casserole becomes very messy very quickly.
But I did like the idea of the mole sauce. The corn tortillas, with their distinctive lime flavor, and Monterey Jack cheese make a wonderful combination. I decided to reconstruct the dish is a way that’s easy to prepare and easy to serve.
There was no getting around making the mole sauce… and who would want to short-cut that anyway… with its rich, spicy complex flavors. And after making the same recipe for over 10 years, I’ve mastered making it in less than 30 minutes. Instead of using store bought tomatoes, I used a can of smoked tomatoes from last summer. I cooked chicken breasts, simply seasoned with salt and pepper, in the mole sauce.
If there’s one thing about mole I can say with conviction, it’s even better when paired with corn tortillas or other dish made with masa harina. Masa harina is corn meal that has been treated with lime and gives tortillas their distinctive flavor. It is also used in tamales and pupusas. I didn’t want to compromise the dish because I was too lazy to roll enchiladas. Instead, I made individual mounds of nachos – corn chips topped with melted jack cheese and scallions.
In the end it was a delicious, elegant meal, and a wonderful last minute, throw-together dinner that took less than an hour to prepare.
Hundreds of years ago, some brave and patient soul stumbled across the artichoke plant and decided to eat it. He was brave for wanting to put something so fibrous and prickly into his mouth. And patient… because I’m sure the first attempt at eating the artichoke was not a pleasant one. Somehow, this adventurous person figured out that we must trim the artichoke and then cook it, either by steaming or braising.
What our culinary ancestors discovered, the Italians improved upon, and my former boss Lydia Shire further embellished. Her standard artichoke preparation was braised in olive oil with capers, garlic, parsley and anchovies. The olive oil tamed the acrid after-taste that makes artichokes so difficult to pair with wine. And the anchovies lend a salty je ne sais quoi (in the same way that fish sauce gives Vietnamese and Thai food depth).
These artichokes are wonderful in risotto or roasted and stuffed. My favorite preparation from Lydia was the skillet pizza – a white pizza topped with the parmesan, St. Andre cheese and truffle oil. Currently, I don’t have truffle oil in my pantry, but I did have some first cuttings of arugula and scallions in the garden, which lightened the otherwise rich dish.
Artichoke Pizza
pizza dough, store-bought or home-made 1 shallot, sliced 4 garlic cloves, sliced 2 scallion, cut in rounds 2 braised artichokes 3 oz. St. andre cheese 2 oz. ricotta salata, grated 2 oz. parmesan, grate 1/4 cup olive oil
Sweat shallots and garlic in olive oil.
Form dough in a well oiled skillet.
Garnish pizza with artichokes, garlic and shallots, cheeses and scallions
This spring has been unseasonable pleasant and warm. I’ve been in the garden cleaning and planting almost every day this week. With the rhododendrons in bloom and the arugula ready for a harvest, it seemed only fitting to inaugurate patio-entertaining season.
I really don’t have enough arugula, mizuna and tat soi to make a salad yet, but they make a great garnish to grilled flat-bread. Tossed with a little oil, the soft leaves brighten the crispy bread and tangy ricotta topping.
And cheese straws are a perfect accompaniment to a crisp white wine or a gin and tonic.
They say you shouldn’t go to the grocery store hungry because you will over-buy. A corollary to that adage would be, “Don’t go to Russo’s at the peak of Spring.” I’m like a kid in a candy shop, throwing everything in my cart – fresh English peas, morels, fiddlehead ferns, asparagus and ramps.
As I unloaded my bags at home, I thought about what I could make with my bounty. I could make a mélange of vegetables to serve with fish, but I wanted each vegetable to have a chance to shine. Instead, I opted to spread the wealth across several meals. The first meal, I wrote about here: a rather straightforward dish that I replicate in similar fashion every year.
For my second spring meal, I wanted to take a new direction. I found a recipe for fiddleheads that marinates them with soy sauce and sesame oil. This seemed like the perfect accompaniment to teriyaki.And when I make teriyaki, I usually add shiitakes, morels seemed like the logical spring substitution.
The vinaigrette for the fiddleheads is reminiscent of the bean sprout salads served in Japanese and Korean restaurants. I would use this same preparation in the future with bean sprouts.
Fiddlehead Salad
½ pound fiddlehead ferns 1 teaspoons sugar
2 tbs. soy sauce 1 ½ tbs. sesame oil 1 ½ tablespoons rice wine vinegar 1 1/2 tablespoons sesame seeds, toasted
Soak fiddleheads in water. Let the dirt settle to the bottom. Lift them out, and drain on a paper towel. Repeat this process two more times.
Bring a large pot of water to a boil. Salt generously. Add fiddleheads, and cook for three minutes, or until bright green. Drain well and shock them in an ice bath.
In a bowl combine sugar, soy sauce and sesame oil. Add drain the fiddleheads and toss to coat. Sprinkle with sesame seeds. Serve with morels and teriyaki glazed fish or chicken.
I thought I had just watered the ficus tree in the hallway, but when I looked at it this morning, the soil was bone-dry. I gave it a quart of water, but the water quickly raced to the bottom of the pot into the base plate. Within hours, the soil was dry again. It’s a miracle the plant is still alive.
I bought the ficus tree a few weeks after moving into my first Boston apartment. Like me, it’s had several homes in the last 15 years… moving into larger and larger pots. Its current home is a 5 gallon, ceramic planter.
The soil is depleted of nutrients and structure. After several years in the same pot without refreshing the soil, it can no longer hold water. The tree has sucked out every ounce of life from the soil. Sure, I can add fertilizer or plant food to the soil, but it won’t rebuild the soil to help it retain moisture and nutrients to slowly feed the roots.
The same type of soil erosion happens in our gardens and in our farm lands. Plants take the nutrients out of the soil to support their growth. And if we don’t replenish the soil, we can’t continue to grow healthy plants. Many commercial farmers (and home gardeners) opt for chemical fertilizers and amendments to add the nutrients back.
The chemical soil amendments give the requisite nitrogen and phosphorus, and commercial farmers can grow more corn and wheat. But unless the soil is regenerated, these fertilizers are like a crack addiction: the farmers must add more and more to get the same effect. And the sea-life becomes collateral damage. The run-off from these chemically treated fields in the corn belt of the US flows into the Gulf of Mexico, creating algae bloom, depleting oxygen levels in the water, and suffocating sea life. The dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico, where fish no longer survive, spans approximately 7,000 square miles.
A primary tenant of organic, sustainable farming is to maintain healthy soil so that it can regenerate itself without artificial enhancements, and without creating run-off that kills other plants or animals. We can amend our soil naturally, keeping its structure healthy so that we don’t need chemical fertilizers.
Organic and sustainable farming practices implement a variety of methods to maintain soil health: crop rotation, cover crops and compost. Cover crops, such as legumes and clover, are planted in off-seasons to replenish the soil naturally with nitrogen. For large-scale farmers this also would mean growing a variety of crops (and
not just miles and miles of corn), rotating the crops across different
plot of land, and letting the land lay fallow every several years.
Unfortunately, most commercial farmers do not do this, nor do government subsidies support this.
For the home gardener, compost offers another option.
Compost is decomposed organic matter, it can be animal scraps (or waste), vegetables or leaves. Compost looks like dirt and has no smell. It can be worked into existing soil to help replenish the nutrients and structure. My compost bin is a receptacle for food scraps, harnessing all the left-over nutrition to feed back into the ground.
Around my house, I have other natural sources of nitrogen. The spent coffee grounds are chock-full of nitrogen, as is the leftover ash from the charcoal grill. I sprinkle these all over the garden in the spring.
As for my ficus tree, I will take it out of its pot, add the old dirt to my compost bin and give it fresh soil.
Banana Bread
The banana peels get tossed into the compost bin. In a few months, I’ll have fresh soil for the garden (and my ficus tree). It also goes great with a cup of coffee.
1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour 1/2 cup whole wheat flour (or more all-purpose flour) 2 1/4 tsp. baking powder 1/2 tsp. salt 6 tbs. butter 2/3 cup sugar zest from 1 lemon 1 tsp. vanilla extract 2 eggs 5 bananas – to yield about 1 1/4 cup mashed pulp
Whisk together the flour, salt and baking powder.
In an electric mixer, cream together the butter and sugar. Add the lemon zest, vanilla, eggs and banana.
My favorite produce market has begun stocking its aisles with little seedlings. I couldn't help myself, and loaded up my cart with the first of the summer/fall crops – leeks, broccoli and Brussels sprouts.
But before I can get these plants into the garden, I have to prepare the vegetable beds. There's not much left from last summer, just a few haggard leeks that survived the cold winter.
I harvest those, and then with a garden shovel, I turn the soil. I break up clumps of matted down dirt and pull out tangles of old roots that may interfere with the new plants. Once the soil is aerated, I mix in compost.
I didn’t have enough leeks for a side dish, so I opted for a little “vichyssoise” sauce for roasted halibut. I prepared a basic vichyssoise with less chicken stock and some asparagus stems. I added spinach for a bright green pop of color, and sautéed morels to bring out the sweet earthiness of the fish.
Roasted Halibut with Asparagus and Morels
2 halibut fillets
1 tbs. butter
1/4 pound fresh morels
1 small shallot, peeled and diced
2 garlic cloves, peeled and minced
1 tsp. fresh thyme
1/4 cup red wine
1 tbs. canola oil
1/4 cup red wine
salt pepper and lemon juice to taste
Asparagus Sauce
1 1/2 cups chicken or vegetable broth
1 tbs. butter
2 small leeks, chopped
1/4 cup potatoes, diced
1/4 cup white wine
14 asparagus spears, trimmed, tips reserved
1/2 cup spinach
salt and pepper to taste
1. Make the sauce: Heat butter in a small pot. Sweat leeks and potatoes. Add asparagus (except reserved tips), white wine and chicken broth. Simmer, covered for 15 minutes or until asparagus and potatoes
are tender.
2. Put spinach in the bottom of a blender. Pour the sauce base into blender
and puree. Season to taste with salt and pepper (and a spot of cream too)
3. Season halibut with salt and pepper.
4. Heat a large skillet over medium high flame. Add 1 tbs. butter. When melted, add the morels, shallots, garlic and thyme. Season with salt and pepper. Cook for 2 minutes without stirring. Stir a little and then continue cooking for a few minutes more. Add the red wine, and continue cooking until almost all the liquid has evaporated. Set aside in a warm place.
5. Heat a second large skillet over high heat. Add canola oil. Pat fish dry and gently press into the pan. Cook for 5 minutes on the first side or until golden brown. Turn over, turn heat to medium and cook for 2 minutes more. Remove fish from pan.
6. Serve halibut with sauce, morels and steamed asparagus.
