Feta-ccompli: Feta-Walnut Spread

13 Feb

The whole Super Bowl thing has got me thinking about creative solutions for portable party food that doesn’t bore, travels well without dripping onto your car seat or collapsing en route and isn’t unwieldy if you take public transport. It should look nice – presentation counts for a lot. If you are not sure whether the crowd is primarily vegetarian, a meatless dish can be a very thoughtful additon to a party buffet. And of course, you want it to be simple and easy.

Enter Feta Walnut Spread. I made it in a few minutes with the help of my food processor, ably pulsed by my three year old (DISCLAIMER: My son is a good eater, but please don’t think he’ll eat everything I make or that you see on this blog. He refused to try this spread, even though he participated in the making and really likes feta cheese in other dishes. Can’t win ’em all ).

We took it to a Valentine’s playdate-party for my Single Moms By Choice group this weekend. I can’t say it won everyone over, but I liked it a whole lot with the vegetable sticks I cut up. I think next time I will pair it with toasted pita chips (they won’t compete as much with the flavor of the spread) and I think that the leftovers will make an excellent alternative to mayo on chicken or vegetable sandwiches.

The original inspiration comes from Molly Katzen’s Moosewood Cookbook, which I had to buy again after my well-worn original fell prey to a hurricane-related flood in Puerto Rico years ago, and which I was delighted to find still had all the recipes written by hand.

Feta-Walnut Spread

1 Cup chopped walnuts

½ packed Cup fresh parsley, roughly chopped

1 cup crumbled feta cheese

½ cup water

Three cloves garlic, peeled and chunked (less or none if you are not a garlic fan)

1 tsp lemon juice

(garnish – hot red pepper flakes, dried oregano, olive oil)

Pulse the walnuts and parsley in a food processor until blended. Add the rest of the ingredients (except the garnish) and puree until smooth. Transfer to serving bowl and cover tightly. Place in fridge to chill. Before serving, drizzle with olive oil and sprinkle with oregano and red pepper flakes. Serve with toasted pita chips or as a dip for crudité.

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Super Bowl: Yuca en Escabeche- a bold alternative to potato salad

5 Feb

I’ve got nothing against potato salad; in fact, it is a big favorite of mine for summer barbecues, church functions, Christmas buffets or midnight raids on the leftovers.

But Game Day calls for a more assertive strategy: yuca en escabeche (or, as my friends and family know and love it: yuca salad) is the clear winner for full flavor, honking big texture, great colors and the ability to stand up to spicy wings and ribs. It has the heft to defend against the beer and alcohol blitz of Super Bowl Sunday, but is not so exotic looking or smelling as to scare off cautious diners. And of course it makes for more interesting conversation amongst those who are only really there for the food and the commercials.

The colors are very appealing

The colors are very appealing

Yuca (Manihot esculenta) is a rough-skinned root vegetable native to Brazil. It is also known as cassava, manioc and mandioca. The bitter kind has a poison that native Americans from the Caribbean on down used to tip their hunting arrows with back in the day. We’re not serving that kind. In fact, I have never seen it (although that is exactly the type that gets made into bland tapioca – go figure). Up here we get the sweet kind that simply needs to be peeled and boiled to share its goodness (just don’t eat it raw).

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Zesty, Zingy, Zarela – Reinterpreting Pollo al Limón

4 Feb
 
 

Fab cookbook by my hero - ¡Zarela!

I have a weakness for what Puerto Ricans call limones del país or “local limes”, the ones you may know as Key limes, one of many varieties of Citrus aurantifolia, native to Southeast Asia. They are the small, thin-skinned ones, sometimes mottled, often more yellow than green, definitely more acidic and sweet than the thick-skinned ones more commonly found in my New York area supermarkets or as woefully tiny and bedraggled triangles of peel, drowning ineffectually in bar drinks. 

My great-aunt Titi Quicio used to make me limonada from the ones from the tree in her yard in Mayagüez — every yard worth a damn back then had a lime tree for luck and on principle — as well as chickens and any number of useful medicinal herbs planted in glorious, battered, colorful, rusting tin cans – and that sweet-tart zing of acid and sugar syrup in a glass clinking with ice cubes and sweating into the disintegrating paper towel wrapped inevitably around the bottom remains one of the most powerful flavor memories I possess. Anything that comes even close sends me straight back to childhood places from which I wish I didn’t have to ever return.

So whenever I see a green net bag of those little round babies in a store, I have to buy it, no matter the price. Once I get home, however, I have no idea what to do…My Cuba libre consumption (the difference between a rum and coke and a Cuba libre is that the Cuba libre has lime; a Cuban might tell you that the difference is that there is no such thing as a free Cuba, but we’ll leave that alone) has dropped to nothing in the years since I left Puerto Rico and the likelihood of my making limonada in the middle of winter is decidedly small.

So I slice one open and suck out the juice, prompting much pleasurable wincing and squinting and squirting of salivary glands. Then I agonize over how not to waste the rest.

Fortunately, last week when limones del país showed up in my local supermarket, I thought of my hero, mentor and friend, Zarela Martínez.

Zarela, who grew up killing rattlers with a lariat on a ranch in Mexico, toughed her way through a bad marriage to haul her twin boys to New York and make a dramatically wonderful and interesting career in restaurants (Her eponymous restaurant on NYC’s 2nd Ave @ 50th & 51 has been going strong for 22 years!), making PBS programs and writing wonderful books. I met her through the James Beard Foundation Awards when she and her son, Food Network hottie Aaron Sánchez, hosted a few years back, and I am grateful that we have been friends ever since.

She is utterly candid, hard-working, stylish and just fabulosa. And her book: Zarela’s Veracruz, was just the thing, because Mexicans know exactly what to do with limes without making life difficult.

So here is my adaptation of her Chuletas de Pollo al Limón, made with things I had around the house…I used my limes, but whichever kind you find in the supermarket will work just fine. Honestly, my adaptations resulted more from mistakes (I am not very good at following recipes), but that just proves how flexible and resilient this one is. And the leftovers – very adaptable too!

Pollo al Limón Verde – Lime Chicken

 (adapted from Chuletas de Pollo al Limon, Zarela’s Veracruz)

4 tsp soy sauce

2 tsp Worcestershire (chicken or classic) sauce

(if you have Maggi sauce, change the soy/Worcestershire  comb to 2 tsp soy sauce and 1 tsp Maggi sauce)

¼ cup lime juice

1/3 cup olive oil

1.25 lbs boneless skinless chicken thighs, pounded to half the thickness

Mix soy sauce, Worcestershire or Maggi sauce, lime juice and olive oil in a cover/sealable container big enough to hold marinade and chicken together and marinate for at least an hour (if you have time)

Heat a skillet until fairly hot and place thighs in it with room to spare (reserving marinade). Unless you have a pretty big skillet, you’ll have to do it in batches. Sear to white on each side, then cook an additional  5-6 minutes on each side, lowering heat to medium. When all the chicken is cooked, turn up the heat in the skillet, pour in reserved marinade and boil for a minute. Pour over chicken and serve.

(I loved this dish both straight from the skillet and as leftovers. I sliced it up and added it to a vegetable stir-fry at the end after adding a bit of soy sauce to the vegetables, just to warm up the chicken and it added great substance, texture and taste. This chicken is also good cold with mayo/mustard in a sandwich, wrap or salad.)

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Super Bowl: My Guacamole Kicks Your Guacamole’s …

29 Jan

An integral part of any Super Bowl strategy

The Super Bowl is only a game.

Super Bowl food, however, is serious business.

Guacamole is the bottom line of that business.

Guacamole (an appropriate linguistic blend of  the Spanish word for avocado: “aguacate” and “mole” or “milled/mashed”) is an integral part of the strategy of any self-respecting Super Bowl party, with avocado forming the base. I borrow this from Steve Inskeep on NPR’s Morning Edition to give you an idea:

Avocado consumption during the Super Bowl has become the stuff of urban legend. Most of the statistics are probably exaggerated, but that’s not going to stop us from repeating them. Because one says Americans will consume about 50 million pounds of the fruit as they sit on their couches watching the game. A more graphic claim comes from the California Avocado Commission (which)… has been quoted saying the amount of guacamole that Americans will eat this Sunday is enough to cover a football field – end-zone to end-zone, waist deep.

And when it comes to guacamole, I am the one who should have several big, fat Super Bowl rings studding my stumpy-sturdy, more-useful-than-beautiful, hands. Any time I serve it, I win.

I do not care what is traditional, what is correct, what should be, how anyone else does it. My guacamole has always and will always rock. I am proud of it and everyone loves it.

So now that we have dispensed with any pretense at humility, I will give you my recipe, which is a more-or-less one that you should taste while making, because that is what I do. It never tastes exactly the same, but it always tastes good.

Natalia de Cuba Romero’s Legendary Guacamole

2-3-4 Hass (small black pebbly) avocadoes, purchased relatively hard, 3-4 days before the game and scrupulously monitored for a gentle give before cutting open*

3-4 generous and fragrant cloves garlic, peeled (minced superfine if you don’t have a garlic press. If you do have a garlic press, wait for instructions)

1 tsp ground cumin (at least)

¼ cup fresh-squeezed lime juice (Key limes are the best, but not crucial; pre-squeezed from those plastic lime shaped containers is not an acceptable option)

¼ tsp salt

1 Cup nonfat plain yogurt

1-2 hard-boiled eggs, chopped

Handful grape tomatoes, halved, insides squeezed out haphazardly, then chopped

1 Tbs cilantro, finely chopped (unless you have some aversion to cilantro, which many people, remarkably enough, do)

Black pepper to sprinkle

Note: You really should have a garlic press for this.

Have a big bowl ready. Cut the avocado in half, remove pit and peel. Place in bowl. Press  (or add minced) garlic. Add cumin, salt, and some of the lime juice. Mash it to your liking (smooth or chunky). Add a couple of generous tablespoons of yogurt to taste (this is a stretching measure so you need to play with it and add as needed). Play with the spices a quarter tsp at a time and the lime a tsp at a time. When you like the flavor you have achieved, stir in the eggs and tomato. Et voila! The best guacamole ever. Serve with good tortilla chips (I like the blue corn ones, myself)

 *Do NOT wait till game day to buy your avocadoes because only the hard, unripe ones will be left. Buy several days ahead, let soften outside the fridge and if they give a LOT when you press, put them in the fridge immediately. The yogurt will save you if you don’t have enough soft or if you have too much brown flesh.

If using the Florida/Caribbean large, smooth-skinned variety, you may not need much yogurt, because they are more watery, not as dense.

 

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Manning Up to Meatballs

24 Jan

I have been very sneaky about meatballs lately.

I have a secret (until now) fear of attempting meatballs and having them fall apart when I fry them. I love fried foods, but hate frying. I never get it right!

But my son loves meatballs (we call them albóndigas), they reheat well, are convenient for lunches, and keep frozen for ages. And then of course, I prefer him (and me) to eat homemade everything. So I resort to manipulation.

I get the meat (3lbs organic ground beef) and then tell my dad I need his help to do meatballs because I want to learn his recipes and techniques (which is true), because he makes the best meatballs in the world (also true), and because with my son vying for my attention all the time, it is hard for me to get such a project done all by myself (also true).

Then, my dad – who has always been the kind of father who would start helping with your science project and end up constructing a windmill of Frank Lloyd Wright-worthy grace, proportion and utility while you sat idly watching over his shoulder, without getting a chance even to drive a nail – well, he takes over the meatball-making process, so by the time he is heating the oil, I am either making a salad, doing dishes or otherwise safe from the dreaded frying process.

This time, however, there was thawed meat that needed cooking, no dad to call on for assistance and too much seasoned ground beef already stocked in the freezer to make switching gears a viable escape route. It was a snow day and Leandro was occupied with visiting friends. So, I had to face my fear and man up. It was time to make some meatballs.

And meatballs I made using the recipe I have been writing down and editing everytime I watch my dad make them. He is getting used to using measuring instruments instead of just eyeballing the ingredients so I get an accurate measure.

The frying went fine, once I traded in the spatula and began using my beloved tongs to turn the meatballs frequently while browning. Are they as good as my dad’s? Well no, not yet. Next time I think I will leave out the oil in the seasoning paste and I still have to work on my rolling and frying for a firmer, more evenly cooked result. But I have busted through the fear that was preventing me from trying and flavorwise they are outstanding. Really, really good. As Leandro said when he ate them (reheated) for dinner tonight, “These meatballs rock in my tummy, Mommy!”

Pedro’s Albóndigas

5 cloves garlic, peeled

1 Cup onion, chopped

2 Tbs olive oil

1 Cup flat fresh parsley (stems removed) or 1 Tbs dry

¼ 1 tsp chile powder

2 tsp Old Bay Seasoning

1 tsp salt

3 lbs ground beef (you can substitute 1lb of pork for 1lb of beef)

2 whole eggs (optional)

1 cup breadcrumbs (plain or seasoned)

Whir garlic, onions, olive oil and parsley in a blender or food processor until minced fine. Add chile powder, Old Bay and salt and pulse a few times until it forms a paste.

In a large bowl place meat, seasoning paste, optional eggs, and bread crumbs. Mix well so that breadcrumbs are evenly distributed. Using your hands, roll into balls about 1.5 inches across. You can dip your hands in water to keep from sticking.

Heat 2 Tbs oil in heavy skillet at medium heat until the oil flows like water and a meatball dipped in it sizzles softly. Fry several at a time (use tongs to turn quickly) browning on all sides, then lower to medium low and cook for about six minutes, shaking the pan and turning meatballs occasionally. When they are cooked through, cool on paper towels. Can be frozen for three months in an airtight container.

 

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Oh. My. Cod. Fresh Filets with Onions and Capers

20 Jan

As a Caribbean person, I often forget the existence of fresh cod.

In my world, cod is called bacalao, usually comes in salt-crusted bricks or paddles, much as it was when it arrived in the New World, masterminded by intrepid Basques and other seafaring peoples, to make an important (and tasty) protein source last and last and last. It has to be soaked for ages with many changes of water and, if you don’t like fishy-fish, you are probably not going to like bacalao.

I promise that I will get to the fresh (non-fishy, non-salty) version in a second and give you a killer recipe that is all flair and no hard work and can be used with any firm-fleshed white fish, but  indulge me for a moment as I take my tastebuds for a saunter down a Puerto Rican Cuisine Memory Lane.

Think batter-fried bacalaitos (best-eaten from a battered pot full of dubious grease bubbling over coals at a palm-roofed beachfront kiosk marshalled by an old lady in rollers and washed down with an ice-cold Medalla beer), or shredded into rice (arroz con bacalao) for the holidays, or dressed with vinaigrette and served with boiled tubers (serenata) on a Lenten Friday, or in a reddish sauce with hard-boiled eggs (bacalao a la vizcaína) any old time.

I am dabbing nostalgic tears from my eyes and nostalgic water from the corners of my mouth right now, overwhelmed by food memory.

Fortunately, my present latitude offers some solace.

As a Caribbean person adapting to living in the cruel Northeastern winter, frozen fish has taken the place of salted fish (and fresh too, to be honest). And so, I recently discovered the wonder of some vacuum-packed slablets of frozen fresh cod (a phrase which only makes sense in contextual comparison to salted fish) at, you guessed it, Costco Warehouse. As it is “Wild Alaskan”, it is also a good choice from a non-polluted environment and in terms of sustainability (visit the Monterey Bay Aquarium Seafood Watch site if you are concerned about that sort of thing http://www.montereybayaquarium.org/cr/cr_seafoodwatch/sfw_recommendations.aspx). I sauteed a couple experimentally just for me and the result was a quick yet good-looking plate of big flakes of fish just sliding apart and yet another way to incorporate capers into a dish.

This one I would definitely serve on date night.

Sauteed Fresh Cod Dressed with Onions and Capers

(tilapia or any firm white fish would work well here)

1 Tbs extra virgin olive oil

1 Tbs butter

2 small slabs fresh cod filet (5-8 oz each)

Salt and pepper

½ medium onion, peeled and sliced thin

1-2 tsp capers, mostly drained

Heat oil and butter together in a heavy skillet at relatively high heat.

Using about ¼ tsp salt, sprinkle fish on all sides. Do the same with the pepper, preferably fresh cracked.

When the foaming of the butter subsides, cook fish on each side at high heat until just white. Then lower heat and cook on each side from 4-6 minutes each (I prefer my fish somewhat undercooked; if you are just learning to cook fish, simply use a fork or knife in the center to check for done-ness: no more translucence).

Remove cod and set on a plate (preferably warm). In the same skillet, sauté the onions in the oil and butter at medium high until wilted and somewhat tender. Add the capers to warm them up. Then spoon the onions and capers over the fish and serve.

This fish would be great over wilted greens, polenta or couscous or with Snap and Go Asparagus. I ate my second slice cold over salad and it was yummy!

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It’s Winter and I Am Roasting (vegetables)

17 Jan

Moving and angst are natural partners. We’ve been moving upstairs and emptying a storage unit  this week — as in:

“I didn’t even know I still (or ever) had this!”

“Where the f**k did all this crap come from?”

“I have never seen a dust mouse that big. Ever.”

“Oh God, how am I going to get all this done before the semester starts on Tuesday?”

“Leandro please don’t run in front of: the moving truck/hand truck/person trying to move a big box up the stairs/me. ”

“Sweet Jesus, the moving guy just looked in that long-unopened drawer before I  had a chance to remove the scandalous lingerie that I had completely (and sadly) forgotten about.”

…etc. etc. etc….

and add to that an aching, frigging back from said moving, ’cause the ten years that have passed since I last saw that stuff haven’t made me any younger. Heavy sigh.

So, our diet has not been virtuous – Chef Boyardee was on the menu more than once; reheated pizza, Cheese-Its, leftover Halloween chocolate, cheese and crackers, cheese and crackers, salty popcorn, basically a diet of shut-up food all in front of the T.V. and endless repeats of a Scooby-Doo video — where can I buy those Scooby Snacks, anyway, cause Lord knows they would fit right in with my current mode…

But within the frenzy, I have made some good food happen too, thanks to some of the very recipes you have seen here. The spinach sauce for pasta served for a couple of meals, especially because I used farfalle (bow ties), which Leandro really really digs (and which grip a lot of spinach).

I made the basic seasoned ground beef in a big batch, a third of which went into an impromptu pasta dinner for friends on Friday, another third into chili con carne with rice Saturday, then on tortilla chips with cheese today (Sunday) and another third is frozen for next week and the new semester.

I also roasted vegetables.  This is something I do all winter (it’s too damn hot in the summer to turn on the oven) and then eat the vegetables all week in different formats. This is just one version (as I continue to crave asparagus in the off-season). It really is best with the linguine, but I was pressed for time and my son is not yet interested in this kind of dish, so I just served it to myself (several days running) with leftover rice and a dash of soy sauce. I also gave a plastic tublet to Leandro’s godmother (a teacher) for her take-to-school lunch.

Roasted Vegetable Linguine

2 packets (about 20 oz) baby bella mushrooms, washed and sliced

1 lb asparagus, trimmed and cut into 1 ½ inch pieces

1 bunch broccoli crowns, separated into florets

1 red pepper, cored, seeded and chopped

1 medium onion, chopped

5 cloves garlic, chopped

3 Tbs olive oil

½ tsp red pepper flakes

1 cup cherry tomatoes

½ cup white wine

½ lb linguine

½ cup torn fresh basil leaves or 1 Tbs dry oregano

Preheat oven to 450°F.

Toss all vegetables (except tomatoes and herbs but including red pepper flakes!) and oil into a large roasting pan and roast for 20 minutes, stirring once or twice.

Get your pasta water on the boil and prepare pasta according to package directions. Save ½ cup pasta water when draining.

Add tomatoes to pan and roast 10 more minutes. Transfer vegetables to a bowl. Set pan on two burners on medium heat and add wine, stirring and scraping off burnt bits. Simmer for 3 minutes or so, until wine has cooked off then add reserved pasta water.

Return pasta to pot, add vegetables and liquid from pan. Warm to serving temperature and add herbs.

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Chicken Aversion Averted

10 Jan

I have to say it up front: Chicken grosses me out.

I don’t particularly like working with it raw, I find it boring to eat, and the whole factory chicken thing makes me kind of sick.

There are exceptions of course; chicken soup (sopa de pollo) from the Dominican 4 Restaurant in Farmingdale could make a dead man…resuscitate, shall we say. My dad grills chicken in any number of delicious ways and he also rolls it up with sundried tomatoes and other delicious stuff and bakes it, all with irresistable results. And the ultimate: is there anything lovelier or more civilized on a cold day than a roast chicken with winter vegetables?

Fighting chicken is a useless battle. People love chicken. The average per capita consumption of chicken in the U.S. is somewhere between 60 and 90 lbs per year depending on which graph you are looking at. If you entertain, you probably have to serve chicken at some point.

Kids also like chicken. They eat pounds of chicken nuggets per year (which I assume counts on “consumption of chicken” graphs, although by the looks of a lot of these “chicken” nuggets, there is very little chicken involved; I believe what they call chicken “tenders” are actual chicken, not ground up bits with other ground up stuff).

I have a kid and like all kids whose parents let them watch T.V., he is subject to the relentless McNugget marketing assault . But before I surrender the chicken nugget thing to BK and Mickie D’s, I am trying to romance my son’s texture and flavor palate with something that actually resembles food.

I have two things on my side:

1) that same Dominican 4 Restaurant in Farmingdale and their chicharrones de pollo (fried chicken strips) that are so awesome and delicious that my English-dominant son will say whole paragraphs in Spanish to waitresses he has never met before to make sure he gets them.

And 2) when I make the following oven-baked chicken fingers at home, Leandro gets to hammer the hell out of the chicken breasts before I bread them!

I freeze most of them for good packed lunches (if your daycare or school will re-heat). And to help my chicken aversion, I buy the organic chicken three 1-lb packs at Costco.

Oven-baked Chicken Tenders

2 cups nonfat plain yogurt (you can use buttermilk, but since you can’t buy buttermilk in small containers and I don’t drink it or use it for much else, I substitute yogurt)

2 Tbs mustard

1 tsp salt

2 Tbs dried oregano

2 Tbs dried parsley

2 tsp cumin

3 lbs boneless, skinless chicken breast, pounded (under wax paper) to even thickness and cut into strips (I actually have a meat tenderizer/pounder hammer, but I have used a rolling pin and other creative methods)

2 cups breadcrumbs in a flat plate for coating

Olive oil for drizzling

Heat oven to 400°. Line a baking sheet with a wire rack or lightly grease a baking sheet/al-foil. Mix yogurt and spices in a nonreactive dish. Dip chicken in wet mixture, then coat in breadcrumbs.

Transfer to baking sheet. Drizzle with oil then bake in oven until cooked – 20 minutes (less if you really pounded the chicken). If you use a rack, you don’t have to turn. If you are cooking directly on a baking sheet, turn halfway through. If it hasn’t crisped up, you may want to give it a few minutes crisping on the broiler. If you are planning to freeze and/or reheat (which you probably are, if you are doing 3 lbs!), don’t bother crisping. Serve with whatever dipping sauce you like (we do ketchup!)

Later, you can heat in the oven with tomato sauce and cheese and call it chicken parmesan!

If you are freezing, layer with wax paper.

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Three common ingredients = one uncommonly good pasta sauce, FAST

5 Jan

So we spent another evening in the emergency room and Leandro got another four stitches, this time in the forehead. With that kind of excitement going on, you can be sure that once the chocolate ice cream dinner for brave boys was up, I was STILL going to be too tired for anything elaborate in the kitchen.

Marcella Hazan to the rescue. This queen of the kitchen’s Essentials of Italian Cuisine is a much loved and much soiled recipe book over here. These days I don’t have the resources for some of the more ambitious dishes, but her tomato sauce with onion and butter is simple and perfect: three ingredients resulting in one glorious, sweet, rich sauce that you barely have to stir!

I have adapted it slightly to make it even faster (puree, rather than whole tomatoes, adjusted the butter, for example). The beauty of this one is that it can be done in the time it takes you to boil up the pasta.

Marcella recommends potato gnocchi under the sauce, but the pre-prepared ones are generally yucky and I ain’t making gnocchi myself any time soon (oh for the heavenly days that Fabiola made it for me in Rovereto!).

These days I buy fresh ravioli from Fairway Market (no preservatives and a variety of fillings – $6 for 24) and actually freeze it. It breaks off into convenient serving sizes and takes about 15 minutes to cook after you drop them in the boiling water and the boil comes back. They re-heat pretty nicely, so I make extra for my little guy’s lunch box, just adding a dab of butter to the hot ravioli so it doesn’t stick.

I used cheese ravioli this time. “Mama I really love this!”

 

Steamed broccoli can be dipped in the sauce

Tomato with Onion and Butter

28 oz. can tomato puree

6 Tbs butter

One onion, peeled and cut in half (I prefer red onion for extra sweetness, but use whatever you have; yellow is fine)

Cook all three ingredients together in a deep pot with a lid at medium to low heat until the fat begins to separate from the tomato (about 20 minutes, or the amount of time you spend boiling the pasta). The longer you cook it, the sweeter it gets, so if you have more time, use it!

Spoon over your favorite pasta and serve with loads of good grated cheese (Parmigiano Reggiano or Gran Padano)

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Snap and Go Asparagus (fast and fun)

4 Jan

I dared to go off-season this week and it was well worth it.

When Spring rolls around I am on the phone to the local North Fork farms to find out exactly when they will be harvesting asparagus. There is nothing, nothing, nothing  better than the sweet, buttery green-ness of fresh-from-the-earth asparagus. I eat it for the six weeks of May and June that it is harvested (nevermind the odd smell of bathroom visits! More on that later), raw, steamed, sauteed, roasted…however.

However, it is not Spring right now! Asparagus may be in season somewhere, but not in my grow Zone.

Usually I stick to our local seasons, but the bunches of asparagus at one of the local grocery stores just looked so good that I got a craving that virtue could not curb. Hey, it’s been a tough holiday and virtue doesn’t seem to be handing out its own rewards at the moment. What the imported stuff lacked in farm-to-table zest, I made up for in garlic.

At $3.99 a lb, you might not find asparagus cheap (especially when you snap a third off the bottom!). Asparagus (which is a member of the lily family) tends to be expensive because it has to be harvested by hand. But it is certainly easy to prepare, and made for a speedy yet chic snack for me and my friend Jamie on a recent playdate (during which the kids ate – you guessed it – pizza). 

Please note, you can look very sexy nibbling asparagus if you let yourself go a bit. For that purpose, and for this barely-cooked recipe, I recommend the skinny asparagus over the fat.

Snap and Go Garlic Asparagus

1 bunch fresh asparagus (about a pound), rinsed and trimmed*

1-2 Tbs olive oil

2-3 cloves garlic, peeled and chopped, not too fine

salt for sprinkling

Heat the oil in a large skillet at medium heat until fragrant. Toss in the garlic, turn to coat, sauté an additional minute, then toss in the asparagus. Stir to coat then allow to cook for 5-10 minutes (the fresher and thinner the shorter the cook time). You can test them after five minutes by trying a stalk. You just want it tender and warm, but not mushy. Sprinkle with salt, and serve.

*Prepping the asparagus is fast and easy, but requires some explaining:

Rinse the stalks. Take one stalk and snap off from the bottom; there will be a natural break (sometimes it’s as far as a third of the way up!), which will scare you because you have spent money on this asparagus, dadgummit! The point, however, is that the stalks can be woody (especially if it is not-so-fresh) and the woodiness creeps up from the bottom. Some people use that first stalk as a measure and use a knife to trim all the rest. I snap each one. Discard the bottoms. Dry the remaining stalks.

(I often use this as a side dish to eggs or steak, but will also just do a pan and eat it with my fingers, as Jamie and I did on Sunday. Delicious and dead simple).

Fun science notes: Now, about the asparagus and urine connection. Apparently some people detect a sulfurous odor in their pee after eating asparagus (I definitely do) and others don’t. The jury is still out on whether that is because some people don’t produce the odor or they just can’t smell the difference. According to some of my online searches, Ben Franklin found the odor disagreeable, while Marcel Proust thought it rather fragrant (so the differences of olfactory opinion between the Yanks and the Franks go waaaaay back and waaaaay deep). At any rate, the odiferous asparagus mystery raises interesting questions about human digestion and sense of smell in general and may hold the key to greater understanding of what the nose knows and why.

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