Beet Chips

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During my first pregnancy, I had an occasional craving for citrus.  Grapefruit, oranges, pomelos, lemons, limes, anything.  During my second pregnancy, nothing.  And during my third pregnancy, I had no cravings, but one aversion: beets.

Other vegetables were okay: I would happily have eaten butternut squash tacos with chipotle and feta or a pound-of-greens frittata.  Those risotto-stuffed chard leaves were popular in my kitchen that year, and a simple arugula salad was just my speed (the arugula comes up in the garden by itself on years when I’m neglectful; what could be easier?).

But beets!  Woe!  I used to love beets!  Roasted with walnuts and blue cheese.  Grated beet salads with honey-ginger or lemony dressings.  Beets steamed with their greens and swathed in oil and vinegar.  Goodbye, beets.  Even after my baby was born they seemed a little too…sweet, too meaty.  Too beet-y.  So last year I dutifully piled the beets into my crisper as they arrived from my CSA.  I cooked the greens and packed the roots tighter and tighter into the left-hand drawer.  Finally, in the dead of winter, I cleaned out the drawer and composted them all.  Sorry, beets.

This year I am taking a more reasonable approach.  I’m planning to make all my beets into beet chips.  They’re crispy and salty and, while they’re still sweet, they’re a world away from the roasted beets that I once loved.  They’re a nice change of pace, and they’ll help free up some space in my fridge this summer. Continue reading Beet Chips (click for recipe)

Maple Granola with Almonds and Coconut

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Happy weekend! It’s felt like the weekend here for a few days, honestly, with family in town and a bonus baby in the house (my nephew!) and the kind of lazy schedule that made me feel accomplished the day we all got out on our bikes/scooters/strollers and rode two whole blocks.  (Not impressed?  You try getting out of the house with four kids when the oldest is five.)

And now we get to cap that off with the real weekend.  I, for one, am celebrating with one more foray in my effort to become the web’s preeminent source of granola recipes.  (Ok, not really, but there are a lot of granola recipes on this website: that deliciously sugary olive oil granola, Heidi Swanson’s delicate and buttery granola with orange zest, currants, and walnuts, an oil-free crunchy hippie orange and almond granola, and my old standby with dried cherries).  And now, maybe, my new standby–this weekend, anyway–a nearly equal proportion of oats to seeds and nuts, maple syrup and olive oil for sweet and crunch, and a serious spoonful of salt that makes it all just right.

This recipe roughly follows the Seattle-based Marge Granola formula as it appeared on The Kitchn’s website, so if you lack the time or inclination to make your own granola you can just click that link above to order some seriously tasty granola from Megan (who also, by the way, writes the lovely blog A Sweet Spoonful–see you over there!).  But I imagine that if you are reading this blog you are, or aspire to be, a granola-making type, so let’s do it.  Continue reading Maple Granola with Almonds and Coconut (click for recipe)

Christmas in July Lima Bean Salad

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It’s a good friend who knows what kind of gift you will appreciate.  It was a good friend who recently gave me a bag of dried Rancho Gordo Christmas Lima beans.I had heard of Rancho Gordo before, and I seem to remember that around the holidays they sold a year-long bean subscription that I considered buying myself for my birthday.  My friend’s gift inspired me to check their website for cooking tips,  which, of course, led me to the online store.  And they sell so many kinds of “glorious, old-fashioned heirloom beans” that I imagine I will be spending much more time there in the future.  And ordering glorious beans galore.  It’s a small indulgence, really.

The recipe suggestions for this chestnut-flavored bean ranged from curry to sauteed mushrooms to gorgonzola sauce.  I liked the idea of the curry flavors and I planned to serve the curried beans with this jeweled rice–but once the beans were cooked they were so good that I couldn’t bear to adulterate the flavor.  Instead I tossed a few cups of the beans with fresh herbs and a splash each of olive oil and good sherry vinegar.  I cooked a pound of dried beans and used about half for this dish. Maybe I’ll feel ready to curry the other half later this week. Continue reading Christmas Lima Bean Salad (click for recipe)

Parsley Pesto Toasts with Radishes

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I love to cook.  The rhythm of chopping, the aroma dancing up from the pan, the colors and flavors and textures of food transformed by heat and human ingenuity.

I also love to not cook.  The ease of a salad fresh from the garden, a handful-of-this-handful-of-that pesto, a plum I pick from the tree and eat outside.

This flavorful recipe is not-cooking cooking.  It takes less than 5 minutes (including the pesto) and can be lunch or a snack for one, or you can make a platter of these pretty little toasts to serve at your garden party.  Invite me!

You do need a nice hearty bread, thinly sliced and toasted (you could rub it with olive oil first, sure, but I didn’t).  The pesto recipe is mostly parsley, so heap it on there.  Top with lots of thinly-sliced radishes for crunch and zing, and anoint your toast generously with flaky salt.If you’re in more of a cooking kind of mood today, allow me instead suggest these “green tartine” radish top toasts.  Can’t decide?  You could always make both together for a top-to-tail radish tasting.

Whole Wheat Pasta with Basil Pesto and Greens

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Tonight I had the good fortune of being invited to an event celebrating the release of the Herbivoracious Cookbook (more on that another day) at the lovely Seattle restaurant Emmer&Rye.  (Check out the lovely new top-floor, west-facing deck if you’re in Seattle–but hurry, summer’s almost over!)  Chef Seth Caswell has earned a host of accolades for his food and wide admiration for his commitment to sourcing ingredients locally.  Seattle is a bit Portlandia in its fascination with locavorism and chef-farmer relationships, and Caswell is rightly a bit of a local celebrity in this regard.

The event’s food was an excellent show of a good restaurant’s place in the world.  I was charmed by plates of the most perfect diminutive vegetables: baby eggplant topped with shaved goat cheese, sweet little stuffed orange tomatoes, rich mushroom-topped tiny toasts, a single slice of purple potato topped with cauliflower puree and roasted cauliflower.  Each was exquisitely garnished.

As far as I am concerned, it was perfect restaurant food.  Fancy, thoughtful, and ridiculous to contemplate reproducing at home.

And then I came home to simpler fare.  Whole wheat pasta.  A basil pesto.  Those sauteed greens.  Home cooking as perfect in its place as the restaurant fare was on that gorgeous deck tonight. Continue reading Whole Wheat Pasta with Basil Pesto and Greens (click for recipe)

Sauteed Greens with Garlic

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Although it’s only been a few weeks, I’m feeling pretty proud of myself for staying on top of both of our CSAs.  A CSA is a great motivator to cook vegetables because the more the veggies pile up, the less room I have for my extensive condiment collection and the really good stuff, like chocolate sauce and enough feta cheese to last me until fall.  (What?  It’s pickled.)

At this time of year, our veggie box is full of leaves, and this recipe is my go-to solution for cooking them down to a manageable size for storage or immediate consumption.  These silky greens are great alone or as a component of another dish (try whole wheat pasta with these greens and basil pesto).

This treatment works well for softer greens, including tender kale, and would also work for briefly simmered collards or tough kale.  I made one batch with rainbow chard this week, pictured below, and a separate batch using beet greens, arugula, and radish tops.  Whatever greens you use, start with a lot; one bunch of greens looks awfully puny after a few minutes in the pan. Continue reading Sauteed Greens with Garlic (click for recipe)

Broccoli and Green Garlic Soup, Chilled or Hot

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Here’s my high-tech approach to tracking the many recipes I find online that I’d like to try: I open a new tab in my browser with the recipe I want to remember and leave it there until my computer slows to a crawl because I haven’t rebooted in days.  Then I shut my computer down and start all over again.  Efficient, right?  (I do technically have a Pinterest account, but I guess I’m a slow adopter.)  (There’s also this list.)

Luckily, this chilled broccoli soup recipe from Sassy Radish appeared at just the right moment in my life, and I was able to press it into action right away.  Nash’s graced us with both broccoli and green garlic in our CSA box this week, Seattle provided us with soup weather today, and the rest, as they say, is history.

We ate the soup warm the first time, as eating a cold broccoli soup would have required either advance planning or patience, neither of which I could muster today.  But now that it has thoroughly chilled in the fridge, I can confirm that it also makes an excellent chilled soup as intended.  Either way, a crusty chunk of bread and a soft cheese alongside will make this a a nice summer meal. Continue reading Broccoli and Green Garlic Soup (click for recipe)

Tzatziki

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There was great enthusiasm around here about the prospect of an Emmy Cooks bloopers reel, so today, for your enjoyment, I present a dish that didn’t turn out so well.

To be clear, I love the tzatziki recipe I’ve given you below–you can’t really go wrong with herbed yogurt sauces in my book.  Remember that cilantro yogurt sauce (and are you still making it as often as I am)?  The basil yogurt sauce?  This, finally, is the classic: yogurt and dill, with cucumber for crunch.  And it’s great. But I made the tzatziki as one component of an apparently ill-conceived riff on Eggs Benedict, which ended up not as great as it should have been.  It was good, but….  It was whole grain toast topped with silky sauteed chard, a poached egg, and this lemony-garlicky tzatziki, but it needed a little something more.  A drizzle of spicy butter?  A generous crumble of smoked salmon?  You tell me if you try.  I’ve already picked out a recipe from Ottolenghi’s Plenty for the next time I try an eggs-and-yogurt combination.

Unfortunately, I made this breakfast for my sister, thinking it would be a special send-off meal after two so-nice weeks together.  I was sad to say goodbye to her, but what a luxury to have so much time together when we live in different cities.  Thank you for coming, sis, and for all the fun and help!  Next time I will play it safe and express my breakfast-time appreciation with chocolate waffles instead.The consolation prize is having a bowl of the tzatziki in my fridge to enjoy in the coming week.

Continue reading Tzatziki (click for recipe)

Raw Rhubarb Compote

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I don’t think I knew about rhubarb when I was a kid.  But I have read about and romanticized the childhood pleasure of being sent outside with a bowl of sugar to dunk the tart whole stalks as an afternoon treat.  Did you get to do that?

This compote is like a grown-up version of what I imagine that sweet-crunchy experience to be.  I especially like to make it with green rhubarb, which turns a dingy beige color when cooked; leaving it raw instead preserves the gem-green color and lets the occasional pink highlight shine.  The flavor is very bright, tart and sweet at once, and if you are feeling adventurous the recipe (from Rustic Fruit Desserts, again) smartly suggests infusing the compote with fresh rosemary or lavender.  I always mean to try that, but it’s so good as is that I never have.

Likewise, I’m not too creative about serving this dish.  We usually scoop spoonfuls over yogurt, maybe with a little granola (like this one with orange zest and currants) sprinkled on top.  What other ideas do you have?  I have a big bowl in my fridge.

Continue reading Raw Rhubarb Compote (click for recipe)

Fava Bean and Arugula Crostini

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I love many vegetables.  Most vegetables, even.  But I do not love fava beans.

Sure, they’re the color of springtime.  And at their best, they do taste like something that color green should taste.  But they are so much work.  (Every year around this time, someone acts like it’s a new idea to grill whole fava beans, but that can’t really work.  Does that really work?)

So I only cook fava beans when they appear in my CSA box.  One or two pounds can be manageable if you have half an hour to kill: string the pods and pull them open, push out the beans with your thumb, simmer them for a few minutes, drain and run them under cold water, then peel the bean-skin from each and every individual bean.

Then see if you find yourself admiring the fava’s color and flavor, or if you find yourself vowing to just steam some broccoli next time.  If you forget your vow and find yourself with another pound of favas, though, this recipe is one of my favorites.

Continue reading Fava Bean and Arugula Crostini (click for recipe)