margherita pizza with swiss chard

#Nofilter. That's how good this pizza looked. :)  It's pretty easy, too. Doctor-up some tomato sauce from the can, add cheese and greens (saute first), and pop it in the oven - hot as it can go. This is also inspired by Smitten Kitchen's margherita pizza, when we got chard and fresh oregano in our (last) CSA installment. Now it's time for summer produce and the Ann Arbor farmer's market!

"rushed" pizza dough from Smitten Kitchen: 
1 1/2 cups flour (combo of white/wheat)
1 1/4 tsp yeast
1/2 cup warm water
1 tsp salt

Put the yeast in water, let sit five minutes, then mix with flour and salt. Knead 5 minutes, then put in an oiled bowl in a warm oven (turn on low for 5 minutes then off) 30 minutes, covered with plastic wrap. Then you can use it!

pizza sauce:
1/2 cup diced tomatoes (from can, or pureed tomatoes)
1 clove garlic, pressed
a bit of salt and pepper
red pepper flakes
salt and pepper

1/2 ball fresh mozarella, torn into pieces (about 5 oz)

a good pile of swiss chard leaves, stems removed, cut into strips: saute these first before putting on pizza

optional: sprinkles of parmesan on top and fresh oregano

spring pea pasta with pancetta, spinach and shallots

This was dinner from my regular St. Olaf friends gathering. It's finals, the end of the semester, so we wanted a quicker, easier recipe. This one is delicious, and comes together quickly. Nicole brought an awesome salad and a grapefruit cake with candied violets on top. So pretty stellar for an "easy" mid-week meal, although a bit rich and indulgent. :)  It's easily made vegetarian by omitting the pancetta.

ingedients: shell pasta, peas (we had to use frozen rather than fresh because of this cold cold spring), spinach, pancetta, shallots, lemon, parmesan, half/half, mint or parsley. 

Boil the salted pasta water, add pasta (about 1/2 lb for 3 servings). When the pasta is done, strain and set aside.

While pasta is cooking, chop shallots, pancetta. Cook pancetta till near-crispy in a separate pan, then add the shallot to soften.

Zest 1/2 lemon and 1 c parmesan.  Roughly chop spinach leaves and mint or parsley for garnish.


Melt some butter in the (emptied) pasta pot, then add 1 cup half/half (or cream). Let it simmer and reduce a bit. Add peas to let them cook. Then add shells back in, plus zest, parmesan, salt and pepper. Mix together, add pancetta and shallots back in, with spinach, just to get it wilted. Top with mint and an extra shaving of cheese. 

toasted millet with sugar snap peas, avocado, radish and ginger-honey dressing

This is another recipe inspired by Dennis Cotter (For the Love of Food). This one had a shorter list of ingredients, among some truly complicated recipes in his collection... :) He always has such enticing sounding combinations. I also love how in British English they say "spring onions" instead of "green onions." It's nice. This recipe did feel very spring-like. And it made a great packed lunch. I actually whipped it together in 25 minutes while I was having my morning breakfast and coffee, and then took it with me to the office.

Eating millet makes me feel slightly hippie-ish, bird-like...just because my sisters had parakeets when we were growing up, and they would put sprigs of millet in their cages. And now I am eating bird food. And it is delicious. As Cotter notes, you could easily substitute couscous or bulgur wheat here.

I made half of the below portions, and it made 3 largerish side-salad portions.
300 g millet / couscous / bulgur wheat
4 spring onions, finely chopped
150 grams sugar snap peas, cut in half
2 avocados, cut into slices or dice
4 radishes, sliced thin
optional: sprouted bean, handful of micro salad leaves
salt and pepper
garnish: toasted pumpkin seeds, chopped mint

First toast the millet about 7 minutes with a bit of olive oil in a saucepan. Add water (2:1 ratio, so 600 mL for 300 g millet) and let it cook, covered 15 minutes. Then prep the other ingredients. When the millet is done, mix everything together.

ginger-honey dressing:

juice of 1 lemon
2 T grated fresh ginger
1 T honey (or other sweetener)
125 ml olive oil

Cotter says to grind the pumpkin seeds and then mix them with the dressing. It seemed like an unnecessarily difficult step, to dirty the food processor...so I just tossed the seeds with the salad, and I liked them like that. 

rice noodles and cabbage with ginger-honey-almond sauce and spring-omelette strips

Okay here's a recipe from Dennis Cotter's For the Love of Food, another great recommendation from Synne. :) As far as Cotter's recipes go, it's one of the easier ones (in terms of finding ingredients and steps), but it does dirty three pans. The flavor makes it well worth it though. It's one of those, "I made this?" meals. So easy and so tasty. One of my favorite go-to lazy take-out meals is pad thai, so this rice-noodle dish is a good comfort meal, and I can think of good ways to vary it.  The ginger-honey-almond sauce is also really good, and I will use this again on soba noodles or veggies at some point. Just a warning though, the rice noodles stick and it's not as good left over.

honey-mustard broccoli salad

 Here's another one for fulfilling my veggie craving. It's a broccoli salad that would also be great for a summer picnic (summer weather? please?).  This recipe is from The Sprouted Kitchen cookbook, which has so many good healthy meals and beautiful photography.

honey-dijon dressing
3 T Dijon
2 T honey
2 T olive oil
2 T red wine vinegar
salt and pepper

Steam broccoli florets just enough to take off "raw edge," cool with running water in a sieve. Meanwhile, julienne the stems (mandoline + cut matchsticks), cut the apple into fine dice or matchsticks, combine everything in a bowl. Add some green cabbage if you have it around. I also thought that some dried cranberries would be good in this. For the leftovers I think I will throw some in.

2 bunches broccoli with stems (about 1 lb)
1/2 cup toasted sunflower seeds
1 apple, cored and diced
1/4 cup flat-leaf parsley
optional: add some thinly sliced green cabbage

carrot, parsnip, dill and white bean salad with toasted almonds

I remember when Synne made this for us in Berlin, a recipe from 101 Cookbooks. I have wanted to make it since then and finally got around to it. Plus added some parsnips we had from our CSA. When the carrots and parsnips caramelize in the pan, they get really nice and sweet. Dill seems very spring-like to me - fresh herbs always add so much. :) It's a great healthy and flavorful salad, and the beans make it very substantial.

As Heidi Swanson writes, if you used canned beans this recipe can come together in a flash. I thought the raw shallots were a bit intense.  Maybe add them in part-way through the cooking time to take off some of the raw edge. I also would have liked more dill flavor. Add in some raw dill to the dressing if you also have a taste for it.

moist, flaky and tender, currant-rosemary scones

I. just. want. a. scone.

So I have a true pastry addiction right now...confession...like almost a scone/croissant a day as a little afternoon treat to get me through the work day. Marathon training seems to justify any extra treats - which isn't the best attitude to have...Really, I'm trying to be better... But I just keep remembering these scones I had from Ovenly bakery in Brooklyn, when Michael and I went to visit Synne and Brett. (They live just down the street - which would be dangerous if I lived there...it's so cute and delicious.) They had combinations like apricot-thyme, and currant-rosemary...yum. Which I had to recreate.  And where did I have a curry scone recently? I don't remember...may have even been there - it also had currants in it. Anyways, lots of fun combinations to try out!

I know I just posted a scone recipe (cherry-ginger) relatively recently...but Easter seems like far, far, away to me. I found a great blog post from Luna Cafe about "the best scones in the entire world"
and I wanted to try out the technique. The author writes that you have to layer the butter like in making pastry, rather than incorporate it into the dough like rough meal(as most recipes state). She also compared a whole bunch of scone recipes (10 different formulas), and looked at how they vary the levels of butter, egg, and cream - with the 2 cups of flour being the standard. Interesting...She also emphasizes that more important than ingredients is the technique of using very cold butter and liquid and incorporating it quickly into the dough. This method does take slightly longer, as you chill the dough an extra 30 minutes. So I tried it out, and I'm not sure whether I like this recipe the best. It made a rather wet dough. The scones were pretty moist inside, but I like them a bit drier.

this is the technique she describes (Luna Cafe):
Cut the butter into 1½ teaspoon size chunks (16 chunks per 1 stick butter). Dump the mixed dry ingredients out onto a clean surface and scatter the very cold butter on top. With your hands, lightly coat the butter chunks with flour by tossing the two together a few times. Then, using a heavy rolling pin, roll over the mass, flattening the butter into thin sheets. Gather the mixture up into a loose mass and repeat twice more.  Scoop the mixture into a mixing bowl and continue with the recipe. After the dough is formed, flatten somewhat and gently make 2 letter folds (as for flakey pastry or croissant dough) in opposite directions. This will help to build flakey layers in the baked scone.

2 cups King Arthur unbleached, all-purpose flour (9 ounces, 240 g)
2 tablespoons sugar (this can vary 0-6)
1 tablespoon baking powder
½ teaspoon fine sea salt
8 tablespoons very cold, unsalted butter, cut into 16 equal-size pieces
1 large, very cold egg (or ¼ cup additional liquid)
¾ cup very cold cream
½-1 cup dried fruit (currants)
1 tsp dried rosemary

1. Adjust oven rack to middle position, or slightly above, and heat oven to 375°F.

2. Place flour, baking powder, sugar and salt in large bow, whisk together. Dump out on a clean work surface. Add butter over the flour and do the method described above, rolling over the butter. Put in a bowl and refrigerate 30 mins.

3. In a glass liquid measuring cup, combine egg and cream. Refrigerate.

4. Add liquid to dry ingredients, without overmixing, and dump back out onto counter. Lightly pat together, and fold the "dough" twice for extra buttery layers. Don't knead. Pat into a round shape, and cut into eighths.  If you are going to freeze some, do so at this point. Scones are best fresh from the oven.

5. Brush scones with egg wash or cream, bake at 375 15-16 minutes, just until brown.

winter to spring? a cheery carrot-ginger soup with orange

Well we're 2/3 the way through April and it is not feeling very spring-like. Minnesota has 30 inches of snow...and here in Michigan we still don't have any leaves on the trees--hardly even visible buds. It's getting old. Although as soon as the warm spring sun comes out, all I want to do is sit and bask like a lizard in the sun, so I guess the unusually cold spring is good for my dissertation.

In fact, my infrequency of posting is correlated to two things: first, I started a new chapter and have been very productive and making good progress in my work; and second, I have jumped on the sandwich-train. Two guys in my office starting bringing sandwich fixings to the office, and having lunchtime sandwich time. It's been a while since I have made sandwiches for lunch...and it seemed super practical, not to mention economical. So I got a good loaf of bread, avocado, cheese, turkey breast, some spreads (humus and a spicy black bean spread), brought in some of our good CSA greens...and that is what I have been eating all week. Rather boring and not too blog-worthy. Although Joy the Baker did a fun sandwich post a while ago: on baguette and bagel.

Anyways, it is the weekend and it's time to cook again. I am feeling very vegetable-hungry and wanted some bright colorful meals.  Carrot-ginger soup is perfect because it feels vibrant and sunny without requiring spring veggies. :)  I posted another variant of this from Sara here, as part of our soup swap. This one forgoes the coconut milk, and adds a little tomato and orange. It feels so healthy and so flavorful - always a good combination. I used quite a lot of ginger (a 2-inch piece), which gave it a nice spiciness.  

ginger-garlic meatballs

These are a Nigel Slater - inspired recipe. I am really enjoying discovering his recipes, and I love his writing style. It's so strange when you feel you get to know someone a bit through his or her writing. The best cookbooks are like that. Synne gave me The Kitchen Diaries for Christmas - and he goes through a year, sharing recipes and food notes. You really feel you get to know him. I am also reading through Appetite and really enjoying it. It has gems like this:

"Putting little bits of leftover food on plates is not a good idea. They will only dry up and haunt you every time you open the fridge door. You might as well throw them away in the first place."

"Use your nose. At first you can only tell when something is burning. The smell of smoke will alert you to the fact that your supper is probably past the point of perfection. Pretty soon you will find that the smell a dish gives off as it cooks can be a good clue to its progress. Butter will smell nuttier, garlic will smell sweeter when it has softened..."

"I loathe gadgets. My idea of hell is a drawer full of those miraculous, time-saving devices specialy designed for cutting pizza/portioning a cake/brushing the soil off mushrooms, etc. ...Before you get carried away with one of those gadget catalogues and your credit card, let me warn you that you by the time you have played hide and seek with your little diddy that does this or that, you could have done the job ten times over."

"butter. Glorious stuff."

"mustard. How I love mustard."

Okay I could go on and on but I will stop myself. :)

stuffed peppers with chard-shallot quinoa and andouille sausage

This was inspired by the beautiful swiss chard we got from our CSA on Friday, plus stuff we had in the pantry. I first made a quinoa with caramelized shallots and chard, added some toasted pine nuts (and andouille chicken sausage - but would be good as a vegetarian version as well). Then I filled some red bell peppers, topped with parmesan and put them under the broiler until brown and bubbly. Yum yum.

Tips: Cook the quinoa in some stock for extra flavor (1:2 ratio), and pre-boil the bell pepper 4-6 minutes so it's partially cooked when you put it in the oven. Make sure you keep a close eye on it when it's under the broiler - when it starts to brown it goes very quickly!

root vegetable ragout with tarragon wild rice "pancake" topping

Tonight's Saturday day night dinner was a delicious, veggie-packed feast. We got a big new load of vegetables from the CSA on Friday, including parsnips, and flipping through cookbooks (a weekend hobby...) I saw this tasty-sounding recipe from Deborah Madison's Vegetarian Suppers. This helped us clean out the odds-n-ends of the vegetable drawer (some beets, carrots, parsnips). Jessica and I cooked together, which helped cut down the somewhat long prep time. But it is worth it. It makes a lasagne-pan size casserole of root vegetables, topped with a tasty wild rice "pancake" topping. It was a nice, fitting comfort-food for this unseasonable April weather (blgh).

Deborah Madison points out you could also make wild rice "crepes" and serve the ragout filling inside. I love any form of pancakes...but this makes the cooking time less hands-on than making individual pancakes.

Like all brown food, it didn't photograph super well, but I just have to convince you of the deliciousness: crunchy wild-rice tarragon topping...bright pink root vegetables and cabbage with a goat cheese sauce underneath. Yum.

cherry-ginger cream scones

When I'm working I often need a mid-afternoon sugary treat. Scones are my favorite...but I often find the ones you can get in most bakeries totally inferior - often too moist and more like a muffin than a scone.  In Ann Arbor, the exceptions are scones from the Pastry Peddler (who also supplies to Comet Coffee and Sweetwaters). And also the Jefferson Market, whose scones are so huge and light and fluffy you can hardly finish one. But then you'll want to go back the next day. They do a pear-ginger variant that is almost as good as this recipe, fresh from the oven.

basic scone recipe from Joy the Baker - who also has a new cookbook out this year

2 cups all-purpose flour

1/4 cup sugar

2 teaspoons baking powder

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, cold and cut into cubes

1 cup cherries

1/2 cup coarsely chopped candied ginger

1 large egg

1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

1/2 cup heavy cream

cream and sugar for topping

1. Heat oven to 375. Prep a baking sheet with parchment.
2. Dry ingredients: combine flour, sugar, baking powder, salt in a bowl.
3. Add (cold) butter: work into flour with a pastry cutter or fork. You want it to be pea-sized and smaller. Add in the cherries and ginger, tossing around so they don't stick to each other.
4. Wet ingredients: In a separate bowl, mix eggs, vanilla, and cream.
5. Combine quickly so everything is wet. you will need to use your hands, dump the dough onto a floured surface and push together into a ball, then flatten to a disk.
6. Cut the disk into fourths, then eighths. Put the eight scone pieces on the parchment. Brush with cream and bake 15 minutes.

You can also freeze scones at this point and bake later. Scones are always best fresh and don't keep too long! 

rutabaga-potato pancakes

My mormor sent me a recipe for rutabaga-potato cakes, made with mashed potatoes and rutabagas. I loved the idea of the combination, and decided to make a kind of "latke" with those ingredients, adding in some red onion. One small rutabaga and potato made about 8 potato pancakes. Germans serve these with applesauce - if you had some it would be great. They would also be good for brunch or breakfast. (Smitten Kitchen, in her tips for hosting brunch, suggests to re-heat latkes in the oven, to get them extra crispy and do the work ahead of time.)

  To make: I just combined grated rutabaga, a grated red potato, some thinly sliced red onion in a bowl with 1 egg and some bread crumbs, a little thyme and salt and pepper. It wasn't super wet. Then I fried them in a bit of oil.