Stephencooks

Sage Risotto

  

We finally sold our old house and I spent a day there recently getting it ready for the closing, and one of the things I did just before I left was to harvest all the oregano, sage, thyme and chives I could, along with a couple of sheaves of lilies, hollyhocks and roses. The oregano went to some pesto for the freezer (if you haven't tried oregano pesto yet, don't deny yourself this treat any longer), the chives and thyme just replaced the bunches I've been buying at the farmers' market...but using up a lot of sage is a challenge, since a little sage goes a long way and can easily overpower other flavors.

In this sage risotto, however, the sage didn't overpower anything beacause it was the center of attention. Every bite was heavy with the wonderful power of sage, with the parmesan cheese and pancetta just strong enough to add some accent notes. After years of cautiously adding a leaf or two to various dishes, worried that the "whole thing would taste like sage," it was an empowering departure to just let go with both barrels of the sage gun. A fresh green salad (made from mesclun, radicchio, radishes and onions from our Wolf Pine Farm share) and a crusty bread and we had a great casual summer supper.

Calamari with Thai Basil, Onions and Ginger

  

This week's farm share box included a bag of mesclun mix, a bag of flavorful baby arugula, snap beans, a beautiful bunch of white-tipped radishes, a bunch of purple-stemmed Thai basil, a bunch of savory, a head of Chinese cabbage, a bunch of Swiss chard, a head of green cabbage and a bunch of beautiful new onions. I was jonesing for an Asian-style meal -- after all, I did live for twelve years right next to Boston's Chinatown, where I got in the habit of eating wonderful and authentic Chinese, Japanese, Thai, Korean and Vietnamese food on a very regular basis... This bag of herbs and veggies was particularly inspiring in the Asian direction -- in this one meal I used the cabbage, the onions, the Thai basil and the savory!

Swiss Chard Demystified!          My pal Helen at Beyond Salmon (a CSA shareholder at Brookfield Farm in Massachusetts) posted an informative primer on Swiss chard a couple of days ago, along with a very yummy recipe. CLICK HERE to check it out.

This dish is very simple to prepare. The calamari is briefly blanched, then quickly stirfried with the onions and ginger, and finally mixed with the other ingredients for a few seconds of warming and blending. The blanching and quick stir-frying of the calamari insures that it remains very tender and not at all chewy, which is essential to all good calamari preparations. The fragrant Thai basil is tossed in just before serving so that it remains fresh and powerfully forward in the final dish.

The result satisfied my craving for a good plate of "Chinese" food and the fresh Thai basil gave it a distinctive and memorable taste. I served this with plain white rice and a variation my Ginger-Steamed Cabbage (made with the  Wolf Pine Farm green cabbage, but omitting the little dried shrimp and substituting savory from this week's share for the cilantro -- I also omitted the sesame oil as the calamari dish had sesame oil in it). Another winner!

Seared Striped Bass Steaks

  

I picked up a 1-3/4 pound (before cleaning) striped bass at  Harbor Fish the other day (farm-raised since it's not legal in Maine to sell wild-caught stripers these days), thinking that I would prepare it in the traditional Chinese manner: steamed whole, with ginger and black bean sauce. But when I got to the kitchen to do the cooking I felt like doing something different with the fish, since it seems we had a Chinese whole fish not long ago...

I ended up cutting it crosswise into four thick little steaks, which I seared and served on a puddle of sauce made from a broth I made with the head, tail and trimmings from the fish. Simple, quick and very, very good. This was served with a roasted medley of sweet new vegetables from my weekly farm share and a steaming stack of the first native sweet corn of the season. I've said it before...but ahh, Maine: the way life should be!

Roasted Vegetable Medley

 

This week's farm share included a bunch of tiny little new carrots -- about a quarter inch at their fattest -- and some more garlic scapes. I also had a bunch of beautiful purple scallions from last week's share waiting to be used. From these I made a quick, easy medley of roasted vegetables that took full advantage of the sweetness and tenderness of the little carrots. It made a great accompanyment to the seared striped bass steaks we had the same night.

Peach Cobbler - The Pastry Variation

 

Don't you just love it when you get a fresh view of an old favorite? I made my first cobbler over forty years ago, and I've been making them ever since...and all that time my idea of cobbler has been the same: fruit, cooked with sugar, flavorings and a thickener, with a sweet biscuit baked on top of it. I love all the gooey sweetness soaking into the biscuit and mixing in my mouth with the mandatory vanilla ice cream. For about the last fifteen years I've been doing variations on Deborah Madison's version in The Green's Cookbook, which uses tapioca for the thickener. I particularly like it because she combines blueberries and peaches, which here in Maine seems to me to be so perfect in the summer after a feast of lobster, corn on the cob and a salad of fresh field greens and heirloom tomatoes.

So what could I learn about cobbler, given that we have this long and wonderful relationship? Well, sometimes you're in love with a girl...until you meet her sister! The other night we had dinner at a local restaurant here in Portland and after a very enjoyable meal there was mention of "warm peach cobbler" when the dessert list was recited. Ah, my old favorite, I thought. Let's see how their version compares...

Some of you who are more knowledgable about the world of cobbler may already know where this is going, but to me it was a bolt from the blue: no biscuit anywhere in sight! On presentation, the dish appeared to shallow bowl of cooked fruit with a nice little scoop of homemade vanilla slowly melting over it. However, the story got more interesting once the first spoonful was in my mouth. The fruit was perfect: not overcooked, so there were nice chunks of peach, and not too sweet, with just enough cinnamon. But there was another element in there: something like...cookie dough! In any case, it was not the peach cobbler I thought I knew, and yes I was wondering: just where has this version been all my life!

The next day I couldn't help myself: I bought a bagful of peaches (I actually found some nice ripe ones -- from California, since it will be another month until we get New England peaches -- at Whole Foods) and went to work to try to discover the secret. A little surfing on the net and I found the "pastry variation" of cobbler, so after reading several versions (called "country cobbler" or "Texas cobbler" or variants on that idea) -- in which a sheet of pastry is baked in the center of the fruit, like buried treasure -- I went to the kitchen and made my own adaptation, trying to get as close as I could to the Katahdin experience.

The result: wonderful. There is something extremely seductive about this stuff (maybe it's the butter...?) -- so my cobbler world is definitely in a slightly different orbit than it was a few days ago!

Caponata Pizza, with Eggplant, Tomato and Onions

  

Caponata is an ancient Sicilian anitpasti offering, an eggplant- based stew that is usually served spooned on crostini, so using the familiar ingredients of this concoction to make an eggplant pizza seemed to me to be a natural direction to go.

Of course, like all of the ancient Italian cuisine, it has spread from its home base all over Italy, and all over the world, so there are hundreds of variations calling themselves caponata these days. To make this pizza I just reviewed a few caponata recipes online and in my cookbooks and then closed the books and shut down the computer and made this pizza from what I had on hand, following the basic idea of eggplant, onion, tomato, olives, etc.

The result was very good, earning an instant place on the short list of favorite pizzas around here. The bufala mozzarella complemented the rest of the ingredients nicely, and the combination of flavors, while familiar, was just unusual enough on a pizza to stand out as memorable. I'll definitely be making this one again soon!

Pan-Seared Halibut with Corn-Coriander Salsa

  

For the July version of the Paper Chef competition, Kevin of Seriously Good decreed the ingredients to be corn, ground coriander and pine nuts, all combined with something celebratory of our nation's independence. It didn't take me long to settle on locally-caught halibut as my symbol of independence, for a number of reasons: the halibut is a predatory ruler of the sea, swimming powerfully where it will in search of food, which is basically whatever other animals it can fit in its mouth. Though the idea of the U.S. as a powerful nation has been perverted and misused by our "leaders" in recent years, there is no denying that strength is necessary if a nation is to become and remain free and independent, so this fish to me is symbolic of American strength and independence. Also, as one of the dwindling list of wild-caught foods in our diet, the halibut represents a connection to our primordial past, when food was hunted or gathered instead of cultivated and processed, which, when I'm in a romantic mood, seems like a time of independence and freedom. (Of course, the unrelenting need to find or kill enough food for the family probably didn't feel much like freedom to our ancient forebears....!) And finally, I chose halibut to honor the fiercely independent and self-reliant American fishermen and women who brave the sea to best the halibut and put this beautiful food on our tables. These strong men and women, almost all of them small independent operators, are living symbols of American independence and determination to me.

With regard to the dish itself, there are lots of things that came to mind for the remaining ingedients in the assignment -- fritters and cakes and puddings and other such preparations -- and the ground coriander suggested Indian cuisine, of which I'm fond, but I wanted the halibut to be a part of the dish, rather than just accompanied by something made from the other ingredients, and at the same time I wanted the halibut to stand forward and not be overwhelmed by strong flavors. The result of this thinking was a the conclusion that the fish should be very simply prepared and then paired with a simple, fresh salsa based on corn, tomato and coriander -- supportive but not competitive with the halibut's flavor. Toasted pine nuts, a regular feature of my cooking, were a welcome topping to this plate.

At the table, Elise deemed the dish "a keeper," and I was very pleased with it myself. As intended, the coriander/corn/tomato salsa complemented but did not overwhelm the fish, and the pine nuts added a pleasantly crunchy taste accent. Overall, we thought it seemed a fittingly celebratory meal for the anniversary of our nation's independence.

Vegetable Medley Stir-Fry, with Baby Turnips, Kohlrabi, Carrots and Onions

  

Today we have more tender fresh organic goodness from our farm share. The box this week included a bag of mesclun greens, sugar snap peas, a bunch of purple kohlrabi, a bunch of savory, more garlic scapes and a bunch of tender young kale.  One of my favorite everyday meals, especially with bounty like this, is a nice medley of stir-fried or steamed vegetables, so I knew what to do when I got my share home.

By the way, in case you wonder why local organic produce can be pricey, remember: no poisons on your food means someone has to weed the fields! The farmer who I get my produce from explained that they do have a mechanical weeding device for some crops that can be planted in machine-friendly configurations, but that when the ground is mucky, the way it has been in the past weeks, that doesn't work so well. She pointed out that it's particularly disheartening to see when you've finished a field that the side you started on is covered with weeds again! So, if you love the product of your local farms, be sure to thank your local farmworkers for all the backbreaking labor which makes it possible to put healthy delicious food on your table!

Also, a word about kohlrabi, since a lot of people are unfamiliar with this vegetable. It's one of my favorites, with flesh a lot like a peeled broccoli stalks, one of my other all-time favorites. (If that doesn't make sense to you, based on your personal experience with broccoli stalks, you have a pleasant surprise coming: see my Steamed Broccoli post to find out how to join the cognoscenti who search through the broccoli pile at the supermarket for the bunch  with the thickest stalks!) The Wikipedia entry on kohlrabi tells us the basics:

Kohlrabi (Brassica oleracea Gongylodes Group) is a low, stout cultivar of the cabbage which has been selected for its swollen, nearly spherical, Sputnik-like shape. The name comes from the German kohlrabi (turnip), because the swollen stem resembles the latter. Kohlrabi has been created by artificial selection for lateral meristem growth, its origin in nature is the wild mustard plant.

The taste and texture of kohlrabi are similar to those of a broccoli stem or cabbage heart, but milder and sweeter, with a higher ratio of flesh to skin. The young stem in particular can be as crisp and juicy as an apple, although much less sweet. Except for the Gigante cultivar, spring-grown kohlrabi much over 5 cm in size tend to be woody, as do fall-grown kohlrabi much over perhaps 10 cm in size; the Gigante cultivar can achieve great size while remaining of good eating quality.

My kohlrabi were, as promised, "crisp and juicy as an apple." They can be peeled and sliced raw into a salad for a crisp addition, and eaten this way they frequently have a nice sharp radishy bite, as mine did this week. Also, especially with tender young kohlrabi, the green tops can be cooked as well (see the recipe after the jump).

Cod Roasted with Pancetta, Leeks, Mushrooms and Tomatoes

  

Once again I found myself in Harbor Fish Market on the Portland docks. With the Fourth of July coming up, the traditional New England holiday meal is salmon and fresh peas, and since these are two favorites at our table we've frequently gone right along with the crowd when preparing Independence Day feasts. And not only did Harbor have four varieties of salmon -- they had a bin full of fresh peas right in the middle of the floor!

However, the salmon selections were two varieties of farm-raised Alantic salmon and two types of wild-caught Pacific salmon (chinook and king), and it only took me a minute to reject them all. The Atlantic farm-raised, in my experience, has a bland taste -- and then there's the questionable environmental impact issues associated with this product. And though the Pacific salmon looked good and came from one of the more sustainable fisheries going, the absurdity of buying fish that had been shipped over 3000 miles while I could actually hear the Atlantic lapping on the pilings under my feet stopped me cold.

Then I saw the cod. The fish of empire -- as we know from reading Cod: A Biography of the Fish that Changed the World by Mark Kurlansky -- and also a very good eating fish. (Okay, I know there are problems with the cod fishery...but I'm not ready to deal with that yet.) Beautiful, thick, wild-caught fillets, cut from a large fish and gleaming up at me from the case. And no more painful, dollar-wise, than the farmed salmon.

With whitefish fillets I like to keep things simple, since the flavor is so easily hidden or overwhelmed by sauces or additions, so these beauties were just wrapped in thin sheets of pancetta and roasted on a bed of leeks, shitake mushrooms, garlic and oregano. The vegetables were sautéed for a few minutes before the roasting, and then simmered in wine. I tossed in some tomato wedges just before the fish went in the oven and the resulting broth was very flavorful and light.

I served this beautiful dish with a salad of fresh greens from my farm share and a crusty French peasant bread from the amazing and authentic Standard Bakery (no website -- it's at 31 Wharf St, and makes the best bread in Portland), which as luck would have it is right across the street from Harbor Fish. Ah, Maine: the way life should be!