“Eggs and Things”

“Eggs and things”

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I call this “eggs and things”. It’s sort of like a reverse frittata. The actual vegetables used don’t matter too much, as long as they’re fresh and in-season. Made with potatoes and onion, this becomes la tortilla de españa.

Here’s a version I did back in April — with ramps and Yukon potatoes.

This preparation contains plum tomatoes, shallots and baby spinach. It’s delicious.

1 large shallot, peeled and thinly sliced
3 plum tomatoes, diced
1 lb. baby spinach, washed and trimmed*
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste
3 eggs, lightly beaten

Melt butter in a large skillet over medium-high heat. Add shallots and cook, stirring frequently or until translucent, about 1 minute. Add tomatoes, a scant pinch of salt and pepper. Sauté or until tomatoes disintegrate slightly and form a light sauce. Reduce heat to medium. Season to taste. Once tomatoes are thoroughly cooked but not yet completely liquid, add the spinach. Cook until spinach barely begins to wilt, about 1 to 2 minutes.

Add a couple of beaten eggs; pour over the vegetables. Cook until eggs are set. Stir to break eggs up — the eggs should be somewhat “shredded”. Check seasoning, then serve immediately.

Time: 20 minutes (including prep time).
Makes enough for 1 serving. Pair with a baguette and a glass of white wine for a light dinner.

* Substitute regular spinach, however you may have to adjust the cooking time slightly.

A Farewell to Summer

I know, I know…it’s early November. I have no business posting anything about summer knee-deep in autumn.

Migliorelli had some beautiful plum tomatoes for about $1.60 a pound. I bought three or four pounds fully intending to make some of Marcella’s tomato sauce later in the week but this post on Mouthfulsfood gave me other ideas.

Tomato risotto

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Confit 2

More like a quick confit like the last time. I had gotten a batch of grape tomatoes from Citarella the other day, in addition to some heirloom plum tomatoes. Serve over egg noodles or pasta. A glass of white wine and a small salad and you’re set.

Fresh linguine with tomato confit, herbs and pecorino cheese

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Salad + Soup

Chilled chard and sorrel soup, with crème fraiche –
This soup is so easy I can make it with my eyes closed. Saute onion in unsalted butter, add chard and sorrel, add vegetable stock, check seasoning. Simmer for 10 to 15 minutes; let cool, then blend using either a regular blender or immersion blender. Check seasoning again. Chill for 2 to 6 hours. Garnish with a dollop of crème fraiche and chopped herbs. It’s a perfect anecdote for all the muggy weather we’ve been having lately.

Summer chopped salad —
Apricots, plums, tomatoes, heirloom onions, yellow and purple peppers, baby zucchini, with a white wine viniagrette (lemon basil, salt, pepper, extra-virgin olive oil, white wine vinegar).

Recession Specials 4c — Tuesday

Earlier this week I decided to embark on an experiment where I’d clean out my fridge and cook dinner each night using only the ingredients I had on hand. Click here for the ingredient list, here for Sunday’s dinner and here for last night’s meal.

I do these experiments from time to time because it forces me to be creative in ways that I normally might not be. There are times when I fall into what I call “a cooking rut”, where I just rely on things inside my comfort zone so this is a good way for me to think out of the box for a change.

Before I get to Tuesday’s dinner, I thought I’d take a moment to talk about something that’s been bothering me for a while.

A couple of weeks ago, Michael Pollan wrote a long essay in the New York Times Sunday magazine on the decline and fall of cooking in America. (Go read it if you haven’t already and then when you’re done, come back to this post and write something in the comment section if you like.) One of the figures in Pollan’s think-piece is Harry Balzer, a food-marketing researcher who compares “cooking” — not the term as you or I know it as practiced on this blog — to the act of spreading peanut butter on a piece of bread and calling it a day. But don’t take it from me, here’s a quote from the article:

I spent an enlightening if somewhat depressing hour on the phone with a veteran food-marketing researcher, Harry Balzer, who explained that “people call things ‘cooking’ today that would roll their grandmother in her grave — heating up a can of soup or microwaving a frozen pizza.” Balzer has been studying American eating habits since 1978; the NPD Group, the firm he works for, collects data from a pool of 2,000 food diaries to track American eating habits. Years ago Balzer noticed that the definition of cooking held by his respondents had grown so broad as to be meaningless, so the firm tightened up the meaning of “to cook” at least slightly to capture what was really going on in American kitchens. To cook from scratch, they decreed, means to prepare a main dish that requires some degree of “assembly of elements.” So microwaving a pizza doesn’t count as cooking, though washing a head of lettuce and pouring bottled dressing over it does. Under this dispensation, you’re also cooking when you spread mayonnaise on a slice of bread and pile on some cold cuts or a hamburger patty. (Currently the most popular meal in America, at both lunch and dinner, is a sandwich; the No. 1 accompanying beverage is a soda.) At least by Balzer’s none-too-exacting standard, Americans are still cooking up a storm — 58 percent of our evening meals qualify, though even that figure has been falling steadily since the 1980s.

Like most people who study consumer behavior, Balzer has developed a somewhat cynical view of human nature, which his research suggests is ever driven by the quest to save time or money or, optimally, both. I kept asking him what his research had to say about the prevalence of the activity I referred to as “real scratch cooking,” but he wouldn’t touch the term. Why? Apparently the activity has become so rarefied as to elude his tools of measurement.

“Here’s an analogy,” Balzer said. “A hundred years ago, chicken for dinner meant going out and catching, killing, plucking and gutting a chicken. Do you know anybody who still does that? It would be considered crazy! Well, that’s exactly how cooking will seem to your grandchildren: something people used to do when they had no other choice. Get over it.”

Depressing, isn’t it?

I’m fortunate enough to surround myself with people who are interested about food — how we think about food, how to prepare food and what we eat from day to day. When the Internet first came onto the scene, there weren’t that many online food fora where like-minded people could interact. Now there are literally hundreds of sites, from foodblogs to fora such as eGullet and Serious Eats, to e-lists such as the Community Food Security Coalition, a mailing list based in Portland, Oregon. This plethora of food sites gives me hope that cooking is alive and well, that even though obesity and related health issues are on the rise in America, the conventional wisdom holds that society will not soon forget this most essential of life skills.

So you can imagine my dismay when I talk to people who I occasionally come across who think I’m crazy when I tell them that cooking dinner is easy. It could be breakfast or lunch, the actual meal is irrelevant. That making chicken stock from scratch is a relaxing activity. They can’t imagine why I would schlep 60 blocks to a farmer’s market downtown when it’s more convenient to go to a corner store across the street. How do you find the time?, they ask. It’s inconceivable as far as they’re concerned.

It makes me wonder sometimes which planet I’m living on.

Recession Specials 4b — Monday

Radish, tomato and red onion “bruschetta”

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Radishes and red cippolini onions were roasted in a 350 F oven for 30 minutes, then combined with halved Sungold cherry tomatoes and garlic chives, and spooned atop slices of toasted sourdough bread. If this were true bruschetta, I’d have used Italian bread or perhaps a baguette, but I didn’t have that luxury this time around.

Main entrée was a plain French omelette and salad greens with a white wine viniagrette.

Rather than describe how to make an omelette, this is one of those times where the best explanation is something you can view, preferably by a true master:

This blog post seems appropriate given that Julie and Julia was released last week.

Potatoes 6

Potato tomato gratiné, green salad with simple viniagrette

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Don’t be scared by the fancy name. A gratin is a culinary technique where a food is topped with a browned crust which usually consists of breadcrumbs, cheese, egg and/or butter. Gratinées are usually baked or broiled to form a golden crust on top and are served in their own baking dishes.

Potatoes gratiné is one of the most common of gratins and is known by an assortment of names, including gratin dauphinois. You might know it better as scalloped potatoes or potatoes au gratin.

Gratin dauphinois is a specialty of the Dauphiné region of France. The ingredients consist of thinly sliced and layered potatoes and cream cooked in a buttered baking dish rubbed with garlic. Gratin savoyard is a variation where the cream is replaced with cheese and butter, and meat stock is poured over prior to baking. Gratin Languedocien consists of eggplant and tomato, topped with breadcrumbs and olive oil, then browned.

Besides potatoes and eggplant, other gratinées may include avocado, zucchini, pumpkin, turnip or fish. A gratiné is typically associated with autumn or winter. It can also form the basis of a light summer supper. Serve with a green salad and a glass of white wine.

In the Style of Toscana

Stufato di verdure alla Toscana

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Stufato di verdure is a northern Italian vegetable stew common to Tuscany. This version was served with a poached farm egg and garlic-rubbed sourdough toast. The word stufata is a cooking technique similar to a braise, in which the ingredients are cooked in little or no water. The juices from the vegetables themselves form the stew’s gravy. Stufato should be served immediately lest the vegetables absorb what little liquid there is. Then it becomes more like ciambotta, a southern Italian dish that’s related to both ratatouille and caponata.

Stufato is a year-round dish that’s limited only by your imagination and availability of ingredients at your local market. In autumn, it can feature pumpkin, squash, tomatoes, cranberry beans, cauliflower and peppers. In the winter, it might contain black cabbage, potatoes, carrots, chard and kale. In the spring, fava beans, baby artichokes, baby leeks, young peas, green garlic and turnips.

You can make stufato several hours ahead and reheat, or serve it at room temperature. This goes well with a crisp white wine such as a pinot gris or Tokay d’Alsace.

Raw Food 2

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What could be simpler: diced heirloom tomatoes (Japanese pear, Aunt Ruby, Sungold cherry tomatoes), mint, shallot, extra-virgin olive oil, kosher salt, black pepper and cooked spaghetti.

Make this sauce with ripe tomatoes and fresh herbs. Some cooks use basil, celery leaves, capers or oregano. It’s all about whatever ingredients you happen to have on hand. Serve with a Chianti or a glass of pinot noir.

Confit 1

Confit is a generic term for various kinds of food that have been immersed in a substance for both flavor and preservation. Sealed and stored in a cool place, confit can last for several months. The word comes from the French verb confire, meaning “to preserve”, which in turn comes from the Latin conficere, meaning “to do, to produce, to make or to prepare.”

You might be familiar with duck confit (confit de canard, an essential ingredient in cassoulet) or fruit confiture (whole fruit infused with sugar and preserved; this is different from a jam in that the fruit is usually not pureed).

This is a quick tomato confit made from 2 ripe Jersey tomatoes, kosher salt, black pepper, parsley and extra-virgin olive oil. Cut the tomatoes into wedges and arrange them, cut side down atop a bed of herbs such as basil or parsley. Season with salt and pepper. Add enough olive oil so that it comes halfway up the sides of the tomatoes. Roast the tomatoes in a pre-heated 325 F oven for 90 minutes. Tomatoes are done when they are lightly caramelized yet still hold their shape. Toss a couple of teaspoons of tomato oil with cooked spaghetti. Top each serving with some confit, scatter with chopped herbs and serve immediately.

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Tomatoes can be stored in olive oil in a tightly covered container for up to 2 days.