Japanese-style Cabbage Salad

I made this salad for the first time last night to accompany a Japanese-style meal, and I liked it a lot. It will definitely be a regular guest at our table! Sorry, no photo. It was gobbled up too quickly ;)

Ingredients

1/2 large head cabbage, cored and shredded

• 1 bunch green onions, thinly sliced

• • 1 clove garlic, minced
  • 1 teaspoon grated fresh ginger root
• 3 tablespoons sesame oil
• 3 tablespoons rice vinegar
• 3/4 tablespoon sugar
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon black pepper

Mix ingredients together, let sit at room temperature for a bit to let flavors mingle, and enjoy!

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Yellow Eye Heirloom Beans

Yellow Eye beans are a variety of the white bean family and are creamy, rich, and delicious. Their flavor is neutral and earthy, and their texture is crumbly, just right for a chowder.












Here are the ingredients that you need for Yellow Eye Chowder...














Mise en place.











The white "eye" of the bean is where it used to be attached to the pod.













Soak for a few hours before cooking for extra tender beans.








In a soup pot over med heat, warm the olive oil. Add the onion, celery, and garlic and saute until soft and fragrant (~10 minutes). Add the beans and their soaking water, plus additional cold water to cover the beans by 1 inch. Bring to a boil, cover partially, and simmer until beans are starting to soften but still fairly firm, ~1 hour.

Add sweet potatoes, chicken, sage, + S&P to taste. Bring to a gentle simmer and cook, stirring occasionally, until the beans are tender but not falling apart, about 20 minutes.





Ladle the chowder into warmed bowls and garnish with fresh chopped parsley.










Mmmmmmm....
Delicious with a rustic Artisan bread.

Dandelion "Honey"

When a friend of mine posted a link to a recipe for Dandelion Honey on her Facebook page, I was more than intrigued. The amounts in the recipe sounded almost magical: "365 dandelions, 1 for each day of the year", and the idea of taking a pesky weed and turning it into something delicious was very appealing to me.

So, the other day on our 1 mile walk home from school, my children and I collected dandelions that we found growing in parks and next to the sidewalk on our route home. We weren't keeping track, just picking all the nice looking ones that we saw, and when we arrived home I found we had collected more than 800! So I doubled the recipe.

It turned out to be a real task extracting the petals from the leaves and bases of the flower, so I probably would have been wise to make a single batch... so I will give you the quantities for just one recipe! (Please note: it is important to remove all greenery from the flowers to ensure that your final product will have a pleasing golden color! Also, wash the flowers before removing the petals, then let dry out an hour or two in the sun before proceeding.)

The flower petals from 365 dandelions are mixed together with 1.2 Liters of water, 2 lemons and 2 oranges thinly sliced (preferably organic, so as to avoid the pesticides leaching out into the mixture). Bring the mixture to a boil, then simmer, covered for one hour. Leave the covered pot to sit overnight so that the flavors can continue to infuse the liquid.

The next day, strain the liquid, add 1 kilogram of sugar, and reheat to a boil. Cook for 15-20 minutes at moderate heat. Ladle it into small jars, close while hot.

This "honey" may be used in desserts and also as a cough syrup if you like! We used it this morning on pancakes.

Pasta di Carciofi

To ring in the spring season, I decided to make an artichoke pasta. I found the recipe in Giuliano Bugialli's book On Pasta.

I was so proud of myself for finally cleaning artichokes without hacking them up into unrecognizable bits and pieces... I started with 3 large artichokes, which were cleaned, then soaked in ample cold water with lemon halves squeezed and dropped into the bowl.

30 minutes later, the artichokes were cut into 8ths and sauteed for 5 minutes along with the chopped leaves of 15 large Italian parsley sprigs, 3 cloves of chopped garlic, and 1/4 cup olive oil.

I added 1 cup dry white wine, and cooked the artichokes over high heat until the wine evaporated, then added salt and pepper, covered the casserole, and continued to cook the artichokes until they were tender.

The artichokes were pureed in a food mill, then made into a dough using 5 1/2 cups flour, 3 extra-large eggs, and salt and pepper to taste.

To prepare the pasta, I rolled the dough through a pasta machine to make sheets, then cut the sheets into tagliatelle using an attachment.

To finish, the pasta was boiled for about 3 minutes, then tossed with a butter and sage sauce. It was soooo yummy!

The re-telling of this recipe was somewhat abridged. For the full version I recommend you purchase Bugialli's book. It's a great resource!

Chocolate Tasting

Some number of years ago, about 6, I guess, my husband and I decided to do a chocolate tasting of various single-origin chocolates from 4 different producers. We discussed our opinions and then agreed on a rating of each chocolate on a scale of 1-10. I've been holding onto the piece of paper upon which we recorded our ratings for all these years, and it gets moved from place to place in our house, never to be discarded lest I forget our ratings and have to start all over again. Wait a minute, that's not a bad idea, is it?!?!

I've decided it's time to stop shuffling this little piece of paper around, and record these ratings somewhere more permanent. Now you can all benefit from our little experiment and perhaps sample some of these goodies for yourself!

Valrhona 2003 Ampamakia (Madagascar) ---- 4

Valrhona 2003 Gran Couva (Trinidad) ---- 5

Valrhona 2003 Chuao (Venezuela) ---- 7

Amadei Ecuador ---- 6

Amadei Grenada ---- 6

Amadei Jamaica ---- 7

Amadei Madagascar ---- 7.5

Amadei Trinidad ---- 8 (tasting note: tabacco flavors)

Amadei Venezuela ---- 8

Amadei Porcelana ---- 8

Michel Cluizel Concepcion (Venezuela) ---- <7

Michel Cluizel Los Ancones (Santa Domingo) ---- 6.5

Michel Cluizel Tamarina (Sao Tome) ---- 6/7 (we agreed to disagree on this one! - I liked it better)

Michel Cluizel Mangaro (Madagascar) ---- 7

Domori Puertofino (Venezuela) ---- 8.5

Domori Puertomar (Venezuela) ---- 9

Domori Porcelana (Venezuela) ---- 9.5

Makes me want to go pick up some bars of Domori!!! :-D

Nostalgic Pumpkin Soup

In November of 1994, I was an exchange student in the south of France living with a beautiful family of 5 for about 10 days. The mother made us many wonderful meals, including, of course, escargot. I remember her children telling me how when it rained, their mother would send them outside to collect the snails... I also remember her sending me off to our field trips with bagged lunches of supremely delicious bread covered in such tasty cheese... ahhh... :) And the yogurt that they ate for dessert following dinner... well, there's nothing like it here. Anyhow, all that was just a tangent and an excuse to reminisce!!! :-D

What this post is *really* about is that I still have vivid memories of the night she made pumpkin soup for us. It was a cold, damp night, and we were returning from a judo lesson, and we were nourished by this warm, flavorful soup, bread and a salad. It was perfect.

I have no idea how she made her soup, or accomplished the deep flavors that were in it, but I am trying my best here to come close.

I started like this:

I chopped the onion and garlic, and sauteed them in a little bit of olive oil in a large pan. Then I chopped the pumpkin up and added it to the pan, all of it, because I wanted it to be richly "pumpkin". That's what I remember. I put in about 6 cups of my homemade vegetable stock, and cooked the pumpkin until it was soft. Then I pureed it with my immersion blender until it was nice and smooth. I poured in just a bit of whole milk for creaminess, but not too much, because I didn't want to kill the pumpkin flavor. Then I seasoned the soup to taste with salt and pepper, nutmeg, and a little bit of what Thomas Keller calls "squab spice", a mix of cinnamon, coriander, cloves, pepper, and ginger, because I had some in my pantry and it seemed like a good idea :)

I ended up with this:

I'm sure it's not the same. But it's good!

Saumon au Poivre Vert (Salmon With Green Peppercorns)

"A fashionable discovery of nouvelle cuisine, green peppercorns add piquancy to all kinds of sauces and stews. Available pickled in jars or cans, they are great to keep on hand in your pantry."

Tonight Bill and I decided to frog out. We made a delicious French meal of pan seared salmon with a rich peppercorn cream sauce, accompanied by baked tomatoes topped with garlic. It was tres magnifique!