Pea Soup - Not Just for Winter Anymore

When you have a small kitchen, choosing which tools and gadgets deserve a drawer or cupboard or spot on the counter involves ruthless triage. A toaster, coffee maker, food processor and KitchenAid mixer are the only large items that make the cut in my kitchen. The crockpot (I miss it) and microwave (don't miss it at all) had to be banished to the garage. I gave the breadmaker away and the ice-cream maker is in my bedroom closet (which doesn't inspire much hope that I'll suddenly start churning ice-cream every week. Anyone want an ice-cream maker?)

Smaller items I give a little more leeway to. Certain kitchen tools stay in one of my three kitchen drawers not because I use the tools all the time, but because they do one specific job really well. Like a tiny sieve I use to make Summer Pea Soup with Cardamom. Whenever I make this soup I am reminded how much I love this little sieve, even though I honestly don't remember how or when it even ended up in my kitchen. From where does this love spring? From the silky smooth texture of the soup, that's where.

This soup involves three steps: simmer the peas, puree the peas, push the peas through a sieve. This third step traps the chunky insides and skin of the peas and releases their essence, a liquid form of pure flavor. Do not try this soup without a sieve - both a colander and cheese cloth will result in a soup texture that is unappealingly babyfood-like. But when the soup is made right, it's hard to believe such a simple process can yield such a lovely soup.

Summer Pea Soup with Cardamom
3 cups fresh peas or a 16 oz bag of frozen peas
3/4 cup chicken or vegetable broth
1/8 tsp cardamom or more to taste (but don't overdo it - the cardamom should be very subtle)
Optional garnish: fresh parsley and a swirl of creme fraiche

Simmer the peas in the broth for five minutes or until just soft. Puree in a blender or food processor. Pour a little bit of the puree into the sieve at a time. Hold the sieve over a medium-sized bowl, or the pot you simmered the peas in. Push a spoon against the peas, mashing them so their liquid drips into the bowl. Discard the chunky remains of the peas (or eat them later with salt). Re-warm the pea soup, adding more broth if you want the texture to be thinner. Add the cardamom and a pinch of salt. Garnish with parsley and/or creme fraiche.

Recipe by J.Meier

Dried vs Canned Beans

I have always felt a little bit guilty when I buy beans in a can. Granted, there are much bigger things in life to feel guilty about. But along with a degree from a culinary school comes a lifetime of guilt whenever you take shortcuts in the kitchen. Cake mixes? No way! Store-bought pie crusts? Never! (except for every time I make a pie...) Pasta sauce in a jar? Why, when I can spend six hours making my own? The same goes for canned beans. Real cooks use dried beans. Real cooks know that the hours of soaking and cooking dried beans result in a flavor that is far, far superior to canned beans. At least this is what always goes through my head when I buy cans of black beans and pinto beans and garbanzo beans each week.

But not this week. I reached for the can of garbanzos on the grocery store shelf, then paused. And right there in the bean aisle I made a decision to change my life. I was going to start buying dried beans.

But change is never easy. I began, of course, by using a shortcut; instead of soaking the dried garbanzos overnight the package said I could boil them for 2 minutes and soak for only 1 hour. After an hour of soaking I transferred the beans into a vessel (a crock pot) where they could slowly and comfortably cook into the amazing beans they were supposed to be. And while I went about my day, those little beans cooked and cooked and cooked. As they filled the house with an amazing aroma I kept thinking, cooking beans in a crock-pot is so easy! Why did I ever buy those pathetic canned beans anyway?

But seven, yes, seven hours later those canned beans weren't seeming so pathetic. I'm not sure if I was disappointed or pleased to find out that dried garbanzo beans, carefully cooked for seven long hours, tasted exactly like the garbanzo beans I'd been buying in cans all these years.

Eventually I'll give dried black beans and pinto beans a fair chance to prove their superiority and I'll let you know how it goes. But garbanzos? I'm back to buying them in a can, without the tiniest bit of guilt.

Curried Garbanzo Beans

1/2 onion, diced
1 garlic clove, minced or put through a garlic press
1 can garbanzo beans, with liquid
1 14.5 oz can diced tomatoes
1/2 cup broth (or water)
2 carrots, sliced thinly (optional)
1 cinnamon stick, broken in half
1 1/2 tsp red curry powder


Saute onion in olive oil until soft. Add garlic. Just as garlic starts to brown add the rest of ingredients. Simmer on low until broth reduces and mixture is somewhat thick, about 25 minutes. Salt to taste. Serve over rice.

Dressing Up

My favorite salad dressing for a long portion of my life - ranging from the age when memories first start up until the end of highschool- was Ranch dressing made from the dry mix. It was the official Meier household salad dressing, sworn in by Mom, who said it tasted better than bottled Ranch (she was right.) This was long before olive oil and balsamic vinegar and flax oil made it into our kitchen and long before any of us knew to feel incredibly guilty about eating ingredients like Maltodextrin, Monosodium Glutamate,Modified Food Starch, Casein and Hydroxypropyl MethylCellulose (mixed with mayo and buttermilk, of course).

It pleases me, though, that whenever I go home there is still an orange Tupperware container in the fridge filled with Ranch dressing. With all due respect to the farmer's market shopping-healthy eating-locavore dining-Michael Pollan disciples out there, (I can say this, because I am actually one of them) sometimes modified food starch and maltodextrin mixed with mayonnaise still tastes really good. Standing in the kitchen late at night reading a magazine and eating summer lettuce and a grilled chicken drumstick doused in Ranch dressing is much more fun than doing the same thing while eating micro-greens and sprouts doused in lemon juice. This is an irrefutable fact.

But as they say, you can't go back. Ranch dressing made from a dry mix is no longer the official household dressing at my parent's house; it is an indulgence for meals when the body is so overloaded with healthy omegas from flax oil that it can't take any more. In my own kitchen, I long depended on balsamic vinegar to dress salads then turned to fresh lemon when I moved to a city where lemons grew on trees outside the door. But lately, I have grown salad weary. I simply can't eat another bowl of such plainly dressed greens. I need a salad with a little more style. I want something that tastes good but doesn't make me feel guilty. This search will continue all summer I presume, but for now I have been satiated by a Mango-Avocado dressing that's incredibly easy to make. This recipe makes a few cups of the dressing and after a few days in the fridge it gets a little thick, so eat it sooner rather than later.

Mango-Avocado Dressing

In a blender mix:
1 peeled mango
1/2 of an avocado
1 tsp dijon mustard
1/2 of a jalapeno pepper, minced
1 Tbsp cilantro (or parsley)
1 Tbsp lime juice
1/4 cup rice wine vinegar
1/2 cup vegetable oil
Salt and Pepper to taste

Eat Yur Bitter Greens

Bitter gets a bad rap. The dictionary doesn't do the word any favors (having a harsh, disagreeably acrid taste; grievous; distressful; piercing; stinging...you get the picture).Neither does life (usually used to describe exes we never want to see again.) But bitter happens to be a flavor I often enjoy (talk amongst yourselves about what this says about my personality) and I wish for the word that its definition was a little kinder.

Because it isn't, though, wine sellers stoop to using words like "pleasing astringency" instead of bitter, as writer Evan Spingarn explains in his piece about Wine for Adult Tastes. The world "sweet" is often tagged on to "bitter" when describing chocolate to make it more palatable. And when it comes to bitter greens they're often simmered for hours and drenched in fat to smooth out the very thing that makes them great: bitterness.

It is because of this long tradition of cooking bitter greens beyond recognition that greens such as mustard, collard and kale are often thought of as winter food. But when cooked with a lighter hand - a quick saute, a drizzle of olive oil, a paper-thin slice of prosciutto - greens are as summery as any salad out there.

Mustard greens are for the hardcore. Kale is for a more-sensitive palate. Collards are somewhere in between. I'm willing to bet you've passed over kale every time you're in the produce section. This week, don't. Grab one bunch (it wilts down to serve 3 people), chop it roughly and give it a rinse and dry in the salad spinner. Heat some olive oil (add mushrooms, onions or garlic if you like. Add a little prosciutto or bacon if the dish looks a little too green for your liking) and throw the kale in. Saute until the moment the greens wilt and the bright green color fades to a darker hue.

In the summer months, I like serving sauteed greens with fish (salmon is especially good) and white beans warmed right out of the can with fresh herbs sprinkled on top.

Beauty over Practicality in the Kitchen

I'm really into glass jars these days. I was forced into it, as I'm living with an interior decorator right now who loves everything beautiful and banishes all ugliness (which includes despicable things like plastic tupperware containers and toilet paper holders. She said if she could, she wouldn't even have toilets in her house). I don't have anything against toilets, but I can see her point about the Tupperware. Practical, yes. Aesthetically pleasing, not so much. I had to send The Husband to work last week with a glass jar of oatmeal and strawberries for breakfast. Not the easiest container to carry to work, perhaps, but there was something really nice and old fashioned about it. I've always been a fan of Crate & Barrel's glass storage bowls but now I'm hooked on regular canning jars as well. Try bringing a salad to a BBQ this weekend in a tall glass jar (like the thai chicken salad below that I'm totally in love with right now).


Or at the very least, use a glass jar to make and shake-up your dressing.
Dressing:
1 jalepeno pepper, seeded and diced
3 Tbsp fresh lime juice
2 Tbsp Asian fish sauce
1 garlic clove, minced
1/2 tsp sugar or honey
1/4 tsp salt

Salad:
1 lb. chicken breast
1/2 head napa cabbage (or regular cabbage) sliced into thin strips
3 carrots, peeled and cut into rounds (or grated)
1 cucumber, diced
1 red pepper, diced
1/2 cup roughly chopped cilantro
1/2 cup roughly chopped fresh mint

Whisk dressing ingredients together or put in a glass jar and shake. Saute chicken breasts in a pan with olive oil, salt and pepper, or grill it outside. Let chicken cool and then cut into small, bite-sized pieces. Toss vegetables and herbs together in a large bowl. Add chicken and dressing. Toss well.

This chicken salad is also really good as a sandwich, on a baguette with a little mayo

Fiddlehead Ferns

I've always been a little bit afraid of Fiddlehead Ferns. Being an urban forager who roams through cute gourmet shops is quite a different thing than being a forager forager who actually goes into the woods and picks things. But I've been wanting to cook fiddleheads for years - so when I was hiking near Seattle on Whidbey Island and saw them growing wild, then soon after saw them in a grocery store in Connecticut, I knew it was a sign. Suddenly, Fiddlehead Ferns were showing up everywhere in my life. I had to eat them.

Sold for an affordable $6.99/lb, I bought a half pound plus some angel hair pasta and prosciutto. I still felt a little bit of unease - I'm mean, look at these things in my sink! - but I got passed it when I realized how easy they are to cook. Simply give the ferns a quick swim in boiling water (3 minutes or so) and then saute them into whatever dish you like. The flavor is a lot like asparagus and the texture is similar as well but crunchier.

The recipe below serves 2. The prosciutto can be subbed out for mushrooms. This pasta would be delish with a Sauvignon Blanc or Albarino wine.

Fiddlehead Ferns with Pasta and Prosciutto
1/2 lb. Fiddlehead Ferns
1/3 box of angel hair pasta
6 pieces of prosciutto, sliced thin and torn into shreds by hand
2 Tbsp olive oil
Grated Parmigiano or Pecorino cheese for garnish
Salt and Pepper to taste

Boil enough water to cook the pasta. Add Fiddlehead ferns first, boiling for 3 minutes. Remove the ferns from the boiling water and then put in the pasta to cook. Heat 1 Tbsp olive oil in a pan. Add ferns and a pinch of salt and pepper. Saute ferns 4-5 minutes, then add prosciutto and another Tbsp olive oil. Turn off the heat, add the cooked noodles and cover the pan. Let sit 1-2 minutes, then serve pasta garnished with grated Parmigiano-Reggiano or Pecorino.
Recipe by Jennifer Meier

Old Mother Hubbard . . .

. . . went the cupboard to get her poor dog a bone. When she got there, the cupboard was bare and so the poor dog had none.

I've been reaching deep into the bowels of my cupboard this week, opening cans and boiling noodles and grains that have been in there for who knows how long. Yes, it is good to keep a well-stocked pantry, but it is also good to flush out the pantry now then. Spring is the perfect time to do this sort of cleaning and so is the week before you leave on extended time away from your apartment, which happens to be my motivation. I vowed to buy as few new groceries this week as possible and to shop only from my own cupboards and refrigerator. I've had some admittedly bad meals (the night of sardines and quinoa was rough) and some good ones, like this easy salad of cabbage, carrots and garbanzo beans in sesame-soy dressing.

This recipe can be adapted for whatever vegetables you have in your fridge. The egg can be left out if you like; I just happened to have one lonely egg sitting in my fridge that needed to be used. The garbanzos can also be subbed out for other forms of protein: chicken, salmon or tofu would be good.

Vegetable Salad with Sesame-Soy Dressing
1/4 of a cabbage, finely chopped or grated
2 carrots, peeled and sliced
1 can garbanzo beans, drained and rinsed
1 egg, either scrambled or hard boiled.
1/2 cup roughly chopped cilantro
1/4 cup sesame seeds
2 Tbsp soy sauce
1 Tbsp sesame oil
1 scallion, finely chopped
1 tsp brown sugar
dash of red pepper flakes


Combine the cabbage, carrots, garbanzos and cooked egg in a large bowl. In a pan over medium heat, toast the sesame seeds for 3-5 minutes until very lightly browned. Sprinkle the sesame seeds and cilantro over the vegetables. In a small bowl, whisk together soy sauce, sesame oil, scallion, brown sugar and red pepper flakes. Pour the dressing over the salad, toss well.

Granola

Over the years I've made many valiant attempts at making food at home that can easily be found in a restaurant or store. And over the years, I've had to admit defeat more than a few times. Marshmallows, for one. Why would anyone try to make homemade Marshmallows when you can buy a bag of perfectly fluffy, uniformly shaped Marshmallows for a few bucks? This is a good question and one I asked myself after the third time I found myself scraping thin, sticky, spongy homemade "Marshmallows" out of a pan. I have also vowed to The Husband and myself that I will never again attempt to make Thai food. Why go to five stores for fifteen different ingredients that I always manage to turn into an inedible mix of sweet/spicy/fishy flavors when I can simply pick up the phone and have Pad See-Iw delivered in twenty minutes?

But there are some things that never taste as good when they are store-bought and are incredibly easy to make at home. Pita chips, for one. Ricotta,surprisingly, is another. And last week, I added Granola to this list. I love Granola and I have never found a version in any store that I have fallen in love with. And believe me, I've tried them all, spending as much as $10.00 for a mediocre experience. It's usually too sweet or too dry. It usually has too many oats and not enough nuts. The flavor is often bland or artificial tasting. I am so much happier with my own homemade version that I will never buy Granola again. This recipe is easy to make, relatively healthy and can be adjusted to your personal tastes. Like more dried fruit? Add more! Love pecans and hate almonds? No problem! Trying to cut back on sugar? Just add less! The only ingredient I wouldn't tinker with is the oil - if you must cut back, just be warned that your Granola might lean towards something a horse would enjoy eating more than you.

3 cups old fashioned oats
3 cups nuts (I usually use a combination of two or three nuts. My favorites are pistachios, pine nuts, slivered almonds, pecans and pumpkin seeds)
1/2 cup shredded, unsweetened coconut (optional)
1/4 tsp kosher salt
1 tsp vanilla
1/4 tsp cinnamon
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1/3 cup water
1/3 cup brown sugar
1 Tbsp honey (you can also use maple syrup)
1 cup dried fruit (sometimes I use less, especially in the summer when I add fresh berries to a bowl of Granola)

Preheat oven to 300. Mix first 3 ingredients in a large bowl. Whisk together all other ingredients (EXCEPT dried fruit). Pour liquid over oats and nuts, mixing really well to completely coat. Pour Granola onto a rimmed cookie sheet (preferably lined with parchment paper.) Bake 1 hour, stirring several times. Take out of the oven and add dried fruit. Let cool. Store in an airtight container for up to 2 weeks.

Celery root

There are more than a few frightening-looking fruits and vegetables that look more like creatures you’d find under your bed than something you’d want in your kitchen.
When I bought celery root recently, I was sure I’d come out for a glass of water during the night and find that the root had sprouted legs and beady eyes or some sort of sticky gremlin-like cocoon. But beneath its scary exterior, is a mild and harmless vegetable.

Celery root, also known as celeriac [sel-LER-ee-ack], is the ugly cousin of celery. It can be eaten raw or cooked and tastes a
little bit like a cross between celery and a potato. To serve the root raw, peel it, shred it on a cheese grater and added a little mayonnaise and shrimp for a light salad. Cooked, you can treat celery root like any other root vegetable: bake or boil; puree or mash.

It supposedly keeps better in the fridge after buying, but I left mine on the counter for week. When left out long enough, the root gives off a savory aroma that smells exactly like Lipton Noodle Soup.