I love the excitement that comes with springtime foods and I find myself looking forward to things like sugarsnap peas and asparagus. But those things aren't available in Vermont yet and ramps are, so I've got ramps on the brain. I know I can get ramps at a few stands at the Montpelier Farmers Market this weekend, but I just didn't want to wait that long. So I decided to see if I could find any on my own. A few weeks back my boyfriend and I were tromping through Hubbard Park and saw some plants that we thought might possibly, maybe, could be ramps. We didn't investigate then, but I decided to make yesterday's exercise into a foraging trip. Armed with a bag, some gloves and a picture of a growing ramp cluster (it's surprising how different things look on your cutting board than in the dirt), I soldiered into the woods.

Turns out they are really easy to find. And once you find one cluster, there will surely be a couple thousand more plants within about 100 ft. So I had me some easy pickings. And I picked a lot. But I doubt I even got 1% of what was on that hillside. I cleaned and pureed the whole lot, so I could freeze it and use it for later. But 1/2 lb was saved from the freezer and used for this delicious (and potent) ramp pesto. I've got me some ramplicious breath now!

Ramp Pesto

1/2 lb cleaned whole ramps
3 oz feta cheese
1 tbs olive oil
3/4 tsp salt plus more to taste
1/4 tsp black pepper
1/2 cup almonds or walnuts
spinach to taste

1) Rough chop the ramps and add everything except the spinach to a food processor. Puree until smooth. Add the spinach to taste and puree until smooth.

Note: As ramps can be as spicy as raw garlic, if you’re using the pesto as a main component (as in pasta), I recommend adding 2-4 oz of raw spinach to cut the burn. If you’re using the pesto as a dip or spread, I recommend enjoying full rampiness and leaving the spinach out!

Wild leeks are back! And for the uninitiated, they are oh so tasty. Culinarily wild leeks are really less like leeks and more like onions. The tops can be used like scallions, although they look more flat and leaf-like and the bulbs are like, well, mini onion bulbs (I bet you didn't see that one coming). This recipe is from a couple years ago, but it's still as good as ever (but that does mean no photo for those who have been enjoying my fine, fine photography). And since I wrote this recipe I've discovered that you can make a fabulous wholeish grain risotto out of pearled barley (I say wholeish because pearled barley is kind of in between a whole grain and a white grain, nutritionally. But in my opinion it makes a good high-fiber risotto). To modify this recipe for pearled barley, just add an extra cup of broth (and choose a larger pearl for better nutrition and less refinement). Oh yum.

Wild Leek & Bacon Risotto

15 wild leeks, leaves and bulbs sliced and separated
6 pieces of bacon
1 cup white wine
1 cup Arborio rice
3 cups vegetable broth, warmed
1/2 tsp black pepper
1/4 cup parmesan cheese

1) Cook bacon over medium high heat to taste in a large high-sided frying pan or sauce pan. Remove the cooked bacon from the pan and set aside.
2) Cook the chopped wild leek bulbs in the bacon fat for about 1 minute. Add the white wine and scrape the yummy bits from bottom of the pan.
3) Add the rice and stir until almost all the liquid is absorbed by the rice. Add one cup of warmed broth and stir the mixture often until most of the liquid is absorbed.  Repeat for the rest of the broth.
4) Remove the risotto from the heat and mix in the cheese and black pepper. Enjoy!

I originally came up with this recipe because I had extra cabbage and cheese and just thought that this sounded good. At the time I still had it in my head that most people didn't like cabbage, so when I made this for a potluck and folks started clamoring for the recipe, I was pleasantly surprised. It did seem to take 2 years for me to get around to writing this recipe down, but let me tell you that this is a tasty one. It's dangerous for me to have a whole pan of mac & cheese in my house, so I made it for a potluck again. The folks at this potluck (an entirely different crowd) had equally excited admiration for the dish. So, this is officially two-potluck approved!

Cabbage Macaroni & Cheese

8 oz pasta (elbow or penne recommended), cooked, drained and set aside
1/2 medium cabbage (about 2.5 lbs of cabbage), chopped
1 medium onion, sliced
1 tbs olive oil
1/2 tsp salt
2 tbs butter
3 tbs all-purpose flour
1/8 tsp ground cloves
1/2 tsp onion powder
1/2 tsp garlic powder
1/2 tsp black pepper
1 1/2 tsp salt
2 tbs mustard
4 cups milk
1 1/4 lb semisoft cheese (Monterey Jack or a favorite local cheese), shredded
1/4 lb blue cheese, crumbled
9 oz crushed potato chips (thick cut recommended)


1) Preheat oven to 350° F and grease a 9x13 inch casserole dish

2) In a large sauté pan, over medium high heat, sauté the cabbage, onion, olive oil and 1/2 tsp salt until the cabbage has softened. Remove from heat and set aside

3) In a medium sauce pan, over medium heat, make a roux by melting the butter and then adding the flour (make sure to sift out any lumps first). With a fork, vigorously stir the flour and butter for several minutes until the flour just starts to brown. Add several tablespoons of milk and incorporate the milk into the flour with the fork. Add several more tablespoons and fully incorporate again. Repeat until all the milk has been added (once the mixture is more liquid than solid you can add more milk with each addition). Add the cloves, onion powder, garlic powder, black pepper, salt and mustard to the milk mixture and cook, continuing to stir regularly with the fork, until mixture has thickened. Remove the sauce from the heat and mix in 1/2 the semisoft cheese.

4) In a large bowl, mix together the cooked pasta, cabbage mixture and cheese sauce. Pour into the prepared casserole dish and top with the other half of the semisoft cheese, crumbled blue cheese and finally the crushed potato chips. Bake at 350° F for about 1/2 hour or until the cheese on top is cooked to your desired level of doneness.

I wrote an article about fennel for the latest issue of Local Banquet and you can see it here:
http://www.localbanquet.com/issues/years/2012/spring12/fennel_sp12.html or read the whole magazine digitally here (which I highly recommend):
http://issuu.com/localbanquet/docs/spring12?mode=window&viewMode=doublePage
I've got some cools things coming down the writing pipeline too, so be sure to keep an eye out!

I'm always excited when there's a dish in my head that I've been wanting to do for a while and then someone comes along and asks me to write a recipe that fits perfectly with the recipe in my head. This is just one of those recipes!

As someone who doesn't eat refined sugar, I've always been excited by the common inclusion (in Vermont at least) of maple creme brulee on fancy restaurant menus. And then I've always been sad that the sugar they "brulee" (i.e. burn) is the regular table sugar that my insides don't agree with. And they already added the sugar to the top of every prepared custard, so I can't even just get maple custard.

Prior to developing this recipe, I had never had creme brulee. It always enticed and intrigued me, but I could never eat the sugar on top. I always felt like it could be made with maple sugar, but that was never offered in restaurants and pre-weight loss me really shouldn't have eaten the maple sugar anyway (even though I occasionally came up with some really valid sounding excuses for why I could, just this one time). But maple sugar is one of the many delicious things my post-weight loss pancreas can handle, so a maple sugar maple creme brulee has gotten back on my radar screen in recent months.

So, when the manager of the Montpelier Farmers Market emailed me to ask if I had a good maple recipe for this week's market newsletter, I jumped on the chance. And oh my, did I just fall down a high calorie rabbit hole of deliciousness (and if you don't mind, I might just hang out down here for a while).

Creme brulee is way easier than many restaurants make it seem. My experience in the food world has taught me that most savory chefs are terrified of the sweet kitchen, so if you see a dessert that even a chef will make, you'll probably be able to handle it just fine. Creme brulee does take a little time, but it's largely unattended time. So you can be doing other stuff at the same time, or make the custard ahead and burn the sugar under the broiler in about 5 minutes right before you're ready to serve.

So, have fun with this one. And I won't even tell you what my new calorie counting app says is in this little indulgence...


Maple Crème Brulee

2 cups heavy cream
1/2 tsp vanilla
1 large egg
3 large egg yolks
1/3 cup maple syrup
4 tsp maple sugar

1) Preheat the oven to 325° F

2) Put the cream and vanilla into a small pan and, stirring occasionally, cook over medium high heat until the cream just starts to bubble.

3) In a medium bowl, beat the egg, egg yolks and maple syrup with a whisk until even. While whisking, slowly pour the hot cream into the egg mixture. Strain the egg and cream mixture into a large measuring cup with a spout (at least four cups).

4) Place the ramekins into a casserole dish and place the whole dish on the middle rack of the preheated oven. Pour the cream and egg mixture into each ramekin (it should just fill the ramekin). Then pour enough hot tap water into the casserole dish, so that the water reaches halfway up the side of the ramekins. Bake the custards in the water bath for about 40 minutes or until the custards still quivers when shaken, but has no liquid beneath the skin. Cool the custards in the fridge for 1 hour to three days.

6) When the custards are cool, turn on your oven broiler and evenly spread 1 tsp of maple sugar over each custard and place the custards on a cookie sheet. Move the oven rack to the highest location in the oven and put the sheet of custards under the broiler. The sugar will take about 5 minutes to burn, although broilers vary widely in intensity, so keep a careful eye on the crème brulees. The crème brulee is done when the maple sugar is a mix of light brown and black. Quick cool the crème brulees in the fridge for about one minute and then serve immediately.

This recipe came to mind originally as a parsnip dish. The sweetness of the parsnip plus the bite of the horseradish just sounded right to me. So, on batch one I peeled and sliced the parsnips into french fry sized pieces, and tossed them all in olive oil, spices and horseradish. While I like the sinus crushing power of fresh horseradish, I know most people prefer a slightly mellower flavor, so I kept the horseradish to just a mere tablespoon. Because I usually put horseradish in dips and spreads (or pair it with something sharp like vinegar or mustard), I hadn't realized how much horseradish mellows in the oven. So, while batch one made some tasty parsnips, the horseradish wasn't even noticeable.

While I still think that this dish would taste great with parsnips (or sweet potatoes), I used up all my parsnips on batch one and was obliged to move on to potatoes. It was a good move, because batch two was mighty tasty (even the leftovers taste good with ketchup and mustard, as the empty bowl next to my computer can attest to). The horseradish definitely comes through in this variation, but could even stand to take more horseradish, if you are inclined toward mighty flavors.


Roasted Horseradish Potatoes

6 large red potatoes (about 3 lbs)
4 tbs jarred horseradish
1 tbs olive oil
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp black pepper
1 tsp dried thyme

1) Preheat your oven to 450° F. Oil a large baking sheet pan.

2) Chop the potatoes (skin on) into roughly equal bite sized pieces. Mix in a large bowl with the rest of the ingredients

3) Spread potatoes out on the prepared pan and roast for 20-30 minutes, until fork tender. Enjoy!

I have spent far more Valentine’s Days on the single front than I have entwined in a couple, so when I was tasked with creating a Valentine’s Day themed recipe for the Montpelier Farmers Market newsletter, I had to spend a little time thinking about what this holiday meant to me. I never been much of a subscriber to the belief that you have to celebrate Valentine’s Day with pink hearts and squishy-wishy tweddy bwears. To me Valentine’s Day is about celebrating all the good stuff about the relationship you are in. Kind of like Mother’s Day for love. I also think that V-Day should be about you and your better half, so folks outside of the pair shouldn’t get a say (kind of like gay marriage, really).

We’re often taught what are appropriate date foods and what aren’t. Foods that are messy, need your hands, make your breath smell or make you fart are all out. But, to me, Valentine’s Day isn’t about dating, it’s about your coupledom, so if you and your partner like to get messy with your hands or don’t mind life’s odors, you should do what makes your pair happy. I love garlic, my man loves garlic, and when I suggested this dish to my man he quickly texted back “Yes please.” Since ours were the only opinions that mattered, I decided to give us mutually sweet breath with this sublime soup. One of my favorite parts about this soup (besides its taste) is the one cup of wine. The two of you can finish off the rest of the bottle together to get a head start on this holiday that’s as lovely as the one you love.




Valentine’s Day Garlic Soup

3 small yellow onions
3 medium heads of garlic (about 3.5 oz, unpeeled)
1 tbs fresh rosemary (or dried, if preferred)
2 tbs olive oil
1/2 tsp salt
1 cup white wine
4 cups vegetable or chicken broth
2 oz chevre (optional)

1) Peel, halve and then slice the onions (slicing from pole to pole, rather than across the center produces onion slices that hold their structure better in a soup). Peel and thinly slice the garlic. Finely chop the rosemary.

2) Add the onions, garlic, rosemary, olive oil and salt to a large saucepan and sauté over medium high heat, stirring often, until the onion has started to brown. Add the wine to the pot, reduce heat to medium and cook for about 5 minutes, until onion and garlic have softened. Add the broth to the pot and bring to a simmer. Remove from heat and portion into bowl. Add a 1/2 oz dollop of chevre to each bowl of soup, if you’d like. Enjoy!

Another article I wrote for Local Banquet. Aiming to aggregate my articles all in one place!

http://www.localbanquet.com/issues/years/2011/Fall11/fruitwines_f11.html

This is an article that I wrote last summer for Local Banquet, but might prove interesting to all involved. Especially to those folks who are missing the Butterfly Bakery hot sauce until peppers pop out of the ground next summer.

http://www.localbanquet.com/issues/years/2011/Summer11/hotSauce_s11.html

Are you familiar with creton? If not, you should be. (It’s pronounced cre-toungh or something like that. It’s got that French nasally “oungh” sound at the end). Creton is this fabulously delicious pork spread from Quebec. My French-Canadian boyfriend introduced me to the stuff, but he had no idea the flurry of pork deliciousness he was about to unleash in my kitchen. Creton is almost exclusively available north of the border, so if a roadtrip wasn’t in order, the kitchen was to become my pork-spread haven. Now this might be the point you might be thinking “pork SPREAD?” I understand the hesitance, but I assure it’s delicious with many uses. A common one is my house is on toast or bread. It also makes a great sandwich (think BLT, but with spreadable bacon). Like so many delicious things, it also tastes good on a spoon. Or fingers. Or other people’s fingers (just keep in mind where the creton ends and other people’s fingers begin – a common mistake).

Since I don’t see the point in making delicious foods with un-delicious ingredients, I sourced my pork from local farmers. Traditionally creton is made with ground pork, pork fat, breadcrumbs, milk and added spices (actually, most creton in Canada – especially that from old Canadian grandmothers – is made with MSG. While that’s some tasty stuff, I figured that that wasn’t the health profile I was aiming for. And really, I don’t want to know what health food black-ops reign of terror I was going to bring upon myself if I attempted to buy MSG in Vermont). I read a whole bunch of recipes online and planned my attack. My first few attempts weren’t what I was aiming for (but still well consumed by all involved). Mr. French-Canadian Boyfriend said that my creton tasted more like tourtiere (a Quebecois pork and beef pie, that, while delicious, was not creton, and not something I was going to attempt, since Mr. French-Canadian Boyfriend’s mother regularly makes him one that he likes very much). I finally decided to stop trying to recreate creton that tastes exactly what I had had in Canada (after all, no MSG on hand) and just aim for making some darn tasty pork spread. And let me tell you, this is some darn tasty pork spread. Instead of mixing ground pork and pork fat, I let someone else take that step and just used raw sausage. You can add more pork fat if you’d like, but it’s not necessary. Interestingly, Mr. French-Canadian Boyfriend thinks that this tastes more like “authentic” creton than any of the stuff I made before I stopped trying to recreate “authentic” creton. And how fast it disappeared in both our houses might just be testament to how much no one cares about authenticity and how much everyone does care about yummy, yummy piggies on our toast.

 

Bacon Leek Creton

1 bulb garlic
1/2 of the white of a medium-large leek
2 strips bacon
1 tbs butter (or pork fat)
1 lb raw pork sausage (casing removed)
1 cup milk
1/3 cup bread crumbs

1) Mince the garlic, leek and bacon and cook with the butter over medium heat in a medium sauce pan until vegetables are softened.

2) Add the sausage and smash/stir the mixture with the back of a wooden spoon until the sausage is well broken up and cooked.

3) Stir in the milk and breadcrumbs and spread out in the pan. Cook over medium heat until most of the liquid has cooked out (about 15 minutes). Transfer the creton to a storage container and chill. Serve cold and enjoy!