Wilted Arugula

I decided to go out on a limb last night and cook arugula to go with the meatballs Eric and I had for dinner, and I’m glad I did. The wilted arugula was a nice change of pace from a salad.  It was pretty good <<channelling Larry David>>, pret-tay, pret-tay, prettay good.  The only problem was that the greens cooked down to nothing.  I could have used a side salad after all because I didn’t feel like I got my fill of green veggies with dinner.  If you’ve never eaten cooked arugula before, I recommend trying it.

Lentil Soup and Meatballs

I’m amazed at how much more I can get done with an extra hour in the day thanks to Daylight Savings Time.  After a solid night’s sleep, I tumbled out of bed at 10 minutes to 8  this morning, walked Toby and ate breakfast. Eric made scrambled eggs with Saga blue cheese, bacon, toast and capuccino.

After breakfast, I got to work on my lentil soup. The recipe I use, which comes from The Barefoot Contessa Cookbook, makes enough for eight to 10 servings. I usually halve the recipe, but this time I made the whole thing so that I could freeze some of the soup. 

When I got to the point where I needed to add the stock to the vegetables (onions, leeks, carrots, celery), I paniced: I didn’t have enough stock.  The recipe called for three quarts and I only had two, 32-ounce containers of store-bought chicken stock.  Then I remembered that I had two containers of stock in the freezer that I had made (eep!) two summers ago when Eric and I were buying organic chickens from Two Spoon Farm.  I dumped the frozen stock into the soup and was saved by my own industriousness.  Eric and I are going to have the soup for dinner tonight with a salad and some bialys our industrious friend Erica whipped up this morning. 

Next on my to-do list (after walking Toby a second time) was mixing up the ingredients for Italian-style meatballs (recipe from the February 2006 issue of Martha Stewart Living magazine), which I cooked in a couple of cans of diced tomatoes with some olive oil, garlic and crushed red pepper flakes.  Eric and I will have the meatballs for dinner tomorrow night.  I can’t decide whether to serve a salad with the meatballs, or try a recipe for wilted arugula that I found in another past issue of Martha Stewart Living magazine.  I’ve never eaten arugula cooked, and I can’t imagine what it’s like. Honestly, the idea of cooked arugula doesn’t send me, but I might make it anyway just to try something different.  On the other hand, I hate to waste the perfectly good arugula that I got in my CSA two weeks ago by cooking it.  Maybe I should just make an arugula pesto? 

What do you think? Should I make a salad to go with the meatballs, or try the wilted arugula?

Anaheim and Jalapeno Poppers, Friday Night’s Dinner

Eric and I got a variety of peppers in our CSA two weeks ago–a combination of sweet peppers along with a jalapeno and an anaheim.  Tonight I’m going to turn the jalapeno and the anaheim into poppers. 

I’ve never made jalapeno poppers before so hopefully mine will come out alright. This recipe for jalapeno poppers from AllRecipes.com sounds great!  Unfortunately, it calls for cream cheese, and I don’t have any cream cheese in the fridge.  I have sour cream, which won’t provide the right consistency, but it will have to do.  Rather than halving the peppers, which is what the recipe calls for, I think I’ll leave mine whole (minus the ribs and seeds) so that the sour cream and cheese mixture doesn’t melt out when I fry them.   

I’m also going to make more roasted veggies and a salad to go with the poppers since we still have so much lettuce, cauliflower, potatoes and beets left.

Update 7:14 PM

The poppers came out awesome!  Eric bought cream cheese at the general store so that I didn’t have to use sour cream, and it made all the difference.  The sour cream just wouldn’t have withstood the heat of frying.  I left the peppers whole and stuffed them with the cream- and cheddar cheese mixture. (I left out the bacon bits because I didn’t feel like cooking bacon and having yet another pan to clean up.)  I fried the peppers in a saute pan because I don’t have a deep fryer. (If Eric and I owned a deep-fryer, we’d be in deep trouble, as we’d be cooking donuts and churros and friend chicken ALL. THE. TIME.) If I ever make the poppers again, I’ll fry them in a Dutch oven or a large pot to prevent the oil from spattering all over my cook top.

Roasted Vegetables, Thursday Night’s Dinner

Two weekends ago, Eric and I visited our friends, the Donnelly-Foremans.  Stephen and his daughter Madden cooked an awesome dinner for us: grilled rib-eye steaks and roasted vegetables.  After feasting on Madden’s savory roasted veggies, I vowed I’d make them for Eric and me, and tonight, I did just that. 

We have so many vegetables from the CSA that cutting up a bunch of them, tossing them with some olive oil and kosher salt, and roasting them in the oven is a perfect way to use them. I roasted a beet, some fingerling potatoes, a carrot, a sweet potato and some cauliflower at 425 degrees for an hour.  I neglected to toss the veggies while they were cooking, and consequently, they got a little burned, but they still tasted great.  

I had intended to marinate some tofu to go with the roasted veggies for dinner, but I never had a chance to whip up a marinade this morning or on my lunch break.  Fortunately, there was a leftover piece of pecan chicken in the fridge from Tuesday night,  which Eric ate with the vegetables.  There wasn’t enough chicken for both of us, so I fixed myself a salad and sprinkled it with some kidney beans.  Not surprisingly, it wasn’t enough food for me. I guess I’ll have to have a hot fudge sundae later tonight.

Dinner Menu: Wednesday Night

For a meat-and-potatoes man…actually, allow me to rephrase this. The meat-and-potatoes man I’m writing about is my husband, but he’s not so much of a potatoes man. He likes potatoes, for sure, but he also likes to avoid carbs.  So I guess I should just call him a meat man.

For a meat man, my husband, who loves his steak and his venison and eats bacon for breakfast almost every day, is surprisingly open to eating vegetarian meals, including tofu.  The fact is, the guy just likes to eat. It doesn’t matter what he’s eating so long as it tastes good.  I am grateful for this because, although I am a flesh-eating omnivore, I enjoy cooking and consuming vegetarian meals. 

Tonight I cooked a meatless meal: A quick black bean soup, Delicata squash and salad.  The recipe for the black bean soup came from Simple and Delicious magazine, and it was indeed simple and delicious. It consisted of just four ingredients: a can of black beans, a cup and a half of chicken stock, 3/4 of a cup of chunky salsa (I used Newman’s Own) and lime juice.  Dump all the ingredients in a pot, heat over a simmer, and voilà: You’ve got instant, tasty black bean soup.

The Delicata squash came in last week’s CSA. I baked it at 375 degrees for 30 minutes.  The red leaf lettuce and bell peppers that I used in the salad also came from Clear Brook Farm. 

It was the perfect, hot, nourishing supper for a cold, rainy Vermont night.

The Elusive Morel Hides No More

We found some morels!  We finally found some wild morels! Eric, Toby and I went for a hike on Sunday, and Eric spotted one within minutes of getting out of his car: The tiny fleshy fungus rose proudly from a pile of rotting leaves, near the base of a gnarled old Ash tree.

Unlike previous foraging expeditions, we hadn’t gone out specifically to mushroom hunt.  Our intent was to hike.  But when we reached the trail head, Eric noticed all the Ash trees and thought the forest could be productive morel habitat. And it was.  We collected nine morels. I found three or four, and Eric spotted the rest.

The experience of discovering the mysterious little mushrooms was like finding gold. Honest to G-d. That’s the way I described it to Eric at the height of my excitement while we were in the woods.  My analogy is not so far-fetched: Morels are that rare and valuable. One pound of wild morels retails for $40. Our nine blonde morels probably weighed about 12 ounces.  They were nice and plump.

Since morel season is just about over, Eric and I are very excited to have a good spot for shrooming next spring.  We’ll pick a bunch for ourselves and sell the rest.  If you’re interested in buying some morels, place your order now!

Eric and I are hoping we’ll get some rain in the next day or two so that we can go back to our spot and hopefully harvest one last crop.  I *really* want to make a morel and ramp quiche and a morel risotto.

We cooked four of the morels last night in some butter and sherry and ate them with grilled ribeye steaks and garlic toast.  Even though Eric was certain the morels were not the poisonous “false morels” because the mushrooms’ stalks were hollow and the ridges symmetrical, I was still a little nervous about eating them, having never before consumed a mushroom I’d picked in the wild. The mushrooms were delicious, though they tasted faintly of dirt (to me) despite my efforts to clean them thoroughly.  I did not get sick, nor did I have visions of Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds after eating them, for better or for worse.

We’ll eat the rest of the morels this week.

Cooking with Game: Partridge

Eric shot a partridge last November, and we finally ate it for dinner last night. It was scrumptious.

I just love partridge. It doesn’t taste at all gamey, and it’s so easy to prepare. We usually roast it. Here’s our fool-proof method, which Eric employed last night:

Season bird with salt and pepper. Rub skin with butter and place in a roasting pan with some ramps (wild leeks) and a splash of white wine. (We prefer the screw cap wines. Nothing but the best for us.) Bake at 400 for 35 minutes.

Interesting note about the partridge Eric cooked last night: When he cleaned it out, we saw that its last meal had been bittersweet.

I made a bulgar wheat salad to go with the partridge.  I tossed a cup of cooked bulgar with some olive oil, lemon juice, sliced grape tomatoes, diced yellow bell pepper, chopped red onion and feta cheese.  It was wicked good.

How do you like to prepare partridge?

Zucchini and Tomato Frittata with Ramps

On Mother’s Day, I cooked breakfast for my mom, dad, brother and sister-in-law.  I baked corn muffins filled with raspberry jam (à la Ina Garten) and prepared a zuchinni and tomato frittata, which I’ve made before.

The frittata recipe calls for onions, but this time I replaced them with the ramps (wild leeks) that Eric and I had picked the prior Sunday.  I’m guessing I used about 1/4 to 1/3 of a cup of chopped wild leeks (I didn’t measure.)

I honestly think the frittata turned out better because of the ramps.  Its flavor was much richer, and it smelled even more fragrant when it was cooking in the oven than I remember it smelling last year. Of course, the frittata might have tasted better this year because my mom doubled the amount of cheese that went into it.  But I really do think it was the ramps.

Fiddlehead Ferns, Ramps and Morels

Eric, Toby and I went foraging for fiddleheads, ramps (aka wild leeks) and morels on Sunday in Arlington and Manchester, Vermont.  Sadly, we didn’t find any morels; the earth was too dry at the time. Although most of the ferns had almost completely unfurled, we managed to collect several handfuls of bright green, tighly coiled fiddleheads.

We had the best luck with ramps. We probably picked close to two pounds.  I’ll never forget seeing ramps for sale for $14/lb. at a Whole Foods in Wayland, Massachusetts a few years ago. I remember thinking it was crazy to pay so much money for a food you could easily find in the woods.  I can only imagine what a pound of wild leeks fetches these days at a Whole Foods. Do I hear $20/lb.? (Going, going, sold to the sucker driving the Saab!)

I bought salmon steaks at the grocery store to prepare en papillote for dinner Sunday night.  I couldn’t wait to cook them with the wild leeks and fiddleheads.  Unfortunately, I could only find farm-raised salmon at Shaw’s, which I’m never going to buy again. It’s bad for the environment, according to Eric, and not nearly as healthful as wild salmon. It’s much more fatty and tastes more fishy.

I seasoned both sides of the salmon steaks with salt and pepper and placed them on slices of lemon on top of the parchment paper.  I topped the the steaks with fresh parsley and dill and lots of ramps, crimped the parchment, and baked the steaks at 350 for about 20 minutes.

This was a great way to prepare farm-raised salmon because the lemon, herbs and ramps offset the fishy flavor the salmon, which, I must say, came out delicious.  I served the fish with steamed fingerling potatoes and steamed fiddleheads.  The fiddleheads were so good!  They tasted so fresh and green.  The ramps tasted amazing, too.  I just love the taste of a roasted wild leek.

The weather this week has been conducive to mushroom growth.  Eric is going turkey hunting tomorrow, and I’m hoping he’ll be able to find some morels or maybe even some chanterelles while he’s in the woods.  I’m dying to make a quiche with ramps and morels.  Unless I go out tomorrow at lunch, I don’t think I’ll have a chance to get back into the woods to forage until late next week, and by that time it may get dry again and the morels may be gone.

Of course, I hope Eric will come home with a turkey, too!

A Day of Hunting and Cooking

Patridge hunting season opened in Vermont last weekend, so Eric went hunting with a friend this morning. Eric took Toby with him since the friend he was meeting (Mike Q.) was bringing his Black Lab, Wally.  Toby was never trained for hunting because we got him from my parents when he was about 8 months old and because, as an alpha male Golden Retriever, it was hard enough to get him to heed our weak-willed human commands.  Needless to say, Eric and I were a little worried Toby would sabotage the hunt even though Eric’s taken him out hunting previously and he’s done fine.

Just to make sure Toby didn’t misbehave, I had a talk with him when I walked him before he left to meet Mike and Wally.  I told him to be a good boy when he went hunting with his Pa and to follow Wally’s lead (Wally has been trained to hunt.) I repeated this message to Toby several times, and I think it worked because when Eric and Toby came home around 1 PM, Eric said Toby did pretty well, all things considered.  He didn’t go crazy.  He didn’t run too far ahead of Eric and Mike.  He was a good boy.  He didn’t retrieve any birds because there weren’t too many birds for Mike and Eric to shoot at.  It turned out that Wally was the bad boy. Not so much in the field, but in the car.  He devoured three cider donuts Eric had bought–one he snatched right out of Eric’s hand.  That Wally.  He’s a rapscallion.