i really like your peaches fruit salad

It’s a fruit salad. It’s an aphrodisiac. Does summer get any better than this?

I invented this fruit salad after reading a chapter in Iwan Bloch’s Sex Life in England (1934) entitled “Curious Sexual Instruments.” Bloch was an old-school German sexologist — indeed, he is credited for being one of the founders of that branch of study — who wrote comprehensive books on large chunks of sexual life, including a biography of the Marquis de Sade and books on prostitution, erotic literature, and sexual odors.

In “Curious Sexual Instruments,” we find not only what you would expect, but also a few paragraphs on aphrodisiacs identified by experts. A certain M. Venette, author of De la Generation de l’Homme ou Tableau de l’Amour Conjugal, singles out foods such as egg whites, “sweet strong wine,” and milk. Another gentleman named Ryan adds these to the list: fish, turtles, oysters, crabs, lobsters, eggs, artichokes, truffles, mushrooms, celery, cocoa, onions, cinnamon, pepper, apricots, strawberries and peaches.

Bloch’s third source, the pornographic novel The Amatory Experience of a Surgeon (1881), is perhaps the least credible of the lot, but I believe everyone should try once what it recommends: making your move on the ladies with a cinnamon-dusted hand.

Or you could try this fruit salad instead. Capitalize on the local peaches coming into season, and the apricots in full swing.  It seems too decadent for breakfast to me, but you have your own morals.  You might perhaps decide to enjoy it after eating some of the other ingredients on the list: begin with raw oysters and chilled artichokes in a truffle mayonnaise, then tuck into a bouillabaisse of fish, shellfish, celery and onions, perhaps.

Whatever you do, save some room for dessert, because this is the best fruit salad I’ve ever tasted. If they don’t like your peaches after this concoction, heaven help you.

I Really Like Your Peaches Fruit Salad

Serves 2

• 2 ripe peaches, cubed
• 2 ripe apricots, cubed
• strawberries in some form, either fresh (everbearing from your garden?) or frozen, chopped, or a scoop of homemade strawberry preserves or syrup
• a few shakes of cinnamon
• a few grinds of black pepper
• 2 T. “strong, sweet wine” such as Port or Madeira
• 1 pint whipping cream

Mix together all ingredients but the whipping cream. Let macerate for at least 30 minutes. Adjust sweetening by adding a bit more Port, if necessary or pleasurable.

While fruit is macerating, whip cream until very stiff, even lumpy, and add a bit of sugar while whipping. An alternative is to use slightly sweetened ricotta or crème fraîche. Serve in individual bowls with a dollop of whipped cream on top and a drizzle of Port.

 

keeping cool with sour cherry and apricot soup

I should dedicate this, the second summer appetizer in my series of summer appetizers with obscure ingredients, to the folks at Hentze farm, where I bought the blushing, lovely apricots and the already-pitted sour cherries, submerged in their juice.  It made my life so easy, and easy livin’ is what summer is supposed to be about, right?

Sour cherries and apricots whisper Hungary to me.  My trip to Budapest in 2006 for a conference was one of the highlights of my life.  If my soul had a foreign home, it would be Hungary.  Of course, I’d soon die and have to be buried in a piano box because I would eat so much, but I’d die happy.  At one restaurant, I ordered sour cherry soup (meggy leves), thinking it would be a light starter.  Of course, being Hungary, it was thickened with sour cream and topped with whipped cream.  And every bite was delicious.

My version of the soup is lighter and appropriate for a July grilled meal.  The soup is still rich, but unless you want to serve it as a dessert (which you absolutely can), forgo the whipped cream and replace the sour cream with thinner, lighter crème fraîche.  Noris Dairy makes a delicious, slightly runny “sour cream” that is basically crème fraîche, so I use that.  You might try lightening up your sour cream with a bit of heavy cream if you can’t find crème fraîche.  If you can’t find that, you certainly won’t be able to find Hungarian apricot brandy, which is not imported much in the States, so substitute cherry brandy.  Or make your own apricot liqueur!

Using fresh sour cherries and apricots make this soup extraordinary.  It’s better to substitute fresh Bing or other cherries than to use frozen or canned sour cherries, since this is all about fresh summer produce.  I don’t bother peeling the apricots, but it might make the texture more elegant.

Sour Cherry Apricot Soup

Serves 4-6 as an appetizer or dessert

2 cups pitted sour cherries
3 cups cherry juice
½ cup fruity red wine, such as Merlot
1 cup quartered fresh apricots
1 T. sugar
½ cup crème fraîche
1 T. powdered sugar
1 piece cinnamon stick
1 star anise
3-4 whole cloves
1 T. apricot brandy (Hungarian barack palinka) or cherry brandy

Pour juice and wine into pot, add cherries, apricots, and sugar.  Place spices in small cheesecloth bag and tie with kitchen twine.  Submerge in juice.

Simmer cherries and apricots just long enough to soften them up, about 5-10 minutes.

Mix crème fraîche and powdered sugar in a small bowl.  Remove soup from heat and remove spice bag.

Scoop out about half of the cherries and apricots and puree in the food processor, then return to soup pot.

Quickly whisk in crème fraîche until thoroughly mixed, and add brandy.

Pour into small serving bowls and chill for several hours before serving.

 

blogger craves tunafish, details at 11

On Sunday, it was hot and we were moping around the house, looking for entertainment.  When that failed, we turned to food.  I didn’t feel like cooking, and I especially didn’t feel like eating the salad greens, carrots or radishes populating the crisper.  And we didn’t want to go out, either.  So I did what any reasonable foodie would do: turned over her kitchen to the creative wiles of her husband.

Retrogrouch loves sandwiches.  I could care less about sandwiches.  Undaunted, he opened a can of tuna, drained off the juice carefully.

“Give this to deserving individuals,” he pronounced solemnly.  “Of your choosing.”

One deserving individual happened to be begging at my feet.  I put the bowl o’ juice on the floor.

He dumped the tuna in my food processor.  A healthy scoop of the dill relish I had made that morning joined the party.  A few fat blurbs of mayonnaise invited themselves, too.

I looked pained.  “You’re going to blend that?  How about some green onions,” I asked, “or some herbs or vinegar or tomatoes?”

Retrogrouch brushed off my anxieties.  “Nope,” he said, and hit pulse.

A few seconds later, we had a creamy, dilly tuna spread that we slathered liberally on toasted wheat bread.  I don’t really like sliced wheat bread, either.  But it was so damn good I am drooling over it and I want his tunafish for breakfast now and for every meal for the rest of my life.  So I’m going to make an effort to do sandwiches for dinner more often, or better yet, make him do them!  Yay!

 

fastest pickle in the west

I once had a boyfriend who was so desperate for pickles, he’d even drink a jar of pickle juice.  I still haven’t quite forgiven him for scarfing down my expensive, hand-crafted practically Kobe-beef-fussiness-quality Japanese pickles that were carefully stowed away in my tiny apartment refrigerator in Tokyo.  Bonzai, cried he, and shinkansened out of town before I could beat him with a keisaku.  Thanks to his quick escape, we are still friends today, and I feed him pickles when I can.

So this post is for him.

It’s also for anyone who likes new dill pickles, the ones you get for free in New York delis, the half-sour ones.  Sometimes called refrigerator pickles, mine are much better (she said, humbly) because they have the spirit of half-sours but take less than half the time of than regular refrigerator pickles.  I developed the recipe while making real new dill pickles, a dubious wild fermentation preparation of whey, brine, and sitting on a counter for a couple days.  (The Master Food Preserver in me says no, the mouth is saying let’s go.)  When they work, they’re wonderful, slightly fermented, bright lime green, crisp, lovely.  When they don’t, well, you could die of botulism.

But the pickles I’m touting here are absolutely safe, and while not as good as real, fermented new dills, they are an excellent substitution and they only take a few hours to make.  Having a BBQ this weekend?  Try making these in the morning and serving them with your ribs in the evening.  The pickles last about a day, but the quality starts to deteriorate after that, so plan accordingly.

The preparation is inspired by Japanese cucumber salad, and also by my great-grandmother’s recipe for sweet and sour vinegar cucumber salad.  In both of these salads, the cucumbers are sliced, salted, and left to sit in a seasoned vinegar and water solution.  The Japanese sometimes add seaweed or sesame seeds; my great-grandma added thinly sliced white onion.  I was making my regular new dill pickles, as I mentioned, and I ran out of the requisite whey before I ran out of anything else, so I was inspired to turn a long wait into something fresh and salad-like, but with dill flavor.  I thought it might be an amenable idea to add pickling spices, garlic, and a couple heads of fresh dill to a brine and serve the cucumber “pickles” that night as a salad.  And sure enough, it worked.

Can you tell I’m super pleased by this one?  I am.  I have pickle addicts to feed.

Fastest Pickle in the West

• 4 cups sliced pickling cucumbers (1/2-inch slices)
• 3 cups cold water
• 1 T. sea salt
• 1 t. white vinegar
• 1 T. pickling spices
• 1 t. brown mustard seeds
• 3-4 garlic cloves, crushed
• 2 fresh dill heads, or substitute 2 t. dill seeds (not weed)

Wash pickling cucumbers well and slice.  Make brine of water, salt and vinegar.  Mix well, then pour over cucumbers in bowl or plastic container for marinating.  Add pickling spices, mustard seeds, garlic and dill.  Cover container and refrigerate at least 4 and up to 12 hours.  Does not keep for longer than a day or two.

 

ab ovo — tonight we’re gonna party like it’s 400 AD

We’re still struggling through over temperatures well into the 90s, and the last thing I feel like doing is cooking; even starting up the grill is fatiguing.  So I’ve been thinking about summer appetizers, those light, fresh, simple nibbles that highlight one or two ingredients and delight the eye and tongue with something unusual, and thought I’d feature a few of these beauties in the upcoming weeks.

These recipes will contain some ingredients which aren’t available widely, but they are fun to play with if you can get your hands on them.  I’ll suggest substitutes when I can.  What’s most important is to experiment consciously and purposefully with just one or two flavor combinations.

The first in my series of summer appetizers is an adaptation from the Culinaria Italy cookbook. Inspired by the fabled gourmand of ancient Rome, Apicius, who was likely a composite figure who created the world’s first cookbook, this recipe takes what was originally a sauce for soft-boiled eggs and returns it to the egg — in a deviled-egg-type sweet and sour stuffing of pinenuts and lovage.  I love the idea of lounging about in white togas with broad purple edging, and eating beautifully prepared, local stuffed eggs, with, say, peacocks strutting to and fro and slaves to refresh your gin-n-tonics (which were not Roman, but the British have Roman blood, and well, it’s *my* fantasy, ok?).

The fish sauce might be the strangest item in this recipe, but it approximates the popular Roman fermented fish condiment, garum or liquimen.  If it wigs you out, just use salt, and in all cases, use it sparingly.

Lovage is one of those perennial herbs that takes a while to get started but then stubbornly persists on little water and filtered light, year after year.  It has the taste of strong, sweet, lemony celery. It can easily overwhelm a dish with its perfumey, vegetal bitterness.  In short, we don’t see it much in American recipes except for the occasional soup.  But as a main attraction in a simple small dish, it can be refreshing.  You might choose to substitute celery leaves, or even tarragon, which would work well but change the character of the dish.

To make the perfect hardboiled eggs, follow my recipe below.  You won’t get the hard, dry yolks or the greenish cast that comes from overcooking the eggs.

Pinenut and Lovage-Stuffed Eggs

In ovis hapalis: piper, ligusticum, nucleos infusos. Suffundes mel, acetum, liquamine temperabis. (Original recipe in Latin)

12 hardboiled eggs

1/2 cup pine nuts, soaked in verjus, or a sweet wine such as Riesling, for 15-20 minutes

2 T. finely chopped lovage or celery leaves

1 T. honey

1/4 t. freshly ground pepper

2 t. vinegar

few dashes Thai fish sauce or salt to taste

Prepare hardboiled eggs by placing eggs in cold water and turn heat on medium high.  When water starts to boil vigorously, remove eggs from heat and place in bowl of cool water to stop cooking.  Cool eggs and peel.

Slice eggs in half lengthwise and carefully remove egg yolks to bowl, reserving egg whites for stuffing.  Combine pine nuts, lovage, honey and egg yolks.  Crush with wooden meat pestle or any heavy pounder until pine nuts are mostly smashed.  Add pepper, vinegar and fish sauce or salt, mix well, and stuff the eggs.  Garnish each egg with a lovage leaf or a few reserved pinenuts that you have roasted until light brown.  Refrigerate eggs until serving.

AND…for your picnicking pleasure…

Bonus Potato Salad with Eggs, Pinenuts and Lovage

This preparation also makes a great potato salad, according to Retrogrouch, who ate it all as I was cleaning up the kitchen.

Boil 2-3 medium waxy potatoes. Cool potatoes and slice or cube while still warm.   Combine potatoes with the crushed pinenut and herb preparation above, then add 3-4 chopped hardboiled eggs.  Add a handful of parsley and more lovage, if you have it.  Blend with 1/4 cup mayonnaise, or to taste, and salt and pepper.  Chill for a couple of hours before serving and keep cold in cooler if you plan to serve it outdoors or after a Roman orgy, since it is highly perishable.

 

raspberry jamboree

Alone this week, I busied myself with a borrowed dehydrator, a bottle of wine, a flank steak, Ore-Ida frozen hash browns, tofu, crummy supermarket grape tomatoes, a pint of succulent local Bings, frozen blackberry puree, and a half-flat of Willamette raspberries. Honestly, I feel like I could desiccate anything.

But this is about raspberries, and the time of the year I simply love the best. I still think it’s miraculous that raspberries grow so well here, and they are beautiful and delicious and huge. My raspberries, razzleberried up in the first shot here, are coming along slowly, given that it’s only their second year, but my Meekers are amazing and my Newburghs, although a bit rougher-looking than the perfectly conical, tight-fleshed Meekers, are sweet and delicious. My Amity and Heritage raspberries, and my single black raspberry, a Munger, are taking their own sweet time. So I went out an bought some Willamettes, not nearly as nice as Meekers, but still much better than anything you can get in the supermarket.

So I set about trying to destroy them.

First, I dried a few pints, against the advice of the Preservation Wise Ones, who said that the quality doesn’t hold up. I thought they’d be good thrown in cereal. I still do, although the sweetness was largely sucked away and they turned very seedy, even the largest ones.

Next, I added a handful of raspberries to a jar full of Italian white wine vinegar, along with some Szechuan peppercorns and star anise. The mild sweetness of the raspberries seems to be working well with the floral heat of the peppercorns and the spicy undertone of the star anise. The vinegar needs to sit and steep for a couple weeks before using it. Making flavored vinegars is a forgiving, beginner-level activity that everyone should try! You should avoid containers with metal caps. Don’t worry too much about fresh herbs or fruits spoiling in the concoction– the vinegar is a great preservative — but aim for no more than a ratio of 1:3 fruit:vinegar.

I thought I’d use the vinegar with grilled chicken and fruits, and in a contemporary “shrub,” which is an old American summer refresher. Think perverse Lime Rickey.

Raspberry Shrub

1 T. raspberry vinegar, preferably homemade

1-2 T. sugar, or to taste

pint glass filled with ice

carbonated water or club soda

fresh mint to garnish

Mix together vinegar and sugar until dissolved. Add vinegar mixture to glass filled with ice, then top with carbonated water. Garnish with mint sprig. Drink shouldn’t be too sweet for maximum refreshment.

By the way, it’s not local, but if you can afford a bottle of St. George’s Aqua Perfecta Meeker raspberry eau-de-vie or raspberry liqueur, be sure to pick one up. And another one for me, kthxbai.

 

goodbye kale and chard, hellllllllllo summer!

With this weekend’s heat (finally!), I knew I’d have to harvest the rest of my spring greens and snowpeas, plus with the Olympic Trials starting in Eugene with all its attendant crowds at local restaurants, it seemed the perfect time to stay at home. So we decided to host an impromptu barbecue!

Retrogrouch manned the meat station, and I played with vegetables. I’ll post about my new invention, Faster Than A Speeding Bullet New Dill Pickles, later. Suffice it to say I used a Japanese method and my great-grandma’s Polish cucumber salad to make a very serviceable new dill pickle slice in three hours flat. We ended up making a variety of grilled things based on what people brought, so it was a night of burgers, brats, salmon and steak (!), plus my black bean bulgar wheat salad and a mesclun salad with chive blossom vinegar as sides. Someone brought a lovely cool lime tart for dessert.

Another discovery was a very decent “spinach-artichoke” dip that I drummed up from our huge supply of greens. It was made from much healthier ingredients than your usual spinach dip. My recipe makes 3-4 cups of a relatively firm-textured dip that can’t be frozen, so you’ll either have to scale down or use it as a stuffing in cherry tomatoes, celery, peapods, etc., or as a pasta sauce. Or have a huge party! Or just leave it in the fridge and snack on it all weekend long during a heat wave…

The farmers markets are selling early, soft, large-leaved basil, so I used some for this recipe. It makes the dip taste less like “spinach-artichoke” and more like pesto, which is not necessarily a bad thing. The base is ricotta cheese instead of sour cream or mayo, which helps lend a lightness to the dip, as does the lack of oil. Add just a bit of lemon juice to keep the basil from discoloring. We used a budget Parmesano Reggiano, which was fine, and frozen artichoke bottoms, available at Middle Eastern grocery stores. You could also use artichoke bottoms (or hearts) canned in water.

Spring Greens Basil Artichoke Dip

Makes 3-4 cups.

• 1 very large bunch chard
• 1 very large bunch kale
• 1 big handful fresh basil
• 6-8 oz. frozen artichoke bottoms, thawed and chopped
• 1 lb. whole milk ricotta cheese
• 1/4 cup light cream cheese
• 1/4 cup parmesan cheese, grated
• 1-2 cloves garlic, minced
• 1 T. lemon juice
• salt and freshly grated pepper

Clean greens and remove stems. Blanch the chard and kale in a large pot of boiling water by submerging the leaves in the water for only a couple of minutes max, until they are bright green and wilted. (I did it in two batches.) Then, remove the leaves and immediately plunge them in a large bowl of iced water to stop the cooking and set the color.

After letting the greens cool, remove from iced water and squeeze as much water from the ball of greens as you can (again, it’s better to do this in at least two batches).

When greens are prepared, add them and the rest of the ingredients to a food processor, and pulse until ingredients are well mixed but not pureed.

Add salt and freshly ground pepper to taste. Salt is crucial, since the ricotta and greens are mild.

Refrigerate for at least an hour. The ricotta cheese and small amount of lemon juice makes this dip not so great for keeping at room temperature for long periods.

Serve with wheat crackers or pita bread.

 

of bicycle tour maps and new potatoes with mint

Retrogrouch has been in training for a long bike trip, and we’ve been discussing the particulars.  He’s adamant about being old-school, and I’m itching to play with the dehydrator and dry him 10-course meals for the journey, so we have very different plans.  But we agree that he needs appropriate clothing.

So he sends me this film made by the British Transport Film group, an account of the Bicyclists’ Special Touring Excursion to Rugby on May 8, 1955, with a note saying he plans to model his “entire look on these chaps.”

So I watch it… As expected, not my cup of tea.  Bikes, English people, bikes, bikes, trains, bikes, bikes, bike parts, ooh–there’s some tea…and bikkies!, bikes, bikes, healthy young people, bikes, propaganda, bikes, trains, bikes, bikes…then, hello!

“H. H. England, the Editor of Cycling, knows that a cycling tour without a map is like new potatoes without the smell of mint.”

My interest is piqued.  Minted new potatoes! Who knew!? What kind of a British conspiracy kept this delicious secret from the Yanks?  I look it up, thinking the mint would be added raw to the cooked potatoes, but discovered they BOIL the potatoes with mint!  Wow.

So we cycled out (ok, I drove) and bought some local new potatoes called German Butterballs, a yellow, lovely potato, and a head of new garlic, large and well-formed but still with undifferentiated cloves.  With herbs from my garden, it was an easy side dish.

The video itself is pretty interesting — socialism on bikes, sponsored by the railway network propaganda machine.  Bits of history and British imperialism sneak in every so often.  And check out those woolen cycling knickers.

More importantly, however, is the existence of MINTED NEW POTATOES.  I don’t normally steal recipes wholesale, and if I do, I certainly don’t blog about them, but this one was so beautiful and pristine that I couldn’t resist.  OK, I did change it just a teeny tiny bit, by accenting the mint cooking liquid with more chopped mint, and adding both lemon and French thyme, plus their blossoms, to the potatoes.

I don’t know much about the British cook Nigel Slater, other than he seems to be a lyrical writer and a good cook dedicated to the ebb and flow of British seasonal cooking, so you bet I’d like to know more. In this recipe, he boils the potatoes as usual with mint sprigs, then smashes each one in a baking dish, dots the potatoes with an herb and garlic butter, then bakes just until the top is until crusty and browned.

I’d like to think Mr. Slater would approve of my use of local butter, potatoes, new garlic, and herbs.  Not very British, no, but as right as a tour with a map.

Bicycle Tour With A Map Minted New Potatoes

Serves 4 as a side dish.

1 pound new potatoes around the same size, no more than three inches in diameter

a handful of clean, fresh mint sprigs (4-5 large ones), two set aside for garnishing

1/4 cup unsalted butter

3 T. minced new garlic (not garlic scapes)

1 T. fresh thyme

freshly ground pepper and sea salt

sprigs of mint and thyme to garnish

Scrub potatoes well without peeling (new potatoes have flaky, thin skins — see image above).  Place in pot and cover with cold water.  Add several mint sprigs, reserving enough to add some to the finished dish and as a garnish.

While the potatoes are boiling, mince new garlic and thyme, then mash into the butter in a small bowl.  Add sea salt and freshly ground pepper to the butter to taste.

Boil potatoes until a thin knife can pierce them easily.  Drain potatoes, discarding mint.

Preheat broiler on high.  Place each potato in a Pyrex baking dish, and smash each one lightly with a fork, so the insides are bared but you can still see the shape of the potato.  Dot each potato with the compound butter, and broil only until top is browned, just a few moments.  If you’d like crustier potatoes, bake rather than broil at around 425 until crustiness is achieved, but I, for one, couldn’t wait, and won’t blame you if you can’t, either.  Garnish with more mint, mint sprigs, and more thyme flowers.

Serve immediately.  Your special excursion train to Rugby is pulling into the station.

 

little green potstickers

One of my very first good friends in college was a Japanese guy, an exchange student who met with me for conversation practice.  I was seventeen, fresh from the suburbs, in a new town, and experiencing life on my own for the first time.  He was a bit older than me, but in certain ways in the same situation as I was.  He treated me at first strangely, based on Japanese custom for dealing with someone who is at once a beloved little sister and an esteemed teacher (so yes, it didn’t really work).  But over the months, as he became more and more Americanized and we got to know each other better, our relationship evolved into something really special.  He had a similar sense of humor as me (poor guy), and also a streak of melancholy and sensitivity that all truly funny people share. We kept in touch for many years, helping each other out in our native lands and through several moves and new careers, until one day he finally he vanished into the ether of Japanese corporate society.

But I still think of him every time I make potstickers.  I learned many of my homestyle Japanese dishes from him.  In fact, for a long time, I knew how to make more Japanese dishes than anything else.  I was a vegetarian for several years in college, and he gladly showed me how to cook Japanese vegetables and modified recipes, like the one for the very popular pork dumplings that we call potstickers and the Japanese call gyoza.

I’ve never measured this recipe, and I would never serve it to guests.  This is messy, slightly greasy, casual family eating with humble ingredients.  It also has a distinct disadvantage of being a pain to make.  But potstickers are delicious, and worth the trouble.

If you’ve had potstickers at Chinese restaurants, understand that these are significantly smaller, with a very light “skin,” not the heavy, doughy wrapping you’ll find there.  This is because you will be cheating and buying store-made skins, not making your own.  This does save a bit of time, especially since the skins can be kept in the freezer.

The other day, faced with (1) some thawing skins I was going to use for cheater pirogies with my homemade sauerkraut, and (2) an ever-growing vegetable bin full of local chard and kale, I was inspired to dude up my potsticker recipe.  My potstickers are usually filled with a cabbage, tofu, green onion, garlic and ginger mixture.  I thought it might be nice (and even remotely healthy) to swap out the cabbage for better greens.  And sure enough, it worked!

This filling is vegan.  You can include an egg, if you want, to help bind the filling, but I’ve never had any real problems with unbound filling, so I don’t bother.

As a warning, you’re going to need a largish non-stick skillet with a lid that fits over it tightly.  If you’re doubling the recipe, you should keep in mind you’ll need to cook the potstickers in two batches.

Little Green Potstickers

For the Filling:

1/2 cake regular (firm) tofu, drained well of water
3-4 green onions, chopped
2-inch long piece ginger, grated finely
2 cloves garlic, chopped finely
2 big handfuls of mixed greens (or a quarter of a small cabbage)
1 t. sesame oil
1 t. sesame seeds
1/2 t. salt
1 T. corn starch

For the Dipping Sauce:

1 part Japanese soy sauce: 2-3 parts rice vinegar
a float of chili oil (la-yu) is optional

For Cooking:

1/4 cup vegetable or peanut oil
1/2 package potsticker “skins,” sold at Asian markets and at some large supermarkets

The first step is to prepare the filling.

To drain the tofu, remove it from the package, squeeze it a little bit, and place it in a colander.  On top of the tofu, place a small plate and then weigh down the plate with something heavy (a small pot or a gallon-sized Ziploc bag filled with water will do).  Let sit for 15 minutes, pressing down on the weight every so often, to drain as much water out as possible.  Pat dry before using.  Crumble and place into a large bowl.

To prepare the greens (this step is unnecessary if you are using cabbage), blanch them in a pot of boiling water for a few seconds, then immediately plunge them into a bowl full of ice water. This will fix the color and make the filling cook more evenly.  Remove greens from ice water, squeeze them very well to remove most of the water, then chop finely and add to bowl with tofu.

After preparing the tofu and greens, add the rest of the ingredients to the bowl and mix thoroughly.

Filling and Folding the Potstickers:

The basic technique is to place a teaspoon full of filling on a “skin,” gently dampen one edge of the circle with water, then crimp or fold the edges to seal the dumpling.  A good seal ensures that when you cook it, it won’t burst the seams and ooze filling out all over the place.  The crimping process is difficult to describe in words, so I’ll give you a few options.  One, check out a video on how to do it.  Two, look at my pictures, and see how I fold while pressing the filling down with a finger inside the potsticker.  Three, just forget the whole thing and seal each potsticker by crimping the edges with a fork, just as you would a pie crust.

For the first option, check out this video I found on youtube, and watch her fingers.  She is using thicker “skins” that might be homemade, rather than store-bought.  You’ll want to use less filling than she does, but the video provides a good tutorial on folding:

Some tips:  more hands makes for faster eatin’ — see if you can enlist others to help you.  Some people get so good at the process they can work at the speed of light.  I’m not that talented, as you can see from my messy folding, but still rarely have a potsticker disaster.

Don’t use any more than one teaspoon of filling for each potsticker.  Less is better than more.

Don’t let the filled, uncooked potstickers sit too long on a plate, or they may start to stick and rip when you remove them.  You may want to prepare some, then cook them, then prepare some more.  Retrogrouch and I do this, often eating potstickers straight from the stove, as we’re folding more.

Cooking the Potstickers:

Once you run out of filling, you are done, and you can cook the potstickers!  Cooking is a two-step process: first browning the bottoms in some oil, then steaming the potstickers until the skin becomes translucent.

You don’t want to use too much oil.  Just coat the bottom of the non-stick pan with oil (I confess I use a regular pan and more oil, but they are much more prone to sticking and ripping that way).  Place each potsticker into the hot oil.  To discourage sticking, I do this in a quick one-two motion, dipping it in the hot oil down on the pan, then immediately lifting it up again, then putting it down.  It’s ok to crowd the pan, but move quickly, watching the earliest potstickers so they don’t get burnt on the bottom.

Once all the potstickers are browned on the bottom, add about a 1/3 cup of water.  Again moving quickly, pour all the water in the pan at once, then immediately put the lid on the pan so you’ll get the full rush of steam.  N.b., if you don’t move fast, all the oil and water will spray all over your stove.  See the video for a good example of this process:

When the skins are translucent, and you can see the filling inside, remove the potstickers carefully. (See the picture above for what they should look like when steamed — can you see the green?)  You can use a nylon spatula and loosen the bottoms, then flip them onto a plate.  Expect to lose a couple.  The losers should be devoured by the cook before anyone can see your lack of professionalism.

To Serve:

Serve with rice and a dipping sauce made of one part Japanese soy sauce and two or three parts rice vinegar.  It can be doctored with a float of chili oil (la-yu), and some chopped scallions or sesame seeds or even chopped garlic, if you’re fancy.

Enjoy — and feel good that you’re using up some of those delicious local greens!

 

introducing the favalous fava bean!

Although the lingering chill has affected the hot weather crops, our cool weather ones are doing just fine! I continue on with sweet snowpeas, and the favas are happily ripening in other gardens.

Today, I am on assignment for my CSA, because their favas are finding their way into boxes for the next few weeks. Widely used in the Mediterranean and Middle East, favas are used in myriad ways both healthy and lovely. I’ve been looking at some beautiful recipes from Italy, Tunisia, Morocco and Japan. You can’t go wrong with preparing fresh beans and pureeing them with some olive oil and garlic for a wonderful dip, but there’s much, much more to try.

Fava beans, if they had an advertising campaign, would bill themselves as “Europe’s First Bean.” Thorngrove Table, an absolutely wonderful medieval food blog, featured their history in a post a few years ago. As with all ancient foodstuff, the fava bean is associated with otherworldly legends. Some cultures cast fava beans for divination (favomancy), and others plant them as magic beanstalks to reach up to a giant’s castle. Having planted mine as green manure in February, I missed the traditional day in Italy to plant them, November 2 (All Souls’ Day), which gave the title “beans of the dead” to the fava, and the other traditional day in Europe, Good Friday, seems a bit late. I also failed to plant them in the night, another superstition for good luck.

Favas were seen as both good and evil. On the dark side of the force, they were seen as the vessels that held the souls of the dead. Other mortal dangers include favism (a serious chemical intolerance of the bean that creates anemia in some people of Middle Eastern and Mediterranean descent) and, of course, the reputation they have as an accompaniment to human liver, with a nice Chianti. The pods are said to be toxic, and you should avoid eating the beans raw.

When the force is with them, favas have pretty little white and black flowers, and the young beans are tender and just as green as can be. The plants fix nitrogen in the garden via little nodules on the mature roots, so they’re not only pretty but great for your soil. You can eat the young plant tips sautéed with butter and garlic, the young beans as you would green beans, and the older beans shelled, which taste of the essence of spring.

Shelling fava beans involves a double commitment: first you need to remove them from their tough pods, then, after boiling the beans for 2-3 minutes, you need to remove the tender green innards from their waxy shell. But honestly, they’re worth it. And if you’d like to skip a step, you can buy the shelled beans frozen at Middle Eastern markets, but you’ll still need to remove the waxy shell after boiling them.

Some delicious ideas for the beans:

• Lamb stew with favas and green almonds, eaten by Moroccan Jews in the spring - apparently the Israelites ate favas when they were slaves in Egypt, so they are a symbolic food at Passover;
• Italians eat young favas with watercress and pecorino in a salad, or creamed with melted pecorino and cream (see recipe for the latter in The Silver Spoon Italian cookbook);
• Japanese vegetarians puree the beans and serve them with thin slices of fried eggplant seasoned with soy;
• Alice Waters has a quick, simple recipe for fried artichoke bottoms topped with freshly boiled, warm fava beans in Chez Panisse Vegetables;
• Another recipe from The Silver Spoon is a lovely variation of fava puree - boil the shelled beans with small cubes of raw potato in vegetable stock, then mash together and serve with some olive oil.

But the most unusual and lovely one, in my view, is the most seasonal, too. Until sundown tonight, many Jews all over the world are celebrating Shavuot, a holiday that honors the Torah. It also coincides with the grain harvest in Israel, so it makes sense that North African Jews would celebrate with a traditional dish of buttered couscous topped with fava beans and sautéed onions. Claudia Roden has a great description of the classic recipe in her The Book of Jewish Food: An Odyssey from Samarkand to New York. The classic often includes powdered sugar or cinnamon and raisins, plus dairy drinks on the side, to symbolize “the land of milk and honey.” I decided to add a non-traditional ingredient to the dish, local fennel from our weekly market, to change and layer the flavors in a different way. It’s a delicious and beautiful side, perfect for everything from a vegetarian meal to fish to chicken.

Couscous Topped with Favas and Caramelized Fennel and Onion

Serves 2 as a main dish, 4 as a side

1 cup quick-cooking couscous
5 T. salted butter, separated
1/2 t. cinnamon
1 bulb fennel, sliced thinly and chopped
fronds from the fennel, rinsed and chopped
1/2 cup chopped sweet white onion or spring onions
at least 1 cup prepared fava beans (shelled twice)
salt and pepper

Shell and cook the fava beans: Remove the beans from the pod, then boil them for three minutes. Shock in cold water, then slip off the white, leathery skins. Set prepared beans aside in a bowl.

Prepare couscous according to the directions on the package, using 1 T. butter instead of olive oil. Keep covered and warm as you make the topping.

Fry the onions in 2 T. butter over medium heat until they are beginning to caramelize (color dark golden). Add fennel bulb (save fronds for serving) and continue to sautée until the fennel and onions have some dark brown caramelization. Add salt and pepper to taste, then fold in the prepared fava beans.

Just before serving, season the couscous with 2T. butter, cinnamon, and fennel fronds. Mound couscous into cone shape with flattened top on a platter, and crown the top with favas and fennel mixture. Serve warm.