Rampage: Part Pickle (with Baked Bean Bonus)

I tend to be a little scared of pickled foods that were not formerly cucumbers. Interesting tidbit: in the grocery store I shopped at in Glasgow, they had a whole wall of pickled items, which was across from the entire wall of baked beans - there were like a BAJILLION varieties of baked beans - it would blow your mind. One time, this (American) girl I knew in Scotland won a push-up contest at a bar, and she won her weight in baked beans. That is how seriously the Scots take their baked beans.

But - back to pickles.

So, at the grocery store, I once asked where the pickles were. The sales associate was confused - "Pickled what?" Because they pickle everything there. In fact, in the winter, people there drink so much they become pickled.

But as I've come to love my Shelburne Farms cookbook as much as a brotha from anotha motha, after seeing this ramp pickle recipe I really wanted to try my hand at non-cucumber pickles. And now I've made it three times in two years. It's super easy, and makes the ramp season last just a little bit longer. They are a little spicy, a little onion-y, and tangy and delicious. Eat them with anything you'd eat a regular pickle with - on the side of a sandwich for lunch, on top of a burger, as an interesting accoutrement to a cheese plate, etc.

Ramp Pickles, from Cooking with Shelburne Farms

20 or so ramps, trimmed so there is just about 1 inch of greens
1 cup cider vinegar
1/4 cup honey
1/4 cup sugar
1 teaspoon hot pepper flakes (I used aleppo pepper flakes)
1 teaspoon whole black peppercorns
1 teaspoon whole fennel seeds
1 teaspoon whole coriander seeds
1 bay leaf

Blanch the ramps in boiling water for two minutes. Immediately transfer to an ice water bath to stop the cooking.

In a small saucepot, heat the vinegar, honey, sugar, hot pepper, peppercorns, fennel, coriander, and bay leaf to a simmer.

Put the ramps in a clean jar big enough to hold all the liquid (and the ramps). So - back to the recipe - pour the hot liquid over the ramps. Only once it cools down (this will take a few hours) do you want to cover it with the lid, then pop it in the fridge for at least 12 hours before eating. The recipe says they'll last a month in the fridge.

 Bonus photo: the wall of baked beans at a Scottish grocery store

Rampage: Part Trout

As mentioned in a previous post, its ramp season! Well, it's almost done now. I've been meaning to post this for a couple of days, but you know, all that other life-living kept getting in the way. I happened to buy these trouts (purposely adding the "s" because I want to) at a Whole Foods in Virginia, where I questioned the clerk as to why there was tax on my purchase. "It's just trouts!" I protested to the confused clerk, thinking my purchase was mislabeled as take-out food or something. So, boo to Virginia for taxing groceries. (Side note: yes, even super-liberal Democrats will occasionally complain about taxes.) Apparently, my trusty Shelburne Farms cookbook agrees with me. It suggested that, in the ideal situation, one would catch the trouts in a gently babbling brook, then forage for the ramps on the side of the stream. And, when you get home, Aunt Bea will have made a pie! Golly!

Trouts with ramps, served with herbed aioli, adapted from Cooking with Shelburne Farms
Serves 2

2 whole trouts, cleaned and butterflied
8 ramps (or scallions, if you can't find ramps), hairy root bits trimmed off
salt and pepper
2 sprigs each of 2-3 herbs (I used garlic chives, regular chives, and oregano)
salt and pepper

Herbed aioli (because I refuse to call it mayonnaise)
1 egg yolk (farm fresh, please)
3/4 teaspoon mustard
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon lemon juice
1 teaspoon white wine vinegar
1 minced teaspoon of each of the herbs you used above
1/4 cup olive oil



Put your cast-iron skillet in the oven and set it to broil. Let it get hot in there while you get the fish ready.

Rinse and pat dry the trouts. Open each fish like a book, and season the inside with salt and pepper. Divide the herb sprigs and all but two of the ramps among the fish. (Save the two ramps with the longest greens.) Close up the fish, then tie each one closed with a ramp. The photo above is of the raw trouts, so you can see the little ramp knot. Don't they look like they just ate a bunch of ramps? Ha!

Carefully take the superhot skillet out of the oven and put the trouts in. Broil them for 7-9 minutes, or until the fish is cooked through.

Meanwhile, make the aioli. In a mini-chopper (or blender), zip up the egg yolk, mustard, salt, lemon juice, vinegar and herbs. Add the olive oil, and zip again until nicely emulsified. (It can probably take more oil than that, but I liked it like this.)

When the fish is done, serve it whole on the plate. The exposed ramps might be a little charred, but that's ok - I won't make you eat that part. To eat, scrape off the skin (it is really easy), and serve with the aioli.

Roundup: Curly weed edition

Happy spring! While asparagus, ramps, and morels tend to steal the arbiter of spring spotlight - those of you in the north might be excited about the arrival of your delicious friend, the fiddlehead fern! I was able to get my hands on some recently, and did them up simple style: just let some garlic sizzle in olive oil, then add the fiddleheads until they are tender, about five minutes.  Aren't they so cute you could just die? Or, alternatively, eat them?

My friend Bev really likes pizza. But I don't think she likes it enough to eat it topped with locusts.

Apparently, the Food Channel is feeling less than hip. So they are going to launch another, "grittier" network called "The Cooking Channel." Possible shows to look forward to include hosers (Canadians) making taco vending machines, demonstrations on how to break a chicken's neck, and vintage Julia Child. Sounds kinda badass. I think I might tune in...

The FDA wants you to stop eating so much sodium. I concur. That's why I respect recipes that say "season to taste." I RARELY add as much salt as a recipe asks for, because I've conditioned my taste buds to want less salt. I also think I'm really sensitive to salt. I eat a salted french fry, and two hours later I practically feel hungover. So, watch the sodium, people. Your skin will thank you.

The state of farmworkers wages in Florida is horrendous. The reasons I stopped buying tomatoes in the grocery store is not because they taste terrible - they do - but because the people who pick them are horribly treated, and I didn't want my money to go towards those practices. (I've linked to this Gourmet article before, but its worth linking again.)


The World Maple Syrup Festival will be crowning World Champions in four categories (Fancy, Medium Amber, Dark Amber, and Grade B) this Saturday in St. Johnsbury, Vermont.  Miss Teen Vermont will also be making an appearance.

A mango thumbs up to the people who created this pesticide awareness guide/iPhone app. It's a handy guide of what to buy organic and what's ok to buy conventional. I can never remember beyond "seeds on the outside" means you should get organic.

I give a mango thumbs down to the students at a school in New Jersey who are bitching and complaining that they had to eat cheese sandwiches as punishment after a food fight. I happen to think that cheese sandwiches are awesome, and in fact, I ate one for lunch today. And yesterday. (Can I get a cheese sandwich high five, Carly?) In fact, that same Carly once served me moldy cheese on month-old bread, with mustard, as a snack. And you know what, food-throwing teens, I was happy about it! (This may have been at 2am, after a recreational evening. The Scooby-Snack van was closed.)

Light and springy

The single best meal of my life was a dinner my dad won in a silent auction. He bid on the "chef's table" at a restaurant called Jackson's, and the chef in question happened to be our next door neighbor when I was a kid. (In the interest of full disclosure, he was my boyfriend for two days in the fourth grade and then later in high school we used to hang around the same troublemakers. Yes, b&b, I'm referring to you.) But back to the dinner. First there was ceviche as an amuse bouche. Then fresh pea soup with a little island of crab, then tuna carpaccio, beef tartar, tenderloin slow boiled in olive oil, and a banana upside down thing for dessert (it was starting to be a haze at that point). It was chock full of fresh, seasonal delicacies. No one could move at the end of the night, but if you are going to be a glutton, do it right. With all those amazing foods, though, my favorite was the pea soup. It was fresh, light, sweet and herbaceous. Thank you, Rick, for the amazing pea soup memories. 

While flipping through some magazines and deciding what to make for Easter dinner, I came upon a pea soup recipe. This one is pretty good (nowhere near Rick's, but I am a mere mortal) and really easy - which is what I like in first courses! I wouldn't recommend it as a dinner entree, it's better as a starter or a side. And if you can garnish it with a little crostini - all the better.

Spring pea soup (not as good as Rick's), loosely adapted from Bon Appetit, April 2010
Serves 4

1 tablepoon olive oil
2 shallots, chopped
1 small garlic clove, minced
about 2 cups frozen peas (from a new bag, not one that has been sitting in your freezer, opened, for 2 years)
2 cups low-sodium chicken or veggie broth
1/4 cup half and half
1/4 cup fresh mint, plus a little for garnish if you're feeling fancy.
salt and pepper, to taste

Heat the olive oil over medium heat in a medium saucepan. Add the shallots and cook until they are soft and tender, turning the heat down if they start to brown, about 4-5 minutes. Add the garlic and cook for one minute. Stir in the peas, then the broth and bring to a simmer. Let it simmer for about 10 minutes or until the peas are nice and tender. Let it cool a little, then pour into a blender, add the dairy and mint, and puree until very smooth. (This took about 2 minutes of blender time, for me.) Taste it, and add salt and pepper as necessary. Refrigerate for at least an hour before serving cold. Garnish with mint, if you want.

Haiku for the vealcake...

You had me swooning
"This is SO good I could die"
Twelve times during dinner.

Um, yes, so there's a reason I'm not a poet. MOVING ON.

My parents bought half of a baby cow last year from a butcher last year. Don't worry, he was hugged and snuggled and loved to his last days. Is it odd that I only buy responsibly raised fish, but will eat veal? Maybe. But this was a LOCAL cow. So I justified it in my head. Plus if you had to live in an area where high school football dominates the newspaper year round, you might not mind dying young either. So there. Anyway, back to the veal. My parents found out they could buy a half cow when my dad showed up at the butcher and said he was ready to pick up his order. The below exchange is approximate.

Butcher guy: We have the whole lamb you ordered processed and ready to go.

Dad: I'm not allowed to take something like that home without a note from my wife.

But it gave them the idea! After my mom wrote the note, they got a lamb, and this past year was half a baby cow. So that's how I ended up with a couple of pounds of ground veal a few weeks back. And how this luscious vealcake came into my life. And now my pants will never fit the same...

Vealcake with mushrooms, from Gourmet, February 2006
Serves 2

1 slice of bread, torn into bits
3 tablespoons cream, divided
1 egg, beaten
1/4 teaspoon salt
pepper
3 tablespoons chopped chives - divided
3/4 lb ground veal
1/4 cup bread crumbs*
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
1-2 tablespoon butter
1/2 lb cremini mushrooms, chopped


Put the torn bread and two tablespoons of cream in a large bowl to soak for five minutes. Add the egg, salt, pepper, two tablespoons of chives and veal, then mix gently with your hands. (No squishing and squashing between your fingers allowed.) Form the veal into two patties. Spread the bread crumbs on a plate and dredge the vealcakes in the crumbs.

Heat the vegetable oil and one tablespoon butter in a heavy skillet. Cook the vealcakes 4-5 minutes per side, until golden brown on the outside. If you have a meat thermometer, it should read 148 degrees. If you don't - well, go with your gut or use the time-honored method of cutting and peeking to see if its done.

Remove the vealcakes to a plate and cover with foil. If there's enough fat in the pan to cook the mushrooms, then just toss them in. If not, add a tablespoon or so of butter. Cook until they are softened, about 5 minutes. To really guild the lily, add a tablespoon of cream and let that cook for a minute or so. Serve the mushrooms on top of the vealcakes, and garnish with the remaining tablespoon of chives.

*When I have fresh bread that gets too stale to eat, I zip it up in the food processor to make crumbs, which I keep in a bag in the freezer. It's a motley mixture of crumbs - English muffin, whole wheat bread, sourdough, etc. But they work just fine for most coating and stuffing jobs.