Do you:

A) Laugh and throw the newspaper into the recycle bin, and go off to feed your newborn.
B)  Dream wistfully about the days when you could have pulled something like this off while reading your 3-year old the same Curious George and the Pizza story for the fortieth time.
C) What’s a kid (or two)? Bring on the fancy French dinner party!
D) Go for it, but hedge your bets by finding an equally food-crazed partner-in-crime.

When my friend Rebecca approached me about co-hosting a Julie & Julia dinner party with her, I was excited about the idea, but also a little nervous. We went into the project with some major handicaps. Both of us have active 3-year-olds. Rebecca is nursing a 4-month-old, and I’m three months pregnant with my second.

On the other hand, we have a lot of combined experience cooking, baking, and entertaining. When we can carve out the time for it, we both love cooking fussy dishes from scratch and feeding a crowd. Rebecca is a big fan of Julia Child. I can actually thank Julie Powell’s blog for inspiring me to pick up both volumes of Mastering the Art of French Cooking. Now would be my chance to try some of the recipes for myself. With two husbands and a close friend who is good with kids as backup, what could go wrong?

Several days before the party, Rebecca and I sat down to plan the menu, which had to be both pescetarian and kosher. This meant that we could skip over large sections of Mastering the Art of French Cooking, which is heavy on the meat and shellfish recipes. We settled on:

Vichyssoise (Cold Leek and Potato Soup)

Gratin aux Fruits de Mer (Gratin of Creamed Salmon)

Tomates A La Provencale (Tomatoes Stuffed with Bread Crumbs, Herbs, and Garlic)

Saute de Brocoli (Chopped Broccoli Sauteed in Butter)

Salad Greens with Cherry Tomatoes and Sauce Vinaigrette (French Dressing)

French Bread, Cheese, and Fresh Fruit

Gateau aux Noix — Le Saint Andre (Walnut Cake) with Creme Chantilly (Lightly whipped cream)

Pouding Alsacien (Gratin of Sauteed Apples — a cold dessert)

Rebecca handled the Salmon Gratin; the Sauteed Broccoli; and the Walnut Cake, while I took on the Vichyssoise; the Stuffed Tomatoes; the salad and the vinaigrette; and the cold Apple Gratin. 

We agreed to hold the party at Rebecca’s house, which would (theoretically) be easier with a newborn’s early bedtime. When I chose the dishes that I would prepare, I focused on those that could be made ahead and would transport easily. I made the Pouding Alsacien the night before the party, since it is supposed to chill for 24 hours, and the Vichyssoise the morning of the party, since it is also a chilled dish. (Sure, the Pouding Alsacien took 2 hours of preparation time and 45 minutes of baking time, keeping the crazy pregnant lady up until 12:30 a.m. But that’s a story for another blog entry.) I stuffed the tomatoes shortly before going to Rebecca’s house, and held them at room temperature, ready to go in the oven for 15 minutes. I made up the vinaigrette in a sealed bottle, and washed the cherry tomatoes (kindly provided by my husband from his garden) for the salad. Knowing that last-minute preparation was likely to be chaotic in a house with five adults, a baby, and two toddlers, I wanted to get as much done in advance as possible. 

When we walked in around 5:45pm, Rebecca was frantically stirring the cream sauce for the salmon gratin on the stovetop while also keeping an eye on the walnut cake in the oven.

She admitted to being a little behind, since she had thrown an elaborate toddler tea party (complete with three kinds of cut-out sandwiches, scones, lemon curd, and cookies) the day before and had attended Shabbat services that morning. Between that and nursing the baby and putting her toddler down to nap, she was just getting started on dinner. I assured her that this was a forgivable delay, and started unpacking the food that I had brought.

When you have a 4-month old and two toddlers in attendance, and the hostesses are a Nursing Mom and a Pregnant Woman, it really takes a village to throw a dinner party. Our friend Susan hovered nearby, holding baby M. and lending a helping hand with the table setting and food preparation.

Our husbands were tremendously helpful, as well. Within ten minutes of our arrival I had to send mine home to fetch the fresh fruit that my pregnant brain had forgotten. He even washed strawberries and grapes for me upon his return. Rebecca’s husband put extra leaves in the table, fetched cooling racks, and helped with the after-dinner dishes. Both kept an eye on the toddlers, who were streaking through the kitchen while pushing toy strollers and shopping carts and shrieking at top volume.

The men took the toddlers outside, which after a heated disagreement about whether to play in the front versus the backyard was resolved in favor of doing both, reduced the chaos considerably. Rebecca got the salmon gratin in the oven, frosted the cake with whipped cream, and chopped broccoli. I stole licks of whipped cream and helped Susan set the table. Baby M. decided it was time for her before-bed feeding, and started yelling for Mom, so Rebecca sauteed the broccoli while holding her.

There were some anxious moments when we weren’t sure if the stubbornly liquid salmon gratin was going to set up. After leaving it in the oven for 30 minutes rather than the indicated 15, we decided that the remaining liquid was oil from the melted cheese on top, and that it would reabsorb while cooling. (This did turn out to be the case.) While my Tomatoes Provencale baked, we started putting the remaining food on the table.

When we took on this project, Rebecca and I entertained warm, fuzzy dreams of introducing our well-dressed, well-behaved 3-year-olds to the glories of the fancy French dinner party. Were we delusional? Well, mostly. We got the kids seated to a loud chorus of, “I’m not hungry, Mommy! Don’t want to eat! Don’t want to sit! Don’t want a booster seat — want a phone book! Want a booster seat! Want to sit next to Daddy!” etc.

Rebecca’s daughter, T., ate some cherry tomatoes and a bit of bread and cheese, but wanted to get down almost immediately. My son A. rapidly followed suit, although he did pause to shovel in three pieces of broccoli and a small scoop of the salmon gratin first. Neither kid would touch the Vichyssoise, even when we tried to present it as “potato soup” or “milk soup”. The kids did eventually come back to eat a bit more and have some dessert. We were also treated to a call and response performance of “Uh oh juice! Mine!” while they drank apple juice. 

We did try to keep the kids at the table, but eventually gave up for the sake of our own sanity. My comment to Rebecca: “If you’re thinking of having a formal French dinner party with 3-year-olds, just don’t do it.”

Rebecca, of course, had another problem to deal with — it was now past 7 o’clock and baby M. wanted to nurse and go to bed. So Rebecca had to disappear into the nursery for the first part of the party. Once she got M. partially fed and changed and swaddled, she brought her back to the table to finish nursing and fall asleep, but the noise and light were keeping baby awake. Mom and baby vanished into the nursery again. The toddlers decided to play a loud ballgame outside the nursery right as baby M. was being laid down in her crib. This time, baby became wide-awake, and was still awake when we left at almost 10pm. She was actually very well-behaved for a baby kept up 3 hours past her bedtime, and was perfectly happy to be passed between Mom, Dad, and friend Susan during the remainder of the evening.

All this meant, though, that poor Rebecca got her first taste of Vichyssoise while the rest of us were finishing up our meal.

The food, when we got around to eating it, was excellent. The Vichyssoise was smooth and cool and creamy — perfect for a hot August evening.

After the soup course, we moved on to the Salmon Gratin, which we ate with the Tomatoes Provencale and the Broccoli. After our fears that the Gratin wasn’t going to be edible, the finished product was a delicious surprise. The fish flavor came through clearly, but was moderated with the huge amount of cream (do you sense a theme, here?) and the cheese on top. I had never thought of fish and dairy as being a good pairing, but they came together into a harmonious whole. The stuffed tomatoes were a wonderful accompaniment, and for some, were the highlight of the meal. The tomatoes themselves came out of my husband’s garden as well as our weekly CSA delivery, so were sweet and ripe. The roasting had softened their texture and intensified their sweetness, and the crisp bread stuffing brightened with purple basil, parsley, and garlic made a wonderful visual and textural contrast. The broccoli was tasty and made a nice side for the salmon, but Rebecca and I agreed that the five tablespoons of butter in the recipe didn’t really come through in the taste of the finished dish. It tasted like plain broccoli, so all that butter seemed excessive.

After the main course, we nibbled on the salad (sad to say, the vinaigrette was not a highlight of the meal, but the cherry tomatoes were fabulous) and the bread, cheese, and fruit. 

We rounded up the kids again and sat down for dessert. The walnut flavor in the Gateau aux Noix and the apple flavor in the Pouding Alsacien were excellent foils for each other. I loved the Walnut Cake — while fresh and moist, especially with all that whipped cream, the airy texture of the cake managed to evoke the dry mealiness of a walnut meat. The Pouding Alsacien was also quite good, although with a heavier texture. The base of the Pouding was like a cold slice of crustless apple pie, made sweeter with the addition of plum jam, topped with a lighter version of bread pudding. It was tasty, but I found myself wondering why this was a cold, not a warm, dessert.

Offered a choice between cake and apple “pie”, the kids chose…leftover pink and purple sugar cookies from Rebecca’s tea party. Neither T. nor A. was remotely interested in the Walnut Cake or Pouding Alsacien. Okay, A. was willing to eat all the whipped cream off my slice of cake, but I quickly put a stop to his efforts. I wanted that whipped cream for myself!

Good food, good wine (for those who could drink it), good friends, and good conversation. We lingered at the dinner table until almost 10pm. It felt very civilized, very French, and very Julia! Really not a bad way to spend an evening, despite a few very cute little distractions.

I think this photo captures how Rebecca and I felt at the end of the evening when we took our bow — tired, but triumphant.

Bon Appetit,
Stacy Laughlin and Rebecca Stashower

Many more photos at the link:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/34107777@N07/sets/72157621872094187/

Finding just the right recipe was a bit of a challenge. I had plenty of recipes for plum crumbles and plum upside-down cakes, but I wanted this to be a proper birthday cake. (Read: Birthday cakes aren’t really birthday cakes without frosting.) In flipping through my favorite source for cake recipes, Tish Boyle’s The Cake Book, I came across a recipe for Apple Cake with Maple Frosting. I thought that cinnamon, ginger, brown sugar, and maple would marry very well with the plums. I was a little concerned about altering the moisture balance in the cake by using juicy plums rather than apples, but with DH’s approval, I decided to go ahead with the experiment.

When I went into the backyard to pick plums, I selected those that were ripe, but relatively firm. I washed them, then cutting around the pits, I diced them into 1/2-inch pieces.

I filled a 2-cup measure with the red-gold pieces. While I cut the plums, I preheated the oven to 350 degrees F (325 degrees F in my convection oven).

Knowing that fruit-based cakes can be really sticky, I spent a lot of time greasing and flouring my cake pan. If you want to turn the cake out of the pan, like I did, it’s important to use a lot of butter and carefully cover every surface. Then sprinkle in the flour, making sure it’s also covering every surface, and tap the pan against the edge of the sink to get rid of the excess.

In a small bowl, I stirred together the flour, baking powder, spices, baking soda, and salt.

In the bowl of my trusty KitchenAid mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, I creamed the butter and sugar until the mixture was light and fluffy. I added the vanilla, and then the eggs, one at a time, beating the mixture well and then scraping the sides of the bowl down after each addition. Reducing the mixer speed to low, I added 1/3 of the flour mixture, then 1/2 the buttermilk, then another 1/3 of the flour, then the remaining buttermilk, then the remaining flour. Once you’ve added any flour, it’s important to stir gently just until the flour is incorporated. If you overmix, the cake will be tough. Scrape the sides of the bowl between additions.

I removed the finished cake batter from the mixer stand, and gave it one or two more good stirs with my spatula to make sure that all the ingredients were incorporated. Then I gently folded in the reserved plums.

I scraped the prepared batter into my greased and floured cake pan, and baked the cake in the center of the oven until the surface was golden brown, the sides had shrunk back from the edges of the pan, and the center sprang back when touched gently. A toothpick inserted in the center of the cake came out clean.

The Apple Cake recipe that I had started with had suggested a 25 to 30 minute baking time — I think that I baked the Plum Cake between 35 and 40 minutes, because of the greater moisture content. Watch carefully since you don’t want to overbake it.

The Apple Cake recipe suggested cooling and serving the cake in the pan. I turned my Plum Cake out onto a plate and then a cake rack after 10 minutes. The next time, I will probably allow it to cool longer in the pan before turning it out, since the hot fruit made the cake a little weaker than I would have liked. It did stay in one piece, more or less.

Once the cake had cooled completely, I made the maple cream cheese frosting. In a clean mixer bowl with a clean paddle attachment, I beat the softened cream cheese and butter at medium speed, then added vanilla, maple syrup, spices, and a pinch of salt. At low speed, I added the sifted confectioners’ sugar, then increased the mixer speed to high for 2 minutes to finish the frosting.

I decided to frost the top of the cake and leave the sides unfrosted for a more rustic look, and stored the cake in the refrigerator to allow the frosting to set.

Before serving, I used a green can of Betty Crocker “Easy Flow” icing to write a birthday message to DH. Possibly because our air conditioner was broken in the middle of a heat wave that day, the “Easy Flow” icing was more difficult to control than usual, so you’ll have to excuse my poor handwriting.

This cake is definitely best the day after you bake it. The first day I served it, the cake had two distinct layers. The plums, which had all settled to the bottom of the cake during baking, were rather soggy, and the top of the cake was comparitively dry. It was good, but not fantastic.

By the next day, the moisture from the plums had seeped into the rest of the cake, and the flavors and textures had melded beautifully. The tangy plums were beautifully complimented by the flavors of vanilla, cinnamon, and ginger in the cake and the hint of maple in the frosting. Next time, I will plan to bake this cake a day ahead.         

Plum Cake with Maple Frosting
(Adapted from Apple Cake with Maple Frosting, in Tish Boyle’s The Cake Book)

Makes one 9-inch square cake, serving 12. (I baked it in a 10-inch round cake pan without problems.)

Plum Cake

1 1/2 cups (6.4 oz/181 g) all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon ground ginger
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup (1 stick/4 oz/113 g) unsalted butter, softened
1 cup (7.6 oz/217 g) firmly packed light brown sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 large eggs
2/3 cup (160 ml) buttermilk
2 cups peeled and chopped (1/2 inch pieces) ripe but firm plums

Cream Cheese Maple Frosting (see below)

1) Position a rack in the center of the oven and preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Grease the bottom and sides of a 9-inch square (or 10-inch round) baking pan. Dust the pan with flour.

2) In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, cinnamon, ginger, baking soda, and salt; set aside.

3) In the bowl of an electric mixer, using the paddle attachment, beat the butter at medium speed until creamy, about 1 minute. Gradually add the sugar and beat at medium-high speed until well blended and light, about 2 minutes. Add the vanilla extract, then, add the eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition and scraping down the sides of the bowl with a rubber spatula as needed. Reduce the speed to low and add the flour mixture in three additions, alternating with the buttermilk in two additions and mixing just until blended. Remove the bowl from the mixer stand and stir in the chopped plums.

4) Scrape the batter into the prepared pan and smooth the top. Bake the cake for 35 to 40 minutes, until it is golden and a toothpick inserted into the center of the cake comes out clean. Cool the cake completely in the pan on a wire rack.

5) Frost the top of the cooled cake with the maple frosting. Cut the cake into squares (or wedges) and serve it directly from the pan. (I turned mine out onto a plate, and that seemed to work fine.)

Store the cake in the refrigerator, loosely covered, for up to 3 days. Bring the cake to room temperature before serving.

Cream Cheese Maple Frosting

Makes 1 1/2 cups

6 ounces (170 g) cream cheese, softened
3 tablespoons (1.5 oz/42 g) unsalted butter, softened
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 tablespoons maple syrup, or 1/8 teaspoon maple flavoring
1/8 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/8 teapoon ground ginger
Pinch of freshly grated nutmeg
Pinch of salt
1 cup (4 oz/115 g) confectioners’ sugar, sifted

1) In the bowl of an electric mixer, using the paddle attachment, beat together the cream cheese and butter at medium speed until smooth. Beat in the vanilla extract, spices, and salt. Reduce the speed to low, add the confectioners’ sugar, and beat until well blended. Raise the speed to high and beat until light and creamy, about 2 minutes.

Store in an airtight container in the refrigerator for up to 1 week; let soften at room temperature before using.

Every Sunday, Blossom Hill Certified Farmers’ Market occupies the back corner of the Princeton Plaza parking lot at the corner of Kooser Road and Meridian Avenue in San Jose. The market operates year-round, but the crowds really swell at this time of year. People of every age and ethnicity turn out to buy and sell fresh-from-the-farm produce. During the week, this is a depressing strip mall anchored by an empty Mervyns, but on Sundays it becomes a riot of color, sound, and tastes.

Before I even enter the market, the corn starts calling to me as it does every year. “Fresh Brentwood corn picked hours ago! Sweeter than my mother-in-law!” I sometimes wonder about the corn hawker’s relationship with his mother-in-law, but his famous catchphrase is drawing in the crowds as usual. I dodge between a couple of fellow-shoppers in order to secure myself six plump ears and a bag of green and yellow wax beans.

In short order, I finish filling my shopping bag with donut peaches, dried plums destined for zucchini bread, oyster mushrooms, a loaf of bread, three little shortcakes and a pint of strawberries to go with them, skinny Japanese eggplants, and a pound of gorgeous wild salmon. I look wistfully at baskets of yellow and red cherries, tiny blueberries, bags of squash blossoms, and beautifully shaped heads of cauliflower, but I’m out of money. Time to take my loot home.

At our house, DH presides over our grill, and I generally prepare the meat or vegetables for grilling. This arrangement suits us both. (The one time I tried barbecuing I managed to coat the shortribs with ash when I splashed water on a flare-up.)

A couple hours before DH is ready to start the fire, I fill our stockpot with cold water, rinse off the ears of corn, and leave them to soak. When the coals are ready, DH grills the corn in their wet husks for 15 minutes.

Meanwhile, I prepare the salmon fillets, marinating them for 10 minutes in a mixture of freshly squeezed lemon juice and dried dill. (Fresh dill is called for in the recipe, but dried works fine in a pinch.)

I mix up the sauce for the salmon, a simple mixture of more dill, mayonnaise, and Dijon mustard.

The salmon recipe calls for grilling the salmon directly on a greased grill rack, but it’s been our experience that fish inevitably sticks. We started grilling our fish on a greased double thickness of aluminum foil with its edges turned up, but the fish would sometimes end up poaching in its own juices rather than grilling. Recently, I discovered that I could improve this set-up by cutting multiple slits in the bottom of the aluminum foil with a sharp knife. This arrangement allows any liquid to flow out of the bottom of the aluminum foil.

I hand DH the marinated fish on its greased aluminum foil “basket” along with the sauce and a long-handled silicon pastry brush. He pushes the corn to the outer edges of the grill, and places the fish in the center, skin-side up. He covers the grill for three minutes. He turns the fish and brushes the top generously with the mayo/mustard/dill mixture. Keep a close eye on the fish at this point as the final cooking time will vary tremendously with the thickness of the fish and the heat level of the fire. Don’t overcook it — the salmon is done when it flakes easily with a fork.

While the salmon finishes cooking, DH uses terry cloth towels to husk some of the grilled corn. (Be careful — the corn will be very hot.) For an extra touch of sweetness and color, he places our husked ears back on the grill rack for a couple minutes, turning frequently, until a few of the kernels have caramelized. DS is a corn purist and wants his corn to be uniformly yellow, so DH skips this step with his corn.

The salmon is perfectly cooked and very moist thanks to its acidic marinade, protective dressing, and DH’s watchful eye on the grill. We eat the sweet corn with soft butter and a squeeze of lime juice. The three of us consume five ears of corn. (DS comments, “I LOVE corn-on-the-cob. I even love corn off the cob!”‘) We finish up with the little lemony shortcakes that I had purchased at the farmers’ market, split and filled with whipped cream and ripe strawberries.  

DH serves dinner on the patio, where we can watch the birds pig out at the feeders; make a big mess with our corn; and admire DH’s garden. Tomato row is getting heavy with immature fruit — before dinner, DH offers me one of the first ripe sungolds of the season.

Happily, even though our son rejects most tomatoes, he has (rightfully) decided that the tiny orange sungolds from DH’s garden are delicious. A few small zucchinis are visible next to their showy yellow blossoms.  A sole towering corn stalk from DH’s first planting of corn looms over multiple small shoots from the third (hopefully more successful) planting of corn.

DS’ lettuce planting is going like gangbusters.     

It may only be the second week of June, but summer has definitely arrived at our house.

Dilly Salmon Fillets
From Better Homes and Gardens New Grilling Book. 2nd Edition

4 5- to 6-ounce fresh or frozen salmon or halibut fillets, 1/2 to 3/4 inch thick (Note — I think ours were much thicker — just adjust cooking time accordingly.)
3 tablespoons lemon juice
2 tablespoons snipped fresh dill (Or about 1/2 the amount of dried dill)
2 tablespoons mayonnaise or salad dressing
2 teaspoons Dijon-style mustard
Dash pepper

1) Rinse fish, pat dry with paper towels. Place in a shallow dish. For marinade, in a small bowl combine the lemon juice and 1 tablespoon of the dill. Pour over fish, turn fish to coat. Cover and marinate at room temperature for 10 minutes.

2) Meanwhile, in a small bowl stir together the remaining dill, the mayonnaise, mustard, and pepper. Set aside.

3) For a charcoal grill, arrange medium-hot coals around a drip pan. Test for medium heat above the pan. Drain fish, discarding the marinade. Place fish on greased grill rack (or use the pierced aluminum foil arrangement I describe above) over drip pan. Cover and grill for 3 minutes. Turn fish; spread with the mayonnaise mixture. Cover and grill for 2 to 6 minutes more or until fish flakes easily when tested with a fork. [For a gas grill, preheat grill. Reduce heat to medium, and cook fish over medium indirect heat.] Makes 4 servings.

Grilled Corn
From Deborah Madison’s Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone

Keep the stem attached to the ears, pull back the husks, and rub off the silk. (This can also be done after grilling.) Soak for at least 20 minutes in cold water, then pull the husks back over the kernels, twisting them so they’ll stay closed. Grill for 15 to 20 minutes, depending on the heat of the fire, turning the corn every few minutes. As the corn steams, the kernels will turn bright and glossy. Pull back the husks during the last few minutes so that the corn caramelizes just enough to intensify its flavor. Serve with butter, salt and pepper, and a squeeze of fresh lime juice.

To the ridiculous:

Yes, that really is the world’s puniest head of broccoli, parked atop a mammoth stem. If I weren’t feeling ripped off, I might laugh.

However, there were many delights in the box to make up for the joke broccoli: orange apricots, deep red strawberries, adorable little peppers, onions, carrots, and heirloom tomatoes.

After a long day at the beach, I wasn’t in the mood to cook something complicated for dinner. But I still wanted the table to be special for Shabbat. Solution: leave my cookbooks on the shelves and improvise with some of the seasonal ingredients that I had available. Yesterday, I had picked up some lamb shoulder arm chops  (flat chops that are roughly the shape and thickness of sirloin steaks). To round out dinner, I had challah, a small round of good-quality soft rind cheese, some Cranberry Hazelnut Raincoast Crisps to spread the cheese on, and whatever I wanted to pull out of the CSA box.

As we come into tomato season, I like to throw together simple diced tomato salads. Tomatoes, mozzarella cheese,  a swirl of olive oil, a dash of rice wine vinegar, salt and pepper, and a few shakes of dried tarragon makes a lovely salad. Since we were already having cheese with dinner, I decided that more cheese would be overkill, and pared down my “recipe” even further.

A ripe Brandywine tomato looks a bit like Frankenstein’s head. The tops are often cracked in a star-shaped pattern, and scars usually adorn the sides and bottom. But don’t let that scare you away — they have an intense, meaty tomato flavor. I like to use a small sharp knife to cut the core out at the top. I trim away the cracked and badly scarred areas at the same time, then cut the tomato into thick slices and dice it.

I tipped the tomatoes into a bowl, drizzled them with olive oil and balsamic vinegar, and sprinkled them with salt, pepper, and Herbes de Provence. Ripe tomatoes don’t need much more than that to be enjoyed. The balsamic vinegar added a note of sweetness that is lacking in first-of-the-season tomatoes.

In a pan over medium-high heat, I quickly sauteed two more CSA offerings: bell peppers that I had cored and sliced into strips and a tiny, thinly sliced onion. Don’t overcook them at this stage.

Once softened, I pushed the bell peppers and onion to the side and added in the lamb chops. I had seasoned the lamb with salt, pepper, and Herbes de Provence. (Not coincidentally, the same seasonings that I used in the tomato salad.)

I seared the lamb for five minutes on each side, then piled it on a plate with the caramelized peppers and onions on top.

The lamb, which was pink and juicy inside, was complemented beautifully by the savory flavor of the Herbes de Provence and the sweetness of the caramelized peppers. The lush tomato salad and the mellow cheese eaten with the fruit and nut crackers and a ripe apricot made perfect accompaniments. I served some premium green tea ice cream with white chocolate chunks for dessert, and breathed a sigh of contentment. Not every special occasion dinner requires a lot of fuss.

I’ve missed writing here, though. Now that things have calmed down, I’m going to try to make time to post here, at least once a week.

Our garden and CSA box have changed considerably, between mid-March and the end of May. DH has been harvesting spinach (almost done, now) and sugar snap peas from the garden. The latter are DS’ favorite — he eats them straight out of the garden. The sweet peas and roses are in bloom, and the plum tree is heavy with green fruit. We’re looking forward to tomatoes, soon.

Last Friday’s CSA box contained strawberries, spring onions, arugula, asparagus, carrots, and some adorable baby artichokes. The onions and carrots have been features for weeks, now, and our produce drawer was overflowing. Last night, I decided to deal with this Spring bounty by making a Creamy Carrot Soup that was recently featured in Cooking Light, and a Sauteed Baby Artichoke recipe with bacon and mint from Sunset Magazine.

While I peeled carrots, DH helped me prep the artichokes, trimming off the outermost leaves and placing them in a bowl of ice water and lemon. He brought a big pot of water to boil on the stove.

Note: If you click through to the Sunset Magazine photo, you will see that they trimmed off all the dark green outer leaves of the artichokes, leaving just the yellow-green globes in the center. DH thinks it’s sacrilege to discard half of the artichoke, so he left most of the green leaves. Your mileage may vary.

Meanwhile, I peeled all the carrots in the refrigerator, perhaps a pound in total. The original recipe called for two pounds of carrots, so I decided I would reduce the liquid amounts and the salt in the recipe, accordingly. I washed four spring onions.

While I cut the carrots into 1/2-inch pieces and chopped the spring onions, DH boiled the artichokes for about 15 minutes.  (Next time, I might boil them for 20 minutes, since these artichokes were on the larger side for baby artichokes, and still had most of their outer leaves. Note that the Sunset recipe calls for 3 dozen baby artichokes — we had seven.) When they were done, I removed them to a colander in the sink.

I sauteed the onion and carrots in a Dutch oven for 10 minutes, stirring frequently. I added 1/2 a teaspoon of salt, pepper, and a bit of powdered ginger.

Two cups of chicken broth and a cup of water covered the amount of veggies in my pot.

I brought the mixture to a boil, covered the Dutch oven, and reduced the heat to a simmer. The original recipe called for simmering the ingredients for 25 minutes or until the carrots were tender — I set a timer for 15 minutes.

Meanwhile, I prepped the remaining ingredients for the sauteed artichokes. The original recipe calls for an ounce of pancetta. I hadn’t been able to find any at the store, so I went with two slices of center cut bacon, cut into thin strips with a pair of kitchen shears. I chopped some mint, sliced two garlic cloves thinly, and measured some dry white wine in a cup.

I experimented with cutting one of the baby artichokes in half, as suggested in the recipe. It was difficult to get a clean cut — the artichoke started to fall apart. And it was almost impossible to spot the fuzzy choke inside, to clean it out. I decided to leave the other artichokes whole.

In a pan set over medium heat, I cooked the bacon pieces until the fat had rendered out and the bacon was starting to brown. (Don’t over-brown the bacon, or it will burn later.) I fried the garlic slices in the pan until they were golden brown, then added the whole artichokes (and the one cut artichoke) and 1/4 cup of white wine. While I tossed the artichokes in the pan, the wine and bacon grease reduced very quickly into a glaze.

I decided to add another 1/4 cup of the wine to coat the artichokes a little more. I tossed in some chopped mint, salt and pepper, and set the pan aside on low heat while I finished the soup.

After 15 minutes, the onions and carrots were definitely soft. I pulled the pan off the heat and used an immersion blender to puree them into a creamy soup. I drizzled in a small amount of heavy cream, and tasted for seasoning. Mmm.

I brought the finished soup and artichokes to the table.

This was an excellent dinner. The carrot soup, while containing very little cream, managed to be smooth and rich. It was also a gorgeous orange color. Both DH and DS requested seconds. Admittedly, we allowed DS to remain under the mistaken impression that it was squash soup, which he loves, until the end of the meal. But hopefully he’ll now remember that he likes carrot soup, too. The taste was pretty similar.

The sauteed baby artichokes made the perfect little nibble to go with the soup. The glaze, punctuated with the bits of mint, fried garlic, and bacon, was smoky and flavorful. We’re used to eating artichokes with lemon butter, but these really didn’t need it. The outer leaves of the artichokes were a little tough, and didn’t have much “meat” on them. Possibly we should have trimmed more of the outer leaves off before cooking, or the sauteeing process toughened them. But the inner leaves and the heart were very tender. (Don’t forget to clean off any fuzzy grey choke before eating the heart.)   

Remember the artichoke that I cut in half? While not as lovely as the whole artichokes, that turned out to be my favorite since the smoky glaze was able to penetrate to the center. DH, on the other hand, thought the halved artichoke was a little tougher than the others. You might want to try leave some whole and cut other in half, so you can try them both ways.

Creamy Carrot Soup
from Cooking Light Magazine

Yield: 4 servings (serving size: 1 1/2 cups)

Ingredients

1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil
1 3/4 cups chopped Vidalia or other sweet onion
2 pounds carrots, cut into 1/2-inch pieces
1 teaspoon fine sea salt
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
Dash of ground ginger
2 cups water
2 cups fat-free, less-sodium chicken broth
2 tablespoons heavy cream, divided

Preparation

1. Heat oil in a large Dutch oven over medium heat. Add onion and carrots to pan; cook 10 minutes, stirring frequently. Stir in salt, pepper, and ginger.

2. Add 2 cups water and broth to pan; bring to a boil. Cover, reduce heat, and simmer 25 minutes or until carrots are tender. Remove from heat; cool.

3. Place half of carrot mixture and 1 tablespoon cream in a food processor or blender; process 20 seconds or until smooth. Pour pureed mixture into a large bowl. Repeat procedure with remaining carrot mixture and 1 tablespoon cream. Return mixture to pan; cook over medium heat until thoroughly heated.

Sauteed Baby Artichokes
From Sunset Magazine

Ingredients

3 dozen baby artichokes
2 tablespoons lemon juice
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 tablespoon salt
1 ounce pancetta (chopped)
2 cloves garlic (sliced)
1/4 cup dry white wine
1/4 cup mint (chopped)
grated parmesan cheese

Preparation

Trim outer leaves and stems from artichokes, leaving just the tender yellow-green leaves. Drop artichokes into a bowl of ice water mixed with lemon juice and olive oil.

Bring a large pot of water to a boil and add salt. Drain artichokes and add to boiling water; simmer until tender, 10 to 20 minutes. Cut any larger ones in half, removing any fuzz at the heart.

Set a frying pan over medium-high heat. Add pancetta and stir until fat is rendered. Add garlic and stir until golden. Add wine and the baby artichokes. Cook until wine is almost evaporated. Add mint and salt and pepper to taste. Serve topped with grated parmesan cheese.

My St. Patrick’s Day meal has evolved over time. For many years, I’ve baked Irish Soda Bread. At some point, I added champ — mashed potatoes made with cream and butter that has been infused with green onion. A couple years ago, I found an excellent corned beef recipe with a mustard and horseradish crust. It’s served with a side of cabbage that has been simmered in the strained corned beef cooking liquid, augmented with caraway seeds.

The whole meal — corned beef, cabbage, champ, and soda bread — is excellent for entertaining since much the work can be done long before your guests arrive. Add some good Irish cheddar and some bottles of Guinness to the bill of fare, and you’ll have a St. Patrick’s Day celebration fit for a king.

Yesterday, we invited four of our friends plus their toddler sons to a belated St. Paddy’s Day Shindig. We didn’t all sit down for lunch until after 2 o’clock, but there was plenty of soda bread, cheese, and good company to enjoy while we waited for the corned beef to finish its long, slow cooking and for our youngest guest to wake up from his nap.

Early that morning, I started my preparations by purchasing a four pound, center-cut piece of corned beef from Lunardi’s along with some other provisions for our feast. Luckily, even though the shamrock and leprechaun cookies had already been displaced by Easter offerings, there was still plenty of corned beef, Irish cheese, and Guinness in stock. It was even on clearance.

The corned beef and cabbage takes a good 3 1/2 hours from start to finish, not including prep time, so allow plenty of time before you want to serve your meal. Don’t let this intimidate you, since much of this is unattended simmering. As soon as I got home, I chopped onion, celery, and carrot and peeled a garlic clove.

I got out our big stockpot, and placed the corned beef brisket in the bottom of the pot. The original recipe calls for pouring 16 cups of water over the corned beef. I took the advice of some Cooking Light recipe reviewers and replaced about half of the quantity of this liquid with Guinness.

I dumped the onion, celery, carrots, and garlic into the pot, added some pickling spice, and brought the liquid to a boil over high heat. Once the pot was bubbling, I covered it and turned the heat down to low. I left the beef to simmer for three hours in the pot while I turned my attention to the rest of our meal.

Irish Soda Bread is easy and fun to make. It’s a type of quick bread — the leavening in it comes from baking soda and buttermilk rather than yeast. It gets its distinctive, sharp anise flavor from caraway seeds.

To begin, I sifted all-purpose flour into a large bowl along with baking soda and salt.

I stirred in sugar, caraway seeds, and dried cranberries. The latter are a substitute for raisins, which I hate — my friends joked that my bread is New World Irish Soda Bread.

I poured in the buttermilk and stirred just until the dough was evenly moistened. Do not try to stir until the dough is smooth — it should have a rough, shaggy appearance, similar to scone dough.

The dough was extremely sticky at this point. (I needed DH’s help to take the following photo to preserve my camera from sticky, floury death.) On a well-floured surface, with floured hands, I kneaded the dough about eight times.

I learned the motion of kneading in ceramics class. You push down with the heel of one hand, and use the other hand to fold over the dough. Repeat, turning the dough slightly as you go. Admittedly, kneading a dough this sticky is a little tricky. You will probably need to add a little more flour as you go. Don’t overdo the kneading or the additional flour. When done, the dough will still be very soft but will be less sticky.

I formed the dough into two small, dome-shaped loaves on a baking sheet, leaving a good amount of room between them to allow for expansion. (I sprayed the baking sheet with a bit of cooking spray first for easy removal.) Using a small sharp knife (a steak knife works well), I cut a deep “x” in the top of each loaf. I melted a little butter in the microwave, and brushed the top of each loaf with a pastry brush.

I slid the soda bread into a preheated 350 degree F convection oven (375 degree F regular oven), where it baked for about 37 minutes. The baked loaves will be golden brown. If you lift one up and rap on the bottom with your knuckles, it should sound hollow. I transferred the loaves to a cooling rack.

Once the soda bread was in the oven, I took a few minutes to core and thinly slice a cabbage. I bagged the sliced cabbage and set it aside for later.

I thinly sliced a bunch of green onion (green parts only) and set the little rounds aside. I readied a large bowl of cold water, scrubbed three pounds of Russet potatoes, and started peeling them and cutting them into 1-inch pieces. I carefully cut away any black (rotten) bits. As I finished cutting up a potato, I placed the pieces in the bowl of cold water. This keeps them from turning brown.

Meanwhile, I had brought a pot of salted water to a boil. Once my potatoes were all cut up and my water was boiling, I put in my potato pieces to cook for about fifteen minutes.

While the potatoes cooked, I melted a good chunk of butter in a small pan of heavy cream. Once the mixture had come to a simmer (watch carefully so it doesn’t boil over), I added the green onions and set the mixture aside to steep.

Once the potatoes were tender, I drained them thoroughly in a colander and returned them to the pot. I mashed them with a potato masher, and stirred in the cream mixture until they were light and fluffy. I added salt and pepper, covered the pot, and set them aside until it was time to reheat the champ (green onion mashed potatoes) before dinner.

By the time the first wave of our guests arrived, I was able to sit down and enjoy the fresh soda bread and two kinds of Irish cheese with them. The soda bread was rich and dense, fragrant with the caraway and fruity with the cranberries, and partnered very well with the sharp cheese.

While we ate, we discussed the long and illustrious history of corned beef as it appears in The Oxford Companion to Food. The name comes from the “corns” (grains) of salt that are used to preserve the beef. It was interesting to discover that in Britain, corned beef means canned pressed beef (it played a similar role to SPAM during World War II — cheap, salty, and delicious meat protein), while in NorthAmerica, corned beef means a salted beef brisket. The corned beef that I was preparing for our meal was of the latter type. (Our British friend J. was one of our Shindig guests. He was familiar with the canned corned beef back home, and called my roasted corned beef the most frou frou that he had ever seen. I chose to take that as a compliment.) 

Corned beef and cabbage, is, of course, a well-known Irish and Irish-American dish. According to the Oxford Companion, corned beef is first mentioned in an 11th century Irish text. (“Many wonderful provisions, pieces of every palatable food…full without fault, perpetual joints of corned beef.”) Cork City was a major exporter of corned beef from the late 17th century until 1825.

In New York, Irish immigrants came across corned beef brisket in kosher delicatessens on the Lower East Side. They used it as a cheap substitute for Irish bacon on an everyday basis, and would eat a boiled dinner of corned beef and cabbage on St. Patrick’s Day.

Once our corned beef had simmered for three hours, I used a meat fork and a spatula to remove it to the rack of a roasting pan that I had sprayed with cooking spray.

I placed a large colander in the bottom of a very large bowl, and very carefully poured in the hot cooking liquid. (You can do this in two bowls if you don’t have an extra large bowl available.) I removed and discarded the vegetable solids into the compost bin. The strained cooking liquid went back into the stockpot. I added caraway seeds and my reserved sliced cabbage, brought the pot back to a boil, and simmered the cabbage for 20 minutes. I started warming up the pot of Champ.

I preheated the broiler and made the horseradish and mustard crust for the corned beef. I slathered one side of the corned beef with Dijon mustard. In a small bowl, I mixed together bread crumbs with prepared horseradish, and carefully patted the mixture on top of the mustard.

A few minutes before we were ready to eat, I slid the roasting pan into the oven. After three minutes, the crust on the corned beef was a glorious speckled brown.

I brought it to the table on a platter, and dished up the cabbage and champ. There was butter to melt on the champ and for the remaining soda bread.

Most of the food vanished in a twinkling. Were there leprechauns involved? Little leprechaun children, anyway. Our toddler visitors enjoyed all the food. (Our son was too excited to eat much, although he did sample the corned beef.) The adults were very appreciative of everything, although I think I received the most compliments on the mustard/horseradish crust on the corned beef.

Don’t wait for next St. Paddy’s day to roll around before you try some of these excellent recipes.

Corned Beef and Cabbage Dinner
From Cooking Light Magazine
Note: I skip the potato portion of this recipe, since I make champ with this meal. (See below.) If doing this, skip ingredients from “red potatoes” through “black pepper.”

Ingredients:
1 (4-pound) cured corned beef brisket, trimmed
16 cups water
2 cups chopped onion
1 cup chopped celery
1 cup chopped carrot
1 1/2 teaspoons pickling spice
3 garlic cloves, peeled
Cooking spray
1 tablespoon caraway seeds
1 (2 1/2-pound) head green cabbage, cored and cut into 1-inch strips
4 pounds small red potatoes, quartered
2 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley
2 teaspoons butter
2 teaspoons grated lemon rind
2 teaspoons fresh lemon juice
1/8 teaspoon black pepper
1/2 cup dry breadcrumbs
1 (5-ounce) jar prepared horseradish, drained and squeezed dry
3 tablespoons Dijon mustard
 
Preparation:
Place brisket in a large stockpot; add water and next 5 ingredients (water through garlic). Bring to a boil. Cover, reduce heat, and simmer 3 hours. Remove brisket from pot.

Place brisket on the rack of a broiler pan or roasting pan coated with cooking spray; place rack in pan. Strain cooking liquid through a colander into 2 large bowls; discard solids. Return liquid to pot. Add caraway seeds and cabbage; bring to a boil. Reduce heat; simmer 20 minutes. Drain.

While cabbage is cooking, place potatoes in a large Dutch oven. Cover with water. Bring to a boil; cook 20 minutes or until tender. Drain. Return potatoes to pan. Stir in parsley, butter, rind, juice, and pepper; toss to coat.

Preheat broiler.

Combine breadcrumbs and horseradish. Spread mustard over one side of brisket. Press breadcrumb mixture onto mustard. Broil 3 minutes or until lightly browned. Serve brisket with cabbage and potatoes.

Champ (Green Onion Mashed Potatoes)
From Bon Appetit Magazine, on the Epicurious.com website
(Original recipe is supposed to serve four — I made about 1 1/2 times the base recipe.)

Ingredients:
2 pounds russet potatoes, peeled, cut into 1-inch pieces
1/2 cup whipping cream
1/4 cup (1/2 stick) butter
1 bunch green onions, sliced (about 1 1/3 cups)

Preparation:
Cook potatoes in pot of boiling salted water until very tender, about 15 minutes.

Meanwhile, bring cream and butter to simmer in heavy small saucepan over medium heat, stirring often. Mix in green onions. Remove from heat. Cover and let steep while potatoes cook.

Drain potatoes thoroughly. Return potatoes to same pot and mash. Add cream mixture and stir until blended. Season to taste with salt and pepper. (Can be prepared 2 hours ahead. Cover; let stand at room temperature. Rewarm over low heat, stirring often.)

“Champ is traditionally served with a well in the middle that has a dab of butter melting in it. The potatoes are usually eaten from “outside” to “inside,” dipping each bite into the butter.”

Irish Soda Bread
From Gourmet Magazine, on the Epicurious.com website

Ingredients:
4 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon sugar
1 1/2 tablespoons caraway seeds
1 cup raisins (I use dried cranberries)
1 3/4 cups well-shaken buttermilk
2 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted

Preparation:
Preheat oven to 375°F. Butter and flour a large baking sheet, knocking off excess flour.

Sift together 4 cups flour, baking soda, and salt into a large bowl and stir in sugar, caraway, and raisins. Add buttermilk and stir just until dough is evenly moistened but still lumpy.

Transfer dough to a well-floured surface and gently knead with floured hands about 8 times to form a soft but slightly less sticky dough. Halve dough and form into 2 balls. Pat out each ball into a domed 6-inch round on baking sheet. Cut a 1/2-inch-deep X on top of each loaf with a sharp knife, then brush loaves with butter.

Bake in middle of oven until golden brown and bottoms sound hollow when tapped, 35 to 40 minutes. Transfer loaves to racks to cool completely.

No, your eyes aren’t seeing double. Capay Valley really did send us TWO gigantic bunches of carrots, TWO big bunches of leeks, and TWO fennel bulbs in this week’s box. Other offerings included baby spinach, radicchio, arugula, and Swiss chard.

Blah. The farm newsletter keeps talking about harvesting asparagus, but nary an asparagus spear in sight, at least in the Capay Valley box. Yes, I am a wee bit grumpy. Perhaps the universe is punishing me for focusing on carrots in my last post by showering me with too many carrots. On the plus side, I have a pretty good recipe for carrot curry.

I apologize for the short post. Tomorrow I will be hosting a belated St. Patrick’s Day Shindig, so you can look forward to Irish Soda Bread and Corned Beef in my next entry.

I should mention that I’ve never been a huge fan of the carrot. Most of the raw carrot (grated or sliced) that I’ve eaten in salads over the years has tasted like damp cardboard. And I’ve generally found carrot cake’s best feature to be the cream cheese icing. Give me a big piece of chocolate cake any day.

I may be a convert on both counts. In the first place, Capay Valley’s carrots simply taste better than any grocery store or salad bar carrot that I’ve ever had the misfortune of eating. They have a sweet-sharp taste and a pronounced crunch that is downright pleasant.

Having beaten down my old prejudice against carrots, I went looking for a couple of recipes that would feature them. I found two excellent carrot recipes in Rose Carrarini’s charming book Breakfast, Lunch, Tea: The Many Little Meals of Rose Bakerywhich includes over 100 recipes from her Anglo-French Rose Bakery in Paris. Carrarini emphasizes fresh, healthy, seasonal ingredients in her recipes, making her cookbook excellent for preparing food sourced from a CSA box or farmer’s market. Her baked goods are also divine, and lower in sugar than many similar recipes that I’ve examined.

I prepared Rose’s carrot cake last Friday for Shabbat dinner. As an aside, I apologize for being too busy to take “in-progress” photos for this cake. You’ll have to wait for the big reveal at the end.

To begin, I peeled and grated last week’s bunch of CSA carrots. As usual, I grated my thumb in the process. One of these days I’ll figure out the grating attachment on my food processor! In the meantime, I’ll just have to continue to bleed for the sake of my art.

Once I had bandaged my thumb and had a nice pile of orange carrot on my cutting board, I proceeded to make the cake batter. In the bowl of my KitchenAid mixer, I beat eggs and superfine baker’s sugar until they were light and fluffy, added in some canola oil, and beat the mixture some more. I gently folded in the grated carrot and some flour with cinnamon, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Finally, I chopped some walnuts and folded them in.

I transferred the mixture to a baking pan that I had greased with butter and lined with a circle of parchment paper. (To make the parchment paper circle the right size, simply trace the bottom of your pan with a pencil, cut the circle out, and place it, pencil marking side down, in the greased pan. ) I baked the cake in a preheated 325 F convection oven (350 F regular oven). While the recipe suggests that the cake will take about 45 minutes to bake, I found that it took closer to an hour. (The cake was still liquid after 45 minutes.) However, definitely start checking after 45 minutes. A toothpick or knife inserted in the center should come out clean.

After letting the cake cool for about 20 minutes in the pan, I carefully inverted the cake onto a plate, peeling off the parchment paper circle from the bottom. Then I inverted it again onto a cooling rack to finish cooling. Ideally, the cake should be completely cool before it’s iced. I was a little pressed for time, so after 45 minutes I declared it “good enough” and made the icing. (The icing started to melt a bit as a result, but on the plus side I thought the warm cake was really delicious. The icing re-firmed when I refrigerated the leftovers.)

I cleaned the KitchenAid’s work bowl and paddle, and beat butter and cream cheese together until creamy. I flavored it with vanilla and confectioner’s sugar. Carrarini gives a range of sugar depending on how sweet you like your frosting — I admit that I used the upper number.

I frosted the top of the cake, leaving the sides unfrosted. I found the contrast between the white top and the dark sides attractive, but I suppose you could frost both if you like. I decorated the top with a little orange and green sugar. 

Fresh from the oven, the texture of the cake was amazingly light. It was redolent of cinnamon, sprinkled with confetti-like bits of grated carrot, and studded with the walnuts.

The creamy frosting set the cake off perfectly, but for the adults, wasn’t the only reason for eating the cake. DH, DH’s Mom, and I all thought that the cake was heavenly. DH liked it even better the second day. Refrigerated overnight, the cake was richer and denser, more like a traditional carrot cake. 

I’m afraid that my son cast a dissenting vote…he didn’t like the texture of the nuts. He did taste a few bites of the cake, but only really liked the frosting. He later informed us that, “Only squirrels eat nuts.” If you or your children aren’t fans of nuts in your baked goods, I’m pretty sure this cake would be almost as good without them.   

The second dish I made starring carrots was also from the Rose Bakery cookbook, a Carrot and Seed Salad. The same day I made the carrot cake, another bunch of carrots showed up in our weekly CSA delivery. (The bunch that I posed next to the finished carrot cake, actually.) We were attending a potluck dinner at a local park, and I decided that a carrot salad would be a good addition to the picnic spread. Instead of the more traditional raisins, this carrot salad is made with crunchy sunflower or pumpkin seeds, and has a light lemon dressing that isn’t too sweet. 

Like the cake, I began the salad by peeling and grating a bunch of CSA carrots. I did manage to avoid re-injuring my thumb!

While I grated the carrots, I preheated the oven. Once it was hot, I spread out a cup of salted sunflower seeds on a tray, tossed them with a small amount of canola oil and a tiny bit of extra salt. I roasted the seeds for about 13 minutes total, stirring them at the 5 and 10 minute mark. I left the roasted seeds on the tray to cool.

I juiced a few CSA lemons, straining out the seeds until I had measured out a 1/2 cup of lemon juice.

I poured the lemon juice in a small bowl, and whisked in some salt, ground pepper, superfine sugar, and olive oil. I tasted the dressing, found it too flat, and added more lemon juice, salt, and sugar until the balance of flavors seemed right. 

I placed the grated carrot in a bowl. I felt like I didn’t have much carrot, so I decided to grate in two green apples for a little color, flavor, and extra volume. I knew that the lemon in the dressing would keep the apples from turning brown, and their sweetness would complement the carrot.

I tossed the carrot and apple with the dressing and the toasted sunflower seeds.

The finished dish had a good balance of flavors between the sweet carrots and apple, the tart lemon juice, and the nutty sunflower seeds. Initially, the carrots and seeds were nice and crunchy. If I took this dish to another potluck, however, I would bring the seeds in a separate bag and stir them in at the last minute. By the time we ate, they were a little softened by the dressing. Even so, I think this was a reasonably successful dish, and one that I would make again. 

As long as we’re on the subject of carrots, I’ll leave you with this photo of a few baby ones that DH recently pulled out of the garden. He’s threatening to make vegetable bouquets like this one the new standard in our house. I think I’ll stick with roses, but these guys certainly are cute.

Carrot Cake
From Breakfast, Lunch, Tea: The Many Little Meals of Rose Bakery
Serves 8

Note from Stacy: You will achieve the best, most accurate results from measuring your ingredients.

unsalted butter, for greasing
4 eggs
225 g (generous 1 cup) caster (superfine)
300 ml (1 1/4 cups) sunflower oil (I used canola oil with good results)
9 medium carrots, finely grated
300 g (2 cups) all-purpose flour, sifted
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 rounded teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
150 g (1 1/2 cups) finely chopped walnuts

For the icing
125 g (generous 1/2 cup) unsalted butter, softened
250 g (generous 1 cup) cream cheese
1/2 teaspoon natural vanilla extract
50-75 g (1/2-3/4 cup) confectioner’s sugar, depending on how sweet you like your icing

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. (325 degrees F in a convection oven.)

Butter a 9 inch cake tin and line its base with parchment paper.

Beat the eggs and caster sugar until they are light and fluffy but not too white and meringue-like.

Pour in the oil and beat for a few more minutes.

Fold in the carrots and then the flour with the cinnamon, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Finally fold in the walnuts.

Pour the mixture into the prepared tin and bake for about 45 minutes or until a knife inserted in the centre comes out clean.

Remove from the oven and cool the cake in the tin before taking it out.

To make the icing, beat the butter with the cream cheese for a few minutes till the mixture is smooth.

Add the vanilla extract and confectioner’s sugar.

When the cake is cold, ice the top with the icing — it can be as smooth or as rough as you like.

Carrot and Seed Salad
From Breakfast, Lunch, Tea: The Many Little Meals of Rose Bakery
Serves 6

130 g (1 cup) sunflower or pumpkin seeds
1 tablespoon sunflower or canola oil (optional)
pinch of salt
8 medium carrots, grated
1 handful chopped chives (I left the chives out and added two Granny Smith apples, grated)

For the dressing
125 ml (1/2 cup) lemon juice
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper
1 tablespoon caster (superfine) sugar
about 3 tablespoons sunflower oil or olive oil

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F, and if you wish, mix the seeds with the oil.

Season the seeds with the salt, spread them evenly on a baking tray and bake for approximately 15 minutes till they are lightly roasted and crisp, turning frequently. Set aside to cool.

Place the carrots in a serving bowl.

To make the dressing, whisk together the lemon juice, salt, pepper, and sugar in a bowl, then whisk in the oil. Check the seasoning — you may need more salt, sugar, or lemon juice.

Pour the dressing over the carrots (and grated apple, if using) and mix well.

Sprinkle with the chives (if using) and the cooled seeds.

Like Halloween, it was filled with costume parades, carnivals, and the exchanging of sweet treats. Even the reading of the megilla was exciting as the audience was encouraged to use groggers, or noisemakers, to blot out Haman’s name during the reading. (When are kids actually told to make noise during storytime?) The ritual Purim feast is the one time of the year that adults are supposed to get drunk. Purim is also a time for giving to the needy and for giving gifts of food to family and friends, a custom called shalachmanot.

Purim fell on March 9-10 this year, but our celebrations actually began a few days before that when we invited our friends R. and T. to make hamantaschen with us. Hamantaschen are triangular shaped cookies, one of the most celebrated sweets of Purim. Haman, the villain of the Purim story, was said to wear a three-cornered hat, and these cookies mimic that shape. Gil Marks includes a fascinating history of the hamantaschen in his book The World of Jewish Cooking: More Than 500 Traditional Recipes from Alsace to Yemen. Here are some highlights:

“The first mention of hamantaschen appears in…an eleventh century prayer book [from] Marne, France…Poppy seed, the original filling, remains the most popular….Among the many medieval Teutonic pastries was a triangular-shaped treat called mohntasch (poppy seed pocket). The similarity of the German word for poppy seed, mohn, to the name of the villain of the Purim story, Haman, led to the renaming of this cookie to hamantasch(Haman’s pocket). Subsequently, various symbolic meanings were ascribed to the hamantaschen. The triangular shape came to represent either Haman’s pockets, alluding to the bribes the prime minister took, or his tricornered hat or ears, connoting his execution. This is in line with the widespread custom of symbolically eating some part of Haman and thereby erasing his name…”

Whatever the symbolic meaning of hamantaschen, they are delicious and fun to make, especially with kids. Originally, hamantaschen were made with a yeast cookie dough. These days, a sugar cookie dough is more common, and that’s what I grew up with and still bake as an adult. (We were lucky enough to taste both this year, since yeast hamantaschen were served at the Purim carnival we attended over the weekend.) A circle of dough is cut out, a dab of filling placed in the center, and the cookie is folded in a triangular shape around the filling.

While poppy seed or plum preserves are most traditional, I love chocolate hamantaschen. One of my earliest memories is of filling hamantaschen with chocolate chips with my preschool “boyfriend” and our respective mothers. While chocolate chips may be delicious, they are a little difficult to work with in this application, always trying to roll away or distort the triangular shape of the cookies. I was really excited this year when I happened upon a jar of Nutella chocolate hazelnut spread in my cupboard, and decided to give that a try. Bingo. Nutella, as it turns out, is perfect for making hamantaschen. The cookies hold their shape much better than when chocolate chips are used, and the nuttiness of the hazelnut adds another dimension to the treat. Nutella hamantaschen are my new gold standard.

I used Bon Maman strawberry jam to fill some hamantaschen as well, and that was less successful. The jam boiled over and ended up streaking the sides of the cookies. I think it was just too thin to make a good hamantaschen filling. Even though my strawberry hamantaschen were less pretty than their Nutella cousins, they still tasted really good. Perhaps I could try thickening the jam in some manner next year.

To begin, I made the cookie dough for the hamentaschen. I used our KitchenAid to cream the butter and sugar until it was light and fluffy, and then beat in the egg, a little orange juice, vanilla, and salt. I beat in the flour just until the mixture came together into a soft dough, finishing the mixing by hand.

For convenience, I divided the dough into four balls, flattened the balls into disks, and wrapped each disk in plastic wrap. I would bake the hamantaschen in four batches, pulling out a dough disk from the refrigerator as I was ready for it. As each batch baked, we could work on cutting, filling, and shaping the next batch.

The dough needs to be refrigerated for at least an hour before proceeding. Our son provided enthusiastic assistance in cleaning up the kitchen.

You will want a large nonstick surface for rolling out the dough — wax paper will do in a pinch. Personally, I love my Roul’Pat Pastry Mat, an extra large Silpat. (A Silpatis a nonstick, oven-safe silicone mat that is great for making cookies and candy.)

Cookie dough shapes release easily from a Roul’Pat, making cutout cookies much less annoying. Even with a nonstick surface, you will still want to dust your Roul’Pat (or wax paper) with a good amount of flour.

I also have a Silicone Rolling Pin, another great innovation. Dough is much less likely to stick to it. Whether silicone or traditional, you will also want to dust your rolling pin with flour.

For a cutter, I used a 2 3/4-inch round biscuit cutter, dipped in flour. I had ready a baking sheet, covered with a Silpat for easy cleanup and release of the baked cookies. (The Silpat isn’t strictly necessary, but it does help, particularly when your strawberry jam boils over and turns into soft candy!) I set out a small bowl of water and my hamantaschen fillings.

I rolled the first dough out thinly, sprinkling with flour as necessary to prevent the rolling pin from sticking to it. I helped my son cut out as many rounds of dough as possible.

I gathered up the scraps, rerolled the dough, and we cut more circles. Once the dough was cut, we put a small amount of Nutella or jam in the center of each circle. Use less than you think you need — a small teaspoonful is enough. Otherwise you will have exploding hamantaschen.

Dipping our finger in the bowl of water, we lightly wet the outside of a dough circle. This helps the dough stick together when shaped.

The next part takes a bit of practice — you are forming the circle into a triangle, leaving most of the filling visible in the center. I folded up the bottom of the circle, and pinched to form the two bottom points of the triangle. I folded up the two sides of the triangle, and pinched to form the top point of the triangle.

When finished, I had a tray of unbaked cookies that looked something like this. I slid them into the oven to bake and moved on to the next batch.

At age 2 3/4, my son was able to help cut the dough, wet the edge, and shape a respectable hamantaschen with a lot of guidance. I did let him do a couple with no help at all — he was overenthusiastic in his pinching and ended up with more of a crescent than a triangle, but the result was still pretty tasty. One of them never made it in the oven — he consumed it before I could grab it from him!

Our son’s friend T. and her Mom R. were also able to get in on the act. Making hamantaschen is a really fun activity to do with friends.

Needless to say, the finished hamantaschen were a huge hit with DH, DS, and me. By all rights, we should have given away a good portion of the hamantaschen in shalachmanot, but I have a confession to make. I think the three of us ate all but five of the finished hamantaschen. (One went to T., and four went to DH’s co-worker.) The finished cookies were crisp and buttery, with a delicious hit of chocolaty Nutella or strawberry jam in the center. Even the messy strawberry ones were fantastic. Our son begged and stole as many of them as he could get away with, and I don’t even want to think about how many hamantaschen I ate over a three day period. Mysteriously, my weight actually went down by a few pounds over the weekend. Maybe the world is missing out on the hamantaschen diet?    

I can’t wait to do this again next year. I wonder if our son’s hamantaschen-making skills will have improved in a year’s time.       

Cookie Dough Hamantaschen
Recipe from Gil Marks’ The World of Jewish Cooking: More Than 500 Traditional Recipes from Alsace to Yemen

1/2 cup (1 stick) plus 3 tablespoons butter or margarine, softened
1/2 cup sugar
1 large egg
3 tablespoons orange juice, sweet red wine, or water (or 2 tablespoons water and 1 tablespoon lemon juice)
1 teaspoon vanilla extract or grated lemon zest
1/4 teaspoon salt
About 2 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
About 1 1/2 cups poppy seed filling, prune jam, or plum preserves. (Or another filling of your choice — I highly recommend Nutella.)

1) Beat the butter or margarine until smooth. Gradually add the sugar and beat until light and fluffy, 5 to 10 minutes. Beat in the egg. Blend in the juice, wine, or water, vanilla or zest, and salt. Stir in enough of the flour to make a soft dough. [Note: I used the full amount of flour.]

2) Wrap the dough in plastic wrap and chill until firm, at least 1 hour. The dough can be stored in the refrigerator for several days or in the freezer for several months. Let stand at room temperature for several minutes, until workable but not soft.

3) Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F. (350 degrees F in a convection oven.) Have ungreased baking sheets ready. (Note: I like to use a Silpat liner for easy removal and cleanup.)

4) For easy handling, divide the dough into 4 pieces. (I actually do this before refrigerating the dough. I divide the dough into four disk-shaped pieces, and refrigerate them wrapped in plastic wrap.) On a lightly floured surface or piece of waxed paper, roll out each piece 1/8 inch thick. (An extra large Silpat, called a Roul’Pat, works great.) Using a 2 1/2-3 inch cookie cutter or glass, cut out rounds. Reroll the scraps.

5) Place 1 teaspoon of the filling in the center of each round. (Use less than you think you need.) Pinch the bottom side of the dough round together over the filling. Fold down the top flap and pinch the other two sides together to form a triangle, leaving some filling exposed in the center. (Hamantaschen can be prepared ahead to this point and frozen for several months. Defrost before baking.)

6) Place the hamantaschen 1 inch apart on the baking sheets. Bake until golden brown, about 13 minutes. Transfer to a wire rack and let cool completely. 

Note: Marks includes the margarine variation for purposes of the kosher separation of dairy and meat. Someone who keeps kosher wouldn’t be able to eat butter hamantaschen at the end of a meat-based meal. If you don’t need to worry about keeping kosher, I highly recommend that you use butter.

The weather was warm and the sky gloriously blue this weekend. Our strange hybrid plum/peach/nectarine tree is covered with fluffy white blooms, with the odd pink blossom here and there. 

The garden beckoned irresistibly to both my boys. Before he started work today, DH’s vegetable garden looked like this:

Feathery carrot tops are visible, and a few curly pea vines.

The latter have been repeatedly attacked by DH’s arch-nemesis, snails. As usual, we have sweet peas coming up in abundance. In fact, one of DH’s missions for the day was to make a path through the sweet peas. He also pulled out the daikon radish that ate Chicago.

DH spent some time sorting through his seed collection and diagramming the vegetable garden.

Today he planted corn, beets, sugar snap peas, and sunflowers. He has tomato, sunflower, Lolita squash, and cucumber seedlings coming up in a “greenhouse” incubator. (Really a storage shed with glass walls — the previous owners of our house kept five cats in there.)

Like his father, our son already loves gardens and was excited to be able to “help” Daddy. He happily poked around with his little shovel and rake and even managed to pull out a few weeds. (Also a couple of sweet pea vines, but uh, mistakes will happen.)

I’m looking forward to cooking with the garden’s bounty this summer!

_____________________________________________________________________

Our Capay Valley CSA delivery for the week of 3/6/09:

Carrots, Golden Chard, Dino Kale, Collard Greens, Fennel, Pea Greens, Beets, Spinach, Radicchio, and most excitingly, Artichokes and Belgian Endive.

I first tasted Belgian Endive when I studied abroad in France. It was January 1996 — I was in the second semester of my Junior year in college. Before living in Paris for four months, my classmates and I were spending a few weeks in Aix en Provence, taking an intensive French language class and enjoying Aix’s charming cobblestone streets. While in Aix, I was living with a host family (an American expatriate, her French husband, and their two darling little girls) in a townhouse that looked like it had once belonged to Rococo nobility. My host mother was an excellent cook, and one of the dishes she prepared while I was staying with her was warm crottins of goat cheese with an endive salad. The contrast between the sweet creaminess of the goat cheese and the bitterness of the endive was a revelation to my tastebuds.

When two beautiful endives showed up in this week’s box, I immediately knew that I wanted to create a variation on that memorable salad. Capay Valley includes recipes with each delivery, and this week’s newsletter included a recipe for an Endive & Radicchio Salad with a mustard vinaigrette. I decided to go with that for the salad portion of the dish. Crottins (which means animal dropping in French) are small rounds of aged goat cheese. I remember the ones that my host mother used having developed a bit of a rind, so she was able to bake them with no protective coating, as in thisrecipe. While there are excellent crottins produced in California, my local grocery store didn’t have any. I decided to use a log of soft goat cheese, cut into rounds. To prevent the soft cheese from running all over the place, I would need some sort of coating. After consulting with DH, I decided to try crushed cornflakes.

To begin, I made the mustard vinaigrette for the salad. I minced a small clove of garlic finely, and crushed it with 1/2 teaspoon salt using the flat side of my chef’s knife.

I whisked the garlic paste, some Dijon mustard and red wine vinegar, and black pepper in a bowl. While whisking, I drizzled in 1/4 cup of olive oil and continued whisking until the mixture was emulsified.

I carefully washed the two Belgian endives and two very small heads of Radicchio.

I sliced the endive and Radicchio crosswise into strips. I set the finished dressing and salad greens aside — I wouldn’t combine them until it was time to serve dinner.

I placed about 1/2 a cup of cornflakes into a large Zip-lock bag, sealed the top. and used my hands and a potato masher to coarsely crush the cornflakes. You want a mixture of fine crumbs and some larger pieces for texture. I dumped the cornflake crumbs onto a plate. I beat an egg in a small bowl. I opened up the goat cheese log and sliced it into 6 equal rounds. (The goat cheese log I bought was on the small side, weighing perhaps 4 oz.) The cheese was a little sticky, so I found that I had to push the rounds carefully off the knife blade, and wipe the blade off in between cuts.

I was now ready to dredge the cheese rounds. I dipped each round in the beaten egg, and then coated it thoroughly with cornflake pieces.

You want as much of the cheese to be coated as possible, including the sides, but don’t worry if you can see a few white bits peeking through. I placed the prepared goat cheese rounds in the refrigerator while I cooked the steaks that I was planning to serve as our entree.

Once our steak was cooked and resting, I sprayed a small rimmed baking sheet with cooking spray, and arranged the goat cheese rounds on it. I gave the tops of the rounds an additional spritz of cooking spray to assist with browning. I slid the goat cheese rounds into a preheated 375 degree F convection oven (400 degree F regular oven) for 9-10 minutes.

Just before dinner, I tossed the vinaigrette with the endive and radicchio.

I pulled the goat cheese rounds out of the oven – they smelled deliciously of toasted cornflakes.

I carefully slid two forks under each round in order to transfer them to our dinner plates. Proceed with caution — they don’t have much interior strength since they’re all warm creamy cheese in the center. I served two of the goat cheese rounds on a heap of the endive & radicchio salad, with a piece of grilled grass-fed sirloin steak rubbed with Penzey’s Chicago Steak Seasoning.

DH and I both found this to be an incredibly successful dish. Cornflakes might seem like an odd coating for goat cheese rounds, but their sweetness was the perfect balance for the bitterness of the greens, the astringency of the mustard vinaigrette, and the richness of the cheese. The textural contrast between the crisp greens, the crunchy cornflakes, and the creamy cheese was equally harmonious. The cheese rounds were also very tasty with the steak, although the salad on its own would be a beautiful centerpiece for a vegetarian luncheon or light dinner.

To my delight, our son tried a bite of the cheese rounds, but sadly, he didn’t like their taste at all. It looks like his cheese connoisseurship (remember that he happily at cave-aged Gouda yesterday) doesn’t yet extend to an appreciation of goat cheese. A napkin and a glass of milk had to be employed to get the taste out of his mouth. He was very appreciative of the steak, however, and I’m proud that he at least gave the goat cheese a try. Your child’s mileage may vary.

Endive & Radicchio Salad
From Farm Fresh to You’s Organic Produce Delivery Service Newsletter 

1/2-1 garlic clove
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon coarse grain mustard
1 tablespoon red wine vinegar
1/4 teaspoon black pepper
1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil
2 medium Belgium endives, sliced crosswise 1/2 inch thick
1 head Radicchio di Treviso, torn into 2-inch pieces (I sliced two small heads into strips like the endives.)

Mince garlic with a large heavy knife, then mash to a paste with salt using flat side of knife.

Whisk together garlic paste, mustard, vinegar, and pepper, then add oil in a slow stream, whisking until emulsified. Just before serving, toss greens with vinaigrette.

Cornflake-Crusted Goat Cheese Rounds

Non-Stick Cooking Spray
1/2 cup cornflakes
1 egg
1 small (approximately 4 oz) log of plain goat cheese

Preheat convection oven to 375 degrees F, or a regular oven to 400 degrees F.

Spray a rimmed baking sheet with cooking spray.

Place cornflakes in Zip-lock bag, squeeze out air, and seal. Crush cornflakes coarsely, leaving some larger pieces. Place cornflakes on plate, and set aside.

Whisk egg lightly in small bowl, and set aside.

Cut goat cheese log into 6 rounds of equal size, gently sliding each round off of knife blade and wiping blade clean between cuts. Dip each round in egg, then coat completely in crushed cornflakes. Try to cover all surfaces of rounds, including the sides. Set aside the prepared rounds on a plate and refrigerate until ready to bake.

Ten minutes before you are ready to serve dinner, place rounds on greased baking sheet. Spray tops of rounds with a little more cooking spray to aid browning. Bake in preheated oven for 9-10 minutes, until cornflakes are (even more) golden and cheese is softened. Serve immediately with Endive & Radicchio Salad.