Gadgets

Any gadget in my kitchen has to do more than one thing. My coffee station is both for coffe and espresso.  My Ninja is the insanely strong blender and has the produce slicing attachment with a variety of blades.  My panini unit makes paninis, toast, and can grill chicken.  My Kitchen Aid mixer has a meat grinding attachment.  My Cuisinart immersion blender can cream hot veggies into soup and has a whip attachment for cold cream.

The only exception to the rule- my Robot Coupe.  It is a food processer on steroids that can grind anything to a pulp in mere moments.  My husband loves to harvest fresh horseradish this time of the year.  I cut those babies in thirds, throw them in and press the on button.  Within seconds, it is ground to the familiar condiment most commonly added to ketchup to make cocktail sauce or mayo for roast beef!  And my eyes are tearing.  With ramp season underway, I pack the bulbs, leaves, some parsley, toasted pecans, and olive oil into the unit and within seconds  I have beautiful bright green pesto.  I have even been known to whip (pulse?) together a double batch of scones because the dough comes together very quickly, reducing how much it is handled, producing a more tender scone.  Breadcrumbs from day old bread can be made in seconds to add to meatballs, meatloaf, roasted tomatoes, and salmon cakes.  Fresh salmon please, not that canned stuff.  I cringe just thinking about that product!

My kitchen is small, my house is small. Every nook and cranny is important space that must be used efficiently.  But I splurge because the singular focus of this appliance is that good.

What to do with duck eggs?

Why of course, make the absolute best-ever pasta dough!  Duck eggs are only available at the Cooperstown Farmers' Market for a short tome, and Sonja from Nectar Orchrds sells them by the half dozen.  I love to make pasta.  It is easy, it is fun, and it is really difficult to do wrong!  

Basic pasta dough:  Eggs, flour, olive oil, salt, and pepper.  It is also really easy to remember the process: two eggs, two cups of flour, one tablespoon olive oil, pinch of salt, and a pinch of pepper.  I do not have a pasta board, so I use a large serving platter that has short sides.  Put the flour on the plate use a fork to mix the salt and pepper throughout and make a well.  Beat the eggs with the olive oil and put in the center of the well.  When I use duck eggs, I always beat them first because the yolk is a bit tough to break up easily.  Using a fork, pull the flour from underneath the walls of the well until a dough come together.  Once there, turn onto a floured board, kneading in flour until the dough is pliable and no longer sticky.  Wrap up in plastic and let rest in the refrigerator for about half hour, forty-five minutes.  Handle the dough as little as possible, you do not want to develop the gluten proteins too much, the dough will become tough.  I always use 00 flour, not all-purpose, when I make pasta.  The end product is silky and tender.

I have a small pasta roller that I purchased years ago, great investment.  I can roll and cut.  Before I purchased the roller, I hand rolled with a French rolling pin and cut strips, measured with a ruler and then used the ruler as the straight-edge and cut with a pizza cutter.  This is on quarter of the round of dough the recipe produces. 

 

Before I cut the pasta dough, I always have the boiling water heavily salted and ready to go.  Once it comes to a serious boil, I add the salt, and then reduce the heat so that the pasta is not beat up!  Fresh pasta only takes minutes to cook, depending on the thickness.  I rolled mine to a 7 on the dial and then cut.  It only needed about two minutes and then I pulled it and put it in the sauce.

The sauce was easy.  I love garlic and olive oil on fresh pasta.  So here is my riff using fresh ingredients from the market.  Here is what I used:

One half pound package of pancetta and a dried pepper from Gaia's Breath Farm, a bunch of ramps from Painted Goat and olive oil, salt, pepper, fresh lemon juice, and zest from my pantry.  I put a half inch dice on the pancetta, rendered it in the olive oil until the pieces were crisp, removed the meat and added the I chopped the bulbs and stems of the ramps and the pepper (cut in half) and added some smoked Himilayian sea salt and a few turns of freshly ground pepper.  I sautéd until ramps were tender, added the chopped leaves and wilted them in the oil.  I finished with the lemon juice and pulled the pasta from the water, added it to the pancetta/ramp mixture and combined gently.  I finished with Pecorino Romano cheese and the crispy pancetta.  Sprinkled with zest and served.

Yum, happy eating!

 

Whole, real food

I jumped on the fat free bandwagon years ago; jumped on the butter is bad for you wagon for a while; did a stint on the vegetarian express, and most recently attempted gluten free.  Let's be real, unless you absolutely have to, who wants to live without pasta, bagels, and good bread?  All of those extremes did encourage temporary weight loss.  But the most successful I have ever been has been with real foods, portion control, and exercise.  I lost 50 lbs. a couple of years ago, again.  With the stress of some personal issues this past fall and through the end of January, I regained 15 of the 50.  

Summer is coming and the bounty of #thecooperstownfarmersmarket, I feel comfortable that I am back on track.  Last night I sliced some thick chops from a pork loin because I was running a time deficit and knew roasting the loin whole would put dinner on the table at 8PM, instead of 7:30PM. I had some spinch and parsnips from Heller's Farm.  I boiled the parsnips drained them and put them back on the burner to dry them out a touch and puréed them with a very little bit of butter and organic heavy cream (very little, a teaspoon of butter, a tablespoon of heavy cream.)  I sautéed the spinach in some organic olive oil that I heated with garlic cloves to flavor the oil and pan seared the chops to get some color on them.  I finished them in the oven, pulled them out and deglazed the pan with the Merlot I was drinking, reduced and voila, a pan sauce!

Real food, exercise, and portion control.   Chunky pup has been put on a new eating plan as well and she has lost three pounds since the end of January, five pounds in a about a year.  She has at least ten more to go so she and I and Small pup (Zeus), our acting supervisor are off for our two mile walk!

Beans...do I need to say more?

I love beans:  Black beans, red kidney beans, cannellini beans, lima beans, garbanzo beans, butter beans, heck even fava beans.  What I do not love:  Canned beans.  I bought my first electric pressure cooker a little over a year ago; loved it.  I was still working full time and the fact that I could come home at 5PM and still have dinner on the table by 7PM astounded me, and I am not talking take out!  I was losing weight and eating healthy and dried beans made it easy.  And then, tragedy.  I had become so accustomed to having it, that I gave how easy it made my life nary a thought until November 2013 when the pressure gauge broke.  I was on my way home from Long Island on the train a couple of days after Christmas when I realized I could no longer do without it.  I ordered another one.  Truth be told, I liked my first one better because it multi-tasked better, but this one was on sale.  

I did not start using it regularly until early April and now, I am convinced I will never live without one again.  The electric version is not terrifying as your grandmother's traditional stove top one was.  I have yet to have it explode the hot contents all over (although I did do that once with a roasted eggplant and still have a small scar, but that is another kitchen adventure of years gone by and I come off looking silly.)

I had a ham bone in the freezer, dried black beans in the cupboard and time on my hands!  Also had some Sabra salsa, one of the few prepackaged food companies whose products I will occasionally use because I can read all the ingredients and they are really foods.  I also found some uncooked flour tortillas, again able to read all four ingredients, and queso fresco...and the end result:

Ramp pesto

Yesterday, I talked about the dicey outcome of my purple potato gnocchi.  The outcome was not typical of past outcomes using Idaho potatoes or red bliss potatoes.  The accompaniment, ramp pesto, is where I expected the inconsistency to come from.  It always is inconsistent.  The earlier the ramps are dug, the smaller they, are the more heat and garlic flavor comes through.  The later in the season, the larger the bulbs, the smoother the garlicky flavor is and the less heat.  The flavor profiles garner the same passion as the arguememt over whether they are called ramps or wild leeks and each camp has its preference.

This early in the season, I love ramps puréed into a smooth pesto with extra leafy green parts, to cut the heat a bit.  I add toasted pecans and about a third as much parsley ( once you have the bunch, pick leaves only, please, take the time, it is woth it) as ramp greens, and throw the in the food processor.  I slowly add olive oil as the mixture breaks down.  Too much and it separates after a spell and not enough will leave a rough texture.  As the season progresses, the leaves can become stringy and makes it harder to come up with a smooth and consistent product.

I do not add salt until after I add the cheese, either Parmagarna Reggiano or Pecorino Romano, and I do not stir in the cheese until right before service.  I use a micro plane to grate it and I do add as I taste until I hit the flavor note I like.  The beauty of pesto...it can be whatever you want and pretty much from whatever green herb/garlic/nut/ cheese combo favors you like.

Pesto is ridiculously versatile.  It is great with pasta, spread on grilled bread, on grilled chicken sandwiches, mixed into potato salad, and stirred into soups in the fall.  I will freeze as much as possible in ice cube trays, pop them out, and keep them in a freezer safe bag for the middle of winter when I am in desperate need of spring!

 

Purple potato gnocchi

Usually, I make gnocchi in batches and freeze what I am not immediately using.  Full disclosure, it did not work so well this time.  The trick to making gnocchi is to use as little flour as possible so the little potato pillows remain light and airy, instead of dense and heavy.  I always boil the potatoes in well salted water until fork tender, drain them, and then return the to the hot pot to pull extra water.  Then put them through the ricer (see first pic,) add the flour, salt, pepper until  pieces hold together and are not wet, then add the beaten egg.  I flour the work surface, and in batches, roll them into logs, cut them in one inch pieces and flick them off a fork.  I do not have a gnocchi board; I use a fork to create the classic ridges (pic 2.)

I bring a large pot of water to a boil, add salt and reduce heat.  Do not add the gnocchi to rapidly boiling water!  They are delicate and will not survive.  Remember, you are only looking to heat them through to cook the egg.  When the water is a rapid simmer, add the gnocchi in batches, do not crowd the pot.  When they float to the surface, give them another thirty to sixty seconds and remove to plate.

I like these with butter or with the pesto, in this case ramp pesto (see pic 3 and 4.)

 

 

I froze the balance, as I usually do.  When I cooked them, they deteriorated.  This is the first time I have ever made them with purple potatoes, as I said.  I am unsure if is the starch content in the potato, if they should have defrosted first (I never defrost them), or if they held too much water.  Always good to have a backup plan and out came the boxed pasta!

I use approximately three pounds of potato, again flour predicated on moisture in potato, and two -three eggs.  In this case duck eggs.  The potatoes came from Heller's Farms and the duck eggs from Nectar Orchards, both at the Cooperstown Farmers' Market!  

Ramp pesto to follow tomorrow.  This is a great time of year for foodies.  The abundance is just beginning.

Back at it!

It's May, it's May, the lovely month of May.  True, words from a song, but better yet....great whole foods from the Cooperstown Farmers's Market.  The abundance of real food was unbelievable.  Foods that I will eat all week long, although Sunday's Off will still be about the extravagance and pleasure that food offers.  With fresh ramps from Painted Goat farm, purple potatoes from Heller's Farm and duck eggs from Nectar Orchards I am thinking either fresh duck egg pasta with ramp pesto or gnocchi (made from the purple potatoes)  with ramp pesto anybody have a preference or should I surprise you?