Kate Flaim (Girl Reporter)

Hi! We’re back. We got back a week ago, but you know how that always goes. If you want to take a look at where we were and what we were doing, from my perspective (which means with very few pictures of me!), check out this Flickr set.

One lucky thing about this pregnancy is that it hasn’t changed my vegetable obsession, it’s just made me a bit lazier about cooking things myself. Salads, especially those that don’t rely too heavily on lettuce, make me very, very happy these days, and we ran into a brilliant combination several times on the Scotland leg of the trip: Peas, edamame, some sort of greens and a bit of cheese.

The first (and best) encounter was in the charming town of Plockton, near the Isle of Skye, which despite a tiny population is blessed with a handful of very good restaurants. At the Plockton Inn (needs redecorating but the food was excellent), we ordered the pea/edamame/asparagus salad as a starter, and then I tried to eat as much of it as I could without Ben noticing. Sadly, I’d already divided it between two plates before realizing how great it was.

Super, super simple, but incredibly tasty. The sweet English peas and earthier edamame are a great pairing.

Later, in a random pub in Edinburgh, we ordered something similar, this time with rocket (arugula) as the green, no asparagus, and with the addition of chunks of feta. This photo is truly terrible, but it was very dark and the one light was coming straight over my shoulder, making big shadows!

When we got to France, I was still thinking about those salads, so on our first night in the house we’d rented I made my own version, using little fava beans instead of edamame.

Market spoils:

We just don’t have local produce like this here yet. It was luxurious.

Ben had never prepped fava beans before. He was taken aback by the layers of steps, but was an instant pro, especially at getting the pods open in one fell swoop. He cut the prep time by well more than half.

I popped a steamer basket in a pan of boiling water so I could use the same water to blanch the favas and the peas separately. Then I used it to steam the asparagus.

Such a tiny number of favas. I ALWAYS forget that you have to buy them by the kilo to have enough.

I mixed the blanched/cooled vegetables (I shocked everything in the coldest water I could get after cooking; I didn’t have any ice!) together with a mustard vinaigrette. That was a mistake; the mustard overwhelmed the little fava beans. But it was nice with the peas and asparagus.

Quiche for me, pizza for Ben, and bread, to go with the salad.

Last night I went for it again, this time using frozen shelled edamame from Trader Joe’s, and a handful of rather elderly-looking English peas from Whole Foods (via god knows where; LOCAL VEGETABLES, PLEASE ARRIVE).

Once again, I cooked the vegetables separately (the peas need 30 seconds, max, and the frozen edamame closer to 5 minutes), then shocked them in ice water to stop the cooking.

This time I just dressed them with lemon juice and good olive oil, salt and pepper (same for the salad greens, in a different bowl):

When Ben got home, I topped the greens with the peas/beans, to which I had added a bit of marinated feta from the WF antipasto bar.

And we ate on the porch—hurray!

With a handful of cherries for dessert:

I hope Ben doesn’t get sick of this anytime soon, because I’m planning on making a million versions of it this summer. Slightly mashed and spread on bruschetta! Served with buffalo mozzarella! On top of fish!

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P.S. Vote for Renee‘s community garden grant proposal! Vote here.

Noodle Quest got under my skin, and one night after deciding to try Smitten Kitchen’s adapted-from-GOOP ginger dressing, I thought I’d whip up some cold peanut noodles to round out the meal. My mom used to make something similar, and I’d eat as many as I could out of the bowl before getting my hand smacked away. This comes together in less than the time it takes to cook the pasta.

Since I still haven’t found the right chinese noodles (they’re square cut, not flat), I used regular spaghetti. Worked great.

I used a combination of my beloved local Teddie brand natural peanut butter (chunky), soy sauce, rice wine vinegar, chili/garlic sauce and sesame oil. (This is not the place for a sweetened peanut butter like Skippy. Too much sugar.)

I started by thinning the peanut butter with a little warm water, and whisking it until it stopped looking repulsive and smoothed back out. (Warning: These are not attractive photos. For real.)

Added in the other ingredients and whisked some more:

Added in my cooked spaghetti (I rinsed it to de-starchify) and mixed:

The noodles suck in the sauce as they sit. They started out all nice and glossy (see above), but soon got much drier (see final photo, below). That’s fine, but instead of being overdressed, as I’d feared, they were a little under-dressed. I also will make the sauce sharper next time, since all that pasta dulls it down. I tossed in a little extra soy sauce and vinegar after I’d already mixed everything together, and drizzled with sesame oil before serving.

As for the ginger dressing…. I need to keep trying. It was really bland, even after I added extra ginger. Maybe I needed more shallot? Some garlic? Perhaps my two small carrots were still more carrot than one large? I love the idea (I am obsessed with the carrot-ginger dressing you get on those tiny side salads when you order sushi), and now I have a huge tub of miso, so why not try again?

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I am on vacation, so this post appeared today through the magic of pre-scheduling. Comment away and I’ll reply when I get home!

A couple weeks ago I had the distinct pleasure of meeting up with fellow Boston-area blogger Katy Elliott, who is chronicling her unbelievable house restoration/renovation along with many, many pretty things on her blog. We had been wanting to try Sofra, the bakery/cafe from Oleana‘s Ana Sortun.

I was basically speechless as I considered my many options. Everything sounded so amazing! I finally settled on a sesame, walnut, kale and fresh mozzarella flatbread, which was cooking on a traditional middle eastern domed oven.

Katy ordered a spinach falafel with some sort of fancy beet spread:

After lunch, Katy treated me to dessert, and I jumped on the chance to try a rhubarb pastry I’d had my eye on. It was so simple—perfectly cooked rhubarb in puff pastry, with crunchy sugar on top—and I am dying to replicate it when we’re back. I hope I haven’t missed the rhubarb season!

We also each loaded up on things to take home. For dinner that night, Ben and I had an indoor picnic of sorts, with the fluffy pitas, muhammara spread (Wiki says it’s traditionally peppers, ground walnuts, breadcrumbs, and olive oil), a little chickpea and goat cheese pizza, and a turnover filled with, supposedly, bacon and brussels sprouts. Only I’m 99.99% sure they were peas.

We still have lots of the spread left, and a few nights later when Ben wasn’t home for dinner I fried eggs and ate them as little sandwiches on the pita, with some of the muhammara. Tangy and delicious!

It’s the rhubarb pastry that I can’t stop thinking about, though. If only I’d taken a photo! Ah well. I’m currently in Clafouti Land in the midst of cherry season; let’s see if I can’t come up with something worth sharing!

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I am on vacation, so this post appeared today through the magic of pre-scheduling. Comment away and I’ll reply when I get home!

That pre schedule thing is a lie. Had to post manually from worst computer in France because wordpress bites. xoxo

Our friends Megan and Dave live in an unbelievable (if slightly crumbling) townhouse, and a couple Saturdays ago they suggested bagging on restaurant plans in favor of an impromptu dinner party to take advantage of a nice night on the deck.

A mere hour or two later, we showed up to find that they’d prepared a feast of fresh fish, salad, asparagus, potatoes… After staying on the roof until the sun set and we got too cold, we dug in downstairs.

(I am so in love with this table/dining area)

There was an incident with a cork that crumbled while we were trying to open it, eventually requiring two corkscrews, a knife and scissors to extract enough that the rest could be pushed down into the bottle. Producing a geyser effect. It started so prettily:

But…

(Note Dave’s grilling headlamp in back of the wreckage.)

The wine was apparently delicious, though. So at least it was worth the mess!

Once we had recovered a bit (and eaten our way through most of the leftover mango salsa), it was dessert time. I’d brought over blackberries, whipping cream, and a Whole Foods angel food cake, since I didn’t have enough warning to make dessert at home. The berries macerated in sugar and lemon juice while we ate, but Dave took a look at the options and decided he’d whip up a nice sabayon sauce to top things off. Impressive, right? Here’s his mom’s recipe:

Cold Sabayon Sauce
From Dave’s mom

5 egg yolks
½ cup sugar
¾ cup sweet white wine (or add extra sugar to dry white wine)
1 Tablespoon finely grated lemon zest
½ teaspoon vanilla
1 cup heavy cream, whipped to hold a soft shape

Combine egg yolks and sugar in a heatproof bowl (metal is good) that fits over a pot of simmering water. Whisk yolks and sugar until combined. Add white wine. Set over simmering water and whisk constantly until mixture thickens and coats a spoon and is too hot to leave your finger in. Remove from heat, add lemon zest and vanilla. Allow to cool or, to cool quickly, set bowl in a bowl of ice water and whisk. When mixture is cool, fold in whipped cream. Cover and chill until serving time.

And the action shots:

How gorgeous is this double boiler?

And the heavenly, heavenly result:

I have to admit, I’d never made sabayon. It was so simple! And SO GOOD. A huge step up from plain old sweetened whipped cream, and a welcome addition to an only-mediocre cake. The berries were helped a lot by the maceration, and were great with the bit of tang in the sauce.

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I am on vacation, so this post appeared today through the magic of pre-scheduling. Comment away and I’ll reply when I get home!

I’m in a library in a wee little town by the bridge to the Isle of Skye… Just wanted to check in, say hello, and thank everyone who voted in the Rockywold contest. We got 2nd place, so we’ll get to have a quick weekend at the lake over the summer!

I’m seriously working on how we could arrange to move here and run a small inn or something. We’re staying here, and I never want to leave. Don’t you think it would be wholesome to raise the baby by the sea?

Ok, kids. I’m headed off on this epic last-trip-before-baby. We’re driving around Ireland and Scotland for a week (I bought a new umbrella for the occasion), then flying down and renting a place just north of the Spanish-French border for another week. I cannot wait! (But I should really go finish packing.)

I’ve lined up a few things to post while I’m gone, and don’t forget to vote in the Rockywold contest (link in the box on the left sidebar). The voting is pretty out of control since there’s no IP address limiter in place, so I doubt I have much of a chance of winning, but never give up, right?

Finally, this is random but too cute not to share. Ben brought home this tiny container of my favorite local milk for me, since I wouldn’t use up the big container before we left:

Heeeee!

Have a great couple weeks! I’ll check in if I can, and will be back online in mid-May.

The voting is open in the contest I blogged about yesterday. Please vote here!!

Squam Lake in NH is perhaps my favorite place in the world, and there is a very amazing and wonderful camp there, Rockywold-Deephaven, that we fell in love with last summer. It’s an old school (founded in 1897), rustic place, and I just love it. They are having an Earth Day essay contest to win a stay there this summer, and I’m one of the five finalists!

To win I need to get the most votes between noon on April 28 and noon on May 4. And I need your help, big time: I’m going to be out of the country for more than half of the voting, so it will be harder for me to spread the word towards the end.

Here’s my essay, which had to be fewer than 140 words and answer the the question, “What is one of your best moments or memories in nature?”:

I grew up in Oregon during the bitter battle to save the spotted owls from logging, and when I was 10 I was lucky enough to see the owls in the wild. We hiked deep into the forest, an emerald-green cathedral with a carpet of moss and ferns. When we stopped, the leader handed me a live mouse and I clambered to the end of an enormous fallen tree. I stood, holding the mouse out by its tail, and the owl swooped out of nowhere, so silent I barely registered it until the mouse had vanished. I never forgot that golden-green moment, the speckled owl whooshing past, the trees looming up overhead. I’m grateful that the logging trucks of my childhood–each holding one huge tree–have vanished, but that forest and those owls have held on.

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Voting is now!! Please share with as many people as you can. Email it around! I am not ashamed to ask for help, here!

Vote here:

PLEASE vote for me, and please ask your friends to vote? We didn’t think we’d make it to the lake this summer because of preparations for the baby, and it would mean so much to either make one last trip before he’s born, or to go up and relax with him at the tail end of the season. Thank you, thank you, and please excuse the re-posts I will be putting up until the contest ends…

And so you understand why I’m so excited, here are some postcards from our weekend at Deephaven Camp last summer:

I am so obsessed with noodles, you guys. I always have been; my known weak spots are generally fried dough (donuts, elephant ears, churros, etc.), assorted other fried foods (clam strips, sausage-stuffed olives, duck fat fries, etc.), flat breads, and noodles. Mmmm, carbs and fat. Also garlicky kale, thank god.

A couple weeks ago I met my cousin Sara for lunch at Blue Ginger, out in Wellesley, where chef Ming Tsai has recently added a Noodle Bar to the lunch menu. I ordered the yakisoba (“Ramen Noodles and Garlic-Ginger-Tamari Sauce, served with carrots, bell peppers, onions, cabbage and scallions”), subbing in pork for chicken, and received a heavenly (spicy) bowl of chewy noodles and ridiculously flavorful minced or ground pork. I ate all the noodles and as much pork as I could shovel up with my chopsticks, but I had plenty leftover to mix with a package of ramen at home for dinner that night. (I left out the “flavor”/MSG packet and let the sauce on the pork do the work.) When Ben returned home from the trip that was allowing me to eat noodles multiple times a day without anyone knowing (until now), I decided I’d try to recreate the dish at home.

And by recreate, I mean I made noodles with pork. Flavors and vegetable content ended up being totally different. Perhaps because it was only now that I looked up the menu online and saw tamari listed as a key ingredient in the sauce. This will be an ongoing quest, unless Chef Ming decides he wants to share his recipe. I did meet him briefly at the restaurant, where he was styling food for a photo shoot, but I failed to beg for the recipe. He was super nice, though.

I patched together a sauce with pretty much everything in the fridge, plus a crazily hot black bean/chili sauce I grabbed at Whole Foods. I kept adding splashes of this and that, so I have no proportions or measurements, but I used hoisin (fatal mistake), soy, rice wine vinegar, the black bean/chili stuff, sesame oil, and maybe some of the chili-garlic sauce I keep around. Eh.

I chopped up spring onions and napa cabbage, minced garlic and grated ginger.

Then I cooked about a pound of ground pork in the wok, with half of the garlic and ginger. At the end I poured in some of the sauce and cooked it off to coat the pork.

Set that aside, then stir-fried the onions with the rest of the garlic/ginger.

And then the cabbage.

Once the cabbage was wilting, I added in the rest of the sauce and got it simmering.

And then the unruly mass of the cooked noodles entered the scene.

OMG. I really need to get a source for the delicious square chinese noodles my mom always used. The ramen were SO hard to deal with, all curly and tangled together. I adjusted the flavoring with more soy at that point, because the hoisin had made everything too sweet.

The final result was tasty, but it didn’t hold a candle to the Blue Ginger dish. I will track down the right noodles and some tamari and give it another go when we’re back from Europe.

Does anyone have a noodle dish they swear by? I have a good-looking recipe from my mom to try out, but I welcome all suggestions.

A month or so ago I was honored when I got an invite to write an “In the Kitchen With” column for Grace’s wonderful Design*Sponge. Since spring was finally peering around the corner, I made absorption pasta, that old favorite of mine, with asparagus, pancetta, lemon zest and feta. The post is up today, so check it out!

And for those of you who came over from Design*Sponge today, welcome! Sorry about the site crash earlier; the volume was a bit much for the server, apparently. If you have any questions for me, please feel free to ask over at formspring!