Kate Flaim (Girl Reporter)

(No CSA this week; we were out of town and a neighbor picked up my share.)

As if pregnancy hadn’t already made me an incredibly lazy cook, summer really lowers my level of ambition in the kitchen. As I flipped through photos from the last couple months there were two things I kept falling back on, each of them easy to adapt to nearly any situation: Pasta salad and sliced steak over salad.

Pasta salad first. I never understood the stuff. It always seemed clammy and gluey and all-around blah. But then I started needing to take side dishes to picnics, or needing a side dish for a barbecue, and the revelations of Lydia’s pasta salad, and Bridge’s Greek version, and the BLT salad from Matchbox in DC all conspired to make me sort of obsessed.

Recent versions of each:

Lydia’s, modified for extra flavor:

(Tomatoes, red onion, mozzarella, basil, pasta. Everything except the cheese and pasta sat for a while in sherry vinegar, olive oil, salt and pepper to get juicy. Cheese added once the pasta had cooled.)

Greek:

(Tomatoes, red onion, bell peppers, feta, olives, summer squash, pasta. Again with dressing the vegetables first and adding the cheese last.)

BLT, again:

(Tomatoes, red onion, pasta, bacon, iceberg lettuce & creamy dressing of your choice (bacon/lettuce/dressing added just before serving))

Meat on salad:

Perfect for nights when it’s too hot to turn on the stove at all. Grill something and slice it on top of a salad that you’ve fancied up with whatever sounds good.

First up, skirt steak (marinated in ginger/soy/etc.) and served over butter lettuce and avocado with carrot-ginger dressing from Smitten Kitchen (I found the dressing bland and need to play around with it more. I might have used too much carrot?):

Next, gluten-free cooking for Ben’s mom, with a totally unsuccessful marinade that we will not legitimize with a link, but with very successful corn salad on top of the greens:

(I have made this version several times (adding avocado to the corn salad, sometimes), but not with that gritty gross marinade, EPICURIOUS.)

And in a variation on the theme, a taco version with ground beef that I cooked with homemade taco seasoning and served on lettuce with corn, avocado, tomatoes and a little cheese. Greek yogurt (instead of sour cream) and crumbled chips added to taste at the table.

Hmm, revisiting these has solved my dilemma about dinner tonight—I just need to decide which one sounds best. I think I want to give that carrot/ginger dressing another shot.

Summer! Forget Memorial Day. Despite the calendar and no matter how freakishly cold or hot it is, the first CSA pick-up of the season marks the beginning of summer for me.

Last week in the first installment, I brought home a light and chlorophyll-packed bag of greens:

-Kale (I scored an extra from the new swap box)
-Broccoli
-Napa cabbage
-Spring garlic (I think that’s what it’s called. It’s juicy and hasn’t hardened yet)
-Salad mix

I came home and took moody portraits of the garlic.

Then I chopped it up, removing the tough outer layers but not bothering to peel the cloves.

Obviously since I had a pile of kale that and the garlic were going to go together. Per usual. I do love kale.

Kale!

This week remained green.

-Red leaf lettuce
-Spinach
-Popcorn
-Rainbow chard
-White turnips (with greens)
-Garlic scapes
-Basil plant (Which reminds me, the poor thing is languishing on my sink waiting to be replanted. Drat.)

I figured I’d use up as much as I could in one meal, so I decided to cook the chard and turnip greens and serve them over pasta dressed with scape pesto.

I am always amazed by the grit that comes off nice field-fresh greens. Proof of local rain storms!

I zoned out while making the pesto, and forgot to add in parmesan. I kept thinking, “this is bland and not quite like pesto,” but I didn’t clue in to the missing element until I was serving the pasta. Oops! Well, that kept it a bit lower fat, right? If you try this, add a good amount of grated parmesan. Anyway, I chopped the scapes just enough to throw them in the cuisinart, and added a bunch of walnuts and enough olive oil to make everything blend and get to the right texture. A bit of salt and pepper, and voila!

(Adding an extra handful of walnuts with the seasoning)

For the greens, I cooked the chard stems for a minute or two, then added the chard, then the mustard greens, and a dash of chicken stock.

Bacon and feta on top gave much-needed creamy/salty/savory flavors. (I cooked the lardons first, and used the same pan/bacon grease for the greens.)

Enjoy the hot weather! We have a busy week coming up, so I’ll probably check back in next Thursday. BTW, I’m now blogging at Fit Pregnancy’s website every Thursday, chronicling my preparations for the baby from a nursery/gear perspective. Check it out if you’re so inclined!

I’m in a major blogging rut, having lots of trouble writing anything up. But I have tons of photos from the trip that I always planned to share with you, so how about I just jump back in and share a few tasty experiences per post until I can bear to actually write about what I’m cooking?

Today’s offering: Sweets

In Dingle, the town in Ireland where we stayed for the first couple nights (and near where my mom’s family came from), we fell for a fantastic local ice cream shop. The staff members had clearly been told to encourage tasting, and they had lots of ideas on fun flavors to combine with each other. Our favorite lady is in the background here, behind the cutest darn cones in history.

My combo was a scoop each of sea salt and caramel. This is not surprising if you know how I feel about last year’s trendiest flavor, salted caramel. I’ve been wolfing those french fleur de sel caramels whenever I could get my mitts on them since I first tried them at 13 or so.

The same shop sold these gorgeous lollipops, which I didn’t buy:

Up in Plockton, in Scotland, at the Plockton Inn (home of the first edamame/pea salad), we had the best sticky toffee pudding I’ve ever tasted. And I’ve tasted them anywhere they are on the menu, which in the UK is everywhere.

This winter I really do need to finally start making that at home.

A block or two down the road in Plockton, the next night, we ate a lovely meal at the Plockton Shores restaurant, and finished it off with rhubarb pie. Wow, we’re hitting all my weak spots! Salted caramel, sticky toffee, rhubarb…

On the left in the photo is whipped double cream. You could have spread it on toast.

In France our sugar came mostly from breakfast pain au chocolat, nutella, jam and fruit. These little palm-sized melons came from Morocco and were forcefully chosen for me by the man in the market stand. (“No! Do not pick by smell! Choose by weight! Heavy is ripe!”)

One after-dinner exception came from a really cool bakery near the town where we were staying, about which I will write more later. In addition to a regional specialty that I’m dying to recreate, they made Parisian-style macarons, and acquitted themselves quite well.

Finally, in Dublin, we followed the strong advice of my friend Laura and visited the famed Queen of Tarts café for lunch one day. Oh yum.

We shared a sandwich and salad, plus a pot of tea, and then in a fit of gluttony each got a dessert.

Ben got a sticky and enormous chocolate cake:

And I, sucked in by a lifetime of reading English novels and salivating over desserts I’d never seen, finally got to try a slice of Victoria Sponge. In this case it was filled with strawberries and cream. It was luscious and I was glad I didn’t have to share.

I know this is kind of a mean set of photos to post, especially in the late afternoon. I know I’m going to go attempt to eat a healthy snack instead of rifling through the pantry for something sweet!

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!!