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Lime granita is perfect end to summer meal

July 23rd, 2008 · recipes

Yes, the spaghetti and meatballs were fine, but the lime granita for dessert was what got my guests’ attention the other night. (Well, that and the marvelous Ultrafast Avocado Soup that Angela brought as an appetizer. An amazing recipe and dish.)

I don’t own an ice cream freezer and have had mixed results in the past with frozen dessert attempts, but this one was bliss, a perfect light, cold end to a meal that was probably too heavy for the weather. And my first try at granita, no less!

Do try this at home! You won’t be sorry. The end result is a sort of intense lime slush. I adapted the Lemon Granita recipe from Patricia Wells’ Trattoria cookbook. (There’s also a newer edition, for whatever that’s worth.)

Lime granita

  • 1/3 cup sugar
  • 1/2 cup freshly squeezed lime juice
  • 1 1/2 cups water
  1. Combine all ingredients in heavy saucepan. Bring to a boil and stir until sugar is dissolved.
  2. Pour resulting syrup in 9-inch-square aluminum cake pan. When cooled to room temperature, place in freezer for 15 minutes.
  3. Stir syrup and scrape frozen particles from the sides. Use fork to break up ice crystals, and return to freezer 15 minutes.
  4. Repeat step 3 until you have a mound of fluffy frozen syrup, two or three hours. (I would think it best to serve within a couple of hours.)
  5. Serve in chilled glasses. (Wells recommends serving in champagne coupes, but I didn’t want to bother washing them.) Makes six servings.

Note: Limes were on sale and juicy. It took only three and a half limes to get a half-cup of juice.

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Free food coming my way!

July 21st, 2008 · local food

I must look hungry. A week after Lynn gave me a bunch of food, my weightlifting teacher gave me a bunch of apples from his tree. “Take all you want,” he said. “We’re never going to be able to use them all.” He even grabbed a large paper grocery bag, handed it to me and gave pointers on selection.

These are Lodi apples.

Pretty, aren’t they? Loren said they’re not so great for eating out of hand but make great pies and applesauce. The Seasonal Ontario link above says something different. Everyone seems to agree they don’t store well. Unfortunately, I’ve been very busy (why can’t I be independently wealthy?!), so I haven’t done anything with them yet.

Deadlines are good. I’ve had these apples five days, so I need to act within the next week, preferably within a few days. I’m going to make some sauce. I think I’m going to try to dry some, maybe make an apple crisp. In the meantime, I’m reveling in my good fortune. If you have favorite tips for Lodi apples, let me know!

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Roundup: Pharma-food; local growers, local harvest

July 20th, 2008 · Food in the news, Roundup, local food

My tax dollars at work. It didn’t get much attention in Kansas, but controversial pharma-food producer Ventria got a nice loan from me and my fellow taxpayers. Now they’re talking an over-the-counter product instead of saving third-world children. What a surprise! (The biggest report in the Wichita Eagle, mere mentions in KC Star, Lawrence J-W, nothing in the Topeka paper.)

Of marts and markets. Local food producers are underwhelmed by Wal-Mart’s plans to boost its local food purchases. (KC Business Journal)

Growing local. Interest in growing your own food is in full flower. (KC Star)

Growing Growers grows, too. The Growing Growers farming apprenticeship program gets some press. (Lawrence J-W)

Getting corny. Sweet corn—the kind grown for humans—is in the local markets. Toothpick, anyone? (Lawrence J-W)

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Salade nicoise makes its first appearance

July 17th, 2008 · Food preparation, local food, recipes

I love Nicoise salad (or salade nicoise, as you prefer), and the fruits and vegetables to make it are rolling in. As Michele Humes noted, it’s a dish that has a melange of variations, but I pretty much quit worrying about what’s the “right” way to make it years ago. I’m just happy when I have a bunch of new potatoes and tender green beans and tomatoes to combine with tuna. If I have those items, I have, in my opinion, a Nicoise salad.

That moment finally arrived the other day, with beans and potatoes from Rolling Prairie and tomatoes from my friend Lynn (whose picture I can’t find on her website). I managed to screw up one of those (more in a second), but it still tasted fabulous. I didn’t even realize until I saw Michele’s post that I entirely forgot cooked eggs. And I can take or leave anchovies.

I nevertheless managed to mess up my fairly unpicky expectations. Here’s what I did: steamed and sliced the potatoes, and tossed them with a simple vinaigrette and a few chopped sweet onions; added them to a plate with torn lettuce, steamed green beans, tuna packed in olive oil, and sliced cucumbers. Then I drizzled more dressing over the top:

Do you notice anything wrong?

Yes, it’s the color of the beans. Not so appetizing.

It’s all because I was trying to be quick. For one reason or another, I often seem to be in a hurry to get food on the table and, thus, always on the lookout for quicker methods. That was the case this time. I thought, “Hey! If I steam the potatoes and beans instead of boiling them, I’ll get done a lot quicker because I won’t have to wait for all that water to boil.”

So I put a steamer basket in a big pot with an inch of water in the bottom and added the potatoes. About 10 minutes later I added the beans. I aggravated the situation, I think, by letting the water simmer instead of really boil. The potatoes were fine, but the beans were not so fine.

The beans looked almost like (ugh) canned green beans, even after plunging them ice water. And they didn’t seem as crisp-tender as when dropped into boiling water for 3-4 minutes. And they didn’t have that bit of salt that they get that way. And they weren’t green! At least not bright green. (I was tempted to turn them bright green via my computer so you’d think I made a perfectly beautiful salad but decided to confess instead.)

In case you’re wondering, here’s the dressing I used:

  • Extra virgin olive oil and red wine vinegar in equal parts
  • Salt and pepper to taste
  • Minced garlic to taste (just a little for a little zip)
  • Prepared Dijon mustard to taste (ditto for zip and emulsion)

If I hadn’t been in a hurry, I’d have added some minced parsley, too, but that would have required going outside.

Two morals of this story:

  1. Salade nicoise is fab, even if you mess it up.
  2. Don’t steam green beans if you want them to be pretty.

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Fresh produce, including eggplant, begs to be eaten

July 16th, 2008 · Food preparation, recipes

A friend recently bestowed on me this gorgeous bounty from her garden after I said “yes” to her eggplant offer. I was thinking ratatouille until I realized I didn’t have any peppers, and I didn’t want to go to the store or farmers market.

Instead, I used much of the produce to make the following quick-and-easy vegetable stew/sauce that I combined with pasta. But I need your advice. (Keep reading.)

Summer vegetables and pasta

  • 1/4 cup olive oil
  • 1 small-medium onion, coarsely chopped
  • 2 fat cloves garlic, minced
  • 3 small slender eggplant, cut lengthwise and sliced crosswise
  • 2 small zucchini, sliced
  • 9 or more small plum tomatoes
  • 1 large bay leaf
  • 1-2 sprigs each fresh thyme, rosemary and oregano
  • Salt and pepper to taste
  • 1/8 teaspoon cayenne
  • 1/4 cup dry red wine
  • 8 ounces medium pasta, such as penne
  1. Heat oil in skillet or dutch oven over medium-high heat. Add onion and saute 1 minute. Add garlic and eggplant; toss immediately to distribute oil over eggplant (otherwise it quickly absorbs oil where it lands). Stir-fry 2 minutes.
  2. Add zucchini, tomatoes (whole), bay leaf, rosemary, thyme, salt, pepper and cayenne. Stir. Reduce heat to low. Add wine, and cover.
  3. Simmer about 20 minutes, covered. Stir occasionally. Gently squeeze the tomatoes with tongs to eject the innards into the dish and lift out the tomato peel. (You may want to used a spoon to help with the process.) Discard the peel, unless you want it for something else, and remove bay leaf and herb sprigs. (The leaves of the thyme and rosemary probably will have fallen off them stem.)
  4. Cook pasta according to package direction until al dente. Drain.
  5. Combine pasta with vegetable mixture, and serve. Makes 3-4 servings.

Simmered vegetables

The final dish (sorry about the bad photo)

The flavor was excellent, but I wasn’t thrilled with the texture. The eggplant practically dissolved and gave the mixture a starchier texture than I’d prefer.

I have much more experience with the deep-purple American or Italian eggplant, which hold up pretty well in the pot. If the Oriental eggplants typically disintegrate, I probably would simmer the mixture with everything but the eggplant for 10 minutes and then add it for 10 minutes, enough to cook it but not enough to make it gooey. Or, I’d use an equivalent amount of diced, deep-purple eggplant for the full simmer.

So that’s my question: Is this starchy gooiness the usual result of simmering the elongated, Chinese-type eggplant? I haven’t found a good source comparing the cooking properties of the different eggplants. If you know the answer or can point me to a source, let me know!

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Feasts for the eyes?

July 13th, 2008 · General

In honor of my nephew’s show at the new DotDotDot ArtSpace , which has some food-related themes, I go off-topic a bit to show a couple of his watercolors as well as an etching by his grandfather, my dad. They both show an affection for irony.

Below are two of Rob’s paintings. They’re watercolor on paper, about 30 by 36 inches. (That’s one of the scary-looking Olsen twins, Mary-Kate, I think, atop the hotdog pile.)

And here’s Dad’s take on the Three Graces. I think he and Raphael had different aims. The etching is about 10 by 8 inches. Fortunately, he sometimes remembered Keats.

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