Food Poetry Friday

Peeling Onions
by Adrienne Rich

Only to have a grief
equal to all these tears!

There's not a sob in my chest.
Dry-hearted as Peer Gynt

I pare away, no hero,
merely a cook.

Crying was labor, once
when I'd good cause.
Walking, I felt my eyes like wounds
raw in my head,
so postal-clerks, I thought, must stare.
A dog's look, a cat's, burnt to my brain -
yet all that stayed
stuffed in my lungs like smog.

These old tears in the chopping-bowl.

---

This seemed appropriate for a dreary, grey Friday.  I took the photo on our trip to California in May; it's from the Santa Monica Farmer's Market. I hope your cooking projects this weekend only bring tears to your eyes with their sheer deliciousness!

French Onion Soup

Are you chilly? It is winter, after all, and that makes it soup season. Let's get cozy.

First, slice 5 pounds of onions. Thin, but not too thin; you're going to cook them for quite some time. Your eyes may water.

Put half a stick of butter in a big, heavy pot. Turn on the flame, low. Stir every few minutes for two hours. After ninety minutes your onions will be sitting in a pool of oniony liquid and it will seem like they will never ever be done. Keep going! After two and a half hours your onions should be melty and dark golden brown, but if they're not, keep cooking.

Sprinkle the melty onions with a tablespoon or two of flour and stir it in. Add a cup of wine and simmer till it's all gone.

Add a cup or two of water and six cups of stock - chicken, beef, veal, duck, whatever you have. Homemade is great if you have it. If it's from a box, just make sure it's not crazy salty. Simmer the whole mess for another hour until it's silky and smooth.

Now the fun part: add a little blorp of dijon mustard, a splash of Worcestershire sauce and a bigger splash of soy sauce. Grind in a lot of black pepper. Taste your soup and put it in a bowl. Slice some bread and toast it up. Put it on top of your soup and cover it in a pile of sweet, nutty cheese, then stick the whole mess in the oven until the cheese is melted and bubbling brown. Dig in.

Walking Onions

A former colleague at my old desk job gave me a handful of these little alliums a couple of years ago. I stuck them in a pot in the fall and in the spring they popped up cheerily, the first thing out of the ground. Where regular onions have flowers, walking onions have bulblets, little mini onions.  When the stalk bends over under the weight of the bulblets, it hits the ground and the bulblets start to grow, hence the "walking". I've got grand plans for pickling a few of these this year.

Stone Soup Farm CSA: Week Two

 
Here's our half share from Stone Soup Farms this week: red leaf lettuce, a quarter pound of spinach, lacinato kale, garlic scapes, turnips and POPCORN! I'm pretty excited about that last one, as we are popcorn fans here at Hungry Bruno. I especially like it with pimenton de la vera, Spanish smoked paprika, and butter. What do you put on your popcorn?


 
I used the turnip greens and spinach to make a galette, as I had some leftover 3:2:1 pie dough (about 10 ounces) from the rhubarb pie I made last weekend. I caramelized one onion, then added the greens and sauteed them until they were wilty. Rolled out the dough, spread a tablespoon of dijon mustard on it, then a flurry of grated cheddar (gruyere would be nice, too!), then the onions and greens and a little more cheese. I crimped up the edges and slid the whole shebang on parchment onto the baking stone in my 375 degree oven. Thirty-five minutes later: dinner. With asparagus and lemony butter. Not bad for a Tuesday!

Bright Pink Salad

Friday night, I faced a bowl of beets. I had roasted them a few days before on a kitchen binge, knowing I would be more likely to eat them if they were ready to go in the fridge.

I didn't have any grand plans for them, but Adam and I needed a snack before heading out for the evening, so I began to construct a salad of things I had around. Here is half a small red spring-sweet onion, sliced thinly.

There was a small block of feta in the cheese drawer, so I added that for tang., and handful of roughly chopped parsley for contrasting color.

Then I noticed the avocado, so ripe and perfect it just had to be used immediately. This is the one ingredient I wasn't sure about, but the cool creaminess was just different enough from the earthy beet flavor that the similar textures didn't fight each other in the bowl.

Finally, a palmful of pistachios for crunch and salt. I squeezed half a lime over the bowl for acidity, then I gave the bowl a gentle toss.

Aaah, beets: nature's paintbrush.

PS. Have you entered my most recent book give-away yet? One more day!


Bright Pink Salad
serves two as a snack or side

1 bunch beets, roasted* and chopped into bite sized chunks
1/2 small red onion, sliced thin
2 ounces feta cheese, crumbled
handful flat-leaf parsley (or cilantro might be nice), chopped
1/2 avocado, diced
handful pistachio nuts, roughly chopped
juice of half a lime

Put beets, onion, feta, parsley, avocado and pistachio in a bowl, squeeze lime juice over all. Toss gently, then taste, add more lime if necessary.

*To roast beets: Preheat oven to 350F. Scrub beets and remove scraggly root ends and greens (reserve greens for another use). Do not peel (it will be easier once they're cooked), but quarter large beets, halve if small. In a large piece of heavy duty aluminum foil, toss the the beets with 3-4 Tablespoons olive oil and a sprinkle of salt. Use your hands to be sure all pieces are coated, but then don't touch anything, because you'll have pink beet juice all over you and that. stuff. stains. Fold the edges of the foil over to form a packet, place packet on a cookie sheet in case of leaks, and bake for an hour. After an hour, carefully open the packet to let some steam escape, then return it to the oven for another 20 minutes. Remove from oven and allow to cool, then using a paper towel, slide skins off beets. Store in the fridge with any accumulated juices and remaining oil until ready to use. Beets will keep, roasted about 5 days.

Pasta with Golden Beets and Their Greens

Did you know I majored in Italian Studies in college? I speak the language and I studied at l'Universita di Ferrara for a semester my junior year. When I graduated, I took a job as a travel agent with an Italian Tour company in Boston. Whether I liked that job (I didn't) and whether I still work there (I don't) is not relevant to this post; the point is that the Italian-born owner of the company was an excellent cook. If I came in with leftover Spaghetti Bolognese for lunch, she would tell me how her mother made Bolognese. Every once in a while she would bring in homemade pizza that was really delicious. She also subscribed to Gourmet magazine. It was just my luck that she subscribed both in her name and in the name of the company, and I usually snagged the extra copy floating around the office. That first year out of school was the first year I really had to cook for myself and the magazine was an inspiration. I still make the first thing I ever cooked from Gourmet - Seared Tofu & Vegetables with Coconut Sauce from the September 05 issue. When I quit that job I lost my access to free issues and I only picked it up at the grocery store every once in a while.

Until this year, when I bought myself a Christmas present: I finally (finally!) subscribed to Gourmet. AND there was a *special offer* on the interwebs, so I subscribed to Bon Appetit, too! So now you know the long and winding road that takes us to today's recipe, Pasta with Golden Beets and their Greens, from the February 2009 issue of Bon Appetit. I've messed with the name a bit because I've messed with the recipe a bit. I'm not a fan of farfalle for purely aesthetic reasons (I think they look sort of juvenile on the plate) so I used gemelli instead. I also cut the recipe in half because I only bought one bunch of beets and it was just me for dinner.

Aren't these beautiful greens? I have purchased beets at the grocery store and had greens so sad and lifeless that I tossed them rather than trying to salvage them, but these guys are just so perky and tasty-looking, exactly what the recipe called for. You could use red beets if you want, but your pasta will definitely turn pink.

Oh, and this isn't the speediest of recipes. It was fine with me, because like I said it was just me and I was watching old episodes of No Reservations and was perfectly content, but if you don't have 40 minutes to caramelize onions, maybe save this for another day, hm? Elise has posted a time-lapse video of caramelizing onions which is really amusing, but here are mine at 0 minutes:

10 minutes:
20 minutes:
30 minutes:
and finally, 40 minutes and ready to go in the finished dish.

Speaking of the finished dish (and please forgive the weird Space Odyssey perspective in this photo, I got impatient to eat and this is the best one I got), doesn't this look yummy? The sweetness of the onions sets off the earthiness of the beets really well and the pine nuts are a welcome crunch. And I got to feel like I was really behaving, since I ate the WHOLE vegetable AND there were leafy greens. I hope you like it, too.

Pasta with Golden Beets and Their Greens
2 generous servings

small handful of pine nuts
4 Tbsp olive oil
1 very large onion (or two smaller onions), sliced
2 cloves garlic, chopped fine
1 bunch golden beets with greens, beets peeled and cut into wedges, greens washed and cut into 1 inch strips
6 oz (about half a box) dried pasta of your choice
Parmesan cheese

Toast the pine nuts in a dry skillet over medium heat for 2-3 minutes until they smell good and are golden in spots, set aside. Add a couple of tablespoons of olive oil to the skillet, then add the sliced onion and saute about 10 minutes until it is starting to soften. Reduce heat to medium-low, and continue to cook the onions, stirring every few minutes, until the caramelize and become brown, another 30-40 minutes.

Meanwhile, bring a large pot of well salted water to boil. Boil the beet wedges until tender, about 10 minutes. Remove from water with slotted spoon and return water to a boil. Add the pasta to the water and cook until al dente.

Once the onions are browned and the pasta is cooking, add the beet greens to the skillet with the onions along with another tablespoon of oil. Cover and cook about 5 minutes, stirring occasionally, until the greens are tender. Drain the pasta, reserving some of the cooking water, and return the pasta to the pot along with the onions and greens mixture, pine nuts and about 1/4 cup of grated Parmesan. Add pasta water, 1/4 cup at a time to moisten if you like. Season with salt and black pepper, and serve, topped with more shredded cheese.

Kathy Frontino's Amazing Potato Salad

This past Saturday was a very busy day. Busy in the best way, though: TWO parties to attend! Three of Adam's friends were having a "house cooling" party since they are moving out of the apartment they've lived in for a few years. I had a bag of cherries left over from the photoshoot (oooh look how FANCY I am, I had a photoshoot), and I had never made a pie before. Knowing the girls' affinity for this particular baked good, I made a cherry pie, using a recipe from Deb of Smitten Kitchen. Look, a pie!

It was my first 'from scratch' pie and it was delicious.. but we're not here to talk about pie (sorry)!
If you know me in real life, you know there are a couple of dishes I make regularly and get regular requests for. Particularly in the summer, aka season of barbecues/deck parties, and I've mentioned one of them before: Kathy Frontino's Potato Salad. In the photo above (from the first time I mentioned this delicious stuff), the potatoes are overcooked so it's not so pretty, but even mayo-phobes love this stuff, since it, um... doesn't have any mayonnaise in it. Anyway, we were sitting around the living room early last week talking about Tammi and Tom's housewarming party (party #2 on Saturday), and I volunteered to make this my contribution, since most people would be bringing... tequila. Yes.

The story behind how I learned this recipe involved 72 Bud Lights... and that's all I'm going to say on the subject. This is more of a method than a recipe, but you will need:

red potatoes
red onion (you could also use vidalia, as long as it's a nice sweet onion)
extra virgin olive oil
red wine vinegar
coarse salt
black pepper

I borrowed a gigantic (too big, in fact) pot from T^2 and boiled up six pounds of red potatoes until I could easily stick them with a knife, but they didn't fall apart. That's only two bags, actually, but it SOUNDS like a lot.

I cut up 1 1/2 red onions into very thin slices until I had a big pile... and then last night I looked for the other half an onion in the fridge and couldn't find it. Argh. Anyway...

I cut the potatoes into bite-sized pieces. These happened to be pretty small so some only needed to be cut in half.
Then I started layering - it's important to build this dish in layers so each potato gets seasoned, and you only have to do minimal stirring at the end.

Start with potatoes, then onions.

Then salt and pepper; I used about a teaspoon per layer of Kosher salt and 12-15 grinds of pepper... maybe 1/2 a teaspoon per layer? Maybe more? I like pepper, so I err on the side of a lot.
Then drizzle with vinegar and olive oil (it seems I forgot to photograph that step). I probably use about two tablespoons of vinegar and three to four tablespoons of oil per layer. In all I think I used about half a cup, maybe more, of oil.

Continue to build your potato salad, adding and seasoning in layers. Give it a good but gentle stir to make sure each potato bite is glazed with olive oil and has a kick of the vinegar. Bring a vat to a party, and watch it disappear.