Cardoons: Once is Enough

Note: There is an F-bomb in this post. You were warned.

Cardoons! Limited supply! Only take some if you can experiment with them and report back! So said the CSA announcement this week. Cardoons! I’d heard of them and been hoping for years to try them.

According to a British gardening book that I have somewhere in my house but can no longer find, cardoons are a tall and dramatic-looking member of the thistle family, a relative of artichokes, and a back-of-the-garden oddity. It used to be a common vegetable but fell out of favor sometime before the invention of the combustion engine. I’d filed the bit of information away in case I ever met this plant. And now, thanks to Harmony Valley, it was staring me in the face!


Cardoon looks like celery crossed with an iguana. It is flocked with grayish-green fuzz....














....and studded with quarter-inch spines. It’s as if aliens planted a Jurassic-era garden; or some mild-mannered vegetable got blasted with gamma rays and then got pissed off. Wow! This was going to be so cool!

A little checking around revealed that cardoon should be de-leafed, de-thorned, and cleaned of tough strings; then boiled for fifteen minutes to an hour. It can then be made into things like crudités or salads. Joy of Cooking suggested it might taste like artichoke. I decided on a gratine. This was going to be great! I’d serve it as a surprise treat to Saturday’s dinner guests.

As I prepared the cardoons, excitement soured into doubt. These stalks were awfully big and stringy. That gray bloom turned out to be a layer that sometimes peeled off like onionskin. I cut them into the two-inch lengths that Joy suggested and set them to boil in water spiked with salt and lemon juice.

Beth arrived to help with dinner preparations. “What can I do?” she asked. “Oh,” I tossed back breezily, “how about if you make the Mornay sauce?” I rattled off the directions over my shoulder as I poked the boiling cardoons with a spoon. “Like this?” she asked, some minutes later. I looked into the pan. Beth had made a textbook sauce. It was perfectly smooth, white, and uniform. The sides of the pan weren’t even dirty. Damn!

I drained the cardoons. They looked as if they had lost an election of some sort, or perhaps as if they owed money to the Mob.

I poured Beth’s beautiful sauce into a buttered dish and started laying cardoon pieces in, grumbling all the while. “You don’t sound too confident. You’re going to serve this to guests?” Beth demanded. So, drums rolling, I tasted a cardoon.



A high note of baking soda sang above a base taste of overcooked silage, followed by a convulsive sourness. “Oh, try this,” I gasped. “No way,” said Beth, backing away. I snatched the pieces out of the Mornay, horrified that they would taint it. And then I looked down at them, all sauce-smeared in the colander.

I never until this day met a vegetable I didn’t like. And I hate to waste anything. I screwed my courage to the sticking point and picked up one of the sauced pieces. This one was tenderer. The silky Mornay smoothed away most of the bitterness. The flavor and texture were like a mild, soft artichoke heart. I saw how this might have worked: tender inner stalks broiled up with sauce and cheese could have made a not too unattractive presentation, and they might even approach enjoyable.

But you know what? Fuck it. Cardoons are a lot of work for something only a little bit delicious. And a lot of people, my guests included, don’t even like artichoke. I dumped the whole mess straight in the trash. Sorry, cardoons.

I can see why people stopped eating these things. What I can’t see is why anyone ever decided to eat this in the first place. Maybe some feudal peasant saw her donkey munching a roadside thistle and shoved him out of the way to grab it for herself. Maybe when the choices were cardoons or nothing, cardoons were worth the fuss.

Even though I didn’t like them, I’m thankful to Harmony Valley for the opportunity to try cardoons. It had been a longtime dream, and now I can mark it up as a lifetime achievement.

Don’t try this at home
Here’s what I was going to do, had my initial bite not been so shatteringly unpleasant.

1 lb de-thorned, de-leafed, de-stringed cardoon stalks, cut in 2" pieces
2 T lemon juice
1 t salt
2 T butter
2 T flour
1½ c whole milk at room temperature
¾ c grated Swiss cheese, divided in half

Put the cardoon pieces in a pot with 8 cups of water, the lemon and salt. Boil for 15 to 20 minutes and drain.

Meanwhile, melt the butter in a saucepan and whisk in the flour. Whisk until very smooth. Add the milk, whisking constantly to avoid lumps. Whisk and whisk over medium heat until the sauce thickens. Take it off the heat and whisk in half the cheese.

Butter a glass or ceramic baking dish and pour in half the sauce. Lay the cardoon pieces in the sauce, overlapping each other slightly, and cover them with the rest of the sauce. Sprinkle with the remaining cheese. Bake in a 375° oven until the sauce is bubbly and the cheese is toasty and just browned, about 20 minutes.

There’s a country song in here somewhere

I had a notion I was going to get my heart broken when I walked up to him in the lunchroom.

“John,” I said, twirling the kitchen knife in my hand, “would you help me out with something?”

John looked up and smiled—not at the knife, but at the two large apples I held in my other hand. When John’s not at work, he’s an epicure with a well-trained palate. He was exactly the person I needed. I sat down, arranging the objects on the table between us. “We’re going to do a little experiment,” I said.

“As you know, this is the second year of SweeTango—the controversial new apple from the University of Minnesota. It’s touted as even better than my beloved favorite, Honeycrisp.”

“I have here two apples,” I continued. “One is a Honeycrisp. One is a SweeTango. We’re going to try them, talk about what we taste, and decide which one is better. Then I’ll tell you which is which. I’m too biased to be objective, so I’m interested to hear your opinion.”

John was in.

We started by looking at the apples. They were lovely, their rosy red skins striated with yellowish green. The only way to tell them apart was by size. “Not much difference,” John said.

I cut each in half. One of the apples had yellower flesh than the other. The second apple had a hurt spot in the center, but we dismissed that as unimportant. Texture appeared otherwise identical.

We tasted the first apple. Good crunch! We both found it very sweet, but it also had a contrasting acidic kick. “Nice tang,” John remarked. The flavors were high, sharp, and bright, with a cidery undertone. John gave his approval, and I agreed.

On to apple number two. Upon biting in, John exclaimed, “This has a grapey flavor to it.” He was right. Though sweet and equally crunchy as the first apple, the flavor was more muted and rounded. It was a softer, fruitier taste. Another very good apple, we concluded.

“So,” I asked, “which is better?”

John guessed that the first apple was Honeycrisp and declared that he liked it better.

I smiled sadly. I agreed with John’s judgment. The bright, tangy apple was indeed the tastier of the two. But he guessed wrong: it wasn’t the Honeycrisp.

Cue the music:

Dang you, SweeTango, I hate you
Like I hate the sun in the sky.
I hate you so bad, I hate your mom and your dad,
I hate you so much I could cry.

Dang you, SweeTango, I hate you
Like I hate the stars up above.
They don’t have to flaunt you, I hate you ‘cause I want you
Even more than the one that I love.

¡Vivan Chiles Rellenos!

If you’re all wondering what to do with a poblano pepper, then you should go stuff it.

Har har har! No, really. And then you should batter it and fry it and serve it with a bunch of its friends.

Perhaps once a year I make chiles rellenos (say “ray-YAY-nohs.” Do not call them “reh-lennowz” unless you are still eating tor-til-ah chips.) from Diana Kennedy’s The Art of Mexican Cooking. To me, they epitomize the complexity of Mexican food. Even the most seemingly simple Mexican dish can involve multiple cooking methods and several iterations of processing. Making rellenos is like making four different dishes: roasting, peeling, and seeding the chiles; making the stuffing; making the sauce; and, finally, battering and frying the chiles. Add some side dishes to the meal, and you could be cooking all day a la Like Water for Chocolate.

This time, though, I tried to keep things simple. I used a good brand of canned refried black beans, and I used cheese for the filling. I made a very quick and easy tomatillo salsa for an appetizer and an even quicker and easier red tomato sauce to nap on the chiles. I rounded out the meal with a pot of white rice and a simple stewed zucchini with yellow cherry tomatoes and oregano. I forgot to set out the corn tortillas I’d bought, but nobody missed them. Dessert was vanilla ice cream or muskmelon, a cup of coffee, and a sliver of chocolate spiced with cinnamon and cayenne.

Chiles Rellenos
There are four stages: the chiles, the sauce, the filling, and the frying. Finally, we eat!

The Chiles
You can stuff any pepper, but traditional cooks use the poblano. These dark green, glossy triangles are relatively mild and about the size of a fist. Start with more chiles than you’re planning to serve; I promise at least one of them will end up in shreds while you are preparing it. Roast them on a grill or under a broiler, then peel them (here’s how). Find the weakest part of the chile, slit it open lengthwise, and sweep out the seeds and veins, being careful not to tear the flesh. You may need to wipe off your fingers, or your chile, with a towel as you work. Put the cleaned chile on a plate or cookie rack. You can do this a day ahead.

The Sauce
According to Kennedy, rellenos are traditionally heated up in a sauce—essentially, a very simple tomato reduction thinned with chicken broth. I opted to skip the broth and ended up with a tangy and fresh-tasting tomato sauce. You can make this ahead of time.

2 or 3 tomatoes
2 T chopped onion
1 clove garlic, chopped
1-2 T oil
Salt to taste

Put the tomatoes, onion, and garlic in a blender and liquefy. Heat the oil in a well-seasoned skillet. Dump in the tomato mixture and fry until reduced, maybe 5 or 10 minutes. (At this point Kennedy has you add 2 ¼ cups of chicken broth and cook 5 minutes more.) Salt to taste.

The Filling
Recipes abound for the relleno, or stuffing, part of chiles rellenos. You can use seasoned meat, or maybe potatoes and chorizo. I found queso Chihuahua, the quintessential Mexican melting cheese, at the Wedge. Muenster would be the next best choice. I cut it in strips about the size of my index finger. A large poblano will take two or three of these pieces; for a tiny chile, I cut one in half.

Put cheese inside the chile, being careful not to tear it. The chile should be nice and full, but the sides of the hole should overlap a bit. If you opt to close the slit with a toothpick, be sure to warn your guests.

The Frying
Cover a plate with several layers of paper towels and put it in the oven at 200° F. Get out a big frying pan and pour in about an inch of oil. Canola is nice. Put the pan on a medium-high burner.

Now make the batter. For every four to six big chiles, get these things:

3 eggs
¼ t salt
⅓ c flour

Separate the eggs. Beat the whites until they are stiff and turning dry. Beat in the yolks, one by one, and the salt.

OK, here we go. It’s showtime. I always get very scared at this point. I’m convinced that the chiles will come apart, stick to the pan, catch on fire, splatter everywhere, or burn black. But not one of those things has ever happened. They always fry up like magic.

Plan to work with one or two chiles at a time. Dredge a chile in flour...











then hold it by its stem and dunk it in the batter.


































Gently lay the chile in the hot oil and let it cook golden brown. Use two spatulas to turn it on its side (or flip it right over if it is very small). Fry each chile on all sides...





then remove to the plate to drain.

Hey, look at that! It worked!

Let’s eat!

If you did the broth thing, you can put the rellenos in the sauce and heat them up for five minutes or so. Otherwise, plate ‘em up! Serve each guest one big chile or two smaller ones. You can pool the sauce under them or nap it on top.

¡Buen provecho!

Beef Soup: True Enough

My friend John Reimringer has just published his first novel, Vestments. John has called it his love letter to the city of St. Paul. Indeed, the city’s presence is strong throughout the book, shaping the characters’ daily lives, their choices, their reactions to each other—just as cities do in real life.

After listening to him read from Vestments, I decided John should have some soup and it must be of beef. For this man, a steer should be hewn down in its prime and laid low with long simmering. And so I’d make stock. As an homage, the ingredients would come from the St. Paul Farmers Market.


I got beef shanks from Farm on Wheels. I put them, together with cubed beef chuck, in the oven to roast while I prepared the aromatics. First, the strong leaves of an unblanched celery plant. Yellow onions and sage would bolster John and his wife, poet Katrina Vandenberg, with their pungency. But I added bay and rosemary, black pepper and sweet carrots, too, to soften and round out the flavors; I wanted my friends to be happy. Oh, and a bit of garlic, too. They would get no less than the best.

I put the bones to bed in a crock pot, their vegetable friends tucked in all around them. Then I let slow heat work its magic, easing subtle fingers into the hearts of marrow bones, smoothing out collagen and fat, drawing out essences; leaving the souls of vegetables and meat suspended in cooking liquid.

Finally, when I tasted a bit of meat, there was nothing beefy about it anymore. I strained the broth, defatted it, and cooked it down until it was strong, velvety, and satisfying. In went a half cup of pearled barley along with the beef cubes I roasted earlier. It would take about forty-five minutes for the grain to cook. In that time, I diced some more carrots and sliced shallots, then chopped some green beans for color and fun.

The weird thing about being friends with a novelist and a poet is this: I worry that I know a lot more about them than they can possibly have deduced about me. Their jobs are to make art, and art is emotional truth. A poem, the characters in a novel: they are shards of the author’s self caught and pinned onto the page like an entomological specimen. It’s published and out there, for better or for worse. Little bits of their truths are available on Amazon.com for anyone in the world to buy and read in black and white.

I brought two quarts of my emotional truth, still hot from the stove, to another of John’s readings on a rainy night last week. Soup can’t say everything. I hope it said enough.

Pepperpalooza!

What am I supposed to do with all these little peppers that Harmony Valley keeps sending? The neighbors with whom I share the CSA don’t want to deal with them, so I have been inheriting entire paper sacks full of thin-fleshed red, orange, and yellow jewels not much bigger than a thumb.

I’ve been stacking them up like a miser with gold coins. But no more. You can’t hoard food; you have to spend it, however precious and rare it may be. I know just the thing to do with these dear ones. If you want to show a pepper to full advantage, you roast it.

This would be better done over a wood fire or on a charcoal grill, but my stove’s broiler works just fine. I have cookie sheets that are specially designated for roasting peppers. They are blackened with the unctuous pepper juices that ooze out and burn to the pan, never to be scrubbed free. These sheets will not bake cookies again.



Regiment your peppers, rank and file, leaving an inch or two between them so the hot, dry air of the broiler or grill can reach everywhere. Put them on the heat and go do something else until you hear them squeal and pop. Be brave; leave them until their skins are blackened and blistered. Then turn them. For large bell peppers, you may have to char four sides plus top and bottom. For these little dolls, one flip did the trick.




When the peppers are well charred, dump them into a paper bag and close them up. You can also use a bowl and cover them with a dish towel. The idea is to let them sweat their skins off. The hollow center of the pepper is filled with steam that will continue cooking the flesh and make the peppers easier to peel.

Finally, fish the peppers out of their sweat lodge. Pull off their skins, then pull out their caps. Tear them in half, dodging steam and hot liquid. Scoop out the seeds with your thumb, if the heat doesn’t bother you, or with a spoon or the back of a knife. It helps if you keep a small fingerbowl of water while you fillet your peppers. Rinse your fingers if you need to, but avoid rinsing the pepper flesh. You will wash off all the roasty deliciousness.

When you are finished, then perhaps more of the afternoon will have passed than you intended. Maybe your fingers will be pink and tender from the steam. But you will have a bowl of riches that no one can buy any other way.

What to do with your newmade treasure? You can make a mighty fine sandwich from roasted peppers, sprouts, your favorite cheese, and maybe a dab of olive oil and fines herbes. You can purée them into a cream soup that will make people drop their nets on the shore and follow you for the rest of their lives. You can pickle them in white wine vinegar with a little salt and sugar, then get them out some horrible February day to remind yourself that there is such thing as summer.

I put some of mine on top of a focaccia.

Whole Wheat Focaccia with Shallots and Roasted Red Peppers

1 package yeast
¾c lukewarm water
1 T sugar
½ c flour
Another 2 c white flour
And 2c whole wheat flour
1 t salt
1 c water
1 c olive oil
2 or 3 shallots, sliced thin
Another 2-3 T olive oil
1 cup roasted peppers, skinned and seeded
Sea salt to taste

Mix up the yeast, the lukewarm water, and the sugar. Let it stand for 5-10 minutes in a warm place. When you return, the solution should be foaming like gangbusters. This “proves” the yeast, i.e. demonstrates that it is alive and ready to do its job. Congratulate the yeast on its virility and add the ½ cup flour. Go away for about a half hour.

When you return, the yeast will have made a hell of a job with that flour. You will have a bowl of oatmeal-colored gloop shot through with bubbles from the action of the yeast. You may wish to signal your appreciation with a low whistle. This gloop is called the “sponge.”

Mix the flours and the salt in a big bowl. Make a well with your fist or a spoon. Pour in the remaining water, 1c oil, and the sponge. Use a rubber scraper to mix this mess up until all the flour is incorporated and the dough ball is starting to look a bit raggedy. Scrape the dough out onto a floured surface and knead it until it is smooth. Put it in an oiled bowl; the big bowl you were just using will probably work. Put a little oil on your palm and slather it across the dough surface to keep things from drying out. Cover the bowl with foil, plastic wrap, or a cloth and set it in a warm spot. (If your kitchen is drafty, preheat the oven to 200 and turn it off. When you open the door, you’ll lose 100 degrees anyway. Put the bowl in there.) In about an hour to 90 minutes, the dough will have doubled in size.

While that’s happening, put the sliced shallots in a small pan with the last bit of oil. Sweat them in there at low heat until they are golden or until you get sick of it. This should take around 20-30 minutes.

When you’ve finished washing the dishes and calling your friend Betty, then turn the dough out of the bowl and onto a greased cookie sheet. If you prefer, you can divide the dough into two loaves at this time. Spread it out with your hands until it is about an inch thick. Scatter the shallots and oil across the dough, then add the peppers in artful arrangements. Preheat the oven to 350°. Allow the dough to rise again, around 20-30 minutes. Bake the bread for 20-35 minutes, until the crust is browned and makes a hollow sound when you tap it. Sprinkle sea salt on top of the loaf. Make it look pretty.

Mangiamo!

These Beans Are Greek to Me

How Greek is this dish? Heck if I know. I had it on vacation two weeks ago in a restaurant called Ethos. The hostess had a large swooping mane of platinum-colored hair and a flowy tiger-striped blouse. She kept the waiting list in her head and seemingly knew what every single person in the restaurant, whether staff or customer, was doing and what they needed next. She was born to be a maîtresse d’hôtel.

That staff of hers is great, too. Our server knew not only every dish, but every one of a dozen fish on the menu by their Greek and English names. Some of them were catch of the day. She knew all those fish well enough to have a favorite.

She brought a green bean dish with a sharpish-tasting tomato sauce. There was a subtly sweet, woodsy undertone to it, though, that I could not place. Finally I found and identified the culprit: whole allspice. Who would expect to find that at a Greek restaurant?

Well, when your mouth is full of something good, you don’t need to know what’s Greek. You just need to enjoy.

Ethos Green Beans
The allspice berries at Ethos were nearly tasteless, their deliciousness having escaped into the sauce via stewing. My guess is that the chef starts a batch of the sauce in the afternoon and then keeps it on the back burner all night. When the kitchen receives an order for this dish, maybe Chef scoops up a dollop of sauce, tosses in the beans and dill, and then simmers them tender while he or she makes the rest of the meal.

2 T olive oil
1 small onion, chopped
1 clove garlic, minced
2 cups chopped tomatoes (I used a pint of cherry tomatoes plus one small beefsteak tomato)
½ cup white wine
3 allspice berries
A sprig of oregano
1 lb green beans
2-3 T chopped fresh dill
Salt and pepper

Heat the olive oil in a wide-bottomed, deep pan. Sauté the garlic and onion until translucent. Toss in the chopped tomatoes and fry them a bit until the pan starts to dry out. Add the wine, allspice, and oregano. Turn down the heat, cover the pan, and simmer for fifteen or twenty minutes. Check the pan often and throw in some water if things are getting too dry. It would be best if the dish could simmer on low heat for a long time, but if there isn’t time for that, cook it harder. The idea is for the tomatoes to break down into a thin sauce.

Throw in the green beans and the dill, stir, and cover the pan again. Let the pot stew, stirring occasionally, until the beans are quite tender, perhaps ten minutes or more. They will not be the bright green of steamed beans; they will start to turn olive-colored.
For the last minute or two, take the cover off the pan and check the thickness of the sauce. It should be thin but with some body, like gravy. You may need to let some extra water steam off.

Season to taste. Yum!

Open Letter to Target

It’s my blog, so I get to go off-topic sometimes. Fellow food lovers, I have to get something off my chest.

Dear Target:

I’ve been your loyal customer for literally all my life. As a kid growing up in Minnesota, I formed some of my earliest shopping-related memories in the speckled white linoleum aisles of Duluth’s Target store. In college, that store was my go-to place for everything. Now that I’m climbing onto the bottom rung of middle age, I can’t think of a store I like better. That’s why it breaks my heart to tell you I’ll never shop at Target again.

There are so many reasons why I love your brand and your stores. There’s the merchandise, of course, and the prices. I’ve smugly identified with your cultivated image of the Target shopper: smart and fun; stylish, yet approachable. Yes. I am soooo much cooler than people who shop at discount stores.

I can’t tell you how many times I have defended you to opponents of big-box retail. “Target is different,” I’d say. “They treat their employees like people.” (I know this because as a cash-strapped young adult, I had a second job at the Knollwood Mall store in St. Louis Park.) I have advocated for you to people who think you are corporate drones. “Target cares about communities,” I’d argue. “They give a percentage of their profits to local charities. They send cadres of volunteers.”

And of course, your support for queer people and their causes is legendary. Target has long been a presence at the Minnesota AIDS Walk; AIDS is still popularly, though wrongly, thought of as a gay disease. Target takes up a big corner of Loring Park at Pride every summer. And no queer Target corporate employee needs to work in the closet, as you (inexplicably, still) have a 100% rating from HRC.

Over the years, you’ve made it clear your queer customers and employees are important to you. It’s just as clear that they are not as important as the possibility of an economic climate that might be a little more conducive to your financial growth. For me, your $150,000 campaign donation to a homophobe belied all the good you’ve ever done. I believed you when you said you’re sorry you gave the money. But I can’t help but notice that you did not ask for it back. And I cannot help but wonder if you’re planning to make another such donation in the future.

I have one political dream for my lifetime: to live in a country where I am not a second-class citizen. To live in an America that holds good to the promises in our Constitution: that full faith and credit shall be given in each state to the public acts, records, and judicial proceedings of every other state. That Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion. That no state shall make or enforce any law which shall deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

If I shop at Target, Target will make a profit. And I have no indication that Target will not give some of that profit to politicians who work to defeat my dream. That’s why I cannot spend another cent with you. I will be paying a lot more for prescriptions, for shampoo, for patio furniture and sunscreen and snow shovels and antifreeze and socks and dish soap and alarm clocks. But I won’t be helping you fund my demonization and continued marginalization. That’s what you bought with the money you made while we were doing business together. You’ve betrayed your own policies and you’ve betrayed me.

Honestly, I did expect more.

Summer Swoon

Like a fool, I went on vacation. Why did I do it?! August is my favorite food time of year in Minnesota! Everything is ripe to bursting. All my favorite fruits and vegetables are peaking: corn, zucchini, tomatoes, basil, eggplants, cherries, berries, melons, peaches, and on and on and on.

I came home to an enormous CSA farm share full of impossibly lush corn, beans, tomatoes, peppers, basil, melons, and raspberries. I’m equal parts frantic and ecstatic, so the only reasonable thing to do is faint.

When I pick myself up off the floor, I will go straight to the kitchen and cook this stuff. Summer cooking should, in my opinion, be fresh and immediate. You should be able to march out to the garden in the middle of a recipe and pick something to put in the dish. The prep should be simple and the cooking time short.

Today’s blog is a twofer because I’ve been neglecting you all. I have here a pair of dishes with summer vegetables and their good friend olive oil.

Corn and Radish Salad
This recipe came out of the Southwest Journal a couple of years ago, and I tweaked it a bit. It’s a great thing to do with leftover corn on the cob. Ha! As if there’s ever anything left over of THAT.

Dressing for 4 cups of corn
A jalapeno pepper, seeded and chopped
Juice of ½ lime
1-2 t honey
¼ t ground cumin
¼ c olive oil
Salt and fresh ground pepper

Put these in the food processor or blender and liquefy them as you prepare the other ingredients.

The salad: Make it by the ear!
4 or 5 ears of cooked corn
6 radishes, halved and sliced (1 or 2 radishes per ear)
¼ c coarsely chopped Italian parsley (1 or 2 sprigs per ear)
1-2 T sliced or minced onion (a scant teaspoon per ear)

Slice the kernels off the cob. You do this by holding the cob on end and sawing a sharp knife down the side of the cob. Don’t dig too deep or you’ll cut into the cob; aim to cut off around three rows at a time.

Put all the salad ingredients in a bowl and toss them with the dressing. That’s all!

Zucchini Stewed with Tomato
Stewing a zucchini is not the same as stewing a chicken. It takes minutes, not hours. You can start this dish and throw it on the back burner while you toss a salad, and they will be done at the same time.

1-2 T olive oil
1 small onion, diced
2-3 cloves garlic, chopped
A pound of zucchini and/or pattypan squash, sliced into thick rounds
One or two large fresh tomatoes, chopped, or 1 to 2 cups of canned tomatoes (I found one jar left from last summer)
A handful of fresh basil leaves, torn
Salt and pepper to taste

Heat the oil in a large skillet and sauté the onion until translucent. Toss in the garlic and stir it around for a minute.

Add the squash and sauté until it begins to get tender, about four or five minutes. Add the tomatoes and, if needed, enough water so that the squash pieces are swimming just a little bit. Turn the heat down to medium-low and cover, stirring occasionally, for five minutes.

Have a look: the squash should be tender and the tomatoes should be thickened, not watery. If it is too soupy in there, uncover and cook off some of the water. Add the basil for the last minute of cooking, then season with salt and pepper.

Figs: Pure Romance

I ducked into the Whole Foods to buy dip, and what should appear before my eyes but a display of fresh turkey figs? They were perfectly ripe and they were on sale. When the universe is speaking to you this clearly, ignore it at your own peril.


Soft, fragrant, and curvy figs are among our most sensuous fruits. Bite or cut into one: the dusky skin just barely offers resistance, then yields to reveal white flesh and glistening pink jelly. The taste is as delicate as a caress.

Match the sweet murmur of figs with a nibble of black pepper and a nip of goat cheese. Soften the cheese’s bite with a little dollop of honey. Serve these to your sweetheart as a light dessert, maybe with a moscato or a glass of lemonade, as the sun slips out of the summer sky. Breathe in the scents of figs and summer as evening fades into night. Draw your lover gently into your arms, place your lips close to her ear, and whisper:

“Are you going to eat that last one?”

Figs with Honeyed Goat Cheese
Sometimes you can find goat cheese with honey in the schmantzy cheese section of the grocery store. If you don’t see it, just get some chevre and put it in the blender with a couple of tablespoons of honey. Taste and add as you go until it is a nice balance of goat-tart and honey-sweet.

Fresh ripe figs
Honeyed goat cheese (see note above)at room temperature
Fresh ground black pepper

Trim any stems off the figs. Slice them in half the long way. Lay the fig halves cut side up.

Stir up the cheese so it is soft. Using two spoons, drop ½ to 1 teaspoon of cheese on the center hollow of each fig half. Arrange the figs smartly on a serving plate.

Grind a little black pepper over the figs. Bat your eyes a little as you serve them.

Go with what you know

Today is a special day! It’s a milestone birthday for Beth, the most important person in the entire universe. There’s little to nothing I wouldn’t do for her, so when she asks me to make her favorite cake and decorate it with flowers, I do so with a smile on my face and a song in my heart.

Beth loves the devil’s food cake recipe from Eleanor Ostman’s Always on Sunday frosted with the chocolate mousse frosting from Joy of Cooking. I usually decorate her cake with fresh pansies and mint leaves from the garden.

“But,” I wondered, “what if I candy the flowers?” I mulled over the advantages. “They will stay pretty for longer. I can preserve them in advance. I can capture them at the apex of their bloom, and they will look FABULOUS.”

And besides, it would be one more layer of elegance. One more confectionary demonstration of how much I love this brilliant woman. She makes my whole world feel like chocolate cake and a field of flowers. Why wouldn’t I want to pull out all the stops on her birthday?

So I studied up on how to candy the flowers. I picked the best ones, freshened them in cold water, and brushed them in egg wash with a clean, fine paintbrush. I dusted them as gently as I could with superfine sugar. I laid them carefully on parchment to dry.

I succeeded in turning the simple beauty of summer pansies…


into these sugar-mummified floral corpses.


I did not have the heart to put them on a cake this important. Good thing I have been super nice to my pansies all month. They were kind enough to have opened some new flowers. Thanks, pansies. I’ll go with what I know and not count on fancy sugar acrobatics to carry the day.

Happy birthday, dear Beth!

Pico de Mango

In case you didn't get the bulletin, it's summer. The days are a grind of punishing sun. The night flows in, sultry, its dark heat draping us with a slick sheen of languor. The dense, humid air trails its heavy fingers across our skin, leaving trickles of sweat to slip down a back or a neck. In my garden, the scents of jasmine and lily hang in voluptuous clouds, nectar oozing to the tips of turgid pistils, pollen sifting off to stain fleshy white petals.

It’s salsa weather. Mangoes are a shudderingly fine balance between acid and sweet. Their lazy, musky nectar and silk-smooth flesh are a perfect complement to the vigorous crunch and zing of onions, chiles, and cilantro. Round it off with the clean finish of lime to cut the lingering sweetness.

Mango Salsa
I have won so many salsa contests with this recipe that people don’t know whether to get mad or hungry when they see me coming.
2 ripe mangoes
5 or 6 scallions or half a small onion
1 or 2 jalapeño chiles
A fistful of cilantro
Juice of one lime
A dash of salt

Chop everything and mix it up. That’s it!

Bonus: How to cut up a mango
There are still people in the world who do not know how to cut up a mango without waste or injury. Not another thumb lost to mangoes!

Anatomy of a mango: The large, flat seed is in the center of the mango. Its fibrous outside is entrenched in the flesh. The trick is to cut away the fruit as close to the seed as possible, then come back for what’s attached to the seed.
























Addressing the mango: Find the stem to tell you where the center is. Hold the mango so the seed is perpendicular to the cutting surface.





















Lop off the cheeks. With practice, you will learn to know how close to the center you can cut.

















Score the flesh. Try to cut as deep as the skin, but not through the skin.



















Now hold the mango slice like a votive offering and push it inside out. The skin will pop from concave to convex, presenting you with many cubes of mango that you can slice or pick off the skin.





Finally, pare the skin off the remaining disc and whittle the flesh off the seed. This is slippery and possibly dangerous. If you don’t want to risk your fingers, and especially if no one is looking, you might just want to gnaw the fruit off the seed.

Hey, cook’s privilege. You earned it.

Salmon for Introverts

I’ll have a real picture as soon as I can figure out how this damn camera phone works.

Every time my friends John and Mike get an invitation to the same event as me, Mikey asks, “Is Beth going to be there?” The answer is often “no.” My partner, Beth, likes a quiet, intimate setting with a nice meal and a chance for a long conversation.

John and I belong to a circle of friends that, quite frequently, sings bawdy songs at the top of our voices in a space packed with as many of us as will fit.

So to give our introverted partners a chance to bond, I arranged dinner with Beth, John, and Mike at my house. John and I conducted an entire conversation to the tune of “America, F*** Yeah” (NSFW) while Beth and Mike embarked on an in-depth mutual fascination. In another room.

When it was time to serve, we turned to Beth and Mike. They were so deep in a conversation about yoga and modern art that they did not even hear us sing, “It’s dinnertime, F*** YEAH!”

Eh. How did we manage to attract these gentle people, who assert themselves so differently—and so much more quietly—than we do? I don’t know about John, but I used recipes like this to entice my introverted sweetheart into loving me back.

Salmon, Spinach Pasta, and Salad with Beet and Fennel
This meal would have served six. There were leftovers.

The Salmon
2 lb salmon fillets
5 springs rosemary
1 T olive oil
3 T lemon juice
Salt and pepper

Pick the leaves off the rosemary stalks and chop them. Mix all ingredients but the salmon. Rub the seasoning mix on the cut side of the fish. Refrigerate for 1 or 2 hours.

Broil or grill the fish for 8-10 minutes or until cooked to desired degree of firmness.

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The Pasta

1 lb whole wheat penne
2 T olive oil
2-3 cloves garlic
1 lb spinach leaves, washed and dried
1 splash of white wine
½ c Parmesan cheese
A grating of nutmeg
A grind of black pepper

Boil water and heat a pan. Pour the pasta in the boiling water. About 5 minutes before the pasta is cooked, pour the olive oil into the pan and swirl it around. Sauté the garlic for 30 seconds. Toss in the spinach and sauté for three or four minutes. Pour in a splash of wine, cover, and steam for a minute more. Take the pan off the heat.

The pasta should be about done. Drain it well. Throw it in the same pan with your spinach, the cheese, and the nutmeg and pepper. Toss to coat the pasta and serve immediately.

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The Salad
1 cup cooked diced beets
1 cup sliced fennel (stalks and leaves are great!)
1 head Boston lettuce (I used red from Dehn’s Garden)
Balsamic vinaigrette
Moisten the beets with a teaspoon or two of dressing. Toss the greens, beets, and fennel with a little more of the dressing. That’s it!

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The Crazy Cat Index

We interrupt our regular food-related programming to bring you the Crazy Cat Index.

The Crazy Cat Index is a metric that gives insight on whether you (or anyone) are in danger of becoming a Crazy Cat Lady. It is just an indicator, and the outlying values are not necessarily useful. But that's no problem for me. The Crazy Cat Index is really just a tool for speculation, time-wasting, or making fun of my ex-girlfriends.

Here's how it works: the index is a ratio of person's age multiplied by number of cats in the household; over number of rooms in the household times number of human beings who share it. Age is measured in years. "Room" is defined as a weatherproof, full-time habitation space. Hallways don't count. Patios don't count. Bathrooms count, as do finished basement spaces. Laundry rooms? Sure, why not. Storage closets? No. If you're arguing to include closet space, then you already know you're a crazy cat lady. Stop trying to game the index.

Here are some examples for comparison.

Let's say a 35-year-old woman with one pet cat lives alone in a one-bedroom apartment with separate living and dining spaces. Count the rooms: 1) bedroom; 2) kitchen; 3) bathroom; 4) living room; 5) dining room.

Nothing about this woman sounds crazy outright. Her CCI is (35*1)/(5*1), or 7. If we increase her age to 50, her CCI is 10. So 7 to 10 a good benchmark for a person with a cat but no particular indicators of crazy. If the person shares the apartment with someone, the CCI is halved. This is still within normal range.

Compare with the CCI I calculated for someone of my acquaintance who is a known crazy cat lady. At 43 years of age, she lives in a small one-bedroom apartment (bed, bath, kitchen, living/dining area) with three cats. Her CCI, (43*3)/(4*1)=32.25, is frankly disturbing.

The CCI postulates that, all other factors being equal, crazy-cat-ladiness increases with age. Thus the CCI for each person in a cat-owning family is different, even though they share the same number of rooms, cats, and human companions. Living alone indicates more craziness than sharing a home with other people. Living in tiny one-room apartments is more crazymaking than living in spacious quarters.

Living alone in a studio apartment with multiple cats is, obviously, crazier and crazier every year.

One of these things is not like the others

I have finally gotten around to making atonement for this.

I speared Kadejan chicken thighs, Tollefson Family Pork bacon, and a pineapple that I only bought because it was on sale at the local big box grocery store. I served them on a bed of grilled garlic scapes alongside some new potatoes with dill, both from the Minneapolis Farmers Market.

It’s all local! Except the pineapple! That’s OK; I’m an import, too.

Wagon Scapes

I have never met my friend Kerry, and this recipe is for her.

Last summer I decided to try Twitter. One of the first people I found was one who blogs and tweets as Clue Wagon. We were both new to Twitter, and we quickly discovered that we really enjoy each other’s perspective on life. Go read her blog about genealogy. You’ll see; she’s a mensch.


Clue Wagon and I discovered garlic scapes at about the same time last year, I think. I remember sharing confusion and fascination with this absurdly curly vegetable. We swapped recipes. She sent me a nice pesto. I sent her a sauté of scapes and shrimp finished with white wine and served over cappellini. She told me she’s a vegetarian.

Damn it! I try so hard; I really do. I try to be open to the notion that not everyone will eat everything. I try not to assume. But it did not occur to me to wonder, much less ask, if Clue Wagon was into eating the not-kosher, not-halal, not-vegetable underwater bugs that shrimp essentially are. Crap!

I’ve been thinking about it ever since. Here’s the deal: cooked shrimp are a circle of savory yum. They meet the tooth with just the right amount of resistance. They are salty-sweet and meltingly delicious. I hate the thought of my friend missing out on an ingredient that creates this satisfying burst of flavor, but I’ll be damned if I can’t come up with something that isn’t a dead animal, too.

So, Kerry, please accept this recipe as my love song to vegetarians and food lovers everywhere. You’re at the top of the list.

Wagon Scapes
If you are a vegan, you could make these with gnocchi. It’s so gratifying to bite those. Rrrr!

Pan photo by Beth Berila


1 package cheese tortelloni (2-3 servings)
2-3 T olive oil
1 bunch (10 to 12) garlic scapes
1 bunch(6-8) green onions
½ lb crimini mushrooms
¼ to ½ c white wine, stock, or water
1 sprig each of sage, rosemary, parsley, and basil
Salt and pepper to taste

Set a pot of water to boil. Mince up the herbs. Cut the scapes into ½-inch pieces. Slice the white part of the onions and save the greens for some other use. Slice the mushrooms.

Pop dried tortelloni in the boiling water and give them a bit of a head start. If you’re using gnocchi and you are a multitasker, you can make them at the same time as the scapes. If you’re a one-track cook or you’re using fresh pasta, make them at the end.

Heat the oil in a sauté pan over medium-high heat. Throw in the onions and garlic scapes and stir them around for a minute or two. Throw in the mushrooms. Stir until they release their juices.


Splash some of your liquid into the pan. Keep stirring until reduced and the vegetables are tender. Remove from the heat. Finish your pasta, drain it, and put it in serving bowls. Spoon the vegetables on top. Sprinkle on the herbs and finish with salt and a grind of black pepper.

Mangiamo!

Ladies Who Lunch

OMG, you guys. This may be the most precious thing I have ever posted. “Precious” as in “twee.” For I have created a Cheese Log.

...wait for laughter to die down...

Here’s the deal. Two kinds of people will like this thing. First, people who genuinely like cheese logs. Second, people who like them ironically. Which one am I? I’m not going to confess, and I challenge you to guess.

Three events have converged to result in a cheese log. First, I am planning to attend a small gathering over the weekend, and snackies shall be required. Second, radishes the size of golf balls showed up in my Harmony Valley CSA box today. Third, I have been keeping the salad burnet from last week's box in a jar of water in the fridge. The plant is so pretty that nothing seemed special enough to use it in.

Well, cheese log is the thing! It is pink. It is springy and cool. It is covered with the minced leaves of a sparkly-flavored, wine-dark herb. I am so pleased with my own cleverness that I may just decide this appetizer is too special to serve.

Wait, no I won’t.

Ladies Who Lunch Cheese Log
1 package cream cheese (use full-fat or the log will not be very solid)
1 golf-ball-sized radish
2 T minced chives
A dash of salt
A handful of herb leaves, minced fine

Chop the radish and throw it in a food processor with the cream cheese. Process for several minutes until pink and smooth.

Gently stir in (do not process!) the minced chives. Salt to taste. Turn the cheese out onto a piece of waxed paper. Wrap the cheese up like a burrito and refrigerate until firm.

Unwrap the cheese. (You can cut the log in half at this point if you want it to be smaller.) Briefly smooth it out by rolling it on a counter or between your hands, and then roll it in the minced herbs until covered. Serve right away; or wrap in a clean piece of waxed paper or plastic wrap and chill until serving time.

I’ll drink to that.

Harmony Valley, Are You Trying to Kill Me?

Harmony Valley Farm has never before given me any indication that they wanted me to be sick, hurt, or dead. So then why did they fill my CSA box with stinging nettle? We’re talking about a noxious weed that, when touched, retaliates with pain, itching, and blisters.

OK, OK. I know that Harmony Valley just thinks weird vegetables are fun. They like to grow new things. They like to try feeding these things to their customers—their newsletter even has handy tips on how to make pesto and pasta and soup with their new little friend. Hmmph. Next I suppose they’ll ask me if I want to play fetch with their pet alligator.

Well I want revenge. The only way I’ll be satisfied is to invent a more exciting recipe than what they came up with–and I have done it! I thought and thought until I realized this problem may have been solved before. My idea comes from an area of vague overlap between Mexican and East Asian cooking. The magic solution is, indeed, a solution: I will quick-pickle these little demons.

A Mexican cook would probably wait only an hour or so before serving this nettle recipe. A Japanese, Korean, or Chinese cook might wait one to three days. Any of those people would have put in hot peppers, garlic, ginger, or other seasonings, too; but I was interested in the pure nettle flavor. It’s a surprisingly complex taste: an initial pleasant pickle sourness broadens and mellows into a flavor that’s slightly nutty, slightly musky, slightly minerally. These would make a great taco with queso blanco, or a condiment for black bean soup, or for plain rice, or even for sushi.

Take that, Harmony Valley!



Pickled Stinging Nettles
They won’t sting anymore after you do this to them.

⅔ c vinegar – I used rice, but you could use white or apple cider too
1 T salt
2 T sugar
2 qt stinging nettle leaves – the bundle from a Harmony Valley CSA is just right

Pick the nettle leaves off their stems (wear gloves unless you like weeping sores), wash them, and spin them dry in a salad spinner.

Put the vinegar, salt, and sugar in a 2-quart saucepan, cover, and bring to a boil. Stuff the nettle leaves in the pan, clap the lid on, and return to a boil—this will only take a few seconds. Take the pan off the heat and stir the nettles so they all get dunked in the vinegar. Put the lid back on and allow them to stand for a few minutes until they have reduced in volume and are covered with the liquid.

Pack the nettles into a clean half-pint jar, pour on the vinegar, and screw on the lid. (I wrap the lid in plastic wrap to keep the metal from corroding.) Store in the refrigerator until ready to eat. I wouldn’t keep them more than a week or two; I don’t think long-term storage is going to be a big problem. Because, you know, yum.

Spring Thing Fling!

Yesterday it tried to snow, and today it was sunny and 60 degrees. I bought my tomato plants but they will have to live inside for a few weeks. All the flowers in the garden are growing! I got to spend the whole afternoon outside playing with them! And tonight I will pay for it in allergies. Aaah! Spring is here!

Best of all: there’s finally something to cook. Vegetables have returned to the Minneapolis Farmers Market, and last week my neighbor Gwen and I pawed through the very first of a whole growing season’s worth of Harmony Valley CSA boxes we’re sharing this year.

Here’s my first hurrah of spring!

Spring Things Menu


Like a Minnesota spring, this meal is here in a heartbeat and gone before you know it. To make the dinner, get everything you see in the photograph; romaine lettuce; salt and pepper; a handful of sugar; salad dressing; a pat of butter; and a splash of mirin. Oh, and ice cream.

• Sorrel and Romaine Salad
• Sauté of Morels and Green Garlic
• Fresh Asparagus
• Pan-Seared Salmon in Mirin Reduction
• Stewed Rhubarb with Vanilla Ice Cream

First, cut things up. Chop the rhubarb into ½” chunks. Chop the garlic and slice the morels. Roughly chop or tear the romaine and sorrel, wash it, dry it, and toss it together. Chop or snap the asparagus.

Next, throw the rhubarb in a saucepan with sugar and a splash of water. Heat to boiling. Simmer that, stirring occasionally, while you cook the rest.

Heat butter in a sauté pan. Cook the garlic and morels until tender and any water has been resorbed. Carefully scrape out the pan. Heat it back up.

Put the salmon, skin side up, in the hot sauté pan. Cook 3 or 4 minutes. Turn over and sprinkle with salt and pepper.

Put the asparagus and a drop of water in a saucepan with a tight-fitting lid over high heat.

Pour a splash of mirin in the fish pan and shake. In the 3 minutes it takes the mirin to reduce, the asparagus will be done. The rhubarb sauce is probably done too.

Turn off all the burners, put your dinner on your plate, dress the greens, and serve. For dessert, spoon the still-warm rhubarb sauce over scoops of vanilla ice cream.