Not Quite to Go... – Day 3 of This Year’s Marathon of Sides

What’s cooking? Smashed Carrots with Feta and Mint

It will take me longer to write this post than it will take any of you to cook this dish, and it’s not going to be a long post. That’s because I’m running out of time to get something up for you before midnight, even though I’m pretty sure most of you – except maybe my friend Henrietta – have the good sense to be in bed by now.

But that’s not going to stop me. Why? Because this new carrot dish is amazing – the texture and flavors are entirely fresh and different. It’s such a pretty dish, too. Even my prince said they were the best carrots he’d had in a long time, and I don’t think it was because he was just hungry.

When you go to buy carrots for this dish, do the Kitchen Goddess a favor and buy the big ones. No frou-frou baby carrots for this dish. It won’t have the same texture, and it won’t have as many of those wonderful nutrients – vitamins A, C, and K, plus potassium – that make carrots so good for you. Cup for cup, baby carrots offer 55% less vitamin A, 55% less vitamin C, 30% less vitamin K, and 25% less potassium than the big-boy carrots. At least, that’s what my research tells me. Of course, if your children will only eat the baby ones – that have been specially bred for sweetness and minimal core – then by all means, buy them. Just not for this dish.

I loved the texture of this dish. Smashing the carrots – which is way more interesting than puréeing them – gives you that lovely mix of soft with not-so-soft, and combines well with the cheese. In effect, the smashed carrots have the same texture as the crumbled feta, so the dish has a nice, even consistency. And the feta, with its sharp, salty flavor, is a great pairing to bring out the natural sweetness of the carrots.

Please note that while it takes very little time to make this dish, you can still cook the carrots/garlic mixture a day ahead. Then when you’re close to serving time, reheat the mix and add the feta/mint. What a winner.

The KG liked garnishing with a pretty bit of carrot top. Check at your grocer or local farmers’ market.

Smashed Carrots with Feta and Mint

Adapted from David Tanis in The New York Times.

Serves 4-6.

Ingredients
3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
2 pounds large carrots, peeled and cut into 1-inch chunks
Salt and pepper
2 large cloves garlic, minced
1 cup well-flavored chicken broth (or vegetable stock)
6 ounces feta cheese, crumbled
2 tablespoons freshly chopped mint leaves
Pinch of Aleppo pepper (or crushed red pepper)

Directions
In a large skillet with a lid, heat the olive oil at medium-high until it shimmers (not smoking). Add the carrots and stir them around in the oil to coat. Sprinkle the carrots with ½ teaspoon kosher salt and ¼ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper.

Add the garlic and stir it frequently with the carrots until it reaches a golden color, about 3 minutes. Do not let the garlic brown. Add the chicken (or vegetable) stock and stir to combine well.

Cover the pot and reduce the heat to medium low, so that the carrots simmer until tender, about 10 minutes. Remove the lid and continue to simmer the carrots another 10 minutes, stirring occasionally, then turn the heat to medium high until most of the stock has evaporated, which should take another 2 minutes.

Using a potato masher, smash the carrots in the skillet until the mixture reaches a texture you like. Try to leave it a bit rough.

At this point, the carrots can be covered and set aside until you are ready to serve. When you’re ready to serve, reheat the carrots over low heat, adding a tablespoon or two of broth if the mixture seems dry. Check the seasoning and add salt/pepper to taste.

Reserve 1-2 ounces of the feta and about a quarter of the chopped mint as garnish. Stir the rest of the feta and mint into the warm carrots, and transfer the mixture to a serving dish. Sprinkle with the Aleppo pepper (or crushed red pepper), and the remaining feta and mint.

* * *

Come back Sunday for the final installment of this year's Marathon of Sides. Yes, the Kitchen Goddess is taking Saturday off.

Get Set... – Day 2 of This Year’s Marathon of Sides

What’s cooking? Fava-Mint Pesto

Fava beans are one of those foods I always expect to learn that Martha Stewart popularized. (And yes, I do remember the Hannibal Lecter line from Silence of the Lambs, but I think that reference more likely put people off this fine veggie.) In any case, it’s certainly true that favas currently enjoy a sort of cult following among foodies and chefs, including Mario Batali, Bobby Flay, Daniel Boulud, Thomas Keller, Giada De Laurentiis, and – laughably – 15 recipes at marthastewart.com. The woman is truly incorrigible.

Yet it happens that fava beans – known also as broad beans, field beans, and tic beans – have long been an integral part of cultures as far-flung as China, Colombia, Croatia, Egypt, Ethiopia, India, Italy, Mexico, Spain, Sudan, and Turkey. Whew. Even tiny Luxembourg, where I’m told (by wikipedia, of course) that smoked collar of pork with broad beans is the national dish. It seems that the U.S. is one of the few countries where these nutty, buttery members of the pea/bean family have not been widely celebrated.

That’s about to change, as the Kitchen Goddess is now a fan. Hahahaha... well, we must have our little joke. But seriously, the expanding popularity of favas in the U.S. has meant that they are much easier to find in your grocery store. (If you don’t find them, try the frozen food aisle.) And although the peak season for them is in the spring, I found some just the other day. I’d been saving today’s recipe for next spring, but was so delighted to see them that I decided what-the-heck. I’ll bet you can find some, too. And if you can’t, try this recipe with lima beans, which are not as flavorful but will take you in the same general direction.

One of the oldest plants in cultivation, fava beans are also one of the most densely nutritious. They’re a cheap and fiber-rich source of lean protein, with no saturated fat or cholesterol. What they do have is lots of thiamin, vitamin K, vitamin B-6, potassium, copper, selenium, zinc and magnesium.

So don’t be put off by the way they look, which is a bit like something Jack might have stolen from the giant. The only small downside is that they take a bit of time to peel:

1. Snap off the end of the pod, and pull the string – like you would with a sugar snap pea.

2. Use a finger or a paring knife to break open the pod along the seam, almost like a zipper. Remove the large, white shells.

3. The meat of the plant is inside those large white shells, and it’s easiest to extract the green insides if you drop the shells in boiling water for 30 seconds, then cool them off in an ice bath.







4. Make a small slit in the white shell, and you can practically squeeze the green insides out.

So, not really hard, just a little tedious. (This is where re-runs of Law & Order will come in handy.) The good news is that the green insides need very little cooking (30 seconds). And once they’re cooked, the pesto comes together quickly with a food processor. So for your Thanksgiving feast, this pesto recipe gives you a tastes-good and good-for-you spread to use on crackers or crostini as an appetizer.

Kitchen Goddess note: The recipe calls for Agrumato olive oil, one of the few items the KG doesn’t have in her larder. It’s an extra-virgin olive oil that has been pressed from olives and lemons, simultaneously. The idea intrigues the KG, but not enough to put off making the recipe. So she bought a lemon-infused olive oil, and was very happy with the results. Then, to satisfy the itch, she ordered some Agrumato. Will let you know how that goes.

The freshness of the lemon and mint flavors works beautifully with the nuttiness of the favas, pistachios, and Parmesan. And the color is outstanding.

Fava-Mint Pesto

Adapted from Los Angeles chef Jessica Largey, in Saveur magazine, June 2015.

Makes 2-2 ½ cups.

Ingredients
3 pounds fresh fava beans in their large, green pods (If you find shelled beans or frozen beans, you’ll need 2 cups of them.)
kosher salt
2 tablespoons raw pistachio nuts, lightly toasted and roughly chopped
1 garlic clove, sliced in half
6 tablespoons Agrumato lemon oil or another good quality lemon-infused olive oil
¼ cup finely grated Parmigiano-Reggiano
¼ cup loosely packed mint leaves, roughly chopped
finely grated zest of 1 lemon, plus 2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice

For presentation:
• seeded crackers or French baguette, sliced and toasted
• shaved Manchego cheese or Pecorino Romano, OR goat cheese with small, fresh basil leaves

Directions
Shuck the fava beans from their pods, then peel off and discard the white shells. (See directions above.) You want to have about 2 cups of cleaned fava beans.

Fava beans: the shucking process.

Prepare a bowl of ice with water and set it aside. Drop the beans into a medium saucepan of boiling, salted water, and when the water returns to a boil, cook the fava beans 30 seconds. Drain the beans and plunge them into the ice bath for a minute to stop the cooking and set the color. 

In the bowl of a food processor, pulse the pistachios with the garlic until well chopped. Use a spatula to scrape down the sides, then add 2 tablespoons of the lemon oil and pulse again to combine it well with the nuts and garlic.

Add the fava beans and pulse long enough to get a coarse purée. Scrape down the sides of the processor bowl, and add the remaining 4 tablespoons of lemon oil, the Parmigiano-Reggiano, mint, lemon zest, and juice. Continue to pulse long enough to reach a consistency you like. (This spread looks best when it’s slightly rough.) Season with ½ teaspoon of kosher salt and ¼ teaspoon of freshly ground black pepper.

Serve with seeded crackers or crostini on the side, or assemble the crostini with shaved Manchego or Pecorino, or goat cheese with a basil leaf.

* * *

I’ve shown the crostini paired with the Curried Butternut Squash Soup from yesterday’s post, but they’d work well with any of these other treats you can find here at Spoon & Ink (click each name for the appropriate link). And all of them can be made ahead of time and reheated on the big day:

• Cold Zucchini Soup
• Cream of Broccoli Soup
• Thai Curry Soup with Broccoli, Spinach, and Cilantro
• Wild Mushroom Soup with Madeira

Come back tomorrow for Smashed Carrots with Feta! We’re marching toward Thanksgiving...

Bright Ideas What’s cooking? Creamy Corn Pasta with Basil and Mint

As much as I honor the brave men and women who’ve given their lives for our country, Memorial Day inevitably reminds me of the end of the school year. At least, that’s when it ended when I was in school. We had no spring break, so no need to extend the year to recoup those days.

By the time I got through college, I figured I was done with school. (I wasn’t, but I thought I was.) Then I started work. On Wall Street. In research. I knew nothing, about corporate America or the securities business. Which worried me. Then I realized that, in research, what you do is learn. And in the process of learning about the stock market and the economy and financial instruments, I also learned how much I enjoy learning.

This awareness would come as a surprise to most of my college professors. But I was young when they knew me, and my frontal cortex – that place where judgment and higher level thinking take place – was still in the framing stage.

I still enjoy learning, and in that regard, I’ve recently become addicted to podcasts, downloadable audio files that you can play on your phone or tablet or computer. They don’t provide in-depth knowledge on any topic, but I’m not looking for any advanced degrees, so the “interesting tidbits” approach works fine for me. I subscribe to the ones I like best, so the updates come to me wirelessly and automatically, and I listen to them on my car stereo system through a Bluetooth connection with my phone. Twenty-first century magic. How cool is that?

Here’s my list:

■ This American Life – Journalistic non-fiction stories, ranging from thought-provoking to humorous
■ Freakonomics Radio – Discussion of socioeconomic issues for a general audience
■ Serious Eats – Conversations on food and life with food world professionals
■ The Sporkful – Passionate discussions about ridiculous food minutiae
■ Radiolab – Broad-based documentaries weaving stories and science and philosophy
■ Science Friday – News and stories about science
■ TED Radio Hour – New ways to think, based on talks from the world-renowned TED stage
■ The Splendid Table – James Beard Award- winning program on culinary culture and lifestyle
■ From Scratch – Interviews about the entrepreneurial life with pioneers in business and the arts
■ Wait Wait... Don’t Tell Me! – Humorous panel game show based on current events

So, foodwise, what have I learned? Now, if your eyes are glazing over and you’re wondering if I’m ever going to get to a recipe, the answer is yes. So you can skip down to it now, or maybe you’d like to learn something, too, today...

1. Would you even guess that canned tomatoes are better for us than fresh, locally harvested heirloom varieties? (Amazing, yes? The Kitchen Goddess is having a bit of trouble with this one. She believes the science, but still plans to marinate herself in fresh NJ tomatoes this summer.) Lycopene, the heart-healthy, cancer-fighting nutrient that gives tomatoes (and watermelon and bell peppers) their red color – needs to be heated for best absorption by our bodies. With that in mind, investigative journalist/health writer Jo Robinson says the best product in the grocery store – for lycopene – is tomato paste.

2. Also from Robinson, some vegetables lose their nutrients faster than others. She calls them the “Eat Me First” foods – on the assumption that you shop only once a week and purchase your supply of veggies in one shopping trip. (Ha! The KG has been trying – without success – to do that for ... a lot of years.) So here they are: artichokes, asparagus, broccoli, kale, leeks, lettuce, and spinach. For the most nutrients, you want to eat those foods in the first two days after purchase. For broccoli and kale, in particular, less cooking is best. Robinson says the optimum way to cook vegetables for nutrition is microwave steaming, as short a time as possible. Cooked carrots on the other hand, give you twice as much beta-carotene as raw ones.

[Here’s a tiny Kitchen Goddess recommendation: When you buy broccoli, cook only the flowering head. Use a peeler to remove the tough outer skin from the thick stems (which are almost sweet), and cut them into batons to use for dipping into your favorite crudité dressing. Like this...]

3. Acidic foods – wine/beer, vinegar, and lemon juice, in particular – are a great way to balance the richness or saltiness of a dish. So if you have a soup or sauce that’s too rich, it’s not a surprise that adding a squeeze of lemon or a teaspoon of vinegar or wine will help. But what if a soup is too salty? Same advice: add some lemon or vinegar. Rebalancing the tastes will enhance all the flavors in the dish.

4. You like scrambled eggs for breakfast? You’ll have the lightest, fluffiest eggs if you add salt to the eggs, then let them sit 15 minutes before cooking them. The KG scoffed at this one until she tried it. Yessirree. Try it yourself.

















5. If you’re into making pasta, try making it with egg yolks only – no whites – for a more tender pasta. That’s a recommendation of pasta wizard Missy Roberts, the chef/owner of Lilia in Brooklyn. But even if you’re cooking the dried stuff, she says:
(a) Salt the water. About 2 teaspoons of salt per quart of water (it should taste like the ocean) is the most important factor in cooking the pasta. No oil in the water. If you’re concerned about the pasta sticking together, just stir it frequently.
(b) Be sure to add some of the pasta water to the sauce; pasta water contains starch that helps bind the sauce to the pasta.
(c) Finish cooking the pasta in the sauce – i.e., give the pasta dough an opportunity to absorb the sauce in its final minutes of cooking.
(d) Finally, in serving pasta, add only as much sauce to the bowl as can be handled by the pasta – it should never be swimming in sauce.

* * *

Sooooo.... speaking of pasta. Here’s a perfect dinner for one of those nights when you really aren’t up for much effort. Which describes – even for the Kitchen Goddess – a lot of nights.

I found this recipe last summer in the height of corn season, but I didn’t get around to it until just recently. I’d seen corn on the cob in my grocery store, but it was surely not from any place local. So you want to keep this dish in mind when the fresh stuff actually makes an appearance in July. But for now – when you really want to feel like summer – most of this corn is going to get pulverized, so who really cares if you use fresh or frozen?

Orecchiette on left, farfalle on right.

You’ll be amazed to find no milk or cream in the dish, but the heart of the sauce is nothing more than corn and scallions cooked to complete tenderness, then buzzed smooth in a blender. Layer on the toasty flavors of brown butter and caramelized corn, then tang it up with basil and mint and lemon. Toss in some salty,umami-filled Parmigiano-Reggiano, and you will not be able to stop eating it. The New York Times’s Melissa Clark, who originated the recipe, uses orecchiette (the little ear-shaped pasta), but the Kitchen Goddess prefers farfalle (bow-tie pasta). Use whatever you like, but choose a shape that’s got plenty of surface to hang onto that sauce.

And if you needed an added incentive, I should tell you that it cooks in 30 minutes. That doesn’t count the time it takes you to get your s*** together – assembling the ingredients and that little bit of chopping. But not a lot of time, really.

Creamy Corn Pasta with Basil and Mint

Adapted from Melissa Clark in The New York Times.

Serves 4.

Ingredients

I augmented my scallion greens with fresh chives.

Kosher salt
12 ounces dry pasta (orecchiette or farfalle or your choice)
1 tablespoon olive oil, plus more for drizzling
1 bunch scallions (about 8), trimmed and thinly sliced (separate the white parts from the green)
2 cups corn kernels (frozen or from two large ears)
½ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper, plus more for serving
3-4 tablespoons unsalted butter
½ cup grated Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese
⅓ cup combination basil and mint, torn or in a chiffonade*, plus extra for garnish
½ teaspoon Aleppo pepper, or ¼ teaspoon red pepper flakes, to taste
Juice and zest of one lemon

*[Kitchen Goddess note: Chiffonade is a slicing technique for fresh herbs: stack the leaves 8-10 at a time, then roll the stack up like a cigar, and slice them thinly. It produces a lovely, fluffy pile of thin ribbons. If you need photos, go here.]










Directions
Bring a large pot of water to a boil, and stir in salt (2 teaspoons per quart of water). Add the pasta and cook until it is 1-2 minutes away from being al dente. Reserve 2 cups of the pasta water, and drain the pasta.

While the pasta is cooking, heat the oil in a large skillet and add the scallion whites with a pinch of salt. Saute the scallions for 3-4 minutes, stirring, until soft, then add ½ cup of the pasta water and all but ¼ cup of the corn. Bring the mixture to a simmer and cook 5 minutes, until the corn is tender.

Transfer the mixture to a blender, along with another ½ cup of pasta water and purée 1-2 minutes on high, until the mixture is smooth. If it seems too thick to pour easily, add more pasta water. Add ¼ teaspoon of salt and ¼ teaspoon of black pepper, and blend briefly to combine.

In the same skillet you used to simmer the corn, melt the butter over medium heat and add the reserved ¼ cup of corn. Cook, stirring, until the corn is tender, which will take about 2 minutes. You want the butter and the corn both to brown, but be aware that the corn will pop some as it caramelizes, so use a long wooden spoon to stir the corn, and stand back from the skillet.

When the corn and butter have browned slightly, reduce the heat and add in the puréed corn sauce. Stir to combine and cook on low heat until the mixture is evenly heated.

Add in the pasta and raise the heat to medium. Add more pasta water if the mixture seems too thick, and cook another minute. Add the scallion greens (about ¼ cup – and you can augment with fresh chives if your scallion greens aren’t up to par), the Parmesan, the basil/mint, the Aleppo pepper (or chili flakes), and ¼ teaspoon each of salt and pepper.

Stir to combine well and sprinkle over the lemon juice. Stir again – lightly – and adjust seasoning to taste. Serve immediately, garnishing with extra herbs, scallions, and the lemon zest. If you have a good olive oil handy, you can drizzle a little over the top.

Hanging Out with My People What’s cooking? Two great cocktails and a Tropical Smoothie

I started writing this at 32,000 feet, on my way back from a conference for bloggers in Seattle. The International Food Bloggers Conference 2015. Yes, even the Kitchen Goddess can enjoy hanging out with a group of like-minded souls for a few days.

I’m never really sure what I’ll find as I head into such adventures. I arrive at the hotel, and the questions that burn in my mind are... “Who ARE these people? And are they MY people?”

Not surprisingly, it’s a fairly eclectic group, and yes, they are my people. I mean, who else could spend three days talking about food and photography and food styling? But, as always, I’m intrigued by the subculture phenomenon.

On just about any topic, you can find a large group of people who’ll happily spend days on end discussing aspects of related minutae that would cause a “normal” person to run screaming from the room. Back in my single days, for instance, I was introduced to the world of tournament bridge. (The card game, not the giant steel structures.) Three times a year, the American Contract Bridge Association holds a national tournament at which many of these aficionados spend 10 days straight doing nothing but playing bridge. Sure, sign me up. And when these people go to dinner, they mostly discuss bridge hands. And at the end of the day, having spent their waking hours playing anywhere from 26 to 78 hands, they retire to the bar where the talk shifts to... bridge hands.

You can find subcultures of flower arrangers, crossword puzzlers, antique car owners, bonsai tree artists (you know who you are), ...even writers. And the great thing is that, within these subcultures, the qualities that in the “normal” world would cause a person to stand out, don’t. The hierarchy of values that makes George Clooney or Mark Zuckerberg or Oprah Winfrey a star is turned on its head. In the bridge world, Warren Buffet and Bill Gates – who both play the game – are unremarkable participants, and many of the “star” players would strike a non-bridge player as odd or even unpleasant.

Among food bloggers, the stars are the photographers, food stylists, and cookbook writers. In Seattle, in a workshop on taste trends, one woman told us about a recipe of hers for dill pickle soup. Yes, I know, dill pickle soup. Apparently it went viral and she got like a million hits. And when she reported this episode to the crowd, you could almost hear the low murmur ripple through the room... Holy shit... a million hits. That’s the stuff of rock stars in the food blogging world.

Among the many treats of the weekend was a Culinary Fair [read: dinner] featuring goodies from various Seattle restaurants and conference sponsors. As I wandered the room, I noticed lots of people sipping really pretty cocktails. Turns out they were offerings of the Stonyfield Yogurt Company, and not a drop of yogurt in them. Who knew yogurt people could be such fun? In fact, the cocktails were creations of Rebecca Rice, of Highball Custom Bar Catering, inspired by Stonyfield yogurts. That’s all I know about Rebecca except that she had some very fine ideas.

So in honor of the Stonyfield Yogurt folks, here are two of those yogurt-free cocktails – tested and approved by the Kitchen Goddess and her hubby, who pronounced them “mighty tasty” – and a breakfast treat for the next day.

The Cooler takes a little work, but well worth it for the gorgeous layered look and the fresh and complex taste – like a salad that’s simultaneously fruity and herb-y and you can’t quite decide which. Make a batch of the pear-ginger juice and the cucumber juice and serve these to your guests with hors d’oeuvres. Only one per guest, unless, well,... you know.

In case you missed it, I’m going to repeat: this Gingered Pear and Cucumber Cooler, with the layer of green drifting into the layer of golden yellow like a rainbow, is beautiful, and would make a great start to a dinner party. Very sophisticated. The Kitchen Goddess doesn’t even like gin, but she finished hers. Yes, sirree.

Gingered-Pear & Cucumber Cooler

Inspired by Stonyfield Organic Gingered Pear Oh My Yog! Yogurt, and adapted from Rebecca Rice, Highball Custom Bar Catering

Makes 4 cocktails.

For the drink:
6 ounces pear juice (I used pear drink from concentrate; or make your own if you’re really crazy or have a juicer)
1-inch piece fresh ginger, peeled and minced
1½ large cucumbers (not the seedless variety)
3 ounces lemon juice
7 ounces good quality gin
4 teaspoons sugar (superfine sugar dissolves best; use less sugar if you prefer less sweetness)

For the glasses (martini glasses work well):
lemon wedges (for wetting the rims)
pink flaky salt (if you can find it, or kosher salt if not)
cayenne pepper

Stir the ginger into the pear juice and refrigerate it for at least 30 minutes. Strain out the ginger before serving.










Cut 12 thin slices of cucumber (3 slices per drink). Set aside on a plate, covered so they don’t dry out. Chunk the rest of the cucumber into a juicer (if you have one) or blender and process to get as finely pulverized as you can. Strain the pulp from the juice to get at least 3 ounces of juice. Refrigerate the juice until ready to serve.

Cucumber juice --isn’t it pretty?

Run the lemon wedges around the rims of the glasses to wet them, and roll the edges of the glasses in a saucer of salt (pink salt is nice but not necessary) mixed with a dash of cayenne.

In a glass jar or cocktail shaker of ice, combine 4 ounces of the gingered pear juice, 3 ounces lemon juice, 7 ounces gin, and the sugar, and shake until thoroughly chilled. Strain into the four salt-and-cayenne-rimmed glasses.

Float 3 cucumber slices in each drink to cover the surface. Pour ¾ ounce of chilled cucumber juice over the back of a spoon in a layer over the cucumber slices.

The spoon is essential, to keep the cuke juice from torpedoing the cuke slices.

* * *

The Blueberry Mojito is a lot simpler and adds a nice fruitiness to the classic mint drink.

Kitchen Goddess note: The following drink calls for Minted Simple Syrup. I have touted this syrup as a staple for your fridge on more than one occasion. And here it is again. But the KG is a patient woman, so in case you still don’t have any... In a small saucepan, combine 1 cup water with 1 cup sugar and 1½ cups mint leaves, and bring to a simmer, stirring just until the sugar dissolves. Simmer 2 minutes and strain. Put the syrup into a jar and label it; it will keep indefinitely.

Blueberry Mojito

Inspired by Stonyfield Organic Quebec Blueberry Oh My Yog! Yogurt, and adapted from Rebecca Rice, Highball Custom Bar Catering

Makes 4 cocktails.

1 pint blueberries
1 small bunch fresh mint
7 ounces white rum
4 ounces fresh lime juice
3 ounces minted simple syrup [See KG note above.]

Put a small layer of crushed ice in the bottoms of 4 highball glasses.

Add a layer of blueberries (10-12).

Add a layer of mint leaves.

Repeat with layers of ice, berries, and mint.

In a glass jar or cocktail shaker with ice, combine the rum, lime juice, and minted simple syrup. Shake until the mixture is thoroughly chilled, and strain into the four glasses. Garnish with a sprig of mint.

* * *

Tropical Smoothie

Inspired by Deborah Harroun (check out her very attractive Taste and Tell blog)

Makes 4 servings.

12 ounces 100% pineapple juice
2 large ripe bananas, cut in ½-inch pieces and frozen
6 ounces Stonyfield Organic Plain Greek Yogurt
1 cup coconut water
1 cup crushed ice

Combine all ingredients in a blender, and process until smooth. Serve immediately.

Flights of Fancy Food What’s cooking? Artichoke Pesto and Salad Shirazi

The Kitchen Goddess is chagrined to note that it’s been more than two weeks since my last post. A shameful situation, to be sure, but we – my hubby and I – have done an obscene amount of travel this year (at least one trip per month), and it’s difficult if not impossible to collect my already scattered thoughts while on the road. But I will attempt to catch up today with not one but two easy recipes that celebrate spring.

In light of all this travel, it’s a vast understatement to say that I’ve had my fill of airport food lately. Of course, there’s no such thing as airline food anymore, unless you’re flying first class, where, believe me, the food they’re serving isn’t even up to what they used to serve in coach. So my habit of packing a few snacks has become something of an obsession. Part of it is driven by my desire not to throw away perfectly good food, yet it’s tough to imagine showing up at my neighbor’s doorstep with, “Hi, would you like some leftover risotto? Or this half of an apple? How about a cup of cucumber salad?”

The packing almost always takes place in the last few minutes before we leave. My prince checks his watch and paces while I stuff the food into baggies and wedge it carefully into my carry-on, adding one of those little cellophane packages of fork/spoon/salt/pepper and a couple of paper towels, because you can’t rely on airplane napkins to keep your hands clean. For our latest trip, I took a hard-boiled egg, an apple (which I sliced), and a pear (also sliced). I thought about adding some cheese, then decided against it to save my marriage.

The flight was just to Houston, only 35 minutes long, and he reminded me more than once that we’d have time to grab lunch in the Houston airport, so the food was really superfluous. Then a funny thing happened on the way to Houston. There was lots of turbulence, and as the plane neared the landing strip, the pilot made an abrupt adjustment and took us back up into the clouds. Whoa, what was that about?

“Sorry, folks,” said the pilot. He added something that sounded like, “Blah blah wind shear blah blah.” After which we spent an extra 20 minutes or so flying around for a new approach. A little unsettling, but we finally made it to the gate. Can you see where this is going?

“I hope we don’t miss our connection,” said my husband. “Looks like we won’t have time for lunch.”

I said nothing, but smiled triumphantly to myself as I thought about my stash. We made the connection (just barely), and as I unearthed my “lunch,” the look on his face reminded me of a golden retriever we once had who would follow me around the kitchen hoping for anything edible to fall on the floor. “Don’t worry,” I said. “We can share this.” But next time, I’m also packing that cheese.

* * *

All this travel has played havoc with my diet, so I’ve been concentrating lately on salads and other veggie-centric dishes. Today, I have two great finds for you: an hors d’oeuvre and a salad. Both would be great, by the way, as airplane lunches.

The hors d’oeuvre is Artichoke Pesto, another on my list of great pestos and a winner for anyone who likes artichokes. The Kitchen Goddess loves them. It was a find of my friend, Ellen, who says it began life as a Weight Watchers recipe. I’ve tweaked it a bit, increasing the garlic and adding lemon juice, but the master stroke was to use those marinated artichokes you find in the relish bars offered by most large grocers these days. You can trim back the calories by using canned artichoke hearts, but I think the oil- and herb-marinated hearts offer a huge improvement with very few added calories. If your grocer doesn’t have a relish bar, or it doesn’t stock artichoke hearts, go for the jars in the relish aisle. Just find a brand that incorporates some seasoning. And the marinated hearts don’t turn brown like the ones packed in brine.

This pesto is best if it’s the tiniest bit chunky, so I wouldn’t just turn on the food processor and walk away. Pulse it until the mixture reaches a consistency that’s spreadable, but not a purée. The Kitchen Goddess is so fond of this stuff that she’ll eat a large scoop of it over lettuce for lunch with crackers. Or over scrambled eggs with blue corn tortilla chips, like this, for breakfast.

Artichoke Pesto

Adapted from Weight Watchers, Inc.

Makes about 2 cups.

1¼ cups marinated artichoke hearts, drained with 1 tablespoon of the flavored oil reserved
2 medium cloves garlic, minced
1¼ cups fresh basil leaves (packed)
¼ cup pine nuts
3-4 tablespoons grated Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese
½ teaspoon (rounded) kosher salt
1 teaspoon freshly squeezed lemon juice
freshly ground pepper, to taste

In a small Teflon skillet over medium heat, toast the pine nuts until they turn a golden brown (about 5 minutes). Add the nuts and the rest of the ingredients (including the reserved oil) to the bowl of a food processor and pulse until coarsely ground. Adjust seasoning to taste.

Transfer the pesto to a bowl, cover and refrigerate about an hour before serving, to allow the flavors to come together. Serve as a spread with crackers or chips or vegetable crudité.

* * *

My grocery store has this year been stocking bags of what I thought to be some variety of hothouse cucumbers. But in researching about this recipe, I discovered that they’re actually Persian cucumbers, a variety that’s been around for more than 3000 years! I wonder what took my grocer so long...

These cukes – also sold as Gourmet Baby Cucumbers – look more like the large English cucumbers than the darker, thicker-skinned ones we’re used to seeing. Persian cucumbers are about 6 inches long, with thin, textured skin that there’s no need to peel. They’re sweeter and crisper than common garden cucumbers, and have no developed seeds. They retain their water, so they stay cool tasting – one source I found said the interior can be as much as 20 degrees cooler than the skin. So they’re great in salads, and a terrific accompaniment to rich meats like lamb.


This particular salad is a traditional dish from Shiraz, a 4000-year old city and the sixth most populous in Iran. It’s light, fresh, crisp, and low-cal, and it takes almost no time to make.

Salad Shirazi

Adapted from Ellie on Food.com.

Serves 4

For the dressing:
4 tablespoons olive oil
juice of 1 lime (about 2 tablespoons)
1 garlic clove, minced
½ teaspoon honey
salt and pepper to taste

For the salad:
5 Persian cucumbers
1 pint (11-12 ounces) sweet cherry tomatoes
2 scallions, white and light green parts only
½ cup mint, chopped
1 jalapeño, seeded and diced (or 1-2 tablespoons diced jalapeños from a jar. Yes, the KG is not too proud to get her jalapeños from a jar.)

Put all ingredients for the dressing into a jar and shake it well.

Slice the cucumbers lengthwise into quarters, then slice across in ⅜-inch cuts. [KG note: If this sounds too precious, just know that I thought ¼-inch cuts were too thin and ½-inch cuts too thick. So there.] Put them into a medium-sized salad bowl.

Slice the tomatoes into quarters, and add them to the bowl.

Slice the scallions thinly on a diagonal, and add them to the bowl. Add the mint and jalapeño, and pour the dressing over all. Adjust salt and pepper to taste. Toss well, cover and refrigerate for at least 30 minutes before serving. Now, wasn't that easy?

Listing to Normal What's cooking? Herbed Salad with Squash Ribbons

Back when I was working full-time, a friend from the HR department walked into my office and told me about a new program his department was sponsoring for employees, to introduce them to the Franklin Daytimers organizing system.

“Sounds interesting,” I said.

“Yes,” he said as he began collecting the Post-Its from here and there around my desk. “And I’ve enrolled you in the first class.”

You know, I think of myself as an organized person. I array my spices in alphabetical order and my sprinkles on the color spectrum; I organize my recipes in files labeled for “Appetizers,” “Desserts,” “Soups and Sauces,” etc. And my kitchen drawers are, well, neat. So I feel like I’ve got a handle on my life. Then I look around my office. (Don’t hope for a photo here – you don’t really think I’d let you look around my office, do you?)

The main point of the Franklin system was to start each day by listing the tasks you wanted to accomplish that day, noting on each its level of importance, and then numbering them in the order you needed to get them done. It was a great system, and it served me well until I stopped working for that company, and shortly thereafter, I fell off the wagon, so to speak. The one piece that carried over is the lists. Not that daily list of what to do and the order thereof – although I have that, sort of – now I also have the secondary list of  possible blog topics, the list of ingredients for something I can’t quite recall, the list of ideas for Christmas gifts, and, of course, the list of what to buy at the grocery store, along with the separate shopping list for Penzey’s (spice store). Among others. Some of my lists have their own sub-lists.

I was feeling kind of bad about all this list-making, until a couple of years ago when the Morgan Library in NYC held a special exhibit on lists – documents (mostly by artists) from the archives of the Smithsonian. What fun! It turns out that all the world makes lists. From Arturo Rodriguez (artist), a list of his paintbrushes with drawings of each; from Adolf Konrad (another artist), a pictorial list of what to pack for a trip, with each item – down to the socks – carefully illustrated; a letter from H.L. Mencken listing 29 personal facts for a profile another writer was doing on him; from the artist Janice Lowry, a list of 50 Angry Grievances which included “No rain” and “George Bush”; and a list by Picasso of artists proposed for a show.

Lists are a natural part of cooking – lists of ingredients, lists of steps to take. For a party we used to hold each year, I have spreadsheets (!) with lists of what worked the previous year and what didn’t, the serving dishes to use for each hors d’oeuvre, and where to find the recipes I used. So at least the Kitchen Goddess is organized!

Trend-Spotting

From the various cooking and food-related magazines I get, I’ve noticed that, in spite of the change in seasons, salads seem to be popping up everywhere. I don’t know why that is, but I like to seize a trend at the outset. Then on a podcast of America’s Test Kitchen radio show, they featured Yotam Ottolenghi, the Israeli-born chef and cookbook author. As he talked about how he enjoys mixing textures and flavors, he moved into a discussion of... yes, salads.

“When I visit my parents outside Jerusalem,” said Ottolenghi, “you see how herbs grow – so easily and so wonderfully, just as well any other leaf... Why can I not have a salad that is just plainly tons of parsley, tons of basil, cilantro, a bit of tarragon and some chervil? Have that as the main thing, rather than dressing a salad with just a bit of herb. It seems so fresh and so right.”

Well, I liked that idea, and I remembered herb-centric salads from two of my favorite new cookbooks: A16: Food + Wine, from the San Francisco restaurant, A16, and Jean-Georges Vongerichten’s latest, Home Cooking with Jean-Georges. Both salads also used squash ribbons, which I’d been dying to try. My own version turned out really well, and the salting/rinsing process with the squash ribbons gave them a smooth but crunchy texture I enjoyed – even into the next day with the leftovers. Fresh and lively, the salad is so much more interesting with the parsley and mint than I would ever have thought. By the way, I’d recommend looking for the smaller, tenderer Italian parsley; it’s lighter in color and less leathery in texture. The dressing couldn’t be simpler – who needs herbs in the dressing when you’ve got herbs galore in the salad?









Kitchen Goddess note on the squash ribbons: You can make these with your vegetable peeler, but I prefer to use my Benriner mandoline. It’s more reliable for getting uniform thicknesses – also more dangerous, and you know how the KG loves danger. An option would be the Kyocera Adjustable Slicer with Guard ($21 at amazon.com), which was awarded “best buy” in a comparison of kitchen slicers in Cook’s Illustrated magazine, so it’s probably less dangerous. The Benriner, which also has blades for julienning, is $22 at amazon.com.

Herbed Salad with Squash Ribbons

Serves 4-6 ... or 2 if you decide to make it lunch.

2 medium zucchini, 5-6 ounces each
1 medium yellow squash, 6-7 ounces
kosher salt
2-3 ounces baby arugula
2 ounces sunflower sprouts (use any hearty sprouts if you can’t find sunflower sprouts)
½ cup loosely packed fresh Italian parsley (leaves only), coarsely chopped
½ cup loosely packed fresh mint leaves, coarsely chopped
½-¾ cup Italian olives (I prefer Castelvetrano or Cerignola), pitted and sliced
1 large navel orange, peeled and segmented (optional -- I like it both ways)
freshly ground pepper
Garnish: shavings of aged Pecorino Romano cheese

Dressing:
¼ cup extra-virgin olive oil (use the best you have)
2 tablespoons freshly squeezed lemon juice

Trim then ends of the squash and, using either a vegetable peeler or a mandoline, slice them into ribbons no thicker than ⅛ inch. Put the slices into a bowl and toss well with 1 teaspoon salt, then place the slices in a colander set over the bowl and let them sit for 10 minutes. This process will cause the squash ribbons to wilt and soften as the salt leaches the water out.

Rinse the squash ribbons under cold running water and pat dry with paper towels. The squash ribbons can be prepared to this point then layered between paper towels and stored in an air-tight baggie for several hours.

When you are ready to serve, place the arugula and sprouts in a large serving bowl, top with the squash ribbons, the parsley and mint, the olive slices, and the orange segments, if using. (You'll note the absence of orange segments in the photo. So shoot me.)

Combine the olive oil and lemon juice in a small bowl or jar and mix well. Toss the salad with the dressing, then taste for seasoning, adding salt if necessary. This salad will require less salt than usual because the squash ribbons have absorbed some salt and the olives are salty.

Arrange the salad for serving, making sure to distribute the olives evenly. Use a vegetable peeler to shave curls of pecorino on top and finish with fresh grinds of pepper.

Here's the salad before the pecorinoo curls -- a little easier to see.

Kitchen Goddess note: This salad is molto easy to serve at a dinner party. Prepare/store the squash ribbons as noted above, then measure out the other ingredients into separate baggies, and mix the dressing in a small jar. Assembling the salad then takes only a couple of minutes. And it’s very pretty, don’t you think?