This is the quintessential summer salad. Tender crunchy green beans and sweet, sun-kissed tomatoes. Sadly, we are still several months away from those beans and tomatoes, but we can fake it.
Most of the year, green beans look so full of promise, all bright and green, but in truth, they are imposters. Once you cook them, they disappoint. If you try to cook them briefly, they never have that fresh snap of summer beans, they just come out tough and leathery. If you try to cook them longer, to get them tender, they just end up mushy. And let’s not even talk about winter tomatoes. Red cardboard, disguised as a tomato. Enough said.
To satisfy my craving for verdant crunch, I bought haricots vert, those skinny pricey green beans. I’m sure my carbon footprint is huge, because they were probably from Kenya or Guatemala, but I wanted that tender crunch. Getting sweet tomatoes out of season is as simple as buying the little grape or cherry tomatoes. They have much better texture and flavour than their big sisters. Bonus points if you can find the rainbow baby tomatoes. With the addition of toasted pine nuts, olives, capers and some ricotta salata, this salad had a decidedly Sicilian bent. For the dressing I whisked together anchovy paste (please use it even if you don’t think you like anchovies, it adds a powerful umami punch without tasting fishy), dijon mustard, garlic, lemon juice, white wine vinegar and extra virgin olive oil. Don’t forget to garnish with fresh basil leaves.
When the baskets at the market are spilling over with green and yellow beans I get very excited. That satisfying sharp snapping sound they make when you break off the ends tells me that these beans are fresh from the field.
Traditionally in North America, veggies have been portrayed as a minor character on the plate, letting meat take center stage. However, chefs around the world are beginning to inspire us to flip that view around. Let vegetables shine on the plate , but use meat sparingly, to add some acidity, richness and fat. This recipe was created by Chef Josh Keeler from Two Boroughs Larder in Charleston, SC.As I perused Chef Josh’s recipe, I did a double take reading the instructions. Put the salami in the blender. Really??? Remember that episode of The Chew when host Carla Hall wonders “Can you blend it?” and then proceeds to puree leftover chicken pot pie? Well, blended salami vinaigrette is way better than that. Surprisingly delicious. It adds richness and an unctuous quality to the beans. The pureed dressing is a rather vibrant orange colour, thanks to the paprika, but don’t let it scare you. Press on!
I decided to add a touch more salami , crisping up little cubes to use as a sort of meat crouton.The first time I made this we added chick peas to the dish to up the protein content. As my sister Bonnie says, “Chick peas make everything better.” For this photo shoot, I left them out.
When Mother Nature shows up at the farmers market flaunting her peaches (and beans), you don’t mess around too much with perfection like this. Keep it simple!I have made this salad four times already this summer. The first time I made it, it was part of a celebratory dinner* for 12. (Big football game victory – Go RedBlacks!!) Luckily I had a wonderful sous chef with me in the kitchen that day; my niece Samantha was visiting. We have collaborated in the kitchen before, on a 6 braid challah, so I knew I had some exceptional assistance.
As the afternoon wore on and we continued our prep, I noticed the level of blanched beans in the colander was diminishing. My niece could not stop eating them. She told me that her beans never tasted like this, and asked what I had done? I explained that they were fresh from the farmer’s field and I that I had heavily salted the cooking water. (almost 1/4 cup Kosher salt for a big pot of water). This seasons the beans perfectly and they do not taste “salty”.
Sautéing the peaches in a bit of vegetable oil for just a few minutes really enhances their natural sweetness. The pickled onions add a welcome piquant note. This is a beautiful fresh summer salad.
If the view outside your window is anything like mine, you may be wondering if winter will ever end.Hey, don’t get me wrong. I love fall root vegetables as much as or even more than the average joe out there. I mean, they really are the unsung superstars of winter produce. There is no end to the culinary magic that you can perform with carrots, parsnips, squash and potatoes. But seriously, I am sick of roasting, mashing, sauteeing and frying those suckers.
I am longing for something fresh and green and crunchy. I am craving baby green peas. Those tiny swollen little pods that, when shucked, give birth to tiny green peas. I miss that satisfying little pop when you bite into them. I am longing for local asparagus. Those grassy sweet spears that tell me spring is here. Sadly, those first green shoots of asparagus have yet to spring forth from the frozen ground and there are no fresh peas ready to pop anywhere near where I am any time soon .
So, it’s green beans to the rescue. Although they are not local , they will stand in as a green crunchy substitute until I can get my hands on the first produce of spring.This green bean recipe is called Crunchy Green Beans2, because the beans get added crunch from two different sources. The first is from toasted hazelnuts. I just love that slightly bitter tanic zing you get when you first crunch a toasted hazelnut between your teeth. Then there is a follow up flavour of slightly browned butter. So complex for such a little nut.
The second crunch source is Panko breadcrumbs. Panko breadcrumbs, if you are not familiar with them are special Japanese breadcrumbs. The biggest difference between panko and regular breadcrumbs is that panko is made from bread without crusts. The crustless bread is coarsely ground into airy, large flakes that give fried foods a light, crunchy coating. The flakes tend to stay crispier longer than standard breadcrumbs because they don’t absorb as much grease.Please, take the time to salt the water before boiling your green beans. I added about 2 tablepoons of kosher salt to the water. This does not make the beans overly salty, it just seasons them perfectly so they do not taste bland. You can not get the same effect from salting after cooking. After boiling for several minutes, give your beans an ice water bath. I just place the colander of drained beans right into a large bowl of ice water. Once they have cooled, just lift the colander up and leave all the ice cubes behind in the bowl. No need to fish ice cubes out of your green beans.Some butter or olive oil, or a little of both is added to the toasted crumbs and nuts and the blanched beans get a toss in all that crunchy goodness until they are heated through. Hot or at room temperature, these are a little bit salty, a lot crunchy and so satisfying.
Last Monday morning I woke up with a killer Cronut hangover. For the uninitiated, a Cronut is an amazing pastry from Dominique Ansel Bakery on Spring St. in SoHo. Imagine if you will a cream filled donut hooking up with a croissant, falling in love and mating. (Hey, it could happen, ever watch those eHarmony commercials?) The Cronut would be the love child of that union.They take a croissant type dough and form it into a donut shape. Then they deep fry it and pump it full of a Tahitian Vanilla pastry cream. They enrobe it in a rose flavoured glaze, tint it the palest, prettiest pink imaginable, and then, bedazzle it with candied rose petals.
This creation is based on the traditional Breton butter pastry, known in Brittany as Kouign Amann. People are lining up for them as early as 6:00 a.m., because they sell out so quickly. There are even rumours that Cronuts are being scalped on Craigslist. They just launched a lemon maple variety for the month of June and a Dulce de Leche variety is in the works for July!http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vswiimBEvCk
I first heard about Cronuts on Serious Eats. I knew that in the wrong hands, (MINE), a Cronut could be a dangerous thing. But I needed to find out if they were really all that and a bag of chips. So, I figured I’d do the next best thing to actually eating it myself. I would get my friend to try them, and give me the lowdown.
My girlfriend Paula and her husband were heading to NYC, so I forwarded the Cronut link to her and asked her to go check them out and report back to me. She e-mailed me back that she would do one better; she would bring me back some to try myself. Apparently they sell out very quickly, so she went online, ordered them and on Sunday afternoon, schlepped her husband down to SoHo to pick them up. He stopped complaining once she shoved a Cronut in his mouth. She managed to get them through Newark Security and even through Customs unscathed, although I suspect a Cronut or two were sacrificed as bribes to ease their entry into Canada. We take Cronut importation seriously in this nation.
Now you may be thinking, “What a great friend Paula is, to bring these all the way back from NYC”. Or you may be wondering if she isn’t just a sneaky closet enabler, trying to fatten up her friend.
Sunday night, around 8:30 p.m., our doorbell rang. It was Paula, on her way home from the airport with the box of Cronuts. She said that we had to eat them right away. I didn’t want to be rude, so I took a small bite. Crispy flaky light layers of buttery croissant gave way to a silky pastry cream filling flecked with vanilla bean seeds.I am sure I moaned as I thanked her profusely. I really was planning to have just a little bite, so I could say I had tried them. However, once she left, an evil voice from somewhere deep inside my head commanded me to finish the entire thing. So I did. And then, once my husband and daughter went upstairs, I scarfed down a second Cronut; hence the Cronut hangover on Monday morning.
I felt vaguely nauseous from all that sugar and butter I had ingested, so I figured that the perfect antidote was something green and acidic. I remember reading somewhere that apple cider vinegar is a great digestive aid. I had some fresh green beans, so I got to creating with what was in my fridge.Cookbook author and griller extraordinaire, Chris Schlessinger, once said, “Green bean recipes are like movies: You always think there are lots of good ones around until you’re ready for one, then you can’t find any you really like.” Here’s a fantastic one for whenever over-indulging makes you feel the need to be virtuous. (At least until the next binge!)
For those of you who live in a place where the daffodils and crocuses are popping through the earth and spring is just around the corner, I say, how lovely for you. Well, I may add a few more descriptive words than that, but I prefer to keep this G-rated. If, like me, you are suffering through a long and snowy winter and the end seems very distant, and the view outside your front door or bedroom window looks something like this, well, let’s all chant together… #@*&@!!
From my above rant, you can clearly tell I do not embrace winter. When I first moved to this winter wonderland we call Ottawa, many well intentioned people advised me that the best way to get through the long winter was to pick a winter sport and embrace it. After all, in the Nation’s Capital we have hundreds of miles of trails for snowshoeing or cross country skiing, not to mention the world’s longest (7.8 kilometers) skating rink, once the Rideau Canal freezes up. I have tried it all and to be honest, I just hate being cold. I prefer to spend my winters indoors. But I will admit to going a little stir crazy by mid-March. Just when you feel there is no end in sight and you can not look at another root vegetable or cabbage, these appear in the market.
These beauties are blood oranges. They typically appear in my market late February-March. Once I see them, hope blooms in my heart and I know that asparagus and strawberries will surely follow soon. Sometimes the blood oranges come wrapped up, like a present in colourful Ninja Turtle wrapping paper and sometimes they come unwrapped, naked for all the world to see. Mine came from Italy. They also grow them in Texas and California.
I am reminded of a line from the movie Forest Gump when I slice into a blood orange. You never know what you’re gonna get when you slice into a blood orange. The flesh can range anywhere from a blush coloured pink all the way to a profoundly deep crimson. Sometimes the flesh can will appear mottled, partly orange and partly red. I find those scariest of all, they sort of look diseased. The flavour is slightly less acidic than regular oranges. The colour variance inside the 3 oranges I sliced up was very surprising. I got orange, pale red and deep red flesh. Blood oranges have this unique color because they carry anthocyanins, which are powerful flavonoid pigments that exist in red and purple fruits and vegetables. These pigments are very effective in protecting the body from many diseases.
Blood oranges look especially pretty when you take the time to segment them into little wedges. I made a video demonstrating how to do that.
I paired the blood oranges with green beans, frisée, radicchio and belgian endive for a gorgeous salad. I tossed everything with a sherry vinaigrette and sprinkled on some toasted chopped hazelnuts. A few pomegranate seeds on top would really gild the lily!
I defy anyone to feel sad after feasting your eyes on this salad.
Like most of you, I suspect, I sometimes fall into a rut and eat the same things over and over again. It’s just easier that way sometimes. But, this year I have decided to try cooking with a new grain every month. Sort of expand my culinary horizons. However, that goal kind of runs counter to a second goal of mine, to eat my way through my pantry, without buying any new staples.
I was inspired in this second goal by a good friend. Last time I visited her at the cottage she shared with me, that for the month of August, she was planning to empty out her pantry. On days when she had company, everyone usually gathered on the dock around 5 pm for drinks. Instead of agonizing over what to serve with drinks, she would just use whatever she found in her pantry cupboard. One day, she confessed, she opened up a can of chickpeas, rinsed and drained them and served them with a sprinkling of black pepper. Along side this she served some dried apricots she spied lounging at the back of the shelf in a plastic bag. Apparently these offerings were gobbled up quite happily with a glass of chilled Prosecco.
So here I was with the good angel on one shoulder, whispering in my ear, “Come on, clean out the pantry. You have 5 different kinds of grains here. Eat us!”. On the other shoulder I had the devil, tempting me to be wasteful and go out and seek a new grain. Most of you know I have very little willpower, so it should come as no surprise to you that I went out and bought some wheat berries. I had never cooked with them before and a recipe by Globe and Mail nutrition reporter, Leslie Beck, caught my eye.
Wheat berries are essentially whole unprocessed wheat kernels, containing all three parts of the grain (germ, bran and endosperm). Only the hull is removed. They sort of look like barley but have 75% more protein and 40% more fibre than barley. All in all, a nutritional powerhouse. Wheat berries need to be rinsed and then they are cooked in simmering water, about a 2:1 ratio, like rice. They take about 40 minutes to cook and have a wonderful nutty taste and chewy toothsome texture. I added some french green beans to the original recipe as I happened to have some wilting in my fridge!
The other ingredients are arugula, pomegranate seeds and diced red apples. The dressing is made from olive oil, cider vinegar, apple juice, maple syrup and grainy mustard.
Chewy, crunchy, tangy and sweet. And healthy too! Feel free to substitute whatever grain you have languishing on the shelf of your pantry. This would be great with Farro as well.
This is the quintessential summer salad. Tender crunchy green beans and sweet, sun-kissed tomatoes. Sadly, we are still several months away from those beans and tomatoes, but we can fake it.
With the addition of toasted pine nuts, olives, capers and some ricotta salata, this salad had a decidedly Sicilian bent. For the dressing I whisked together anchovy paste (please use it even if you don’t think you like anchovies, it adds a powerful umami punch without tasting fishy), dijon mustard, garlic, lemon juice, white wine vinegar and extra virgin olive oil. Don’t forget to garnish with fresh basil leaves.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vswiimBEvCk
