Muttar paneer and strawberry tart

Last night we had our friend, Monique, over for dinner. We made muttar paneer with fresh peas and this strawberry tart from one of the many Martha Stewart magazines given to me by my Aunt Kathy.

Paneer is faster and easier to make than expected, although it's very important to use high quality whole milk. We used non-organic cheap milk and it was a mess. The paneer disintegrated when I tried to fry it and it felt sticky and difficult to deal with.

To make:

Heat a half-gallon of whole milk in a saucepan over medium heat. When it's just coming to a boil (steaming), add 4 T lemon juice (or lime juice, in a pinch) and stir gently. The lemon juice will make the milk curdle, separating the curds from the whey. Remove from heat and pour through a (cheese)cloth-lined mesh strainer over a large bowl. The whey will be a yellowish liquid and can be kept for a few days in the frig to add to soups, rice or to deglaze pans while cooking. The curds will be white and chunky. Wrap the curds in the cheesecloth, place it between two plates and then rest something heavy on top of the plates (a cast iron skillet or a bunch of books will do nicely). Let this sit an hour or so, until the curds have been compressed into a flat, dense slab. Cut the slab of paneer into squares and fry in a skillet with hot oil. Brown on both sides and then move to a paper-towel lined plate to drain. (You can fry right away or keep in the frig until you are ready to fry. You don't even have to fry it, but it keeps it shape better if you do.)

Our paneer kept falling apart and sticking to the pan, so I had a messy pile of overly greasy paneer. Thankfully, muttar paneer is a forgiving dish, and the paneer worked out just fine when added to everything else.

Wisconsin peas and strawberries....95 cents to $1.05 a pound

It's pea season. Last weekend we drove to a farm near Clintonville, WI to pick peas and strawberries. (See the next post on the berries.) We went a little nuts and bought a whole flat of peas, which were gigantic and sweet, and two flats of berries, which were ripe as hell.

After the 4 hour drive home, we spent three hours processing fruits and vegetables. That night for supper, I made a lettuce salad with strawberries and a side of garlic sauteed beet tops. Jeremy made fresh pea risotto. How is it possible that we can eat so well???

Summer pasta salad

I dislike mayonaise based pasta dishes, especially in the summer. (Who wants to eat that when it's hot?) I started making this pasta salad back in Atlanta because it's flexible enough to add just about anything, and it's easy to make.
Ingredients:
1 package penne pasta (or whatever kind you like), boiled until al dente and rinsed in cold water
1 head broccoli, broken into smallish stalks
1 head cauliflower, broken into smallish pieces
3-4 carrots, diced
1 onion, diced
garlic, chopped
mushrooms, sliced (if you like)
1 c cherry or plum tomatoes, halved
1 c almonds (or nut of your choice), toasted
1 c dried cherries (or cranberries, or blueberries, or whatever dried fruit you like)
Fresh spinach and/or arugula
Herbs (we use about a tablespoon of oregano, basil and a teaspoon of thyme, but you can also use cilantro and a bit of mint) and salt/pepper
1 to 3 ratio of oil to vinegar/citrus juice (about 1/4 c total...we usually use a mixture of balsamic, regular vinegar and a bit of either lime juice or orange juice with olive oil)

Put a large stock pot on to boil with plain water. Par boil the broccoli until bright green and still crunchy, maybe a minute or two. Rinse with cold water and drain well. Pour into a large bowl. Repeat with cauliflower (might take a minute more than the broccoli). Add the carrots (you can par boil these as well, or leave them raw so they're a little more crunchy) and tomatoes in the bowl (don't boil the tomatoes).
In a skillet with 1-2 T olive oil, saute onions over medium heat until almost carmelized. Add garlic and mushrooms, cooking a few minutes more with a splash of soy sauce. Add to the bowl of veggies. Repeat with spinach and arugula until just wilted. Add to the bowl. Mix well, but gently.
In a separate bowl, mix oil, vinegar and herbs.
If you aren't eating it right away, add 1/3rd of the vinegrette to the pasta salad, stirring to coat and cover with Saran wrap. Keep in frig until ready to use.
Keep vinegrette in the frig too. When ready to eat, add the rest of the vinegrette, the nuts and dried fruit. Stir well and serve.

Spring rolls and orange pecan bundt cake

I am truly addicted to spring rolls. I could eat them every day if I could, and then I would weigh a thousand pounds and still want more spring rolls.

Unfortunately, it's another food we've ruined for ourselves, because no restaurant's rolls are as good as ours. (Why can't they use a spicy marinade instead of just dry noodles and lettuce??)

Jeremy was gone for the night, so I made myself some, using black rice noodles instead of white. (We've posted on these guys before, so the recipe already lives on this blog.) Don't they look creepy?



I also made orange pecan bundt cake. I messed up the praline topping by using too many nuts and not enough butter/rum, but they make a nice addition along the top.

Rancho Gordo beans

Jeremy and I are true nerds. In early June, we celebrated our 10th anniversary (of dating, not marriage). What did we get as presents? Jewelry? A travel package to somewhere fun? Fancy dinner out at a restaurant? Nope. Beans.

Months ago, Jeremy bought this issue of Savuer magazine at the Atlanta airport, and we've been loving it ever since. They hailed Rancho Gordo as this fabulous heirloom bean-town, and after reading the descriptions of their merchandise, I knew that we were getting beans this year. They're not cheap at $5 a pound, but damn, they're worth it. I selected four types as a surprise for Jeremy: the borlotti, yellow-eye peas, scarlet runner beans and cranberry beans. Aren't they BEAUTIFUL???????



We used the scarlet runner beans first. The package instructed us to soak them overnight, but we soaked those damn things overnight, boiled them for nearly three hours with beer (the epazote smelled too much like burnt tires for us to ruin the beans), soaked them for two more days and boiled them another two hours. After all this, each bean is as big as your knuckle. The skin was starting to burst open, and the meat didn't have a particularly nice flavor. We made this bean salad:



Initially the salad was just okay, but the longer the beans sat in the frig, they better they tasted.
Next came this soup, a basic pasta fazool, and dear god, it was soooooo good. My only complaint was the pasta, which expanded to gigantic proportions, sucked up all the liquid and eventually disintegrated into the soup.


More beans are soaking today so we can try this recipe for curry beans.

Beans....the perfect anniversary gift!!

Scallion chickpea wraps with tofu and veggies

This recipe is god knows where...but here's a pretty picture.

Apricot Rhurbarb Crisp

The above arpicots were on there way to become yet more compote, but I really wanted to tell you about the wonderful dessert that their sibling fruit joined.

This was another occasion where we let the internet provide a recipe to conform to our desires and ingredients. With an abundance of rhubarb and apricots to use up/savor our friends at food network provided this recipe, that with a couple minor subsitutions (apricots and a couple of spare mangos for peaches, and shortening for lard) became one of the most delicious dishes of early summer. It's really closer to a broken pie than a traditional cobbler, but so so tasty, and the lime zest in the dough brlliantly sets off the fruit around it.

The ever-changing Farmer's Market

It's amazing what a few weeks can do for summer produce. A few weeks back, the most we could get from the local veggies were lettuce, spinach and a few scallions. Everything else was shipped here from somewhere else (although those were some tasty damn apricots.)

A week later we have rhubarb, chard, and the very beginning of peas and strawberries (the berries were $5 a pint, so we didn't buy any....that's why they're not pictured here.)

Now it's almost too hot for spinach, and the lettuce looks all wilty and sad. The asparagus is also finished (these were shipped from Washington), but we've got onions, beets, zuccini, radishes, herbs, more peas, kohlrabi (not shown), berries and tiny baby potatoes.

Every week we go on either Saturday or Sunday morning to buy the weeks' produce. We base our menus on what we can find, and supplement the veggies with a co-op run. After breakfast, one of us washes everything we've purchased in Veggie-Wash and dries them on the table before they move to the frig. It's amazing how much gunk is on the produce...and this is just after the lettuce....

We need to be better about washing the produce that comes from the grocery store...that has even more wax, dirt, fingergerms and god knows what else on it after living in trucks and boxes for weeks.

Rhubarb cobbler, three photos

One of the very best things about summer is rhubarb. There are 60 types of rhubarb, although the most common is Garden Rhubarb. Indigenous to Asian and coming to America in the 1820's, rhubarb is not only delicious, but a stong laxative. (Hooray, regularity!)

I found this recipe in a newspaper. Growing up, we had rhubarb pie and cake only. Cobblers always seem alluring, but I ultimately find them disappointing because they have too much crust. We were out of AP flour, so I tried substituting whole wheat, and while the resulting topping was no doubt marginally healthier, it was not tasty enough to make it worth it. Not only that, but this particular batch of rhubarb was still it was juicy as hell. A few weeks later, we used this recipe for another cobbler, and found it much tastier.

JUICY!

Heaven.....