Category Archives: food and cooking

French Cooking (Leek Week)

food and cooking, pie

Last week my friend K. let me know that she had a large crop of leeks she needed to harvest to make room for summer plants. Not once but twice I went to her back yard and got a bunch. If you aren’t familiar with this vegetable, you won’t know what a treasure had been bestowed on me. K. says that when she cooks leeks it makes the house smell like a French restaurant. They are in the allium family, but have their own distinctive flavor, not like onions or garlic or anything else.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Leeks need some prep work before you can fully enjoy them.There was my bundle of leeks (the second batch, as I’d neglected to do any documentation of the first) on the back step. These were mostly smaller in diameter than the ones I see in the store, but contrary to the resemblance, they don’t taste like a large scallion, either. And they are dirtier than other members of their family. The next photo was taken a couple of days later, after I took them out of the refrigerator and sliced them lengthwise for cleaning.

Leeks always have dirt between the layers of flesh and you have to spend some time getting them clean. Just plop them in the sink and run the water over them while you use your fingers to loosen the dirt and let it run down the drain.

I accidentally deleted the picture of leeks in my sink, but I think you can imagine it.

Here are the nice clean vegetables. I was preparing to make Leek Confit, a recipe I got online at http://www.epicurious.com/ and then changed a little bit. I made it twice, once using mostly the white part and this time using the whole thing, I found out that it works either way. It is a very easy way to prepare the vegetable, and the finished product can be used as an ingredient in more leek recipes.
 
Leek Confit
1/4 cup unsalted butter
4 large leeks, halved lengthwise and cleaned, cut crosswise into 1/4″-thick slices (about 5 cups)
2 tablespoons water
1/2 teaspoon salt
Melt butter in a large pot over medium-low heat. (I had 15 cups of chopped leeks, so I tripled this recipe and used a 12″ cast-iron skillet.) Add leeks; stir to coat. Stir in water and salt. Cover pot; reduce heat to low. Cook until leeks are tender, stirring often, about 25 minutes.
Uncover and cook to evaporate excess water, 2-3 minutes. Serve warm.

This second picture shows how the leeks turn more of an olive green color after cooking. At this point they are ready to eat as a side dish just the way they are. The first night I made crostini and we spread the toasts with goat cheese and piled the confit on top. That was my favorite. Since then I have also served them alongside or in eggs or as a vegetable dish next to–anything!

The author of the recipe said that the confit will keep for a week in the refrigerator, so I have been hoarding the last bit of my second batch to savor some morning on my eggs or toast. If I get a windfall of leeks again I think this confit would be a good way to freeze any excess.

And after reading pages of recipes for leek tart or quiche, I added some of the confit to whatever typical quiche ingredients I could find in my refrigerator and came up with the following:

Leek Tart
2 cups Leek Confit (recipe above)
4 eggs
1/3 cup sour cream
2 tablespoons heavy cream
2 tablespoons Chardonnay wine
3 slices cooked bacon, diced
1/4 teaspoon salt
freshly-ground black pepper to taste
Preheat oven to 400°. Beat the eggs with the creams, wine, salt and pepper; add bacon and leek confit and stir. Pour into a pie shell that has been pre-baked for 10 minutes, and place in the bottom third of the oven. Bake for 25-30 minutes, until the top is golden and puffed and the custard is cooked through.

I like this picture of the tart, even though it has dappled sunlight on it, and it wasn’t even quite done cooking when I took the photo. I didn’t want to stick a knife in to test the custard before I’d taken some pictures. When I did peek inside, I realized that the quiche was still too soft, and I put it back in and it puffed more as it was finishing.

I’d like to try more variations on Leek Tart–perhaps something that is not so eggy. But I think it would be hard to go wrong with leeks. Their irresistible flavor almost guarantees success, at least in my house.

Here I’d like to give you my favorite pie crust recipe, since I’ve been blogging about pies lately. For most of my life I used the basic pie crust recipe from Joy of Cooking, until a few years ago I discovered Mark Bittman’s wonderful recipe in How to Cook Everything. It is my new standard never-fail basic, and he gives variations for different size pie pans, single and double crusts, and so on. His was my basic, but I have already altered this recipe to make it less salty. He is assuming salted butter, by the way. I am only giving you the ingredients list here, because I can’t imagine using printed directions to make pie crust, and I didn’t write his down. If you don’t know how, find a real person to teach you while standing next to you.

Pie Crust
For an 8-10″ single crust:
1 1/8 cups flour (5 oz.)
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon sugar
8 tablespoons cold butter
3 tablespoons ice water
(sweetened/enriched, add 2 tablespoons sugar and/or 1 egg yolk with the water)
For a generous 10″ or deep single crust:
1 1/2 cups flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 teaspoon sugar
10 tablespoons butter
4 tablespoons ice water
For a 2-crust pie:
2 1/4 cups flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
16 tablespoons butter
2 teaspoons sugar
6 tablespoons water
Happy Baking!

Buttermilk Pie

food and cooking, pie

I made this pie tonight to share with some friends. It’s a bit of a twist on a custard pie; lemon juice and buttermilk give a more complex flavor, and butter makes for a–well, buttery experience! This is my version of a traditional Amish recipe. I cut down on the sugar, and next time I think I’ll reduce it further, maybe to 1/2 or 3/4 cup instead of a full cup.

Buttermilk Pie
1 unbaked 9” pie shell
½ c butter, softened
1 cup sugar
3 tablespoons flour
3 eggs, beaten
1 cup buttermilk
1 teaspoon lemon juice
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
Speck of salt
Grated nutmeg
Preheat oven to 350°. Prepare pie shell. Cream butter and sugar. Add flour, eggs, buttermilk, lemon juice, vanilla and salt. Mix well. Pour into unbaked pie shell. Sprinkle nutmeg over top. Bake for one hour or until top is golden brown.
 

I like to put a foil collar around my crust for at least the first half of the baking time, so that we don’t end up with extra-brown and unappetizing crusts. We like to eat our piecrust.

 At first I was planning to make a fruit pie with a top, so I measured out enough flour for a top and a bottom crust. When I changed my mind and didn’t need top crusts, I doubled the recipe and made two pies.
This would be a good dessert for a meal that was a little low in protein, as it has quite a bit in the form of eggs and buttermilk.
Another variation I have tried is to use 2 tablespoons of arrowroot powder instead of the 3 tablespoons of flour. I think it was a bit creamier result.

These pies look a bit lopsided–that’s evidence of the fact that my stove is not level! At least the homely appearance doesn’t affect the flavor.

Ice Cream Spoons

food and cooking, history,

On Mother’s Day we had ice cream for dessert, and I remembered to use the ice cream spoons to make it more festive. They belonged to my maternal grandmother, and when as children we were given ice cream at her house she always insisted on getting this little box out of the buffet so that we could partake in the most exalted and tasty fashion. Because, as everyone agrees, ice cream really does taste better when eaten with the spoon designed just for it.

Frittatas

food and cooking

The frittata is the easy way to make an omelette. I can’t remember the first recipe I ever saw for this dish, but I doubt it was authentically Italian, as the name might imply.

Over the years, in any case, I’ve evolved my own basic recipe, which is to fall back on if I go too long between frittatas and can’t remember the proportions.

Today is Cinco de Mayo, so even though I’ve already published two posts today, I’ll try to get this one out there and be timely for once. I forgot about the holiday for most of the day; our family hasn’t usually celebrated it though the festivities are all around us here in California. It was pure happenstance that I decided that the frittata I was planning for dinner would be made with Tex-Mex flavors. Then after it was in the oven someone mentioned the holiday, and I was very pleased with my unconscious “choice.” When I saw how lovely the pie looked, I whipped out my placemats that might actually look more South American than Mexican…but in any case, they looked more fitting than the everyday ones.


But back to Italy, where they have this tradition of combining eggs with vegetables and cheese in an oven-baked pancake. If you use a cast-iron skillet the result is rustically beautiful, so I always like to put it on the table for everyone to see, and cut it into wedges there.

Eggs are so nutritious and inexpensive, I like to make an egg dish for dinner once every week or two at least. Most people who eat at our house these days don’t have eggs for breakfast very often, so it’s not redundant to eat them in the evening.

This recipe can easily be stretched for more people, or adapted to what you have and like, by adding more eggs or vegetables, cheese, cooked potato, herbs & spices, etc. It is hard to ruin it and I rarely measure out the ingredients, except for salt, which I keep consistent at 1/8 teaspoon for every 3 eggs. This example has an Italian flavor, but you could make it Mexican, Chinese, or Middle-Eastern with a few changes.

Spinach Frittata

1 10-oz. package frozen chopped spinach, thawed & drained
12-13 eggs, beaten
½ teaspoon salt
½ cup grated Parmesan cheese
½ teaspoon nutmeg
½ teaspoon oregano
black pepper to taste

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Grease a 10-12” cast-iron skillet (or other pan of your choosing) with butter or olive oil and let it get hot in the oven, if you like, while you prepare the batter. Beat all ingredients together and pour into the pan. Bake until eggs are set and top is golden brown, 15-30 minutes depending on your pan, etc. Cut into wedges or squares to serve.

Obviously this makes enough for a big family. I usually incorporate 1-2 eggs per person, depending on their size or appetite, and sometimes add an extra one or two “for the pot,” because if there are leftovers I’m happy to eat a slice for breakfast. The amount of spinach is plenty for the quantity of egg, but sometimes I use just as much spinach with only eight eggs. As I said, it’s hard to ruin it. I’ve made versions with added ricotta cheese, crumbled bacon, and leftover greens that had been cooked with onion and garlic. And I served one at a tea party once so that we wouldn’t overdose on sugary stuff.

Tonight, for my Tex-Mex Frittata ( I think the Hispanics have something that uses similar ingredients but not baked in this form, so I don’t want to use their term) I used:

  • seven eggs
  • about a cup of shredded cheese, mixed jack and cheddar
  • about 2 oz. of canned diced green chiles
  • some vegetables I’d sautéed–sweet red pepper, garlic, scallions, cilantro
  • salt, chili powder and cumin to taste

After I’d heated some olive oil in an 8″ cast-iron skillet, I poured in the egg mixture and put it in the oven at 450° this time, because that’s the temperature that was dictated by the recipe I was trying out, Crash Hot Potatoes, thanks to Pioneer Woman at http://thepioneerwoman.com/cooking/ . The guys really liked these potatoes, which you can see in the photo above.

If, in addition to your veggie-laden egg pancake, you serve a steamed vegetable on the side and a tossed green salad, you might almost make up for the rest of the day when we tend to have so few vegetables. And as my husband is always reminding me: Though “experts” may debate about what is the healthiest diet, high-carb, low-carb, low-fat, low-sugar, etc., everyone but everyone agrees that we should all eat our vegetables.