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2 May 29, 2017 Italian

Ingredient of the Week: Fava Beans // Fava Bean and Mascarpone Ravioli with Truffle Butter

It’s time for the (slightly belated) final post for fava bean week. It’s another recipe inspired by Italy – homemade ravioli filled with a fava bean, mascarpone, and ricotta mixture and served in a two-ingredient truffle butter sauce. Because it turns out that when one of your ingredients is truffle butter, you don’t need much else.

While fava beans are abundant in Italy and Portugal, they aren’t particularly common in the US, even at the height of their season. They occasionally make an appearance at Wholefoods, and some people have found them frozen at Trader Joe’s, but I couldn’t find any near me. We are growing a long row of them, but they won’t be ready until late June, about the same time that Bostonians will be able to find them at local farmer’s markets.

So what’s a fava bean lover to do? I’ve basically been rabid for them in anticipation of the series, knowing it would be difficult to get my hands on enough for several recipes. I’ve started harassing the staff at Wholefoods, begging for them to go back into the stock room and bring me a few pounds. I made my friend Veronika walk through all of the Wholefoods in Cambridge with me – surprisingly, the little Wholefoods had some and the big one didn’t. It doesn’t help that you need about 1 pound of pods for every cup of beans, so what may look like a lot of beans disappears surprisingly quickly.

And then, unexpectedly, I found fava bean nirvana – Eataly. While out shopping for wedding shoes with my mom, we stopped in at the new Eataly in Boston. I needed truffle butter for this recipe, and figured it made more sense to pay a little more at a store that I knew would carry it than to schlep all over looking for it. If you’ve never been, Eataly is like the Ikea of Italian food, except everything is expensive. You have to wind your way through the massive store in a certain order. You’ll pass the gelato and pastry counters, a case full of beautiful seafood, a deli counter with dozens of prosciuttos, and rows of dry and canned goods. After weaving my way through the tempting rows filled with jars of fancy tomatoes and olive oils and capers,I found the produce section. There, next to a beautiful basket of morel mushrooms, were all the fava beans I could want. So now I know. And if you’re in Boston, New York, or Chicago, you know too.

Back to the ravioli. Every once in a while Trevor and I break out the pasta machine and make a batch of homemade pasta. I find it quite therapeutic to make, although our pasta is never quite as tender as I want. It’s fun to customize, though, and this filling is really lovely. The sweet mascarpone and ricotta really mellow out the fava flavor. We tossed the ravioli with a quick burro fuso – truffle butter melted and whisked with a bit of warm water. Simple, elegant, and springlike, a homemade pasta worth the effort.

More Fava Bean Recipes…

Spanish Fava Bean Salad with Tomatoes and Prosciutto

Avocado Toast with Fava Beans and Pecorino

Fava Bean Soup with Mascarpone, Mint, and Pancetta

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Fava Bean and Mascarpone Ravioli with Truffle Butter Sauce

Fava Bean and Mascarpone Ravioli with Truffle Butter {Katie at the Kitchen Door}

Homemade Ravioli with a Fava Bean, Mascarpone and Ricotta Filling. Served in a simple Truffle Butter burro fuso sauce.

Adapted from SPQR.

Author: Katie at the Kitchen Door
Yield: 4 1x

Ingredients

Scale

1 cup blanched, peeled fava beans (from 1 pound of fresh beans)
1 TBS chopped fresh mint (from 10–12 leaves)
1/4 cup mascarpone
1/2 cup ricotta
1/4 – 1/2 tsp sea salt
1 recipe homemade pasta dough
2 oz. truffle butter
3 TBS warm water (preferably the pasta cooking water).
grated pecorino cheese, for serving

Instructions

Add the fava beans, mint, mascarpone, and ricotta to a food processor. Process until smooth and fluffy. Season to taste with sea salt. Transfer to a bowl, cover, and refrigerate.
Use a pasta machine to roll out the pasta dough in thin sheets. Target the third or fourth thinnest setting as your ultimate thickness of the pasta.
Lay the pasta sheets flat on a lightly floured surface, covering the sheets you aren’t using with a piece of plastic wrap. Use a knife to score the pasta sheets into 2 inch squares. Place 2 teaspoons of the chilled filling in the center of half the squares. Wet your finger with water and run it along the edge of each square, then cover the squares with filling with another sheet of the pasta. Press the sheets firmly together around the edges of each filled square, forming ravioli. Use a ravioli cutter or knife to cut the ravioli apart, then firmly press the edges together again to ensure there are no air bubbles. Repeat until you have used all of the pasta dough, re-rolling any dough scraps as needed.
Bring a large pot of salted water to a gentle boil. Gently place the ravioli in the boiling water and cook just until al dente, about 2-3 minutes. They should be floating at the surface of the water when they are ready. Remove them from the water with a slotted spoon and place them on a large plate. Drizzle the ravioli with just a little olive oil to keep them from sticking.
Add the 3 TBS of the pasta cooking water to a small frying pan, and bring to a simmer over low heat. Whisk in the truffle butter one piece at a time, allowing the butter to melt between additions. When you have incorporated all of the truffle butter, add the cooked ravioli to the frying pan and toss gently to coat with the butter sauce. Divide between plates, sprinkle with the grated pecorino, and serve immediately.

4 May 25, 2017 Current Feature: In Season

Ingredient of the Week: Fava Beans // Spanish Fava Bean Salad with Tomatoes and Jamón

During the time I spent in Lisbon over the past year, there was a noted dearth of fresh vegetables in my diet. The food in Lisbon is wonderful, but it’s not particularly fresh. One night I stumbled upon a tapas restaurant that served a fava bean salad and it quickly became my go-to vegetable dish when I was craving something light. It was a cold, simple salad of favas, tomatoes, olive oil and herbs. I couldn’t tell you exactly what was in it, but it hit the spot.

I tried to recreate this salad for this week… and totally missed the mark. But, what I did make turned out wonderful. Nothing like that particular tapas dish, but delicious nonetheless. It has a lot of Spanish flavors – smoked paprika, jamón, tomatoes – that all meld together in a warm, homey dish. It ended up being my favorite of all the fava dishes I’ve made for this week, a total surprise hit. Try it with a few slices of crusty bread or a bowl of pasta for a comforting spring dinner.

More Fava Bean Recipes…

Avocado Toast with Fava Beans and Pecorino

Fava Bean Soup with Mascarpone, Mint, and Pancetta

Fava Bean and Mascarpone Ravioli with Truffle Butter Sauce

Spanish Fava Bean Salad with Tomatoes and Jamón

A warm tapas dish of sauteed fava beans, fresh tomatoes, and jamón.

Author: Katie at the Kitchen Door
Yield: 4 1x
Cuisine: Spanish

Ingredients

Scale

2 TBS olive oil
1 small red onion, peeled and chopped
4 cloves garlic, peeled and minced
2 cups of shucked and peeled fresh fava beans
2 TBS fresh lemon juice
1 medium heirloom tomato, roughly chopped
1/2 tsp smoked Spanish paprika
2 thin pieces of jamón serrano or prosciutto, torn into bite size pieces

Instructions

Heat the olive oil in a large saute pan over medium heat. Add the chopped onion and saute until soft, about 5 minutes. Add the garlic and saute for 1-2 minutes more, stirring frequently. Add the peeled fava beans, lemon juice, tomato, and smoked paprika. Cook, stirring occasionally, until the tomatoes have broken down and the fava beans are tender.
Push the beans to one side of the pan to expose the bottom of the pan. Add the pieces of jamón to the bottom of the pan and fry for 1 minute, just to crisp up. Mix the jamón into the beans and season to taste with salt and pepper. Serve warm with crusty bread or warm pasta.

0 May 23, 2017 Breakfast

Ingredient of the Week: Fava Beans // Avocado Toast with Fava Beans and Pecorino

Four years ago, we spent two weeks in Italy in the beginning of May. It was our first “adult” vacation, and we ate and drank our way through Rome, Florence, and the Maremma. Rome is a city that is easy to fall in love with, especially in May. Jasmine tumbles over seemingly every stone wall, its fragrance completely filling the city. The weather is sunny and dry but not too hot, perfect for sundresses and gelato and walking along the river. Nights are cool and you can eat al fresco, sipping on chilled Pinot Grigio and tucking into plates of cacio e pepe. While parts of Rome are perpetually jammed with tourists, if you move just a little outside the tourist track you’ll begin to feel the heartbeat of a thriving, modern city.

While we were there, we visited a farmer’s market and loaded up on pecorino cheese, the first tiny strawberries of the season, truffled sausage, and fava beans. We brought our bounty to the Pincio gardens, where we picnicked amid throngs of people watching the sunset over the Piazza del Popolo. The simplicity and freshness and ambiance of that meal has stuck with me more than any almost any other meal in Italy.

Eating fresh fava beans with chunks of pecorino cheese is a Roman tradition with a long history. In Rome, the custom is to eat them just as we did – a freshly shucked bean, a slice of pecorino, and perhaps a chunk of crusty bread. It’s a nearly perfect pairing, perhaps improved only by a glass of stony Italian white wine.

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0 May 22, 2017 Soup

Ingredient of the Week: Fava Beans // Fava Bean Soup with Mascarpone, Mint, and Pancetta

It’s very clear to me what I should be eating and drinking in May. Perhaps more clear than any other month of the year. May is for fava beans, as many as I can get my hands on. It’s for ramps, garlicky and pungent, worth the splurge. It’s for chilled glasses of rosé, on both warm days and cold days. And finally, at the very end of the month, it’s for the first strawberries, tiny and bright red.

This year, on May 2nd, I found myself standing over a pile of fava beans, happily shucking the beans from their fuzzy-pods. (This is only a happy activity the first time. After that it’s a chore and a half but still worth it.) I had just opened the first bottle of rosé, a lovely Chilean blend. And then, I realized that I had lived this exact moment the previous year – the first fava beans, the first rosé, the apple blossoms just reaching their peak outside the window. What a beautiful moment! The world is better for its patterns.

In celebration of this particular moment in the year, I’m bringing back a series that’s been quiet for years: ingredient of the week. It’s been 3 years since I last did one, but it’s always at the back of my mind. What’s in season now that I can only get my hands on for a week or two? How can I make the most of it’s brief appearance before it’s gone for another year? After my Sunday Dinner series, it’s the series that best reflects why I write this blog – finding interesting recipes to celebrate seasonal ingredients. Of course, given my current blogging pace of 4 posts a month, putting together 5 posts in a week seems a bit Herculean. So much cooking and writing and photo editing, not to mention the fava bean shucking! But I’ve planned ahead, and I think we’ve got this.

Fava beans have a very distinct flavor, grassy and slightly bitter. This soup is the essence of that flavor, undistilled, unsweetened. It’s a good recipe to kick off this week, a pure celebration of spring flavors. It’s all about the toppings – don’t skip them. The soup needs the saltiness of the pancetta and the crunch of the croutons and the subtle sweetness of the mascarpone. It even needs the mint, that little bit of herbality humming in the background. Without all of those flavors to highlight and offset the grassy fava beans, the soup is a bit one dimensional and overwhelmingly green tasting. But all together, it’s the very essence of spring.

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7 May 18, 2017 Dessert

Peanut Butter Banoffee Eton Mess

I didn’t intend to post two dessert recipes in a row. Normally, I try to keep things balanced and fairly nutritious around here (especially now that I’m in full-blown wedding planning mode and realllly starting to think about how that strapless dress is going to look). But, sometimes my recipe inspiration is for things like homemade spinach wraps… and sometimes it’s for Banoffee Eton Mess.

If “Banoffee Eton Mess” is meaningless to you, let me explain. This dessert mashes up two classic British desserts – banoffee pie and eton mess. We’ve been intermittently watching The Great British Bake-Off and it has substantially increased my desire to bake all sorts of British things. And to call them “bakes,” of course. I have also begun to fantasize about living in that magical baking tent filled with pleasant people and cakes, surround by green fields and flowers.

I digress. Banoffee Pie is a sticky sweet dessert that consists of dulce de leche, bananas, whipped cream, and a shortbread crust. It’s kind of childish and simple and a very fun thing to say out loud. Banoffee. I think the name may be the primary reason that Trevor requested it as his birthday dessert, given that he doesn’t like bananas. Not to worry, I didn’t leave it that simple anyways. First, I turned the “offee” into peanut butter dulce de leche. Yum. Next, I made these as layered parfaits, adding a layer of crumbled meringue to the party. Which meant I could also call it Eton Mess – a mixture of broken-up meringues, whipped cream, and fruit. Tah dah! Peanut Butter Banoffee Eton Mess.

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16 May 8, 2017 Dessert

Portuguese Chocolate Mousse with Chocolate Salami

For the second year in a row, I let my birthday slip past without my customary celebratory blog post. Last year’s blog post is sitting somewhere in WordPress purgatory, photographed, partially written, but never published. It was a lovely pesto pasta salad with green olives and mushrooms that we ate at the beach on a sunny April afternoon. It was good, but not that memorable.

This year, I just didn’t get around to making my birthday dessert in time. I still celebrated my birthday with the usual enthusiasm, but had to take a last-minute trip to Portugal that week. The dessert I had planned – Portuguese Chocolate Mousse with Chocolate Salami – remained a plan. But it’s such a good dessert that I decided this was a “better late than never” situation. Plus, Trevor’s birthday is coming up on Friday so we have an excuse for having a fridge full of chocolate mousse.

This mousse is inspired by the Mercado de Ribeira, one of my favorite Lisbon haunts. Also known as the Time Out Market, it’s by no means a hidden spot. The concept is like an upscale food court, but all of the “stalls” are outposts of the best Lisbon restaurants and vendors. You can find tender grilled octopus doused in olive oil, bacalhau in all its forms, $5 wines, and rich eggy desserts. After 8pm it’s bustling with tourists and locals alike, and reserving a table requires some aggressive seat-saving. But it never fails to disappoint – the food is amazing, the vibe is energizing, and there’s something for everyone.

The chocolate mousse at Nos e Mais Bolos inside the market is amazing. It is rich and pudding-like and has bite-sized pieces of Portuguese Chocolate Salami as a topping. Don’t worry – there’s no meat in chocolate salami. The best way to describe it is as a no-bake fridge cookie. It’s made from cocoa powder, butter, a bit of rum or liquor, and chopped up cookies, then rolled into a log to look like salami. It’s a traditional dessert in Italy and Portugal, so common that I once found it in a vending machine in a 1,000 year old castle on top of a mountain. Really good hiking snack, by the way. It also takes chocolate mousse to the next level.

While researching mousse recipes, I stumbled upon something called “two ingredient chocolate mousse.” It’s an incredibly simple recipe by Heston Blumenthal, which requires nothing other than chocolate, water, and a bowl of ice. Because all Portuguese desserts are made primarily with a ton of eggs and a ton of sugar, I was pretty sure that this magical mousse could not be the answer. But I had to try it anyway, just to see. Because what if two ingredient mousse was really a thing? That would mean that I could have chocolate mousse at any time with only 10 minutes of effort. Dangerous, but also amazing.

So I made two batches of chocolate mousse. The first was the aforementioned two ingredient version. The second was a more traditional mousse, with eggs and butter and a touch of cream. The verdict? They were both really good. Different, but good. The super-simple mousse has a very pure, chocolaty taste and surprisingly creamy texture, but no richness. You want to use your very best chocolate for this, because it’s the only flavor. The mousse loaded up with eggs and butter and cream is obviously much richer, but doesn’t have that same purity. Tasted side by side, the winner kind of depends on my mood at that moment. But to be totally honest? I think most of the time I’ll prefer the two ingredient version. Crazy!

Whether you go the easy route or the rich route, the pieces of Portuguese Chocolate Salami on top add this amazing extra dimension. The chocolate salami is easy to make and super-chocolaty. It’s very rich – kind of the perfect thing to keep in the fridge at all times, as just a bite will satisfy an intense chocolate craving. As my trips to Lisbon are slowing down, I’m happy to have cracked one of my favorite dessert recipes at home. Now I just have about 8,000 pastries left to learn.

Portuguese Chocolate Mousse with Chocolate Salami

Traditional Portuguese chocolate mousse served with crumbled “Chocolate Salami” – a sliceable chocolate fridge cookie. Inspired by the Chocolate Mousse at Nos e Mais Bolos.

Chocolate Salami recipe adapted from Easy Portuguese Recipes.

Note: this recipe is the traditional, rich mousse with eggs and cream. If you want to try the two-ingredient mousse, the recipe for that is below!

Author: Katie at the Kitchen Door
Yield: 4 1x

Ingredients

Scale

For the Chocolate Salami:

1 stick (4 oz.) salted butter
1/2 cup (4 oz.) granulated sugar
6 TBS (1 1/2 oz.) dark, high-quality cocoa powder, such as Valhrona
2 egg yolks
2 TBS port wine, rum, or fruity liqueur
7 oz. biscotti or vanilla wafer cookies
powdered sugar for coating

For the Chocolate Mousse:

2 TBS butter
8 oz. bittersweet chocolate chips
2 TBS port wine or rum
1/4 c. heavy cream
4 large eggs, separated

Instructions

To make the chocolate salami: melt the butter in a medium saucepan over low heat. Add approximately half of the the sugar and whisk to combine thoroughly. Add the cocoa powder and whisk thoroughly. Continue to cook for 1 minute longer, whisking the whole time – mixture should be smooth. Remove from the heat.
Place the egg yolks and the remaining sugar in a medium, heat-proof bowl, and whisk until thick and creamy, about 1 minute. Slowly pour in the hot cocoa mixture, whisking the egg yolks vigorously as you do so. Stir in the port wine or rum and whisk to combine. Mixture should be thick, smooth, and glossy.
Cut the cookies into small pieces using a serrated knife. Add the cookies to the warm chocolate mixture and stir gently to thoroughly combine. Let the mixture cool to room temperature. Once cool, place a sheet of wax paper on the counter. Scrape the mixture onto the wax paper and shape it into a log roughly 8 inches long. If the mixture is too runny to do this, place it in the fridge for 30 minutes before shaping into a log. Wrap the log in waxed paper and then again and tinfoil. Place in the fridge and chill until firm, at least 2 hours.
To make the chocolate mousse: add the butter, chocolate chips, port wine or rum, and heavy cream to a medium metal bowl or double boiler. Bring a small pot of water to a simmer – the bowl should fit snugly on top of the pot without the bottom of the bowl touching the top of the water. Place the metal bowl over the simmering water and melt the chocolate, stirring continuously with a rubber spatula. As soon as the chocolate mixture is fully melted, remove it from the heat. The chocolate should be thick and glossy.
In a medium, heatproof bowl, vigorously whisk the egg yolks for 30 seconds, then pour the hot chocolate into the egg yolks, whisking as you do so. Beat thoroughly to combine. Mixture should be thick but run freely from the whisk when lifted. Set chocolate aside and let cool to room temperature.
Use a stand mixer or handheld mixer to beat the egg whites until they form soft, shiny peaks. Add half of the beaten egg whites to the cooled chocolate mixture and use a spatula to gently fold the two together. Repeat with the remaining egg whites, doing your best not to deflate the whites. When the two mixtures are fully combined, pour the mousse into four wine glasses or coupe glasses. Refrigerate until firm, at least 2 hours.
To serve, cut the chocolate salami into slices, then cut the slices into cubes. Place on top of each glass of chocolate mousse. Serve chilled.

Magic Two-Ingredient Chocolate Mousse

Two-Ingredient Chocolate Mousse {Katie at the Kitchen Door}

This incredible chocolate mousse has only two ingredients – chocolate and water – with a deep chocolate taste and a smooth, fluffy texture.

Recipe by Heston Blumenthal via Eat Live Run.

Note: this recipes is all about the chocolate you use, so use the good stuff. If you don’t love the flavor of the chocolate, you won’t love the flavor of the mousse. If the mousse becomes grainy as you whip it, return it to the heat and re-melt, then try again.

Author: Katie at the Kitchen Door
Yield: 2 1x
Category: Dessert

Ingredients

Scale

4.5 oz of bittersweet chocolate chips or roughly chopped chocolate, the best you can afford
1/2 cup water
ice

Instructions

Fill a large metal bowl with ice and cold water and set aside.
Place the chopped chocolate and the water in a metal bowl. Bring a small pot of water to a simmer – the bowl should fit snugly on top of the pot without the bottom of the bowl touching the top of the water. Place the metal bowl over the simmering water and melt the chocolate, stirring continuously with a rubber spatula. The water should get incorporated into the chocolate as you stir. As soon as the chocolate mixture is smooth and fully melted, remove it from the heat. Place the bowl with the chocolate in the bowl with the ice water, and whisk the chocolate constantly for 2 to 3 minutes, until the chocolate has thickened slightly and the color has become a bit more pale.
Divide the mousse into 2 wine glasses or ramekins and chill for at least 30 minutes, then serve.

7 May 2, 2017 Drink

Passion Fruit Margaritas for Margarita Week 2017

Happy May, and Happy Margarita Week! It’s year two for the tequila-fest that Kate over at Hola Jalapeno puts together in celebration of Cinco de Mayo. Last year, I contributed these Sparkling Lemongrass Ginger Margaritas. I was still feeling very inspired by all the amazing Vietnamese, Japanese, and Chinese food we ate while in Asia, so it was only natural to work some of my favorite Asian aromatics into a traditionally Mexican drink.

For this year, I dialed things back a little bit. It can sometimes feel like I’m constantly trying to outdo myself when I come up with recipes. I want the recipes on this blog to be creative and inspiring – I’m not here to write about super simple recipes or cooking basics. However, simple doesn’t always mean tired and overdone. Simple recipes can be a wonderful way to let the flavor of an incredible ingredient shine through. Think burrata cheese, high quality olive oil, and perfectly crunchy sourdough. So while last year’s contribution to Kate’s Margarita Week was exotic and new, this year I’m keeping it simple with Passion Fruit Margaritas. Just a perfect, balanced drink that lets the passion fruit sing accompanied by high quality tequila.

I developed a crush on passion fruit during my first few trips to Colombia two years ago, and since then it’s blossomed into a burning romance. Whilst I burn through some of my food obsessions in a month or two (like when you fall in love with a new song and play it non-stop for two weeks, only to realize that you never want to hear it again after that), others are a slow build. Passion fruit is one that’s here for the long haul. It’s so wonderfully tangy and fragrant, the perfect complement for desserts and drinks. I daydream about the passion fruit gelato at Santini in Portugal, and I can slurp down a fresh passion fruit juice in minutes.

The only downside to my love for passion fruit is the cost. Passion fruit are hard to find and exorbitantly expensive in Boston, running $2 a piece (if anyone in Boston has tips for where to get them cheaper, please share! I’ll bring you a margarita). This might be the only drink I’ve ever made that cost more to make at home than it would have to order at a restaurant. At least I had a lightbulb moment when reading this post by A House in the Hills that you can grow passion fruit (obviously). True, it typically grows in subtropical places like Colombia and Australia. But we’ve tried lemon trees and avocado trees and olive trees, so why not give passion fruit vines a try? One day we’ll live in California/Portugal/Mexico where we belong. Until then, I’ll be forking out the cash to get fresh passion fruit for my margaritas and desserts.

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4 April 23, 2017 Italian

Goat Cheese Stuffed Shells with Peas and Asparagus

At this time of year I get so anxious for spring to arrive. The first few weeks of April are a special kind of torture for New Englanders. One moment it’s 70° and sunny and I’m sure that it’s time to plant the tomatoes, and the next day I’m wearing three layers while trodding through the rain. Every year I find myself scrolling back through my Instagram feed trying to find the moment when spring arrived. When did the apple trees bloom? When did the crocuses pop? It had to be earlier last year, didn’t it?

Slowly but surely, it’s coming. We had a weekend with a hint of sunburn, a beer on the porch in the afternoon, and a promise of more warm days to come. The peas have sprouted and we check on them three times a day, the only denizens of our garden so far. The trees are in that tentative green stage, and I find myself looking up every 10 minutes, as if they may somehow magically burst into blossom over the course of an afternoon. But that’s how it feels when it finally happens, isn’t it? One morning the gray branches and bare against the spring blue sky, practically bursting with anticipation, and the next somehow everything is green and lush.

But all this is the essence of spring, is it not? The uncertainty, the anticipation, the oscillation between summer and winter. So, thank you, spring, for showing up. For teasing us with sunshine and letting us plunge our hands into the soil. For the first signs of green and even for the cool nip in the wind. I promise to enjoy every moment of you, the most fleeting of seasons. I’ll enjoy the rainy days with fat raindrops pounding against the roof. I’ll enjoy every blossom you toss our way – first, the purple and yellow crocus tips, then the showy magnolia blooms, the showers of pink apple blossoms and the regal irises.

Because every season needs at least one or two go-to pasta recipes, I’ve been developing spring pastas. I’m trying to build a collection for each season, like this Creamy Mushroom Pasta and this Heirloom Tomato Spaghetti. And now, my latest for spring – Goat Cheese Stuffed Shells with Spring Vegetables. They have all the usual spring suspects – peas, asparagus, goat cheese, lemon – tucked inside thick pasta shells. The filling also includes ricotta, mozzarella, and chopped spinach. So much cheese! So many vegetables! The finishing touch is a quick bechamel sauce and just a little bit more cheese before baking.

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13 April 19, 2017 Latin and Mexican

Corn and Chorizo Tacos

I have recently rediscovered the taco as a homemade dinner option. Jury’s still out on how this discovery will affect my overall health, but on all other fronts – flavor, ease, cost, deliciousness – I’m pretty happy with it. It’s no wonder tacos were a staple of our childhood dinners. They’re so easy! While even your basic taco-kit Tex-Mex taco can be delicious, gourmet tacos are next level. You know, the kind that successful food trucks all over the US are dedicated to – with soft flour tortillas wrapped around spicy barbacoa and pickled onions and freshly made salsa. The kind that makes you feel like you’re standing on a street corner in Mexico, watching life go by and soaking up the sun.

These tacos are more of the grown-up, gourmet variety (although with a couple throwbacks to the childhood Tex-Mex version). Instead of ground beef and “taco spice” I make them with fresh Mexican-style chorizo sausage. The mixture of the mildly-spiced chorizo, sweet onion, and corn makes up the bulk of the filling. They come together in no-time, maybe 20 minutes from “I want tacos!” to biting into your first one. So if you’re going for a 30-minute dinner, you’ll still have 10 minutes left to shake up a margarita.

What takes these chorizo tacos over the top for me is griddling the tortillas in the leftover chorizo fat. They turn golden brown and a little crispy, and if you melt a bit of cheddar cheese in the center at the same time you are ready for taco heaven. Quality toppings also up the ante here. A generous amount of sliced avocado, fancy salsa, and sour cream all come together to give you the perfect amount of savory-spicy-rich-sweetness in each bite. I’ve been making these with the chorizo that comes in our Walden Local Meat Company subscription, and I’m pretty sure they’ll be on our table at least once a month. From now until… forever.

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5 April 13, 2017 Pasta

Lemony Israeli Couscous with Asparagus, Oranges, and Goat Cheese

I recently discovered two things. First, Cara Cara oranges. Have you ever had one? They’re amazing. Whoever invented orange-flavored candies was definitely inspired by these guys. They are so much sweeter, juicier, and just more wonderful than regular oranges, and they’re a beautiful pink color inside, too. Although I usually associate citrus with January and February, Cara Caras seem to just be hitting their peak season now. At least, Wholefoods is full of them: no ramps or fava beans, just a lot of oranges. Although to be honest, I think my expectations for the seasonal produce that should be available in April have always been a little out of touch with reality. It was snowing two weeks ago, after all.

Writing the above paragraph has sent me down an internet rabbit hole looking for orange trees online. Because wouldn’t a Cara Cara orange tree be the perfect addition to our collection of trees that you probably shouldn’t try and grow in Boston? Our impulse-tree-purchase rate is way up this month anyways – last weekend alone we bought an olive tree and a coral bark Japanese Maple. What would harm could one more citrus tree do?

The second thing I discovered is that I’ve been cooking asparagus wrong. My standard cooking method for most vegetables is this: douse liberally with olive oil, sprinkle with sea salt, roast at 400°F until nicely charred. I like my roasted vegetables to be borderline carcinogenic. Especially brussels sprouts – I love the way the leaves get translucent and crunchy. Unfortunately, this method has left me unsatisfied when it comes to asparagus. If you roast asparagus even a little bit too long, it becomes stringy and mushy. So I recently tried a recipe in Diana Henry’s Simple which calls for you to lightly steam the asparagus by putting the thick ends in an inch or two of simmering water and pushing the tips just below the edge of the pot, without putting the whole stalk underwater. You only cook the asparagus for a few minutes, until they’re bright green, then drain immediately. This method resulted in asparagus that was fresh, tender, and perfectly cooked without being limp or mushy or stringy. Success!

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