BLACK PEPPER SHRIMP // anna

Happy Monday!  I tried to get this recipe to you on Friday, when it was snowing/raining/hailing and we desperately needed some heat, but the day slipped away from me.  Anyways, this recipe is still perfect for today because it's got some heat and lots of spice and it will give you a kick in the pants which, if you're like me, you need on Mondays.

I came across this recipe a few weeks ago when my mom gave me Plenty. Both Elspeth and my mom have been raving about Jerusalem, the sister cookbook to Plenty, so I knew I was in for a treat.  I sat down to flip through and bookmark the recipes I wanted to try immediately.  Apparently I need to try  all of them.

Plenty is filled with page after page of beautiful photography and mouth-watering recipes, all vegetarian.  I finally settled on black pepper tofu as a jumping off point, and I'm glad I did.  It was simple and delicious, especially served over wilted greens and rice, and it has a warmth to it that is perfect for spring evenings.

While the original recipe calls for crispy fried tofu, my tofu-frying skills are not up to par and I opted to use shrimp instead.  I'm sure it would be fabulous with tofu as well, or really any protein.  Feel free to add more or less spice, depending on your preference.  I toned the original recipe down a bit, as my taste buds can't handle the heat of eight chiles.

BLACK PEPPER SHRIMP

The Maine shrimp season is over now, but many places still sell it frozen.  This dish is delicious with rice and wilted greens - I used kale and spinach, but whatever you have on hand will work.

2 tablespoons olive oil
1 pound raw shrimp, shelled
5 to 6 tablespoons butter
3 fresh red chiles, thinly sliced
6 large garlic cloves, diced or crushed
2 medium shallots, diced
3 tablespoons diced fresh ginger
9 tablespoons plus 1 teaspoon soy sauce or tamari
2 tablespoons sugar
3 to 4 tablespoons crushed black pepper (I used a spice grinder)
1 bunch green onions, cut into 1 to 2 inch segments

Heat olive oil in a large frying pan.  Add shrimp and cook until pink on both sides.  When shrimp are cooked, remove them from the frying pan and set them aside.

Add butter to frying pan and melt it.  Add chiles, garlic, shallots, and ginger.  Cook on medium-low heat for 10 to 15 minutes, until ingredients are soft.  Stir in soy sauce, sugar, and black pepper.  Add green onions and cook for 1 to 2 minutes, covered, allowing them to soften a bit.

Add the cooked shrimp to the butter and soy mixture, mixing well so all pieces are covered in sauce.

Happy eating!

Satisfying, and beautiful

Hi! I tried to stop in here on Friday, but Blogger was having some kind of meltdown, so I couldn't. I wanted to tell you that the first farmers' market of the season was Saturday morning at eight o'clock sharp in Orleans, and that I was looking forward to seeing you there. I hope you made it.

If you didn't, though, don't worry. Barbara and Gretel and Lucas and the gang will be there every week from now on, and the Provincetown market starts this Saturday. There's also a new farmers' market on the block, starting up this Wednesday at the brand-spanking-new Preservation Hall in Wellfleet. I'm not quite sure who will be there yet, but I'm planning on going, and I promise to report back. It is so nice to have a fridge full of local greens and spring carrots and hothouse tomatoes (!) and cucumbers (!) and Ron Backer's asparagus. Finally! It makes me a little giddy.

It is also a good reminder that there are, believe it or not, other food groups besides rhubarb & Meyer lemon desserts. Between the rhubarb pie testing my mother and I have been doing, and last week's attempt at this Shaker Lemon Pie, and the rhubarb-lemon cobbler we talked about two weeks ago, I find it hard to fathom, but according to the Little Caesar lettuces and the French Breakfast radishes, it's true.

And I have to say, it feels pretty good to step back into the salad world. Yesterday, Alex and I had one of those hugely productive Sundays—tidied up, did the laundry, finished the house budget, picked out paint colors, planted squash, planted melons, planted tomatoes, went to the dump, scrubbed the guest room!—and mid-day, we stopped for a quick rest at the kitchen table. We didn't have time for a long break—there were still way too many spiders living in the baseboards—but I wanted to make something a little bit elegant, something pretty and simple.

I pulled out a nice china salad bowl, and three bags of greens from the fridge. I did a little mix-and-match—some of Barbara's butter lettuce, a handful of spicy mustard Mizuna from Rod and Darnell, and a whole bunch of Lucas's baby braising mix. Then I chopped up a tomato, sliced a carrot and cucumber and two radishes thin with the mandolin, and crumbled some goat cheese and gorgonzola on top. It was hardly fancy, but it was satisfying, and beautiful, and with a few slices of baguette and butter, it did the trick.

If you're feeling anything like I am these days—hungry, and busy, and a little too interested in gardening to sit down and make anything terribly fussy or complicated—I highly recommend giving it a whirl.

FIRST OF SPRING TOSSED SALAD

This is hardly complicated enough to count as a recipe, but it's what we've been eating all week, and it's also delicious. Tomatoes and cucumbers are not normally things I associate with spring, but with Ed and Betty's hothouse in full operation, maybe they'll move up permanently on the calendar—keep your fingers crossed, and who knows.

1/8 cup balsamic vinegar

1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil

1/2 teaspoon whole grain mustard

a pinch of salt

freshly cracked pepper

1/2 pound mixed spring greens

1 spring carrot, trimmed and sliced thin

2 French Breakfast radishes, trimmed and sliced thin

1 tomato, chopped into half wedges

1/2 cucumber, sliced thin

a handful of crumbled gorgonzola

a handful of crumbled chevre

Whisk together the balsamic, olive oil, mustard, and salt and pepper to taste in a small pitcher. Be sure to whisk for at least 30 seconds; it takes the mustard a little while to bring the vinegar and oil together and get the whole thing to emulsify. Set the dressing aside.

In a large salad bowl, toss together the greens and other vegetables. Crumble the cheeses on top, dress, and toss well. Serve at once, with a hunk of crusty bread to mop up the extra cheese and dressing and veggie juice.

The Local Food Report: turnip tops

Anna Henning is on a mission: she wants everyone to start eating turnip greens.

In case those gangly greens up there don't convince you, I'll lay out her reasons.

For starters, she calls turnip greens the Best of the Best when it comes to nutrition. We've all heard about beet greens, sure, and Swiss chard, but the fact is, when it comes to things like vitamins A and C and calcium, turnip greens blow those other greens right out of the water. (Kale is the exception to this rule; it has one and a half times the vitamin A and two and a half times the vitamin C. If you're interested, check it all out on nutrition data.com.)

Beyond the health benefits, though, turnip greens just taste good. They're crunchy, and sweet, and just a little bit spicy, and when you cook them down, they get wilty and smooth, perfect for wrapping around pasta or serving with mashed potatoes alongside a nice cut of meat. They're the kind of thing you might want to stir into a batch of Portuguese kale soup, or sauté in bacon fat for a bacon-egg-and-toast lumberjack side treat.

And last but not least, Anna says, pulling up a turnip and throwing its greens into the compost is a colossal waste.

Anna is a farmer—she grows with Bob Wells at Redberry Farm, off Schoolhouse Lane in Eastham—and when I talked to her, this was a three-person campaign. She was in, and Bob. and Heather Bailey, who makes those ridiculously good scones that I get every Saturday morning at the farmers' market in Orleans. And although I have to admit I was a little skeptical at first, after taking a bite, and then another, and then sauteing up a whole mess of turnip greens with sausage and garlic and cream, the campaign now counts another convert in me.

PENNE WITH SAUSAGE, GARLIC, AND TURNIP GREENS

I always like the combination of sausage, greens, and penne—there is something hearty and rustic about it that suits this season just right. Turnip greens are an excellent stand-in for the usual chard or kale, and if you like broccoli, the stems of the turnip greens make a nice addition along with the leaves. Slice them like you would celery—they have a sweet, spicy flavor, and add a nice crunch.

1 pound sausage links, cut into 1/2-inch rounds
2 tablespoons olive oil
5 cloves garlic, minced
1 cup white wine
3/4 pound turnip greens (with stems or without, depending on your taste), coarsely chopped
1 cup heavy cream
salt and pepper to taste
1/2 pound penne pasta, cooked

Brown the sausage over medium-high heat in a big, deep cast iron skillet. Set aside, leaving any remaining fat and browned bits in the pan.

In the same pan, heat up the olive oil and sauté the garlic until fragrant, about 30 seconds. Pour in the white wine to deglaze the pan; simmer until reduced by half. Stir in the turnip greens.

Cover the pan, turn the heat down to medium low, and let the greens wilt down a little bit.

After about five minutes, remove the cover, turn the heat back up to medium-high, and add the cream. Season with salt and pepper to taste and simmer for a minute or so to let the cream thicken up.

Add the pasta and the reserved sausage. Toss well and serve hot.

The Local Food Report: E & T Farms

Ed Osmun is shy—that much we have in common. The first day I showed up with my microphone in tow I could see it in the way he bowed his head. But just as much as Ed is shy, I am determined, and today, finally, we got his story out. It starts with tilapia—ready for market, and fat.

These tilapia are the main event on Ed's farm. They arrive tiny—half a gram—from New Mexico. A breeder there selects for uniformity and growth, which makes Ed's life easier when it comes to culling and the eventual harvest. The fish spend their roughly nine months of life in nine large, half-dumpster size tanks—growing up in shades from orange to black into weights a pound and a quarter and on. As they live and eat they of course create waste, but Ed has a system in place—a growing method called aquaponics—that allows him to use this waste instead of throwing it out.

It works like this: in the water, there are big drums filled with nitrogen-fixing bacteria. Next door—adjacent to the fish tanks in the farm's roughly 8,000 square foot indoor growing area—is a greenhouse space. Nine tubes, one from each of the fish tanks, feed nine hydroponic systems, with the water full of nitrates constantly filtering out from the fish tanks and into plastic tubes beneath the rows of salad greens.


Eventually, what solid waste the greens can't take up is filtered out along with old water, and new water is filtered in. It's a fairly ingenious system, although Ed says he can't take any credit. People think the idea may go as far back as the ancient Incas, the Chinese, and even the Aztecs. If you think about it, it's actually a very natural system—the whole world runs on aquaponics in one way or another. But the modern system was the brainchild of the New Alchemy Institute—the place that inspired Arthur Teubner to include growing space in his living space. The researchers at New Alchemy published a series of articles on irrigating garden vegetables with fish effluent in the 1970s, and the idea took off.

Ed says he's been interested in controlled environment growing for at least as long. His wife tells him he was talking about it when they were dating; they've been married now 37 years.


Of course, the upshot of all this is food. Ed sells tilapia to local chefs (he's hoping to start selling retail to fish markets soon, too) and his greens go to local stores, restaurants, and farmers' markets. They're sold under the banner of E & T Farms, which Ed runs with his wife, Betty. They also produce honey and beeswax candles, and in the summer, they expand their growing outside and offer goodies like tomatoes and cucumbers. But even now, all year round, they have salad mix—plump plastic bags filled with baby lettuces, Swiss chard, arugula, and even a few nasturtiums.

This Saturday, at the Marstons Mills Farmers' Market, if you have a second, introduce yourself. Ed may be shy, but he's always willing to talk aquaponics.

The Local Food Report: Seed Ordering

Today, finally, I placed my seed order. Ordering seeds always seems very daunting to me—like taking on the Impossible Project or maybe surviving a twenty-six-point-two-mile run.

I was thinking about this the other day while playing eeny-meeny-miny-moe with Crisp Mint and Rouge d'Hiver on the lettuce page of the Fedco catalog, and I decided it was time to get help. (For seed ordering. Just to be clear.) I called my friend Tracy (who helped me start a garden for the chefs at one of Alex's restaurants last spring), and she told me to talk to a friend of hers, Master Gardener Celeste Makely. I met Celeste in her sunroom, we talked for two hours about seeds and seedlings and garden planning and even baked tomatoes. She sent me home with a tiny fig tree, a homegrown Valencia orange, and all sorts of excellent recommendations. I am not very good at sharing oranges, or potential fig factories, but fortunately, I do much better with notes. So for those of you who aren't quite sure what you want to plant, here are Celeste's top seed picks for 2010:

1. Danvers (carrot)

Apparently, the reason carrots are so tricky to grow is because they need a very fluffy soil. If they don't get it, they tend to become distorted. Unless they're Danvers. Celeste says these carrots stand up particularly well to heavy soils, and are thin and long with a strong top. (For yanking.)

2. Spinach and lettuce of any kind

Spinaches and lettuces are, by definition, easy, Celeste says. Order what you think is tasty, or pretty, plant a bunch, and don't worry about it too much unless the weather gets outrageously sunny and hot. If that happens, give the plants some shade and some water, and they will soldier on. Depending on how you plan to plant your garden, it might be a good idea to buy some early and late varieties, and some that can stand the heat. This way you can be in greens all the time.

3. Chioggia (beet)

These are those pretty magenta and white swirled beets you see at the farmers' markets all the time. Celeste cooks sometimes at the soup kitchen in Provincetown, and last year, a local gardener donated a whole bunch of these. She says they were the hit of the season—wonderfully sweet just roasted with a little bit of oil and salt and pepper.

4. Early Spring Burpless (cucumber)

Celeste likes these for slicing, because they are early, and prolific, and inside their bright white flesh is oh-so-crisp. They also grow long, and don't have too many spines.

5. Bush Pickles (cucumber)

These are ideal for people who don't have much space, but want lots of cucumbers and lots of pickles. Celeste says they grow small (about four to five inches, a.k.a. ideal pickle length), and stay firm, even jarred.

6. Bright Lights (Swiss chard)

We grew Bright Lights Swiss chard in our garden last year, and I can attest to its fabulous-ness. We planted it twice, once in the early spring, and once at the end of August, and we have been in red-yellow-pink-and-orange chard from April through today. I know! Two plantings, a million cuttings, lots of salads, lots of stir-fries, a whole bunch of soups, one Swiss chard gratin, a whole lot of blanching and freezing, and several pounds of onions and garlic later, and we are still eating from a single pack of seeds. Celeste likes it because it's beautiful, and prolific, and easy, and as I just mentioned, about as versatile in the kitchen as one green can be. She found this recipe for goat cheese rolled up in chard leaves and grilled, which even without having tried it I feel I can heartily recommend.


7. Pointsetta (hot pepper)

Pointsetta wins purely on cuteness. It's a new pick for Celeste this year, but she likes the way that the peppers point up instead of down, and are very bright and tiny and generally adorable. She's doing a demo garden for the new Wellfleet Community garden plots, and she says that when she saw this she simply couldn't resist.

8. Jalapeño (hot pepper)

Believe it or not, Celeste recently had a Jalapeño plant that lived for five years. She says she simply planted it in a pot, and brought it inside in the fall and back out again every spring. Jalapeños are easy, and better yet, produce peppers that sliced in half, stuffed with cheese, and broiled, will bring you to your knees.

9. Herbs (not Rosemary, or Parsley)

At least not from seed. Rosemary and Parsley are both difficult to germinate, Celeste says, and not worth your trouble at all. Get them, but buy them already robust in little pots at the garden store. As for the rest, plant Oregano and Spearmint but watch out because they spread, and accumulate as many varieties of Thyme and basil as you can. Oh! and while we're on basil, Celeste thinks Genovese, the big, broad-leafed Italian variety is very nice, as are Thai basil and lemon basil.

10. Tropical fruits (huh?)

Celeste's last recommendation is just in case you decide that this year, you want to go big time. She has a sunroom on the south side of her house, and for a while now, she's been experimenting with tropical fruit trees. Based on my Valencia-orange-eating-in-February experience, I'd say it's been a wild success. In addition to the oranges, she's ordered and successfully nursed to maturity a Meyer lemon tree, a Ponderosa lemon tree (which produces fruit the size of baseballs!), and several varieties of Italian figs. (The seeds for which her grandfather brought over from Italy.) She thinks that if you have a sunny room, you should go for it.

There you have it—Celeste's top ten for 2010. Before I go, though, a few notes. You probably noticed there are no tomato varieties up there. That's because next week, I will be bringing you another of Celeste's seed-ordering lists, this time ONLY for tomatoes. Yipee!


And a note about seed ordering: Celeste orders most of her seeds from Totally Tomatoes, which carries both tomatoes and a few other plants, like hot peppers and cucumbers and basils. It's a great catalog for anyone, but maybe more so for a tomato zealot like Celeste than for the rest of us.

I order all of my seeds from Fedco, a Maine-based company that I like because it a) sells only seeds adapted to our cold New England climate, b) is very committed to sustainable growing and non-GMO seeds, and c) has in its catalogs sections like "How Not to Order" and seed descriptions like this. Reading it makes my eyes water and my sides hurt.

To request a Fedco catalog, all you have to do is click on over here, and then call and leave a message with your name and address. They say it might take a few weeks to get it, but mine only took a few days. Have fun!

Pretty magnificent

Well. I am happy to report that the market was a success: Fisher did not get any brisket, Alex and I managed to resist buying an entire bag of cider donuts and split only one instead, and we came home not with radicchio, but with a frisee-like baby mizuna, which was an excellent second best.

We also got eggs, and some bacon, and some Shy Brothers cheese. And although according to my friend Kristen fridges cannot actually talk, I could swear that while I was putting everything away the door was squeaking frisee ! salad ! with lardons, and a fried egg ! At least, that's what I heard.

Anyway.

If you have never had a frisee salad with lardons and a fried egg, well, maybe that's why your fridge does not speak. Because once you have tried this dish, you and your fridge will be asking for it every day. In the summer, I eat it all the time. There's a frisee salad with lardons and a superbly tangy mustard vinaigrette and a nice panko-crusted fried duck egg on the menu at Blackfish, and I have found that if I ask very nicely at the end of my shift the kitchen will make me one. My friend Kerry has figured this out, too, and a few of the other girls, and we've discovered that sometimes, if we ask extra nicely, the kitchen will even make us a big bowl of it to share. Not always with duck eggs, but still. We have an addiction to feed.

And over the winter, that addiction has been hungry. It has been angry and ugly and kicking and screaming and crossing its fingers and toes that we can just wake up already it will be May. Now that it's February and the days are a little longer and the birds are back and the sun is just a bit stronger, it's been seeming like it's high time to at least throw it a little tide-me-over here and there.

Which is why I was very, very happy to find mizuna at the market the other day. Mizuna is not a frisee, not really at all, but it shares several important characteristics with the endive. For starters, it is very stemmy and leggy with spindly little arms, arms that wave out in the same skinny, feathery, frisee way. It is also bitter, and very crisp, all in the manner of a good curly endive. It is smaller than frisee, and ever so slightly sweeter, but in the important ways—in the way it has plenty of places to catch mustard vinaigrette and goopy egg yolk and can hold it's own flavor-wise against the lardon bits—it is 100% there. (Lardon, in case you're not familiar with it, is just a fancy word for bacon cut another way.)

And so today, at lunchtime, I got out the mizuna and a chicken egg and some bread crumbs and a few slices of bacon, and I got to work.


It didn't take much. I fried the bacon in a skillet, poured off the grease, and fried the battered up egg in the leftover fat. Then I tossed the greens with a tangy mustard and shallot vinaigrette and crumbled up the bacon so it could fall through the leaves and then, when the egg was ready, balanced it on top. It was golden, and crispy, and from its perch, it had almost a proud, stately look. Then, when I cut in, the egg yolk burst all over the greens and coated everything in a rich, runny yellow. It was pretty magnificent.

So go ahead, get your groceries or your mustard or go in with a neighbor on half a pig, just do what you need to do. Only don't wait as long as I did, or you might start to imagine that your fridge can speak.

MIZUNA SALAD WITH BACON, A FRIED EGG, AND TANGY VINAIGRETTE

This recipes makes enough salad for two people. It is adapted, mentally speaking, from the way the frisee salad at Blackfish tastes, although it is fairly different. I like to eat it for lunch with a slice of toasted whole wheat bread and a little bit of Shy Brothers cheese, and then I like to make myself a second plate when dinner rolls around.

4 slices bacon
1/3 pound baby mizuna
1 small shallot, minced (about 1 tablespoon)
2 teaspoons Dijon mustard
4 tablespoons olive oil
2 tablespoons white vinegar
a dash of sherry
salt and freshly cracked pepper to taste
extra fat (olive oil, canola oil, bacon fat, or melted butter) for frying
1/2 cup very dry bread crumbs
2 eggs

Haul out a medium-size frying pan and get the bacon going. While it cooks, whisk together the shallot, mustard, olive oil, vinegar, and sherry to make the mustard vinaigrette, and season it with salt and pepper. If it is too tangy for your taste, add a bit more olive oil. Toss the greens with the dressing and set aside.

Flip the bacon and continue cooking until it is crisp on both sides. Take it out of the pan with a good pair of tongs, and set it on a cookie rack or clean dishcloth to drain. Get out a small, heavy-bottomed pot, and pour the leftover bacon fat from the frying pan into this pot. Add the extra fat until the combined fats reach an inch up the side of the pot, and turn on the heat to medium-high. (How much you need will depend on how much fat your bacon renders, and how big of a pot you use. Just big enough to fit an egg is good.)

While the fat heats up, crumble the bacon over the mizuna and toss the greens again. Divide the greens and bacon into two portions, and arrange each half in the center of a dinner plate. Then put the breadcrumbs in a small bowl and crack one egg in. Carefully roll the bowl around so that the outside of the egg is coated in breadcrumbs. When the fat is hot, use a slotted spoon to drop this egg in. Cook it for 10 seconds on each side and place the fried egg on top of one of the salads. (This timing yields a runny yolk. If for some reason you want a fully cooked yolk, add about 10 seconds to each side.) Bread and fry the other egg, and serve the salads immediately. And don't be afraid to sop up any extra yolk with some bread.