The Dinner Files

Delicate green spring vegetables – the asparagus, the peas, the fava beans – are plentiful, but our San Francisco spring is not keeping pace. Lots of gray and rain and chilly wind and not as much sunshine and clear days as we’re used to this time of year. It’s hard to get excited about simply steamed asparagus with aïoli when I’m chilled to the bone.

A big warm bowl of creamy risotto, though? That I can tuck into with glee.

Spring risotto

Go ahead and play around with the proportions of veggies here – nothing’s set in stone. Add some chopped fennel in with the green garlic, use spring onions instead of green garlic, add mint or dill or chervil at the end.You will find plenty of risotto recipes than demand that you stir the rice constantly. This is not one of them.

1 to 2 pounds fava beans

1/2 pound sweet peas/garden peas/English peas

1/2 bunch asparagus

2 green garlics

5 cups broth (I use homemade chicken stock – if you used commercial broth dilute 4 cups of it with 1 cup of water)

2 Tablespoons butter

1 Tablespoon olive oil

1/2 teaspoon salt, plus more to taste

1 cup aborio rice

About 3/4 cup freshly shredded not-super-aged Pecorino cheese

First things first – and experience spring cooks know what this is going to be – you need to double shell the fava beans (I even have this step-by-step guide on how to do it!). I’m sorry. It really is a complete pain if you’re not in the mood to slowly but surely work your way through those beans. Grab the phone, put on the radio, have a chat, or just take a moment and have a little day dream while your hands and eyes are busy.

Set the shelled, blanched, and shelled favas aside.

Shell the peas – doesn’t that seem like a breeze after the favas? – and set them aside with the favas.

Snap the asparagus spears where they break naturally and discard the ends. Cut the asparagus into relatively thin, angled slices, leaving the 1-inch to 2-inch tips intact. Set aside.

Cut off the root ends off the green garlics. Cut the white and light green part of the stalks in half lengthwise – the darker green top will hold the whole things together. Chop the white and light green parts. Reserve the dark green tops for making stock, if you’re so inclined.

Put the broth in a medium saucepan and bring to a simmer. Keep it at a very low simmer.

Meanwhile, heat another medium-ish saucepan over medium high heat. Add 1 tablespoon of the butter and the olive oil. When the butter is melted and stops foaming, add the chopped green garlic and the salt. Cook, stirring, until the green garlic is wilted, about 2 minutes.

Add the rice and stir to completely coat it with the butter and oil. Cook, stirring until the opaque rice grains turn a bit translucent around the edges.

Add about a cup of the warm broth to the rice and cook, stirring as you like. Adjust teh heat so that when you’re not stirring the mixture simmers a bit but doesn’t boil or get too excited. When most of the broth is absorbed – when you can see the bottom of the pot for a few seconds when you stir because the mixture is thicker than the broth – add another 1/2 cup broth. Continue cooking, with some stirring, and adding 1/2 cup of broth at a time until the rice is almost tender to the bite but still has a kernel of uncooked-ness in the center – it took mine a bit over 15 minutes to get there.

Add the asparagus and more broth and continue cooking and stirring and adding broth as needed until the asparagus is almost done and the rice is al dente – tender but with structure to each grain. Add the peas and fava beans.

Continue cooking, adding a bit more broth and stirring, until the peas and beans are warm, just a minute or two. Stir in the cheese and remaining tablespoon of butter and taste – add more salt if you want. We found more cheese on top and some freshly ground black pepper was tasty indeed. As mentioned above, a bit of chopped spring herbs would be lovely too.

We had ours with a boiled egg on the side – we have all these picture-perfect pastured eggs in the house and they are difficult to resist. I meant to soft boil them – start in cold water, bring to a boil, cover, remove from heat, let sit exactly three minutes, remove from hot water, and peel. But the risotto timing with the rice and vegetables and whatnot had the bulk of my attention and the eggs sat around on the counter after I took them from their hot water bath and kept cooking and they weren’t soft-boiled at all. They were, however, delicious and super-spring-y with the risotto.

I’m addicted. I cannot stop making and eating little layered concoctions with a base of ricotta. Ricotta with jam. Ricotta with honey. Nuts or crumbled wafer cookies or cacao nibs sprinkled in there somewhere. My favorite combination so far is to top the ricotta with the honeyed kumquats I made a few weeks ago – I’m running out fast and find myself wishing I had made a lot more of them – and some toasted walnuts.

I’ve been constructing them in simple glasses for dessert, as above, but also slathering them into cereal bowls for breakfast. Here’s the one I’m eating as I write:

Yogurt, of course, works, too. Note: my dashing husband vastly prefers them when made with thick Greek yogurt. He finds the ricotta “grainy.” Um, yeah, I think, that’s the whole point – the oddly dry-yet-still-moist, sort of chewy but still mainly smooth texture of ricotta is its entire appeal to me. But, if, like him, you like things more obvious and creamy, then by all means, use some yogurt. The nice thing with a parfait is that they are individual. So I make mine with ricotta and everyone else’s with Greek yogurt. It makes me feel quite kind and generous and thoughtful as I force yet more layered dairy product, sweet fruity element, and crunchy bits on my family.

It’s true. You can grill beets. Let me take that a step further: you should grill beets.

I learned this from my dashing husband’s college roommate. He’s a gregarious fellow who likes to eat. He likes to come to our house because I cook. I cook real food and plenty of it. He’s great to cook for simply because he’s so appreciative. A dinner of roast chicken, garlic buttermilk mashed potatoes, and a salad once elicited a wonder-filled “do you eat like this every night?!?!” from him.

During one visit to California from the chilly East a few years ago he was so excited about being here and about me cooking that he wanted to get involved in the kitchen. I had a meal planned. I am used to being the boss of our kitchen. I say “our kitchen” because I am a generous person. The kitchen at this house is mine. My kitchen.

My kitchen isn’t big. Two – even three – people can work in it (and four have done so), but those people need to be fairly aware of those around them. There has to be some communication at work. I say this with love, but this particular house guest, while a great talker and fun conversationalist, isn’t the best communicator I’ve ever met. He isn’t, in short, the very best of listeners. That made me wary about letting him help with the meal; it also made him fail to heed my initial reluctance.

Had our lend-a-hand visitor been my friend originally instead of one I inherited from my dashing husband, I might have said, “hey, let me do my thing” or forced a specific task upon him. He was *so* enthusiastic and his desire to soak up my cookin’ mojo was *so* palpable that I dug deep and found a morsel of generosity and empathy and let him peel and slice some beets and put them on the grill.

It was not what I had planned for the beets. But again, he was just *so* very extremely beyond belief excited, I felt like too much of a killjoy to stop him. Whatever, I thought, let him burn, undercook, and generally ruin the beets. Who cares.

Yes, that was my idea of generosity.

He didn’t burn them. He didn’t under cook them. He didn’t ruin them in any way. The grilled beet slices were tender on the inside, caramelized on the outside, with a nice bit of bitter char that off-set their sweetness beautifully.

Grilled beet salad

Peel beets and slice them about 1/4- to 1/2-inch thick. Brush them with oil and place them on a medium to medium hot grill. Cover the grill (especially if it’s a gas one), flip the slices after the beets get grill marks, 8 to 10 minutes. Continue cooking on the other side until the beets are tender and grill-marked on the other side. Put abut a beet’s worth of slices on a salad plate (or put all the slices on a family-style platter), dollop some soft, creamy cheese here and there (I used ricotta here, because that’s what was in the fridge, but a creamy chèvre would have been delightful). Some toasted walnuts or thinly sliced shallots wouldn’t have been out of place, if you wanted to add them. Drizzle with extra virgin olive oil, toasted walnut oil, or pine nut oil. Sprinkle with salt.

This is for all the lovelies out there just trying to get a tasty dinner on the table – you know who you are. It isn’t fancy, but the bright ginger, fresh asparagus, rich pork, and hearty brown rice make for a deeply satisfying dinner after a long, hard day. You start cooking the pork and asparagus while the rice and egg cook, so while there is sort of a lot going on at once, much of it is hands-off.

Rice bowl

This – and by “this” I mean a bowl of rice with stuff on it – is a favorite around our house. I’m partial to the ground pork and asparagus combo, but greens, butternut squash, and minced chicken has its fans, as does the tofu, peas, and spinach combo I’ve broken out on occasion.

2  cups  short-grain brown rice

1/2  teaspoon  salt

4  eggs (optional)

1  pound  ground pork

1/2  cup  sake or white wine (optional)

2  tablespoons tamari or soy sauce, plus more to taste and/or for serving

2  bunches asparagus or similar amount (lots) of your favorite vegetable

1  piece ginger, about 4 in. long

3  cloves garlic

8  green onions

2  tablespoons  vegetable oil, divided

Cilantro for garnishing

Bring 4 cups water, the rice, and the salt to a boil in a medium saucepan, cover, reduce heat to a simmer, and cook until tender to the bite, about 35 minutes. Or, do as I do and set it all up in a rice cooker and forget all about it.

While the rice is cooking, cook everything else. First things first: Hard boil the eggs. I use Julia Child’s method and it turns out a perfect egg every single goddamn time: put eggs in a medium sauce pan and cover with water. Bring to a boil. Once the water is boiling – not just tiny bubbles along the edges of the pan, but big bubbles coming up all over – cover the pan, turn off the heat, and let sit 14 minutes. Drain and peel the eggs under cool running water. Slice and set aside.

While the eggs are cooking, put the pork in a medium bowl and pour the sake or white wine and the tamari or soy sauce over it. Mix gently and let sit until you’re done with the eggs.

If you still have some time waiting for the eggs, snap off the woody ends of the asparagus and cut the spears into bite-size pieces (or peel/chop/prep whatever vegetable you’re using).

Now grate the ginger, mince the garlic, and chop the green onions.

Heat a large frying pan over medium-high heat. Add a tablespoon of the oil and the pork and cook, stirring once in a while, until the pork is about half-way cooked – some is cooked through and some isn’t and none if it is starting to brown yet. Add 3/4 of the grated ginger. Stir in the ginger and cook until the pork is cooked through and starting to get brown in some spots.

Transfer the pork to a bowl or plate and cover to keep warm. Return the pan to the stove and add the remaining tablespoon of oil, the remaining ginger, garlic, and green onions. Cook, stirring, until the fragrances blend, about a minute. Add the asparagus, stir to combine, add 1/4 cup of water, cover, and cook until the asparagus is tender, about 4 minutes (other vegetables may take longer).

While the asparagus cooks, chop or mince the cilantro.

The rice should be done now. Divide the rice between four deep cereal or chili bowls. Top with asparagus, pork, and a sliced hard boiled egg. Sprinkle with cilantro and serve with tamari or soy sauce on the side for people to add to taste. We put various hot sauces and hoisin on the table at our house, too.

We had a bit of leftover salmon – and after the boys were done pawing at it to get all the crispy skin, it was none too pretty looking either. When I mentioned the possibility of salmon cakes my son jumped up and down, clapping his hands. Regular readers know that I take an almost sick pleasure in frugality. I’m not cheap, but I can really work the clever haus frau angle and something about wasted food makes me a bit nuts. Salads, cakes, and fritters are all ways to stretch leftover fish and seafood. To make what’s old new again, to make what’s not quite enough plenty.

Salmon cakes

Feel free to experiment away with these. I have no idea what you like in your salmon cake. You might want a bunch of minced peppers or chiles or some bizarre combination of spices. Go to town. These proportions of fish to egg to crumb, however, should serve you quite well. If you like mayonnaise in your salmon cakes, go ahead and add 1/4 cup in place of one of the eggs. Me, I can’t figure out why you would do that.

2 cups (about 12 oz.) cooked and flaked salmon

2 – 3 tablespoons minced green or red onion

2 tablespoons minced parsley (or combination of herbs of your choosing)

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

1/8 teaspoon cayenne (clearly optional)

2 eggs

1/3 – 1/2 cup panko or freshly toasted bread crumbs, plus more for coating, if you like

Flour for coating if you don’t want to use panko or bread crumbs, if you like

Oil for cooking

In a medium bowl, combine the salmon, onion, herbs, salt, pepper, and cayenne. Mix to combine. Move the mixture to the side of the bowl and crack the eggs into the now sort of empty section of the bowl. Use a whisk or fork to beat the eggs. Now gently combine the salmon mixture and the beaten eggs and think about what you’ll do with that minute of washing and drying an extra bowl that you just saved.

Stir in panko or bread crumbs. Breads crumbs vary *so* much that the amount is a bit tricky. You want the mixture to hold together, but you don’t want it to get too bread-y. If you want to form and cook the salmon cakes right away, you’re going to need to add even more panko. If you’re willing to form them and chill them, you can get away with less.

Spray your hands with cooking spray or oil them with olive or vegetable oil and form the cakes. I make mine about 3 inches across and an inch thick. Place them on a baking sheet, cover, and chill for a few hours for best results.

Dredge the cakes in flour or bread crumbs, if you like, but I find it’s not necessary and quite messy.

Heat a large frying pan over medium high heat, add some vegetable or olive oil for cooking, and cook salmon cakes, a few at a time, until golden brown on one side, about 4 minutes. Turn over and cook until golden brown on the other side and cooked through, another 4 minutes. Repeat with remaining cakes. Serve hot or at least warm.

I recently found myself sitting in a room in Yountville with a few other food writers, a whole mess of health and nutrition writers, some fitness writers, some food product development folks, a bunch of chefs, and the usual assortment of marketing and PR people that are so often present when the rest of that group gets together (we need someone to organize us, after all – and getting writers and chefs all in the same place at the same time appears to be a lot like herding cats).

The talk, much to my surprise, centered on healthy cooking and how we (“we” being writers and chefs) can help Americans eat better and I was bored. Really quite extremely bored. I was bored for several reasons.

1) I would never willing attend a talk on “healthy cooking.” I had thought I would be attending a much more specific ingredient-focused presentation and demonstrations. I already know a lot of what is generally called “healthy cooking.”

2) I don’t think people lack information about eating well. I think most people know they should eat vegetables and not fry everything. I think most people are stuck between a rock and a hard place of economics, convenience, and the horror of confluence that is human biological craving and food science’s ability to work those cravings like nobody’s business and in order to do great scads of business.

3) The notion of what “healthy cooking” is that was largely being used in that room makes me sad. It was more nutritionally driven than taste driven, more about what is in food than how we experience food. From what I have pieced together, unless people are really in touch with the experience of their food and how it affects them, switching how they eat is an uphill battle of deprivation and backsliding.

Then the discussion turned to class and I went from bored to wanting to pull my hair out strand by strand. That the worst food is the cheapest and that people with less money therefore tend to in general eat more of it is a question of federal policy (see “Farm Bill”) as much as anything and no matter how many articles I write about how delicious greens are, we subsidize high fructose corn syrup and not chard and discussing it as a question of nutritional education is insulting to everyone involved. Political education, perhaps. It certainly ain’t an issue that is going to be solved by lifestyle magazines.

Then – please, stay with me, I’ll get to the delicious salmon soon – the discussion turned to the children. Annoyance turned to hopelessness as the room took as unquestioned truth the notion of kids food. The need for healthy kids food. The challenge of kids food. Sneaking spinach into smoothies (and not telling the kids what made it green – “magic” was suggested as an explanation). The importance of kids menus offering carrot stick “dippers” instead of French fries.

Look, children tend to be pickier about food than adults. They don’t necessarily want to eat everything we eat. They also don’t know much. That’s why we need to teach them.

Just as we teach kids how to read and how to brush their teeth, we need to teach them how to eat. If we slough it off by handing them snack packs throughout the day, that is how they will learn to eat – constantly, with their hands, processed food. We can’t teach them in an afternoon when they’re in fourth grade – it’s a process. A long, slow process of offering different foods and explaining again and again and being consistent and letting them make choices when and where appropriate and laying down the law when that’s appropriate too. It’s like every other aspect of parenting. And, like all the other aspects, they watch more what we do than listen to what we say.

(I don’t think I ever got a dirtier look than the one I got from a group of parents at the park at 11:30 one morning when my son was three and I told him as he looked at the other kids constantly pawing through bags of Goldfish crackers and Pirates’ Booty that no, I didn’t have a snack because he’s already eaten it. Plus, I said, we’re going home soon as we were having lunch in half an hour and that it was okay to be a little bit hungry before a meal. To me it seemed like a teachable moment. Their faces told me they thought it was closer to abuse.)

Annoyance, hopelessness, and frustration with the world melted away when I got home and was met by a family that was super psyched to have me throw a salmon fillet on the grill and help me pick the last of the mustard greens from our completely over-grown garden and eat them tossed with a bit of rice vinegar, sesame oil, soy sauce, and mirin. When my son made a play for the charred and crispy skin from my piece of salmon, I gave it to him with glee.

What? It’s not salmon season yet? Why no, it’s not. This fillet is part of a group-buy from a fisherman up in Washington state a friend put together. It was wild-caught Pacific salmon caught last season, bled and iced on the boat, cleaned and frozen the same day. We bought so much directly from the fisherman that he shipped it freight and the whole of it cost way less than retail. It makes me grateful not only for the family that eats it with joy and but also for the deep freeze that came with our house. Now I’m waiting for this year’s salmon season to start up so I can get some from the Copper River fishermen I met last summer.

Frozen salmon on the grill

The best thing I learned while up in Alaska last summer learning about Copper River salmon was that you can throw frozen salmon directly on the grill. It takes a few more minutes to cook, and works like a charm. Brilliant.

Salmon fillet, skin on – fresh, frozen, or defrosted

Oil

Salt

Pepper (optional)

Lemon (optional)

Clean the cooking grate on your grill – no need to go crazy, but scrape off any bits clinging to it. Rub the grate with oil. Now heat the grill. Get it nice and hot, but not crazy hot – you should be able to hold your hand about an inch above the cooking grate for a minute or two.

Rub the skin with oil and set salmon, skin-side down, on the grill. Sprinkle the flesh side with salt. Sprinkle pepper on too, if you like. Cover and cook until desired doneness. I find a fresh fillet that is about an inch thick is ready in 10 -12 minutes, but I like my salmon actually cooked in the middle. If you want that bit of raw, cook it less. A frozen fillet the same size seems to take an extra 5 minutes on the grill.

Notice I have not instructed you to flip or turn or move the fish in any way. The skin protects the down side, the cover helps cook the top side.

Use a wide spatula to lift the whole fillet off the grill and slide it onto a baking sheet or platter. Hold the platter over the grill and next to the fish when you do this so the fillet spends as little time as possible hanging off the spatula on either end.

Serve hot or at least warm with a spritz of lemon juice, if you like, or whatever sauce or condiment floats your salmon boat.

Panic set in. Kumquat season is coming to an end. We’ve been digging these tiny completely edible (peel and all!) citrus fruits for a couple months (ever since we had that endive kumquat salad, in fact). We’ve had that salad about a thousand times and eating plain kumquats as snacks.

The time for fresh kumquats is coming to an end, however, so I put some up.

Honeyed kumquats

These preserved kumquats and their delicious honey kumquat syrup are delicious on ice cream, yogurt, and even ricotta (add a few walnuts for crunch).

2 pounds kumquats

3 cups water

2 cups honey

1/2 cup sugar

6 half-pint jars (or 3 pint jars), sterilized

Cut off stems from kumquats. Either poke a small hole or two in each kumquat with a skewer or toothpick or cut kumquats in half and remove any seeds. (It’s your choice – do you want pretty, whole fruits with the seeds in or less elegant kumquat halves with seeds already removed?)

In a pot, bring water, honey, and sugar just to a boil. Add kumquats and bring back, just to a boil. Adjust heat to maintain a steady simmer and cook, skimming off any foam that develops, until kumquats are tender, about 25 minutes for halves and 40 minutes for whole kumquats.

Transfer hot kumquats to sterile half-pint or pint jars and screw on lids. Bring a canning kettle full of water to a boil and hot-water process the jars for 10 minutes.

Let cool and store in a cool, dark place for up to six months. Once a jar is opened, keep it in the refrigerator.