Kale, Garlic scape, and Feta Frittata

Wait! Don’t go! 

I know that is the most burnt, unappealing looking frittata ever but don’t lose hope in me yet! I’m just easily distracted.

Here’s what you’re gonna do when you make this --- you’re gonna take it out about 5 mins earlier than I did, and you won’t be disappointed. As a general rule, it’s a good idea to keep an eye on anything that’s under the broiler. Noob move here. What I wouldn’t give to have a window in my oven door. But seriously, underneath that blackened exterior was the most luscious, well flavored eggy concotion I’ve ever thrown together.

I mean the moment I saw I had burnt the thing beyond saving, I was like, well there goes posting that. But I was also half starved and needed lunch, so I decided to see if it was still edible. And my goodness, yes it was! The flavor! The yum! The ahhh - I have to tell everyone about this! Screw the top!

So are garlic scapes still a thing? Real talk, I made this frittata a bit ago when I had a pound of them from my farm share.  I’m not so sure they are still available but if they are, find ‘em and do it! My CSA gave me so many that they went into EVERYTHING and it was the best. Assuming they are long gone from farmstand, garlic would be just fine here, I’d say 1 clove minced should do the trick

Obviously I could have redone this attempt. But sometimes there’s something endearing about a total screw up...yea? Life’s beauty is in the imperfections, right????

(I’m just tryin’ to make myself feel better about burning my frittata.)

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Kale, garlic scape, and feta frittata

Ingredients:

2 tablespoons butter (or other cooking fat)

1 bunch kale, destemmed and torn into bite size pieces (I used lacinato)

½ medium size onion, sliced

3 garlic scapes, diced (or 1 clove of garlic minced)

pinch of red pepper flake (if desired)

6 eggs beaten

½ cup grassfed heavy cream

salt & pepper

⅓ cup feta cheese

sprinkle of shredded pecorino or parmesan (optional)

Directions:

Heat 1 tablespoon of butter in a 10-inch cast iron skillet over medium heat. Once melted, add kale, onion, garlic scapes, and red pepper flake to pan. Cook until onions are transculent and kale is soft and wilted.

While veggies are cooking down, beat 6 eggs with heavy cream, salt and pepper. Once fully beaten, stir feta in.

Add in second tablespoon of butter and allow to melt into vegetables. Pour eggs over the sauteed vegetables and stir in quickly to incorporate. Now leave to set over medium heat for approximately 10 minutes. Turn on your broiler. Right before placing under broiler sprinkle a bit of shredded pecorino or parmesan, if desired. Broil for approximately 10 minutes, but keep a watchful eye, remove once top of frittata is puffy and becomes a delightful golden brown.

Roasted Peach Strawberry Chunk Popsicles

Remember those cute bitty strawberries I told y’all about last week? The suspicious ones? Welp, I learned more about them this past farmer’s market visit. They’re called tristar strawberries and they have a much more flexible growing season. So my little suspicious strawbs, are definitely local, totally seasonal, and um, er, wut...oh the organic front? Yea….the jury’s still out. I had already bought them with my eyes before my wallet made it out of my bag and I was afraid to know the answer. So I still don’t know the answer, but the strawberries are little nuggets of summer heaven so I’m surely okay living in denial about them.

I ended up mixing some of them up into something "cool" with the other stars of summer, some sweet local peaches.

Perfect combo.

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Roasted Peach & Strawberry Chunk Popsicles

Ingredients:

3 ripe peaches, quartered and peeled

1 teaspoon coconut sugar (or other sweetener)

1 cup almond milk (or any other milk - dairy or non)

1 teaspoon vanilla

1 tablespoon honey

½ cup chopped strawberries (tossed in a touch of honey if desired)

Directions:

Place your quartered peaches on your roasting pan and sprinkle sugar on top and toss in pan to cover evenly.

Throw into an oven at 350 degrees for about 30mins until soft and caramelized.

Remove and let cool.

Once peaches have cooled a bit, place in blender along with almond milk, vanilla, and honey. Blitz until smooth and combined.  

Stir strawberries into the peach-milk base and pour into the popsicle molds.

Freeze until hard, about 5 hours.

Run mold under warm water to loosen.

Makes 8 three ounce popsicles.

Fresh Pea Deviled Eggs and a few excuses...

Oops. Hello, hi, I know…it’s been too long.

Yes? What was that? Sorry I can barely hear you over my own self doubting and guilty thoughts about not keeping up with this the way I wanted to.

Okay. Off to make a real go at it, starting……...now!

So, after many, many a weekend of not being in the comforts of my own kitchen, I’m hoping to get back on track here. Two of these past weekends were spent at my mother’s in CT. So while I couldn’t do my usual farmer’s market runs, I did spend the days weeding the garden, making flower bouquets, and picking wild raspberries from around the yard.

Can’t get more local than that, really. I know, woe is me.

Then, I spent this past weekend eating my way through Austin, Texas. See what did I tell you, full of excuses. I was visiting friends but mainly I stuffed my face with naughty, naughty (utterly delicious) food.

Of course, me, being who I am, I managed to come upon a farmer’s market, and somehow restrained myself from buying all the peaches and fresh tomatoes I saw. It was hard. Austin was full of friends, puppies, tacos, and hot Texas sun and I’m already missing it - but I’m also looking forward to my first free weekend in my city of New York in a while. Back to the market and back in the kitchen I go! I can’t wait, I have truly missed it.

In other more relevant news --- at one point I did get around to using some of my shelling peas from my CSA and have the pictures to prove it!

I was inspired by smitten kitchen’s spring asparagus version of these deviled eggs and when she suggested using peas instead, I made a mental note to do so. They were the first thing I thought of when I got them in my farmshare last week.

The eggs in the pictures look super green because I used mashed avocado instead of mayo, but mine went brown pretty darn fast. I would use mayo next time instead which is what the recipe below reflects.

These eggs had a lovely pop of freshness in an otherwise usually rich bite. Can’t wait to make them again with mayonnaise instead. Although, let me say, the avocado didn’t taste bad whatsoever, so if you’re anti-mayo it’s still a tasty choice. They just go from beautifully green to disgustingly brown in about 5 seconds, so eat them up fast!

Fresh Pea Deviled Eggs

inspired by these eggs over at smitten kitchen

Ingredients

4 hard boiled eggs

3 tablespoons fresh peas - shelled, blanched, and smashed or pureed

2 tablespoons mayonnaise (I use Sir Kensington’s)*

Squeeze of half a lemon ( approx 1 tablespoon juice)

½ tsp dijon mustard

salt and pepper to taste

*(If going the avocado route - use 2 tablespoons of avocado that has been mashed with a bit of fresh lemon juice)

Slice your hard boiled eggs in half and place the yolks in a bowl and set the whites aside.

(P.s. this is how I’ve been hard boiling my eggs with terrific results.)

Take your smashed peas, mayo, lemon juice, mustard and put them in the same bowl as the yolks and mash together to incorporate. Stir in your salt and pepper to taste.

Once fully mixed together, scoop yolk mixture and spread out equally among the egg whites. Serve immediately (recommended if you use avocado) or refrigerate covered in plastic wrap until ready to eat.

Last note, I fully recommend reading through the entirety of the smitten kitchen asparagus recipe from above. She has so many tricks and tips up her sleeve that are super helpful for making just the prettiest deviled eggs there could be.

Pickled Red Onions

Is it too late for an easy, quick Fourth of July condiment recipe? I know it’s practically over, but due to the East Coast’s complete wash out of a Fourth, perhaps some of y’all will be celebrating tomorrow? That’s what we’re doing and I will be sharing this love then. On all the burgers and all the hotdogs. Bunless, they might be. Tasteless, not so. 

As previously mentioned yesterday. I had time to do no things this week. I am le worst. So all those lovely veggies I lugged home from the market last Saturday have yet to meet their true destiny as the picnic salads I had planned to get done pre-July 4th. Gah! Even if you did celebrate today, this quick topping will hopefully elevate that cold burger you sneak out of the fridge at midnight.

I’ve only suddenly, recently, begun to adore red onions. With foods and me, it’s like a switch. One day I will hate something particular, the next day -- oh hey! You like this now! It happened with pickles, hot dogs, olives, AVOCADOS! For the life of me I can’t believe I went so long not eating avocados. I’ve thoroughly made up for lost time with those, let me tell you. It’s interesting how our palates change. So now, all of a sudden, like two weeks ago, I’ve been like -- I want all the red onions! Put them in all the salads, burrito bowls, on top the burgs!!! Charred or raw, doesn’t matter. I don’t know what hit me. So after inhaling a burger at a local restaurant that had a pickled red onion relish on it, the next logical thing to do was figure out how to pickle them at home.  

They're terribly easy to make, and definitely worth it. This is an all summer recipe really (maybe even all year), and I plan to have a jar of them on hand indefinitely.

Pickled Red Onions

1/4 cup white wine vinegar

1 tablespoon honey

1 teaspoon salt

1 tsp whole peppercorns

1 1/2 cup water

1/2 red onion, sliced

In a small saucepan, bring vinegar, honey, salt, peppercorns, and water to a boil. Add in the sliced red onion and reduce heat to a simmer. Simmer for 3-5 mins, then remove from heat and let cool.

Place in a sealed container. They will last for about two weeks in the fridge.

Put on everything. 

Strawberry Rhubarb Compote

This week got completely away from me. Completely. I got home from work late every night with not much more time to make anything but an egg and go straight to bed. Thus, my gorgeous last of the season strawberries had begun to wither away! This is not how I wanted to start this whole thing off. This whole blogging thing. It’ll be easy, I said. No problem, I said.

 Reality check. 

So to save my poor, poor, shriveling berries, tonight I chopped them up and threw them into a saucepan with some diced rhubarb I’d frozen. I cooked them away with some lemon zest and juice, some honey and vanilla. This all resulted in a decently respectable strawberry rhubarb compote. Schmear it on something toasty or drizzle it over ice cream, it’s good for all those things.

Strawberry Rhubarb Compote

2 cups extra ripe strawberries, chopped

1 cup rhubarb, chopped

Zest and juice of ½ a lemon

Splash of vanilla

4 tablespoons of honey

 Mix all indredients in a small saucepan over a low heat, stirring occasionally until broken down and thickly jammy. Seriously. That's it. I’d say it took mine about 40mins to get to my desired consistency.

It should last about two weeks in the refrigerator.