Sunday Morning Reads

For your Sunday morning cuppa joe

can’t get more spring in a salad

the search for the perfect taco (otherwise known as my day-to-day life)

lesson learned: live your dream (even if that dream is making yogurt)

school lunches: a priority (related: Fed Up is a must watch)

also related: are we setting kids up to be sick, fat, and unhappy?

graphic article, important read

i'm technically a 90's kid; i was raised like a 70's one

the late, the great josh ozersky on food writing

lucky peach fan girl, i am, but this article has me running for the canning jars

Roasted Ramp Ricotta Pasta

I keep buying ramps. I keep buying them like I have the faintest clue what to do with them. Sometimes I think I am just buying them for the sake of their seasonality. I know they’re only here for a short time and I mean, everyone else is buying them…

Where’s a mom with her sayings about bridges?

Instagram was telling me that I could just roast them and end it there. Perhaps poach an egg and call it a night. Instagram was also really selling ramp pesto. I wanted to do something else, truth be told I’m not that big on pesto.

Sometimes a new experience, a new adventure, a new place can serve as inspiration. 

And sometimes that place is Brooklyn.

Since the weather’s been getting nicer, my boyfriend and I have been really diligent about going to different areas of the city and just ‘splorin on the weekends. We’ve both lived here alotta years but feel like there are whole parts of the city we’ve never seen. Two Saturdays ago we spent the entire afternoon and night walking all over Greenpoint and Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Iced coffees were slurped, comfort food was had, ice cream was discovered, a frisbee was tossed, sunset was seen with toes in the grass. We didn’t want the day to end so we wandered around again until we found a cute little restaurant to grab some matching whiskey on the rocks.

Since we were still full from a heavy lunch, we sat at the bar and just sipped on our Jamesons, but I couldn’t help but look at the menu anyway. Just as I was thinking that the next day I really had to come up with a way to use those ramps --- I spotted a ricotta ramp pasta on the specials menu that sounded completely inspiring. Very springy, very simple sounding, very much something I thought I could replicate with some adaptations here and there.

So I figured out what to do with those ramps.

Watch those roasting ramps carefully! My first time roasting ramps I lost the poor things. Burnt to a crisp. RIP. A little char on the ends is a nice contrast but otherwise you just want them to soften and caramelize a bit. Also, can I just say you’re not doing it right if you’re not covered in dirt and leaves when dealing with your ramps. Clean them very well. They have a lot of crevices and those crevices have mud in them.

If you can find fresh peas, bless you -- USE THEM. I made do with some frozen ones.

And by all means, you can use whatever type of pasta you like, I used a gluten-free, “paleo” pasta by Cappello’s.

Last note, you probably won’t use the entire batch of ramp ricotta, but I can assure you I didn’t have a hard time figuring out how to use the rest. I may have spread it on some toast with roasted red peppers and pepitas. I also may have folded it into some meatballs…

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Roasted Ramp Ricotta Pasta

inspired by a special at Juliette

Ingredients:

1 bunch ramps, trimmed of ends and cleaned very well

olive oil for roasting

salt and pepper

8 oz ricotta (about 1 ½ cups)

¼ cup chopped fresh parsley

½ cup diced bacon

1 cup fresh or frozen peas

1 box Cappello’s Fettucine (or approximately 8 oz fresh pasta / 4 oz dry pasta)

squeeze of half a lemon

shredded parmesan for sprinkling (if desired)

Directions:

Heat oven to 350 degrees.

In a roasting pan, spread ramps out evenly amongst each other. Drizzle well with olive oil and season with salt and pepper. Roast for about 15 to 20 minutes. Begin checking them at around 10 minutes to ensure they do not burn.

While ramps are roasting, begin preparing the other components. Fill a medium sized saucepan with salted water and begin bringing it to a boil for the pasta. In a small bowl fold the majority of the chopped parsley into the ricotta, reserve a bit of the parsley for garnish if desired.

Once the ramps have finished roasting, remove from oven and let sit for a bit until cool enough to handle. Meanwhile begin to render out the bacon in a pan over medium heat. Once bits are close to getting nice and crispy, toss in the peas. Cook the peas until just warmed through and bacon is nice and brown. Remove from heat.

Take the cooled ramps and give them a nice chop. Fold the chopped ramps into the ricotta mixture. Then season it with salt and pepper to taste.

Now that all your components are ready, prepare the pasta. If you’re not using the Cappello’s pasta or a fresh pasta, do your best to accommodate for the cooking time of dry pasta. Cappello’s or fresh pasta only takes about a minute to cook, so I always cook it last.

As soon as pasta is done cooking, reserve a bit of the cooking water, drain the pasta and dump it into a large mixing bowl. Immediately add about 1/2 to 3/4 cup of the ricotta mix to the pasta. Add the bacon, peas, and some of the bacon fat to the bowl as well. Begin to toss together. I find that using a pair of tongs helps to turn the pasta into the mix gently. If you feel it needs a bit of help becoming saucy add a touch of the reserved cooking water until it’s the desired consistency. A squeeze of lemon at the end helps brighten the whole thing up.

Serve with a sprinkling of chopped parsley and shredded parmesan.

Serves 4

What I Really Eat: Migas Style Breakfast Tacos

"What I really eat" are my Iron Chef meals. My pantry meals. Shit, my fridge is empty meals. The things that come out of necessity and lack of time. The ingredient list will usually be small and the execution usually simple. Something that is less of a recipe and more of a guideline. If something exceptionally awesome comes out of my Sunday night scramble, it will get posted as a “What I Really Eat” and probably be accompanied with a not-my-best photo.

Having not encountered much Tex-Mex growing up, I didn’t learn the genius of migas until I was watching the special features section for the movie Sin City. I was a bonafide film nerd growing up (I even went to film school!) so it was normal for me to pour over the special features of any movie I came across. Here is where Robert Rodriguez solidified himself as both a favorite director and a serious crush factor. He makes movies? He cooks? And eggs for dinner at that? Sold. I’m sold.

(I highly suggest watching his other cooking school videos. As he wisely says "not knowing how to cook is like not knowing how to f...just watch the videos.)

My love of migas has now totally and completely been cemented since I began visiting friends in Austin, Texas. One night while everyone else was drunkenly digging into some deliciously sloppy nachos, I was happily inhaling migas breakfast tacos at one in the morning.

These should work for all your come-home-a-bit-tipsy midnight snack needs, breakfast for dinner indulgences, and are just as appropriate for the time of day when eggs are usually consumed. They would make an awesome assemble-your-own brunch item. I’ve even packed them up for “not a sad desk lunch". Eaten cold from the fridge with my fingers? Guilty.

These of course would be much more simple without all the frying of various carb sources, but it’s the crunch of the tortillas that gets me every.single.time. More power to you if you make your own tortillas, recipe is in the video link. I’ve done it before and it is for sure worth it. When I’m just looking to stuff my face though, some organic sprouted corn tortillas I found at Whole Foods have been doing the trick just fine. If you do watch the video, I did adapt the recipe to essentially combine the two different tacos he makes. Believe you me, when tomatoes are in season again, those are going right on in.

I don’t believe in Cinco de Mayo, but I do believe in tacos. Here’s my contribution to the “holiday”.

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Migas Style Breakfast Tacos

adapted from Robert Rodriguez’s 10 Minute Cooking School

Ingredients:

¼ cup olive oil for frying

2 smallish yukon gold potatoes, diced

2 corn tortillas, cut into ½ inch squares

2 tablespoons butter

1 onion, diced

1 jalapeno, ribs and seeds removed and minced

6 eggs

splash of heavy cream or whole milk

salt and pepper

6 additional corn tortillas for serving

sliced avocado

hot sauce to taste

Directions:

In a medium sized skillet heat up approximately a ¼ cup of olive oil over medium heat. Once the oil is hot enough add diced potatoes to oil. Fry up until golden brown on all sides and soft when pierced with a fork. Remove from oil and set on a paper towel lined plate to drain, sprinkle with salt to taste.

Add cut up tortillas to the same oil, watch these carefully they will brown up quickly. Fry until completely golden brown. Turn off heat and add to paper towel lined plate to drain. Sprinkle with salt to taste.

In a different skillet or the same with oil cleaned out, heat 1 tablespoon of butter over medium high heat. Once melted add onion and jalapeno to the pan. While the vegetables are cooking, beat the 6 eggs with the splash of heavy cream and salt and pepper until combined.

When onion and pepper are getting soft and starting to caramelize, crank up the heat to high and add the remaining tablespoon of butter. Swirl to coat pan. When butter is melted and starting to brown, add the eggs to the hot pan. Let eggs begin to set on the bottom and then quickly add the potatoes and fried tortillas to the eggs. Start to pull the eggs away from the sides of the pan as you would scrambled eggs. Continue to cook eggs until the desired consistency. Remove from heat and plate.

Here’s where you do you. To serve, if you want lightly warm a tortilla then scoop a bit of the eggs into it. Top with avocado and hot sauce to taste. Proceed to stuff face.

Serves 4 to 6

Monday Market Haul - 5/4/2015

Green has become an impossibly comforting color to see these past few weeks. After the months of dusty, dreary, dank greyness of everything, the refreshing bursts of green appearing everywhere, it’s like coming out of a black and white film reel into a technicolor wonderland.

Have you ever seen the movie Pleasantville? It’s kinda like that.

eggs, pea shoots, broccoli rabe, asparagus, ramps, baby lettuces, lilacs, sausage

Here I present my ever comforting haul including the outcome of all those April showers. There’s a saying about that right?

P.s. I figured out what to do with last week’s ramps. So there’s that.

Monday Market Haul - 4/27/2015

A girl can only eat so many crunchy kale salads before yearning for the juicy, crispness of romaine to then truly be brought out of the winter blues. As is such, while I patiently wait to spot the asparagus, peas, and rhubarb that spring is so famous for, the baby lettuce stand-ins are doing a bang up job of transitioning the season through.

So not to beat a dead horse, but did you also know that ramps are here? Ramps. RAMPS! I tell you.

Oh, really? Everyone else in this weird food world already told you? Okay that’s good, I can save my breath then. Because, ramps.

Happy to report that this much awaited harbinger of spring was exceptionally lower in price than the 20 dollars (!!!!) they were last weekend. I tried to restrain myself from buying more than one bunch because, truthfully, I haven’t a clue what I want to do with them. Do you know? Can you help me? Anybody? Bueller?

Monday Market Haul - 4/20/2015

Sometimes I forget that spring might be my favorite time of year.

Summer is my jam. I’m probably the only person in this city that appreciates a good humid climate combined with straight outta hell heat. Fall is pretty gorge, but only in New England. Winter, um, again, only in New England. And only if you don’t have to drive anywhere.

But spring. Spring is an amazing time of year, especially in the city. All of a sudden, it starts thawing out, both physically and metaphorically. The winters can be harshhhhh. And so can the summers in their own sense. But when we have yet to remember that summer follows spring, we’re all pretty excited to exit our self-imposed hibernation.

My absolute favorite is when the trees start to bloom. All the trees wake up and are no longer these stoic, scraggly sticks coming out of the ground. They’re like giant bouquets erupting out of the sidewalks! Eventually all the petals fall off, but even that is beautiful, like snow showers.

As excited as I was for the start of the new year, spring has begun to be the true time of rebirth and new beginnings. The city has just begun it’s reawakening, and I along with it. I didn’t realize I’d been hibernating too.

Spring favorites have been popping up all over my instagram. I was super excited to get my hands on some this weekend at the market. I only found some RAMPS! But as buying even one bunch at $20(!!!!) would have stripped down half my market budget I decided against them. Alas, there was no rhubarb or spring peas or asparagus. Those grams must have been situated a bit more south or west of the northeast. Oh well, next week (or the week after, or the week after) it is!

These pictures are from some hauls from a few weeks ago. Long past due.

Winter Slaw

Disclaimer: We are going to pretend I didn’t go MIA yet again last week okay?...I don’t want to talk about it.

Well that went fast. It’s March already? How the hell did that happen? Winter is, dare I say, almost over?

I'm not winter's biggest fan or anything, and yet I’m vaguely sad about it. I’m not sure if it’s just time passing by so quickly that makes me feel wistful or if it’s genuinely the fact that another season has just ticked by. I was really getting in the swing of things for winter cooking. Baking all the squash, eating all the kale salads, living off pears, apples, and citrus. Braising, roasting, soup-making.

The thought of winter cooking terrified me when I was sitting upon heaps and heaps of summer produce (with scarcely an idea of what to do with ALLLLL of it.) I realize now, the abundance of summer produce can be downright overwhelming.

Where as, and I’ve said this before, the limited variety of winter produce has me figuring out how to use the same vegetable in several different, more creative ways. I also look back on past winters when I was always so disappointed with the general lousiness of vegetables. Mealy pink tomatoes, rubbery peppers, miniscule zucchinis, nevermind the tasteless strawberries and costly raspberries -- then seasonal eating went and slapped me upside the head. Um, hello! It ALL makes sense now. Eating locally and seasonally has changed my entire life, and I can say definitively for the better.

So since winter is just about done (although currently in NYC there looks to be no end in sight, i.e. snowing the rest of the week) I’m sharing with you today a Winter Slaw. I lived off this slaw for about a week and it only got better with time. And then I made it again, because it was that good. And before winter yields to spring in a few weeks, I want to make another batch, to toast to the cabbage, and kale, and carrots, and apples. Because even among the grey, dreariness of the season, they made everything a little brighter.

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Winter Slaw

Ingredients:

¼ cup white balsamic vinegar or apple cider vinegar

¼ cup olive oil

1 tablespoon maple syrup

1 tablespoon dijon mustard

salt and pepper to taste

1 head red cabbage, shredded thinly

½ bunch kale, chiffonaded

4 carrots, shredded or julienned

1 granny smith apple, shredded or julienned

½ cup golden raisins

Directions:

In a small bowl, mix all dressing ingredients and whisk together until well combined. Set aside.

To assemble slaw, add all prepped vegetables to a large salad bowl and toss together until well mixed.

Pour dressing over vegetables and toss again to coat.

The slaw only gets better with time, taste wise and it turns a very pretty magenta after a day or two in the fridge.

Yield: 10 to 12 servings

Monday Market Haul - 2/23/2015

Well I went MIA there for a bit, I’m sorry. I have no excuse other than, well, life.

Work, was the main culprit, it was just “one of those weeks” for two weeks in a row. And then sometimes I take the work life “home with me.” It makes it nearly impossible to scrounge up the least bit of creative energy, and then I let this space wander. The following guilt makes things no better.

Hoping to get back to a regular routine over here.

Going to the market in the beginnings of an actual snow storm was a magical and refreshing start to the weekend. In a stroke of luck, I was able to get all I needed at the market, even though I got there much later than usual, due to work, and then there was snow. More snow.

I figured all the farmers were going to pack up early to avoid a slippery drive back. But I hauled ass down to Union Square as soon as I could just to see if anyone was still there. While some stands were missing and others were wrapping up, I was still able to score sausage, syrup, squash, and the prettiest greens in existence. The Vermont syrup guys had no plans to leave too early -- hardcore New Englanders. #represent

Since I missed about two weeks here, I’ve built up quite the backlog of things to share, so I’m hoping to get my act together and get them out to the world, asap. Those cute, little nasturtiums that came in my greens (via, Two Guys From Woodbridge) and the days staying brighter longer is certainly helping my motivation right now.

Although my initial positive outlook for 2015 is at times waning away, I can still feel change in the air. I’m desperately trying to stay close to that feeling as I move throughout my days. Just keep cooking, just keep cooking, just keep cooking...I tell myself.