FOOD ON THE FOOD

Pico de Gallo (Red Salsa)

As the tomatoes taper off this fall, I’m bidding them a fond farewell with this recipe for fresh salsa or pico de gallo. This is my current favorite homemade red salsa (for my favorite green sauce or salsa verde, go here).

With tomatoes, onions, hot peppers, and cilantro straight from the garden, it doesn’t get any fresher than this. We usually devour all the salsa with tortilla chips or maybe we'll save a little for huevos rancheros. But my Venezuelan friend recently turned me on to arepas (fried corn cakes stuffed with cheese), so I gave those a try. I admit I just used the recipe on the back of the bag of corn meal (basically mix 2 cups precooked white corn meal with 3 cups water and 1 tsp. salt). I fried up the patties, split them, and stuffed them with shredded cheddar, which melted almost immediately from the residual heat.

Topped with fresh salsa, these had me smiling all afternoon.

Pico de Gallo

Recipe can be doubled and tripled. Ole!

1 onion, finely chopped
1/2 lime
2 medium tomatoes, finely chopped
1 jalapeño, seeds removed, minced
1 Tbsp. chopped cilantro (optional)
1/2 tsp. kosher salt (or more to taste)
Freshly ground black pepper

Soak the chopped onion in the juice of 1/2 lime for 15 minutes. Fold in the tomatoes, jalapeño, cilantro, salt, and pepper. Taste and adjust the salt, pepper, and lime if necessary. Dig in with tortilla chips or spoon over arepas.

Chicken Enchiladas

I know, I know, my food styling has regressed to pre-2008 standards. But hungry kids have no patience for all that camera foolishness, and who could blame them?

We get lots of tomatillos in our farmshare in the fall, and salsa verde is what I always make with them. I'll branch out eventually, but in the meantime, the salsa itself is very versatile. You can eat it with tortilla chips as a snack, you can make a tortilla salad, you can serve it over roasted or pan-fried fish, you can slow-cook a pork shoulder in it, or you can make enchiladas. The kids won't come near a tomatillo with a ten-foot pole, but somehow they manage to eat their weight in chicken enchiladas. Go figure.

Chicken Enchiladas  

Make the salsa verde the day before so dinner comes together more quickly. If you have neither tomatillos nor time, you can substitute jarred salsa verde instead.

1-1½ lbs. tomatillos (about two pints)

1-2 chiles, like serranos or jalapeños

1 medium onion, chopped
1-2 Tbsp. chopped cilantro

Lime juice, to taste

½ tsp. kosher salt, or to taste
1 Tbsp. vegetable oil
1½ pounds chicken thighs
½ cup water
10-12 corn tortillas
½ cup shredded Cheddar cheese or Monterey Jack

Preheat the oven to 375°F. 

Remove the husks from the tomatillos and rinse off the sticky resin in warm water. Cut the tomatillos in half and place them cut-side down in a baking dish along with the whole chiles. Roast until soft, 20 to 30 minutes. Let cool slightly so you can handle them comfortably. Remove the stems from the peppers and transfer them and the tomatillos to a blender or food processor. Add the onion, cilantro, lime juice, and salt. Puree until smooth. Add a little water if necessary to keep everything moving. (At this point, you can cover and refrigerate until ready to use.)

In a large frying pan, heat the oil over medium-high heat until hot and shimmering. Season the chicken with salt and pepper, and then brown the chicken on both sides in two batches. Remove the chicken to a plate and pour the salsa verde into the hot pan, stirring and loosening up all the browned bits from the bottom of the pan. Stir in 1/2 cup of water. Add the chicken back to the pan, bring to a simmer, cover with a lid, and reduce the heat to medium-low. Simmer until the chicken is cooked through and tender, about 15 minutes for boneless chicken breasts, a little longer for chicken on the bone. Remove the pan from the heat and transfer the chicken to a plate. Shred the chicken into bite-sized pieces and remove the bones, if any. Stir in a little salsa verde to flavor and moisten the meat. Season with more salt and pepper if necessary.

To assemble, spoon a thin layer of sauce on the bottom of a 9x13-inch baking dish. Wrap the stack of corn tortillas in a damp paper towel and gently heat them in the microwave for a minute or two until warm and pliable. One at a time, spoon a line of chicken down the center of a tortilla, fold the sides around the filling, and place seam-side-down in the baking dish. Continue until you run out of ingredients or space (any leftover chicken filling can be used in burritos for lunches). Spread the remaining salsa verde over the top, being careful to cover every square inch of the tortillas so they won't be dry. Sprinkle with shredded cheese. Bake 10 to 15 minutes until the cheese is melted and the enchiladas are heated through. Serve with sour cream and a salad of your choice.

Local Ingredients:

Tomatillos, chiles, onion, cilantro: Waltham Fields Community Farm, Waltham, MA

Chicken: Chestnut Farms, Hardwick, MA

Tortillas: Cinco de Mayo, Chelsea, MA

Cheese: Cabot, Cabot, VT


A Very Important Vegetable Meeting

I've called you all here today because I had a couple of revelations about vegetables over the past week that you might be interested in. Or not, but since when does that ever stop me. I'm not really sure how to import PowerPoint presentations into my blog, so I'm just going to read them off:

Bullet Point Number One: Spaghetti squash is delicious layered like lasagna with tomato sauce, mozzarella cheese, and Parmesan. Especially if you use a nice thick homemade tomato sauce so it doesn't get too watered down. Simply cut squash in half, scoop out guts, roast cut-side-down on oiled sheet pan 45 min. at 350 F until tender. Scoop out the stringy contents of one squash shell into square baking dish, layer with sauce and cheese, repeat with second half. Bake until bubbly, 20-30 minutes. The kids didn't notice that it wasn't spaghetti and I didn't tell them. The result was that both of them gobbled up the whole thing even though neither one of them likes tomato sauce. I know! I've given up trying to figure kids out, but sometimes it works to your advantage.

Bullet Point Number Two: YOU MUST MAKE THIS EGGPLANT RELISH!!!

Put aside that maybe you don't like eggplant, not to mention that what the hell is it doing in relish form? Put those things aside and keep them there. My neighbor brought me a taste of this one afternoon and it changed my world. I then made two batches in a week, using up four of those long, skinny CSA eggplants and a bunch of little ones from the school garden, as well as two red Italian frying peppers we got in our farmshare. I am crazy for this relish. It's delicious scooped up with pita chips, makes a nice side dish next to lamb, and could totally work as a sandwich topping. Husband wants it as lasagna filling. It's awesome! AND it's totally healthy—there's nothing bad in here at all. To put this in proper perspective, I've just spent the past month making almost nothing but cakes, pies, and strudels, and the only thing I want to eat right now is this eggplant. Either my cookbook blows or this eggplant is really something.

And that concludes my presentation. This meeting is adjourned. You are hereby dismissed from work early to go make this eggplant relish.

Spicy Eggplant Relish

If you peel the eggplant, no one will know it's eggplant and everyone will eat it. Swear to god.

2 Tbsp. olive oil
1 cup minced onion
1 medium globe eggplant or 2-3 long, skinny ones, diced small (peeling optional)
1/2 tsp. ground cumin
1/2 tsp. salt
1 medium red bell pepper, minced
1 clove garlic, minced
1 Tbsp. lemon juice
Cayenne to taste

Heat oil in a large skillet. Add onion, eggplant, cumin, and salt, and sauté over medium heat until eggplant is tender, 10-15 minutes. Add pepper and sauté another 5 minutes. Stir in garlic and lemon juice and cook several minutes more. Add cayenne a few shakes at a time until you get the desired heat. Add more salt if necessary. Serve warm, room temperature, or cold with pita chips, lamb chops, roast chicken, or all by itself with a spoon.

Source: An old Moosewood cookbook.

Local Ingredients:
Eggplant, peppers, onions, garlic: Waltham Fields Community Farm, Waltham, MA

Reaching for Summer: Broccoli Rabe Pesto

Man, have I been in a dinner rut lately.  Anyone else?  I think it's the time of year: I'm mentally done with winter, but spring is still teasingly out of reach.  And I don't want to put down any groundhogs with regard to weather predictions, but I'm not sure I agree with their scientific method.

Happily, I came across some frozen broccoli rabe pesto I made with last year's CSA bounty from Waltham Fields.  I'm a big proponent of making pesto out of any and all green things: basil, mint, parsley, cilantro, garlic scapes, garlic mustard growing wild in our yard.  However, broccoli rabe had not been a pesto ingredient in our kitchen until last year, when I saw a recipe in Food & Wine's cookbook Reinventing the Classics.  It's a cookbook I'm really enjoying and will likely reference again--lots of sprightly seasonal dishes as well as some good recipes for the shiitakes I grow.  The recipe for delicata squash stuffed with quinoa salad was a particularly good find, and you know I have little patience for squash and/or quinoa. 

I'm happy to have another use for broccoli rabe since it's one of my favorite greens (I say greens because the kind I get from my CSA tends to be leafy and short on florets).  This pesto was delicious the first time around with prosciutto and ricotta ravioli from DePasquale's Pasta Shoppe in the North End.  It was also super tasty the second time around on thin spaghetti with sweet Italian sausages from the unrelated DePasquale's sausage shop in Newton and some broccolini of unknown origin.  (If your kid sees broccolini in the store and wants some because he likes the name, well, by god, buy the broccolini!!!)  Earthy and bright, this pesto was a little bit of summer sunshine after what I hope will be the last snowfall of the winter. 


Broccoli Rabe Pesto

1/3 cup walnuts
1/2 lb. broccoli rabe, trimmed
1 garlic clove
1/3 cup plus 1 Tbsp. olive oil
Pinch crushed red pepper
1/3 cup Pecorino
Kosher salt and black pepper to taste

Preheat oven to 350 F.  Spread walnuts in a pie plate and toast for 8 minutes until golden and fragrant (or toast them in a dry pan over low heat, tossing frequently, about 4-5 minutes).  Let cool.

In a large pot of boiling salted water, cook the broccoli rabe until tender, about 3 minutes.  Drain and let cool under cold water.  Squeeze out excess water and coarsely chop.

In a food processor, mince garlic.  Add walnuts and pulse until coarsely chopped.  Add broccoli rabe and crushed pepper and process until finely chopped while adding oil slowly through the feed tube.  Add 1/3 cup Pecorino and pulse until just combined.  Scrape into bowl and season to taste with salt and pepper.

Freeze or serve by boiling 3/4 to 1 lb. pasta in salted water.  Drain, reserving 3/4 cup of the pasta water.  Toss pasta with pesto and reserved water until well coated.

Source: Adapted from Reinventing the Classics by Dana Cowin and the editors of Food & Wine.

Simple Salsa Verde

One thing I love about CSAs is the exposure you get to vegetables you maybe don’t think to buy.  Take tomatillos, for instance.  Do I love those fresh-tasting Mexican green sauces often found gracing enchilada plates?  Yes.  Do I suspect that tomatillos play a vital role in their deliciousness?  Yes.  Have I ever bought a tomatillo in my life?  No! 

Well, why the hell not?  That seems to be the question posed by my neighborhood farmers judging from the pint after pint after pint of tomatillos we’ve been offered this summer.  I can’t ever say no.  The result is I’ve gotten a little more comfortable with tomatillos.  Now I know to wait until the yellowish-green fruits fill up their husks and split the seams before picking them.  I know that you can make salsas out of either raw or cooked tomatillos, but that I prefer cooked.  That the resulting salsa is absolutely fantastic for both scooping up with tortilla chips and spooning over roasted fish (or, as we had last night, pan-fried dabs—a flatfish related to the flounder).  For a smoother sauce for those chicken enchiladas I mentioned, just run the salsa through the food processor or blender, thinning with some water if necessary.

Who knows, maybe one day I'll attain a similar comfort level with all of these millions of exotic hot peppers that keep ending up in my refrigerator!

 

Roasted Tomatillo Salsa

For the love of god, don’t touch your eyes (or any other sensitive part of yourself or anyone else) with your chile pepper fingers.  Scrub your hands WELL.  Trust me.

1-1½ lbs. tomatillos (about two pints)
1-2 chiles, like serranos or jalapeños
1 medium onion, finely chopped
1-2 Tbsp. cilantro, chopped
Lime juice, to taste
Salt, to taste

Preheat oven to 375°F.  Remove husks from tomatillos and rinse off the sticky resin in warm water.  Cut them in half and place cut-side down in baking dish along with whole chiles.  Roast until soft, 20-30 minutes.  Let cool slightly so you can handle them comfortably.

Coarsely chop the tomatillos and put into a small bowl.  Finely chop the roasted chiles and add as much as you think you can handle.  Chiles vary in how much heat they deliver, both between all the different varieties and within their own ranks.  For a very mild salsa, add only the flesh of the chile (slice the four sides from the pepper, scrape off and discard the seeds and inner ribs, and mince).  For more heat, add some seeds.  Not all the seeds!  The number of seeds you should add is directly proportional to how convincingly you can roll your r’s.  Here’s a good test—say this:

Un burro comía berros y el perro se los robó, el burro lanzó un rebuzno, y el perro al barro cayó.

If that doesn’t roll off the tongue, I’d lay off the seeds.

Add the onion, cilantro, lime juice, and salt (be generous with the salt, though).  Serve with tortilla chips or mounded over roasted fish.  For a less chunky, more uniform sauce for, say, those chicken enchiladas I mentioned, purée in food processor and thin with water to desired consistency.

 

Local Ingredients:

Tomatillos, onion, chiles: Waltham Fields Community Farms, Waltham, MA

Red Pesto

Here’s another guest post, this time from Jill over at North Shore Dish.  Be sure to hop over and check out the gorgeous photography and all the delicious happenings to the north of the City.  Thanks, Jill!

I love how recipes evolve. One of my family’s favorite pasta dishes was given to me years ago by a friend. She found it in a newspaper or magazine, photocopied it, and wrote her changes on it. My copy has the original article, plus her changes, plus mine.

I keep the original rather than typing out the recipe I actually use because the article tells the story of how the recipe originated with Luciano Pavarotti, who says you must first sing the tenor part of an opera, preferably Verdi, before making the dish.

I’ve never followed that instruction and the pasta still tastes terrific. It’s easy to make, feeds a crowd, and it’s a nice change from regular tomato sauce or pesto.

Red Pesto

1 lb frozen ricotta cavatelli
½ cup minced fresh basil
½ cup minced fresh flat-leaf parsley
1 small can tomato paste
½ cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese (I’ve used Kraft in a pinch, and the sauce is still delicious)
2 garlic cloves, minced
½ cup extra-virgin olive oil

Boil a large pot of water while you make the sauce.

I use my Cuisinart to chop the herbs, then transfer them to a bowl and add the tomato paste, cheese, garlic, and oil. Mix thoroughly.

Cook the pasta according to the directions, return to the hot pot, add the sauce, and stir. Serve with additional grated cheese, crusty bread or garlic bread, and a green salad.

Note: I don’t recommend using another pasta. It will taste fine, but there’s something magical in the combination of the cavatelli with this sauce. The sauce will keep fine in the fridge for a day, just stir before using as the oil will have separated.

Cookbook Friday: Tomato Sauce

Dora Barbaresi (my grandmother) with sweetheart, Freddie Donarumo, in 1940 in front of her house in New Haven, CT.

Dora met Freddie at a party hosted by the Junior League club.  She was 18 years old and was there with her boyfriend at the time.  Freddie, 20, was there with his girlfriend.  Dora took one look at Freddie and decided right then that he was the one.  He must have noticed her, too, because the very next week, Freddie invited Dora on a hayride.  After that, they were inseparable.

No one in the family has ever heard anyone say a bad word about Freddie.  He worked as a manager at the local A&P, and was known as an all-around great guy.  After dating for five years, Freddie proposed.  “Will you marry me?" he asked Dora.  "Because if you don’t, I’m going into the seminary.”  He was only being slightly dramatic; he actually was considering the priesthood.  But, Dora accepted and, reflecting back, she says, “Of course, I was going to marry him.  I wasn’t going to waste him on the church.”

Nonni’s Tomato Sauce

But, where’s the oregano?  Where’s the basil?  She doesn’t use it, and I’ve never missed it.  This sauce is great with her eggplant parmesan, lasagna, manicotti, and tortiere.  It also freezes well.

2 Tbsp. olive oil
3 garlic cloves, chopped
1 pork chop or 2 sausage links
1 large (28 oz.) can tomato puree
½ can water
Salt and pepper

Heat olive oil in large frying pan.  Add meat and cook until nicely browned.  Remove meat and set aside.  Add garlic and cook until fragrant (about 10 seconds).  Add tomato puree, water, cooked meat, and simmer for about an hour (she says, taste and you’ll know.).  Add salt and pepper.

Dora [Barbaresi] Donroe
New Haven, Connecticut
1918 -

Next Recipe: Eggplant Parmesan

     (Previous Recipe: Passatellis)