Selective Palate

So summer is officially here and so is my local farmers market. Even though it is still early in the growing season for Vermont we have had quite a nice bounty. The local farmers have also been dropping off their goods to our local coop so I don’t have to wait all week! A while back I just happened to stumble on a bunch of beautiful ramps. Without even thinking I grabbed 2! Knowing the season is super short I just had to grab them without even thinking about what to make. When I got home I laid them out on the counter. What to do? PESTO!

Ramp Pesto with Asparagus tossed with Spaghetti

Ingredients:
1 bunch wild ramps (leaves an d bulbs)
handful blanched almonds (about ¼ cup)
¼ cup Parmesan cheese
salt and pepper to taste
enough olive oil to bring it all together plus 1 T.
1 bunch Asparagus cut in 1 inch pieces
1 lb spaghetti

Recipe:

In a blender place first 4 ingredients with the motor running stream in enough olive oil till the sauce comes together . Set aside. Make pasta to package directions. While that is boiling heat up a sauté pan with about 1 T. olive oil and quickly sauté the asparagus until tender crisp or however you like them. Add cooked pasta to sauté pan with asparagus and toss. With heat off mix in the pesto thoroughly, add some pasta water if you need to thin it out and gently heat the pesto. Serve immediately with some fresh parm!

This is a really yummy, satisfying, fresh and pretty dish! I served it for company and everyone loved it. It went great with both the chardonnay and pinot noir I served plus since we all ate it the garlic breathe was canceled out!

Up here in Vermont the farming season is already short add to that about 2 months of straight rain and you get a very disappointing tomato harvest. M and I decided to utilize are large yet mostly useless deck to start a container garden. And though fun it was not very prosperous to say the least. I was hoping for bounties of tasty summer tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers and herbs but really we ended up with tiny tomatoes with little flavor, 2 small cucumber, and 3 peppers (good news this sudden batch of sunshine has encouraged more peppers!). The herbs came out fine I guess, but not what I had hoped for at all and due to all the rain we had cilantro for about 2 weeks till it all flowered and died; on the other hand it came to seed and I harvested coriander! I still found myself having to go to the farmers market weekly. But that did not stop me from taking what little we harvested and adding that to some farmers market goodies to create my favorite summertime treat; Gazpacho!

For some of you this is the perfect way to end the summer and rid yourself of all those tomatoes you may have *cough-jealous-cough* instead of making jars and jars of tomato sauce you can whip up a batch of this soup. It can last in the fridge for over a week, if its not eaten quicker and you can morph it into all kinds of things; add hot peppers or sauce and you have salsa, blend up into a thick puree and you have a light fresh tomato sauce to toss with pasta, add basil and top bruschetta, I am tellin ya endless possibilities!

Recipe:

3-5 Good sized tomatoes, any variety will work, I used a combo of heirloom and slicing from my garden and a few romas I grabbed at the market; diced
1 cucumber diced
1-2 bell peppers diced green or red, I like the sweetness of the red
1 onion, you can use regular white but I like the sweeter varieties, like bermuda, vidalia and red
2-3 cloves garlic minced
A good splash sherry vinegar or white wine works well here too, about 1/4 cup
About 1/4 cup of good quality olive oil with a little extra to drizzle at the end
1 cup tomato juice or sauce (not seasoned)
1 cup or so beef broth (you can leave this out to make it vegetarian and add either veggie stock, water, or more tomato juice)
A couple good dashes of hot sauce
handfull of fresh cilantro and parsley
and of course salt and pepper

Once you have all your veggies diced up nice take about 2/3 of them and plop them in a blender, I use my stick blender. The point is to puree about 2/3 of the mixture. Now pour all the chopped veggies and pureed veggies in a large bowl and add the remaining ingredients. Just add what you need until you get the desired taste and constancy. If you like your soup thinner you will most likely use all the liquid but if you like a chunkier style like I do you will add less. Play with the vinegar, if your tomatoes are a bit more on the acidic side you may want to cut back but if like me they were a tad bland you may want to kick it up. Also, the hot sauce is to taste feel free to leave it out. We like spicy in this house so I add quite a bit. This is not a science just a basic recipe. It is pretty fool proof if you ask me.

Traditionally, gazpacho uses stale bread but I omit that opting for a crustini along side my soup but the choice is yours. Also, with the bread left out you can morph this into so much more.

Chill this soup over night for best flavors. When ready to serve ladle into cups or bowls and top with a drizzle of good olive oil and a few sprigs of fresh cilantro.

Morphing ideas:

To the leftover soup add chopped olives, capers and fresh oregano and toss with hot pasta.

Add a few more chopped up tomatoes, raw or roasted and a some diced jalapenos for a chunky salsa, or puree further and add chopped chipolte in adobe for a thin smokey salsa.

Add more tomatoes, and fresh basil and top bruschetta for a nice appetizer.

Or puree until smooth adding more tomato juice if needed and mix with vodka for a little twist on a classic Bloody Mary!

You can even freeze this soup! It may not taste as fresh when thawed but in the dead of winter it will be a perfect taste of summer.

Sometime back in late June early July garlic scapes and ramps were all over the famers market. I had never cooked with either so of course I picked up bunches of both to experiment. After tasting them I had tried them in several dishes from ramp risotto to home made garlic scape ‘n herb buttermilk dressing. Both were fantastic and I can say now that I am big fan of both. Unfortunately, the season for both are very short and I must wait till next year to enjoy them again. But I can look back and remember them fondly.

One Wednesday night back in July I had bought some gorgeous sea scallops and fresh jumbo shrimp from the fish truck. Now I am the only person in my house that eats either so whenever I make them I have to make a dish that I can throw in chicken or fish for M. This night I looked in my veggie bins for inspiration. It hadn’t gone to the farmers market that morning so I was working with the remnants from the weekend. I had a few garlic scapes, 2 ramps, and a bunch of swiss chard. Also, in the fridge was leftover brown rice from earlier in the week. I quickly figured on a variation of scampi!

Recipe:

Protein of your choice, I used sea scallops, shrimp, and sliced chicken breast, but you really can use anything you like. But if you use white wine like I did you may want to stick with your “white” meats. (Just a side note a great fall and winter variation I use red meat and red wine!)
1 bunch chard or any green you like chopped up into bite size pieces
red chili flakes to taste
2-3 ramps sliced up
1-2 garlic scapes chopped up
1-2 T. butter
1 cup or so white wine, any decent wine works here, I have done this with whatever I was drinking at the time or even vermouth.

First heat a fry pan until it is good and hot, melt 1/2 the butter (if it smokes too much you can add olive oil to bring the smoke point down, or just remove the pan from the heat as you add the butter). Place your scallops (or whatever) in the pan to get a nice sear on the meat. I seared off my scallops first then the shrimp and finally the chicken (each separately so not to over cook the seafood). Remove meat from pan and add more butter along with the ramps, scapes, and chili flakes if using. Saute for about 30 seconds to 1 minute until you just begin to see some color and smell the ramps and scapes. Add the wine and deglaze the pan scraping up all the wonderful bits. Add in the chard and begin to wilt the greens. Then place your meat back into to pan just to warm through, and finish cooking. You can if you like add a little more butter to the sauce at the last minute to give it a silky texture and don’t forget to season with salt and pepper at the end very important! Serve over leftover rice, pasta, cous cous or by it self.

And there you go a very fast, fresh and tasty meal. I make several variations of this all year long. This was a first with the ramps and scapes but I really enjoyed it. The scapes keep a good bit of their texture through the cooking process along with keeping a nice garlic taste. The ramps get nice and sweet and have a taste of well, sweet garlic shallots. I used the greens and the bulb of the ramp which both have their own flavor. Still if you don’t have garlic scapes or ramps sub out garlic and shallots, or onions, green onions or really anything you have on hand. This is not so much a recipe as it is a method, you really can do anything you like! That is what I love about cooking, you get to be so creative while using up what you have leftover!

This once a week deal is really not working so well I know. This blogging thing isn’t as easy as it looks!

Well this week though busy has been great so far. I am so happy to have our farmers market back. I knew I missed it but I didn’t know how much. Now up here the market starts in the beginning of June but we don’t start seeing any real produce until towards the end of the month. So this Saturday I headed on over (its across the street, how cool is that!). I lucked out with some great finds. I came home with a lunch of locally produced aged goat cheese, with freshly baked croissants. In addition, I was able to score some fresh butter lettuce and radishes and the biggest score of the day was a fresh ham steak from a local farm who raise their livestock from birth with no hormones/antibiotics, fed on food from the farm! It is really amazing. We had the cheese with the croissants and saved the produce and fresh ham for Sunday dinner.

Saturday night we decided to go to Jazz Fest in Burlington and we had an awesome dinner at Luenigs and enjoyed great music from Trio Gusto with Mike Martin. They were fantastic and we really enjoyed ourselves. So much so that I will follow up with another post all about it!

So on to Sunday Dinner!

With everything being so fresh I didn’t want to cover up any of that flavor so I kept it really simple. I started with a short brine on the pork. A combo of brown sugar, kosher salt, cloves, coriander, and black pepper corns and water. Once the brine cooled I soaked the pork for about 2 hours. It was only about 2 pounds so it didn’t need much. Once out of the brine I mixed up a rub consisting of toasted coriander seeds, cumin, garlic, salt and pepper mixed with a drop of liquid smoke and a drizzle of (fresh from the farmers market) cold pressed sunflower oil. By the way this stuff is like liquid gold. It has a nice nutty taste and is light and really full of flavor. You could of course use olive oil and no one would be the wiser! I ground all this up together in a mortar and pastel until a nice paste formed. I slathered that all over the ham steak and let that sit for about an hour as I got the rest of dinner prepped and ready to go.

First, I pre-heated the oven to 450 and placed my grill pan in the oven to heat up. I don’t have an outside grill so I use this set up whenever I want the same effect. Then I began work on the salad. The butter lettuce was picked that morning so as you can imagine it was a little dirty; I gave it a good washing and let it dry while I cleaned and sliced the radishes nice a thin and sliced some vidalia onions very thin as well. I threw it all in a bowl and that is where it sat waiting its dressing. Again I went real simple here. The dressing was nothing more than 1/4 cup lemon juice, 1/4 butter milk, 1-2 T. fresh dill, salt and pepper, and of course a drizzle of the Sunflower oil. It made a great light and tangy ,perfect for the salad. I held off tossing together until ready to serve. Then I began a light BBQ sauce to serve with the pork.

My mother used to make this sauce when I was a kid. In fact I had never even had store bought until I was grown and out of the house. I still prefer mom’s!

This is not an exact recipe but more like a method and a taste as you go kind of sauce. But here ya go, just don’t tell mom I gave out her secret!

Melt about 1-2T. butter in a sauce pan then add about 2-4 cloves garlic minced, 1-2 T. onion minced and saute until fragrant (NOT BURNT!) to this add about 1/4 cup brown sugar and let it get all carmally. To this add a few gluggs of beer, any kind really, whatever you like to drink. You could sub out hard cider or just stock if you don’t want the alcohol. Let this bubble away and add some tomato paste, I add a good squirt from the tube I would say about 2 tsp. Stir in and then add about 1/2 bottle of catchup and 1/4 cup red wine vinegar. This is usually where my mother stops, I however like things with a bit of a kick and I added 1 tsp. of cayenne and a couple good dashes of hot sauce. And don’t forget the salt and pepper! That’s it; it’s real simple and lends itself to experimentation. Really its hard to screw it up!

Ok Lets put this meal together!

Now that the “grill” is hot I gently laid the ham steak in the pan and closed the door. Cook on this side for about 10 minutes. I got some nice grill marks and accumulated some nice juices in the pan which I used to baste the steak as I turned it over and cooked for another 5 minutes or so. I took the pork out of the oven and let it rest while I took some corn on the cob I had handy and just placed them on the grill pan and put them in the oven.

By the time the ham steak had rested, the corn was done and I tossed the dressing with the salad. Serve with the sauce on the side and dinner was done!