Leek, Potato, and Mushroom Tart

Hey, I made a good pie crust! Like, the real way: cutting the butter in with a fork and a cool, fast hand, then chilling the dough, then rolling it out, then folding it up so I could move it and unfolding it in the pan.

This is a new thing for me. I hadn't tried the real thing in several years, partially because I thought I didn't care that much about pie crust and partially because the whole procedure seemed fussy. But I think that was just me being defensive about my poor pie crust skilllz.

Of late, I've been alarmed by the premade frozen pie crusts we sometimes buy -- who knows what's in those? And my simple oil crusts have been tough and nasty. So when I decided to make a roasted vegetable tart thing the other night, I knew I had to make a real crust.

The egg yolks were the trick. I used this recipe for the crust. For the filling I sort of followed the recipe except that I used fewer potatoes, left them in bigger chunks, and added a whole bunch of quartered cremini mushrooms. I also added the two egg whites left over from making the crust. And I used a deep springform pan, so the vegetables had plenty of space.

The whole thing was wonderful. It wasn't eggy or creamy at all. At that high temperature, each vegetable roasted up perfectly, with internal juiciness but lots of browned surface. It was a little oniony -- these were unpredictable local leeks, and they were not as mild as I would have liked. Otherwise, though: perfect.

Local Beets

Apropos of not much, here are some local beets from the All-Local Farmers Market. They were so tender and delicious -- quite a bit juicier and milder than what I get from the grocery store. And rich, so rich -- I could only eat small amounts. I roasted them at 400 degrees for 80 minutes, covered in tinfoil, and sliced them up with just a little butter. They did not need salt or pepper. I wish I could remember the name of the farm they came from.

Classic Mojito Recipe

The point of this post is to record my mojito recipe. I had it down last year, but I managed to completely forget my recipe over the winter and have had to spend the past month re-perfecting it.

Easy way to remember it: the Rules of Twos.

For each mojito:

1. Put about 2 inches of fresh mint leaves in the bottom of a tall glass. Smush them up a little with the handle of a sharpening steel, which is the perfect muddler if you're not into buying something as fancy as a muddler.
2. Mix in a measuring cup:
   • 2 ounces freshly squeezed lime juice, which is about 2 limes' worth of juice
   • roughly 2 teaspoons granulated sugar, depending on how sweet the limes are
   • 2 ounces light rum
3. Mix. If you're making several, you might as well put it all in a shaker with some ice to get it really well mixed, but for just one I wouldn't bother.
4. Add ice to glass on top of mint.
5. Pour lime-sugar-rum mixture over ice.
6. Add 2 to 5 ounces club soda, depending on desired strength, and mix well.

This is a classic mojito recipe, something surprisingly hard to find online.

Actually, decent drink recipes can be hard to find, period. For one thing, neither the public nor the alcohol industry seems to understand the concept of "parts." For example: the back of the Kahlua bottle in my liquor cabinet instructs me to mix 1 ½ parts Kahlua to 1 ½ parts vodka as the base for a White Russian. I am not kidding.

Here, take a look at the mojito recipe at the official Bacardi site: 1 part rum, 2 parts club soda, 12 mint leaves, half a lime, and half a part sugar.

Now, the whole point of giving a recipe in parts instead of measurements is that it's scalable. If you tell me to mix 1 part Canadian whisky with 2 parts motor oil, I can make one small cocktail or an entire punchbowl full.

I'm serious here: You cannot mix measurements and parts in the same recipe. Mix half a lime with half a part sugar? What if I'm making a bathtub full of mojitos? Is Bacardi suggesting that a lime is a quantity fixed in relation to a part? Cause that would make my head explode.

Moreover: there is no such thing as half a part. Rather than halving the part, you double the parts of the other substances. Instead of "half a part Sweet-n-Low to 2 parts Asti Spumante," you would need to specify "1 part Sweet-n-Low to 4 parts Asti Spumante." That's kind of the whole point.

Astute readers will chip in here to observe that my recipe requires 2 inches of mint but doesn't specify the diameter of the glass, which is equally imprecise. That's true. So here: Use 12 to 22 mint leaves per drink, depending on how much you like mint and how much mint you have.

Also: No, it's not okay to make a mojito with dried mint. That's pretty much the definition of not okay. If you don't have any fresh mint, just drink a stupid beer. Or some rum and soda with a squeeze of lime -- nothing wrong with that. Just like in cooking, you have to let the ingredients on hand dictate what you make. You don't make beef Wellington out of leftover hamburgers just because you're craving beef Wellington and don't have any tenderloin.

Sheesh.

It's strange having a one-sided conversation here these past few weeks, Mom. It seems to be leading me to lecture imaginary conversational partners. I wonder where you are today -- crossing into Canada, probably? If you get near a computer anytime soon, tell me what you're eating.

That summer I helped you, Dad, and Russell move up to Alaska, I remember eating in a lot of rural Canadian diners. I ordered a lot of Denver sandwiches. Eat one for me. Tell 'em you want 2 ½ parts egg to one lime's worth of bell pepper on six ounces of toast. See how they feel about that.

Stir-Fried Noodles with Shrimp and Herbs

We have Thai basil and regular basil growing steadily now (except for the Japanese beetles chowing down on them every night), and the All-Local Farmers Market always has local shrimp lately, so I made this herby stir fry. I marinated the shrimp in a little lime juice and fish sauce first. Then I stir fried onions, red peppers, and rice noodles (already soaked and cooked), then stir fried the shrimp and a bunch of basil, then added a sauce of soy sauce, fish sauce, and sugar. I served it over lettuce and more basil, plus some mint.

It was one of my more successful stir fries -- instead of the wok, I used a giant skillet, which made much more sense since we have one of those awful flat-top ranges. Since the skillet was bigger than the burner, I could move things on and off the hot part of the pan just like with a wok over a gas burner.

Garden Foods

The first garden foods are beginning to creep in to our meals. We don't have enough tomatoes yet to eat plain -- the rats got to the first round -- but we had some yellow cherry tomatoes for our salad. And we didn't have enough yellow squash for a squash gratin, but we had enough for a potato gratin with a little squash mixed in.

I liked this potato gratin enough that I plan to make it again soon. I sauteed some sliced red potatoes in olive oil, salting them lightly, then added a sliced squash, then moved the whole thing to a gratin pan. I sprinkled some thin slices of Emmenthaler cheese around and poured a little cream over the top, ground some pepper over the whole thing, and then baked it and browned the top. It was roughly based on MFK Fisher's descriptions of her cauliflower gratin and similar dishes she would make when she was young and poor and living in France.

That funny little thing on top of the chicken is smoked chicken liver. Astoundingly good.

First Okra of the Year

And so it begins again.

I picked up some local crowder peas at the Rosewood Market and cooked them very simply with bacon, salt, and the first two okra pods of the season. And I understood this time what's so special about crowder peas. Lawson describes it as a metallic flavor, and yes, there's a brassy freshness even after 25 minutes of cooking. They taste sort of like fresh peas and sort of like dried beans. Very exciting. We ate them with cold smoked chicken and a simple green salad.

I am impatient for more garden okra. I almost became unprofessional yesterday while interviewing a lady who represents a certain organization that promotes local food when she told me she doesn't like okra. What? She's only lived here a year, though. I guess it took me a few more years than that to come around. She was very neat otherwise. But okra. OKRA.

Spicy Pork Tacos!

Spicy pork tacos! I don't know why that requires an exclamation point, but it does.

Lawson smoked a pork butt last week. We ate the meat with his homemade barbecue sauce for the first few days, but then I decided to try something else. I added chopped roasted green chiles, a fresh green chile, some diced tomato, lime juice, and salt to the leftover smoked pork, and I served it with corn tortillas. On the side we had roasted cauliflower. It was pretty delicious -- the smoked pork stood up really well to the roasted green chile flavor. I will try it again next time we have smoked pork around.

Note to readers: Kris/Mom is going to be on the road for the next 40 or so days, so it'll just be me posting...and she'll have a lot to catch up on when she returns.

Pipián Verde

So I made a pipián, the pre-Columbian dish made from toasted squash seeds, tomatillos, chiles, cilantro, and a few other things ground up and stewed with poultry. James Peyton's recipe called for duck, preferably wild, but I used a chicken.

I didn't know quite what it would taste like -- I'd never eaten one before -- and couldn't quite imagine the flavor, so I didn't tweak the recipes much (Peyton + Gabilondo + internet). Next time I will. It was rich but not as full of chile flavor as I would have liked. And a whole chicken was too much food with all that thick nutty sauce. It was mostly like a dull mole (and indeed, Peyton says pipians are like ancestors of moles -- basically pre-roux sauces thickened by tortillas or nuts).

Toasting the pumpkin seeds was fun; they popped and danced and browned nicely. But even with a whole cup of cilantro and some green chiles, the sauce was a kind of an icky light brown. Next time I'll use a whole bunch of poblanos and tomatillos and fewer pumpkin seeds. A little white wine or vermouth would be good. Maybe more oregano. Lime juice instead of vinegar for brightness. And I think I'll cook the sauce for less time -- use breasts or smaller pieces and only cook the thing for 45 minutes or so once the chicken is browned. I don't think it was improved by the few hours of stewing.

Lawson's growing tomatillos this year, so it shouldn't be long before I try again.

Salmon, Red Potatoes, Chard--and Aioli

I took the shortcut tonight and made an aioli-type sauce based on mayonnaise, mixed with yogurt to make it lighter--after all, farmed salmon is fatty enough already, no point in adding an extra cup or two of olive oil. The menu tonight was roasted salmon with basil aioli, roasted red potatoes, swiss chard with onions and garlic, and fresh raspberries.

Over the last couple of days we've had red chile enchiladas with chorizo, guacamole salad; tofu with red curry sauce on a bed of cabbage; and many beautiful cherry tomatoes from the garden.

Basil Aioli Sauce for Salmon

Chop finely, or use food processor:

2 tablespoons fresh basil

2 cloves garlic

2 anchovy fillets

Juice and rind of 1/2 lemon

Several dashes hot pepper sauce

Stir into:

1/2 cup mayonnaise

1/2 cup plain yogurt

Salt and pepper to taste

Strawberry-Rhubarb Cobbler

I saw rhubarb at the grocery store last week (nobody I know seems to grow it) and got to thinking about the rhubarb sauce you used to make when Russell and I were kids. I remember eating it plain, slightly warmed, with a spoon. That was just rhubarb and sugar, right? It was magical.

Then, in one of the many strange food coincidences of the late spring, my pal Kerry sent me a link to this rhubarb pie post.

I also saw that strawberries were on sale, and not knowing whether Lawson was ready to handle plain rhubarb sauce, I then got to thinking about strawberry-rhubarb pies.

But you know what? Pies are too fancy, with their fussy rolling pins and optional lattices and pie weights. So I decided to make a cobbler.

My favorite chapter in the 2000 Joy of Cooking is "American Fruit Desserts." It covers cobblers, grunts, slumps, crisps, pandowdies, and apple brown betty. The linguist in me is ecstatic over this.

I used the Joy strawberry-rhubarb cobbler recipe. It has just a tiny bit of cornmeal mixed into a basic biscuit dough. I used white whole wheat flour instead of white flour. And I made rough blobby chunks of dough the way you used to instead of rolling out the biscuit dough or something else all fancy.

It was delicious. Lawson, who found his one previous run-in with rhubarb pie kind of weird, loved it. So now I have to find out if I can grow rhubarb down here in South Carolina.

More Whining About the Sad State of Food in America

I went to a conference of piano teachers over the last three days. We opened with a three-hour meeting of the board, with a break for "dinner" (menu: sub sandwiches, an assortment of chips, soda pop.) I wasn't too worried because there was to be a reception for the guest artists and presenters after the meeting. Oops--menu: doughnuts, brownies, soda pop.

A friend and I went out for food supplements afterwards--beer and salad.

Fortunately, I am very paranoid about getting caught with nothing healthy to eat, so I had brought with me yogurt, raspberries and other fruit, Wasa, Jarlsberg cheese, and two bottles of wine. I resorted to these many times over the three days, and gladdened the heart of several fellow attendees with a glass of wine.

I ate dinner once at the hotel restaurant, which had a reasonably priced Chipotle Chicken plate. It had a large serving of fresh vegetables and a side of roasted red potatoes, the chicken was a bland breast fillet with a little sauce but it was cooked well--i.e., not dried out. That was the purchased meal highlight of the trip. Hooray to them for the fresh veggies!

I visited two chain restaurants because I didn't wish to be a problem to my companions. The first was Rock Bottom, a brew pub. I can't complain because I ordered a small Caesar salad and a pale ale, and both were pretty much as advertised (they didn't brag). We ate outside, always a plus in the southwest. The second was My Big Fat Greek Restaurant, where I ordered a Greek salad. Raymond had a pomegranate mojito. The place was generic in every way including the food, except for the very loud music--the same at all their locations, I understand. I wouldn't go again, although I didn't suffer any actual digestive or hearing damage.

How did I get to be such a snob? I promise to be more positive.

At home tonight I made pork chops, brown rice, and zucchini, followed by fresh pineapple. This is a quick and easy recipe:

Pork Chops with Green Chile Sauce

4 pork chops

Flour, salt, pepper
Olive oil

Dredge the pork chops in flour, salt, and pepper. Brown thoroughly on both sides. Add to the skillet:

3 or 4 chopped tomatoes (I used partly tomatillos)

1/2 sliced onion

3 cloves garlic, sliced

2 to 4 chopped green chiles

1 teaspoon oregano

More salt and pepper to taste

Stir and cook until things begin to wilt, then cover the pan and simmer until pork is tender, 30 minutes or more.

New Crab Salad

This salad may never happen again, because it required hyper-fresh crab meat and just the perfect ingredients. But it came together nicely -- the crab was so sweet and delicate. And it was the perfect accompaniment to chicken wings.

I dressed some crab with lemon juice, olive oil, salt, and pepper and let it sit for 10 minutes. Then I tossed it with arugula and topped it with crumbled goat cheese and pieces of rice crackers. Wonderful texture -- crispy and soft and cool.

Update: Turns out Anne Postic wrote about crab salad in today's Free Times. What are the odds? Her recipe sounds wonderful.

(Con)Fusion Cuisine

I failed to come up with a unified menu last night. Various things in the refrigerator cried out to be used NOW. I ended up with Japanese, Mexican, Italian, and Iowa foods: Teriyaki Salmon; pasta with pesto; a pico de gallo with garden cherry tomatoes, olives, jalapeno, cilantro, yellow bell pepper and possibly something else; and corn on the cob.

Teriyaki marinade transforms the most mundane farmed salmon, and it's so easy!

Teriyaki Salmon

Salmon fillets

Soy sauce

White vermouth
Chopped ginger
Garlic
Brown sugar or honey

Mix ingredients and marinate salmon for about a half hour. Drain and reserve marinade. Boil it or nuke the liquid for a couple of minutes to make it safe from the raw fish, strain, and serve as a sauce.

Broil, grill, or roast the salmon until just cooked through. Serve with teriyaki sauce and rice.

Crab Cakes

Every year at the beach Lawson makes crab cakes. But this year we brought the crabs back home to pick, and I made the crab cakes.

I used a simple combination of several recipes. This was roughly it:

1 lb crab meat
1 cup crushed crackers (These were thin rice-and-wheat cocktail crackers. Saltines would work, or bread crumbs.)
2 or more T mayonnaise
1 T Dijon mustard
1 T lemon juice
1 t lemon zest
1 egg
1/2 onion, diced and sauteed
3 T parsley, finely chopped
salt and pepper

Mix; form into 4 to 6 cakes; roll in salted cornmeal; chill for an hour or two; pan fry.

I also made a salad that we ate over two days -- one of my usual bean, herb, and citrus summer salads. It contained garbanzo beans, mint, cilantro, roasted red peppers, carrots, pumpkin seeds, lemon juice, olive oil, salt, and pepper. On the second day I added some spinach.

Grandma's Birthday Party

We had a birthday party for Grandma yesterday. First we had a recital of two-piano music by Donizetti, J. C. Bach, Schumann, and Mozart. Then I served a lunch of gazpacho and blueberry muffins, followed by a roast beef and blue cheese salad. The piece de resistance was this chocolate and raspberry mousse cake brought by GJ from Le Delice French bakery. It was the best purchased dessert I've ever had. And we had champagne.