The Cartoon Kitchen: Asparagus with Black Beans
This week's Cartoon Kitchen features Serious Eats' cartoonist in residence Larry Gonick's spin on asparagus. —Ed Levine
Asparagus Wrapped in Pancetta with Citronette
Adapted from Italian Grill by Mario Batali.
- serves 6 -
Ingredients
2 pounds large asparagus (12 to 18 stalks per pound)
4 ounces thinly sliced pancetta
Grated zest and juice of 1 orange
2 teaspoons Dijon mustard
1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
1 1/2 tablespoons finely chopped fresh thyme
Coarse sea salt
Procedure
1. Snap the tough bottom stalks off the asparagus. Unroll the slices of pancetta and lay them out on a work surface. Lay an asparagus spear on a slight diagonal across the bottom of one slice and roll it up, covering as much of the stalk as possible but leaving the tip visible. Place on a tray or small baking sheet and repeat with the remaining asparagus. Cover and refrigerate for 1 hour (this rest will help the pancetta adhere to the asparagus).
2. Preheat a gas grill or prepare a fire in a charcoal grill.
3. In a small bowl, whisk together the orange zest, juice, and mustard. Continuing to whisk, slowly drizzle in the olive oil until emulsified and smooth. Season the citronette with salt and pepper, and set aside.
4. Place the asparagus on the grill and cook, turning occasionally, until it is just tender and the pancetta is crisped, about 4 to 6 minutes. If the pancetta browns too much before the asparagus is cooked, move the spears to a cooler part of the grill.
5. Whisk the citronette again, and pour half of it onto a serving platter. Sprinkle with half of the chopped thyme and pile the asparagus on top. Drizzle with the remaining citronette and sprinkle with the remaining thyme. Serve with a small bowl of coarse sea salt for dipping.
Focaccina with Provolone and Scallions
Adapted from Italian Grill by Mario Batali.
You can make your own pizza dough (here's a great recipe) or ask a local pizzeria if it would be willing to sell you some. You might also try your grocery store for premade pizza dough.
Ingredients
2 large garlic heads
Pizza dough
Flour, for rolling
2 cups grated young or semisoft provolone
1 1/2 tablespoons chopped fresh rosemary
1 bunch scallions, thinly sliced
Procedure
1. Preheat grill. Meanwhile, slice garlic about 1/4 inch down from top of heads so that cloves are exposed. Wrap each head in foil, and transfer to a 350°F oven. Roast garlic about an hour, or until cloves are very soft. Remove garlic from oven, let cool, and then squeeze out the cloves. Mash them with a fork.
2. Divide dough into 2 pieces. With a floured rolling pin, roll each piece into a 12-by-7-inch rectangle that's about 1/4 inch thick.
3. Place one dough rectangle on grill; cook until bottom is golden brown, about 1 1/2 minutes. Flip dough; continue cooking on other side until golden, about 2 more minutes. Transfer dough to cutting board. Repeat with remaining dough rectangle.
4. Let dough cool about 2 minutes. Use a serrated knife and cut it in half horizontally, creating, essentially, a large sandwich. Spread one half of each bread with the garlic paste, then sprinkle the rosemary over it. Place provolone on the other halves; sprinkle those with scallions. Sandwich the halves together; wrap each with foil, and grill, flipping once, until focaccina are hot and cheese is melted, 5 to 6 minutes.
5. Unwrap, cut into 1 1/2-inch-wide strips, and serve immediately.
Dinner Tonight: Cauliflower Purée
I’ve been on a little cauliflower kick lately and just couldn’t turn down the possibility of what was essentially cauliflower mashed potatoes. Yep, it’s a holdout from the low-carb craze. But I didn’t care if it was healthy; I just wanted to see if it was worth it. I found the recipe in Ted Allen’s The Food You Want to Eat, and even he seems a little ashamed of it, regardless of the fact that it ended up being delicious.
And he’s right, the cauliflower puree never feels like a mashed potato rip-off. Instead it makes an earthier offering that’s perfect with lighter dishes like fish. To spruce up things Ted advises a few possible additions. He likes to add curry powder, English mustard, blue cheese or parmesan. I settled on the last item, adding huge grated handful at the very end. It won’t replace mashed potatoes on the Thanksgiving table, but might provide a lighter side to some grilling sessions.
Dinner Tonight: White Bean Gratin with Red Peppers and Rosemary
A few things attracted me to this recipe: its supposed Basque origins, its easy preparation in a food processor, and a quick 15-minute cooking time. I imagined the gratin of white beans would be crusty and creamy, like a long-cooked cassoulet.
It didn’t quite work out that way—what came out of the oven was satisfying, but not particularly mind-blowing. If nothing else, though, this recipe is a shining example of the creaminess potential of beans. With only 2 tablespoon of butter for four generous servings (plus a glug of olive oil), the resulting hummus-like spread was as smooth and rich as ever. That said, it was also a bit bland. The next time I try something like this, I’d go with a more assertive flavor like garlic or cayenne; the rosemary and peppers just wasn’t enough to compete with the wide, open taste of white beans.
But there’s nothing wrong with the method, and the result is a melty, healthy spread that I served with a pile of sautéed spinach and a grilled sausage. Next time, I’d only purée half the beans to give it some more textural interest, lose the cheese on top, double the bread crumbs, and put it under the broiler to assure a flavorful, crusty top.
Pickled Ramps
Need another way to preserve your ramps aside from encasing them in logs of butter? Follow this recipe for pickled ramps and you'll end up with sweet-and-sour ramps that will extend ramps season a few extra weeks, or even months. The ramps are quickly blanched before pickling to preserve the bright pink and green colors. Chopped up or whole, these are best with roasted meats, fish, or pasta.
Eating for Two: Swiss Chard with Tomatoes and Chickpeas
Baby is kicking every day now and already has a couple of toys and some astonishingly pretty clothes, which for some reason makes her seem much more real. I’m dying to know what she’ll be like and what her tastes will be. Will she be interested when I try to share all the books I loved as a little girl? Will she be a happy and adventurous eater, or is there a lot of coaxing in my future?
Two years ago a friend’s four-year-old daughter won my heart with her spontaneous request that I read to her from Little House in the Big Woods. Then she charmed me by showing me around her father’s beautiful vegetable garden, capping the tour with the eager exclamation, “Let’s eat some chard!” Andrew thinks involving children in gardening gives them an investment in eating their vegetables, and we hope someday to live near a patch of soil that will allow us to test that theory. In the meantime, chard-eating children remain an obsession of mine, although I’m pretty sure we’ll think baby is brilliant and perfect even if she eventually begs for Bratz dolls and Kraft singles instead of books and leafy greens. I hear that’s what it’s like to be a parent.
Cook the Book: Baked Fennel with Prosciutto
Everyone has ingredients they can't resist. Favorite foods that are always kept on hand; items that, when spotted on restaurant menus make a dish impossible not to order. For my mother, it's artichoke hearts. For my boyfriend, it's bacon. For me, it's fennel. Fronds, shavings, wedges—I love the crunchy, sweet, licorice-flavored vegetable in all its incarnations.
Today's Cook the Book recipe, excerpted from Lidia's Italy, is for Baked Fennel with Prosciutto. This Roman dish is straight from the heart of Italian cooking, combining best-quality ingredients with simple preparation methods. Toss everything together hours ahead, store it in the fridge, and then pop it in then oven a bit before dinner.
Salty Prosciutto, fragrant cheese, sweet fennel, and a drizzle of butter. Who could resist that?
Dinner Tonight: Broccoli Sautéed with Crisp Garlic
Gordon Ramsay’s In the Heat of the Kitchen has been fun to look through, but I haven’t really been able to put it to much use. Most of the recipes seem rather complex for a hectic weekday night. So I was a little surprised to find this quick little broccoli recipe stuck between “Caramelized baby onions with beet jus” and “corn fritters with lime crème fraîche." With only eight ingredients, seven of which I had already, this proved to be a perfectly practical side.
While the crisp garlic is fun and those onions sure do add a lot of sweetness, what really separates this dish from a standard accompaniment is the oyster sauce. It somehow binds all the ingredients and transforms this into an interesting side dish worth paying attention to. It’s such a simple addition, too. This, of course, all depends on whether you have oyster sauce just hanging around the fridge ready to go in to random dishes. I do. Its cost is so small, and it keeps surprising me with dishes like this one.
Dinner Tonight: Roasted Cauliflower with Capers
When I pulled this from the oven, I was livid. Both the cauliflower and capers came out looking awfully disappointing. And by “awfully disappointing,” I mean “burnt." I just couldn’t believe Martha Stewart, of all people, would construct such a disastrous mess of a recipe. I mean, you all can see this, right? Those little black balls are the capers. I almost chucked it right there.
Ends up all those crispy black bits are full-flavored goodness. I really should have known better. I had no use for cauliflower until I learned that it gets this wonderful nutty aroma when you roast the hell out of it. And this caper-assisted recipe is even easier than the curried version I had made before. The fiancée actually finished this before the meat course, forking up all those little black bits as quickly as possible.
Dinner Tonight: Wilted Spinach Salad with Warm Feta Dressing
I just picked up some fantastic French feta from my local cheese-monger that’s changed my opinion about the stuff. Feta has never really tasted like much to me, but this one does—it’s still crumbly, but it’s not overly salty, and doesn’t have that slightly chalky aftertaste. It reminds me most of a buffalo mozzarella with its luscious body and tangy bite, even though it’s a crumbly goat-based cheese. The cheese inspired this warm spinach salad.
Most of my warm spinach salads have been meat affairs. You know the drill: cook up a whole heap of bacon, toss it on some spinach leaves, and watch them wilt. It’s a delicious winter salad, one that I do love to indulge in, but then I found this recipe that utilized sweet red onions and feta. I’m not sure if all feta acts like my insanely good French version, but mine became gooey and luscious. The sweet red onions provide the sweetness, and the feta gets creamy and gooey. Not exactly a light meal, but it’s a great alternative to the bacon-laden kind.
The Cartoon Kitchen: White Beans and Cilantro
This week's Cartoon Kitchen features Serious Eats' cartoonist in residence Larry Gonick's spin on white beans. —Ed Levine
Dinner Tonight: Rice with Okra
What’s interesting about this recipe isn’t necessarily the use of okra (I’ll get to that shortly) but the technique. The rice is cooked uncovered for ten minutes in a pot of water and then transfered to a steamer basket for an additional seven minutes. I suppose this is the poor man’s version of a rice steamer, but I’d never done it before. It’s a little more involved than the ordinary pot of rice. Luckily, it produces fluffy, slightly toothsome rice that’s really delicious.
Cook the Book: Fresh Corn Fritters
And so we come to the end of this week's Cook the Book series, which has highlighted Crescent Dragonwagon's Cornbread Gospels. It's probably a little early to start thinking about the fresh, sweet corn of summer, but just hold on to this recipe for Fresh Corn Fritters till it's time.
Win 'The Cornbread Gospels'
As is always the case with our Cook the Books, we're giving away a five copies of this book this week. Enter to win here »
Cook the Book: Truman Capote's Family's Cornbread
The first of our cornbread recipes this week is for a Southern cornbread. Crescent Dragonwagon, the book's author, has helpfully broken up The Cornbread Gospels into regional divisions, explaining the differences among them. There are too many to go into here, suffice it to say that this cornbread should do you right no matter where you live. It's a recipe adapted from Sook Faulk, whose niece Marie Rudisill was Truman Capote's aunt. Faulk reportedly gave the recipe to Rudisill "with the understanding that [she] would share them with Truman Capote, [her] sister's child, who had been brought up in Sook's hometown, Monroe, Alabama."
Snapshots From Italy: Hammer Your Spears
Italians have an undeserved reputation for hammering vegetables to a fault, an accusation most often leveled at us by the" tender-crisp" camp. While I agree that cooking vegetables to the point of disintegration can be yucky, I think undercooked veggies are an insult to the vegetal world. Too many fine, deserving vegetables suffer an inconsequential position in a meal by being left in a slightly crisp state of unfulfilled flavor that no sauce can rescue.
Asparagus are the perfect example of a vegetable that needs a good long hammering (ahem) in a hot oven. Sorry, fans of tender-crisp, but I really dislike waterlogged, boiled asparagus, and steaming them renders them equally tasteless. If you don't believe me, bite into a "tender-crisp," steamed asparagus spear—no cheating with mayo, please—and tell me if any fireworks go off.
Dinner Tonight: Steamed Artichokes with Light Balsamic Vinaigrette
I was quite the picky eater in my youth. I didn’t touch green beans, wouldn’t go near cooked carrots, and never had a salad I liked until junior high. But against all reason and logic, I did love artichokes. From the moment I started eating artichokes, I remember actually enjoying them. Perhaps it’s the activity of picking up off the petals, dipping them in butter, and pulling off the “meat” of the vegetable with my teeth. What fun food to eat!
Essentials: Potatoes Baked and Twice-Baked
Yesterday I was glad that Lucy alerted us to the existence of Totally Baked (something has been done to the Dining Section online, and now I am bad about seeing Food Stuff). Recently I was craving a baked potato on a night when I had no patience for cooking and no potatoes in the house, so I ran out to get one at a Hell’s Kitchen establishment that will remain nameless. It was gummy, hard in the middle, and totally disappointing. Now I have another spot to try.
A well-baked potato with the right toppings offers an amount of pleasure disproportionate to the raw ingredients cost, especially with a green salad on the side. It also involves very little active time and kitchen cleanup. For these reasons it was one of my favorite dinners senior year of college, when I was cooking for myself at a school not really equipped for independent eaters. I knew how to bake potatoes, roast vegetables, steam broccoli, whisk together a vinaigrette, and make beans and rice out of a box. Oh, and heat up a can of soup. It must have been a little monotonous, but in retrospect I think I ate very well.
I Love Creamed Spinach
And the Pioneer Woman is back with one of her patented visual recipes—this time for a classic steakhouse side. —The Serious Eats Team
I love creamed spinach. Have I mentioned that? I do. I think I first developed a love for it during my vegetarian days back in L.A., when my carnivorous friends would drag me out to steak restaurants and I had no choice but to order all the sides on the menu lest I starve. And creamed spinach was always my first choice, followed by sautéed mushrooms, roasted asparagus, garlic mashed potatoes, and carrot purée. Gosh, I was weird.
Today I’m married, it just so happens, to a cattle rancher and I’ve long since learned to love a good, juicy rib-eye. And while I look at my very brief (OK, seven-year) stint as a vegetarian as a youthful indiscretion, I have carried with me a deep, abiding love for steakhouse side dishes. I still love my creamed spinach.
Dinner Tonight: Cabbage Salad with Cornichons and Capers
This might look a lot like a coleslaw recipe, and I'll be the first to say that coleslaw isn't one of my favorite foods. I've had too many disappointing experiences with the stuff in little paper cups, tasting like it had been tossed in Miracle Whip. No disrespect; it's just not my thing.
And yet, this cabbage salad recipe from Pork & Sons—a side dish to the smoked Boston butt—really makes the case for cabbage with mayo. Rather than shredded, the raw cabbage is sliced into wide ribbons, which maintain their crunch under the blanket of silky sauce, a homemade mayonnaise with a piquant handful of cornichons, capers, and shallots. And what a sauce it is—I made extra and have been painting it on bread to make amazing ham sandwiches. Red wine vinegar and mustard provide an appropriately spicy background to balance out the richness. I think of it as French-ified coleslaw.
Dinner Tonight: Fennel, Arugula and Green Apple Salad
I recently bought one of those Kyocera plastic mandolines
Snapshots from Italy: Carrots in Marsala
The cluttered and dusty used bookstore on my block has become one of my favorite haunts, mostly for a sometimes campy and ever-revolving selection of old cookbooks. The Myra Breckenridge Cookbook displayed in the window last week made me laugh right out loud, but inside I found an even greater treasure—an old copy of Elizabeth David's Italian Food. It is impossible not to be inspired by David's evocative and vivid writing style, and thumbing through the dog-eared volume while imagining her travels through Italy in the early 1950s has become my new afternoon ritual.
The pages recently fell open to reveal her recipe for Carrots in Marsala; it instantly seemed so mouthwatering I had no choice but to head straight for the market.
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Mango Bean Salad
Fresh fruit and hearty beans make a refreshing side for our Morningstar
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