Escalivada

One of my favorite things to do with a mix of summer vegetables is to slow-roast them, drizzle with olive oil and eat with slices of toasted bread. A Spanish restaurant I used to go to had a similar dish called "Escalavida," which they sadly took off the menu. I used bell peppers, zucchini, tomatoes and onions, but eggplant is also a great addition. I did each vegetable under the broiler separately, but a grill is even better if you have one!

Bell Peppers: Arrange peppers on a foil-lined baking sheet. Adjust oven rack so the peppers can sit as close to the broiler heating element as possible without touching it. Preheat broiler and put in peppers. Watch and turn when the skin facing the broiler turns black (you'll begin to smell at about the same time). Turn until most of the skin is black and peeling (they don't have to be totally black...about 75%). Cool in a Ziploc bag or a bowl, until they're cool enough to handle.

The skin should then fall off pretty easily. Resist the urge to rinse them- it will be faster and you'll get rid of all the black but they won't have that wonderful roasted, caramelized, smokey taste.

Eggplant: Position rack so that eggplant will be a few inches from the broiler. Rotate the eggplant periodically so the skin is charred and pulls away. Let the eggplant rest until cool enough to handle. Cut open and pull out the inside in strips. Taste some- if it's still a bit chewy, throw it back in for a few more minutes.

Tomatoes: Cut tomatoes in half on the equator and seed. If they're large, cut into quarters. Let them drain for a few minutes on paper towels. Arrange on a rimmed baking sheet (not too crowded- an inch or so between pieces) and drizzle with olive oil and sprinkle with salt. Roast a few inches under the broiler for about 5-10 minutes to cook out some of the water and just begin to brown the edges. (These aren't so well-suited to the grill as the other veggies)

Onions: Cut onions in half, and then into wedges about 1 inch thick. Toss with olive oil and salt and arrange on a rimmed baking sheet. Roast a few inches from the broiler, stirring when the edges start to brown. Take them out when the onions are translucent and browned on the edges. (On the grill- Cut the onions in slices like you would for onion rings. Use a toothpick to hold all of the rings together. Grill on medium-high heat. These make burgers amazing.)

Zucchini and Summer Squash: Cut lengthwise into quarters or smaller. Toss with olive oil and salt and roast several inches under the broiler, turning periodically so no sides get too brown.

Arrange on a dish and drizzle with a good olive oil. Slice bread, brush with olive oil and arrange on baking sheet. Put the sheet in the still-warm oven (broiler turned off) to lightly toast.

Slaws

Cabbage is an under-appreciated summer veggie. Everyone gets excited about heirloom lettuce greens, but cabbage can be pretty remarkable too. They're preposterously cheap, something like 50 cents a pound. I love cole slaws for snacking on. The shredded cabbage is such a great canvas for all kinds of flavors, and the crispy-coolness makes such a nice pallet cleansing snack. I like anything I can eat a massive bowl of and feel good later.

I'm noming on some classic cole slaw now- shredded Savoy cabbage and grated carrot with a very very small amount of a dressing made with mayo, yogurt and white balsamic vinegar. I also put preposterous amounts of pepper in it. It's crunch and spicy and cold; it's like the savory equivalent of a popsicle.

I also made a slaw from Fine Cooking with cabbage, jullienned mango, raddichio, and sriracha, and it was So. Good. Especially with a gingerey tuna burger on top. I especially love how, unlike a salad, I can make a big giant bowl of it and eat it for several days without it getting soggy.

Swiss Chard is pretty.

This is a pretty great time for the farmer's market. Not a ton of tomatoes, or eggplant, or even zucchini yet but there are huge piles of leafy green things everywhere. I can barely fit it in my fridge, but of course I've been buying a lot of it. I love the rainbow Swiss chard. It's like spinach, but a little firmer with an earthier flavor. The bright colored stalks are just too cool to pass up. I've taken to keeping it in a vase on my coffee table, like flowers.

The first time I made this, I cut it into big pieces and sauteed it in olive oil, like spinach. This was ok. It took a pretty significant amount of time, and by the time it was soft enough, the whole mess was kind of brown.

Blanching before is the way to go. It does mean an extra pot to clean, but whatever. I cut the leaves off the stalks and washed those a few times (it's always filthy), and I diced up the stalks. I blanched the leaves for about 2 minutes, and did the stalks for about 5 minutes.


I soaked some golden raisins in the boiling water, and toasted up some pine nuts. I breifly considered adding bacon, decided that was unnecessary. Maybe next time. I sauteed some garlic in some olive oil, added the chopped up, blanched stalks, the blanched greens, the raisins and the pine nuts, ans seasoned with lemon juice, salt and pepper.

Paella

Tonight, I made paella. It's wonderful and easy and cheap and it makes everyone happy. I used shrimp and andouille sausage, but lots of things work. Combinations of seafood are common (like, maybe shrimp, clams and mussels) and they look really striking. I think having a few shrimp (maybe like 2 or 3 per person) and a decent amount of sausage is a good way to stretch it out. Chorizo or spicy Italian sausage are good as well. Or, you could do chicken and sausage, or chicken and shrimp. A quick epicurious search pulls up vegetarian paella (white beans and swiss chard, asparagus and sugar snaps), a turkey paella, even rabbit and artichoke. Snails are another traditional component.

Paella is a Spanish rice dish that is supposed to be cooked in a very thin, some would say very cheap, pan. Purists will insist that the title "Paella" requires a crunchy, almost burnt crust on the bottom of the pan. It's become a recurring theme in Top Chef (the TV show) for a contestant to make what they call paella. In most cases, they've used the high quality pans provided for them, and thus have produced a nice, evenly heated, perfectly cooked pan full of rice. This angers Chef Tom Collichio. In a few cases, the contestant has pulled this off (see: Ilan, Season 2, individual paellas, cooked in serving dishes, and not actual cookware. Clever, or lucky?). When this has happened, all the judges basically get off on this magnificent burnt rice. Padma Lakshmi, judge and host, delights in proding the crunchy bits with her fork, like an ethnic, stoner version of Amelie cracking the top of her creme brule, and she looks up and informs the viewers at home "the rice is soooo crunchy, you guys!"

But anyways. My "paella" did not have the crunchy bottum. I don't care for burnt rice, myself. I chopped up about 1 cup of onion and sauteed that till it was a little browned. I added in minced garlie (2 cloves), a big pinch of saffron and about 1/2 teaspoon of smoked spanish paprika. I used roasted red peppers from a jar, so I diced them and added them after the spices. (You'd add diced fresh bell pepper with the onions.) I poured in 2 cups of chicken broth (fish stock is good too), 1 cup of short-to-medium grain rice and an andouille sausage, halved and sliced. You bring the broth to boil, then lower the heat and cooked with the lid on for 15 minutes, till the rice is mostly cooked. Then I added the shrimp- I just layed them on top of the rice and pushed them into it so they were in the rice but not covered. If the rice looks dry, add more broth. Cover again and cook on very low heat till the shrimp are pink.

If you were using chicken, you would brown in in the pan before doing anything else, cooking it about halfway. Then, you'd add it with the rice and broth, letting it cook the rest of the way. Clams or mussels you'd add with the rice and broth. If you're using uncooked sausage, cook it with the onions and peppers. If (like I did) you havve cooked sausage, just add it with the rice so the flavor will infuse.

Saffron and Spanish Paprika are pretty strongly associated with paella. Saffron is amazingly expensive, and if I hadn't helped myself to my mom's supply, I'm sure I would not be using it in my own kitchen. I've made this with a little tumeric in place of saffron and been quite happy with the results. I think I even called it "Paella", not "Seafood and Sausage Rice Dish with Eclectic Blend of Spices and Without Bottom-Crust". It's very flexible- a 2:1 liquid:rice, as much meat or seafood as you like (or, as much as you have), and whatever vegetables seem appropriate (red or green bell peppers, tomato, green bean, peas, artichokes, asparagus...) This is a good dish for using vegetables that maybe aren't as great as they could be, whether they're canned or frozen or just leftover, because they'll be cooking in a really flavorful broth.

Roasting

I love making roast chicken, especially when it's cold outside. It looks gorgeous and it makes my apartment smell yummy. And you can do plenty of stuff with the chicken, including making stock. I got a chicken at the Christmas farmer's market yesterday. This is my first local chicken. I've been buying the organic free range chickens at the grocery store, even though it's a little more expensive, but considering I get like 4 or 5 meals out of it, it seems worthwhile to start with better quality chicken.

I rubbed the inside and outside of my little chicken with salt and sat it in my fridge all day. I rubbed it with canola oil and roasted it at 425, upside down for half an hour, then flipped back over for 15 minutes.

I also love roasting vegetables. Someone reminded me that, maybe a few months ago, I said cauliflower was the last thing I had yet to developed a taste for. I love roasting cauliflower; I love the browned, slightly caramelized outside that brings out that nuttiness. At the farmer's market, there was a spread of broccoli, white cauliflower and purple cauliflower. I am a sucker for heirloom-y, different looking vegetables. In the summer, this mostly concerns tomatoes- I love the wonky looking ones with weird protrusions and stripes. But i absolutely had to get a little of each, so I'd have a pile of green, white and purple roasted veggies. Thanks to my P.O.S oven, they ended up a little more roasted than planned. Still delicious, still kind of awesome looking-


I mean, seriously! That purple is insane! I was worried the color wouldn't be vibrant and awesone after blasting the shit out of it in a 450 degree oven, but that weird Cauliflower From Neptune color just got better.

(Random aside- on Top Chef, four teams had to prepare dishes based on "Old", "New", "Borrowed" or "Blue". Obviously blue is the hardest. How bad ass would it have been if they'd found piles of purple cauliflower and made some blue-violet cauliflower puree, and maybe a blue-cheese stuffed piece of meat? Really, they should have called me)

Root Vegetables

I am a big believer in the "Eat Food. Not Too Much. Mostly Plants" approach. (Believer, not always a practitioner) It's not exactly hard in the summer, when farmer's markets and roadside stands are piled with vegetables that actually look more appealing than anything you see in a fast food commercial.

Winter is a little different. Not that I can't find tomatoes and eggplant and corn. And they're good. I mean, there's nothing wrong with them. They're probably 90% as good as the real thing, but the lacking 10% is noticeable. People got through winters before they had fresh spinach and tomatoes from Costa Rica, and they didn't do it eating starch and meat. What were they eating?

I had forgot about root vegetables! Yup, the botanical underground nutrient storage bin, the un-glamorous peasant fare unnoticed in the grocery store, rarely seen in a cookbook and never rearing its head on the restaurant menu.

Potatoes get such a bad rap. Yeah, carbs, glycemic index, whatever. It's almost miraculous, that you can dig this lump out of the ground and it's such an accessible source of nutrition ( alittle too accessible as for as blood sugar is concerned, but, you know, moderation....). Cool story- potatoes are indigenous to Urugay and Chile, close enough to the equator that there are basically no seasons, but mountainous (cold). Their indifference to the lengths of days, hours of sunlight, dramatic temperatures is unique- they grow anywhere, any time. Potatoes are a genetic rockstar. I think I've rhapsodized about my love of sweet potatoes before. It's like if you took a potato, carefully seasoned it, and added a multivitamin.

Carrots are the first thing you think of when you think of root vegetables. They're tasty, versatile, and full of vitamins. But there are these things, that look like carrots, except they're white, a fat.... Parsnips sound pretty lame and they looks like they couldn't possibly taste good.

I had dinner at a friend's house, and she made coq au vin with a parsnip purre. What a lovely healthy alternative to mashed potatoes! I thought. Jumping in to help peel, I realized that I haven't ever cooked and probably never eaten parsnips. Just peeling them, I couldn't beleive how aromatic they were- they smell like thyme, and fenel, and gin, and some kind of flower... How could some knoby sad looking root that grows deep underground taste so fresh and bright?

The puree was so much better than mashed potatoes. I had to investigate this. I had a recipe for a chicken braise with Brussels sprouts, carrots and parsnips. I meant to try it leaving out the parsnips (oh no!) but instead I doubled it up. It was great. I saw a few recipes for roasting parsnips. (I think all winter vegetables are better roasted, especially brusselss sprouts, broccoli, cauliflower, carrots, squash...) I liked the idea of cutting it into matchsticks and eating them like fries. I cut the core out of a few parsnips, cut them into sticks about 2 inches long, 1/2 inch thick, and tossed them with olive oil, salt, pepper and cayenne. Roasted at 425 for about 15-20 minutes, the sitcks got a little brown and caramelized around the edges. I curled up in an armchair with a plate of parsnip fries, a bit of balsamic vineagar to dip them in, and an episode of Mad Men. Best snack food ever.