Field Peas

I'm a Northern transplant (and a picky eater as a child) so "field peas" ("cowpeas," "Southern peas"), in all their wonderful variety (and here for a slideshow), are pretty much foreign territory to me. But my husband grew up eating all types of peas*, and really loves them. In the summer, I can often find them shelled, packed in a plastic container, all ready to cook, so I'll buy some for him. I usually simmer them with some olive oil for flavor, and he's always happy to see them on the plate. Field peas were traditionally cooked by simmering them with fatback.

With our discovery of Benton bacon, cut into lardons by our friendly meat purveyor at Star Provisions specialty market, field peas have reached new heights (albeit less healthy ones). The fantastic hickory smoke flavor from the bacon permeates the peas, ever so subtly. I've become a field pea convert! The zipper peas, cooking above, were worth a meal in themselves.

I also cooked up some tiny cream peas and some beautiful pink-eyed peas (top picture), which are destined for the freezer and future enjoyment. The method: bring to a boil with olive oil or fatback (or bacon lardons!), then simmer until tender.

Here's a link to a good article (by a prominent Atlanta chef) about enjoying field peas.

*All of these Southern peas are technically beans.

Lardon love

I mentioned earlier my discovery of Benton bacon cut into lardons. Although we eat very little pork, we've become mildly obsessed with these little bits of smoky goodness. Plus we love the word "lardons" - and look for any excuse to mention lardons (in as French an accent as we can muster).

It's become our Sunday ritual to come home from church and enjoy scrambled eggs with lardons, onions, hot peppers and cheese. When I'm feeling particularly virtuous, I'll scramble one egg white for every whole egg, to cut the fat and cholesterol. And I cook as much fat as I can out of the bacon. The best part: my splatter guard has lingering remants of a great smoky smell now that I enjoy every time I open the pots and pans drawer.


Sunday. My favorite breakfast of the week.

{update: Basically, lardons are bacon that's been cut in little pieces. And very much related to "lard" unfortunately... Wikipedia says "lardons are frequently used in French cuisine to flavor salads, stews, quiches, potatoes, omelettes and other dishes" Stay tuned for further lardon postings, as I work through the lardon stash that's in my freezer.}

Summer Dinner Party II (Mexican): black bean and corn salad

This evening we invited another couple to dinner on the spur of the minute. We share a love of Mexican flavors, and I wanted them to try the chicken enchiladas verdes recipe that I found earlier this week. To complement the enchiladas, I made a black bean and corn salad. The original recipe, from the Georgia Pecan Commission recipe page, has orzo in it and it makes an all-in-one side dish, but this evening I served it without the orzo as a salad on a bed of lettuce. I've seen a similar dish called "Texas caviar" - this one is different because it has black beans, toasted Georgia pecans, and a very simple healthy dressing of lime juice, olive oil and cumin.

The best of summer

Tonight's dinner featured some of my very favorite summer ingredients: fresh tomatoes and fresh basil. Both homegrown in containers next to our front steps. I had an herb garden in our last house, but it took me 5 or 6 years to get around to planting herbs in this house. I'm so glad I got back to it - there's nothing more fun than to step outside the door with some scissors and snip ingredients for a recipe. Or a garnish.

We have one tomato plant. This, our first tomato, was huge. Isn't it beautiful? I'll have to say, it was the best tomato I've ever eaten.


The brown rice/basil/pine nut salad is a simple recipe from SuperFoods HealthStyle. If you follow that link, you'll see that the recipe calls for stuffing the rice mixture into hollowed out tomatoes. We've done that for dinner parties (and it's fabulous), but for "just us" dinners, I usually spoon the filling next to sliced tomatoes. And I'm a Northerner, so I don't peel my tomatoes. When I first moved here 27 years ago, I was shocked to find out how many people here in the South insist on peeling tomatoes that are going to be sliced or eaten raw.


I served this recipe along with spicy chicken wings leftovers from the freezer. My husband had lemon sorbet for dessert.

The Verdict:
The tomato was "to die for" and the whole meal was just a perfect light summer supper. The tomato recipe is a a great accompaniment to grilled chicken or meat. It can be made ahead, for easy entertaining.

Health in a bowl

In my forays around the food blogosphere, I came across a reference to walnut sage pesto. And was immediately captivated. We have a nice little patch of sage growing outside the front door, and I don't cook with it nearly as much as our other herbs. But my husband and I love sage, so I excitedly searched for recipes.

One of the first things I learned was that most walnut sage pesto recipes have a lot of parsley because sage is a very strong flavor. Anyway, I bookmarked a few recipes, then I came across this recipe for Sweet Potato and White Bean Soup with Sage Walnut Pesto from Cooking Light and I was smitten. The picture is gorgeous. Of course. (I was planning to serve my soup in a wonderful artsy bowl, but in the end I grabbed bowls that were the right size. I only remembered about photographing after we sat down to eat. Blogging about dinner is kinda tough that way. So there's my soup, above, in an Easter bowl from The Bay! My husband's bowl had little chicks around the border...)

With this recipe in mind, I ordered sweet potatoes as part of my box of vegetables. I had to go to two stores to get leeks and cannellini beans and chard. The whole time, I was irrationally excited about making this soup. Finally it was all assembled.


So, just a little chopping and processing and the pesto was done.


The soup came together quickly. The most time consuming thing was making sure the leeks and the chard were well washed. Saute the leeks, throw a few things in, and it's done!


Here are a few notes of how I made the recipe:
- I used olive oil for cooking the leeks.
- I used homemade chicken stock from the freezer
- I forgot to add the lemon juice to the soup, although I had it all squeezed and ready to go
- for the pesto, I increased the sage and decreased the parsley. I'd add even more sage next time.
- I used olive oil in the pesto because my walnut oil had gone bad, unfortunately.
- the mini chopper was perfect for the pesto

We served the soup with crusty bread and a salad.

The Verdict:
Not only did this soup live up to my insane expectations, it exceeded them! I loved it!! The soup is packed with nutrition, especially from the sweet potato and chard, plus it has protein from the beans. The best part is how all of the flavors blended into a synergy of warm deliciousness. I can't wait to have the leftovers.

And after dinner I previewed the recipe for cookies I am going to bake this weekend that have, oh, five or six kinds of chocolate.

Box of goodness

I finally got my act together and registered with Moore Farms, an association of small sustainable, natural and/or organic food producers that serves Metro Atlanta and offers an option of custom ordering. Last Friday I chose my produce.

The pickup was today, at a location about a mile away, conveniently located between the gym and my house. Did I feel virtuous going to work out then to pick up my fabulous box o' veggies on the way home? You bet I did.

Inside the box:
lettuce
slicing tomatoes
roma tomatoes
peaches
sweet potatoes
white potatoes
and organic pasteurized eggs

I planned some of our meals this week around the contents. And it looks like a peach dimple cake for TWD.

{TWD} Chocolate Whopper Malted cookies

Oh, Dorie, you are a victim of your own chocolate cookie perfection. We discovered your World Peace Cookies earlier this summer, and they have pretty much spoiled me for other chocolate/chocolate cookies!

We've made numerous batches of World Peace Cookies (recipe online here) and have served them to several gatherings of friends (one group call them "Peace cookies", the other calls them "those salty cookies"). These cookies are amazing! Everybody LOVES them! Why am I waxing eloquent about a cookie that was NOT this week's challenge? Well, it would be no easy task to knock the World Peace Cookies off their chocolate cookie pedestal. And, imo, the Chocolate Malted Whopper Drops were not up to the challenge.

For the recipe I used:
Hershey's Special Dark cocoa powder
Callebaut bittersweet chocolate, chopped
Whoppers (some cut in half, others in quarters)
Ovaltine

Preparation notes:
- the dough was VERY sticky
- the cookies puffed up in the oven
- the cookies softened overnight, but I don't know if that's because I covered them too soon (I thought they were fully cooled.)
- the malted milk balls sort of melted and caramelized as they baked. (I thought this was the best part)

The Verdict:
Overall, I'd rate them a VG.

They were very rich, and there was almost too much going on, especially when they were warm. Some of the richness might have come from the Special Dark cocoa powder we used. I liked them better once they cooled (but maybe that's how I feel about most cookies? That seems weird.)

I don't like malt flavor and luckily the malt taste was not very strong in these cookies. It seemed more pronounced when they were warm. If I were making them again, I'd use Nesquik rather than Ovaltine, to reduce the malt factor.

The cookies softened a LOT overnight - maybe I covered them too soon, or shouldn't have put them in two layers (they were separated by parchment)? The next day I let them sit in the air and that firmed them a little, but they were still distressingly soft for me. Of course that didn't stop me from eating them. A lot of them.

I served these as part of a dinner party a couple of weeks ago. When our guests saw them, they were very excited that I'd made "the salty cookies"; I had to break it to them gently that these were not the World Peace cookies. They got over their disappointment fairly quickly. Most everyone seemed to like them. I sent some home with them.

One guest, H, makes a similar cookie with malted milk balls and she said these were better. In fact, she made Dorie's version with her children the next day! Another guest, S, said that nothing can compare to the World Peace cookies. She has bought herself some fleur de sel to make those soon.

I tried making ice cream sandwiches with these cookies (and vanilla/honey ice cream) and I realized that I should have paid more attention when people have said how they did it. In the freezer my ice cream melted out from in between the cookies and made a total disaster. I found one of the sandwiches in the recesses of my freezer this weekend, and it actually was pretty tasty. But not pretty looking.

The bottom line for me:
These are quite acceptable cookies (and I personally polished off what I didn't give away) but ultimately Dorie's World Peace Cookies continue to reign unchallenged in their sublime chocolate perfection. I will be VERY interested to see how the Chocolate Chunkers (next week's challenge) turn out. The recipe seems similar to Dorie's Quintuple Chocolate Brownies, and I loved those.

Thanks to Rachel of Confessions of a Tangerine Tart for hosting this week. Check out her post for the Chocolate Whopper Malted Drops recipe or find it on page 85 of Dorie Greenspan's oh-so-fabulous book, Baking From My Home to Yours. To see how a couple hundred others baked this recipe, visit the TWD blogroll.

Blue and yellow and green all over

We love to eat Mexican food. I was browsing over at Simply Recipes, and this recipe for Chicken Enchiladas Verdes caught my eye. The recipe gives directions for a delicious-sounding homemade tomatillo sauce, but also gives the option of making this dish with bottled salsa verde. I'd love to experiment with tomatillos some day, but for this weeknight dinner, it was the jarred stuff all the way!


I kept pretty much to the recipe, using chicken thighs and cooking them as instructed. The meat turned out tender and fragrant. I softened the blue and yellow corn tortillas with the recipe's method (in a skillet with oil), dipped the tortillas in salsa verde, then filled them with a spicy chicken mixture and rolled the echiladas.


For the sauce, I substituted Greek Yogurt (2%) for the specified sour cream, spooned it on top of the enchiladas, sprinkled onions and organic shredded pepper jack cheese on top, and ran the dish under the broiler to melt the cheese. My enchiladas were nowhere near as beautiful as those over at Simply Recipes, but they had a great cheesy appeal of their own!

I served these with guacamole, salsa, chips, and a green salad.

The Verdict:
These enchiladas are excellent, and I will definitely make them again. The key is to get a salsa verde that is great, because the flavor is prominent. The salsa I used was quite tangy but tasty. The Greek yogurt worked perfectly in the sauce, and I'd do it again, possibly with nonfat yogurt.

I'd take a few shortcuts next time:
1. If possible, cook and shred the chicken in advance. This is a great recipe for using leftover roast chicken or turkey.
2. I'd soften the tortillas by putting them in the microwave between damp paper towels. This is easy and fast, and eliminates the added oil and dirty frying pan.
3. I'd skip the step of dipping the tortillas in the tomatillo sauce. Instead, I'd try making the recipe as a casserole: fill and roll the softened tortillas, place them in a baking dish, make up the sauce and spoon it over the rolls. Then sprinkle the cheese, cover with foil and bake in the oven until hot and melty. I'd serve with chopped onion, cilantro, chopped hot peppers and chopped tomatoes on the side, to be added as desired.

{Update November 19, 2008: I've now discovered a salsa verde/ enchilade recipe that I like even better! You can find the entry here.}

{Cool Tools} Small Wonder

I cannot begin to count the number of times that I've torn up the edge of a rubber scraper when coaxing tomato paste out of those tiny, narrow cans. Well, no more! Last time we were in a kitchen store, I found this nifty little scooping scraper, and it comes in quite handy for all those small scraping tasks, naturally. What can I say? It's the little things in life.... (And yes, that is a chicken-shaped cutting board in the picture below. I've had it for years, but sadly it's beginning to crack)

Serendipity

Today I looked in my fridge and discovered three well-chilled cookie dough mounds. Last week when I was making cookies, I had a tiny bit of dough left over from my Peanut Butter Oatmeal Chipsters and a little from my "still-in-experimental-stages" oatmeal cookies. I'd kneaded the two doughs together and stuck the mixture in the fridge. So today I popped them in the oven.

The Verdict:
I'll have to say, these are fantastic cookies! A slight hint of peanut butter and lots of oat-y goodness. No fruit, chips or nuts, just chewy oatmeal.

What's that you say about "three?" Well, I had to sample one, didn't I?

My husband enjoyed the cookies with his favorite ice cream - rum raisin - while he caught up on the weekend papers.

A Winning Season!

Cathy, whose blog is The Tortefeasor has given me another award for my blog!! Cathy's blog is one of my favorites (and would be even if it didn't have the world's best legal/baking pun for a blog name!) Her posts are written with wit and good humor. Some day, I hope to bestow an award on her...


Here are the Award Rules:

1. when you receive a diamond, make a post about it on your blog.
2. name the blogger from whom you got it.
3. award the diamonds to seven other bloggers.
4. link them.
5. and tell them they got one.

Here are the blogs I'd like to award a lovely diamond:

1. Matt of Matt's Kitchen
2. Tommi of Brown Interior
3. Elizabeth of Cake or Death
4. Wendy of Pink Stripes
5. Natashya of Living in the Kitchen With Puppies
6. Mary Ann of Meet Me in the Kitchen
7. Melly of Miscellany

I recommend you check out all these awesome blogs! I think you'll agree: they're award-worthy!!

Ginger Peach Shortcakes

Our book club met last evening (2x/month for us) and I, of course, offered to bring the sweets. I had the peanut butter/oatmeal chipsters in both variations, and I wanted to bring something else. I'd already baked and served the chocolate Whopper cookies to this group (will be posted next Tuesday), and I was hopeful that the new TWD recipes would be announced in time, but they weren't. I turned to my ever-growing list of desserts-to-be-baked and selected a Ginger Peach Shortcake recipe from Bon Appetit. I love cooking with local peaches when they're in season - nothing so good as a Georgia peach!


The cool thing about this recipe is that it uses ginger ale AND chopped candied ginger in the shortbread (along with just a little heavy cream and butter.) I wasn't sure if the shortcakes would puff or spread. I took a gamble that they would puff, but instead they spread. Instead of splitting them, we just piled the fruit and whipped cream on top.


The peaches are macerated with lime, a bit of sugar and some MORE candied ginger!



The Verdict:
This was absolutely delicious and a great way to enjoy fresh summer peaches. But not without guilt! The ginger/ginger ale really tastes great in the shortcake. And the ginger/lime is a fantastic combination in the fruit. I left the whipped cream unflavored and unsweetened, which was perfect.

I think the next time I make this I will try some of my usual healthful substitutions, and I'm guessing we will still like it a lot. With a bit more peace of mind!

Some changes I might try:
- Use at least half White Whole Wheat flour
- Substitute evaporated nonfat milk and whole milk for the cream
- reduce the amount of butter
- reduce the sugar in the shortbread and eliminate the sugar from the peaches


... The leftover ginger-lime peaches were yummy stirred with yogurt, blueberries and flaxmeal for lunch the next day.