Summer's bounty

It's ironic that here we are in the thick of summer with produce coming in fast and furious and I seem to have taken a little hiatus from writing this blog. Maybe not ironic exactly, but you get what I mean.

Summer's bounty is pretty awesome and we have been getting lots of great stuff -- zucchini, onions, pickling cukes, red and green cabbage, lettuce etc. Last week we even got garlic and shallots, too. I've been making alot of salad. And homemade salad dressing, which is better than anything from a bottle. (Sorry Paul Newman.)

If you've never made your own salad dressing you should know that it's easy, fast and tastes great. Here's how. Put one teaspoon Dijon mustard in a jar with screw on lid. Add some salt and freshly ground pepper. Add one garlic clove pressed or one finely chopped shallot. Mix in one tablespoon vinegar. I like white balsamic or red wine vinegar, but you can adjust what you pick based on your other salad ingredients. Shake. Add three to four tablespoons extra virgin olive oil. Shake. Taste for seasonings and dress salad.

Chopped Cabbage Salad

My work schedule changed this week and I have less time during the day to devote to cooking and blogging. Working as a freelance writer from home for the last two years I could often cook in between assignments. Now that I work in an office, the last two nights I've walked in the door at 5:30, kicked off my shoes, tied on an apron and scooted to the stove to cook, glass of wine nearby. It's different, but enjoyable.

This salad saved me some time Tuesday when I was at a loss for an easy vegetable to go with some sandwiches we were bolting down before heading to the Orioles game. I had made it Monday night to go with fish tacos and proved to be better the second day than the first. I hate soggy leftover dressed salad. It's slimy and gross. But cabbage lightly dressed with olive oil and white vinegar gets better with time. It softens and absorbs the other flavors in the salad. If you have time, salt the cabbage before assembling the salad. If not, it still tastes good on Day 1. And even better on Day 2. And it's really forgiving. Add in any of the suggestions, or not, and it always tastes great.

Chopped Cabbage Salad
1 small head cabbage
salt as needed
2 celery stalks, chopped
2 carrots,chopped
1 small onion, minced
1 red or yellow bell pepper,chopped
1/3 Cup olive oil
2 Tablespoons sherry or white wine vinegar
fresh ground pepper
(optional) cubed cooked potatoes, chickpeas, green beans, peas, feta,
blue cheese, avocado, radishes
Instructions:

Core and roughly chop chopped , put it in a colander and sprinkle with a couple tablespoons of salt. Check in ten minutes, and if the chopped is not yet "weeping", add a bit more salt, then mix so all chopped is salted. Put a plate on the chopped to press it down and let it sit for at least an hour or as much as two hours. If chopped
becomes too salty, rinse it before using.

Add remaining ingredients to the cabbage, toss well. Garnish with parsley. Serve immediately, or put in the refrigerator to meld flavors. The salad will keep for a couple of days.

VARIATION: Asian Style Chopped Cabbage Salad: Instead of the olive oil, use 1 tablespoon sesame oil, and 5
tablespoons peanut oil. Substitute lime juice or rice vinegar for sherry vinegar or lemon juice. Add some minced fresh hot chile and chopped scallions. Garnish with chopped cilantro.

Adapted from "Food Matters: A Guide to Conscious Eating" by Mark Bittman (Simon and Schuster, 2008).

Frisee Salad with Lardons and Poached Eggs

One of the leafy green items we got this week was curly endive. Also known as chicory or frisée , it's a bitter lettuce. Very bitter. Mean girl bitter.

To be honest, I wasn't sure what to do with it. Had it been cooler outside I would have tossed it in a pot of Italian Wedding Soup, which would have blunted some of its sharpness. But the weatherman was calling for more typical Baltimore summer weather (Translation: Hot and sticky.)

So I made salad. With warm bacon dressing. And a poached egg on top. Break into the egg and the warm yolk drips over the dressed greens and creates this delicious, rich tasting sauce that complements sharp vinaigrette and salty bacon. I sprinkled my bowl with a little crumbled blue cheese, because I thought I remembered that a french bistro near here does the same.

Here's the recipe I used from Gourmet Magazine:

FRISÉE SALAD WITH LARDONS AND POACHED EGGS

SERVES4

The secret to this take on salad lyonnaise is very fresh eggs. If the slab bacon you're using is particularly lean, add 1 tablespoon vegetable oil to the skillet when cooking.

FEBRUARY 1999

• 1/2 lb frisée (French curly endive)
• 6 oz slab bacon or thick-cut bacon slices
• 2 tablespoons distilled white vinegar
• 4 large eggs
• 2 tablespoons chopped shallot
• 3 tablespoons red-wine vinegar

• Tear frisée into bite-size pieces and put in a large bowl. If using slab bacon, cut lengthwise into 1/4-inch-thick slices. Cut bacon slices crosswise into 1/4-inch-thick sticks (lardons).
• In a heavy skillet cook bacon over moderate heat, stirring occasionally, until golden and remove skillet from heat.
• Have ready another skillet with 1 inch warm water. Half-fill a 4-quart saucepan with water and stir in white vinegar. Bring liquid to a bare simmer. Break each egg into a teacup. Slide 1 egg into simmering liquid and immediately push white around yolk with a slotted spoon, moving egg gently. (Egg will become oval, with yolk completely covered by white.) Add remaining 3 eggs in same manner. Simmer eggs about 1 1/2 minutes for runny yolks to about 3 minutes for firm yolks. (Serving this salad with runny—not fully cooked—yolks may be of concern if there is a problem with salmonella in your area.) Immediately transfer eggs to skillet of warm water.
• Reheat bacon in its skillet over moderate heat. Add shallot and cook, stirring, 1 minute. Add red-wine vinegar and boil 5 seconds. Immediately pour hot dressing over frisée and toss with salt and pepper to taste.
• Divide salad among 4 plates and top with drained poached eggs. Season eggs with salt and pepper and serve salad immediately.

Recipe courtesy of Gourmet

Choppin' broccoli

Culinary gods come and go.

When I first started cooking, Fannie Farmer was my go-to girl for recipes. Later it became Mark Bittman. And just this Spring I found a new go-to goddess -- Melissa Clark from the New York Times. The cookbook club I belong to (INSERT SHAMELESS PLUG HERE, uh sorry, I mean -- http://charmcitycookbooking.wordpress.com/) tested her book "In the Kitchen With A Good Appetite" in April and found a lot to like about the straightforward, unpretentious recipes.

The hands down winner of the book is this Garlicky Sesame-Cured Broccoli Salad. This is not a salad for the faint of heart. It's spicy, salty, garlicky, and crunchy. It can be a finger food at cocktail time or a salad on a buffet. Kids even like it. Shocking, but true.

So this recipe was what I thought of immediately when I saw the broccoli in the box this week. Sure the bunch was smaller than what you find in the grocery, but bigger than the head of CSA broccoli we got two weeks ago. Which means that summer is really here.

Garlicky Sesame-Cured Broccoli Salad

Time: 10 minutes, plus 1 hour marinating

1 1/2 teaspoons red wine vinegar

1 teaspoon kosher salt, more to taste

2 heads broccoli, 1 pound each, cut into bite-size florets

3/4 cup extra virgin olive oil

4 fat garlic cloves, minced

2 teaspoons cumin seeds

2 teaspoons roasted (Asian) sesame oil

Large pinch crushed red pepper flakes.

1. In a large bowl, stir together the vinegar and salt. Add broccoli and toss to combine.

2. In a large skillet, heat olive oil until hot, but not smoking. Add garlic and cumin and cook until fragrant, about 1 minute. Stir in sesame oil and pepper flakes. Pour mixture over broccoli and toss well. Let sit for at least 1 hour at room temperature, and up to 48 (chill it if you want to keep it for more than 2 hours). Adjust seasonings (it may need more salt) and serve.

Yield: 6 to 8 side-dish servings or more as an hors d’oeuvre.

Recipe from "In the Kitchen With Good Appetite" by Melissa Clark, also published on February 20, 2008 in the New York Times.

Oh, boy!

The theme of this week is: You can have any vegetable you want, kid, just as long as it's green.

Too early for tomatoes and watermelon, so here we are in Greenland. Must spend some time washing and spinning dry my haul and looking up salad recipes.

Help!

You look radishing, really.

I never really thought much about radishes. They came in a plastic bag, tasted kind of sharp, and didn't make much of an impression on me when my mom tossed them in a salad.

Then one morning at the farmers market I cam across some pink and white radishes that were long and thin, with floppy green tops. I loved them upon first sight and bought them on the spot. I had no idea what to do with them, but through some high level research (um, Google) I discovered that these mild radishes go well with buttered bread and a sprinkling of coarse salt. And a new favorite sandwich was born.

So when the CSA box yielded a bunch of white radishes, I knew what to do. I washed them, cut off the tops and put them on a plate with some salt. I didn't include bread or butter, because I was cooking crab cake tacos and didn't want to spoil anyone's dinner. They were sweet and mild, salty and crunchy. Better than potato chips. Or close, anyway.

We are still eating a lot of salad. But tonight, I'm also planning to cook the swiss chard that I blanched earlier in the week.

I love swiss chard. It's mild, tastes good hot or cold, and is easy to prep. Basically all you do is put some olive oil in a skillet, add some garlic and cook until fragrant, then add the blanched chard. Cook until heated through. Add some raisins that you've soaked in hot water and drained, some toasted pine nuts, and some salt and freshly ground pepper.

If you prefer a true agrodolce, or sweet and sour chard, add some vinegar. If you aren't fond of fruit in your veg, leave out the raisins. And if you have some leftover, toss it in your eggs tomorrow at breakfast.

Shrimp 'n Grits 'n Scapes

A funny thing happens when you join a CSA. You start trying to cram unusual vegetables into just about anything you can.

"I shoved 3 bunches of kale into lasagna," my neighbor and fellow CSA member proudly told me one day earlier this week.

"Oh, it cooked down so much that you needed to use 3?" I replied.

"No, I had to get rid of three bunches of kale," he said.

This week our item to use was scapes. I could have made pesto again, but when I wanted to make shrimp and grits and didn't have any scallions, I immediately thought of the other long green shoots in my fridge. The scapes needed to be cooked in bacon fat for a bit before I added them to the recipe, (A Paula Deen creation) but since I was going to be using the bacon fat to cook the shrimp, no big deal.

I loved the flavor the scapes gave the dish - grassy and fresh, but more complex than scallions. A major success.

Here's the recipe, adapted from "Paula Deen and Friends" (Simon and Schuster, 2005)

Shrimp and Grits

1 cup stone-ground grits
Salt and pepper
1/4 cup butter
2 cups shredded sharp Cheddar cheese
1 pound shrimp, peeled and deveined, left whole if small and roughly chopped if medium or large
6 slices bacon, chopped into tiny pieces
4 teaspoons fresh lemon juice
2 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley
1 cup sliced scapes
1 large garlic clove, minced

Directions

1. Bring 4 cups water to a boil in a medium saucepan. Add the grits and salt and pepper to taste. Stir well with a whisk. Reduce the heat to the lowest possible setting and cook the grits until all the water is absorbed, about 10 to 15 minutes. Remove from the heat and stir in the butter and cheese. Keep covered until ready to serve.

2. Rinse the shrimp and pat dry. Fry the bacon in a large skillet until browned and crisp, then drain on a paper towel. Add the scapes to bacon grease in pan and saute until browned and softened. Add shrimp to the skillet and saute over medium heat just until they turn pink, about 3 minutes. Do not overcook! Immediately add the lemon juice, parsley, green onions, and garlic. Remove the skillet from the heat.

3. Pour the grits into a serving bowl. Pour the shrimp mixture over the grits. Garnish with the bacon bits and serve.

Goofus and Gallant

I was a huge fan of Highlights magazine when I was a kid, and there was no feature I loved more in the magazine than Goofus and Gallant. This was a cartoon about two brothers, one named Gallant who had impeccable manners and the other, Goofus, who was a real jerk and could never do anything right.

An example: Goofus plays with matches and likes to start fires in class. Gallant always asks his parents before picking up any type of incendiary device.

I liked Goofus the best. Here's why: The boy was a troublemaker and great fun to read about. I was a goody two shoes, and even I found Gallant boring.

I don't mean to bury the lede, it's just that so far this week I have been more of a Goofus than a Gallant when it comes to my mess of greens. Like Gallant I was prompt to pick up my CSA share on Wednesday afternoon. But like Goofus, I let the greens sit in my fridge for several days before even deigning to wash them.

Friday afternoon I got to work and washed and spun two heads of lettuce, the arugula and the spinach. I blanched the swiss chard to use on Monday.

So Gallant.

Then I promptly shoved it ALL back in the fridge and went to a friend's house for pizza.

So Goofus.

Saturday afternoon I decided something should be done. So I pulled out the bunch of scapes and decided to put them in a crazy lady vase and shoot their portrait. (They kind of look like an 80s side ponytail, no?)

Then my inner Gallant kicked my inner Goofus to the curb and I decided to get busy for real. What's the best way to use greens? Salad. And I knew just the one.

A former coworker gave me this salad recipe that she got from Martha Stewart Living. The original recipe uses a mix of arugula, spinach, watercress and Belgian endive and is topped with blue cheese, hearts of palm and a killer vinaigrette. She calls it "Mother Stewart's Salad." I substituted green and red lead lettuce for the endive and watercress and bagged the hearts of palm, which I don't really like.

The result? Spicy, crunchy, green, garlicky, stinky blue cheese goodness. Given my split personality this week, I renamed the salad in honor of my favorite spiritual guides. My apologies, Martha.

Goofus and Gallant Salad

2 heaping cups baby spinach

2 heaping cups arugula

1 heaping cup red leaf lettuce

1 heaping cup green leaf lettuce

1/3 cup crumbled Maytag Blue cheese

Mix washed, torn greens in a bowl. Top with cheese. Then for the vinaigrette, press one clove garlic into a jar with a lid, and add salt, freshly ground pepper and 1 TSP Dijon mustard. Add 1 tablespoon white balsamic vinegar and shake. Add 3 TB extra virgin olive oil and shake. Pour over salad. Toss. Add additional salt and pepper to taste.

Week 2: Green machine

Week two of our CSA share from One Straw Farm brought us many green leafy things. Luckily I knew what all of them were. There was one bunch chard, one bunch spinach, one bunch of super peppery arugula, three purple sweet potatoes, one bunch white radishes, one bunch romaine lettuce, one bunch green leaf lettuce, one bunch kale and a bonus bunch of garlic scapes.

Better break out the salad spinner.

Purple pride

There are only two out of eight items left from this week's farm share: kale and purple sweet potatoes.

The kale was easy. (Did I just say that?) The humidity from last week broke, so I made sausage, white bean and kale soup. The kale stays nice and shapely in the soup and loses some of its overwhelming kale-ness, thereby winning over the haters. It's not so much a recipe as it is a guideline. Brown some Italian sausage, throw in chopped onion and garlic, add cleaned chopped kale and broth, toss in canned drained and rinsed white beans. Simmer. Sprinkle with grated cheese and eat.

The potatoes took some thinking. I hate purple. It was my high school color and I can't look at it without thinking of my 7th grade gym uniform. Think polyester double knit track shorts in bright purple trimmed in white. Ugh. I wanted to do something different than the usual but ended up with oven fries. So I peeled the potatoes and cut them in fry shape, tossed them with a little canola oil, some kosher salt and some curry powder, and roasted them in the oven for about 40 minutes until they became delicious french fry like objects which I served with burgers from the grill.

P.S. I still hate purple.

Chardtacular

I like Swiss Chard. But others in our house aren't crazy about it.

So when I saw the two bunches of chard in our CSA box this week, I wasn't sure what to do. Knowing that the leafy green would be making frequent appearances in the weeks ahead, I wanted to try something other than my ususal garlic, pine nuts and raisin treatment.

When I found a recipe on my CSA's site for En - chard-ladas, I knew I had to make it. Basically what you do is make a cheese sauce and use it as a binder for the chard. Then you roll the mix up in corn tortillas, douse with salsa and bake.

I decided to use the web recipe as a guide and instead make a bigger recipe of cheese sauce from my fav Mac and cheese recipe from Mark Bitman's "How to Cook Everything" instead. http://www.howtocookeverything.tv/recipe.php%3Fnid=27.html

The bonus? Extra cheese sauce, which I used to make a small dish of mac and cheese. When the pasta was cooking I threw the CSA broccoli into the water and made it a one dish meal. Yum.

This is the One Straw Farm recipe:

Enchiladas with Greens
1 bunch greens- chard, collards, kale or a mixture of the greens.
2T. oil
2 cloves garlic
2 T. butter
1 T. flour
1/2 c milk
1/2 c cheese- cheddar
corn tortillas
Sauté greens in garlic and oil.
Make a cheese sauce with milk, cheese, flour and butter. Mix cheese sauce into greens. Place the mixture into a tortilla, roll and place onto a greased baking dish. Cover with salsa and bake @ 375 for 20 min.

caesar salad

Caesar salad isn't easy, it isn't low fat, low calorie, or particularly swanky. But when it's made well, it's delicious.

And when I saw the leafy green head of romaine lettuce in the CSA box this week, I thought of Caesar. Caesar Cardini, that is, the restaurateur that invented this salad in 1924 when a rush of business on July 4 depleted the kitchen of his San Diego restaurant and he had to improvise.

I like anchovies and homemade croutons. I hate oily fatty dressing and I didn't want to use raw egg. So I reached into the Eating Well Recipe Rescue Cookbook and pulled out a favorite recipe that uses a dressing made from roasted garlic and a little bit of chicken broth, vinegar and oil and whirred in a food processor.

http://www.eatingwell.com/recipes/caesar_salad.html

Pasta

Pasta is delicious. Pasta is versatile. Pasta is always present in the pantry.

But when it comes to making something new and exciting, pasta almost feels like cheating. It's too easy. No matter what you do to pasta, people usually like it.

But when presented with a bunch of garlic scapes, I made pesto. For pasta.

That's right I cheated.

And it was I good thing I did, because it was a huge hit. The pesto was lighter than traditional basil pesto, and had an almost grassy flavor. I stirred in some grape tomatoes after coating the farfalle with sauce and the results were pretty good.

The next day I stirred some scape pesto into my scrambled eggs and the results were even better.

I guess sometimes cheating isn't really cheating.

Here is the recipe, adapted from Kim O'Donnel's Mighty Appetite blog at The Washington Post:

Garlic Scape Pesto

Ingredients:
1 cup garlic scapes (about 8 or 9 scapes), top flowery part removed, cut into ¼-inch slices
1/3 cup toasted slivered almonds
¾ cup olive oil
¼-1/2 cup grated parmigiano
½ teaspoon salt
black pepper to taste

Method:
Place scapes and walnuts in the bowl of a food processor and whiz until well combined and somewhat smooth. Slowly drizzle in oil and process until integrated. With a rubber spatula, scoop pesto out of bowl and into a mixing bowl. Add parmigiano to taste; add salt and pepper. Makes about 6 ounces of pesto. Keeps for up to one week in an air-tight container in the refrigerator.

For ½ pound short pasta such as penne, add about 2 tablespoons of pesto to cooked pasta and stir until pasta is well coated.

Berry good

Sorry I forgot to post an image yesterday of my Week One haul.

Day 1: The biggest problem was finding a place in the fridge for all of my voluminous green leafy, curly minions. Did I jam them in the crisper, which was already filled with sadish supermarket celery and boring carrots, or leave them on shelves where I would see them many times a day and be reminded of my promise to use up EVERYTHING I received in my weekly share. I opted for the latter -- except for the purple potatoes, which I left in the fruit bowl since I have a bad habit of ignoring potatoes left in the pantry.

The strawberries looked the most fragile and delicious so last night I started with those. I filled a glass salad bowl with organic baby greens, tossed in some killer feta (salty! creamy!) and topped it all with the strawberries and a handful of sliced almonds. It was 100 degrees here yesterday and too hot to cook. Plus we were having chicken flatbread sandwiches for dinner and it seemed to go. I didn't actually get to eat any of the salad last night because I was the taxi to soccer tryouts. I do know that my son, looking at the salad bowl asked his dad, "Are we allowed to eat that or does Mom have to take a picture of it first?"

Smart boy.

I forgot to take the picture.

We put the five leftover strawberries in a dish with the California strawberries from earlier in the week. My 8-year-old ran a taste test this morning. It was no contest which one was the winner. "These taste like something," she said after she took a bite of the local berries.

I had to agree.

Week 1 - The Sweets & scape

Today was the first CSA pickup from One Straw Farm, a nearby organic farm, and I am astounded by the quantity and variety of what we got in our share.

This is what was in the box: Two bunches of chard, one box of strawberries, a bunch of garlic scapes, four purple sweet potatoes, one head romaine lettuce, and one head of broccoli. And yes, one bunch of kale. It was all so fresh it squeaked when we put it in our bags.

I laid it all out on the counter when I got home and surveyed my haul. the strawberries were dark red jewels, just gorgeous. And the lettuce looked like it would be delicious seared on the grill and made into a Ceasar. But I am puzzled about what to do with the sweet potatoes and the scapes. Stir fry? Oven fries? Pasta? Could they be cooked together or apart?

Right now the scapes are in the fridge, their tendrils shooting off the shelf and reaching into the area below. It looks like some kind of veggie horror movie ....

Countdown to CSA

71 days until I pick up my first CSA share from One Straw Farm. Can't wait!

Bake!

They say you aren't supposed to judge a book by its cover but I usually do anyway. And judging from the cover of Nick Malgieri new book "Bake!: Essential Techniques for Perfect Baking" (Kyle Books, 2010), which features six perfect loaves of bread and a luscious looking raspberry tart on the cover, this book looks like a keeper.

But it was something Malgieri wrote in his introduction that really won me over. "Please don't buy into the fallacy that 'baking is a science'," he wrote. "You'll only end up intimidating yourself." The author, who has more than 30 years of experience teaching people how to bake and is the former executive pastry chef at Windows on the World, goes on to explain that hundreds of everyday processes that people often use, like driving a car or using the telephone, can be explained using strict scientific principles, but we take those processes for granted and aren't afraid of them."Baking needn't be any more difficult than a phone call," he concludes. "You just need to know what to do in order to do it successfully every time."

To parapharse the inimitable David Cassidy: Nick Malgieri, I think I love you.

Finally someone who speaks my language. I'm a good cook but the fussiness of many baking cookbooks really turns me off. If you think I'm going to wade my way through a four page cake recipe when a one pager turns out a product that's just as delicious, you're wrong. "Bake!," which has lots of step by step photos, does a great job of explaining technique. The recipes are well-written and straightforward. And Nick Malgieri is a really interesting guy, who, get this, doesn't weigh his ingredients. He just scoops and levels. Cue the sound of angels rejoicing please.

I recently had the opportunity to meet Nick at a potluck event for Baltimore area food bloggers and he was as gracious and down to earth as his recipes are. The evening, hosted by Julie Thorne and coordinated by Dara Bunjon of Dining Dish, was a casual gathering with lots of great food and wine where we got to chat with Nick and one another about a topic that's near and dear to our hearts: Food.

The best part was of course, the baked goods. There were espresso chocolate chip cookies, peppery sandwich cookies, heart shaped puffs filled with delicate pastry cream, and a moist hot milk cake dusted with powdered sugar. Nick baked two things: A chocolate bourbon cake that was rich and smooth and delicious and some Roman biscotti so deliciously crunchy and light it was difficult to eat just one. Try them yourself. And check out "Bake!" -- you won't be disappointed.

TOZZETTI: ROMAN ANISE, ALMOND, AND HAZELNUT BISCOTTI

Unlike most biscotti that are formed into narrow loaves before baking, tozzetti are spread in a pan. After the initial baking, they are cut into narrow strips and dried in the oven until shatteringly crisp.

Makes about 80 thin biscotti

2 cups all-purpose flour (spoon flour into dry-measure cup and level off)
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 1/2 cups whole blanched almonds, lightly toasted
1 cup whole blanched hazelnuts, lightly toasted
3 large eggs
1 1/3 cups sugar
2 tablespoons Sambuca liqueur
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 tablespoon aniseed, crushed
One 9 x 13- x 2-inch pan, buttered and lined with buttered foil

1. Set a rack in the middle level of the oven and preheat to 350 degrees.

2. Stir the flour and baking powder together, then stir in the almonds and hazelnuts
and set aside.

3. In a large mixing bowl, whisk the eggs, then whisk in the sugar, continuing to
whisk for a minute until somewhat lightened. Whisk in the liqueur, vanilla, and
aniseed. Use a large rubber spatula to stir in the flour and nut mixture.

4. Scrape the mixture into the prepared pan and smooth the top. Bake until just firm,
about 20-25 minutes. Cool in the pan on a rack.

5. When completely cool, slide the slab of baked dough to a cutting board. Use a
sharp serrated knife to cut into three 3-inch wide bars, then cut across them to
make 1/2-inch thick biscotti. Arrange the cut biscotti on 2 paper-lined pans.

6. Dry the biscotti until very crisp but still light in color at 325 degrees for about 20
minutes. Cool and store in a tin.

Copyright © Nick Malgieri 2011, All Rights Reserved

**
CHOCOLATE BOURBON CAKE

The sweet, mellow flavor of Bourbon has a great affinity for chocolate. Serve this
unadorned cake with a little unsweetened whipped cream.

Makes one 8-inch cake, 8 to 10 servings

2 sticks (8 ounces) unsalted butter, cut into 12 pieces
8 ounces bittersweet chocolate (70%), cut into 1/4-inch pieces
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup all-purpose flour (spoon flour into dry-measure cup and level off)
Pinch of salt
5 large eggs
3 tablespoons best-quality Bourbon
1/2 cup dark brown sugar, firmly packed

One 8-inch round 2-inch deep pan, buttered, bottom lined with a disk of buttered
parchment

1. Set a rack in the upper third of the oven and preheat to 350 degrees.

2. Melt butter in a saucepan over medium heat, allowing it to sizzle and get really hot.
Remove from heat, add chocolate and whisk smooth.

3. In a bowl, whisk the granulated sugar, flour, and salt together; add all the eggs and
Bourbon. Whisk together smoothly.

4. Stir the brown sugar into the butter and chocolate mixture and stir into the batter.

5. Pour the batter into the prepared pan and smooth the top. Bake the cake until the
center is still soft, but no longer liquid, 25 to 35 minutes.

6. Cool the cake on a rack.

7. To serve the cake, invert to a platter and remove the pan and paper. Cover loosely
with plastic wrap if not serving immediately.

Copyright © Nick Malgieri 2011, All Rights Reserved

Kale, a four letter word.

Some vegetables get no respect. Sure if you are corn and potatoes and anything else that can be drenched with butter and tarted up with cheese, you're easy to love. Or bathe a vegetable in olive oil and roast at a high temperature until it caramelizes and you've got yourself another winner. Yes squash, kohlrabi and parsnip, I am definitely talking to you.

And then there's kale. Ahhh kale. I've tried to love you. I've put you in soup with sausage and white beans, made you into chips kissed with salt and cider vinegar, tried you raw. It's not working kale. I think we need an intervention.

I've gotten my husband and two kids to like broccoli (Melissa Clarke's Sesame-Cured Raw Broccoli Salad: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/20/dining/201arex.html ). They inhale Swiss chard (http://www.eatingwell.com/recipes/skillet_gnocchi_with_chard_white_beans.html). And they like collards cooked low and slow with Truck Patch Farm bacon http://truckpatchfarms.com/index.html.

But kale, you disappoint. Your flavor is too harsh, too green, two kaleish. They can sniff you out and turn up their noses in no time. And there is only so much kale one woman can eat before she admits defeat.

The other night I went to a meeting of a parent group trying to get the county schools to serve healthier lunches. As I was leaving my husband and kids were shouting suggestions of foods I should be lobbying for. The words that followed me out the door were these, "Whatever you do," my husband said, "don't tell them we need more kale."

Summer, where are you?

It's still February but we are already dreaming of summer. "I can't wait until we have watermelon and cherries and peaches," my 8-year old daughter said yesterday as she surveyed the fruit bowl sitting on the table. She sighed at the sight. The bowl held five browning bananas and an indifferent looking Bosc pear. The refrigerator wasn't much better: A few oranges, some carrots, a bag of romaine hearts and a bunch of kale that I meant to roast but somehow forgot about despite the fact that its green leafiness had consumed most of the bottom shelf for the majority of the week.

She took an applesauce out of the fridge and grabbed a spoon.

I'm tired of winter, too. And since a Spring break getaway somewhere warm is not in the cards this year, I started thinking about joining a CSA instead. Buying a share means that from June to November, a local organic farm will present me with a box of eight different kinds of fruits and vegetables grown just a few miles away. I've wanted to join one for years but always told myself that I could just go buy what I wanted at the Farmer's Market instead. Some weeks I did, but most I didn't.

This year is different. I cook dinner every night and make grocery lists every week. I love the idea of not having to choose every single item we eat, of making things based on what's in season and what's in my fridge.

What does the box have in store for me this summer? I have no idea. But I know I can't wait to find out.