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.

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.

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."