Baby Turnips with Salt and Sesame

A revelation from Deborah Madison's new cookbook, Vegetable Literacy. So simple it can hardly be called a recipe - I want to shout this from the rooftops! This is possibly the best way to eat turnips that I have ever come across. They are surprisingly addictive.

Over the past few years, I've been working at learning how to love turnips. I guess I think that all vegetables are lovable in some way, it's just a matter of finding out the way to make them shine... and turnips are one of the most underappreciated vegetables of all.

In fact, turnips were actually the inspiration for starting this blog. I had been shopping at the growers' market, and I'd spent my last $2 on a bunch of red turnips, having absolutely no idea what I would do with them. I got home and thought, what have I done? Why did I buy these? They were just so beautiful, rosy on the inside and pure white inside... I couldn't resist them.

One key to enjoying turnips is to choose the small, tender young ones (Japanese Hakurei turnips are especially nice.) They have a wonderful, mild flavor, a bit like radishes. It is amazing how different they are from the big purple-topped ones you find at most grocery stores. If you do find yourself with the big ones, they are still lovable too, but you might have to resort to cooking them with savory meat juices, or cream, or cheese.

3 or 4 Hakurei or other small turnips
Sea salt, Maldon salt, or other yummy salt
1 Tbs. black sesame seeds

Slice the turnips very thinly. Toast the sesame seeds in a dry pan on medium heat, just until they start to smell nice. Arrange the turnips on a large plate and sprinkle with the salt and sesame seeds.

Fava Bean Crostini

We have had the most amazing crop of fava beans already this year! We've harvested about a pound each weekend for the past 3 weeks, which is amazing considering about the only other thing even close to ready this early in spring is radishes.

It's a variety called Negreta from Territorial Seed that I planted in the fall, and the plants grew to about 6 inches, then lived through the winter like that. They started growing taller in February and in March already had pods. The beans are just getting big inside now.

My favorite thing to do with them so far is this simple mash on crostini. You just shell the beans, then boil them for a few minutes and chop them roughly and toss them with olive oil and salt. You can also peel off the skin from around each bean, but it's fine to eat, so I just leave it on. Honestly, if you harvest a pound of pods, only 1/4 of the weight is actual beans, so I don't want to throw away any more than I have to!

Roasted Potatoes with Sumac and Spruce Tips

Roasted potatoes are so simple and good, they make a great canvas for all kinds of things. Such as... two of my favorite foraged treats, sumac and spruce tips!

Spruce tips are the tiny little bundles of bright green new leaves that grow on spruce trees in spring. They have a lovely citrusy flavor, especially if you harvest them in the spring, before they even break out of their papery brown husks. Around here, spruce trees only grow at the very top of the mountain, about 10,000 feet (the Sandias have seven different life zones from the bottom to the top!) Last year I cooked salmon with them, as well as making spruce salt and spruce sugar to use later.

Sumac is a spice commonly used in Middle Eastern cooking, made by grinding the berries of Rhus coriaria, or Tanner's Sumac. We have a different species here called Three-Leaf Sumac, which looks very different, but the berries have a similar tangy flavor. It's also called Lemonade Bush, or Skunkbush Sumac (which I don't understand, because it's really not stinky). It grows in the forest understory on the east side of the Sandias, at about 7000 feet. There's also a fine specimen in the native plant garden at our Natural History Museum for reference. The best time to harvest them is in the summer when the berries mature, but they keep!

Since sumac and spruce tips both have an oddly citrusy flavor, I thought I'd try them together:

1 lb potatoes, cut into 1-inch chunks
2 Tbs olive oil
1 tsp ground sumac berries (you could also just use the Middle Eastern sumac)
1 tsp spruce tip salt (or 1 tsp salt and 1 tsp chopped fresh spruce tips)

Preheat oven to 450F. Bring some water to boil in a 2-quart saucepan, add the potatoes, and cook about 10 minutes, until they are about half-done. There should still be a firm white spot in the middle if you cut one, so that they don't get overdone in the oven.

Drain the potatoes and shake them around in the colander a bit to rough up the outside (this makes for lovely crispy edges once they're roasted). Toss with oil in a rimmed baking sheet or cast iron skillet. Roast for about 40 minutes until they are golden brown, turning once during the cooking. Toss the potatoes with the salt, sumac, and spruce tips immediately after taking them out of the oven, so that the mixture sticks to them. Serves 2.

Huevos Rancheros, NM style

Aahh, huevos rancheros. One of the best breakfasts ever invented. At its best in my backyard with a fresh egg from our darling chickens, fresh pinto beans from Moriarty, and lots of NM green chile. It's so perfect, it doesn't even need cheese.

It's a simple combination of tortillas, beans, with an egg and some kind of chile or salsa on the top, and I can't say I've ever had bad huevos rancheros, but these specific ingredients make it special to me.

1. I like them with corn tortillas, not flour. 
2. Fresh pinto beans (they're still dried, it's just that they are this year's crop) really do taste better and cook up faster than the old dried-out ones you buy at grocery stores. I had no idea, until we started buying them from Schwebach Farms. They sell at a few places around town, and at their Moriarty farm.
3. New Mexico green or red chile. It's a myth that the "best" or only authentic chile comes from Hatch. Great chile comes from all parts of the state. If you can't get fresh or frozen NM green chile, you still have many choices to make great NM-style huevos. You can often buy red chile powder at grocery stores in other parts of the country, and make a sauce from that. If you don't like hot food, you can make a fine green chile sauce from the mild Anaheim chiles that are widely available. In fact, you could actually use the red chile enchilada sauce that is commonly sold in grocery stores, and sometimes they even have green enchilada sauce! This is what my mom used to use to make rolled enchiladas in a big pan, growing up in Seattle (I never knew there was such a thing as flat enchiladas, or green enchilada sauce until I came to NM).
4. Fresh eggs really do taste better than store-bought ones. I was never an egg-lover until we got our chickens. 
5. Cheese is optional.

First you'll have to cook the beans, possibly the night before. This takes something like 4 hours in a crockpot on high (or overnight on low) or 30 minutes in a pressure cooker. I think it's a myth that you need to soak them overnight, although that does help them cook faster. Also contrary to popular belief, I think adding salt at the beginning helps them cook more evenly. Garlic and a whole red chile are nice additions.

Then, cook the chile. I chop up one whole onion, 1/2 pound green chile, and add a little chicken broth and salt. Simmer until the onions are very soft. Do NOT add cumin. I believe it is sick and wrong to put cumin in green or red chile sauce. I like it in other contexts, but not here.

Fry the eggs. I think fresh eggs are easier to fry, because their whites hold together better. If you're afraid to flip them, you can always just put the lid on to help the tops cook (just so the whites aren't runny). Or, as the Spanish do, and Dave's mom does, spoon the hot oil over the tops to cook them.

Finally, warm the tortillas directly on the burner. Spoon beans and chile over them, and top with fried eggs. A perfect start to Saturday!

Shiitake Mushrooms

We grew these!!

Dave got this mushroom-growing kit from my sister for Christmas, and it's going pretty well. My sister's boyfriend, Tyler, made that beautiful cutting board in the top photo!

Shiitake mushrooms have an intense mushroomy flavor, and they are wonderful in Asian-style noodle soups, or stir-fry. But they're also great in any western-style dish that calls for regular mushrooms. Next I think I really need to try making gyoza or pot stickers with a mushroom filling! Or that savory custard recipe in this month's issue of Bon Appetit.

My go-to mushroom recipe is Mollie Katzen's Stellar Mushroom Sauce. It's kind of like a beef stroganoff, but with no beef. Part of its genius is the combination of sherry and sour cream; it's one of those recipes that somehow adds up to more than the sum of its parts. I've never been able to photograph it well, I guess because it's just not that pretty. Here's my adaptation of the recipe.

1/3 cup sour cream
2 Tbs butter or olive oil1 cup minced onion
3/4 lb fresh shiitake mushrooms, chopped
3/4 lb crimini or white button mushrooms, chopped
1 tsp salt
1/2 cup dry sherry
2 Tbs flour
1 clove garlic, minced
Lots of black pepper
1 lb extra-wide egg noodles

Put the pasta water on to boil, and set out the sour cream to warm to room temperature. Heat butter or oil in a large skillet or Dutch oven. Add the onion, mushrooms, and salt. Cook uncovered on medium heat until mushrooms and onions are soft (they don't have to brown).

Add the pasta to the water and cook according to directions. Stir the sherry into the mushroom mixture, then sprinkle in flour while whisking constantly. Add garlic and black pepper, cook another 5 minutes or so, then stir in the sour cream and cook until just heated through. Toss with noodles and serve hot. Serves 4-6.

Spring has sprung!

I went on a little road trip to Arizona this week - only four days - and while I was gone, all kinds of amazing things happened! Amazing how sudden it can be.

Our Manchurian apricot tree bloomed for the first time! Well, I guess last year it had maybe two little blossoms, but this year it's covered with these little beauties. It's not supposed to freeze at all this week, so maybe it will have time to set fruits before we get another cold snap.

 Daffodils are poking up...

And tulips...

And daylilies!

The lilacs are beginning to leaf out, and the golden currant is blooming. I hope we'll have a good show this spring, but I'm a bit worried because it's been such a dry winter. Things tend to die over the winter because I don't water them enough.

And the fava beans are in full bloom! Maybe this year we'll actually have a decent crop. I've never quite gotten it right before with the timing. We have such a short time when it's not too cold and not too hot. I planted these seeds in the fall - the plants grew about four inches high, and survived the entire winter. They are a black-seeded variety called Negreta from Territorial Seed, advertised as being early to mature and good for overwintering. They're supposed to have 10-inch long pods with 6-7 beans per pod! In the foreground are some Turkish Giant garlic and Gray Shallots which I also planted in fall; they sprouted and have been hanging out just like that all winter.

Beet and Carrot Salad with Fennel Pollen

 

This may be the best beet salad I've made! Fennel pollen adds a licoricey note, with an interesting little bit of umami. I also threw in some celery leaves and fennel fronds because I had them around; celery leaves add great flavor without having to commit to the texture of actual celery stalks.

One of Bon Appetit's predictions for this year's food trends is salads without the greens, consisting of all kinds of shaved vegetables. That's particularly timely because the recent cold snap in California and here in New Mexico has wiped out a lot of the winter greens crop, making the prices for what greens did survive sky-high. Our CSA, Skarsgard Farms, just happened to bet on root crops this year instead of greens, which I guess is fortunate. So let's make the most of the root vegetables we have!

3/4 lb beets
3/4 lb carrots
1/3 cup olive oil
2 Tbs sherry vinegar
1 tsp honey
1 tsp Dijon mustard
Small pinch fennel pollen (a little goes a long way)
2 Tbs chopped celery leaves, fennel fronds, or parsley

Using a mandoline, slice beets and carrots as thinly as possible. Heat a large pot with a steamer and a little water, toss in the pile of veggies, and steam until just tender. People say if you slice beets thin enough, you don't have to cook them, but I like to cook them lightly to take off that slight astringent edge.

Whisk oil, vinegar, honey and Dijon together in a medium bowl. Add vegetables and toss thoroughly. It's great either warm or cold, but it's good to let it marinate a little bit. Sprinkle in the fennel pollen and herbs, and toss some more. Serves 6 or more as a side.