Er – maybe not like this. They are pretty, though! Maybe you want to:

1. Grow your own sprouts! (Sprouted chickpeas are great for hummus)

2. Grow random crap from your pantry and fridge! (Special shout-out to potato sprouter extraordinaire Judith Ternes – you inspire us)

3. Check out Carolyn Cope‘s advice for edible windowbox gardens!

4. Find out who among your friends and family are undercover garden wizards! They’re everywhere, and they’ll definitely give you advice, probably bring you their extras, and maybe even deliver you some transplants.

Don’t forget to have fun and not worry too much! This spring, I tried to let go of my desire to read and read and read about gardening, and just gardened. It’s been great. Maybe (read: probably) I’ve made some serious technical errors, but I’m too ignorant to know the difference! And as long as I’m not perpetuating pests, I figure my amateurish behavior is acceptable. And the herbs are hard to kill. And it feels good to eat food you’ve grown. And it feels almost as good if not better to not pay $3 for a pathetically small bunch of “fresh” herbs.

Max and I threw a bunch of stuff in the ground this spring. Click on for some photos of our -likely-unimpressive-to-you-but-totally-life-changing-for-me garden! I’m practicing for my hopefully long career as a slightly senile but very proud grandmother who has impressively but inconveniently learned to use snapfish.

We started out with some super cute herbs from various farmer’s market stands (background), some tiny squash and melons, and some rhubarb. Special thanks to previous tenants for the tulips, mint, and marjoram! I think this photo is from May-ish.

Here’s a (slightly) better look at our herbs: three types of sage, rosemary, marjoram, basil, thyme, mint, oregano, chives, purslane (technically a weed, but apparently edible!), cilantro.

We were out of town for two weeks and our cilantro bolted! We could hardly believe it.

The rest of our herbs didn’t do so poorly either. The weeds, as you can see, are also well. We also added a jalapeno pepper plant and a serrano pepper plant. And our toes!

Here’s a closeup of our little squash:

They grow up so fast! From total cutie-babies to beautiful adults! But they’re overwhelming us. Maybe they’re more like teenagers.

We’ve also put in eggplant and tomatoes. Angela has graciously allowed us to plant our watermelon and extra pepper and eggplant seedlings in her garden. We can’t wait for harvest to continue! We’re so sick of lettuce!

Turn my kitchen color palette yellow!

(If you’re not a Harry Potter geek just ignore me.)

Learn to make pasta.

We’ve been obsessively experimenting with happy chickens – here you can see Old Hall Farm and Fosse Meadows Farm stands, both of which offer a perfect bird for a Sunday night roast with market vegetables. And pretty bunting.

Perry’s Farm and Ted’s Veg are great for stocking up on produce – I’ve been trying all sorts of fun and colorful things like green and red kale, red cabbage, Isle of Wight tomatoes, sorrel, cress, local apple and pear varieties, rhubarb stalks, and purple sprouting broccoli.

It’s all excellent quality, grown by small farmers and producers, and a great way to get involved in supporting the local community. Plus, it’s delicious.  Showing up at the market and buying whatever looks exciting is a great way to try out new vegetables and play around with different recipes.

I love broccoli, especially when it’s pretty and purple. I think it’s delicious on its own, but let’s be honest…isn’t everything a little bit extra awesome when you add cheese into the mix?

This fantastic creamy feta dip is adapted from Sarah (fellow Rambling Restaurauteur) and her amazing Persian dishes that we’ve enjoyed at Nowruz new year celebrations for two years.  She’s made addictive rhubarb lamb khoresh and homemade baklava and all sorts of deliciousness.  I borrowed her lovingly worn Persian cookbook to play around with some recipes for a dinner party and ended up with a version of a Cheese and Walnut Spread that goes perfectly with lightly steamed broccoli.

You have to start with a really good feta cheese and our choice of cheese the past few years has been this delightful can of unintelligibility.

Having just got back from Berlin yesterday, I actually think it’s in German, although the writing also implies Bulgarian? Who knows – it’s creamy, salty, and fantastic and that’s all that matters.  Go comb the corner stores for it and you won’t regret it.

If you happen to be so lucky as to have received a Slap Chop (of incredible infomercial entertainment value, including the remix) for Christmas from your brother, you can use it to crush some nuts. You won’t regret that either.

Add some chopped parsley and mint to the dip, along with lime juice, some olive oil, minced garlic, and salt and pepper. I happened to have some creme fraiche in the house from Ottolenghi’s amazing caramelised garlic tart which added a nice smooth tartness to the dip.

It’s great with crackers, great with flatbread. Great on carrots or probably any other raw or lightly steamed vegetable. I bet it would be good stuffed in a chicken breast or rolled up into meat or spread on a sandwich. Cheese spreads like this are great multitaskers.  Make it and I’m sure you’ll find another ten great ways to eat it. Like by itself on a spoon…

Super Easy Cheese,  Herb, and Nut Dip

What You Need:

I’ll be honest, I didn’t really measure any of this, so don’t worry about the proportions too much. Try, taste, adjust as necessary, and I’m sure it will be delicious.

A good hunk of feta cheese (the Persian book says 1/4 pound)

1/2-1 cup of nuts – traditionally walnuts, but I didn’t have any, so I used almonds. Also delicious.

A handful of fresh parsley, chopped into little shreds

A handful of fresh mint, also chopped into little shreds

Other herbs that would be good but I didn’t have – scallions, basil, tarragon, etc.

1 clove minced garlic

1/4 cup creme fraiche

1/4 cup olive oil – I think I left this out

juice of 1 lime

salt & pepper

What You Do:

Ummm…put it all in a bowl and mix it up. It doesn’t get any more complicated than that and it will take only about 5 minutes of your life. Scoop onto a piece of broccoli or animal flesh or grain product and eat. Happy times.

]]> http://eatfamilystyles.com/2011/04/11/sunday-farmers-market-trips-and-an-easy-cheesy-recipe/feed/ 0 http://eatfamilystyles.com/2011/04/03/real-bacon-real-excitement-and-a-really-delicious-caramelized-garlic-tart-obviously-with-bacon/ http://eatfamilystyles.com/2011/04/03/real-bacon-real-excitement-and-a-really-delicious-caramelized-garlic-tart-obviously-with-bacon/#comments Sun, 03 Apr 2011 16:34:01 +0000 mei http://eatfamilystyles.com/?p=3528 If  you’ve ever met me, you know I have a thing for bacon.

I love bacon enough for my sister and I to make an all-bacon Thanksgiving feast with 8 dishes including bacon stuffing, bacon mashed potatoes, and bacon-wrapped turkey. I love bacon enough to go to a Bacon Camp and make bacon sushi and take random photos of beautiful bacon dishes. I love bacon enough to do a 4-course Iron Chef-style bacon smackdown that included bacon chocolate and bacon cookies and have been known to make bacon cupcakes and even bacon macaroni-and-cheese cat cakes. Don’t ask. I even love bacon enough to tattoo it on my face.

So you can probably comprehend my fat-kid-in-a-candy-shop-on-Christmas-morning level of excitement when this package arrived in the mail. I actually jumped up and down and squealed like a pig.  A delicious, dry-cured British pig.

Understandably, most people’s first question on hearing about my bacon package is ‘How did you get that?!?!’ Meaning, obviously, ‘How can I get that!?!?!’  The answer is that I was sent the bacon from a PR company promoting ‘Real Bacon’; that is, British bacon dry-cured in a traditional manner that involves hand rubbing with salt and spices and at least 21 days of air-drying.  In contrast to a lot of imported bacon that’s injected with water and chemicals, this bacon doesn’t shrink to half its original size in the frying pan or give off a funky white gloopiness when being cooked which comes from the injected water leaching out, two things I’ve actually noticed recently when cooking bacon. Plus, the bacon comes from pigs that are compassionately farmed, which I’m all about. Well, that’s what the press release says, which may require a little more investigation.

However, the interesting thing for me was that the press release didn’t come from an expensive artisan bacon company, or even from one company at all. In fact, the bacon came from multiple different supermarkets at a range of prices from M&S to Morrisons, all in support of the ‘I love Real Bacon’ campaign.  And while I’m trying to look for supermarket alternatives for a lot of my shopping, it’s a bit unrealistic to get all my groceries at farmer’s markets  so it’s great to know that there are some better options. And the bacon certainly looked better than a lot of the inspidly pink, monotonously hued, fleshy rashers you sometimes see down those flourescently highlighted megamart aisles.

P.S. For those of my friends back home wondering why the bacon is a funny shape and less fatty and stripey than normal, this is what is called ‘back bacon’ in the UK, which is essentially a bacon-cured pork loin. The typical long and skinny slice of pork belly that we just call bacon, they call ‘streaky bacon’. In case you were wondering.  They held their size pretty well when fried up with none of the gross white stuff, had a nice salty meatiness and got a good seared crisp on the fatty bits.  Pretty damn good stuff.

Now I love bacon, and you love bacon, and I want to share the glories of bacon. Getting a massive box of bacon is definitely a good opportunity to have a dinner party.  But as much as I would like to just hand over strips of bacon for our mutual enjoyment, I figured it should actually be incorporated into a dish before I get accused of endangering the cardiac health of my dinner guests. Enter Ottolenghi’s Caramelised Garlic Tart of amazingness.

I’ve talked about genius chef-man Ottolenghi before and the usefulness of his incredible vegetarian cookbook, Plenty, during my month of meatlessness.  Every recipe I’ve tried so far, from the Very Full Tart to this ridiculously good soba noodles with mango and eggplant recipe, has been absolutely stellar.  But of course, even stellar can be better with bacon. I bet Ottolenghi himself, as a meat eater with an appreciation of the glories of vegetables, would agree.

Caramelised Garlic Tart with Goat Cheeses and, Obviously, Bacon.

All credit to Ottolenghi, except adapted slightly in honor of bacon.

What You Need:

375g puff pastry – easy to buy pre-rolled in the store

a few tbsps olive oil

Salt and black pepper

2 heads garlic, cloves peeled – I did this once and my hands smelled of garlic for hours. My recommendation for lazy people who don’t mind spending an extra pound – buy them pre-peeled. Your fingers and your friends will thank me.

1 tbsp balsamic vinegar

1½ tbsp caster sugar – that’s just regular sugar for you Americans.

1 tsp chopped rosemary

1 tsp chopped thyme, plus a few whole sprigs to finish

120g rich, creamy goats’ cheese

120g harder goat’s cheese

2 eggs

100ml double cream  - heavy cream if you’re in the US

100ml crème fraîche

What You Do:

1. Preheat the oven to 180C/350F and then roll out your puff pastry in a tart pan or pie tin. Create an outer crust lip, place some baking paper down, fill with beans and blind bake for 20 minutes. Take out the beans and bake for another 20 minutes or so, until the pastry is a light golden brown.

2. While the pastry is baking, cover the garlic in water and simmer for 3 minutes to blanch. Drain, then return to the pan with a splash of oil to lightly fry for a few minutes. Add the vinegar and 180 ml of water (about 3/4 cup) and simmer for another 10 minutes. Then add the sugar, the thyme and rosemary, and a pinch of salt.  Simmer for another 10 minutes until the liquid is reduced to a delicious-smelling dark syrup and you are tempted to eat whole cloves of garlic straight out of the pan.

3. Crumble the goat cheese and strew across the pre-baked tart case. I’m interested to experiment with some other cheese here, but I used one log of chevre and another white hard goat cheese and they were delicious.

4. Now this part is pretty exciting. Spoon the garlic and the sauce across the cheese. It looks pretty already, and you will want to try to eat it now, but don’t. It gets much better.

Hello Beautiful.

5. Whisk together the eggs with the double cream and creme fraiche and some salt and pepper. Pour into the tart case, letting some of the garlic peek out and show their face.

6. ADD YOUR BACON! I only did half because one of our guests doesn’t eat bacon. Sad, I know, but that’s more bacon for the rest of us.

7. Bake the tart for about 35-45 minutes, until the filling sets and the top is a lovely golden-brown color that you just want to lick.  Mmmmmm.  I’ve made this thing of beauty twice now for dinner parties and brunches and it’s always a huge hit.

For those of you who might want a healthier or non-meat version, remember that it started as a vegetarian tart and is still seriously delicious that way. Although….well, come to think of it, given the eggs and the cream, I should probably avoid references to health altogether.  But the important thing to know is that this tart, like just about everything, including breakfast, lunch, dinner, dessert, Thanksgiving, is just better with bacon.

A moment to savor: I am less than one week away from the end of a Month of Meatlessness.  Cue the shock. The horror! Why?! Well, after eating a few great vegetarian meals recently, my steak-obsessed boyfriend was interested to continue the trend. Out of a sincere desire to experiment with minimized meat consumption (combined with high-reaching ambition and some serious self-delusions), he audaciously proposed an entire month of vegetarianism. Within about 9 painful days, he was found ravenously destroying a blue cheese- draped venison burger at Borough Market. I, however, despite my love for all things bacon, took it as a personal challenge to finish the month without letting a piece of animal flesh cross my lips. To be fair – it actually hasn’t been too much of a lifestyle change for me.  I cook almost exclusively vegetarian at home and can be completely satisfied with a veggie entree when eating out. I only found myself mourning my meat-freeness once or twice when an entire side of smoked salmon tried to seduce me from the fridge and when an entire table of Malaysian meat dishes taunted me from a communal table while I sobbed quietly from the corner.

Near-misses aside, I’ve relied heavily on Yotam Ottolenghi’s new vegetarian book, Plenty, which I bought as presents for 3 people before finally purchasing for myself.  It’s so good and so beautiful, I think the man might be a genius.  He, like me, is a dedicated meat eater who also revels in the beauty and flavor of meatless dishes that showcase everything from the humble onion to the unexpectedly sexy baby radish. Inspired by his ‘Very Full Tart’, I made a similar but oh-so-very-slightly-less-full-on tart with creme fraiche instead of double cream and leaving out the ricotta.  You can really use almost any vegetables you like here. At a cost of only about 10 pounds, a tart this size could last at least 3 meals for 2 people, although it’s good enough that I ended up eating it straight out of the pan after an entire slice and a half. Prepare at your own risk….

A Very (slightly less than) Full Tart

Adapted very slightly from Ottolenghi’s Plenty cookbook

What You Need:

1 large yam or sweet potato, cubed

Working on my knife skills

2 zucchini, sliced

1 red onion, sliced

2 cloves garlic, chopped

2 large handfuls spinach

a few glugs of olive oil

1 package rolled shortcrust pastry (easy to find in a British supermarket, maybe use a pie crust without sugar in the States?)

350ml creme fraiche (or, you know,  a small container’s worth for those of you too busy to convert things)

3 eggs

1 small package feta (200g for you particular people )

salt and pepper

assorted herbs and spices – I put in a little cayenne and some mixed herbs that were lying around, but it’s totally up to you

1 small container of cherry or grape tomatoes, sliced in half

What You Do:

1. Toss the yam in some olive oil and whack it into a pre-heated oven at about 350F and after they get slightly soft (about 10-15 minutes ), chuck in the zucchini slices.

2. While those vegetables are roasting, saute the onion and garlic in a little olive oil. Once soft, add the handfuls of spinach and saute until cooked, then remove from heat.

3.  Unroll the pastry and place in a tart pan or rectangular tray, then prick all over with a fork to prevent from bubbling up. Once the vegetables are nice and soft and lightly browned to your preferred degree of doneness, put the empty pastry shell into the oven for about 10-15 minutes to brown.

P. S. I didn’t grease the pan and it was fine.

P.P. S. If you’ve got dry beans and are a big overachiever, you can weigh down the pastry and blind bake it. If you don’t and you’re lazy like me, just make sure to prick the pastry well and keep an eye out while baking and poke any big bubble.

The uncooked tart, tomatoes upright and smiling.

4. Beat the eggs into the creme fraiche and crumble in the feta cheese. Add some salt and pepper and any herbs and spices you feel like.

5. When the tart crust is a nice light golden color, take it out of the oven and dump all the cooked vegetables in.  Pour the eggy cheesy mixture around them, then take the tomatoes and arrange them sliced half up so the can be seen all red and pretty on top.

6. Chuck the whole happy deal back in the oven for 30-40 minutes or so.

7. When the filling is golden and only very slightly jiggles when shaken, take the tart out. Let cool for as long as you can stand it, then slice and eat. Try your best to save some for breakfast and maybe even lunch, you won’t regret it…

It feels good to be on top.

We got our eggplants from Mandeville’s farm stand, our recipe from smittenkitchen, and the parmesan cup idea from a combination of Tommy, Max’s uncle, and the firm belief that you can always have more cheese.

We sliced eggplant.

We put it in a bowl.

We roasted it and put it back in the bowl with scallions, cilantro, feta, shallots, and red wine vinegar.

We baked spread-out tablespoons (or maybe 2 tbs?) of parmesan until they were golden brown.

We used mini-muffin tins and teeny cups to mold the parmesan into vessel-shape. We had to work fast before the parmesan hardened! Incidentally, there must be a better way to do this. We just didn’t figure it out.

We filled the cups!

And, as a bonus, one (bad) photo of our completely home-made pork buns (pickled red onion and cucumber, slow, red-cooked pork shoulder, momofuku-recipe buns):

Just wanted to let you kids know what we’ve been up to.

You might argue that he does a lot of things that are absurd. Especially if you are his son, who is obviously responding to his own probably forcibly donned gem-studded crocs with a classic pose for the camera: palm to forehead accompanied with expression of serious psychic pain.

But I digress. There are few things that are not improved with a fried egg with an oozy, slightly runny, richly yellow yolk. I just never thought that thing would be pasta. It was an “I didn’t know you could do that!” sort of moment. Sort of like a lot of feminist theory. Too far? Okay. I digress again, obviously.

We didn’t have a pasta roller (we have since acquired one), but we did have a lot of bicep power between the three of us (Baniel, Captain Tinyfeet, and Beanpie), so with the guiding light of Mario Batali shining upon us and our almost embarrassingly low level of experience, we started to make pasta. We also turned to Alice Waters and Alton Brown for support, and learned that we were to use semolina flour (which comes from durum wheat and is higher in protein) for a better, yellower, more beautiful and pliable dough. Some people just use AP flour, and some use a mix, but we got semolina flour at Weggie World, so we decided to go for it. We didn’t have a recipe guiding us, so we played it by ear.

We experienced failure – heartbreaking, I-guess-we-just-won’t-eat-any-dinner-because-we-don’t-deserve-it failure. But we learned from our mistakes. And also Skyped with Amin, who had actually read Alice Waters’ guide to making pasta dough. And we did way better the next time.

Our improvised pasta dough recipe and a guide to uova di raviolo after the jump. You don’t need a roller, but if you need your arms the two days after, you might want one.

Our Basic Pasta Dough Recipe: Our basic pasta recipe is as follows – and keep in mind that we consulted few experts other than engineering student extraordinaire Amin Younes while we were putting this particular part of our recipe together.

Make a volcano on the table with 3 cups of semolina flour (or a well in a bowl – see Serious Eats for what that looks like) and fill the middle with 4 egg yolks.

Why egg yolks, and not just whole eggs? Max should probably weigh in on this in terms of the properties of egg yolks as opposed to whites, but as far as I’m concerned, why have less cholesterol when you could have more?

Right? As a side note, my new favorite way to separate yolks from whites is just to crack all the eggs into a bowl, and then scoop out the yolks with my hands, one a a time, passing them from hand to hand – it’s easier on the yolks, and fun to do. Just make sure your hands are clean if you have plans for meringues or egg white omelettes. Erm… probably your hands should be clean regardless, actually.

Where were we? Oh, yeah, yolks. Four of them. If you’re not convinced, you could probably also use 2 eggs instead. Add a sploosh (maybe 2 TBS) of olive oil and a pinch of kosher salt to the center of the volcano, and then work the liquid into the flour starting from the middle of the volcano so it doesn’t spill all over the table. Mix with your hands!

Once the liquid is incorporated, continue to knead and gradually add water, about 1 cup in all, while you’re kneading. Keep going. Is the color pretty consistent? Is the dough past crumbly, but before sticky? You’re done adding water. Knead until you’ve worked the dough for about 15 minutes. I usually stop when it looks something like this, or maybe a few kneads after.

Then, we tightly wrap the dough in saran wrap, and rest for 45 minutes. Don’t know why. I’ll let you know if I find out. After that, it’s ready to use – roll it out by hand, or with a roller. Experiment with fillings – go crazy! We’ve tried spaghetti (or at least, thin, circular strands of pasta), ravioli, and tortellini and have gone rogue with probably half a dozen different cheeses, three bean salad, grilled fish, pork belly, celeriac puree, and a few other items.

Though Food Lab research on how to cook pasta is kicking Alton Brown’s skinny ass all over the place in terms of water requirements (how hot and how much), his and probably your grandmother’s wisdom about at least a gallon of water, salted and boiling for pasta (for about 4 people) is still legit when it comes to pasta that’s fresh.

A Guide to Uova Di Raviolo: We read over Mario Batali’s Food Network recipe for this culinary gem, but took a lot of creative license with it, and you should too! Here’s our basic guide for about 4 raviolos.

Roll out enough pasta dough so that you can cut eight rounds of dough that are about 6 or 7 inches in diameter. (this should only be about 1/3 or 1/2 of the dough you made in the above recipe, if that). The rounds should be a few millimeters thick – if you’ve eaten lots of ravioli you’ll have a good sense of the thickness you want. You can do this with a rolling pin or a pasta roller, and bowls/plates are great for cutting rounds – just place your bowl upside down on the pasta and cut around the edge.

Place your rounds on a floured surface, or parchment or wax paper – just make sure they don’t stick!

Mix about 1 cup ricotta cheese with a handful of chopped, blanched spinach (just pop it into boiling water for five seconds). Another vegetable could be good here too, like pureed celeriac or shaved caramelized fennel. Season with kosher salt and white and/or black pepper to taste. Batali also adds parmesan, which we opted out of, but you could add any kind of delicious, strong cheese, really.

Your filling should be perhaps a little saltier than you want it so the flavor of the ricotta and spinach can stand up to the richness of the egg yolk and whatever sauce you put on your raviolo.

Spoon equal portions of the ricotta mixture – about 1/4-1/3 cup, if I had to guess – onto the centers of four of the pasta rounds. Then, use your finger to spread the mixture into an ring – the hole in the middle should be about an inch and a half wide – just the right size for an egg yolk and a little bit of white.

You might be tempted to pipe the mixture onto the pasta, but we’ve found that creating the ring by moving the ricotta mixture creates a good seal that holds the egg inside the ricotta ring – you don’t want egg white leaking out and ruining the sealed raviolo (this is what happened in the picture below!).

Then, place 1 egg yolk (and some white, if you wish, but not the whole thing!) in the center of each ricotta ring. We use Happy Hens chicken eggs – if you can get your hands on some eggs that are really fresh, or even some duck eggs (oooh…), you’re a badass and will be rewarded in spades. This is a good time to stick a little pat of truffle butter (or any other kind of butter, for that matter) right on top of or next to the yolk.

Then, place pasta rounds on top of each pasta-ricotta-egg unit. Use your fingers to press down right at the edge of the ricotta ring, and try not to leave too much air into the raviolo. Then, use a fork to seal the deal. You may wish to use an egg wash (egg white + water) or some other form of moisture to help seal. You may also want to trim the edges so you have a nice uniform raviolo (the upside down bowl trick works great here too).

Bring a gallon of sea-water-level salty water to a boil. This salt is realllly important! It will make your pasta absolutely heavenly. While you’re waiting, you should probably make a butter sauce – try 1 stick of butter and some fresh herbs (tarragon, thyme, whatever you have) in a saucepan over medium-low heat until it takes on a nice brown color and a delicious, nutty smell. Beurre noisette = yum.

Once you’ve got a rolling boil, very gently pick up your uova (you may want a spatula or turner) and slip it into the water. Stir it around a little to keep it from sticking to the bottom of the pot. Most fresh pastas cook in 2 or 3 minutes, but for a delicious, oozy but well warmed yolk, you should give the uova about 5 minutes of cooking.

We actually prefer 7 minutes:

The yolk is creamy, not solid, but not watery either. But we’ll let you decide how you like yours done. Spoon some beurre noisette on top, and enjoy this heavenly, decadent, delicious homemade treat. And then try to tell me there is something that can’t be improved with an egg yolk and a little truffle butter. Let us know how it goes!

]]> http://eatfamilystyles.com/2010/06/03/pastravaganza-and-other-portmanteaux-a-maverick-recipe-for-basic-pasta-dough-and-a-non-recipe-for-the-craziest-ravioli-youve-ever-had/feed/ 11 http://eatfamilystyles.com/2010/05/08/the-easiest-recipe-ever-or-insert-in-a-pickle-pun-here/ http://eatfamilystyles.com/2010/05/08/the-easiest-recipe-ever-or-insert-in-a-pickle-pun-here/#comments Sat, 08 May 2010 18:34:23 +0000 irene http://eatfamilystyles.com/?p=3249 Pickles are just one of those things. Salty, sweet, sting-y and sour, pickles can really transform an eating experience (or, if you’re like me, they can be an eating experience in and of themselves). So, when I learned how to make pickles, I was converted – I’ll never buy pickles again. Here are three reasons why you shouldn’t either…

I know it might seem like those three jars were the three reasons, but I have three more in case you aren’t satisfied.

First reason: making pickles is ridiculously easy. Here’s the recipe: combine 1/2 cup rice wine vinegar (also known just as rice vinegar), 5 or so TBS of sugar, 2 or so TSP of kosher salt with 1 cup very hot tap water. Stir to dissolve the solids, and pack your picklee into a mason jar or tupperware. Cover the produce with the brine, cover, and refrigerate. That’s it. I’m not kidding.

Second reason: almost any kind of produce, be it fruit or vegetable, super-fresh or a little on the old side, can be made into a delightful pickle. Trimmed, julienned, or sliced, vegetables like beets, carrots, celery, cauliflower, fennel, shiitake mushrooms and cabbage make great pickles. Fruit makes great pickles too: try cherries, or chunks of plums, pears, or watermelon.

Third reason: lots of different spices can make your pickles more distinct and complex. We’ve been thinking about coriander seeds, fennel seeds, chinese five spice, cloves, and cinnamon

The pickles will be at their height of flavor in about four days. However, you’ll probably still be amazed by their flavor when you sneak into your refrigerator later that day and try one – or just take them all out on to the porch and stuff your face like we did.

Now, I know some of you may be thinking, “Irene, this recipe has four ingredients including water AND about 3 steps: you’re asking a lot of me. Measuring spoons, refrigerators – this is far too hoity-toity for my tastes.”

That’s why there’s an even quicker, easier recipe: combine sliced cucumbers with three parts sugar and 1 part salt: for 2 cucumbers, 1 tbs sugar, 1 tsp salt. Toss and let them sit for 10 minutes. If they’re too salty, rinse them. And then gorge yourself on the easiest pickles you’ve ever made. Just beware, we’ve only tried this with cucumbers – I’m not totally sure if it would work with all the other produce we’ve listed, but feel free to give it a try and make sure to slice really thin.

This recipe is just one in a series adapted from David Chang’s Momofuku, a much beloved cookbook documenting the rise of the small but mighty Momofuku restaurant empire in New York City’s East Village.

I always wish I had access to a table large enough to seat 20 of my best friends around it for an epic dinner party. I still haven’t managed to acquire such a table or a room large enough to put it in, but I got a taste of what it might be like at a great event last night called the Hub Feast.  It’s a potluck and a dinner party,  a chance to meet great people and talk about all sorts of cool food things, and an opportunity to make an unnecessary amount of insanely indulgent peanut butter cream cheese-frosted cupcakes.  What more could you ask for?

The event took place at one of the Hubs:  a network of beautifully designed office/event/social spaces for members and their guests to work, meet, connect,  innovate, and more, located as close as Islington (the first one) and as far as Bombay and Sao Paulo. I’ve visited the gorgeous wood-beamed and exposed brick-walled Hub King’s Cross a few times to meet with our friends at Hide & Seek and so was excited to return for one of their monthly community feasts, described as follows:

The programme of Feasts for 2010 is well under way now and this month, we’ll be looking at Guerilla Food. Across London, there are people running underground restaurants, growing things in weird and wonderful places, cooking in unpredictable locations and using food in ways previously not explored. If you want to meet these people and find out a bit more about what they’re up to, we invite you to come along.

As always, you can expect to sit next to people who love food, cooking it, talking about it and most of all, eating it. So bring both an open mind and a dish to share to eat with people that love all things food. An informal evening with a very loose agenda, we hope to create a feast where conversation about food, life, love and everything in between, can flow freely.

We’ve been chatting with the lovely Hub folks including Holly, Alex, Lucy, and Eleanor about doing some events, so they invited us down to chat about Rambling Restaurant and underground supper clubs and all things delicious and exciting.  It all sounded like  pretty much like my ideal evening, so Sarah, foodrambler and I baked up a storm of lemon curd meringue roulades and several batches of the most insanely deliciously orgasmic Banana Cupcakes with Peanut Butter Cream Cheese Frosting.

A quick aside on these cupcakes: I’d recommend you don’t click that recipe. In all seriousness…it will haunt your dreams. The banana cupcakes are very good; the peanut butter cream cheese frosting will bring you to your knees in pure tastebud joy.  The sublime happiness is only slightly marred by the guilty knowledge that the peanut butter (fat) plus cream cheese (fat) plus salted butter (fat) plus icing sugar in this frosting  is probably at work hardening your arteries as soon as the  cupcake crosses your lips and the smile crosses your face.  However,  keep in mind that all this tasty fat and sugar are calories that humans are genetically hardwired to love. This means it is not my fault when I eat gargantuan mounds of the frosting piped onto cupcakes (dangerous), slathered onto apples (healthy!), spread onto bananas (still good!), licked off of several kitchen tools (not so much) and then, finally, by the unabashedly deliberate spoonful.  I guarantee you will do the same. Blame biology.

But back to the feasting – it was a lovely evening of meeting, chatting, and of course, lots of eating. We went around the table and introduced ourselves so everyone got to see who was there and their cool projects and organizations and affiliations. I had great conversations about cooking and food spaces with Holly from Food Stuff and talked sustainable food development with some great people from Forum for the Future and saw but didn’t get enough time to chat with Chris from the Real Bread Campaign.  Meanwhile I ate fresh bread, hummous, spicy ginger carrot beetroot salad, Spanish omelette, flapjacks, apple crumble, spinach and strawberry salad, couscous, roasted vegetables, and so much more.  One of my favorite dishes was an amazing wait-a-minute-this-is-vegan?-you-must-be-joking leek pie made by a really nice guy named Alessio, whom I tackled after dinner to express my delight in his dish and ask his secret. Apparently, it’s soy cream. Don’t worry, it’s not actually a secret.

It was a wonderful occasion to meet a lot of creative, friendly, interesting people, all equally in love with food and cooking and community and eating.  I’m excited for the next one.  You can come along too, but only if you promise to take home some cupcakes so I don’t have to.  I still have some leftover frosting in the fridge and it is calling to me to come eat it with a big spoon…

]]> http://eatfamilystyles.com/2010/04/29/community-feasting-and-the-best-cupcake-frosting-you-may-ever-put-in-your-mouth/feed/ 3 http://eatfamilystyles.com/2010/04/29/a-night-of-moulin-rouge-at-the-rambling-restaurant/ http://eatfamilystyles.com/2010/04/29/a-night-of-moulin-rouge-at-the-rambling-restaurant/#comments Thu, 29 Apr 2010 08:43:16 +0000 mei http://eatfamilystyles.com/?p=3229

Welcome to the Moulin Rouge Ramble, a dimly lit den of cabaret, cake  & corsets that popped up on Great Windmill Street a few weeks ago.  Hosted by the amazing word-of-mouth agency 1000heads, decorated by the creative visionary Ali O’Malley, and captured on film by the fantastically talented Mark, it was quite the evening to remember…as long as you didn’t down too many absinthe cocktails.

Come check out Mark’s amazing photos of our ephemeral Parisian creation filled with candlelit erotic poetry, beef bourguignon,  fishnet stockings and freeflowing champagne…

I tell you no lies when I mention the freeflowing champagne, generously supplied by the astonishingly accommodating, friendly, and up-for-anything folks at 1000heads.  Lined up in the soaring foyer of their Soho office building were dozens of champagne flutes, ready to welcome our diners who had solved mysterious clues of translation and location to turn up cabaret-clad in front of the Windmill Club for a night of adventure.

More meals should involve top hats and feathers.

All that week, we’d cooked and cleaned and baked and transported and decorated, up to the very last minute. Below, we add last-minute touches while the dancers practice their burlesque routines.

Thankfully, our dedicated team had everything looking spectacular by the time everyone arrived.

The Rambling Restaurant was lucky to have the most dedicated and gorgeous team of corseted and feathered servers from 1000heads, including the wonderful Lauren, Lisa, Donna, Gemma, Nicola, Sam, and even more who pitched in to hang curtains, wash dishes, move tables and boxes and abandon their desk and office space to our bizarre activities.  Below, Lauren and Lisa begin to take the cornichons and carrot salad out to be served with crusty baguettes & butter and foodrambler‘s delicious pork rillettes.

The large flatscreen television gives away our boardroom-as-kitchen, from which we served and stewed our three course meal.

Here foodrambler and I spoon up slow-cooked beef stew with parsley cream sauce. While I loved the earthy combination of wine and spices in the bourguignon, it doesn’t make for the prettiest presentation.  That was one of the many lessons we learned while serving 140 eaters over 2 nights, as well as very important ones on keeping food hot and timely for people.  Just as foodrambler flambéed about 25  saucepans of beef that made her kitchen erupt in flames, we jumped straight into the fire for this dining challenge and learned a lot about what worked and what didn’t as we went along that will be valuable for future events.  Most useful information learned: how to rock a corset-apron combination.  So much wisdom gained over this experience.

Back in the satin-draped dining room, people showed off their masks and moustaches…

and displayed their amazing handmade Moulin Rouge themed hats (well done Ailbhe)…

and talked and ate and admired the decorations…

…and participated in a fancy dress competition led by the deliciously scandalous poet Abi Palmer…

…and even found love at the Moulin Rouge.

But mostly, I think, they drank….

and drank…

…and drank.

We certainly contributed by handing out a very strong absinthe cocktail that we called the Drunken Fairy, but is generally known as Death In The Afternoon. Judging by the feedback from some aching heads the next day, it’s pretty apparent why.

I acknowledge I had quite a strong hand with the absinthe from Liqueurs de France …

but it’s much more fun to blame it all on Nicola the Green Fairy.

Some of my favorite photos of the evenings are of the favorite people I met, including the shot of this laughing lady…

and this adorable photo of our sexy dancers, the Chitty Chitty Bang Bangs. I only wish I had been hardcore enough to go out dancing with them till 6am like some impressive people I know.

Even if you don’t go clubbing with dancers in fishnets, you at least need to fit in a photo shoot in front of the Windmill Club.

Before our late night marathon dancing and cleaning sessions, we ended with a very sticky Moulin Rouge Velvet cake. I loved foodrambler’s chocolate fishnet stockings, threatening to slide off the tilting cake into a pool of buttery frosting madness.  I cut the red velvet cake into shocking scarlet slices that looked insane but tasted damn good.

And of course, everything tastes better with birthday candles.

Thanks a million to everyone involved. For more on the event, check out blog posts by foodrambler and 1000heads.

All photos copyright by Mark, except the last one from 1000heads.