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Cottage Cooking Club: June 2015
Finally after a long, long winter, fresh local vegetables are starting to be plentiful around these parts. Mostly what we’re seeing is Greens, Greens, and more Greens, though spring roots like radishes and salad turnips are being harvested too. I tried to align what’s available with the recipes I picked from Kitchen Lioness Andrea’s lineup for Cottage Cooking Club this month. The recipes we cook from British chef Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s cookbook, River Cottage Veg celebrate vegetables, sometimes in familiar ways, and often with an unfamiliar twist, which has been fun.
I chose two recipes this month. The first was New Potato Salad “Tartare”. I love potato salad, especially ones made in the French style with a vinaigrette. My signature salad is a Dijon potato salad (which I’m shocked to find I’ve never blogged about), but I’m always up for trying a new version. The flavorings in the salad were inspired by tartar sauce, without the mayo. What a refreshing twist! Chopped cornichons, capers, and fresh herbs (dill, chives, and parsley) are added to potatoes along with a simple vinaigrette. Quartered “soft” hard-boiled eggs add the final touch. I was even able to use chives and parsley from my back door herb garden!
The only thing I’d change about this is the cooking method for the potatoes. Whenever I boil potatoes for potato salad, I’m unhappy. The potatoes always seem water-logged. I have much better luck with steaming them. I followed the recipe and tried boiling them as directed, but I should learn by now to stick to my preferred method.
Other than this hiccup, I loved the end result. The contrast of the salty tangy pickles to the fresh verdant flavor of the herbs make a winning combination. I’ll definitely be making the River Cottage version of potato salad again this summer!
The second recipe was the Greens and Ricotta Tart. I couldn’t find beets with greens the day I went to the farmers market (just a tad too early in the season), but I found beautiful Swiss chard from Kimball’s Farm. I also couldn’t find ricotta salata where I looked, so I substituted another sheep’s milk cheese: Spanish Manchego. Savory tarts are another favorite of mine. In the summer, I make one almost every week. Again, I’m always happy to try a new combination and learn something new.
I love when a recipe that uses both the stems and the leaves of greens. It always feels wasteful to discard the stems which they are perfectly edible, though not always in the recipe at hand, and try to do “nose-to-tail” cooking of vegetables when possible. For this tart, thinly sliced stems are sautéed with the onion and garlic before adding the leaves to wilt. The custard for this tart is made richer with egg yolks and cream.
The pastry crust was interesting in its use of cold milk instead of water. I found the dough to be easy to work with and the final pastry had a flaky texture. The crust didn’t brown as I would have expected, but I’ll admit I’ve been having some issues with my oven temperature and it was probably that, not the recipe.
My intuition told me to use a larger tart pan than called for, so I chose an 11-inch instead of a 9-inch. This was the right call. The crust fit into the larger pan with no trouble, and I had custard leftover. I ended up making a mini-crustless tart with some already cooked broccoli rabe and the extra custard.
I was very lucky in my choices this month: two winners that I will definitely make again this season.
One of my favorite parts of this group is seeing the other participants’ results with the recipes I didn’t choose to make. It helps me narrow down the other winners in the book that I must try. If you’d like to see their posts, you can see them here.
Cottage Cooking Club: April
It’s another month in the Cottage Cooking Club, a project led by Andrea, The Kitchen Lioness, that is a combined effort of several bloggers to cook all the recipes in Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s cookbook, River Cottage Veg. This vegetarian cookbook contains a variety of recipes ranging from the simple to the complicated, all meant to encourage your palate and your kitchen to embrace more vegetables in your daily life. Andrea’s sensibilities follow the season, so when she chooses the recipes each month, she tries match up to what’s growing in the typical Northern clime.
April is a hard month for local produce in my neck of the woods. Happily, winter has departed, but it’s still early in the season. In my home garden, early herbs (chives and tarragon) are thriving. The radish, arugula and pea seeds we planted have germinated, but it will be weeks before anything is ready for harvest. The local farms are in the same boat. I volunteer weekly at the local community farm and the past month I’ve been in the greenhouse, transplanting seedlings from tiny to larger cell packs. The farmer just planted the first seeds and seedlings in the ground the past weekend.
With no hope of local vegetables, I limited my selections for this month to recipes that use vegetables that I typically buy at the supermarket all year round: celery and mushrooms.
First up was a Celery Gratin. This was a much different presentation of celery than I’ve seen. Usually, celery is just a bit player in the sautéed aromatics for a dish or chopped into a stock. Usually the only time celery plays a starring role is cut up as a crudité for dipping or snacking. For the gratin, the celery is roasted with herbs and butter until tender, then topped with breadcrumbs and cheese. It was a beautiful looking dish, but to be honest, this is my least favorite recipe I’ve tried from the book so far. The celery, while tender, still required a knife to cut through the strings. Also, it was bland. It didn’t even taste all that celery-y. We finished it, but were not fans.
On the other hand, the Creamy Mushroom Soup is one of the best mushroom soup recipes I’ve ever made. Leeks and a variety of mushrooms (shiitake, cremini, and Portobello) are sautéed and then simmered in homemade Vegetable Stock with a sprig of thyme. This fragrant soup is then pureed in the blender. To round out the flavors, some heavy cream, sherry, and nutmeg are added, giving the soup deeper flavor without making it too heavy. I was excited to garnish the soup with snipped chives from my backyard herb garden (yay, spring is here). The only change I might make next time is to add additional dried thyme when sauteeing the vegetables for a more pronounced herbal tone (and thyme is my favorite herb). The mushroom soup is definitely a winner!
Chives in My Herb Garden!
If you’d like to check out the recipe reviews for April from the other Cottage Cooking Club participants, check out their links here.
A Plateful of Happiness 