Death By Fern

They say fiddlehead ferns can kill you if eaten raw, or just give you a nasty G.I. infection. But they're so fun and green and crunchy, I can't resist them. I once picked some on the side of a road in rural Vermont (where I'm told they're the state vegetable), ate them and lived to tell about it.

The ferns above were blanched in boiling, salted water for a few minutes until they were slightly soft then sauteed with chopped onions in some olive oil.

Sweet Satsumaimo!

Say that three times fast. Or just say Japanese sweet potato.

Baked for an hour at 400 degrees, slapped with butter and drizzled with maple syrup, it's a meal. Japanese sweet potatoes have a subtler taste and denser texture than your basic yam, with hints of chestnuts, pear and pound cake. I like them a thousand times better. The Internet tells me they're a fall harvest vegetable, which I believe, but my local market has them year round. The Internet also says they're from Japan, but I'm pretty sure this one's from South America.

For something fancier, try these:
Roast them with scallion butter [Epicurious]
Japanese Sweet Potato Cakes [My So-Called Japanese Life]
Japanese Sweet Potato Gratin [NY Mag]

Roasted Eggplant Salad

Eggplants used to intimidate me. All that salting and rinsing and frying seemed too much of a hassle. It was sad, because I love eggplant. Then I learned there's an easier way: Stick the whole thing in a hot oven (500 degrees) or a covered bbq and call it a day. It worked perfectly! I poked it first a few times with a knife before I put it on the grill and then I occasionally turned it while it cooked. When the skin started to char and peel off and the eggplant sort of deflated, I took it off.


It didn't look pretty. I let it cool. Then I peeled off the skin and mixed the cooked eggplant with olive oil, lemon juice, crushed garlic, salt and pepper. I was available on Blackberry throughout.

This photo isn't half bad, taken by sheer good fortune just at the start of the golden hour. I'm sending it over to a blogger named Michelle. I don't know her personally, but she's got a blog I read regularly called Greedy Gourmet (I especially like the European-style date lines) and a feature called SnackShots. This month's theme is salads, so what the hell.

Sweet Plantains (and a Surprise Guest)

My Bubby, who is 93 years old this year, used to cook maduros, or sweet plantains. They are a childhood favorite, and immediately conjure images of my grandparents' apartment in Miami Beach--a gold velvet couch, heavy gold drapery, an oversized TV console blasting "The Price is Right," a domino set on the glass coffee table, giant watercolors by a supposedly-famous Israeli cousin and of course, maduros, rice and beans and arroz con pollo at the dinner table.

Really good maduros require plantains that are ripe beyond all imagining: black, oozing syrup and starting to mold (see left). My advice: If you think they're ready, give them another 3 days.


Peel the plantain carefully and slice it on an angle, then fry in vegetable oil, or some other oil that can stand high heat.


Be generous with the oil. I've found that maduros are tastiest when they've fried ankle deep in very hot oil. Flip them once, when the undersides are brown and caramelized, and when the other side is cooked equally, take them out and let them drain on a paper towel. If the oil is very hot, they shouldn't take more than a couple minutes on each side.

This batch came out delicious. Even the squirrel thought so. When we weren't looking, he jumped through the kitchen window, grabbed one, and ran out onto the deck to eat it. Can you blame the little bugger?

Jicama Salad

Jicama is so delicious I don't know why I only eat it once a year. For this salad, I cut a whole jicama into thin strips and tossed it with sliced, seeded cucumber and radishes. I made a dressing with olive oil, sherry vinegar, lime, salt, cayenne pepper, a wee bit of agave nectar (sugar is a fine substitute) and chopped mint.

Roasted Asparagus

A classic spring crowd pleaser: Set the oven to 500 degrees; lay the asparagus out on a flat baking dish lined with tin foil and coat generously with olive oil; sprinkle with salt and pepper and cook for about 10 minutes or until firm.

Pasta Night: Lemon & Garlic

Jessie in Lexington, Va., had a classic cook's conundrum: an exotic ingredient she wanted to play with, but no clue how to use it. (How she came to have an excess of salty preserved lemon around to begin with is a mystery.) She writes:

"I'm never quite sure what to do with salty preserved lemon, so last night I tried adding it to a simple pasta dish. Throw a bunch of trimmed ramps (that have been blanched in boiling, salted water for about 3 minutes), lots of roasted garlic, olive oil, preserved lemon, and a squirt of fresh lemon juice to a food processor and pulse into smooth. Toss with al dente spaghetti, and top with grated parmesan and freshly ground pepper. Serve with a slice of homemade bread and home brew."

We're submitting this dish to Ruth's Presto Pasta Night. Crossing fingers...



The home brew is delightful, but hardly simple. If you have a few hundred free hours on your hands, give it a shot. Here again is Jessie:

"Making homemade beer is sort of like canning vegetables in that it requires standing over a 3 to 5 gallon pot of boiling liquid for a couple of hours while all the windows in your home fog up. But unlike canning, it's crucial to regularly measure the density of the liquid with a hydrometer before adding additional ingredients (tales abound of home brew bottles exploding under pressure due to imprecise hydrometer readings). What you're looking at here is a blond ale, with a 7 percent alcohol content, comprised mostly of malted barley and stored in 3-4 cases old Grolsch bottles. The entire process--boiling, bottling, and, in particular, fermenting--takes about 10-12 days. The taste reminds this beer maker of the English ale New Castle. "

A hydrometer???

Grilled Pizza

With the weather warming up, it was finally time to break out the grill. Up in Boston, Marisa and Mo have been cooking grilled pizza. They use a bag of pre-made pizza dough at Trader Joe's (at Panzer Kitchen, where we use no measurements, making our own dough would be near impossible) and take it out of the fridge 20 minutes before they're ready to start.

The only tricky part about this dish is flattening the dough. Mo went at it diligently for about 10 minutes, using a rolling pin and a floured wood cutting board, and occasionally lifting it up to stretch it out with his hands.

When it was the right size (in our case, sort of medium-sized), he put it on a heated grill and brushed the dough with olive oil, flipping it carefully once until it was crispy on both sides then sprinkling grated cheese and covering the grill just long enough for the cheese to melt. Again, this requires diligence, but no particular magic. Right, Mo?

We topped our pizza with turkey sausage and red peppers, chopped tomatoes and arugula drizzled with olive oil and lemon. But you can put anything--or nothing--on yours.

10-Minute Dumpling Soup

Pick up a package of frozen vegetable gyoza or dumplings (available at Trader Joe's or most good supermarkets). Saute chopped kale and a lot of minced garlic in olive oil. Boil a pot of vegetable broth (fresh or from a cube). Drop frozen dumplings and frozen edamame in boiling broth. Let cook for about 3 minutes then shut off flame. Add kale and garlic, a splash of soy sauce, and hot sauce (Siracha if you can find it) to taste.

Anything Goes Granola

Granola contains two sets of ingredients: hard stuff (any mix of grains, seeds, nuts and dried fruit) and soft stuff (syrup to bind the hard stuff together). Our hard stuff included grains (rolled rice, rolled oats, rolled barley) and seeds & nuts (sesame, pumpkin, almonds, walnuts). We heated our soft stuff (brown rice syrup and maple syrup) on the stove until it was hot. Then we laid out the granola mixture on a baking sheet and poured over the syrup so every piece was covered. We baked it all at 350 degrees, moving around occasionally, until browned and crispy.

Later, we added dried fruits to the mix: banana chips, cranberries, goji berries, apples slices and coconut.

Pita and Veggie Burger

Throw vegetables in a food processor or blender: Portobello mushrooms, carrots, red peppers, onions, garlic, cilantro, kale, etc. Add a can of rinsed and drained black beans, soy sauce, cumin, salt, pepper, chives. Blend everything together. Mix in a lot of bread crumbs and one egg. Form patties and pan fry in oil until crunchy on the outside.

1st Street Tostadas

From Alexandra. Chop an onion, chop some garlic. Saute some of both in a pot with olive oil for a bit then add a can of pinto beans and some salsa. In a separate pan, saute the rest of the onion and garlic in some olive oil. Add slices of yellow or red bell pepper. When they’re almost soft, add spinach leaves and cook until they’re just wilted. Soften tortillas—corn or flour—in the oven. To assemble, take a tortilla, add grated cheese, a dollop of the beans, a dollop of the spinach/pepper mix, guacamole, chipotle or other chile saude, chopped tomatoes, lime juice.