(Want to skip my rambling and get right to the recipe? Click here.)

After several years and multiple failed restarts, I think perhaps its time I just admit a simple truth: I am an absolutely awful blogger.

I always start out with the best intentions, but can never quite follow through. Here, at eri-chan*eats, I thought setting myself a bunch of very public goals would motivate me to actually meet them and keep up with this thing for more than a couple of months. Of course I haven’t, and the longer I’ve been away, the harder its been to come back. The 5 months of silence became an intimidating wall between myself and this blog, and I was almost afraid to come back and admit, to myself and to anyone who may have ever read my posts, that I failed.

But no matter how many times I fail, I always eventually come back to this whole blogging thing, and its because at the end of the day I really do enjoy it. So maybe its time to stop trying to force myself into a model that obviously doesn’t work for me, and just accept that I’ll never be one of those people who blogs 5 times a week and has hundreds of followers. I’ll never get KNOWN for this thing because I just don’t have the dedication to put that much effort in, and really that’s just fine – I’m writing for me and for my friends who like to see what I’m cooking and eating and discovering, so who care how many other people ever read?

So from now on, I’m just going to write when the mood strikes me, and not feel bad about it. That means my goal to write every two weeks is going out the window, but that’s ok. Most of the other goals I set for myself for this year can still be met, and I still want to try, but I won’t beat myself up if I don’t get to them all. After all, there’s always next year!

All that being said, there are actually some valid reasons why I haven’t been blogging these last few months.

Simply put, for awhile there, life just got a little too crazy for me to spend any time here.

• In May, my sister and I threw a surprise party for our parents to celebrate their 30th anniversary, and I catered the whole thing myself, including the cake. It was a lot of fun and the party went really well, but planning and cooking for it pretty much consumed my life for two months beforehand.
• A month later, my family and I went on an epic trip to Arizona and hiked to the bottom of the Grand Canyon. It was an incredible experience but, again, took a lot of my time and attention before hand for training and preparation.

For the rest of the summer its been one thing after another: my best friend and her husband moving out of state; weddings; family parties; work craziness.

I’ve also been doing a lot more of the meal planning and cooking on my own lately. I’ve never really talked about it publicly before, but last year Justin had an accident which left him with a potentially permanent seizure condition and a lot of residual health problems. Over a year later there are still a lot of days where he just doesn’t feel up to doing much, and when I’m also working overtime or having to take care of the cleaning and chores and errands on my own, a lot of times I just don’t have the energy to put a lot of thought and effort into what we’re eating. I/we still shop and plan our meals every week, but its always a toss-up whether or not we’ll actually be able to stick to it. Many times, we don’t.

And to top it all off, at the beginning of the summer we got a notice from the management company for our apartment complex, officially banning the use of open-flame grills anywhere on the premises. Everyone in this complex has a grill on their porch or balcony, but they’ve all been sitting cold and lonely since May. Most years we practically live off grilled chicken, pizza, and vegetables in the summer, but not this year. I think we may have had one dinner of grilled burgers and dogs before we were cut off. Honestly, what fun is summer when you can’t grill?

The end result of all this is that, quite frankly, there just hasn’t been terribly much on our plates that’s worth sharing. There’s been plenty of good, even delicious food (because life would be unbearable otherwise!) but very little that I’ve felt compelled to come here and blog about.

Which brings me to this broccoli soup, which we made for dinner last night. I don’t really know why this soup suddenly inspired me to write. But at some point in the process of sauteeing, simmering, pureeing, and plating, I found myself excited to blog again.

There’s nothing special about this broccoli soup, really. Its delicious, of course, but its just like dozens of other pureed vegetable soups I’ve made over the years. So somehow I don’t think the motivation came from the soup itself.

Maybe it was the bolt of inspiration which led me to reserve the broccoli florets, caramelize them, and use them as a topping, rather than simply blending them up with the soup base.

Maybe it was the way that one extra touch and a little extra thought elevated a humble bowl of soup to something just a bit more special. I love a smooth, creamy soup as much as the next person, but the slightly crunchy, sweet and nutty florets on top, combined with tangy, melty cheese, turned what would otherwise have been a tasty but boring dinner into a much more exciting dish.

Maybe it was the sudden chill in the air that’s settled over New York in the last couple of days, signaling the end of summer and the beginning of my favorite season, and the simple comfort of dipping our toes back into warming, hearty cold-weather fare.

And maybe its this change in the seasons that’s giving me the sense of being at a turning point, with the busy, crazy times behind me and  long stretch of unplanned quiet ahead. Maybe its the obvious changes in the world around me that makes me feel like I can try again, start over, and get back to the things I love: cooking, eating, and being creative in the kitchen.

Whatever the reason, this soup felt special enough to share. I’m glad to be back.

Creamy Broccoli Soup

Serves 2

Ingredients:

2 cups chopped broccoli (stems and florets, separated – see below)
1 cup chopped potato (about half of a large russet or one small red or yukon gold)
1/2 cup chopped white or yellow onion
2 garlic cloves, smashed
1 bay leaf
2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil, divided
2 1/2 cups water
1 Knorr chicken bouillion cube
6oz fat free Greek yogurt
1/3 cup shredded sharp cheddar
salt and freshly-ground black pepper

Directions:

To prep the broccoli: Separate the florets into small pieces and set 1/2 cup aside to be caramelized for the soup topping. Peel the tough outer layer from the stem of the broccoli and chop, adding to the rest of the florets.

Heat 1 tbsp of the olive oil in a medium-sized saucepan over medium heat. When the oil looks shimmery, add the onions and garlic and sautee with a pinch of salt until they begin to soften. Add the chopped potato and broccoli and sautee until the broccoli begins to turn bright green. Add the bay leaf, bouillion cube, and water. Reduce heat to medium-low and simmer until all the vegetables are soft enough to smash against he side of the pan with a spoon with little effort, probably around 30 minutes. Remove from the heat and set aside to cool a bit before pureeing (tossing hot soup in a blender is just asking to have soup explode all over your kitchen).

While the soup cools, heat the remaining olive oil in a heavy skillet (cast iron is ideal) over medium until shimmery. Add the reserved broccoli florets and spread out in a single layer, sprinkle with salt and pepper, and cook, stirring occasionally, until the broccoli is brightening in color and beginning to soften. Crank the heat up to high and cook without stirring for a minute or two until the broccoli turns golden brown and crispy on one side; stir and repeat until the broccoli is well caramelized (not burned!) and tender-crisp. Remove from heat.

Remove the bay leaf from the soup and pour it into a blender, add the greek yogurt, and puree until smooth and creamy. Pour the soup back into the saucepan (through a fine strainer if you like) and place over low heat to rewarm and adjust seasoning. I found that the bouillion made the soup plenty salty, but that a few generous grinds of black pepper were both needed and welcome.

Divide the soup between two bowls or shallow soup plates, as we’ve used here, top each serving with half the caramelized broccoli, and half the shredded cheese. Justin sprinkled his with some smoked habanero chili powder and pronounced it excellent; I’m a wuss when it comes to heat, but think that a milder variety of chili or some crushed red pepper flakes would be a tasty addition.

Serve with warm, crusty bread for dipping. We enjoyed this with some prosciutto-stuffed bread sticks from our local farmers market, and although I suspect I could’ve done a better job if I’d made them myself, the salty, meaty prosciutto in the bread went a long way toward making this a more satisfying dinner.

I was awfully excited to see rhubarb at our local grocery store this morning. So excited, in fact, that I immediately snatched up one of the three remaining bundles to bring home with me, despite not having a single clue what to do with it.

Its something that’s surprisingly difficult to find here – last year, our farmers’ market didn’t even have it, and since the market won’t start up again until June I doubt we’ll find it this year either.

This is a shame, because I love rhubarb. Rich garnet red, streaked with almost-neon chartreuse and with pale-green-to-ice-pink insides, its a real beauty queen in the produce aisle. And its flavor – bitter and sour but with subtle floral notes – is a little abrasive, but softens and blooms with the proper application of heat and addition of sweeteners and complementary flavors. Its complex, sophisticated, and just plain lovely to look at and to cook with.

Lovely rhubarb, an edible springtime beauty.

Once I got my rhubarb home, I began to weigh my options. I wasn’t in the mood to futz with pastry, so pie was out. We’d bought cereal to have for breakfast this week (a rarity around here) so I couldn’t justify making muffins or quickbread. I considered just chopping and freezing it to keep around for baking and jam-making later in the season, but our freezer is currently full to overflowing with steaks and burgers from Omaha Steaks and approximately two whole chickens broken down into breasts, thighs, legs, and carcasses for stock, plus a bunch of other odds and ends.

With no other viable options, it looked like canning would be the way to go.

Jars and a bottle, ready to be sterilized

I didn’t want to just make my usual stewed rhubarb jam, though – I wanted to get as much out of this rare treasure as I could. So although did make a couple jars of jam, I also made some rhubarb simple syrup, and decided to try a very simple preserve by packing chunks of rhubarb in a light, subtley sweet-and-sour syrup, in  an attempt to preserve the rhubarb’s natural flavor a bit more faithfully.

My stewed rhubarb jam is not something I’m terribly exacting about – I just toss whatever rhubarb I’ve got in a pan with some sugar, lemon juice, and water, boil it until the fruit breaks down, then add some powdered pectin and cook until it thickens. This time I also stirred in a couple tablespoons of St. Germaine elderflower liquor, thinking that its sweet, floral character would match well with the rhubarb’s natural tang.

Chopped rhubarb, jewel-like and beautiful.

The simple syrup is indeed simple to make – I just tossed equal parts rhubarb, water and sugar in a pan and cooked it until the rhubarb broke down, then poured the mixture through a fine mesh strainer to separate the liquid from the solids. Since I had my jam standing by, I just added the leftover pulp into the jam and eliminated any waste from the process.

Simple rhubarb preserve in light syrup

The rhubarb preserve was a total experiment though, and I guess I’ll know if it worked or not when I eventually open the jars. Using the same technique I’d use to make pickles, I packed fresh chunks of rhubarb in jars, then made a very light simple syrup with a couple cups of water, a couple tablespoons of sugar, and some citric acid for balance, then poured the hot syrup over the rhubarb pieces. I’m hoping that avoiding the whole boiling step with the rhubarb pieces will help them retain some of their structure, and that the lightly flavored syrup will preserve some of their flavor. We’ll see. If it works, I’ve got a Jamie Oliver noodle dish with pork that’ll be the perfect destination. (We’ve made it before – its awesome.)

Just love these colors, gorgeous in the late afternoon sun.

Even in a jar (or bottle), rhubarb is beautiful. I love the glowing ruby hues of these jars, and I love that I’ve now got rhubarb on the shelf just waiting for a day when creativity strikes.

The results of a relatively easy afternoon's work.

And perhaps more than anything, I love that I was able to kick off the canning and preserving season when I was least expecting it. Bring on the summer berries and stone fruit, the pickles and tomatoes – the weather’s getting warmer and I’m ready to get canning!

I love Gir. And Gir loves taquitos.

Those of you who are fans of Invader Zim will understand why this pic is appropriate for a post about taquitos. And if you’re not familiar with Zim? Go to YouTube or Hulu, search for the show, and bask in the ridiculously twisted brilliance of one of the best cartoons in semi-recent history.

But anyway, on to the food.

Turkey Verde Taquitos, Roasted Cremini Mushroom and Asparagus Salad

Taquitos are one of those foods that are just fun to eat. Crunchy, creamy, and stuffed with richly-seasoned meat and cheese, they are perfectly munchable and ideal for snacking with a cold beer while watching your favorite sport on the boob-tube. They’re versatile, flavorful, and texturally balanced, and are an ideal way to use up odds and ends in your fridge and end up with something greater than the sum of its parts.

Luckily, they can also be stupidly easy to make when baked instead of fried, and make a damn tasty dinner when paired with a cool, creamy dipping sauce and a creative salad.

Crispy, crunchy, savory, cheesy goodness.

These taquitos are filled with ground turkey in a simple chili-verde sauce, seasoned with green chilis, cumin, garlic, and oregano, and blended with shredded cheddar cheese. The salad is a riff on a Bobby Flay recipe, with roasted cremini mushrooms and asparagus in an ancho chile vinaigrette. Its got a bit of an identity crisis, with a vaguely-French mix of greens, toasted cashews, and blue cheese, but its delicious all the same, and a welcome change from our standard greens-carrots-onions-balsamic-vinaigrette salad formula. And the cool, creamy, fat-free Greek yogurt-based dipping sauce with more green chilis and lime provides the perfect lightly-rich foil to the hot, crunchy taquitos.

All in all, this is an easy, satisfying, and highly enjoyable meal for a relaxed Friday night.

Turkey Verde Taquitos with Creamy Green Chili Sauce

Serves 2

Ingredients

Taquitos:
1/3 lb ground turkey
1/2 cup minced red onion
3 garlic cloves, smashed and minced
1 tsp ground cumin
1/2 tsp dry oregano
3 oz canned chopped green chilis (from a 4 oz can – reserve 1 oz for the sauce)
1/2 cup shredded sharp cheddar
6 small corn tortillas
1 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
Salt and pepper to taste
Non-stick cooking spray

Sauce:
1/3 cup fat free Greek yogurt
1 tbsp low fat mayo
reserved 1 oz chopped green chilis
juice of half a lime
salt to taste

Directions

Preheat your oven to 425 degrees. Line a baking sheet with foil, spray with non-stick cooking spray and set aside.

Heat the olive oil in a large sautee pan on medium heat until shimmering, then add onions and garlic and a sprinkle of salt. Sautee, stirring regularly with a wooden spoon, until onions and garlic are softened and very lightly browned. Add the ground turkey to the pan and  break up with your wooden spoon, stirring to combine with the onions and garlic in the pan. Add the cumin and oregano and sautee until mostly cooked through. Add the green chilis with their liquid, turn down the heat a bit, and cook gently until the excess liquid in the pan boils off. Season to taste with salt and pepper, then move the meat mixture to a bowl and set aside to cool to near room temperature.

While the meat cools, make the sauce by combining the yogurt, mayo, reserved chilis and lime juice in a bowl and stirring to combine.  Season to taste with salt and set aside for later.

When meat has cooled, stir in a spoonful or two of the dipping sauce and the shredded cheese.

Working with two tortillas at a time, place between damp paper towels on a microwave safe plate and nuke for 25 seconds to soften. Lay one tortilla on a board or plate and spoon 1/6 of the meat mixture (a couple tablespoons’ worth) in a line down the center of the tortilla. Roll the tortilla tightly around the filling like a cigar, then lay seam-side down on the prepared baking sheet. Repeat with remaining tortillas. Spray the tops of the taquitos with more non-stick cooking spray and sprinkle lightly with salt.

Bake the taquitos on a rack positioned near the center of the oven for about 20 minutes or until golden brown and crispy-crunchy. Depending on your oven, you may want to rotate the pan halfway through to ensure even browning. Take note that the rolled ends of the taquitos will probably brown faster than the centers because of the moisture in the filling, so keep an eye on them in the last few minutes of cooking. Serve the taquitos while hot with the dipping sauce.

Roasted Cremini Mushroom and Asparagus Salad w/Ancho Chili Vinaigrette

Serves 2; adapted from The Mesa Grill Cook Book by Bobby Flay

Ingredients

8-10 cremini mushrooms, cleaned, stems removed, and cut in quarters
6 thick asparagus spears, trimmed and cut in 2″ lengths
2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil, divided
salt and pepper to taste
1/4 cup chopped cashews
crumbled blue cheese
1 1/2 cups salad greens (We used a mix of butter lettuce and raddichio, but feel free to use romaine lettuce, spring mix, arugula, or whatever greens you prefer.)

Dressing:
2 tbsp red wine vinegar
4 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
1 tbsp mustard (we used our standard Guldens spicy brown, but feel free to use dijon or a grainy mustard)
1/2 tsp honey
1 tbsp ancho chili powder
salt and pepper to taste

Directions

Preheat oven to 425 degrees. Line a baking sheet with foil.

Toss quartered mushrooms with 1 tbsp olive oil and spread in a single layer on the baking sheet. Place on a rack near the bottom of the oven and roast for 15 minutes. Remove from the oven, add the asparagus, second tbsp of olive oil, and salt and pepper to taste, and continue to roast for 10 minutes or until the vegetables are golden brown and tender.

While vegetables are roasting, heat a small skillet over medium heat, then add the cashews and toast, tossing often, until the nuts have browned as evenly as possible. Remove the pan from the heat immediately to keep the nuts from burning from residual heat (this is especially important if you have an electric range as we do).

Make the dressing by combining all of the ingredients in a container with a tight fitting lid and shake vigorously to combine. (Alternatively, combine the vinegar, mustard, honey, and chili powder in a bowl and whisk to combine, then gradually stream in the oil while whisking to create an emulsion, and season to taste. I think the shaking method is much easier and faster, but do what you will.)

When the vegetables are done, remove from the oven and toss with a couple tablespoons of the dressing on the baking sheet.

Divide the salad greens between two plates, top each with half the roasted, dressed vegetables, nuts, and cheese, then drizzle with extra dressing to taste.

Meal prep tip:

Timing these two dishes for a single meal is pretty simple. When you preheat the oven, position one rack near the bottom of the oven, and the second halfway between the center and the top. Start the mushrooms in the oven on the lower rack, then put the taquitos in five minutes later on the upper rack. After ten minutes, add the asparagus to the pan with the mushrooms and rotate the pan with the taquitos. That way, everything will be finished cooking at about the same time.

This may seem like a ridiculous statement to make, but I honestly believe that The French Laundry Cookbook is the most educational cookbook I own.

My favorie cokbook and one of my favorite bottles of wine - Bedell Cellars' "Gallery" white

As a home cook who is pretty comfortable with a wide range of cooking techniques and ingredients and who is (I think) relatively skilled in the kitchen, I don’t generally look at cookbooks as learning tools, but as inspirational ones – if I’m looking for meal ideas, the cookbook shelf is one of the favorite places to look. And of course, the FLC has inspiring recipes in spades. But for me, the greatest value in cooking out of this book is the wealth of information, techniques, and advice from master Chef Thomas Keller that allow me to hone and perfect the skills I already have and bump my cooking up to the next level.

That’s why I’ve made it one of my Eleven in 2011 goals to cook from the FLC at least once every 2 months. That may not seem like much, but really, lets be honest – cooking anything out of this book requires a certain amount of advanced planning and hours or even days of cooking, chilling, resting, etc. to get to a finished meal. These recipes aren’t anything you take on lightly, but I think even I can manage 6 FL meals in a year.

So anyway, about 2 weeks ago I took a day off of work with the specific goal of cooking from the FLC. (Yes, I took a day off to cook. Yes, I am that much of a loser.) The chosen recipe? Warm Fruitwood Smoked Salmon with Potato Gnocchi and Balsamic Glaze. Oh yes.

Forming potato gnocchi - rolling the little potato dumplings across the back of a fork creates their characteristic ridges.

Making this dish requires several elements that must be made following sub-recipes from the book: chicken stock, chive oil, balsamic reduction, vegetable brunoise, and gnocchi. Luckily, all are reasonably easy and can be made days in advance, if need be. Since I was home all day I made everything but the chicken stock the same day – the stock was made the previous weekend and frozen.

The balsamic reduction was exactly that – balsamic vinegar heated very, very slowly (not even at a simmer) until it reduced to a thick, almost caramel-like consistency. The chive oil ended up being scallion oil because the grocery store was severely lacking in chives I’d consider edible (can someone please explain to me how ANY store can put produce out for sale that’s already growing mold?? I swear I’d kill for a Whole Foods that’s less than 30 minutes away…). Making the oil is simple but requires some time – blanched scallions get blended up with canola oil until completely smooth, then have to rest 12-24 hours to infuse the oil with flavor and color before being stained to remove the vegetable solids and end up with a clear, brilliantly green and aromatic oil. I was impatient and only let it rest for about 6 hours, but the oil still came out vibrant and fragrant. Both the reduction and the oil went into squeeze bottles until it was time for plating, and the recipe made enough to keep in the fridge for another meal (or meals).

Lots and lots of brunoise. Well worth the effort.

The brunoise is fussy, but it is a common garnish in many recipes in the FLC, and I find it oddly relaxing and almost therapeutic to prepare. I don’t know if a brunoise is always made the same way, but Chef Keller’s calls for a carrots, turnips, and the green tops of leeks (in a 1-1-2 ratio) to be thinly sliced, matchsticked, and diced into 1/8″ cubes, then blanched separately before mixing everything together. Given the amount of busy work required to make even a small amount of this, I think its worth making a large batch and then freezing it to use in other meals later on. The recipe also called for a garnish of tomato diamonds, which are made by quartering a plum tomato lengthwise, scooping out the seeds, trimming the ribs, slicing into strips, then dicing the strips on an angle to create small diamond-shaped pieces.

Super dramatic sunlit gnocchi-making shot!

And finally, the gnocchi. Gnocchi are one of my favorite pastas to make, because they’re so darn easy. Not that I make them often, so I can’t really speak to how different (or not) Chef Keller’s recipe is than anyone else’s – I do know that his recipe produces an impossibly soft, pillowy dough that is a dream to roll out and shape, and the cooked gnocchi are soft and tender and not dense at all. I will admit to having completely over-salted this batch, having salted the dough once, then forgotten and salted it again. Oops. Luckily the par-boiling step in Chef Keller’s recipe helps to leach out a bit of the excess salt, and otherwise it just means they can be sauced lightly without ending up with a bland dish. The recipe also makes more than you need for a single meal, which means I’ve now got a bag of homemade, par-cooked gnocchi in the freezer for easy dinners.

(Notice how cooking out of the FLC also helps me easily stock my fridge and freezer with all sorts of tasty goodies? Bonus!)

Pretty salmon rosettes.

The last major component of the dish, the salmon, had to be jury-rigged a bit. Chef Keller calls for a large piece of fruitwood-smoked salmon to be cut into small, steak-like cubes. Unfortunately there isn’t much variety in smoked salmon around here, and I wasn’t willing to spend money on shipping to mail order a single piece for a single meal. So, I bought some of the standard thin-sliced stuff at the grocery store, separated the individual slices, then rolled them into pretty rosettes and sealed each one with a toothpick.

Finally, with all that done, it was time to put dinner together. At this point the meal was so simple to complete it was almost stupid.

The par-boiled gnocchi were first seared in an oiled pan to give them a bit of a crisp, golden brown crust, then simmered in some of the homemade chicken stock enhanced with a touch of white wine vinegar, a spoonful of brunoise, and a handful of tomato diamonds, plus salt and pepper to taste. I mostly skipped the salt because the gnocchi were plenty salty already.

The salmon rosettes were warmed very gently in steaming (but not simmering) milk for a few minutes, just long enough to soften the flavor of the salmon without actually cooking it. And finally, a generous handful of fresh arugula was dressed in a simple lemon vinaigrette with shallots.

To plate, I squeezed a slightly sloppy ring of chive oil onto each plate and divided the gnocchi (about 12 apiece) with their sauce and garnishes on top. The dressed arugula was piled up alongside, and dots of the thick balsamic glaze were squeezed around the edge of the plate. Finally, we used this essential special-ness of the meal as an excuse to crack open one of the good bottles of wine we’ve been keeping around for awhile – Bedell Cellars‘ “Gallery” white.

The final plate - sorry for the ugly photo, my Blackberry does not do well with these types of things. Also, my plating sucks. Those "dots" of balsamic glaze make me cringe.

And as with most things I’ve made from the FLC so far, this was absolutely killer. I think the warming step with the salmon made all the difference, as the normally harsh (I think) salty, smoky flavor of the fish became a bit muted and more subtle, and blended perfectly with the warm, pillowy gnocchi in their slightly rich, slightly acidic sauce. The bright, peppery greens provided the perfect kicky counterpoint to the otherwise velvety character of the dish, making the whole thing yet another perfect example of Chef Keller’s skill with complementary flavors and sensory balance.

My only complaint would be a lack of textural contrast – some crunchy toasted bread batons as a garnish might have filled in that empty note, and if I make this dish again I’ll be sure to keep that in mind.

All told, though, I’d consider this another rousing success in my FLC adventures. Its been a little too long since I’ve cracked the cover of this wonderful book, and it was both fulfilling and fun to dive back in.

I was both incredibly excited and incredibly nervous to get my seeds started – this is the first test of my previously-absent green thumb, and if my seeds don’t germinate or if  I don’t handle them properly and they die, I won’t have enough time to start over from scratch.

To give myself the best chance of success, I decided to follow a system for seed-starting that is both uncomplicated and mostly idiot-proof: the Burpee greenhouse kit. I picked mine up at Home Depot for $10, and although the system is fairly flimsy, it does come with everything you need, and the soil-less peat pellets make planting your seeds clean and easy.

I planted three seeds in each cell to help ensure I’d get at least one usable seedling for each type of plant, and planted two cells’ worth  of the tomatoes, basil and cilantro because I want to be able to two plants for each. Since I’m trying two different varieties of peppers, I planted one cell of seeds for each.

I started my seeds last Sunday, and here’s what the tray looks like today:

Seed Starting Tray 3-12-11

I’ve got sprouts! The basil and tomatoes are sprouting nicely, and far earlier than expected. I can’t see any sign of the other plants yet but I feel pretty optimistic. Almost all of the seeds had an estimated sprout time of 8-10 days, so aslong as they start moving by mid-week I should be in good shape.

Once they’ve all sprouted I’ll need to set the tray up under a light source – luckily, we have an old Aerogarden that didn’t work terribly well on its own, but has a full-spectrum grow-light built in which I can repurpose for this.

I’ll probably need to thin out the seedlings at that point, and then there’s nothing else to do until the seedlings are a few inches high, at which point the tomatoes and peppers will be moved into intermediate pots (peat pots, which can be planted directly in soil and will dissolve over time) and the basil and cilantro will go into their final container.

That, however, is several weeks away. For now I’m just happy that I’ve managed to  get some of my seeds on their way to becoming full-grown, edible plants!

So, since my camera died and I can’t really afford to replace it right now, its going to be difficult to post food photos and recipes for awhile. Luckily, I’ve got my garden project to keep me busy and keep you entertained!

In my first post about this project I talked about the excellent guidebook I’d been reading to learn all the ins and outs of growing edible plants in containers. One of the first (and probably most important) pieces of advice in the book is that in order to be successful gardening in a small space, you’ve got to plan, and plan intelligently. Luckily, I’ve got a bit of an OCD streak and I adore this sort of thing, so once I’d gotten through the parts of the book that were relevant to my interests (skipped most of the sections on edible flowers and fruit – not in the cards right now) I pulled out the graph paper and tape measure and got to planning.

After a bunch of changes and reconsiderations, I came up with this:

This drawing represents approximately 1/3 of our available space on the balcony, which was about all I felt comfortable using given our almost perfect western exposure (which means full sun for a good portion of the day, but also that the balcony railing will create shade as the day goes on), the fact that the glass sliding doors take up 3/4 of the back wall area, the fact that we want to retain room for a couple chairs and a small table, and the fact that our grill and electric smoker are set up on the other end of the balcony.

Since creating this image I’ve made a few more changes: the basil is moving out of the rectangular container and into its own round pot with the addition of some cilantro, and will be placed at the bottom of the L-shaped bench in sort of a mirror image of the existing herb pot;  and, I’m going to try to grow two tomato plants instead of just one.

There are also a couple of unanswered questions here – in particular, what do I plant in the container with the peas once they’re past their time? I’m considering carrots as a fall crop (there’s a variety that grows in perfectly round spheres that I’m a little enamored with) but haven’t really decided yet. And will I also be able to plant a fall crop in the container with the beans? I know they grow and produce later in the season than the peas, so I don’t know if there will be enough time to grow something else once they’re done for the season.

At this point though, I’m pretty committed to my garden layout, and I’ve started preparing for the planting season. I’ve bought all of the seeds I need for spring planting (the lettuce, scallions, tomatoes, peppers, peas, beans, basil and cilantro are all being started from seed) and have built the L-bench (if laying a few boards on top of some cinder blocks counts as “building”), and have even started collecting my containers – found these gorgeous fiberglass pots at Home Depot and bought a matched set of three in different sizes.

I’m running into a bit of a roadblock trying to find rectangular containers in the right size, but hopefully I’ll be able to find something that’ll work – there’s a big garden center not too far from here that I’m going to visit in a couple weeks, and I’m hoping they’ll have some better options than I’ve been able to find elsewhere.

For now, though, I think I’m on the right track. Next up, the first REAL challenge: starting my warm-weather crops indoors from seed!

This year for Un-Valentine’s Day (I’ll explain later) Justin surprised me with tickets to the New York Wine Expo at the Javits Center in Manhattan. Pretty cool, right? We’ve been suffering a sad lack of good wine in the house over the past 6 months due to some tight financial conditions, so an opportunity to get out and try a whole bunch of good wine, all of it new to us, was quite a treat. Plus, I’ve never been to the Javits Center, which seems bizarre considering I’ve been living in NY for over 10 years now (eek!). So, on Saturday (2/26) we bundled ourselves onto an LIRR train and headed into the city for fun, wine-centric afternoon.

I have to apologize right upfront for the awful photos – my poor little Nikon digital camera finally kicked the bucket after 6 years of faithful service. RIP, dear friend. I can’t really afford a new one right now, though, so I’m gonna have to make do with the camera on my Blackberry for awhile… sucks.

I think we had two major revelations/discoveries over the course of our 3.5 hour tasting:

1. Portuguese wines – we just can’t get them around here, and they’re apparently pretty rare in most of the U.S., but the unique varietals that grow in that country produce some really interesting wines, reds in particular. After being fairly blown away by a Portuguese red blend which was comprised of three grape varietals we’d never even heard of, we made it a point to stop off at several other Portuguese tables and try other bottles of those varietals, either singly or in blends with other grapes. The two that really knocked our socks off, Aragonez and Touriga Nacionel, were fairly common among other Portuguese producers but were only two out of what seemed like a dozen other varietals exclusive to the region. There is much exploring to be done here, I think, though it will be a bit of a challenge given their aforementioned rarity in the States.
2. Vermont Ice Cider – like Ice Wine, but made exclusively from apples. Easily the best thing I tasted all day; and granted, I like sweet dessert wines probably more than I should, but even Justin (who is adamantly not a fan of sweet wines or sweet things in general) agreed they were delicious. There were 3 producers at  the table for the Vermont Ice Cider Association: Eden Ice Cider Company (with 2 offerings), Champlain Orchards, and Windfall Orchards, offering tastings of 4 different bottles, and all were utterly wonderful. Honeyed, fragrant, surprisingly complex with subtle tangy or spicy notes depending on the blend, I would gladly have a bottle of each on the bar to enjoy all through fall and winter as an after-dinner treat. Sadly, none of these producers will ship to consumers. Rats! Gotta find someplace around that sells their product, or we just might have to plan a weekend up north next autumn so we can visit them on site.

The handful of specialty food producers were a nice bonus, particularly because all were offering samples – breaking up tasting rounds with little nibbles here and there made the whole experience much more enjoyable and interesting. They were also the only vendors actually selling their product to attendees, so we came home with some tasty treats: smoked confit duck legs, duck prosciutto, and 2oz of foie gras (!) from Bella Bella Gourmet; 1/2lb each of medium and dark wine-pairing chocolate from the cleverly-named Brix Chocolate; and a small package of Champignon cheese (soft-ripened with champignon mushrooms – divine!).

We also grabbed information from Wild Forest Products/Mardona, who were offering samples of their excellent truffle oils, balsamic glazes, and gourmet pickles/antipasto – the spicy pickled garlic was killer but way too hot for me; the pickled brussels sprouts were more my speed – and who shave an online retail store. I may be ordering a jar of the sprouts for research so I can make my own. (Oh who am I kidding – I just want to eat them.)

Overall it was a really fun, eye-opening day and something I’d be very interested in attending again next year. In the meantime, we’ve got an absolutely EPIC meal plan for this week using some of the goodies we picked up, starting with last night’s dinner (again, sorry for the crappy photo):

Smoked Duck Pho, Vegetable Summer Rolls w/Chili-Soy Dipping Sauce

I will come out and admit right up front that I am no longer much of a fan of The Food Network. Where it used to be the default destination on my cable remote, I now feel that I’ve mostly outgrown their rapidly declining programming. At most I’ll turn on Iron Chef America (which has also gone downhill somewhat but which I still enjoy a great deal) Good Eats (if I can ever manage to catch it), or Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives (don’t judge, I love me some triple-D). The cooking shows have, as a general rule, fallen off.

Coffee-Rubbed London Broil, Smoked Red Pepper Sauce, Succotash

However, it was through The Food Network that I was first introduced to Bobby Flay and his intensely-seasoned, chile-laden southwestern style of cooking. I know many people take issue with Chef Flay due to his somewhat arrogant bearing on tv and his apparent inability to cook anything well that doesn’t match up with his usual M.O. And I can understand why those people feel that way – he annoyed me for a long time too, and I was unimpressed by the casual way in which he tossed around chipotle peppers and his single-minded devotion to all things grilled.

I was annoyed, until I tasted his food for the first time. All it took was one meal at Mesa Grill New York and I was a fan for life.

Bobby Flay's Mesa Grill Cookbook

Say what you will about Chef Flay; the man knows how to put flavors and ingredients together to create a dish that’ll make your tastebuds sing. Sure he’s a one-trick pony, but that’s a-ok with me because he does what he does so damn well. Whenever I’m in the mood for something southwestern or vaguely tex-mex, but more interesting than your typical taco or fajita, I pull the Mesa Grill Cookbook off the shelf and flip through, certain that I’ll find something that will not only inspire me and make a damn good dinner, but will find its way into my bag of tricks for later meals.

This meal is pretty much the perfect illustration of that statement. The coffee and chili rub on the london broil and the smoky red pepper sauce are both recipes from the book which are signature Bobby Flay creations and which have now become staples of our cooking repertoire. The coffee rub is my absolute favorite rub for beef, hands down – it’s smokey, spicy, fragrant and a bit bitter, and plays off the deep, earthy flavor of beef perfectly. The pepper sauce does, in fact, make use of the much-maligned chipotle, but the real flavor base of the sauce is sweet, roasted red bell peppers. We even cut back on the amount of chipotle called for, so that the smoke and spice become subtle background notes to the tangy sweetness of the peppers. Its a remarkably versatile sauce, and we find ourselves using it in all sorts of dishes when we’ve got a batch in the fridge.

The succotash side dish is also based on a recipe in the Mesa Grill cookbook – its not exact, as the original called for chayote squash which we don’t have access to. If you like lima beans, though (and I do) its pretty hard to beat the combo of sweet corn and carrots, limas, onions, lime juice and cilantro. I’ve never actually eaten chayote before so I don’t really know what we were missing without that key ingredient, but I’d say the sweet, fresh-tasting succotash was a pretty perfect complement to the richly flavored beef.

I love how colorful this plate is (which is another thing that Bobby Flay does really well, by the way).

Recipes for the rub and the pepper sauce are below, and I hope you’ll try them out the next time you want something a little different for your steak dinner. If you like them, take a peek at the Mesa Grill Cook Book, borrow a copy from your local library and try another recipe or two, and see if it doesn’t make you feel just a little bit more charitable about Bobby Flay and his chile-loving ways.

Coffee Spice Rub for Steak

From the Mesa Grill Cook Book  by Bobby Flay
Makes about 1 cup of rub.

Ingredients

1/4 cup ancho chile powder
1/4 cup finely ground espresso-roast coffee beans
2 tablespoons sweet paprika
2 tablespoons dark brown sugar
1 tablespoon dry mustard
1 tablespoon salt
1 tablespoon freshly ground black pepper
1 tablespoon dried oregano
1 tablespoon ground coriander
2 teaspoons ground ginger
2 teaspoons chile de árbol powder or cayenne (optional)

Directions

There aren’t any, really – just mix everything together in a bowl. Ta da!

Use like any other spice rub on your preferred cut of steak, or even on a beef roast. (Haven’t tried it yet, but now that I’ve thought of it, its gonna happen.) To make our london broil, we just rubbed a couple tablespoons into both sides of the steak and seared it in a bit of oil in a VERY hot cast iron pan, then let it rest for 5 minutes before slicing. Remember that with steak, you want the meat at room temperature before cooking so that it will cook evenly and yield that beautiful red center beneath a crisp outer crust.

A couple of notes:

• Regarding the coffee beans: Much like cooking with wine, you want to use a flavorful product that you’d actually enjoy brewing and drinking. The flavor of the coffee will be intensified when its cooked into the steak, so don’t try to use something like Folgers on this – spring for the good stuff.
• For an even more intense flavor, start with whole spices, then toast and grind them fresh. Its more work, but its worth it.
• Try replacing some or all of the sweet paprika with a smoked variety – smoke and coffee play VERY well together, and good smoked paprika will also have a special sort of earthiness that will complement the flavor of the ancho chile quite nicely.
• I skip the chile de arbol/cayenne because I’m a wuss, but feel free to add as much or as little as you like.
• This recipe will make more than enough rub to coat steaks for dinner for 4. Store the extra in the fridge in a container with a tight-fitting lid and it’ll last for weeks.

Smoked Red Pepper Sauce

Adapted from the Mesa Grill Cook Book  by Bobby Flay
Makes about 1.5 cups of sauce

Ingredients

2 roasted red bell peppers, peeled, seeded and chopped
1/4 small red onion, coarsely chopped
4 cloves roasted garlic, peeled
2-3 tbsp red wine vinegar
1 tbsp honey
1 tbsp Dijon mustard
1/2 tbsp adobo sauce from canned chipotles in adobo
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil

Directions

Again, this is easy as pie: just toss everything except the oil in a blender and flip the switch. Once you have a smooth puree, drizzle in the oil while the motor is running and blend just long enough to mix everything together nicely. (Don’t overblend when you add the oil – EVOO releases bitter flavor compounds when its agitated too much.) At this point you can go ahead and use the sauce as is; for a more refined, more smoothly-textured sauce, pour through a fine mesh strainer into a clean bowl, using a spoon or spatula to help push the puree through if necessary.

Serve with your coffee-rubbed steak, or use as a dip for crudite, as a sandwich spread or burger topping, as a mix-in for salad dressings (either vinaigrettes or creamy mayo-based dressings), in pasta dishes, on pizza, or just as a vibrant, flavorful garnish on any dish with a spicy, southwestern flair.

One of my biggest goals for the coming year – which is part of my eleven in 2011 for eri-chan*eats ,but is also part of a bigger lifelong goal of mine to be as self-sufficient as possible when it comes to food acquisition,production and preparation – is to learn to garden; specifically, to learn to grow edible plants in containers.

The container part of the equation is mostly out of necessity – at the moment I’m living in a 2nd floor apartment with no in-the-ground garden space, and have to make do with growing things on our balcony. However, after doing a fair amount of reading about container gardening,  it seems to me that containers have a lot of advantages over a traditional garden: portability, flexibility, a lack of pests and soil-born disease, and complete control over soil quality. These seem like good reasons to keep planting in containers even when I have space for a real garden, if only on a supplementary scale, and I think that having these skills will help me for the rest of my life.

That being said, I’m about as much of a gardening novice as one can be. I remember growing some things as a child – peas and flowers, mostly – and had a couple of indoor plants during college and the years immediately following, but somehow I’ve managed to kill just about every plant I’ve ever taken possession of (including a cactus I had during my junior year of college – I mean really, who kills a cactus??). I can generally joke about my “black thumb” and not feel too badly about it, but if I’m really serious about growing what I eat, I’m going to have to get past that somehow.

The Bountiful Container by Rose Marie Nichols McGee and Maggie Stuckey

Luckily, I have a great resource to get me going: The Bountiful Container by Rose Marie Nichols McGee and Maggie Stuckey. My wonderful mother, who is no slouch in the garden herself, gave me this book as a Christmas gift this year, and I’ve found it not only incredibly informative and useful, but also fun and inspirational to read. I highly recommend it to anyone who’d like to take on a gardening challenge of their own.

I’ve spent the last month or so reading this book and planning out what I’ll grow this season and how I’ll set up my garden, and the more I work on my plan the more excited I get.

My head’s been filled with visions of pots filled with greenery and bright red tomatoes, snappy green peas, and fragrant herbs; I imagine being able to slip out onto the balcony in the evening to pick lettuce for that night’s salad, or cheerfully harvesting basil for pesto in the afternoon, and perhaps snitching a green bean or two to nibble right off the plant and still warm from the sun.

Though I’m dipping my toes in unfamiliar waters with this project, at the moment I feel pretty confident about my chances of success. That being said, and delusions of grandeur aside, I’ll be pretty darn happy if I can keep just one or two plants alive and healthy for long enough to yield something we can actually eat.

If only it weren’t still the middle of winter; as long as we’ve got these freezing temperatures, planning and dreaming is about all I can do. Bring on spring!

(Of course that’s not really true – there’s plenty of prep I can get started with now, but I’ll save that for another post.)

Lets take a break from all the diet-friendly, light-and-healthy stuff for a minute and take a brief, delicious detour into comfort-food-land.

I don’t know about the rest of you, but here in New York we’ve been buried under over a foot of snow since Christmas, with major winter storms battering the tri-state almost every week. They’re saying its the worst winter in at least 6 years, and that January 2011 was the snowiest month in New York’s history (or at least as long as they’ve been keeping track of such things).  Its certainly the worst winter I can remember since I was a kid, and all this snow, ice, and frigid cold absolutely necessitates hot, hearty, and homey meals.

Classic Meatloaf w/Peas and Carrots

Enter the meatloaf. This isn’t something we make often, but a recent feature in Fine Cooking’s February/March 2011 issue on this classic favorite inspired me.

One of the great things about Fine Cooking is their build-your-own recipe model for favorite dishes like pasta bakes, risotto, and cheesecake – they provide instructions for a basic method, and then give you easy ways to customize the recipe to fit your tastes using swappable ingredients and optional mix-ins. This is cool in the magazine, but their online tools make the whole process even more fun and easy; just drag and drop the ingredients that appeal to you, and the tool automatically creates the recipe for you. Neat, right?

The recipe that Fine Cooking’s tool generated for us is below (with a few inevitable changes) but I highly recommend that you try the recipe builder out for yourself. The possibilities are endless!

We paired the meatloaf with a somewhat retro side dish of peas and carrots, given a bit of an update by using fresh carrots and frozen peas instead of canned (blech), adding fresh onions, and sauteeing everything briefly in a bit of butter. Seasoned with salt and pepper, a touch of sugar, and a squeeze of lemon, the vegetables stay a little crunchy and plenty flavorful. A scoop of creamy mashed potatoes to round things out wouldn’t go amiss, either.

I know there's not really any way to make ketchup look anything but gruesome. But, I really like ketchup on my meatloaf.

Classic Meatloaf

Adapted from Fine Cooking
serves 4 generously

Ingredients

2 tbsp plus 1 tsp. canola or olive oil
1 medium yellow onion, chopped
1/2 cup small-diced carrots
1/2 cup small-diced celery
2 large cloves garlic, finely chopped
4 oz. medium-coarse white bread, such as Italian or French, cut into 2-inch pieces (about 2-1/2 cups)
1/2 cup fat-fee Greek yogurt
1/2 lb. ground pork
1/2 lb. ground beef
1/2 lb. ground veal
2 large eggs
1 1/2 tbsp dry poultry seasoning -or- 1 tbsp each chopped fresh rosemary, thyme and sage
3/4 tsp pimenton (smoked paprika)
1 tbsp Worcestershire sauce
Kosher Salt
Freshly ground black pepper
3 tbsp ketchup
1 tbsp Dijon mustard
1/2 cup shredded Jarlsberg Swiss cheese

Directions

Heat 2 Tbs. of the oil in a 10- to 12-inch skillet over medium-low heat. Cook the onion, carrots, celery, and garlic, stirring frequently, until softened and just beginning to brown, 6 to 8 minutes.

Transfer to a large bowl and let cool until warm.

In a shallow dish that holds it in a single layer, soak the bread in the milk, flipping once, until soggy but not falling apart, 5 to 10 minutes, depending on the coarseness and freshness of the bread. Lightly squeeze a handful of bread at a time to remove some of the milk (it should be wet but not drenched). Finely chop and add to the bowl with the onion mixture.

Position a rack in the center of the oven and heat the oven to 375 degrees F.

Add the beef, pork, veal and eggs to the onion mixture. Scatter the poultry mix (or fresh herbs) and pimenton over the meat, and then sprinkle with the Worcestershire, 2-1/4 tsp. salt, and 1/2 tsp. pepper. Use your hands to gently mix all the ingredients until just combined; try not to compact the mixture as you do this.

Heat the remaining 1 tsp. of oil in a small skillet over medium-low heat. Form 1 Tbs. of the meatloaf mixture into a small patty. When the oil is hot, cook the patty on both sides until cooked through, about 5 minutes total. Transfer to a plate and let cool slightly. Taste and adjust the salt, pepper, and other seasonings as needed. Repeat until you’re satisfied with the flavor.

Mix the ketchup, mustard and shredded cheese together in a small bowl.

Line a baking sheet with foil. Transfer the meatloaf mixture to the baking sheet and form into a 10×4-inch rectangular block (it becomes loaf-shaped as it cooks). Spread the ketchup mixture over the top and lightly down the sides of the meatloaf to glaze it.

Bake until an instant-read thermometer registers 160 degrees F in the center of the meatloaf, 40 to 55 minutes.

Let the meatloaf rest for 10 minutes. Transfer to a cutting board or serving platter with a large spatula and cut into 3/4- to 1-inch-thick slices.