So, for lunch today, a little spring take on a salad nicoise… no tuna, but plenty of potatoes, an egg, pea vines, and some fresh spring peas with the simplest vinaigrette.

If your pea vines are a little tough, you could lightly blanch them first; I just used mine raw.

Ever since I started telling people that I was going to write a cookbook on doughnuts, I’ve gotten questions about whether it was going to include any savory recipes. Like me, many of you out there love your doughnuts, but also tend to crave salty over sweet. I’ve been promising some savory doughnut recipes ever since, and I must say, I wish I had gotten around to it much, much sooner.

Since I basically started my whole doughnut obsession around Cinco de Mayo with margarita doughnuts, what better way to jump into savory doughnuts than this: green chile and chicken doughnuts! Oh, sure, it’s more of a New Mexican flavor combination than a true Mexican one, but then again, it seems that it is the US that has turned the 5th of May into a new reason to party. And really, can you ever go wrong with green chile?

You can do these doughnuts a couple of ways. If you want easy, just make raised doughnuts as usual (either with  one of the recipes in Doughnuts or one of the ones on the site), but use 1/2 of the sugar and twice the salt. I subbed in 25% whole wheat flour in these, and loved it. Cut them out as doughnuts (they’ll just fry easier that way!) And then, load up a couple with warmed up green chile with shredded chicken, a little diced onion, maybe some cilantro, definitely a fried egg, a sprinkle of cojita, and a good dollop of sour cream. Oh my. Breakfast fit for a Donut King.

Or, you can get fancy. And by fancy I mean stuffed. Roll out your dough a bit thinner than normal and cut out rounds (without holes), and then place a bit of the shredded chicken, green chile, cojita, onion and whatever else you like in the center. Be careful not to overfill though… you want it to be less than 2 tablespoons all in. Then, top with another round, and crimp closed (I use the same cutter, which trims off any extra and pinches the edges together well). Proof, fry and you have what I will call with no shame an Empanut. Sort of like a doughnut, sort of like an empanada, all kinds of delicious. You could, of course, then proceed as above and smother in more green chile and cojita. Or, you can simply take a bite.

Or, if you really want to get crazy… cut out a ton of holes, fry them up, and use them in place of the chips in your favorite chilaqueles recipe.

Oh savory doughnuts… what in the world took me so long!

Happy Cinco de Mayo everyone!

I am also comforting myself with other warmth, like this little pot of baked eggs with smokey paprika. Just toast up some little squares of stale bread tossed in a little salt and olive oil until they are slightly crunchy. Then, top with an egg (or two if you like), and tiny pour of cream and a healthy dash of smoky paprika (hot or sweet, whichever you prefer), and bake at 350F until the whites are set.

Getting into the kitchen always brings me joy. It’s a celebration of life and love that I suppose is what Valentines day is supposed to be about. I don’t usually do anything to celebrate it, but my mom always did send a card. I think she would have liked this little pot of deliciousness.

I think you could pretty easily pass this juice off as “kiwi” juice for the color if your family grimaces at the thought of spinach in their juice. I used 3 apples, 2 pears, 3 kiwi and 1 to 2 cups of spinach (including the stems). On the kiwis, I just chopped them in half and tossed them in the juicer. I was a little afraid that the skin might make the juice a bit weird, but it was fine. The mesh strainer in the juicer pretty much filters all of that out (of course, it also filters out a lot of the good fiber you get from the fruit).

Just like yesterday, these are pretty quick to come together if you do a little bit of pre-planning. Make the crepe batter the night before, and keep it chilled up until you need to use it (do give it a good stir before you start making the crepes). Pull out the cream cheese too, if you are using it, so it warms a bit and is easier to spread. Make the balsamic syrup, and set it aside. Chop the kale and the pears. Place the pears in some slightly acidic cold water (a squeeze of lemon will do) to keep them from browning. Make the crepes and set aside while you saute the kale (just a touch of oil and a very hot pan). I like to finish the kale with a squeeze of lemon juice and a little salt. To assemble, smear a small amount of cream cheese on a crepe, top with the kale and a sprinkling of pears and drizzle with the syrup.

By the way, the balsamic syrup is a great addition to all kinds of things, and it’s really easy to make. Just combine 1/2 cup balsamic with a tablespoon of sugar, and heat to your desired consistency… actually, just a tiny bit thinner than what you’d like because it will thicken a smidge as it cools. It’s also the subject of my next Still Life With remake challenge… so stay tuned!

From South Africa, I came home with more than a couple of recipes, but I’ve been very eager to share these two with you. Of course, arriving home after two weeks away meant that things got very busy, but this week has pleasantly returned to a more leisurely pace. Time for cooking and shooting and sharing.

First off, when we were in Durban, it was all about the Bunny Chow, a hearty dish of knock-your-socks-off curry that is served in a bread bowl that is a half loaf of bread. Bunny chow doesn’t have anything to do with rabbits, but rather the dishes Indian heritage, from a vegetarian immigrant group known as the Bania. The original vegetarian curry was served up in a loaf of bread, which allowed it to easily be transported to eat in the streets, at work or wherever (depending on whose history you believe). Over the years, the curry has changed and is more often a lamb or mutton curry made with a very spicy red curry spice. But it’s still eaten without utensils, using the bread to scoop out bites of the curry.

The day after the race, Cam and I stopped in to a cute cafe in Durban, Bean Bag Bohemia, to sample our first bunny chow, although there it was called Durban Stuff. And stuffed it was, with chicken and prawns and one of the spiciest curries I’ve ever had. Good thing there were also cocktails!

There were really only two challenges to making bunny chow when I got home… first, I really should have bought some Durban curry powder which goes by some great names like Mother-in-Law-Hell-Fire. If you don’t happen to be in Durban, try this homemade substitute. Secondly, is finding unsliced sandwich bread! Of course, I could have made my own, but to be true bunny chow, you need the super fluffy light stuff. Not rustic, country loaves. You really want unsliced Wonder bread. But, I was able to find a not-too-rustic white bread loaf at the little bakery just up the hill from me. The rest of the dish was a breeze.

Buttermilk rusks are kind of the opposite of Bunny Chow.

When I tried my first rusk, my first though was why? Imagine scones, without any additional flavorings like fruit or spice, baked until they are hard and crumbly. There’s not much flavor and they are very, very dry. Almost rock like. Do people really want to eat these? And then, for no apparent reason, I took another nibble. And another. The subtle sweetness kind of grew on me. A dunk into a cup of sweet tea, and the rusks soften and become oddly addictive. I’m not saying that they are going to replace doughnuts or anything, but they are kind of a neat snack to have around.

I can’t wait till we get to go back to South Africa again, next time to see some of Cape Town with perhaps a wine tour or two.

]]> http://www.laraferroni.com/2010/06/24/bunny-chow-and-buttermilk-rusks/feed/ 8 http://www.laraferroni.com/2010/05/26/a-hearty-spring-salad/ http://www.laraferroni.com/2010/05/26/a-hearty-spring-salad/#comments Wed, 26 May 2010 15:30:51 +0000 L http://www.laraferroni.com/2010/05/26/a-hearty-spring-salad/ In just a few hours, I’m going to be hopping on a plane to another season. There will be butt-numbing numbers of hours watching personal video, reading and listening to music. And then, I’m going to find myself in South Africa.

Yes, South Africa. Where, if weatherbug has it correctly, the weather will be surprisingly like it has been in Seattle. Imagine that.

We are going because my husband, who is very brave and maybe a little insane, will be running this marathon. Which really isn’t a marathon at all. It starts that way, but then it keeps on going. For a total of 55 miles. Did I mention a little insane? And very, very brave?

Afterwards, and after a couple of days of recovery, we’ll be heading out on safari before heading back home.

I can’t wait to share some of the stories with you. I also can’t wait to see what will be happening in the garden when I return. It is already so full of promise. My pea plants seem to grow in inches overnight, and have just started to put out scarlet blooms. Lemony sorrel, which was planted last fall, is in full force. Chives have blossomed into beautiful lilac balls. And I have just harvested my first leeks!

There is nothing like a leek pulled straight out of your own garden.

With these, I made little julienned strips, tossed them in olive oil, and roasted them in a hot oven for about 15 minutes. They caramelized up quickly into little crisps which taste remarkably like toasted marshmallows.

You can use them to top soups, pizzas or as I did on top of a simple salad of sorrel, sauted trumpet mushrooms and an egg. Delicious.

Have a great couple of weeks! See you in June!

So, in fits and starts, I eventually built it. It’s called GobbledyBook, and it’s free for anyone to use. I’ve kept kind of quiet about it because, to date, just about the only person who has used it has been me and it’s always a little nerve wracking to have other people start playing with your baby.

I’ve used it quite a bit already. In fact, I’ve entered over 4,500 recipes in more than 40 of my cookbooks. And even though that is only a small part of my cookbook library (yes, I am one of those freaks), it’s already come in handy to help me find the right recipe and actually cook from my cookbooks! Woo Hoo!

The basic scenario is pretty simple. Say, I want to make some bread pudding. I know I have a lot of bread pudding recipes in my cookbooks, but which ones? I’m sure that Donna Hay has a recipe, but I own 6 of her books. With GobbledyBook, I can simply type bread pudding into the search box, and it shows me 26 recipes out of my cookbooks and what page the recipe is on (Donna Hay has a Marmalade Bread and Butter pudding in Modern Classic Vol. 2, page 146, by the way). You can also see a full list of ingredients for the recipe as well as comments. (To actually cook the recipe, you have to go to the cookbook… I’m not trying to steal from cookbooks, just make them easier to use).

Or, maybe I need to bring something gluten free to a pot luck? I can browse all gluten free recipes, and then narrow down the selection by what ingredients I have or the type of food I like to cook, like Italian. I can limit the search to just cookbooks I own, or any cookbook that has been indexed. Then, I just go grab the book off of the shelf (or order it from Powell’s or Amazon!) and get cooking.

It’s also been wonderful for helping me figure out what to do with the ingredients in my market basket each week. Once I get tired of my old standards, I just plug in a couple of ingredients and see what other dishes I can make. Like, for example, this Swiss Chard Frittata that I made for lunch today.

Actually, this is a combination of two recipes… a basic baked frittata and a swiss chard tart recipe from Sunday Suppers at Luques. I didn’t quite have all the right ingredients for the tart, but I did have (most of) the makings for the pine nut relish that tops it. So, keeping with the basic seasonings of the tart, I skipped the crust, bumped up the egg and turned it into a lovely (and gluten free) lunch treat (recipe below!)

Anyway, back to Gobbleybook. As it turns out, I wasn’t the only one with the problem of using their cookbooks, or the idea to solve it. Late last year, another site launched called Eat Your Books. With a slightly bigger staff (than my 1, so anything is bigger!) and interns helping out with the data entry, their catalog is significantly bigger already. Good for them! I’m sure if I hadn’t spent the last couple of years building my own site, I would totally sign up.

There are some differences between GobbledyBook and Eat Your Books though. First and foremost, GobbledyBook will let you catalog your own books, so you don’t have to wait for someone else to add your book. You can just do it yourself (and you’ll most likely find a few great recipes to bookmark along the way… I know I have).

GobbledyBook is also free to use. There are no sign up fees or subscriptions fees, and it is my intention to keep it that way. You sign in with your Facebook account, and you are good to go.

GobbledyBook also lets you enter the data the way you want to and the way the recipe is written. If the recipe calls for spring onions, you enter spring onions. Behind the scenes, we’ll match up ingredients that are the same (so if you search for scallion, you’ll see recipes for green onions as well. Search for soup and you’ll see recipes that are bisques). I’ve had numerous searches on Eat Your Books fail because I didn’t use quite the right search term.

So, if you find yourself wanting to make your cookbook library a little easier to use, I hope you’ll give GobbledyBook a try and enter a cookbook or two. To entice you a bit more, I’m giving away a $50 gift certificate to your choice of Powell’s or Amazon to the first person to catalog 500 recipes!

PS: GobbledyBook is a labor of love. It’s been a long time since I’ve done any “real” software development, so you may, at times, find a glitch or two. If you do, I hope that you let me knows so I can keep making the site better!

]]> http://www.laraferroni.com/2010/03/22/gobbledybook/feed/ 42 http://www.laraferroni.com/2010/01/14/the-italian-farmers-table/ http://www.laraferroni.com/2010/01/14/the-italian-farmers-table/#comments Fri, 15 Jan 2010 01:11:23 +0000 L http://cookandeat.com/2010/01/14/the-italian-farmers-table/ The summer we went to Italy, Cam & I came home with dreams of packing up and finding some little Italian cottage to call home. I'd meet local food artisans and do what I do... write and photograph about the food and culture. I'd write a cookbook on traditional Italian cookery that went much deeper into regional dishes than most Italian cookbooks do. Of course, that's far easier to dream about than actually do, so here I still sit in Seattle, longingly flipping through The Italian Farmer's Table cookbook, written by a a pair of chefs who turned their dream into a book of real Italian cooking.

Yes, I am quite envious of Matthew Scialabba & Melissa Pellegrino who got to live one of my dreams. For 4 months, they traveled around Italy’s agriturismi, harvesting grapes, making goat cheese, hunting for local venison. I’m also thankful that they shared so much they experienced in their cookbook; not just recipes, but stories of the families they met along the way. They sent me a copy of their book several months ago, and it’s taken me a while to sit down with it and take it in. I still have much I want to cook from it, but today, I finally picked out a recipe to try, a simple salad of cabbage, pear and orange.

This recipe is definitely not what you’d think of if you think of Italian cooking, and that’s one of the reasons that I picked it. I appreciate the fact that this is not simply a cookbook of those recipes that everyone thinks of when they think of Italian food, but gets deeper in to what people really eat. This particular recipe is from the chapter on Casale Cjanor, an agriturismo/poultry farm in the San Danielle region of Friuli. Recipes in this region are heavily influenced by Germanic and Slavic roots, and you’ll find all sorts of ingredients that wouldn’t come to mind when thinking about Italian food.

This particular recipe is a bright salad that would be a perfect accompaniment to any heavy stew (like perhaps, the hearty looking braised duck just a few pages past). The celery, cabbage, pear and oranges are remind me of a Waldorf salad, but without the goopy mayo. It’s really the perfect side salad to have in winter, when citrus is at it’s peak.

I’m very much looking forward to trying many of the other recipes in this book!

Cabbage and Pear Salad (Insalata di Cavolo e Pere)
From The Italian Farmer’s Table   

The original recipe calls for green cabbage, but I had red cabbage on hand and I love the vibrancy it adds. Feel free to use either red or green. I think this salad would also work well with a handful of toasted walnuts tossed in.

Serves 6

1 or 2 large orange
2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
1 teaspoon white wine vinegar
1/2 head cabbage (red or green)
1 pear, cored and thinly sliced
2 stalks celery, sliced into half moons
1 tablespoon poppyseeds

Start by peeling the orange. I like to do this with a knife even if the oranges peel easily, to remove all the pith and white membrane. Once peeled, section the orange in small segments, and catch the juices that spill as you go. You want to have between 1 and 2 tablespoons of juice, so if needed, squeeze a bit more. I like the dressing quite citrusy.

Whisk together the orange juice, olive oil, vinegar and a bit of kosher salt & pepper, and set aside.

Shred the cabbage and place it in a medium bowl. Then, add the pear, celery and poppyseeds. Add a pinch of salt and pepper, followed by the dressing. Toss to coat.

To serve, place a mound of the cabbage and pear mixture on the plate, and top with two to three orange segments.

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