Monthly Archives: June 2014

Chard cakes with sorrel sauce

These chard cakes are the perfect vaguely healthy yet super decadent summer appetizer or side dish. They are seriously so good is difficult to describe. It’s this odd sensation of something super healthy and good for you like chard, and then made a little bit sinful by deep frying it, but then it’s covered in this really fresh and light tasting sorrel sauce. The recipe for the chard cakes is on p. 149 of Yotam Ottolenghi’s Plenty and is also featured online here.

This is how much I love swiss chard

I don’t think I’d ever cooked with swiss chard before starting this blog, but now I’ve cooked at least 4 recipes featuring it. It is just so good the way that Yotam Ottolenghi suggests making it, and it is especially well complemented by Greek yogurt, which I think has been a key ingredient in every swiss chard recipe I’ve made so far (I especially really loved the swiss chard with tahini, yogurt, and buttered pine nuts, featured here).

Here I am contending with my mountain of swiss chard

Unfortunately it’s summer and dry as a bone, so I don’t have any mushrooms or a mushroom lesson for you today, but I made this recipe for the first time with my friend Rachel, who is a fellow microbial ecologist and has started a blog herself teaching people about microbes – so check it out if you want to learn some microbial ecology :)

Ingredients for the sorrel sauce – sorrel, garlic, Greek yogurt, dijon mustard

As for the chard cakes, the first step is to make the sorrel sauce, which requires either a food processor or a blender. I used a food blender while making it at Rachel’s house and I used an immersion blender when I made it again at home. Personally I think the immersion blender was a bit easier but either works. Make sure to start boiling the water for blanching the Swiss chard while making the sauce because the sauce doesn’t take that long to make and you might get hungry while waiting for the water to boil!

Sorrel leaves

I don’t think I’ve ever cooked with sorrel in my life before! It grows wild all over California and my other friend Rachael, who I took mushroom hunting with me in Point Reyes, was pointing out and collecting the wild sorrel growing along the trails. Next time I will have to collect it myself in the woods, but this time I bought it from the Berkeley bowl. Blend the sorrel leaves, Greek yogurt, garlic clove, olive oil, and Dijon mustard until smooth.

Mixing together ingredients for the sorrel sauce

It makes a beautiful bright green sauce that I will have to find other uses for this week since we had a lot of extra! I think it would be good on cous cous or steak and would probably go well with grilled porcinis :)

Sorrel sauce in the immersion blender

I felt like I would totally fit in with all of the Berkeley and Oakland hipsters when Rachel gave me a mason jar to store the sorrel sauce in:

Sorrel sauce

Isn’t it beautifully bright green?

Sorrel sauce in mason jar

After the sauce is made the next step is to blanch the swiss chard. While the swiss chard is blanching, sautee pine nuts in oil. This is another repetitive theme in the Ottolenghi books and it is delicious! Pine nuts add such a nice decadent crunch to all of these dishes and they are so good toasted!

Blanched swiss chard with toasted pine nuts

Next add the egg, bread crumbs, salt, pepper, and cheese. I had no idea where to find kashkaval cheese but a quick google for substitutions on my iphone while at the grocery store found me mozzarella. Rachel, who has made the recipe before and said she went out of her way to find kashkaval cheese at a specialty cheese shop, said it tasted way better with mozzarella. The mozzarella was creamy and stringy which held together the cakes very well. Then came the fun part – mixing everything together and molding the cakes with my hands! While mixing the cakes we started heating up canola oil in a pan.

Adding the mozzarella cheese

Mixing up the chard cakes

Once the oil was hot we fried the cakes in the oil for 2-3 minutes on each side. This was pretty much my first time frying anything!

swiss chard cakes frying in oil

Don’t they look pretty when they start to brown?

Swiss chard cakes browning

Rachel didn’t have any paper towels but she did have leftover napkins from Halloween which we put to good use!

Chard cakes with lemon wedges and halloween napkins

These cakes tasted super decadent and delicious. They were satisfying and surprisingly not that unhealthy tasting given they were fried in oil.

Chard cakes fried to perfection

You have to make them yourself. Seriously, just go do it. You won’t regret it! Here is the ingredient list to help you out :)

Sorrel sauce:

3 cups sorrel leaves, washed
1/2 cup Greek yogurt
1 garlic clove, crushed
2 tbsp olive oil
1/2 tsp Dijon mustard
salt

Cakes:

1.25 lbs Swiss chard
1/3 cup pine nuts
1 tbsp olive oil
4 oz kashkaval cheese, coarsely grated (I used mozzarella)
1 egg
6 tbsp dried white breadcrumbs
1/4 tsp salt
black pepper
vegetable oil for frying

Brunch time! Green pancakes with lime butter

Yesterday I decided to make brunch for my friend Valerie. Valerie and I met at sleep away camp when we were 10 and have been friends ever since! One of the first recipes that caught my eye when I bought Plenty, by my main man Yotam Ottolenghi, was the green pancakes with lime butter from page 150. I am SO glad that I finally made them because they are DELICIOUS. The pancakes are savory and taste like a Chinese egg roll – pancake fusion, or perhaps similar to Jeon, if you are familiar with Korean food.

Green pancakes in all their savory delicious glory

I decided to accompany the pancakes with scrambled eggs with you guessed it, yes MUSHROOMS. My blog has been sadly bereft of mushrooms as of late, so I decided to add them in to my scrambled eggs. Even though they were just regular button mushrooms from the Berkeley bowl, any mushroom is better than no mushroom in my opinion, and I’ve always thought the button mushrooms get a bad rap. Did you know that Agaricus bisporus, the common grocery store button mushroom, is actually the same species as cremini and portabella? Yes, you thought you were being fancy buying portabella mushrooms, but in fact it’s just a button mushroom grown larger. I’m not saying they aren’t still good though..look how pretty these babies are:

mushrooms!

I sauteed some mushrooms with half a red onion for the eggs while Valerie got started on the lime butter, which is a magic combination of butter, lime juice, lime zest, salt, pepper, cilantro, garlic, and chile flakes. Here is Valerie making the lime butter:

Valerie making the lime butter with lime zest, lime juice, salt, pepper, cilantro, garlic, and chile flakes

Here is the completed lime butter before we rolled it up in saran wrap and stuck it in the fridge to chill:

lime butter with lime juice, lime zest, salt, pepper, cilantro, garlic, chile flakes about to be chilled

How beautiful are all of these green ingredients for the green pancakes?

Green onions, cilantro, and limes for the green pancakes with lime butter

The next thing to do is to wash and wilt 0.5 lb of spinach in a pan, drain it, let it cool, squeeze out the moisture, roughly chop it, then set it aside. For the pancakes, Ottolenghi calls for self-rising flour, which you make by adding 1.25 tsp baking powder and a pinch of salt to 1 cup of regular all-purpose flour. Melt 4 tbsp of butter in a pan and then add it to 3/4 cup self rising flour, 1 tbsp baking powder, 1 egg, 0.5 tsp salt, 1 tsp cumin, and 2/3 cup milk in a large mixing bowl and whisk until smooth. Finely slice the green onions, then add them and the wilted spinach to the pancake mixture along with a green chile. Ottolenghi called for 2 fresh green chiles but he did not specify which kind and since I’m not huge on spicy I used one large jalapeno pepper. I removed the seeds from the jalapeno pepper before adding it to the pancakes but if you are a big fan of spicy, by all means go ahead and add more! Here is what the pancake mixture looks like:

Pancake mixture with flour, baking powder, egg, butter, salt, cumin, milk, green onions, spinach, and green chile

The next step is a bit complicated – you are supposed to whisk an egg white to soft peaks and gently fold it into the batter. What exactly is a soft peak?? I had no idea about this but luckily Valerie seemed to know, but unfortunately she said my whisk stinks and she could not whisk to soft peaks with it. Luckily the pancakes still turned out gorgeous even with the poorly whisked egg whites:

Green pancakes browning in the pan

Heat a pan to medium high heat, add olive oil, and add 2 tbsp of pancake batter for each pancake and cook them for 2 minutes on each side. Here are the pancakes with lime butter:

Green pancakes with lime butter

For the scrambled eggs, I cracked and whisked up 5 eggs, added salt, pepper, and basil flakes, and added them to the sauteed mushrooms and onion:

Green pancakes with lime butter with scrambled eggs with mushrooms and onions

Valerie brought over some fresh lettuce from her mother’s garden and we made a simple lettuce and tomato salad to accompany the pancakes and scrambled eggs. Here is the completed meal:

Green pancakes with lime butter, scrambled eggs with mushrooms and onions, and lettuce and tomato salad

Here is Valerie enjoying the lovely meal:

Valerie and her delicious brunch of green pancakes with lime butter and scrambled eggs with mushrooms

Next time you are thinking of going out to one of those trendy brunch spots and waiting over an hour in line to be at the hippest spot in town, think about making this brunch at home instead. Delicious high quality and way cheaper brunch fair all from the comfort of your own home – plus you get to keep the leftovers. I highly recommend it :)

Ingredients:

Lime butter
8 tbsp (1 stick) unsalted butter, at room temperature
Grated zest of 1 lime
1 1/2 tbsp lime juice
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 tsp white pepper
1 tbsp chopped cilantro
1/2 garlic clove, finely chopped
1/4 tsp chile flakes

1/2 lb (about 8 cups) spinach, washed
3/4 cup self-rising flour
1 tbsp baking powder
1 egg
4 tbsp unsalted butter, melted
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp ground cumin
2/3 cup milk
6 medium green onions, finely sliced
2 fresh green chiles, thinly sliced
1 egg white
Olive oil for frying

Eating my weight in gelato in Italy

As you know from my previous post, I got a free trip to Zurich for work to give a talk at the Mycorrhizal Symbiosis Symposium. The talk went well and I had fun at the conference, which was awesome scientifically and intellectually, but I found the food in Zurich lacking. I am just not a heavy Germanic food kind of girl. Happily for me, my cousin Aaron and his wife Kate live in Naples, so after the conference I flew to Italy to visit. As you can imagine, I took my eating very seriously on this trip, especially when it came to gelato! I knew you all would be interested in the gelato I ate in Italy so I kept a list of flavors I tried. So here it is!! Another day another gelato..

gelato #1: nocciolata and stracciatella – chocolate hazelnut goodness and creamy milk based gelato with chocolate strands thrown in – analogous to chocolate chip ice cream but so much better because the chocolate is melded throughout rather in discrete chips. Here I am enjoying a gelato in a gelateria in my cousin’s building before I even go upstairs to put down my luggage:

Enjoying Nocciolata and Stracciatella gelato before I even put down my luggage

gelato #2: pan di stelle – After a disappointing Nutella festival with no nutella (What!?!?) and then walking a mile to the world famous pizzeria da michele, where allegedly pizza was born, only to find it closed, I definitely needed gelato! I tried a mysterious flavor called pan di stelle, which I believe is an Italian chocolately star cookie. It was ok but not my favorite.

gelato #3: pistachio, baccio, straciatella – After a day of trekking around Herculaneum in the rain, which was a wonderful rainy day activity in fact and I highly recommend a visit, I decided I needed to go for a three-fer gelato this time. I tried pistachio, baccio, and returned to the delicious straciatella to make sure I had at least one familiar favorite. Baccio is chocolate hazelnut, and is delicious, although I recommend nocciolata over baccio for you nutella lovers.

gelato #4: ambroggio e fragola – Kate and I took a lovely day trip to Capri, which is a gorgeous resort island an hour ferry ride from Napoli. It is soo soo pretty and luxurious, but be prepared to watch the dollars drain out of your pockets. We spent nearly 40 euros to get 5 minutes in a cave called the Blue Grotto, which admittedly, was pretty cool:

Blue grotto cave in Capri

But the real highlight of Capri as far as I’m concerned was the galeto. Hands down some of the best gelato I’ve ever tried..ever! It was sooo good!!! I tried a flavor called ambroggio, which as far as I can tell was ferrero rocher flavored gelato, and was to-die-for. I paired it with fragola, which is strawberry. Here I am living the life of luxury and enjoying gelati in Capri:

Ecstatic after discovering the most amazing gelato flavor ambroggio in Capri

Kate also got the delightful ambroggio, but she paired it with after eight (mint chocolate candy for those of you who don’t know what this epic candy is):

Kate enjoying gelato in Capri

gelato #5: torta caprese e melone- Kate and I decided that the gelato in Capri was so good, that after taking this seriously scary chairlift ride to the top of a mountain, we deserved to treat ourselves to gelato again. While scary (Aaron thought I was totally lame for thinking this was scary, but I’m afraid of heights, so it was scary for me!), the view was pretty epic:

Chairlift ride up the mountain in Capri

The view from the top was just incredible:

View from top of mountain in Capri

While the view was gorgeous, I was still a little rattled from the chairlift ride up and was seriously dreading the ride down, which looked scarier. I decided I needed a little prosecco to calm my nerves before taking the scary ride back down the mountain:

Enjoying la dolce vita in Capri

And finally, back to the gelato! After surviving the ride back down the mountain, Kate and I enjoyed another gelato. I tried something called torta caprese, which really I’m not sure what it is, but it was the best gelato OF MY LIFE. Seriously, it was so good. If you go to Italy, go to Capri just for the torta caprese and ambroggio gelato. DO IT.

gelato #6: nocciolata e mandarlo- After several days of hanging out in Naples and enjoying day trips to Positano and Sorrento in the amalfi coast, Herculaneum, and Capri, Aaron, Kate, and I took a road trip up north to experience the Cinque terre. Cinque terre is five towns located about a 6 hour drive north of Naples on the coast. They are gorgeous picturesque villages with cute painted houses etched into the rocky coast. We stayed in the largest and northern most village, Monterosso. Our first full day in Cinque terre we took the train to the southern most village, Riomaggiare, and enjoyed a gelato. I returned to an old fave, nocciolata, and paired it with a new flavor for me, mandarlo, which is almond. Mandarlo was delicious! Another flavor that I highly recommend! Here I am enjoying nocciolata and mandarlo in Riomaggiare:

Nocciolata and mandarlo gelato in Riomaggiare

Here are Kate and Aaron enjoying their gelati:

Kate and Aaron enjoying gelato in Riomaggiare

gelato #7: stracciatella e cioccolotto – After relaxing in Riomaggiare, we took the train to Manarola and enjoyed an epic swimming hole. Manarola was totally one of my favorite towns. Check out how cute it is:

The town of Manarola in Cinque terre

After the relaxing day we were ready to check out the nightlife in Monterosso, which Rick Steves claims is the nightlife hub of the Cinque terre. Let me tell you, it was dead! We were walking around at midnight on a Friday night, and everything was closed! A middle aged couple saw us walking around and asked us where the nightlife was, and we had to let them down that we couldn’t find any. Luckily, one gelateria was still open and we got the last gelato of the day before they closed their doors. Since I wasn’t super inspired by the late night flavor options, I returned to my old fave stracciatella and paired it with cioccolotto, or milk chocolate.

gelato #8: mandarino e tiramisu – For our second day in Cinque terre, we decided to hike from Monterosso to Vernazza, the next town over. The hike took nearly 2 hours and was pretty hilly, but it provided us with gorgeous views of the Cinque terre:

View on the hike from Monterosso to Vernazza in Cinque terre

View of Vernazza from the trail

After enjoying Vernazza, which was another fabulous town, we decided to take the train to Corniglia. We should have read Rick Steves’ account of Corniglia being for the “hermits, anarchists, and mountain goats” more carefully before we attempted to visit. You have to walk up a stair case of 365 stairs before even being able to enter the village! It was torture! Needless to say, Corniglia was NOT our favorite town. We were there for barely 45 minutes total but we did manage to squeeze in a gelato before we left. At least the gelato was delicious. I tried mandarino and tiramisu, which was delightful:

Tiramisu and mandarino gelato in Corniglia

Kate enjoying dark chocolate and coconut gelato in Corniglia

gelato – the only part of Corniglia we enjoyed!

gelato #9: Fichi e caramelli e ciocco crok – After a heavenly 2 days in Cinque terre, we took a four hour road trip to Lake Como. What can I say about Lake Como other than I desperately want to go back? We were only there for half a day but I could easily imagine spending several days there. It was BEAUTIFUL. Warm weather, alpine lakes, and the Alps in the background. It was gorgeous:

Lake Como

While we were only there for half a day, we did manage to squeeze in a gelato. I had “Ciocco crok” which was chocolate with hazelnuts and almonds mixed in, and fichi e caramelli, or caramelized figs, gelato. Fichi e caramelli was really realy good!

Fichi e caramelli e ciocco crok gelato in Lake Como

gelato #10: Swiss chocolate and passionfruit mango – Kate was disappointed that I did not make it to number 10 while in Italy, but luckily for me, Switzerland also has good gelato :) I took the train from Milan to Zurich across the alps, and when I landed in Zurich I was ready to search for gelato number 10. Unfortunately, Zurich is a zillion times more expensive than Italy, and I had to shell out 7.90 francs for gelato in Zurich compared to 2 euros for gelato in Italy. Of course, francs and euros are both worth more than US dollars, so it was a freaking expensive gelato! Luckily I didn’t know the price before I already had the gelato in hand, because I might have backed out if I had known in advance it was nearly $9 for a cone. Then I would not have gotten to experience the joy of swiss chocolate gelato! You pay dearly for it, but man is it delicious. I paired it with passionfruit mango, which my sister Leslie claims is a weird combination, but I thought was great:

Swiss chocolate and passionfruit mango gelato in Zurich that I paid nearly $9 for!

So there you go, gelato eating endeavor. Over the course of 1.5 weeks in Italy I ate gelato 9 times, with my 10th in Zurich, and then an 11th on the plane because Swiss Air served swiss chocolate gelato on the plane. So what do you think, did I get my gelato’s worth out of Italy? Could you have eaten more?

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The world is your oyster mushroom!

Monthly Archives: June 2014

Chard cakes with sorrel sauce

Brunch time! Green pancakes with lime butter

Eating my weight in gelato in Italy