Leaves for Breakfast: Quail Eggs and Greens

Scene: Midnight, inside. Lights are off, all is silent. Husband and wife are on the brink of sleep.

Husband (suddenly, without warning): What do you suppose would happen if we made an omelet out of the quail eggs?

Wife: Mmph.*


*Translates as: "I'm sorry, the person you're trying to contact has already fallen half asleep and can't respond using prototypical language at present, but clearly that's an empirical question that we need to investigate first thing in the morning."
 
Answer: Good things happen. It's not that quail eggs really taste different than chicken eggs, but it was like this had a whole extra layer of freshness and eggy taste to it. If that makes sense. Which it probably doesn't. So you'll just have to make it sometime and see.

Ingredients
8-10 quail eggs, or 2-3 pastured chicken eggs
Olive oil
1 medium shallot, sliced into thin half-rings
1-2 handfuls mild greens (e.g., fava, baby mustard, and/or spinach), coarsely chopped
1 tbsp chopped flat leaf parsley
Salt & freshly ground black pepper
Ñora pepper
2 slices whole grain bread, toasted

Carefully crack the quail eggs into a bowl without breaking the yolks (use a fingernail to get through the membrane under the shell, and peel back to get the egg out).

Heat a little olive oil in a nonstick pan over medium heat. Add the shallot and a pinch of salt, and saute for a couple of minutes until soft. Add the greens and cook, stirring, until just wilted, then add the pepper, parsley, and ñora and stir to mix. Pour in the eggs (still without breaking the yolks) and turn the heat down to low.

Wait about 10 seconds, then slowly stir the eggs and greens together, and continue cooking for a minute or two until the whites have set.

Lightly drizzle the toast with olive oil, top with the eggs, and serve hot.


Serves 2 for a light breakfast.

Butternut Squash with Shallot and Sage

This is an easy and delicious way to use up leftover butternut squash if you've roasted or precooked more than you need for another recipe.

 
Ingredients
Olive oil
About 1 1/2 cups coarsely mashed leftover squash
1 small shallot, halved lengthwise and sliced
3-5 leaves fresh sage, thinly sliced crosswise
1/4 cup water
Freshly grated nutmeg
Salt
Freshly ground white pepper


Heat olive oil in a small pan over medium heat. Add the shallot and a pinch of salt and saute until soft, then add the sage. Continue cooking for a minute or two, then fold in the squash. After another minute, turn the heat slightly and stir in the water. Continue cooking until it takes on desired consistency (it should be kind of like mashed potatoes -- not too thick, not too soupy). Turn off heat, add a pinch of nutmeg, salt, and white pepper to taste, and let sit for a minute or two before serving.

Serves 2 as a side dish.

Fettuccine with Winter Squash, White Beans, and Sage

Apparently, I spoke too soon. This pasta recipe was perfecter.

Pasta Ingredients
1/2 cup stone ground whole wheat flour
1/4 cup unbleached all purpose flour
1/4 cup mixed quinoa & chickpea flours (half & half)
1/8 tsp salt
1 pastured egg
1 tbsp warm water + 1 tbsp milk
1 tbsp olive oil
Liberal dousing white pepper (when using this recipe with winter squash)

Mix dry ingredients in a bowl, then make a well in the center and add the olive oil and egg. Mash together with a fork, adding the milk and water as you go. When it forms a ball, take it out and knead it for 10 minutes on a very lightly floured cutting board. When dough is smooth and elastic, form a ball, set in a bowl, cover with saran wrap, and let sit for 30 minutes.

Break dough into quarters. Take each quarter, press lightly into a rough ball, and feed through the pasta machine at its widest setting. Fold in half, and repeat. Tuck the edges over to square the piece of dough, and feed through at the second-widest setting. Continue until setting 7, then hang to dry on a pasta tree. Repeat for each quarter of the dough. Let dry for about 30 minutes, then feed through the fettuccine attachment on your pasta machine to cut the noodles.

Cook in salted boiling water for 3 minutes until al dente (reserve a ladleful or two of the pasta water for the sauce).

Sauce Ingredients
4 cups cubed butternut squash (or cut into flat squares about 1/4" thick)
3 tbsp pine nuts
1 tbsp pastured butter
Olive oil
1 large leek, halved lengthwise and sliced (white and light green parts)
1 cup cooked cannellini beans (or sub canned)
1/4 cup white wine
1/3 cup veggie or chicken broth
Several big handfuls of baby mustard greens (or sub half arugula and half spinach)
12 sage leaves, sliced crosswise into thin ribbons
Zest of 1 Meyer lemon
1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese
1 tbsp chopped flat leaf parsley

Toss the squash pieces with olive oil, spread on a baking pan, and roast in the oven at 425 degrees until tender (15-30 minutes, depending on their size).

Heat a wide pan with deep sides over medium high heat. Add the pine nuts and toast until lightly brown, then remove and set aside.

Heat butter and a generous glug or two of olive oil in the same pan over medium heat. Add the leeks and a pinch of salt and saute until soft, about 5 minutes. Add the beans and saute for another minute or two, then add the wine and stir, cooking, until it evaporates. Gently stir in the squash and 1/4 cup of broth and saute for a couple of minutes, adding a little more olive oil if necessary and a pinch or two of salt.

When the squash is heated through, add the greens and remaining broth and cover the pan to let the greens begin to wilt in the steam. Uncover, stir, and add the sage. Continue cooking until the greens are completely wilted, then add the lemon zest and white pepper, adjust salt to taste, and turn off the heat. Cover and let sit 5-10 minutes to let the flavors blend.

Add a ladleful or two of pasta water from the pot just before draining the fettuccine, and stir. Add the drained noodles back to the pot, drizzle lightly with olive oil, and toss with the sauce.

Serve hot, topped with a liberal sprinkling of pine nuts, parsley, and grated Parmesan.

Serves 2-3.

Excuses, Excuses

I have heard, through the grapevine, that certain readers are politely wondering what the devil I've been doing slacking off my posts in the last couple of weeks, and to you I say:
...well, I hadn't figured out what to say yet, really, because I'd been sorting through my excuses trying to figure out the best one. Since a favorite hasn't emerged yet, you're stuck with the whole list:

1. I was in Oregon.

2. On the way back from Oregon, I was inescapably confronted with a packet of Northwest Nibbles when a flight attendant chucked them onto my tray table and refused to take them back, and I lapsed into a deep depression over their continued existence.

3. Because of #1, we missed our CSA box last week, and so we have since been lacking our usual heaps of inspirational produce.

4. We have been revisiting old favorites.

5. I have developed an unholy and unshakable addiction to cara cara oranges, which are amazing and delicious and so juicy that it would be imprudent and irresponsible to type while one is stuffing them in one's face.


 
While you're waiting for me to run out of oranges and cook something, read this. It's excellent. Kind of like a cara cara orange for the brain.
(Have I mentioned that I may be slightly obsessed?)

Smoked Salmon Sandwich with Lemony Kale

One of my favorite things about days that I get to work from home is the possibility of a warm sandwich for lunch. Someday, I will get a panini maker for my office. (You assume I mean a panini grill, but having written "panini maker," I'm now picturing a professional-looking office assistant with a nice little apron who would stand in the corner and produce hot sandwiches on demand.) Until then, I will tide myself over with the occasional Warm Sandwich Wednesday.

Ingredients (per sandwich)
2 oz. smoked wild salmon
3 leaves dino (Lacinato) kale, sliced crosswise into thin ribbons
Olive oil
Squeeze of lemon
Black pepper
Whole grain or Dijon mustard
2 slices whole grain, not-too-many-ingredient bread, toasted

Heat a little olive oil in a small pan over medium high heat. Toss in the kale and stir-fry until it begins to wilt, then cover pan, turn off the heat, and let sit for a minute or two until fully wilted. Squeeze a little lemon juice over the top, sprinkle liberally with freshly ground black pepper, and toss to combine.

Drizzle the bottom piece of toast very lightly with olive oil and spread the top piece very lightly with a little mustard, then layer the smoked salmon and kale in between.

Dandelion Green Reprise

This is really just a variation on the theme of an earlier recipe, but I liked it even more than that one and thought it deserved its own post.

Ingredients

Olive oil

1 large shallot, sliced

Small handful golden raisins

1 bunch red-stemmed dandelion greens, cut crosswise into ribbons

1/4 cup chicken broth

Heat the olive oil in a pan over medium heat. Add the shallot and saute for a couple of minutes until soft, then add the raisins and cook for a minute more. Fold in the greens and saute, stirring, for another minute or so, then pour in the chicken broth. Stir once or twice, let simmer for a moment, then stir again and simmer until the excess liquid boils off and the greens are completely wilted. Serve hot.

Pappardelle with Mushrooms, Sausage, and Greens

Here is what you should do: Make these, and make this sauce, and toss them together, and eat them. This recipe was inspired by a dish at Lucca that I have been slightly obsessed with for the better part of a year. Now I am obsessed with this version as well. Use good quality Italian sausage for this -- there's only a little bit, but it flavors the whole dish, so you probably want something snazzier than a supermarket variety.

We made this using greens from our CSA box, including baby red mustard greens and nettles...which, two stings later (from preparing them, not eating them), I'm not sure I'd exactly actively seek out in the future for cooking myself. If you do use nettles, a pair of powder-free latex gloves is a lovely thing to have on hand...literally. Rinse the nettles, pick the leaves off the stems carefully, and then soak the leaves in slightly warm water for a few minutes. Drain, then cook. Cooking takes the sting out, and they taste wonderful. But this might be an ingredient best enjoyed at a restaurant when someone else is handling the food preparation. (Pizzaiolo, in Oakland, is still one of our favorite pizza places ever, and they will put nettles on your pizza. And you will, in turn, declare your undying love for their pizza oven. Or at least, we did.) You could use baby arugula, spinach, and/or amaranth greens here as well -- pretty much anything that doesn't require a long cooking time.

Ingredients
Multigrain pappardelle or fettuccine
1/3-1/2 pound mild Italian lamb sausage meat (or other sausage)
3/4 cups finely chopped shallot
2 cloves garlic, pressed
Slightly over 3/4 lbs crimini mushrooms, sliced
Slightly over 1/4 lbs shiitake mushrooms, sliced
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
2 tbsp sherry
1/4 cup veggie broth
2-3 handfuls of greens, chopped
2 handfuls flat leaf parsley, chopped
Shaved Parmesan cheese

Bring a pot of salted water to a rolling boil for the pasta.

Heat a bit of olive oil in a wide pan with deep sides over high heat. Add the sausage and brown lightly, breaking into pieces with a spatula. When the pieces are golden brown on one or two sides, push to the side of the pan and turn the heat down to medium. Add the shallot to the opposite side and stir, cooking, for about two more minutes until the shallot is soft. Add the garlic, stir once or twice, wait a moment, then add the mushrooms and mix everything together. Stir and cook, adding a couple pinches of salt and a liberal dousing of black pepper, until the mushrooms begin to soften and release their juices (you may have to sprinkle them with a little olive oil to get them going). Add the sherry, stir, and saute for a moment more. Next, add the greens and veggie broth and saute briefly until they wilt, then stir in most of the parsley (adjust amount to taste) and turn off the heat.

Meanwhile, add the pasta to the boiling pot of water, stir, and cover to bring back to a boil quickly. Boil for about 3 minutes (for pappardelle) or until al dente. Just before you drain it, remove a ladleful of water and reserve for the sauce.

Drain the noodles mostly but not completely, and then pour them into the pan with the sauce. Drizzle with a little olive oil, then toss gently to combine with the mushrooms, adding some extra pasta water if necessary.

Serve hot, with extra parsley and the shaved Parmesan sprinkled over.


Serves 3-4.


Pairs very, very well with Moshin Vineyard's current red blend, which is some sort of delightful Zin-meets-Syrah-with-a-splash-of-Pinot type of affair.

The Pasta Chronicles, Cont'd: Multigrain Pasta Dough

After several selfless attempts at perfecting a recipe for multigrain pasta dough, we finally hit upon a balance of ingredients last night that passed the delicious-enough-to-post threshold. [Update: This one is even better.] This should work for any noodle -- we've used versions of it for ravioli, pappardelle, and tagliolini, and the dough is elastic enough that it holds up to the thinner settings on the pasta machine without breaking. The elasticity seems to depend on the protein content (more protein = more elastic), which is something to keep in mind if you decide to tweak the recipe below: the quinoa and chickpea flours are fairly high in protein, so if you substitute whole wheat flour or another grain, you may need to increase the egg and/or milk to compensate. Conversely, if you increase the amount of high-protein grain flour, you could reduce or cut out the milk entirely.

Ingredients
3/4 cups stone ground whole wheat flour, plus extra for dusting
3/4 cups all purpose flour
1/4 cup quinoa flour
1/4 cup chickpea flour
1/4 tsp salt
Liberal dousing of freshly ground white or black pepper (optional)*
2 pastured eggs
2 tbsp olive oil
Scant 2 tbsp milk + 2 tbsp warm water

*White pepper complements winter squash recipes, and black pepper goes particularly well with lemon or basil. If you do use pepper, make sure you don't grind it too coarsely (big pieces can rip the dough as you get to the thinner pasta machine settings).

Combine the flours, salt, and pepper in a bowl.

Make a well in the middle and add the olive oil and eggs, then use a fork to begin blending the flour at the edge of the well into the center of the eggs. Add the water and milk slowly as you blend, and continue until it takes on a fairly uniform consistency. (You can do this on a cutting board instead, but the Household Kneader, after trying it both ways, says it's much easier in a bowl.)



Dust a cutting board and your hands with flour, then take the dough out of the bowl. Knead for about 10 minutes, dusting the board with additional flour as needed, until the dough is very elastic. Form a ball, then set in a lightly greased bowl and cover with saran wrap. Let rest for about 30 minutes.

To form the noodles, take a ball of dough about the size of your fist, dust very lightly with flour if it's sticky, and run it through the widest setting of your pasta machine. Fold in half, and repeat. Fold the ends in to create a rectangle, and run it through once more (the goal is to have a fairly rectangular sheet that's on the wide side). Adjust the pasta machine to the next setting, and run through again. Continue decreasing the width, one setting at a time, until you reach setting 7, laying the sheet of dough on a cutting board lightly dusted with flour once in the middle if necessary.

For cut noodles (e.g., fettuccine, tagliolini), hang the pasta sheets on a pasta tree to dry for about 20 minutes, then run each sheet through the pasta machine attachment of your choice.

For pappardelle:
After you finish rolling each sheet, lay it gently on the lightly-floured cutting board to cut the pappardelle noodles (a pastry cutter works well for this, or just use a paring knife). We made our noodles just under 3/4" wide, but you can make them whatever width you'd like (just don't forget that they expand quite a bit when you cook them).

To cook, bring a pot of salted water to a rolling boil. Add the pappardelle, stir, and cover to bring back to a boil quickly. Boil for 3 minutes or until al dente.

Serves 3-4 when making noodles. For ravioli, you probably only need half as much.

Risotto with Winter Squash, Bacon, and Sage

The brilliant thing about risotto, besides the obvious fact that cooking it involves one hand for stirring and leaves the other free to hold a glass of wine, is that it allows you to combine an irresponsibly large number of your favorite ingredients into a single dish. A single awesome, delicious, not-sure-I-actually-made-enough-for-both-of-us-tonight-honey sort of dish.

For instance. I love bacon. Love seems like too mild a word, but we'll go with it. And I love squash. Deeply love. And I've recently been on a southern greens kick. Especially when they're around bacon. And then there are assorted minor ingredients that I feel oddly passionate about, like sage and shallot and lemon zest.

So when I found all these things in my fridge tonight, I had a warm fuzzy feeling that good things were about to happen. 

We had baby red mustard greens from our produce box that I added just before the risotto was finished, but if you're using big-leafed greens, it's probably better to add them all earlier, which is what I wrote here. You should be able to substitute or add collard greens. Or throw in some baby arugula near the end...really anything with a little bit of a kick should work well.

Ingredients
2 cups veggie broth (new favorite: Imagine has a mere 9 ingredients, all recognizable, and comes in a low sodium version that avoids the whole wildly oversalted risotto thing)
Olive oil
Rounded 1/2 cup chopped shallot
1 cup Arborio rice
2 cups diced winter squash (heirloom or butternut)
White wine
Several big handfuls of turnip and mustard greens, sliced or chopped
1 tbsp sage that's been sliced crosswise into thin ribbons
2 strips Niman Ranch applewood smoked bacon (else pancetta), cut crosswise into strips
Zest of 1 lemon
Coarsely ground black pepper
1/4 cup freshly grated Parmesan Reggiano

Heat broth in a small pot over medium heat until it simmers, then turn off heat and leave covered to keep warm.

In a large pot, heat a glug of olive oil over medium heat. Add the shallot and saute for several minutes until soft, then add the rice and squash and stir to coat evenly. Cook, stirring occasionally, for about three minutes (the mixture should start to smell fragrant and toasty). Add a ladleful of white wine and continue to cook, stirring, until the liquid has been absorbed. Start adding the broth, a ladleful at a time, stirring occasionally and allowing it to be absorbed each time before adding more. After the second ladleful of broth, add the greens to the rice, and continue cooking as before.

When the rice is almost tender, heat a small pan over medium high heat, add the bacon, and cook until lightly brown on all sides. Add the sage, stir once or twice, and turn off the heat. Drain most (but not all) of the excess bacon grease out of the pan.

When the rice is tender (which should be just about when all the broth has been added), toss in the lemon zest, pour in the bacon-sage mixture, and sprinkle liberally with freshly ground black pepper. Stir together, and turn off the heat. Add the parmesan, stir, and serve hot.

Serves 2-3.

Tip: If your risotto has to sit for awhile, because, for example, one person in your party was unavoidably detained at the hospital despite ASSURING you that he would be back momentarily, or because you put it in the fridge to have leftovers the next day, you can reconstitute it by adding a little bit of broth before reheating (it tends to dry out when it sits for too long, but perks back up with a little more broth).

Best Oatmeal Ever

The only thing that I have to say about this recipe is that it is oatmeal-hating-husband-approved, after eleven years of wrinkle-nosed reactions to anything remotely resembling porridge.

Ingredients
3/4 cups Bob's Red Mill steel cut oats, or slightly more
1 tbsp olive oil
1/4 cup milk
1 1/2 cups water
1/4 cup golden raisins
Marcona almonds, very coarsely chopped
Brown sugar
Cinnamon
Freshly grated nutmeg

Heat a smallish pot over medium-high heat. Add the oats and toast, stirring or shaking the pan from time to time, for 3-4 minutes. Push the oats to the side of the pan, and add the olive oil to the other side to heat. Stir to coat the oats, and continue toasting for another couple of minutes until they smell fragrant and start to brown.

Add the water and milk, cover, and bring to a boil. Turn the heat down to low and simmer for 13 minutes. Add the raisins, stir, and simmer for 2 minutes more. Uncover and continue to cook, stirring, until any excess liquid is evaporated and oats are just slightly wetter than desired texture. Turn off the heat, replace cover, and let sit for a couple of minutes.

Serve sprinkled with a little brown sugar, cinnamon, freshly grated nutmeg, and Marcona almonds. (If you don't have Marcona almonds, you could toast sliced almonds and put them over the top, but the Marconas are worth finding, especially because their slight saltiness complements the sweetness of the brown sugar.)

Serves 2.