Brunch on Sunday

We had a guest visiting us on Sunday. Since my sense of smell and taste was slowing coming back, I welcomed the chance to cook brunch for our vegetarian friend. I had most of the fresh produce from the farmer's market and garden. Dan and I wanted to try more recipes from the Herbal Kitchen mentioned in this post. I was happy to use many different herbs from our garden.
Summer roll with lettuce, basil, cilantro from our garden. I had 6 spears of asparagus left from a bunch I bought at the market and added to the rolls.

Potato Gratin. Dan thinks we sliced the potatoes too thin. We are going to try thicker slice next time and also make it with more liquid. I shouldn't pack down the potato layers next time. We used winter savory following the recipe and it tasted very good.
Gratin with grated zucchini, basil topped with bread crumbs (I used panko). This was so simple and surprisingly good.
I wanted peas to be the highlight of the meal, couldn't find a recipe I wanted to try, so went with impromptu salad. I blanched them in salt water and cooled in ice water. The dressing was made with olive oil (3), lemon juice (1), finely chopped garlic scapes (0.5), finely chopped pinch of rosemary , salt, pepper, and a pinch of sugar. I added green onions and baby yellow carrot from our garden. Peas, radish, and cucumber (which I added later and thus not on the photo) were from the farmer's market. Shavings of Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese were added on top.
I wanted to add hard-boiled eggs to my pea salad, but Dan wanted me to make egg salad. A scoop of egg salad on the side of pea salad was delicious, but I still think the wedges of hard-boiled eggs would have looked nicer.

It is very satisfying to work with the freshest ingredients in season. Peas are coming in abundance at the market. I am excited to see zucchini, cucumber, cabbages, potatoes, squash blossoms, and even tomatoes at the market. I need to make sure I pick them all up this Saturday.

Yeon

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Welcome Spring Dinner

Dan got a rib rack on Friday and decided to smoke/grill ribs. He has some beautiful shots of the ribs before and after cooking and hopefully will post them soon. Here I present you with the photos of side dishes that we prepared for the dinner with our friends on Saturday.

Photo by Dan

Deviled Eggs: stuffed with smoked salmon, chives and chervil. I picked up a chervil plant from Nancy in the morning and used some in the afternoon! I used Rainbow eggs from Nancy and Dave.

Photo by Dan

Mixed green and arugula from Rieko and Erland. Radishes from Rick in pickling juice (not quite ready that night but were delicious the next day). Strawberry dressing is made from strawberries that we picked from Glade-Link farm last year. The small blue bowl is from Shuck Pottery.

Photo by Dan

Grilled spring onions from Jim (Tomatoes et al), and three different asparagus from Chris, Rich, and Rick.

Photo by Dan

Strawberry and rhubarb cobbler. Rhubarb is from my garden. The original recipe was for rhubarb only and I modified it to work with half strawberries and half rhubarbs. The original recipe is from the Herbal Kitchen by Jerry Traunfeld. I made deviled eggs above following his recipe from the same book.

• 1 pound of rhubarb stalks, cut into 1/2 pieces
  
• 1 pound of strawberries (frozen ones from last year, thawed and dried to remove access water)
  
• 1/2 cup sugar
  
• 1/3 cup spearmint, chopped
  
• 2 TBS of unsalted butter, cut into small pieces)
  

Biscuits

• 1 cup all-purpose flower
• 2 tsp baking powder
  
• 1/4 tsp fine salt
  
• 5 TBS sugar
  
• 4 TBS unsalted butter
  
• 1/2 cup minus 1 TBS heavy cream
  

I introduced the strawberries since my green rhubarb doesn't stay pretty when cooked , and because strawberries and rhubarb go so well together. I cut down the content of sugar and spearmint.

1. Preheat the oven at 400F.
2. Mix rhubarb, strawberries, sugar, and mint in a 9 x 13 baking dish. Dot with butter. Bake for 20 minutes and the mixture is bubbly.
3. While rhubarb and strawberries are baking, make the biscuit dough. Mix flower, baking power, salt and sugar (only 4 TBS), and then cut into butter using your finger tips or pastry blender until the mixture resembles a coarse meal. Pour the cream and briefly mix so that they come together. Roughly divide the dough into 8 discs.
4. When you take out the baking dish following the step 2, arrange the discs you made from the step 3 on top of the hot rhubarb/strawberry mix. Sprinkle the remaining 1 TBS sugar on top of the biscuit disks. Bake for another 20 minutes, or until the biscuit is dark golden brown.

This cobbler is sweet and tart at the same time. Our neighbor Mike asked if there was mint in the cobbler, while Jackie didn't know till he mentioned it. It is a fun and easy recipe and I would like to try with fresh strawberries again. If I can get a hold of red rhubarb stalks, I might try the original recipe too.

Yeon

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