Tag Archives: mint

Ramp, Feta & Mint Pizza

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Having spent much of my week in meetings, I find myself home alone on Friday night desperately attempting to catch up on emails and a couple of writing projects. This is not as bad as it sounds when you consider the fact that I went a little overboard on the ramps during Monday’s farmers’ market expedition and had the foresight to pick up a ball of pizza dough on my way home this afternoon.

It seems that Friday night pizza is officially a thing.

Ramp, Feta & Mint Pizza

  • 10-12 ramps, dirty ends trimmed
  • 1 tablespoon butter
  • 1 small ball pizza dough
  • 1 tablespoon olive oil
  • 1/3 cup ricotta cheese
  • 2 ounces feta cheese, crumbled
  • 20 or so fresh mint leaves
  • salt and pepper
  1. Turn your oven up as high as it will go and remove the pizza dough from the refrigerator.
  2. Bring a large cast iron skillet up to medium heat with the butter. Add the ramps, placing the bulb ends in the skillet and draping the greens, which will cook faster, off the side. When the bulbs are starting to brown, flip the ramps over, When the other side has some color, slide the greens portions in as well. Flip one more time to cook the greens thoroughly, sprinkle with a little salt and set aside.
  3. Give the skillet a quick rinse and pop it in the oven. When the oven is pre-heated, remove the skillet and swirl a little olive oil inside. 
  4. Slowly stretch your dough into a circle approximately the size of your skillet by working your hands around the edges, pulling gently and allowing gravity to assist. Place the dough in the skillet, drizzle a little more olive oil on top and then spread the ricotta cheese in a layer. Add some black pepper, the ramps and the feta cheese. 
  5. Pop the pan in the oven and let cook for 7 to 11 minutes until the edges of the crust are browned. Sprinkle the hot pizza with the mint leaves before serving.

Ramp, Feta & Mint Pizza

This should probably be enough for two people, but I’m having a hard time resisting the half that’s sitting on my cutting board.

Fava Bean, Mint & Feta Dip

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A week after returning home, I’m still on a bit of a bread bender. Having polished off the last of my Parisian stash on Friday, I found myself tucking in my desk chair at 5:45 this evening in order to make it to the Union Square Greenmarket before the good people of Bread Alone packed up for the day. Once I had a quarter loaf of their excellent organic French sourdough stashed in my tote, I was free to roam. I told myself I didn’t need anything else, as I still had vegetables left over from last week and another CSA share arrives tomorrow. But a giant bag of fava beans was just three dollars. And wouldn’t some fresh mint (at two dollars for a nicely sized bouquet) be just the thing to make the favas’ green and slightly nutty flavor pop? And who can pass up tender young garlic?

Fava Bean, Mint & Feta Dip

  • enough fava beans in pod to fill your salad spinner (Sorry, I have no idea what they weighed.)
  • four cloves garlic – the younger, the better
  • juice and zest of 1/2 lemon
  • 3 tablespoons good olive oil
  • small handful of mint leaves
  • 1/2 tablespoon Aleppo pepper
  • salt and pepper
  • 2 ounces feta
  1. Set a small pot of water to boil, crack open a cold beer and get to work popping the fava beans out of their pods. The technique is similar to shelling peas. It will get easier as you go, I promise. The beer helps.Shelling Fava Beans
  2. By the time you shell your final bean, the water should be boiling. Add a generous pinch of salt as well as the beans. Peel the garlic and toss this in as well. Let boil until the beans are tender, approximately five minutes, then strain into a collander and rinse with cold water.
  3. Remove the garlic and dump the beans into a food processor. Pulse several times until you have a coarse mixture. Remove approximately half of the beans. Add the garlic, olive oil, lemon zest and juice, mint, Aleppo pepper, and salt and pepper. Puree until smooth, taste and adjust seasoning.
  4. Stir in the coarsely ground beans and crumbled feta. 

This would make a great hors d’oeuvre served on small crostini or with pita points for dipping. I stashed about half in the refrigerator for tomorrow’s lunch and ate the rest slathered on toasted slices of that Bread Alone sourdough while watching the sun set from the roof of my building. With the temperature hovering around 90 degrees at 8:00pm, this made an ideal supper.

Fava Bean Mint and Feta Dip

Garden Pea and Spring Onion Purée

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This week’s CSA share brought green onions, also known as spring onions. While one can just use them in place of regular onions, I wanted to take advantage of their delicate flavor and natural sweetness. Shelled peas at the farmers market provided inspiration.

Garden Pea and Spring Onion Puree

Garden Pea and Spring Onion Puree

  • 1 1/2 cups fresh shelled peas
  • 3 tablespoons coconut oil
  • 1/2 tablespoon Herbes de Provence
  • 2 spring onions, white parts diced and green parts reserved for future use (alongside radishes in a bulgur salad, for example)
  • 1 scape, thinly sliced
  • 1 teaspoon white wine vinegar or lemon juice
  • 6 mint leaves
  • salt and pepper
  1. Bring a small pot of well-salted water to a boil and add the peas. Simmer for two minutes or so and then rinse quickly under cold water to stop the cooking. The peas should be bright green and still firm.
  2. Saute the spring onions in 2 tablespoons of coconut oil over medium-low heat, taking care not to let them brown. (You could use some other light oil, but the coconut oil really brings out the sweetness of the onions and the peas.) When your onions are wilted, add the scape and cook for a couple of additional minutes. Then crush and sprinkle in the Herbes de Provence, allowing the oil to rehydrate the dried herbs.
  3. Toss the onion mixture, the remaining tablespoon of coconut oil, the vinegar, the mint and all but a tablespoon of the peas into the food processor. Gradually add water until the mixture is just loose enough to catch on the blades. (I’d guess that I ended up using about 1/3 cup.) Add salt and pepper to taste and continue processing until you have an even texture but not a true purée.
  4. Stir in the remaining peas, garnish with a sprig of mint and serve with toast points. (I went with whole wheat sourdough sliced thinly and toasted in a cast iron skillet with a little coconut oil.)

I am happy to report that this pairs nicely with a semi-dry Riesling, gin and tonics with rhubarb simple syrup and a dash of orange bitters, or your morning coffee.

Rhubarb Gin and Tonic

The Hungover Fig

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I’m kicking off a two-week vacation with a few days in Baltimore visiting good friends who are serious foodies.  Last night we hosted a truly decadent dinner party that featured two kinds of roasted bone marrow and a whole lot of wine.  Unsurprisingly, I woke up feeling less than stellar this morning.

I dragged myself downstairs for coffee and was delighted to recall that one of our dinner guests had left fresh figs from her yard.  I trimmed the stems off and scored the figs into quarters before topping them with some rather pungent sheep’s milk feta and a drizzle of raw honey.

I ate this standing at the kitchen counter.  Midway through, one of my hosts appeared and tipped me off that there was fresh mint growing in the backyard, so I sprinkled some small leaves over the top.  This dish is so simple and so delicious and works with all kinds of cheese.  I am particularly fond of ricotta and soft goat cheese.

As I polished off the last of the figs, I remembered that we scored an invitation for brunch and fig harvesting on Saturday before I head down to the beach.  Life satisfaction is high at the moment.

Scapes and Squid

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I’ve been traveling a lot, but this weekend was all about Brooklyn. Prospect Heights, Crown Heights, Park Slope, Clinton Hill, Williamsburg, Bushwick, Boerum Hill, Sunset Park and a 24-hour diner in Bay Ridge were all on the agenda. My friend Dana and her girlfriend Kathleen were coming for dinner on Sunday, so I swung by the Grand Army Plaza Greenmarket. It was, indeed, quite green. I came home with three kinds of kale, mint, chives, baby red jacket potatoes, radishes, sugar snap peas, and garlic scapes. (I also bought squid, hot turkey sausage and slab bacon, but had a tough time working them into this composition.)

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I was first lured into buying scapes a few years ago; something about their sinuous curves proved irresistible. A scape is a stem that shoots up from the garlic bulb and produces a small flower. Farmers trim them so that their garlic bulbs will continue to grow. They’re similar to garlic in flavor, but not as sharp. Scapes are tasty cooked, but I think they really shine when eaten raw. Here’s just one in an endless number of riffs on scape pesto. (Note that it freezes beautifully.)

Scape Pesto

  • 6 garlic scapes, ends and tips removed
  • 1/3 cup marcona almonds (you could use regular almonds, walnuts, pine nuts, etc., though I would recommend lightly toasting them first)
  • zest and juice of one lemon
  • 3 tablespoons olive oil (good quality, because this isn’t going to be cooked)
  • 30-40 fresh mint leaves (this could be basil, parsley, cilantro, etc.)
  • salt and fresh-ground black pepper (to taste)
  • pinch of sugar (if needed)

Blend the first five ingredients in a food processor, adding water a little at a time  to loosen the mixture enough that it becomes a rough paste. (You could also just add more olive oil, but we’ve got bacon and butter coming further down the page.) Add salt, pepper and, if needed, a pinch of sugar to taste.

I’d texted Dana from the greenmarket to confirm that she eats squid. Her reply came just as I walked in the door: “I eat squid, but am not the hugest fan ever.” The pressure was on. I didn’t really have a plan, but had gotten it in my head that I wanted to make a single dish that married the scapes, squid, potatoes and sugar snap peas into a sort of warm composed salad.

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A lot of people find the prospect of cooking squid intimidating, but it’s easy. The key is to cook it very quickly (grilled, fried, boiled or sautéed) or to cook it very slowly (in a traditional Italian red sauce or a fisherman’s stew perhaps). Anything in between yields the rubbery texture of late-night diner calamari.

Scapes and Squid

  • 3 cloves pressed garlic
  • 2 tablespoons olive oil
  • 1 tablespoon red wine vinegar
  • pinch each of dried oregano, Aleppo pepper and red pepper flakes
  • smoked sea salt and fresh-ground black pepper
  • 1.5 pounds cleaned squid

Combine all ingredients and let sit for at least one hour and up to six hours.

  • 1 batch scape pesto (see above)
  • 15-20 small red potatoes, cut in half
  • 3 cups sugar snap peas, strings removed
  • 3 ounces slab bacon (or other smoked fatty pork product)
  • 1 preserved lemon (a regular lemon would also work), flesh removed and rind sliced into slivers
  • 1 tablespoon butter
  • 8-12 fresh mint leaves

While the squid marinates, slice the potatoes and parboil them in salted water until they are just fork tender. Removed the strings from the sugar snap peas and blanch them in the salted water for just a couple of minutes, taking care to cool them down quickly so that they stay crisp and bright green.

At this point, you can knock off and enjoy a glass or two of a nice crisp white wine or a rose until just before you’re ready to eat.

Cut the bacon into small pieces (you may recognize these as lardon) and render them in a cast iron skillet over medium heat.

Meanwhile, in a second pan, melt the butter with the preserved lemon rind over medium heat. When it has stopped foaming, add the potatoes, cut side down.

When the bacon is starting to crisp but is still meaty, push the pieces to the edge of the pan and add as many of the squid bodies as will fit in a single layer. Cook until the squid turns an opaque white on the bottom and then flip. When the other side turns white, pile them at the edge of the pan and add another layer, repeating the process until all of the squid is cooked.

When the potatoes have browned, add the sugar snap peas and stir until they are just heated through.

Spoon the potatoes and peas onto a platter and then add the bacon and squid as well as any juices left in the pan. Drizzle the whole thing with scape pesto and top with some thinly sliced mint leaves.

Dana, the squid skeptic, went back for thirds.

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