Recipes from Cooking with Doyle Moore on Focus 580
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Cooking on Focus 580: Recipes for September 2008
September 3, 2008: Bounty of the Harvest
It’s that time of year when we have available all the fresh foods we dream about during the winter, including corn, tomatoes, even peaches. Do you have any special recipes that make use of the season’s available items? Have you purchased something at the farmers’ market and found a new recipe to make use of it?
Doyle has come across some new recipes for foods that he thought he knew, variations on well-known dishes. He has often given a recipe for white gazpacho, taught to him back in the 60s, with cucumber and sour cream or yogurt, and Moroccan-flavored influences. Of course, the Spanish gazpacho with tomatoes is delicious. But he’s come up with a new one, not the same old thing. They call it green gazpacho, and he finds it exceedingly delicious, more than he expected with a lot of added good flavor.
GREEN GAZPACHO
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2 large cucumbers, peeled, quartered lengthwise and seeded
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1 large green bell pepper
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[6 leaves lettuce, chopped – Doyle omits this]
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2 scallions (white and light green parts), chopped – Doyle uses more, “a whole bunch”, 5
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⅓ cup fresh cilantro leaves [Doyle uses a full cup]
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3 cups buttermilk
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4-oz. can chopped mild green chilies, drained
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3 Tbsp. fresh lime juice
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1 tsp. ground cumin
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salt and pepper to taste
Reserve about half of one cucumber and half of the bell pepper and dice finely; set aside for garnish. Coarsely chop remaining cucumbers and bell pepper; transfer to food processor or blender. Add the [lettuce], scallions and cilantro and process until puréed with some texture remaining. Transfer to large serving container. Stir in buttermilk, chilies, lime juice, cumin, salt and pepper, adding more buttermilk if needed to achieve a slightly thick consistency. Serve immediately or cover and chill until needed. Just before serving, sprinkle with the served diced cucumber and bell pepper.
So suddenly the chilies, lime juice, and cumin are flavorful additions new to this dish. It lasts quite a while, since the recipe produces about a quart and a half of soup which you can’t eat all at once. Sort of like a big chopped salad. It’s got almost no fat, and all those healthy fresh vegetables.
It used to be that cumin was only used in Indian cooking and you could only find it in exotic foreign groceries. But it’s also used in Mexican foods, and now it’s also appearing in lots of recipes, a new adaptation of American cooking. Often Doyle doubles the amount of a spice called for in a recipe, but in this recipe the one teaspoon is just the right amount.
BERRY PIES
David doesn’t have a lot of pastry experience, but this summer he has twice made galette, or tart. His wife comes home with lots of berries, blueberries and blackberries. She came across a recipe for a berry tart in a magazine. It’s the kind where you roll out a crust, you pile your fruit on it, and then you just kind of fold a flap of the pastry up for the sides, and you bake it. It’s really easy and really good. So now David is feeling less intimidated by pastry; this is the rustic kind called “get it done and have it.”
Oddly enough, Doyle has also been making some pastry. He has about three variations. One requires that the crust be “blind baked” in a pie tin. Then chocolate is spread over it and melted, and allowed to cool. Then you put the berries on top of the chocolate and serve. Another variation: use puff pastry and build up an inch of a wall around the berries. And a third variation: make a pie crust; cover the bottom of the crust with cream cheese; puree two cups of your berries and thicken the puree with 3 Tbsp. of cornstarch, and put that in the bottom of the crust, and toss the remaining (approx. 5 cups) of whole berries on top.
David wonders, what other type of fruit could you make such a quick and easy tart with? Apples? Peaches? Doyle suggests that if you use apples, you should sauté them with spices (a touch of cardamom along with cinnamon) a bit first, because they take a longer time to cook; maybe even add a little maple syrup.
A caller from Downs offers some hints for using puff pastry for that kind of tart (not really a galette). Roll out one sheet into a 12 x 12 square. Trim the edges so you have a nice clean edge to puff. Then cut the remaining into six rectangles. Bake the rectangles. Take a knife and cut little rectangles out of the interior of the big puff pastry and inlay the smaller rectangles (tap them down with a spoon). Then you have a case that you so whatever you like with: you can do something as easy as putting whipped cream topping and berries, or pastry cream or lemon curd, or even just the berries. People just ooh and aah over these little pastry cases.
Be careful when cutting puff pastry: the knife (a sharp blade) should be pointed straight down, and you don’t saw or drag it. Use your biggest knife, and if it’s not long enough, pick it up and drop it down again, like a guillotine. That way the edges will puff up nicely. If you drag the knife across, you will seal off the layers of pastry and it won’t puff up so well.
SWISS CHARD AND ZUCCHINI GALETTE
The caller from Downs says you can also use a Swiss chard and zucchini filling for your galette.
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10-12 stalks of Swiss chard
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1 medium onion, chopped
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2 large garlic cloves, minced or chopped
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¾ tsp. salt
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1 tsp. fresh thyme or ½ tsp. dried thyme
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3 large eggs, beaten
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½ cup gruyere cheese
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½ cup skim milk
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bit of olive oil
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2 medium sized zucchini, chopped
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1 recipe of pastry
Cut to separate the chard from the stems, but keep the stems. Chop the leaves and slice the stems. Sauté the onion and the chard stems in the olive oil. Add the zucchini and 1 clove of garlic and some of the salt. Cook until they are the way you like them to be. Dump out and add the Swiss chard to the pan and cook until a little bit tender (this takes a little longer than spinach but not very long), and add the second garlic clove. Roll out your pastry (she likes a yeasted dough for this, but you can do it with a pie dough). Cool the cooked ingredients and pile them on the pastry and fold up and seal the edges, making sure you don’t have any leaky places – making a sort of pouch but open at the top. Then pour in as much of the eggs and milk as will fit, and top it with the cheese. Bake in a 350º oven for 35-45 minutes.
You can do this in a quiche pan as well, it doesn’t have to be a galette. She likes to use a very thin yeast dough. Doyle has been impressed with yeast doughs, if you let them rise for the 20-30 minute specified they work really well. If you include the yeast with the flour and then add hot water, it rises very nicely. Doyle turns on the oven to 350º for about 30 seconds, then turns it off and pops the dough in; there is just enough heat for the dough to double or triple in 20-30 minutes when he’s ready to use it with the remaining ingredients. The same technique works when making a pizza dough for pizza bianca, which is just olive oil and rosemary and salt on top of the crust, no cheese.
COLE SLAW
Doyle has lost track of the sauce his mother used for cole slaw, which had some alchemical process of adding vinegar to cream so that it didn’t curdle. But he’s come up with a new cole slaw with some new ingredients:
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5 cups shredded cabbage
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½ cup toasted almonds, sliced
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1½ cups dried cranberries
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1 cup celery – adds another level of crunch
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¼ cup chopped green onions
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½ cup chopped green bell pepper
Dressing:
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½ cup mayonnaise
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1 Tbsp. sweet pickle relish
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1 Tbsp. honey mustard
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1 Tbsp. honey
With the honey and sweet pickle, it’s going to be a little sweeter than traditional cole slaw. A nice combination of new accompaniments for the cabbage.
A few years ago David was making some cole slaw from a Craig Claiborne recipe that had mayonnaise and lemon juice as the pairing of creaminess and acid. He thought it was not bad, but wanted to have a little sweetness note in it. He remembered that his mother used to put raisins in her cole slaw. So he added raisins or currants which some people might think odd but which worked well. Doyle points out that there is a specific salad that is made with shredded carrots and raisins, so it’s not that odd. During the war they used raisins as a meat substitute, mixed with peanut butter and made into a sandwich.
SUMMER SALAD DRESSING
A caller from Champaign reports that her mother used a salad dressing that she would toss with lettuce in the summer, with blue cheese and lemon juice, not sure whether she used any oil. It made a light coating on the lettuce and was delicious. The blue cheese was mixed in with the lemon juice and became creamy. Probably a little bit of oil was included.
BERRY SOUP
The Champaign caller’s mother was Swiss, so they have a lot of typically Swiss recipes. They would make a berry soup with raspberries or strawberries or blueberries. Cut up the fruit and put sugar on it to draw out the juice. Pour buttermilk over it so you have a wonderful pink soup, and serve it chilled, as a cold fruit soup. You don’t need to like buttermilk to like this, because it gets all mixed up colorwise and tastewise with the fruit.
GRILLED POTATO SALAD
It’s the fashion now to have a ribbed grill in the house (or grill pan). Doyle has seen several recipes for potatoes that are grilled and used as a potato salad, using the beautiful Yukon golds that we get. Doyle is also fond of the tiny baby Dutch potatoes, boiling them quickly and maybe cutting them in half, but if you are going to grill, use the large Yukon golds and cut them about a quarter of an inch thick.
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4 large Yukon potatoes, sliced ¼-inch thick
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5 Tbsp. extra-virgin olive oil, divided
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2 Tbsp. grill seasoning blend
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2 Tbsp. rosemary leaves, 3 sprigs, stripped and chopped
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2 navel oranges, peeled and chopped
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1 small red onion, thinly sliced
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4-5 cups arugula, chopped, 2 bunches
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2 Tbsp. red wine vinegar
Toss the sliced potatoes with 3 Tbsp. of the olive (or vegetable) oil. Add the grill seasoning and rosemary and grill them about 4-5 minutes on each side.
Meanwhile, combine the oranges and onion and dress with the vinegar and the remaining oil. Add the grilled potatoes (which will really soak in the dressing); when ready to serve, add the arugula and toss to distribute.
ROASTED VEGETABLES
David likes the idea of using well-known ingredients like potatoes prepared in a new and different way. It reminds him of a vegetable soup made with roasted vegetables: you add the pre-roasted vegetables to a stock, and then you don’t cook it very much longer. You get the flavor of the roasted vegetables in the soup which you don’t expect in a soup. Doyle is partial to roasted vegetables. There is a Greek recipe for roasted vegetables that is just exotic: chop up the vegetables, throw them in a pan with olive oil; sprinkle tomato juice over it which adds the exotic flavor. You can roast all of the root vegetables, but you can also roast asparagus.
WHAT IS A ROUX?
A caller on a cell phone wants to know, what is a roux? It is a thickener and a base for sauces; making it is somewhat ritualistic, you have to pay attention. Flour and oil [traditionally: butter] are cooked together as if you were making a thickening for pan gravy; keep cooking it and stirring for a long time. You can stop at various times, depending on what you want to thicken: at the beginning, or when it gets to a light caramel tan, nut-brown, or almost brick-colored. But don’t burn it. You’ll find it in all recipes for gumbo, which uses a dark brown roux. For more information, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roux. In addition to being a thickener, it contributes a toasty, nutty flavor.
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