Cornmeal Cake with Balsamic Strawberries

Happy (belated) Anniversary to me!  This was the cake Alex baked for our anniversary.  I had some wonderful fresh strawberries from the farmers' market that I wanted to bake something with.  I thought about strawberry shortcake, but we have made those several times before.  I was very tempted by this Almond-Oat Strawberry Shortcake, but I wanted to make something new and (more) different.  Then I remembered that awhile back I found a few recipes for cornmeal cakes and cornmeal pound cakes online.  So I took pieces and ideas from a number of recipes to come up with this recipe.  And then I told Alex to make it for me.  Haha.  Thanks hon!  I was originally planning on whipping up some mascarpone with a little vanilla extract to serve with the cake and the macerated strawberries, but I got lazy and decided not to make the additional trip to the grocery store.  I wish I had because the creaminess of the mascarpone would have been wonderful with the cake and berries.  Oh well.  The cake was wonderfully light and not too sweet, which meant that I ate it for breakfast as well as dessert (with and without strawberries).  The texture was somewhat similar to a sponge cake or angel food cake - it was firm and fluffy, rather than crumbly and moist, but not too moist.  It isn't rich and dense like a slice of chocolate cake or carrot cake.  It was a lovely cake with a hint of citrus and a sweet crunchy topping of turbinado sugar.  I love the addition of turbinado sugar on scones, shortcakes and this cake.  It is such a wonderful touch.

Recipe after the jump!

Sopa de Ajo (Garlic Soup)

Sopa de ajo (aka garlic soup) sounds a little weird right?  I thought so.  I know it's a totally traditional Spanish dish, but I have never been inspired to try it or make it at home.  But we had some stale bread in the apartment and Alex wanted to use it, so I found this Mario Batali recipe online at Serious Eats for sopa de ajo with poached eggs.  I have to admit, the poached eggs were what really sold me on this recipe.  Well, that and the fact that we had everything we needed in the apartment (which is a huge plus on a rainy weeknight).  This soup is simple and very satisfying, with a pleasing richness from the poached egg.  It's the perfect type of soup to eat when you are feeling a little under the weather or when the weather outside just isn't so great.  One note - depending on the type of bread you use you might have to play with the ratio of broth to bread a little - ours got really thick, almost oatmeal-like, because we used a fairly hearty bread (and probably because Alex used more than 1/4 pound on accident).  As far as meals go, it was comforting and tasty.  We served it with a nice salad, and it was a perfect meal for a rainy Tuesday night.

Recipe after the jump!

Blistered Snap Peas with Mint

After all of my anticipation of our first snap peas of the spring, I have to say that this was not my favorite sugar snap pea recipe.  I was really bummed.  I was so excited for this dish (and for the appearance of sugar snaps at the farmers' market) and it just turned out to be ok.  And when you are expecting awesome things, ok just doesn't cut it.  Blistering the snap peas seemed to mask, rather than enhance the flavor and sweetness of the peas.  I say that it masked the flavor because I had a few raw sugar snaps while trimming them and they were delicious as is - light, fresh and sweet.  And then once I cooked them they lost some of their snap (which is to be expected), but they didn't pick up any additional flavor.  I felt like the lemon evoo just ran right off and didn't provide the sugar snaps with much flavor.  And while I normally love the combination of sugar snaps and mint, I didn't think the mint here did all that much to elevate the dish either.  Maybe I should have stuck to my tried and true Sugar Snap Pea Salad with Radishes, Mint and Ricotta Salata...  I don't know.  But I do know that with the remaining pound of sugar snaps I will be making other (and hopefully more successful) dishes!

Recipe after the jump!

Rhubarb Ketchup

Spring is here!  That means ramps (which have already come and gone), rhubarb, sugar snap peas, asparagus, strawberries, and other wonderful ingredients.  I just get so excited once fresh spring produce shows up.  And the rhubarb at the farmers' market this week looked GORGEOUS - vibrant red stalks with green leafy tops.  So I bought a couple pounds.  And after the heavenly slice of strawberry-rhubarb pie I had this weekend at a place called The Blue Stove I knew I couldn't compete with their pie, so I decided to go with something savory - a rhubarb ketchup to serve with some skirt steak from Jean-Georges Vongerichten that I found on the Food & Wine website.  One of the things that drew me to this recipe was that it was an interesting use of an ingredient that up until now I have only used in baking/desserts.  I was looking forward to seeing rhubarb in a more savory context.  And overall I think it was very successful. I thought the tartness and the slight heat of the ketchup really complimented the meatiness of the grilled skirt steak (seasoned simply with s&p). I could also see the ketchup working nicely with some juicy grilled bratwursts - again that contrast of rich, smoky meats with the tart acidity of the ketchup. The recipe says to serve with steaks, pork or veal chops, chicken, onion rings or bratwursts, so I guess you can't go wrong if you serve it with any of those things!I only made a half batch of the recipe, so I still have one pound of rhubarb left for another application.  I'm thinking dessert, but I am going to stay away from pie because I am just going to end up disappointed when my pie isn't as good as The Blue Stove's...  Maybe a cake of some sort?  I have been wanting to make a cornmeal cake or a pound cake for awhile.  And there is this recipe for Rhubarb Country Cake that I saw on Epicurious awhile ago that sounded interesting.  Now I just have to decide what to make!

Recipe after the jump! 

Sauteed Asparagus with Green Garlic and Fried Eggs

This is the type of meal that I would eat all the time if I were still single or living alone.  And that's exactly what I told Alex while we were eating dinner last night.  I freaking love asparagus and I love eggs.  Any dish that combines those two thing is A-OK with me.  I guess that's no surprise to anyone seeing as we have a number of other recipes on the blog that combine those two things (see Midnight Asparagus with Creamy Eggs and Pan-Roasted Asparagus, Poached Egg and Miso Butter for two quick examples, although I know that there are at least 2 more on the blog off the top of my head).  I just can't help myself when things go together this well!  

This is the perfect mid-week meal because it comes together easily and quickly, and requires minimal prep-work.  Alex and I made it Thursday night after I got home from work around 9 pm and we had it on the table (and eaten) by 9:30.  How easy is it to just fry up a few eggs and serve them on top of some sauteed asparagus?  I am strongly of the belief that many dishes would be improved by the addition of a runny egg or two, but that's another story entirely.  Another plus for this dish is that it can be adapted to use whatever you have in the fridge.  I know I generally don't have access to green garlic, but we had it this time so we used it.  Regular garlic would work just fine!  

As a side note, before you all think I have turned vegetarian on you,  the next few posts will be meaty.  So stay tuned!

Recipe after the jump!

Pan-fried Noodles with Senposai and Tofu

It was pretty exciting to be able to eat dinner at home tonight and last (that post is going to have to wait until later).  Work has been crazy enough that I ate at my desk Monday and Tuesday and made Alex meet me for dinner on Wednesday.  So I refused to go out to dinner tonight, even though we didn't seem to have enough ingredients to make a meal.  Every dish I thought of required a trip to the grocery.  And then it occurred to me that I had some Hong Kong style noodles in the fridge so we could make pan-fried noodles.  The only problem with that plan was that we didn't have any proteins defrosted (aside from a skirt steak that I am saving for our attempt at rhubarb ketchup tomorrow), nor did we have our usual cache of canned vegetables for stir-fry.  And then I thought of the tofu, senposai and green garlic (both from the farmers' market) we had in the fridge.  So I decided that we could make a vegetarian pan-fried noodles - fry the tofu to get it nice and crispy and golden brown, stir-fry the senposai with the green garlic and voila!  For a dish that we essentially made up as we went along, it turned out really really well.  I thought the oyster sauce and sugar gave the dish a nice sweet, but savory and rich flavor.  There were a lot of different textures and tastes here that worked really well together.  I was worried that the dish would need a little something extra to give it flavor so I brought out some chili oil and Chinese chili paste, but it really didn't need it.  

Recipe after the jump!

Mindy Fox's Peanut Soba, Cabbage and Chicken Salad

This recipe was one of the many I found (and bookmarked) at Serious Eats in the past few weeks.   Until recently I read random reviews and taste tests at Serious Eats, but I never tried out their recipes.  Then I realized that they have some pretty awesome recipes.  Oops.  Take this recipe for instance.  I have never heard of Mindy Fox (and I still don't know who she is), but Serious Eats had two of her recipes on the site, both of which I was really excited to try in the future.  We just happened to get around to making this one first because we made asparagus for lunch yesterday and her other recipe on Serious Eats is for a raw asparagus salad.  That might be a little too much asparagus in one day for Alex.

The thing I liked most about this recipe is that it's hearty and filling, but still feels light because of the cabbage and radish salad.  The noodles get a little gummy once you toss them in the peanut sauce, but what do you expect when you use a peanut butter-based sauce?  Peanut butter is gummy by definition and the noodles are starchy, which just gums things up more.  We tried lightly oiling the cooking water for the noodles and then rinsed them well after cooking, but they still have the tendency to form one sticky noodle mass once you toss with the peanut sauce.  Luckily, I have no problem with sticky noodle masses provided that the flavors are good.  And once you toss the noodles with the cabbage salad the lime juice dressing from the cabbage helps to loosen things up a bit.  I guess my other complaint would be how complicated this salad is.  It takes two pots (or one if you cook the noodles in the same pot that the chicken poached in, which is what we did, but you still need to rinse the pot out/wash it between uses), a few mixing bowls, a mandoline (to shred the cabbage and to thinly slice the radishes), a knife, a mini food processor/blender, a colander and so on and so forth.  Because each element is made individually it doubles the amount of work.  However, keeping the cabbage-radish salad and the herbs separate from the noodles until the very end makes the dish feel fresher and lighter.  So I guess the sheer number of dirty dishes is something that you just have to accept and deal with if you want to make the salad.  In the end it is worth it, but it does make cleaning up something of a process. 

Recipe after the jump!