Wednesday night ramps

Since I read Tamar Adler's brilliant book I have been a one-night-a-week cooking machine. Which means I have been eating both well and more or less healthily. 

Wednesday is my FTY delivery day so it makes sense to do most of the cooking as soon as I get home with the groceries. 

In this week's order I got two bunches of ramps. The taste of ramps sends me back in time to when I was a kid and I spent hours outside down in Hull pulling up small spring onions and pretending to be a survivalist in "the woods" which was really just a wooded lot. 

The ramps flavor is far more delicate, but then again, the spring onions I thought I discovered as a kid were probably not really onions at all and I really probably shouldn't have been eating them. But for better or worse, the scent of fresh onion means spring to me. 

Oh I am ready for summer already.

Anyway, I rinsed the leaves of the ramps and chopped them off. I sauteed them in a little oil to wilt them for a quiche filling, but ramp leaves would be lovely chopped into a salad. They have a light onion-y taste that gets the palate ready for summer salads. 


The bulbs I am going to pickle. 

Then I sauteed a big bunch of swiss chard, including the stems, and a bag of spinach. All this then went into a quiche. For some reason I am a big fan of swiss chard in quiche. 

This means quiche for lunch tomorrow. Because if I don't bring my lunch to work I will eat potato chips and cookies and call that a meal. Bleh. 

I also made a pot of polenta. Which I had for dinner with some black beans. 

And the delicious discovery of the night for me is fried parsley and garlic. Possibly I am the last person on earth to have made this, but I will be making this again. And again. And probably again after that. 

All it is a bunch of stemmed and chopped parsley sauteed in plenty of olive oil with a few tablespoons of chopped garlic and a big pinch of salt. The garlic will brown and the parsley will get crispy and the whole thing will be unbelievably delicious. I spooned a bit of it onto the polenta before topping it with the beans and it really pulled the whole dish together. 

Ahhhh, happy girl. That's me.



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

You should be eating: Braised Chicken Meatballs

Image
This was an impulse order at the Dumpling Cafe on Washington Street in Boston. (True story: when I was telling my Mom where it was, I used the Naked i as a point of reference.) I'd actually gone for the xiao long bao (broth filled dumplings) also known as "Juicy Buns", which they are famous for apparently. Hey, better late to the party than to not party at all, right? Because I did my homework, I knew to load one on to the spoon and then to nibble a little hole and suck out the piping hot broth. That is a tip that you will thank me for later, I promise you. There is no time that biting down enthusiastically into a bun filled with scalding hot filling and broth will reward you in any way. Also I knew from my homework that the key was to order everything at once while the waitstaff was near you. So in a panic I ordered the braised chicken meatballs. What a treat! They come with baby bok choy and a plate of rice. I totally think you should go eat them righ...
Keep reading....

Eastah Scorchah

Image
In April when the temps rise above 40, everyone around these parts switches over to iced coffee with a childlike glee that summah is just around the cornah. However when the temps rise to the 80's we all just complain. It's too soon for the beach, in a day or two the temps will drop back to the 40's, everyone is hot in their Easter dresses, it's too soon for A/C. We complain because we know that summah does NOT arrive in April, no matter how much global warming is happening, the possibility of a snow storm exists right through the end of the month. But hey, it was Easter and it was hot so we grilled and drank cold drinks and ate cool desserts. Sriracha grilled shrimp is literally one of my most favorite things to grill. If you are a recipe person, use this recipe from Food 52: Spicy Shrimp Recipe . If you are a just-wing-it cook like me, you basically marinate peeled and deveined shrimp in a gloopy mess of olive oil, Sriracha, garlic, Worcestershire sauce, br...
Keep reading....

Aggressive coffee.

Image
The Evil Twin got us iced coffees this morning because it's what you do in Boston when the temps are above 40 degrees. Apparently she ordered hers "fucked up with 28 splenda". There is no other explanation. Unless it's "fuck you and your 28 splenda".
Keep reading....