Sasha's Kitchen: Bucatini with Cauliflower and Ramps

I'm really into making pasta dishes with spring vegetables right now.  I love using everyuthing that's seasonal.  I'm happy to say that I scored the first rhubarb of the season at Union Market in Park Slope and am making a rhubarb crumble pie this weekend (posting it soon!).  In the meantime, I've been enjoying making some vegetable pastas.  Ramps finally arrived at FreshDirect just before Passover so I made this delicious dish just before passover started.  Ramps, if you are not familiar with them, are wild onions, usually gathered by hand.  They are a bit of a cross between leeks and wild garlic.  I like using them in pasta dishes during their short season.  Some people also like to make pickled ramps, but I haven't tried that yet.  Next week, I'll be making swiss chard ravioli dough with ramps/ricotta/marscarpone cheese and a rose vodka sauce.  Here's the first garden fresh pasta of the spring.

Sasha's Bucatini with Cauliflower and Ramps
1 lb bucatini pasta
florets from one cauliflower head, diced into small pieces
1 bunch of ramps, diced
zest of half a lemon
extra virgin olive oil
1 pint halved yellow grape tomatoes
1/3 cup panko bread crumbs

To make this dish, first saute the cauliflower in a couple tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil, for about ten minutes, until soft.  Add the lemon zest and the ramp bulbs (separated from the green part of the ramps) and cook antoher two minutes.  Then add the diced green part of the ramps and the yellow tomatoes and saute another few minutes until the tomatoes are softened and shriveled.  In the meantime, cook the bucatini (hollow tubular pasta) according to the package instructions.  Toss the panko bread crumbs in with the vegables and mix in the pasta.  You can add a bit more olive oil if needed, and be sure to reserve a bit of the pasta water and add that in as well. This was delicious!

Sasha's Kitchen: Bucatini with Cauliflower and Ramps

From Amasea's Kitchen in Sun Valley: Super-spicy cauliflower soup

This is soup that made my lips hurt.

Before I went to boarding school (my choice, I wasn't a juvenile delinquent...at least, not much :) I had a really good tolerance for spice. I ate Thai food at Seattle Thai restaurants, where the stars were in Asian terms and not ours: 4-star Asian is like 40-star American. But at a boarding school, they can't spice things very highly, or add particularly engaging ingredients, due to allergies and moderate palates. I made do with Tabasco, but it's just not the same.

So after four years there, and four years in college, which was nearly as bad, my palate had degraded. A lot (but not alot). I've been a wuss ever since.

Lately though, in part thanks to my husband, who really enjoys some heat in his meals, I've been rebuilding my tolerance. And this is the rather extreme result.

I got a medium-sized head of organic cauliflower at Atkinson's, our local market, and steamed it until it was soft...too soft, actually, I got distracted by coverage of the earthquake and tsunami in Japan. I put that, and two-ish big chipotles (the dehydrated ones, in adobo sauce) in my Cuisinart.

In a separate nonstick pan, I sauteed one medium white onion and four large cloves of garlic, fairly finely chopped, with some olive oil, salt and black pepper, and about a tablespoon of white sugar. Once they were browned, I added about half a cup of College Inn Thai Coconut Curry Broth (which, incidentally, I have fallen in love with) and cooked that down so the onions and garlic were soft. That mixture went into the Cuisinart with the chipotles and cauliflower, and was pureed until the mixture was nearly smooth. I added another cup or so of broth and about a tablespoon and a half of lime juice, and heated it all back up again.

What's in the picture above is the teeny bit that remained once I realized I needed to take a picture to tell y'all about this awesomeness, with a side of Chenin Blanc and some sourdough baguette slices. And all that's left of the soup is my still-burning lips and a portion I froze for my husband, who's out of town...because I know he'll love it!

From Amasea's Kitchen in Sun Valley: Super-spicy cauliflower soup

Sasha's Kitchen: Ad Hoc's Cream of Cauliflower Soup With Red Beet Chips

I recently realized that not a single Thomas Keller recipe has been featured on this blog yet.  It's certianly time to change that!  Keller, the renowned celebrity chef and owner of a number of world famous restaurants, including The French Laundry, Per Se, Bouchon and his newest restaurant, Ad Hoc, which opened in 2006.   I have been to Bouchon and hope to make it to Ad Hoc on my next trip to Napa Valley.  I have not been to Per se or the French Laundry, as reservations there will set you back quite a few pretty pennies, but they have earned their reputations as some of the best restaurants in the world according to my friends who have dined there.  I am very excited about Thomas Keller's new cookbook, Ad Hoc At Home which brings Thomas Keller's celebrity kitchen to the everyday chef in a more accessible manner.  Sure, the French Laundry cookbook looks absolutely amazing, but even I was too intimidated to make the $70 investment in the book and the time investment required to make any of the recipes inside.  Never mind - Ad Hoc At Home  makes Thomas Keller accessible to the proletariat.  My first recipe from the cookbook, the Cream of Califlower Soup With Red Beet Chips was a huge success.  I plan to make his caramelized scallops next.  Please note that I am posting the full soup recipe, but I halved the recipe to serve two, which was perfect for our dinner!

Ad Hoc At Home's Cream of Cauliflower Soup With Red Beet Chips
2 heads of Cauliflower
4 T butter
3/4 cup chopped leeks
3/4 cup coarsely chopped onion
1/2 tsp curry powder (Keller only uses 1/4, but I like a bit more curry)
kosher salt
2 cups milk (I used skim milk)
2 cups water
2 cups heavy cream
canola oil for deep frying the beets
1 tsp white vinegar
croutons (I didn't make my own like Keller suggests, I just used Mrs. Cubbison's store bought croutons)
1 medium red beet
extra virgin olive oil
freshly ground black pepper

First, remove the leaves from the cauliflower and cut out the core.  Coarsely chop the cauliflower.  Reserve about two cups of the florets for the garnish and place aside.  Coarsely chop the leek and onion.

Melt three tablespoons of butter in a large pot or Dutch Oven.    Add the onion, leek, curry and cauliflower to the pot and season with 2 tsp of salt.  Cover the pot with a lid and cook on medium heat for twenty minutes until the vegetables are almost tender.

Add the milk, cream and water and increase heat to medium high.  Then reduce to a simmer, and simmer the contents for thirty minutes, skimming off the foam occasionally.    Then allow the soup to cool for about five or ten minutes, and puree in the blender.

To prepare the beet chips for the garnish, fill a pot with an inch of canola oil.  Slice the beet super thing with a mandolin and fry for a couple minutes in the oil.  The place the fried beets on a paper towel to allow the oil to run off.  The beets are absolutely necessary to make the soup work, so don't skip this part, even if you are wary of beets (like my husband was).  The purpose of the beets is threefold - they add texture, color and a bit of sweetness.  Yum!

To prepare the reserved cauliflower garnish, take the cauliflower you set aside and boil in some water with salt for five minutes until the florets are tender, along with a teaspoon of vinegar.  The vinegar will allow the florets to retain their white color.  Then, drain the florets and saute in a tablespoon of butter.

Serve the soup with the florets, croutons and beet chips, and season with pepper.  This recipe was fabulous!

Sasha's Kitchen: Ad Hoc's Cream of Cauliflower Soup With Red Beet Chips

Sasha's Kitchen: Vegetarian Cauliflower Casserole

As I mentioned in a previous post, I ate at a wonderful organic vegetable and fruit centered restaurant last fall when my husband and I visited Napa Valley, Ubuntu. Since that delicious meal, I have been inspired by head Chef Jeremy Fox's Michelin-starred cuisine to create my own vegetarian dishes using the best organic fruits and vegetables that I can fine (which obviously pale in comparison to the fruits and vegetables he harvest from his organic garden in Napa).

Tonight, I was inspired to create my own casserole using cauliflower based on a cauliflower casserole that is one of the signature dishes on his menu. I did take a look at his recipe for the basic outline (the cauliflour, butter, curry and whole milk), but from that point on, created my own recipe. Below is the recipe I created and adapted. Tonight was a test-run on the dish for a vegetarian dinner I will be hosting for some vegetarian friends in early January and it was a success according to my taste buds.

Ingredients
2 heads of plain cauliflower
3 T extra virgin olive oil (I used Round Pond's Blood Orange Olive Oil, another treat form the Napa trip)
2 T curry powder
1/4 tsp nutmeg
1/4 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp cardamom
2 star anise
4 oz of butter (1 stick)
2/3 cup whole milk
1/2 cup non-dairy almond milk
1/8 tsp almond extract
parsley for decoration
salt and pepper to taste
toasted french bread
small amount of colored cauliflower for decoration

First, cut up the white cauliflower into small pieces and mix well with the olive oil and a little salt. Roast at 350 F until slightly charred and tender.

Melt the butter on medium heat until foamy and then take off the heat and add all of the various spices (this was my improvised spice mix which was delicious, as the flavors mix nicely). Let sit for about 30 minutes so the flavors absorb into the butter. Add this mix to a pot with the cauliflower from the oven and add both the whole milk, the almond milk and the almond extract (sparingly). Cook on medium until completely soft.

Then, bake at 350 F for about 15 minutes. The mixture should not change too much and should look almost kind of soup like when you take it out. It will have a beautiful texture. Before you bake, sprinkle some of the colored cauliflower on top.

I served in bowls because I only have large souffle/casserole dishes. Ideally you would want to bake in individual casserole dishes.

Put a little parsley and pepper on top and it should be delicious.

To learn more about cooking with cauliflower, click here for a dish from Amasea's kitchen in Sun Valley.

Sasha's Kitchen: Vegetarian Cauliflower Casserole

Amasea's kitchen in Sun Valley: A cauliflower experiment

When it comes to food, I'm a sucker for inspiration. I've gone on shopping sprees based on episodes of Top Chef or a page out of the dearly departed Gourmet. So when I heard last week's Splendid Table, I keyed in on the idea of cauliflower, a vegetable with a wonderful wintery quality.

Here's the original recipe:
http://splendidtable.publicradio.org/recipes/side_fried_cauliflower.shtml

But despite the promises of Lynne Rossetto Kasper and Momofuku's David Chang, I didn't think the crispy rice and fish sauce vinaigrette would sell with my fiance, who is a bit picky about his food and was somewhat skeptical of cauliflower in the first place.

Instead, I took inspiration from my inspiration and decided to merely roast the cauliflower with a mix of key lime oil and olive oil, salt, pepper and some red curry powder (just the boring Spice Islands kind -- when the fiance and I merged our kitchens, we ended up with approximately 87 million spice jars, and have been trying to find ways to use them up).

Here's how the original recipe says to roast:
To roast the cauliflower: Heat the oven to 400°F. Put the florets in a large mixing bowl, add a splash of oil—enough to coat them, start with a couple tablespoons—and toss. Spread the cauliflower out on a rimmed baking sheet (or two—you want space around the cauliflower so it roasts, not steams) and pop into the oven. After 20 to 25 minutes, the cauliflower should be browned in spots and tender.

I say they forgot something: Turn the cauliflower about halfway through. I ended up with cauliflower that wasn't just brown in spots, it was dark brown and crispy in a few places and seasoned-white everywhere else. Which created a discontinuity in texture that ultimately wasn't as pleasing as I had hoped. I believe turning the cauliflower would have mitigated that, and will try turning the next time I decide to roast it.

To accompany the cauliflower (which, though a side, was the main experiment of this plate), I put a large pan on medium high heat. In it I put olive oil, green peppercorns, yellow curry powder, a little powdered red pepper, and salt and pepper. I added sliced yellow fingerling potatoes, and once they were about half done, several chicken tenders. When the chicken and potatoes were done (the potatoes got a nice sear), I removed them, leaving the oil, spices and peppercorns in the pan. I added a little heavy cream and white wine, resulting in about a cup, maybe cup and a half, of sauce.
I also made some garlic bread, melting butter and olive oil with tons of pressed garlic and salt and pepper, then smeared that on slices of fresh olive oil-rosemary bread. That went in the oven (with the cauliflower) throughout the potato/chicken process.

I didn't think to take a picture of the plate -- which is OK, since it was pretty blandly colored, between the garlic bread, cauliflower, chicken, potatoes and basically beige sauce. But at the top of the page is a picture of the cauliflower, with some sauce on: You can clearly see the brown spots.
Lesson learned, veggies turned.

Amasea's kitchen in Sun Valley: A cauliflower experiment