Neon Lights

The color of produce this time of year is mind-boggling.

We were leaving the Farmers Market the other day when a few stalks of Neon Lights Swiss Chard poking out from a basket caught my attention and practically slapped me in the face with thier vivid colors.  I had to have them.  What to do with them?  I didn't know and it didn't matter.  They were so striking and stunning, I had to have them.

We love swiss chard and I usually treat it as any other green.  But, that chard was special. With Chard on my mind, I flipped through Lidia Cooks From The Heart Of Italy by Lidia Matticchio Bastianich, a James Beard Award Cookbook nominee, and found her Umbrian  recipe for Strangozzi with Chard and Almond Sauce, or Pasta with Chard and Pesto. I used her recipe as inspiration.

Pasta:  Any long form of pasta can be used for the recipe, although it is typically made with fresh pasta rolled out and cut by hand.  I love making pasta.  I can do it in my sleep.  I like the way it feels in my hands.  Firm, soft, and pliable.  That something so messy can turn into lovely pasta strands pleases me. I made fresh pasta.

I usually use the cutter on my pasta machine to make ribbons. The traditional method for Strangozzi calls for  pressing out long sheets of pasta, flouring them lightly, rolling them into cigars, and slicing ribbons using a serrated knife. I went traditional.  After rolling and cutting, I let them rest in little nests to air dry.

Chard:  After rinsing and drying the chard, I sliced the stalks on the diagonal and cut the leafy tops into bite sized ribbons.  I jullienned fresh local carrots and thinly sliced garlic and onions.

With  Mise en Place, the dish moved pretty quickly.  Because everything needed to saute together for a short time, I  blanched the carrots and chard stalks in well salted boiling water beforehand and set them aside.

I tossed the garlic and onions into a screaming hot oiled cast iron skillet to soften and caramelize. I threw in the chard greens and reserved vegetables to saute in the onion garlic oil.  While they briefly sauteed, I dropped the pasta into the still boiling blanching liquid for 2 minutes.  When the pasta was al dente, I used a spider to scoop it out of the water cauldren and dropped it right into the simmering chard mixture..  After a good stir to incorporate the pasta with the greens, I seasoned with salt, pepper, and parmesan reggiano cheese.A ladle of  pasta water  loosened the sauce.  At this point in her recipe, Lidia Bastianich tosses the mixture with fresh basil almond pesto. Although I love pesto, we had enough garlic and cheese going on, so I went lighter with fresh julienned basil. 

One last quick simmer to blend everything  before plating took about three minutes.  I used that small window to prepare a garnish of pan-seared prime rib.  Yup.  To the side of the beautiful Strangozzi with Neon Lights chard, we had  thinly sliced seared prime rib as a nibble.

A shower of cracked Tellicherry pepper and  reggiano cheese finished it off.

Fresh pasta is very hard to rival.  There are really good quality dried pastas on the market.  I use them and love them, but there is something about scratch-made pasta that simply elevates it to an ambrosia state.

The Strangozzi was perfectly al dente with a butter soft exterior.  Clean and pure.  When tossed with the garlicky onion sauteed chard and sweet carrots, it transformed into a flavor sponge, absorbing  the slight cooked-out  bitterness of the chard which countered the richness of the cheese and olive oil.

And the prime rib?  Well seasoned and well marbled, it provided lip gloss and a smidge of  weight to a somewhat dainty Strangozzi con Salsa di Beitole e Mandorle.  And was heaven.

Blackberries & Other Things

I am not a baker.  Not even close.  Baking is a little too precise and fussy for me.

This morning we picked up some beautiful wild Madison County grown blackberries at the Farmers Market..  I was torn between the wild blackberries and the huge plump shiny ones that most vendors were selling.  The wild ones reminded me of the blackberries my dad used to pick from the fence rows on his farm. We went wild.

I decided I would make a blackberry tart.  We were  back home in our pajamas by 10:00 am. and I really didn't have traditional ingredients for...well, anything.  Probably why I don't bake or make desserts.  Nothing on hand.  I wasn't going back out in the blazing heat, so I conjured up a little tart with what I did have on hand in the pantry.

I found an unopened box of Lemonade Girl Scout cookies left over from the cookie selling wars and ground them in a food processor with 5 tablespoons of cold butter and a few drops of cold water. Crazy. It felt dough-like.  I plopped it into a tart pan and began pushing the dough toward the edges and up the crimped sides of the removable bottomed pan.  After pre heating the oven to350 and docking the dough., I baked it for 20 minutes until it was almost brown.

Tart shell done.

I had nothing for a filling.  No marscapone or cream cheese.  Not even heavy whipping cream to whip into a gorgeous sweet airy filling.

I did have a huge naval orange, lemons, sugar, butter, and eggs.

  I love lemon curd and tranferred that method over to make  fresh orange curd.  I beat 3 eggs, 2 egg yolks, 1/2 cup sugar, 1 stick of butter, 1/2 cup fresh orange juice, 2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice, and the zest from the citruses until frothy.  I slowly heated the mixture over medium low heat and whisked until it thickened.  Once thickened, I immediately put it into a chinois to strain, covered it with plastic wrap, cuts slits to vent, and refrigerated it for several hours.

Once it was thoroughly chilled and somewhat firm, I spread the orange curd onto the lemon cookie tart shell  and sprinkled the tiny wild blackberries over the curd.  We had a jar of Kentucky Proud Windstone Farms all natural seedless blackberry jam in the refrigerator.  I heated 2 tablespoons of the jam until melted and dabbed the tops of the wild blackberries with it for a bit of glaze.  It was surprisingly lighter than I thought it would be.  The fresh orange curd was airy with just a slight hint of orange flavor, complimenting the lemon crust.  The mildly tart wild blackberries were the perfect foil to the buttery creamy curd and crunchy tart shell.

Although very tasty, I'm still not a baker.