Fiddlehead Ferns

While perhaps not as scary or threatening as the stinging nettles reported on a few weeks ago, Fiddlehead ferns are certainly not your average vegetable. They really do come from ferns, copious amounts of which blanket the forests and parks here in the Pacific Northwest. The fiddlehead part refers to the tightly wound coil of the young fern shoots. There is about a two week window in the spring where this new growth is tender enough to eat, just before it unfurls into the common fern frond. It is at this point when the Fiddlehead ferns can be harvested for consumption (by professionals, of course), as they were by one of my favorite purveyors, Foraged and Found Edibles.

Wanting the ferns to maintain their crisp texture, I knew that cooking them for a long period of time was certainly out of the question. We first started by rinsing them thoroughly and then trimming off the bottom of the stem ends. As we already had the grill fired up, I decided to give them the simple treatment of olive oil, salt and pepper before putting them into a "grilling skillet" (just a pan with holes in it so that you can grill small things without losing them). Once they were mostly tender when poked with a fork, we pulled them and served them alongside a delicious pork chop and some grilled bread.

At first bite, this unusual vegetable struck me as tasting very similar to asparagus, or perhaps a cross between an asparagus and a green bean. But then the bitterness came. I don't think I cooked them long enough. They still tasted mostly raw, and their texture was closer to celery than that of a perfectly cooked asparagus. So I will attribute the bitter aftertaste to user error, not an inherent flaw of the fiddlehead. Next time I try them, I'll perhaps blanch them for a minute or two before grilling or sauteeing them. So if you're ever in the market for a whimsical-looking side dish, hopefully you can learn from my mistakes and try your own hand at the Fiddlehead ferns!

"Real" Milk

Since my trip to France when I was 16, I haven’t been much of a milk drinker. Prior to that trip, I loved milk and would guzzle it down by the glassful with any meal. But in France, the milk was, well, different—warm, thick, a bit off-tasting. I guess it kind of tempered my enthusiasm for the drink, especially when served “straight up." But even though I now prefer a glass of red wine with my dinner and soy in my coffee, there sure is nothing that quite beats a glass of cold milk with something gooey and chocolatey. Mmmm… brownies.

So, the raw milk that I bought at the market from Sea Breeze Farms turned out to be a perfect excuse to make rich, decadent, brownies! Raw milk is something I’ve been curious about for awhile now, but my knowledge about it was fairly limited. I knew that it was unpasteurized milk and that consequently the health risks were much greater than with pasteurized milk. But when I recently read an article in Seattle Magazine about a local producer of raw milk, it suddenly made so much sense to me to drink “real” milk. Like all other things American, our government has spent the past several decades trying to protect us from our own stupidity, our own carelessness. People drank milk straight from cows for centuries, and suffered no ills. But suddenly dairy farms got big, farmers got sloppy, and people got sick.

However, smart dairy farming is back. Some farmers are now taking better care of their cows and more precautions with their processing methods. As a result, many small dairy operations, such as Sea Breeze Farms, are now selling "real" milk once again. Raw milk costs quite a bit more than its pasteurized counterpart because the licensing requirements are apparently extremely rigid and require lots of expensive equipment for cooling and cleaning. But if you're someone like me who only drinks milk in their coffee or with the occasional brownie, the overall cost is nominal. With that in mind however, the flavor and quality of the milk did not blow me away. I guess I expected it to taste different from the normal grocery store variety, somehow thicker and richer. It wasn't. The consistency was the same and I could only detect a slight richness in the flavor when I really looked for it, and what uniqueness there was certainly didn't stand up to the chocolate. However, despite the similarities in taste, I know that by buying "real" milk I am supporting not only one farmer, but also an entire philosophy of raising animals. For that reason, I will continue to buy my one small carton of raw milk every so often. Well, that and it goes well with brownies.

Cherry-Chunk Fudge Brownies

1/2 cup (1 stick) plus 2 Tbsp. unsalted butter
5 oz. bittersweet chocolate, coarsely chopped
2/3 cup flour
1 1/2 Tbsp. cocoa powder
1/4 tsp. salt
1 cup sugar
1/3 cup packed light brown sugar
3 large eggs
2 1/2 tsp. vanilla extract
1/3 cup semisweet chocolate chips
1/3 cup dried cherries

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease an 8-inch square baking pan.
Melt the chocolate and butter together over a double boiler or in the microwave, using low heat and stirring frequently. Set aside to cool.

In a small bowl, stir together the flour, cocoa powder, and salt. Mix both sugars into the melted chocolate mixture. Whisk in the eggs, then add the vanilla. Add the flour mixture to the chocolate and stir until just combined; add the chocolate chips and cherries, then turn out the batter into the prepared pan.

Bake for about 30-35 minutes, or until the center feels firm and a toothpick inserted into the sides comes out clean (the center should still be moist). Allow to cool completely before serving.

(This recipe is adapted from Nancy Baggett's book The All-American Cookie Book.)

Stinging Nettles

Do you see them? Do you see the little hairs that sting you with their acid? I first encountered these little buggers when we had recently moved to the Northwest. Playing disc golf one day, I ignorantly waltzed into the dense shrubbery in my shorts to find my Frisbee. Suddenly I felt like there were biting ants attacking me, burning up and down my legs. They didn't have these nasty plants in California where I had grown up! Old folklore says to rub the fronds of a neighboring fern on the nettle "bites" to quiet the burn, but whatever it was, the sting eventually faded away. I learned my lesson about nettles that day, but you can imagine my surprise when, not too long after my "nettle incident," I opened up my menu all those years ago at the local establishment Le Gourmand to find Nettle Soup as a specialty!

After the chef's reassurance that the stinging part of the nettles disappeared with cooking, we tried the soup and were pleasantly surprised by its subtle grassy flavor, not to mention its completely sting-free texture. With that soup in mind, I procured a bag of nettles from Foraged and Found Edibles last weekend (after first getting over my excitement that one of my favorite vendors had returned to the market!). The nettle plants grow wild all over the Northwest and other temperate climates, and their fresh, young leaves are best early in the spring. As you can imagine, washing them creates quite a dilemma. The small leaves, all tightly bunched into a plastic bag, are just waiting to get you, reaching out with their hairy antennae. For once feeling slightly afraid of my food, I turned the plastic bag inside out and used it as a glove to wash them in a bucket of water. Although they did have some rather thick and fibrous-looking stems, I wasn't about to pick through them. Rather, I just dumped the whole lot into an already boiling pot of stock with some shallots and garlic in it. I then boiled the leaves for about 15 minutes, blended it all up and then strained it. Much of the green roughage didn't make it through the strainer, so the resulting soup was significantly paler in color than its original ingredients. No matter, though. A splash of cream, a little salt and pepper, and the nettle soup was perfect. Uniquely grassy and herbaceous in flavor, I can now say that nettles are my friend.

Naughty Nellie

A blog devoted to cheese is more than overdue. Yes, I've mentioned it in the past, but cheese also deserves to be in the limelight every now and again, right? It just so happens that I've been eye-balling the stand at River Valley Ranch for several weeks now. Their goat cheeses look beautiful, and part of me is always envious of someone who can milk their own goats one morning and have a lovely log of cheese to show for it the next. Needless to say, their fresh cheeses are very fresh. However, I was tempted by the cheeses that had been given a bit more time to develop; the cow cheeses. The Tipsy Cow was the first one that got my attention, perhaps because of its name but more likely because of the gorgeous texture throughout and the slightly purple hue of the rind which apparently comes from soaking in red wine. But knowing what a big beer fan Gibson is, I finally settled on the Naughty Nellie, the rind of which is washed with Pike Place Brewery's beer of the same name.

Eager to give it a try that evening, I left it out for several hours so that it could come to room temperature, thereby allowing us to fully appreciate all the subtle nuances of this lovely cheese. The texture was exactly what I like in a cheese; soft but not runny, yet at the same time hard enough to slice thinly with a cheese slicer. Quite like butter, actually. But the flavor was a bit, well, unfortunate. It seemed like it had potential, but either we got a bad batch or the Naughty Nellie beer is just too much for a simple cow's milk cheese. It was very acidic and tangy, to the extreme. A bite of it kind of made me pucker, actually. But although unique in its flavor, I love a cheese that makes you stop and think. Nellie was a bit too naughty for my tastes, but that doesn't mean I won't try River Valley Ranch cheeses again.

Jerusalem Artichokes

Neither an artichoke nor from Jerusalem, this tuber from the sunflower family is one of those rare produce items that is most happy when everything else withers from the cold. Although it is in season from October through March, this past week was the first time that I have picked it up at the market. Perhaps it's because it's so brown, plain and unassuming looking. Who knows. But there it was, tucked in among the kale and cabbage. A good alternative to potatoes, I thought.

Before I could cook with it, however, I had to refresh my memory on its misnomer of a name. It turns out that the Jerusalem part was really a mispronunciation of the Italian word for sunflower, girasole. And since its brown exterior has more resemblance to ginger root than an artichoke, I'm not sure where that name came from. In an effort to clear up the confusion, many produce vendors are now calling it a sunchoke, although I still see it most frequently labeled by the name Jerusalem Artichoke. I also had to do a bit of research on how to cook it since it had been awhile. Even though its white flesh looks somewhat like a potato, it certainly doesn't cook like a potato would. In my opinion, it is somewhere between a cross of a potato and a jicama, with a seemingly much higher water content than a potato. Because of this, you can eat them raw, although I wouldn't really recommend it. I thought they might be good as a thin, crisp, galette-style side dish. After first peeling them, I sliced the little chokes thinly, then heated up some fat in a large saute pan and spread them out in a shallow layer. After letting the bottom layer brown undisturbed for awhile, I beat one egg and about a quarter cup of milk together then poured that over the top. Finally, I put a thin layer of my favorite new find from Trader Joe's on top, beer cheese. Yum. Then the whole pan went under the broiler until it was puffy and bubbly.

It's hard to go wrong with anything with melted beer cheese on top of it, but after my first bite I was quickly reminded why I hadn't cooked with Jerusalem Artichokes in such a long time. They're really not that good. They're certainly not bad, but just not exciting in the least bit. No flavor of their own to speak of, and a weird, watery crunch where there doesn't seem like there should be one. Interesting, but not great.

Kale Cakes & Pork Chops

What follows is a time-line of our dinner last night, from the raw ingredients to their finished form.



Beautiful, beautiful kale!
The purpley-one is Red Kale and the long, skinny dark-green one is Lacinato Kale.








These funny looking parsnips are actually from my garden. I finally got around to digging them up and it's apparent that I should have done a better job of thinning them out. Many were too small to use, but there were also plenty that were a decent size. (On a side note, I learned earlier that parsnips require a freeze to convert their starches to sugars. I tried one in the fall and it was horrible--chalky and dry. But now they are sweet and tender!)







I turned all of this into Parsnip-Potato Kale Cakes (recipe follows).






We ate our Kale Cakes with the most delicious pork chops from Samish Bay Cheese. They are a farm up near Bellingham that raises beef and pork in addition to making cheese. They call their pork Whey Tastier because they also feed their pork the residual whey from their cheese-making process. I am more than happy to participate in that kind of recycling!
To keep the pork chops from drying out during cooking, I first brined them for about two hours in a solution that was 1/4 cup kosher salt, 1/8 cup sugar and about 3 cups water. Before cooking I rinsed them, patted them dry in paper towels and then sprinkled with pepper (no salt!). To cook, I seared both sides of the meat in olive oil over medium-high heat and then put the pan into a 350 degree oven for about 5-7 minutes. While the meat was resting, I deglazed the pan with about 1 cup of ruby port. I let it reduce until it was slightly thick and glazey, then combined it with the juices from the resting meat.

Everything was "whey" tasty. The meat was tender and juicy, and the Kale Cakes were crisp on the outside and warm and comforting throughout. The only negative was that the cakes soaked up all of the delicious pan juices too quickly. Not only did this create a soggy cake by the end, but we also ran out of juice to dip the pork into. I can think of worse problems for a Monday night.

Parsnip-Potato Kale Cakes
Serves 4

2 bunches kale
1/2 pound parsnips, peeled and cut into 1 inch pieces
1/2 pound potatoes, peeled and cut into 1 inch pieces
4 cloves garlic, peeled and minced
1 tsp. red pepper flakes (optional)
1/4 cup grated parmesan
1/4 tsp. ground nutmeg, preferably freshly grated
2 eggs
1 cup breadcrumbs or Panko
About 3 Tbsp. olive oil
2 Tbsp. butter
salt and pepper

Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil. Add the potato pieces and boil for about 10 minutes. Add the parsnip pieces to the potatoes and boil another 5-10 minutes or until both are soft when poked with a fork. Fish out the potato and parsnip pieces with a strainer and allow the water to return to a boil.

Separate the stems from the kale leaves and wash the leaves thoroughly. Add the kale leaves to the boiling water and let boil for about 5 minutes, until slightly wilted. Drain and transfer immediately to a bowl of ice water. Allow to cool. When the kale is cool enough to touch, grab fist-fulls of it and squeeze out as much water as possible. Lay it out on paper towels and press firmly to dry. Bring the kale together into a tight bunch on a cutting board then chop finely.

Heat 1 Tbsp. of olive oil in large saute pan over medium heat. Add 3 cloves of the garlic and the pepper flakes; saute briefly, 30 seconds or so, then add the chopped kale. Cook, stirring frequently, until the garlic is cooked and any moisture has been evaporated, about 5 minutes. Remove from the heat.

Meanwhile, beat 1 egg in a large bowl. Using a potato ricer, squeeze the cooked parsnips and potatoes into the bowl with the egg (or alternatively, mash the parsnips and potatoes in a separate bowl and then add to the egg). Add the kale, remaining garlic, grated parmesan, and grated nutmeg. Season to taste with salt and pepper. Mix thoroughly—hands work best for this!

Beat the other egg in a small bowl and place the breadcrumbs in another bowl.
Divide the potato/kale mixture into four even balls. Working one at a time, press one ball into a flattened disc in the palm of your hand, about 4 inches in diameter. Dip it into the egg, then roll it in the breadcrumbs to cover. Set on a piece of waxed paper and repeat with the remaining kale cakes.

Heat 1 Tbsp. olive oil and 1 Tbsp. of butter in a large saute pan over medium-high heat. When oil is hot (just beginning to smoke), add two kale cakes to the pan, pressing lightly with the back of a spatula to make them a bit thinner. Fry about 3 minutes a side. Remove to a plate, then heat remaining oil/butter and fry remaining two cakes.

"Low-Key" Salmon

So now that we all know how to pronounce the word, there are a few things that need to be known about the locally run Loki Fish Co. For starters, their fish is freakin' awesome. So fresh and delicious, even for Seattle standards. At the market it comes either frozen, smoked, or canned. I've tried all three and any form it comes in is delicious. I've really enjoyed the canned salmon in the past; its pastel-pink flesh packed in oil is light and flaky with that indescribable "umami" flavor. This time, however, I went with a frozen piece from one of their coolers.

But what really makes Loki Fish stand out is their approach to fishing. The owner Pete Knutson, who runs the business with his sons, fishes along the coast of Southeast Alaska and the Puget Sound. Because it is such a small organization, the fish are apparently handled with the care never seen on those giant fishing vessels. After being caught, they are immediately processed, frozen, then flown to Seattle within 48 hours after arriving at harbor. So while technically their fish is sold "frozen" rather than "fresh", it is probably much "fresher" than most fish you might buy from a larger operation. They claim that they can have their fish on ice within 45 minutes of being caught, while a large-scale fishing boat might take 2 to 3 days to do that! Gross! But another benefit of running a smaller fishing business is that it can be done in a sustainable way. They are able to fish year after year in the same places because they are fishing respectfully rather than greedily--taking only what is needed instead of depleting the source entirely. For that reason, we can all breath easy knowing that we are eating salmon to help save the environment!

I didn't want to do too much with my hunk of salmon because I know how fragile and subtle it can be. I made a little "pouch" out of tin foil, topped it with some olive oil, salt, pepper, and chopped chives, then baked the whole thing at 325 degrees for about 20 minutes. The results were amazing. So moist and tender with not the least hint of fishiness. But the best news is that Loki fish is available not only at local Farmer's Markets, but also at restaurants and some grocery stores like PCC. So whether you want to save the world or just enjoy some good fish, find Loki fish if you can.