Mise en place

Mise en place is many things: a good idea, a pretentious French phrase, and a religion among many chefs. It is nonetheless something I practice rarely, because I am (1) lazy, and (2) descended from People From the Frozen North Who Like to Cook Their Food Slowly (thus giving us plenty of time to prepare ingredients as we go).

Nonetheless, with the summer and its bounty of produce upon us, I determined that, if I were going to try to make an eggplant-tomato curry tonight (recipe tomorrow, I hope), it would be a good idea to prepare all the ingredients ahead of time:


The star of the show — eggplant from the Intervale Community Farm (our CSA).


Tomatoes, mostly from our thankfully late-blight-free garden, plus one or two from ICF.


Shallots, bought in a bundle from the Vietnamese grocery around the corner, with a lime behind the cutting board.


Rice noodles, from the same (the package bearing the label "Prime Minister's Export Award 1994").


Basil and citrus mint from the garden (being immersion-rinsed using the same pot I cooked the noodles in, to save on dishwashing...)


Fish sauce with a bit of red Thai curry paste and brown sugar dissolving in it.

Eating the lawn: pasta with white beans and chicory

It's the season in between when the root veggies from the winter farm share run out and the summer share (or even the Farmer's Market) begins, when there's just not a lot of local produce to be had. However, the lawn is starting to green up, which means dandelions, chicory and my latest discovery, garlic mustard, are there for the picking. The chicory especially calls out, as it is still tender and relatively mild, and has not yet begun to grow its big spiky stems:



So for dinner last night, I cooked it with pasta and white beans, topped with delicious crunchy fried breadcrumbs:



Pasta with White Beans and Chicory

1/2 lb. whole-wheat pasta
1 medium onion, chopped
3-4 cloves of garlic, minced
a couple of pinches of red pepper flakes
several bunches of chicory (or other bitter green, chopped if large leaves), washed
1 can cannelini beans, drained and rinsed (or about 1 1/2 cups home cooked)
about 1/4 cup fresh breadcrumbs
extra-virgin olive oil, plus light olive oil for sautéing if desired
salt & pepper

1. Heavily salt some water, and put it on to boil for the pasta.

2. While water is heating, saut&ecaute; the onions in some oil (I generally use light olive oil for sautéing, saving the extra-virgin stuff for finishing and places where you'll really taste it) over medium-high heat until soft.

3. Add the red pepper flakes and the garlic, cook for 20-30 seconds until garlic blooms.

4. Add the chicory leaves, without drying too much so they have some liquid to braise in (since I tend to wash greens, especially from my lawn, by immersing in a bowl of water, I just left them in the water until it was time to add them to the skillet). Turn down the heat a bit.

5. Once the greens have cooked down, add the beans.

6. Add pasta to water once it boils; as pasta is cooking, add small amounts (1/4 c.) of pasta water to sauce and reduce - kind of like making a risotto.

7. Once pasta is cooking, heat several glugs of extra-virgin olive oil in a small skillet and toast the breadcrumbs until they become golden-brown, oil soaked morsels of delicious crunchiness.

8. Drain pasta when al dante, reserving about a cup of the pasta water in case you need to thin out the sauce. Add pasta to skillet with sauce, toss to combine, add a little more pasta water if dry, then drizzle with extra-virgin olive oil.

9. Serve in pasta bowls topped with the breadcrumbs.

In addition to the chicory, I learned this past weekend that one of the invasive species we've had in the backyard for the last few years is in fact garlic mustard, and edible:



Turns out it makes a very tasty pesto, with a kind of lemony-mustardy bite, which is good, because we've got a big field of it surrounding our blueberry bushes in the back corner of the yard and, apparently, releasing a mild herbicide from its root system:

Last kiss of the flower goddess

It is properly fall now, cool enough to turn the oven on and enjoy not just the smells but the warmth emanating from it as well. Now the weekly home baked loaves of bread, which are enough a regular part of our cuisine to warrant summertime baking, will be joined by roasts, casseroles, oven-braises, dishes that take a long, slow approach to reach intense flavors.

Last night I made chicken enchiladas — a family favorite, with a sauce made from pureed roasted tomatoes from the garden. With the kids running underfoot as I assembled them, my usual rational approach to cooking (cut everything up, then turn the heat on and start cooking) went out the window. I had warmed corn tortillas anxiously awaiting filling before I had cut up the roasted poblano chilis, so they ended up being chopped one by one as I assembled the enchiladas. As it turns out, one of the chilis was much hotter than the others, and instead of being distributed evenly throughout the adult enchiladas, the heat was concentrated in just one or two of them. By luck of the draw, H, whose tolerance for spiciness is much lower than mine, and tries to avoid it while I seek it out, got the spicy enchiladas. A shame to see those beautiful dark-green, home-roasted poblanos, full of fire, discarded on the side due to a simple twist of fate.

In the spring we started pumpkin plants indoors, part of our ambitious gardening plans for the year. They were the fastest and best of the plants we started inside, we were worried that pumpkin plants would take over our lawn and that, come fall, we would have so many pumpkins that the neighborhood kids would regularly harvest them for vandalous purposes. But of the ten or twelve plants we transplanted outside after Memorial Day, most of them died, mysteriously, within a week or two, no doubt victim of some insect or small hoodlands creature, like the skunk who lives behind our neighbor's shed and probably dug up all our pea plants. A few plants survived, but over the summer most of them dropped off until we now have only one, a poor little bedraggled plant creeping cautiously across the lawn. Something, perhaps the same thing that took out its siblings, is chopping off its flowers as it puts them up. It is clear that this plant, our last hope for pumpkins, will never actually produce one.

But yesterday, in the middle of the afternoon, I noticed a new, full blossom, unmolested by the plant's tormenters. Seizing the opportunity to harvest at least one small fruit from all of our pumpkin-related labors (squash blossoms are edible), I plucked it. As an appetizer before our baked enchiladas, harbinger of fall, I made Sopa Xochitl, a simple, brothy soup with squash blossoms, named for the Aztec goddess of flowers.