Why we garden

 Picked our first tomato of the season today. Just a cherry one, but it's one of those life-affirming acts of summer.

Sometimes the weeds, the bugs, the heat, no time combine to make me think I'm nuts for knocking myself out to grow what I can readily buy at local farmers market.

And then I go out and randomly pick a big bowl of herbs to make my take on James Beard's pasta sauce of butter and herbs. (Melt a half pound of butter, add a finely chopped shallot and cook until soft. Toss in a cup of assorted chopped herbs and juice of half a lemon. Toss with a half pound of cooked pasta.) Then I'm good again for a while.

Under the strawberry moon

 

This year's trip Up North came with several bonuses. A giant "strawberry moon" on a clear night. A long wait for a table was rewarded with a seat at the best new table at Angry Trout. And the tablecloth I happened to grab to take along matched the rhubarb scones on the cabin's blue Fiestaware plates perfectly. Because, yes, things like that please me.

 Also pleasing: Unpacking a stuffed 40-quart cooler filled with goodies. It’s always worth making room for a few versatile spreads, sauces or dressings to enhance sandwiches, pasta or grilled meats. They're easy to tuck in around the containers of scones ready to bake from the freezer and other breakfast treats. Here are this year's food enhancers.

Artichoke-Olive Antipasto Sandwich Spread
Adapted from Meredith Deeds as published in the Star Tribune Taste section.

Ingredients
¾ cup marinated artichoke hearts, drained
¾ cup green olives with pimentos, drained
¼ cup roasted red peppers, drained
1 tablespoon capers, drained
1 tablespoon pickled jalapeños, drained
2 garlic cloves, chopped
1 tablespoon red wine vinegar
1 tablespoon olive oil

Method
Combine all ingredients in a food processor and pulse until just coarsely chopped, or chop it all coarsely by hand.

Rating: Nice. It worked as a sandwich spread with leftover grilled pork tenderloin, as a pizza base topping and as a pasta sauce. I've made a similar spread before, but I thought the pickled jalapeños worked nicely here.

 

Rhubarb mostarda
From Kim Ode’s “Rhubarb Renaissance” as published in the Star Tribune Taste section.

Ingredients
1 cup rhubarb, cut into ½-inch pieces
¼ cup minced red onion
¼ cup chopped dried mission figs
¼ cup dry white wine
2 tablespoons sugar
1 tablespoon mustard seed
1 teaspoon dry mustard
1 tablespoon white balsamic vinegar

Directions
In a medium saucepan combine rhubarb, onion, figs, wine and sugar and simmer over medium heat for about 5 minutes, stirring often. Add mustard seeds and dry mustard and cook another few minutes until the mixture is thick and syrupy. Add vinegar and cook for 30 second. Remove from heat to cool.

Rating: Fine. It worked best as a condiment on freshly grilled pork tenderloin with the contrast of the hot with cold.

Angry Trout has added a table where the dock used to be. Can't beat the view.

 

Sheet pan gnocchi with tomatoes, red onions and basil

 

Roasting gnocchi, particularly shelf-stable gnocchi, never would have occurred to me. That's when I feel like, OK, I'll hang on to my Bon Appetit subscription a little longer.

Sheet pan gnocchi with tomatoes, red onions and basil
Adapted from Bon Appetit, June/July 2021

Ingredients
1-pound package shelf-stable gnocchi (or refrigerated gnocchi)
2 pints cherry tomatoes
½ large red onion, sliced into ½-inch wedges
3 large garlic cloves, unpeeled
4 tablespoons olive oil, divided
1 teaspoon kosher salt
1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice
2 cups baby arugula leaves
1 cup basil leaves torn into pieces
2 ounces Parmesan cheese, shaved

Method
Preheat oven to 425 degrees. Place parchment on a rimmed baking sheet. In a medium bowl, combine gnocchi, tomatoes, onion, garlic, 3 tablespoons olive oil and kosher salt. Toss together and spread on baking sheet. Sprinkle with pepper. Bake for 20 to 25 minutes until gnocchi are golden and starting to crisp. The tomatoes will have burst.

Remove garlic and squeeze out pulp int a small bowl. Mix with lemon juice and remaining 1 tablespoon of olive oil.

Add arugula, basil and Parmesan to gnocchi mixture. Toss together. Drizzle dressing over the top and serve, drizzling with more olive oil if desired.

Rating: Really, really good. I was a bit skeptical of how it would work with shelf-stable gnocchi, which is what I had on hand, but it actually works quite well. The tomatoes give off enough moisture to sort of steam the gnocchi, which takes on just a bit of crunch on the outside with the usual soft pillow interior. Very nice indeed, and not just because I don't have to clean the pasta pot, which is a fab bonus.  

Egg salad with avocado

 

This made a perfectly fine fast lunch. You can mix up the egg salad in advance, adding the avocado and spreading the toast right before serving.

Egg salad meets avocado toast
Adapted from Better Homes & Gardens, April 2020. This is one of those recipes that I made according to how it was pictured in the magazine, not how it was written. The recipe called for mixing the avocado into the egg salad, but it was clearly also spread on the bottom on the toast, and served with lettuce. I decided if it was good enough for the stylist, I’d give it a try.

Ingredients
3 hard cooked eggs, peeled and coarsely chopped
1 tablespoon finely chopped red onion
1 tablespoon mayonnaise
1 teaspoon Dijon mustard
½ teaspoon lemon juice
1 small avocado
4 slices bread, toasted
Lettuce leaves

Method
Combine eggs, onion, mayonnaise, mustard, lemon juice and salt to taste. Mash ¼ of an avocado onto each of two toast slices. Chop up the remaining ½ of an avocado and mix it in with the egg salad. Divide egg mixture between the two slices. Top with lettuce leaves and remaining toast slice. Serves 2.

Rating: Perfectly fine. I'm pretty sure avocado chopped into your favorite egg salad recipe would do the trick.

Turkey and apricot wraps

This recipe is brought to you by the Zoom warriors of the world. You know the type: Meeting jockeys who now get their cred/kicks by seeing how solidly they can pack their Teams calendar full of the new remote office version of face time. It was inevitable that the noon hour would no longer be off limits, and in fact become the de facto meeting time any time they needed to pull together a meeting of people from across departments.

So now it's frequently the new norm to have back-to-back-to-back meetings from 11 to 1:30 and beyond. By the time I surface from the meeting vortex, Dave is starved, and I'm starved for time.

So recipes like this one are ideal. It makes a super fast, non-disappointing lunch, which is now my new weekday standard. After a hiatus of probably a dozen or more years, I've actually resorted to putting canned soup on the shopping list. There's only so much a gal can do when the Slack Attack happens at all hours and days of the week. And yes, I know I'm lucky to have a job to complain about, and the ability to not sweat the rising grocery bill too much. Eventually I'll be stuck back in the office eating at my desk while I work, so I treasure even low-aspiration lunches eaten at a table, even if I have to swat away Slack messages while I eat.

Turkey and apricot wraps
From “Taste of Home 5 Ingredient Healthy” as published in Relish magazine. Someday I'll get to my Bon Appetit habit again.

Ingredients
¼ cup softened cream cheese (spreadable works too)
1½ tablespoons apricot preserves
2 (8-inch) tortillas
¼ pound sliced turkey deli meat
1 cup baby spinach leaves

Method
Combine softened cream cheese and preserves. Divide mixture between tortillas and spread evenly over the top. Top with turkey slices and baby spinach. Roll up each tightly, slicing in half horizontally if desired.

Rating: Super fast way to get a lunch on the table that still tastes like you didn’t completely cave.

Variations: Substitute 1 tablespoon harissa for the preserves and substitute arugula for spinach.

Or try mixing avocado with the cream cheese instead of preserves. Or pesto.

Sliced beef, quick-pickled red onions and cucumbers work with TJ’s Green Dragon sauce mixed with the cream cheese.

Butternut squash ravioli with pancetta and vermouth sage cream sauce

 

 This isn't really a recipe, and thus I didn't intend to post anything about it. But Dave snapped a picture with his phone because he was in love with it, probably because he was the one who picked the sage blossoms for garnish when I sent him to the basement for fresh sage leaves.

It was a I-don't-feel-it evening in the kitchen, so I sauteed some red onions along with a few ounces of chopped pancetta until softened and browned, tossed in some vermouth, cream, salt and fresh sage leaves and put that sauce over some purchased butternut squash ravioli. I sprinkled some chopped fresh tomatoes and more sage leaves over the top.

If I had actually made the squash ravioli, I would have been pretty pleased with myself. As it was, I was pleased to expend minimal effort for an otherwise quite passable meal.If I'd been presented with it as takeout, I would have been fine with it. 

But I bet there wouldn't have been the sage blossom garnish. Can't wait until I can liberate that plant from the basement along with all of its herby friends.

Chicken tetrazzini

This is hot dish, '80s-style. For me, when I first made this it seemed a big step up over the standard casserole fare: It had a real sauce instead of creamed soup, spaghetti as the base instead of elbow macaroni and a fancy name. 

In retrospect, it's still hot dish. But I have an abundance of cooked chicken to use up (a byproduct of making broth for all those soups for lunch), and also lately the unsettled times called for a dose of comfort food.

Chicken Tetrazzini
Adapted from “The Good Housekeeping Illustrated Cookbook” by Zoe Coulson. At the time this book first appeared, it was a major departure from the standard "red book" compendiums like Betty Crocker and Better Homes and Gardens cookbooks. There were pictures, lots of pictures. One of every recipe, and in color, no less. In this Instagram-type cookbook era, that might not seem a big deal, but at the time it was. Sure, the photos were all at the front and the photos were in the back, but you could browse them up front, see something that looked good and it told you what page you could find it on. As a newlywed, I checked it out of the college library and later asked for it for Christmas. It still might be the cookbook out of which I've tried the most recipes, hot dish or not.

Ingredients
½ cup butter, divided
½ pound sliced mushrooms
1 small onion, chopped
1 tablespoon lemon juice
½ cup flour
¼ teaspoon nutmeg
½ teaspoon paprika, plus more for garnish
1 tablespoon salt (or less)*
3½ cups chicken broth
½ cup dry sherry
3 cups cooked chicken
1 cup half and half
3 ounces grated Parmesan
1 pound spaghetti, cooked until al dente

Method
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease a 13-by-9 pan. Spread cooked spaghetti in the bottom of the pan.

Heat 2 tablespoons butter in a large saucepan. Cook onions, mushrooms and lemon juice until onion is softened. Remove from pan and set aside.

Add remaining butter to the pan. When melted, stir in flour, salt, nutmeg and ½ teaspoon paprika, cooking for a minute or two until it picks up a slight color. Gradually stir in broth and sherry, stirring and cooking over medium heat until sauce thickens. Stir in reserved vegetables, chicken and half and half.

Pour mixture over cooked spaghetti in pan. Sprinkle with Parmesan cheese and paprika. Bake for 30 to 40 minutes until golden and bubbly. Let sit a few minutes before serving.

Rating: As hot dish goes, this is still one of the better interpretations. It has actual flavor and everything. It might not make the best potluck fare, since spaghetti is a bit challenging to dish up tidily. I'd probably swap to a short pasta if I was ever in my life intent on taking a hot dish to a potluck, which I guess might be good for a joke. 

*About that salt. Clearly when this book came out in 1980, salt intake guidelines weren't quite the same thing that they are now. I dialed it back a bit and didn't notice a lack of salt.