Strawberry Rhubarb Galette

A few weeks back I was lamenting the lack of fresh fruit this time of year, and grumbling that I didn't want my rhubarb in pie form. Well, now the fruit has come in! Namely strawberries. I have been eating pints upon pints of them. And, it turns out, now I do want my fruit in the form of pie. Namely a strawberry-rhubarb galette.

This galette — the fancier name for a rustic open-faced tart — is pure early summer. My new friend rhubarb is sliced into slim little batons, which I somehow like so much more than the usual rounds. And it's paired with perfectly ripe, punchy strawberries, so red throughout that you barely need to do anything but flick off the hulls and slice them in half. And then I topped it with whipped cream, because: pie. The whole thing is a whisper of berries and rhubarb and cream, all fruit and air and butter.

Because I am a sucker for delicacy-over-structure, I went with my beloved rough puff pastry dough, which is shatteringly delicious, but lacking a bit of the structural integrity required. No matter. I scooped up the still-warm juices that escaped through the breech in the crust wall, and drizzled them over the top to glaze the top fruit. And next June, I'm sure I'll do it again. Having to soak a sheet pan is a small price to pay for this.

Strawberry Rhubarb Galette

This amount of starch and jam yields a fairly tight set, which helps keep everything together on an open-faced galette. But if you prefer a softer gel, feel free to reduce the amount of thickener.

1 pie's worth of your favorite pastry (structural issues be damned, I can't quit this one)
1 pound rhubarb, washed and cut into thin batons (1/4-inch by 3 inches)
1 pint strawberries, washed and hulled
2/3 cup sugar
2 tablespoons tapioca starch
2 tablespoons jam/jelly (I used apricot jam, but any other softly set preserves with complementary flavors work fine)
1 egg, beaten with a splash of water or cream
coarse sugar for sanding
lightly sweetened whipped cream, for serving (optional)

Line a rimmed sheet pan with parchment paper. Roll out your dough to a roughly 14-inch circle, and transfer to the sheet. Set aside.

In a large bowl, toss together the rhubarb, strawberries, sugar, starch, and jam, stirring gently until the fruit is coated with the mixture. Spread on the dough, up to a few inches of the edges. Fold the edges back over to form a 2-inch crust, crimping and pinching as needed to secure.

Gently brush the overhanging crust with the egg wash, and sprinkle with the coarse sugar. Set in the freezer for 45-60 minutes or so (or less, if you're like me and want to take exciting chances with pastry opening up in the oven).

When the galette has almost finished chilling, preheat the oven to 375° Fahrenheit. Transfer to the oven and bake until the pie is browning and the juices are thickened and bubbling, ~45 minutes. If your galette springs a leak and the juices escape, carefully pull the galette, spoon the juices back over the fruit, and return it to the oven. Let cool to room temperature before serving (with whipped cream, if desired).

Sopa Seca (aka Mexican Spaghetti)

It doesn't need saying that technology can connect us in big, profound ways. But it can also connect us in lovely little ways too. The other night, a friend posted that he was dealing with an unseasonably cold Philadelphia evening by cooking up some beans and pasta. And I was able to sort of collapse time and space and virtually join him, because, 3,000 miles away, I was doing the same thing. In Andrew's case, it was a delicious-looking bowl of pasta fagioli, with heirloom white beans and mixed-up Italian pasta. And in my house, it was a long-simmered pot of clean-out-the-pantry black and red beans (salt-soaked, of course). And, starring in the role of noodles, this sopa seca. Or, as I've been calling it, Mexican spaghetti.

This version of sopa seca, a beloved humble casserole, is from the great Diana Kennedy. And it is ridiculously satisfying. It's got all the things you want from a plate of pasta: comfort and carbs and sweet-tangy tomato sauce. But even better, the sauce is cooked down and oven-baked until it's an almost jammy backdrop, and — most importantly — spiked with smoky-hot chipotle pepper. And then things just get better, with a sprinkling of salty cheese, sour crema, and some bright leaves of cilantro.

I know I'll be coming back to this recipe again and again — especially on colder nights, when I need a bit of oven-baked comfort (and a bit of spice). It's one of those great dishes that manages to be both familiar and exciting. And it's one of those great dishes I'd like to share with all of my friends — whether it's at my table, or across the internet.

Sopa Seca (aka Mexican Spaghetti)

adapted from Diana Kennedy via Saveur, with thanks to Bon Appetempt for flagging
serves 4 

Pureeing and cooking down the tomato sauce takes some time, but yields a crazy delicious result. Next time (and lo, there will be a next time) I'm aiming to double the sauce, then freeze half after cooking it down, to have on hand to make this an even easier weeknight supper.

3-4 canned chipotle chiles in adobo, depending on your taste for heat
4 cloves garlic, peeled
1 (15-oz.) can whole peeled tomatoes in juice
1/2 small white onion, roughly chopped
3 tablespoons high-heat oil, such as canola or grapeseed
8 ounces fideos, or vermicelli noodles broken into 3-inch pieces (I tend to buy these short little noodles from the local Middle Eastern store, which work quite well)
2/3 cup chicken or vegetable stock (Kennedy calls for 1/2 cup, but I generally prefer fully cooked to al dente, so added a splash more and it worked quite well)
coarse salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste

crumbled cotija or feta cheese
sour cream or crema (or your current favorite yogurt)
handful cilantro, washed and roughly chopped
a side of beans and avocado (optional)

Purée the chipotles, garlic, tomatoes, and onion in a blender until very smooth, at least 2 minutes. Set aside.

Heat the oil in a big oven-proof skillet over medium-high heat. Add half of the pasta and cook, stirring, until lightly browned and toasted, ~2-3 minutes. Scoop out of the pan, set aside, and toast the remaining noodles. Scoop those out of the pan as well, and place with the others.

Return the skillet to heat, and pour in the tomato mixture. Beware the spatter! Cook, stirring occasionally, until almost all of the liquid has evaporated (~15-20 minutes). Add the stock, stir and cook another minute, then turn off the heat and add the noodles. Stir to combine, and season with salt and pepper to taste.

While the tomato mixture is cooking down, preheat your oven to 350° Fahrenheit. When the pasta has been added and seasoned, cover the pan with foil, and place in the oven. Bake until the pasta is tender and the sauce is absorbed, ~10 minutes. NOTE: If you don't have an oven-proof skillet, you can transfer the contents of an ordinary skillet to an oiled 8-inch casserole dish at this point, and cover/bake that (which is actually what Kennedy recommends, but I'm a one-pot gal myself whenever possible).

To serve, divide onto plates, and let diners top with cheese, drizzle with crema, and sprinkle with cilantro as desired. Enjoy hot, with beans, avocado, and/or salad on the side.

Spinach Salad with Bread, Dates and Almonds

When I make a green salad, it almost always looks the same: you've got your lettuce of some sort, toasted sesame or pumpkin seeds, thinly sliced radishes, and a citrusy vinaigrette. Sure, there are some variations beyond that — a handful of blanched asparagus in the spring, a few cubes of buttery avocado or crumbles of blue cheese (depending on what's left over in the fridge), maybe a carrot shaved into curls with a vegetable peeler. But really, it's pretty much the same old leafy template. Which is why it's so nice to find something so entirely different from my usual rut. And so delicious.

This recipe, as most things in the surprisingly-simple-yet-delicious-and-dusted-with-sumac category, comes from Yotam Ottolenghi. Baby spinach leaves, vinegar-pickled onions and sticky-sweet dates, and crisp buttery croutons and toasted almonds. So, so good. The original calls for torn-up pitas (as befits a cookbook called Jerusalem), but I used a freezer-burned ciabatta roll to equally delicious effect. It's a combination I never would have thought of, and it's wonderful.

Of late, I seem to be on a run of kitchen fails (hence my radio silence). There were the morning buns made from a "quick" croissant dough, which was not remotely quick, and after all that work was not even close to being as good as the real thing. There were the asparagus deviled eggs that were far, far more work than their non-asparagus brethren — and didn't really taste that much like asparagus. It's hard to recommend something with a low work-to-return ratio. But this salad? It's a simple salad. And it's different, and delicious, and I can't wait to make it again.

And speaking of surprising Middle Eastern flavors, I recently had the good fortune to spend the day with a visiting delegation of chefs, bakers, and food service folks visiting from Egypt, Algeria, Morocco and Oman, as part of the State Department's Diplomatic Culinary Partnership. You can hear more about the delicious exchange, and the larger ideals of gastrodiplomacy, over at NPR.

Spinach Salad with Bread, Dates and Almonds

adapted from Jerusalem, by Yotam Ottolenghi and Sami Tamimi
serves 4 (as a salad, though two people could make a meal of the whole thing)

1/2 small red onion, thinly sliced
half a dozen Medjool dates, pitted and cut lengthwise into quarters or sixths (depending upon size)
1 tablespoon white wine vinegar
2 tablespoons butter
2 tablespoons olive oil, divided
2 small stale pitas (or a stale roll), torn into bitze-sized pieces
1/2 cup almonds, coarsely chopped
2 teaspoons sumac
1/2 teaspoon chile flakes
several handfuls baby spinach leaves
juice of 1/2 lemon

Place the sliced onion and dates in a small bowl, and pour the vinegar over the top. Add a pinch of salt and stir. Let marinate for at least 20 minutes, then drain the vinegar.

While the onions are pickling, heat the butter and 1 tablespoon of the olive oil in a pan over medium heat. Add the bread and almonds and cook, stirring regularly, until the bread has toasted to a crunchy golden brown. Remove from the heat, and stir in the sumac, chile flakes, and a hefty pinch salt. Set aside to cool.

To serve, dress the spinach leaves with the remaining olive oil and lemon juice, and a pinch of salt. Top with the dates and red onion, and the seasoned bread and almonds. Serve.

Almond Granita with Minted Rhubarb

Rhubarb and I don't always get along. I usually thrill to see it in the markets, right around the time that the wintered-over apples are mealy, past-its-prime citrus isn't juicy, and ohmygosh why isn't there any fruit? feelings are running high. But then I take it home, and don't quite know what to do with it. A few weeks ago I slumped rhubarb into a compote to pair with a flourless almond cake, but ended up just eating the cake plain (well, plain except for whipped cream).

I think the problem is that I don't want stovetop sauces or oven-baked pies. I want fruit. I want something fresh and juicy and full of spring. Given rhubarb's tartness, it can be hard to find raw preparations where it delivers on this springtime promise. I've seen a few Mediterranean recipes that shave it into salads, but it's usually just a lone stalk or two. And I didn't want salad. I wanted dessert.

The original version of this recipe pairs the rhubarb with its old friend, the strawberry. I'm sure that's lovely, but our strawberries are still a few weeks away. And luckily my failure to wait for them yielded a truly delicious result. This almond granita is just a simple frozen almond milk, frozen into fluffy crystals (I made it fresh, but you could also freeze up a commercial version if you prefer). The milky sweetness is a perfect match for the spunky punch of pure fresh rhubarb, saucy with a bit of sugar. A little bit of mint (thanks to a friend's backyard) heightens the springtime brightness even further. I'm sure I'll eventually bake up some rhubarb into a pie (especially when the strawberries come in). But right now, this fresh-fresh-fresh bit of crunch and melt and sour and sweet is just what I needed to fall back in love with rhubarb.

  
Almond Granita with Minted Rhubarb 

adapted from Apt. 2B Baking Co. 
yields ~4 good-sized or 6 small serving 

Granita:
1 cup raw almonds
2 1/2 cups water (plus more for soaking)
1 teaspoon vanilla extract or 1/2 vanilla bean, scraped
sugar to taste (~2-3 tablespoons)
pinch salt

Rhubarb:
~6 slim stalks rhubarb
~1/4 cup sugar
handful of mint leaves

To make the granita: Place almonds in a bowl, and cover with water. Let soak at least four hours, or overnight. Drain, place in a blender with the three cups water, and puree to bits. Strain the mixture through a few layers of cheesecloth, squeezing to get out all of the liquid you can. Add vanilla, sugar, and salt, and adjust seasonings to taste to yield a sweet, flavorful mixture.

Pour the mixture into an 8x8 or 9x9 baking dish. Slide the dish into the freezer, and chill for one hour. Remove the dish from the freezer, and scrape the milk with a fork to break up the crystals. Return to the freezer, and scrape the milk every 20 minutes or so, until it is frozen and, thanks to your work, fluffy crystals have formed (maybe another hour or so).

To make the rhubarb: Wash the rhubarb, and cut in a fine dice. Toss it in a bowl with the sugar, and let sit for about half an hour to let the juices come out, and the sugar dissolve into a syrup. Add the mint.

To serve, layer the granita and minted rhubarb in a glass, and slurp up before it melts.

Roasted Carrot and Avocado Salad

Every now and then people express concern at the prospect of cooking for a food writer, as though our standards and expectations exceed the home cooking realm. And I think oh, if only they could see what I eat. I mean sure, I eat well. But it's often ridiculously simple. An omelet with garlic bread. A container of vegetable soup thawed from the freezer. A pound of roasted Brussels sprouts and a dish of pudding. This is not the stuff of Instagram dreams and restaurant menus. This is the stuff of humbly delicious daily life.

And it's good stuff. There can be truly something transformative about a bowl of vegetable soup, even mushy from the freezer. But every now and then, you make something that is just on another plane entirely. Something that employs a few cheffy tricks and techniques, that takes some time and fussing but just elevates the ingredients to a different level entirely.  Like this carrot salad.

I have long been a fan of salads with roasted carrots, and recently served a Moroccan version to a dinner party of 18 people. But this carrot salad — oh, this is something else entirely. The carrots are left dramatically whole, par-boiled and then rolled in a garlicky spice paste, and roasted under a few chunks of citrus. Then the sweetly caramelized roasted lemon and orange are juiced, and that juice gets mixed with a sharper shot of fresh citrus, for a truly transformative dressing. Then come buttery chunks of avocado, tangy sour cream (or, if you're me with leftovers, Middle Eastern lebneh), and a surprising crunchy sprinkle of seeds.

The end result is rich and buttery and sharp and vegetal and creamy and crunchy all at once. It's truly extraordinary. And yes, I still appreciate my sloppy soups and mashed potatoes for dinner. But once in a while, it's nice to really bring it, to show what a dish can be. And to keep all the civilians on their toes.

Roasted Carrot and Avocado Salad

adapted from ABC Kitchen, as posted on Daily Candy and further adapted by Sassy Radish
serves 4

For the Crunchy Seeds:
¼ cup sunflower seeds
¼ cup raw pumpkin seeds
¼ cup white sesame seeds

For the Salad:
1 pound medium carrots, peeled
1 teaspoons cumin seeds (toasted if you like)
3 garlic cloves
1 teaspoon fresh thyme leaves
¼ teaspoon chile flakes
1 1/2 teaspoons coarse salt
3/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1 tablespoon red wine vinegar
¼ cup plus 2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
1 1/2 oranges, halved
2 lemons, halved
1 avocado, halved, pitted, peeled and cut into thin wedges
¼ cup sour cream or lebneh/Greek-style yogurt
3 cups micro greens or sprouts (I used about 1/3 cup of flowering tips and delicate herbs from a local salad mix)

Toast the seeds: Preheat the oven to 350° Fahrenheit, and spread the seeds on a baking sheet. Toast, stirring occasionally, until lightly toasted and starting to color, but not golden brown (~5-7 minutes). Set aside to cool, leaving the oven on.

While you're toasting the seeds, bring a large pot of water to a boil. Add the carrots and simmer until a knife pierces them easily, about 15 minutes. Drain and transfer to a roasting pan.

In a mortar and pestle or food processor, pound together the cumin seeds, garlic, thyme, chili flakes, 1 1/2 teaspoons of the salt, and pepper. Pound until crushed and pasty, then add the vinegar and 1/4 cup of the olive oil, mixing to combine. Pour over the carrots, and shake them around until they're well-coated.

Place 2 of the orange halves and two of the lemon halves on top of the carrots, cut side down. Roast until the carrots are golden brown, ~25 minutes.

When cool enough to handle, squeeze the roasted orange and lemon juice out, and squeeze the juice from the fresh citrus. Measure out 1/4 cup of this mixture (I drank the rest), mix in the remaining two tablespoons olive oil, and salt and pepper to taste.

Arrange the roasted carrots on four plates, and drizzle with a bit of dressing. Divide the avocado and sprouts on top, add more dressing, then top with a dollop of sour cream and sprinkle with the seeds. Serve.

Shaved Coconut Macaroons

There's a certain comfort that comes from the cyclical rhythms of life. Of doing the same things that you've done in years past, the same thing your parents and grandparents have done. Which, in April, means scrubbing out the dust in a fit of spring cleaning. And baking macaroons.

I've long been a fan of this version, but was seeking a little variety. And I was smitten with these shaved coconut beauties as soon as I saw them. Pretty little piles, all golden and toasty and perfect. These shaved coconut macaroons follow a similar format to the others, soaking up a cooked-in goo of egg whites and sugar, then baking up into golden crisp edges and sweet chewy insides. Admittedly, these are a bit more toothsome than the shredded version. But sometimes it's nice to have a cookie with a bit of chew. And it seems a fair price for all that pretty.

And if you want to move on to Passover appetizers (now that we've taken care of dessert), you can find my rundown of options over at NPR's Kitchen Window — if I may recommend, the deviled eggs with horseradish-orange gremolata are a particularly delicious option. Happy Passover! Happy Spring!

Shaved Coconut Macaroons

adapted from Chewy Gooey Crispy Crunchy Melt-in-Your-Mouth Cookies by Alice Medrich
yeilds ~26 cookies, depending on how you size them

The first day, these cookies have crisp edges and tender insides, but gradually become more tender throughout. If you're making them any time in advance, I recommend freezing them to preserve the texture.

4 large egg whites
3 1/2 cups unsweetened dried flaked (not shredded) coconut
3/4 cup sugar
2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
hefty pinch salt

Line two cookie sheets with parchment paper.

Combine all of the ingredients in a large metal mixing bowl. Set the bowl over a pot of barely simmering water, and stir, scraping from the bottom, until the mixture is very hot to the touch and the egg whites have thickened slightly and turned from translucent to opaque, 5 to 7 minutes. Set the batter aside for 30 minutes to let the coconut absorb more of the goop.

When the cookies have sat for half an hour, preheat the oven to 350° Fahrenheit.

Scoop the batter up into a heaped tablespoon or scoop, making little mounds on your prepared cookie sheets. Bake for about 5 minutes, just until the coconut tips begin to color, then lower the oven temperature to 325° Fahrenheit.

Bake another 10 to 15 minutes, until the cookies are a beautiful cream and gold with deeper brown edges. If the coconut tips are browning too fast, lower the heat to 300° Fahrenheit. Set the pans or just the liners on racks to cool completely before removing the cookies. Eat, or freeze for future consumption. And a drizzle of ganache doesn't hurt.

Braided Sweet Tahini Bread

In general, I am a big fan of traditional pastry fillings. Almondy frangipane, rich and smooth pastry cream, tangy cheese mixtures. But recently I made a braided loaf filled with a swipe of sweetened tahini. And it was just lovely (especially paired with a cup of black tea). I love the brioche-like richness paired with the nutty filling, though I'm also now eying some variations that match the tahini filling with a leaner, pita-type dough. Because once you go down this tahini path, evidently it's hard to stop.

We tend to think of tahini, if we think of it at all, as a topping for falafel. Or for some ill-conceived hippie sauce. But it can be so much more. In the Middle East, it is used much as we use butter or margarine, to add richness and body (along with its own nutty nature) to a variety of preparations, both sweet and savory. You can read about this recipe, and other lovely tahini treatments, over at NPR's Kitchen Window.