One of the things I love about the family-focused Club Med resorts: homemade, gourmet baby food at every meal. Today's brunch at Club Med Sandpiper Bay in Florida featured pureed roast turkey with mashed potatoes. I saw several babies sucking it down with every evidence of enjoyment.
I have a teenager who loves to cook vegetables. Particularly greens. Give Emery a bunch of kale, a pile of chard, a bag of spinach, and he's a happy boy. He makes Asian greens soup, spinach fried rice, mustard greens with garlic and soy sauce. When our friends around the corner clean out their organic garden and give away trash bags filled with huge chard leaves, Emery is first in line.
As it happened, I was the one who made the chard and feta pie in the picture above. Emery darted in and out of the kitchen, interrupting his homework a little too often to poke his nose into what I was doing. "It's chardikopita!" he said as he watched me add feta and dill to the lightly sauteed chard.
I love this rustic press-in crust. I tell people it's because the olive oil gives the crust a terrific flavor. The truth, however, is that I love this crust because I'm terrible with a rolling pin. Don't tell. It's a feature, not a bug.
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Swiss chard and feta pie
by Erika Kerekes March-22-2012
Lightly sauteed greens flavored with onion, dill and feta make a terrific pie filling. I eat this for breakfast, but it makes a nice light supper too.
Ingredients
2 cups all-purpose flour
2/3 cup plus 2 tsp olive oil, divided
1/3 cup heavy cream
1/2 tsp salt
1 large yellow onion, chopped
1 large bunch Swiss chard, leaves and stems, roughly chopped (about 8 cups)
2 eggs
1 cup feta cheese, crumbled
1/4 cup fresh dill, chopped
freshly ground pepper
Instructions
Preheat the oven to 375 degrees.Put the flour in a medium-sized bowl. In a small bowl, whisk together 2/3 cup of the olive oil, the cream, and the salt. Pour the olive oil mixture into the flour and stir together with a fork to make a crumbly dough. If the dough seems too dry to hold together, add water 1 teaspoon at a time until the dough is workable.Tip the dough into a 9-inch pie plate or shallow baking dish. Press the dough over the bottom and up the sides of the baking dish with your fingertips to make the crust. Set aside.In a large saucepan, heat the remaining 2 teaspoons olive oil over medium-high heat and saute the onion 4-5 minutes until it's softened. Add the chopped chard and saute a couple of minutes; the chard will wilt and shrink down considerably. When it's just wilted, remove the pan from the heat and pour the chard into the bowl that held the dough mixture - might as well not get another bowl dirty, right?Let the chard cool about 10 minutes, then add the eggs, feta, dill and a good amount of ground pepper. Mix thoroughly. Pour the chard filling into the waiting crust and pop the whole thing in the oven. Bake about 45 minutes, until the pie is set and the top is starting to turn golden. Let cool at least 30 minutes before serving to let things firm up a bit - otherwise the whole thing will collapse when you cut into it.
Details
Prep time: Cook time: Total time: Yield: 8 servings
Want to bring your friends and family to their knees? Want people to tell you they've never met such a genius in the kitchen? Want to see some serious plate-licking and scrap-picking?
Make gravlax.
Gravlax, or cured salmon, is one of the easiest super-gourmet recipes you will ever make. It has four required ingredients (salmon, salt, sugar, pepper) and several optional ones (fresh herbs, dried herbs, a few drops of vodka or tequila or gin). You'll also need plastic wrap, two baking sheets, and a few cans of tomatoes or beans or whatever's in your pantry. Really high-tech.
I would make this every week if I weren't the only one in my household willing to eat it. Unfortunately, my family is currently on a salmon strike. Crazy people.
Use the freshest salmon you can find. It doesn't need to be sushi grade, but it's not really going to get cooked, so don't use fish that's close to the edge. When it's done, slice it thinly. My favorite way to serve gravlax is with cocktail pumpernickel slices, creme fraiche, a big pile of capers, paper-thin slices of cucumber, and a squeeze of lemon.
By the way, gravlax is excellent party food. Pile the sliced cured salmon in the middle of a platter and mound the accoutrements around the sides. Let people make their own little open-faced sandwiches. Low hassle, extra elegant. If there's no party and it's just you, scale down the amount of the salt mixture and use two smaller skin-on salmon filets rather than a whole fish.
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Gravlax (cured salmon)
by Erika Kerekes March-19-2012
The combination of salt, sugar and pepper cures raw salmon and turns it into a true delicacy. Be sure to start this 3-5 days ahead - it takes time for the cure to penetrate the fish.
Ingredients
1 whole raw salmon, skin on, head off, fileted
1 cup sea salt
1 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup ground or cracked black pepper
1 bunch fresh dill (optional - substitute 3 Tbsp dried dill or another herb of your choice)
2 Tbsp vodka, tequila or gin (optional)
Instructions
Lay several large pieces of plastic wrap on your counter, overlapping them to form one very big square. Lay one filet of salmon in the middle of the plastic wrap, skin side down.In a small bowl, mix together the salt, sugar and pepper. Pour the salt mixture over the salmon, mounding it thickly on the flesh of the fish and making sure the whole surface is covered. Lay the dill over the salt mixture if you're using it, then place the other fish filet on top, skin side up. Basically, you're sandwiching the salt mixture between the two pieces of salmon.Now bring the plastic wrap up around the salmon, wrapping it tightly. If you misjudged the first time and didn't end up with enough plastic wrap to go all the way around, take some more. Let me be clear here: You can't really wrap the salmon too much or too tightly at this point. Get it nice and snug in its plastic wrap house.Place the wrapped salmon on a baking sheet or in a roasting pan that will fit in your refrigerator. Put a plate or a smaller sheet pan on top of the salmon and weight it down with a few big cans of something. Place the whole thing in the refrigerator and let time work its magic. Turn the fish over once or twice a day to redistribute the juices that will start to flow. This is why the salmon has to be well wrapped - you want to keep that liquid in with the salmon, not leaking out onto the pan.After four or five days, the salmon should be done. Unwrap it in the sink, scrape off the dill and most of the salt mixture, slice it thinly, and serve with thinly sliced toast and any combination of the following: creme fraiche, capers, chopped onions, lemon wedges.
Details
Prep time: Cook time: Total time: Yield: 20+ servings
This is one of those "stupid genius" appetizers you can bring to any party. It's good for the vegans. It's good for the dieters. It's good for the heart-healthy.
Also, it's just plain good.
I brought it to the Super Bowl party we're invited to every year. I'm pretty sure a few people were disappointed, because usually I bring these amazing cheese straws with smoked salt. But I was on Waistline Watch this year. You can't please everyone. Some grumbled, others gobbled. Maybe we'll all live a little longer.
I can get beautiful miniature sweet peppers and Persian cucumbers at my local Costco. If you can't find them, use whatever vegetables you find that work well for scooping. Larger cucumbers work, although the end result will be a multi-bite rather than one-bite morsel. Make your own hummus or use your favorite store-bought brand.
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Hummus-stuffed peppers and cucumbers
by Erika Kerekes March-13-2012
File this under "stupid genius" in your recipe box. Use store-bought hummus for the quickest result, or make your own if you prefer.
Ingredients
12 miniature sweet peppers, mixed colors
3 Persian cucumbers
approximately 1 cup hummus (store-bought or homemade)
Wash and dry the vegetables. Prepare the peppers by cutting off the tops, then carefully cutting out the seeds and ribs with a paring knife. Cut the ends off the cucumbers and slice each one into 4 chunks. Using a melon baller, scoop out the flesh on one cut side of each chunk, being careful not to pierce the bottom. You'll end up with hollow peppers and cucumber pieces with little wells, ready for stuffing.Place the hummus into a zip-top bag. Cut off a tiny piece at one corner. Squeeze the hummus down and through the cut hole, using the zip-top bag like a pastry bag, and fill the peppers and cucumbers, finishing each with a little swirl.Place the chopped herbs on a plate or in a shallow bowl. As you finish stuffing each vegetable, dip the top in the herbs, the way you'd dip an ice cream cone in sprinkles. Place the vegetables on a serving platter. Serve immediately.
Details
Prep time: Cook time: Total time: Yield: 24 pieces
At one point I remember saying to my boys "You haven't lived until you've eaten potatoes fried in duck fat."
Now, whenever I pull out potatoes, they're disappointed if duck fat isn't involved.
I walked away from last week's Food Bloggers Los Angeles meeting with about 10 pounds of mixed yellow, red and purple fingerling potatoes courtesy of the Idaho Potato Commission. When I put them on the counter and saw the boys' hopeful faces, I knew what I had to do.
No frying this time. Oven-roasting works just as well. I put a few spoons of duck fat on top of the cut potatoes, stuck the pan in the oven for a few minutes, and then tossed everything around on the baking sheet with a spatula as soon as the duck fat melted. Even a little bit of duck fat gives the potatoes a rich, savory flavor and ultra-crisp shell. We tried to use our forks but mostly failed.
There were no leftovers.
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Roasted potatoes with duck fat
by Erika Kerekes March-11-2012
My kids have learned one lesson well: You haven't really lived until you've eaten potatoes cooked with duck fat.
Ingredients
2 pounds fingerling potatoes, any color, scrubbed, unpeeled and cut in 2-inch pieces if necessary
2 Tbsp rendered duck fat
1/4 tsp salt (or to taste)
Instructions
Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Spray a baking sheet with cooking spray. Scatter the potatoes on the baking sheet, then spoon over the duck fat and sprinkle generously with salt. Put the baking sheet in the hot oven for a few minutes; once the duck fat has melted, pull the baking sheet out of the oven and toss the potatoes around with a spatula or large spoon so they are all evenly coated with the duck fat. Return the pan to the oven and bake 35-40 minutes or until the potatoes are cooked through and golden brown on the cut sides. Sprinkle with additional salt if desired and serve immediately.
Details
Prep time: Cook time: Total time: Yield: 4-6 servings
