Zucchini and Ricotta Galette (a borrowed recipe)

Melissa sent a blueberry muffin recipe from Smitten Kitchen, and browsing along I knew I had to make this Zucchini and Ricotta Galette. It seemed perfectly simple but not at all boring, comfort food (buttery pastry + 3 kinds of cheese!) but still summery.

I was a little worried this would be too zucchini-y, so I used one medium zucchini for a fairly thin layer. I baked it 35 minutes, which left the zucchini perfect done -- still fresh tasting.


My crust was not as glorious as the original seemed to be, but I also didn't chill it quite long enough and my butter bits were perhaps too big. Note: take care with pastry, the little details make a difference!

You can visit the beautiful Smitten Kitchen for the recipe and additional thoughts. Now me and the men (er, man and dog) are off to Blaine for a festival of crab! Plus appropriate cocktails, horseshoes, and lounging around in the sun. :)

Brunch with a flip: Crepes a la Florentine

For three months, I served crepes and wine at a cafe near my college apartment. I'd never even tasted a crepe when the retired-engineer-turned-restauranteur hired me, but the recipes were works-in-progress, so I ate crepes all summer: with asparagus and hollandaise, banana and nutella, flaming crepes suzette.

In the six years since, I never made them at home -- until today. With a recipe and a little inspiration from a recent class at Blue Ribbon Cooking, I prepared my mise en place forGateau de Crepes a la Florentine (roughly translated: giant saucy pan of crepes with spinach).

Despite initial fear, I've pretty much mastered the French flipping of a crepe: paper-thin disks fly from my frying pan, crisp at the edges, perfectly browned on one side. I flipped about 30 crepes today, and not one landed outside the pan. Yes, quite impressive, thanks.

Note: this is a long recipe with many steps, but it's not super tricky and can be assembled in advance then heated half an hour before serving.

Gateau de Crepes a la Florentine

Ingredients:

• Batter for 24 crepes (must be made at least 2 hours in advance)

For the sauce mornay (bechamel with cheese):

• 5 T flour
• 4 T butter
• 2¾ cups boiling milk
• 1/2 tsp salt1/4 tsp pepper
• Nutmeg, whole for grating
• ¼ C heavy cream
• 1 C coarsely grated cheese -- should be swiss, but I used an aged white cheddar

For the spinach filling (this is double the suggested amount of spinach, which seemed like barely a garnish in the dish):

• 3 C wilted, chopped spinach (just wilt it in a medium-hot pan, no oil necessary)
• 2-4 T of the mornay sauce above
• Salt + pepper

For cheese and mushroom filling:

• 1 C cream cheese
• Salt and pepper
• 1 egg
• 1 C chopped mushrooms
• 1 T minced green onion
• 1 T butter

For finishing:

• 2 T grated cheese
• 1 T butter

Make the sauce mornay:

Melt butter, then add flour and whisk two minutes. Remove from heat, and beat in the hot milk, salt, pepper, and nutmeg. Boil, stirring, until slightly thick. Reduce heat and slowly stir in cream, then cheese. Remove from heat.

The spinach:
Mix wilted spinach with 2-4 T of the sauce mornay. Salt and pepper to taste.

The cheese and mushroom filling:
Saute mushrooms and green onions in butter. Beat cream cheese and egg in a bowl, then stir in mushrooms. Season.

Assemble:

Either make all your crepes in advance, or make them as you assemble the dish.

Line a lightly-buttered baking dish with crepes, overlapping just a bit and tearing them in half if they don't fit properly whole (no one will see what they look like, so just make it work). Then layer: first, a thin layer of spinach, then a thin layer of mushroom filling, then spread sauce mornay over it. Continue, with a layer of crepes, then spinach, then mushroom, then mornay. Finish with a layer of crepes, and cover with remaining sauce mornay. Sprinkle with remaining cheese, and dot with butter. Refrigerate until a half-hour before serving, or proceed directly with baking.

Bake:

Preheat oven to 375. Bake dish 25 to 30 minutes in upper third of oven. To serve, cut in pie-shaped wedges.

Mac (or penne) + Cheese

I read a lot of recipes. A good one is almost narrative, with appealing characters, dramatic conflicts, and a satisfying resolution. On a rainy Thursday, I want a comfortable old book and unpretentious food.

Fortunately, fate (disguised as time-wasting at work) let me to this mac + cheese recipe on a friend's very-entertaining blog. Since it comes from New York, I'll pretend it's a bit sophisticated. (Er, wait, it's actually from The Pioneer Woman. Hm. I guess pioneers are chic in a bonnet-wearing way.)

I will definitely follow Kelsey's adaptations to use lots of mustard and pepper. And I'll probably use whole-wheat penne, since I have that at home. Usually I reserve my excitement for dinner until after lunch, but today I'm making an exception.

Pasta with beets, greens, and goat cheese

So I had some beets, and I wanted some pasta.

Unfortunately, I found no beat sauces in my many cookbooks, and "beet pasta" search results returned recipes for creating pink noodles from scratch. While enticing, I rarely have motivation to use that Marcato pasta maker I received so many Christmases ago. My enthusiasm for kneading and flattening and cutting and drying does not match my enthusiasm for fresh, hand-made pink pasta.

But finally I found a couple recipes that outlined roasting beets, then cubing them and tossing into a little stock with garlic, and simmering down to saucy consistency. Steam or blanch a leafy green, like kale. Toss together your cooked pasta, kale, and sauce. Don't be skimpy with the sauce -- since it's quite thin, the pasta will absorb much of it. Reserve extra stock or pasta-cooking water to add if the final mixture is too dry. Sprinkle with goat cheese just before serving.

White vegetable lasagna

Brian asked when we might start eating solid foods again, and I realized my winter soup binge had gone on too long.

I also had a box of sweet potatoes leftover from Thanksgiving, and this recipe used them all -- a good thing, since sweet potatoes do not generally excite me and they may otherwise have sat in the corner of the kitchen until Easter. This vegetable lasagna used them well: the very

lengthy baking time made them sweet and soft, and the texture worked perfectly in lasagna.

So I've never made lasagna before, and I'm not quite sure this counts: no meat or tomato sauce means this does not have traditional lasagna flavor. But true to lasagna form, it has a long recipe with many layers. Don't be daunted -- there's nothing difficult. Just be generous with seasoning, spices and flavorful ingredients (garlic and onion), and make sure you have everything before you start.

White vegetable lasagna

(adapted from another blogger, who adapted it from Cooking Light. I un-lightened it a bit.)

Ingredients for white sauce:

• 3 1/2 lbs sweet potatoes, peeled and sliced into ½ inch thick slices (I used the food processor -- messy looking slices, but it doesn't matter for this.)
• Cooking spray
• 2 cups milk
• 1 shallot, coarsely chopped
• 1/8 tsp ground nutmeg
• 1/8 tsp ground cinnamon
• 1 bay leaf
• 2 1/2 T flour
• 3/4 C grated Parmesan

Ingredients for the other layers:

• 1 T olive oil
• 2 cloves garlic, diced
• 10oz fresh spinach
• 10 oz ricotta cheese (I used about 2/3 of a 15oz package)
• 2-3 oz fresh mozzarella, either purchased in pearl form or sliced very thin
• 9 no-boil lasagna noodles

Roast the sweet potato slices. This can be done earlier in the day, or even a day ahead. Preheat oven to 450°. Spray 2 - 3 large baking sheets with cooking spray and spread sweet potato slices in a thin layer. Season generously. Roast 20 minutes, turn, and roast another 20 minutes or until tender (about 40 minutes total). Turn the oven down to 375° (for final baking of lasagna).

Make the white sauce. Combine onion, milk, nutmeg, cinnamon, and bay leaf in a medium sauce pan and heat on medium heat, stirring constantly. Bring to a simmer, then remove from heat and let the sauce stand 15 minutes (this is when the flavors of onion + bay leaf infuse into the milk). Strain out solids and discard, saving the milk mixture. Return milk to the pan and whisk in flour. Season with salt and pepper (about 1/2 tsp each). Cook over medium, whisking, until sauce is thick, about 5 - 8 minutes. Remove from heat and stir in Parmesan.

Saute the spinach (can be completed while milk is resting for 15 minutes). In large pan, saute the garlic briefly in olive oil over medium heat. When softened, add a large handful of spinach -- enough to fill the pan -- and a big sprinkle of salt. Turn the spinach with kitchen tongs as it wilts. If not all the spinach will fit in the pan at once, remove the first batch to a plate when wilted, and add the second half.

Assemble your lasagna in layers: sauce, pasta, sauce, spinach, sweet potatoes, ricotta, pasta, sauce, spinach, sweet potatoes, ricotta, pasta, sauce, mozzarella. All layers should be thin, but take care to spread the sauce sparingly. Spray the interior of a 9x13 baking dish with cooking spray. Spread a thin layer of sauce in the dish, and top with three lasagna noodles (overlapping slightly). Spread a thin layer of sauce on the noodles. Add a layer of spinach, then a layer of sweet potato, then a layer of ricotta -- you may need to crumble/smash the ricotta into bits and spread around, since it's not quite liquid enough to spread. Over ricotta, add a second layer of pasta, then sauce, then spinach, then sweet potatoes, then ricotta, then a final layers of pasta. Top it with the last layer of sauce, then spread your mozzarella over everything -- either dot the top with your pearls of mozzarella, or lay out very thin slices.

Spray a large piece of tinfoil with cooking spray, and tent over assembled dish. Bake at 375° for 30 minutes, then remove the foil and bake for another 20 minutes. Top should begin to brown just slightly. Let stand 10 minutes before serving.

The Noncollapsible Cheese Souffle

I have made one other Julia Child, boeuf bourguinon, and realized near the end that I'd left out the "onion and mushroom garniture" completely. Oh well. Today, I read through our souffle recipe carefully before gathering the ingredients.

The souffle has a reputation for being temperamental, perhaps not worth the challenge. This recipe from The French Chef Cookbook, however, has "non-collapsable" in the title, the ingredient list is short (butter, eggs, milk, flour, minimal seasonings), and the instructions require no technique more complex than folding whites into sauce. If we can do any souffle, it should be this one!

Souffle Demoule Mousseline 

aka: The Noncollapsible Unmolded Cheese Souffle

by Julia Child, with cheese substitutions by Raven

Preliminaries: 

• Baking Dish
  
• 2-quart souffle dish
  
• 1/2 T butter
  
• 2 T finely-grated parmesan 
  

Preheat oven to 350. Put enough water in the baking dish so it will come at least halfway up the souffle dish; place dish of water in lower third of oven (remove souffle dish). Spread butter inside souffle dish, being sure bottom is especially well-coated; roll cheese around in dish to cover bottom and sides.*

* At this point we discovered my cheese was not sticking to the sides, which I've read is necessary for providing the souffle with a coarse wall to climb up. Melissa grabbed a large pinch of cheese and smashed it against the dish. We did this all the way around -- perhaps not an elegant preparation, but effective!

The Sauce Base:

• 2 1/2 T butter
  
• Heavy-bottomed saucepan
  
• Wooden spoon
  
• 3 T flour
  
• 3/4 C milk
  
• Wisk
  
• 1/2 tsp salt
  
• 1/8 tsp pepper
  
• pinch of nutmeg
  

Melt butter in pan. (I used medium.) Stir in flour with wooden spoon and cook slowly, stirring for 2 minutes without browning. Remove from heat, let cool a moment, then beat in all hot milk, stirring vigorously with a wire wisk. Boil, storring for 1/2 minute (my mixture was way too thick to do anything like "boil," so I just turned on the heat for a moment. I doubt this did anything, but it made me feel like I was following directions.) Remove from heat, beat in salt, pepper and nutmeg.

Adding Eggs To Sauce Base

• 3 eggs + 3 extra egg whites
  
• Clean, dry bowl
  
• Wisk or mixer
  
• Pinch of salt
  
• 1/4 tsp cream of tartar
  
• 1 C coarsely grated cheese (Julia said swiss, I used cheddar + parmesan)

I will paraphrase the author's lengthy instructions: Separate yolks from whites. Begin beating whites in your stand-mixer, add tartar and salt, then wisk yolks into sauce base. When whites form soft peaks, stir 1/4 of them into the sauce base to thin it a bit. Then fold in the rest. Pour into prepared dish, place carefully into pan of water, then bake at 350 for 85 minutes. Blog while waiting.

The souffle is now baked, quite brown on top and much softer on the bottom -- I'd place it in the lowest rack of the oven next time. But! It's pretty delicious. Very cheesy and eggy, soft with crispiness on top and edges. I will definitely try again, with spinach or some other addition.

According to Julia: "Best of all, you can serve it unmolded so it makes a splendid effect, standing serenely on a platter." My unmolded souffle was far from serene, looking upside-dow, unevenly baked, and generally quite uncomfortable on its platter. I turned it back into the baking dish, where it seemed most at home. 

The cookbook came from a friend working at Julia Child's alma mater (among the school's many charming traditions that make me slightly jealous of the women's college experience: an annual Julia Child Day). The souffle dish I bought for $10 -- certainly not expensive, compared to many kitchen tools, but perhaps of limited use. However, I do love white porcelain serving ware -- if nothing else, my dish can stand serenely on a shelf between less-serene souffles.