Amazing Race - FINALE Part 2 - Rhubarb Apple Betty.

So here is the RHUBARB-APPLE BETTY, as promised in part 1 of my Amazing Race finale post.  Why a Betty?  You know, aside from the fact that Betty White hosted SNL the night before the AR finale (total coincidence - I had been planning to make the Betty - but maybe it was a subconscious gesture to honor BW?).   In selecting an AR-inspired dish this week, I decided to make a dessert from a famous San Francisco chef, as the finish line was in San Francisco.  Our main dish, a spring panzanella (see the first finale post for the recipe), was made using our farm-fresh veggies - very on theme because our farm also serves the San Francisco-Bay Area.  I decided to make a dessert from "The Greens Cookbook" by Deborah Madison.  Her restaurant, Greens, is a San Francisco institution (and also happens to be all-vegetarian).  My wonderful husband was somehow psychically connected to my plans - he got me another Deborah Madison cookbook for Mother's Day (well, technically he facilitated the gift-giving, because the book is from our amazing dogs, Cosmo and Cooper.  Yes, I am one of those kind of fur-moms).  I was torn between the Betty and an intriguing-sounding Semolina Pudding with Blood Orange Syrup, however the latter seemed to require a bit more effort and is definitely out-of-season.  That one is on the back burner until oranges come back into season.  But I've mentally filed it in the "must make" file!

(Side note: The finish line was so cool.  It was in Candlestick Park, where the San Francisco 49ers play - they are one of our clients, and I know some of the people who would have been involved in the logistics of making that happen.  I was so excited!  Ask me about my super amazing SUITE experience at the stadium!  Wow.)

From what I can tell, the Betty is British in origin, and was popular in Colonial America.  It's a type of baked fruit pudding, and the component that distinguishes the Betty from other fruit crisps, crumbles, buckles, and slumps is the bread crumbs.  Sugared fruit is layered between buttery bread crumbs and baked.  We ate ours with vanilla frozen yogurt, but you could also use cream or a creme anglaise sauce. 

The Rhubarb-Apple Betty was tart and refreshing.  I selected two tart green Granny Smith apples, along with a tart-sweet Pink Lady (my absolute favorite for snacking).  Rhubarb is a beautiful red stalk from a perennial plant native to China, which looks very similar to celery but is unrelated.  It is technically botanically a vegetable, because the part we consume is part of the actual plant, not the seed-containing fruit.  And - brace yourself - the leaves contain oxalic acid and are therefore poisonous, so don't eat them!  Nutritionally, rhubarb is very low in calories, about 26 calories per cup, and contains potassium, vitamin C, calcium, and dietary fiber.  However, the calcium is combined with the oxalic acid, making it difficult for the body to absorb.Check out this neat rhubarb compendium site for more information than you ever needed to know about rhubarb!

Make sure you use fresh breadcrumbs, because they are such an essential part of the dish.  Enjoy!

Rhubarb-Apple Betty

Adapted from Deborah Madison, "The Greens Cookbook"

1 pound rhubarb, washed, trimmed (use stalks only), and cut into 1-inch pieces

3 apples (use 2 good baking apples, like Mutsu or Granny Smith, plus a sweeter one, like Fuji or Pink Lady)

1 cup brown sugar

1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

1/8 teaspoon ground cloves

1/4 cup orange juice

2 1/2 cups fresh breadcrumbs (to make, whiz fresh bread in a food processor)

6 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

Peel and core the apples, then slice thinly and add to a large bowl with the rhubarb.  In a small bowl, mix together the brown sugar, cinnamon and cloves.  Place the breadcrumbs in a medium bowl.  Remove two tablespoons of the sugar mixture and add to the breadcrumbs, along with the melted butter, and toss.  Add the larger amount of the sugar mix, plus the orange juice, to the fruit, and stir everything together.  

Spray a non-metal baking dish with cooing spray (use glass or a ceramic/earthenware gratin dish) for assembling the Betty.  Place half the breadcrumbs in the bottom of a baking dish, cover with all of the fruit mixture, then top with the remaining half of the breadcrumbs.  Cover loosely with foil and bake covered for 20 minutes, then uncover and bake for another 25 to 30 minutes, until the fruit is tender.  Serve warm with ice cream or cream.

Amazing Race - FINALE in SF.

 Sunday was a very big night in our home.  ***WARNING!  If you haven't watched the Amazing Race finale, and you plan to - STOP READING!***

As you may already know, I am a devotee.   My husband and I have probably watched at least 6 seasons of this show, from beginning to end.  It has become a very elaborate ritual in our home.  On Amazing Race nights, I cook a dish inspired by the cuisine of the country that the contestants will visit during that week's episode.  So for example, previously the teams raced through China - and I made moo shu vegetables (with homemade crepes!).  The one week that really stumped me, probably three seasons ago, was Kazakhstan.  Good luck finding a vegetarian-friendly, palatable meal in K-stan.  They primarily consume ... offal.  And other bits and pieces of animals that we are not accustomed to eating.  It's difficult to do a vegetarian riff on horse balls ...

Often times, we invite friends over to celebrate our Amazing Race obsession alongside us.  We have two friends in particular who are game.  We love sharing the experience of eating new food and rooting on our favorite teams.  Early in the season, we all pick a team that we think will win the big prize - $1 million!  The team that makes it to the final pit stop first (the finish line), after traveling through all of the countries in the race, wins.  My team never, ever wins.  This season was no exception!

But ... we were excited to like two of the final three teams in the race.  The third team included the Miss Teen South Carolina girl who talked about maps and "the Iraq" and became a You Tube sensation for her inability to cobble together a sentence.  She (20 years old) raced with her obnoxious cross-eyed model boyfriend (28 years old ... see a problem there???).  Our favorite team, Jet and Cord, were cowboy brothers from Oklahoma - actual cowboys.  They had lovable personalities and never allowed nastiness to infiltrate their race strategy.  We were really rooting for them, even though neither my husband or I officially picked them to win - they were the obvious favorites.  They came in a close second, behind the ultimate winners, Dan and Jordan (also brothers). We didn't mind seeing them win, though it was bittersweet because the cowboys were our emotional pick.  But at least it wasn't Miss Teen South Carolina, Caite (yes, really), and her obnoxious cross-eyed model boyfriend, Brent.

So what does one eat for the finale of the Amazing Race?  Anything from my box would do for the occasion, since the final pit stop was in ... San Francisco!

Our farm, Full Belly Farm, services both the Sacramento and the San Francisco Bay Area.  I thought it would be appropriate to really make anything using my local produce, since it would be SF-inspired no matter what.  We had a wonderful spring panzanella (bread salad) recipe, from Smitten Kitchen, and a lovely Apple-Rhubarb Betty.  The Betty recipe came from Deborah Madison, a great vegetarian culinarian and the owner/chef of the prominent Greens restaurant, a true San Francisco institution with an all-vegetarian menu.  I have yet to eat there, but I will one day.   I'm going to devote a separate post to the Apple-Rhubarb Betty - it was a fun treat to celebrate the Amazing Race finale.

Panzanella is a bread salad, made with baked or pan-fried croutons.  I have had recipes using both methods (Ina Garten's is pan-fried and fantastic!).  This base of this recipe, the bread cubes, are simply fantastic - PARMESAN croutons!  These aren't your usual salad bar suspects, crunchy and flavorless.   These are savory little morsels that soak up the vinaigrette and pair beautifully with the spring veggies and white beans.

This recipe benefits from day-old bread; if your bread is younger than that, you can toast it a bit longer in the oven to compensate.  I find the salad maintains its structure better with the older bread.

If I were to do anything different, I would saute the leeks rather than simmer them.  I thought the texture of the leeks was a bit loose and wet, but they tasted good and didn't detract from an otherwise fabulous salad!

Spring Panzanella
Adapted from Smitten Kitchen

For the bread cubes:
1/4 cup olive oil
2 cloves garlic, minced
6 generous cups of day-old bread, cubed (I used all but the ends of a pugliese loaf)
6 tablespoons finely grated parmesan
Salt and pepper to taste

For the vinaigrette:
1/4 to 1/2 a red onion, finely diced (select the amount based on your personal taste)
2 to 3 tablespoons white wine vinegar
Juice of half a lemon (I used a bit more)
1/4 cup olive oil
1/2 teaspoon dijon mustard

For the salad:
3 leeks, green and root ends trimmed
salt
1 bunch asparagus, cleaned and sliced into 2-inch pieces
1 can (15 oz) white beans, rinsed and drained

Make the bread cubes: Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.  Mix together all of the bread cube ingredients in a big bowl; spread on a baking sheet sprayed with cooking spray.  Bake for 12 to 15 minutes (plus another minute or two for fresher bread), stirring once or twice.  You want the bread cubes to be crunchy but still a bit tender on the inside - definitely not dry all the way through, like boxed croutons. Set aside to cool while you prepare the other components.

Make the vinaigrette: In a small bowl, mix the red onion with the vinegar and lemon juice; let sit for a few minutes to remove the rawness from the onions.  Whisk in the olive oil and mustard, as well as salt and pepper to taste.

Make the salad: Place the croutons in a large bowl.  Add the leeks, asparagus, and beans to the bowl and mix.  Pour the vinaigrette over the salad and toss well.  Add salt and pepper to taste.

Enjoy!

Amazing Race - Seychelles

The opening scene of this week's Amazing Race episode pretty much summed up how I felt about cooking a meal inspired by this week's location. All of the teams were totally confused about where Seychelles is located. One after another as they departed for this leg of the race, the teams ripped open their yellow and black envelope and proceeded to butcher the name, ponder the location, and display a complete lack of knowledge about the place. (The entire premise of the show, by the way, is somewhat ironic for one of the teams - Miss Teen North Carolina or whatever she was, the one who infamously answered her pageant question by saying that American children don't have access to maps ... "and the Iraq and such as" ...)

Seychelles. Hmmm ... googling failed me when it came to providing recipes. I had at least heard of it (or the shoe company). I found out that it is a country of about 500 islands north of Madagascar, in the Indian Ocean. It is remote, tropical, and very beautiful. This former French colony is a tourist destination, presumably catering to Europeans. But I couldn't find much about their cuisine. It makes sense that there is a significant amount of seafood featured, and they have their own version of Creole. The food is inspired by French, English, African, Indian, and Chinese traditions. There are tropical fruits like coconut, banana, and papaya, as well as vegetables like yams, potatoes, pumpkin, and tomato. I found many references to fish curry and coconut curry, including a fish curry recipe published by the BBC, so I decided to prepare a curry dish with veggies. I chose a South Indian curry dish from Epicurious, with a flavor profile (cumin, garam masala, garlic, plus lime, tomato, and coconut) that seemed to match the exotic array allegedly found in the Seychelles (thanks, Internet).

I did make some changes to the Epicurious recipe, but I thought I would link to it in its entirety so that you can make it as it was intended. The base of the recipe is an aromatics-and-spices paste, a technique that was unfamiliar to me. You whiz an onion, some garlic, a few tablespoons of oil, and the base spices in a food processor to form a paste. This paste is cooked over medium heat for ten minutes, then tomato paste is added and the mixture cooks for five more minutes. After that, veggie broth, lime juice, and cardamom are added, and this liquid base simmers for a bit for the flavors to develop, after which the veggies (sweet potato, potato, carrot) are added. I'm curious to know if this is a traditional South Indian technique because I thought it worked beautifully. I did skip the coconut chunks and instead used unsweetened shredded coconut to save time and prevent loss of critical digits. The end result was served with fragrant, buttery basmati rice (another Seychellois staple!). It was absolutely delicious!!!

I will definitely be eating the leftovers tomorrow! Sweet, tart, spicy, and salty - this dish had it all.

P.S. Seychelles looked incredibly beautiful. Turquoise water and lush landscapes. It looked like heaven.

Amazing Race - France

I did something I have never done before this past weekend! The Amazing Race jetted to France, and I did a little kitchen happy dance. Sometimes, cooking food inspired by a country's cuisine can be downright hard. Or, as has happened in the past, three weeks of racing in China takes a toll on my creativity. I always strive to make something delicious and representative of the culture, but sometimes you just have to have a Chinese "chicken" salad (with veggie chik patties standing in for the poultry).


But, France? Ahhhhh, France. Cheese, bread, croissants (boulangerie/patisserie!!), wine ... France I can do! But I wasn't going to do France lying down! I decided to tackle something so quintessentially French that it's almost blasphemous to do it on this side of the pond ...


And I present to you ..... MADELEINES!


The infamous, butter-rich, shell-shaped, cakey cookie of my dreams!

To tackle this project, I had to purchase a madeleine pan. Madeleines are a spongy dough that is made by whirring the sugar and eggs together to create a light, foamy base, then gradually adding in flour, butter, and flavoring. In this case, I made lemon madeleines using the Meyer lemon from my CSA box. Usually, Meyer lemons get the scone treatment in my kitchen; had the race been to England, we might have seen some scones pop out of the oven!

I relied on that famed American-in-Paris, David Leibovitz, for the madeleine recipe. It makes 24, and my pan accommodated 12, which was an absolute blessing in disguise! The first batch of madeleines was ... less than perfect. They came out looking golden and beautiful on top ... blackened and streaked on the bottom. Hmmm ... I made some adjustments; instead of brushing the molds with melted butter, I used Pam. Instead of dusting with flour (the part that had unfortunately burned in round 1), I spread a bit of "clarified" butter in each mold. I had some leftover melted butter and skimmed the milk solids off the top to make a modified clarified butter (I didn't bother to strain or work too hard to get all the solids out - normally, these are the parts that burn, but in this case I figured it didn't matter too much since the madeleines themselves are chock-a-block with buttah). And I nudged my oven down to 400 from 425. I haven't done a scientific analysis, but I'm pretty sure this oven runs hot. I do a lot of adjusting downwards now that I have the electric oven. I am so used to a drafty old gas oven ...

The second batch came out beautifully!! Rich, decadent, but still light and fresh. Mmmm...

Bon appetit!

Amazing Race - Germany

My husband and I enjoy a Sunday evening ritual that is - what else - food-centric and TV-centric! We are devoted fans of the Amazing Race, and each week I cook a meal inspired by the country in which the contestants are traveling. Don't worry - you will never see us racing together as a team on AR. We are pretty sure we would tear each others' faces off (best case scenario). Let's not test our harmonious relationship!

This particular season - Amazing Race 16 (!!) - has some incredible casting. Remember Miss Teen South Carolina, the beauty queen who answered a question about American children's lack of geography knowledge by uttering the infamous phrase "such as ... and the Iraq"? She and her boyfriend (Caite and Brent) are Dumb Blond Team #1. Dumb Blond Team #2 is comprised of a Big Brother winner and a former Big Brother contestant (dating - Jordan and Jeff). My only knowledge of these two comes from watching them in all their glory in clips on The Soup. The girl Jordan was expressing her confusion about what "quarter after" means in reference to time keeping ... oh boy.

This Sunday, the teams traveled to ..... GERMANY! Whenever I can cook relatively comfortably from the cuisine of the country, I am particularly excited. (Um, Kazakhstan? They pretty much only eat offal there. I took that week off.) I was also thrilled to enjoy a virtual visit to Germany because it's where I was born when my dad was stationed in Augsburg in the Army. (Yes, I can still be president; no, I'm not a dual citizen.)

In honor of Germany, we had:

• German potato salad
  
• Faux bratwurst (confession, it was kielbasa - which is actually Polish - because they were out of the bratwurst). We served the faux-wurst with bell peppers and onions that were scorched in the oven at 500 for 10 minutes. (I abstained from the fake meat because it freaks me out a little. I did cheese, veggies, mustard, and Miracle Whip on a sourdough bun.)
• Cookie experiment - German chocolate cookies baked in bar, rather than drop cookie, form. These were crumbly but delicious. The experiment was 80% successful, 100% tasty.

Here's a full plate:


Close-up of the potato salad - it was good. A bit laborious and needed a tad more salt, but still pretty tasty. A warm beer-based vinaigrette is poured over cooked sliced potatoes, onion, and parsley. Recipe here, from Cooking Light. I stayed true to the recipe, with the exception of subbing my CSA fresh onions for the yellow onions in the vinaigrette. I also bypassed whizzing the dressing concoction in my food processor - why food process when I can just whisk? (Confession: I used my mini stick blender-style dressing wand, a gift from my husband.)

Tonight (Monday night), we enjoyed another CSA-veggie-inspired meal. Leftover potato salad and ...

Chard Tacos!


This is a tried-and-true recipe from one of my favorite books, A Year in a Vegetarian Kitchen by Jack Bishop. This book is a must for any vegetarian. The recipes are simple yet delicious. Many can be tackled on a weeknight, and the ingredient lists are reasonable, often surprisingly terse. The book is divided into four chapters, one for each season. This is a wonderful book by which to learn to cook or expand your repertoire of unique yet accessible dishes. Bishop is the editor of method-obsessed Cook's Illustrated, and it shows in these tight, reliable recipes.

Corn tortillas cradling swiss chard and onion saute, with leftover bell peppers and onions, plus some cheese, a dab or two of sour cream, and some taco sauce. Plus a small side of leftover German potato salad.

And for dessert - the very non-German chocolate cookie bar. I learned that German chocolate cake is actually an American invention, with the original recipe calling for "German" brand sweet chocolate. I consider the Amazing Race to be a great learning tool!

Next week: FRANCE!