What season is it anyway? I am in the kitchen, trimming cabbages, peeling rutabaga, cutting the tops off carrots. I was going to make Caesar Salad with baby romaine to celebrate the first warm, bright Sunday of May, but all of the lemons on our tree are small and green, so instead I trim the remaining winter vegetables. The rutabaga has that hot taste it sometimes gets and some of the carrots are watery. They don’t know what season it is supposed to be either.
I start slicing fennel, thinking I’ll stir up some kind of mustardy vinaigrette for it. I go back upstairs for a recipe that is surely in my saved blogs folder and can’t find it. I search two or three blogs I read for fennel salad and come up empty-handed. Yes, I make a fennel salad, but I want to make a different one. I mix some whole-grain mustard with some red wine vinegar and put that on the sliced fennel. I eat quite a lot of that while I’m thinking (I haven’t had lunch).
I go back upstairs and find an intriguing recipe for rutabaga, which I have all of the ingredients for. I look for the Mario Batali original, but can’t find it. Do I really want to make rutabaga home fries? Not before I eat something. But what am I going to eat? There on the toaster oven is the dry French bread I was going to make into croutons for the salad. When in doubt, eat bread and cheese. I cut the bread into three slices. Our cheese supply is limited today: we are down to mozzarella, Pecorino and those crusts of Parmesan that you throw into vegetable soup, so I cut a few slices of mozzarella, add some Pecorino for flavor, pile fennel shards on top of that and put the whole thing in a 400 degree oven. Fifteen minutes later the cheese is browned in spots the way I like it, the fennel is warmed through. I eat a cheese toast. I go upstairs. I eat another one. In ten minutes I am back downstairs for the last piece.
This time I stay long enough to make pizza dough. I keep sourdough starter in the fridge and try to use it once a week. Mozzarella and Pecorino are perfect pizza cheeses, so I mix together 3 cups of flour*, and 1 and 1/2 cups of water and let it rest for ten minutes. Then I add 1/2 cup of sourdough starter and a little over 1 tsp kosher salt. I let the KitchenAid mix that several minutes with a dough hook while I add flour, tablespoon after tablespoon after tablespoon, waiting for the dough to leave the sides of the bowl, which it doesn’t want to do today. Eventually, I move it to a floured board and knead by hand as it absorbs all of the flour from the board. We do this dance for quite awhile and then I smear a little olive oil in the bread bowl, cover it with a dish towel and consign it to the refrigerator: I will make the pizza tomorrow. The arcane pizza-making instructions come from The Cheese Board Collective Works, one of my favorite cookbooks for pizza and sourdough bread.
Now, some people I know make delicious pizza. They seem to plan what they will put on it. Around our house, we make pizza because we have a lot of odds and ends of cheese and meat, or half a jar of olives to use or some leftover pasta sauce or eggplant that needs to come out of the freezer. Or we make pizza because it will use the mozzarella we have in the house. I spied some green olives on the door of the fridge that I suspect will become pizza ingredients and I believe I have some roasted red peppers in the cooler.
The cooler, by the way, is a cabinet that more houses should have. It is a cupboard built next to an outside wall of the house. Part of the wall has been replaced with a screen. Because fresh air cools the cabinet, you can keep oil, vinegar, mustard, ketchup — things that might otherwise take up space in your refrigerator — in the cooler. We store canned goods in there, too, both homemade and store-bought, and things like Karo syrup.
The day slips away after that in another round of phone calls and emails about hotels in France. Sigh. I whir 1/4 cup of minced candied ginger in the blender with the juice of two limes and a handful of fresh mint leaves. I pour most of it into a glass and add sparkling water. I call that dinner. Without the water this makes a great dressing for fruit salad: you can add more lime if it is too paste-like, but the fruit will give off juice. It’s a good alternative to dairy-based dressings and mayo (shudder). I’ve been known to dress carrot salad with it, too.
What do you do with “hot” rutabagas and watery carrots? I expect some gardeners or farm cooks will have some answers.
*I like to use part whole wheat flour in pizza dough, usually at least 1/2 a cup.
A sour dough starter, leafy greens galore and delicious drinks with ginger? Ideal dinner all round 😀
Cheers
Choc Chip Uru
Thanks, CCU.
From a lazy cook – I am always so inspired by your postings – I hate just cooking for myself and long for company when I can try out your brilliant recipes. My sons are coming over for supper so I will explore your posted offerings for ideas…
I hope you find something you like, John. Wasn’t it lazy enough to just drink my dinner?
I can honestly say I’ve never had a rutabaga, so I don’t know what I’d do with hot ones. Hmm…
We usually eat them raw or roast them. The hot taste means they aren’t good raw.
Like yummy, never had rutabaga so can be of no help there, but love your approach to pizza and your solution for the fennel, Sharyn. The idea of a “cooler” in a house is great and one that used to be common around the country I think, back in the day, but might not work too well these days in the south. From now until about October, our only cool is machine or ice driven!
Rutabaga is something like turnips, although the exact taste is different. “Hot” rutabaga is defective and not ideal.
Is it me, Sharyn, or didn’t WP have a Search input box that would allow you to find say, fennel recipes, without searching individual blogs? I seem to remember using it when in that same boat that you found yourself in on Sunday. It’s been gone a while now, and I’ve no idea why. You are such an inventive cook, Sharyn. It’s a treat to see the dishes you develop with the ingredients, whatever they may be, on-hand.
I didn’t think of searching on WordPress itself, John. I did use the search function on three blogs, including yours. I thought someone had prepared raw fennel in a mustard vinaigrette and I wanted to check the seasoning, but I never found it and I didn’t want all of the results of a Google search.
Yet another productive session in the kitchen Sharyn! I wish we had a cooler cupboard. My flat is so small and my dry food cupboard is bursting at the seams! I have to admint that I haven’t heard of rutabaga. I wonder if it goes by another name in England… I would love to try some though!
I think you might call them “Swedes,” Lauren: the big, round, yellowish root vegetable — sort of like a yellow turnip.
You must be getting ready to travel as you’re having bread and cheese, the classic travel meal! We made a cooler in our hotel room in Rome on a wide marble sill, with the window cracked and curtains drawn around the food. I’m still trying to track down the name of the Paris hotel for you. On Saturday I cooked salmon with lime slices, a Torta del Riso from my Italian cookbook, a goat-cheese quiche, and other offerings. It was somewhat Italian in feeling. All the guests got garden roses on their plates, which felt very decadent, and we looked at the so-called super moon through my Newtonian mirror telescope on the patio table. Your mint-ginger all-purpose puree sounds delicious and versatile. Thanks for sharing it!
Thanks, Suzanne. Bread and cheese is our fallback lunch around here when we have cheese. Neola may have booked at Hotel Minerve, but they won’t tell us whether the booking is confirmed for another two days. Your garden dinner sounds lovely.
Gah – I love this post!!! Reminds me of many of my days in the kitchen – and sounds delicious too with those cheese toasts! I love rutabagas and eat them raw, yes, like carrots! I love the sound of your mint ginger lime concoction – I’m tagging this one!!
Thank you, Shira. It’s not all loveliness and light, is it? Congratulations — I think this is the first time the word “Gah” has been used on the blog. When rutabaga has that hot, off-flavor, then what do you do with it?
Sharyn it looks like I no longer have the details of the hotel in Paris, I’m going to have one last look in my hotmail folders – a grim task!
back onto your non-recipe cooking, I love the thought processes, and some of the best meals are the ones where we have a few bits of this and something of that. re the swede / rutabagas, I can’t help there either! Not a great practical day here 😉
I appreciate the fact that you looked for your hotel data, Claire — if you can’t find it, it wasn’t meant to be. We are now in the queue at two hotels, waiting to see if either booking is confirmed. And the rutabagas are sliced and sitting in water in the fridge — I may make those home fries yet! (The link was not working, which is why I didn’t post it)
Ok I need to DEFINITELY do a sourdough starter! I have never done it and really want to! I’m so glad you posted this, I wish we could make pizzas together! 🙂 Thanks for the mention too 😉 Cheers!
My starter is not the very best, but it is serviceable and not very finicky as long as I feed it once in awhile and use it at least once every two weeks. I think on Wednesday I am going to post “Everything I Know About Pizza.”
I don’t think I’ve ever had rutabaga, Sharyn. What about a soup? Can you purée it smooth and perhaps sprinkle a little cheese on it?
We used to have a cold cupboard in our old kitchen; we insulated the new one, so the cupboards aren’t nearly as chilly!
Yes, I can make it into soup, but I’m concerned about the off-flavor — it isn’t spoiled: it just has the kind of heat that radishes and Brussels sprout sometimes have. We love our cooler, but we live in a warmer climate than you do.
I’ve never known anyone to be as resourceful as you are, Sharyn. I love all the taste sensations you represent in this post…and would love the “limeade with a bump up”–the ginger sounds like a grand addition. Any produce that begins to lose it’s best qualities is shared with the tortoise and the hare! Darwin and Pinky need variety, and I almost always have something to share with them! Debra
Ah, well, we are the tortoise and the hare here, Debra. I should hunt through our oldest cookbooks, the ones that actually teach you something about basic food preparation. People didn’t throw out edible food in the old days (not that you are throwing it out by feeding your pets).
I want to come to your house – you always seem to have fun preparing all your wonderful (and healthy) meals.
I so enjoy reading your posts as it gives a glimpse into life in another region of this country, from your choice of ingredients to things like your cooler cabinet. Our winters are too harsh for such a grand addition to a kitchen. Ginger and mint in the limeade sounds delicious, too!
I don’t know anyone else who has a cooler cabinet, Nancy. Our weather is generally cool, but not freezing, with the odd frost now and then in the winter, but our kitchen is heavily shaded by trees and the cooler faces the neighbor’s house, which is not more than two feet from our kitchen door.
I love this post; you perfectly encapsulate the process of cooking invention, and this is one of my favourite of your paintings. I have grown to like rutabaga (swedes) quite a bit since I’ve been here in the UK; they’re frequently served mashed, wih plenty of butter, alongside roasts and in Scotland they are a traditional accompaniment to haggis. I love roasted carrots; I think it’s a good way to use watery carrots because the wateriness disappears and the sugars caramelize.
Thank you, Susan. A couple of people suggested mashing the rutabaga, but when I queried my mother she said she would not eat it that way, or mashed mixed with potatoes or carrots (also suggested). I like roasted carrots, too.
This is quite the post! And yes, what season IS it anyway!?!?! 😀 It’s been hot and cold, cold and hot here!
Thanks, Tiffany. Hot at the moment.
Was your intention with this post to illicit drooling and tummy rumblings? If so: touchdown!!
anne
Really? Hot rutabaga and watery carrots make your tummy rumble? Or was it the Caesar Salad I didn’t make, or maybe the toasted cheese with fennel?
All the talk of food, period! Good or bad, it’s got me to thinkin’ (is it obvious that I haven’t eaten breakfast? ;P)
(PS – how do you normally do your fennel? I have yet to find a dressing or prep that I like)
Well, first of all, I like fennel to start with — I like that licorice/anise taste. I posted an orange and fennel salad here: thekalechronicles.com/…/a-january-feast-potato-soup-fennel-orange-… I’ve also put it in soups (nice with celeriac) and I like it roasted, too, usually in a pan with other root vegetables.
Hello Sharyn,
we don’t get rutabaga here so I am sorry I can’t help with that one. As for the fennel salad, spree of cooking spree has a wonderful fennel salad that has become a regular in my house here is the link,
http://cooking-spree.com/2012/03/27/aprils-green/
Thank you, Sawsan. I think that was the link I was looking for, for the dressing with the roasted fennel seeds in it.
Hi Sharyn, I have to admit to not being the world’s biggest fan of rutabaga. Mixed up with a stew it’s not too bad though.
I love the sound of the ginger cooler – simple to make and delicious – Will have to give this a try!
Hi Charles. Just be aware that it started out as a dressing for fruit salad and dilute accordingly. (The lime-ginger drink, not the rutabaga!) What we gets around here, we eats.
A leisurely day in the kitchen, turning random bits and pieces into something new and flavorful. Not a bad way to spend a Sunday. I said I’d drop by last night. Well, I guess the weather is not the only thing that is not turning out as planned! I am here now though and this is a perfect stop to make at the end of my morning and before the afternoon begins. When is the grand departure, I forget? Will you write from France?
I leave California on June 16th and return on July 2nd. I have no mobile devices and I will be on retreat for a week, so I will write about France and French food after I return.
Then I have an assignment for you, if you feel so inclined. How about leaving us readers with a list of some of your personal favorite Kale Chronicles posts for us to browse through while you are gone, so we don’t get too lonely?
I’ll see what I can do, Granny. I might have some guest posts while I’m gone as well. And there is always the old post called “Things to Do on the Kale Chronicles When I Am Not Here.”