Caramelized onion and lavender tart

Woo! I'm getting crazy with the tarts these days.

This one uses dried lavender, which gives a lovely herbal bite to the sweetness of the caramelized onions. The original recipe used crisped proscuitto as a base (that is, proscuitto sauteed a little bit until crispy), but I used some leftover ham which I thought worked just as well. Other things you might use: country ham, crumbled bacon, or go veggie and use blue cheese crumbles.

I also used the walnut crust from the bacon and chard tart. It's my new all-purpose tart crust.

Loosely adapted from Ancient Grains for Modern Meals:

2 big onions, sliced (I used Vidalia onions)

1 1/2 teaspoons dried lavender

1 teaspoon dried thyme

4 oz proscuitto or ham or bacon or blue cheese or whatever

2 large eggs

1/2 cup plain Greek yogurt

1/2 cup milk

1 oz grated cheese (I used parmesan; gruyere would also be yummy)

1 tablespoon Dijon mustard

Caramelize the onions by sauteing on medium-low, in olive oil or bacon fat, for the better part of an hour. Let them get dark, the darker they are the sweeter they taste. Meanwhile make the tart crust and par-bake it according to the instructions.

Remove the onions, and saute the meat in the same pan with a little more olive oil. In a bowl, mix together the eggs, yogurt, milk, cheese and herbs.

Brust the tart crust with the mustard, layer the meat in the bottom, add the onions. Pour the egg mixture over all that, and bake at 375 for 45 minutes. Let sit for 15 minutes before serving.

Carrot and cilantro salad

4-5 carrots, grated (a food processor grating blade works great for this)
1/2 bunch cilantro, chopped

For dressing:

2 tablespoons Dijon mustard
1 tablespoon honey
1/4 cup cider vinegar
1/2 cup grapeseed or canola oil
salt and pepper

Mix the carrots and cilantro together. If you grated your carrots in the food processor, use that to make the dressing. Combine all but the oil, whir, and add the oil in a slow stream until emulsified. (Or whisk together in a small bowl.) Add dressing to carrots just before serving.

Cool, quick, cheap, tasty. The perfect summer salad. (And in my opinion, a more flavorful and less mayonnaise-y alternative to slaw.)

Gardening update

I have little green tomatoes now! (Little green Cherokee Purple tomatoes, to be precise; the other varieties are flowering but haven't produced any fruit yet.)

The herbs are coming along; the chervil and cilantro have already flowered; the rosemary and lavender are hanging in there (but they're growing so slowly, I may not have anything to harvest until next year); the basil is just starting to take off. I harvested the first few leaves of basil the other day.

Also, the borage has produced its first blooms.

Borage is fairly uncommon, but it's an edible flower. One of the few truly blue things in the plant world. And awful pretty.

Speaking of blue, I cut these off the bushes in the front yard. I don't know what they are, the previous owner planted them.

I also have a particularly pernicious rabbit. After a rainy spell last week, when it rained for three days straight, I came outside to discover he'd nibbled all my cauliflower down to the roots. He'd also decapitated most of the green bean plants and one whole squash plant. Needless to say, I was livid. When it's not raining, I can spray down repellent, which works--it's just that when it rains, it washes all away and I can't put more down. Let's hope we don't get any more prolonged rainy spells like that. As it is, I'm not sure I'll be able to get any cauliflower this year.

So if anyone has any rabbit tips, let me know. My grandmother volunteered this helpful information: "Just trap them under a box and club them to death. That's what I used to do." I'm pretty sure I don't have it in me to club a rabbit to death.

Unless, of course, I catch it eating my tomatoes.

Garlic scape pizza

Garlic scapes are the curly top of the garlic plant, available only a few weeks a year as the garlic ripens. I was fortunate enough to get a bag in my CSA box last week. They taste like a milder, greener (green as in salad) version of garlic. And they look like a vegetable version of bend-y straws, which is fun.

For the pizza, I laid down slices of fresh mozzarella and the unused bits from yesterday's tart--a few tablespoons of caramelized onion and a few leaves of wilted chard. Topped that with the garlic scapes, and a layer of parmesan. When it came out of the oven, I garnished with the torn first basil leaves from my garden.

Hooray! I'm finally getting basil!

Bacon, chard and walnut tart

I've never had a lot of success with tarts.

A lot of tart recipes call for complicated crusts, which turns me (and most everyone else) off. The few times I've attempted a tart, I made my standard pie crust recipe instead--which clung to the inside of the tart pan and essentially ruined the tart-ness of the tart. In later years, when my crappy yard-sale tart pan gave out, I just made the "tart" in a pie pan, with a pie crust.

Well, the other day I was at Williams-Sonoma picking up a salad spinner, and I noticed several kinds of tart pans on their sale table. It was on sale, it was good quality, I no longer owned a tart pan, so I picked one up.

And lo, this recipe for a Bacon, Chard and Walnut Tart fell into my lap.

And lo! I already had all of the ingredients! Including a brand-new tart pan!

Now I know why my tarts always failed--a flaky pie crust will cling to the inside of the tart pan. You want a more crumbly crust, like this one, which was way easier to put together than I thought it would be. This may turn out to be my default tart crust from now on.

Reprinted here, from Food52:

Serves 8


Walnut Tart Crust:

1 1/2 cup organic all-purpose flour
1/2 cup walnut meal (made from whirring walnuts in a blender until fine)
1/2 teaspoon fine sea salt
1/4 cup toasted walnut oil
1/2 cup ice water (you probably won't use it all)

Bacon, Chard and Walnut Filling:

1/2 cup chopped walnuts, heated in a hot skillet for a minute or two until "toasted" (be careful not to burn them)
1 cup chopped thickly sliced bacon
1 cup chopped sweet/Vidalia onion
1 tablespoon toasted walnut oil
1 bunch green chard leaves, chopped
4 eggs, preferably organic and free-range
1/2 cup organic heavy cream
2 tablespoons pure maple syrup
2 teaspoons fresh thyme leaves, plus more for optional garnish
1 pinch sea salt
dash of ground black pepper

1.Preheat oven to 375 degrees F. In a medium bowl, stir together the flour, walnut meal, and the salt.
2.Add the toasted walnut oil and mix well.
3.Add about 1/4 cup of the water, and using your hands, mix until it starts to form a dough. Add more water, a tablespoon or so at a time, and keep using your hands to mix until it comes together into a ball.
4.Roll out into a little bigger than the bottom of your tart pan on a floured surface. It's ok if it falls apart a little- it's better not to overwork it and just to press the extra pieces into the tart pan.
5.Rub the bottom and sides of your tart pan with toasted walnut oil and then transfer the rolled-out dough into the tart pan. Using the heel of your hand (or whatever that part of your hand under your thumb is called), press the dough into the bottom and half-way up the sides of your tart pan. Any pieces that broke off while you were rolling can be pressed in now. I am all for charmingly rustic tart crusts, so don't worry if it doesn't look perfect.
6.Prick the crust all over with the tines of a fork, then cover with a layer of foil and place pie weights or a layer of dried beans on top. Bake for 10 minutes, then remove the weights/beans and foil and bake for another 10 minutes or until crust just starts to brown and become fragrant. Set aside while you make the tart filling; reduce the oven temperature to 350 degrees F.
7.In a cast-iron skillet, cook chopped bacon for several minutes, until crisp. Remove bacon from pan and set aside. Pour half the bacon fat into another skillet and leave the rest where it is.
8.Add chopped onion to one of the skillets along with the tablespoon of toasted walnut oil. Cook for about 20 minutes over low heat, stirring every now and then, until well caramelized.
9.In the other skillet, cook the chard over low-medium heat for 3-4 minutes. until fully wilted. When the onions are done, combine them with the chard, the toasted walnuts, and the cooked bacon in a large bowl. Add the thyme leaves and mix well.
10.Add the eggs, cream, and maple syrup to a small bowl and whisk until blended. Add this to the bacon mixture and combine. Pour into the par-baked tart shell.
11.Place the filled tart pan on a cookie sheet and place in the oven. Bake until the center of the tart is set, about 15 minutes. Allow to cool slightly before removing the tart from the outside and bottom of the pan; garnish with additional fresh thyme if desired before serving.
 
Notes: This is WAY better made ahead of time and reheated, as the filling will thicken more and the flavors will meld better. A perfect thing to make ahead for a fancy brunch.

Egg white frittata with broccoli

Due to my recent batch of mint-chocolate chip ice cream, I had a lot of egg whites left over. (Ice cream calls for egg yolks.) There were six or seven egg whites, too many to just discard, so I decided to make an egg white frittata with a head of broccoli I had floating around.

I added a couple of whole eggs to beef up the egg supply. I got out my cast-iron skillet, cut up the broccoli into big rough florets, and sauteed them for a minute in olive oil. I then added the eggs, let that cook for a couple of minutes, added a layer of grated parmesan, and popped the skillet into the oven at 425 for five minutes or so, until the eggs were puffy and a little browned on top.

I served the whole thing with some roasted potato wedges. Such a virtuous meal--veggies and protein, and I used up three separate things (egg whites, broccoli, and the last of the potatoes). The broccoli was still crunchy, the potato wedges were roasty and crunchy around the edges, and the egg white had enough cheese to keep it from being totally bland.

To compensate for all the healthiness, I had two glasses of white wine with it.

Stuffed zucchini (and stuffed peppers)

This was a "let's throw this all together and see what happens" kind of  meal. I had two zucchini and two green bell peppers--not quite enough of either to do anything interesting with--and some fresh mozzarella. I thought "maybe stuffed peppers?" and decided to do the same thing with the zucchini. I didn't want to go through the effort of cooking up a separate batch of rice or quinoa or anything to stuff the veggies with--and then realized I had a container of Italian sausage-heavy spaghetti sauce I'd made over the weekend.

So I "stuffed" the veggies with spaghetti sauce, topped with the mozzarella, and baked. The zucchini I cut into long pieces, and stood on end. My original plan was to hollow them out with a melon baller, but the melon baller was bigger than the actual zucchini, so I just scooped off the top a little. I baked everything at 400 for a half hour or so, putting the cheese on top halfway through, then putting more cheese on top when they came out of the oven.

It was actually a very nice meal, if a little sloppy due to all the sauce. (Be sure to serve this with some nice garlic bread, to sop up all the sauce!)