We make a pesto-like sauce of the cooked peas and toss it with a short pasta – penne or rotini works well, and then add in some reserved cooked sugar snaps for color and crunch.

The original recipe from the April 2005 issue of Gourmet, says to force the sauce through a sieve, but we find this an unnecessary step if the peas are fresh.  And instead of garlic cloves, this time we used 5 or 6 garlic scapes from our CSA.

Also, we like to add a handful of fresh herbs to the pesto.  While weeding the garden this weekend, we found another patch of mint that we are trying to keep from growing out of control.  So we harvested it and tossed it into the blender with the peas.

This pasta makes a great main dish, or a nice side to the grilled Jordandal Farms pork chops that we purchased at the market on Saturday.  Stella’s whole wheat bread, also from the market, rounded out the meal.

Sugar Snap Peas and Pasta
1 # sugar snap peas, trimmed and strings discarded
1 # short pasta – penne or rotini
2-3 cloves of garlic (or  garlic scapes)
Fresh herbs – mint, oregano, whatever you have on hand
1/4 cup olive oil
1/2 cup grated Parmigiano-Reggiano (or good quality, local equivalent)

Boil a large pot of salted water – you’ll use this pot to cook both the peas and pasta.

Cook sugar snaps for 2 minutes, then remove 1 cup of the peas.  Rinse in cold water to stop cooking.  Cut in half.  Save to toss into the pasta at the end.

Continue cooking the remaining peas for another 2-3 minutes, until they are nice and tender.

Remove peas from pot and put in blender.  Save a cup of cooking water.

Return water you cooked the peas in to a boil and then add pasta to the same water for cooking.

While pasta is cooking, finish the sauce.  To peas in blender add garlic (scapes), herbs, olive oil and cheese.  Puree.  Add some of the cooking water to thin sauce.  Add salt and pepper to taste.

When pasta is done and drained, toss sauce with cooked pasta and peas.  Sprinkle more cheese on top.

Truly fresh sugar snap peas only last a couple of weeks, but while we have them, this is a recipe we will make over and over.

As cooked up last night with bleu cheese and red onions

Most people who will be grilling burgers this Memorial Day weekend won’t think much about the plastic wrapped package of pre-ground beef that they’ll make their burgers from. Others won’t think twice about tossing a couple pre-made frozen beef patties on their grills.

We’ve certainly enjoyed plenty of those burgers.  But last night we tried something new that really allowed the flavor of the burger to come through.

It is truly simple to buy good quality cuts of beef from the local grocery store, butcher, or farmers market purveyor, and then grind your own beef in a food processor.  No need for a special meat grinder attachment or any other fancy kitchen gadgets.

You can then be sure of what has gone into your burger, and you can also be sure of the best possible taste and quality.

In his book, “How to Cook Everything”, Mark Bittmanlays out a simple method for grinding your own beef with a food processor: just cube the meat into 1 to 2 inch or so pieces, add to processor and pulse until it’s chopped.  Take care to not overdue it, since you want chopped, not a puree.

His recommendation is to use a chuck roast or a well marbled sirloin.  That way the beef will have the requisite 15 to 20 percent fat ratio, which is necessary for flavorful burgers.

While that will make a great burger, you can take your burgers to the next level by using leaner, beefier cuts, such as hanger steak or skirt steak, or even something like the local Highland Beef from Fountain Prairie Farms.

The key to making these flavorful cuts of lean meat burger friendly is to add back a little fat.  Borrowing a trick from southern cooks, we added a couple of strips of good quality bacon for every pound of lean beef, and then chopped the bacon with the beef in the food processor.

The bacon adds both the requisite fat, along with a subtle smoky flavor.  Since you’re adding raw pork to the mix, be sure to adjust cooking time appropriately to balance taste with your level of food safety concern.

Another key to great burgers is not to compress the meat too much when forming the patty.  Additionally, avoid the mistake of compressing the burger with a spatula on the grill, since that squeezes the juicy life from any good burger.

While pre-ground beef is certainly convenient, the secret to a better tasting burger on the grill is grinding your own beef and adding just a touch of good quality bacon to the mix for flavor.

One of our favorite treats at Restaurant Magnus in Madison is the chimichurri sauce that they bring out with fresh baked bread at the beginning of the meal.  The sauce is a pungent green flavor bomb, with hits of garlic, chili heat, herbs, and vinegar.

Chimichurri is a sauce that has similarities to both a pesto and a salsa, and is an Argentinian  staple that is served with grilled meats, especially steak, as well as being a flavorful marinade.

The traditional version is based upon bunches of parsley (or cilantro) and a large quantity of garlic being minced together with some form of chili heat, vinegar, and olive oil.

With a bundle or so of ramps left over in the fridge, we thought we’d make a Wisconsin spring farmer’s market version of chimichurri, using the ramp greens for the parsley and the bulbs for the garlic .

In the end, to keep the dish rooted somewhat in tradition, we added back some parsley and garlic.  The result was a sauce that was great with a dinner of grilled steaks and fresh farmers market asparagus, with the ramps providing both an herb and a garlic accent to a juicy cut of beef.

Chimichurri Sauce With Ramps

Ingredients

large bunch of fresh ramps, root end of bulbs trimmed (12-18 ramps)
handful of fresh Italian flat-leaf parsley (1/2 cup chopped)
2-3 garlic cloves
1/2 cup olive oil
2 Tbsp red wine vinegar
1 teaspoon sea salt
1/4 teaspoon red pepper flakes, or to taste

Method

1. Put the ramps, parsley, garlic, and about 1/4 cup of the olive oil into a food processor and pulse until the greens are coarsely ground.

2. Add the red wine vinegar, salt, and red pepper flakes, then pulse to blend. Continue to pulse while drizzling in the olive oil. The sauce can run from thick to thin, based upon your preference, so the amount of oil is up to you.  Lean towards less if using as a condiment, or more if using as a marinade.

3. You can serve immediately, or let the flavors blend for a couple of hours. Refrigerate to keep for a few days.

4. The proportions are rough suggestions; vary according to whim, preference, or availability.

If you are looking for a more traditional approach to a chimichurri sauce, Elise at Simply Recipes or Andrea at Andrea’s Recipes have more standard parsley-centric versions with plenty of garlic.

That’s all it takes to make a loaf of bread.  But although the basic ingredients are simple, there can be a wide gap between an average loaf and something truly transcendent.

What we were looking for was a bread that you’d normally find at a boulangerie, or a local bakery that takes its craft seriously: a golden wonder with a crackling brown crust on the outside and a tender crumb inside that had depth and texture.

Unlike our great-grandparents, baking bread is not the necessity it once was.  In fact, in Madison there are several producers of excellent bread that are easily bought, including Madison Sourdough, La Baguette, Manna Cafe, and Stellas Bakery at the Farmers Market.

However, what you miss is the aroma of fresh baked bread from the oven and the taste of a still warm slice of bread you baked yourself, slathered in butter.

What separates good from great in baking bread isn’t ingredients, it’s technique.  More specifically, we’ve found  four key tips across a couple different resources to be the keys to baking great bread:

• Measure ingredients through weight ratios rather than volume.
• Incorporate steam early into baking process
• Knead dough sufficiently to build the gluten structure
• Use less yeast and let dough rise over a period of several hours

Ratios

Baking benefits greatly by using weight ratios to measure ingredients rather than cups and measuring spoons.  The basic bread ratio from Michael Ruhlman’s book Ratio is: 5 parts flour to 3 parts water, with pinches of yeast and salt.

Rather than futzing or worrying about how the dough will turn out, this basic ratio is just about fool proof.  And although it requires the use of an inexpensive kitchen scale, the results are worth it.

Steam

At one point in our bread baking history, we would splash a small amount of water on the floor of the oven to create steam. In hindsight, there is something not-so-smart about doing that, especially for a gas oven.

Which is why the dutch oven method mentioned in this no knead bread method is perfect if you’re good with making a boule shaped loaf.  You keep the moisture in with the lid closed for the first 30 minutes, and then remove the lid for browning during the last 20 to 30 minutes of baking.

Yeast

Something else we learned from Ratio was that you could use any amount of yeast, as long as you adjusted rising times:  more yeast=faster rise.  However, by using less yeast, the flavors in the dough have more of a chance to develop, giving complexity to the taste of the bread.

By buying a jar of Red Star yeast (Milwaukee made) and keeping it in the fridge or freezer, you can conveniently measure out the right amount for however long you want the bread to rise, rather than the standard 2 1/4 teaspoons from the pre-measured packets.

Kneading

While we borrowed the dutch oven technique from the famous No-Knead bread recipe, we still find that kneading the bread is helpful.  Over a ten minute knead time, you can feel the dough transform as its gluten structure develops. A long rise with a wet dough can do an OK job of this as well, but the bread will lack some substance.

Baking bread for most people isn’t an everday proposition.  However, a couple simple techniques can create amazing bread for the days when you do want something fresh and hot, right from the oven.

The first day of marketing at any Farmers Market in the northern latitudes can sometimes be a bit of a disappointment.  There is so much pent up demand for something green and fresh after a long winter, that the lack of huge assortments of different types of produce can take the wind right out of a shopper’s sails.

This year at the Dane County Farmers Market in Madison, things felt different.  The weather was wonderfully sunny, and people all seemed in a great mood and happy to be there.

And the produce haul was pretty good for early season: ramps and sun chokes from Harmony Valley Farm, chicken from Jordandal Farms, curly red mustard greens, and fresh pasta from RPs.

Once home with our market bags, we immediately made a Wisconsin market lunch of fresh RP’s Pasta linguine, with Harmony Valley ramps, cracked black pepper, and some award winning SarVecchio parmesan.

After a good wash of the ramps, we separated the greens from the purple and white bulbs.  The bulbs were coarsely chopped, while the greens were stacked on each other and cut into chiffonade strips.

While waiting for the fresh pasta to briefly cook, the ramp bulbs were gently sauteed for a couple of minutes until they became translucent.

Once the pasta was just about ready, we added the ramp greens to the pan.

You need to watch the ramps closely in the pan, because they can go from almost there to over done in the time it takes to check the doneness of the pasta.

By pulling the strands of cooked linguine right into the pan of sauteeing ramps, some of the pasta water comes as well.  This blends with the ramps and the olive oil to form the sauce for the pasta.

Once the pasta was plated, we added a couple of grinds of cracked black pepper and some shavings of the Sarvecchio parmesan.

We sometimes use a vegetable peeler to shave parmesan; if it’s sharp, it can provide the best control of the size and length of the shavings.

Our dinner was also a Farmers Market feast, with roasted Jordandal chicken on a bed of sun chokes and potatoes.  We also mixed some store bought bibb lettuce with the mustard greens for a salad with a bit of a personality.

We also had a great loaf of whole grain bread from Stellas Bakery (just follow the calls of “Hot Cheese Bread!” at the market).

Looking forward to seeing what’s new and available at next week’s market.

We have always tried to maintain an ideal of the Friday Night Supper, which is a meal at home that should be as simple and laid back as going out for a fish fry.

Last night, the spur of the moment decision was mussels with french fries.  With the meal lacking the sophistication of a Brasserie V or a Sardine, it would be a stretch to call them Moules Frites.  But despite a couple of false starts, the Friday Night Supper turned out to be delicious.

Outside of the reliable above mentioned local options for mussels, our three reference points for amazing mussels were three restaurants from travels: L’Express in Montreal, Belgo in London (the restaurant has as great an attitude as their website), and Bistrot Maison in the Willamette Valley wine town of McMinnville, Oregon.

All those mussels were plump, steamed in a simple wine/shallot broth that could almost be drunk from the bowl.  And the frites were thin, crispy, and most likely fried in something forbidden like beef tallow or duck fat.

Our Friday night supper didn’t approach those heights, although the Prince Edward Island mussels we bought from Hughes Seafood at Brennan’s on University were the plumpest store bought mussels we have ever had.

To prepare, we started by mincing shallots and flat leaf parsley.  We then brought a couple of cups of dry white wine to simmer with the shallots, so the shallots could release their flavor.  Just before dumping in 3 pounds of mussels, we added the parsley.

With a vigorous shake of the Le Creuset pot half way through, the mussels were done in five minutes.

We served them with a crusty baguette from Manna Cafe on Sherman Avenue, that was great for soaking up the sauce.  Manna bakes a baguette so tasty, it can be a meal in its own right.

Unfortunately, the fries, or frites, we were baking took longer crisp up than we expected, so they made a mid-meal appearance. Good when they got there, but no competition for the frites from Brasserie V.

We also attempted to hand make Aioli (mayonnaise with garlic) from scratch.  Our first attempt at Aioli failed, (were the eggs not room temperature?) so we made a quick and very tasty fix by mincing garlic and a touch of salt into store bought mayonnaise.

To wash all this down we had a great local beer with an intimidating name and label:  Ambergeddon from Ale Asylum Brewery in Madison.  It had a heady, over the top hop taste that sparred well with all the garlic and shallots in the meal.

Despite a couple of bumps in the road, this dinner worked well in delivering the simple, yet delicious ideal of a Friday night supper.  A successful homemade Aioli from scratch will be for another blog post.

A couple of eggs, salt, pepper, butter, a little time in a hot pan, and you have breakfast or lunch.

Or topped with finely chopped herbs, and served with a glass of Viognier and a green salad, you can even have a simple but elegant dinner.

And the whole trick to making French omelettes is in the wrist.

Namely using a hot pan primed with butter to swirl the egg mixture to quickly cook it, then giving the pan a couple of sharp tugs to fold the omelette over itself to get the classic French rolled omelette.

You can read differing approaches to this technique in Richard Olney’s “Simple French Food” or James Peterson’s “Glorious French Food”.  However the technique isn’t really intuitive coming from the pages of a book.

Therefore, in our first post, it is probably appropriate that we have America’s first foodie, Julia Child, to give a vintage video demonstration of the pan technique for omelettes:

The key is not to overcook the eggs.  As you can see, this technique is 30 seconds, tops. Any other ingredients, such as tomatoes or mushrooms, are added on top after the omelette is plated.

What you are trying to avoid is something browned and overcooked, with a texture like shoe leather.

That’s why it’s important to leave the top part of the omelette a bit soft when folding it up in the pan. The middle of the omelette will continue cooking to the right consistency, even after it’s been inverted on the plate.