Let me tell you about this salad that chef Casey Schanen of Nell Thorn made at the cooking school the other night. Not that everything else he made wasn’t amazing, but the salad was the real eye-opener for me. Here’s what was in it: fresh arugula, roasted squash, arugula pesto, and warm ricotta cheese. Yeah.

I’ve been hearing a lot about making ricotta at home, but for whatever reason I’ve never tried it. It really is astoundingly easy, and as much as I love cold ricotta, it turns out I love fresh, warm ricotta even more. In this salad it fills the same role as fried goat cheese – the warm creaminess adds to the dressing and enriches the greens – but without the crunch (and oil). And ricotta has a fantastic springy texture in the mouth that I find addictive.

So Casey heated milk, stirred in salt and fresh lemon juice, and scooped out the curds into cheesecloth. I tossed the arugula with good olive oil and salt, and we portioned it onto plates with a sprinkle of roasted orange squash. A scoop of ricotta went on top of that, then a drizzle of garlicky arugula pesto with pumpkin seeds. That was it. I would eat salad more often if it was like this.

As I said, there were a few other good things to eat. Nell Thorn bread with castelvetrano olives, house-made pastrami, and toasted walnuts, as a starter.

Potato gnocchi with one of the best damn pork bolognese sauces I have ever eaten. The restaurant smoked their own bacon for this. It was incredible.

And a buttermilk panna cotta with a topping of pears poached with vanilla bean. I may not be a big dessert person, but I inhaled this.

Classes like this are what keep us coming back to the cooking school. Local ingredients, real technique, great flavor combinations. And if you haven’t been to Nell Thorn yet, I really think you should go.

For our end-of-summer party this year, we let ourselves be inspired by the latest issue of Saveur and made food with a Greek or Mediterranean slant: dolmades, tzatziki, tabouli, grilled flank steak, lemon chicken, grilled eggplant dip, hummus, and so on. For a while we were considering pastitsio (sort of a Greek lasagna), but decided on a greens-filled phyllo pie instead. I thought this would be spanakopita, the classic buttery spinach-feta pie, but then I discovered hortopita.

Hortopita is like spanakopita, but better. It uses any sort of greens mixture (horta in Greek) plus scallions and fragrant herbs, and instead of butter you brush the phyllo with olive oil, making it much less rich. I ended up making this twice this week – the one I made for the party disappeared almost instantly, and since there was phyllo left over I figured I’d just make us another one.

The first one used a gorgeous bunch of rainbow chard from a friend’s garden, plus some fresh beet greens. The second pie was made of purslane from Blue Heron Farm and a bunch of ruby chard. Both were great. Purslane is remarkably like spinach, and melts down into practically nothing, so you can use a lot. This is a great way to eat a huge quantity of greens!

Fresh herbs are key to the flavor of this pie. The world’s not going to end if you don’t have them, but I was really struck by the earthy quality of the blend of dill, mint and parsley. Quantities are highly variable, however. This is very much a use-what-you-have sort of recipe.

Hortopita

adapted from The New Mediterranean Diet Cookbook by Nancy Harmon Jenkins and the Aug/Sept 2010  issue of Saveur

• 1/2 cup olive oil, plus more for brushing the phyllo
• 6 cloves garlic, minced
• 16 scallions, chopped
• 2 pounds greens (chard, purslane, beet greens, spinach, dandelion greens, etc), washed and chopped
• 1 cup each (more or less) fresh dill, mint, and parsley, minced
• 12 oz feta, crumbled
• black pepper
• 12 sheets storebought phyllo, thawed

Preheat the oven to 375°.

Heat the olive oil in a large skillet and add the garlic and scallions. When they begin to soften, add the greens and herbs. Saute, stirring occasionally, until the greens are cooked down and soft, about 15 minutes. Add black pepper to taste and lightly stir in the feta so it stays chunky. Set aside to cool for a few minutes.

Lay out your sheets of phyllo on a damp cloth or wax paper. In a 9×13″ roasting pan, lay a sheet of phyllo into the bottom and lightly brush it with olive oil. Lay another sheet on top, crosswise if possible, and brush with oil. Continue until you have six layers. Pour the greens filling into the pan. Lay six more layers of oil-brushed phyllo on top. Put in the oven and bake 30-40 minutes, until golden brown and bubbling inside.

Serve hot, warm or cold. It’s all good.

I was so thrilled when I finally found a copy of Nancy Silverton’s pastry cookbook at Powell’s a few weeks ago. Of course, I still haven’t made the recipe I bought the book for (the incredible homemade buttermilk crackers we had at Duckfest), partly because my eye was immediately drawn to the ricotta-stuffed muffin recipe. Our favorite goat cheese vendor had fresh ricotta last week, we just had to do it. Really, could you have resisted?

The muffin batter itself was a lot like my usual muffin recipe - yogurt and oil, not too sweet. The difference was the addition of ground toasted fennel seed into the batter, a fabulous idea in itself – plus a creamy center of ricotta mixed with a bit of sour cream, that spills out when you bite into the muffin. Mmmm.

I did run into a few difficulties. My muffin tins might not have been large enough, because even after I filled them past the point I thought was wise, I still had enough to scrape into a small bread pan. The dough was much stiffer than I expected and was rather hard to work with; on the other hand, the filling did not leak at all and the muffins didn’t explode in the oven, so maybe that was how it was supposed to be.

If I make this again (probably not for awhile, as we still have most of this batch in the freezer) I may switch it up a little. The batter seemed like it had too much flour and possibly too much baking powder, and it surprised me that it had no salt. The Gothberg Farms ricotta is so fresh and tender it doesn’t really need the sour cream added in, and I think a bit of sugar, vanilla or maybe fresh herbs might be good additions. We ate our muffins with lots of fresh raspberries on the side, but you could toss berries into the filling instead. I can think of lots of different directions to go here – what would you do with this muffin?

Ricotta Muffins

Almost (but not quite) as written by Nancy Silverton, from Nancy Silverton’s Pastries from the La Brea Bakery.

batter:

• 2 tsp fennel seed
• 3 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
• 3/4 cup sugar
• 1 Tbsp plus 1 tsp baking powder
• 3/4 tsp baking soda
• 1 1/2 cups yogurt
• 3/4 cup vegetable oil

filling:

• 1/2 cup (4 oz) ricotta
• 4 Tbsp sour cream
• salt

Preheat the oven to350°.

Toast the fennel seeds in a small pan. Let them cool and grind them in a spice grinder or mortar.

Combine the ground fennel seed with the flour, baking powder, baking soda and sugar. Make a well in the center and pour in the yogurt and the oil. Mix them together, then incorporate the dry ingredients from the sides. Mix well, making sure to get all the flour from the bottom of the bowl.

Mix the filling ingredients together in a separate bowl. Grease your muffin tins with oil or butter, then spoon in batter until the cups are 1/3 full. Drop in a spoonful of the ricotta filling in the center of each cup. Top with the rest of the batter – the cups should not quite be full (extra batter can be baked in loaf pans or additional muffin tins).

Bake 25-30 minutes, until golden brown on top. Serve with berries or jam.

Ever since our last cooking class with Casey Schanen, I’ve been thinking fondly of his ravioli stuffed with fresh peas and feta, served in a lemon beurre blanc. We received a ravioli making kit for Christmas, and fresh shelling peas just appeared in the market. Our choice for Sunday dinner was clear.

For the filling, I wanted to use Gothberg Farms fresh chevre, because I am still newly in love with this cheese and I want to use it in everything. This particular ball of cheese had a distinctly grassy note entwined with its sweet milkiness. It seemed made to go with peas.

First, we shelled our peas. I blanched them in boiling water for two minutes, then drained and cooled them. I set aside a few peas to go on top of the ravioli, but mashed the rest lightly with a spoon before adding the goat cheese along with some salt and pepper. In retrospect, a little lemon zest would have been nice as well. And perhaps a little chopped fresh mint. Next time…

I made a small amount of pasta dough with one egg and about equal parts unbleached flour and semolina flour. The ravioli mold is exactly the width of a sheet of pasta made from our hand-crank machine, so we had some fun trying to get the dough to come out full width. The mold worked great, though – you lay a sheet on the bottom mold, then press it down with the top piece to create hollows for the filling. Then you lay another pasta sheet on top and roll over it with a rolling pin to seal and cut the edges. Very easy, and makes much prettier ravioli than the ones I’ve done by hand.

The finished ravioli went into the pot of boiling salted water, inflated beautifully and danced around for five minutes (not a single one leaked, yay!). I fished them out carefully and dressed them with hot butter, peas, parsley and tarragon. A sprinkle of coarse salt at the end made it perfect.

With small filets of pan-seared sockeye salmon and an incredible Cabernet Franc rosé from Chinook Winery, this made a beautiful spring supper.

Ever since I brought home a tub of leaf lard from Art of the Pie I’ve been itching to use some of it in a savory pie. My chance came this week, as we had a bunch of spinach from Frog’s Song Farm, a bag of mustard and kale greens from Blue Heron, and a wedge of fresh goat feta from Gothberg Farms. If that doesn’t say “savory tart” I don’t know what does.

I began by completely screwing up my pie dough. I usually stick with a part-whole wheat, all-butter crust for my quiches, but I wanted this crust to taste distinctly of lard. Unfortunately I added too much lard, especially given the warmth of the kitchen, and the dough became unwieldy. I ended up patting it into a tart pan with my fingers instead of rolling it out all the way. Then I prebaked it for a few minutes to make sure it would set and not just melt in the pan. It actually worked OK, so I got started on my filling. 

I wanted this to really be about the greens and feta rather than the binder, so instead of following my usual quiche formula I made up something a little different. I blanched the greens in salted boiling water, then squeezed the liquid out and chopped them. I mixed up two eggs, then added the cooled greens, some sauteed shallot, the crumbled feta, a dollop of cream, lots of freshly ground black pepper, and a pinch of nutmeg. I piled all this into my tart crust and baked it for a while at 375° – sorry, I wasn’t really paying attention, but I think it was about half an hour. Basically, when the egg had set and was beginning to puff up, I called it done.

We let it cool briefly, then carefully (as the crust was very tender) cut wedges and ate them with glasses of chilled rosé. Despite the haphazardness of the preparation, it was really, really good. How about that?

This week has been crazy busy, but we did make time to get down to opening day of our local farmer’s market. It was a classic Pacific Northwest Memorial Day weekend, which is to say it rained every. single. day.

Fortunately there were plenty of vendors and customers, and the hardy Prozac Mountain Boys managed to keep the music playing without floating away.

We bought leeks, fingerling potatoes, asparagus, hothouse peppers, and butter, which seemed like a pretty good haul for the season (thank goodness for Hedlin Farms’ greenhouses). Then we checked out Gothberg Farms’ stand. A local goat dairy, they’re newcomers to the Mount Vernon market, and we’re really excited to have them here. I expect we’ll be eating a lot of their cheese in the months to come, but for now we limited ourselves to a tub of fresh ricotta and a block of Queso Blanco.

The ricotta blew us away. I mixed it with a little sugar and a drop of vanilla, and we rolled it up in warm eggy crepes with hot blackberry sauce. Incredible stuff, so fresh and milky and with a delightful springy texture. I am so buying this again.

The Queso Blanco was awesome, too. It’s very fresh and milky as well, with a firm texture rather like panir. I hear it’s excellent fried, but we ate it on garlicky chicken tacos with roasted bell peppers and cilantro and it was lovely. I tried marinating a little in a bowl with olive oil, salt and pepper, rather like mozzarella balls, and that was delicious. We also tucked some into quesadillas the next morning with hot sauce and scrambled eggs. The queso didn’t melt so much as warm and soften, but I thought it was a perfect breakfast cheese.

As it happens, Gothberg Farms is having an awesome-sounding farm day and BBQ this Sunday. We can’t be there (I have a pie class to attend), but I strongly urge everyone to go out there and support this place. They do amazing work!

Have you eaten raclette? It’s a semi-soft, slightly stinky cheese from Switzerland, and it’s fantastic melted. We’ve bought it before, usually to put on hamburgers – a use I highly recommend. However, I had never had it served in the traditional manner, melted and poured over bread and vegetables, so when John DeGloria over at Slough Food announced a Raclette Night, we were keen to go.

The premise is simple, made even simpler with these nifty raclette grills. Unlike fondue, where you melt the cheese and dip stuff in it, here you melt the cheese and pour it over other stuff. There are cute little Teflon dishes to put under the broiler, and while the cheese heats up you can toast bread, or halved potatoes, or ham, or whatever you like on the top griddle.

Once we all had the idea, we were turned loose on the grills and a counter full of ingredients. There were steamed potatoes, good bread, ham, prosciutto, several kinds of cheese (including raclette, of course), and a tossed green salad.

Since you are just heating up a bit of food at a time, you can stretch out a meal for hours. An excellent opportunity to go through some good wine. This Mondeuse was a wonderful match with the cheese.

And a cannoli to finish things off.

I really liked the sound of John’s suggestion of doing this with queso fresco and tortillas, for a Mexican “raclette” night. He had some incredible goat queso from Gothberg Farms, a local cheese producer (we recently went through two packages of her fresh chevre, it’s delightful), but I’m guessing cheddar would work too.

Slough Food rents these little grills out for free, with cheese purchase. We are definitely having a raclette party at our house this summer.

We had originally planned to have steak for dinner, but I was feeling tired and steak sounded like a lot of work to eat, so we did a little menu rearrangement. We had bought a cauliflower with the intention of making Pasta al Cavolfiore, a comforting Moosewood standby from our college days, and it was just the thing for my mood. My husband used to make this for me when we were first going out, and I find it soothing.

Because this is a recipe from the 1977 Moosewood Cookbook, a book that could have been commissioned by the Eat More Cheese Association, it’s less of an Italian pasta dish and more like a vat of cauliflower cheese with some pasta and tomato thrown in. You don’t really have to add as much cheese as the recipe says to – it would still taste great – but I admit a lot of the appeal here is the dense richness of the cheesy pasta, studded with tart bits of cauliflower and herb. We do veer away from the Moosewood vegetarian standard by adding some chunks of seared kielbasa, which adds a nice smokiness, as well as heft.

We never seem to make less than a full recipe of this stuff, even though it takes us days to eat the leftovers. I should mention that this is one of the few things that doesn’t really work with a fried egg on top. Yes, I tried it.

Pasta al Cavalfiore

adapted from (the old version of) The Moosewood Cookbook by Mollie Katzen

• 2 Tbsp olive oil
• 1 large cauliflower, broken into bite-size pieces
• 3 cloves garlic, minced
• 1 bay leaf
• 2 tsp dried basil, or 1 Tbsp fresh julienned basil
• 2 cups or 1 large can tomato puree or crushed tomato
• salt and pepper
• 2 cups grated cheese, Parmesan or Cheddar or a blend
• 1 kielbasa or other smoked sausage
• 1 lb pasta (we like penne)

Heat the olive oil in a large skillet. Add the garlic and bay leaf, and the basil if using dried. Saute for a minute, then add the cauliflower, salt lightly and saute, adding water if necessary, until the cauliflower is tender. If using fresh basil (we often get those bundles of hydroponic basil this time of year, it’s wonderful having it fresh) add it now. Add the tomato and simmer 15 minutes or so.

If adding kielbasa, slice the sausage thickly and arrange the pieces in a nonstick skillet over medium high heat. Sear, turning once, until the pieces are hot and slightly caramelized. Set aside.

Cook the pasta until just done, reserving some of the water before draining. Stir the pasta into the cauliflower-tomato sauce, adding a bit of the pasta water if it seems too thick. Stir in the cheese, and the kielbasa if using. Serve right away.

Some people like chocolate, so I hear. The sort of people who say “eat dessert first,” and mean it. The sort of people who really would rather have something sweet than almost anything else. I am not one of those people. I like potatoes. The saltier, the better, but chances are good that if it is made of potatoes, I will probably like it. Potato chips are one of the finest things life has to offer, in my opinion (and I am vindicated in my opinion by the Parsi food pyramid). I am also very fond of small yellow potatoes roasted until they are creamy inside and crusty outside. But I don’t complain about potatoes bathed in heavy cream, herbs and cheese. Nope.

Yes, I was on a low-carb diet at one time. No, it didn’t stick. For obvious reasons. And this is why I walk several miles a day. To avoid being potato-shaped as well as potato-obsessed. Anyway…

We made scalloped potatoes a few days ago, for a celebratory dinner at home. We pulled out two pretty beef tenderloin steaks, threw together a Caesar salad, and tried a new potato recipe out of America’s Test Kitchen, which was still open from making challah the previous evening. The whole dinner was wonderful, but these potatoes really clinched it for me.

When making scalloped potatoes, it’s a very handy thing to own a mandoline (we have this one). It lets you make perfect thin slices that will cook evenly in the cream, so you don’t end up with mush and crunky bits. Make sure you don’t add your fingertips to the recipe, though.

Scalloped Potatoes

adapted from The America’s Test Kitchen Family Cookbook 

• 2 Tbsp butter
• 1 onion, thinly sliced
• 1 tsp dried thyme
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• salt and pepper
• 2 1/2 pounds russet potatoes, sliced 1/8″ thick
• 1 cup chicken broth
• 1 cup heavy cream
• 2 bay leaves
• 1 cup grated parmesan

Preheat the oven to 425°.

Melt the butter in a Dutch oven or other large heavy pan. Add the onions and saute until they soften. Add the thyme, garlic, salt and pepper, and stir briefly. Add the potatoes, broth, cream and bay leaves. Stir carefully (not wanting to break up the potatoes) and bring to a simmer. Cover and cook for ten minutes, until the potatoes are just tender.

Pour the contents of the pan into a gratin pan or baking dish. Sprinkle the cheese over the top and bake 15-20 minutes, until bubbling and golden. Let rest ten minutes or so before digging in.

This one could be a candidate for Confessions of a Locavore. Local it ain’t, and neither is it particularly healthy. It is, however, highly seasonal, in that I only eat it on or around Thanksgiving. And it’s really, really good. I don’t know where the recipe originated, but it’s a staple of my husband’s family’s Thanksgivings, hosted by his Aunt Mary. No matter what else I have on my plate, I always make sure there’s plenty of room for creamed spinach.

It’s one of those dishes where I might be happier not knowing what was in it. But as Mary writes in the family cookbook, “Don’t worry about the ingredients, just enjoy.” That said, here’s what the ingredients look like before the spinach goes in:

Yes, it’s just what it looks like. Eggs, mayo, cheese, cream of mushroom soup, onions, and water chestnuts. When I add the spinach to this mix it almost disappears, making something that’s more spinach-flavored cheesy goo than anything else. But the water chestnuts are important, mind you – the delicate crispness they provide is a big part of the appeal, and helps give the (misleading) impression of lightness. I particularly love eating this stuff on a soft, sweet bread like challah, so it’s all soft-textured except for the slight crunch.

I try to offset the guilt of buying canned mushroom soup by getting the “Healthy Request” version. Not as salty, and doesn’t have MSG. I know I could make bechamel sauce instead, but then it wouldn’t be the real creamed spinach. Like making tater tot casserole with  fresh grated potatoes. Just wrong. You gotta love this for what it is.

Aunt Mary’s Creamed Spinach

• 2 packages frozen spinach
• 1 cup mayonnaise
• 1 cup grated cheddar
• 1 can water chestnuts, chopped
• 1 onion, chopped
• 1 can cream of mushroom soup (I prefer the stuff without MSG, but follow your bliss)
• 2 eggs

Heat up the spinach in the microwave and squeeze most of the water out. Combine it with everything else in a large bowl, then scrape it all into a gratin dish or roasting pan. Top with breadcrumbs if you like, but it’s not necessary. Bake uncovered at 350° for 45 minutes, until it puffs up a bit and turns golden on the edges. Serve as a side dish with roasted poultry, or with eggs for breakfast, or spread on crackers, or spooned directly out of the fridge. Whatever works. Enjoy!