Sunchoke Spinach Dip
Following Rebecca's family tradition, our Christmas festivities spilled into the early morning hours. Friends and family filled the house with the hum of conversation, laughing, singing, and of course eating. These occasions are primetime snacking. Inspired by our winter CSA's bounty, we created a new favorite snack. Sunchoke Spinach Dip is bright, savory, creamy, with a sweet, almost nutty flavor from the sunchokes. Sunchokes are a funky little root vegetable. Also known as Jerusalem artichoke, they are neither from Jerusalem, nor related to the artichoke. This North American native vegetable has an artichoke-like nuttiness. If you've never cooked with sunchokes before, this dip is an excellent introduction.
Yield: 3 cups
Ingredients:
- 1 pound sunchokes
- 2 cups fresh spinach
- 1 cup Parmesan cheese, grated
- 1/2 cup mayonnaise
- 4 tablespoons cream cheese
- juice of half a lemon
- 3 garlic cloves
- 3/4 teaspoon kosher salt
- 1/8 teaspoon ground black pepper
- pinch ground cayenne pepper
Steps:
- Peel sunchokes and place in a medium pot with enough water to cover. Bring to a boil over high heat, reduce heat to medium and cook for 12 minutes.
- Remove the sunchokes from heat, drain, and place in a food processor or blender.
- To the food processor, add the remaining ingredients (spinach, Parmesan, mayonnaise, cream cheese, lemon juice, garlic, salt, pepper, and cayenne. Puree until smooth.
- Serve with bread, crackers, or chips. Refrigerate if not using immediately.
Black Pepper & Lime Caesar Salad
My mother and sister flew to Haiti last week, the final visit in an amazing month of family guests. First Madeline's uncle arrived on a spur of the moment 48-hour trip to cuddle his new niece. Next to arrive was her grandpa and grandma, traveling to Haiti from Indiana, narrowly avoiding a political protest near the airport on the day of their arrival. Madeline's omi and opi from Canada made it in time to see her first smiles, and last week she met her aunt from Pittsburgh for the first time. It has been an incredible expression of love and support from both of our families as they trekked to Haiti, schlepping our many bags along with them. Each time, as I passed our little daughter over to her newly arrived family member, it was a moving experience. Perhaps it's the postpartum hormones... but there was just something about the contrast of having moved to a new place without family, and then watching the faces of our parents and siblings as they held our daughter for the first time that put a lump in my throat. So how does this all relate to this most excellent black pepper lime caesar salad recipe you might ask? My family is nuts for caesar salad. So as I paced the house waiting for my mother and sisters' delayed flight last week, I made my new favorite variation with black pepper and lime. I perfected this version over the last few months while pregnant and unable to eat the classic caesar dressing with raw eggs. I discovered mayonnaise to be a creamy and delicious substitute and swapped out the traditional lemon in favor of local key limes. This is an addictive dressing, so I recommend just going ahead and doubling it the first time.
Carrot Ribbon Salad with Carrot Top Pesto
Our friends Beth and Justin, both creative cooks and passionate gardeners, made our day when they dropped off some beautiful carrots, freshly dug from their garden. While hardcore carnivores may lay claim to nose-to-tail cooking, we think that this veggie based dish gives the concept a run for its money, as it uses all parts of the carrot plant: root-to-leaf cooking in its colorful prime. Carrot Ribbon Salad with Carrot Top Pesto is adapted from vegetable whiz Diane Morgan’s Roots cookbook. In this dish, the carrots are first mellowed with a quick hot water bath to soften their texture and bite. Carrot top pesto, with its subtle parsley-like flavor, is a lovely match, accented with dollops of creamy goat cheese. Find a source for fresh vibrant carrots with tops and make this beautiful dish.
Grilled Romanesco Cauliflower With Cashews
Some things in nature just make your jaw drop. For me, Romanesco cauliflower does this every time. Maybe it is memories of my mathematician grandfather explaining the geometric beauty of the perfect fractal florets spiraling into a hundred mirrored pyramids. Maybe it is because Romanesco is quite frankly the weirdest looking vegetable I've ever seen. Or maybe it is that despite its unusual looks, Romanesco is also a great tasting vegetable: a firm textured, sweet and earthy cross between cauliflower and broccoli. If you are lucky enough to get a hold of one of these green fractal beauties, our Grilled Romanesco Cauliflower with Cashews is a salty smoky side that shows off every gorgeous floret. We keep the dish simple to highlight the star ingredient, while adding a little smokey char, gently tossed with lemon, sage, salt and pepper and accompanied with some seasonal vegetables and nuts. A unique and delicious side salad to match this stunning vegetable.
Sweet Pea Soup
Sometimes, we get a little absorbed in enjoying food, and forget the broader context of our speech. We had our good friends Beth and Justin over for dinner this weekend. Our spoons stopped mid-slurp, and we all did a double take when Rebecca enthusiastically proclaimed: "I love this soup, the pea-ness really shines through!"
Allow me to say it another way, this is great, quick sweet pea soup. The gentle cooking lets the subtle and sweet pea flavor star. Sweet Pea Soup is a dish I request often (usually with Rebecca's awesome Buttermilk Biscuits). There’s nothing as satisfying as a vibrant green soup to fight the rainy grays of March.
Grilled Vegetable Soba Noodles with Rosemary Garlic Sauce
Cooking delicious food for guests with dietary preferences calls for creative use of the season's bounty. Our goal for a weeknight dinner with friends was a vegetarian, gluten-free main dish, using seasonal vegetables, ready in 30 minutes. After a visit to our local famers’ market, we set to work creating a vegetable based pasta dish with flavor and texture that would appeal to a wide range of eaters. To make Grilled Vegetable Soba Noodles with Rosemary Garlic Sauce, we grilled up fresh broccoli, cauliflower, green beans and zucchini. With a roasted garlic sauce in mind, we added whole garlic cloves to the grill, to see if we couldn’t achieve a roasted garlic flavor without turning on the oven. It worked brilliantly. While the vegetables and garlic grilled, we cooked up a quick batch of buckwheat soba noodles, a toothsome noodle that is also gluten free and cooks in 4 minutes. For a subtle sauce that would accompany the dish without overpowering the fresh flavors, we clipped some rosemary from our garden, added our grill-roasted garlic, a flurry of nutty parmesan cheese, and bright lemon for contrast. Enjoy summer vegetables and homespun food shared with the ones you love.
