briciole

terrina di verdure primaverili

spring vegetable terrine

It all started with a very nice gift of fresh fave (fava beans). In looking for something different to make with fava beans, I found an appealing recipe for Spring Vegetable Terrine. The recipe is taken from a book by Stéphane Reynaud. He "uses the term terrine rather loosely to apply to nearly anything that one molds into a form and then slices to serve."

Before I talk about the recipe, this is how I prepare fava beans for further use: shell the fave and blanch them for 30 seconds, then drain them and plunge them into a bowl of ice-cold water to stop the cooking. After a couple of minutes, slit the skin with your thumbnail then pinch it to slip the bright green core out of its coat and into a bowl

I had never made a terrine before and I was excited by the possibilities offered by the recipe in terms of combining different vegetables (verdure). To go with the fava beans, I chose snap (green) beans (fagiolini), carrots (carote) and a red beet (barbabietola rossa). Instead of heavy cream, I used a combination of milk, fresh homemade chèvre and water.

• 7.5 oz. (220 g) fava beans (processed as described above and then weighed)
• 3.5 oz. (100 g) green beans, boiled as part of a bigger batch, and cut into 1-inch pieces
• 1 small red beet, washed, steamed, skin removed and diced
• 2 medium carrots, steamed and diced
• 4 eggs
• 1/4 cup non-fat milk
• 1/4 cup homemade chèvre
• 1/4 cup water (next time I will try using 2 tablespoons instead)
• slivered fresh basil (basilico) and chopped fresh dill (aneto)
• salt and freshly ground black pepper

I don't have a terrine mold, so I used a loaf pan and followed the recipe's instruction for baking. I unmolded the terrine on a plate and offered it as my contribution to dinner at Christine's of Christine Cooks. The photo is not great, but I hope it gives a sense of the nice result. The slices reminded me of stained glass: each colorful piece of vegetable contributes its flavor and texture to the whole. This is a dish I will certainly make again.

This is my contribution to edition #238 of Weekend Herb Blogging, an event started by Kalyn of Kalyn's Kitchen, now organized by Haalo of Cook (almost) Anything at Least Once and hosted this week by Rachel of The Crispy Cook.

This post contains the roundup on the event.

Hear me pronounce the words on the terrina di verdure primaverili audio file [mp3] or go to the terrina di verdure primaverili audio page for more listening options.

riepilogo del weekend di erbe aromatiche numero 236

Weekend Herb Blogging #236: the roundup

As the host of last week's edition of WHB, I have the honor of presenting a very interesting set of posts submitted by bloggers from around the world. I have decided that I like the presentation in alphabetical order by featured ingredient (as seen in the roundup of #235 by Haalo), so I will adopt it for this edition.

For every contribution, I will offer a small bite, a sample of the delicacy to be fully savored by reading the relevant post.

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B is for Brasilian nuts

a favorite ingredient of Anh from A Food Lover's Journey.

Anh used Brasilian nuts, together with dried apricots and dates, to make Nut and Dried Fruit Cake, the ultimate ‘power slice’.

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C is for cauliflower

and Brii of Briiblog used it to make Cauliflower Pesto "very quick, very easy, very tasty :)"

She served some with spaghetti and a lot of black pepper.

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F is for fiddlehead ferns

and this year, Rachel, The Crispy Cook, foraged for them at a grocery store. She's learned that, while "the coiled-up new growth of several different varieties of fern can be eaten,... many varieties are inedible and may in fact be poisonous."

She describes her Steamed Fiddlehead Ferns as "one of the most beautiful vegetables one can behold on the plate."

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G is for garlic

and Christine of Kits Chow discovered that her 15-minute Stove-top, Roasted Garlic
is an asset in the kitchen.

"Spread some garlic paste on pieces of crusty bread for a delicious snack or store the paste in a jar, cover with olive oil and keep it in the fridge" for future use.

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L is for lovage

which Simona of briciole planted in her vegetable garden last year.

She is now enjoying the leaves of this perennial plant as a flavoring for her homemade fresh chèvre.

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P is for pepper

"Piperies Florinis are red long sweet peppers, named after the prefecture of Florina, in Norther Greece, where they are produced."

In the hands of Ivy of Kopiaste..to Greek Hospitality, these flavorful red peppers have been turned into a dip, which needs bread, so we have No Knead Ciabatta Bread and Piperis Fiorinis Dip.

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R is for raspberry

and Cinzia of Cindystar used some ripe, juicy raspberries to top her Chocolate Mini Pies with Chilled Grana Padano Cream and Raspberries, of which she made two versions, one using chocolate puff pastry and one using chocolate shortcrust pastry.

Grana Padano is one of the best cheeses of the world, produced in my country of origin, Italy.

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S is for salsify

"a most elusive root," as Haalo of Cook (almost) Anything at Least Once describes it: "Here in Australia finding it commercially is an almost impossible task and they do tend to sell as soon as word gets round that they are available."

Finally getting her hands on one specimen inspired Haalo to prepare Salsify and Shimeji Bruschetta, in which the root is paired with mushrooms in a beautiful and satisfying combination.

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... and for shiso

of which Lauren of Besides Pho says: "Japanese Shiso also known as Perilla is a herb of the mint family. Its cousin Tia To (with a purple-garnet underside) is often used in Vietnamese cuisine as garnish in grilled meat or egg roll and noodle dishes. Both offer fragrant hints of cinnamon, mint and lemon."

Lauren used this interesting herb to prepare some refreshing Shiso Apple Granita.

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... and also for strawberry

Peppers were not the only red food that inspired Ivy of Kopiaste..to Greek Hospitality last week.

"The strawberry season is almost ending and now you can get them quite cheap. If you like having strawberries, year round (not that they’ll last so long) you can preserve them," by making her Strawberry Spoon Sweet. The post includes also a recipe for apricot spoon sweet.

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take two

Strawberry season is long in California, and Simona of briciole takes advantage of this by repeatedly making Fresh Strawberry Mousse with Yogurt. 

Low-sugar and non-fat, this is a nutritious and flavorful dessert option.

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T is for tarragon

and Stacey of Fessenden Farmstead used it to make Tarragon Vinegar.

She actually added something more than tarragon (from her herb garden) to white wine vinegar: garlic and red pepper flakes (her own peppers, dehydrated and ground) also went into the mix. The flavored vinegar will be ready in a few weeks.

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T is for tomato

Though the name is "completely lackluster," Janet of The Taste Space found that Eggs Poached in Tomato Sauce "is one of those incredibly delicious and flavourful meals where simple ingredients make something special."

She liked the dish so mach that she won’t complain if she eats it all day.

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Many thanks to all who contributed to produce a varied and interesting collection of both savory and sweet dishes for this edition of Weekend Herb Blogging. I do hope I have not left anybody out of the roundup. If you find that, notwithstanding my best intentions, I actually have omitted a post, please send me a note.

Anna from Anna's Cool Finds is currently accepting submissions for this week's edition. You can always look ahead to who's hosting on this page. And if you are new to the event or need a reminder, the rules for participating are detailed on this page.

A final thank you to Haalo of Cook (almost) Anything at Least Once, who has been organizing for over a year and a half the event started by Kalyn of Kalyn's Kitchen. It gives me special pleasure to be part of an established tradition that links so many food bloggers around the world.

chèvre fresco fatto in casa e levistico

homemade fresh chèvre flavored with lovage

In my cheese making, I like to alternate between fresh and aged cheeses. Fresh cheeses have the advantage of being ready for consumption within a short time frame and so they balance out the need for longer waiting periods required by aged cheeses.

A few days ago, after getting a quart of fresh goat milk, I decided it was time to use the chèvre direct-set packets I had in my freezer. I added to it a quart of cow milk and followed these instructions to make the cheese. This is as easy as it gets in terms of making cheese at home. The result is a creamy cheese that begs to be used in creative combination — besides enjoyed on its own, spread over homemade bread.

Being very familiar with this fresh chèvre, which comes also in delicious flavored versions, I decided to pick something from my small herb garden to flavor my product. A plant that is doing very well in it is lovage (levistico or sedano di monte, literally: mountain celery), an herb about which Deborah Madison recently wrote a nice article. The name lovage (Levisticum officinale) has an interesting etymology, as you can read on this page (Liguria is an Italian region). And here you can read a few more interesting pieces of information, like the fact that, as the title of the article says, "a little lovage goes a long way."

Lovage's flavor is indeed pronounced, so you want to use your taste buds to decide how much to add. I did not measure precisely my two ingredients: in a custard cup, I mixed with a fork about 1/4 cup of chèvre and a scant tablespoon of finely shredded young leaves of lovage. I then spread the flavored cheese over slices of my homemade sourdough olive bread (pane alle olive).

I am planning to devote a post to my sourdough bread baking activities, so you will read more about the bread in the photo soon.

This is another contribution to edition #236 of Weekend Herb Blogging, an event started by Kalyn of Kalyn's Kitchen, now organized by Haalo of Cook (almost) Anything at Least Once and hosted this week by yours truly. This post contains the roundup of the event.

Update (September 2012). Valerie of A Canadian Foodie has launched a year long event called Cheesepalooza, which encourages people to take up home cheese making via monthly challenges of increasing complexity. The cheese chosen for the second month is basic chèvre and I submitted my previous experience with this lovely simple fresh cheese. This post contains the roundup of the event.

Hear me pronounce the words on the chèvre fresco fatto in casa e levistico audio file [mp3] or go to the chèvre fresco fatto in casa e levistico audio page for more listening options.

mousse di fragole fresche con yogurt

fresh strawberry mousse with yogurt

As I mentioned recently, "I have a relatively small number of cookbooks and treasure all of them." Mollie Katzen's The Enchanted Broccoli Forest is part of my collection and it shows unmistakable signs of repeated use. One recipe from the book that I have been making for a number of years and that is a favorite with my husband and anybody who's ever tasted it is the fresh strawberry mousse.

The word mousse, imported into Italian from the French language, refers to a dessert usually containing cream or eggs. The mousse under consideration here contains no eggs. It may be made with whipped cream (panna montata), but it can also be made with yogurt, like I do, and the result is a delicious fruity, fresh-tasting, and light dessert. My version of the recipe departs in several details from the original to answer my preference for lightly-sweetened desserts and my sensitivity to the flavor of corn starch (amido di mais), which make me decrease the quantities of both relevant ingredients.

I am delighted that Mollie Katzen has put a lot of her recipes online. The one for fresh strawberry mousse is shown in a way that reproduces the original page where it appeared. When I started experimenting in the kitchen, the graphic design of the cookbook's pages made the recipes somewhat more approachable and gave me more confidence that I could follow them to completion and also adjust them as I wished: it was like adding my handwriting to that of the author.

Without further ado, here is my list of ingredients:

• 2 baskets of organic strawberries [see the Note below]
• 1/4 cup vanilla (superfine) sugar (zucchero), which I make by keeping immersed into the sugar in tall jars whole vanilla beans and/or split vanilla beans previously used to make ice cream, like this one, or this one)
• 2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice (succo di limone)
• 1 tablespoon corn starch
• 1 teaspoon lemon zest (from an organic lemon) grated with the Microplane zester
• 1 cup (8 oz.) firm non-fat yogurt [note the underlined adjective]

Note about strawberries: there are some foods I always buy organic and strawberries are one of those (this paragraph on strawberries and pesticide residues explains why). I usually buy strawberries at the farmers' market by the basket (the commonly used green plastic baskets). I never bring the baskets home: I empty them in a bag and return them to the farmer for reuse. I weighed the strawberry once, but forgot to write down the result: I seem to remember it was 22 oz. or so.

To prepare the mousse, I follow the procedure as described in the original recipe. The only difference is that when I first cook the strawberries, I leave the pot uncovered (for no special reason: this is how I did it the first time and I have continued doing) and stop the cooking as the strawberries start to soften and juice, so I can't say they look like soup.

The day I decided to take a couple of photos for a planned post, I looked at the pool of white yogurt in the middle of a sea of strawberry red and decided to play with it using a chopstick before folding it in properly. Mindful of my partiality for marbling paper, I swirled the chopstick and achieved a sort of combed marbled pattern.

After taking a few photographs, I folded the yogurt into the puréed strawberries. I usually serve the mousse as is, but for the photo op above, I decided to add a bit of chocolate shavings, to create some color contrast.

Try the original recipe, or my variation, or create your own, but please, do let this mousse tempt you. It is a great way to celebrate strawberry season, which in California, where I live, is blessedly long.

This, as you may have guessed, is my contribution to edition #236 of Weekend Herb Blogging, an event started by Kalyn of Kalyn's Kitchen, now organized by Haalo of Cook (almost) Anything at Least Once and hosted this week by yours truly.

This post contains the roundup of the event.

Hear me pronounce the words on the mousse di fragole fresche con yogurt audio file [mp3] or go to the mousse di fragole fresche con yogurt audio page for more listening options.