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I thought I had an unusual affinity for bitter things, but if that's the case how come I have a hard time eating radicchio and other people don't? Anyway, my gardener friend also works for a local organic farm helping with distribution, and she often brings me lovely things. Yesterday one of the things was an oblong radicchio about half the size of a big old romaine lettuce, and another was red romaine about half the size of that. The little lettuce I devoured immediately with things sprinkled on it and the juice of half a wee meyer lemon (this is not a trendy meyer, it is the consequence of living on the coast where it is never hot enough for a high-acid proper lemon: though I admit I loive meyers best anyways). Akso, the dill and mint will be easy to dispose of.
So anyway, the radicchio. I had a vague memory of successfully doing it up in a sort of bastardized ala Catalana, so I figured I would do that again. A word about ala Catalana is in order. This is a Spanish spinach dish: you saute it fast fast with a sprinkle of raisins and pine nuts and splash it with red wine, and serve it forth. It is heavenly, but of course I cannot eat spinach anymore because I failed some universal test of worthiness and lost an enzyme or gained an antibody or some damned thing and now I must suffer without spinach forever and forever. I can hardly eat an occasional bite of chard or a bit of beet greens, but if I push it, the results are not pretty, and one spinach leaf destroys me and my immediate environment for a couple of days if not longer. We are speaking of dysentery here and now let's stop speaking of it. Oh, and I can't even eat pine nuts either, they turn my mouth into unbearable bitterness for weeks nowadays. I am not exaggerating. I think it was six weeks, the time I found out about it.
The point is, there is this lovely tecbhnique for cooking greens, which can be generalized as so: greens, dry fruit, nuts, liquor or acid, sauteed, as simple as that. I had a revelation and I thought, radicchio and a milder green, mixed, and use some candied orange peel and some wafer-dried plums (m y own invention because I don't trust the plums to dry in traditional prunes or halves without molding in our foggy climate, even in the dehydrator), and walnuts (often I use almonds or even sunflower seeds which are nice and resinous). And I thought, wouldn't a sweetish, salty sort of meat be nice too? And how about a shaving of asiago at the end, for a blander note? The meat was some ham because it was the thing I could get in the smallest amount at the big grocery store. And I used red chard, but just a little because it is in the spinach family and I don't quite trust it.
Reader, it was heaven on a plate. I slivered everything in thin thin slivers so it would all look the same. Except the asiago, I shaved it in wide thin flakes. If you eat noodles as I pretend I don't but really I do now and then, it would probably be nicer on something like orecchiette than on something like angel hair. Or you could do it with polenta, perhaps. I just did it as it was because I had already had starchy food three times today: half a big sandwich roll for breakfast, two flour tortillas! for lunch, and the breading of the emergency fried chicken I bought the dog.
I still have more than half the radicchio left. I'm going to make green soup from some of the broth left from cooking chicken for the dog. Should I put that in there?
On another front, I planted red bunching onions, some kind of old carrot seed, celery root, and turnip today. Also campanulas. I got home too late from getting chickens for the dog to water so I must must must in the morning.
So anyway, the radicchio. I had a vague memory of successfully doing it up in a sort of bastardized ala Catalana, so I figured I would do that again. A word about ala Catalana is in order. This is a Spanish spinach dish: you saute it fast fast with a sprinkle of raisins and pine nuts and splash it with red wine, and serve it forth. It is heavenly, but of course I cannot eat spinach anymore because I failed some universal test of worthiness and lost an enzyme or gained an antibody or some damned thing and now I must suffer without spinach forever and forever. I can hardly eat an occasional bite of chard or a bit of beet greens, but if I push it, the results are not pretty, and one spinach leaf destroys me and my immediate environment for a couple of days if not longer. We are speaking of dysentery here and now let's stop speaking of it. Oh, and I can't even eat pine nuts either, they turn my mouth into unbearable bitterness for weeks nowadays. I am not exaggerating. I think it was six weeks, the time I found out about it.
The point is, there is this lovely tecbhnique for cooking greens, which can be generalized as so: greens, dry fruit, nuts, liquor or acid, sauteed, as simple as that. I had a revelation and I thought, radicchio and a milder green, mixed, and use some candied orange peel and some wafer-dried plums (m y own invention because I don't trust the plums to dry in traditional prunes or halves without molding in our foggy climate, even in the dehydrator), and walnuts (often I use almonds or even sunflower seeds which are nice and resinous). And I thought, wouldn't a sweetish, salty sort of meat be nice too? And how about a shaving of asiago at the end, for a blander note? The meat was some ham because it was the thing I could get in the smallest amount at the big grocery store. And I used red chard, but just a little because it is in the spinach family and I don't quite trust it.
Reader, it was heaven on a plate. I slivered everything in thin thin slivers so it would all look the same. Except the asiago, I shaved it in wide thin flakes. If you eat noodles as I pretend I don't but really I do now and then, it would probably be nicer on something like orecchiette than on something like angel hair. Or you could do it with polenta, perhaps. I just did it as it was because I had already had starchy food three times today: half a big sandwich roll for breakfast, two flour tortillas! for lunch, and the breading of the emergency fried chicken I bought the dog.
I still have more than half the radicchio left. I'm going to make green soup from some of the broth left from cooking chicken for the dog. Should I put that in there?
On another front, I planted red bunching onions, some kind of old carrot seed, celery root, and turnip today. Also campanulas. I got home too late from getting chickens for the dog to water so I must must must in the morning.
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