New potatoes, new beets and baby lettuce

Yesterday's cats and dogs rain is just a memory, it's summer.... pre-summer.... almost midsummer. The trip home on the back roads from Rørvig was pre-summer beautiful, wheat and safflower fields, poppies and elderflowers. I picked up some new potatoes and tiny new organic beets at a roadside stand.

Had them boiled on baby lettuce leaves from the garden. With a simple dressing of
1 part Greek yoghurt
1 part homemade mayonnaise and
salt, pepper and chopped chives.

It was the mayo, made with safflower germ oil, that made it taste so good. If I hadn't had homemade mayonnaise, I would have made a different dressing, probably of safflower germ oil, a little lemon juice, salt, pepper and some freshly chopped herbs.

dansk

Braised cime di rapa

The weather's hot and sunny and my cime, growing like weeds from seeds I bought last summer in Florence, is bolting. Them for dinner, before their small, yellow brocoli flowers really start bloomimg.

Blanched for about 2 minutes in boiling water to soften the slightly bitter cabbage taste. Then in cold water to keep them bright green. Braised for a few more minutes in olive oil with a clove of chopped garlic, half an inch of finely chopped chili without the seeds, a pinch of salt and a few tablespoons of water.

dansk

Somebody's Grandma's salad dressing

'Old fashioned' salad dressing, eaten on Boston lettuce, one of the only kinds of green salad everyone but the odd gourmet ate, when I arrived in my adopted country 30+ years ago. It was a hard transition - one I never fully made, having grown up on all sorts of salads and a lot of crunchy, tasty Romaine.

But it's food for the divine, this cream and lemon dresing on a freshly picked head of soft Boston lettuce. Last night we ate it with chicken, new potatoes and raw, sugar marinated rhubarb.

9 tablespoons of heavy cream
3 tablespoons of freshly squeezed lemon juice
2-3 teaspoons of sugar
salt and freshly ground pepper

Mix everything and let the dressing sit for half an hour. Toss with the washed and thouroughly dried leaves of a head of Boston lettuce just before eating.

The wine was a 2005 Sauvignon Blanc from St. Clair in Marlborough, New Zealand. It's a heady Sauv, with more concentration and less acid than the Loire Sauvignons, that I usually drink - and love - with this kind of food. A real pleasure, though, and great with the rhubarb. Good with asparges, too.

dansk

Marinated baby artichokes

The other day, I got my hands on some tiny artichokes, the young ones that can be eaten whole. I don't have them often here and they're such a delicacy, so they usually 'just' end up as homemade marinated artichokes. This time, too.

Clean the artichokes, which means get rid of everything, you wouldn't want to get in your mouth. Snap the outer leaves off and cut the stem away if it's stringy. Cut off the tough ends of the rest of the leaves on an angle, so the outer leaves lose more than the inner ones. Halve the chokes.

Boil the halved artichokes for 8-10 minutes until they're partly tender in plenty of water with salt and some lemon juice - that keeps them from turning brown. Let the artichokes drip off in a colander. Let them simmer on the lowest possible heat in marinade until they're tender. This time the marinade was made of 2 tablespoons of virgin olive oil, 2 tablespoons of lemon juice, 2 small branches of fresh thyme, a halved clove of garlic, salt and freshly ground black pepper. They're good eaten right away and can also be kept for a couple of days.

dansk

Light tomato soup

I had some tomatoes left over from a job, that I wasn't going to use - tomatoes have no taste in May in Denmark. But I had trouble just throwing them away, so we made tomato soup.

My 3 1/2 year old assistant handled washing the tomatoes, I cut a cross in them, gave them a minute in boiling water and skinned them.
We cut the tomatoes - there were 11 - into large chunks and fried them in a pot in 1 1/2 tablespoons of butter for a couple of minutes. Then we added 1/2 sweet onion, 1 teaspoon of sugar, salt and some freshly ground pepper.
After 20 minutes, the onion was removed and the soup was blended and heated through with 3-4 tablespoons of heavy cream. This soup retains it's taste of fresh tomatoes, because it simmers just long enough to soften the tomatoes and because it's only ingredients are the tomatoes and a few taste enhancers.
It was a really nice bowl of soup, my negative view on tomatoes in May notwithstanding. My assistant, who is usually quite clear about not liking vegetables, devoured 2 bowls.

dansk

More beans with ham ends

Same recipe as last time, but this time I actually have a little bag of ham ends in the fridge. And yesterday I stumbled on the season's first favas, I think they're broad beans in English. The first row is sown in the garden, too, for this summer's beans with ham.

They were good. Felt privileged, and opened a bottle of Barolo, Cascina Cucco 'Vigna Cucco' 1997. From Carlo Merolli. Seductive, weekday Barolo at it's best...
dansk

Beans with ham ends

A favorite, veggies with a bit of depth, good for those evenings when the desire to eat something tasty is greater than the desire to cook it. Had a big bowl last night, a whole meal with half a creamy buffalo's milk mozzarella and my local baker's crusty bread.

In Spain, where I learned to eat them, they use the ends of cured ham, that you have laying around after eating the ham itself. Here in Copenhagen, I usually use bacon. Different taste, good, too...

Fry
100 g. of ham ends i small pieces and a shallot
in 2-3 tablespoons of olive oil in a pot. When the onion is translucent add

500 g. - about a pound - of beans
and stir until the beans have changed color to bright green and are coated with oil. Pour

1/2 glass of water
into the beans along with some salt and freshly ground peber. Cover and let the beans simmer very gently until they're soft. This is a dish, where I like the vegetables beyond the al dente stage.

The beans I used last night were done after 15 minutes of simmering. When I can find them, I use favas, the beans, they use in Spain for this dish - they're even better. Young ones will only need to simmer for 10 minutes. Older specimens may need a half hour. Good hot or at room temperature, and for the next couple of days, as well.

dansk