somewhere btw swamp soup & potage creme

 I have a craving in the springtime / early summer to make watercress soup. I first learned about it in Ireland. When I started researching this post, I knew instinctively to look in Ruffage, a cookbook by the chef, author, fellow Midwesterner and alum of Ireland’s Ballymaloe Cookery School, Abra Behrens. I found a suggestion there not for watercress soup but lettuce soup. Behrens writes, “cooked lettuce makes everyone wrinkle their nose at first, myself included. I first saw braised lettuce on a Jacques Pepin cooking show in a hotel room before I knew who Jacques Pepin was. Every single step along the way I scrunched my face even more - lettuce, butter, chicken stock, wine. I was wrong. The heat of the base converts the lettuce into silky little handkerchiefs.” I really love her writing, esp this idea of lettuce as a fabric material, her honesty and her humor. 

The texture of a cold soup from greens is tricky. I have an idea that I don’t want to include potato, as in the Ballymaloe recipe, as well as a recipe from the Canal House, because I want to preserve the intensity of the greens in flavor, but in the past anytime I left out potato the soup is slimy, coating your lips with the glycerol texture of the broken down cress. I opted to try to meet the French-influenced lux texture of a shiny chicken stock, cream and plenty of butter with some slick greens. Behrens braised lettuce soup recipe incorporates peas, an interesting innovation. 

There’s a great recipe for Lettuce-Watercress soup from Amanda Hesser in her book the Cook and the Gardener. Hesser writes “Watercress soup was once very popular in France. Considered a spring tonic, it was referred to as a potage de santé or health soup. Lettuce soup has also enjoyed its popularity. It’s been around for ages, reaching a height of sophistication in Careme’s day, during the nineteenth century.” Hesser’s green soup practice makes use of what tastes good in that moment, rather than adhering to the fanciful, almost antique recipes of yore from the likes of Antonin Careme, the king’s cook. 

In the same spirit I recommend you hunt around for what greens are tasting good to you now. This recipe tasks you with imagining a blend of brightness and spiciness from different sources - kind of like how a winemaker has to make a cuvée or blend - I found it fun, hope you do too. 

Green Soup 

3 tablespoons salted butter

3 shallots, chopped

1 lb tender-leaved greens, like young kale, swiss chard, spinach, arugula or amaranth*

Spring of mint, picked for its leaves 

Bunch of parsley, picked for its leaves 

Couple of chives, chopped 

¼ c water 

2 cups good-tasting stock, vegetable, chicken or veal 

¼ c cream 

1 tablespoon Salt 

Pinch of White pepper 

Melt butter in a large pan. Add shallots and cook on medium-low heat until melted, about 8 minutes. Add greens (but not the herbs) and water to pan. Season the greens with salt. Cook on low heat, stirring occasionally, until cooked through, about 20 minutes. Don’t rush it. If the leaves get dry, add a bit more water as needed. 

Transfer onions and greens to a blender, and add raw herbs. Add a little stock and blitz it up on low at first, add speed and stock as you go. Blend until all the flecks of green are incorporated. Should look like a green smoothie. Add the cream. Taste and add seasoning if needed. It should seem pretty thin but will thicken a bit when it gets cold. Chill in fridge until ready to serve. Garnish with chopped chives. 

*Amaranth is a neutral-tasting leaf, so you can layer on flavor with herbs and most pungent and peppery greens. If you can find the herb Savory this does it really well. Amaranth also grows wild around Chicago like a weed. We do have led in most parts of Cook county in the top layer of our soil from industrial run off. In my case, amaranth just starting growing in a raised bed we have, I was only able to identify it with the app called Plant Finder. The markets are starting to have more greens and herbs, and this is a good time for the softer greens, while later in the summer we get more hearty and fibrous textures. 

fish mayo

Mayonnaise was on the short list of foods reviled in my family home. It was taken so seriously I used to order McChickens without sauce (dry). My dad still refuses to touch it. We once went to lunch together at the restaurant I had just started working at, I ordered the whole menu I think aside from the two dishes they always had on. One, a highlight for me, was a goat dish with tonnato. Knowing the principles of the restaurant at the time it must have been made with bonito instead of the moist canned fish. It also had what must have been a mountain of black pepper in the sauce, giving it spice and texture that, to my mayo-sensitive taste at the time, offered balance to that tonnato, to that dish.

Starting so far from the source, the Northern Italian sauce commonly served with veal, opened up my curiosity and six years later I find myself in my kitchen closer to emulating the classic.

In Benedetta Vitali's cookbook Soffritto: Tradition and Innovation in Tuscan Cooking she includes vitello tonnato in a chapter called "Layering Flavors" intended to "offer a series of recipes based on the search for tastes to assemble and mix, with the aim of finding unusual and interesting combinations". Obviously not relegated to only food, this is also how one thinks about putting wine and food together on the table. You could bluntly call pairing a flavor layer and as fair weather pairing fans it proves re-invigorating and inspiring to tear things down to the scaffolding and think about the construction. I think a lot about the scene from It's Always Sunny where Danny Devito's character Frank says he likes to make the sandwich in his mouth because it tastes better.

Because I'm curious about the potential of the flavor layer, freeing the tuna from the veal, I don't use Vitali's recipe which classically calls for using some jus in the sauce itself further marrying the sauce and meat together. As common in my kitchen I turn to Rachel Roddy. Her method is good for this because while some recipes ask you to add mayonnaise to a fish puree, she has you add your olive oil into your eggs and fish mimicking mayonnaise making itself. Marcella Hazan insists that you use 100% olive oil mayonnaise for tonnato and I agree. The flavor is usually too strong but with the multiple fishes and other seasonings the grassiness is balanced and essential to the dish. So doing it yourself you know what you're getting into. The process of making mayonnaise itself has a leisurely magic to it, asking one fat to absorb another close to infinitely without breaking. Bearing witness to that kitchen magic is always a treat. Lastly, building the sauce in one blender is more economical to clean, hopefully allowing you to relax an take your time with your oil addition.

Roddy serves her sauce with tomatoes, as does Helen Rosner in her recent article for the New Yorker. Local tomatoes aren't in season yet but are close enough that it feels sensible to hold off on a dish that celebrates them. I picked potatoes, partially because potato rhymes with potato so you aren't robbed of the joy of saying "potato tonnato" which nicely mimics "potayto potahto". But also in the spirit of Vitali's suggestion. This ultimately ends up combining two fridge salad classics, the tuna salad & the potato salad into one. And I think it's a good place to start. The recipe makes for more sauce than you probably need for potatoes so you can play around with it for a few meals. We used this sauce the other day to dress pork sandwiches.

Tonnato (adapted from Rachel Roddy's column A kitchen in Rome)

Some people put capers in their sauce but I follow RR’s lead and use parsley, leaving capers as garnish. Also while I affectionately call this fish mayo it’s only sort of true. You are looking for a silky texture, expecting something stiffer that mimics Hellman’s will only lead to an undeserved disappointment in yourself.

2 anchovy fillets

160g can tuna (120g drained) this should be written on the can

1 clove garlic

1 whole egg plus one yolk

1 tsp dijon mustard

small handful parsley (optional)

150ml olive oil

pepper and maybe salt depending on your anchovies

1. Add the anchovies, drained tuna, garlic, eggs, mustard, and parlsey into your blender and pulse until smooth.
2. Once smooth, continue to pulse and add your olive oil in bit by bit as you would with mayonnaise. After the oil’s been incorporated, taste and add pepper and salt if you think it needs it.

Add a glass of wine on the side to keep layering flavors.

potatoes & caper leaves in a sea of sauce

break it up

 Sometimes you get to thinking a certain way about things and get stuck. Then if you’re lucky, someone or something gets you unstuck. For me, oftentimes wine does that. It can turn the way you think about something on its ear. I've written about wine and cooking disrupting my depression. A wine can show me a way of being - from combining flavors you'd never think of putting together - to carrying dark depth with grace - that help break out of my lulls, particularly with regard to feeding myself. So this is a post about herbs of all things to the tune of Patti Smith. I'm starting to understand my rage gets channeled into through and around food in some weird ways!

I’ve been very curmudgeonly and a little dogmatic about not having too many herbs in my kitchen. Sometimes it's fun to be a curmudgeon, lately I don't enjoy it as much. During the year I avoid buying herbs to the point that I avoid any recipe that depends on them. They are expensive, and I never use the whole clamshell container and they go bad, with the exception of thyme maybe. Bon Appetit magazine is the source of this wonderful, slightly tedious and helpful guide on how to store herbs properly. For a long stretch in the late mid-aughts BA was also responsible for lots of recipes that required many different fresh herbs. This annoyed me, in that it seemed to always require a pricey trip to the store and was not pantry-cooking-friendly. In summer, I keep a few herb pots that mitigate this issue, although we still need to buy herbs from the store sometimes.

I tend to think of a wine as having either a tender or soft stemmed herbal quality or a woody herb quality. Soft-stemmed herbs are: parsley, mint, cilantro, dill, basil, tarragon ~ while hardy-stemmed herbs are: thyme, oregano/marjoram, rosemary, bay. But then this false binary is broken up by some wines like syrah which classically hold aromatics of both fresh mint and thyme. And thus, in wine I find things go together that I would never reach for in my cooking. 

The person I share my kitchen with loves to cook with blends of herbs and spices, and I always enjoy his use of them. His favorite is herbs de Provence. This blend of thyme, rosemary and a differing combination of chervil, bay, marjoram and sometimes also lavender,  is reflected in the concept of garrigue. Garrigue is the French term for the wild vegetation along the Mediterranean coast but broadly in the south of France. Rather than a single plant or scent, garrigue refers to a variety of aromatic, resinous herbs like rosemary, sage, bay leaves and thyme. It also includes shrubs like juniper and artemisia as well as lavender and mint.   Em, who visited the Languedoc this spring, confirms that when you stand in the vineyard at a winery like Le Petit Domaine de Gimios, it smells like this. 

I made this lasagna in that same spirit of crossing my artificial boundary of soft and hard herbs - using thyme, fennel seed, and a basil garnish that seems minor but is very important for fragrance and texture. 

In addition to crispy noodles and cheese on the surface, I wanted to include the crispy leaf of the kale in this lasagna. This is kind of like a lasagna version of Em’s pasta, sausage, broccoli (PSB). For a vegetarian version, I recommend switching the pork for chopped fennel. It takes a little work to collect the perfect bite for the eater, but this is only because I wanted to keep it as simple and gestural for the cook (me) as possible. Lavering on a bed of fresh green curly leaves, for instance, feels really good even if it takes an extra second to cut it on the plate later on. 

*** and to drink ***

The Rainbow store now offers packs that highlight certain themes or producers, as well as a custom option. We have more wines in stock than are reflected in the packs detailed online. With the custom option, there's a space to give us some info about what you'd like. We encourage you to share what you're looking for - whether you would just like something new, or seasonal, or to go with what you're cooking this week. For instance, if you wanted an herbal pack including a syrah, we have wines for that, and it's just about our favorite type of thing to put together.

Lasagna 

Makes 1 tray / casserole dish about 9” x 13” 

Par-boiled Noodles*

Cream Sauce (see below)

Pork & Onion (see below) 

1/2 lb cleaned and destemmed Russian red kale leaves, kept whole 

1/4 c grated parmesan 

Small handful basil leaves, chopped 

Splash olive oil 

*Buy lasagna noodles and par cook them according to the package instructions, or make pasta according to the egg dough recipe from the blog. Roll out into ¼” thick sheets, then cut into strips. Don’t worry too much about making them evenly sized, it’s nice to make a little patchwork when you assemble it. In boiling, salted, water, cook the noodles for a minute, you just par boil them before baking them in the casserole. 

Cream sauce 

This started as a failed attempt to make Ricotta and turned into something nice between a fresh cheese and a bechamel

2 c heavy whipping cream 

½ c greek yogurt 

1 tablespoon distilled white vinegar 

Combine the yogurt and cream in a saucepan, and whisk until smooth. Bring to a low boil, then add vinegar. Keep cooking at a low simmer for 20 minutes, whisking occasionally to keep the sauce from burning on the bottom of the pan or on the sides of the pan. It should be reduced by about a half. 

Pork & onion 

1 lb ground pork 

10 or so spring onion bulbs or shallots, peeled and quartered

¼ c dry white wine

1 tablespoon fennel seeds, toasted and ground 

 3 or so thyme branches, leaves removed and chopped roughly

In a skillet, heat a glug of cooking oil. When hot, add the ground pork. Season with salt, chili flake and black pepper. Let pork brown by letting it sit in the pan and not stirring it around too much. Cook it til it’s no longer pink then remove to a plate. Deglaze the pan with ¼ c dry white wine. Add the onions and cook on medium-low heat until tender, about 15 minutes. Combine the onions and the pork and ground fennel and thyme. 

~~

Assemble the lasagna by placing cream sauce on the base of the casserole dish, followed by the noodles, then the pork, then the kale, and repeat. Finish the top with kale leaves, a drizzle of cream sauce, the grated parmesan and a few splashes of olive oil. 

Bake at 350 for 30 minutes. Let rest 10 minutes out of oven before serving. Serve with basil sprinkled on top. 

fridge salad

 Maybe you work at a restaurant and it is busier. Maybe your friends are asking you to hang out more. Maybe both are happening at the same time.

Coming out of a long nap you should go into the kitchen and cook something that you can pull from the fridge and eat when you have a little time to yourself. I would suggest to marinate some beets. My old acupuncturist said beets are good for your blood, something that tends leaves your face when you overexert yourself. Maybe kind of funny to be suggesting beets but honestly love and appreciate them for being a workhorse of whatever our Midwestern cuisine is. Plus it’s easier to appreciate cold things when you are hot. I cook them like Alice Waters in a baking dish with a splash of water covered in tin foil at 375 until a knife goes through in the way I feel like eating them. Sometimes that’s more firm and sometimes that’s beet jelly. I find it really hard to cook beets *just right*. Then you wait til they’re cool enough to peel the skins and cut them and dump vinegar on to taste. You can find yourself using a lot of vinegar but my favorite for this dish is very precious to me and I only spare a small glug, it serves more to highlight the sweet-earth rather than to mask it as can be common with this preparation.

The beets are good because of this earthiness, reminding us of what we stand on (even if it’s underneath concrete) and offer a “grounding” feeling for the eater. If you want to sink your feet in even deeper I might suggest to have some blue cheese with the beets. Nicolaus Balla published a recipe for beet and blue cheese salad in the influential Bar Tartine cookbook, including an image where the beets and cheese are separate. Which is how I like it in order to get the full visual impact of both beautiful foods. The beets and cheese tend to bleed on each other which is fine but feels less inspired pulling it out of the fridge on day 2 or 3.

On the way back from the cheese shop I texted Cub that I wanted to the Cab Franc of foods. The kind I like, deep earth with a lick of acidity. Something that reminds me of opening a fresh bag of clay, damp and heavy sure, but full of possibility. Going to take you somewhere. 

Unless you’re really in the clouds I would suggest white wine, a friend of Cabernet Franc, Chenin Blanc for this. We have a duo in the shop from Le Temps d’Aimer that I’ve been dreaming about since the last time the wines were in Chicago. If you hate blue cheese, you can eat beets and drink Cabernet Franc maybe? I suggest this pair from Bobinet. Pop the Hanami whenever you’d like and save the Echalier for an occasion.

Other fridge salads to consider: beans, tuna, mussels like from our apéro bar, a grain salad like farro