It’s springtime in Seattle and the land is engorged with possibility.  You don’t need to go farther than your own neighborhood to make a meal fit for royalty, let me show you.  I cook by feel rather than by rote more often than not, and it’s a good habit to be in if you want to focus on seasonality. Rather than go to the store armed with a nitpicking recipe and a fastidious commitment to detail, loosen up. Go with the flow.  Take a walk. That’s what I did, and two blocks from my house I ran across a patch of stinging nettle ripe for the taking.  There may have been a touch more planning involved as I was armed with gloves, shears and a bag for my bounty- all necessary for harvesting stinging nettle lest you desire prickly pain all day.  In fact if you’re not sure it’s stinging nettle there is one surefire way to check, though I don’t recommend it :)

I brought my nettle home and lightly steamed it to render it harmless, then plucked the leaves from the tougher stems.  Harvest younger, shorter nettle for best flavor and tenderness.  Once I had my nettles ready to go the rest of the meal fell into place readily.  I had a fresh fat duck sitting in the refrigerator waiting to be fabricated (broken down) and cooked sous vide, so I thought I’d make a pasta with the nettles and some kind of saucy meaty accompaniment with the duck. 

I fabricated the duck into four parts and seasoned each quarter with homemade salt, thyme, smoked garlic powder, bay leaves, and oregano.  I packed each quarter into food-safe bags and sous vided the legs and thighs for 15 hours at 180° and the breasts at the same temperature for five hours. Normally you can get by with cooking duck breast at 140°, but since I kept the bone-in I maintained a higher cooking temperature as I was looking for more of a fall-off-the-bone tenderness rather than a firm breast.  Funny, kind of the opposite as you’d want in a human, no? 

Initially I thought of making gnocchi with the nettles, but settled on its ricotta-based cousin called gnudi (which means nude in Italian and is short for gnocchi gnudi- aka gnocchi nude of the pasta itself).  Some folks refer to gnudi as malfatti, which means badly made, but I like gnudi better, plus I take time in forming each gnudo, so they’re not really as roughly made as some malfatti can be.  As I see it, a main difference between malfatti and gnudi (though this varies regionally and is hotly debated) is that malfatti can be made by simply dropping dollops of dough into boiling water (you can even plop them out using a pastry bag) whereas gnudi tends to be formed using spoons or hands.  I thought gnudi rather than gnocchi would bring out the flavor of the nettle as it wouldn’t be competing with potato. I thought correctly- who woulda known? 

Making gnudi is fun. That sentence wasn’t meant to sound sexual, I promise.  First you press out all the liquid from one tub of ricotta and the nettles, then whir them in a food processor with either two duck egg yolks or three chicken yolks.  Plop the goo into a mixing bowl and add salt, smoked garlic powder if you wish, and flour as needed to form a light dough.  A cup and a half of flour should more or less suffice.  (tip- the amount of flour needed in most recipes will vary with your humidity and altitude. Learn to adjust by feel rather than rely on a specific number). 

To form the gnudi roll a teaspoon of dough between your palms into a little oval. Place on a parchment-lined sheetpan and repeat with remaining dough. Cover while waiting for the water to boil and finishing the duck and sauce.  Cook gnudi as you would gnocchi- by dropping into salted boiling water and removing with a slotted spoon once they float to the top.  Keep in warming oven while boiling the remainder. 

Rhubarb became the base for the duck sauce because it is seasonal and growing like mad all around Seattle.  I chopped it into small pieces and reduced it in moscato wine, chicken stock and the juice of one orange. After ten minutes I strained it, tossing the rhubarb chunks.  I poured some duck fat and jus from one of the duck pouches into the saucepan and lightly sautéed a spring onion in it. Then I added the rhubarb sauce and reduced a bit further, adjusting seasoning as needed.  To finish the dish, I crisped up the skin on the duck by deep-frying them for two minutes. Then I plated the gnocchi, a quarter of duck, and drizzled rhubarb reduction over both. 

This dining experience is an example of how relatively simple it is to incorporate local, seasonal elements into cuisine.  Rhubarb and nettles were foraged and duck eggs come from a local farm as does the duck itself.  Herbs all came from my garden, salt I made from Washington waters, garlic powder was made and smoked at home.  While I buy my ricotta from DeLaurenti in Pike Place Market and they make it themselves, I easily could have made it too. It’s one of the quickest cheeses to make; in fact it’s a byproduct of many other cheeses.   I hope this post inspires you to take a walk and cook off the beaten path.  Your diners will thank you for it.

This is one of the most attractive pastas I have ever made, on the inside and out.  As the dutiful author of a Seattle food blog, I owe it to you to share, but it’s so dang good I was this close to keeping this little gem in my secret bag of tricks.  The striking green color peeking out the layers of rotoli whets even the most finicky appetite.  This dish is a pan-global crowd pleaser, borrowing just a little bit from several different cultures.  It looks incredibly sophisticated on the plate, but the flavors are so deceptively simple even my (ultra-refined) toddler gobbles it down by the handful.  If you’ve never made your own pasta, what better time to start, as these simply formed sheets are much more forgiving than if you were making ravioli, for example, and yet I daresay they are more beautiful. 

Last time I found myself in the unparalleled NYC, a friend and author of the beautiful blog Culinary Musings suggested we meet at Buddakan in the Meatpacking district for a lil drinky-poo and something delish on which to nosh.  They serve edamame ravioli on their dim sum menu and I haven’t been able to get it out of my head ever since.  I finally set out to recreate it, though I will say that the end: a. this is only very loosely-based on the original and b. imho, mine’s better :) If you ever make it to Buddakan, let me know what you think. If you get around to making these rotoli I know exactly what you’ll think, and it won’t have much to do with the analytic part of your brain. Rather, the pleasure centers associated with taste will be doing cartwheels over each other to get more, more, more, and you’ll undoubtedly eat more than you should. 

Rotoli just means rolls in Italian, this is one area I decided to deviate from the original inspiration.  While I can’t get enough of ravioli-making, I wanted to try a different type of pasta that would really showcase the green of the edamame.  I figured instead of hiding it inside a closed pocket, I would just roll up little tubes then cut them into pieces, that way you’d be able to see the green peering through the layers on the side.  It was the right call because so much of food is its visual appeal before it even hits your lips, and this dish is pretty as a picture. 

Truffled Edamame Rotoli in Sauternes Broth

Edamame Puree:

• 1 bag shelled edamame, boiled and drained
• ¾ c whole milk ricotta
• thinly sliced leeks that have been sweated in butter
• salt & pepper to taste
• white truffle oil to taste
• ½ c packed shaved Parmigiano Reggiano

Pasta:

• 1-2 c flour (start with a cup, add more as needed)
• ½ tsp salt
• 2 large eggs (I use duck eggs for their stiffness)

Sauternes Broth:

• 1 1/2 c Sauternes
• ½ c chicken stock
• 2 fresh bay leaves, crushed
• truffle oil to taste

Garnish: a few reserved edamame pods to add color to the plate

1.  In a food processor, blend the cooled edamame (reserve half a cup of pods for garnish), ricotta, leeks, and Parmigiano.  After it is completely smooth with no lumps, add the salt, pepper and truffle oil. Give it a few whirls in the processor and taste to adjust seasonings. 
2. Mix the eggs into the salted flour until they are completely blended. Knead more flour in as needed until the dough becomes smooth and elastic.  Tearing off walnut-sized pieces and working on a well-floured surface, roll out pasta into rectangular shapes approximately 4×8”.  It’s easy if you form a tube with your piece before you start rolling it, that way it will naturally roll into a rectangle.  You’ll want the thinness to be one stage above as thin as you can roll it- basically the level you would roll for lasagna sheets.  Allow the sheets to hang for a few minutes, but don’t leave them for too long as they’ll become brittle and crack when you’re filling them.  You can cover them with a tea towel as they’re resting in order to avoid excessive brittleness. 
3. Bring a medium stockpot of salted water to boil. Meanwhile, working with one sheet at a time, spread an equal amount of filling all over the pasta sheet, completely covering it.  Roll each filled sheet from the shorter end to end like you would a crepe, only tighter.  Place the sheets on a sheet pan and cover with a tea towel to prevent dryness. 
4. Once you have rolled each pasta sheet, begin boiling the involtini one at a time in the prepared water. After two minutes (or when they float to the top) remove them to a sheet pan with a slotted spoon.  You can place them in the oven on its lowest setting to keep warm as you finish the rotoli and make the Sauternes broth. 
5. For the broth, simmer all ingredients except the truffle oil until it is reduced by half.  Remove the bay leaves and add truffle oil to taste. 
6. To assemble, cut each involtino into four or five pieces and arrange on a plate.  Drizzle with Sauternes broth and garnish with a few edamame pods. 

I’m on a bit of a pasta kick these days that involves putting the egg on the inside.  A few months back I made a duck egg raviolo appetizer that complemented the fresh white Alba truffle I shaved over it perfectly.  Now that the Alba truffle season is passed and my inner foodie snob will not allow me to substitute domestics or French blacks, I’m forced to pair my eggs with such exotic ingredients as bacon (really going out on an adventurous limb here, I know).  Now when you think bacon, egg and pasta, what comes to mind? You got it, carbonara- the Emilia-Romagna or Lazio- originated comfort food quite popular amongst noi Americani because we sure do love our bacon.  But I can never make it that simple.  No, there always has to be a culinary twist, and in this case I decided to make the eggs quail, the pasta giant ravioli called raviolone, and cook the eggs inside the pasta instead of cracked over the top upon tossing. 

A quail egg is the perfect size to work with to fill a raviolo.  It gently bursts from its mottled shell into the waiting mote of ricotta in a faultless decisive moment.   Cooked al dente in its raviolone package, the yolk oozes forth like a particularly lively poached egg.  After this lengthy Pollyanna intro, you would think everything in my kitchen was coming up sugar and spice and everything nice.  You would be wrong.  You see, I have an 18 month old boy named Bentley Danger.  Why oh why did I give him the middle name Danger? People live up to their names, and in his case it couldn’t be truer.  What is it they say about little boys? Snakes and snails and puppy dog tails? Well we haven’t gotten there yet, but we will.  He’s smart as a whip but so mischievous and curious I can’t fathom what the terrible twos have in store. 

While I was elbow deep rolling out pasta sheets on the island in my kitchen, Bentley decided to open the floor-height wine refrigerator.  The locking mechanism broke last week and Jonas and I have been scratching our heads on how to somehow baby proof the fridge while not adult proofing it at the same time, since we do require ready access.  Bentley is completely aware of this development, and I’ve had to blockade the fridge numerous times in the last week.  Somehow intuitively knowing that I would be engrossed in my pasta mass and therefore unable to retaliate, he managed to lift a bottle out of the fridge (starting early, I know).  The really bad part? He proceeded to drop it whereupon it shattered upon contact with the floor.  I jumped to action and lifted him away from any danger, coating him in a mixture of duck egg and semolina in the process.  I put him in his crib and went back to survey the scene. The really really bad part? It wasn’t just any bottle- it was an ’01 Barbaresco worth a pretty penny in economic value, but even more sentimentally speaking, as we picked it up in Italy during our wedding festivities a few years ago.  I guess you can’t fault the boy for good taste, right?  In any case, all is well now, Jonas managed to repair the lock, and I decided that after smelling all that good wine during the cleanup I needed to open a bottle to finish my pasta and drown my sorrows. 

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                                                                                -TS Eliot

I don’t know what it is about the last stanza of The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock that has always made me think of beets.  I mean sure, the word red is in there, and red is eponymous with beets, but I don’t think that’s it.  I think it’s because I get some vision of waiflike sirens with rosy cheeks and garnet lips billowing on fragile seashells on the crest of a wave.  Red lips and cheeks always bring beets to my imagination because I love to paint the faces of everyone in the kitchen with halved beets whenever I’m working with them.  If no one is game, I step it up another notch and take out my 12” chef’s knife, drizzle beet juice all over it and my finger, and commence to bloodcurdlingly scream. That get’s them every time, of course then they really won’t let me paint their faces since they’re so mad at me. 

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I have the greatest neighbors in the world who are always performing thoughtful little gestures that mean the world to me.  The most recent came in the form of a “just because” package left on the front mat- a cardboard box wrapped with a length of my favorite chartreuse ribbon.  The box contained five beautifully cushioned little gourds, all a different color, some with spiky protrusions, some with striated patterns.

These gourds go a long way toward satisfying my growing need for fresh flowers in the house as the chill air settles around us. I think it stems from a want-what-you-can’t-have sort of ideology, but my desire for fresh flowers is always in inverse proportion to how warm it is outside.  In other words in summer, when fresh flowers are in over-abundance all over town including in my yard, I feel much less need to have them on my dining table than in winter when they have to be carted up from faraway tropical paradises at prices that make my husband wince.  It is my hope that the cheerful, bright gourds Robert and Patrick dropped by will somewhat curb my appetite for flowers since I can arrange them happenstance around the house in lieu of pricy peonies. Read more